Just in case there are those who do not know, in canada at least the providers always have a uncontracted phone price. These prices tend not to be advertised much though, and many of the salesmen are comissioned based on contracts not the devices themselves.
Be sure to ask. Repeatedly. And with different agents.
But define it in legal clauses without there being loopholes or possibility for abuse of the system or gaming it (from either side, if its the corps then the system is useless waste, if its the government then the system is fearsome). That is what really bugs me about such ideas.
That's a lame definition of fascism. The central characteristic of fascism is control of citizens actions by government or other influential people who aren't officially part of it in the name of the nation. You're talking corporatism which does suck but is different. I'd reword what you're saying as "The central characteristic of fascism is control of citizens actions by government, or other influential people who aren't officially part of it, through appeals to nationalism and unreasoning patriotism."
Course thats also jingoism. nitpicking language is fun, but in the end its the point thats important. Such a system would be easy to subvert and use as a method of complete economic control by the government if it isnt implemented flawlessly (and point to the government program that is). That is my point.
As i mention in other replies, the big issue for me is the fact that this is all based on the subjective notions of "ethics and national interest". If we create such a system with great intentions, it must be created such that subjectivity cannot enter into the equation. The wrong person gets in power and bam, the system is the infrastructure to have massive influence over american corporations and vicariously, the economy. Its the wrong kind of step unless it is done flawlessly.
Perfection is rare in humanity. I dont trust us to do it properly without it being a hair trigger away from being perverted into something horrible. It might NOT be perverted but what politician doesnt like more power and influence?
The odd one yes, but most people like that tend to not get to the upper echelons of politics in any event.
Its really not in the idea itself, its in the implementation. This to me sounds like one of those ideas that sounds great on paper, until the human element is involved. They would have to be extremely careful to balance the government influence on corporations, cost of running the system, and the ethics of it veryyy careful and ensure no room for someone to turn it into a control panel for the countries economy.
I do not trust us to be able to do that. The founding fathers sure as hell tried in the constitution, and they seemed like fairly reasonable men. Didn't keep numerous administrations from ignoring it when its considered "best for the nation" in the controlling parties opinion.
Its the subjectivity of it all that makes me leery of any such system.
The problem with such legislation is who is determining what is in line with the nations interests, how the controlling players think the nations interest has that change over time. Such a system of corporate management could be easily perverted. Theres also the other angle where such a system could be an entirely worthless waste of taxpayer dollars and not ever be properly enforced.
Not saying its a bad idea to create such a system, it would just have to be VERYYYY carefully balanced between governmental influence over the corporations, the overhead of running the system, and ethics. Consider the constitution, and how many different possible interpretations people use to support their arguments in government.
I dont trust the current set of politicians on any side to want to be able to balance a checkbook let alone those considerations.
Fascism is a government, faction, movement, or political philosophy that raises nationalism, and frequently race, above the individual and is characterized by a centralized autocratic state governed by a dictatorial head, stringent organization of the economy and society, and aggressive repression of opposition. In addition to placing the interests of the individual as subordinate to that of the nation or race, fascism seeks to achieve a national rebirth by promoting cults of unity, energy and purity [1]
(I expect money comes into this equation somewhere) Development costs for the fixes and effectively retooling costs for the production line. I would expect that making a new master and swapping it up in pressing wouldn't be the big portion of the cost, but its there.
Of course companies hate the concept of full disclosure. That would not allow them to make patch timetables based on business needs as opposed to customer needs. But then, I'll never understand why consumers accept the concept that businesses need to keep such secrecy in the name of security through obfuscation, and then smile and nod when things fall apart that "yep dealing with computers for you".
Why in the hell has this become one of the few fields where its considered normal to have a broken product? Granted its nigh impossible to have a 100% bug-free product, but the standards seem to keep falling and falling.
This has been a long time in the coming and has been bugging the hell out of me. This is where i see a lot of the "Community Contributions" involving Jeff Hawkin's recent endeavors. If you take a look at some of the details of his models, the fact that DARPA and Lockheed/Martin have taken an interest in his work, and his recent projects things start to look scary.
It is easy to envision the possible uses for his recent mundane technologies". Itinerary analysis and keyword triggered speech recognition and recording? The former has obvious uses and the latter would remove a metric shitload of overhead from surveillance storage and analysis.
My tinfoil hat allergy can only say correlation != causation so many times before the system spazzes right out.
The problem is that what passes as education in the US (and other similarly wealthy countries, indeed) is of such poor quality that one is left wondering if this was intentional and not accidental. Well lets look back shall we.
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
-- Woodrow Wilson (pres. of the usa 1913-1921)
They created exactly what they wanted. General and some school boards college prep curriculum cover the larger class, some college prep and AP for the former. Its working wonderfully well, look at the crap the larger class in America is willing to consume with a straight face these days.
i think that fellow might be referring more to the supercapacitors, not superconductors.
still not mass producable enough while being energy dense enough as far as I've read. If this was the case in Japan, i'm sure someone with enough jingo power would have updated the wikipedia entry.
In case i made an ass of u and me; As for superconductors, theoretical superconductor "flywheels" for current have been suggested but i'm not finding anything mentioning work outside of labs with low-temp superconductors.
This isn't only not censorship, it's not even evil. It's simply stupid.
When i think of the number of users who are consistently pasting youtube urls to each other...and then think of the number of users who would actually bother using the microsoft video service, i fail to see how there could possibly be a gain in this beyond drastically reducing the number of MSN and Windows Live messenger users in the end overall.
Maybe they just want to get rid of the hippies and only keep the userbase of controllable wallets? Beyond something bizarre like that, i fail to see the advantage in the end.
but to simply attack a company for no reason because they are successful, just goes to show what sort of people work for/. You must be new...to computing. I'll grant that slashdot attacks microsoft for the wrong reasons quite often, or invalid or poorly researched reasons, but the general attitude is definitely not for NO reason.
Seems more like they're taking their time on this one. More than likely, they'll wait long enough to include it as a default update push and once its ubiquitous on their platform THEN go ahead with changing across their sites. Of course, they'd have to be careful to avoid another anti-trust row.
The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!" because they don't realize its silverlight.
you cant claim an illegal act as being allowed simply because its not listed as an exception in a contract the same way you cant list an illegal act as a clause of a contract.
plus, the service was listed as UNLIMITED. That might be a close parallel if this was a case of the ISP selling him 1GB worth of transfer one time as pay per use and him demanding unlimited, but thats not what is being discussed here is it?
No offense, but you were also at fault here
This is also why ISP's should include a bandwidth cap in their contract. How was he at fault in any way when he purchased a service stated as being without limits, and then used it as such?
Its not the users fault at all if the ISPs are going over capacity by selling what they do not have. In fact, if they hit their networks capacity and continue to sell the same terms to new customers, in the end they are comitting fraud (like selling someone a Ferrari at reasonable prices for a Ferrari and then delivering a Civic, to use the ever popular car analogies).
Don't worry, with Macs still around we'll still be able to understand and use their networking protocols, hack into it, and upload a virus compatible with their system of computation to make for a dramatic cliffhanger explosion moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Just in case there are those who do not know, in canada at least the providers always have a uncontracted phone price. These prices tend not to be advertised much though, and many of the salesmen are comissioned based on contracts not the devices themselves.
Be sure to ask. Repeatedly. And with different agents.
see, that sounds great.
But define it in legal clauses without there being loopholes or possibility for abuse of the system or gaming it (from either side, if its the corps then the system is useless waste, if its the government then the system is fearsome). That is what really bugs me about such ideas.
Course thats also jingoism. nitpicking language is fun, but in the end its the point thats important. Such a system would be easy to subvert and use as a method of complete economic control by the government if it isnt implemented flawlessly (and point to the government program that is). That is my point.
As i mention in other replies, the big issue for me is the fact that this is all based on the subjective notions of "ethics and national interest". If we create such a system with great intentions, it must be created such that subjectivity cannot enter into the equation. The wrong person gets in power and bam, the system is the infrastructure to have massive influence over american corporations and vicariously, the economy. Its the wrong kind of step unless it is done flawlessly.
Perfection is rare in humanity. I dont trust us to do it properly without it being a hair trigger away from being perverted into something horrible. It might NOT be perverted but what politician doesnt like more power and influence?
The odd one yes, but most people like that tend to not get to the upper echelons of politics in any event.
Its really not in the idea itself, its in the implementation. This to me sounds like one of those ideas that sounds great on paper, until the human element is involved. They would have to be extremely careful to balance the government influence on corporations, cost of running the system, and the ethics of it veryyy careful and ensure no room for someone to turn it into a control panel for the countries economy.
I do not trust us to be able to do that. The founding fathers sure as hell tried in the constitution, and they seemed like fairly reasonable men. Didn't keep numerous administrations from ignoring it when its considered "best for the nation" in the controlling parties opinion.
Its the subjectivity of it all that makes me leery of any such system.
The problem with such legislation is who is determining what is in line with the nations interests, how the controlling players think the nations interest has that change over time. Such a system of corporate management could be easily perverted. Theres also the other angle where such a system could be an entirely worthless waste of taxpayer dollars and not ever be properly enforced.
Not saying its a bad idea to create such a system, it would just have to be VERYYYY carefully balanced between governmental influence over the corporations, the overhead of running the system, and ethics. Consider the constitution, and how many different possible interpretations people use to support their arguments in government.
I dont trust the current set of politicians on any side to want to be able to balance a checkbook let alone those considerations.
Yep. Partly.
Of course companies hate the concept of full disclosure. That would not allow them to make patch timetables based on business needs as opposed to customer needs. But then, I'll never understand why consumers accept the concept that businesses need to keep such secrecy in the name of security through obfuscation, and then smile and nod when things fall apart that "yep dealing with computers for you".
Why in the hell has this become one of the few fields where its considered normal to have a broken product? Granted its nigh impossible to have a 100% bug-free product, but the standards seem to keep falling and falling.
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
This has been a long time in the coming and has been bugging the hell out of me. This is where i see a lot of the "Community Contributions" involving Jeff Hawkin's recent endeavors. If you take a look at some of the details of his models, the fact that DARPA and Lockheed/Martin have taken an interest in his work, and his recent projects things start to look scary.
It is easy to envision the possible uses for his recent mundane technologies". Itinerary analysis and keyword triggered speech recognition and recording? The former has obvious uses and the latter would remove a metric shitload of overhead from surveillance storage and analysis.
My tinfoil hat allergy can only say correlation != causation so many times before the system spazzes right out.
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
-- Woodrow Wilson (pres. of the usa 1913-1921)
They created exactly what they wanted. General and some school boards college prep curriculum cover the larger class, some college prep and AP for the former. Its working wonderfully well, look at the crap the larger class in America is willing to consume with a straight face these days.
yeah, that'd be the verbose version of what i meant =)
Hey, which crazy thing happening are you guys screaming about?
So if the former ever occurs, does the entire mass of microsoft matter in the world convert to perfectly proportional energy?
nobel prize here i come.
But was anyone able to get past the introduction without the whole thing starting to narrate in ones head with the Simpson's Comic Book guy voice?
Thats the thing many people like to forget, middle-east born religions are all about code reuse.
Islam extends Christianity extends Judaism extends Zoroastrianism
Then theres the fork of what some would call the Edge Christianity such as jehovas witnesses, mormons, etc.
but somehow they all see themselves as "us", and the others as "them".
i think that fellow might be referring more to the supercapacitors, not superconductors.
still not mass producable enough while being energy dense enough as far as I've read. If this was the case in Japan, i'm sure someone with enough jingo power would have updated the wikipedia entry.
In case i made an ass of u and me; As for superconductors, theoretical superconductor "flywheels" for current have been suggested but i'm not finding anything mentioning work outside of labs with low-temp superconductors.
I agree entirely, and to take it a bit further..
This isn't only not censorship, it's not even evil. It's simply stupid.
When i think of the number of users who are consistently pasting youtube urls to each other...and then think of the number of users who would actually bother using the microsoft video service, i fail to see how there could possibly be a gain in this beyond drastically reducing the number of MSN and Windows Live messenger users in the end overall.
Maybe they just want to get rid of the hippies and only keep the userbase of controllable wallets? Beyond something bizarre like that, i fail to see the advantage in the end.
I should note that i define people in this case as people too to know what you mean by browser and go "Oh you mean the internet".
That kind of people.
Seems more like they're taking their time on this one. More than likely, they'll wait long enough to include it as a default update push and once its ubiquitous on their platform THEN go ahead with changing across their sites. Of course, they'd have to be careful to avoid another anti-trust row.
The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!" because they don't realize its silverlight.
and that correlates how?
you cant claim an illegal act as being allowed simply because its not listed as an exception in a contract the same way you cant list an illegal act as a clause of a contract.
plus, the service was listed as UNLIMITED. That might be a close parallel if this was a case of the ISP selling him 1GB worth of transfer one time as pay per use and him demanding unlimited, but thats not what is being discussed here is it?
Its not the users fault at all if the ISPs are going over capacity by selling what they do not have. In fact, if they hit their networks capacity and continue to sell the same terms to new customers, in the end they are comitting fraud (like selling someone a Ferrari at reasonable prices for a Ferrari and then delivering a Civic, to use the ever popular car analogies).
Don't worry, with Macs still around we'll still be able to understand and use their networking protocols, hack into it, and upload a virus compatible with their system of computation to make for a dramatic cliffhanger explosion moment.
No matter.