Same here. I was subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime before cutting the cable cord. When we cut the cord, we subscribed to Hulu as well. I tried out CBS's streaming service but cancelled it before the trial period was over. DC's service sounded interesting, but there's not enough I really want to watch there to justify the price. Disney's service intrigues me, but I'll see if the selection and interface make it worth while. (I might subscribe to it for a month or two at least.) Meanwhile, if I want LATEST BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE, I'll just take out the DVD from my local library. I've also found that I'm watching less and less TV as other things grab my attention. I actually have a backlog of shows I'd like to watch, but always find other things to do that I'm more interested in.
Also, the only reason that the USPS is experiencing financial difficulty is that it is forced to finance pensions far further out than anyone else. This was done by Republicans to intentionally sabotage the USPS and make UPS/FedEx look like viable alternatives.
When I cut cable it was because my cable provider (Time Warner Cable at the time, now Charter) decided that I needed to pay $50 extra a month. For that, I'd get slower Internet speeds and some features that I didn't want or need. I asked for a better deal and was told that this WAS the better deal. They said that worse deal was that I pay hundreds more and me paying $50 more a month was really good. So I cut cable. Now, I save about $80 a month versus what I would be paying had I kept cable. If cable TV isn't giving people a good value for their dollar, they're going to cancel it. It's not some vital service that everyone NEEDS to subscribe to in order to assist everyone else out.
Don't forget that other money maker: Reduce the advertised price of cable TV but more than make up for that with large increases in nonsensical fees that get added to the bill to cover normal business expenses. Expect to see "Office Toilet Paper Fee", ""CEO Wants A Yacht Fee", and "Electricity To Power Our Stores Fee." Also, they should call more of them "taxes" even though they aren't really taxes so that people get mad at the government and not at the cable company.
By me we get LAFF. It shows old shows like Night Court, Third Rock from the Sun, and That 70's Show. Yes, I prefer streaming but when I'm in the mood to turn on live TV and see a random show, LAFF seems to always have something good on.
Remember also that the $5.6 billion is just the first installment. The full wall is expected to cost $25 billion (or more as government projects seem to always run over their funding projections). We could build a giant golden statue of Trump to soothe his ego and spend less money. (Not that I want golden statues of him either.)
I'm sure there's already been tons of lawsuits where the family members can't agree on method of disposal. One family member might be advocating for cremation, another for burial, and a third wants the person taxidermied and propped up on a couch with a beer can in his hand. (Granted, that's weird cousin Eddie making that request. Nobody really listens to him.)
Nature is great, but it's not perfect. Not every improvement can be attempted by nature. Perhaps this new pathway was attempted by natural selection, but the partial pathway (as it wouldn't spring up completely finished in nature) didn't give enough of an improvement to be worthwhile. Or perhaps the partial path had a hidden cost that made it less able to compete. A cost that is overcome by the full pathway, but one that prevented natural selection from going down that road.
Man has been artificially changing plants for thousands of years. Do you think apples looked like they do in the supermarket before man got his hands on them?
I have a Nalgene water bottle that I use. Yes, technically, it's plastic, but I use this bottle and refill it multiple times each day. When it's dirty, it goes in the dishwasher and comes out clean to be used again. Eventually, I'm sure it'll go in the recycling bin, but not before being refilled and reused thousands of times.
One of the problems with getting rid of recycling is that - absent any other action - we'll still be using plastics. So dumping plastics in the ground still means that we're extracting oil to turn into plastic. Plus, plastics tend to find their way into our oceans where they then break down into microscopic particles and enter the food chain. (Not in a "broken down into components" sense, but in an "ingested and poison/kill animals" sense.)
The proper thing to do is use all 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, not just Recycle on its own. First, we need to reduce how much plastic we use. This might mean making bottles out of something other than plastic. Second, we need to reuse. For example, when you get a plastic grocery bag (if you're not using a canvas one), then use it for other purposes instead of just tossing it. Finally, the remaining plastic that is used, should be recycled so that we don't need as much new plastic.
There seems to be too much of a reliance on Recycle and not enough on Reduce and Reuse.
It's one of those things that's constantly billed as a "security question" and before my ID theft I naively thought that it provided some level of security. Basically, if you tried to apply for credit in my name and said my mother's maiden name was "Smith", I thought you'd be denied because that's wrong. Instead, mother's maiden name is pretty much ignored. They might as well ask "What's your favorite food" or "Are you reading any good books right now" for all the security it provides. Yet, they still will ask for mother's maiden name and bill it as a security procedure.
Don't underestimate how little companies might check information before opening a line of credit. When my identity was stolen, the thieves opened a credit card in my name. They had the name, address, SSN, and date of birth right, but the mother's maiden name wasn't even close. This is billed as a "security question," but failing this didn't stop Capital One from opening a card in my name for the identity thieves.
In my case, I found out about it due to a fluke. The thieves paid for rush delivery of the card and THEN changed the address to their own. The rush delivery processed first and the card came to me. Had that processing switched, they would have gotten the card, racked up a ton of debt in my name, and I would have only found out about it when the collections agencies banged down my door telling me to repay what "I" charged.
For the credit card company, dealing with this was as simple as writing it off as fraud and closing the account. For me, it meant dealing with the fallout and freezing my credit permanently (only thawing it when I want to open a new account). Credit Card companies have almost zero incentive to prevent identity theft.
My guess is that whaling in Japan is similar to coal in the US. Both are dying industries that still have enough political clout to get money from the government to prop up their businesses and keep them going long past when they should have died.
WordPress makes it nearly trivial to set up your own website. Many hosts even provide installers so that you just click a button on your control panel and get a WordPress installation. As much as I like WordPress, though, I think part of the problem in replacing Facebook is the "one stop shop" concept. If I want to check on how Bill, Ted, Fred, and George are doing, I can either go to 4 different websites one after another or I can go to Facebook.com and see all of their updates. (Theoretically, that is. Facebook's algorithm tends to hide things but people still "feel" like they're seeing the updates.)
So perhaps a combination of easily created/updated personal sites and RSS could replace Facebook.
To be robots.txt was always more about "don't waste your own resources indexing this" than any kind of privacy mechanism. If they want to ignore that, hey, it's their CPU and storage.
I recently had an application of mine go through a security assessment. We noticed that it was indexed by Google (the front page as the rest is behind a login screen). I said I'd add a "robots.txt" and was told not to. Yes, that will tell Google not to index those files, but it will also tell hackers "something juicy may be here." Robots.txt can be a double-edged sword.
My father used to work extra hours. He'd come home with a stack of papers to go through every night. On weekends, he'd have even more papers to do over Saturday and Sunday. I asked him once why he did this and he said that his boss expected this level of work from him. At the time, I thought "he expects it because you provide it." He wasn't paid overtime or anything. This was him doing work on his time essentially for free.
When I got my current job, I told my then-boss that I wasn't working nights and weekends. I was willing to do so if it was an emergency (critical system goes down and they need me to fix it), but this was going to be the exception, not the rule. I wasn't going to work on projects until midnight every night because they wanted me to put in more hours without paying me for them. There was some push back initially. At the time, one of my job duties was checking a generic company e-mail account (info@companyname.com). I was told that I NEEDED to check this on the weekend in case someone had a medical emergency and e-mailed the account. I replied that anyone who had a medical emergency and e-mailed "info@companyname.com" deserved to wait until Monday morning to get an answer. (Plus, religious restriction prevent me from checking e-mail on Saturday.) They relented and that's how I've worked since then.
The original copyright term, in the US at least, was 14 years. After that, you could renew it for another 14 years. I think that's plenty of time. I published a book two years ago. If I live until I'm 90 (and there are no more copyright extensions), then my novel will fall out of copyright in the year 2135. If my youngest son has a child when he's 30, this grandson of mine will be 100 by the time my novel's copyright expires. I don't think my great-great-grandkids need to profit off a book that I wrote. Having the copyright expire in 2030 (2044 if I renew) is enough.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. As much as I think the package thief SHOULDN'T have a case, the American legal system is messed up. There have been instances of burglers breaking into homes, being injured, and suing the homeowner. This should be a case of "if you are injured in the process of committing an illegal act you have no recourse", but it - at best - turns into legal fees/hassles for the victimized homeowner and - at worst - can result in the homeowner victim needing to pay the thief.
So while I would hope that any reasonable judge would laugh the package thief out of court, I could see a thief winning or at least getting a full trial and costing the guy legal fees.
All this being said, I would love to see a package with a loud speaker system that shouted "PACKAGE THIEF" 30 seconds after it was moved.
It's not always because nobody is home. Some delivery drivers are either too lazy or too overworked to ring a doorbell and wait for an answer. I've been home many times knowing that a package was going to be delivered only to receive a "delivered" text message without a doorbell ringing. I look outside and the package is there, easy prey for a package thief.
Occasionally, I've had things delivered that require signatures. With some delivery companies, this will result in an automatic "sorry we missed you" note on the door and me needing to drive down to the local center to get the package - even if I was home at the time. No ringed doorbell or anything. The driver just prints out a quick "missed you" note and sticks it to the door rather than "waste time" ringing the doorbell and waiting the 1 minute for me to get to the door and sign his pad. (Yes, we've complained and no nothing changed.)
So it's fine for an ISP to disable your Internet until you view an ad that they want you to view? What if it's two or three ads? What if it becomes before any page load and not just at the beginning of a browsing session? What if you're playing an online game and get locked out because the ISP decided that you needed to watch their newest ad and you were busy gaming?
At what point does it go from "it's just a button press so it's okay" to "this is unacceptable !"
Also keep in mind that many ISPs are monopolies in their areas. So your ability to say "I hate all these ads the ISP is forcing me to view so I'm leaving" is highly limited.
One thing you've got to realize about Judaism is that it's massively decentralized. If you wanted a ruling on lab grown meat in Catholicism, it would be easy. The pope (or some bishop under the Pope) gives it the thumbs up and Catholics everywhere grab lab grown steaks in their local supermarkets. With Judaism, though, it's more like thousands of rabbis, each with different opinions and different numbers of people following their rulings. The Conservative and Reform movements are somewhat organized. If their main group says lab grown meat is fine, most of those rabbis will follow this ruling. The Orthodox isn't really a single group, though. There will undoubtedly be Orthodox rabbis that rule for lab grown meat while others rule against it. The debate will go back and forth for years without one clear answer.
To give a different example, look at kitniyot. On Passover, Jews avoid (among other things) leavened bread. Anything that could leaven is also forbidden to the point that many people even use different pots/plates/utensils during Passover. A long time ago, things like corn, rice, and beans were stored in sacks that once held flour. To avoid any cross-contamination, these items - called kitniyot - were banned for Jews from Europe. (Jews from Spain and Africa had a tradition of eating these and still do today.) The reason for this ban has long since disappeared. It would be trivial to buy corn/rice/beans that have never touched flour. However, the kitniyot ban continues due to social momentum more than anything. Some rabbis have said it's okay to eat kitniyot. Others have said to stay away from it. There's no one ruling so, in general, the default ban remains in place.
There are many times when having a decentralized religious system is advantageous, but it also can have its downsides.
As someone who cares about animals being treated ethically and humanely, I hate PETA. Their extremist actions paint everyone who cares about animals in a bad light. If lab grown meat tears PETA to bits, I'll welcome lab grown meat for multiple reasons.
I could see it inheriting the status of the animal it comes from. Right now, the biggest issue with making cheese kosher is the rennet. This is traditionally made from the lining of a calf's stomach. The problem with this, for kashrut purposes, is that you now have rennet derived from a meat-based source mixing with dairy - and mixing milk and meat is a big kosher no-no. (Many cheese makers have gotten around this by using vegetarian friendly rennets like microbial rennet.) So I could see a lab grown steak being considered as the same as the version that comes from an actual cow. There's still the issue of "kosher slaughter" (there are rules on how to kill the animal), but those might be somewhat waived as the "animal" is just a bunch of cells in a lab/processing facility, not an actual animal.
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Same here. I was subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime before cutting the cable cord. When we cut the cord, we subscribed to Hulu as well. I tried out CBS's streaming service but cancelled it before the trial period was over. DC's service sounded interesting, but there's not enough I really want to watch there to justify the price. Disney's service intrigues me, but I'll see if the selection and interface make it worth while. (I might subscribe to it for a month or two at least.) Meanwhile, if I want LATEST BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE, I'll just take out the DVD from my local library. I've also found that I'm watching less and less TV as other things grab my attention. I actually have a backlog of shows I'd like to watch, but always find other things to do that I'm more interested in.
Also, the only reason that the USPS is experiencing financial difficulty is that it is forced to finance pensions far further out than anyone else. This was done by Republicans to intentionally sabotage the USPS and make UPS/FedEx look like viable alternatives.
When I cut cable it was because my cable provider (Time Warner Cable at the time, now Charter) decided that I needed to pay $50 extra a month. For that, I'd get slower Internet speeds and some features that I didn't want or need. I asked for a better deal and was told that this WAS the better deal. They said that worse deal was that I pay hundreds more and me paying $50 more a month was really good. So I cut cable. Now, I save about $80 a month versus what I would be paying had I kept cable. If cable TV isn't giving people a good value for their dollar, they're going to cancel it. It's not some vital service that everyone NEEDS to subscribe to in order to assist everyone else out.
Don't forget that other money maker: Reduce the advertised price of cable TV but more than make up for that with large increases in nonsensical fees that get added to the bill to cover normal business expenses. Expect to see "Office Toilet Paper Fee", ""CEO Wants A Yacht Fee", and "Electricity To Power Our Stores Fee." Also, they should call more of them "taxes" even though they aren't really taxes so that people get mad at the government and not at the cable company.
By me we get LAFF. It shows old shows like Night Court, Third Rock from the Sun, and That 70's Show. Yes, I prefer streaming but when I'm in the mood to turn on live TV and see a random show, LAFF seems to always have something good on.
Remember also that the $5.6 billion is just the first installment. The full wall is expected to cost $25 billion (or more as government projects seem to always run over their funding projections). We could build a giant golden statue of Trump to soothe his ego and spend less money. (Not that I want golden statues of him either.)
I'm sure there's already been tons of lawsuits where the family members can't agree on method of disposal. One family member might be advocating for cremation, another for burial, and a third wants the person taxidermied and propped up on a couch with a beer can in his hand. (Granted, that's weird cousin Eddie making that request. Nobody really listens to him.)
Nature is great, but it's not perfect. Not every improvement can be attempted by nature. Perhaps this new pathway was attempted by natural selection, but the partial pathway (as it wouldn't spring up completely finished in nature) didn't give enough of an improvement to be worthwhile. Or perhaps the partial path had a hidden cost that made it less able to compete. A cost that is overcome by the full pathway, but one that prevented natural selection from going down that road.
Man has been artificially changing plants for thousands of years. Do you think apples looked like they do in the supermarket before man got his hands on them?
I have a Nalgene water bottle that I use. Yes, technically, it's plastic, but I use this bottle and refill it multiple times each day. When it's dirty, it goes in the dishwasher and comes out clean to be used again. Eventually, I'm sure it'll go in the recycling bin, but not before being refilled and reused thousands of times.
One of the problems with getting rid of recycling is that - absent any other action - we'll still be using plastics. So dumping plastics in the ground still means that we're extracting oil to turn into plastic. Plus, plastics tend to find their way into our oceans where they then break down into microscopic particles and enter the food chain. (Not in a "broken down into components" sense, but in an "ingested and poison/kill animals" sense.)
The proper thing to do is use all 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, not just Recycle on its own. First, we need to reduce how much plastic we use. This might mean making bottles out of something other than plastic. Second, we need to reuse. For example, when you get a plastic grocery bag (if you're not using a canvas one), then use it for other purposes instead of just tossing it. Finally, the remaining plastic that is used, should be recycled so that we don't need as much new plastic.
There seems to be too much of a reliance on Recycle and not enough on Reduce and Reuse.
It's one of those things that's constantly billed as a "security question" and before my ID theft I naively thought that it provided some level of security. Basically, if you tried to apply for credit in my name and said my mother's maiden name was "Smith", I thought you'd be denied because that's wrong. Instead, mother's maiden name is pretty much ignored. They might as well ask "What's your favorite food" or "Are you reading any good books right now" for all the security it provides. Yet, they still will ask for mother's maiden name and bill it as a security procedure.
Don't underestimate how little companies might check information before opening a line of credit. When my identity was stolen, the thieves opened a credit card in my name. They had the name, address, SSN, and date of birth right, but the mother's maiden name wasn't even close. This is billed as a "security question," but failing this didn't stop Capital One from opening a card in my name for the identity thieves.
In my case, I found out about it due to a fluke. The thieves paid for rush delivery of the card and THEN changed the address to their own. The rush delivery processed first and the card came to me. Had that processing switched, they would have gotten the card, racked up a ton of debt in my name, and I would have only found out about it when the collections agencies banged down my door telling me to repay what "I" charged.
For the credit card company, dealing with this was as simple as writing it off as fraud and closing the account. For me, it meant dealing with the fallout and freezing my credit permanently (only thawing it when I want to open a new account). Credit Card companies have almost zero incentive to prevent identity theft.
My guess is that whaling in Japan is similar to coal in the US. Both are dying industries that still have enough political clout to get money from the government to prop up their businesses and keep them going long past when they should have died.
WordPress makes it nearly trivial to set up your own website. Many hosts even provide installers so that you just click a button on your control panel and get a WordPress installation. As much as I like WordPress, though, I think part of the problem in replacing Facebook is the "one stop shop" concept. If I want to check on how Bill, Ted, Fred, and George are doing, I can either go to 4 different websites one after another or I can go to Facebook.com and see all of their updates. (Theoretically, that is. Facebook's algorithm tends to hide things but people still "feel" like they're seeing the updates.)
So perhaps a combination of easily created/updated personal sites and RSS could replace Facebook.
I recently had an application of mine go through a security assessment. We noticed that it was indexed by Google (the front page as the rest is behind a login screen). I said I'd add a "robots.txt" and was told not to. Yes, that will tell Google not to index those files, but it will also tell hackers "something juicy may be here." Robots.txt can be a double-edged sword.
When I need to tell people how long I've been making websites, I say "I've been doing this since frames were the hot new thing!"
My father used to work extra hours. He'd come home with a stack of papers to go through every night. On weekends, he'd have even more papers to do over Saturday and Sunday. I asked him once why he did this and he said that his boss expected this level of work from him. At the time, I thought "he expects it because you provide it." He wasn't paid overtime or anything. This was him doing work on his time essentially for free.
When I got my current job, I told my then-boss that I wasn't working nights and weekends. I was willing to do so if it was an emergency (critical system goes down and they need me to fix it), but this was going to be the exception, not the rule. I wasn't going to work on projects until midnight every night because they wanted me to put in more hours without paying me for them. There was some push back initially. At the time, one of my job duties was checking a generic company e-mail account (info@companyname.com). I was told that I NEEDED to check this on the weekend in case someone had a medical emergency and e-mailed the account. I replied that anyone who had a medical emergency and e-mailed "info@companyname.com" deserved to wait until Monday morning to get an answer. (Plus, religious restriction prevent me from checking e-mail on Saturday.) They relented and that's how I've worked since then.
The original copyright term, in the US at least, was 14 years. After that, you could renew it for another 14 years. I think that's plenty of time. I published a book two years ago. If I live until I'm 90 (and there are no more copyright extensions), then my novel will fall out of copyright in the year 2135. If my youngest son has a child when he's 30, this grandson of mine will be 100 by the time my novel's copyright expires. I don't think my great-great-grandkids need to profit off a book that I wrote. Having the copyright expire in 2030 (2044 if I renew) is enough.
The chip beeped too much when it came near, so it's off taking a shower.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. As much as I think the package thief SHOULDN'T have a case, the American legal system is messed up. There have been instances of burglers breaking into homes, being injured, and suing the homeowner. This should be a case of "if you are injured in the process of committing an illegal act you have no recourse", but it - at best - turns into legal fees/hassles for the victimized homeowner and - at worst - can result in the homeowner victim needing to pay the thief.
So while I would hope that any reasonable judge would laugh the package thief out of court, I could see a thief winning or at least getting a full trial and costing the guy legal fees.
All this being said, I would love to see a package with a loud speaker system that shouted "PACKAGE THIEF" 30 seconds after it was moved.
It's not always because nobody is home. Some delivery drivers are either too lazy or too overworked to ring a doorbell and wait for an answer. I've been home many times knowing that a package was going to be delivered only to receive a "delivered" text message without a doorbell ringing. I look outside and the package is there, easy prey for a package thief.
Occasionally, I've had things delivered that require signatures. With some delivery companies, this will result in an automatic "sorry we missed you" note on the door and me needing to drive down to the local center to get the package - even if I was home at the time. No ringed doorbell or anything. The driver just prints out a quick "missed you" note and sticks it to the door rather than "waste time" ringing the doorbell and waiting the 1 minute for me to get to the door and sign his pad. (Yes, we've complained and no nothing changed.)
So it's fine for an ISP to disable your Internet until you view an ad that they want you to view? What if it's two or three ads? What if it becomes before any page load and not just at the beginning of a browsing session? What if you're playing an online game and get locked out because the ISP decided that you needed to watch their newest ad and you were busy gaming?
At what point does it go from "it's just a button press so it's okay" to "this is unacceptable !"
Also keep in mind that many ISPs are monopolies in their areas. So your ability to say "I hate all these ads the ISP is forcing me to view so I'm leaving" is highly limited.
One thing you've got to realize about Judaism is that it's massively decentralized. If you wanted a ruling on lab grown meat in Catholicism, it would be easy. The pope (or some bishop under the Pope) gives it the thumbs up and Catholics everywhere grab lab grown steaks in their local supermarkets. With Judaism, though, it's more like thousands of rabbis, each with different opinions and different numbers of people following their rulings. The Conservative and Reform movements are somewhat organized. If their main group says lab grown meat is fine, most of those rabbis will follow this ruling. The Orthodox isn't really a single group, though. There will undoubtedly be Orthodox rabbis that rule for lab grown meat while others rule against it. The debate will go back and forth for years without one clear answer.
To give a different example, look at kitniyot. On Passover, Jews avoid (among other things) leavened bread. Anything that could leaven is also forbidden to the point that many people even use different pots/plates/utensils during Passover. A long time ago, things like corn, rice, and beans were stored in sacks that once held flour. To avoid any cross-contamination, these items - called kitniyot - were banned for Jews from Europe. (Jews from Spain and Africa had a tradition of eating these and still do today.) The reason for this ban has long since disappeared. It would be trivial to buy corn/rice/beans that have never touched flour. However, the kitniyot ban continues due to social momentum more than anything. Some rabbis have said it's okay to eat kitniyot. Others have said to stay away from it. There's no one ruling so, in general, the default ban remains in place.
There are many times when having a decentralized religious system is advantageous, but it also can have its downsides.
As someone who cares about animals being treated ethically and humanely, I hate PETA. Their extremist actions paint everyone who cares about animals in a bad light. If lab grown meat tears PETA to bits, I'll welcome lab grown meat for multiple reasons.
I could see it inheriting the status of the animal it comes from. Right now, the biggest issue with making cheese kosher is the rennet. This is traditionally made from the lining of a calf's stomach. The problem with this, for kashrut purposes, is that you now have rennet derived from a meat-based source mixing with dairy - and mixing milk and meat is a big kosher no-no. (Many cheese makers have gotten around this by using vegetarian friendly rennets like microbial rennet.) So I could see a lab grown steak being considered as the same as the version that comes from an actual cow. There's still the issue of "kosher slaughter" (there are rules on how to kill the animal), but those might be somewhat waived as the "animal" is just a bunch of cells in a lab/processing facility, not an actual animal.