It took me quite a bit of reading to understand what a "Cardinal scouting director" is. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what such a person actually does.
He managed talent scouting for the St Louis Cardinals baseball franchise. Basically he was in charge of the staff that tried to identify up and coming talent in development leagues, high schools and colleges. 20 seconds on google should have clarified the matter for you so I'm thinking you didn't actually read very much. Personally I think you might be engaging in a bit of equivocation by intentionally pretending to be unable to parse the sentence.
Given the tech-oriented and international audience of this side, I'm not sure that one can assume that I am alone in being confused by the wording of the title.
Most of the readers of slashdot are in the US and just because someone likes technology doesn't mean they are ignorant about sports. I was a D1 college athlete myself at one point and I still coach several teams.
A better one would be to simply refer to the person as "sports executive".
That's like calling someone at GE an "engineer". It's technically accurate but it doesn't tell you much about what they actually do.
Even a good team like Cleveland, with multiple good offensive threats, doesn't really play as a team. There's too much of LeBron dribbling while other guys stand around. He did the same stuff in Miami.
Have you actually watched Lebron play? The guy passes the ball a ton. He's in the top 10 in the league for assists every year and is in the top 20 all time already. I agree with your point that much of the NBA doesn't play like a team. But I don't think that is actually a fair assessment of Lebron James specifically. He actually does quite a lot to distribute the ball, sometimes to a fault. In a lot of ways he plays a lot like Magic Johnson. Amazing scorer but possibly even better at passing the ball.
Company I've never heard of buys most important processor company in the world. Wow.
Softbank is one of the 100 largest companies in the world. You not knowing them speaks more to your ignorance of Japan than anything else. They've been a big player in the tech world for decades.
And Intel might disagree about who is the most important processor company in the world though ARM certainly has an argument for the title. ARM is king of the hill in mobile devices but changes are you typed your posting on a device with an Intel microprocessor. Which is more important? Guess that depends on your point of view.
And if you didn't have to have your water tank replaced, the old water tank was "Grandfathered" in, and was about as safe as the new replacement, except for the fact that now you've had to have a government inspector involved, paid additional "fees" and you likely delayed repairs because of the added expense.
Nope. The inspection was 100% free of charge and took very little of my time. The old tank was inspected at the time on it's installation which coincidentally was the last time money changed hands for it. The old tank was safe because it was installed to code and inspectors are VERY useful in ensuring that contractors build to code. The old tank was not as safe as the new one because it was starting to malfunction (pressure releases, pilot going out, etc) I'm guessing you haven't dealt with contractors much but a lot of them will cut corners at every opportunity because it increases their profits. Inspections are required by law in most places because contractors have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted and sometimes this results in dangerous problems. Contractors are about as trustworthy as a used car salesman as a general proposition.
Getting Government approvals doesn't actually help, and may actually be problematic.
You have that 100% backwards. Getting government approvals doesn't hurt and sometimes it proves helpful. Sometimes you have to pay for the inspection but that's not a bad thing either. You'd be an idiot to have significant work done on your house and not have it inspected by an independent third party. I've had contractors try to cut corners on work done to my house and the inspector made them do it right. I'm actually quite glad to have code inspectors available to me since I'm not an expert in a lot of areas of home building.
So what happens if someone complains to McDonald's that they are offended by a site that they saw another customer visit that got through the porn filters such as a news program.
I'm sure they'll deal with it the same way they deal with complaints today. Understand that McDonald's isn't looking for perfect here. They are looking for plausible deniability in the event of a lawsuit or bad PR. Someday some asshat is going to do something lewd in a McDonald's involving the internet and they are just setting up their defenses against that today. It allows them to say to a judge or a news outlet that they are taking reasonable measures to try to keep the place family friendly. McDonald's gains NOTHING by providing unfettered internet access. Expecting them to support porn watching in their stores is simple idiotic.
It's not real hard to make the argument that cnn.com doesn't constitute porn by any reasonable definition. It's very hard to make the argument that pornhub.com isn't porn. Yes there will be some grey areas but they won't be hard to sort out for the most part.
So, you want every home (remember every home is a potential airbnb place) inspected by the Governments?
Homes ARE inspected by the government. I just had my hot water tank upgraded and the township came out to inspect the work to make sure it met code. If I sell the house I'll have to have the government come out to inspect it. Not the common theme here - when money is exchanged the government gets involved to make sure things are done properly. It is easy to show there is a compelling public interest in them doing so. There are a lot of laws that apply for rental properties and governments enforce these to ensure the safety of the occupants and that protected classes are not discriminated against and a few other public interest concerns. These laws didn't appear out of thin air.
Your family comes, a foreign exchange student comes, a refugee comes, a co-worker comes, a visitor of any kind comes. How do you prove that You aren't an airbnb-er.
You don't need to. Strawman argument right here. Nobody is arguing against your right to host guests on your property for free. The discussion is whether you can charge them rent without incurring assorted other obligations to ensure the safety and well being of your paying "guests".
Do you want to pay Taxes to have a guest?
If you are receiving payments for that "guest" to stay at your residence then you already owe taxes on that income. That would be true even if AirBnB didn't exist. ANY income you generate is taxable and that includes property rentals of any sort. Don't take my word for it. The IRS will be happy to clarify the matter for you.
Depending on who you ask, you will get a different interpretation of what constitutes porn.
Doesn't matter. In this context, "porn" is whatever McDonald's defines it to be. Their definition need not agree with yours or anyone else's. They could call Sesame Street porn if they want to get silly about it. It's their wifi so they can provide as much or as little of the internet as they feel appropriate. It's their free speech right to do so. If you don't like it then shop elsewhere.
Let's be clear - this is NOT government censorship and the first amendment does not apply here. No protected classes are being adversely affected by this. McDonald's is a private business and they can provide their goods and services however they like so long as they are not adversely affecting any protected classes.
I agree with you, to a point. Yes, McDonald's can block porn on its WiFi. I'm just uncomfortable about McDonalds being free to define what "porn" is.
Doesn't matter if you are uncomfortable with it or not. You don't have to call it "porn" if it makes you uncomfortable. They are absolutely free to block WHATEVER they want on THEIR equipment that they pay for. If you don't like it you can go elsewhere. It's a private business and it's no different then them deciding to not provide escargot on their menu. They aren't required to provide it on their menu of goods and services just because you would like to have it. They are not violating the rights of any protected groups by deciding that having people using their wifi to watch porn isn't in their best interests.
What if, say, Chick-fil-a decided that "porn" included anything with a gay theme, even if it did not involve explicit visuals (e.g., gay rights, marriage, merchandise) and blocked it on their WiFi? IANAL, but this sounds like a conflict of constitutional rights of free speech vs. equal protection, and I think the courts have decided that equal protection wins.
You are confused. Constitutional rights to free speech have NOTHING to do with private businesses in a context like this. The first amendment applies to the government, not the private sector. If Chick-Fil-A want's to block "porn" on their wifi they are absolutely free to do so. They have the same right to free speech as you do. There might be business consequences to their free speech (lost revenue etc) but they are free to decline to facilitate your out of control porn addiction.
if public WiFi is part of the service that a business offers, then it cannot discriminate against any protected group with that service. Porn-watchers are not a protected group, but gays are.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with protected groups. Furthermore your implication that gays have some sort of compelling interest in watching porn at McDonalds is totally out of line and disrespectful.
But someone watching a violent movie, which won't be blocked, is okay for the kid to see, though, right?
That's not likely to result in a lawsuit. Someone watching porn might and it certainly would result in a ton of bad PR. Seriously folks, this is just McDonald's heading off a problem before it becomes a problem. I don't think they are making a big social statement.
And what exactly is "porn" again? The Venus de Milo? Greta Garbo in a swimsuit? Protest coverage? Dancing?
I'm guessing your parents never had The Talk with you if you are actually trying to use this irrelevant nonsense as an argument.
In this case "porn" is whatever McDonald's defines it to be. It's their property and they can do what they like with it. If you don't like it go elsewhere. If they lose business they might reconsider but I'm pretty sure they won't miss you or your porn.
This is like the civil rights legislation in 1964. It needed lots of republican support because so many democrats were against it.
You should study your history more. This bears zero resemblence to 1964. "Democrats" who voted against that bill switched parties shortly thereafter and those people are now solidly republicans. In fact it was that exact bill that resulted in the south voting solidly republican ever since then. This bill will have no such fallout even though in some ways perhaps it should.
I find it ironic that the party that freed the slaves is now the party whose core is now scared racist white people.
The other half of the quote you provided is that they are spending money to "fix" a problem that may not have existed.
They are doing it to head off any lawsuits that might potentially arise. You can be sure the first time some mom observes someone watching porn in front of her kids using McDonald's wifi that a lawsuit and tons of bad PR would follow. Taking reasonable measures to block this problem before it happens is a very sensible thing to do. If you don't like it, don't shop there. But frankly if you actually have a problem with this you probably need psychiatric help.
So in short, they are determining and deciding on what constitutes an enjoyable experience for their clients.
Yes they are. If you have a problem with that, take your business (and your porn) elsewhere. And frankly I agree with them. McDonald's is not the appropriate place for watching porn and never will be. You seem to have a profound entitlement complex if their actions actually offend you.
I am not sying they do not reserve the right to do whatever they want on their network, but diseminating the mesage this way doesn't cut it for me.
So you are saying you think it is a good idea to watch porn in a McDonald's and how dare they prevent it. Otherwise there is no reason for you to care at all.
This is a free country, if I want to watch porn at McDonalds then so be it!!!!
You seem to forget that it's a free country for McDonald's too. They are under no obligation to cooperate with your pathetic need to watch porn on their property.
And seriously, if you really are so desperate that you need to watch porn at McDonald's then you need to go play in traffic or get serious psychiatric help. Time and place people. Time and place.
Not that I can tell. They frankly are pretty quiet about it for the most part. Sometimes they get involved but it's the exception. They should be on the front lines of that debate but you almost never hear police talking about it publicly. They should be voting and funding the most anti-gun political candidates possible if but they don't. Makes little sense.
Note that Chicago has some of the strongest gun control laws in the country, and a rather higher than average murder & crime rate.
A single locality having strong gun control accomplishes little if the surrounding areas don't share that philosophy. Particularly in a large city with a bad gang problem. Strengthen gun control in the rest of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin and go clean up the gang problem and see what happens.
For that matter, seems to me Rwanda did the gun control thing just before they did the "massacre those other guys" thing....
Are you really worried about getting massacred in the US and if so by whom? If you are I'd suggest moving to a safer country. Sounds like a straw man to me.
Personally, I'm in favour of strict gun control laws. For the police. They don't need to carry a handgun, a shotgun & an assault rifle
Neither do you. The only thing you are going to accomplish by carrying a gun is to increase the likelihood of getting shot yourself. Let's say you were in Dallas during the recent tragedy and you were carrying a piece. How exactly are the police to supposed tell you apart from the bad guys? Guess what? They can't. And given how twitchy they've become lately you're probably going to get shot.
When the cops disarm, I'll think about it. Probably won't get rid of my guns, but I'll at least think about it....
So you prefer to have a Mexican standoff with the police that you cannot possibly hope to win. Good luck with that. Let me know where to send the flowers.
The most economic benefit we've received from anything spaceflight related is from satellites.
Fair point. However bear in mind that manned spaceflight has been an integral part of many of those satellites. Hubble not the least among them. Servicing a satellite in space (currently) often requires a manned mission so it's not as if they are neatly on one side of the ledger or the other. A lot of that value from satellites would never have been realized without a manned space program. Furthermore some of the potentially most valuable things we might ever do in space will probably require humans to actually go there. It will take humans longer to get to someplace like Mars but once we are there we will be able to do far more than most machines. We are the most adaptable "machines" we have access to even if we are comparatively fragile.
Again, I'm not trying to argue in favor of one or the other. I think both are necessary and both are valuable. Having both makes us better off than choosing just one or the other. They complement each other.
and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
I don't think this is even close. From the Voyager program to climate satellites, we've learned far more from unmanned missions.
Completely disagree. We learned a VAST amount from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions as well as later manned missions and arguably much of the most valuable information came from learning how to keep people alive in space. We learned many things that we would never have learned from just sending up probes and satellites. To pick a random example I would argue that something like learning about the effects of prolonged zero-g on the human body is every bit as valuable as something like pictures of Pluto and it may have a lot more potential application back here on Earth. It's hard to compare the value of random bits of science but I take strong issue with the notion that the science we've gathered from our manned expeditions is any less valuable than what we've gotten from probes.
Please describe the causal link between having to put a man into a metal tube and your list of supposed spinoffs?
Go research it yourself. There is a great article on wikipedia to get you started regarding NASA spinoffs.
How much cheaper would it have been to subsidize students or engineers directly?
It wouldn't be cheaper. It would be substantially more expensive because the research was undirected. Spinoffs come from solving one problem and finding a use for the technology elsewhere. If you don't solve the original problem you don't develop the technology to spin off. It's not the only way to do things but undirected research is difficult to fund and justify. Engineers don't go around solving problems at random as a general proposition. Students rarely solve serious engineering problems at all.
It's a pretty convoluted way to develop things, don't you think?
Not at all. It's exactly how it is done in pretty much all universities and government research labs and it works tremendously well. Go talk to anyone at a technology transfer office at a university if you need clarification.
And how did people invent things before rockets?
Rather a stupid question I think. Not going to bother with this one either.
Unless you mean Tang there is nothing that resulted only from manned space flight that had any benefit on man-kind. It's a loss leader.
First off, Tang didn't come from the space program. It was developed by General Foods in 1957. It was used in the space program which popularized it but NASA had nothing to do with its creation.
Second, you couldn't be more wrong that nothing came out of the manned program. Here are just a few of the highlights from the manned program: Infrared ear thermometers, ventricular assist devices, advanced artificial limbs, LEDs in medical therapies, invisible braces, temper foam, enriched baby food, portable cordless vacuums, water purification, pollution remediation, improved food safety, lightweight breathing systems, safety grooving on runways, scratch resistant lenses, remote controlled ovens, and the list goes on and on.
The reason manned spaceflight developed better technologies is that more money was thrown at it.
R&D doesn't work quite like that. More money thrown into research does not automatically equal better results. It helps but the relationship isn't causal. The relationship is more of a correlation. You can throw a LOT of money into R&D and get very little to show for it sometimes. Similarly you often can get very good results without spending a fortune. What technology you get out of the R&D depends heavily on the problem domain. Some areas of research are more fertile ground for technology spinoffs than others. I have no doubt that more money thrown into space R&D (manned or unmanned) would result in better and faster advances but the reason manned spaceflight developed (generally) better tech had probably more to do with the problem domain and the ease of transfer to commercial applications than it did the budget.
Give robotic space exploration an Apollo-sized budget and we might see even greater technological advances.
We almost certainly would see greater advances. No argument there. But the thing is that the manned program necessarily develops technologies that are generally more transferable to human needs. The reasons for this should be obvious. Furthermore the Apollo budgets ended 40 years ago and despite substantially reduced budgets for manned spaceflight it has continued to be a treasure trove of valuable research and technology advances. I'd love to see both robotic and manned spaceflight go back to Apollo era budgets but to be frank that kind of misses the point. Whatever we do it is important to do both manned and unmanned space exploration. We would be negligent if we neglect one or the other.
Imagine the tech we'd have to develop to drill into Europa, make submarines for Titan, construct rovers that can survive on Venus, or reach other star systems.
And imagine the tech we would have to develop to GO to Europe or be in that submarine on Titan. You seem to have missed the point. I'm not arguing for manned or robotic spaceflight. I'm pointing out that we get a huge amount of benefit in the form of technology from our manned program AND our robotic programs and we'd be idiots to neglect either one. The benefits from each are different but I don't see one as more important than the other.
Disagree. With the caveat that it is exploration as long as you learn something. And we've learned a lot from our activities in nearby space. It doesn't have the pretty pictures we get from planetary probes but the technology and economic benefits we get from spaceflight are almost entirely from our activities in low to geosync orbit as is virtually all of what we have learned about biology in space. Those probes we send to Jupiter and Pluto have their technology developed and proven in our low earth orbit activities. What we are doing there is definitely exploration unless you are using a needlessly restricted definition of the word.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Saying robotic probes are "discredited" is clearly wrong. They have clear and substantial scientific value and they account for a large portion of our understanding of our solar system and astronomy data.
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
That's obvious in hindsight. For those of us old enough to remember the shuttle when it was new I can tell you anyone who thought that about the shuttle at the time was mostly keeping it to themselves. Yes it was a dead end but it took a while to realize that. That happens sometimes. At the time the shuttle seemed like the next logical evolution of spaceflight.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere.
Manned spaceflight has had tremendous benefit to humanity. The amount of technology development that has come from the manned program has been tremendous due to the challenge of the task. The information value of manned spaceflight is easy to overlook but it should not be. We've probably gotten more economic benefit from manned spaceflight than from probes and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
The argument of probe vs manned space flight is an idiotic one. We need both. Probes can tell us things that would be hard to learn or take MUCH longer and are quite economical for many mission profiles. But there are many things we can only learn though manned spaceflight and the technology and economic side benefits tend to be bigger as well. We need both and to present it as an either/or really is doing all of us a huge disservice in the long run.
I agree with you, but I also believe we can't just ignore the constitution
Never argued otherwise. But we can amend the Constitution and we can clarify what the second amendment means to be different from what it has meant in the past. All it would take is for the Supreme Court to make a ruling. Jim Crow laws used to be held as Constitutional - until they weren't. The Constitution once said that women couldn't vote, that slavery was legal and that alcohol was banned. Society has evolved since then and our gun laws should be no exception to that. How many people have to die needlessly before we start trying to find ways to make our society less violent?
The fact that black people were barred from owning firearms is one of the reasons the 13th amendment was passed.
We didn't end slavery to make sure that black people could carry guns. We ended it because it was a reprehensible practice and we fought a real shooting civil war over it. NOBODY at the time was standing around saying "we need to make sure black people can own guns". If anything people back then were generally terrified of the concept of armed black people.
Yeah, look at what a wonderful police state the rest of the world is turning into.
If you think we actually live in a police state you have NO idea what a real police state is or what it is like to live in one. Come back and argue when you have some real perspective and life experience.
The rest of your post is preposterous, gun lobby nonsense so I'll stop here.
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It took me quite a bit of reading to understand what a "Cardinal scouting director" is. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what such a person actually does.
He managed talent scouting for the St Louis Cardinals baseball franchise. Basically he was in charge of the staff that tried to identify up and coming talent in development leagues, high schools and colleges. 20 seconds on google should have clarified the matter for you so I'm thinking you didn't actually read very much. Personally I think you might be engaging in a bit of equivocation by intentionally pretending to be unable to parse the sentence.
Given the tech-oriented and international audience of this side, I'm not sure that one can assume that I am alone in being confused by the wording of the title.
Most of the readers of slashdot are in the US and just because someone likes technology doesn't mean they are ignorant about sports. I was a D1 college athlete myself at one point and I still coach several teams.
A better one would be to simply refer to the person as "sports executive".
That's like calling someone at GE an "engineer". It's technically accurate but it doesn't tell you much about what they actually do.
Even a good team like Cleveland, with multiple good offensive threats, doesn't really play as a team. There's too much of LeBron dribbling while other guys stand around. He did the same stuff in Miami.
Have you actually watched Lebron play? The guy passes the ball a ton. He's in the top 10 in the league for assists every year and is in the top 20 all time already. I agree with your point that much of the NBA doesn't play like a team. But I don't think that is actually a fair assessment of Lebron James specifically. He actually does quite a lot to distribute the ball, sometimes to a fault. In a lot of ways he plays a lot like Magic Johnson. Amazing scorer but possibly even better at passing the ball.
Company I've never heard of buys most important processor company in the world. Wow.
Softbank is one of the 100 largest companies in the world. You not knowing them speaks more to your ignorance of Japan than anything else. They've been a big player in the tech world for decades.
And Intel might disagree about who is the most important processor company in the world though ARM certainly has an argument for the title. ARM is king of the hill in mobile devices but changes are you typed your posting on a device with an Intel microprocessor. Which is more important? Guess that depends on your point of view.
And if you didn't have to have your water tank replaced, the old water tank was "Grandfathered" in, and was about as safe as the new replacement, except for the fact that now you've had to have a government inspector involved, paid additional "fees" and you likely delayed repairs because of the added expense.
Nope. The inspection was 100% free of charge and took very little of my time. The old tank was inspected at the time on it's installation which coincidentally was the last time money changed hands for it. The old tank was safe because it was installed to code and inspectors are VERY useful in ensuring that contractors build to code. The old tank was not as safe as the new one because it was starting to malfunction (pressure releases, pilot going out, etc) I'm guessing you haven't dealt with contractors much but a lot of them will cut corners at every opportunity because it increases their profits. Inspections are required by law in most places because contractors have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted and sometimes this results in dangerous problems. Contractors are about as trustworthy as a used car salesman as a general proposition.
Getting Government approvals doesn't actually help, and may actually be problematic.
You have that 100% backwards. Getting government approvals doesn't hurt and sometimes it proves helpful. Sometimes you have to pay for the inspection but that's not a bad thing either. You'd be an idiot to have significant work done on your house and not have it inspected by an independent third party. I've had contractors try to cut corners on work done to my house and the inspector made them do it right. I'm actually quite glad to have code inspectors available to me since I'm not an expert in a lot of areas of home building.
So what happens if someone complains to McDonald's that they are offended by a site that they saw another customer visit that got through the porn filters such as a news program.
I'm sure they'll deal with it the same way they deal with complaints today. Understand that McDonald's isn't looking for perfect here. They are looking for plausible deniability in the event of a lawsuit or bad PR. Someday some asshat is going to do something lewd in a McDonald's involving the internet and they are just setting up their defenses against that today. It allows them to say to a judge or a news outlet that they are taking reasonable measures to try to keep the place family friendly. McDonald's gains NOTHING by providing unfettered internet access. Expecting them to support porn watching in their stores is simple idiotic.
It's not real hard to make the argument that cnn.com doesn't constitute porn by any reasonable definition. It's very hard to make the argument that pornhub.com isn't porn. Yes there will be some grey areas but they won't be hard to sort out for the most part.
So, you want every home (remember every home is a potential airbnb place) inspected by the Governments?
Homes ARE inspected by the government. I just had my hot water tank upgraded and the township came out to inspect the work to make sure it met code. If I sell the house I'll have to have the government come out to inspect it. Not the common theme here - when money is exchanged the government gets involved to make sure things are done properly. It is easy to show there is a compelling public interest in them doing so. There are a lot of laws that apply for rental properties and governments enforce these to ensure the safety of the occupants and that protected classes are not discriminated against and a few other public interest concerns. These laws didn't appear out of thin air.
Your family comes, a foreign exchange student comes, a refugee comes, a co-worker comes, a visitor of any kind comes. How do you prove that You aren't an airbnb-er.
You don't need to. Strawman argument right here. Nobody is arguing against your right to host guests on your property for free. The discussion is whether you can charge them rent without incurring assorted other obligations to ensure the safety and well being of your paying "guests".
Do you want to pay Taxes to have a guest?
If you are receiving payments for that "guest" to stay at your residence then you already owe taxes on that income. That would be true even if AirBnB didn't exist. ANY income you generate is taxable and that includes property rentals of any sort. Don't take my word for it. The IRS will be happy to clarify the matter for you.
Depending on who you ask, you will get a different interpretation of what constitutes porn.
Doesn't matter. In this context, "porn" is whatever McDonald's defines it to be. Their definition need not agree with yours or anyone else's. They could call Sesame Street porn if they want to get silly about it. It's their wifi so they can provide as much or as little of the internet as they feel appropriate. It's their free speech right to do so. If you don't like it then shop elsewhere.
Let's be clear - this is NOT government censorship and the first amendment does not apply here. No protected classes are being adversely affected by this. McDonald's is a private business and they can provide their goods and services however they like so long as they are not adversely affecting any protected classes.
I agree with you, to a point. Yes, McDonald's can block porn on its WiFi. I'm just uncomfortable about McDonalds being free to define what "porn" is.
Doesn't matter if you are uncomfortable with it or not. You don't have to call it "porn" if it makes you uncomfortable. They are absolutely free to block WHATEVER they want on THEIR equipment that they pay for. If you don't like it you can go elsewhere. It's a private business and it's no different then them deciding to not provide escargot on their menu. They aren't required to provide it on their menu of goods and services just because you would like to have it. They are not violating the rights of any protected groups by deciding that having people using their wifi to watch porn isn't in their best interests.
What if, say, Chick-fil-a decided that "porn" included anything with a gay theme, even if it did not involve explicit visuals (e.g., gay rights, marriage, merchandise) and blocked it on their WiFi? IANAL, but this sounds like a conflict of constitutional rights of free speech vs. equal protection, and I think the courts have decided that equal protection wins.
You are confused. Constitutional rights to free speech have NOTHING to do with private businesses in a context like this. The first amendment applies to the government, not the private sector. If Chick-Fil-A want's to block "porn" on their wifi they are absolutely free to do so. They have the same right to free speech as you do. There might be business consequences to their free speech (lost revenue etc) but they are free to decline to facilitate your out of control porn addiction.
if public WiFi is part of the service that a business offers, then it cannot discriminate against any protected group with that service. Porn-watchers are not a protected group, but gays are.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with protected groups. Furthermore your implication that gays have some sort of compelling interest in watching porn at McDonalds is totally out of line and disrespectful.
But someone watching a violent movie, which won't be blocked, is okay for the kid to see, though, right?
That's not likely to result in a lawsuit. Someone watching porn might and it certainly would result in a ton of bad PR. Seriously folks, this is just McDonald's heading off a problem before it becomes a problem. I don't think they are making a big social statement.
And what exactly is "porn" again? The Venus de Milo? Greta Garbo in a swimsuit? Protest coverage? Dancing?
I'm guessing your parents never had The Talk with you if you are actually trying to use this irrelevant nonsense as an argument.
In this case "porn" is whatever McDonald's defines it to be. It's their property and they can do what they like with it. If you don't like it go elsewhere. If they lose business they might reconsider but I'm pretty sure they won't miss you or your porn.
The A-ISIS Act? Seriously? Did they think that through at all? The jokes just write themselves.
This is like the civil rights legislation in 1964. It needed lots of republican support because so many democrats were against it.
You should study your history more. This bears zero resemblence to 1964. "Democrats" who voted against that bill switched parties shortly thereafter and those people are now solidly republicans. In fact it was that exact bill that resulted in the south voting solidly republican ever since then. This bill will have no such fallout even though in some ways perhaps it should.
I find it ironic that the party that freed the slaves is now the party whose core is now scared racist white people.
The other half of the quote you provided is that they are spending money to "fix" a problem that may not have existed.
They are doing it to head off any lawsuits that might potentially arise. You can be sure the first time some mom observes someone watching porn in front of her kids using McDonald's wifi that a lawsuit and tons of bad PR would follow. Taking reasonable measures to block this problem before it happens is a very sensible thing to do. If you don't like it, don't shop there. But frankly if you actually have a problem with this you probably need psychiatric help.
So in short, they are determining and deciding on what constitutes an enjoyable experience for their clients.
Yes they are. If you have a problem with that, take your business (and your porn) elsewhere. And frankly I agree with them. McDonald's is not the appropriate place for watching porn and never will be. You seem to have a profound entitlement complex if their actions actually offend you.
I am not sying they do not reserve the right to do whatever they want on their network, but diseminating the mesage this way doesn't cut it for me.
So you are saying you think it is a good idea to watch porn in a McDonald's and how dare they prevent it. Otherwise there is no reason for you to care at all.
This is a free country, if I want to watch porn at McDonalds then so be it!!!!
You seem to forget that it's a free country for McDonald's too. They are under no obligation to cooperate with your pathetic need to watch porn on their property.
And seriously, if you really are so desperate that you need to watch porn at McDonald's then you need to go play in traffic or get serious psychiatric help. Time and place people. Time and place.
China is a state with 1.3 billion people and can barely feed itself.
You haven't been to China have you? I have and your description doesn't come close. To anyone who has been there you sound like an ignorant imbecile.
Police Unions do tend to favour gun control.
Not that I can tell. They frankly are pretty quiet about it for the most part. Sometimes they get involved but it's the exception. They should be on the front lines of that debate but you almost never hear police talking about it publicly. They should be voting and funding the most anti-gun political candidates possible if but they don't. Makes little sense.
Note that Chicago has some of the strongest gun control laws in the country, and a rather higher than average murder & crime rate.
A single locality having strong gun control accomplishes little if the surrounding areas don't share that philosophy. Particularly in a large city with a bad gang problem. Strengthen gun control in the rest of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin and go clean up the gang problem and see what happens.
For that matter, seems to me Rwanda did the gun control thing just before they did the "massacre those other guys" thing....
Are you really worried about getting massacred in the US and if so by whom? If you are I'd suggest moving to a safer country. Sounds like a straw man to me.
Personally, I'm in favour of strict gun control laws. For the police. They don't need to carry a handgun, a shotgun & an assault rifle
Neither do you. The only thing you are going to accomplish by carrying a gun is to increase the likelihood of getting shot yourself. Let's say you were in Dallas during the recent tragedy and you were carrying a piece. How exactly are the police to supposed tell you apart from the bad guys? Guess what? They can't. And given how twitchy they've become lately you're probably going to get shot.
When the cops disarm, I'll think about it. Probably won't get rid of my guns, but I'll at least think about it....
So you prefer to have a Mexican standoff with the police that you cannot possibly hope to win. Good luck with that. Let me know where to send the flowers.
The most economic benefit we've received from anything spaceflight related is from satellites.
Fair point. However bear in mind that manned spaceflight has been an integral part of many of those satellites. Hubble not the least among them. Servicing a satellite in space (currently) often requires a manned mission so it's not as if they are neatly on one side of the ledger or the other. A lot of that value from satellites would never have been realized without a manned space program. Furthermore some of the potentially most valuable things we might ever do in space will probably require humans to actually go there. It will take humans longer to get to someplace like Mars but once we are there we will be able to do far more than most machines. We are the most adaptable "machines" we have access to even if we are comparatively fragile.
Again, I'm not trying to argue in favor of one or the other. I think both are necessary and both are valuable. Having both makes us better off than choosing just one or the other. They complement each other.
and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
I don't think this is even close. From the Voyager program to climate satellites, we've learned far more from unmanned missions.
Completely disagree. We learned a VAST amount from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions as well as later manned missions and arguably much of the most valuable information came from learning how to keep people alive in space. We learned many things that we would never have learned from just sending up probes and satellites. To pick a random example I would argue that something like learning about the effects of prolonged zero-g on the human body is every bit as valuable as something like pictures of Pluto and it may have a lot more potential application back here on Earth. It's hard to compare the value of random bits of science but I take strong issue with the notion that the science we've gathered from our manned expeditions is any less valuable than what we've gotten from probes.
Please describe the causal link between having to put a man into a metal tube and your list of supposed spinoffs?
Go research it yourself. There is a great article on wikipedia to get you started regarding NASA spinoffs.
How much cheaper would it have been to subsidize students or engineers directly?
It wouldn't be cheaper. It would be substantially more expensive because the research was undirected. Spinoffs come from solving one problem and finding a use for the technology elsewhere. If you don't solve the original problem you don't develop the technology to spin off. It's not the only way to do things but undirected research is difficult to fund and justify. Engineers don't go around solving problems at random as a general proposition. Students rarely solve serious engineering problems at all.
It's a pretty convoluted way to develop things, don't you think?
Not at all. It's exactly how it is done in pretty much all universities and government research labs and it works tremendously well. Go talk to anyone at a technology transfer office at a university if you need clarification.
And how did people invent things before rockets?
Rather a stupid question I think. Not going to bother with this one either.
Unless you mean Tang there is nothing that resulted only from manned space flight that had any benefit on man-kind. It's a loss leader.
First off, Tang didn't come from the space program. It was developed by General Foods in 1957. It was used in the space program which popularized it but NASA had nothing to do with its creation.
Second, you couldn't be more wrong that nothing came out of the manned program. Here are just a few of the highlights from the manned program: Infrared ear thermometers, ventricular assist devices, advanced artificial limbs, LEDs in medical therapies, invisible braces, temper foam, enriched baby food, portable cordless vacuums, water purification, pollution remediation, improved food safety, lightweight breathing systems, safety grooving on runways, scratch resistant lenses, remote controlled ovens, and the list goes on and on.
The reason manned spaceflight developed better technologies is that more money was thrown at it.
R&D doesn't work quite like that. More money thrown into research does not automatically equal better results. It helps but the relationship isn't causal. The relationship is more of a correlation. You can throw a LOT of money into R&D and get very little to show for it sometimes. Similarly you often can get very good results without spending a fortune. What technology you get out of the R&D depends heavily on the problem domain. Some areas of research are more fertile ground for technology spinoffs than others. I have no doubt that more money thrown into space R&D (manned or unmanned) would result in better and faster advances but the reason manned spaceflight developed (generally) better tech had probably more to do with the problem domain and the ease of transfer to commercial applications than it did the budget.
Give robotic space exploration an Apollo-sized budget and we might see even greater technological advances.
We almost certainly would see greater advances. No argument there. But the thing is that the manned program necessarily develops technologies that are generally more transferable to human needs. The reasons for this should be obvious. Furthermore the Apollo budgets ended 40 years ago and despite substantially reduced budgets for manned spaceflight it has continued to be a treasure trove of valuable research and technology advances. I'd love to see both robotic and manned spaceflight go back to Apollo era budgets but to be frank that kind of misses the point. Whatever we do it is important to do both manned and unmanned space exploration. We would be negligent if we neglect one or the other.
Imagine the tech we'd have to develop to drill into Europa, make submarines for Titan, construct rovers that can survive on Venus, or reach other star systems.
And imagine the tech we would have to develop to GO to Europe or be in that submarine on Titan. You seem to have missed the point. I'm not arguing for manned or robotic spaceflight. I'm pointing out that we get a huge amount of benefit in the form of technology from our manned program AND our robotic programs and we'd be idiots to neglect either one. The benefits from each are different but I don't see one as more important than the other.
low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"
Disagree. With the caveat that it is exploration as long as you learn something. And we've learned a lot from our activities in nearby space. It doesn't have the pretty pictures we get from planetary probes but the technology and economic benefits we get from spaceflight are almost entirely from our activities in low to geosync orbit as is virtually all of what we have learned about biology in space. Those probes we send to Jupiter and Pluto have their technology developed and proven in our low earth orbit activities. What we are doing there is definitely exploration unless you are using a needlessly restricted definition of the word.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Saying robotic probes are "discredited" is clearly wrong. They have clear and substantial scientific value and they account for a large portion of our understanding of our solar system and astronomy data.
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
That's obvious in hindsight. For those of us old enough to remember the shuttle when it was new I can tell you anyone who thought that about the shuttle at the time was mostly keeping it to themselves. Yes it was a dead end but it took a while to realize that. That happens sometimes. At the time the shuttle seemed like the next logical evolution of spaceflight.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere.
Manned spaceflight has had tremendous benefit to humanity. The amount of technology development that has come from the manned program has been tremendous due to the challenge of the task. The information value of manned spaceflight is easy to overlook but it should not be. We've probably gotten more economic benefit from manned spaceflight than from probes and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
The argument of probe vs manned space flight is an idiotic one. We need both. Probes can tell us things that would be hard to learn or take MUCH longer and are quite economical for many mission profiles. But there are many things we can only learn though manned spaceflight and the technology and economic side benefits tend to be bigger as well. We need both and to present it as an either/or really is doing all of us a huge disservice in the long run.
I agree with you, but I also believe we can't just ignore the constitution
Never argued otherwise. But we can amend the Constitution and we can clarify what the second amendment means to be different from what it has meant in the past. All it would take is for the Supreme Court to make a ruling. Jim Crow laws used to be held as Constitutional - until they weren't. The Constitution once said that women couldn't vote, that slavery was legal and that alcohol was banned. Society has evolved since then and our gun laws should be no exception to that. How many people have to die needlessly before we start trying to find ways to make our society less violent?
The fact that black people were barred from owning firearms is one of the reasons the 13th amendment was passed.
We didn't end slavery to make sure that black people could carry guns. We ended it because it was a reprehensible practice and we fought a real shooting civil war over it. NOBODY at the time was standing around saying "we need to make sure black people can own guns". If anything people back then were generally terrified of the concept of armed black people.
Yeah, look at what a wonderful police state the rest of the world is turning into.
If you think we actually live in a police state you have NO idea what a real police state is or what it is like to live in one. Come back and argue when you have some real perspective and life experience.
The rest of your post is preposterous, gun lobby nonsense so I'll stop here.