Yes, shareholders should have a say in the policy of companies they own, but net neutrality should most certainly not be left to shareholders. If shareholders were allowed to set the minimum wage a company will pay, they have a financial interest in voting for $0.
In a democracy, the government should work to ensure that the interests of the people are served. Net neutrality should be enforced by legislation.
This is an excellent example of why piracy is alive and well today. I occasionally get a call from my cable (internet) provider asking me if I'm interested in taking advantage of a special 'deal' to get cable TV access for around $65/month (for a limited time, of course). Each time I respond by saying "so, you've removed all the advertisements, then?"
The person on the other end of the phone usually sounds confused until I explain that I will happily pay for content, but not so long as they try to treat me as the customer and the product at the same time. I _might_ pay $10/month for a full cable package with ads, and $50/month might be reasonable for 100% ad-free content, but anything like what the standard providers are charging for ad supported content is completely unthinkable. Until then, services like Hulu are a much better deal.
And if content providers are too stupid to put their content up on those sites, I have no qualms pirating it. If I can't find a way to watch content cheaply or for free, I don't bother with that content at all. Big content -- adapt or die!
I appreciate you having the courage to reply -- it would be nice if you didn't do it as an AC, but I can't really fault you for that.
I think that the Bible, and particularly the New Testament offers pretty good guidance on a lot of thorny moral and philosophical issues (though I reserve the right to disagree at times). I picked up on your assault on "gays" because homosexuality and shellfish are given essentially the same treatment in Leviticus -- both are an "abomination". You could interpret that to mean that homosexuality is bad, or you could interpret it as meaning that homosexuality is no worse than eating shellfish, which most anti-gay advocates do.
The old testament says a bunch of contradictory things as well, which I won't go into here, but I would be happy to discuss at length if you're interested. What I'm more interested in addressing is the new testament and the core values it promotes: that we love our neighbor (broadly interpreted to mean every human being) as ourselves, and that we see spirituality as something that is personal and not political. Nowhere in the new testament did Jesus try to impose his belief system on others. He had followers, but they were free to come and go as they pleased, and governed themselves as they saw fit. Jesus was a revolutionary figure; if he were alive today he would likely oppose all armed conflict and would spend most of his time deriding the rich (as he did during his lifetime). You may think that being homosexual is bad, but the only qualities that Jesus consistently spoke out against were greed, selfishness and inordinate wealth. And if you believe that all the old testament stuff was "washed away", I don't see how you justify being against homosexuality at all, at least scripturally. The new testament is good news for believers. It says, among other things, that you can eat shrimp and be faithful in private. It also means that you should probably take the "beam" out of your own eye before attempting to fix someone else (see Matthew 7:5).
Again, I'm not religious at all, I just know scripture pretty well.
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" -- Matthew 22:21
The "God" of your understanding has no place in politics, and if you're really worried about "gays" corrupting society, I think you're pretty misguided. Do you follow all of the commandments of the old testament? Do you still eat shellfish? "But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." -- Leviticus 11:10
NB -- I'm not religious, but grew up in a very religious family, and I can cite scripture chapter and verse all night long -- I guess I can thank my crazy parents for something!
This is just another in a succession of stories on./ today that has deeply shaken my faith in democracy and liberty in the civilized world. Earlier today (or maybe last night) there was a story posted about proposed legislation that would require ISPs to log all internet activity of customers in HI for 2 years, which would be accessible to law enforcement (or just about anyone) without a warrant or court order. Add to this the articles about DMCA exemptions for jailbreaking of devices, which are about to expire, and ACTA being signed by 22 European countries. Today,./ also brought news of the demise of the market for used console games (thanks to Microsoft), the NASDAQ delisting a broadcasting company under pressure from the Chinese government, and a new law that would provide for indefinite logging and retention of online activity of Australian citizens.
SOPA may be on hold, but I fear that we might be losing the war against big content providers and others who want to restrict our rights for financial or political gain. While I appreciate being made aware of these troubling developments, I find today's news to be incredibly distressing and depressing. While the war isn't over, I feel the balance is beginning to shift against us. What else can we do to tip the scales?
Re:It has been known for quite a while.
on
Is E85 Dead Now?
·
· Score: 1
Bonch is a known troll. Slashdot -- feature request: allow filtering based on username/UID. For the time being, Bonch is the only user who posts things that I'm consistently not interested in reading, and, well, I've been active here for years, but there could eventually be someone else that's worth ignoring completely.
Sure, you can call this flamebait if you like, but I've got karma to burn and I know I'm not the only person who thinks that bonch is best left alone and ignored.
While I degree fundamentally with Ron Paul's vision for the country (I believe in single payer health coverage, progressive income taxes, strong environmental legislation, women's right to choose abortion -- strangely, that's a pretty libertarian point of view I think, yet Paul doesn't think so -- strong financial regulation, etc.), I will say that I respect the guy for standing up for what he believes in. It's a shame that the Republican party has tried so hard to marginalize him as a crank. That said, he's unelectable because he doesn't have the support of Fox & co., and without that support, it's pretty much impossible to get enough of the republican base behind him for the nomination.
In plain English: some of you who hate the "Repugs" may have to vote for one in November, if your Dem congressman votes for SOPA. Will you do that?
Likewise, my conservative friends: will you vote for a "Demoncrat" if your beloved Repub congresscreature votes for SOPA?
Yeah, trade one representative who supports SOPA for another who will probably support SOPA anyway, or at least probably won't have the balls to try to repeal it. Our system is fundamentally broken. The fact that we only have 2 choices in most general elections makes our democracy a joke -- a joke that is made particularly clear by bills like SOPA, a bill with broad bipartisan support.
Just as an example, it seems like your comment suggests that I should support Michele Bachmann because she opposes SOPA, and while I think that's great, it doesn't change the fact that Bachmann is BAT SHIT CRAZY! I can't in good conscience vote for someone who supports SOPA, but I also have a pretty hard time supporting someone who thinks that annulling same sex marriages is a good idea or opposes most forms of contraception or thinks that teenage girls shouldn't be protected from HPV for moral / religious reasons.
I don't have the answer, but we need more choices. I think that Republicans are often a bit worse than Democrats, but the mainstream members of both parties seem like they've been sold to special interests.
So, what if I as your neighbor want to secede and pump noxious gasses into the atmosphere? How would you feel if I claimed sovereignty over my land with the intent to dump mercury into the groundwater? I'm sorry, but your argument that everyone has a right to selfishly behave however they'd like to with no regard for the welfare of others is pretty juvenile.
Internet access isn't a human right just like access to running water or electricity aren't human right -- it's not absolutely necessary for life, but it's still pretty damn important.
The google query in the post returns "about 288,000" results, many of which come from the same domains. While agree that this is serious, the claim that 1M pages have been attacked (and who really cares about pages anyway -- the number of sites / domains seems far more important to me) seems exaggerated.
although it didn't really offer anything new it did existing things like email and web browsing better than other phones on the market.
What? While I'm an Android user (and am generally happy with my phone / OS) it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the iPhone, at least the original model, "didn't really offer anything new." It was the first phone to be widely used as a handheld computer instead of just a phone, it was the first phone to have an app store and a large number of third party apps available to end users. I'm pretty sure that was new when the original iPhone launched. While I can't see myself switching from Android to iOS anytime in the future, I give credit to Apple for making the original iPhone a groundbreaking device.
Ok, feel free to mod me down now for saying something in support of Apple.
So not showing up to vote should de-fund things. Ok. What things? Should funding be cut across the board? Should it be cut in the districts where people don't show up to vote? I don't think there's any workable way to implement what you're proposing.
You make a good point -- I think that Canon is a lot better than some other manufacturers in this respect, but I just checked and their newest DSLRs are using a different battery which doesn't look like it'll work with my current camera. I think that having standardized battery types would be great -- it would be nice if batteries were as interchangeable as, say SD or CF cards. I see no reason why that isn't possible. That said, getting a hold of a CF card in 10 years may be tricky as well; guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm not sure what kind of camera you use, but the rechargeable, proprietary battery that came with my Canon DSLR has worked well for years and gone through hundreds of charge / discharge cycles without any noticeable reduction in battery life. While not as cheap as AA batteries, I just looked up replacement cost and found that I could get a new battery for about $30 -- not that I have any need to at this point.
And while the battery is proprietary to canon, it's used in a number of their DSLR cameras, so there's a good chance that if I replace my camera I'll be able to keep the old battery as a spare.
Not sure how hard this would be to do, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to boot from a livecd/usb key. If you remove packages you don't want the end user to have access to (it's hard to browse the web for test answers if there's no browser installed) that should address at least some of your concerns. An added bonus is that if you need to repurpose the machine, or if it doesn't need to be in test mode all the time, a simple reboot could restore it to a vanilla version of the OS.
Exactly. Thing is, most people (particularly in the US) don't "own" their phones -- they get them at a subsidized price in exchange for a lengthy contract. If owning a device legally requires you to purchase a service, the device owns you.
It sounds like the carriers have an incentive to brick stolen phones, not a disincentive as the summary states. If a stolen phone results in another phone sale (to the person who's had their phone stolen) this doesn't sound like a disincentive to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like you slashdotted the EFF. Site is down.
I agree completely and would mod you up if I hadn't already posted here.
Fair point, but it's more or less a non sequitur. The US is, or at least claims and appears to be a democratic society.
Yes, shareholders should have a say in the policy of companies they own, but net neutrality should most certainly not be left to shareholders. If shareholders were allowed to set the minimum wage a company will pay, they have a financial interest in voting for $0.
In a democracy, the government should work to ensure that the interests of the people are served. Net neutrality should be enforced by legislation.
This is an excellent example of why piracy is alive and well today. I occasionally get a call from my cable (internet) provider asking me if I'm interested in taking advantage of a special 'deal' to get cable TV access for around $65/month (for a limited time, of course). Each time I respond by saying "so, you've removed all the advertisements, then?"
The person on the other end of the phone usually sounds confused until I explain that I will happily pay for content, but not so long as they try to treat me as the customer and the product at the same time. I _might_ pay $10/month for a full cable package with ads, and $50/month might be reasonable for 100% ad-free content, but anything like what the standard providers are charging for ad supported content is completely unthinkable. Until then, services like Hulu are a much better deal.
And if content providers are too stupid to put their content up on those sites, I have no qualms pirating it. If I can't find a way to watch content cheaply or for free, I don't bother with that content at all. Big content -- adapt or die!
Um, Christ died about 2,000 years ago.
AT&T cannot raise prices mid contract without offering you a way out of it that doesn't involve an early termination fee.
I appreciate you having the courage to reply -- it would be nice if you didn't do it as an AC, but I can't really fault you for that.
I think that the Bible, and particularly the New Testament offers pretty good guidance on a lot of thorny moral and philosophical issues (though I reserve the right to disagree at times). I picked up on your assault on "gays" because homosexuality and shellfish are given essentially the same treatment in Leviticus -- both are an "abomination". You could interpret that to mean that homosexuality is bad, or you could interpret it as meaning that homosexuality is no worse than eating shellfish, which most anti-gay advocates do.
The old testament says a bunch of contradictory things as well, which I won't go into here, but I would be happy to discuss at length if you're interested. What I'm more interested in addressing is the new testament and the core values it promotes: that we love our neighbor (broadly interpreted to mean every human being) as ourselves, and that we see spirituality as something that is personal and not political. Nowhere in the new testament did Jesus try to impose his belief system on others. He had followers, but they were free to come and go as they pleased, and governed themselves as they saw fit. Jesus was a revolutionary figure; if he were alive today he would likely oppose all armed conflict and would spend most of his time deriding the rich (as he did during his lifetime). You may think that being homosexual is bad, but the only qualities that Jesus consistently spoke out against were greed, selfishness and inordinate wealth. And if you believe that all the old testament stuff was "washed away", I don't see how you justify being against homosexuality at all, at least scripturally. The new testament is good news for believers. It says, among other things, that you can eat shrimp and be faithful in private. It also means that you should probably take the "beam" out of your own eye before attempting to fix someone else (see Matthew 7:5).
Again, I'm not religious at all, I just know scripture pretty well.
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" -- Matthew 22:21
The "God" of your understanding has no place in politics, and if you're really worried about "gays" corrupting society, I think you're pretty misguided. Do you follow all of the commandments of the old testament? Do you still eat shellfish? "But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." -- Leviticus 11:10
NB -- I'm not religious, but grew up in a very religious family, and I can cite scripture chapter and verse all night long -- I guess I can thank my crazy parents for something!
This is just another in a succession of stories on ./ today that has deeply shaken my faith in democracy and liberty in the civilized world. Earlier today (or maybe last night) there was a story posted about proposed legislation that would require ISPs to log all internet activity of customers in HI for 2 years, which would be accessible to law enforcement (or just about anyone) without a warrant or court order. Add to this the articles about DMCA exemptions for jailbreaking of devices, which are about to expire, and ACTA being signed by 22 European countries. Today, ./ also brought news of the demise of the market for used console games (thanks to Microsoft), the NASDAQ delisting a broadcasting company under pressure from the Chinese government, and a new law that would provide for indefinite logging and retention of online activity of Australian citizens.
SOPA may be on hold, but I fear that we might be losing the war against big content providers and others who want to restrict our rights for financial or political gain. While I appreciate being made aware of these troubling developments, I find today's news to be incredibly distressing and depressing. While the war isn't over, I feel the balance is beginning to shift against us. What else can we do to tip the scales?
Accidentally downmodded. Commenting to undo.
Bonch is a known troll. Slashdot -- feature request: allow filtering based on username/UID. For the time being, Bonch is the only user who posts things that I'm consistently not interested in reading, and, well, I've been active here for years, but there could eventually be someone else that's worth ignoring completely. Sure, you can call this flamebait if you like, but I've got karma to burn and I know I'm not the only person who thinks that bonch is best left alone and ignored.
While I degree fundamentally with Ron Paul's vision for the country (I believe in single payer health coverage, progressive income taxes, strong environmental legislation, women's right to choose abortion -- strangely, that's a pretty libertarian point of view I think, yet Paul doesn't think so -- strong financial regulation, etc.), I will say that I respect the guy for standing up for what he believes in. It's a shame that the Republican party has tried so hard to marginalize him as a crank. That said, he's unelectable because he doesn't have the support of Fox & co., and without that support, it's pretty much impossible to get enough of the republican base behind him for the nomination.
In plain English: some of you who hate the "Repugs" may have to vote for one in November, if your Dem congressman votes for SOPA. Will you do that? Likewise, my conservative friends: will you vote for a "Demoncrat" if your beloved Repub congresscreature votes for SOPA?
Yeah, trade one representative who supports SOPA for another who will probably support SOPA anyway, or at least probably won't have the balls to try to repeal it. Our system is fundamentally broken. The fact that we only have 2 choices in most general elections makes our democracy a joke -- a joke that is made particularly clear by bills like SOPA, a bill with broad bipartisan support.
Just as an example, it seems like your comment suggests that I should support Michele Bachmann because she opposes SOPA, and while I think that's great, it doesn't change the fact that Bachmann is BAT SHIT CRAZY! I can't in good conscience vote for someone who supports SOPA, but I also have a pretty hard time supporting someone who thinks that annulling same sex marriages is a good idea or opposes most forms of contraception or thinks that teenage girls shouldn't be protected from HPV for moral / religious reasons. I don't have the answer, but we need more choices. I think that Republicans are often a bit worse than Democrats, but the mainstream members of both parties seem like they've been sold to special interests.
Ooh, so might makes right. Ok. I guess in that case you can secede until the government locks you up^W^W^W liberates you for doing so.
So, what if I as your neighbor want to secede and pump noxious gasses into the atmosphere? How would you feel if I claimed sovereignty over my land with the intent to dump mercury into the groundwater? I'm sorry, but your argument that everyone has a right to selfishly behave however they'd like to with no regard for the welfare of others is pretty juvenile.
Internet access isn't a human right just like access to running water or electricity aren't human right -- it's not absolutely necessary for life, but it's still pretty damn important.
The google query in the post returns "about 288,000" results, many of which come from the same domains. While agree that this is serious, the claim that 1M pages have been attacked (and who really cares about pages anyway -- the number of sites / domains seems far more important to me) seems exaggerated.
although it didn't really offer anything new it did existing things like email and web browsing better than other phones on the market.
What? While I'm an Android user (and am generally happy with my phone / OS) it's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the iPhone, at least the original model, "didn't really offer anything new." It was the first phone to be widely used as a handheld computer instead of just a phone, it was the first phone to have an app store and a large number of third party apps available to end users. I'm pretty sure that was new when the original iPhone launched. While I can't see myself switching from Android to iOS anytime in the future, I give credit to Apple for making the original iPhone a groundbreaking device.
Ok, feel free to mod me down now for saying something in support of Apple.
So not showing up to vote should de-fund things. Ok. What things? Should funding be cut across the board? Should it be cut in the districts where people don't show up to vote? I don't think there's any workable way to implement what you're proposing.
You make a good point -- I think that Canon is a lot better than some other manufacturers in this respect, but I just checked and their newest DSLRs are using a different battery which doesn't look like it'll work with my current camera. I think that having standardized battery types would be great -- it would be nice if batteries were as interchangeable as, say SD or CF cards. I see no reason why that isn't possible. That said, getting a hold of a CF card in 10 years may be tricky as well; guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm not sure what kind of camera you use, but the rechargeable, proprietary battery that came with my Canon DSLR has worked well for years and gone through hundreds of charge / discharge cycles without any noticeable reduction in battery life. While not as cheap as AA batteries, I just looked up replacement cost and found that I could get a new battery for about $30 -- not that I have any need to at this point. And while the battery is proprietary to canon, it's used in a number of their DSLR cameras, so there's a good chance that if I replace my camera I'll be able to keep the old battery as a spare.
Not sure how hard this would be to do, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to boot from a livecd/usb key. If you remove packages you don't want the end user to have access to (it's hard to browse the web for test answers if there's no browser installed) that should address at least some of your concerns. An added bonus is that if you need to repurpose the machine, or if it doesn't need to be in test mode all the time, a simple reboot could restore it to a vanilla version of the OS.
Exactly. Thing is, most people (particularly in the US) don't "own" their phones -- they get them at a subsidized price in exchange for a lengthy contract. If owning a device legally requires you to purchase a service, the device owns you.
It sounds like the carriers have an incentive to brick stolen phones, not a disincentive as the summary states. If a stolen phone results in another phone sale (to the person who's had their phone stolen) this doesn't sound like a disincentive to me.