You did see "flying car" on the list in the write-up, did you not? I did not put it there — we've been dreaming about them for decades. My point is, they would've been "here" earlier, had it not been mandatory to finance the surface-roads too.
As for the actual dangers, well, we've come a long way in the surface car's safety too.
There is a significant danger threatening all of these advances. Yes, I'm talking about that old Libertarian canard of government regulation and, even more importantly, the temptation to have the government "pick the winner" in each area. This is dangerous not only because it violates basic freedoms, but also because the picking is done based on the current knowledge and "state of the art" — and I am assuming the sincerely best intentions of everyone involved — and suppresses "disruptive" innovation.
For example, when FDR granted AT&T its monopoly to advance the fine-sounding goal of connecting every American to the phone network, the company was happy to run wires to each house — billing the taxpayers for it. Facing no competition, they did not have to consider wireless telephony... No, I'm not talking about mobile phones of today — or even of the nineties. But the "last mile" problem in remote locales could have been solved by stationary cellular phones in houses with the 1940-ies levels of technology (fixed large antennas, no need for batteries).
Similarly, had we not been forced to dump quite so many billions every year into maintaining surface roads and highways, maybe, the personal flying vehicles would've been here already — while, in the mean time, the intercity traffic (of both people and goods) would've been handled by the rail-roads much more than it is today.
On the other hand, the planet remains largely unsettled — vast expanses of Siberia, Canada, Alaska, American Midwest, Australian Outback, the deserts (think Sahara) and the entire continent of Antarctica all require relatively minor improvements to become "prime" real estate. Plus the ocean floor — if we are replacing human bodies, we can make some fine improvements...
And then come other planets — there is plenty of room for humanity to grow even with the current fertility rates.
Can't do that, if a person's education takes a comparable amount of time as the period during which it can actually be used productively...
Time dilation?
I don't think, you understood my complaint... Today it takes a person 15-20 years to become reasonably well-educated. He can then use this education for another 30-40 years before retiring due to infirmities. Not only his education, but also his valuable experience all die with him... If we could turn those 30-40 years into even mere 60-80, we'd increase the efficiency of humanity tremendously — thus greatly speeding up the rate of scientific advances and quality-of-life improvements. But, if we could go to infinite, we'd become unstoppable...
So, on October 2nd the countries, where it is Ok to block the entire populace from foreign Internet-resources, where "hate speech", "blasphemy", and mocking the president or king are criminal offences — they will all have more say in how the network is operated than before. Yay!
The desire to somehow be alive forever is the 21st century version of religion, the electronic version of "the immortal soul"
I sense your vague disapproval... But consider, how "unnatural" it is for humans to live beyond 40 — which the already existing improvements in medicine, diet, work, government are giving us.
Why can't future improvements extend the lifespan further? If one can have a new heart or kidney implanted already, why not the entire body some time in the (near) future? We have a galaxy to populate — and not just one. Can't do that, if a person's education takes a comparable amount of time as the period during which it can actually be used productively...
No thanks - Nope, nope, nope. My family is already under orders that if I were to become demented, there will be no intervention other than pain killers
To each his own... I, for one, am hoping to some day be able to have my personality "run" inside a computer. And if that computer is some day given a body — mechanical, biological, or hybrid — well, so much the better!
Think: How long does it take you to fill up a new hard disk with random crap until it's just as full as the old one was?
And yet, hardware capacities grow exponentially, whereas the brain's storage demand, though initially very high, remains unchanged from generation to generation.
If the hardware has not caught up yet, it soon will. Exponents are inevitable, if I may try to coin a phrase...
The previous generation defied their elders by having sex. Millennials are doing the opposite thing now — but for the same reasons...
Maybe, humanity was smarter about it in the earlier centuries — when the unmentionables weren't mentioned (as often) in the news and entertainment channels.
There is so much of it now, it must be turning some people off...
he'll have posted some inane reply insisting that he's right and the rest of us are all just delusional hippies who don't like how the "real world" works.
Funny enough, it was RightSaidFred99, not me, who called most of the/. colleagues idiots:-)
Don't forget the unwritten agreements between the cable companies not to expand their services into a competitors region
Such a collusion would be a major violation of the anti-trust laws. Not that I'd expect a President, who plays golf with cable CEOs to seriously prosecute their companies, but still...
There's a reason you basically never see cities with multiple big name cable options.
In my little town Comcast competes with FiOS rather vigorously...
Hence the rules for charter are based on Cable TV Service
The rules effectively prevented other companies from entering the market. There is no justification for them even if those would-be competitors wanted to offer the same Cable TV service.
Internet on the other hand isn't a luxury service it is needed to operate in modern daily life
Broadband Internet is a luxury — dial-up speeds are perfectly sufficient for job-search and e-mailing one's resume. But this is distinction without difference — why should one company running low-voltage cables to each house be treated differently from another company running low-voltage cables to each house?
And if you say — as you already did — the difference can be legitimately based on the contents of what runs through those cables, I'll pull out the "net neutrality" club and knock you over the head with it.
Cable TV companies are some of the worst to deal with.
Of course. The solution, though, is a removal of the regulations and requirements — however "common sense" they may appear.
Is there another kind? I mean, outside the classroom?
Of course. It is too bad, the US is slowly sliding down on the ease of doing business measures. It was not always that way, and it can get better again. One hopes...
The reason our choice of communication-providers is so limited aren't the companies — those are as hungry for our dollars as ever — but the local governments.
They've created these barriers over the years and were happy to milk them. Now Google comes along and it is cool and persuasive, so, instead of honestly removing the regulatory burdens for all, they find a way to ease them just for one company.
This is "crony capitalism", which has about as much to do with capitalism, as a guinea pig has to do with pork... Some may even call it Fascism.
Of course, Charter did not mind the situation themselves — for as long as their de-facto monopoly was not threatened. But we — the consumers — kept losing...
the government actually does respond when pushed hard enough
The "hard enough" part is the caveat-emptor to drive a truck through. Meanwhile, switching from one competing product (GM, Toyota or Coke, Pepsi or Domino's, Papa Gino) or service to another takes little or no effort.
The "single payer" you and yours call for eliminates competition between service-providers in yet another area — and the already cited Veterans Affairs outrage is what awaits all of us, should you succeed.
nearly 1,600 square miles of land around Chernobyl has radiation levels too high for human health
The irreparable damage is already done, but the other three reactors at the station are in perfectly fine order. In fact, they continued to operate for 14 years — and were shut down for reasons political rather than technical.
Instead of sending thousands of people to install solar panels in the vast dangerously polluted lands, it would be far more sensible — and cheaper too — to reactivate the reactors already there.
One way or the other, it is most unlikely the reason is some deliberate action by WhatsApp or evidence of its collaboration with police.
Interestingly, DBase and Clipper weren't deleting records in DBF-files either — only marking them as deleted... But, hey, every new generation of programmers thinks, those before them were mostly morons and never encountered the "unique" problems they are facing.
Instead of charging the lowest available price, "AT&T charged the school districts prices for telephone service that were magnitudes higher than many other customers in Florida," the FCC said.
If true, then the school principals and techies in the affected school-districts should be fired.
Whoever approved the bills for payments didn't do their job. They should've asked the question: why is my school billed at a higher rate, than I'm paying at home? But they didn't, because it is not their money and their captive "customers" have no other choice anyway... No wonder, the per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupled since 1960-ies — with no improvement in quality to show for it...
That said, $170K seems like small potatoes. It is the sort of money, AT&T may choose to pay (without admitting guilt) just to save money on lawyers. FCC may have a case, or they may be engaged in malicious prosecution — chances are good, we'll never know.
Not true at all — any Internet-service provider would do. I use two different ones, actually, with 4 different phone numbers. The total monthly cost is about $7 (of which the biggest single part is the "911 fee"). A single phone system handles all the complexity and can route incoming calls to different accounts to different extensions. A problem solved years ago.
My Internet is, incidentally, through Verizon's FiOS, but Comcast cables are going to our neighbors' house from the same pole, which delivers Verizon's fiber to ours. Should FiOS misbehave, I'll switch to Comcast in a jiffy... I wish there were even more options, but so far we are fine...
Slashdot Mirror
You did see "flying car" on the list in the write-up, did you not? I did not put it there — we've been dreaming about them for decades. My point is, they would've been "here" earlier, had it not been mandatory to finance the surface-roads too.
As for the actual dangers, well, we've come a long way in the surface car's safety too.
There is a significant danger threatening all of these advances. Yes, I'm talking about that old Libertarian canard of government regulation and, even more importantly, the temptation to have the government "pick the winner" in each area. This is dangerous not only because it violates basic freedoms, but also because the picking is done based on the current knowledge and "state of the art" — and I am assuming the sincerely best intentions of everyone involved — and suppresses "disruptive" innovation.
For example, when FDR granted AT&T its monopoly to advance the fine-sounding goal of connecting every American to the phone network, the company was happy to run wires to each house — billing the taxpayers for it. Facing no competition, they did not have to consider wireless telephony... No, I'm not talking about mobile phones of today — or even of the nineties. But the "last mile" problem in remote locales could have been solved by stationary cellular phones in houses with the 1940-ies levels of technology (fixed large antennas, no need for batteries).
Similarly, had we not been forced to dump quite so many billions every year into maintaining surface roads and highways, maybe, the personal flying vehicles would've been here already — while, in the mean time, the intercity traffic (of both people and goods) would've been handled by the rail-roads much more than it is today.
Come, come, humanity, probably, already has some such mechanisms built in. For example, many more boys are born during war-time. Also, a better-off society has lower fertility rate, than a poor one — that is, the "need" for new people affects fertility rates.
On the other hand, the planet remains largely unsettled — vast expanses of Siberia, Canada, Alaska, American Midwest, Australian Outback, the deserts (think Sahara) and the entire continent of Antarctica all require relatively minor improvements to become "prime" real estate. Plus the ocean floor — if we are replacing human bodies, we can make some fine improvements...
And then come other planets — there is plenty of room for humanity to grow even with the current fertility rates.
I don't think, you understood my complaint... Today it takes a person 15-20 years to become reasonably well-educated. He can then use this education for another 30-40 years before retiring due to infirmities. Not only his education, but also his valuable experience all die with him... If we could turn those 30-40 years into even mere 60-80, we'd increase the efficiency of humanity tremendously — thus greatly speeding up the rate of scientific advances and quality-of-life improvements. But, if we could go to infinite, we'd become unstoppable...
So, on October 2nd the countries, where it is Ok to block the entire populace from foreign Internet-resources, where "hate speech", "blasphemy", and mocking the president or king are criminal offences — they will all have more say in how the network is operated than before. Yay!
I sense your vague disapproval... But consider, how "unnatural" it is for humans to live beyond 40 — which the already existing improvements in medicine, diet, work, government are giving us.
Why can't future improvements extend the lifespan further? If one can have a new heart or kidney implanted already, why not the entire body some time in the (near) future? We have a galaxy to populate — and not just one. Can't do that, if a person's education takes a comparable amount of time as the period during which it can actually be used productively...
Maybe. Maybe I would. Maybe, I'll "go out" in a body (or one of the bodies) and come back into the virtual reality of mine...
The body does not have to be human, BTW. It could be an interstellar ship, for example...
To each his own... I, for one, am hoping to some day be able to have my personality "run" inside a computer. And if that computer is some day given a body — mechanical, biological, or hybrid — well, so much the better!
And yet, hardware capacities grow exponentially, whereas the brain's storage demand, though initially very high, remains unchanged from generation to generation.
If the hardware has not caught up yet, it soon will. Exponents are inevitable, if I may try to coin a phrase...
That's a good thing, actually. People betting their own monies — assuming the risks and hoping for rewards. That's how Capitalism works.
Government officials with no "skin in the game" deciding, how to spend the monies of the captive taxpayers — that's how you do not want to live.
The previous generation defied their elders by having sex. Millennials are doing the opposite thing now — but for the same reasons...
Maybe, humanity was smarter about it in the earlier centuries — when the unmentionables weren't mentioned (as often) in the news and entertainment channels.
There is so much of it now, it must be turning some people off...
Funny enough, it was RightSaidFred99, not me, who called most of the /. colleagues idiots :-)
That's barely relevant. The point is, most of Slashdot would've been happy if there was...
So you'd use their IMAP-service instead — and stop wasting bandwidth.
How is such a mandate any better than a ban? A free country should have neither...
Such a collusion would be a major violation of the anti-trust laws. Not that I'd expect a President, who plays golf with cable CEOs to seriously prosecute their companies, but still...
In my little town Comcast competes with FiOS rather vigorously...
The rules effectively prevented other companies from entering the market. There is no justification for them even if those would-be competitors wanted to offer the same Cable TV service.
Broadband Internet is a luxury — dial-up speeds are perfectly sufficient for job-search and e-mailing one's resume. But this is distinction without difference — why should one company running low-voltage cables to each house be treated differently from another company running low-voltage cables to each house?
And if you say — as you already did — the difference can be legitimately based on the contents of what runs through those cables, I'll pull out the "net neutrality" club and knock you over the head with it.
Of course. The solution, though, is a removal of the regulations and requirements — however "common sense" they may appear.
Of course. It is too bad, the US is slowly sliding down on the ease of doing business measures. It was not always that way, and it can get better again. One hopes...
The reason our choice of communication-providers is so limited aren't the companies — those are as hungry for our dollars as ever — but the local governments.
They've created these barriers over the years and were happy to milk them. Now Google comes along and it is cool and persuasive, so, instead of honestly removing the regulatory burdens for all, they find a way to ease them just for one company.
This is "crony capitalism", which has about as much to do with capitalism, as a guinea pig has to do with pork... Some may even call it Fascism.
Of course, Charter did not mind the situation themselves — for as long as their de-facto monopoly was not threatened. But we — the consumers — kept losing...
The "hard enough" part is the caveat-emptor to drive a truck through. Meanwhile, switching from one competing product (GM, Toyota or Coke, Pepsi or Domino's, Papa Gino) or service to another takes little or no effort.
The "single payer" you and yours call for eliminates competition between service-providers in yet another area — and the already cited Veterans Affairs outrage is what awaits all of us, should you succeed.
The irreparable damage is already done, but the other three reactors at the station are in perfectly fine order. In fact, they continued to operate for 14 years — and were shut down for reasons political rather than technical.
Instead of sending thousands of people to install solar panels in the vast dangerously polluted lands, it would be far more sensible — and cheaper too — to reactivate the reactors already there.
Good luck.
Meanwhile, haters of Coca-Cola can switch to Pepsi without waiting for elections...
One way or the other, it is most unlikely the reason is some deliberate action by WhatsApp or evidence of its collaboration with police.
Interestingly, DBase and Clipper weren't deleting records in DBF-files either — only marking them as deleted... But, hey, every new generation of programmers thinks, those before them were mostly morons and never encountered the "unique" problems they are facing.
Yey! Veterans Affairs for all!..
If true, then the school principals and techies in the affected school-districts should be fired.
Whoever approved the bills for payments didn't do their job. They should've asked the question: why is my school billed at a higher rate, than I'm paying at home? But they didn't, because it is not their money and their captive "customers" have no other choice anyway... No wonder, the per-pupil costs of public schools quadrupled since 1960-ies — with no improvement in quality to show for it...
That said, $170K seems like small potatoes. It is the sort of money, AT&T may choose to pay (without admitting guilt) just to save money on lawyers. FCC may have a case, or they may be engaged in malicious prosecution — chances are good, we'll never know.
Not true at all — any Internet-service provider would do. I use two different ones, actually, with 4 different phone numbers. The total monthly cost is about $7 (of which the biggest single part is the "911 fee"). A single phone system handles all the complexity and can route incoming calls to different accounts to different extensions. A problem solved years ago.
My Internet is, incidentally, through Verizon's FiOS, but Comcast cables are going to our neighbors' house from the same pole, which delivers Verizon's fiber to ours. Should FiOS misbehave, I'll switch to Comcast in a jiffy... I wish there were even more options, but so far we are fine...