The USA PATRIOT Act S. 802 is largely unconstitutional in my opinion.
I am willing to die before I agree to arrest for simply and peacefully expressing an opinion. And, if I am willing to die, I am surely willing to kill.
You think those who believe "Give me Liberty, or give me Death" had in mind quietly painting targets on their bodies?
The tricky part is separating mere bluster from an actual threat to one's liberty. If large numbers of S 802 cases resulted in execution for "sedition" my trigger finger would be a hell of a lot twitchier.
Governments are largely stupid. People don't like clear wrongdoers getting off on technicalities. So, laws are passed that are overbroad. But, like my speech, such laws, without actions consistent with applying them, are also just words.
This creates a dilema: do we wait for the jackbooted thugs to march into our homes, or just our neighborhoods, or to the outskirts of our cities, before we act against them, or do we preemptively strike only because of their words. In revolution, timing is everything: you need an uncoordinated, but relatively synchronized uprising to be effective.
To follow up: I view an agent of the government such a potential threat, that I don't believe an imminent threat to life is necessary to justify responding with deadly force if such an agent has already violated my rights. I think any "reasonable person" would agree.
Try shooting someone who's done nothing physical against you, even a provocateur, and we'll see how long you get to keep your "Second Amendment" Gun. BTW, Rene, are you making an implicit threat against some future government agent who might just want to talk?
Nothing physical? Like enter my home without a warrant through an unlocked door and refuse to leave when asked?
Your point might be that I might be deprived of my gun dare I use it to protect my liberty, and you might be right. In fact, I might even be deprived of my life before I get to fire off a shot. But, it's the whole "die on my feet instead of live on my knees" thing.
Until I act in a manner contrary to the constitution, don't tread on me.
Well, if pressure to change a policy depends on the depth of those queuing for a service affected by it, as opposed to those not queuing who get the service by alternate means, so long as those queuing favor the policy change and those who do not oppose it, it would take a reduction in queue size of 50% to prevent a policy reducing the queue size from being implemented (wild assumptions that all in a queue expecting that some day they might be at the end of the queue and those not needing to seek the service divided along similar proportions as those who do seek the service noted). I think a 50% reduction is queue size would be met with cheer.
But, it appears that you believe that the proportion of those queuing who would support a policy change would decrease the smaller the queue depth. This too, would not be a bad thing: it's the choice between a shorter queue, or a longer one in hopes of getting an even shorter one. Bird in hand vs. two in the bush.
Further, once the queue was sufficiently shortened to have this effect, support for the new policy would wane, even among those queuing (because the queue is now shorter), and a call to cut the expense would arise.
Taking the "rich elite" out of the queue harms no one because (a) the queue is shortened, (b) they still pay, tax-wise, for the service queued for even if they do not consume it.
Taken to it's logical conclusion, you'd have everyone on welfare so that there would be a greater pressure for better welfare services. Better welfare services are offered when LESS people are on welfare.
If the "elite" jumped the queue by paying to the point that the lines were sufficiently shortened to no longer be a political issue, there would be no issue to fix.
The solution to health care is affordable health insurance. Eliminate absurd punitive damages in malpractice suites, inefficiencies of different systems for a myriad of insurers, and price differentials between insured and uninsured[1], and you'd make it far more affordable.
[1] My son was recently an inpatient for six days. The cost if he were uninsured was $3000 a day. The negotiated cost because he was insured was $600 a day. 90% of that was covered after an annual $500 deductible. The biggest problem here is the difference between $3000 and $600.
On Topic: any system which seeks to make all "equal" punishes those who are "better", and therefore removes all incentive for self-improvement. This leads to stagnation, and regression to the least common denominator.
The ADA requires "reasonable accommodation". I expect this could be achieved by schools implementing "study partners", pairing sighted and blind students -- at least until voice or audio navigation is enabled on the Kindle. In fact, if the state wants to be heavy-handed, it should require publishers to not block such navigation or display to blind e-book buyers.
The bottom line here is that braille books are likely a cash cow, albeit a small one, for publishers, in addition to their regular runs. Yes, they account for a small fraction, but if profit margins are the same, over a higher printing cost, replacing them with e-books at lower cost (or even printed books) would cut into publisher profits. Blind customers, therefore, are a benefit to the publisher who can exploit them so long as they can lock them into braille books with no other alternative.
For example: if, of 100 people, 10 are blind, and pay $20 for a book that costs $2 to print as opposed to $10 for the same book that costs $1 to print, the total cost is $2*10+$1*90=$110, and total sales are $20*10+$10*90=$1100, for a profit of $990. If all customers were sighted, the profit would be $10*100-$1*100=$900, $90 less.
Now if the profits on braille books are the same as e-books (at lower margins), it makes no difference to the publisher, but costs more to the blind, a clearly discriminatory practice.
If the profits on braille books are less than e-books (because the publisher thinks it is unfair for the blind to suffer higher printing costs and wants to offset them, perhaps even offering them at a loss as goodwill), then there is no economic incentive to not replace them with e-books for a win-win scenario: the blind get cheaper books, and the publisher makes higher profits.
The only conclusion here, therefore, is that the blind are being taken advantage of, financially, for their disability, for publisher profit.
The counter is that it takes work, and therefore money to develop the software to make e-books available to the blind via text to speech software, and appropriate navigation. True, but this is a NRE (non-recurring engineering) expense, and easily amortized over a large number of books.
Yeah, me too. I posted it as an example of the extremism that one sees of the "if I can't have it, no one should" variety.
The irony, in this case, is that by making options that others would normally have available to them unavailable, they also hinder access for those doing the restricting: in other countries with two-tier health care, those that pay shorten the lines for everyone else (because the state usually has budget quotas for the "free" service).
Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
In this case, though, the publishers would complain if the Kindle provided ubiquitous text to speech (including navigation), because it would cause their lucrative market for audio books to dry up despite benefiting the blind. This is a clear example of a copyright being socially detrimental.
It is illegal for a resident of Canada covered by Canadian health care (say, a citizen, or landed immigrant) to pay for health care, and illegal for a health care provider to charge if they are in the "voluntary" system (which covers 99%+ of the population who can not legally pay anyway) which effectively forces almost all providers to be "in" the system. (There are specialty private clinics catering to non-citizen athletes, etc.)
This is similar to the socialized medicine systems in Cuba and North Korea (but, not, for example, the U.K. and other places with "two tier" socialized health care systems).
The argument is exactly this: it is unfair for some to have what others do not, even if they can pay for it.
This has some interesting effects: When I displayed my American-born son's American passport, he was seen in the clinic ahead of any Canadians who were there ahead of him. See, non-covered persons must pay, and pay more than the clinic receives from the government, so they get first dibs while Canadians wait in line.
During one horrible year when I had to return to Canada from the U.S., my daughter could not take a lunch to school, unless it was basically fruit or salad: no nuts, eggs, lunch meats (nitrite). peanut butter, and I forget what else.
I have the 6x1 plan, and AFAIK, there are no monthly caps on their business service.
But, if my calculations are correct, saturating the download at 6 Mb/s 12% of the time would be required to hit a monthly 250GB download cap.
That's A LOT, and would generally warrant them suggesting you trade up to a higher data rate plan.
In practice I regularly see download speeds of 15 to 20 Mb/s, which are nice when downloading a Linux distro ISO. I'm sure that gives them plenty of room to throttle me to the agreed-upon rate of 6 Mb/s if necessary.
I suspect that Comcast simply really oversells residential service, and business service less so.
Now, there generally is a two or three year contract commitment for their business service.
I got it simply because I wanted reliable connectivity, a static IP, and the freedom to run whatever services I want. (Yes, port 25 is open. No, I don't have an open relay.)
I would think to a "reasonable person", who knows what the internet is (an internetwork of networks carrying internet protocol and internet control protocol traffic), that would mean I get to send and receive such packets to the ability of the provider to carry them, without discrimination, to the limit of the bandwidth I pay for.
IOW, if the traffic demand is D and the capacity is C, C D, the actual bandwidth available to someone desiring d is c=d*C/D.
When the law or contract is silent on a matter, the courts will generally apply a "reasonable person" interpretation on what the contracted agreement is.
Now, the FCC might have been out of place to punish Comcast, but that does not mean that subscribers would not be in a position to launch a breach of contract suit.
Comcast's tough if they oversold bandwidth to the point where they have to discriminate between their users so as to try to minimize the fraction that they piss off (which is really what they are doing -- punishing those that expect what they are paying for).
Disclaimer: I have Comcast business internet service with a static IPv4 address, and I had their residential service as well. I found significant variance in bandwidth available on their residential service, but not their business service. I expect it is not as oversold. I no longer subscribe to their residential service. I actually considered load-balancing outbound TCP sessions across both links at one point, but, given the variance, found it would have been more cost-effective to subscribe to greater bandwidth on their business line. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, or necessary, and dropped the residential service, keeping the business service.
Well, yes, but the laws are based on the presumption that men have a propensity toward violence, where the evidence suggests such a propensity is about equal between the genders. to prop up this lie, things like "fear" count as much as a broken arm.
So: he asks if dinner is ready, she gets mad and stabs him, is afraid he will retaliate and so she calls 911.
Cop sees him stabbed, and her claiming fear. Under the law, BOTH are equally abusive. Often (and I've seen it happen, though it was a toolbox bruising his shoulder and not a knife), HE will be arrested because it stands to reason that if you stabbed someone, you should be afraid that they will retaliate. Further, her stabbing was "justified" out of fear: preemptive strike against a phsyically stronger opponent.
I've often thought that in case of doubt, arrest BOTH parties (this keeps false claims low), and let the courts sort it out, but the courts are so busy, that they prefer to be presented a "fait acompli" that props up justification for existing laws. It's nice to see that some police departments are acting with some sanity and less bias, but there's a lot more that is required.
Studies I've read suggest most domestic violence is mutual, followed by about equal numbers of unilateral violence against women by men, and men by women. The relationships MOST prone to violence are lesbian ones.
This goes against everything stemming from Steinem-era feminists who's mantra was that men must resort to violence to prop up a societal patriarchy. That's driven family legislation for decades: family courts are courts of equity where preponderance of evidence is the standard, and if a woman claims to suffer abuse, the "presumption" based on this patriarchy/violence lie is that she did: the man is guilty until proven innocent, and can't seek damages for the false accusation.
Another feminist of Steinem's era was Erin Pizzey. She opened the first shelter for battered women and observed that most violence was, indeed, mutual, without a great preponderance of men using it to maintain a patriarchal hold on the family unit. However, Steinem's propaganda won out over Pizzey's facts.
Now that the lie is in place, it must be "propped up". And, to this effect, we see increasing legislation including non-abusive things as "abuse". In WA, a woman is abused if she "fears" her domestic partner. How can you control what frightens someone? Traffic makes you late to arrive home, so she fears you went out drinking and will come home violent? Guess what? Under the law, you abused her, and a restraining order can be taken against you, and be removed from your own home.
This is nothing new: the popular lie carries the day while the contrary evidence is suppressed.
My fear is that when the tables turn, as they invariably will, and Steinem's lie is exposed, it will be twisted to argue that women have a propensity to lie and their testimony should never be believed without corroborating proof from a man. While such turnabout generalization might be fair play, it would not be justice.
What proof? The allegation is enough. If someone claims to have been "insulted" who is to say they don't feel that way? Crimes based on how someone "feels" are absurd, but increasingly common.
Because of the false belief that men are inherently violent (why does the image bolster this stereotype?), allegations of abuse often result in fathers denied access to their own children, and having to fight for years to prove the allegations false, with no consequences for the accuser. In the U.S. such cases are heard in "family courts", courts of equity and not law, where the accused has no right to council if they can't afford one, and the bar of evidence is "preponderance" and not "beyond a reasonable doubt". This is supposedly "fair" since courts of law are only used when one is at risk of one's life or liberty: death or jail. Losing one's kids, money, home, does not qualify. Furthermore, the allegation is often believed on it's face since if it were true and NOT removing the accused, harm could result: better to deprive an innocent man of his home, retirement, and kids, than risk him being guilty. Bullshit I say. All this is an increasing attempt to "invent" violent men where there are none.
Ahem: "In light of the recent attempted nuclear attack on this nation, we have invoked marshal law. It has come to our attention that some terrorists are still active and claiming the TSA initiated aggressions against an innocent child. Rest assured that this reprehensible fraud will not go unpunished, and those responsible for promulgating it are considered enemy combatants of the U.S."
As long as the government tells people what puts them at ease, for the most part, they will believe and obey. In situations like this, when people don't know who or what information to trust, they tend to align with the group most apparently in control. Large civil uprisings were often orchestrated when rebel groups managed to seize control over government-run radio and/or television stations.
Such news would never get out. The airport would be sealed, and everyone inside killed, with a cover story of how the detonation of a nuke capable of killing the x00,000 residents living nearby was averted with minimal loss of life.
... I can attest, that one does exactly what one is told to do. (Ex-wife claimed I threatened her with a firearm from my car. Problem was, there was no firearm in the car.)
Being stunned and doing nothing is not the same as being panicked and moving quickly. It's the latter that will get you killed.
I was cuffed, the car searched, and then released.
The notion is that content you license is encrypted to private keys unique to you, stored in secure trust stores that you possess, but are tamper-proof[1].
You have a limited ability to check out and check in copies of these keys to other devices to share, perhaps simultaneously, content you've licensed to a limited audience. Backup copies of your keys, lest all key stores fail, can be held in escrow for you.
Check out and check in of keys can be done with other trusted secure stores with trust established with well known PKI techniques.
The biggest problems are (a) this can't recognize fair use excerpts because there is no technical way to recognize fair use, (b) escrow services might be privacy risks, and, of course (c) [1] for some definition of "tamper proof" -- it is well known that possession of secret information, even in "tamper proof" stores is not to be considered secure -- the bane of ALL DRM schemes. Further, it is only as strong as the weakest such trust store.
Still, this is no weaker than present DRM schemes, though far more convenient for the consumer who wishes to purchase local caches of content.
Streaming solves the problem of local copies of content available for decryption at leisure, though this is not hard to circumvent with network capture tools. Rather, it offers the convenience of not having to maintain a local cache. But, for that to be accepted, it has to (a) be as reliable as having one, (b) be as inexpensive as having one. Compare electrical power: how many of us have generators in case the power fails? A few, but not many, I'd wager. Of course, power from a generator is generally more expensive than from the grid, even ignoring the capital equipment costs. One does not pay for bandwidth use on one's own LAN, but one does pay for internet bandwidth. Unless it remains a fixed cost for "unlimited" use, each stream will cost money, even if there is not a "per viewing" cost by the gatekeeper.
Right now, I can rent a move on a DVD for two days for $2 from a rental kiosk, rent it in high definition for $5-$6 on demand from the cable company (again, for two days), or own a cache of it on DVD for $20. If I'm willing to pay $20, therefore, I should have unfettered access to the content without additional cost, whenever I want.
Let's say that "unlimited" internet bandwidth remains a fixed cost, for some reasonable value of "unlimited". (I expect that bandwidth costs will go down over time for this to remain true, within normal price inflation: internet access always cost me $60-$100 for "adequate" bandwidth since about 2000, where "adequate" increased over those ten years.) And, content providers and access providers are "reliable". And, content providers don't go out of business. Then this model makes sense.
But, what if the provider of all your "unlimited viewing license" content suddenly goes out of business? What then? One should certainly have the option to purchase a local cache (for the cost of the media) so one can continue to enjoy it. Or, be able to download it to one's own local cache for free.
I just don't see the infrastructure and licensing in place for that kind of model, and I do not want to be constrained to "pay per view" for everything, all the time: I want an insurance mechanism against content providers' bankruptcy, perhaps service disruptions, etc.
I also want copyright content to enter the public domain in a timely manner (which such mechanisms could automatically enforce), but that's a separate issue.
Yeah, I found that, with the right dedicated hardware, video decoding is not that power (processing and electrically) intensive: I have a fanless 800 Mhz Via C Nehemiah CPU with off-chip hardware acceleration for MPEG2 decoding to 1080p (though the graphics RAM only had the bandwidth to display 1080i) that runs fanless. And, this is very old tech: the video output is analog VGA and YPbPr.
Granted, it won't do MPEG4 or H.264, but for it's time (c. 2005, maybe?) it was impressive.
I think tablets make for great remote controls and under $200 they start to get reasonable: one remote to control them all, with a web interface on each device.
I suppose a smart phone could do that as well, but sometimes the extra display real estate is handy: movie previews from the cable company's On Demand service should be streamable to the remote/tablet so as to not interfere with the program already displayed, if desired.
Accessing recipes in the kitchen, or an "in a pinch" browser would be handy as well. Think of them as intelligent display devices and not computing platforms. Shove in an SD card with a movie on it for the kids to watch in the car. That kind of stuff.
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The USA PATRIOT Act S. 802 is largely unconstitutional in my opinion.
I am willing to die before I agree to arrest for simply and peacefully expressing an opinion. And, if I am willing to die, I am surely willing to kill.
You think those who believe "Give me Liberty, or give me Death" had in mind quietly painting targets on their bodies?
The tricky part is separating mere bluster from an actual threat to one's liberty. If large numbers of S 802 cases resulted in execution for "sedition" my trigger finger would be a hell of a lot twitchier.
Governments are largely stupid. People don't like clear wrongdoers getting off on technicalities. So, laws are passed that are overbroad. But, like my speech, such laws, without actions consistent with applying them, are also just words.
This creates a dilema: do we wait for the jackbooted thugs to march into our homes, or just our neighborhoods, or to the outskirts of our cities, before we act against them, or do we preemptively strike only because of their words. In revolution, timing is everything: you need an uncoordinated, but relatively synchronized uprising to be effective.
To follow up: I view an agent of the government such a potential threat, that I don't believe an imminent threat to life is necessary to justify responding with deadly force if such an agent has already violated my rights. I think any "reasonable person" would agree.
Try shooting someone who's done nothing physical against you, even a provocateur, and we'll see how long you get to keep your "Second Amendment" Gun. BTW, Rene, are you making an implicit threat against some future government agent who might just want to talk?
Nothing physical? Like enter my home without a warrant through an unlocked door and refuse to leave when asked?
Your point might be that I might be deprived of my gun dare I use it to protect my liberty, and you might be right. In fact, I might even be deprived of my life before I get to fire off a shot. But, it's the whole "die on my feet instead of live on my knees" thing.
Until I act in a manner contrary to the constitution, don't tread on me.
... and this is my Second Amendment Gun.
ANY QUESTIONS?
Well, if pressure to change a policy depends on the depth of those queuing for a service affected by it, as opposed to those not queuing who get the service by alternate means, so long as those queuing favor the policy change and those who do not oppose it, it would take a reduction in queue size of 50% to prevent a policy reducing the queue size from being implemented (wild assumptions that all in a queue expecting that some day they might be at the end of the queue and those not needing to seek the service divided along similar proportions as those who do seek the service noted). I think a 50% reduction is queue size would be met with cheer.
But, it appears that you believe that the proportion of those queuing who would support a policy change would decrease the smaller the queue depth. This too, would not be a bad thing: it's the choice between a shorter queue, or a longer one in hopes of getting an even shorter one. Bird in hand vs. two in the bush.
Further, once the queue was sufficiently shortened to have this effect, support for the new policy would wane, even among those queuing (because the queue is now shorter), and a call to cut the expense would arise.
Taking the "rich elite" out of the queue harms no one because (a) the queue is shortened, (b) they still pay, tax-wise, for the service queued for even if they do not consume it.
Taken to it's logical conclusion, you'd have everyone on welfare so that there would be a greater pressure for better welfare services. Better welfare services are offered when LESS people are on welfare.
What you are describing is little more than envy.
If the "elite" jumped the queue by paying to the point that the lines were sufficiently shortened to no longer be a political issue, there would be no issue to fix.
The solution to health care is affordable health insurance. Eliminate absurd punitive damages in malpractice suites, inefficiencies of different systems for a myriad of insurers, and price differentials between insured and uninsured[1], and you'd make it far more affordable.
[1] My son was recently an inpatient for six days. The cost if he were uninsured was $3000 a day. The negotiated cost because he was insured was $600 a day. 90% of that was covered after an annual $500 deductible. The biggest problem here is the difference between $3000 and $600.
On Topic: any system which seeks to make all "equal" punishes those who are "better", and therefore removes all incentive for self-improvement. This leads to stagnation, and regression to the least common denominator.
The ADA requires "reasonable accommodation". I expect this could be achieved by schools implementing "study partners", pairing sighted and blind students -- at least until voice or audio navigation is enabled on the Kindle. In fact, if the state wants to be heavy-handed, it should require publishers to not block such navigation or display to blind e-book buyers.
The bottom line here is that braille books are likely a cash cow, albeit a small one, for publishers, in addition to their regular runs. Yes, they account for a small fraction, but if profit margins are the same, over a higher printing cost, replacing them with e-books at lower cost (or even printed books) would cut into publisher profits. Blind customers, therefore, are a benefit to the publisher who can exploit them so long as they can lock them into braille books with no other alternative.
For example: if, of 100 people, 10 are blind, and pay $20 for a book that costs $2 to print as opposed to $10 for the same book that costs $1 to print, the total cost is $2*10+$1*90=$110, and total sales are $20*10+$10*90=$1100, for a profit of $990. If all customers were sighted, the profit would be $10*100-$1*100=$900, $90 less.
Now if the profits on braille books are the same as e-books (at lower margins), it makes no difference to the publisher, but costs more to the blind, a clearly discriminatory practice.
If the profits on braille books are less than e-books (because the publisher thinks it is unfair for the blind to suffer higher printing costs and wants to offset them, perhaps even offering them at a loss as goodwill), then there is no economic incentive to not replace them with e-books for a win-win scenario: the blind get cheaper books, and the publisher makes higher profits.
The only conclusion here, therefore, is that the blind are being taken advantage of, financially, for their disability, for publisher profit.
The counter is that it takes work, and therefore money to develop the software to make e-books available to the blind via text to speech software, and appropriate navigation. True, but this is a NRE (non-recurring engineering) expense, and easily amortized over a large number of books.
Yeah, me too. I posted it as an example of the extremism that one sees of the "if I can't have it, no one should" variety.
The irony, in this case, is that by making options that others would normally have available to them unavailable, they also hinder access for those doing the restricting: in other countries with two-tier health care, those that pay shorten the lines for everyone else (because the state usually has budget quotas for the "free" service).
Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
In this case, though, the publishers would complain if the Kindle provided ubiquitous text to speech (including navigation), because it would cause their lucrative market for audio books to dry up despite benefiting the blind. This is a clear example of a copyright being socially detrimental.
It is illegal for a resident of Canada covered by Canadian health care (say, a citizen, or landed immigrant) to pay for health care, and illegal for a health care provider to charge if they are in the "voluntary" system (which covers 99%+ of the population who can not legally pay anyway) which effectively forces almost all providers to be "in" the system. (There are specialty private clinics catering to non-citizen athletes, etc.)
This is similar to the socialized medicine systems in Cuba and North Korea (but, not, for example, the U.K. and other places with "two tier" socialized health care systems).
The argument is exactly this: it is unfair for some to have what others do not, even if they can pay for it.
This has some interesting effects: When I displayed my American-born son's American passport, he was seen in the clinic ahead of any Canadians who were there ahead of him. See, non-covered persons must pay, and pay more than the clinic receives from the government, so they get first dibs while Canadians wait in line.
You missed the word residential methinks.
I consider residential streets relatively safe.
Sure, if you're going to do something really dangerous, like racing or tricks on a bike, skateboard, or scooter, then, yes, protection is a must.
But, riding your bike on a residential street in a sane manner does not carry those risks.
Still, if your kid does not have a helmet the neighborhood busybodies will turn you in to CPS for neglect.
Pretty much.
During one horrible year when I had to return to Canada from the U.S., my daughter could not take a lunch to school, unless it was basically fruit or salad: no nuts, eggs, lunch meats (nitrite). peanut butter, and I forget what else.
I have the 6x1 plan, and AFAIK, there are no monthly caps on their business service.
But, if my calculations are correct, saturating the download at 6 Mb/s 12% of the time would be required to hit a monthly 250GB download cap.
That's A LOT, and would generally warrant them suggesting you trade up to a higher data rate plan.
In practice I regularly see download speeds of 15 to 20 Mb/s, which are nice when downloading a Linux distro ISO. I'm sure that gives them plenty of room to throttle me to the agreed-upon rate of 6 Mb/s if necessary.
I suspect that Comcast simply really oversells residential service, and business service less so.
Now, there generally is a two or three year contract commitment for their business service.
I got it simply because I wanted reliable connectivity, a static IP, and the freedom to run whatever services I want. (Yes, port 25 is open. No, I don't have an open relay.)
I would think to a "reasonable person", who knows what the internet is (an internetwork of networks carrying internet protocol and internet control protocol traffic), that would mean I get to send and receive such packets to the ability of the provider to carry them, without discrimination, to the limit of the bandwidth I pay for.
IOW, if the traffic demand is D and the capacity is C, C D, the actual bandwidth available to someone desiring d is c=d*C/D.
When the law or contract is silent on a matter, the courts will generally apply a "reasonable person" interpretation on what the contracted agreement is.
Now, the FCC might have been out of place to punish Comcast, but that does not mean that subscribers would not be in a position to launch a breach of contract suit.
Comcast's tough if they oversold bandwidth to the point where they have to discriminate between their users so as to try to minimize the fraction that they piss off (which is really what they are doing -- punishing those that expect what they are paying for).
Disclaimer: I have Comcast business internet service with a static IPv4 address, and I had their residential service as well. I found significant variance in bandwidth available on their residential service, but not their business service. I expect it is not as oversold. I no longer subscribe to their residential service. I actually considered load-balancing outbound TCP sessions across both links at one point, but, given the variance, found it would have been more cost-effective to subscribe to greater bandwidth on their business line. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, or necessary, and dropped the residential service, keeping the business service.
Silly me.
Well, yes, but the laws are based on the presumption that men have a propensity toward violence, where the evidence suggests such a propensity is about equal between the genders. to prop up this lie, things like "fear" count as much as a broken arm.
So: he asks if dinner is ready, she gets mad and stabs him, is afraid he will retaliate and so she calls 911.
Cop sees him stabbed, and her claiming fear. Under the law, BOTH are equally abusive. Often (and I've seen it happen, though it was a toolbox bruising his shoulder and not a knife), HE will be arrested because it stands to reason that if you stabbed someone, you should be afraid that they will retaliate. Further, her stabbing was "justified" out of fear: preemptive strike against a phsyically stronger opponent.
I've often thought that in case of doubt, arrest BOTH parties (this keeps false claims low), and let the courts sort it out, but the courts are so busy, that they prefer to be presented a "fait acompli" that props up justification for existing laws. It's nice to see that some police departments are acting with some sanity and less bias, but there's a lot more that is required.
Studies I've read suggest most domestic violence is mutual, followed by about equal numbers of unilateral violence against women by men, and men by women. The relationships MOST prone to violence are lesbian ones.
This goes against everything stemming from Steinem-era feminists who's mantra was that men must resort to violence to prop up a societal patriarchy. That's driven family legislation for decades: family courts are courts of equity where preponderance of evidence is the standard, and if a woman claims to suffer abuse, the "presumption" based on this patriarchy/violence lie is that she did: the man is guilty until proven innocent, and can't seek damages for the false accusation.
Another feminist of Steinem's era was Erin Pizzey. She opened the first shelter for battered women and observed that most violence was, indeed, mutual, without a great preponderance of men using it to maintain a patriarchal hold on the family unit. However, Steinem's propaganda won out over Pizzey's facts.
Now that the lie is in place, it must be "propped up". And, to this effect, we see increasing legislation including non-abusive things as "abuse". In WA, a woman is abused if she "fears" her domestic partner. How can you control what frightens someone? Traffic makes you late to arrive home, so she fears you went out drinking and will come home violent? Guess what? Under the law, you abused her, and a restraining order can be taken against you, and be removed from your own home.
This is nothing new: the popular lie carries the day while the contrary evidence is suppressed.
My fear is that when the tables turn, as they invariably will, and Steinem's lie is exposed, it will be twisted to argue that women have a propensity to lie and their testimony should never be believed without corroborating proof from a man. While such turnabout generalization might be fair play, it would not be justice.
What proof? The allegation is enough. If someone claims to have been "insulted" who is to say they don't feel that way? Crimes based on how someone "feels" are absurd, but increasingly common.
Because of the false belief that men are inherently violent (why does the image bolster this stereotype?), allegations of abuse often result in fathers denied access to their own children, and having to fight for years to prove the allegations false, with no consequences for the accuser. In the U.S. such cases are heard in "family courts", courts of equity and not law, where the accused has no right to council if they can't afford one, and the bar of evidence is "preponderance" and not "beyond a reasonable doubt". This is supposedly "fair" since courts of law are only used when one is at risk of one's life or liberty: death or jail. Losing one's kids, money, home, does not qualify. Furthermore, the allegation is often believed on it's face since if it were true and NOT removing the accused, harm could result: better to deprive an innocent man of his home, retirement, and kids, than risk him being guilty. Bullshit I say. All this is an increasing attempt to "invent" violent men where there are none.
You mean the "conspiracy theory nutcase videos"?
Ahem: "In light of the recent attempted nuclear attack on this nation, we have invoked marshal law. It has come to our attention that some terrorists are still active and claiming the TSA initiated aggressions against an innocent child. Rest assured that this reprehensible fraud will not go unpunished, and those responsible for promulgating it are considered enemy combatants of the U.S."
As long as the government tells people what puts them at ease, for the most part, they will believe and obey. In situations like this, when people don't know who or what information to trust, they tend to align with the group most apparently in control. Large civil uprisings were often orchestrated when rebel groups managed to seize control over government-run radio and/or television stations.
Such news would never get out. The airport would be sealed, and everyone inside killed, with a cover story of how the detonation of a nuke capable of killing the x00,000 residents living nearby was averted with minimal loss of life.
... I can attest, that one does exactly what one is told to do. (Ex-wife claimed I threatened her with a firearm from my car. Problem was, there was no firearm in the car.)
Being stunned and doing nothing is not the same as being panicked and moving quickly. It's the latter that will get you killed.
I was cuffed, the car searched, and then released.
The notion is that content you license is encrypted to private keys unique to you, stored in secure trust stores that you possess, but are tamper-proof[1].
You have a limited ability to check out and check in copies of these keys to other devices to share, perhaps simultaneously, content you've licensed to a limited audience. Backup copies of your keys, lest all key stores fail, can be held in escrow for you.
Check out and check in of keys can be done with other trusted secure stores with trust established with well known PKI techniques.
The biggest problems are (a) this can't recognize fair use excerpts because there is no technical way to recognize fair use, (b) escrow services might be privacy risks, and, of course (c) [1] for some definition of "tamper proof" -- it is well known that possession of secret information, even in "tamper proof" stores is not to be considered secure -- the bane of ALL DRM schemes. Further, it is only as strong as the weakest such trust store.
Still, this is no weaker than present DRM schemes, though far more convenient for the consumer who wishes to purchase local caches of content.
Streaming solves the problem of local copies of content available for decryption at leisure, though this is not hard to circumvent with network capture tools. Rather, it offers the convenience of not having to maintain a local cache. But, for that to be accepted, it has to (a) be as reliable as having one, (b) be as inexpensive as having one. Compare electrical power: how many of us have generators in case the power fails? A few, but not many, I'd wager. Of course, power from a generator is generally more expensive than from the grid, even ignoring the capital equipment costs. One does not pay for bandwidth use on one's own LAN, but one does pay for internet bandwidth. Unless it remains a fixed cost for "unlimited" use, each stream will cost money, even if there is not a "per viewing" cost by the gatekeeper.
Right now, I can rent a move on a DVD for two days for $2 from a rental kiosk, rent it in high definition for $5-$6 on demand from the cable company (again, for two days), or own a cache of it on DVD for $20. If I'm willing to pay $20, therefore, I should have unfettered access to the content without additional cost, whenever I want.
Let's say that "unlimited" internet bandwidth remains a fixed cost, for some reasonable value of "unlimited". (I expect that bandwidth costs will go down over time for this to remain true, within normal price inflation: internet access always cost me $60-$100 for "adequate" bandwidth since about 2000, where "adequate" increased over those ten years.) And, content providers and access providers are "reliable". And, content providers don't go out of business. Then this model makes sense.
But, what if the provider of all your "unlimited viewing license" content suddenly goes out of business? What then? One should certainly have the option to purchase a local cache (for the cost of the media) so one can continue to enjoy it. Or, be able to download it to one's own local cache for free.
I just don't see the infrastructure and licensing in place for that kind of model, and I do not want to be constrained to "pay per view" for everything, all the time: I want an insurance mechanism against content providers' bankruptcy, perhaps service disruptions, etc.
I also want copyright content to enter the public domain in a timely manner (which such mechanisms could automatically enforce), but that's a separate issue.
Yeah, I found that, with the right dedicated hardware, video decoding is not that power (processing and electrically) intensive: I have a fanless 800 Mhz Via C Nehemiah CPU with off-chip hardware acceleration for MPEG2 decoding to 1080p (though the graphics RAM only had the bandwidth to display 1080i) that runs fanless. And, this is very old tech: the video output is analog VGA and YPbPr.
Granted, it won't do MPEG4 or H.264, but for it's time (c. 2005, maybe?) it was impressive.
Er, I dunno.
I think tablets make for great remote controls and under $200 they start to get reasonable: one remote to control them all, with a web interface on each device.
I suppose a smart phone could do that as well, but sometimes the extra display real estate is handy: movie previews from the cable company's On Demand service should be streamable to the remote/tablet so as to not interfere with the program already displayed, if desired.
Accessing recipes in the kitchen, or an "in a pinch" browser would be handy as well. Think of them as intelligent display devices and not computing platforms. Shove in an SD card with a movie on it for the kids to watch in the car. That kind of stuff.
1280x720 native resolution would have made far more sense, no?
I think you mean to write, "... and when the economic downturn hits, cutting IT staff will save the jobs of others."