My point was that it's harder to switch my local ISP than my search engine. If companies start filtering the Internet, how long until the ISPs get in the game.
As for my "options":
DSL: Verizon will sell me a DSL line that's the same price as my current TWC access, but that's less than half the speed. (And I'm on a relatively slow 15Mbps right now.) They also will require me to get a home phone line which I don't want but would add to the cost.
Satellite: I'll admit that I haven't looked into this much but I just looked up one provider and they were offering up to 12Mbps with a 30GB cap for $149.99. After the 30GB, they'll slow speeds down. Given that my estimated usage is about 70GB a month and that I use Internet video services like Netflix and transfer files often, this would result in me paying more for slower speeds and a lower cap.
4G: This tends to have low caps and overage fees, not to mention costing more for base access. I checked Verizon Wireless and they have a plan that would satisfy my estimated monthly usage. It would cost me $600 a month.
In other words, all of the other "competitors" cost significantly more and/or have highly restrictive caps.
They are immune, now, to being belittled or shocked.
Exactly this. When your group's videos frequently include chopping the heads off of people, I don't think photos of people's genitals (no matter how disgusting they are) will shock them. That's like trying to shock an American man by showing him a "lewd" photo of a lady's ankle.
It's possible to mock groups without being racist. If your mocking implies that all Muslims are ISIS members, then yes you are being offensive about it. However, when people mock the Westboro Baptist Church folks, they don't imply that all Christians are WBC members. It's possible to mock a small subsection of a group without insulting the whole.
Private companies do have one big check on their behavior - competition
This doesn't apply for some companies. My only source for wired, high-speed Internet is Time Warner Cable. Suppose they decided that Slashdot was an extremist group (based on reading the titles and spotting the string "ISIS" in a few articles) and banned access to the website. I wouldn't have the ability to vote with my wallet by going elsewhere. In fact, they could raise my rates due to "increased costs due to website filtering" and I'd actually be forced to pay more for worse service.
Would the suffrage movement or the civil rights movement have been silenced at the time?
Some might respond that ISIS is world's different than Martin Luthor King, Jr., but it's the same general concept. If companies or governments decide what people/groups get to say what online, they'll start with groups like ISIS - which I'm sure we can all agree has violent speech. Then, they'd gradually shift until they get to people who don't post violent stuff but just repugnant stuff. Before long, you'll get banned for posting something that could possible make someone uncomfortable (or that might impact the company's bottom line).
This doesn't mean we need to allow everyone online and can't kick people off, but there has to be a legal process for doing so with checks and balances in place - not just a company policy that can shift any second or a "because the government says so edict" whose target might vary depending on who's in charge of the secret committee.
"With so much of the PDA market, Palm is here to stay."
"With so much of the dial-up market, AOL is here to stay."
"With so much of the phone market, Blackberry is here to stay."
All it takes is one slip-up or one unexpected shift in technology to turn a "here to stay" company into a has-been company. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. might be big and smart enough to survive longer than others, but they don't have a guarantee of sticking around merely because of their size.
Barnett asked how much data law enforcement and intelligence agencies should be able to examine from the likes of child abusers or jihadists.
A call of "Think of the Children!" and "Terrorists!!!". No surprise here. One or both of these almost always get trotted out as the reasons why we need to give up our freedoms. And if we don't support said freedom removals, they begin asking if we're pro-child abuser or pro-terrorist.
I might be able to get behind that visible identification idea. I forget people's names all the time and it'd be nice to just read the name tags that are required for for everyone to wear.
Because they need to name the department with phrasing that makes it seem like it's job is to do something tremendously good while it really has a nefarious purpose. So something like: The Department of Freedom Protection. They "protect" freedom by locking it away where nobody can use it sort of like how a toy collector locks a toy away to keep it in mint condition.
A) We assume it's natural for police to stop by after a kid's spelling mistake. (My 9 year old makes similar mistakes all the time.)
and
B) My first instinct was to praise the department for the "measured" response of not hauling the kid into the station in handcuffs, interrogating him for hours without his parents, and then (when they realize the deep trouble they're in) leaking a story that the kid/family is secretly evil in some way.
This boiling water is feeling much more comfortable. Ribbit!
And they the American Northwest "YallQaeda" folks are being allowed to come and go from the Federal land as they please even after it was found out that they are wrecking havoc on the lands. So you have armed folks taking over Federal lands, ruining them, and they are allowed to come and go without being arrested? Do you really think they would be treated the same way if they were 150 armed black men or 150 armed Muslims?
So it's within the powers of the President to have stores say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays"? I didn't realize that the President controlled the seasonal greetings people use. Silly me, because here I thought Freedom of Speech and Religion kept the government from making rules about this sort of thing.
And the wall is not a trivial project. It would be a huge undertaking 1,900 miles. Cost estimates place building a wall along this border at $49 billion. Then there are staffing and maintenance costs. (The wall's no good if people punch a hole in it or tunnel under it and we don't close those avenues off.) How would he pay for this? And, no, saying "Mexico would pay for it" doesn't solve the issue. Mexico's GDP is $1,282.72 billion. How do you convince them to spend 4% of their GDP on a project to benefit the US? It would be equivalent to telling us that we're going to spend $665 billion on a project that will benefit Canada and not us. How many supporters would we round up for this?
Trump is a master of giving a simplistic answer and convincing people to just assume that he can do it because he's Trump. In other words, despite saying he's not a politician, he's acting like a masterful politician.
Made in the USA is fine, but in today's global economy you can't just assume that the USA can make everything better than every other country. We don't have the supply chain in place to build iPhones. Telling Apple they need to only build them in the USA would mean adding significant cost as Apple tries to build a supply chain that already exists in another country.
The idea that Republicans don't like big government is clearly just a sham, a lie from the candidates to get the voters to vote for them. Republicans love big government when it comes to the military, intervention abroad, medicare, the war on drugs, opposing immigration, and a host of other issues. Maybe some of the individual Republican voters don't like big government, but for the most part they lap it up.
Definitely. There are still some Republicans who honestly believe in small government, but they aren't being listened to by the party. They still cling to the "small government" label and lambaste Democrats as being for big government while all the while promoting big government themselves. Politicians seem to have a natural immunity to cognitive dissonance.
The interesting thing will be if Trump doesn't get the nomination. Will he accept and back the GOP candidate? Or will his ego get in the way and lead him to a third party run (which will all but guarantee a Democrat victory)? Even though I don't like any of the GOP candidates, for their sakes I hope they ditch Trump and he doesn't run 3rd party.
Much as I don't like Trump, this was shown to be not true. The products in question were made by someone not affiliated with Trump's campaign. This person opened a shop where you could buy "Make America Great Again" on shirts and stuff and the company this guy used got their stuff from China. The official Trump campaign merchandise is made in America.
Don't worry, though, there are still plenty of other reasons not to like Trump.
The president doesn't have the authority to do that and even if he did it would be a REALLY stupid idea.
I think this pretty much sums up all of Trump's proposals. See: His declaration that, when he's President, he'll make department stores say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." Does he think he's running for President or God-Emperor?
For someone who claims to not be a politician, Trump is very good as politician-speak - the art of telling people you'll do things with no intentions/plans/ability to follow through on it.
Also, I thought Republicans didn't like the government interfering in business? Wouldn't forcing a company to redo its entire operations just to keep everything in America fall under government interference? How long until people realize that President Trump won't be able to do half the things he claims he'll do?
I know that. The point was that even if we somehow could be convinced that the current government has magically reformed itself and pledged not to use its powers for anything other than good, we can't guarantee that a future government wouldn't slide back into the old misuse of its power for corrupt purposes. Without this assurance, we shouldn't grant the government this ability.
Sadly, the reply from those pushing this stuff would be "But that's so HARD and SLOW! And it requires all this tedious paperwork for approval. We want something that can be done in a second with no red tape to stop us from getting the terrorists." (Translation: Remove all checks and balances, give them tons of power, and just "trust" that they won't abuse it.)
And if any politician says "Well, we'd only use it for good", then (besides not believing a single word they say) I'd ask "what about the next administration? And the one after that? Can you guarantee that they'll only use it for good also? What's to stop them from abusing it?"
Even if we could somehow assume that the government would only use its backdoors for good (an assumption that has no foundation in reality, mind you, but let's run with it for now), then there are still two problems with government backdoors.
First, any government backdoor is going to be a backdoor that criminals use. It's only a matter of time. So even if I were to trust a politician who said "We'll only use this for good", my question would be "and how are you going to stop the criminals who will use your backdoor as well?"
Secondly, even if we assume that the current government is populated by saints, you can't guarantee that the next government will be. Or the one after that. My standard question for those who want to give the government more power is "How would feel if a member of the other party was in charge and used this power?" If the person is a Republican, I would them to imagine President Hillary Clinton with that power. If the person is a Democrat, I ask about President Donald Trump wielding it. If you wouldn't want the opposing party using that power, then the only logical response is to keep the government from having that power entirely.
Evolution will "make use" of anything it can, even and perhaps especially factors that no intelligent designer would ever consider.
Related: What intelligent designer would situate a pleasure/reproduction area through a waste disposal zone?
If there was an intelligent designer, he either had a weird sense of humor or didn't feel like putting in too much effort into his job.... Oh dear lord, God is Wally!
Slashdot Mirror
My point was that it's harder to switch my local ISP than my search engine. If companies start filtering the Internet, how long until the ISPs get in the game.
As for my "options":
DSL: Verizon will sell me a DSL line that's the same price as my current TWC access, but that's less than half the speed. (And I'm on a relatively slow 15Mbps right now.) They also will require me to get a home phone line which I don't want but would add to the cost.
Satellite: I'll admit that I haven't looked into this much but I just looked up one provider and they were offering up to 12Mbps with a 30GB cap for $149.99. After the 30GB, they'll slow speeds down. Given that my estimated usage is about 70GB a month and that I use Internet video services like Netflix and transfer files often, this would result in me paying more for slower speeds and a lower cap.
4G: This tends to have low caps and overage fees, not to mention costing more for base access. I checked Verizon Wireless and they have a plan that would satisfy my estimated monthly usage. It would cost me $600 a month.
In other words, all of the other "competitors" cost significantly more and/or have highly restrictive caps.
Exactly this. When your group's videos frequently include chopping the heads off of people, I don't think photos of people's genitals (no matter how disgusting they are) will shock them. That's like trying to shock an American man by showing him a "lewd" photo of a lady's ankle.
It's possible to mock groups without being racist. If your mocking implies that all Muslims are ISIS members, then yes you are being offensive about it. However, when people mock the Westboro Baptist Church folks, they don't imply that all Christians are WBC members. It's possible to mock a small subsection of a group without insulting the whole.
This doesn't apply for some companies. My only source for wired, high-speed Internet is Time Warner Cable. Suppose they decided that Slashdot was an extremist group (based on reading the titles and spotting the string "ISIS" in a few articles) and banned access to the website. I wouldn't have the ability to vote with my wallet by going elsewhere. In fact, they could raise my rates due to "increased costs due to website filtering" and I'd actually be forced to pay more for worse service.
Some might respond that ISIS is world's different than Martin Luthor King, Jr., but it's the same general concept. If companies or governments decide what people/groups get to say what online, they'll start with groups like ISIS - which I'm sure we can all agree has violent speech. Then, they'd gradually shift until they get to people who don't post violent stuff but just repugnant stuff. Before long, you'll get banned for posting something that could possible make someone uncomfortable (or that might impact the company's bottom line).
This doesn't mean we need to allow everyone online and can't kick people off, but there has to be a legal process for doing so with checks and balances in place - not just a company policy that can shift any second or a "because the government says so edict" whose target might vary depending on who's in charge of the secret committee.
It's been said before:
"With so much of the PDA market, Palm is here to stay."
"With so much of the dial-up market, AOL is here to stay."
"With so much of the phone market, Blackberry is here to stay."
All it takes is one slip-up or one unexpected shift in technology to turn a "here to stay" company into a has-been company. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. might be big and smart enough to survive longer than others, but they don't have a guarantee of sticking around merely because of their size.
A call of "Think of the Children!" and "Terrorists!!!". No surprise here. One or both of these almost always get trotted out as the reasons why we need to give up our freedoms. And if we don't support said freedom removals, they begin asking if we're pro-child abuser or pro-terrorist.
They did teach that lion to eat to tofu, though.
I might be able to get behind that visible identification idea. I forget people's names all the time and it'd be nice to just read the name tags that are required for for everyone to wear.
Because they need to name the department with phrasing that makes it seem like it's job is to do something tremendously good while it really has a nefarious purpose. So something like: The Department of Freedom Protection. They "protect" freedom by locking it away where nobody can use it sort of like how a toy collector locks a toy away to keep it in mint condition.
It's a sad commentary on society when:
A) We assume it's natural for police to stop by after a kid's spelling mistake. (My 9 year old makes similar mistakes all the time.)
and
B) My first instinct was to praise the department for the "measured" response of not hauling the kid into the station in handcuffs, interrogating him for hours without his parents, and then (when they realize the deep trouble they're in) leaking a story that the kid/family is secretly evil in some way.
This boiling water is feeling much more comfortable. Ribbit!
And they the American Northwest "YallQaeda" folks are being allowed to come and go from the Federal land as they please even after it was found out that they are wrecking havoc on the lands. So you have armed folks taking over Federal lands, ruining them, and they are allowed to come and go without being arrested? Do you really think they would be treated the same way if they were 150 armed black men or 150 armed Muslims?
So it's within the powers of the President to have stores say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays"? I didn't realize that the President controlled the seasonal greetings people use. Silly me, because here I thought Freedom of Speech and Religion kept the government from making rules about this sort of thing.
And the wall is not a trivial project. It would be a huge undertaking 1,900 miles. Cost estimates place building a wall along this border at $49 billion. Then there are staffing and maintenance costs. (The wall's no good if people punch a hole in it or tunnel under it and we don't close those avenues off.) How would he pay for this? And, no, saying "Mexico would pay for it" doesn't solve the issue. Mexico's GDP is $1,282.72 billion. How do you convince them to spend 4% of their GDP on a project to benefit the US? It would be equivalent to telling us that we're going to spend $665 billion on a project that will benefit Canada and not us. How many supporters would we round up for this?
Trump is a master of giving a simplistic answer and convincing people to just assume that he can do it because he's Trump. In other words, despite saying he's not a politician, he's acting like a masterful politician.
Made in the USA is fine, but in today's global economy you can't just assume that the USA can make everything better than every other country. We don't have the supply chain in place to build iPhones. Telling Apple they need to only build them in the USA would mean adding significant cost as Apple tries to build a supply chain that already exists in another country.
Definitely. There are still some Republicans who honestly believe in small government, but they aren't being listened to by the party. They still cling to the "small government" label and lambaste Democrats as being for big government while all the while promoting big government themselves. Politicians seem to have a natural immunity to cognitive dissonance.
The interesting thing will be if Trump doesn't get the nomination. Will he accept and back the GOP candidate? Or will his ego get in the way and lead him to a third party run (which will all but guarantee a Democrat victory)? Even though I don't like any of the GOP candidates, for their sakes I hope they ditch Trump and he doesn't run 3rd party.
Much as I don't like Trump, this was shown to be not true. The products in question were made by someone not affiliated with Trump's campaign. This person opened a shop where you could buy "Make America Great Again" on shirts and stuff and the company this guy used got their stuff from China. The official Trump campaign merchandise is made in America.
Don't worry, though, there are still plenty of other reasons not to like Trump.
I think this pretty much sums up all of Trump's proposals. See: His declaration that, when he's President, he'll make department stores say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." Does he think he's running for President or God-Emperor?
For someone who claims to not be a politician, Trump is very good as politician-speak - the art of telling people you'll do things with no intentions/plans/ability to follow through on it.
Also, I thought Republicans didn't like the government interfering in business? Wouldn't forcing a company to redo its entire operations just to keep everything in America fall under government interference? How long until people realize that President Trump won't be able to do half the things he claims he'll do?
I know that. The point was that even if we somehow could be convinced that the current government has magically reformed itself and pledged not to use its powers for anything other than good, we can't guarantee that a future government wouldn't slide back into the old misuse of its power for corrupt purposes. Without this assurance, we shouldn't grant the government this ability.
Liquid waste products - even sterile ones - are still waste products.
Sadly, the reply from those pushing this stuff would be "But that's so HARD and SLOW! And it requires all this tedious paperwork for approval. We want something that can be done in a second with no red tape to stop us from getting the terrorists." (Translation: Remove all checks and balances, give them tons of power, and just "trust" that they won't abuse it.)
And if any politician says "Well, we'd only use it for good", then (besides not believing a single word they say) I'd ask "what about the next administration? And the one after that? Can you guarantee that they'll only use it for good also? What's to stop them from abusing it?"
Even if we could somehow assume that the government would only use its backdoors for good (an assumption that has no foundation in reality, mind you, but let's run with it for now), then there are still two problems with government backdoors.
First, any government backdoor is going to be a backdoor that criminals use. It's only a matter of time. So even if I were to trust a politician who said "We'll only use this for good", my question would be "and how are you going to stop the criminals who will use your backdoor as well?"
Secondly, even if we assume that the current government is populated by saints, you can't guarantee that the next government will be. Or the one after that. My standard question for those who want to give the government more power is "How would feel if a member of the other party was in charge and used this power?" If the person is a Republican, I would them to imagine President Hillary Clinton with that power. If the person is a Democrat, I ask about President Donald Trump wielding it. If you wouldn't want the opposing party using that power, then the only logical response is to keep the government from having that power entirely.
Related: What intelligent designer would situate a pleasure/reproduction area through a waste disposal zone?
If there was an intelligent designer, he either had a weird sense of humor or didn't feel like putting in too much effort into his job.... Oh dear lord, God is Wally!