I went to Buffalo, NY to visit family recently and a restaurant we went to tried encouraging people to put away their phones and talk. Instead of installing a Faraday cage, though, they put a basket (of the type they serve bread in) on the table. Everyone's phones went in and stayed there. If we kept our phones there during the entire meal, we got 10% off our check. (We kept our phones there and had fun taking "mental photos" of the kids instead of cell phone photos.)
I much prefer this system. It gives you an incentive to keep from looking at your phone without actively blocking your phone from being used. In case of an emergency, your phone is right there for you to use, but most times it'll just stay in the basket until after dinner is over.
I totally agree that it stinks that they don't have more content to stream. Unfortunately, a lot of media companies look at Netflix and think "If we give them our stuff, they'll put it online, and it'll be PIRATED!!!!" The fact of the matter is that it'll likely be pirated anyway, but if it's on Netflix, there's less of an incentive to pirate the movie. If you're Joe Consumer, are you going to load BitTorrent, find a torrent, weed through the misnamed entries and the "I took this with a handheld camera at the movie theater while crunching on popcorn" listings, and risk being sued or downloading a virus just to view a movie? Or are you going to load up Netflix, hit play, and watch your movie in the highest quality your Internet speed will allow? Netflix is the media company's best weapon against piracy but they're treating the service like the enemy instead of a strong ally.
Not to mention, where would the line be drawn? A video of two people having sex? Definitely porn. Well, unless it's in a movie and the sex is simulated. But what if the simulated sex looks extremely real?
And what if it's not a video? Is an image a naked woman porn? What about a drawing? What about a story without images that goes into graphic detail?
Finally, how would Trump pull this off? If someone in another country films them having consensual sex and uploads the video, how will Trump prevent people in the US from viewing it? Like many of his positions, he has a basic summary in place ("ban porn!" "Build a wall!") but no details.
seems to be in no hurry to learn any of these things.
Trump himself has said that he will make decisions in the Oval Office based on "what he knows beforehand" and "his common sense" not based on pulling enough information from people who know better than he does. In fact, he also claimed that he knows more about the Iraq War than the generals who were in charge of it. Even setting my policy disagreements with him aside, the idea of a President who would make decisions based on the first thing that pops into their head instead of based on getting all of the available information is scary - no matter what party they belong to.
As a counter-point, I've worked with companies who contacted my wife and I because they wanted to use a photo we posted for an ad campaign of theirs. We agreed, they paid us (not a lot of money, but a decent amount for one image), and everyone walked away happy. It makes it all the more infuriating when you realize just how easy it is to do the right thing and credit/pay photographers for their work. It's sheer laziness coupled with a "we won't get caught and if we do we'll lawyer our way out" attitude that leads to companies thinking that they can abuse others' copyrights - often while complaining about how people abuse their copyrights.
Where's the line between individual and company as far as the IOC is concerned? If I tweet something from my personal Twitter account is that ok? What if it's associated with a website that I make money off of?
The New York Times isn't a governmental agency or a Presidential candidate. Those are held to different standards than the media. And the New York Times didn't call on foreign hackers to instigate an attack on a government server to get material - they published the results of the hack. Legally grey? Probably, but it could be argued that this falls under the leeway that is given to the media to help keep government honest. An active Presidential candidate calling upon a foreign power to target his opponent by attacking federal government computer systems, though? That's much, much worse.
I'm not sure if this rises to "treason" levels of bad, but it's certainly very bad.
This is one of the most dangerous things about Trump. He says a ton of things. His supporters filter out the things they don't like and just say "Oh, he was joking. He doesn't really believe that." You can pick and choose from Trump's statements and pretty much build your ideal candidate no matter what your political views if you're right of center. However, the stuff that gets ignored as "That's just Trump being Trump" isn't throwaway material. It's a pattern of reckless speech at best and advocating some really scary proposals at worst.
He's also said he wants to change libel laws so that he can sue reporters who say bad things about him - even if those things are true. So if President Trump would have his way, press reporting on him negatively could first get their credentials revoked and then wind up being sued into oblivion. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if, after the election if he wins it, he declares that criticizing the President was grounds to be tried for treason.
I like streaming for content that I only plan on watching once or twice. For example, the latest episode of a TV series that I like. I don't need to buy the entire season of every TV show on DVD/Blu-Ray and then have it sit on my shelf collecting dust after watching it once. I'll just stream it. However, if there's a movie I really like, I'll buy the DVD/Blu-Ray so I can watch it over and over whenever I want.
Man, 10 years ago, Netflix used to actually be good.
You do realize that Netflix only introduced their streaming service in 2007 (9 years ago), right? Before then, you would manage a list of DVD titles and Netflix would mail them to you as they became available. They still offer this service if you'd prefer DVDs to streaming.
The difference here is that nobody needs to get permission to rent DVDs. If you go to your local Walmart and buy every DVD on the shelf, you could then rent them to anyone you want for any price they're willing to pay. The media companies can't stop you from doing this. So Netflix was able to rent any DVD that they could buy. They did enter into some deals to get DVDs at reduced prices in exchange for some concessions (delaying when the DVD would be available to rent), but these were terms that Netflix opted into. The could just as easily have told the media companies "no" and rented DVDs anyway.
When they moved to the realm of streaming, though, Netflix needed to get permission from the media companies for the rights to stream content. They can't just take a DVD/BluRay, rip it, and put it online. Not if they don't want to face multiple lawsuits. Instead, they need to ink deals and many media companies are withholding content because they see "Internet = piracy = we lose money." What they don't realize is that making the content available via Netflix (and similar services) is they best defense against piracy. (Why pirate Random Great Movie if you can just view it on Netflix instead?)
Netflix would put all of the world's TV shows and movies on their service if they could. They just can't afford to pay every media company for every show so they have to make deals where they can and figure out how to manage their costs versus content offered. It's a much different game than their DVDs-by-mail of 10 years ago.
It's a double-edges sword. On one hand, social media means that an establishment that controls the news media (e.g. the government, big corporations, etc) can be bypassed to get the truth out. On the other hand, it can be used to spread falsehoods around the world even faster.
Social media (like anything on the Internet - or pretty much any other source of information) isn't total garbage which should be junked but neither is it a savior to be trusted all the time.
Hasn't it been shown that you can take a fingerprint left by someone (say, on their phone) and use it to fool a fingerprint scanner? If someone can do this, they are, in essence, stealing your fingerprint. And once someone has that, good luck changing your "password."
As you said, for the "Moon Landing Was A Hoax" theory to be true, NASA and the US Government would have had to silence thousands of people who worked on the project, the Russians who were our bitter enemies and who we were trying to one-up for putting a man in orbit, and thousands of amateurs listening in. Also, this silencing and cover-up would have to be both: 1) So iron-clad perfect that it eluded the detection of thousands of people over the decades and 2) So full of holes that a guy sitting in his basement looking at a video on his computer monitor could spot the forgery. Meanwhile, the conspiracy itself would need to be both so effective that they could keep all of these thousands of people who "knew the truth" silent for all of these years (through everything that the world has gone through in the past 40+ years) and so incompetent that they can't stop hoaxers from blurting out "the truth" all over the place.
This is the standard plot-hole of nearly all conspiracy theories: The conspirators need to be both highly effective and totally bumbling at the same time.
I should have clarified. We cancelled cable TV. Unfortunately, we're stuck with cable for Internet access. Our only other options are DSL (slow and Verizon's looking to ditch it ASAP), mobile (which we use for on-the-go browsing, but isn't good for streaming a household's worth of video), and satellite (slow and expensive with low caps).
Our cable company (Time Warner Cable) hasn't pulled the "Internet Alone costs more than Internet+TV" garbage, but I know that other cable companies (*cough*Comcast*cough*) have. It's all part of their dirty tricks to keep people subscribed to cable TV so they can claim higher subscriber numbers and fend off questions about cord cutting taking off.
Cable news channels do provide news. The problem is that they feel the need to fill up 24 hours with "breaking news coverage" and wind up with 20+ hours of filler (speculation, talking heads, etc) and 3-4 hours of actual news (on a good day). I get the same news content minus the filler from various sources on the Internet in much less time.
News I can get from other sources - either OTA or from the Internet. I don't need 24 hours of "in-depth" news coverage of an event when 20 of those hours are talking heads speculating about things to fill the time.
As for sports, we really don't care about that. Certainly not enough to pay $70+ a month for it.
We actually have an OTA antenna as well so we can get our local stations. My wife uses it but my kids and I don't use it much. About the only thing I miss from the cable days is the DVR but with on-demand streaming I don't need it as much.
When we cancelled our cable, they wanted to raise what I was paying from $87 (for cable TV + Internet) to $137. I would be getting nothing extra in return. No faster speeds. No additional channels or features. It was just a $50 price hike for the sake of hiking prices. When I asked about the $99 promotional prices they were advertising, I was told those were for new subscribers, not people who had been with them for about 15 years. When I questioned why the price was so high, I was told that it was actually a "$150 value" so I was really getting a "great deal."
We canceled cable and now we're paying $35 for Internet plus $10 a month for Hulu. (We were already subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime pre-cord-cutting and would have kept those either way so those really didn't factor in.) After factoring in buying more DVDs and VOD content (from Amazon or Google), I figure that we were saving around $70 a month. After a year of cutting cable, our former cable company announced the usual round of large price hikes so we're saving even more now.
I won't eat a bacon cheeseburger because it's not Kosher. Does this mark me as being a "Muslim supporting Sharia law"? What if I was a vegetarian or a vegan? Are all of them suddenly considered pro-ISIS because they don't eat beef and bacon?
We actually actively discourage converts. Potential converts must first be turned away three times. If after the third time, they come back again, we know they're serious. Then, they can begin a long journey of study before they can finally convert. Even the conversion, for men at least, can turn back potential converts. While women get it easy (dipping themselves in a ritual pool), men need to get a circumcision. And no saying "it was already done when I was a baby." Some blood needs to be drawn. If you're willing to go through all that, they you're definitely serious about converting and not just looking to switch religions based on some impulse that will change a few weeks later.
From what I've heard, Trump immediately regretted his choice, tried to get out of it, but then realized that he couldn't. When Trump and Pence walked out to make the announcement, they played the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That's an odd choice of music for announcing someone that was high up on your VP list.
Many, if not most, of the communists "rooted out" in the 1950's were political opponents of Joseph McCarthy. He read from an empty list and ruined people's lives by branding them "Communist." The same will happen here if we let it and people won't speak up for fear of being brought before the new House Un-American Activities Committee under suspicion of being pro-ISIS.
And as far as visiting an ISIS website being a felony, take a look at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/j49fjhw.
Without clicking it, does that go to a legitimate news story, a video of kittens playing, an ISIS propaganda website complete with beheading videos, or a discussion forum? There's no way to tell. Someone could easily click that link thinking they are going to a funny video and end up on a pro-ISIS website. Then, if/when the authorities kick down their door, they'll discover pro-ISIS materials in the person's browser cache. (That link goes to this Slashdot story. Or does it? Try clicking it to find out!)
Then there's the possibility of computer infection. What if you're infected with a virus/worm/trojan and it downloads pro-ISIS materials onto your computer without you knowing. Are you to blame? Can you be sent to jail and/or fined for this?
Slashdot Mirror
I went to Buffalo, NY to visit family recently and a restaurant we went to tried encouraging people to put away their phones and talk. Instead of installing a Faraday cage, though, they put a basket (of the type they serve bread in) on the table. Everyone's phones went in and stayed there. If we kept our phones there during the entire meal, we got 10% off our check. (We kept our phones there and had fun taking "mental photos" of the kids instead of cell phone photos.)
I much prefer this system. It gives you an incentive to keep from looking at your phone without actively blocking your phone from being used. In case of an emergency, your phone is right there for you to use, but most times it'll just stay in the basket until after dinner is over.
I totally agree that it stinks that they don't have more content to stream. Unfortunately, a lot of media companies look at Netflix and think "If we give them our stuff, they'll put it online, and it'll be PIRATED!!!!" The fact of the matter is that it'll likely be pirated anyway, but if it's on Netflix, there's less of an incentive to pirate the movie. If you're Joe Consumer, are you going to load BitTorrent, find a torrent, weed through the misnamed entries and the "I took this with a handheld camera at the movie theater while crunching on popcorn" listings, and risk being sued or downloading a virus just to view a movie? Or are you going to load up Netflix, hit play, and watch your movie in the highest quality your Internet speed will allow? Netflix is the media company's best weapon against piracy but they're treating the service like the enemy instead of a strong ally.
Oops. You're right. Though, in my defense Trump has said so many crazy things it's hard to keep track at times.
Not to mention, where would the line be drawn? A video of two people having sex? Definitely porn. Well, unless it's in a movie and the sex is simulated. But what if the simulated sex looks extremely real?
And what if it's not a video? Is an image a naked woman porn? What about a drawing? What about a story without images that goes into graphic detail?
Finally, how would Trump pull this off? If someone in another country films them having consensual sex and uploads the video, how will Trump prevent people in the US from viewing it? Like many of his positions, he has a basic summary in place ("ban porn!" "Build a wall!") but no details.
Trump himself has said that he will make decisions in the Oval Office based on "what he knows beforehand" and "his common sense" not based on pulling enough information from people who know better than he does. In fact, he also claimed that he knows more about the Iraq War than the generals who were in charge of it. Even setting my policy disagreements with him aside, the idea of a President who would make decisions based on the first thing that pops into their head instead of based on getting all of the available information is scary - no matter what party they belong to.
As a counter-point, I've worked with companies who contacted my wife and I because they wanted to use a photo we posted for an ad campaign of theirs. We agreed, they paid us (not a lot of money, but a decent amount for one image), and everyone walked away happy. It makes it all the more infuriating when you realize just how easy it is to do the right thing and credit/pay photographers for their work. It's sheer laziness coupled with a "we won't get caught and if we do we'll lawyer our way out" attitude that leads to companies thinking that they can abuse others' copyrights - often while complaining about how people abuse their copyrights.
Where's the line between individual and company as far as the IOC is concerned? If I tweet something from my personal Twitter account is that ok? What if it's associated with a website that I make money off of?
The New York Times isn't a governmental agency or a Presidential candidate. Those are held to different standards than the media. And the New York Times didn't call on foreign hackers to instigate an attack on a government server to get material - they published the results of the hack. Legally grey? Probably, but it could be argued that this falls under the leeway that is given to the media to help keep government honest. An active Presidential candidate calling upon a foreign power to target his opponent by attacking federal government computer systems, though? That's much, much worse.
I'm not sure if this rises to "treason" levels of bad, but it's certainly very bad.
This is one of the most dangerous things about Trump. He says a ton of things. His supporters filter out the things they don't like and just say "Oh, he was joking. He doesn't really believe that." You can pick and choose from Trump's statements and pretty much build your ideal candidate no matter what your political views if you're right of center. However, the stuff that gets ignored as "That's just Trump being Trump" isn't throwaway material. It's a pattern of reckless speech at best and advocating some really scary proposals at worst.
He's also said he wants to change libel laws so that he can sue reporters who say bad things about him - even if those things are true. So if President Trump would have his way, press reporting on him negatively could first get their credentials revoked and then wind up being sued into oblivion. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if, after the election if he wins it, he declares that criticizing the President was grounds to be tried for treason.
I like streaming for content that I only plan on watching once or twice. For example, the latest episode of a TV series that I like. I don't need to buy the entire season of every TV show on DVD/Blu-Ray and then have it sit on my shelf collecting dust after watching it once. I'll just stream it. However, if there's a movie I really like, I'll buy the DVD/Blu-Ray so I can watch it over and over whenever I want.
You do realize that Netflix only introduced their streaming service in 2007 (9 years ago), right? Before then, you would manage a list of DVD titles and Netflix would mail them to you as they became available. They still offer this service if you'd prefer DVDs to streaming.
The difference here is that nobody needs to get permission to rent DVDs. If you go to your local Walmart and buy every DVD on the shelf, you could then rent them to anyone you want for any price they're willing to pay. The media companies can't stop you from doing this. So Netflix was able to rent any DVD that they could buy. They did enter into some deals to get DVDs at reduced prices in exchange for some concessions (delaying when the DVD would be available to rent), but these were terms that Netflix opted into. The could just as easily have told the media companies "no" and rented DVDs anyway.
When they moved to the realm of streaming, though, Netflix needed to get permission from the media companies for the rights to stream content. They can't just take a DVD/BluRay, rip it, and put it online. Not if they don't want to face multiple lawsuits. Instead, they need to ink deals and many media companies are withholding content because they see "Internet = piracy = we lose money." What they don't realize is that making the content available via Netflix (and similar services) is they best defense against piracy. (Why pirate Random Great Movie if you can just view it on Netflix instead?)
Netflix would put all of the world's TV shows and movies on their service if they could. They just can't afford to pay every media company for every show so they have to make deals where they can and figure out how to manage their costs versus content offered. It's a much different game than their DVDs-by-mail of 10 years ago.
It's a double-edges sword. On one hand, social media means that an establishment that controls the news media (e.g. the government, big corporations, etc) can be bypassed to get the truth out. On the other hand, it can be used to spread falsehoods around the world even faster.
Social media (like anything on the Internet - or pretty much any other source of information) isn't total garbage which should be junked but neither is it a savior to be trusted all the time.
Hasn't it been shown that you can take a fingerprint left by someone (say, on their phone) and use it to fool a fingerprint scanner? If someone can do this, they are, in essence, stealing your fingerprint. And once someone has that, good luck changing your "password."
As you said, for the "Moon Landing Was A Hoax" theory to be true, NASA and the US Government would have had to silence thousands of people who worked on the project, the Russians who were our bitter enemies and who we were trying to one-up for putting a man in orbit, and thousands of amateurs listening in. Also, this silencing and cover-up would have to be both: 1) So iron-clad perfect that it eluded the detection of thousands of people over the decades and 2) So full of holes that a guy sitting in his basement looking at a video on his computer monitor could spot the forgery. Meanwhile, the conspiracy itself would need to be both so effective that they could keep all of these thousands of people who "knew the truth" silent for all of these years (through everything that the world has gone through in the past 40+ years) and so incompetent that they can't stop hoaxers from blurting out "the truth" all over the place.
This is the standard plot-hole of nearly all conspiracy theories: The conspirators need to be both highly effective and totally bumbling at the same time.
I should have clarified. We cancelled cable TV. Unfortunately, we're stuck with cable for Internet access. Our only other options are DSL (slow and Verizon's looking to ditch it ASAP), mobile (which we use for on-the-go browsing, but isn't good for streaming a household's worth of video), and satellite (slow and expensive with low caps).
Our cable company (Time Warner Cable) hasn't pulled the "Internet Alone costs more than Internet+TV" garbage, but I know that other cable companies (*cough*Comcast*cough*) have. It's all part of their dirty tricks to keep people subscribed to cable TV so they can claim higher subscriber numbers and fend off questions about cord cutting taking off.
Cable news channels do provide news. The problem is that they feel the need to fill up 24 hours with "breaking news coverage" and wind up with 20+ hours of filler (speculation, talking heads, etc) and 3-4 hours of actual news (on a good day). I get the same news content minus the filler from various sources on the Internet in much less time.
News I can get from other sources - either OTA or from the Internet. I don't need 24 hours of "in-depth" news coverage of an event when 20 of those hours are talking heads speculating about things to fill the time.
As for sports, we really don't care about that. Certainly not enough to pay $70+ a month for it.
We actually have an OTA antenna as well so we can get our local stations. My wife uses it but my kids and I don't use it much. About the only thing I miss from the cable days is the DVR but with on-demand streaming I don't need it as much.
When we cancelled our cable, they wanted to raise what I was paying from $87 (for cable TV + Internet) to $137. I would be getting nothing extra in return. No faster speeds. No additional channels or features. It was just a $50 price hike for the sake of hiking prices. When I asked about the $99 promotional prices they were advertising, I was told those were for new subscribers, not people who had been with them for about 15 years. When I questioned why the price was so high, I was told that it was actually a "$150 value" so I was really getting a "great deal."
We canceled cable and now we're paying $35 for Internet plus $10 a month for Hulu. (We were already subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime pre-cord-cutting and would have kept those either way so those really didn't factor in.) After factoring in buying more DVDs and VOD content (from Amazon or Google), I figure that we were saving around $70 a month. After a year of cutting cable, our former cable company announced the usual round of large price hikes so we're saving even more now.
I won't eat a bacon cheeseburger because it's not Kosher. Does this mark me as being a "Muslim supporting Sharia law"? What if I was a vegetarian or a vegan? Are all of them suddenly considered pro-ISIS because they don't eat beef and bacon?
We actually actively discourage converts. Potential converts must first be turned away three times. If after the third time, they come back again, we know they're serious. Then, they can begin a long journey of study before they can finally convert. Even the conversion, for men at least, can turn back potential converts. While women get it easy (dipping themselves in a ritual pool), men need to get a circumcision. And no saying "it was already done when I was a baby." Some blood needs to be drawn. If you're willing to go through all that, they you're definitely serious about converting and not just looking to switch religions based on some impulse that will change a few weeks later.
Those standard stories should be written and approved by a government agency to ensure accuracy.
We can call it the Ministry of Truth!
From what I've heard, Trump immediately regretted his choice, tried to get out of it, but then realized that he couldn't. When Trump and Pence walked out to make the announcement, they played the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." That's an odd choice of music for announcing someone that was high up on your VP list.
Many, if not most, of the communists "rooted out" in the 1950's were political opponents of Joseph McCarthy. He read from an empty list and ruined people's lives by branding them "Communist." The same will happen here if we let it and people won't speak up for fear of being brought before the new House Un-American Activities Committee under suspicion of being pro-ISIS.
And as far as visiting an ISIS website being a felony, take a look at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/j49fjhw.
Without clicking it, does that go to a legitimate news story, a video of kittens playing, an ISIS propaganda website complete with beheading videos, or a discussion forum? There's no way to tell. Someone could easily click that link thinking they are going to a funny video and end up on a pro-ISIS website. Then, if/when the authorities kick down their door, they'll discover pro-ISIS materials in the person's browser cache. (That link goes to this Slashdot story. Or does it? Try clicking it to find out!)
Then there's the possibility of computer infection. What if you're infected with a virus/worm/trojan and it downloads pro-ISIS materials onto your computer without you knowing. Are you to blame? Can you be sent to jail and/or fined for this?