It is bad enough that my phone is littered with political robocalls. Do I want those same canned messages reaching my Facebook newsfeed? Every day? NO THANK YOU!
I shut out politics from FB since last year's election, and I don't want it back.
The ONLY 'Constitutional Crisis' has been over the travel restrictions. That is only a crisis because of activist judges. Judges who in even recent times would have been hound (rightly so) from the bench for even suggesting that the President's personal prejudices should have any bearing whatsoever on the plain meaning of the law.
You misspelled "executive order". Executive orders are not laws
You conveniently neglected, like every other citizen who has been brainwashed by the liberal-infiltrated MSM, that established federal law (specifically Title 8, Chapter 12, US Code 1182(f)) grants the authority to the POTUS to suspend the entry of aliens deemed detrimental to the interests of the US.
The specific law reads:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
The activist judges completely ignored this law - which was also quoted in the EO - to justify their flawed judgment. When judges or executives or representatives ignore codified law spelled out in front of them simply because it conflicts with their personal agenda, a constitutional crisis exists.
I support Egypt's move because the muslim extremists have a long history of manipulating the media to lend themselves a false legitimacy. When you tell enough lies, people no longer listen to you. These groups cry "censorship" yet do everything to silence dissenting voices who reveal their deception.
More countries should do the same because these groups simply are no longer trustworthy and are at best a brutal and savage culture.
Terrorists have already used drones as IEDs in the middle east war arena to attack troops and bases. It is well known that they exploit public disclosure to improve their destructive techniques. The US military knows too well that you don't disclose tactics to the enemy. I'm no fan of gun control but drones bent on terrorist objectives are so covert that they should have a "kill" switch, so I find it hard to dispute the government's position of classifying records.
I got so fed up with the last presidential election and fraudulent telemarketers robo-bombing my phone that I preceded my answering greeting message with the Special Information Tone (SIT) tone to trick the auto-dialers into detecting a disconnected phone number and removing my number from the list. I just downloaded the tone into my mobile device and played it into the mic on the answering machine.
This has nothing to do with "strengthening the Facebook community" and everything to do with bringing more customers to advertisers.
I grew very weary of advertising years ago and I use every tool to remind Facebook to leave me alone. Facebook nags me to complete my profile but there are certain things I refuse to put there. Facebook likes to broadcast products and services that my friends "liked" in my feed. Facebook uses my data to target marketing based on my interest and preferences. When those ads disguised as "suggested posts" appear in my feed, I make it a point to mark every single one as spam. The ads stop for a while then re-appear, but this is the longest I have gone without seeing them.
Our department is Measurements & Controls, which develops measurement software that relies heavily on image analysis and advanced math. We have engineers, scientists, and PhDs with software experience developing our systems. Our systems are deployed worldwide and have to work out of the starting gate. Our experience has shown that "programmers" and "computer science" graduates lack the work ethic and math background required to accomplish those goals.
The "engineer" job title applied to a "programmer" is certainly misleading.
Someone needs to explain to me why taxpayer dollars freely go to public transportation systems - highways and airports - while taxpayer dollars for internet services go to private corporations whose only perceived purpose is legalized monopolization.
The cable TV and telecommunication corporations' ultimate goal isn't just eliminating competition, their ultimate goal is absolute ownership of the wires/fiber networks that deliver internet services. That is the key to shutting out or hampering competition. We saw this happen when cable TV providers tightened their iron grip on delivery systems when deregulation reared its ugly head.
I hate the cable and satellite TV providers with a passion, in the last 25 years they have shown they are despicable greedy bastards. They continue to raise prices, restrict program material, and shut out competition who desire to lease their networks. They infiltrate government positions and maintain lobbying services to perpetuate their monopolies. I refused to patronize them and have cut the cable since 2000.
Contrast this with the transportation network. Before the 1950s, many bridges were still privately owned and vehicles had to pay a toll. Likewise with roads that were on private property. These assets were removed from private ownership, which opened the gates to better maintained and patrolled roadways. The public benefits from the arrangement as it permitted freer safer flow of goods and services. Likewise with the airports. Because those arteries are such an essential component to the nation, labor unions are forbidden to initiate any action that could impede them.
Give the $$$ to the cable and telecommunication corporations, and the public gains NOTHING. It is a safe bet that once the networks are established, the corporations will use the "tier" subscription system to restrict high speed internet to the most expensive plans to the consumer. We have seen this already with large telecommunication corporations and with entertainment content with the cable TV corporations. The public taxpayer ultimately LOSES in this deal.
Last year FB was caught red-handed censoringpoliticalnews. They can no longer be trusted with political matters (or any news for that matter) and I have no intention of using any of their political features. What is to stop FB from disabling "town hall" notices from FB members affiliated with the political opposition? The liberals have gone too far in infiltrating news outlets, social media, "fact checkers", and other internet resources as well as rigging the elections. This chicanery must end.
The First Sale Doctrine was a legal ruling to prevent these kinds of restrictions to consumers of products under copyrights and/or trademarks. The basic concept is that once the product is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the product in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. Regarding trademarks, it immunizes resellers from infringement liability as long as the product has not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
But there is no legal precedent to patents. I think a good legal argument can be made that the First Sale Doctrine should apply to lawfully traded goods which are under patent.
Hollywood demands that authors of original works sign one-sided contracts that obligate them to give up their publishing and copyrights in exchange for a cut of the net profits. The problem with "net profits" is that Hollywood uses "Hollywood Accounting" tricks to turn profits into a loss and deprive authors of royalty payments. There's a REASON why established actors demand payment UP FRONT.
Some authors have sought legal relief and won, but the process is prohibitively expensive enough to discourage litigation - and Hollywood knows it. The authors may have had their day in court but they have lost control of their original material forever, as those contracts are sealed in iron-clad concrete that the control freak entertainment industry refuses to give up.
The problem isn't the lack of new ideas. The true problem is that authors have been screwed by Hollywood for so long that they refuse to sell their original works that could be made into a movie or TV show. Hollywood can't find authors willing to sell them new ideas, so they re-hash existing ones in their control into re-makes, sequels, prequels, baby versions, et al all in a formulaic process. Small wonder that there is little original material coming out of Hollywood anymore. How many more damn re-makes of "King Kong" does the world need?
Narrowing the targeted demographic to young females is a bad marketing strategy. Besides radio, television and retail malls had the same target audience - young females who are impulsive buyers and impressionable. Television eventually became saturated with poor program material and the ads became longer and more frequent. That had no appeal to the rest of the demographic and they drove away a large body of viewers. For the last ten years there have been a growing number of viewers who gave up broadcast television and cut the cable. The only time I watch TV is in the hotel room when I am traveling, and it has gotten steadily worse - with the barrage of ads, a 90 minute movie is dragged out to three hours with literally 10 minutes of ads for every ten minutes of program (I timed it).
The same thing happened with retail malls. The only stores and products remaining in them are those that appeal to young female impressionable impulsive buyers. Again the rest of the demographic found little appeal, abandoned retail stores in droves, and major chains (Sears, Macy's, JC Penney) are closing anchor stores around the country.
I abandoned radio ten years ago because the new music no longer appeals to me and the ads were becoming longer and more frequent. There are a lot other people like myself who don't fit the demographic of young impressionable females who have also grown tired of radio. Radio (and television) is no longer about supporting refreshing new art, it is about drawing listeners to advertisers. And those advertisers pressure the marketing department to play music that draws in impulsive buyers. We hear the same brain-dead drivel being rotated over and over and over.
There's a reason why streaming services have blossomed. There's a lot of good program material that isn't getting played on television/radio, and people will go elsewhere to find them.
When I was in college back in the 80s, I took a humanities course that studied the manipulations and deceptions of MSM. Boy were my eyes opened. I learned real fast how to weed out misinformation.
A course like this should be mandatory in grade school. But as long as public schools are under control of the liberals, they won't allow it.
My vocation is listed as "Professional Crash Test Dummy"
My employer is listed as "I work at an office"
I don't even list my location or educational institutions. FB occasionally nags me to update my profile but I ignore them. The less FB knows about me, the better.
The other problem is news outlets reporting only part of the story or not reporting at all through indifference.
Where I live, there are two newspapers. One is blatantly liberal and the other is balanced. Many times I will see the same story or editorial appear in both papers, but the liberal one had omitted some crucial details which altered the context of the story. That is subtle but dangerous.
Then there are the news events that are not getting reported. A good example is the gun control agenda of news outlets. There have been many cases of gun violence (home invasion, attempted mass shooting, etc) that have been thwarted by a good guy with legal possession of a gun. And government and university studies that prove that violent crimes increases in cities/countries with gun control laws (not just the US). The news outlets won't report these stories because it would nullify their gun control agenda.
Have you seen the market prices for used Mac Pros? The last of the "cheese grater" Mac Pros - especially the 12 core models - are trading for serious bucks, almost their original sale price. When Apple released the inferior "new" Mac Pro, the demand for the older systems went up.
Man am I glad I abandoned the Windows world and bought my 12-core Mac Pro back in 2012.
As usual, Hollywood is never at fault and it is someone else's fault...
I'm not a subscriber to Netflix and had been buying DVDs (no BR) the last twelve years.
My buying habit slowed WAY down not because of competing services, but because Hollywood intentionally limited the selection of movies to release on DVDs. I'm not a fan of recent releases and prefer buying older movies. But there are a LOT of good movies that are not getting released on DVD, and the older releases are harder to find. Screw the DVD releases of TV shows. In the twelve years I have been buying DVDs it was not missed that the selection of legacy titles on the store shelves has remained stagnant; I found myself returning to store less frequently because I had found no more titles than what I have already seen before. I'd like to buy more, but there is nothing there.
So now Obama wants to give Trump a going-away present: A shiny new, Vietnam-style, ever-escalating war with Russia, and a public perception that, if he tries to end it, or even keep it from escalating, it's because he's a Russian puppet.
That false perception will never be perpetuated as long as people are reminded that Obama was the initial instigator. Obama was a master of deflection having learned from Saul Alinsky well.
The Real Crisis is that the DNC and their prized candidate were exposed as corrupt. The DNC invented "superdelegates" to the benefit of Clinton. The DNC chairwoman rigged the primary to favor Clinton (she resigned). A DNC insider at CNN provided debate questions in advance to Clinton (she was fired). Clinton had sought to blame a video on Benghazi (she resigned to minimize the political fallout). After too many shady scandals dating back to Watergate, voters rejected the MSM's sheltering of Clinton and refused to elect a crook to the executive branch.
The DNC did that to themselves and they are outraged that their corruption was exposed, so they sought a scapegoat to create a diversion from the Real Crisis. Russia didn't invent superdelegates, didn't rig the primaries, didn't provide debate questions in advance. The Real Crisis is that the DNC is losing their voter base even to minorities. Obama's weaponizing of federal agencies as tools of intimidation and retaliation date back to his Illinois state government chicanery and has damaged diplomatic relations. Voters saw government going in the direction of "Boss" Tweed corruption and they wanted none of it.
Slashdot Mirror
It is bad enough that my phone is littered with political robocalls. Do I want those same canned messages reaching my Facebook newsfeed? Every day? NO THANK YOU!
I shut out politics from FB since last year's election, and I don't want it back.
You conveniently neglected, like every other citizen who has been brainwashed by the liberal-infiltrated MSM, that established federal law (specifically Title 8, Chapter 12, US Code 1182(f)) grants the authority to the POTUS to suspend the entry of aliens deemed detrimental to the interests of the US.
The specific law reads:
The activist judges completely ignored this law - which was also quoted in the EO - to justify their flawed judgment. When judges or executives or representatives ignore codified law spelled out in front of them simply because it conflicts with their personal agenda, a constitutional crisis exists.
I support Egypt's move because the muslim extremists have a long history of manipulating the media to lend themselves a false legitimacy. When you tell enough lies, people no longer listen to you. These groups cry "censorship" yet do everything to silence dissenting voices who reveal their deception.
More countries should do the same because these groups simply are no longer trustworthy and are at best a brutal and savage culture.
Terrorists have already used drones as IEDs in the middle east war arena to attack troops and bases. It is well known that they exploit public disclosure to improve their destructive techniques. The US military knows too well that you don't disclose tactics to the enemy. I'm no fan of gun control but drones bent on terrorist objectives are so covert that they should have a "kill" switch, so I find it hard to dispute the government's position of classifying records.
I got so fed up with the last presidential election and fraudulent telemarketers robo-bombing my phone that I preceded my answering greeting message with the Special Information Tone (SIT) tone to trick the auto-dialers into detecting a disconnected phone number and removing my number from the list. I just downloaded the tone into my mobile device and played it into the mic on the answering machine.
This has nothing to do with "strengthening the Facebook community" and everything to do with bringing more customers to advertisers.
I grew very weary of advertising years ago and I use every tool to remind Facebook to leave me alone. Facebook nags me to complete my profile but there are certain things I refuse to put there. Facebook likes to broadcast products and services that my friends "liked" in my feed. Facebook uses my data to target marketing based on my interest and preferences. When those ads disguised as "suggested posts" appear in my feed, I make it a point to mark every single one as spam. The ads stop for a while then re-appear, but this is the longest I have gone without seeing them.
If its primary OS is a Microsoft OS, that doesn't fit the description of "better" in my book.
Windows was the primary reason why I jumped ship to OSX/MacOS so I'll stick with that OS, thank you very much.
Nobody thought a paperless toilet would become reality, but here it is.
I felt a disturbance in the force, as if a billion teenage girls cried out all at once.
Really - the same Google who manipulated their search engine to bury news that were damaging to the Clinton campaign is now promising to protect us from fake news?
Frankly with Google's record of integrity, I don't trust them to decide for me what is fake news.
Like my Dad who is currently in the nursing home dying from alzheimers.
Our department is Measurements & Controls, which develops measurement software that relies heavily on image analysis and advanced math. We have engineers, scientists, and PhDs with software experience developing our systems. Our systems are deployed worldwide and have to work out of the starting gate. Our experience has shown that "programmers" and "computer science" graduates lack the work ethic and math background required to accomplish those goals.
The "engineer" job title applied to a "programmer" is certainly misleading.
The same is true for Obama when he was POTUS.
Obama didn't do any better.
True for Obama.
True for Obama.
Obama blamed the previous administration too.
And also true for Obama when he was POTUS.
So are we done singling out Trump?
Someone needs to explain to me why taxpayer dollars freely go to public transportation systems - highways and airports - while taxpayer dollars for internet services go to private corporations whose only perceived purpose is legalized monopolization.
The cable TV and telecommunication corporations' ultimate goal isn't just eliminating competition, their ultimate goal is absolute ownership of the wires/fiber networks that deliver internet services. That is the key to shutting out or hampering competition. We saw this happen when cable TV providers tightened their iron grip on delivery systems when deregulation reared its ugly head.
I hate the cable and satellite TV providers with a passion, in the last 25 years they have shown they are despicable greedy bastards. They continue to raise prices, restrict program material, and shut out competition who desire to lease their networks. They infiltrate government positions and maintain lobbying services to perpetuate their monopolies. I refused to patronize them and have cut the cable since 2000.
Contrast this with the transportation network. Before the 1950s, many bridges were still privately owned and vehicles had to pay a toll. Likewise with roads that were on private property. These assets were removed from private ownership, which opened the gates to better maintained and patrolled roadways. The public benefits from the arrangement as it permitted freer safer flow of goods and services. Likewise with the airports. Because those arteries are such an essential component to the nation, labor unions are forbidden to initiate any action that could impede them.
Give the $$$ to the cable and telecommunication corporations, and the public gains NOTHING. It is a safe bet that once the networks are established, the corporations will use the "tier" subscription system to restrict high speed internet to the most expensive plans to the consumer. We have seen this already with large telecommunication corporations and with entertainment content with the cable TV corporations. The public taxpayer ultimately LOSES in this deal.
Last year FB was caught red-handed censoring political news. They can no longer be trusted with political matters (or any news for that matter) and I have no intention of using any of their political features. What is to stop FB from disabling "town hall" notices from FB members affiliated with the political opposition? The liberals have gone too far in infiltrating news outlets, social media, "fact checkers", and other internet resources as well as rigging the elections. This chicanery must end.
The First Sale Doctrine was a legal ruling to prevent these kinds of restrictions to consumers of products under copyrights and/or trademarks. The basic concept is that once the product is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the product in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. Regarding trademarks, it immunizes resellers from infringement liability as long as the product has not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
But there is no legal precedent to patents. I think a good legal argument can be made that the First Sale Doctrine should apply to lawfully traded goods which are under patent.
Hollywood demands that authors of original works sign one-sided contracts that obligate them to give up their publishing and copyrights in exchange for a cut of the net profits. The problem with "net profits" is that Hollywood uses "Hollywood Accounting" tricks to turn profits into a loss and deprive authors of royalty payments. There's a REASON why established actors demand payment UP FRONT.
Some authors have sought legal relief and won, but the process is prohibitively expensive enough to discourage litigation - and Hollywood knows it. The authors may have had their day in court but they have lost control of their original material forever, as those contracts are sealed in iron-clad concrete that the control freak entertainment industry refuses to give up.
The problem isn't the lack of new ideas. The true problem is that authors have been screwed by Hollywood for so long that they refuse to sell their original works that could be made into a movie or TV show. Hollywood can't find authors willing to sell them new ideas, so they re-hash existing ones in their control into re-makes, sequels, prequels, baby versions, et al all in a formulaic process. Small wonder that there is little original material coming out of Hollywood anymore. How many more damn re-makes of "King Kong" does the world need?
Narrowing the targeted demographic to young females is a bad marketing strategy. Besides radio, television and retail malls had the same target audience - young females who are impulsive buyers and impressionable. Television eventually became saturated with poor program material and the ads became longer and more frequent. That had no appeal to the rest of the demographic and they drove away a large body of viewers. For the last ten years there have been a growing number of viewers who gave up broadcast television and cut the cable. The only time I watch TV is in the hotel room when I am traveling, and it has gotten steadily worse - with the barrage of ads, a 90 minute movie is dragged out to three hours with literally 10 minutes of ads for every ten minutes of program (I timed it).
The same thing happened with retail malls. The only stores and products remaining in them are those that appeal to young female impressionable impulsive buyers. Again the rest of the demographic found little appeal, abandoned retail stores in droves, and major chains (Sears, Macy's, JC Penney) are closing anchor stores around the country.
I abandoned radio ten years ago because the new music no longer appeals to me and the ads were becoming longer and more frequent. There are a lot other people like myself who don't fit the demographic of young impressionable females who have also grown tired of radio. Radio (and television) is no longer about supporting refreshing new art, it is about drawing listeners to advertisers. And those advertisers pressure the marketing department to play music that draws in impulsive buyers. We hear the same brain-dead drivel being rotated over and over and over.
There's a reason why streaming services have blossomed. There's a lot of good program material that isn't getting played on television/radio, and people will go elsewhere to find them.
When I was in college back in the 80s, I took a humanities course that studied the manipulations and deceptions of MSM. Boy were my eyes opened. I learned real fast how to weed out misinformation.
A course like this should be mandatory in grade school. But as long as public schools are under control of the liberals, they won't allow it.
My vocation is listed as "Professional Crash Test Dummy"
My employer is listed as "I work at an office"
I don't even list my location or educational institutions. FB occasionally nags me to update my profile but I ignore them. The less FB knows about me, the better.
The other problem is news outlets reporting only part of the story or not reporting at all through indifference.
Where I live, there are two newspapers. One is blatantly liberal and the other is balanced. Many times I will see the same story or editorial appear in both papers, but the liberal one had omitted some crucial details which altered the context of the story. That is subtle but dangerous.
Then there are the news events that are not getting reported. A good example is the gun control agenda of news outlets. There have been many cases of gun violence (home invasion, attempted mass shooting, etc) that have been thwarted by a good guy with legal possession of a gun. And government and university studies that prove that violent crimes increases in cities/countries with gun control laws (not just the US). The news outlets won't report these stories because it would nullify their gun control agenda.
These are just as dangerous as fake news.
Have you seen the market prices for used Mac Pros? The last of the "cheese grater" Mac Pros - especially the 12 core models - are trading for serious bucks, almost their original sale price. When Apple released the inferior "new" Mac Pro, the demand for the older systems went up.
Man am I glad I abandoned the Windows world and bought my 12-core Mac Pro back in 2012.
As usual, Hollywood is never at fault and it is someone else's fault...
I'm not a subscriber to Netflix and had been buying DVDs (no BR) the last twelve years.
My buying habit slowed WAY down not because of competing services, but because Hollywood intentionally limited the selection of movies to release on DVDs. I'm not a fan of recent releases and prefer buying older movies. But there are a LOT of good movies that are not getting released on DVD, and the older releases are harder to find. Screw the DVD releases of TV shows. In the twelve years I have been buying DVDs it was not missed that the selection of legacy titles on the store shelves has remained stagnant; I found myself returning to store less frequently because I had found no more titles than what I have already seen before. I'd like to buy more, but there is nothing there.
And this is the fault of Netflix HOW?
That false perception will never be perpetuated as long as people are reminded that Obama was the initial instigator. Obama was a master of deflection having learned from Saul Alinsky well.
The Real Crisis is that the DNC and their prized candidate were exposed as corrupt. The DNC invented "superdelegates" to the benefit of Clinton. The DNC chairwoman rigged the primary to favor Clinton (she resigned). A DNC insider at CNN provided debate questions in advance to Clinton (she was fired). Clinton had sought to blame a video on Benghazi (she resigned to minimize the political fallout). After too many shady scandals dating back to Watergate, voters rejected the MSM's sheltering of Clinton and refused to elect a crook to the executive branch.
The DNC did that to themselves and they are outraged that their corruption was exposed, so they sought a scapegoat to create a diversion from the Real Crisis. Russia didn't invent superdelegates, didn't rig the primaries, didn't provide debate questions in advance. The Real Crisis is that the DNC is losing their voter base even to minorities. Obama's weaponizing of federal agencies as tools of intimidation and retaliation date back to his Illinois state government chicanery and has damaged diplomatic relations. Voters saw government going in the direction of "Boss" Tweed corruption and they wanted none of it.