It sounds like just a lot of public records requests, I doubt most places have a way to automate that. I'm not sure if the fact that they are programmers is relevant to this story, I didn't see a connection.
Seriously. This is the only sentence in TFS that matters:
The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.
This has nothing to do with Google. Maybe Google is at fault for not making updates mandatory, but that would have been a completely different set of issues.
The fact that they seeded the files did raise questions about distribution and permission (on comment sites like this one, anyway), but that issue was never adjudicated. The lawyer attacking Prenda (Morgan Pietz) showed evidence that the seeder's IP address was linked to the offices of Prenda Law (the law firm nominally representing the holding company), which raised questions as to why the attorneys representing the plaintiff were distributing the plaintiff's material (they were in fact the same people, if different legal entities - although, again, never conclusively proven). The various Prenda and holding company stakeholders eventually invoked their fifth amendment rights to not incriminate themselves, which raised further eyebrows since to that point it was not a criminal proceeding against them. There were several hearings where they were all ordered to appear, but they were never all in the same place and seemed to blame whoever wasn't there, while never actually admitting that any wrongdoing had taken place.
I'm not positive on your other question, I believe that an attorney is not ethically allowed to represent himself if he is also the beneficiary of the settlement, so they would have needed to hire a different attorney to represent them. Being attorneys themselves, they figured they would skip that step and just conceal their relationship to the court (note: courts do not appreciate this). That's what I think, anyway, it seems like if they were just able to say that they own the copyrights and be done with it then they would have done that, so I think the reason they didn't is to avoid paying fees to another attorney when they thought they could do the job themselves.
but how exactly is this different than extorting payments for those?
From what I remember about what happened 2 years ago, their scheme went something like this:
1. Buy copyrights to porn movies using a company controlled by them (the attorneys) but nominally owned by a handyman/friend of one the attorneys, whose signature was forged on the company documents. 2. Release those movies on torrent sites. 3. Track who (which IP addresses) were downloading them. 4. Sue people on behalf of the holding company from step 1. 5. Gather spurious evidence but secure settlement payment on threat of taking the people to court and making a public assertion that they downloaded the porn movies.
One major problem with this scheme is that the lawyers doing the suing are also the people who stand to make monetary gain on the settlements, but this relationship was never disclosed or even really proven, despite a lot of circumstantial evidence. The lawyers took great pains to conceal the fact that they would personally receive the settlement money, that it was ultimately being paid to them and not some random holding company. The court wasn't able to prove that they were behind the holding company, and when pressed the lawyers could not adequately explain the relationships between the various lawyers, Prenda Law, the holding companies, the guy who owns the holding company on paper, etc. Put simply, it was a giant fraud scheme to release their own copyrighted movies on torrent sites and then sue people allegedly downloading them, while concealing the fact that the lawyers were being directly enriched by the settlement payments.
This discussion is about the merits of the experiments done on the existing EM drive. Maybe we can wait for the conclusion of those experiments, and an explanation about how it works, before breaking out infinite hypotheticals about what may or may not happen after that. It reminds me of all of the "mock NFL draft" predictions that people spend so much time writing about. Instead of trying to guess what may or may not happen, and then talking about what those things may or may not mean, why not just wait and see what actually happens, and THEN talk about what the actual results actually mean?
The NEXT trick is managing not to kill the crew from all the radiation generated by traveling very, very fast through a space full of - radiation.
Who says you have to travel through the space? Why is everyone assuming they know the physics of something that we have no clue how it would even fundamentally work? A bunch of armchair physicists suggesting theoretical problems to things that we have no clue about. How about moving the space - and everything in it - around the ship instead of moving the ship through the space? How would something like that work, you're asking? We have no idea! Just like any hypothetical you're referring to or making up!
I think that there is a bit of a disconnect between scientific methods and things like psychology. I think it stems from the fact that it's easy to set up a thermometer, or an EKG, or whatever else and get those discrete data points, but it's difficult to measure things like "I feel better" or "I don't think about that the same way." I have a few friends who would swear up and down that EMDR therapy helped them out tremendously, but I don't know if there's a single way to gather data that would actually quantify what happened to them. I see the results not so much as psychology being flawed, but more about the difficulty of simply gathering the type of quantified data that a scientific study would require.
Disproven by product adoption models, showing most people are hesitant to jump on new technology right away. They may not fear it, but most certainly don't embrace it. Those are only the early adopters.
All of that depends on time frame. I'm not trying to claim that when a new technology becomes available, everyone immediately jumps on board. Yes, people wait to see experiences before they commit, I'm not trying to argue they don't. But given a sufficient amount of time (depending on the technology), people will embrace it if it in fact proves to be useful. This should be self-evident. Any disruptive technology will prove that point. Use cars as an example if you want. Did everyone go out and immediately purchase a Ford Model T? No. Did society in general embrace motorized vehicles as a technology? Obviously, using whatever value for "sufficient time" that fits that particular technology. Cell phones are another perfect example. The first commercially-available cell phone was released in 1983. From 1983 until 2015 cell phone adoption has gone from 0 subscribers to over 7 billion, reaching 100% of the population including the bottom of the economic pyramid. So it's kind of pointless to say that people have not embraced cell phone technology simply because most people didn't own one in 1988. THAT is grasping at straws, is a short-sighted view, and completely misses the point.
This particular thread is about people being afraid to adopt green power technologies, and I don't think they are any more afraid of green power than they are of cell phones. Concentrated solar panels became available in the 1980s. Today, considering all of the improvements to both efficiency and price that we've seen over the past 30 years, we're seeing solar on houses, on commercial buildings, and in major power plants. That sounds a lot like cell phone adoption to me, both in terms of the pace of technological development and the uptake in use. I don't think people, in general, are afraid of solar power. I think that people running power companies are afraid of losing profits. That's my original point that you're trying to refute by saying I have no idea what I'm talking about, that I'm grasping at straws, and you trying to anthropomorphise a business. I understand that businesses are made of people, that's not the point. I'm sure you can figure it out.
This just doesn't make sense. Apart from the business having feelings thing, how do you explain new companies coming into the market place or existing companies coming out with cool new innovative products.
That is so far into non-sequitor territory that I'm questioning whether we're even in the same argument. You understand what we're discussing here, right?
Yes, I know that reliance on oil is a problem. The US is the single major consumer, we consume millions of barrels of oil per day. That's a major problem. The point I was making was that we do, in fact, get oil from the middle east and other countries that we don't agree with. I was responding to the fact that he left out Saudi Arabia and Russia from his list. If it wasn't for oil we wouldn't be very friendly with Saudi Arabia, we would be calling them out on human rights issues.
So your statement becomes "People are afraid of change, people are not."
No it doesn't. "Businesses" and "people" are not equivalent terms that can be interchanged in any context. If you want to change "businesses" to "people running businesses" and then qualify the other use of "people" to mean the general public, fine.
Next, you completely ignore Luddites, which are increasing in number with increased autonomy in industry.
And the luddites are going to be frightened of the prospect of switching from coal power to solar? When they plug in their toaster can they tell what kind of power that is?
Lastly, you completely ignore the standard distribution model of product adoption. If everyone was as you say, we'd all be early adopters.
And how does that relate to people being literally frightened at the prospect of the power grid switching from coal to solar?
I doubt that anyone is legitimately frightened of gay people getting married. They just don't like gay people in the first place, it's not that they are frightened of what might happen if gay people can marry each other. I assume you're referring specifically to gay marriage, not gay people in general. Gay people aren't new, that's not a change.
I'm not sure what the statement "some people are afraid of coloreds" has to do with change.
having their guns taken away
They aren't scared of the actual change, they just want their guns.
taxes, apparently
Changes to tax code might cause fear just because the tax code is so confusing in the first place. It definitely does need to be changed, people would welcome it. Most changes to it aren't welcome because they only add more confusion. Changes that would make the tax code easier to understand would be welcomed.
You can't cherry pick. There is more fear out there than not.
Well, I think my examples are better than yours. I know there are a lot of people out there who live in fear, I just don't think that they live in fear of progress like switching from coal power to solar.
Why not become a driver, get a big load of packages, then never return?
If that's actually a problem in reality then we'll see it happen pretty soon, won't we? If we don't see it, then it's probably not actually a problem, is it?
I think one problem is that a lot of the old participants don't do it any more, for whatever reason. Photoshop contests used to regularly pull in 80 or 100 comments or so, now those are the outliers. You could go into one and expect to see 10 or 15 people making entries, but it seems like those people have moved on for whatever reason and haven't really been replaced.
Hence the qualifier "widely". I've seen no data to show that assaults by Uber drivers are any more likely than assaults by "regular" taxi drivers, and I haven't heard of any reports talking about a crash involving an Uber vehicle where the passenger got injured and screwed. Not that they haven't happened, I just haven't seen any reports. I've heard a lot of people talking about hypotheticals, but no reports. I suspect that much of that FUD is being injected into the conversation by interested parties.
Asia-Pacific: China (1000+) Iran (289+) Saudi Arabia (90+) Iraq (61+) Palestine (26+) Yemen (23+) Jordan (11) Afghanistan (6) Japan (3) Vietnam (3+) Malaysia (2+) Singapore (2) UAE (1) North Korea (unknown) Indonesia gets a mention for executing 8 people this week, even though they had none last year
Europe: Belarus (3+) Belarus and Russia are the only European countries that have not abolished capital punishment; Russia's last execution was in 1999
You sound the people claiming that climate change is not real because it snowed in New England this winter. That's about as intelligent as claiming that no one in the world is starving because you can get in your car and drive to a grocery store down the street.
We buy most of our oil, from ourselves. The vast majority of the rest is bought from Mexico and Canada. The largest of the insignificant provider nations is Venezuela. The amount of oil we buy from countries that, "Do not like us", is insignificant.
The major supplier is in fact Canada. Saudi Arabia and Mexico are essentially tied for second, followed by Venezuela, then countries like Ecuador, Colombia, and Russia. Imports from Canada and the Persian Gulf countries account for a little over half of our total imports.
People, and especially politicians, are afraid of change.
People aren't afraid of change. Not only do people expect change, but they embrace it.
The internet fundamentally changed and disrupted a lot of things, from the way people get their news, to the way people get their entertainment like music, movies, and TV shows. I can watch a movie on the phone in my pocket. The only people afraid of those changes are the ones in charge of the old industries which supplied those things, who never adapted and are now in a position of increasing irrelevance.
Uber is another example. Regular people have widely embraced services like Uber, because they offer many advantages over traditional taxis, they are a welcome change. The major noise against Uber is coming, again, from the people losing money and business to them.
On the topic of alternative fuels in general, Toyota took over the hybrid market with the Prius, if you deny that people embraced that ugly thing then you're delusional. They are all over the road, and it's not because they are attractive vehicles, it's because people like the change that they represent. Tesla showed it further, even with a car priced out of reach of the majority of people I still see several Model Ss on the road every week, usually every day. There are plenty of unknowns with all-electric vehicles, like what happens if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have enough juice left to reach a charging station. That hasn't stopped people from embracing the idea and the change though.
Residential solar power is another great example. There are houses all over the place that have solar cells on their roof or on stands in their yard. People were not afraid of that change, when the price hit the right point they embraced it. They feel good because they're generating their own power for their own house, and it cuts down their electric bill to the point that it can pay for itself over enough time.
I don't know about you, but I haven't had a home phone for over 12 years. I had a few dumpy cell phones and since then I've had a few high-powered smart phones. I'm carrying a computer in my pocket more powerful than anything I would have built for home use when I had a home phone. I was not afraid of getting rid of my home phone, it was a welcome change. If someone wants to talk to me they can call me directly, not my house where I may or may not be. If they just have something quick to say they don't even need to call, they can just send a small text message. Or send me a picture. Or send an email, which I can also get on my phone. Or send me a link to a web page, which I can pull up no matter where I am.
These are not "changes" to be "afraid" of, this is what we call progress. The only people holding us back from continued progress are the ones who stand to lose money and become irrelevant. The reason why politicians appear to be afraid of change is because they are paid by the businesses who are becoming irrelevant.
No they aren't. Among men only, only Obama, Napoleon, G.W. Bush, FDR, Reagan, Shakespeare, Hitler, Washington, Churchill, Lincoln, Aristotle, Columbus, Clinton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Einstein are more popular than Jesus. Bob Dylan (21) would be the most popular musician, beating out both Michael Jackson (27) and Elvis (29). None of the Beatles are individually in the top 100 for men.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like just a lot of public records requests, I doubt most places have a way to automate that. I'm not sure if the fact that they are programmers is relevant to this story, I didn't see a connection.
With enough employees or volunteers and time and money, yes I'm sure these 2 guys could monitor every police jurisdiction in the country.
Seriously. This is the only sentence in TFS that matters:
The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.
This has nothing to do with Google. Maybe Google is at fault for not making updates mandatory, but that would have been a completely different set of issues.
The fact that they seeded the files did raise questions about distribution and permission (on comment sites like this one, anyway), but that issue was never adjudicated. The lawyer attacking Prenda (Morgan Pietz) showed evidence that the seeder's IP address was linked to the offices of Prenda Law (the law firm nominally representing the holding company), which raised questions as to why the attorneys representing the plaintiff were distributing the plaintiff's material (they were in fact the same people, if different legal entities - although, again, never conclusively proven). The various Prenda and holding company stakeholders eventually invoked their fifth amendment rights to not incriminate themselves, which raised further eyebrows since to that point it was not a criminal proceeding against them. There were several hearings where they were all ordered to appear, but they were never all in the same place and seemed to blame whoever wasn't there, while never actually admitting that any wrongdoing had taken place.
I'm not positive on your other question, I believe that an attorney is not ethically allowed to represent himself if he is also the beneficiary of the settlement, so they would have needed to hire a different attorney to represent them. Being attorneys themselves, they figured they would skip that step and just conceal their relationship to the court (note: courts do not appreciate this). That's what I think, anyway, it seems like if they were just able to say that they own the copyrights and be done with it then they would have done that, so I think the reason they didn't is to avoid paying fees to another attorney when they thought they could do the job themselves.
but how exactly is this different than extorting payments for those?
From what I remember about what happened 2 years ago, their scheme went something like this:
1. Buy copyrights to porn movies using a company controlled by them (the attorneys) but nominally owned by a handyman/friend of one the attorneys, whose signature was forged on the company documents.
2. Release those movies on torrent sites.
3. Track who (which IP addresses) were downloading them.
4. Sue people on behalf of the holding company from step 1.
5. Gather spurious evidence but secure settlement payment on threat of taking the people to court and making a public assertion that they downloaded the porn movies.
One major problem with this scheme is that the lawyers doing the suing are also the people who stand to make monetary gain on the settlements, but this relationship was never disclosed or even really proven, despite a lot of circumstantial evidence. The lawyers took great pains to conceal the fact that they would personally receive the settlement money, that it was ultimately being paid to them and not some random holding company. The court wasn't able to prove that they were behind the holding company, and when pressed the lawyers could not adequately explain the relationships between the various lawyers, Prenda Law, the holding companies, the guy who owns the holding company on paper, etc. Put simply, it was a giant fraud scheme to release their own copyrighted movies on torrent sites and then sue people allegedly downloading them, while concealing the fact that the lawyers were being directly enriched by the settlement payments.
This discussion is about the merits of the experiments done on the existing EM drive. Maybe we can wait for the conclusion of those experiments, and an explanation about how it works, before breaking out infinite hypotheticals about what may or may not happen after that. It reminds me of all of the "mock NFL draft" predictions that people spend so much time writing about. Instead of trying to guess what may or may not happen, and then talking about what those things may or may not mean, why not just wait and see what actually happens, and THEN talk about what the actual results actually mean?
The NEXT trick is managing not to kill the crew from all the radiation generated by traveling very, very fast through a space full of - radiation.
Who says you have to travel through the space? Why is everyone assuming they know the physics of something that we have no clue how it would even fundamentally work? A bunch of armchair physicists suggesting theoretical problems to things that we have no clue about. How about moving the space - and everything in it - around the ship instead of moving the ship through the space? How would something like that work, you're asking? We have no idea! Just like any hypothetical you're referring to or making up!
you should see them when you point out explicitly where in the Koran, the hadiths and the sira the things I mentioned above are said.
Your comment would have been far more interesting if you had actually cited any source.
The purpose of that event was to highlight that the media and American Islamaphobes are the reason that Islam has such a bad reputation in the west.
So the 2 gunmen that showed up to the drawing event, were they members of the media or Islamophobes?
I think that there is a bit of a disconnect between scientific methods and things like psychology. I think it stems from the fact that it's easy to set up a thermometer, or an EKG, or whatever else and get those discrete data points, but it's difficult to measure things like "I feel better" or "I don't think about that the same way." I have a few friends who would swear up and down that EMDR therapy helped them out tremendously, but I don't know if there's a single way to gather data that would actually quantify what happened to them. I see the results not so much as psychology being flawed, but more about the difficulty of simply gathering the type of quantified data that a scientific study would require.
Disproven by product adoption models, showing most people are hesitant to jump on new technology right away. They may not fear it, but most certainly don't embrace it. Those are only the early adopters.
All of that depends on time frame. I'm not trying to claim that when a new technology becomes available, everyone immediately jumps on board. Yes, people wait to see experiences before they commit, I'm not trying to argue they don't. But given a sufficient amount of time (depending on the technology), people will embrace it if it in fact proves to be useful. This should be self-evident. Any disruptive technology will prove that point. Use cars as an example if you want. Did everyone go out and immediately purchase a Ford Model T? No. Did society in general embrace motorized vehicles as a technology? Obviously, using whatever value for "sufficient time" that fits that particular technology. Cell phones are another perfect example. The first commercially-available cell phone was released in 1983. From 1983 until 2015 cell phone adoption has gone from 0 subscribers to over 7 billion, reaching 100% of the population including the bottom of the economic pyramid. So it's kind of pointless to say that people have not embraced cell phone technology simply because most people didn't own one in 1988. THAT is grasping at straws, is a short-sighted view, and completely misses the point.
This particular thread is about people being afraid to adopt green power technologies, and I don't think they are any more afraid of green power than they are of cell phones. Concentrated solar panels became available in the 1980s. Today, considering all of the improvements to both efficiency and price that we've seen over the past 30 years, we're seeing solar on houses, on commercial buildings, and in major power plants. That sounds a lot like cell phone adoption to me, both in terms of the pace of technological development and the uptake in use. I don't think people, in general, are afraid of solar power. I think that people running power companies are afraid of losing profits. That's my original point that you're trying to refute by saying I have no idea what I'm talking about, that I'm grasping at straws, and you trying to anthropomorphise a business. I understand that businesses are made of people, that's not the point. I'm sure you can figure it out.
This just doesn't make sense. Apart from the business having feelings thing, how do you explain new companies coming into the market place or existing companies coming out with cool new innovative products.
That is so far into non-sequitor territory that I'm questioning whether we're even in the same argument. You understand what we're discussing here, right?
Yes, I know that reliance on oil is a problem. The US is the single major consumer, we consume millions of barrels of oil per day. That's a major problem. The point I was making was that we do, in fact, get oil from the middle east and other countries that we don't agree with. I was responding to the fact that he left out Saudi Arabia and Russia from his list. If it wasn't for oil we wouldn't be very friendly with Saudi Arabia, we would be calling them out on human rights issues.
So your statement becomes "People are afraid of change, people are not."
No it doesn't. "Businesses" and "people" are not equivalent terms that can be interchanged in any context. If you want to change "businesses" to "people running businesses" and then qualify the other use of "people" to mean the general public, fine.
Next, you completely ignore Luddites, which are increasing in number with increased autonomy in industry.
And the luddites are going to be frightened of the prospect of switching from coal power to solar? When they plug in their toaster can they tell what kind of power that is?
Lastly, you completely ignore the standard distribution model of product adoption. If everyone was as you say, we'd all be early adopters.
And how does that relate to people being literally frightened at the prospect of the power grid switching from coal to solar?
Things people are afraid of:
gays
I doubt that anyone is legitimately frightened of gay people getting married. They just don't like gay people in the first place, it's not that they are frightened of what might happen if gay people can marry each other. I assume you're referring specifically to gay marriage, not gay people in general. Gay people aren't new, that's not a change.
I'm not sure what the statement "some people are afraid of coloreds" has to do with change.
having their guns taken away
They aren't scared of the actual change, they just want their guns.
taxes, apparently
Changes to tax code might cause fear just because the tax code is so confusing in the first place. It definitely does need to be changed, people would welcome it. Most changes to it aren't welcome because they only add more confusion. Changes that would make the tax code easier to understand would be welcomed.
You can't cherry pick. There is more fear out there than not.
Well, I think my examples are better than yours. I know there are a lot of people out there who live in fear, I just don't think that they live in fear of progress like switching from coal power to solar.
Why not become a driver, get a big load of packages, then never return?
If that's actually a problem in reality then we'll see it happen pretty soon, won't we? If we don't see it, then it's probably not actually a problem, is it?
Yeah, and those Uber drivers are going to rape the packages, too! Won't someone think of the packages!
I think one problem is that a lot of the old participants don't do it any more, for whatever reason. Photoshop contests used to regularly pull in 80 or 100 comments or so, now those are the outliers. You could go into one and expect to see 10 or 15 people making entries, but it seems like those people have moved on for whatever reason and haven't really been replaced.
Hence the qualifier "widely". I've seen no data to show that assaults by Uber drivers are any more likely than assaults by "regular" taxi drivers, and I haven't heard of any reports talking about a crash involving an Uber vehicle where the passenger got injured and screwed. Not that they haven't happened, I just haven't seen any reports. I've heard a lot of people talking about hypotheticals, but no reports. I suspect that much of that FUD is being injected into the conversation by interested parties.
And the reason that the church gave you for avoiding masturbation is because it will make you blind? Which pope said that?
I can't even find a reference for how that myth started, other than "Victorian era".
Instead of terms like "hell holes" and "third-world", how about just listing the countries who have executed people in 2014:
Africa:
Equatorial Guinea (9)
Sudan (23+)
Egypt (16+)
Somalia (14+)
Americas:
United States (35)
Asia-Pacific:
China (1000+)
Iran (289+)
Saudi Arabia (90+)
Iraq (61+)
Palestine (26+)
Yemen (23+)
Jordan (11)
Afghanistan (6)
Japan (3)
Vietnam (3+)
Malaysia (2+)
Singapore (2)
UAE (1)
North Korea (unknown)
Indonesia gets a mention for executing 8 people this week, even though they had none last year
Europe:
Belarus (3+)
Belarus and Russia are the only European countries that have not abolished capital punishment; Russia's last execution was in 1999
You sound the people claiming that climate change is not real because it snowed in New England this winter. That's about as intelligent as claiming that no one in the world is starving because you can get in your car and drive to a grocery store down the street.
We buy most of our oil, from ourselves. The vast majority of the rest is bought from Mexico and Canada. The largest of the insignificant provider nations is Venezuela. The amount of oil we buy from countries that, "Do not like us", is insignificant.
The major supplier is in fact Canada. Saudi Arabia and Mexico are essentially tied for second, followed by Venezuela, then countries like Ecuador, Colombia, and Russia. Imports from Canada and the Persian Gulf countries account for a little over half of our total imports.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe...
People, and especially politicians, are afraid of change.
People aren't afraid of change. Not only do people expect change, but they embrace it.
The internet fundamentally changed and disrupted a lot of things, from the way people get their news, to the way people get their entertainment like music, movies, and TV shows. I can watch a movie on the phone in my pocket. The only people afraid of those changes are the ones in charge of the old industries which supplied those things, who never adapted and are now in a position of increasing irrelevance.
Uber is another example. Regular people have widely embraced services like Uber, because they offer many advantages over traditional taxis, they are a welcome change. The major noise against Uber is coming, again, from the people losing money and business to them.
On the topic of alternative fuels in general, Toyota took over the hybrid market with the Prius, if you deny that people embraced that ugly thing then you're delusional. They are all over the road, and it's not because they are attractive vehicles, it's because people like the change that they represent. Tesla showed it further, even with a car priced out of reach of the majority of people I still see several Model Ss on the road every week, usually every day. There are plenty of unknowns with all-electric vehicles, like what happens if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have enough juice left to reach a charging station. That hasn't stopped people from embracing the idea and the change though.
Residential solar power is another great example. There are houses all over the place that have solar cells on their roof or on stands in their yard. People were not afraid of that change, when the price hit the right point they embraced it. They feel good because they're generating their own power for their own house, and it cuts down their electric bill to the point that it can pay for itself over enough time.
I don't know about you, but I haven't had a home phone for over 12 years. I had a few dumpy cell phones and since then I've had a few high-powered smart phones. I'm carrying a computer in my pocket more powerful than anything I would have built for home use when I had a home phone. I was not afraid of getting rid of my home phone, it was a welcome change. If someone wants to talk to me they can call me directly, not my house where I may or may not be. If they just have something quick to say they don't even need to call, they can just send a small text message. Or send me a picture. Or send an email, which I can also get on my phone. Or send me a link to a web page, which I can pull up no matter where I am.
These are not "changes" to be "afraid" of, this is what we call progress. The only people holding us back from continued progress are the ones who stand to lose money and become irrelevant. The reason why politicians appear to be afraid of change is because they are paid by the businesses who are becoming irrelevant.
Businesses are afraid of change, people are not.
No they aren't. Among men only, only Obama, Napoleon, G.W. Bush, FDR, Reagan, Shakespeare, Hitler, Washington, Churchill, Lincoln, Aristotle, Columbus, Clinton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Einstein are more popular than Jesus. Bob Dylan (21) would be the most popular musician, beating out both Michael Jackson (27) and Elvis (29). None of the Beatles are individually in the top 100 for men.
it's like if you offered someone $20 to wash your car, which they did, but then threw a bucket of mud on it. would you still pay them the $20?
Uh, no. But if I got 30 washes, and the car was cleaned 29 times, and one time it had mud on it, I would still pay for the other 29 washes.