Plus, once they get a foothold against CD/DVD duplication companies, don't think that the RIAA, MPAA or even the BSA won't call for the law to be expanded to other types of businesses. And once that's well established, how long until homes are fair game?
If the snow knocked your Internet connection offline (perhaps power too) then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the neighbor's Internet/power was knocked out also? And how can you require the student to use a neighbor's computer? Perhaps they don't have any neighbors that they are friendly enough with to do this or who would mind the intrusion of a kid tying up their computer? I know I wouldn't let random neighborhood kids come in my house to use my computers. And, yes, I'm a parent so my kids might even benefit from some kind of "snow day school" system. I just don't see how you can reasonably require this and not take into account Internet/power outages.
WHY NOT JUST DO THE HONEST THING. UPGRADE INFRASTRUCTURE,
Because many of the Internet Service Provider companies also have video (TV) offerings. They see Internet Video (e.g. Netflix) as a threat. After all, why should you pay $60 a month for cable TV plus extra for Showtime, HBO and a dozen other premium channels when Netflix can deliver a better good for much less money? So they *could* improve their infrastructure, but then they risk losing on their video revenues. Instead, they cry about full pipes and put caps on customers with overage charges. Then they sit back, say "Let's see how much of a deal Netflix is now when you rack up $50 a month in overage fees!" and laugh.
Amazon does charge tax in states that they have warehouses. That's not what they are protesting. The problem is that some states are requiring that Amazon charge sales tax even if Amazon has no warehouses or offices in that state. If Amazon has no offices/warehouses in State Y, then what state resources are they using in that state and why should they be forced to charge sales tax in that state?
What government infrastructure does he want for free? Let's focus in on one state, New York. (I happen to live in this state so I know the most about this particular situation.) Classically, you needed a physical presence in a state before the state could charge you tax on your sales. So if I set up shop in New York and sold goods online or via a catalog, I'd have to charge NYS sales tax. If I set up shop in New Jersey, though, and sold my goods the exact same way, I wouldn't have to pay.
Now, Amazon doesn't have any physical presence in the state. No warehouses, employee offices, nothing. As such, they aren't using any government infrastructure. The only time Amazon.com "touches" New York State is via the Internet (paid for on the customer's end by ISP bills and on Amazon's end by their bandwidth bills) or when goods are shipped (shipped via a package delivery service who pays any appropriate NYS taxes). Amazon isn't using any NYS resources for their warehouses or employee offices, though, because none of those are in New York.
What they do have are affiliates. People who put Amazon ads on their websites and get a cut of the sales that are generated. New York decided to redefine "physical presence" to include these affiliates. I happen to be one of these affiliates (though I don't think I'm too biased because it hasn't generated any money for me). I'm not employed by Amazon. My house did not suddenly become an office for Amazon.com. I'm just a glorified ad partner. I run their ads on my site and they pay me for it based on the sales leads generated.
If you claim that affiliates = physical presence then you might as well claim that running any ad in New York State = having a physical presence in NYS. Did Microsoft just run an ad for Windows 7? Time to tax them for their sales. Did Intel run one of their chip ads? Tax them too. A new movie being advertised in theatres? Time to tax the movie studio, production company and any/all companies that worked on the movie regardless of where they might be located.
This kind of action has been tested before in the courts and it has failed. States can't simply tax companies which are completely located outside of the state's borders.
One must respect the precautionary principle and revise the current threshold values; waiting for high levels of scientific and clinical proof can lead to very high health and economic costs, as was the case in the past with asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco.
Translation: Scientific studies haven't supported our position so far so more need to be done until we get one that gives us the results we're looking for. Meanwhile, since we already have decided what the outcome will be, we should go ahead on banning this stuff.
Let's see... what else can we ban because there's no proof it is harmful?
In some ways, it's not as bad with a baby as with an older child. When we went on vacation earlier this year, I was stressed about TSA patdowns. We've talked with our older son (age 7) about inappropriate touching. He knows that nobody but his parents or doctor is allowed to touch him "there." Yet, a TSA patdown might involve some intensive "there" contact. How do you explain this to your child? "Nobody but mommy, daddy, your doctor and a few random TSA agents are allowed to touch you in your private areas"???!!!!
Terrorists could just go to the next mall in kill 1000 people with a bomb. Or they could go to a train station and kill 500 people. They could just go to the next restaurant and kill 50 people.
Or, if they wanted to keep an air travel focus, they could just detonate themselves in the security line of a busy airport. Those expensive explosive detectors won't be worth anything if the terrorist goes boom while waiting on line.
What we really should be doing is just accept terrorists as a threat but not overreacting. We should spend our tax money for real things that are proven to save lives, like improving highways, get more police officers, improving hospitals and health care, invest in more public transportation.
I agree. Real security is needed, of course. And real security would probably cost less than the theater we're getting now. Ditch the expensive explosives detectors and look to how the Israelis do airport security.
Yes a terrorist can hide a bomb in a baby. A terrorist can also surgically insert a bomb into a baby if they wanted to.
What? Terrorists can sugically insert bombs into people? New regulation! All passengers must undergo surgery to make sure no bombs are implanted in their chest cavities. Survivors of the procedure (who aren't found to be carrying surgically implanted bombs) will be allowed to board their flights (provided the Keep Americans Safe Surgery doesn't delay you too much). Those who don't survive will be dumped in bins next to the confiscated shampoo bottles.
Imagine how great this would have been as a student. You could ace all your tests just by writing "God did it" as every answer. Another A+, Johnny? Way to go! Way to fill in those blanks with "God Did It."
Of course, our kids won't actually be learning anything, but isn't school just a complicated babysitting service?
(Sadly, those two views above, while expressed sarcastically by me, are the real views of all too many people.)
Maybe that's one of the things that religion has horribly wrong. Most religions that I know of can grant forgiveness by their higher power(s) (i.e., god or gods) by asking for it. So a religion makes it ok to commit such crimes, because if you honestly ask for forgiveness, then your "sins" will be absolved, and you will live in the glory of the pleasant option of the afterlife.
I can't speak for other religions, but in Judaism there are two types of "sins." The first is Man-God sins. These would involve breaking Shabbat, eating non kosher food (bacon, shrimp, etc), or other actions that go against what God said to do/not do but which don't involve another human being. You can repent and ask for forgiveness for these. Your sins aren't considered to be automatically absolved unless you honestly try to do better.
The second type of sin is Man-Man sins. These would be robbery, murder, adultery and anything else that involves one human being wronging another human being (or wronging more than one human being). With these, you can pray for forgiveness all you want, but it won't do a thing unless you first get forgiveness from the people you wronged. In the case of murder, that's obviously going to be a little tricky. So for small Man-Man sins, you might be forgiven somewhat easily. The larger the Man-Man sin, though, the less likely you are to be forgiven.
Just to address the subject of this thread: Even though I myself am religious, I don't think being religious is a requirement for being moral. There are plenty of immoral people who are religious just as there are plenty of moral people who are athiests (and vice versa).
Fraud alerts are different than credit freezes. Fraud alerts are flags in the system that say "something fishy may or may not be going on with this account, you should check before opening lines of credit." However, actually complying with them is voluntary. Someone can still bypass the fraud alert and ruin your credit.
Security freezes completely lock out new lines of credit from forming. Nobody, not even you, can open up new credit lines until you've thawed your credit. There is no way around this. (Yes, theoretically, ID thief could get your information to unfreeze your credit but the likelihood of that can be reduced greatly by taking simple precautions.)
Just to clarify (after double-checking), you don't always need to spend money to temporarily lift the freeze. If you are a victim of ID theft, then many states will let you freeze/thaw for free. Of course, state laws vary. If your state requires $$$ for temporary thaws, contact your state representatives and demand that they make it free. If enough people do this, we can push back against the credit companies who would love to see roadblocks put in place against people freezing their credit.
On the other hand, the $30 per person (in California) that you spend to freeze your credit is much less than it could cost you in time/money/stress if an ID thief opens a line of credit in your name.
Partly because it is a hassle when you need to thaw your credit. You need to think ahead and contact the appropriate agencies to thaw things out. Of course, it is a much bigger hassle to fix your credit if someone steals your identity. The other part, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, is the credit companies. They *want* you to sign up for credit cards on impulse and they *want* to be able to give your credit information to anyone with a fist full of cash. Freezing your credit keeps this from happening. So even though it is good for you, they try to keep this option from being promoted too much. Instead they promote "Fraud Alerts" which supposedly alert you when someone opens credit lines, but is a voluntary system with no real enforcement.
I agree that it's a moneymaking scheme. I believe, at one time, there was a federal law in the works that would let people freeze their credit for free, but the credit companies "convinced" the politicians that this was a bad idea. After all, if the credit companies seem to think it's their god-given right to sell your credit information to whomever they want, whenever they want and any law that makes it easy for people to say "don't do that" infringes on their "right to profit."
As a victim of Identity Theft, I'd recommend to the people impacted by the Sony debacle (or any other ID breach) to freeze your credit. It costs (in New York, varies in other states) $5 per credit company per person. There are 3 major companies, thus $15 per person. Of course, this fee might be waived if you are a victim of ID theft. Details (and state specific fees) can be found here: http://www.consumersunion.org/campaigns/learn_more/003484indiv.html
Once frozen, nobody can check your credit or open new lines of credit. If you need to allow this action (e.g. because you are buying a car or applying for a job which requires a background check), you can temporarily unfreeze your credit. You can even specify who the temporary unfreeze applies to and for how long. (For example, "Friendly Car Loans can read my credit file from May 6th through May 20th.")
Of course, the credit bureaus don't like you freezing your credit because it means you can't sign up for those "Save 5% on your purchase by opening a credit card with us today" store cards. It also means they can't sell your credit information to other companies. But, honestly, those negatives for them are just more pluses for us.
I think, especially now, people will often use "Bin Laden" instead of "Osama" to keep people from making the Obama-Osama error (either in writing down the name or in people reading the name). Of course, even if it were a last name, calling him "Bin Laden" would make things difficult for others who shared that last name. I know if someone with my last name went on a killing spree, I'd feel uneasy with news reports declaring "Levine murdered 10 today."
Didn't Futurama do this? Zapp Branigan needed to pass a "Lip ID scan" and, as he's passionately kissing the scanner, the computer says "Please, no tongue."
You know someone's going to come out with this: A ChatRoulette-French-Kissing-Over-The-Internet application. You get one of these "IP Tongues", sign up, specify whether you'd rather kiss a male or female (or either one) and suddenly you're kissing random people all over the world. Combine this with a "paid pro" feature where you get to "kiss" your favorite celebrities (read: porn stars) and the company could turn an instant profit.
If anyone makes a million dollars using this idea, just toss me a few thousand as thanks.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, once they get a foothold against CD/DVD duplication companies, don't think that the RIAA, MPAA or even the BSA won't call for the law to be expanded to other types of businesses. And once that's well established, how long until homes are fair game?
If the snow knocked your Internet connection offline (perhaps power too) then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the neighbor's Internet/power was knocked out also? And how can you require the student to use a neighbor's computer? Perhaps they don't have any neighbors that they are friendly enough with to do this or who would mind the intrusion of a kid tying up their computer? I know I wouldn't let random neighborhood kids come in my house to use my computers. And, yes, I'm a parent so my kids might even benefit from some kind of "snow day school" system. I just don't see how you can reasonably require this and not take into account Internet/power outages.
Next all you need to do is direct that backwards time release of energy from the meltdown to cause the meltdown to occur. Closed time loop!
Because many of the Internet Service Provider companies also have video (TV) offerings. They see Internet Video (e.g. Netflix) as a threat. After all, why should you pay $60 a month for cable TV plus extra for Showtime, HBO and a dozen other premium channels when Netflix can deliver a better good for much less money? So they *could* improve their infrastructure, but then they risk losing on their video revenues. Instead, they cry about full pipes and put caps on customers with overage charges. Then they sit back, say "Let's see how much of a deal Netflix is now when you rack up $50 a month in overage fees!" and laugh.
Amazon does charge tax in states that they have warehouses. That's not what they are protesting. The problem is that some states are requiring that Amazon charge sales tax even if Amazon has no warehouses or offices in that state. If Amazon has no offices/warehouses in State Y, then what state resources are they using in that state and why should they be forced to charge sales tax in that state?
What government infrastructure does he want for free? Let's focus in on one state, New York. (I happen to live in this state so I know the most about this particular situation.) Classically, you needed a physical presence in a state before the state could charge you tax on your sales. So if I set up shop in New York and sold goods online or via a catalog, I'd have to charge NYS sales tax. If I set up shop in New Jersey, though, and sold my goods the exact same way, I wouldn't have to pay.
Now, Amazon doesn't have any physical presence in the state. No warehouses, employee offices, nothing. As such, they aren't using any government infrastructure. The only time Amazon.com "touches" New York State is via the Internet (paid for on the customer's end by ISP bills and on Amazon's end by their bandwidth bills) or when goods are shipped (shipped via a package delivery service who pays any appropriate NYS taxes). Amazon isn't using any NYS resources for their warehouses or employee offices, though, because none of those are in New York.
What they do have are affiliates. People who put Amazon ads on their websites and get a cut of the sales that are generated. New York decided to redefine "physical presence" to include these affiliates. I happen to be one of these affiliates (though I don't think I'm too biased because it hasn't generated any money for me). I'm not employed by Amazon. My house did not suddenly become an office for Amazon.com. I'm just a glorified ad partner. I run their ads on my site and they pay me for it based on the sales leads generated.
If you claim that affiliates = physical presence then you might as well claim that running any ad in New York State = having a physical presence in NYS. Did Microsoft just run an ad for Windows 7? Time to tax them for their sales. Did Intel run one of their chip ads? Tax them too. A new movie being advertised in theatres? Time to tax the movie studio, production company and any/all companies that worked on the movie regardless of where they might be located.
This kind of action has been tested before in the courts and it has failed. States can't simply tax companies which are completely located outside of the state's borders.
Translation: Scientific studies haven't supported our position so far so more need to be done until we get one that gives us the results we're looking for. Meanwhile, since we already have decided what the outcome will be, we should go ahead on banning this stuff.
Let's see... what else can we ban because there's no proof it is harmful?
That didn't work. We need a bigger "woosh" to turn off the Sun. Fusion reactors are slightly harder to blow out than birthday cake candles. ;-)
Well, they are kind of noodley.
In some ways, it's not as bad with a baby as with an older child. When we went on vacation earlier this year, I was stressed about TSA patdowns. We've talked with our older son (age 7) about inappropriate touching. He knows that nobody but his parents or doctor is allowed to touch him "there." Yet, a TSA patdown might involve some intensive "there" contact. How do you explain this to your child? "Nobody but mommy, daddy, your doctor and a few random TSA agents are allowed to touch you in your private areas"???!!!!
Or, if they wanted to keep an air travel focus, they could just detonate themselves in the security line of a busy airport. Those expensive explosive detectors won't be worth anything if the terrorist goes boom while waiting on line.
I agree. Real security is needed, of course. And real security would probably cost less than the theater we're getting now. Ditch the expensive explosives detectors and look to how the Israelis do airport security.
Sanity coming out of Texas laws? Surely this is one of the signs of the apocalypse!
What? Terrorists can sugically insert bombs into people? New regulation! All passengers must undergo surgery to make sure no bombs are implanted in their chest cavities. Survivors of the procedure (who aren't found to be carrying surgically implanted bombs) will be allowed to board their flights (provided the Keep Americans Safe Surgery doesn't delay you too much). Those who don't survive will be dumped in bins next to the confiscated shampoo bottles.
I tried looking up some, but couldn't find anything. You might try searching Experian's Canandian website or something.
Imagine how great this would have been as a student. You could ace all your tests just by writing "God did it" as every answer. Another A+, Johnny? Way to go! Way to fill in those blanks with "God Did It."
Of course, our kids won't actually be learning anything, but isn't school just a complicated babysitting service?
(Sadly, those two views above, while expressed sarcastically by me, are the real views of all too many people.)
No, he evolved from some sort of flightless manicotti.
I can't speak for other religions, but in Judaism there are two types of "sins." The first is Man-God sins. These would involve breaking Shabbat, eating non kosher food (bacon, shrimp, etc), or other actions that go against what God said to do/not do but which don't involve another human being. You can repent and ask for forgiveness for these. Your sins aren't considered to be automatically absolved unless you honestly try to do better.
The second type of sin is Man-Man sins. These would be robbery, murder, adultery and anything else that involves one human being wronging another human being (or wronging more than one human being). With these, you can pray for forgiveness all you want, but it won't do a thing unless you first get forgiveness from the people you wronged. In the case of murder, that's obviously going to be a little tricky. So for small Man-Man sins, you might be forgiven somewhat easily. The larger the Man-Man sin, though, the less likely you are to be forgiven.
Just to address the subject of this thread: Even though I myself am religious, I don't think being religious is a requirement for being moral. There are plenty of immoral people who are religious just as there are plenty of moral people who are athiests (and vice versa).
Fraud alerts are different than credit freezes. Fraud alerts are flags in the system that say "something fishy may or may not be going on with this account, you should check before opening lines of credit." However, actually complying with them is voluntary. Someone can still bypass the fraud alert and ruin your credit.
Security freezes completely lock out new lines of credit from forming. Nobody, not even you, can open up new credit lines until you've thawed your credit. There is no way around this. (Yes, theoretically, ID thief could get your information to unfreeze your credit but the likelihood of that can be reduced greatly by taking simple precautions.)
Just to clarify (after double-checking), you don't always need to spend money to temporarily lift the freeze. If you are a victim of ID theft, then many states will let you freeze/thaw for free. Of course, state laws vary. If your state requires $$$ for temporary thaws, contact your state representatives and demand that they make it free. If enough people do this, we can push back against the credit companies who would love to see roadblocks put in place against people freezing their credit.
On the other hand, the $30 per person (in California) that you spend to freeze your credit is much less than it could cost you in time/money/stress if an ID thief opens a line of credit in your name.
Partly because it is a hassle when you need to thaw your credit. You need to think ahead and contact the appropriate agencies to thaw things out. Of course, it is a much bigger hassle to fix your credit if someone steals your identity. The other part, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, is the credit companies. They *want* you to sign up for credit cards on impulse and they *want* to be able to give your credit information to anyone with a fist full of cash. Freezing your credit keeps this from happening. So even though it is good for you, they try to keep this option from being promoted too much. Instead they promote "Fraud Alerts" which supposedly alert you when someone opens credit lines, but is a voluntary system with no real enforcement.
I agree that it's a moneymaking scheme. I believe, at one time, there was a federal law in the works that would let people freeze their credit for free, but the credit companies "convinced" the politicians that this was a bad idea. After all, if the credit companies seem to think it's their god-given right to sell your credit information to whomever they want, whenever they want and any law that makes it easy for people to say "don't do that" infringes on their "right to profit."
As a victim of Identity Theft, I'd recommend to the people impacted by the Sony debacle (or any other ID breach) to freeze your credit. It costs (in New York, varies in other states) $5 per credit company per person. There are 3 major companies, thus $15 per person. Of course, this fee might be waived if you are a victim of ID theft. Details (and state specific fees) can be found here: http://www.consumersunion.org/campaigns/learn_more/003484indiv.html
Once frozen, nobody can check your credit or open new lines of credit. If you need to allow this action (e.g. because you are buying a car or applying for a job which requires a background check), you can temporarily unfreeze your credit. You can even specify who the temporary unfreeze applies to and for how long. (For example, "Friendly Car Loans can read my credit file from May 6th through May 20th.")
Of course, the credit bureaus don't like you freezing your credit because it means you can't sign up for those "Save 5% on your purchase by opening a credit card with us today" store cards. It also means they can't sell your credit information to other companies. But, honestly, those negatives for them are just more pluses for us.
I think, especially now, people will often use "Bin Laden" instead of "Osama" to keep people from making the Obama-Osama error (either in writing down the name or in people reading the name). Of course, even if it were a last name, calling him "Bin Laden" would make things difficult for others who shared that last name. I know if someone with my last name went on a killing spree, I'd feel uneasy with news reports declaring "Levine murdered 10 today."
Didn't Futurama do this? Zapp Branigan needed to pass a "Lip ID scan" and, as he's passionately kissing the scanner, the computer says "Please, no tongue."
You know someone's going to come out with this: A ChatRoulette-French-Kissing-Over-The-Internet application. You get one of these "IP Tongues", sign up, specify whether you'd rather kiss a male or female (or either one) and suddenly you're kissing random people all over the world. Combine this with a "paid pro" feature where you get to "kiss" your favorite celebrities (read: porn stars) and the company could turn an instant profit.
If anyone makes a million dollars using this idea, just toss me a few thousand as thanks. ;-)