except CBC is already putting up a fight against Bell's throttling through the current bent on stories they're running. You can be damned sure blizzard would fight to the death if p2p legislation or traffic shaping started impacting their profits in a measurable way.
You mean like the World of Warcraft Patch system or, more recently, CBC Television's release of a show using bit torrent? Its happening slowly but surely, and the more who do so and see the benefits the more that will.
Plus i'm sure your first responder there is not alone in making use of bit torrent for legitimate commercial applications.
Its pretty easy to put the blame on them when the Clinton administration presided over the most consistent period of economic growth than the entire 35 years prior.
Of course a good chunk of that was lost to the bubble collapse, and a good chunk of the gain was actually spurred by events in the Bush-Sr era, but thats still why its pretty easy heh.
(even if you manage to define those two terms). Hmm, it's been attempted before. Fairly well too, seeing as even the writers admit to the ambiguities and gradients in possible political opinions.
I think the real question is, why is it so blatantly obvious in the US? I can't bring myself to believe that america is the only place one can find these kinds of corruption. What I see is that it seems like american politicians have gotten used to having a rather less skeptical and less inquisitive electorate than many democracies and republics. This leads to certain attempts at subtlety that leave the rest of the world with a raised eyebrow and wondering "who the hell is swallowing this, and how?".
This leads to people making the mistaken assumption that the US is MORE corrupt than elsewhere. All this means is that those that had been using such tactics in the past are getting worse at it within the US. To say no other nations are corrupt is instantly wrong in some way shape or form. The difference is simply that other nations are better at it, know when such corruption will gain public focus or not, or don't have the clout to even try on the world stage. If one spends "scandal time" rashly, you'll end up with a government surrounded by iron clad checks and balances or simply distrusted by the rest of the world. Most politicians do not want either situation, as most politicians are...well...political.
Not american myself, just telling what i see from outside looking in.
In that it is something that is done constantly, you either have two versions of the license or two versions of the product.
This is nothing new, think of all the proprietary software out there where there are "free to use" versions where the only difference is a license agreement that you will not be using the software for commercial applications.
That's what the US thought when it created the lumber tarrifs concerning canadian lumber. All that happened is our lumber industry became more efficient and cost effective than ever, while creating sustainable lumber forests.
Its possible either way though, i'll grant you that.
If there was such a proposal, it would be in the guise of catching drug, alcohol, and tobacco smugglers. Theres a seriously huge industry in smuggling alcohol and tobacco into canada due to our massive taxes on the products (Smokers pay through the nose up here, based on the justification that since the government pays out the health claims, they need a return from the higher risk groups.
This makes for a huge amount of smokes and booze coming across the border to canada from the united states.
Then theres the inverse with drugs (for the most part, its bidirectional in cases) as there is a lot of canadian grown marijuana that gets sent down to the northern states from here in canada.
I can see law enforcement on both sides of the border being pleased with this idea. Being able to identify unauthorized crossings is a bit of a plus, the downside is if its effective the smugglers methodology will simply change.
I'm sure there is a wide variety of other ideas they have for the surveillance, theres certainly a lot of evil things that could arise from this, but i can see how people would want to try using the drones in this manner. All depends on who gets their hands on the control room.
I almost never have a more head-hurting, face-palming experience than trying to argue with people that RF does not impact living tissue...as it wont interact with anything...at all..ever....
This is something that is firmly embedded in the minds of society these days however, at least >51% in my experience.
Really the only big difference is the fact that the second search bar shows up for anyone...the whole market...as opposed to being a select percentage that happen to know site:etc.
The percentage of people that didn't know and/or didn't care is the exact demographic that these sites' marketing are targeting for the most part. I can't imagine a single marketing deparment anywhere where people are going "hey, isn't it neat that google is allowing for (at least slightly more) informed consumers?".
Companies hate having to adapt to change until they really really have to. Sadly this kind of bluster is cheaper and easier than actually trying to ensure ones product or service markets itself by the spec rather than cheap psychology, and sometime actually works (ie: if the company backs down on its own, or if they turn public sentiment against them).
Calling this aggression is an admission of a lack of alternative marketing strategies that do NOT require a first-call-sale type doctrine. Suckers.
Presenting users with choices amongst related businesses.
Oh the aggression. How dare an indexing company make it easier for consumers to view multiple sources for related queries to increase the revenue of their longstanding business model. Removing means of retaining "captive audience" style market research and manipulation is definitely not needed by anyone!
I believe the response for this as a current common colloquialism is "cry more, noobs".
..the concept of IT workers being a distinct outside group rather than part of the society is that most would get the gist of this:
Well, if they didn't vote for A lizard, the wrong lizard might get in!
-- Ford Prefect. Apart from that, why even bother differentiating the IT worker vote from any other demographic? We only have tenuous influence on management most of the time, let alone government. We are not special.
The difference with science is that, if you're honest about it, you mentally append to everything said "According to our current observations,...". This is why science is in a state of CONSTANT revision, and always will unless we somehow become omniscient ourselves.
This is not a negative connotation, this is the whole point. If someone refuses to revise their opinion regardless of new data (whether the data is for or against or not), that is faith imo. It is also the antithesis of the scientific method.
The upshot is, to the open minded, science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive until such a time that we can observe _everything_, in which case there would be no more mysteries anyways and life would be quite boring.
Ahh mistook who the OP was the way threads were nesting at first. My Bad =D
The thing i always wonder is how well such things would hold up in court in the EULAs and whether they ever had. We had in the TOS of the company i worked for that they actually werent liable for the actions or mistakes of their customer service reps. I would LOVE to see that in court.
I've never once been able to find a case of someone contesting these things though, beyond the SAF/911 class action here in canada and the current expressvu late fee suit.
I seriously wonder how many of these contracts that are presented as legit and slammed down the customers throat transfer after transfer wouldn't hold up in court. And whether it has ever been tested. Much of that could simply be a case of "well no one stood up for themselves yet"
Do you know of any sources along those lines for the US or elsewhere? I know we here in canada had a class action go through against Bell concerning the division of fees but i dont know if theres a result yet. Sadly the division of fees is one of the least tricksy and evil things they tend to do and I'm not having much google luck but that doesn't mean the cases arent out there.
Also, if you worked where you worked, you probably would get a kick out of this one i mentioned earlier, even if its the wrong country.
I don't know john, i've worked in several industries at this point and i can easily state that the standard service industries like cable and telecom are leaps and bounds beyond in terms of disregard of their legal obligations. For google, their terms of service have no direct relation to their income. No activation charges, no ETFs/LTCCs, no "HEY WANT A FREE PHONE?! SIGN HERE!".
You're definitely not wrong about the standard services industries though. In canada, ALL the major telecom companies operate this way as well and may be even worse than down there.
Here we have something called the "Consumer Protection Act" (hah) which when you boil it down basically states that if a company made a billing error over 90 days past, they are not obligated to fix it as it was the customers responsibility to let us know within 90 days. Therefore, the goal of customer service is to keep people thinking that everything is as it should be until at least 90 days pass from the error. Whether its the usual "btw, you signed a 36mn term for 3 months free of the smallest voicemail service we offer", or the 90 day thing up here, its a realm of evil that doesn't even come close to what the articles are discussing.
The Google terms of service in question DO also apply to their other services that require registration, where they mention the terms of service, so I don't see how this is really an issue. I don't even see how one could apply it to using their non-registration based services as being binding since they do not even state on the search engine page that use denotes acceptance of the TOS, nor is there even a terms of service section.
Slashdot Mirror
damn, i've been mistaking the use of chairs my whole life.
So if a serial killer goes on a shooting spree, we should say no bullet is safe from him?
(totally agree with you, just an influx of dicketry impulse to the neo-cortex =)
except CBC is already putting up a fight against Bell's throttling through the current bent on stories they're running. You can be damned sure blizzard would fight to the death if p2p legislation or traffic shaping started impacting their profits in a measurable way.
where can i get what you smoke by the way?
You mean like the World of Warcraft Patch system or, more recently, CBC Television's release of a show using bit torrent? Its happening slowly but surely, and the more who do so and see the benefits the more that will.
Plus i'm sure your first responder there is not alone in making use of bit torrent for legitimate commercial applications.
right....which had nothing to do with what i said =)
Now thats a really good point. I wonder how many will read your post as opposed to the other emotionally charged comments we're sure to see.
Its pretty easy to put the blame on them when the Clinton administration presided over the most consistent period of economic growth than the entire 35 years prior.
Of course a good chunk of that was lost to the bubble collapse, and a good chunk of the gain was actually spurred by events in the Bush-Sr era, but thats still why its pretty easy heh.
the sign hung over the door to The Asylum.
I agree with your point though, a toothpick is not going to suddenly cause the office building across the street to collapse.
I think the real question is, why is it so blatantly obvious in the US? I can't bring myself to believe that america is the only place one can find these kinds of corruption. What I see is that it seems like american politicians have gotten used to having a rather less skeptical and less inquisitive electorate than many democracies and republics. This leads to certain attempts at subtlety that leave the rest of the world with a raised eyebrow and wondering "who the hell is swallowing this, and how?".
This leads to people making the mistaken assumption that the US is MORE corrupt than elsewhere. All this means is that those that had been using such tactics in the past are getting worse at it within the US. To say no other nations are corrupt is instantly wrong in some way shape or form. The difference is simply that other nations are better at it, know when such corruption will gain public focus or not, or don't have the clout to even try on the world stage. If one spends "scandal time" rashly, you'll end up with a government surrounded by iron clad checks and balances or simply distrusted by the rest of the world. Most politicians do not want either situation, as most politicians are...well...political.
Not american myself, just telling what i see from outside looking in.
In that it is something that is done constantly, you either have two versions of the license or two versions of the product.
This is nothing new, think of all the proprietary software out there where there are "free to use" versions where the only difference is a license agreement that you will not be using the software for commercial applications.
Hope no one tells them about neutron bombardment and enriching techniques...
It's happened before heh
Really?
That's what the US thought when it created the lumber tarrifs concerning canadian lumber. All that happened is our lumber industry became more efficient and cost effective than ever, while creating sustainable lumber forests.
Its possible either way though, i'll grant you that.
If there was such a proposal, it would be in the guise of catching drug, alcohol, and tobacco smugglers. Theres a seriously huge industry in smuggling alcohol and tobacco into canada due to our massive taxes on the products (Smokers pay through the nose up here, based on the justification that since the government pays out the health claims, they need a return from the higher risk groups.
This makes for a huge amount of smokes and booze coming across the border to canada from the united states.
Then theres the inverse with drugs (for the most part, its bidirectional in cases) as there is a lot of canadian grown marijuana that gets sent down to the northern states from here in canada.
I can see law enforcement on both sides of the border being pleased with this idea. Being able to identify unauthorized crossings is a bit of a plus, the downside is if its effective the smugglers methodology will simply change.
I'm sure there is a wide variety of other ideas they have for the surveillance, theres certainly a lot of evil things that could arise from this, but i can see how people would want to try using the drones in this manner. All depends on who gets their hands on the control room.
I almost never have a more head-hurting, face-palming experience than trying to argue with people that RF does not impact living tissue...as it wont interact with anything...at all..ever....
This is something that is firmly embedded in the minds of society these days however, at least >51% in my experience.
Sucks that paranoia is a survival trait.
But i don't know if its what you're looking for...
Nothing useful out of this as of yet but at least MDA might stay here in canada.
Really the only big difference is the fact that the second search bar shows up for anyone...the whole market...as opposed to being a select percentage that happen to know site:etc.
The percentage of people that didn't know and/or didn't care is the exact demographic that these sites' marketing are targeting for the most part. I can't imagine a single marketing deparment anywhere where people are going "hey, isn't it neat that google is allowing for (at least slightly more) informed consumers?".
Companies hate having to adapt to change until they really really have to. Sadly this kind of bluster is cheaper and easier than actually trying to ensure ones product or service markets itself by the spec rather than cheap psychology, and sometime actually works (ie: if the company backs down on its own, or if they turn public sentiment against them).
Calling this aggression is an admission of a lack of alternative marketing strategies that do NOT require a first-call-sale type doctrine. Suckers.
Monopoly where?
Online advertising?
search?
Definitely not webmail.
Theres a difference between having a monopoly, and being the best at what you do in a market by a significant margin.
Presenting users with choices amongst related businesses.
Oh the aggression. How dare an indexing company make it easier for consumers to view multiple sources for related queries to increase the revenue of their longstanding business model. Removing means of retaining "captive audience" style market research and manipulation is definitely not needed by anyone!
I believe the response for this as a current common colloquialism is "cry more, noobs".
-- Ford Prefect. Apart from that, why even bother differentiating the IT worker vote from any other demographic? We only have tenuous influence on management most of the time, let alone government. We are not special.
The difference with science is that, if you're honest about it, you mentally append to everything said "According to our current observations, ...". This is why science is in a state of CONSTANT revision, and always will unless we somehow become omniscient ourselves.
This is not a negative connotation, this is the whole point. If someone refuses to revise their opinion regardless of new data (whether the data is for or against or not), that is faith imo. It is also the antithesis of the scientific method.
The upshot is, to the open minded, science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive until such a time that we can observe _everything_, in which case there would be no more mysteries anyways and life would be quite boring.
Ahh mistook who the OP was the way threads were nesting at first. My Bad =D
The thing i always wonder is how well such things would hold up in court in the EULAs and whether they ever had. We had in the TOS of the company i worked for that they actually werent liable for the actions or mistakes of their customer service reps. I would LOVE to see that in court.
I've never once been able to find a case of someone contesting these things though, beyond the SAF/911 class action here in canada and the current expressvu late fee suit.
I seriously wonder how many of these contracts that are presented as legit and slammed down the customers throat transfer after transfer wouldn't hold up in court. And whether it has ever been tested. Much of that could simply be a case of "well no one stood up for themselves yet"
Do you know of any sources along those lines for the US or elsewhere? I know we here in canada had a class action go through against Bell concerning the division of fees but i dont know if theres a result yet. Sadly the division of fees is one of the least tricksy and evil things they tend to do and I'm not having much google luck but that doesn't mean the cases arent out there.
Also, if you worked where you worked, you probably would get a kick out of this one i mentioned earlier, even if its the wrong country.
wait a minute..submission time perhaps =D
I don't know john, i've worked in several industries at this point and i can easily state that the standard service industries like cable and telecom are leaps and bounds beyond in terms of disregard of their legal obligations. For google, their terms of service have no direct relation to their income. No activation charges, no ETFs/LTCCs, no "HEY WANT A FREE PHONE?! SIGN HERE!".
You're definitely not wrong about the standard services industries though. In canada, ALL the major telecom companies operate this way as well and may be even worse than down there.
Here we have something called the "Consumer Protection Act" (hah) which when you boil it down basically states that if a company made a billing error over 90 days past, they are not obligated to fix it as it was the customers responsibility to let us know within 90 days. Therefore, the goal of customer service is to keep people thinking that everything is as it should be until at least 90 days pass from the error. Whether its the usual "btw, you signed a 36mn term for 3 months free of the smallest voicemail service we offer", or the 90 day thing up here, its a realm of evil that doesn't even come close to what the articles are discussing.
The Google terms of service in question DO also apply to their other services that require registration, where they mention the terms of service, so I don't see how this is really an issue. I don't even see how one could apply it to using their non-registration based services as being binding since they do not even state on the search engine page that use denotes acceptance of the TOS, nor is there even a terms of service section.
Hey now, don't panda to the masses.