Here's the problem with a child-locator device, especially with the way you describe how it would be attached to them. Anything attached can be removed. Do you really think this is going to be some kind of Great Eliminator of Abductions? Hell no, the abductor just makes sure to shuck the kid of all his or her belongings (possibly clothes, if it gets to the point of being embedded in clothing) in order to defeat being tracked and the kid located. And let me guess, your kids have never ran off and left their backpack someplace, leaving the tracking device off their person?
The problem I have with people going "Yay, a device to help me locate my child" are phrases like this...
I'm quite paranoid so not but a few seconds go by before I realize they aren't there.
Your problem is paranoia. Children, once they start to explore away from their parents, are going to eventually try to shirk all rules and unleash all tethers. This is a good thing. This guarontees that your children are growing up and are going to be capable of living independantly. Binding them to some 'device of protection' is likely to have one of several ill effects, ranging from a need to be watch and an inability to act independantly to purposefully deceptive and living their lives evasively.
This kind of paranoia leads nowhere good. While you may be seeking your children's best interests, this kind of device only offers a false sense of security with how easy it is to come up with ways to defeat it.
I did not miss that case. However, there is a critical difference between buying a CD and ripping it to MP3 and recording a broadcast television show. Namely, that the broadcast is a broadcast, and sent to the public at large, for free. See this excerpt from the decision:
The District Court concluded that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement. It emphasized the fact that the material was broadcast free to the public at large, the noncommercial character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. Moreover, the court found that the purpose of this use served the public interest in increasing access to television programming, an interest that "is consistent with the First Amendment policy of providing the fullest possible access to information through the public airwaves. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 102." Id., at 454. 8 Even when an entire copyrighted work was recorded, [464 U.S. 417, 426] the District Court regarded the copying as fair use "because there is no accompanying reduction in the market for `plaintiff's original work.'"
Now, while I agree that the possibility exists for the idea of format shifting to be included within Fair Use, unless you can point to a provision within the law that specifically allows it or a case such as the Betamax one that addresses the issue, it is conjecture. The case is not the same and would only be the same if you were, say, recording music off of the radio into MP3 format for listening on your iPod. Even then, as stated in the last sentance, there must be no accompanying reduction in the market for the recorded work. If you were to record off the radio and listen to the MP3 exclusively, never buying the CD and never deleting the MP3 you recorded, then this would have reduced the market for the work.
Buying a CD may fall under 'not reducing the market' since you actually did purchase it, but because it is not a free broadcast and you had to go get it, the copyright holder may have ground to specify a music variant of an EULA. Those, while afaik still haven't been tested in court, have been largely regarded as legal extensions to copyright law.
As for your last comment, I fail to see what's so made up about the idea of copyright holders extending additional permission to individuals to do more with their work than is allowed by law.
Compatability with existing and old file formats is key there. If it cannot read and format just the same as the original, who is going to want to go through and reformat however umpteen million documents in order to have them work right under the new office suite? It's easier to just use what you're using instead.
That and interface. Users have to be able to easily figure out how to do things, else they don't get used.
I don't see how crap like this gets modded as insightful. The parent author clearly has no clue as to what the concept of Fair Use really is. Here, let me give you a little description, and I'll even use a reference or two.
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work.
You see, legally, fair use is about sampling a copyrighted work in order to quote verbatum that work in something else, say, a research paper. You are legally allowed to do this without the permission of the copyright holder. You are also legally allowed to parody the work, as our famous Wierd Al does with most of his songs, and he can get away with it, legally.
What Fair Use is NOT about is allowing you to convert the work you have in hand into another form. While it may seem to fit into that set of words, the legal definition has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of 'I want to listen to CD as an MP3' without permission. Now do note that some companies may give permission for such conversion, but that is not fair use; that is their perogative as the owner of the copyright.
I flew home last night from Alaska on a Delta flight. Check-in from the airline, I handed my E-ticket paperwork over and provided names, and the attendant happily printed up both boarding passes for my primary and connecting flights without asking for an ID. I did show one to the TSA rep before entering the security area, but I felt it was just easier than fussing with it.
Absolutely. If there was a VHS tape of me being a crack dealer, I should expect those school doors to be closed to me permanently. What I cannot fathom is the idea that open criticism is an actual offense, much less that he's being unfairly punished for saying he'd been unfairly punished.
Oh, I get it. I see what you're going for. If you do something bad that becoming a better educated or adjusted individual might fix, you are denied the education and teaching that would get you out of that situation, forcing you to persist in your life of crime. Brilliant!
While I'm no fan of having a crack dealer in a school with my child, I would expect something else to happen instead of them being denied schooling. I would expect jail time, isolation, and (god forbid) a reform program designed to cease the offending behavior and 'retrain' the offender into a more valuable or even just viable member of society.
There is a reason why libraries are frequently public institutions. Knowledge is what elevates us to a level where social behavior is well formed. Why deny that to someone who arguably needs it the most?
No entity that I've ever heard of, be it 'godly' or philosophical has ever remained static throughout all time, to provide a consistent definition to what is inalienable and what is not. It used to be that the Christian god rained destruction on non-believers or onto those that skirted his demands (all according to the Bible, of course). In such an environment, would you really have an inalienable right to life? No longer do we have world-wide floods to destroy non-believers, and I doubt very much that we're far better behaved as a society than they were back in the days of old. Additionally, as religion is very much about interpretation as much as anything else, one man's belief on what his god wants may vary from another within the same church, to say nothing of another religion all together.
Where, then, does this static entity come from, I wonder?
The only reason comets have tails is because there is an outward pressure that forces ejected particles away from their source. Likely, the biggest way that such a 'tail' would form in the heliopause is if there was an external force pushing on it.
Think: Earth's magnetic field.
The magnetic field of the earth is shaped very much like a comet, but it is always pointed away from the sun and ripples as solar output changes. There is a website that seeks to model the fluxuations of the magnetic field, but I forget where it's at. If you can locate a source of what might be pushing on the the solar system's magnetic field, then it may be similarly shaped.
No, you are mistaken. Existance is all that is needed to provide 'rights' to an individual. Your existance allows you to act on things and, as described elsewhere, you have the right to do anything you please. However, because we are social beasts and some rights conflict with others, those that are deemed of 'lesser' value to a society (the right to kill someone) is taken away in favor of the alternative (the would-be victim's right to life). In fact, it would seem to me that the very concept of a 'right' to do anything only exists in a social context.
If you lived your life as a hermit, who is there to tell you what you can and cannot do?
Except that the XML will likely have encoded binary tags in it that will be proprietary. While it LOOKS like it's an open format, because you can mirraculously now read it in a text editor, it won't really be open. How do you render the document just the same if you can't decypher that binary tag data? Looks like the same ol' mess all over again, but with a pretty pink ribbon to make it look ok.
If the spec is not open so that anyone can read it and produce a product that reads those files, it is NOT an OPEN format.
I think you overestimate the power a trade embargo has with respect to China. Turn over any electronic device that you see and where does it say it's made? China. How about a good number of other things? Sometimes clothing, sometimes serving utensils, sometimes plates, sometimes desks and furnature. If we placed a trade embargo with China, we cripple ourselves because, at this point, so much is imported from China from American companies that offshored their manufacturing plants there. A great number of computer products will simply up and die until the flow of parts is restored. It doesn't seem like there's many fab plants for things like caps or resistors within the US.
And the net effect on China for all this? Maybe we can force a change, but probably not.
That's why you make the plane capable of generating enough lift when already in motion to glide down to a safe landing, should power fail sufficiently to prevent the props from turning. If you look at the linked article for the plane, you'll see the plane has 4 props and a godawful huge wingspan (partly for solar cells, partly for lift, I'm sure).
Freedom in China ultimately depends on the citizenry. Barring external intervention, the future of a people are determined by the people. Period.
Not that I don't agree with you on this, I find that this statement is being said kind of ironic, given the situation in Iraq. I find the parallels and dichotomy staggering.
Iraq was a dictator-led state, governed by a brutal oppressor that would do whatever he had to in order to not only stay in power but advanced his own agenda. The US, invading under false pretenses, topples this government and assists in the formation of a representative democracy (or whatever failing system is being used in the US), and we have no quams about having done so, from the point of view of the US government.
China is a communist state, governed by a brutal government that uses censorship, isolationism, and propaganda (amungst other devices) to force compliance, obedience, and social growth from it's people. The US does NOTHING, dispite countless publicied human rights violations similar to those committed in Iraq. We state as above, if China's fate is to change, then the change must come from the people.
While I think something good came out of the Iraq invasion (no more Sadam), I think that we should not have invaded as we did. If Iraq was to be free, they were more likely to value that freedom if they took it themselves, just as China should.
Offtopic, I know, but an amusing parallel just the same.
Why would a reviewer need a monitary reward? Think about it this way, if you as a person in a given field, could comment on applications or products your competitors were working on and point out the flaws of 'Hey, everyone's been doing this for years,' wouldn't that be your payoff, as a reviewer? The protection from having someone submit and get approved a commonplace process as novel and then sue the pants off you? Sure seems like a win for me.
So, explain this to me. You're comparing a more modern operating system (modern Linux distros) with Win98 and complaining that the newer one that has more features and takes advantage of the power of modern systems doesn't run quite as well on old hardware? Why not compare WinXP and a modern Linux distro on an old machine and see which one is faster. Stop trying to compare apples and oranges and make grape juice.
I don't know about you, but I looked at the three named pieces of art and I cannot find those literal images in the paintings anywhere. I fail to see how Google could've done a copy/paste from one image of the painting into another image of their logo at all. In this case, I think it is simply stylistic influences, and Google is doing the proper thing. They don't want to have a tribute to their dead relative done? Fine. Let'm fade into obscurity.
Because as we of course all know, no malware anywhere ever ships itself with it's own SMTP server in order to act as an open relay or mail exchanger. All zombie networks and open relays out there are simply people wanting to run their own email server and failing.
By the time a child is 6 or so, they are able to distinguish between 'fantasy' states and 'real life.' This ability to distinguish persists through adolescence into adulthood. Porn, unless viewed by an abhorant mindset, is an expression of fantasy. Unless you are making the mistake that this happens all the time in 'real life,' you are making the assumption that this distinction around fantasy cannot be made by people viewing porn.
This is overly generalized, obviously, but so is the statement I am replying too. How many men view porn or have viewed it in their lifetime. How many then turn to their wives and see them as nothing more than a sex toy? How many would have done so had they not been exposed to porn? That 'me-first' attitude can come into being without porn influencing it at all. It may enhance it, but it certainly doesn't cause it.
Offtopic, but that 'No Child Left Behind' garbage is just that. Oh it must be so disappointing to students if they don't learn their lessons and have to retake a grade, or seek special tutoring or assistance. Overworked as teachers are, all it has had the effect of is reinforcing the arrogance and egocentric nature of kids when they figure out that they will not be left back, and thus, have no incentive to work hard. Lesson plans get simpler in order to accomidate slower students, leaving the smarter students constantly bored and learning nothing. Effect: Dumbing down of America's future.
What a great country we live in, where everyone MUST be at the level of the least intelligent person to ensure that we're all 'Equal*'
* Except for those in power, who won't send their own kids to public schools, dispite inflicting that hell on our children.
That's just the thing, isn't it. Why is it in some menu called 'Script-fu'? What the heck does that even mean, anyways? I don't care if they're scripts, modules, compiled code, third party binaries, or some funky math you do to it in a text file. What is it that the menu describes? Tools? Actions? Filters? It needs to be something the user can relate to, not something the developer came up with to be all cute and relates well only to him.
I use Gimp on the few rare graphical tasks I wind up doing simply because that's what I have access to and it (mostly) works. However, even though I use it for my work, I find the term 'gimp' more aptly applies to the program than the acronym it is named after. It is ugly, it is kludgy, it is unwieldy, and it is difficult to work with. The 'Gimpshop' rewrite helps some, but nothing really makes GTK look good, it seems.
Just a nit. "tax-and-spend" liberalism. Not that I am a liberal, since I tend to vote how I feel is best, government spending is at an all-time high, thanks to our republican president. As someone once said, 'conservative' doesn't mean 'fiscally conservative.' It could mean 'social conservative' or something else. Amazingly, I imagine it might just be the same with liberalism too, that not all of them are of the mindset that 'money makes it all better.'
The problem with Google earth and Google maps for such a 'real time' analysis such as troops massing is that the photos presented and used are not current. They're not even close to current. I think the images taken for the area surrounding my home is at least a year or more old, based on new construction in the area that does not show in the satellite photos. That building started to go up early last year. Troops massing could be done far faster than those images refresh, if they refresh at all.
Besides, the military has earth-watching satellites for their own private use to watch for such things. They need not rely on a civilian tool for it.
Climate change may be normal, but what happens when it changes outside the barriers in which we can survive? When it's a balmy 70-80 degrees in winter, and a scorching 150+ in summer? What about if it gets worse? Oh, that's right, we won't have to deal with it, because we'll be dead, and our children will be living.
I know I, for one, don't want to see humanity end, though the world would probably be better off if we just obliterated ourselves and are fucked-in-the-head egocentrical ways. How much effort does it take to really minimize our impact on the world?
Something like that. Read somewhere in the article that it says "[Content providers] can pay to have a [fast pipe] set up to route traffic back to their subscribers faster." What is that? Verizon selling a data pipe to Google so that Google can talk back "quickly" to their subscribers. They're trying to make direct customers out of both ends of the connection, instead of routing through the already established core pathways of the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the problem with a child-locator device, especially with the way you describe how it would be attached to them. Anything attached can be removed. Do you really think this is going to be some kind of Great Eliminator of Abductions? Hell no, the abductor just makes sure to shuck the kid of all his or her belongings (possibly clothes, if it gets to the point of being embedded in clothing) in order to defeat being tracked and the kid located. And let me guess, your kids have never ran off and left their backpack someplace, leaving the tracking device off their person?
The problem I have with people going "Yay, a device to help me locate my child" are phrases like this...
Your problem is paranoia. Children, once they start to explore away from their parents, are going to eventually try to shirk all rules and unleash all tethers. This is a good thing. This guarontees that your children are growing up and are going to be capable of living independantly. Binding them to some 'device of protection' is likely to have one of several ill effects, ranging from a need to be watch and an inability to act independantly to purposefully deceptive and living their lives evasively.
This kind of paranoia leads nowhere good. While you may be seeking your children's best interests, this kind of device only offers a false sense of security with how easy it is to come up with ways to defeat it.
I did not miss that case. However, there is a critical difference between buying a CD and ripping it to MP3 and recording a broadcast television show. Namely, that the broadcast is a broadcast, and sent to the public at large, for free. See this excerpt from the decision:
Now, while I agree that the possibility exists for the idea of format shifting to be included within Fair Use, unless you can point to a provision within the law that specifically allows it or a case such as the Betamax one that addresses the issue, it is conjecture. The case is not the same and would only be the same if you were, say, recording music off of the radio into MP3 format for listening on your iPod. Even then, as stated in the last sentance, there must be no accompanying reduction in the market for the recorded work. If you were to record off the radio and listen to the MP3 exclusively, never buying the CD and never deleting the MP3 you recorded, then this would have reduced the market for the work.
Buying a CD may fall under 'not reducing the market' since you actually did purchase it, but because it is not a free broadcast and you had to go get it, the copyright holder may have ground to specify a music variant of an EULA. Those, while afaik still haven't been tested in court, have been largely regarded as legal extensions to copyright law.
As for your last comment, I fail to see what's so made up about the idea of copyright holders extending additional permission to individuals to do more with their work than is allowed by law.
Compatability with existing and old file formats is key there. If it cannot read and format just the same as the original, who is going to want to go through and reformat however umpteen million documents in order to have them work right under the new office suite? It's easier to just use what you're using instead.
That and interface. Users have to be able to easily figure out how to do things, else they don't get used.
I don't see how crap like this gets modded as insightful. The parent author clearly has no clue as to what the concept of Fair Use really is. Here, let me give you a little description, and I'll even use a reference or two.
Ref: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use _Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
From that site:You see, legally, fair use is about sampling a copyrighted work in order to quote verbatum that work in something else, say, a research paper. You are legally allowed to do this without the permission of the copyright holder. You are also legally allowed to parody the work, as our famous Wierd Al does with most of his songs, and he can get away with it, legally.
What Fair Use is NOT about is allowing you to convert the work you have in hand into another form. While it may seem to fit into that set of words, the legal definition has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of 'I want to listen to CD as an MP3' without permission. Now do note that some companies may give permission for such conversion, but that is not fair use; that is their perogative as the owner of the copyright.
I flew home last night from Alaska on a Delta flight. Check-in from the airline, I handed my E-ticket paperwork over and provided names, and the attendant happily printed up both boarding passes for my primary and connecting flights without asking for an ID. I did show one to the TSA rep before entering the security area, but I felt it was just easier than fussing with it.
Oh, I get it. I see what you're going for. If you do something bad that becoming a better educated or adjusted individual might fix, you are denied the education and teaching that would get you out of that situation, forcing you to persist in your life of crime. Brilliant!
While I'm no fan of having a crack dealer in a school with my child, I would expect something else to happen instead of them being denied schooling. I would expect jail time, isolation, and (god forbid) a reform program designed to cease the offending behavior and 'retrain' the offender into a more valuable or even just viable member of society.
There is a reason why libraries are frequently public institutions. Knowledge is what elevates us to a level where social behavior is well formed. Why deny that to someone who arguably needs it the most?
No entity that I've ever heard of, be it 'godly' or philosophical has ever remained static throughout all time, to provide a consistent definition to what is inalienable and what is not. It used to be that the Christian god rained destruction on non-believers or onto those that skirted his demands (all according to the Bible, of course). In such an environment, would you really have an inalienable right to life? No longer do we have world-wide floods to destroy non-believers, and I doubt very much that we're far better behaved as a society than they were back in the days of old. Additionally, as religion is very much about interpretation as much as anything else, one man's belief on what his god wants may vary from another within the same church, to say nothing of another religion all together.
Where, then, does this static entity come from, I wonder?
The only reason comets have tails is because there is an outward pressure that forces ejected particles away from their source. Likely, the biggest way that such a 'tail' would form in the heliopause is if there was an external force pushing on it.
Think: Earth's magnetic field.
The magnetic field of the earth is shaped very much like a comet, but it is always pointed away from the sun and ripples as solar output changes. There is a website that seeks to model the fluxuations of the magnetic field, but I forget where it's at. If you can locate a source of what might be pushing on the the solar system's magnetic field, then it may be similarly shaped.
No, you are mistaken. Existance is all that is needed to provide 'rights' to an individual. Your existance allows you to act on things and, as described elsewhere, you have the right to do anything you please. However, because we are social beasts and some rights conflict with others, those that are deemed of 'lesser' value to a society (the right to kill someone) is taken away in favor of the alternative (the would-be victim's right to life). In fact, it would seem to me that the very concept of a 'right' to do anything only exists in a social context.
If you lived your life as a hermit, who is there to tell you what you can and cannot do?
Too bad I don't have any mod points this go-round. This is the best described vision of rights I have read. Now, to convince the world of this vision.
Except that the XML will likely have encoded binary tags in it that will be proprietary. While it LOOKS like it's an open format, because you can mirraculously now read it in a text editor, it won't really be open. How do you render the document just the same if you can't decypher that binary tag data? Looks like the same ol' mess all over again, but with a pretty pink ribbon to make it look ok.
If the spec is not open so that anyone can read it and produce a product that reads those files, it is NOT an OPEN format.
I think you overestimate the power a trade embargo has with respect to China. Turn over any electronic device that you see and where does it say it's made? China. How about a good number of other things? Sometimes clothing, sometimes serving utensils, sometimes plates, sometimes desks and furnature. If we placed a trade embargo with China, we cripple ourselves because, at this point, so much is imported from China from American companies that offshored their manufacturing plants there. A great number of computer products will simply up and die until the flow of parts is restored. It doesn't seem like there's many fab plants for things like caps or resistors within the US.
And the net effect on China for all this? Maybe we can force a change, but probably not.
That's why you make the plane capable of generating enough lift when already in motion to glide down to a safe landing, should power fail sufficiently to prevent the props from turning. If you look at the linked article for the plane, you'll see the plane has 4 props and a godawful huge wingspan (partly for solar cells, partly for lift, I'm sure).
Not that I don't agree with you on this, I find that this statement is being said kind of ironic, given the situation in Iraq. I find the parallels and dichotomy staggering.
Iraq was a dictator-led state, governed by a brutal oppressor that would do whatever he had to in order to not only stay in power but advanced his own agenda. The US, invading under false pretenses, topples this government and assists in the formation of a representative democracy (or whatever failing system is being used in the US), and we have no quams about having done so, from the point of view of the US government.
China is a communist state, governed by a brutal government that uses censorship, isolationism, and propaganda (amungst other devices) to force compliance, obedience, and social growth from it's people. The US does NOTHING, dispite countless publicied human rights violations similar to those committed in Iraq. We state as above, if China's fate is to change, then the change must come from the people.
While I think something good came out of the Iraq invasion (no more Sadam), I think that we should not have invaded as we did. If Iraq was to be free, they were more likely to value that freedom if they took it themselves, just as China should.
Offtopic, I know, but an amusing parallel just the same.
Why would a reviewer need a monitary reward? Think about it this way, if you as a person in a given field, could comment on applications or products your competitors were working on and point out the flaws of 'Hey, everyone's been doing this for years,' wouldn't that be your payoff, as a reviewer? The protection from having someone submit and get approved a commonplace process as novel and then sue the pants off you? Sure seems like a win for me.
So, explain this to me. You're comparing a more modern operating system (modern Linux distros) with Win98 and complaining that the newer one that has more features and takes advantage of the power of modern systems doesn't run quite as well on old hardware? Why not compare WinXP and a modern Linux distro on an old machine and see which one is faster. Stop trying to compare apples and oranges and make grape juice.
I don't know about you, but I looked at the three named pieces of art and I cannot find those literal images in the paintings anywhere. I fail to see how Google could've done a copy/paste from one image of the painting into another image of their logo at all. In this case, I think it is simply stylistic influences, and Google is doing the proper thing. They don't want to have a tribute to their dead relative done? Fine. Let'm fade into obscurity.
Because as we of course all know, no malware anywhere ever ships itself with it's own SMTP server in order to act as an open relay or mail exchanger. All zombie networks and open relays out there are simply people wanting to run their own email server and failing.
Right?
By the time a child is 6 or so, they are able to distinguish between 'fantasy' states and 'real life.' This ability to distinguish persists through adolescence into adulthood. Porn, unless viewed by an abhorant mindset, is an expression of fantasy. Unless you are making the mistake that this happens all the time in 'real life,' you are making the assumption that this distinction around fantasy cannot be made by people viewing porn.
This is overly generalized, obviously, but so is the statement I am replying too. How many men view porn or have viewed it in their lifetime. How many then turn to their wives and see them as nothing more than a sex toy? How many would have done so had they not been exposed to porn? That 'me-first' attitude can come into being without porn influencing it at all. It may enhance it, but it certainly doesn't cause it.
Offtopic, but that 'No Child Left Behind' garbage is just that. Oh it must be so disappointing to students if they don't learn their lessons and have to retake a grade, or seek special tutoring or assistance. Overworked as teachers are, all it has had the effect of is reinforcing the arrogance and egocentric nature of kids when they figure out that they will not be left back, and thus, have no incentive to work hard. Lesson plans get simpler in order to accomidate slower students, leaving the smarter students constantly bored and learning nothing. Effect: Dumbing down of America's future.
What a great country we live in, where everyone MUST be at the level of the least intelligent person to ensure that we're all 'Equal*'
* Except for those in power, who won't send their own kids to public schools, dispite inflicting that hell on our children.
That's just the thing, isn't it. Why is it in some menu called 'Script-fu'? What the heck does that even mean, anyways? I don't care if they're scripts, modules, compiled code, third party binaries, or some funky math you do to it in a text file. What is it that the menu describes? Tools? Actions? Filters? It needs to be something the user can relate to, not something the developer came up with to be all cute and relates well only to him.
I use Gimp on the few rare graphical tasks I wind up doing simply because that's what I have access to and it (mostly) works. However, even though I use it for my work, I find the term 'gimp' more aptly applies to the program than the acronym it is named after. It is ugly, it is kludgy, it is unwieldy, and it is difficult to work with. The 'Gimpshop' rewrite helps some, but nothing really makes GTK look good, it seems.
Just a nit. "tax-and-spend" liberalism. Not that I am a liberal, since I tend to vote how I feel is best, government spending is at an all-time high, thanks to our republican president. As someone once said, 'conservative' doesn't mean 'fiscally conservative.' It could mean 'social conservative' or something else. Amazingly, I imagine it might just be the same with liberalism too, that not all of them are of the mindset that 'money makes it all better.'
The problem with Google earth and Google maps for such a 'real time' analysis such as troops massing is that the photos presented and used are not current. They're not even close to current. I think the images taken for the area surrounding my home is at least a year or more old, based on new construction in the area that does not show in the satellite photos. That building started to go up early last year. Troops massing could be done far faster than those images refresh, if they refresh at all.
Besides, the military has earth-watching satellites for their own private use to watch for such things. They need not rely on a civilian tool for it.
Climate change may be normal, but what happens when it changes outside the barriers in which we can survive? When it's a balmy 70-80 degrees in winter, and a scorching 150+ in summer? What about if it gets worse? Oh, that's right, we won't have to deal with it, because we'll be dead, and our children will be living.
I know I, for one, don't want to see humanity end, though the world would probably be better off if we just obliterated ourselves and are fucked-in-the-head egocentrical ways. How much effort does it take to really minimize our impact on the world?
Something like that. Read somewhere in the article that it says "[Content providers] can pay to have a [fast pipe] set up to route traffic back to their subscribers faster." What is that? Verizon selling a data pipe to Google so that Google can talk back "quickly" to their subscribers. They're trying to make direct customers out of both ends of the connection, instead of routing through the already established core pathways of the Internet.