Current employer maybe, but what if you've been ghosting a string of employers? The more employers you ghost, the more likely a prospective employer will contact one of your ghosted employers and ask about you.
Or that new job you're trying to land might try calling your old position and find out you ghosted them when you left. Then the new company will be less likely to hire you.
ISPs will also often serve one house in a zip code and then report that entire zip code as "covered." So your house might be listed as being able to get broadband speeds but in reality nobody in your area code - save for one lucky individual - can get those speeds.
Either that or they'll promise "up to 100mbps" but only actually deliver 10mpbs. They aren't technically breaking their promise because your speeds definitely would go to 100mbps if everything lined up for you perfectly, but you won't ever really see those speeds.
To be fair, this isn't a recent problem. (The format lock in, not the "stored in the cloud and then the cloud shuts down.") I have stories I wrote when I was young, but since I wrote them in MultiMate for DOS, no modern word processor can translate them into something intelligible. I keep the files around just in case, but will likely never get those files back.
Not to mention that I don't want Yet Another Messaging Program that can't talk to all the other messaging programs that I "have" to run to connect with people.
I don't mean plagiarism. That's something else entirely. I mean specifically publishing a version of the work without the author's/artist's consent. For example, I self-published a novel. I own the copyright on it and all money from the sales (after Amazon's Kindle cut) comes to me. I get to decide what price to sell it at, where it's available, what the cover art is, etc.
Now suppose a major publisher discovered my book and loved it. However, instead of offering me a publishing contract, they decided that they're a large publisher and I'm just a small fry so they bought a copy, ripped the text, and made a new version of the book. They then could put it on Amazon and sell it. Suddenly, I'm competing against my own book. I happen to have published my book two years ago, but the big publishing company could do this instantly. And since they're a big publishing company, they can get the book in book stores (something I can't do right now) and earn money from those sales as well as online sales. Even people who thought they were supporting me might be, instead, sending money to a big publisher who wasn't paying me anything.
I could take the big publishing company to court and under the current laws I'd have a strong case. Suppose, however, that we ditched copyright entirely. What would be my recourse? I could sue them but without copyright law to rely on, I wouldn't have much of a case. Without some system in place to protect authors/artists, the big companies would just repackage and resell everything and keep the money for themselves.
Like I said, I don't think copyright should be forever. I'd be perfectly happy keeping copyright on my novel for 14-28 years and then turning it over to the public domain. That would be more than enough time for me. However, without a replacement system in place, abolishing copyright will just help big corporations and hurt artists and authors.
You'll get no argument from me that people who serve their time for non-violent felonies should have their voting rights restored instantly. I might even be able to be convinced for violent felonies as well, but we could take the "easy win" of restoring voting rights to people convicted of non-violent felonies after they've served their time.
The big problem is that, if the music industry gets to write the laws, they'll make it so "we see this IP address" is proof enough of "it was you who uploaded those songs." Having an open router, a hacked computer, or simply a roommate won't be a defense if the RIAA/MPAA get their say.
I'd disagree. With copyright, I can publish a book and be assured that someone else (say, a large publisher) won't just grab the text of my book and sell it without giving me any money. I can also be assured that a potential movie produced from my work would earn me money instead of a studio simply taking the work and making a movie without paying me anything.
The real problem is that the length of copyright protection has been abused horribly. Copyright serves a valuable purpose as a LIMITED monopoly, but large corporations have essentially removed the "limited" portion. (Yes, it's still technically limited in that you can wait for about 95-120 years to use the work, but that's literally a lifetime so it might as well be forever.)
Copyright should be reverted to the 14 year span plus an additional 14 years if you renew the work. I'd even be willing to compromise with the large companies who would suddenly see a huge amount of their work entering the public domain. Everything produced up to the start of the "Original Copyright Term Length Act" would be assumed to be automatically renewed. Furthermore, we would phase it in for old works. Start with everything produced in the 1920's and 1930's that is still under copyright protection. Then, after 3 years, everything from the 1940's. And so on until everything is either Public Domain or covered under the new law. Yes, it would take 27 years to completely catch up, but it would give businesses time to shift their strategies to accommodate the new (old?) laws of the land.
That was my first thought as well. You could have a group of people who have lost their right to vote because they had a P2P program running which accidentally or purposefully shared their music folder out. I'm of the opinion that copyright violations are wrong and should be punished, but definitely not with the level of fines we have today and absolutely not with a felony charge. (It should be something more along the lines of 10 times the market value of the copyrighted piece shared. So if you share a hundred songs which sell for $0.99 each, you'd pay a $990 fine.)
In addition, any political clout that Pence had would have been depleted via association with Trump (who at that point would likely have been impeached or something). He might WANT to strip LGBTQ rights and send women's rights back 50 years, but he wouldn't be able to get the backing to do anything major. If Trump were kicked out today, Pence would basically be a seat warmer in the Oval Office until 2020. (I guarantee he'd face primary threats from other Republicans at that point.)
I have the Moto Z Play and love it. I have a Mod battery that magnetically clips to the phone to provide extra battery life. (The phone uses its battery until it drops to 80%, then uses the mod battery until depleted before depleting the phone battery more.) That mod battery wasn't lasting as long as it used to so I bought a new mod battery. This one not only lasts a long time but can be charged independent of the phone. And the mod batteries can be used with any Moto phone so if I upgrade in the future, I won't need to buy all new mods. The only downside was that it was hard to find a case that fit the phone with the mod on.
It might not be "user replaceable battery", but the mod battery concept is close (and it opens the door to a lot of other cool mods).
I have an Android phone (as do my wife and kids). I believe Android has this same feature. However, for my wife and me, there are instances when we want calls to come in that aren't in our contacts list. (For example, we drop a car off for service and they're calling us back to say it's ready.) I want those calls to come through but want to block any calls that start with the same area code and exchange code as my number. It wouldn't stop all spam calls, but it would be a start.
Google Voice has a feature where you can mark a number as spam. Once you do this, that person, if they call you again, will hear "this number is no longer in service." I wish that this could work for my normal cell phone except that they seem to randomly generate the last four numbers. Perhaps there should be a "block neighborhood numbers not on your contacts list" feature. This would at least limit the scammers to a tiny subset of possible numbers to work with.
We recently got our kids cell phones (the oldest is in high school and was using a flip phone for years, the youngest is starting middle school). Almost instantly they began getting calls from their area code/exchange. I told them to not answer any call coming from a number not on their contact list. Still, it's annoying for them to randomly get these calls or to pick up their phone after school and see that they've missed 5 such calls.
I think the honest police love body cams because they can protect them from false allegations or questioning their judgement once you have the benefit of hindsight. If someone pulls a gun on an officer and the officer fires, the body cam will show that the officer acted properly. The footage can help clear an honest police officer's name.
Now, corrupt police are another story. They hate body cam footage because the footage will show that the guy didn't pull a gun when he was shot, but that a gun was planted on him after he died of his injuries.
I ran a review/rating site over a decade ago. It was the first real website I ever launched and its purpose was to collect reviews and ratings on As Seen On TV products. I had quite a collection of positive and negative reviews on a lot of products. (Including some scary reviews such as multiple claims of chemical burns from a popular hair removal product that was still available last I checked.) Even back then, I'd get a "mysterious" influx of positive reviews for products that all were essentially the same. These all invariably came from the same IP address. Nowadays, I'm sure those astroturfing posts could vary the wording and be run from different IP addresses all to hide the fact that the reviews were faked.
I know some review sites, like Yelp, have underhanded practices, but I don't envy the honest review sites out there. You constantly need to watch out for and take down fake reviews otherwise any real reviews on your site will just look faked as well. That site will always have a special place in my heart as the first website I ever ran, but I definitely don't miss the work that came from running that site.
This is really bad in mobile games. I play a few mobile games and have noticed this happening more and more. One game had an event with premium characters. Pretty standard stuff - you pay the premium currency which you can accrue by watching ads, completing certain in-game actions, or by paying actual money. I'm fine with this part. I buy the ones I want and skip the ones I don't want, mostly using freely earned premium currency. The problem was that one character could only be obtained in premium "chests." These chests had the possibility to give you tokens which, if you got enough of them, would earn you the character. (There was also the chance to get the character outright, but this was such a small chance that you could pretty much ignore it.) Buying enough chests would cost hundreds of dollars of premium currency. Hundreds of dollars for a single character in a mobile game was outrageous. Hundreds of dollars for the possibility of getting it was even worse. (Thankfully, there was a blow back and it looks like the company has stopped doing this in subsequent events.)
My oldest son has an anxiety disorder. I deal with anxiety also, but his was way worse than anything I've ever experienced. It was like his brain thought up the worst case scenario and then assumed that was true. At 5, he'd be unable to sleep because he read an astronomy book and was convinced that there was a super-massive black hole about to destroy Earth. We tried to convince him that the planet was safe, but he wasn't rational at the time. Think about how rational your average person would be if a super-massive black hole actually was going to destroy the planet in a matter of hours. I doubt people would be sitting down calmly discussing the matter. They'd be freaking out and going berserk.
Furthermore, there was little to no warning when one of these anxiety attacks would hit. He'd be fine in a store and then suddenly screaming about some horrible thing that his brain assumed was true. (e.g. We're 2 minutes late for lunch? I'm never going to eat EVER again! PANIC!) It took a lot of work with a doctor to find the right medication to help my son. It doesn't remove the anxiety attacks, but it delays their onset so that we can respond with other supports including teaching him how to deal with them. After all, he can't learn to deal with them if they go from nothing to 200% ANXIETY in a second. If he has time, though, he can remove himself from the situation and use other tactics to prevent a full blown panic attack.
Even with my much-lower level of anxiety, I've been told to "just ignore it" or "just don't be anxious" as if there's a switch that I'm intentionally not flipping in me that turns the anxiety off. People who don't have anxiety don't seem to realize just how horrible an anxiety attack is and how there's really nothing you can do during one except ride it out.
My son's teacher a couple of years ago said his reading comprehension was below grade level. This is a kid who loves books and is not only constantly reading, but loves writing his own stories as well. However, he has a tongue tie which - even though he's had surgery to correct it - still affects his speech. He's slow reading out loud even though he's quick when he reads to himself. The teacher was going by a "use reading aloud to judge reading comprehension" state standard instead of recognizing that my son's poor "reading comprehension" scores were really about poor speaking ability. Once they let him read the passage silently and answer questions about it, they found his reading comprehension scores to be well above grade level.
The same would be true for speaking in public. I'm sure his medical condition might make it tricky for him to do public speaking and a teacher who grades based solely on how well you do speaking in front of a crowd would likely be penalizing him for something that is completely out of his control.
I'm fine with the DMCA system for copyright infringement. That's how it should work. Party A uploads material. Party B contacts Party A's host and says it infringes their copyright. Party A's host sends the notice to Party A. Party A either takes down the material or asserts that they have the right to upload it. At that point, it becomes a battle between Parties A and B. The host is out of it entirely. What the EU seems to want is for the host to automagically know that the content that Party A is uploading is copyrighted and that Party A doesn't have permission to upload it. There's no way to effectively do that.
Article 13, the "upload filter", would force them to check all content uploaded to their sites and remove any copyrighted material
And how are these companies supposed to 1) know that a piece of material is copyrighted and 2) know that the uploader doesn't have the right to upload it?
For example, I wrote and published a novel. The novel is protected by copyright. When writing the novel, I used Google Docs. (It's handy for writing initial drafts wherever I am. I later exported that into a more full fledged word processor for final formatting.) So there's a copy of copyrighted material in my Google Docs account. Should Google remove that since it's copyrighted content? How do they know that I'm the one who wrote it? As far as they know, I just re-typed something from someone else's book and that text on Google Docs is a copyright violation.
Slashdot Mirror
Current employer maybe, but what if you've been ghosting a string of employers? The more employers you ghost, the more likely a prospective employer will contact one of your ghosted employers and ask about you.
Or that new job you're trying to land might try calling your old position and find out you ghosted them when you left. Then the new company will be less likely to hire you.
ISPs will also often serve one house in a zip code and then report that entire zip code as "covered." So your house might be listed as being able to get broadband speeds but in reality nobody in your area code - save for one lucky individual - can get those speeds.
Either that or they'll promise "up to 100mbps" but only actually deliver 10mpbs. They aren't technically breaking their promise because your speeds definitely would go to 100mbps if everything lined up for you perfectly, but you won't ever really see those speeds.
I haven't released anything of mine into Public Domain, but then again my first novel is only 2 years old. Talk to me again in 12-26 years.
To be fair, this isn't a recent problem. (The format lock in, not the "stored in the cloud and then the cloud shuts down.") I have stories I wrote when I was young, but since I wrote them in MultiMate for DOS, no modern word processor can translate them into something intelligible. I keep the files around just in case, but will likely never get those files back.
Not to mention that I don't want Yet Another Messaging Program that can't talk to all the other messaging programs that I "have" to run to connect with people.
I don't mean plagiarism. That's something else entirely. I mean specifically publishing a version of the work without the author's/artist's consent. For example, I self-published a novel. I own the copyright on it and all money from the sales (after Amazon's Kindle cut) comes to me. I get to decide what price to sell it at, where it's available, what the cover art is, etc.
Now suppose a major publisher discovered my book and loved it. However, instead of offering me a publishing contract, they decided that they're a large publisher and I'm just a small fry so they bought a copy, ripped the text, and made a new version of the book. They then could put it on Amazon and sell it. Suddenly, I'm competing against my own book. I happen to have published my book two years ago, but the big publishing company could do this instantly. And since they're a big publishing company, they can get the book in book stores (something I can't do right now) and earn money from those sales as well as online sales. Even people who thought they were supporting me might be, instead, sending money to a big publisher who wasn't paying me anything.
I could take the big publishing company to court and under the current laws I'd have a strong case. Suppose, however, that we ditched copyright entirely. What would be my recourse? I could sue them but without copyright law to rely on, I wouldn't have much of a case. Without some system in place to protect authors/artists, the big companies would just repackage and resell everything and keep the money for themselves.
Like I said, I don't think copyright should be forever. I'd be perfectly happy keeping copyright on my novel for 14-28 years and then turning it over to the public domain. That would be more than enough time for me. However, without a replacement system in place, abolishing copyright will just help big corporations and hurt artists and authors.
You'll get no argument from me that people who serve their time for non-violent felonies should have their voting rights restored instantly. I might even be able to be convinced for violent felonies as well, but we could take the "easy win" of restoring voting rights to people convicted of non-violent felonies after they've served their time.
The big problem is that, if the music industry gets to write the laws, they'll make it so "we see this IP address" is proof enough of "it was you who uploaded those songs." Having an open router, a hacked computer, or simply a roommate won't be a defense if the RIAA/MPAA get their say.
I'd disagree. With copyright, I can publish a book and be assured that someone else (say, a large publisher) won't just grab the text of my book and sell it without giving me any money. I can also be assured that a potential movie produced from my work would earn me money instead of a studio simply taking the work and making a movie without paying me anything.
The real problem is that the length of copyright protection has been abused horribly. Copyright serves a valuable purpose as a LIMITED monopoly, but large corporations have essentially removed the "limited" portion. (Yes, it's still technically limited in that you can wait for about 95-120 years to use the work, but that's literally a lifetime so it might as well be forever.)
Copyright should be reverted to the 14 year span plus an additional 14 years if you renew the work. I'd even be willing to compromise with the large companies who would suddenly see a huge amount of their work entering the public domain. Everything produced up to the start of the "Original Copyright Term Length Act" would be assumed to be automatically renewed. Furthermore, we would phase it in for old works. Start with everything produced in the 1920's and 1930's that is still under copyright protection. Then, after 3 years, everything from the 1940's. And so on until everything is either Public Domain or covered under the new law. Yes, it would take 27 years to completely catch up, but it would give businesses time to shift their strategies to accommodate the new (old?) laws of the land.
That was my first thought as well. You could have a group of people who have lost their right to vote because they had a P2P program running which accidentally or purposefully shared their music folder out. I'm of the opinion that copyright violations are wrong and should be punished, but definitely not with the level of fines we have today and absolutely not with a felony charge. (It should be something more along the lines of 10 times the market value of the copyrighted piece shared. So if you share a hundred songs which sell for $0.99 each, you'd pay a $990 fine.)
In addition, any political clout that Pence had would have been depleted via association with Trump (who at that point would likely have been impeached or something). He might WANT to strip LGBTQ rights and send women's rights back 50 years, but he wouldn't be able to get the backing to do anything major. If Trump were kicked out today, Pence would basically be a seat warmer in the Oval Office until 2020. (I guarantee he'd face primary threats from other Republicans at that point.)
I have the Moto Z Play and love it. I have a Mod battery that magnetically clips to the phone to provide extra battery life. (The phone uses its battery until it drops to 80%, then uses the mod battery until depleted before depleting the phone battery more.) That mod battery wasn't lasting as long as it used to so I bought a new mod battery. This one not only lasts a long time but can be charged independent of the phone. And the mod batteries can be used with any Moto phone so if I upgrade in the future, I won't need to buy all new mods. The only downside was that it was hard to find a case that fit the phone with the mod on.
It might not be "user replaceable battery", but the mod battery concept is close (and it opens the door to a lot of other cool mods).
Sony's reply to this.
I have an Android phone (as do my wife and kids). I believe Android has this same feature. However, for my wife and me, there are instances when we want calls to come in that aren't in our contacts list. (For example, we drop a car off for service and they're calling us back to say it's ready.) I want those calls to come through but want to block any calls that start with the same area code and exchange code as my number. It wouldn't stop all spam calls, but it would be a start.
Google Voice has a feature where you can mark a number as spam. Once you do this, that person, if they call you again, will hear "this number is no longer in service." I wish that this could work for my normal cell phone except that they seem to randomly generate the last four numbers. Perhaps there should be a "block neighborhood numbers not on your contacts list" feature. This would at least limit the scammers to a tiny subset of possible numbers to work with.
We recently got our kids cell phones (the oldest is in high school and was using a flip phone for years, the youngest is starting middle school). Almost instantly they began getting calls from their area code/exchange. I told them to not answer any call coming from a number not on their contact list. Still, it's annoying for them to randomly get these calls or to pick up their phone after school and see that they've missed 5 such calls.
I think the honest police love body cams because they can protect them from false allegations or questioning their judgement once you have the benefit of hindsight. If someone pulls a gun on an officer and the officer fires, the body cam will show that the officer acted properly. The footage can help clear an honest police officer's name.
Now, corrupt police are another story. They hate body cam footage because the footage will show that the guy didn't pull a gun when he was shot, but that a gun was planted on him after he died of his injuries.
I ran a review/rating site over a decade ago. It was the first real website I ever launched and its purpose was to collect reviews and ratings on As Seen On TV products. I had quite a collection of positive and negative reviews on a lot of products. (Including some scary reviews such as multiple claims of chemical burns from a popular hair removal product that was still available last I checked.) Even back then, I'd get a "mysterious" influx of positive reviews for products that all were essentially the same. These all invariably came from the same IP address. Nowadays, I'm sure those astroturfing posts could vary the wording and be run from different IP addresses all to hide the fact that the reviews were faked.
I know some review sites, like Yelp, have underhanded practices, but I don't envy the honest review sites out there. You constantly need to watch out for and take down fake reviews otherwise any real reviews on your site will just look faked as well. That site will always have a special place in my heart as the first website I ever ran, but I definitely don't miss the work that came from running that site.
Then we might need someone to fight them. Perhaps some sort of predator.
This is really bad in mobile games. I play a few mobile games and have noticed this happening more and more. One game had an event with premium characters. Pretty standard stuff - you pay the premium currency which you can accrue by watching ads, completing certain in-game actions, or by paying actual money. I'm fine with this part. I buy the ones I want and skip the ones I don't want, mostly using freely earned premium currency. The problem was that one character could only be obtained in premium "chests." These chests had the possibility to give you tokens which, if you got enough of them, would earn you the character. (There was also the chance to get the character outright, but this was such a small chance that you could pretty much ignore it.) Buying enough chests would cost hundreds of dollars of premium currency. Hundreds of dollars for a single character in a mobile game was outrageous. Hundreds of dollars for the possibility of getting it was even worse. (Thankfully, there was a blow back and it looks like the company has stopped doing this in subsequent events.)
My oldest son has an anxiety disorder. I deal with anxiety also, but his was way worse than anything I've ever experienced. It was like his brain thought up the worst case scenario and then assumed that was true. At 5, he'd be unable to sleep because he read an astronomy book and was convinced that there was a super-massive black hole about to destroy Earth. We tried to convince him that the planet was safe, but he wasn't rational at the time. Think about how rational your average person would be if a super-massive black hole actually was going to destroy the planet in a matter of hours. I doubt people would be sitting down calmly discussing the matter. They'd be freaking out and going berserk.
Furthermore, there was little to no warning when one of these anxiety attacks would hit. He'd be fine in a store and then suddenly screaming about some horrible thing that his brain assumed was true. (e.g. We're 2 minutes late for lunch? I'm never going to eat EVER again! PANIC!) It took a lot of work with a doctor to find the right medication to help my son. It doesn't remove the anxiety attacks, but it delays their onset so that we can respond with other supports including teaching him how to deal with them. After all, he can't learn to deal with them if they go from nothing to 200% ANXIETY in a second. If he has time, though, he can remove himself from the situation and use other tactics to prevent a full blown panic attack.
Even with my much-lower level of anxiety, I've been told to "just ignore it" or "just don't be anxious" as if there's a switch that I'm intentionally not flipping in me that turns the anxiety off. People who don't have anxiety don't seem to realize just how horrible an anxiety attack is and how there's really nothing you can do during one except ride it out.
My son's teacher a couple of years ago said his reading comprehension was below grade level. This is a kid who loves books and is not only constantly reading, but loves writing his own stories as well. However, he has a tongue tie which - even though he's had surgery to correct it - still affects his speech. He's slow reading out loud even though he's quick when he reads to himself. The teacher was going by a "use reading aloud to judge reading comprehension" state standard instead of recognizing that my son's poor "reading comprehension" scores were really about poor speaking ability. Once they let him read the passage silently and answer questions about it, they found his reading comprehension scores to be well above grade level.
The same would be true for speaking in public. I'm sure his medical condition might make it tricky for him to do public speaking and a teacher who grades based solely on how well you do speaking in front of a crowd would likely be penalizing him for something that is completely out of his control.
I'm fine with the DMCA system for copyright infringement. That's how it should work. Party A uploads material. Party B contacts Party A's host and says it infringes their copyright. Party A's host sends the notice to Party A. Party A either takes down the material or asserts that they have the right to upload it. At that point, it becomes a battle between Parties A and B. The host is out of it entirely. What the EU seems to want is for the host to automagically know that the content that Party A is uploading is copyrighted and that Party A doesn't have permission to upload it. There's no way to effectively do that.
And how are these companies supposed to 1) know that a piece of material is copyrighted and 2) know that the uploader doesn't have the right to upload it?
For example, I wrote and published a novel. The novel is protected by copyright. When writing the novel, I used Google Docs. (It's handy for writing initial drafts wherever I am. I later exported that into a more full fledged word processor for final formatting.) So there's a copy of copyrighted material in my Google Docs account. Should Google remove that since it's copyrighted content? How do they know that I'm the one who wrote it? As far as they know, I just re-typed something from someone else's book and that text on Google Docs is a copyright violation.