I've got a friend in Chicago that because of money issues has been biking around 15 miles to work each day for the last year and a half or so. Rain, snow, sleet, or blazing heat, he's pedalling his ass to work. I've seen photos from the end of his commute home where his clothing and beard are encased in crusted ice and snow. Granted riding a bike to work isn't free and will quickly destroy a bike if you don't maintain it properly.
I had to replace my junker daily driver a few years back, in the middle of the market crash when cash was tight all over, and gas was expensive as hell. I managed to buy a $2500 1990 Toyota Corolla that was in excellent shape inside and out with working A/C, from a regular Toyota dealership no less. I drove it for a year with no issues until I sold it for the same price to a young enlisted guy that needed some wheels. I would bet that it is still out there somewhere today provided it hasn't been wrecked in an accident. I only sold it because we had to buy a larger family vehicle and I then got the wifes newer Corolla.
It isn't that the dealer would ding you for paying cash, it is simply that your credit report would not reflect a long term loan which was serviced properly. You credit report lacking evidence of your ability to manage significant loans results in a lower credit rating. Having a lower credit rating negatively affects your ability to obtain loans from lending institutions, and possibly job prospects when an employer wants to run a credit check.
That said I advocate paying cash for your vehicles when possible and only taking out loans when they are redundant and being used to maintain liquidity or balances in investment accounts earning at a higher rate than the loan. I currently have a car loan for a family vehicle because the cost was around $20k, and the interest rate was half that of my investments growth. We could pay it off without heartache if necessary.
I've never seen car loans at rates lower than or even close to inflation, for buyers without excellent credit ratings, and frequently large down payments. Given the prices he lists he very likely would not have qualified for below inflation rates and he certainly wouldn't have had the cash for large down payments.
The salesman doesn't have to kiss your ass to get a cheaper price by paying cash. You simply make a point of negotiating price before moving on to payments and length of loan. They will frequently give a lower price by planning to stretch the loan out over a longer period and or with a higher rate to make the money back. If necessary you can even agree to finance through their dealership/scam bank, just make sure there is no clause preventing you from paying it off early or anything and then hand them a check once everything is signed.
Except when it comes to H1B Visas the whole point is the company says we can't find qualified people at the regular market price at all. So we want to find qualified foreign workers, bring them into the country, and employ them. To prove that there are no qualified locals the company will usually post advertisements for the job, and document the lack of qualified respondents.
The common tactic that companies like Microsoft take though is that they advertise a job with incredibly specific or impossible requirements, and lowball the salary. When they don't get any locals that match the requirements exactly and are willing to take the low salary they then claim there are no qualified workers and apply to import one. The new foreign worker is then brought in and paid substantially less than the market rate because they have practically speaking no legal recourse and compared to what they could earn at home it is great pay. This devalues the work of citizens because now the H1B's are bringing the market value for those skills down.
In general I don't think anyone, that isn't xenophobic, disagrees with the principle of H1B visas. What we object to is the obvious abuse of the system to devalue our existing skills and the abuse of H1B workers. H1B workers are supposed to be paid the same as any other employee but they frequently are not. And they have no good way of fighting that because their right to be present in the country at all is tied to their employers good will.
The last time I had read or watched much about Landmark, Minecraft was still superior in nearly every aspect. The exceptions being that Landmark had prettier graphics with small voxels, instead of low res textures on large cubes. In Minecraft you can't make things as pretty on a small scale as in Landmark. But in Minecraft you can build things that actually have function and movement. The building in Minecraft also feels more like building to me, whereas Landmark looks like using a 3D modeling tool inside of a game. Minecraft is far more feature complete that Landmark, although that isn't necessarily a fair comparison as Landmark isn't a released game yet. It is kind of silly though to me as Landmark is licensing their voxel technology from another company that already had demo videos out there which appear to be just a few steps from being a better minecraft, Landmark almost looks like a step backwards from those videos in terms of being ready as a game.
I believe s/he was implying that they would put that money back into the economy, just at a much higher level than the rest of us proles. I believe that it is unlikely they would put the money somewhere that it didn't earn a return of some sort. To me this sounds a lot like trickle down economics.
It sounds like most of your complaints are cosmetics. I have different tastes and one of the first things I did when forced to use Win7 at work was disable Aero. I spent a lot of time beating the UI into submission to look as much like XP as possible. I'm still stuck with a start menu with a stupid scroll bar though because our UAC policies won't let me install something to actually fix that.
This is definitely true for some people but not so much for others. I've been playing for years on and off and the only mods I've ever installed where things like optifine to enable higher quality textures. I also have a number of nephews who only started playing in the last year or two, and one of my own kids wants to play it. The nephews saw me playing it while visiting, were enthralled, and eventually pestered their respective parents into getting it for them. I really don't see the market for this kind of game going away. If somone comes along and does it better somehow in a way that matters for children it might get pushed aside.
There are plenty of games that do individual components of Minecraft better, but none of them put it all together into a game that appeals to the same set of people. Landmark has the beautiful world and remarkable tools for altering it, but it is also far more complex than most six year olds could manage to use. Terraria has a much better combat and progression system, but it is a side scroller and so lacks the allure of a 3d world. I'm sure we can come up with plenty of other examples.
The bottom line is that Minecraft is pretty enough, simple enough, and cheap enough that it appeals to a huge range of age groups. But critically it works for little kids, which means that every day their are new customers being born. Market saturation just isn't likely to really happen in the near term.
Honestly the graphics being "outdated" was a feature for many players. It meant more of a focus on the actual gaming elements than window dressing. Besides which there were mods very early on that improved the graphics and lighting.
Minecraft is also the first game I knew of that literally evoked a sandbox feel. Games before it were described as "sandbox" but that really just meant you had a wide amount of freedom in the game. Minecraft actually allowed building and destruction on a scale which no other game had done before, at least not that people had heard of. Of course it was inspired by Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress but those are very niche unknown games by most any comparison.
Also so far as the pricing goes, I remember that when I bought my copy it was closer to $13 because of the exchange rates. Regardless when the transaction servers melted down under the load after Penny Arcade talked about it, Notch made the current version available for free until the transaction servers were back up and a new version was ready weeks later. In my opinion that was some amazing good will, or very shrewd business sense, at a critical moment of growth.
Stupid really doesn't even start to cover it. He was just a teenager, but I had gun safety hammered into me before my Father ever let me touch even his pellet gun.
Keeping guns out of the reach of very young children is important. But just as important is teaching older children and adults about proper gun safety. I worked with a woman who was standing shoulder to shoulder with her best friend when that friend's boyfriend shot her in the face with a large calibre muzzle loader. He wanted to show off his dad's gun and took for granted that it was unloaded. He thought it was perfectly safe to use a percussion cap so it would make a small bang when he pulled the trigger.
Never leave a firearm laying around or stored loaded. Always assume a firearm is loaded until you can physically verify that it is not. Always treat a firearm as if it is loaded, even if you have already proven that it is not loaded. Never point a firearm at something that you do not intend to shoot momentarily.
Fatalities being down can be attributed to all kinds of other factors, such as: Better safety features in general as older unsafe cars age out. Safer road and traffic engineering. Red light cameras reducing incidence of fatal T-Bone style accidents. Better emergency medical response. Poor economy for most people resulting in less driving.
I don't know that I would go to DUI levels necessarily to me. But where I live using a cell phone while driving looks like it should fit the elements for Reckless Driving. Which can have a hefty fine although not cripplingly so, and or anywhere from 5 to 90 days in jail, and possible suspension of license. Honestly I think having a serious threat of going to jail for a few days minimum would cut the amount of casual cell phone use while driving pretty effectively.
Where I live they passed an essentially toothless texting while driving law a couple years ago. The law bans any use of a phone without a hands free kit of some sort while driving. But you can't be pulled over for it, it can only come up as an additional offense. The fine is also a measly $40 or something and doesn't add points to your license.
In my opinion using a cell phone or similiar device shouldn't get it's own special law. That kind of behaviour is just reckless and as such should fall under reckless driving laws.
Software is not a machine, it is a set of instructions for a machine to execute. In this sense it is identical to a recipe, which is not patentable. It is however subject to copyright, which comically enough has longer terms of protection than patents do under current US law.
An important first step I believe would be to make that first small claims suit directly against the officer(s) involved. LE agencies rely on the officers on the front lines to do these confiscations. If those officers get hit with small claims suits frequently enough they'll lose any desire to confiscate where there isn't a criminal case to be made.
Well Shadowrun has actually been fully released for a long while now, and Planetary Anihilation was just released I believe. I can't speak for PA as I haven't played it yet but Shadowrun's initial campaign was fun, and I have heard good things about the new campaign.
I had an unprofessional relationship with my spouse for more than 2 years before we ever had sex. And I can definitely tell you I gave her preferential treatment more than a couple months before we ever had intercourse. In my experience sex wouldn't be the first sign of a relationship.
He didn't write an article specifically written as a review of her game. What he did was write an article about how there were thousands or more new indie games. Then in that article he said that her game, was the big standout and the only graphic in the article was for her game. That isn't exactly a review but it sure is a ringing endoresment. And while that can sound like nothing of consequence a mention like that on some of these gaming related news sites can make or break a game in a huge way. Just look at how Minecraft went from something no one had heard of to an incredible success in the course of a single weekend, arguably because of a silly web comic.
I see the words "objectivity", "mpartiality", and "fairness" all included as part of the second paragraph as common parts of established journalistic codes. I'm pretty sure when you have had a sexual relationship those are going to be very difficult things to maintain when speaking about that person or their work. I wouldn't actually expect anyone to say in their article "We shagged and they were awful in the sack, but the video game was pretty great." I would instead expect the journalist to either state that they had a more than professional relationship with that person, or most likely just abstain from writing about them or their game. He should have told his Editor that he had a non-professional relationship with her and had someone else write any articles regarding her or her work, or including plugs for her work.
It helps that the coals for firewalking are typically ashed over nicely. The ash actually serves as a pretty decent short term insulator. If you just blew the ash off the coals I imagine it would be a very different experience.
So TFS says that the accusations regarding Zoe Quinn were false. I hadn't heard this bit yet, is the article linked to actually confirmation of that? Sorry, I'd read the articles for myself but work filters are a PITA. The last I had heard was that the guy who writes for RPS and Kotaku had confirmed their sexual relationship.
I honestly don't care about her sex life or lack there of. The only thing of interest to me is a "journalist" possibly sleeping with a person with whom he should have a more professional relation ship with, and not disclosing that fact when making mention of her work, whether positive or negative.
Again, their is no need for a "right to privacy", we inherently posses all and any rights not explicitly forbidden in the law or granted to the various Governments to which we are subject. The Constitution is an explicit listing of powers or rights that the Federal Government and it's agents may posses. They are not granted any more authority than is explicitly listed in the Constitution and whatever other laws we've passed. You could argue that some of this might be covered under the questionable patriot law clause, but that is more and more tenous by the day.
Intent and method matters when you are talking about communications, otherwise there would be nothing illegal about wiretapping any phone conversation. You are essentially arguing that just because you had a conversation using a STU in a fortified bunker in an old mineshaft that there is nothing wrong as a private citizen tapping that line, cracking the encryption, and doing whatever they want with it. Or say a voyeur installing their own airport type scanner in a public walkway of some sort disguised as something else, I mean nobody is bothering to even encrypt the radiation they are emitting or reflecting. Just because they wouldn't expect anyone to be able to see or detect that, or even know it's possible, their can't possibly be anything wrong.
And speaking of radiation. I would wager that these towers are also in violation of any number of FCC Regulations on the use of radio frequencies. The frequencies that are used by cell phones are very lucrative and are leased on an exclusive basis. These towers are very likely using bandwidth that is already leased to some other entity. Remember they aren't just listening they have to be broadcasting or the cellphones would never actually establish a connection with them.
So far as the DMCA goes, it is a law, as far as I know it applies to everyone unless they are explicitly exempted. According to the DMCA it doesn't matter how weak the encryption you are using is. Deliberately dycrypting something which you have not been explicitly authorized for is a violaiton and hacking of some sort or another.
The mailbox is exactly like radio transmissions it is just visible from a longer range and using a naturally visible frequency. When I put something in the mailbox it is continuously available to anyone who has the gumption to open the box and open the envelope. When you put a letter in an envelope and seal it, it is then obvious to anyone that it is private and not intended for anyone to read but the receipient listed on the envelope, doubly so if it's one of those 'security' envelopes. But the actual physical protection on that letter is still actually incredibly weak, my two year old frequently opens my mail for me. The same should be logically true for encrypted radio transmissions. Just because it is trivial to break does not justify deliberately doing so. And by virtue of those transmissions being in specifically leased frequency ranges they have an expected receipient, which is whoever the wireless provider is that leased the band and signed the contract with the end user. If the mailman accidentally, or even deliberately delivers my mail to your mailbox you are not legally allowed to just open it and read my correspondence.
As a private citizen I do not need an explicit recitation of rights, the only things I need explicitly stated are things that I may not do. The Government and its many agencies and agents does require an explicit grant of rights in the law to perform their duties. That is pretty much the entire point of our Constitution.
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I've got a friend in Chicago that because of money issues has been biking around 15 miles to work each day for the last year and a half or so. Rain, snow, sleet, or blazing heat, he's pedalling his ass to work. I've seen photos from the end of his commute home where his clothing and beard are encased in crusted ice and snow. Granted riding a bike to work isn't free and will quickly destroy a bike if you don't maintain it properly.
I had to replace my junker daily driver a few years back, in the middle of the market crash when cash was tight all over, and gas was expensive as hell. I managed to buy a $2500 1990 Toyota Corolla that was in excellent shape inside and out with working A/C, from a regular Toyota dealership no less. I drove it for a year with no issues until I sold it for the same price to a young enlisted guy that needed some wheels. I would bet that it is still out there somewhere today provided it hasn't been wrecked in an accident. I only sold it because we had to buy a larger family vehicle and I then got the wifes newer Corolla.
It isn't that the dealer would ding you for paying cash, it is simply that your credit report would not reflect a long term loan which was serviced properly. You credit report lacking evidence of your ability to manage significant loans results in a lower credit rating. Having a lower credit rating negatively affects your ability to obtain loans from lending institutions, and possibly job prospects when an employer wants to run a credit check.
That said I advocate paying cash for your vehicles when possible and only taking out loans when they are redundant and being used to maintain liquidity or balances in investment accounts earning at a higher rate than the loan. I currently have a car loan for a family vehicle because the cost was around $20k, and the interest rate was half that of my investments growth. We could pay it off without heartache if necessary.
I've never seen car loans at rates lower than or even close to inflation, for buyers without excellent credit ratings, and frequently large down payments. Given the prices he lists he very likely would not have qualified for below inflation rates and he certainly wouldn't have had the cash for large down payments.
The salesman doesn't have to kiss your ass to get a cheaper price by paying cash. You simply make a point of negotiating price before moving on to payments and length of loan. They will frequently give a lower price by planning to stretch the loan out over a longer period and or with a higher rate to make the money back. If necessary you can even agree to finance through their dealership/scam bank, just make sure there is no clause preventing you from paying it off early or anything and then hand them a check once everything is signed.
In the Chair Force E-4, back then, could have been a Buck Sergeant. Don't know about any of the other branches.
Except when it comes to H1B Visas the whole point is the company says we can't find qualified people at the regular market price at all. So we want to find qualified foreign workers, bring them into the country, and employ them. To prove that there are no qualified locals the company will usually post advertisements for the job, and document the lack of qualified respondents.
The common tactic that companies like Microsoft take though is that they advertise a job with incredibly specific or impossible requirements, and lowball the salary. When they don't get any locals that match the requirements exactly and are willing to take the low salary they then claim there are no qualified workers and apply to import one. The new foreign worker is then brought in and paid substantially less than the market rate because they have practically speaking no legal recourse and compared to what they could earn at home it is great pay. This devalues the work of citizens because now the H1B's are bringing the market value for those skills down.
In general I don't think anyone, that isn't xenophobic, disagrees with the principle of H1B visas. What we object to is the obvious abuse of the system to devalue our existing skills and the abuse of H1B workers. H1B workers are supposed to be paid the same as any other employee but they frequently are not. And they have no good way of fighting that because their right to be present in the country at all is tied to their employers good will.
The last time I had read or watched much about Landmark, Minecraft was still superior in nearly every aspect. The exceptions being that Landmark had prettier graphics with small voxels, instead of low res textures on large cubes. In Minecraft you can't make things as pretty on a small scale as in Landmark. But in Minecraft you can build things that actually have function and movement. The building in Minecraft also feels more like building to me, whereas Landmark looks like using a 3D modeling tool inside of a game. Minecraft is far more feature complete that Landmark, although that isn't necessarily a fair comparison as Landmark isn't a released game yet. It is kind of silly though to me as Landmark is licensing their voxel technology from another company that already had demo videos out there which appear to be just a few steps from being a better minecraft, Landmark almost looks like a step backwards from those videos in terms of being ready as a game.
I believe s/he was implying that they would put that money back into the economy, just at a much higher level than the rest of us proles. I believe that it is unlikely they would put the money somewhere that it didn't earn a return of some sort. To me this sounds a lot like trickle down economics.
It sounds like most of your complaints are cosmetics. I have different tastes and one of the first things I did when forced to use Win7 at work was disable Aero. I spent a lot of time beating the UI into submission to look as much like XP as possible. I'm still stuck with a start menu with a stupid scroll bar though because our UAC policies won't let me install something to actually fix that.
This is definitely true for some people but not so much for others. I've been playing for years on and off and the only mods I've ever installed where things like optifine to enable higher quality textures. I also have a number of nephews who only started playing in the last year or two, and one of my own kids wants to play it. The nephews saw me playing it while visiting, were enthralled, and eventually pestered their respective parents into getting it for them. I really don't see the market for this kind of game going away. If somone comes along and does it better somehow in a way that matters for children it might get pushed aside.
There are plenty of games that do individual components of Minecraft better, but none of them put it all together into a game that appeals to the same set of people. Landmark has the beautiful world and remarkable tools for altering it, but it is also far more complex than most six year olds could manage to use. Terraria has a much better combat and progression system, but it is a side scroller and so lacks the allure of a 3d world. I'm sure we can come up with plenty of other examples.
The bottom line is that Minecraft is pretty enough, simple enough, and cheap enough that it appeals to a huge range of age groups. But critically it works for little kids, which means that every day their are new customers being born. Market saturation just isn't likely to really happen in the near term.
Honestly the graphics being "outdated" was a feature for many players. It meant more of a focus on the actual gaming elements than window dressing. Besides which there were mods very early on that improved the graphics and lighting.
Minecraft is also the first game I knew of that literally evoked a sandbox feel. Games before it were described as "sandbox" but that really just meant you had a wide amount of freedom in the game. Minecraft actually allowed building and destruction on a scale which no other game had done before, at least not that people had heard of. Of course it was inspired by Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress but those are very niche unknown games by most any comparison.
Also so far as the pricing goes, I remember that when I bought my copy it was closer to $13 because of the exchange rates. Regardless when the transaction servers melted down under the load after Penny Arcade talked about it, Notch made the current version available for free until the transaction servers were back up and a new version was ready weeks later. In my opinion that was some amazing good will, or very shrewd business sense, at a critical moment of growth.
Stupid really doesn't even start to cover it. He was just a teenager, but I had gun safety hammered into me before my Father ever let me touch even his pellet gun.
Keeping guns out of the reach of very young children is important. But just as important is teaching older children and adults about proper gun safety. I worked with a woman who was standing shoulder to shoulder with her best friend when that friend's boyfriend shot her in the face with a large calibre muzzle loader. He wanted to show off his dad's gun and took for granted that it was unloaded. He thought it was perfectly safe to use a percussion cap so it would make a small bang when he pulled the trigger.
Never leave a firearm laying around or stored loaded.
Always assume a firearm is loaded until you can physically verify that it is not.
Always treat a firearm as if it is loaded, even if you have already proven that it is not loaded.
Never point a firearm at something that you do not intend to shoot momentarily.
Fatalities being down can be attributed to all kinds of other factors, such as:
Better safety features in general as older unsafe cars age out.
Safer road and traffic engineering.
Red light cameras reducing incidence of fatal T-Bone style accidents.
Better emergency medical response.
Poor economy for most people resulting in less driving.
I don't know that I would go to DUI levels necessarily to me. But where I live using a cell phone while driving looks like it should fit the elements for Reckless Driving. Which can have a hefty fine although not cripplingly so, and or anywhere from 5 to 90 days in jail, and possible suspension of license. Honestly I think having a serious threat of going to jail for a few days minimum would cut the amount of casual cell phone use while driving pretty effectively.
Where I live they passed an essentially toothless texting while driving law a couple years ago. The law bans any use of a phone without a hands free kit of some sort while driving. But you can't be pulled over for it, it can only come up as an additional offense. The fine is also a measly $40 or something and doesn't add points to your license.
In my opinion using a cell phone or similiar device shouldn't get it's own special law. That kind of behaviour is just reckless and as such should fall under reckless driving laws.
Software is not a machine, it is a set of instructions for a machine to execute. In this sense it is identical to a recipe, which is not patentable. It is however subject to copyright, which comically enough has longer terms of protection than patents do under current US law.
An important first step I believe would be to make that first small claims suit directly against the officer(s) involved. LE agencies rely on the officers on the front lines to do these confiscations. If those officers get hit with small claims suits frequently enough they'll lose any desire to confiscate where there isn't a criminal case to be made.
Well Shadowrun has actually been fully released for a long while now, and Planetary Anihilation was just released I believe. I can't speak for PA as I haven't played it yet but Shadowrun's initial campaign was fun, and I have heard good things about the new campaign.
I had an unprofessional relationship with my spouse for more than 2 years before we ever had sex. And I can definitely tell you I gave her preferential treatment more than a couple months before we ever had intercourse. In my experience sex wouldn't be the first sign of a relationship.
He didn't write an article specifically written as a review of her game. What he did was write an article about how there were thousands or more new indie games. Then in that article he said that her game, was the big standout and the only graphic in the article was for her game. That isn't exactly a review but it sure is a ringing endoresment. And while that can sound like nothing of consequence a mention like that on some of these gaming related news sites can make or break a game in a huge way. Just look at how Minecraft went from something no one had heard of to an incredible success in the course of a single weekend, arguably because of a silly web comic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
I see the words "objectivity", "mpartiality", and "fairness" all included as part of the second paragraph as common parts of established journalistic codes. I'm pretty sure when you have had a sexual relationship those are going to be very difficult things to maintain when speaking about that person or their work. I wouldn't actually expect anyone to say in their article "We shagged and they were awful in the sack, but the video game was pretty great." I would instead expect the journalist to either state that they had a more than professional relationship with that person, or most likely just abstain from writing about them or their game. He should have told his Editor that he had a non-professional relationship with her and had someone else write any articles regarding her or her work, or including plugs for her work.
It helps that the coals for firewalking are typically ashed over nicely. The ash actually serves as a pretty decent short term insulator. If you just blew the ash off the coals I imagine it would be a very different experience.
So TFS says that the accusations regarding Zoe Quinn were false. I hadn't heard this bit yet, is the article linked to actually confirmation of that? Sorry, I'd read the articles for myself but work filters are a PITA. The last I had heard was that the guy who writes for RPS and Kotaku had confirmed their sexual relationship.
I honestly don't care about her sex life or lack there of. The only thing of interest to me is a "journalist" possibly sleeping with a person with whom he should have a more professional relation ship with, and not disclosing that fact when making mention of her work, whether positive or negative.
Again bullshit.
Again, their is no need for a "right to privacy", we inherently posses all and any rights not explicitly forbidden in the law or granted to the various Governments to which we are subject. The Constitution is an explicit listing of powers or rights that the Federal Government and it's agents may posses. They are not granted any more authority than is explicitly listed in the Constitution and whatever other laws we've passed. You could argue that some of this might be covered under the questionable patriot law clause, but that is more and more tenous by the day.
Intent and method matters when you are talking about communications, otherwise there would be nothing illegal about wiretapping any phone conversation. You are essentially arguing that just because you had a conversation using a STU in a fortified bunker in an old mineshaft that there is nothing wrong as a private citizen tapping that line, cracking the encryption, and doing whatever they want with it. Or say a voyeur installing their own airport type scanner in a public walkway of some sort disguised as something else, I mean nobody is bothering to even encrypt the radiation they are emitting or reflecting. Just because they wouldn't expect anyone to be able to see or detect that, or even know it's possible, their can't possibly be anything wrong.
And speaking of radiation. I would wager that these towers are also in violation of any number of FCC Regulations on the use of radio frequencies. The frequencies that are used by cell phones are very lucrative and are leased on an exclusive basis. These towers are very likely using bandwidth that is already leased to some other entity. Remember they aren't just listening they have to be broadcasting or the cellphones would never actually establish a connection with them.
So far as the DMCA goes, it is a law, as far as I know it applies to everyone unless they are explicitly exempted. According to the DMCA it doesn't matter how weak the encryption you are using is. Deliberately dycrypting something which you have not been explicitly authorized for is a violaiton and hacking of some sort or another.
The mailbox is exactly like radio transmissions it is just visible from a longer range and using a naturally visible frequency. When I put something in the mailbox it is continuously available to anyone who has the gumption to open the box and open the envelope. When you put a letter in an envelope and seal it, it is then obvious to anyone that it is private and not intended for anyone to read but the receipient listed on the envelope, doubly so if it's one of those 'security' envelopes. But the actual physical protection on that letter is still actually incredibly weak, my two year old frequently opens my mail for me. The same should be logically true for encrypted radio transmissions. Just because it is trivial to break does not justify deliberately doing so. And by virtue of those transmissions being in specifically leased frequency ranges they have an expected receipient, which is whoever the wireless provider is that leased the band and signed the contract with the end user. If the mailman accidentally, or even deliberately delivers my mail to your mailbox you are not legally allowed to just open it and read my correspondence.
As a private citizen I do not need an explicit recitation of rights, the only things I need explicitly stated are things that I may not do. The Government and its many agencies and agents does require an explicit grant of rights in the law to perform their duties. That is pretty much the entire point of our Constitution.