Not to mention air. All terrorists breathe air (at least until they blow themselves up). Wait a second... I breathe air! Excuse me while I turn myself in as a potential terrorist.
Which is one big reason why I advocate for shorter copyright terms. Let's say you remembered a great, somewhat obscure game from the 80's and wanted to remake it. You wanted to do it properly, however, and get permission from the copyright owners. The company that owned the copyright is likely long since bankrupt and following the ownership of the copyright can be murky at times. You might even locate one company, get permission, and find yourself sued afterwards by a second company who claims ownership. Often, two companies will claim copyright and it will be up to the courts to untangle the mess. If the courts have trouble with this, what hope does your average producer of content have to find the right company.
Now, if copyright expired 14 years after registration (with a one-time 14 year renewal), like it originally was set, you could be sure that any game from 1986 or before was public domain. As for games after 1986, you would know who renewed the copyright under 14 years ago so you would only need to sift through 13 years or less of copyright transferals - instead of 30+ years now.
A 14+14 copyright system would drastically reduce the number of orphan works out there.
I felt the same way when I re-watched some episodes of Voltron on Netflix. I remembered an exciting, top notch animated show. I saw cheesy dialogue and plot holes that you could pilot a giant space robot through. There are somethings that you can relive the glory of - that stand the test of time - and other things that just are better left in your memory.
It's one thing if protest zones are designed to balance the protester's right to protest with the right of everyone else to go about their business. (For example, keeping anti-abortion protesters from physically accosting people going into an abortion clinic.) On the other hand, if the "balance" is to move the protesters so far away as to render them invisible ("sure you can protest this event... the protest zone is 10 miles that way") then you are effectively removing a person's ability to make a statement via protest.
The differences between applying this to the police and to the general public are that the police are public servants (they work for the public) and they are endowed with special powers above and beyond a "normal citizen" (arrest, ability to use force in some cases, etc). They do a valuable service, but this power can also lead to abuses. Making police activities more transparent helps assure the public that their powers aren't being abused. This justification wouldn't apply to your average citizen. (This isn't to say that the police wouldn't love to apply it to everyone. Just that any reasoning to that end would be flawed.)
Shhh... stop countering rhetoric with facts. Clearly Obama time-traveled back to the Bush presidency and forced Bush & company to set this time table. Then he time traveled a bit further back to plant a phony birth certificate so it would be dated properly.
Not to mention blaming gridlock on Obama. When he took office, the Republicans publicly said their goal was to block everything he wanted, no compromise. Obama, naively, tried to work with them and got nowhere. (It's hard to come to a consensus if your opposition's view of "consensus" is "You agree to all of our demands and we give nothing in return.") Any Republicans that wanted to work with the President were threatened by their party and treated as if they had committed high treason.
I'm not saying the Democrats would be better with a Republican president, but you can't lay all of the blame of Congressional gridlock on the President Obama.
While I wouldn't celebrate a hacking that caused safety mechanisms to fail causing a massive spill, I'd question why such safety systems were on the Internet. If such systems needed to be network enabled (e.g. allow remote monitoring), then I'd question whether the security procedures were up to par and why an intruder would be able to cause such havoc.
Of course, as other posters have said, this is industrial espionage, not attempts to damage the operations. Their ideal would be to get into the system and not have anybody know for as long as possible. Causing a huge spill by tampering with safety mechanisms would be the exact opposite of what they want to do.
Don't worry. Those "basic freedoms of the US Constitution" are frequently treated as optional suggestions by politicians. They are more than happy to abide by them unless they decide not to. And if they decide not to, they often whip the populace into a fear-induced frenzy until we beg for them to violate our basic rights.
Sadly, the US has this too with "Free Speech Zones." If the President is driving down the street or a political convention is being held in your city and you want to peacefully hold up a sign protesting a policy of theirs, you are free to do so... in a specially designated zone that is actually nowhere near where they are. We wouldn't want our leaders to see opposition to their efforts, would we? Yes, we have a first Amendment, but the courts have ruled that "make no law... abridging the freedom of speech... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" really means that you CAN decide WHERE the people protest so long as you don't prohibit the content of their protests. So you're free to say whatever you want, so long as it is in this gated cage with an armed guard miles away from the person/people you are protesting.
Gas giants could have moons that receive heat from gravitational changes and radiation from the gas giant. These moons might have life on them. It's an outside chance, yes, but given how many planets there are out there, I'd say the chances of one of these being in this situation is probably high.
In some ways, it is a substitute. However, many times these are games we aren't going to buy since we can't afford to buy every game out there. In other cases, for example Mario Kart 8 videos, they got my son psyched up to try the tracks himself. Even the ones we can't afford to buy psych my son up and he will pester us about buying the game for weeks. These play through videos can be powerful commercials for the games.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of the possibility of "getting Ebola" but not getting any symptoms. Considering that you apparently can't transmit the disease unless you get the symptoms, would these asymptomatic Ebola people be able to transmit it to other people?
In any event, the only people who came down with Ebola symptoms after contact with a person with Ebola were those two nurses. It indicates that non-asymptomatic transmission of the disease isn't an easy thing to do. You won't get Ebola because you sat next to someone on the bus and they had Ebola. (Not unless your bus trips involve WAY more bodily fluid contact that the normal person's bus trip.)
Boss: "Oh, boo hoo! What're they gonna do? Leave us and go to another ISP? We've got a monopoly in the area! They want Internet? They need to come to us. Besides, if we make Netflix look bad, maybe people will dump them and pay us $200 a month for cable again!"
It's more like Phone Company A has 100 channels to Phone Company B. They notice that there is a constant level of 99 calls between A and B. They also see that 25 calls are constantly being made to Joe's Pizzeria who uses Phone Company B for phone service. Phone Company A gets upset that Joe's isn't paying them (Phone Company A) for this traffic, so they refuse to add more channels. (Even though doing so would be inexpensive to do.) So calls to Joe's Pizzeria begin being dropped and Joe's customers get mad that they can't get through. Joe's finally signs an agreement with Phone Company A paying them money and suddenly the calls go through just fine.
This is extortion plain and simple. Add in the fact that the ISPs doing this have an Internet monopoly/duopoly in their areas and also tend to provide video services - that Netflix competes against - and you have extortion plus the use of a monopoly to crush competition in another market. This deserves swift and severe action to show the ISPs that this is NOT to be tolerated. Unfortunately, at best we'll get a strongly worded statement and perhaps a fine that Comcast will make back in the time it took me to write this comment.
My oldest son's latest YouTube love? Watching people play video games on YouTube. He loves video games, but we can't afford every game/gaming system out there. So he can see how a game progresses as someone plays each level. Even if we do get the game, the YouTube videos act as a purchasing filter for us. He can see if the game is something he'd want to play or not before having to spend the $50+ on it.
Satellite Internet can be very expensive. Wireless Internet (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, etc) typically comes with a hard cap (e.g. 10GB) and is very expensive (especially if you get overage fees). Just try watching a couple of Netflix videos every day on your cell phone connection and see how quickly you hit your cap.
Bundling is one thing, but pricing the bundle so that the bundle costs less than one of the items is another. It gets even worse when that one item is something that you hold a monopoly on.
Cable companies, in many areas, hold a monopoly (or duopoly) on Internet access. Want high speed, wired Internet access? You'd better get used to dealing with your cable company. However, the video services area has competition. Not just from Internet video providers (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc) but from Satellite TV as well. When cable companies price it so that getting Internet means you need to get cable TV as well or pay more money, they are using their Internet access monopoly to get a leg up on their competition in the video services market. This should result in federal anti-trust investigations.
We're on the edge of cord cutting also. We do watch some shows on cable TV, but those few shows could be replaced by purchasing them from Amazon VOD. (Or waiting a season for them to come on Netflix or Amazon Prime.) The main reason we haven't cut the cord yet is because our cable company gave us a good deal ($85 a month). If we went to Internet Only from Cable + Internet, we'd save $50 a month. After you factor in purchasing shows we'd want to keep watching, we'd be down to about $35 a month savings. This isn't too huge of a savings so while this deal remains in effect, we will keep cable. The minute they try to up it to the "normal" rate of $150+ a month, though, cable will be cut. I just wish there was competition in the ISP market so I could consider anyone other than Time Warner Cable for my Internet access.
So require anyone returning from Ebola afflicted countries or caring for Ebola infected patients to report their temperature two times a day (which they do anyway) for a 21 day period. Any temperature above normal levels will result in a 5 day quarantine until it can be determined whether they have Ebola (in which case, they go into quarantined treatment) or whether they have something else (in which case, they are still monitored until the 21 days are up).
If you are worried about the nurse transmitting Ebola to random people she meets on the street, look at the Thomas Duncan case. He went into the ER feeling sick (which we now know was due to Ebola), was sent home, interacted with friends and family, went back to the hospital, and interacted with many doctors and nurses. The total number of Ebola transmissions in this case? Two nurses who took care of him during the times when he was VERY infectious and a minor breach in protocol could mean infection.
One of those nurses, in turn, flew on a plane and engaged in some other "normal life" activities before showing symptoms. Total number of people she infected with Ebola? Zero.
We shouldn't be worried that this nurse will go to the supermarket and infect random people with Ebola. Especially not if she's not showing any symptoms. The politicians want you to panic so they can take some measures (regardless of whether those measures actually help), say they "did something" and "took action", and gather more votes for the next election campaign.
That doesn't mean anything. You can test negative, and be asymptomatic, for a long time while still carrying the disease.
Even if the nurse has Ebola, until she starts showing symptoms she won't pose any risk of infecting anyone else.
Even the people infected with Ebola in the US have so far only passed on the infection to people caring for them in later stages of the disease (when even more virus is shed). The one nurse who rode on an airplane while allegedly running a fever (I've heard conflicting reports) infected a grand total of 0 people.
So why should someone who is showing no symptoms and thus has a 0 risk of transmitting Ebola right now be forced into a 21 day quarantine?
Actually, this year I'm planning on voting for a third party candidate. I don't like my state's mayoral candidate (Democrat) who is up for re-election. The Republican has one position I agree with but a bunch of others I don't agree with. I've found that I agree with just about every position the Green candidate holds, though. I don't have any illusions about the Green candidate winning. Our Democratic incumbent is too entrenched. He will win. However, if I and enough people vote for other candidates (especially third party candidates), maybe the winning mayoral candidate will take heed and adjust his positions accordingly. (If there's one thing politicians are known for, it's being able to bend whichever way the political winds blow.)
A lot of money is to be made by some very big companies/individuals on keeping the status quo. That money buys political klout. Scientists might be able to make some technological suggestions, but - by themselves - they won't be able to overcome the political/economic inertia of "keep things the way they are so we can make more money."
Just pick anybody that is not of the incumbent party(republican/democrat). Just make it a clean sweep, and that will wake everybody up for the next round. Vote for business as usual, and that is what you will get, and I will mock your complaints again.
Two problems with this:
1) Republicans and Democrats expect the other party to take over from time to time. Vote all of Party #1 out and they'll just wait their turn for Party #2 to be thrown out. What they really don't want is for some third party to muck up the little duopoly they've secured for themselves.
2) The party in power will often redraw the district lines to help keep their party in power. To overcome this, you would need many, many voters banding together. How likely are you to get tens of millions of Americans to go along with your "Vote against the incumbent even if the other Major Party candidate is against everything you are for" plan? Very unlikely, I'd wager. It's more likely that you and a small group will do this and not get noticed at all as the rest of the voters cast their votes based on policy preferences or party alliance.
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Not to mention air. All terrorists breathe air (at least until they blow themselves up). Wait a second... I breathe air! Excuse me while I turn myself in as a potential terrorist.
Which is one big reason why I advocate for shorter copyright terms. Let's say you remembered a great, somewhat obscure game from the 80's and wanted to remake it. You wanted to do it properly, however, and get permission from the copyright owners. The company that owned the copyright is likely long since bankrupt and following the ownership of the copyright can be murky at times. You might even locate one company, get permission, and find yourself sued afterwards by a second company who claims ownership. Often, two companies will claim copyright and it will be up to the courts to untangle the mess. If the courts have trouble with this, what hope does your average producer of content have to find the right company.
Now, if copyright expired 14 years after registration (with a one-time 14 year renewal), like it originally was set, you could be sure that any game from 1986 or before was public domain. As for games after 1986, you would know who renewed the copyright under 14 years ago so you would only need to sift through 13 years or less of copyright transferals - instead of 30+ years now.
A 14+14 copyright system would drastically reduce the number of orphan works out there.
I felt the same way when I re-watched some episodes of Voltron on Netflix. I remembered an exciting, top notch animated show. I saw cheesy dialogue and plot holes that you could pilot a giant space robot through. There are somethings that you can relive the glory of - that stand the test of time - and other things that just are better left in your memory.
Don't worry. The hotel can charge your phone for you... for a $50 phone charging convenience fee.
It's one thing if protest zones are designed to balance the protester's right to protest with the right of everyone else to go about their business. (For example, keeping anti-abortion protesters from physically accosting people going into an abortion clinic.) On the other hand, if the "balance" is to move the protesters so far away as to render them invisible ("sure you can protest this event... the protest zone is 10 miles that way") then you are effectively removing a person's ability to make a statement via protest.
The differences between applying this to the police and to the general public are that the police are public servants (they work for the public) and they are endowed with special powers above and beyond a "normal citizen" (arrest, ability to use force in some cases, etc). They do a valuable service, but this power can also lead to abuses. Making police activities more transparent helps assure the public that their powers aren't being abused. This justification wouldn't apply to your average citizen. (This isn't to say that the police wouldn't love to apply it to everyone. Just that any reasoning to that end would be flawed.)
Shhh... stop countering rhetoric with facts. Clearly Obama time-traveled back to the Bush presidency and forced Bush & company to set this time table. Then he time traveled a bit further back to plant a phony birth certificate so it would be dated properly.
Not to mention blaming gridlock on Obama. When he took office, the Republicans publicly said their goal was to block everything he wanted, no compromise. Obama, naively, tried to work with them and got nowhere. (It's hard to come to a consensus if your opposition's view of "consensus" is "You agree to all of our demands and we give nothing in return.") Any Republicans that wanted to work with the President were threatened by their party and treated as if they had committed high treason.
I'm not saying the Democrats would be better with a Republican president, but you can't lay all of the blame of Congressional gridlock on the President Obama.
While I wouldn't celebrate a hacking that caused safety mechanisms to fail causing a massive spill, I'd question why such safety systems were on the Internet. If such systems needed to be network enabled (e.g. allow remote monitoring), then I'd question whether the security procedures were up to par and why an intruder would be able to cause such havoc.
Of course, as other posters have said, this is industrial espionage, not attempts to damage the operations. Their ideal would be to get into the system and not have anybody know for as long as possible. Causing a huge spill by tampering with safety mechanisms would be the exact opposite of what they want to do.
Don't worry. Those "basic freedoms of the US Constitution" are frequently treated as optional suggestions by politicians. They are more than happy to abide by them unless they decide not to. And if they decide not to, they often whip the populace into a fear-induced frenzy until we beg for them to violate our basic rights.
Sadly, the US has this too with "Free Speech Zones." If the President is driving down the street or a political convention is being held in your city and you want to peacefully hold up a sign protesting a policy of theirs, you are free to do so... in a specially designated zone that is actually nowhere near where they are. We wouldn't want our leaders to see opposition to their efforts, would we? Yes, we have a first Amendment, but the courts have ruled that "make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" really means that you CAN decide WHERE the people protest so long as you don't prohibit the content of their protests. So you're free to say whatever you want, so long as it is in this gated cage with an armed guard miles away from the person/people you are protesting.
Yay, freedom!
Gas giants could have moons that receive heat from gravitational changes and radiation from the gas giant. These moons might have life on them. It's an outside chance, yes, but given how many planets there are out there, I'd say the chances of one of these being in this situation is probably high.
In some ways, it is a substitute. However, many times these are games we aren't going to buy since we can't afford to buy every game out there. In other cases, for example Mario Kart 8 videos, they got my son psyched up to try the tracks himself. Even the ones we can't afford to buy psych my son up and he will pester us about buying the game for weeks. These play through videos can be powerful commercials for the games.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of the possibility of "getting Ebola" but not getting any symptoms. Considering that you apparently can't transmit the disease unless you get the symptoms, would these asymptomatic Ebola people be able to transmit it to other people?
In any event, the only people who came down with Ebola symptoms after contact with a person with Ebola were those two nurses. It indicates that non-asymptomatic transmission of the disease isn't an easy thing to do. You won't get Ebola because you sat next to someone on the bus and they had Ebola. (Not unless your bus trips involve WAY more bodily fluid contact that the normal person's bus trip.)
Replace the Boss' last line with:
Boss: "Oh, boo hoo! What're they gonna do? Leave us and go to another ISP? We've got a monopoly in the area! They want Internet? They need to come to us. Besides, if we make Netflix look bad, maybe people will dump them and pay us $200 a month for cable again!"
It's more like Phone Company A has 100 channels to Phone Company B. They notice that there is a constant level of 99 calls between A and B. They also see that 25 calls are constantly being made to Joe's Pizzeria who uses Phone Company B for phone service. Phone Company A gets upset that Joe's isn't paying them (Phone Company A) for this traffic, so they refuse to add more channels. (Even though doing so would be inexpensive to do.) So calls to Joe's Pizzeria begin being dropped and Joe's customers get mad that they can't get through. Joe's finally signs an agreement with Phone Company A paying them money and suddenly the calls go through just fine.
This is extortion plain and simple. Add in the fact that the ISPs doing this have an Internet monopoly/duopoly in their areas and also tend to provide video services - that Netflix competes against - and you have extortion plus the use of a monopoly to crush competition in another market. This deserves swift and severe action to show the ISPs that this is NOT to be tolerated. Unfortunately, at best we'll get a strongly worded statement and perhaps a fine that Comcast will make back in the time it took me to write this comment.
My oldest son's latest YouTube love? Watching people play video games on YouTube. He loves video games, but we can't afford every game/gaming system out there. So he can see how a game progresses as someone plays each level. Even if we do get the game, the YouTube videos act as a purchasing filter for us. He can see if the game is something he'd want to play or not before having to spend the $50+ on it.
Satellite Internet can be very expensive. Wireless Internet (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, etc) typically comes with a hard cap (e.g. 10GB) and is very expensive (especially if you get overage fees). Just try watching a couple of Netflix videos every day on your cell phone connection and see how quickly you hit your cap.
Bundling is one thing, but pricing the bundle so that the bundle costs less than one of the items is another. It gets even worse when that one item is something that you hold a monopoly on.
Cable companies, in many areas, hold a monopoly (or duopoly) on Internet access. Want high speed, wired Internet access? You'd better get used to dealing with your cable company. However, the video services area has competition. Not just from Internet video providers (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc) but from Satellite TV as well. When cable companies price it so that getting Internet means you need to get cable TV as well or pay more money, they are using their Internet access monopoly to get a leg up on their competition in the video services market. This should result in federal anti-trust investigations.
We're on the edge of cord cutting also. We do watch some shows on cable TV, but those few shows could be replaced by purchasing them from Amazon VOD. (Or waiting a season for them to come on Netflix or Amazon Prime.) The main reason we haven't cut the cord yet is because our cable company gave us a good deal ($85 a month). If we went to Internet Only from Cable + Internet, we'd save $50 a month. After you factor in purchasing shows we'd want to keep watching, we'd be down to about $35 a month savings. This isn't too huge of a savings so while this deal remains in effect, we will keep cable. The minute they try to up it to the "normal" rate of $150+ a month, though, cable will be cut. I just wish there was competition in the ISP market so I could consider anyone other than Time Warner Cable for my Internet access.
So require anyone returning from Ebola afflicted countries or caring for Ebola infected patients to report their temperature two times a day (which they do anyway) for a 21 day period. Any temperature above normal levels will result in a 5 day quarantine until it can be determined whether they have Ebola (in which case, they go into quarantined treatment) or whether they have something else (in which case, they are still monitored until the 21 days are up).
If you are worried about the nurse transmitting Ebola to random people she meets on the street, look at the Thomas Duncan case. He went into the ER feeling sick (which we now know was due to Ebola), was sent home, interacted with friends and family, went back to the hospital, and interacted with many doctors and nurses. The total number of Ebola transmissions in this case? Two nurses who took care of him during the times when he was VERY infectious and a minor breach in protocol could mean infection.
One of those nurses, in turn, flew on a plane and engaged in some other "normal life" activities before showing symptoms. Total number of people she infected with Ebola? Zero.
We shouldn't be worried that this nurse will go to the supermarket and infect random people with Ebola. Especially not if she's not showing any symptoms. The politicians want you to panic so they can take some measures (regardless of whether those measures actually help), say they "did something" and "took action", and gather more votes for the next election campaign.
Even if the nurse has Ebola, until she starts showing symptoms she won't pose any risk of infecting anyone else.
Even the people infected with Ebola in the US have so far only passed on the infection to people caring for them in later stages of the disease (when even more virus is shed). The one nurse who rode on an airplane while allegedly running a fever (I've heard conflicting reports) infected a grand total of 0 people.
So why should someone who is showing no symptoms and thus has a 0 risk of transmitting Ebola right now be forced into a 21 day quarantine?
Actually, this year I'm planning on voting for a third party candidate. I don't like my state's mayoral candidate (Democrat) who is up for re-election. The Republican has one position I agree with but a bunch of others I don't agree with. I've found that I agree with just about every position the Green candidate holds, though. I don't have any illusions about the Green candidate winning. Our Democratic incumbent is too entrenched. He will win. However, if I and enough people vote for other candidates (especially third party candidates), maybe the winning mayoral candidate will take heed and adjust his positions accordingly. (If there's one thing politicians are known for, it's being able to bend whichever way the political winds blow.)
A lot of money is to be made by some very big companies/individuals on keeping the status quo. That money buys political klout. Scientists might be able to make some technological suggestions, but - by themselves - they won't be able to overcome the political/economic inertia of "keep things the way they are so we can make more money."
Two problems with this:
1) Republicans and Democrats expect the other party to take over from time to time. Vote all of Party #1 out and they'll just wait their turn for Party #2 to be thrown out. What they really don't want is for some third party to muck up the little duopoly they've secured for themselves.
2) The party in power will often redraw the district lines to help keep their party in power. To overcome this, you would need many, many voters banding together. How likely are you to get tens of millions of Americans to go along with your "Vote against the incumbent even if the other Major Party candidate is against everything you are for" plan? Very unlikely, I'd wager. It's more likely that you and a small group will do this and not get noticed at all as the rest of the voters cast their votes based on policy preferences or party alliance.