Yeah I don't buy that argument. If I am immunized from polio, what do I care if the unvaccinated idiot gets it? The disease doesn't affect me.
I'm a parent. My kids happen to be old enough to have gotten some vaccinations (and are up to date on them), however at one point they weren't old enough to get them yet. Why do I care if someone doesn't get vaccinated? Because if enough people don't get vaccinated, herd immunity breaks down and babies (who aren't old enough to get the vaccinations), the elderly and those who can't get vaccinated for valid medical reasons (e.g. allergies) will get sick. If it was just a matter of only the unvaccinated getting sick, I'd agree with you and would argue for vaccines to be voluntary. However, since people's choices not to vaccinate can lead to the death of other people, I think it is well within the rights of the government to require them for all people (except for those with valid medical reasons).
But will it stay like this? Suppose World War 3 breaks out in the year 2173 and most countries suffer horribly before it ends. Technology could be pushed back centuries and records of pre-war times could be lost. Especially if those records didn't suit the purposes of the war's winner. (Not to Godwin the thread, but imagine if Hitler had won WW2. Do you think we'd be reading of all the horrible things he did or would we read about how he's the best person in all of history?)
Don't assume that increased record-keeping of recent years will inevitably lead to perfect record-keeping for all time in the future. A lot can happen in 10 years, much less in a million years.
I know that, awhile back, my account was logged into from some other country (someplace in South East Asia, IIRC) and a bunch of spam links were sent to my contacts. I had a complex password and they didn't change any information. (Odd, since I thought one of the first things a hacker would do is change the password to hold onto the hacked account.) I changed my password and sent folks notice about the hacking. (No, I didn't click on any links or run any programs that would have caused this. I'm extremely careful about security.)
Months later, for a few weeks, I kept getting notices about someone trying to reset my Yahoo Mail password. I kept a close eye on the situation, but it never seemed to progress beyond trying to use the password reset tool to get into my account.
I don't even actively use my Yahoo Mail address anymore. Over the years, it got too clogged with spam and I much prefer GMail. Still, I keep it around just in case.
What they would learn about me from the first page of a Google search on my name:
I'm a Adobe Worldwide Video Evangelist. I live in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I used to work for Boodah Joo Music, Ltd. of San Francisco. I'm @Beatlejase on Twitter. I've been running the site Queso.com since 1999 and am a physician. I'm the producer of "Kid in a Candy Store" and the son of television director/producer Michael Levine. I'm jaselevine on Facebook. I'm an associate in the Boston office of Summit Partners, a growth equity firm for exceptional companies.
What they would actually learn about me:
Nothing, because none of those links were about me and all of that information was about other "Jason Levine"s.
The problem is that "marriage" is the common term used for two people who love each other and have entered into a civil contract to be with each other exclusively for the length of the contract. "Civil union" sounds like some boring government status (which it is) and will never enter the public vocabulary to the degree that "marriage" has. So even if you made "marriage" the religious definition and "civil union" the government one, people would still ask one another "Are you married" and not "Are you civil unioned?"
Someone above mentioned "descriptive audio" for the blind. (It describes what's going on for blind people.) Descriptive audio on online porn might be "interesting."
As another poster pointed out, Netflix likely isn't ripping the DVDs. When they make a deal with a content provider, that provider gives them a digital file to put on their servers. If that digital file doesn't include closed captioning information, they'll need to get this from the content provider. If their contract doesn't provide for that, they may need to pay extra for that stuff. Knowing content providers, it won't come cheap.
I was going to say that tablet cost might work against them replacing textbooks, but given that you can get an Android-based tablet for under $200, and given how much college textbooks cost, this could be a possibility. Of course, this is assuming that a $70 college textbook isn't priced at $69 for the tablet version.
Perhaps a better system would be a "Netflix for Textbooks." You would buy a supported tablet (perhaps buying one through the service) and pay NFT per month for access to the textbooks you need. NFT would negotiate with the textbook publishers to get as many textbooks as possible on the service. As long as you paid for access, you would have the ability to view and take notes in your textbooks. Once you were done, you would cancel the service, save your notes locally, and you would be unable to read the textbooks anymore. (The tablet would be kept by the student for other uses post-college.) Even if this were priced at $20 a month, it could be cheaper than buying new textbooks every year. Of course, I'd wager that publishers would want the users to pay per book and would want the prices "competitive" with their print versions so as not to undercut print profits (and thus completely undermining digital profits).
The solution is clear. We take the bankers, seize their assets, and send them to Mars. Use the seized assets to shore up Greece's economy and use ad revenue from the Bankers on Mars reality show to finance the sequel: Politicians on Pluto.
And can they keep sending supplies even if their reality TV show is canceled? Or will the show's cancellation mean cutting all communication with Mars One?
1. We're on Mars, Hooray! 2. Set up equipment. 3. Transmit episodes of "Life On Mars". 4, Get call from producer, "You had some great content, really, but the show's been canceled by the network execs for a new user-submitted video show called Cute Puppy Antics." 5. All communication between Mars and Earth cut (show's canceled = no more budget). 6. Weeks pass. 7. Crew goes insane, kills each other. 8. Last crew member alive, as he is dying from lack of food and water, notices that the cameras have been filming the whole time. 9. Producer call comes through "Thanks. That 'going insane and killing everyone' stuff will make a great series finale." 10. Video cuts out and last crew member dies.
When I go to sleep, there's a reasonable chance that, when it is time for me to wake up, there will be breathable air outside, temperatures will be livable, water will be plentiful enough, food will be somewhat easily obtained. If you needed more food or supplies, you could drive down to the nearest store. (Yes, you could say all of these even if you went full on nomad and lived off the land. Just replaced "drive to the store" with "hunt/forage.")
If you went to Mars, you would only have breathable air or livable temperatures if the systems didn't malfunction. Water and food supplies would be limited. Replacement parts (for any malfunctioning equipment) or new food supplies would be months away at best. Imagine your fridge breaking in June and having to wait until April for a replacement fridge. What if your air system was leaking and you needed parts to fix it?
This more than just "anytime you get into a car there's a chance of you dying" expedition, it's a suicide mission. The survival rate of this mission would be 0% guaranteed.
I was actually thinking of just that video when I posted my comment. Imagine that in the hands of a high schooler. Like the kind of kids who bullied that bus monitor. *shudders*
Ok, whose bright idea was it to give Portal Guns to the high school kids? The captain of the football team sent one of the chess club members to the hospital by "portal-ing" him down a flight of stairs. In retaliation, the chess club portaled the captain of the football team into an infinite loop. He's been like this for 12 hours straight as we try to figure a way to get him out of it.
Quick, somebody patent that idea so that the RIAA can't implement it!
"I know you wrote this original tune, but our DarwinTunes server farm came up with that three years ago. You owe us $1,000,000 for selling CDs with our tune on it."
I didn't say they wouldn't feel for the people in the back. Chances are, after the situation was over, they'd need some counseling and downtime to recover. However, their job in that situation isn't to try to thwart the hijackers themselves or give in to the hijackers hoping for a peaceful resolution. Their job is to get the plane on the ground ASAP. This: 1) ensures that the plane isn't used as a missile ala 9/11, 2) allows police to quickly respond, and 3) tells terrorists "the best you'll be able to do is kill a few passengers before you're arrested or killed." (Which isn't the best outcome for a terrorist.)
If you have a set policy of Do Not Open The Door... EVER... Even If People Are Dying, then the pilots will be more likely to follow it instead of doing something that would result in more loss of life.
Exactly. If I were given the power to reshape the TSA, I wouldn't get rid of it entirely. I'd X-Ray all luggage, pulling aside anything suspicious looking for a more thorough check. (This would include checked bags, not just carry on bags.) I'd have the metal detectors in place. I'd also station plain-clothes agents throughout the airport looking for people who were acting suspiciously. If someone was spotted acting suspiciously, they could be followed by the agents and/or surveillance cameras.
Once you were on the airplane, I'd have the cockpit door locked and reinforced to prevent entry. The pilots would be under orders to perform an emergency landing if something happened in the passenger area no matter how many passengers the hijackers threatened to kill. The pilots would be absolved of any liability for passenger injury/death in those cases as their job would be to get the plane on the ground ASAP.
Add in some passenger education ("don't take bags from strangers, report any suspicious activity") and terrorists will find attacking airports/airplanes a difficult proposition. It won't be 100% protection, but then again no security ever will be. However, pouring billions of dollars in an attempt to go from 99.99% security to 99.991% security seems wasteful (especially when the new security measures are so invasive). (NOTE: I said "in an attempt" because I don't think they actually do increase security.)
Any terrorist who wanted to cause mayhem now wouldn't even get on a plane. They'd go to a major airport during an extremely busy season (Thanksgiving or Christmas would be good) and do something horrible in the middle of the security line. You'd kill a lot of people and disrupt air travel in that major airport for days. The TSA's invasive security measures won't prevent that (not that they've prevented a single terrorist attack on a plane anyway). If anything, by creating a bottleneck, they almost invite an attack there.
Exactly. Try telling someone who was a victim of sexual assault to "just get over it" and subject themselves to an intrusive TSA pat down. I guarantee they won't be able to "just get over it" even if they tried.
Or try telling a kid (who has been told not to let strangers touch them inappropriately) that they should just let Random TSA Agent take them to the side, away from mommy and daddy, and run their (TSA Agent's) hands up and down their (kid's) body.
"Just get over it" isn't an appropriate response by any measure.
As a parent, I'm against both the naked body scans and intrusive pat downs. The former would add unneeded radiation exposure to my child and produce a photo of him naked. I could get in trouble for taking a picture of my kid in the bath and having it printed out at the local CVS (yes, parents have been accused of child porn for this and had their kids taken away), but the TSA could produce a naked photo of my kid "for National Security."
On the pat down front, I - as a parent - have instilled in my kids that there is a very limited group of people who can touch them "there." Mommy and Daddy (mostly for tub time) and their doctor. That's it. Now we need to add Random TSA Dude to the list? This is completely unacceptable to me.
I've been lucky so far in that my family hasn't been subjected to the Rapiscan (seriously, could they have chosen a worse name) or the intrusive pat downs. However, there have been plenty of stories of TSA agents who subject kids to horrific pat down experiences for minor "offenses" (like running to hug Grandma before her pat down was complete).
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I'm a parent. My kids happen to be old enough to have gotten some vaccinations (and are up to date on them), however at one point they weren't old enough to get them yet. Why do I care if someone doesn't get vaccinated? Because if enough people don't get vaccinated, herd immunity breaks down and babies (who aren't old enough to get the vaccinations), the elderly and those who can't get vaccinated for valid medical reasons (e.g. allergies) will get sick. If it was just a matter of only the unvaccinated getting sick, I'd agree with you and would argue for vaccines to be voluntary. However, since people's choices not to vaccinate can lead to the death of other people, I think it is well within the rights of the government to require them for all people (except for those with valid medical reasons).
But will it stay like this? Suppose World War 3 breaks out in the year 2173 and most countries suffer horribly before it ends. Technology could be pushed back centuries and records of pre-war times could be lost. Especially if those records didn't suit the purposes of the war's winner. (Not to Godwin the thread, but imagine if Hitler had won WW2. Do you think we'd be reading of all the horrible things he did or would we read about how he's the best person in all of history?)
Don't assume that increased record-keeping of recent years will inevitably lead to perfect record-keeping for all time in the future. A lot can happen in 10 years, much less in a million years.
My first thought was "I should fill my kids' kiddie pool with corn starch and water to have some scientific fun with them!"
My second thought was "How would I clean it up when we're done?"
Somehow, I think dumping it all on the lawn would not be ideal.
In the last one, they hit you over the head first and then take your wallet.
In this one they take your wallet after hitting you over the head.
See? Totally different!
Does this include Yahoo Mail accounts?
I know that, awhile back, my account was logged into from some other country (someplace in South East Asia, IIRC) and a bunch of spam links were sent to my contacts. I had a complex password and they didn't change any information. (Odd, since I thought one of the first things a hacker would do is change the password to hold onto the hacked account.) I changed my password and sent folks notice about the hacking. (No, I didn't click on any links or run any programs that would have caused this. I'm extremely careful about security.)
Months later, for a few weeks, I kept getting notices about someone trying to reset my Yahoo Mail password. I kept a close eye on the situation, but it never seemed to progress beyond trying to use the password reset tool to get into my account.
I don't even actively use my Yahoo Mail address anymore. Over the years, it got too clogged with spam and I much prefer GMail. Still, I keep it around just in case.
What they would learn about me from the first page of a Google search on my name:
I'm a Adobe Worldwide Video Evangelist.
I live in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
I used to work for Boodah Joo Music, Ltd. of San Francisco.
I'm @Beatlejase on Twitter.
I've been running the site Queso.com since 1999 and am a physician.
I'm the producer of "Kid in a Candy Store" and the son of television director/producer Michael Levine.
I'm jaselevine on Facebook.
I'm an associate in the Boston office of Summit Partners, a growth equity firm for exceptional companies.
What they would actually learn about me:
Nothing, because none of those links were about me and all of that information was about other "Jason Levine"s.
The problem is that "marriage" is the common term used for two people who love each other and have entered into a civil contract to be with each other exclusively for the length of the contract. "Civil union" sounds like some boring government status (which it is) and will never enter the public vocabulary to the degree that "marriage" has. So even if you made "marriage" the religious definition and "civil union" the government one, people would still ask one another "Are you married" and not "Are you civil unioned?"
God said he wouldn't flood the entire world again. This won't affect the "entire" world. Thus, God loves loopholes.
Wait... does this mean God's a lawyer?!!!!
Someone above mentioned "descriptive audio" for the blind. (It describes what's going on for blind people.) Descriptive audio on online porn might be "interesting."
As another poster pointed out, Netflix likely isn't ripping the DVDs. When they make a deal with a content provider, that provider gives them a digital file to put on their servers. If that digital file doesn't include closed captioning information, they'll need to get this from the content provider. If their contract doesn't provide for that, they may need to pay extra for that stuff. Knowing content providers, it won't come cheap.
I was going to say that tablet cost might work against them replacing textbooks, but given that you can get an Android-based tablet for under $200, and given how much college textbooks cost, this could be a possibility. Of course, this is assuming that a $70 college textbook isn't priced at $69 for the tablet version.
Perhaps a better system would be a "Netflix for Textbooks." You would buy a supported tablet (perhaps buying one through the service) and pay NFT per month for access to the textbooks you need. NFT would negotiate with the textbook publishers to get as many textbooks as possible on the service. As long as you paid for access, you would have the ability to view and take notes in your textbooks. Once you were done, you would cancel the service, save your notes locally, and you would be unable to read the textbooks anymore. (The tablet would be kept by the student for other uses post-college.) Even if this were priced at $20 a month, it could be cheaper than buying new textbooks every year. Of course, I'd wager that publishers would want the users to pay per book and would want the prices "competitive" with their print versions so as not to undercut print profits (and thus completely undermining digital profits).
The solution is clear. We take the bankers, seize their assets, and send them to Mars. Use the seized assets to shore up Greece's economy and use ad revenue from the Bankers on Mars reality show to finance the sequel: Politicians on Pluto.
And can they keep sending supplies even if their reality TV show is canceled? Or will the show's cancellation mean cutting all communication with Mars One?
Best part: If ratings are low, you can just kill the stars... I mean the series.
I'm thinking it might be more like this.
1. We're on Mars, Hooray!
2. Set up equipment.
3. Transmit episodes of "Life On Mars".
4, Get call from producer, "You had some great content, really, but the show's been canceled by the network execs for a new user-submitted video show called Cute Puppy Antics."
5. All communication between Mars and Earth cut (show's canceled = no more budget).
6. Weeks pass.
7. Crew goes insane, kills each other.
8. Last crew member alive, as he is dying from lack of food and water, notices that the cameras have been filming the whole time.
9. Producer call comes through "Thanks. That 'going insane and killing everyone' stuff will make a great series finale."
10. Video cuts out and last crew member dies.
When I go to sleep, there's a reasonable chance that, when it is time for me to wake up, there will be breathable air outside, temperatures will be livable, water will be plentiful enough, food will be somewhat easily obtained. If you needed more food or supplies, you could drive down to the nearest store. (Yes, you could say all of these even if you went full on nomad and lived off the land. Just replaced "drive to the store" with "hunt/forage.")
If you went to Mars, you would only have breathable air or livable temperatures if the systems didn't malfunction. Water and food supplies would be limited. Replacement parts (for any malfunctioning equipment) or new food supplies would be months away at best. Imagine your fridge breaking in June and having to wait until April for a replacement fridge. What if your air system was leaking and you needed parts to fix it?
This more than just "anytime you get into a car there's a chance of you dying" expedition, it's a suicide mission. The survival rate of this mission would be 0% guaranteed.
I was actually thinking of just that video when I posted my comment. Imagine that in the hands of a high schooler. Like the kind of kids who bullied that bus monitor. *shudders*
Ok, whose bright idea was it to give Portal Guns to the high school kids? The captain of the football team sent one of the chess club members to the hospital by "portal-ing" him down a flight of stairs. In retaliation, the chess club portaled the captain of the football team into an infinite loop. He's been like this for 12 hours straight as we try to figure a way to get him out of it.
Quick, somebody patent that idea so that the RIAA can't implement it!
"I know you wrote this original tune, but our DarwinTunes server farm came up with that three years ago. You owe us $1,000,000 for selling CDs with our tune on it."
I didn't say they wouldn't feel for the people in the back. Chances are, after the situation was over, they'd need some counseling and downtime to recover. However, their job in that situation isn't to try to thwart the hijackers themselves or give in to the hijackers hoping for a peaceful resolution. Their job is to get the plane on the ground ASAP. This: 1) ensures that the plane isn't used as a missile ala 9/11, 2) allows police to quickly respond, and 3) tells terrorists "the best you'll be able to do is kill a few passengers before you're arrested or killed." (Which isn't the best outcome for a terrorist.)
If you have a set policy of Do Not Open The Door... EVER... Even If People Are Dying, then the pilots will be more likely to follow it instead of doing something that would result in more loss of life.
From the chart:
Odds of being a terrorism victim in a flight: 1 in 10,408,947
Odds of being killed by lightning: 1 in 500,000
What we need to do is obvious. Let the War On Lightning begin!
Exactly. If I were given the power to reshape the TSA, I wouldn't get rid of it entirely. I'd X-Ray all luggage, pulling aside anything suspicious looking for a more thorough check. (This would include checked bags, not just carry on bags.) I'd have the metal detectors in place. I'd also station plain-clothes agents throughout the airport looking for people who were acting suspiciously. If someone was spotted acting suspiciously, they could be followed by the agents and/or surveillance cameras.
Once you were on the airplane, I'd have the cockpit door locked and reinforced to prevent entry. The pilots would be under orders to perform an emergency landing if something happened in the passenger area no matter how many passengers the hijackers threatened to kill. The pilots would be absolved of any liability for passenger injury/death in those cases as their job would be to get the plane on the ground ASAP.
Add in some passenger education ("don't take bags from strangers, report any suspicious activity") and terrorists will find attacking airports/airplanes a difficult proposition. It won't be 100% protection, but then again no security ever will be. However, pouring billions of dollars in an attempt to go from 99.99% security to 99.991% security seems wasteful (especially when the new security measures are so invasive). (NOTE: I said "in an attempt" because I don't think they actually do increase security.)
Any terrorist who wanted to cause mayhem now wouldn't even get on a plane. They'd go to a major airport during an extremely busy season (Thanksgiving or Christmas would be good) and do something horrible in the middle of the security line. You'd kill a lot of people and disrupt air travel in that major airport for days. The TSA's invasive security measures won't prevent that (not that they've prevented a single terrorist attack on a plane anyway). If anything, by creating a bottleneck, they almost invite an attack there.
Exactly. Try telling someone who was a victim of sexual assault to "just get over it" and subject themselves to an intrusive TSA pat down. I guarantee they won't be able to "just get over it" even if they tried.
Or try telling a kid (who has been told not to let strangers touch them inappropriately) that they should just let Random TSA Agent take them to the side, away from mommy and daddy, and run their (TSA Agent's) hands up and down their (kid's) body.
"Just get over it" isn't an appropriate response by any measure.
As a parent, I'm against both the naked body scans and intrusive pat downs. The former would add unneeded radiation exposure to my child and produce a photo of him naked. I could get in trouble for taking a picture of my kid in the bath and having it printed out at the local CVS (yes, parents have been accused of child porn for this and had their kids taken away), but the TSA could produce a naked photo of my kid "for National Security."
On the pat down front, I - as a parent - have instilled in my kids that there is a very limited group of people who can touch them "there." Mommy and Daddy (mostly for tub time) and their doctor. That's it. Now we need to add Random TSA Dude to the list? This is completely unacceptable to me.
I've been lucky so far in that my family hasn't been subjected to the Rapiscan (seriously, could they have chosen a worse name) or the intrusive pat downs. However, there have been plenty of stories of TSA agents who subject kids to horrific pat down experiences for minor "offenses" (like running to hug Grandma before her pat down was complete).