Not to be an unreasonable skeptic, but these things offer little that anyone needs. You can listen to music by playing MP3 files. These gadgets seem like a way of further dumbing down the internet instead of pushing people to be better than they are right now.
Not just dumbing down but not even as functional.
For music, I like looking at my playlists, all the songs from an artist, etc. For most things, looking and clicking is less clunky than a voice interface.
Now where a voice interface is useful is, say, while driving. But my living room is the last place I would ever need a voice interface.
So you want to get rid of income tax withholding? The government has known where everyone lives and works and their family members and ages and how much money they make for many decades.
You want to get rid of "information sharing" for the ostensible purposes of tracking down "deadbeat dads"? That was the way that having every agency (from dog and hunting licenses on up) feed into giant data warehouses was sold.
You want to get rid of government identity documents? Now they're kinda useful though...
Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.
I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.
Trump's a regular guy (in the sense of being common, coarse, etc.).
Sure, he has no coherent political philosophy, but he is a regular guy (which is what many elites actually dislike about him).
And like it or not, regular guys know the difference between boys and girls. Sure, they may pretend to go along with the mass hysteria, to keep their jobs and not be labeled social pariahs, but they know, in reality.
So, a bunch of activists, in just a few decades, change the definitions of basic words like "gender"... and you're saying that it's the Trump administration that is changing the definition?
Short answer yes. The reason you have a lot of the choices you do is precisely because AT&T was broken up. You might not be old enough to remember what it was like prior to the breakup but I am. Prior to the breakup there was basically no competition in the long distance call market. Unix was in no small part a result of the breakup. AT&T wanted to get into the computer business and the breakup was the price they had to pay to do it. The breakup introduced a lot of competition and innovation that likely would never have happened without it. Could the AT&T breakup have been done better? You could make a case for that. But it almost certainly was a good thing overall.
Split it up and the parts will recombine in some other form but functionally equivalent.
Umm, no. The current AT&T has no where near the market power the company had prior to the breakup. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how powerful a monopoly AT&T was prior to the breakup.
I'm old enough to remember. Yeah, they were super powerful.
I don't think the key was the breakup though.
It was the requiring them to let other companies use their lines. That's what changed things. They owned the wires to your house, so they could say "oh, you wanna use them? Then you have to lease a phone from us. You have to get your service from us. Etc. "
Sherman anti-trust act gives all the needed legal cover. Do it. They are fully formed evil megacorps and trusts if there ever were any. Break them up and let them compete with the fragments of themselves. Competition is the soul of capitalism, not monopolies.
The reason is that Google uses JavaScript to run risk assessment checks on the users
Google is all about tracking people on the net. Anything google does is about tracking people. The reason google needs javascript to be enabled is so that the javascript can help track people. Enabling javascript does not increase security, it decreases security. Javascript is a huge attack surface.
Sure... then again, if you are trying to log into Google, I'm pretty sure that they are already tracking that...
Just sayin', if your goal is to not be tracked by Google, then logging into their services might not be the swiftest move.
For one month of cable television, I can have a year's worth of Amazon Prime which includes a number of benefits, _including_ unlimited streaming video. Cable's days are numbered.
This.
There's more than enough stuff on there to watch, from any genre you care to enjoy.
So unless you simply MUST have the newest shows when they are first broadcast, I don't get why someone would pay a cable company every month what they could pay Amazon once a year.
I'm pretty sure this underlines the fact that humans were not designed by some intelligent superbeing in the sky.
What an odd conclusion.
Starting with the fact that we've had fallible bodies throughout history, and it didn't lead most people that conclusion. It's not like we just discovered that bodies are fallible or in some ways non-optimal.
Usually you folks just think that you've discovered war or natural disasters, as though the ancients had never heard of such things and that's why they had such crazy theories. Now you think you've discovered aging or disease?
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
Agreed. And I just don't get this hostility.
You see it a lot in, say, Joomla and WordPress add ons. Those projects want to promote GPL use, so you have to use GPL to get in their add on directories. Many add on makers therefore whine all the time about their software being reproduced and distributed without their approval. Um, guys, you released it under a license that specifically allows users to copy it. That's a big part of the whole point of the GPL.
Broadcasters can't censor political ads, and there's no rules covering "political truth", so it's now anything goes.
Also, the limits on PAC spending have been removed, so these ads are showing up everywhere
I'm seeing and hearing outrageous and obvious lies in this recent run. Thanks Trump!
Political ads have never had "truth filters". It's always been "anything goes".
Political ads are literally what free speech is for. It was intended for angry leaflets, not exotic dancers.
The whole summit of mauna Kea is a 114,000 - acre nature preserve administered by University of Hawaii. Within that preserve, a 52-acre patch near the summit was set aside for astronomy in 1960. The TMT would be the latest of about 13 telescopes that have been built in this area. It is the first one to become controversial.
Ah well. I guess unthinking "resist" stuff isn't as easy to control as you might think.
The GOP was all for repealing the ACA because it sounds good in a campaign slogan but didn't do it because they have no real alternative policy, just talking points. That's a concrete promise that was broken.
Agreed (about the not repealing), which is why a lot of us are primary-ing those squishy, go along get along RINO lawmakers and trying to replace them.
Seriously, that's what you've got? That's precisely the uni-party crap we're trying to get rid of.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be an unreasonable skeptic, but these things offer little that anyone needs. You can listen to music by playing MP3 files. These gadgets seem like a way of further dumbing down the internet instead of pushing people to be better than they are right now.
Not just dumbing down but not even as functional.
For music, I like looking at my playlists, all the songs from an artist, etc. For most things, looking and clicking is less clunky than a voice interface.
Now where a voice interface is useful is, say, while driving. But my living room is the last place I would ever need a voice interface.
I trust private companies more than the govt.
So you want to get rid of income tax withholding? The government has known where everyone lives and works and their family members and ages and how much money they make for many decades.
You want to get rid of "information sharing" for the ostensible purposes of tracking down "deadbeat dads"? That was the way that having every agency (from dog and hunting licenses on up) feed into giant data warehouses was sold.
You want to get rid of government identity documents? Now they're kinda useful though ...
A computer virus may stop your computer from working but its not "violent" - its not going to walk up and punch you.
With the "internet of things" now, who knows?
It may try to microwave you or slam your garage door on you, anyway ...
Help me Professor Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!
Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.
I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.
Trump's a regular guy (in the sense of being common, coarse, etc.).
Sure, he has no coherent political philosophy, but he is a regular guy (which is what many elites actually dislike about him).
And like it or not, regular guys know the difference between boys and girls. Sure, they may pretend to go along with the mass hysteria, to keep their jobs and not be labeled social pariahs, but they know, in reality.
So, a bunch of activists, in just a few decades, change the definitions of basic words like "gender" ... and you're saying that it's the Trump administration that is changing the definition?
As an active Twitter-avoider, what's a blue check?
IIRC (and I'm not a user either) it was originally a way for twitter to indicate that they had verified the identity of famous or noteworthy people.
Then they started pulling it from people who said things they don't like ...
Split up Ma Bell--happy with the result?
Short answer yes. The reason you have a lot of the choices you do is precisely because AT&T was broken up. You might not be old enough to remember what it was like prior to the breakup but I am. Prior to the breakup there was basically no competition in the long distance call market. Unix was in no small part a result of the breakup. AT&T wanted to get into the computer business and the breakup was the price they had to pay to do it. The breakup introduced a lot of competition and innovation that likely would never have happened without it. Could the AT&T breakup have been done better? You could make a case for that. But it almost certainly was a good thing overall.
Split it up and the parts will recombine in some other form but functionally equivalent.
Umm, no. The current AT&T has no where near the market power the company had prior to the breakup. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how powerful a monopoly AT&T was prior to the breakup.
I'm old enough to remember. Yeah, they were super powerful.
I don't think the key was the breakup though.
It was the requiring them to let other companies use their lines. That's what changed things. They owned the wires to your house, so they could say "oh, you wanna use them? Then you have to lease a phone from us. You have to get your service from us. Etc. "
Sherman anti-trust act gives all the needed legal cover. Do it. They are fully formed evil megacorps and trusts if there ever were any. Break them up and let them compete with the fragments of themselves. Competition is the soul of capitalism, not monopolies.
Isn't Ma Bell almost completely recombined now?
The reason is that Google uses JavaScript to run risk assessment checks on the users
Google is all about tracking people on the net. Anything google does is about tracking people. The reason google needs javascript to be enabled is so that the javascript can help track people. Enabling javascript does not increase security, it decreases security. Javascript is a huge attack surface.
Sure ... then again, if you are trying to log into Google, I'm pretty sure that they are already tracking that ...
Just sayin', if your goal is to not be tracked by Google, then logging into their services might not be the swiftest move.
For one month of cable television, I can have a year's worth of Amazon Prime which includes a number of benefits, _including_ unlimited streaming video. Cable's days are numbered.
This.
There's more than enough stuff on there to watch, from any genre you care to enjoy.
So unless you simply MUST have the newest shows when they are first broadcast, I don't get why someone would pay a cable company every month what they could pay Amazon once a year.
n/t
I'm pretty sure this underlines the fact that humans were not designed by some intelligent superbeing in the sky.
What an odd conclusion.
Starting with the fact that we've had fallible bodies throughout history, and it didn't lead most people that conclusion. It's not like we just discovered that bodies are fallible or in some ways non-optimal.
Usually you folks just think that you've discovered war or natural disasters, as though the ancients had never heard of such things and that's why they had such crazy theories. Now you think you've discovered aging or disease?
Elon Musk Shakes Up SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Division By Firing a Bunch of Managers
Into space?
Better than burying them alive with the Boring company ...
No way that could be abused, for political or popularity reasons.
... I thought Alaska was just some weird place that barely counted as a state and just had weirdos who elected some idiot woman as governor.
That's what I heard around here anyway.
How can we use that as an example?
Nothing defeats AI like putting humans under Internet control.
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
Agreed. And I just don't get this hostility.
You see it a lot in, say, Joomla and WordPress add ons. Those projects want to promote GPL use, so you have to use GPL to get in their add on directories. Many add on makers therefore whine all the time about their software being reproduced and distributed without their approval. Um, guys, you released it under a license that specifically allows users to copy it. That's a big part of the whole point of the GPL.
Well, that's why I monitor and regulate my kids' networked computer use (yes, phones/tablets are computers). And educate them about what they see.
But I thought that made me an evil helicopter parent who is messing up my kids. So which is it?
Broadcasters can't censor political ads, and there's no rules covering "political truth", so it's now anything goes. Also, the limits on PAC spending have been removed, so these ads are showing up everywhere I'm seeing and hearing outrageous and obvious lies in this recent run. Thanks Trump!
Political ads have never had "truth filters". It's always been "anything goes".
Political ads are literally what free speech is for. It was intended for angry leaflets, not exotic dancers.
The whole summit of mauna Kea is a 114,000 - acre nature preserve administered by University of Hawaii. Within that preserve, a 52-acre patch near the summit was set aside for astronomy in 1960. The TMT would be the latest of about 13 telescopes that have been built in this area. It is the first one to become controversial.
Ah well. I guess unthinking "resist" stuff isn't as easy to control as you might think.
n/t
Will we have our own Tiananmen Square anytime soon? Possibly.
You people have completely lost your minds.
You seriously need to get a grip. Turn off the TV, the computer, whatever you need to, for awhile.
The GOP was all for repealing the ACA because it sounds good in a campaign slogan but didn't do it because they have no real alternative policy, just talking points. That's a concrete promise that was broken.
Agreed (about the not repealing), which is why a lot of us are primary-ing those squishy, go along get along RINO lawmakers and trying to replace them.
Seriously, that's what you've got? That's precisely the uni-party crap we're trying to get rid of.
I want my darn headphone jack. And I'm keeping it until my phone is unrepairable.
Get a Moto E4 (or whatever they're selling this year). Vote with your dollars for perfectly usable phones with headphone jacks.