Exactly. This seems more like a Trademark issue to me. Site uses "Comcastroturf.com". Comcast threatens lawsuit because they are using the "Comcast" name. Whether you support the site or Comcast, this is a trademark issue, not a Network Neutrality one.
Now, if they slowed this site to a crawl while making sure ComcastIsAwesome.com was as speedy as possible, then we'd be getting into Network Neutrality territory.
Try wrapping the banana stems in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Your bananas will keep longer.
If they do get too ripe, don't throw them away. Peel them and place them in plastic bags in the freezer. From there, you can make them into Banana Peanut Butter ice cream (puree the bananas in a food processor and add a tablespoon of PB - I prefer dark chocolate PB - for each banana, freeze the result) or banana bread.
Gather more data. That's how science works. There are a lot of things we haven't fully explained yet. One more isn't going to matter.
If anything, it is very exciting when there's something we don't know. There's so much that is known about the Universe that finding something that makes us say "We have no clue" is a wonderful development. This is the kind of thing that spurs scientists on to new discoveries.
"I'm from a company and I control your life" are just as terrifying to me. Perhaps more so because the government (at least in theory) is beholden to the people. A company that controls an aspect of my life only will care about profitability. And that might not depend on the quality of my life.
People who accept the government role in defense, but don't in health care and national health ignore the fact that we are in a never ending war with the bacteria and fungi. A health care system as a part of an integrated civilian and military defense system is a defensive front of the nation and the human race, even if the enemy doesn't have a color or creed.
And, what's worse, the enemy outnumbers us, is stealthy enough that you don't know you've been hit by them until after the fact, and can oftentimes adapt to render our defenses/attacks useless. It's like we're fighting miniature Ninja Borg.
Politicians care about themselves and their ability to remain in power. If they can kill soldiers and remain in power, they will do so. If they can ignore a health crisis and remain in power, they will do so. If they can drag their feet while pretending to address an issue, they will do so. If, however, an issue directly affects them, they'll rapidly act to address it.
To show that this hasn't changed for hundreds of years, I give you The Great Stink of 1858. (WARNING: Do not watch while eating.)
If I start declared "John Smith should die", "Someone should really kill John Smith", and "I'd love to just kill John Smith" and then I'm found with a hammer in my hand over John Smith's lifeless body, it would be perfectly reasonable to admit my statements as evidence of intent. Likewise, Trump's repeated statements that he wanted to enact a "Muslim Ban" are being used as statements of intent. It shows how he intended the immigration ban to function and is perfectly reasonable to admit as evidence.
It's literally the first thing that's recited to you when you're read your Miranda Rights: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Trump said things and they are being used against him. This isn't "liberal vs. conservative." This is just how the law works.
I'd agree with everything you wrote, but would also add that the colonists saw what mixing government and religion does. The King ran the Church of England which was the official religion of England. If you didn't belong to the Church of England, you were effectively a second-class citizen. Meanwhile, the King could change the rules of the religion to suit his whims. If he decided that the whole "Lent" thing was a bother, he could do away with it. If he decided that he wanted to become vegetarian, the religion could outlaw all meat. (Obviously, these are exaggerations to make a point and didn't happen in history that I know of.)
The people who want to remove the "Church-State Separation" keep thinking that this will mean that the Church (by which, they mean THEIR church and not that horrible church down the road that does everything wrong) will influence what the government does. If you remove the separation, though, the influence will flow both ways. I wonder how many of these Church-State Separation opponents would want government officials forming a committee to decide how Baptism should be performed or which prayers should be included in the service.
I grew up riding my bike on the sidewalk - switching to the street only when no sidewalks were available. I think it's technically illegal to ride on the sidewalk where I live now, but I'm not going on a bike ride with my 9 year old son and have him ride on the busy street. It's bad enough when you're in a car and drivers act like idiots. I don't want my son to be there on a bike when some driver decides the text message he just got is more important than watching where he's going.
Curious how they interpret genesis then. If the big bang theory is accurate, then a god simply cannot have created the universe. It all comes down to relativity: If the universe started as a single dimensionless point, then the gravity would have been so strong that time didn't exist. If time didn't exist, then there was no time for a god to create the universe.
I'm Jewish, not Catholic, but I had a rabbi who would teach about Genesis using it to teach moral lessons. For example, there are actually two "creation of man" stories. In one, man is made in the image of God. In another, he's formed from mud. My rabbi said that we should walk around balancing two contradictory attitudes: The world was created just for us and we're nothing but mud. If we can successfully remain in the center, we'll be good.
Going by this, I'd interpret the Bible (or Torah for my fellow Jews out there) figuratively, not literally. When it says "God did X", there's a lesson to be learned, not a literal telling of history.
While I do recommend password managers (I like Password Safe), what if your password is to log into the computer? Then, you can't access your password manager without the password you were going to look up.
What I do is use the same base password and then vary special characters/capitalization. Then, I make a note about the capitalization/special characters used. For example, if my password was "Pass..word.", I'd note "C2L1" for "capital letter, two periods, lower case letter, one period." Nobody looking at my paper would know my password, but if I forgot the specific password, the paper would remind me what it currently is after the latest mandatory password change.
Bah! You elitists with your "facts" and "actual definitions of irony." I'm proposing that we name Alanis Morissette to be in charge of the definition of irony.
Next up: Literally changing the definition of "literally."
Unless I'm listening to music, I have the volume on my phone for media turned off. (I love "watching ads to get free stuff" in games. Launch ad, put the phone down, come back after 20-30 seconds of silence, and claim my free stuff.) If I'm right, would this prevent these ads from broadcasting?
My wife's aunt had breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy. My wife is justifiably freaked out about possibly getting breast cancer. If wearing this special bra once a week for an hour could warn her early on about any possible cancer, she'd be overjoyed. (The earlier you catch any cancer, the better your treatment options.)
Wow. I wouldn't sign that at all if my company tried to force it on me. I've written one book, am working on another one, and have a few other novel/short story ideas I'm going to work on in the future. Not that they're best sellers or anything, but I wouldn't want my company to declare that my books belong to them and not me simply because I was employed by them when I wrote the book. Employment contracts like that should be illegal.
Obviously, what's allowed from company to company varies so check with your manager/HR department. Personally, I try not to work on personal projects during company time. The only exception is writing my novels which I do on my phone (not using company computers) and during my lunch break. I can jot out a quick two to three hundred words while I eat lunch and then my phone goes away and I focus on work-related activities again. Other than that, I strive to avoid working on personal projects during company time or using company resources.
(This doesn't count taking a 5 minute break to make a personal call or look up something I'm personally interested in. I'm talking more "project" level activities like coding a website or writing a book.
BS'ing with co-workers / checking the news / running an errand consumes very little.
And sometimes, these activities can lead to a burst in productivity. If a particular project is wearing me down, a quick talk with a co-worker on a non-work-related subject or checking a news site/Slashdot/etc can let my mind relax. Oftentimes, 5 minutes of this "time wasting activity" can result in me figuring out the problem when spending those 5 minutes working wouldn't have.
My first programming language was a form of Basic (I forget which one) on Apple IIe computers. During middle school, we were instructed to program a slot machine program. Essentially, the assignment was to pull three random array entries and display those. Easy, right? I coded mine, looked up, and everyone was still working. So I decided to add more features. I added in betting with the game repeating until you lost all your money or decided to walk away with your winnings. I looked up and people were still coding. So I added in a loan shark who would lend you money which you had to pay back (with interest) or he'd end your game for you. (I actually had it display that he "took an arm and a leg.") I looked up and FINALLY people were finishing their assignments.
I blew the teacher and my classmates away with what I had made. That SHOULD have been my sign that I needed to go into programming, but it took me until college where I almost failed quantum mechanics as I aced my computer science classes to switch on that light bulb.
To be fair, my current connection is 15Mbps so it's not broadband either. When Spectrum forces me to their plan, I'm supposed to get a speed bump that might take me above broadband levels. When Time Warner Cable was here, they offered actual broadband, but you had to pay a lot more for it. Again, monopoly position = the company will charge you whatever it likes for whatever service is decides to provide and you can take it or go without.
On the flip side, if you remove minimum wage, what's to stop an employer from paying nearly nothing for work that generates the employer more money? If an employee generates $25 an hour in value and the employer pays $0.50 an hour, what would protect the worker? Before you say "they can just change jobs", recognize that you could have an industry "race to the bottom" with salaries. The ones that pay less might make more profits and can gobble up (or force out of business) the ones that pay more.
To give an example, my son recently went to a local museum where he learned about the NYC garment district around the early 1900's. There was no minimum wage or safety regulations so people were worked 15 hours (6am - 9pm) for $3 a week. (That's about $1 an hour in today's money.) If people didn't want to work those hours or asked for more money, they were fired and people who would accept the hours/pay were hired. Every employer in the area paid about the same, so you couldn't just go to another employer. (The lack of safety regulations caused a fire that killed 146 workers.)
Minimum wage laws can help to keep employers from forcing workers to work long hours for little to no pay. They can help keep employees from falling below the poverty line or from having to work three jobs just to make ends meet. They might not be perfect, but doing away with the minimum wage entirely would be disastrous.
The thing is, I'd be all for "let the markets fix it" if the ISP market actually had competition. If I could choose between 12 different comparable ISPs, I could easily vote with my wallet. When I only have one option, though, voting with my wallet doesn't work. The ISP market is broken and this means "let the markets fix it" won't do anything. Government regulations might not fix the market, but they can stem abuses in the short term and possibly even lay the groundwork for competition to sprout up in the longer term.
I've had someone try to tell me that DSL, satellite, and wireless services count as competition for wired Broadband. I currently have Spectrum (Charter, formally Time Warner Cable) at $35 a month - though that's a TWC rate that will likely go away next year and my cost will increase to around $60 a month.
DSL in my area is about 4Mbps for around $40 a month on lines that Verizon wants to get rid of ASAP. Satellite has slow speeds, low caps, and high cost. As for wireless, I use about 500GB a month - mostly in video streaming. Verizon's Unlimited plan would throttle me after 22GB. They have a "data only plan", but that runs about $700 for 100GB of data.
The person I was talking with honestly thought $700 a month was competition for $60 a month. While, technically these are "options", nobody with my usage requirements (video streaming) would take these. This leaves Spectrum as my one and only choice and they know it.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. This seems more like a Trademark issue to me. Site uses "Comcastroturf.com". Comcast threatens lawsuit because they are using the "Comcast" name. Whether you support the site or Comcast, this is a trademark issue, not a Network Neutrality one.
Now, if they slowed this site to a crawl while making sure ComcastIsAwesome.com was as speedy as possible, then we'd be getting into Network Neutrality territory.
Try wrapping the banana stems in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Your bananas will keep longer.
If they do get too ripe, don't throw them away. Peel them and place them in plastic bags in the freezer. From there, you can make them into Banana Peanut Butter ice cream (puree the bananas in a food processor and add a tablespoon of PB - I prefer dark chocolate PB - for each banana, freeze the result) or banana bread.
If anything, it is very exciting when there's something we don't know. There's so much that is known about the Universe that finding something that makes us say "We have no clue" is a wonderful development. This is the kind of thing that spurs scientists on to new discoveries.
"I'm from a company and I control your life" are just as terrifying to me. Perhaps more so because the government (at least in theory) is beholden to the people. A company that controls an aspect of my life only will care about profitability. And that might not depend on the quality of my life.
And, what's worse, the enemy outnumbers us, is stealthy enough that you don't know you've been hit by them until after the fact, and can oftentimes adapt to render our defenses/attacks useless. It's like we're fighting miniature Ninja Borg.
Politicians care about themselves and their ability to remain in power. If they can kill soldiers and remain in power, they will do so. If they can ignore a health crisis and remain in power, they will do so. If they can drag their feet while pretending to address an issue, they will do so. If, however, an issue directly affects them, they'll rapidly act to address it.
To show that this hasn't changed for hundreds of years, I give you The Great Stink of 1858. (WARNING: Do not watch while eating.)
If I start declared "John Smith should die", "Someone should really kill John Smith", and "I'd love to just kill John Smith" and then I'm found with a hammer in my hand over John Smith's lifeless body, it would be perfectly reasonable to admit my statements as evidence of intent. Likewise, Trump's repeated statements that he wanted to enact a "Muslim Ban" are being used as statements of intent. It shows how he intended the immigration ban to function and is perfectly reasonable to admit as evidence.
It's literally the first thing that's recited to you when you're read your Miranda Rights: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Trump said things and they are being used against him. This isn't "liberal vs. conservative." This is just how the law works.
I'd agree with everything you wrote, but would also add that the colonists saw what mixing government and religion does. The King ran the Church of England which was the official religion of England. If you didn't belong to the Church of England, you were effectively a second-class citizen. Meanwhile, the King could change the rules of the religion to suit his whims. If he decided that the whole "Lent" thing was a bother, he could do away with it. If he decided that he wanted to become vegetarian, the religion could outlaw all meat. (Obviously, these are exaggerations to make a point and didn't happen in history that I know of.)
The people who want to remove the "Church-State Separation" keep thinking that this will mean that the Church (by which, they mean THEIR church and not that horrible church down the road that does everything wrong) will influence what the government does. If you remove the separation, though, the influence will flow both ways. I wonder how many of these Church-State Separation opponents would want government officials forming a committee to decide how Baptism should be performed or which prayers should be included in the service.
I grew up riding my bike on the sidewalk - switching to the street only when no sidewalks were available. I think it's technically illegal to ride on the sidewalk where I live now, but I'm not going on a bike ride with my 9 year old son and have him ride on the busy street. It's bad enough when you're in a car and drivers act like idiots. I don't want my son to be there on a bike when some driver decides the text message he just got is more important than watching where he's going.
Clearly, that's from when Jesus took his dad's car for a joyride on the moon. The scamp!
I'm Jewish, not Catholic, but I had a rabbi who would teach about Genesis using it to teach moral lessons. For example, there are actually two "creation of man" stories. In one, man is made in the image of God. In another, he's formed from mud. My rabbi said that we should walk around balancing two contradictory attitudes: The world was created just for us and we're nothing but mud. If we can successfully remain in the center, we'll be good.
Going by this, I'd interpret the Bible (or Torah for my fellow Jews out there) figuratively, not literally. When it says "God did X", there's a lesson to be learned, not a literal telling of history.
Then again, there's also one of my favorite Isaac Asimov stories that covers this.
While I do recommend password managers (I like Password Safe), what if your password is to log into the computer? Then, you can't access your password manager without the password you were going to look up.
What I do is use the same base password and then vary special characters/capitalization. Then, I make a note about the capitalization/special characters used. For example, if my password was "Pass..word.", I'd note "C2L1" for "capital letter, two periods, lower case letter, one period." Nobody looking at my paper would know my password, but if I forgot the specific password, the paper would remind me what it currently is after the latest mandatory password change.
Bah! You elitists with your "facts" and "actual definitions of irony." I'm proposing that we name Alanis Morissette to be in charge of the definition of irony.
Next up: Literally changing the definition of "literally."
Unless I'm listening to music, I have the volume on my phone for media turned off. (I love "watching ads to get free stuff" in games. Launch ad, put the phone down, come back after 20-30 seconds of silence, and claim my free stuff.) If I'm right, would this prevent these ads from broadcasting?
My wife's aunt had breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy. My wife is justifiably freaked out about possibly getting breast cancer. If wearing this special bra once a week for an hour could warn her early on about any possible cancer, she'd be overjoyed. (The earlier you catch any cancer, the better your treatment options.)
Wow. I wouldn't sign that at all if my company tried to force it on me. I've written one book, am working on another one, and have a few other novel/short story ideas I'm going to work on in the future. Not that they're best sellers or anything, but I wouldn't want my company to declare that my books belong to them and not me simply because I was employed by them when I wrote the book. Employment contracts like that should be illegal.
Obviously, what's allowed from company to company varies so check with your manager/HR department. Personally, I try not to work on personal projects during company time. The only exception is writing my novels which I do on my phone (not using company computers) and during my lunch break. I can jot out a quick two to three hundred words while I eat lunch and then my phone goes away and I focus on work-related activities again. Other than that, I strive to avoid working on personal projects during company time or using company resources.
(This doesn't count taking a 5 minute break to make a personal call or look up something I'm personally interested in. I'm talking more "project" level activities like coding a website or writing a book.
And sometimes, these activities can lead to a burst in productivity. If a particular project is wearing me down, a quick talk with a co-worker on a non-work-related subject or checking a news site/Slashdot/etc can let my mind relax. Oftentimes, 5 minutes of this "time wasting activity" can result in me figuring out the problem when spending those 5 minutes working wouldn't have.
My first programming language was a form of Basic (I forget which one) on Apple IIe computers. During middle school, we were instructed to program a slot machine program. Essentially, the assignment was to pull three random array entries and display those. Easy, right? I coded mine, looked up, and everyone was still working. So I decided to add more features. I added in betting with the game repeating until you lost all your money or decided to walk away with your winnings. I looked up and people were still coding. So I added in a loan shark who would lend you money which you had to pay back (with interest) or he'd end your game for you. (I actually had it display that he "took an arm and a leg.") I looked up and FINALLY people were finishing their assignments.
I blew the teacher and my classmates away with what I had made. That SHOULD have been my sign that I needed to go into programming, but it took me until college where I almost failed quantum mechanics as I aced my computer science classes to switch on that light bulb.
To be fair, my current connection is 15Mbps so it's not broadband either. When Spectrum forces me to their plan, I'm supposed to get a speed bump that might take me above broadband levels. When Time Warner Cable was here, they offered actual broadband, but you had to pay a lot more for it. Again, monopoly position = the company will charge you whatever it likes for whatever service is decides to provide and you can take it or go without.
On the flip side, if you remove minimum wage, what's to stop an employer from paying nearly nothing for work that generates the employer more money? If an employee generates $25 an hour in value and the employer pays $0.50 an hour, what would protect the worker? Before you say "they can just change jobs", recognize that you could have an industry "race to the bottom" with salaries. The ones that pay less might make more profits and can gobble up (or force out of business) the ones that pay more.
To give an example, my son recently went to a local museum where he learned about the NYC garment district around the early 1900's. There was no minimum wage or safety regulations so people were worked 15 hours (6am - 9pm) for $3 a week. (That's about $1 an hour in today's money.) If people didn't want to work those hours or asked for more money, they were fired and people who would accept the hours/pay were hired. Every employer in the area paid about the same, so you couldn't just go to another employer. (The lack of safety regulations caused a fire that killed 146 workers.)
Minimum wage laws can help to keep employers from forcing workers to work long hours for little to no pay. They can help keep employees from falling below the poverty line or from having to work three jobs just to make ends meet. They might not be perfect, but doing away with the minimum wage entirely would be disastrous.
The thing is, I'd be all for "let the markets fix it" if the ISP market actually had competition. If I could choose between 12 different comparable ISPs, I could easily vote with my wallet. When I only have one option, though, voting with my wallet doesn't work. The ISP market is broken and this means "let the markets fix it" won't do anything. Government regulations might not fix the market, but they can stem abuses in the short term and possibly even lay the groundwork for competition to sprout up in the longer term.
I've had someone try to tell me that DSL, satellite, and wireless services count as competition for wired Broadband. I currently have Spectrum (Charter, formally Time Warner Cable) at $35 a month - though that's a TWC rate that will likely go away next year and my cost will increase to around $60 a month.
DSL in my area is about 4Mbps for around $40 a month on lines that Verizon wants to get rid of ASAP. Satellite has slow speeds, low caps, and high cost. As for wireless, I use about 500GB a month - mostly in video streaming. Verizon's Unlimited plan would throttle me after 22GB. They have a "data only plan", but that runs about $700 for 100GB of data.
The person I was talking with honestly thought $700 a month was competition for $60 a month. While, technically these are "options", nobody with my usage requirements (video streaming) would take these. This leaves Spectrum as my one and only choice and they know it.
I seriously hope none of them read this and think it's a challenge because they really can mess up a lot of stuff even in two years.