Oh, here, just thought of this other example of what I think would happen: Know how difficult it is to get your average kid to do his homework, any homework? Just imagine how impossible it'll be, when the stick doesn't even have a carrot on the end of it. With no 'requirement' to have a job or a career, how many kids, who by the way don't have fully developed executive brains until they're at least in their 20's, are going to see any reason whatsoever to even bother with school at all? Very damned few, I say. They're even more likely to want to screw off, play video games, hang out with their buddies.. get involved in street gangs, get in trouble, get involved with drug use, etc etc etc than adults even would. What do you think the country would look like after a few generations of that? It would be a joke.
See, you and at least one other are completely missing one of my points, probably being filtered out by the rose-colored glasses you're viewing the world through: 'People' will not 'find their own direction', they'll sit on their asses and do nothing they're not required to; I have a low opinion of the so-called 'average' person...And YES, I'm painting with a very broad brush; we're talking about 300 million people, here, and I'm saying a huge fraction of them will do nothing of any real value to themselves or anyone else if they're not motivated to do something to ensure they have a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food to eat. Look at the way things are right now: there are entire generations of families who know nothing other than living off welfare, making kids so they can get more welfare, and having an attitude of entitlement the whole way. You tell them they need to work to get that money, they laugh in your face, or at best give you a list of (bullshit) reasons why they can't. These of course are the extreme example; they don't even understand the concept of 'having a purpose', they merely exist. There's a whole huge fraction of the population out there that, given the opportunity to live for free, won't do anything because there is nothing they want to do other than party and have fun if they can do so at someone else's expense. For these who won't get a purpose of their own given the opportunity, we give them one by default by forcing them to make their own way in life. If you asked me what percentage of the population, given your utopia of not having to work and getting free money to live from the government with no strings attached, would actually do something creative and purposeful and contributory to the world in general? I'd say it's maybe 10%. The other 90% would screw off on the backs of the 10%, and the whole country would go to hell in a handbasket. No, thanks.
If you were to push her on it, she'll probably say something like, "Even if I give all that up, nothing will change and other nations will keep polluting".
Exactly. That's what I envision the majority of people's attitude towards this is. What really needs to happen? Is a universal changing of hearts and minds on the subject. Good luck with that! The person that comes up with the Magic Formula to do that will solve all the worlds' problems in one fell swoop -- and will also, unfortunately, be very likely to end up the ruler of the entire world, for good or ill.;-)
There's nothing 'puritanical' about that idea, either. People wither away when they don't have a purpose in life. Sadly most people aren't too driven to find a purpose, they would just sit around, get fat, and do nothing -- except maybe get into some sort of trouble or other, or worse, keep reproducing out of sheer boredom. Work is good for people whether they themselves believe it or not, and that's my totally unscientific opinion on the subject, based on 50+ years of observations of people in general -- and note that this is also coming from someone who would benefit greatly from not having to work, yet be provided for the rest of his life. I'd just as soon not have to bother with some stupid job or other, and I'd spend my time going back to school, and riding my bikes, which is much more than I think the average person would end up doing.
It's not the best way of saying it, but the essense of it, I believe, is correct. The average person (pedants: as defined for the entire population, not just Slashdotters, so hush your mouth!) doesn't grok 'climate science' any better than they understand 'rocket science' enough to fabricate and launch a satellite into geosynchronous orbit, so when someone talks about 'global warming', what do they do? They look outside the window at what's going on, or maybe look at the weather forecast; the average person is not the most forward-looking person you'll ever meet, they're more concerned about tomorrow, or next week, or maybe as far as next month, but 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now? Usually, not so much. If the weather has been nice where they are, they're not going to get very disturbed by the abstract ideas of some news report that says in 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, things won't be pleasant, and similarly, they find it difficult to get too upset by the fact that people they don't know in some country they'd be hard-pressed to find on a map is experiencing what is for them bizarre and destructive weather patterns. If you want to see the majority of U.S. citizens being forefront-of-their-thoughts concerned about 'global warming', you'll likely have to wait until they're being seriously inconvenienced by it, which of course will be way, way too late to do anything about it. Which is why scientists and others who do understand the implications of global warming keep amplifying their reports on it -- which of course just causes the deniers of global warming to amplify their claims that they're just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Then the religious types chime in to muddy the intellectual waters even further, confusing the faithful with passages from the Bible that aren't even necessarily relevant.
What can you, as an individual, do? You're already doing everything you can, unless you want to dedicate your life to evironmental activism, in which case you'll be almost universally hated and labeled an 'environmentalist whackjob'. The real problem is changing the hearts and minds of the vast majority of people. They don't understand the problem, and they really don't care, and they don't want to give anything up, either, so they hear the news about 'global warming' and how it's 'human caused' and they think 'well that's interesting' and go on about the business of their day-to-day lives and DGAF because they have jobs and families and interests and nothing is actually getting in the way of them doing any of that. Sadly when it's too late and it's all getting in the way of living normal day-to-day lives is when they'll all panic about it -- then they'll expect the government to 'fix' it all.
Your mindset is in a 'bottom up approach' mode, which won't work. This has to be a 'top down approach' to solving the problem: governments have to be involved in order to get anything about it done. Unfortunately developing nations aren't as interested because they want to grow their economies, and countries like China are more interested in dominating the world economically (and militarily) than they are about anything else.
I actually did a web search for "welfare phones" literally, and found relevant articles that explained it, so it's not just the AC in question who is referring to them as such. As previously stated just now being made aware of this I am unsure what my opinion of it is, but my 'penciled-in' reaction is that it's not necessarily a bad thing; we live in a day and age where, if you're looking for work, not having at least a phone will more or less doom you, and preferably you should have some sort of Internet access. Job offers come fast and furious for many, and if you are delayed at all responding to them, it'll go to someone else. So of all the things that my tax dollars are going to, this may be one of the least objectionable ones. People who actually want to work being given something that enables them to accomplish that isn't a bad thing, and $2B on the scale of what the government spends on much dumber things is a drop in the bucket. The only bad thing that I can think about it off the top of my head is that the money is actually going to the wireless companies, who are all greedy sons-of-bitches to start with. I'd much prefer it was coming out of their pockets instead of mine.
Hmm. Hadn't heard of that before, but it's obviously an extension of the Unversal Lifeline service that's existed for decades. Not sure how I feel about this; I'll have to think about it for a while.
I may be an open-minded person when it comes to subjects like this, but come on, people, let's think things through. At best, what we saw there was some classified government satellite, and the NSA/CIA/whoever has an agreement with NASA to not show it to the public if it happens to be in line of sight of the ISS's cameras. Wouldn't even qualify as a 'conspiracy', just your garden-variety National Security decision.
But, I get 8Mb down/1.5Mb up, with virtually no data cap (I forget, it's in the hundreds of gigabytes per month) from Comcast for $60 per month. It's the cheapest deal I could get out of them. Granted, I hate Comcast, they're an evil company, but so are all the wireless companies, too.
I don't even have a smartphone, let alone pay for a dataplan. I have yet to find a justifiable enough reason to have one, based on the cost of dataplans, the speed, the monthly cap on data, the cost of the damned phone itself, and then every week I see at least a few stories about how all smartphones are a security swisscheese, which leads me to believe that no matter what I do, it'll get hacked, made part of someone's botnet and/or any personal, private data from the phone will get leeched away to who knows who -- so as time goes by a smartphone seems more and more like a dumb choice.
I don't understand how or why someone who is living below the poverty line would even have a smartphone and pay for a dataplan, it really sounds like poor prioritization skills to me. Granted, in this day and age, if you don't have some connectivity to the Internet, you're not likely to get any sort of real job, but as TFA says, there are free public options for internet access, even if they're not great; if you're that hard up, then that's what you should do, not buy expensive phones and/or pay for expensive dataplans. You get the cheapest cellphone you can and pay as little for the service as you can; you don't even get landline service, it costs at least as much these days as the cheapest wireless service and is much less versatile (no text messages, and you can't take it with you; if you're looking for work then being able to return a text or voicemail about a job opening as quickly as possible makes having a cellphone worth it).
I think your comment is more indicative of your poor (or total lack of) taste in music, than it is of the value of the questions I'm asking, or of any aspect of the music industry that's worth discussing. Tell me, do you pay $20 in a restaurant for a steak then put ketchup on it? Or is it drive-thru fast food all the way for you?
Day by day it seems more and more clear that what I keep hearing is true, and that functionally there is no such thing as 'privacy' anymore. If random hackers can do this, then governments sure as hell have been doing it, too. How much longer do you think before you can't even take a dump in your own home without someone watching you do it? We may as well just all walk around naked, with our bank account numbers, credit card numbers, ID numbers, and all our other very personal information tattooed on our backs for the world to see.
I am secretly Michael Huerta, and I will be announcing these changes on Monday morning in a press conference. Drones and their owners will all be brought into line or face prosecution. Resistance is futile!
Religion is the manifestation of a genetic flaw in humans that causes a cancerous cognitive disease of the human psyche and I'd just as soon that it be 'fixed' in the human genome so that no one falls prey to it ever again, and I'd also just as soon that all religions were legally declared 'not real' either as a starting step towards fixing the problem. It's a serious problem in humans that causes crimes against humanity, war, damage to the Earth's environment, and just trouble in general and it need to be cured.
Of course that's an absolute fantasy. As things stand any attempt by anyone to 'fix' this on a global scale would at best cause the War That Ends The World, ironically bringing about the Apocalypse that so many of these 'religions' prophecize is supposed to happen. Sadly, humans will either eventually evolve out of the need for 'gods' and other irrational things of that sort, or they'll extinguish themselves over it. I'm hoping for the former.
Okay, FAA, if you're going to treat drones, legally-speaking, the same way you do all other aircraft? Then there has to be an even-handed approach to regulating them. They'll have to have a unique identification/registration number on them, so that assholes who are using them to spy on people and otherwise invade their privacy can be tracked down and prosecuted. There has to be strict rules about when and where you can fly them, with stiff penalties for drone operators that violate them. For any drone that is more than literally a child's toy (that can't fly more than a few tens of feet away from the remote control) there needs to be a requirement of being legally an adult, there needs to be a requirement for extensive education and training in the piloting and use of the drone, including testing to ensure drone operators are competent and responsible, and there needs to be a requirement for insurance against property damage and bodily harm potentially caused by a drone. If the drone in question is above a certain size, then it needs to contain a transponder, like all full-size aircraft, so that it shows up on traffic control radar, and possibly there needs to be an override available for use by air traffic control so they can remove drones from their airspace in case of irresponsible operation of a drone, or in case of emergencies.
Now I brace for all the drone-yahoos who are going to scream and cry and stamp their feet, insult me, send me death threats, moderate me down as a troll, etcetera etcetera etcetera, and my response to all that is the same as it's always been: If 100% of you people with your drone-toys had been responsible and reasonable with them 100% of the time all the way back since the first ones were available, then none of this government involvement would have happened in the first place, and I wouldn't be posting my opinions of how you and your drone-toys should be handled, officially-speaking. Tough shit for you, suck it up, and if you want to beat on someone for your little drone-toy hobby being 'ruined', then go find one of the assholes who did stupid shit with them and brought all this down on your shoulders; I don't have a drone, don't want a drone, don't even want them around to start with, and don't give a fuck if your little hobby is ruined or not, STFU.
See, here's one of the reasons why this 'legislation' is so stupid: It's like other countries (or the U.S. for that matter) trying to compel a web hosting service that exists outside their borders to do anything: they have no jursidiction, therefore all they can do is make threatening noises. A de-facto banning of encryption is useless since you can't stop https traffic from outside the country.
Agreed. It's clearly time for Ms. Feinstein to resign. As TFA states, she (well, they, actually) either don't understand the technology, or they just don't give a damn.
Well I said commonly cited "innovations" are nothing but marketing circuses and there in lies the problem. Being seen as an innovation is more important to a modern American company than actually being innovative. Science and engineering jobs are not respected, they're seen as cost centres, necessary evils and punished when engineering cannot produce what marketing has promised. As such, STEM jobs are now low paying and have appalling conditions. Long hours and low pay in lay terms, why would anyone want to go to the US for that, you can have shit wages in your own country and often better conditions than the US (20-28 paid holidays a year sound nice)?
Add to this, the patent and copyright minefield that has been created. The US became big by deliberately ignoring the patents of other nations, now seeks to viciously defend its own. Property that has no tangible value is defended more vigorously than people who can actually develop and build new technologies.
Seems to me that a decade or two (or so) ago, the fashionable thing to do was to major in business, or become a lawyer, am I right? If so then that certainly explains what you're talking about.
The capacity of the average Slashdotter to be painfully pedantic somehow never ceases to amaze me. Of course I didn't, I was commenting on one of the design flaws in the damned thing. I'd just as soon they went back to paper towels.
If you want to be factually accurate then sure, but if you're going for humor, then more current-events-oriented works better. Or are you criticizing me for being less than accurate? Please, you'll make DARPA cry! XDDD
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, here, just thought of this other example of what I think would happen: Know how difficult it is to get your average kid to do his homework, any homework? Just imagine how impossible it'll be, when the stick doesn't even have a carrot on the end of it. With no 'requirement' to have a job or a career, how many kids, who by the way don't have fully developed executive brains until they're at least in their 20's, are going to see any reason whatsoever to even bother with school at all? Very damned few, I say. They're even more likely to want to screw off, play video games, hang out with their buddies.. get involved in street gangs, get in trouble, get involved with drug use, etc etc etc than adults even would. What do you think the country would look like after a few generations of that? It would be a joke.
See, you and at least one other are completely missing one of my points, probably being filtered out by the rose-colored glasses you're viewing the world through: 'People' will not 'find their own direction', they'll sit on their asses and do nothing they're not required to; I have a low opinion of the so-called 'average' person. ..And YES, I'm painting with a very broad brush; we're talking about 300 million people, here, and I'm saying a huge fraction of them will do nothing of any real value to themselves or anyone else if they're not motivated to do something to ensure they have a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food to eat. Look at the way things are right now: there are entire generations of families who know nothing other than living off welfare, making kids so they can get more welfare, and having an attitude of entitlement the whole way. You tell them they need to work to get that money, they laugh in your face, or at best give you a list of (bullshit) reasons why they can't. These of course are the extreme example; they don't even understand the concept of 'having a purpose', they merely exist. There's a whole huge fraction of the population out there that, given the opportunity to live for free, won't do anything because there is nothing they want to do other than party and have fun if they can do so at someone else's expense. For these who won't get a purpose of their own given the opportunity, we give them one by default by forcing them to make their own way in life. If you asked me what percentage of the population, given your utopia of not having to work and getting free money to live from the government with no strings attached, would actually do something creative and purposeful and contributory to the world in general? I'd say it's maybe 10%. The other 90% would screw off on the backs of the 10%, and the whole country would go to hell in a handbasket. No, thanks.
If you were to push her on it, she'll probably say something like, "Even if I give all that up, nothing will change and other nations will keep polluting".
Exactly. That's what I envision the majority of people's attitude towards this is. What really needs to happen? Is a universal changing of hearts and minds on the subject. Good luck with that! The person that comes up with the Magic Formula to do that will solve all the worlds' problems in one fell swoop -- and will also, unfortunately, be very likely to end up the ruler of the entire world, for good or ill. ;-)
There's nothing 'puritanical' about that idea, either. People wither away when they don't have a purpose in life. Sadly most people aren't too driven to find a purpose, they would just sit around, get fat, and do nothing -- except maybe get into some sort of trouble or other, or worse, keep reproducing out of sheer boredom. Work is good for people whether they themselves believe it or not, and that's my totally unscientific opinion on the subject, based on 50+ years of observations of people in general -- and note that this is also coming from someone who would benefit greatly from not having to work, yet be provided for the rest of his life. I'd just as soon not have to bother with some stupid job or other, and I'd spend my time going back to school, and riding my bikes, which is much more than I think the average person would end up doing.
No, no one is saying that, you stupid troll.
It's not the best way of saying it, but the essense of it, I believe, is correct. The average person (pedants: as defined for the entire population, not just Slashdotters, so hush your mouth!) doesn't grok 'climate science' any better than they understand 'rocket science' enough to fabricate and launch a satellite into geosynchronous orbit, so when someone talks about 'global warming', what do they do? They look outside the window at what's going on, or maybe look at the weather forecast; the average person is not the most forward-looking person you'll ever meet, they're more concerned about tomorrow, or next week, or maybe as far as next month, but 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now? Usually, not so much. If the weather has been nice where they are, they're not going to get very disturbed by the abstract ideas of some news report that says in 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, things won't be pleasant, and similarly, they find it difficult to get too upset by the fact that people they don't know in some country they'd be hard-pressed to find on a map is experiencing what is for them bizarre and destructive weather patterns. If you want to see the majority of U.S. citizens being forefront-of-their-thoughts concerned about 'global warming', you'll likely have to wait until they're being seriously inconvenienced by it, which of course will be way, way too late to do anything about it. Which is why scientists and others who do understand the implications of global warming keep amplifying their reports on it -- which of course just causes the deniers of global warming to amplify their claims that they're just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Then the religious types chime in to muddy the intellectual waters even further, confusing the faithful with passages from the Bible that aren't even necessarily relevant.
What can you, as an individual, do? You're already doing everything you can, unless you want to dedicate your life to evironmental activism, in which case you'll be almost universally hated and labeled an 'environmentalist whackjob'. The real problem is changing the hearts and minds of the vast majority of people. They don't understand the problem, and they really don't care, and they don't want to give anything up, either, so they hear the news about 'global warming' and how it's 'human caused' and they think 'well that's interesting' and go on about the business of their day-to-day lives and DGAF because they have jobs and families and interests and nothing is actually getting in the way of them doing any of that. Sadly when it's too late and it's all getting in the way of living normal day-to-day lives is when they'll all panic about it -- then they'll expect the government to 'fix' it all.
Your mindset is in a 'bottom up approach' mode, which won't work. This has to be a 'top down approach' to solving the problem: governments have to be involved in order to get anything about it done. Unfortunately developing nations aren't as interested because they want to grow their economies, and countries like China are more interested in dominating the world economically (and militarily) than they are about anything else.
If there's any type of person you should listen to, it's this man.
So she can author a Senate bill to outlaw Google.
I actually did a web search for "welfare phones" literally, and found relevant articles that explained it, so it's not just the AC in question who is referring to them as such. As previously stated just now being made aware of this I am unsure what my opinion of it is, but my 'penciled-in' reaction is that it's not necessarily a bad thing; we live in a day and age where, if you're looking for work, not having at least a phone will more or less doom you, and preferably you should have some sort of Internet access. Job offers come fast and furious for many, and if you are delayed at all responding to them, it'll go to someone else. So of all the things that my tax dollars are going to, this may be one of the least objectionable ones. People who actually want to work being given something that enables them to accomplish that isn't a bad thing, and $2B on the scale of what the government spends on much dumber things is a drop in the bucket. The only bad thing that I can think about it off the top of my head is that the money is actually going to the wireless companies, who are all greedy sons-of-bitches to start with. I'd much prefer it was coming out of their pockets instead of mine.
Hmm. Hadn't heard of that before, but it's obviously an extension of the Unversal Lifeline service that's existed for decades. Not sure how I feel about this; I'll have to think about it for a while.
I may be an open-minded person when it comes to subjects like this, but come on, people, let's think things through. At best, what we saw there was some classified government satellite, and the NSA/CIA/whoever has an agreement with NASA to not show it to the public if it happens to be in line of sight of the ISS's cameras. Wouldn't even qualify as a 'conspiracy', just your garden-variety National Security decision.
But, I get 8Mb down/1.5Mb up, with virtually no data cap (I forget, it's in the hundreds of gigabytes per month) from Comcast for $60 per month. It's the cheapest deal I could get out of them. Granted, I hate Comcast, they're an evil company, but so are all the wireless companies, too.
I don't even have a smartphone, let alone pay for a dataplan. I have yet to find a justifiable enough reason to have one, based on the cost of dataplans, the speed, the monthly cap on data, the cost of the damned phone itself, and then every week I see at least a few stories about how all smartphones are a security swisscheese, which leads me to believe that no matter what I do, it'll get hacked, made part of someone's botnet and/or any personal, private data from the phone will get leeched away to who knows who -- so as time goes by a smartphone seems more and more like a dumb choice.
I don't understand how or why someone who is living below the poverty line would even have a smartphone and pay for a dataplan, it really sounds like poor prioritization skills to me. Granted, in this day and age, if you don't have some connectivity to the Internet, you're not likely to get any sort of real job, but as TFA says, there are free public options for internet access, even if they're not great; if you're that hard up, then that's what you should do, not buy expensive phones and/or pay for expensive dataplans. You get the cheapest cellphone you can and pay as little for the service as you can; you don't even get landline service, it costs at least as much these days as the cheapest wireless service and is much less versatile (no text messages, and you can't take it with you; if you're looking for work then being able to return a text or voicemail about a job opening as quickly as possible makes having a cellphone worth it).
Nice to see someone other than me beating on the drone foamers, it's so important that they get pounded on until they learn to behave.
I think your comment is more indicative of your poor (or total lack of) taste in music, than it is of the value of the questions I'm asking, or of any aspect of the music industry that's worth discussing. Tell me, do you pay $20 in a restaurant for a steak then put ketchup on it? Or is it drive-thru fast food all the way for you?
Oh, shut up. Pedantic, literal types like you make living more of a pain than is necessary.
Day by day it seems more and more clear that what I keep hearing is true, and that functionally there is no such thing as 'privacy' anymore. If random hackers can do this, then governments sure as hell have been doing it, too. How much longer do you think before you can't even take a dump in your own home without someone watching you do it? We may as well just all walk around naked, with our bank account numbers, credit card numbers, ID numbers, and all our other very personal information tattooed on our backs for the world to see.
1. Are the artists actually being compensated properly now?
2. Assuming the answer to #1 is 'yes', is the music industry going to stop whining now?
I am secretly Michael Huerta, and I will be announcing these changes on Monday morning in a press conference. Drones and their owners will all be brought into line or face prosecution. Resistance is futile!
Religion is the manifestation of a genetic flaw in humans that causes a cancerous cognitive disease of the human psyche and I'd just as soon that it be 'fixed' in the human genome so that no one falls prey to it ever again, and I'd also just as soon that all religions were legally declared 'not real' either as a starting step towards fixing the problem. It's a serious problem in humans that causes crimes against humanity, war, damage to the Earth's environment, and just trouble in general and it need to be cured.
Of course that's an absolute fantasy. As things stand any attempt by anyone to 'fix' this on a global scale would at best cause the War That Ends The World, ironically bringing about the Apocalypse that so many of these 'religions' prophecize is supposed to happen. Sadly, humans will either eventually evolve out of the need for 'gods' and other irrational things of that sort, or they'll extinguish themselves over it. I'm hoping for the former.
Okay, FAA, if you're going to treat drones, legally-speaking, the same way you do all other aircraft? Then there has to be an even-handed approach to regulating them. They'll have to have a unique identification/registration number on them, so that assholes who are using them to spy on people and otherwise invade their privacy can be tracked down and prosecuted. There has to be strict rules about when and where you can fly them, with stiff penalties for drone operators that violate them. For any drone that is more than literally a child's toy (that can't fly more than a few tens of feet away from the remote control) there needs to be a requirement of being legally an adult, there needs to be a requirement for extensive education and training in the piloting and use of the drone, including testing to ensure drone operators are competent and responsible, and there needs to be a requirement for insurance against property damage and bodily harm potentially caused by a drone. If the drone in question is above a certain size, then it needs to contain a transponder, like all full-size aircraft, so that it shows up on traffic control radar, and possibly there needs to be an override available for use by air traffic control so they can remove drones from their airspace in case of irresponsible operation of a drone, or in case of emergencies.
Now I brace for all the drone-yahoos who are going to scream and cry and stamp their feet, insult me, send me death threats, moderate me down as a troll, etcetera etcetera etcetera, and my response to all that is the same as it's always been: If 100% of you people with your drone-toys had been responsible and reasonable with them 100% of the time all the way back since the first ones were available, then none of this government involvement would have happened in the first place, and I wouldn't be posting my opinions of how you and your drone-toys should be handled, officially-speaking. Tough shit for you, suck it up, and if you want to beat on someone for your little drone-toy hobby being 'ruined', then go find one of the assholes who did stupid shit with them and brought all this down on your shoulders; I don't have a drone, don't want a drone, don't even want them around to start with, and don't give a fuck if your little hobby is ruined or not, STFU.
See, here's one of the reasons why this 'legislation' is so stupid: It's like other countries (or the U.S. for that matter) trying to compel a web hosting service that exists outside their borders to do anything: they have no jursidiction, therefore all they can do is make threatening noises. A de-facto banning of encryption is useless since you can't stop https traffic from outside the country.
Agreed. It's clearly time for Ms. Feinstein to resign. As TFA states, she (well, they, actually) either don't understand the technology, or they just don't give a damn.
Well I said commonly cited "innovations" are nothing but marketing circuses and there in lies the problem. Being seen as an innovation is more important to a modern American company than actually being innovative. Science and engineering jobs are not respected, they're seen as cost centres, necessary evils and punished when engineering cannot produce what marketing has promised. As such, STEM jobs are now low paying and have appalling conditions. Long hours and low pay in lay terms, why would anyone want to go to the US for that, you can have shit wages in your own country and often better conditions than the US (20-28 paid holidays a year sound nice)?
Add to this, the patent and copyright minefield that has been created. The US became big by deliberately ignoring the patents of other nations, now seeks to viciously defend its own. Property that has no tangible value is defended more vigorously than people who can actually develop and build new technologies.
Seems to me that a decade or two (or so) ago, the fashionable thing to do was to major in business, or become a lawyer, am I right? If so then that certainly explains what you're talking about.
The capacity of the average Slashdotter to be painfully pedantic somehow never ceases to amaze me. Of course I didn't, I was commenting on one of the design flaws in the damned thing. I'd just as soon they went back to paper towels.
If you want to be factually accurate then sure, but if you're going for humor, then more current-events-oriented works better. Or are you criticizing me for being less than accurate? Please, you'll make DARPA cry! XDDD