I don't have a problem with this either so long as it's disclosed in clear, and visible notice on the web pages, and the miner is really just mining and not doing anything else nefarious.
For the same reason the OP mentioned, ads can run all kinds of scripts and crap that is almost guaranteed not be be in my best interest. And it's not vetted (malicious ads being served by ad servers). I'd rather have some code running that is safer to run and isn't annoying or dangerous like ads can be.
My argument for this is that TPB is paying for servers and electricity and all the server resources to provide their service. If I have to "pay" with a bit of my processing power and electricity, to keep the lights on (which is for the users benefit), then I consider that a somewhat fair trade-off, and no more nefarious or sleazy than pushing a bunch of ads that are doing all kinds of nasty things, least of which is tracking all my browsing habits.
Again, the sleaze factor is minimal only IF they are open and honest about it, and tell users when this is happening (or what pages have this code embedded). It would be even less sleazy if they had somekind of timeout on the page, so the miner is only running for max length of time and then stops, for times when you might leave a page up for an extended period of time. The timer could be reset if I visit a different page, or refresh, but just to eliminate the possibility of leaving a page up and walking away and coming back to a toasted laptop that shutdown due to thermal overload from running the miner continuously for too long. I doubt this restriction would be put in place, but that is why I would say warnings should be the minimal amount of warning.
Without a warning, or timeout, then perhaps it's a little bit sleazy, but only because a user wouldn't know that thier PC is drawing max power and running at 100% CPU usage, taking away from other applications that might be running as well. Being upfront can go a long way in this type of situation.
I'm not sure why teachers feel they have to spend their own money on school supplies either. When I was in school, there was either a written list of items I had to have ready, or if not a formal list, then a basic informal list of things that you'll need in most grades... that we had to have purchased ourselves. You know, things like ruled paper, pencils, pens, binders and the like.
Why would the teacher need to buy these things? They can be had for pennies at back-to-school sales, so I find the typical "because poor kids" excuse to be lacking in this regard.
In fact, my school even had a little machine by the office that you could plop a quarter into and turn the dial and out would pop 2 pencils. Granted, this isn't as cheap as buying them on-sale or in bulk, but if you "forgot" your pencil that day, they would gladly let you walk to the machine to buy a new one.
It can easily be that. If you only had one PC, then the new price is about 2X the old cost. Not great, but not too bad. However, they offered a "Family Plan" that was "up to 10 PC's" for a fixed $150/yr. So depending on how many PC's you had in that range, the cost can easily be 5X the old price to keep those PC's backed up now.
I myself had this plan (and many others did too), and even if you only had 5 PC's in your house (figure family of 4 each with PC and a home server), then the new price would cost $600/yr vs. the old cost of $150/yr, this is close to 5X the price and that is only using 5 of the available 10 slots. If you had a bigger family, or were a geek with a ton of devices (like many here on/.), if you used your "Family Plan" to the fullest potential, and actually had 10 PC's using it, then the new cost would be $1200/yr, which is nearing a 10X increase in cost in that case. Almost an "order of magnitude" increase in cost, which is VERY hard to swallow.
Plus the home client is going away as well, so some feature that some people use, like peer-to-peer backups is going to cease working and is not supported under the business plan, so it's not just a price increase, it a feature decrease along with it, making it an even harder pill to swallow.
I am a freelancer, and thus work from home and run my own programming business. Keeping all current and past/present projects and all data/files associated with them backed up and not lose them forever is part of my responsibility. I very much appreciate files being backed up every couple minutes along with history versioning.
I already have a nice Synology NAS with RAID that I backup all PC's to already. However, if you know anything about backup, the 3-2-1 rule requires an OFFSITE backup copy in case of local disaster, hardware theft or damage. You obviously don't know as much as you wish. I get the cloud is ugly, and I don't rely on it either for most stuff. But as an offsite backup of backups, it the only way to do it in real time. Otherwise, you are swapping HDD's and driving them all over creation, which isn't feasable except on a weekly or monthly timeline. I can't afford to lose a month of data without MAJOR headache.
With Crashplan, the software used it's data deduplication/compression/versioning information to create local backups to NAS drive on a continual REAL-TIME basis. And at the same time, uploaded all new/modified files in REAL-TIME to the cloud in case the local backup became "unavailable". This is why cloud backup is important.
Because syncing is not backup. Does iCloud support file versioning? Real time backup? Deleted file retention? What benefits are you referring to? Getting your account hacked and pics leaked on the internet? Deleting your local pics to have your iCloud pics get deleted to? Not to mention it's an Apple product that is meant for Apple devices, they may have some support for windows now, but it's ultimately made for Apple products, which I own exactly 0 of.
Except I had the Family plan which offered 10 PC's for $150/yr. While I wasn't using all 10 slots of my Family Plan license, I do have at least 3 PC's backing up to it.
Using the new SMB plan, I'd have to pay $360/yr for just those same 3 PC's. If I have another pc or so, it goes up from there. The problem with this, is while my laptop and the main file server PC in the house have a good amount of data, my kids PC's have only a few hundred MB or maybe a GB of data that rarely changes all that much. Paying $10/mo for those PC's is not worth it compared too the file server that has all our banking records, family photos/videos, and other irreplaceable data.
You are also not realizing that the client for the SMB service does not seem to support local backups and backups to other offsite PC's like the current client does. Also, the current client was free to use if you didn't want to backup to their cloud service, so you could still use all the features for local backups
You realize the client had options to make the backups as granular as you wanted right. You could even create multiple backup sets that operated on different schedules, and even to different destinations.
This is the same method that a lot of people use to come to the conclusion that having backups is important. Usually after the first or second time a person looses important stuff, they realize that being proactive and having some kind of backup plan (any backup plan) is better than none. Maybe his backup choices will be clearer to him now.
Its amazing how many people say "I don't have anything that's important enough if I loose it...." until they actually loose it, then they are devastated. It's also amazing how many people *think* they'll be ok, because they have the important files duplicated somewhere, until they need to find that duplicate, and are looking on all their various computers/laptops, flash-drives, online file storage, and mobile devices, and the best they can find is a copy that's like a year out of date if they are lucky...
I believe the old saying "once bitten, twice shy" applies to backups here... Maybe he will wisen up and not rely on a single copy of his files if they are so important.
Your argument about cost is correct, but wrong in the end. They may be cheap, but that doesn't mean they are being sold as such by manufacturers and dealers.
I can also buy a nice audio/video/touch screen/nav head unit for the radio location on ebay for a couple hundred bucks, but the dealers want to charge you thousands for their version with less features.
same with lots of extras that are put on cars by dealers vs. aftermarket options. Want nicer rims/wheels, dealer has 1 or 2 options that are all 2x the cost of what you can go to a wheel shop and get them for (and have more options and sizes as well). Want a "spoiler" on the rear, that will cost you $1000 from dealer, when you can buy them on ebay for a $100-$200.
Hell, even looking at just your average everyday service items are rediculous. Dealers want to charge $30+ for an "genuine" oil filter, where AutoZone will have their higher end ones for $10-15. OEM parts from the dealer are all expensive. I've had a 2002 WRX since it was new, and I've made it a habbit that anytime I need to replace something due to breakage or wear, I go with aftermarket and get something better and higher quality than the "OEM" part, and it typically costs less as well. Last part I got was a radiator that I had fail. The dealership wanted like $400 or more for a new radiator (part only, I was doing the labor). I was able to get a full aluminum, larger core one for about $250.
As others have said, it doesn't have to be "one and only one" streaming service turning things into a monopoly. But intercommunication would allow several streaming services to off the same content, and let the users decide which service they want to subscribe to based on price, UI, hardware compatibility etc.
Kodi's 3rd party addons can (and have) already figured this out. If you use Exodus, or Salts, or Covenant, or Genisis they are all pulling the content from basically the same services/servers as each other. The content is spread out on multiple locations, so the source material doesn't exist in a single place, but it doesn't matter which addon you use, the content is all available the same (for the most part). Some addons specialize in providing movies, some TV shows, and some both. Some addons leverage the internal library, while others integrate with Trakt.tv or other accounts. You have options and choices. If one addon goes down, or the developer scraps it or doesn't maintain it, you can move to another addon.
Why can't legit providers figure this out. The content creators (or distributors) could host the files, and allow a standard API for accessing those files through the player of choice. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, (and whoever else comes around), could charge monthly access for content, and then you can use their app to reach all the content available just the same as other apps. Some services could specialize in movies, some TV only, and some for Both (for more $'s than movies or TV alone). The content creators could charge the service providers based on how many hits of their content was accessed by their player.
If Netflix (for example) then wanted to jack up prices and gouge the customers, then people could move their subscription over to Hulu (for example) and have access to the same content.
This is oversimplified, but this is how the pirating boxes do it and it works great. The only difference is you don't have everyone in the chain trying to make buckets of money for doing very little, so it might not work as well. My biggest fear in my example, would be that it turned into the same thing we have now with CableTV and content bundling and other issues.
But the OP was correct, I already subscribe to Amazon and Hulu (used to have Netflix for years, but their streaming sucked compared to disc service), and I'm not going to be jacked around with having to subscribe to 6-10 different streaming services to get the content I want. At that point, it's not only as expensive as cable, but more of a pain, as you then have to remember which service has the show you want to watch to know what app to use. This is already a problem with just 2 services... common scenario already--look around for 5-10 mins in Hulu for the show I wanted to sit down and watch only to realize that show is under Amazon, or vise-versa.
The font maker needs to use the same rules [as the media cartels] when figuring out infringement costs. The media companies love to use a "per infringement" claim. So each instance of each letter of the font that was used should be treated as a separate infringement, plus throw in some wild guest-imates of how many people purchased items containing the font, and how many eyeballs may have seen it in promotions and media since it's first illegal use...
If someone shares a music album online, the RIAA/MPAA don't go for just 1 instance of piracy for the whole album, they treat EACH song as it's own instance. Therefore, using this same reasoning, a font is a collection of multiple pictographs (like an album is comprised of songs), so logically it seems safe to assume that each letter in a font is treated like a song on an album would be treated. Just because the creator packaged a group of pictographs together into a single 'font' (similar to how songs are packaged into a single album) does not change anything. It also appears that more than one font typeface was pirated, so this adds even more penalties to the mix, as it is like songs from 2 albums were pirated.
Heck, going off the logic of another recent story, I'm sure this gives the NSA reason to start spying for years to come on the entire Universal media corporation like they have been with KDC over piracy!
Networks can't impose controls on behavior. Only people can do that.
Was going to expand on this. It doesn't matter if we built a whole new internet. It would end up in the same state the current one is after a period of time. In fact, I would guess it wouldn't take nearly as long for the new 'net to look like the current one, since all the big players have already 'been there/done that' in regards to how to squeeze every penny from people they can in what ever ways they can.
The old internet, while flawed, was a lot more anonymous and private that the current version. Even without End-to-end encryption widely used. People 'felt' free while browsing and connecting online. Because the entire experience was more decentralized. It was more like the wild-west. And not everyone was out to make money off you any way possible. If someone wanted to spy on a user, they'd have to get information from dozens and dozens of separate, non-connected system admins located all over the world in order to profile a person's online habits and communications.
But people being people, took this more decentralized internet, and it slowly coalesced into large blobs of very large players. Because users don't care, as long as they get free stuff, and things are more convenient. Now, the average person could be spied on with a single subpoena for their Facebook account. Everyone is tied to at least Facebook, Google, Apple, or Microsoft and a few others. 95% of their online lives are linked to a small handful of large gatekeepers. These gatekeepers know this, and whatever 'new and improved' internet put forth would still end up this way over time, because the people using would rather have convenience over privacy.
The other problem is that we've came a long way in the spying, tracking, logging and storing of all personal data on the web from the 'golden days' since then. It took a while at first, but now these technologies have been invented and figured out already. The greedy advertisers and similar will just adapt their current tracking methodologies to the new internet in short order, so you won't have any kind of privacy or anonymity there either. Now that the internet is mostly commercial, everything has to be tied to making money, so all efforts are put forth to make sure that your privacy and anonymity are NOT respected.
Then their are the deep-state privacy concerns, and they pretty much figured that out already too. Just force the government sanctioned monopolies like ATT, Comcast etc (the ISP's), to let you capture everything at the source. Any new internet would have to overcome this hurdle, and good luck with that with any kind of network that is spans large enough. A mesh network won't really span overseas, so you are going to have to go through a small group of cables that can be easily tapped. Same is true spanning large open areas as well, even within a certain geographic location. Mesh networking only works in smaller scale, highly concentrated areas. Going further out, or trying to connect these 'pockets' of different mesh networks would still require dedicated lines that are the points that would be tapped by government.
Luckily there's myriad flavors of Linux out there so there's still choice.
This isn't a choice for a lot of work in a lot of sectors. Sure, for a personal computer that the "average Joe" uses, than there are some choices. You can go with Windows, Linux, or even Mac. When all you are doing is web browsing, email, and 'light' office work. There are options to get things done on all these platforms, and many non-techie people are starting to go the way of the cloud for most things (like email, office apps, social media) that most of what they do can be done with a Chromebook even...
However, for real work, the choice you mentioned is not that easy... If you do general web dev, then I'm sure you can do it on most any platform, but what if you are a.net developer? I guess there are some frameworks and dev utils to try to do this on linux and mac (like mono) or something, but it's usually not as streamlined.
Then there are some of us (like me), who develop for specialized hardware, where you have to use the development platforms that are proprietary to the hardware manufactures. They have customized, proprietary compilers and GUI development tools and one is FORCED to use the manufactures software and development environments to develop for these platforms. Guess what, these are ALL windows based. Not even a Mac options here, because they don't want to have support multiple OSes, they pick the one with the most market share. There are lots of people I've met who do what I do, and many of them use Mac's, but they all have to use BootCamp or Parallels with Windows to run all the software we have to use.
I'm sure there are other industries out there, like mine, that just don't have viable options outside windows software to switch to. So sure, we can run something else for day to day office work, but the real work we get paid to do uses software that has absolutely NO alternatives than Windows based environments. We are stuck, and therefore, very screwed if Microsoft goes to a subscription model (which is something I've believed was coming since they came out with Windows10 and gave it away for FREE while they convinced/tricked/forced people to update to it).
So if you have a choice, feel lucky. Because if they go this route... we will all be screwed, but some us will be more screwed than others.
Is it safe to assume that you would also support making all forms of alcohol illegal too? Considering the CDC reports that: alcohol abuse is the third highest cause of death in the U.S. I just want to make sure that your suggestion is fair to all forms of dangerous substances, and not just singling out smoking because you don't smoke.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The above mentioned tactics wouldn't really stop it. It would just create a black market for it instead. Heck, now that California just RAISED the tax $2.00 per pack over what it already was this year, making a pack of cigarettes around $8, I'm waiting to find out if a black market develops and steps up to the plate. The state can try to pick and choose industries to help and crush despite market demands, but if they go too far, people will just go around their red-tape.
Case in point is marijuana. Which until recently in some states, had a de-facto ban on it, and possession being illegal. Did it stop the underground black market from making it readily available? Did it stop users from obtaining it? Nope.
Another example being alcohol back in the 30's, with prohibition. Did that stop people from creating an underground distillation and distribution system. Did it stop Speak Easy's from cropping up. Did it stop people from drinking alcohol. Nope. It did create a side problem though, in that violence increased over rival groups who were competing with each other to provide these underground services, making the original problem even worse with the added violence, gang affiliation, and the rise of organized crime.
Except all the new laws being enacted here that are turning law abiding gun owner's into felons virtually overnight are almost all aimed at "Scary Black Rifles"
don't get me wrong, hand guns are facing a not so good future either, but that is not so much due to the constant barrage of new legislation each year, but by a single tweak of the handgun roster rules that is preventing any new models from being available for purchase, while old ones expire and are slowly falling off of the roster.
I think that if you can [loudly speak] without impacting other people, you should be allowed to do that. In a system with national [media], it's reasonable to simply tax [public speaking] to pay for the [mental] impact, however much that tax might be, and then go ahead and let people [speak] so long as nobody else has to [hear] their [words].
I think that if you can without impacting other people, you should be allowed to do that. In a system with national , it's reasonable to simply tax to pay for the impact, however much that tax might be, and then go ahead and let people so long as nobody else has to their .
discussing reasonable compromises on personal freedom, how about we set some reasonable compromises?
When it comes to personal freedom and individual liberties, there isn't very many compromises that fall under the "reasonable" category. Murder, sure. Robbery/Theft sure. Violence, sure. These are "reasonable" because when performed, the person on the receiving end is loosing their freedoms/liberties.
After that short list though, the graph of "reasonable" compromises starts falling off DRASTICALLY.
Don't know if it's an addiction, but many service members also "feel the need" to re-up over and over after coming back. They come back, try to fit in with society, and decide they'd rather be back fighting the war.
I'm not sure if this differs by state, but in California, you must be 18 to buy a rifle, and 21 to by a handgun. Go figure, even that isn't consistent and based on any kind of logic that I can figure out.
Maybe that is one reason why a large portion of people don't want to socialize health care. Because once you do that, your personal life decisions become other people's business (when it shouldn't be). Then these other people seem to *think* they have a right to tell you how to live, and vote for more nanny state laws because they have the attitude that it IS their business.
It's not that those against socialized health care are completely heartless (contradictory to left leaning politicians and media), it's that they're looking at the issue from another point of view--one of personal responsibility, and individual freedom. They don't want to go down the road of socialized health care, because they don't want other people to feel it's their right to tell them how to live, what not to eat, what not to smoke, what not to drink, and what hobbies or activities they can't do because it might be high risk. They also definitely don't want things to go one step further, and not only ban some things, but also start adding in things that are mandatory, like things you HAVE to eat, or HAVE to drink, or HAVE to do.
We haven't seen those laws yet, but once all the bad and risky things are de-facto banned, like smoking, alcohol, sugary drinks, High Fructose Corn Syrup, etc -- how long do think it will be before the next step is taken where laws are passed requiring people to exercise regularly, drink 8 glasses of water per day, eat 3 servings of vegetables per day, wear sunscreen, etc. If you think that is over the top and unrealistic, I'm sure if you asked someone from 20-30 years ago about a law banning soda size, you'd be laughed at too, and that's already a reality.
Those today are doing so voluntarily, and hopefully scored high enough on the test to understand what that activity could entail.
They put scare warnings on every single pack of smokes, so it's not like you have to search hard to find the 'fine print' of the possible repercussions. All that's required is basic english comprehension.
So MiTM attacks, performed by random ordinary people is perfectly fine and legal to do, when done with the purpose to record and sift through their data transmissions? Somehow, I find that hard to believe...
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I don't have a problem with this either so long as it's disclosed in clear, and visible notice on the web pages, and the miner is really just mining and not doing anything else nefarious.
For the same reason the OP mentioned, ads can run all kinds of scripts and crap that is almost guaranteed not be be in my best interest. And it's not vetted (malicious ads being served by ad servers). I'd rather have some code running that is safer to run and isn't annoying or dangerous like ads can be.
My argument for this is that TPB is paying for servers and electricity and all the server resources to provide their service. If I have to "pay" with a bit of my processing power and electricity, to keep the lights on (which is for the users benefit), then I consider that a somewhat fair trade-off, and no more nefarious or sleazy than pushing a bunch of ads that are doing all kinds of nasty things, least of which is tracking all my browsing habits.
Again, the sleaze factor is minimal only IF they are open and honest about it, and tell users when this is happening (or what pages have this code embedded). It would be even less sleazy if they had somekind of timeout on the page, so the miner is only running for max length of time and then stops, for times when you might leave a page up for an extended period of time. The timer could be reset if I visit a different page, or refresh, but just to eliminate the possibility of leaving a page up and walking away and coming back to a toasted laptop that shutdown due to thermal overload from running the miner continuously for too long. I doubt this restriction would be put in place, but that is why I would say warnings should be the minimal amount of warning.
Without a warning, or timeout, then perhaps it's a little bit sleazy, but only because a user wouldn't know that thier PC is drawing max power and running at 100% CPU usage, taking away from other applications that might be running as well. Being upfront can go a long way in this type of situation.
I'm not sure why teachers feel they have to spend their own money on school supplies either. When I was in school, there was either a written list of items I had to have ready, or if not a formal list, then a basic informal list of things that you'll need in most grades... that we had to have purchased ourselves. You know, things like ruled paper, pencils, pens, binders and the like.
Why would the teacher need to buy these things? They can be had for pennies at back-to-school sales, so I find the typical "because poor kids" excuse to be lacking in this regard.
In fact, my school even had a little machine by the office that you could plop a quarter into and turn the dial and out would pop 2 pencils. Granted, this isn't as cheap as buying them on-sale or in bulk, but if you "forgot" your pencil that day, they would gladly let you walk to the machine to buy a new one.
It can easily be that. If you only had one PC, then the new price is about 2X the old cost. Not great, but not too bad. However, they offered a "Family Plan" that was "up to 10 PC's" for a fixed $150/yr. So depending on how many PC's you had in that range, the cost can easily be 5X the old price to keep those PC's backed up now.
/.), if you used your "Family Plan" to the fullest potential, and actually had 10 PC's using it, then the new cost would be $1200/yr, which is nearing a 10X increase in cost in that case. Almost an "order of magnitude" increase in cost, which is VERY hard to swallow.
I myself had this plan (and many others did too), and even if you only had 5 PC's in your house (figure family of 4 each with PC and a home server), then the new price would cost $600/yr vs. the old cost of $150/yr, this is close to 5X the price and that is only using 5 of the available 10 slots. If you had a bigger family, or were a geek with a ton of devices (like many here on
Plus the home client is going away as well, so some feature that some people use, like peer-to-peer backups is going to cease working and is not supported under the business plan, so it's not just a price increase, it a feature decrease along with it, making it an even harder pill to swallow.
I am a freelancer, and thus work from home and run my own programming business. Keeping all current and past/present projects and all data/files associated with them backed up and not lose them forever is part of my responsibility. I very much appreciate files being backed up every couple minutes along with history versioning.
I already have a nice Synology NAS with RAID that I backup all PC's to already. However, if you know anything about backup, the 3-2-1 rule requires an OFFSITE backup copy in case of local disaster, hardware theft or damage. You obviously don't know as much as you wish. I get the cloud is ugly, and I don't rely on it either for most stuff. But as an offsite backup of backups, it the only way to do it in real time. Otherwise, you are swapping HDD's and driving them all over creation, which isn't feasable except on a weekly or monthly timeline. I can't afford to lose a month of data without MAJOR headache.
With Crashplan, the software used it's data deduplication/compression/versioning information to create local backups to NAS drive on a continual REAL-TIME basis. And at the same time, uploaded all new/modified files in REAL-TIME to the cloud in case the local backup became "unavailable". This is why cloud backup is important.
Because syncing is not backup. Does iCloud support file versioning? Real time backup? Deleted file retention? What benefits are you referring to? Getting your account hacked and pics leaked on the internet? Deleting your local pics to have your iCloud pics get deleted to? Not to mention it's an Apple product that is meant for Apple devices, they may have some support for windows now, but it's ultimately made for Apple products, which I own exactly 0 of.
Except I had the Family plan which offered 10 PC's for $150/yr. While I wasn't using all 10 slots of my Family Plan license, I do have at least 3 PC's backing up to it.
Using the new SMB plan, I'd have to pay $360/yr for just those same 3 PC's. If I have another pc or so, it goes up from there. The problem with this, is while my laptop and the main file server PC in the house have a good amount of data, my kids PC's have only a few hundred MB or maybe a GB of data that rarely changes all that much. Paying $10/mo for those PC's is not worth it compared too the file server that has all our banking records, family photos/videos, and other irreplaceable data.
You are also not realizing that the client for the SMB service does not seem to support local backups and backups to other offsite PC's like the current client does. Also, the current client was free to use if you didn't want to backup to their cloud service, so you could still use all the features for local backups
You realize the client had options to make the backups as granular as you wanted right. You could even create multiple backup sets that operated on different schedules, and even to different destinations.
This is the same method that a lot of people use to come to the conclusion that having backups is important. Usually after the first or second time a person looses important stuff, they realize that being proactive and having some kind of backup plan (any backup plan) is better than none. Maybe his backup choices will be clearer to him now.
Its amazing how many people say "I don't have anything that's important enough if I loose it...." until they actually loose it, then they are devastated. It's also amazing how many people *think* they'll be ok, because they have the important files duplicated somewhere, until they need to find that duplicate, and are looking on all their various computers/laptops, flash-drives, online file storage, and mobile devices, and the best they can find is a copy that's like a year out of date if they are lucky...
I believe the old saying "once bitten, twice shy" applies to backups here... Maybe he will wisen up and not rely on a single copy of his files if they are so important.
Your argument about cost is correct, but wrong in the end. They may be cheap, but that doesn't mean they are being sold as such by manufacturers and dealers.
I can also buy a nice audio/video/touch screen/nav head unit for the radio location on ebay for a couple hundred bucks, but the dealers want to charge you thousands for their version with less features.
same with lots of extras that are put on cars by dealers vs. aftermarket options. Want nicer rims/wheels, dealer has 1 or 2 options that are all 2x the cost of what you can go to a wheel shop and get them for (and have more options and sizes as well). Want a "spoiler" on the rear, that will cost you $1000 from dealer, when you can buy them on ebay for a $100-$200.
Hell, even looking at just your average everyday service items are rediculous. Dealers want to charge $30+ for an "genuine" oil filter, where AutoZone will have their higher end ones for $10-15. OEM parts from the dealer are all expensive. I've had a 2002 WRX since it was new, and I've made it a habbit that anytime I need to replace something due to breakage or wear, I go with aftermarket and get something better and higher quality than the "OEM" part, and it typically costs less as well. Last part I got was a radiator that I had fail. The dealership wanted like $400 or more for a new radiator (part only, I was doing the labor). I was able to get a full aluminum, larger core one for about $250.
As others have said, it doesn't have to be "one and only one" streaming service turning things into a monopoly. But intercommunication would allow several streaming services to off the same content, and let the users decide which service they want to subscribe to based on price, UI, hardware compatibility etc. Kodi's 3rd party addons can (and have) already figured this out. If you use Exodus, or Salts, or Covenant, or Genisis they are all pulling the content from basically the same services/servers as each other. The content is spread out on multiple locations, so the source material doesn't exist in a single place, but it doesn't matter which addon you use, the content is all available the same (for the most part). Some addons specialize in providing movies, some TV shows, and some both. Some addons leverage the internal library, while others integrate with Trakt.tv or other accounts. You have options and choices. If one addon goes down, or the developer scraps it or doesn't maintain it, you can move to another addon.
Why can't legit providers figure this out. The content creators (or distributors) could host the files, and allow a standard API for accessing those files through the player of choice. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, (and whoever else comes around), could charge monthly access for content, and then you can use their app to reach all the content available just the same as other apps. Some services could specialize in movies, some TV only, and some for Both (for more $'s than movies or TV alone). The content creators could charge the service providers based on how many hits of their content was accessed by their player.
If Netflix (for example) then wanted to jack up prices and gouge the customers, then people could move their subscription over to Hulu (for example) and have access to the same content.
This is oversimplified, but this is how the pirating boxes do it and it works great. The only difference is you don't have everyone in the chain trying to make buckets of money for doing very little, so it might not work as well. My biggest fear in my example, would be that it turned into the same thing we have now with CableTV and content bundling and other issues.
But the OP was correct, I already subscribe to Amazon and Hulu (used to have Netflix for years, but their streaming sucked compared to disc service), and I'm not going to be jacked around with having to subscribe to 6-10 different streaming services to get the content I want. At that point, it's not only as expensive as cable, but more of a pain, as you then have to remember which service has the show you want to watch to know what app to use. This is already a problem with just 2 services... common scenario already--look around for 5-10 mins in Hulu for the show I wanted to sit down and watch only to realize that show is under Amazon, or vise-versa.
Was going to say similar...
The font maker needs to use the same rules [as the media cartels] when figuring out infringement costs. The media companies love to use a "per infringement" claim. So each instance of each letter of the font that was used should be treated as a separate infringement, plus throw in some wild guest-imates of how many people purchased items containing the font, and how many eyeballs may have seen it in promotions and media since it's first illegal use...
If someone shares a music album online, the RIAA/MPAA don't go for just 1 instance of piracy for the whole album, they treat EACH song as it's own instance. Therefore, using this same reasoning, a font is a collection of multiple pictographs (like an album is comprised of songs), so logically it seems safe to assume that each letter in a font is treated like a song on an album would be treated. Just because the creator packaged a group of pictographs together into a single 'font' (similar to how songs are packaged into a single album) does not change anything. It also appears that more than one font typeface was pirated, so this adds even more penalties to the mix, as it is like songs from 2 albums were pirated.
Heck, going off the logic of another recent story, I'm sure this gives the NSA reason to start spying for years to come on the entire Universal media corporation like they have been with KDC over piracy!
Networks can't impose controls on behavior. Only people can do that.
Was going to expand on this. It doesn't matter if we built a whole new internet. It would end up in the same state the current one is after a period of time. In fact, I would guess it wouldn't take nearly as long for the new 'net to look like the current one, since all the big players have already 'been there/done that' in regards to how to squeeze every penny from people they can in what ever ways they can.
The old internet, while flawed, was a lot more anonymous and private that the current version. Even without End-to-end encryption widely used. People 'felt' free while browsing and connecting online. Because the entire experience was more decentralized. It was more like the wild-west. And not everyone was out to make money off you any way possible. If someone wanted to spy on a user, they'd have to get information from dozens and dozens of separate, non-connected system admins located all over the world in order to profile a person's online habits and communications.
But people being people, took this more decentralized internet, and it slowly coalesced into large blobs of very large players. Because users don't care, as long as they get free stuff, and things are more convenient. Now, the average person could be spied on with a single subpoena for their Facebook account. Everyone is tied to at least Facebook, Google, Apple, or Microsoft and a few others. 95% of their online lives are linked to a small handful of large gatekeepers. These gatekeepers know this, and whatever 'new and improved' internet put forth would still end up this way over time, because the people using would rather have convenience over privacy.
The other problem is that we've came a long way in the spying, tracking, logging and storing of all personal data on the web from the 'golden days' since then. It took a while at first, but now these technologies have been invented and figured out already. The greedy advertisers and similar will just adapt their current tracking methodologies to the new internet in short order, so you won't have any kind of privacy or anonymity there either. Now that the internet is mostly commercial, everything has to be tied to making money, so all efforts are put forth to make sure that your privacy and anonymity are NOT respected.
Then their are the deep-state privacy concerns, and they pretty much figured that out already too. Just force the government sanctioned monopolies like ATT, Comcast etc (the ISP's), to let you capture everything at the source. Any new internet would have to overcome this hurdle, and good luck with that with any kind of network that is spans large enough. A mesh network won't really span overseas, so you are going to have to go through a small group of cables that can be easily tapped. Same is true spanning large open areas as well, even within a certain geographic location. Mesh networking only works in smaller scale, highly concentrated areas. Going further out, or trying to connect these 'pockets' of different mesh networks would still require dedicated lines that are the points that would be tapped by government.
Luckily there's myriad flavors of Linux out there so there's still choice.
This isn't a choice for a lot of work in a lot of sectors. Sure, for a personal computer that the "average Joe" uses, than there are some choices. You can go with Windows, Linux, or even Mac. When all you are doing is web browsing, email, and 'light' office work. There are options to get things done on all these platforms, and many non-techie people are starting to go the way of the cloud for most things (like email, office apps, social media) that most of what they do can be done with a Chromebook even...
.net developer? I guess there are some frameworks and dev utils to try to do this on linux and mac (like mono) or something, but it's usually not as streamlined.
However, for real work, the choice you mentioned is not that easy... If you do general web dev, then I'm sure you can do it on most any platform, but what if you are a
Then there are some of us (like me), who develop for specialized hardware, where you have to use the development platforms that are proprietary to the hardware manufactures. They have customized, proprietary compilers and GUI development tools and one is FORCED to use the manufactures software and development environments to develop for these platforms. Guess what, these are ALL windows based. Not even a Mac options here, because they don't want to have support multiple OSes, they pick the one with the most market share. There are lots of people I've met who do what I do, and many of them use Mac's, but they all have to use BootCamp or Parallels with Windows to run all the software we have to use.
I'm sure there are other industries out there, like mine, that just don't have viable options outside windows software to switch to. So sure, we can run something else for day to day office work, but the real work we get paid to do uses software that has absolutely NO alternatives than Windows based environments. We are stuck, and therefore, very screwed if Microsoft goes to a subscription model (which is something I've believed was coming since they came out with Windows10 and gave it away for FREE while they convinced/tricked/forced people to update to it).
So if you have a choice, feel lucky. Because if they go this route... we will all be screwed, but some us will be more screwed than others.
Is it safe to assume that you would also support making all forms of alcohol illegal too? Considering the CDC reports that: alcohol abuse is the third highest cause of death in the U.S. I just want to make sure that your suggestion is fair to all forms of dangerous substances, and not just singling out smoking because you don't smoke.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The above mentioned tactics wouldn't really stop it. It would just create a black market for it instead. Heck, now that California just RAISED the tax $2.00 per pack over what it already was this year, making a pack of cigarettes around $8, I'm waiting to find out if a black market develops and steps up to the plate. The state can try to pick and choose industries to help and crush despite market demands, but if they go too far, people will just go around their red-tape.
Case in point is marijuana. Which until recently in some states, had a de-facto ban on it, and possession being illegal. Did it stop the underground black market from making it readily available? Did it stop users from obtaining it? Nope.
Another example being alcohol back in the 30's, with prohibition. Did that stop people from creating an underground distillation and distribution system. Did it stop Speak Easy's from cropping up. Did it stop people from drinking alcohol. Nope. It did create a side problem though, in that violence increased over rival groups who were competing with each other to provide these underground services, making the original problem even worse with the added violence, gang affiliation, and the rise of organized crime.
Except all the new laws being enacted here that are turning law abiding gun owner's into felons virtually overnight are almost all aimed at "Scary Black Rifles"
don't get me wrong, hand guns are facing a not so good future either, but that is not so much due to the constant barrage of new legislation each year, but by a single tweak of the handgun roster rules that is preventing any new models from being available for purchase, while old ones expire and are slowly falling off of the roster.
Let's try the replacement game again here...
I think that if you can [loudly speak] without impacting other people, you should be allowed to do that. In a system with national [media], it's reasonable to simply tax [public speaking] to pay for the [mental] impact, however much that tax might be, and then go ahead and let people [speak] so long as nobody else has to [hear] their [words].
OR....let's play the replacement game...
I think that if you can without impacting other people, you should be allowed to do that. In a system with national , it's reasonable to simply tax to pay for the impact, however much that tax might be, and then go ahead and let people so long as nobody else has to their .
discussing reasonable compromises on personal freedom, how about we set some reasonable compromises?
When it comes to personal freedom and individual liberties, there isn't very many compromises that fall under the "reasonable" category. Murder, sure. Robbery/Theft sure. Violence, sure. These are "reasonable" because when performed, the person on the receiving end is loosing their freedoms/liberties.
After that short list though, the graph of "reasonable" compromises starts falling off DRASTICALLY.
Don't know if it's an addiction, but many service members also "feel the need" to re-up over and over after coming back. They come back, try to fit in with society, and decide they'd rather be back fighting the war.
I'm not sure if this differs by state, but in California, you must be 18 to buy a rifle, and 21 to by a handgun. Go figure, even that isn't consistent and based on any kind of logic that I can figure out.
Maybe that is one reason why a large portion of people don't want to socialize health care. Because once you do that, your personal life decisions become other people's business (when it shouldn't be). Then these other people seem to *think* they have a right to tell you how to live, and vote for more nanny state laws because they have the attitude that it IS their business.
It's not that those against socialized health care are completely heartless (contradictory to left leaning politicians and media), it's that they're looking at the issue from another point of view--one of personal responsibility, and individual freedom. They don't want to go down the road of socialized health care, because they don't want other people to feel it's their right to tell them how to live, what not to eat, what not to smoke, what not to drink, and what hobbies or activities they can't do because it might be high risk. They also definitely don't want things to go one step further, and not only ban some things, but also start adding in things that are mandatory, like things you HAVE to eat, or HAVE to drink, or HAVE to do.
We haven't seen those laws yet, but once all the bad and risky things are de-facto banned, like smoking, alcohol, sugary drinks, High Fructose Corn Syrup, etc -- how long do think it will be before the next step is taken where laws are passed requiring people to exercise regularly, drink 8 glasses of water per day, eat 3 servings of vegetables per day, wear sunscreen, etc. If you think that is over the top and unrealistic, I'm sure if you asked someone from 20-30 years ago about a law banning soda size, you'd be laughed at too, and that's already a reality.
something to think about...
Those today are doing so voluntarily, and hopefully scored high enough on the test to understand what that activity could entail.
They put scare warnings on every single pack of smokes, so it's not like you have to search hard to find the 'fine print' of the possible repercussions. All that's required is basic english comprehension.
So MiTM attacks, performed by random ordinary people is perfectly fine and legal to do, when done with the purpose to record and sift through their data transmissions? Somehow, I find that hard to believe...