I'm saying from a LEGAL standpoint it's still pedophilia. When you go to law school you'll be allowed to argue with me over the legal standard. Until then why don't you take your soapbox and go home? I'm standing reiterating reality and you're soapboxing about being able to screw 17 year olds.
Owning pictures of certain things are against the law. They're against the law in the US, Western Europe, Russia, China, India, and for the most part the entire world. The few places that don't have laws against owning child pornography are small and strange. If they used a polaroid camera and passed the picture around like they used to things would be far different but instead in the world of instant distribution an attempt to cap their actions can only be met with a legal reaction. The perpetrator of the crime gets a tiny sentence for the first offense in Florida which is the first place to fix their laws versus other states that will force them on to sex offender lists forever.
Smith wrote a book prior to the Wealth of Nations advocating a better morality for dealings in this world. Smith if anything would have advocated for a harsher fine & perhaps forfeiture of property or profit.
LOL! You think sex with a 16 year old is pedophilia! Hahahahahaha... there's actually another term for that, and they're not "children" but rather "Young Adults." They're not "Pubescent" or "Pre-pubescent" but rather "Adolescent."
No you're an absolute idiot for ignoring what I said. I said that it falls under pedophilia and that we make no distinction. Go talk with an abnormal psychologist and you'll get the same answer. I noted it for the most part is just lecherous but it is still pornographic & since they are deemed children by the law still. But I feel special knowing a moron with the comprehension skills of a civet can misread what I wrote and make an ad hominem attack at a strawman.
Convenient to disregard any such argument that doesn't suit your particular argument. Nothing in that law has anything to do with "save the children" because ultimately the distribution of child pornography is another aspect of the world of pedophilia. I would ask you though where is it sane to believe that even a small sliver of the people charged with pedophilia were framed? I can respect that sadly a certain amount of people will be charged indiscriminately. But comparatively the vast majority have committed their crimes and frankly it makes me question your ethical status.
Ah see now I just committed a similar action. I disagree with your basic ethical position but only in respect to the fact that simply put pedophilia and much of it's tenets relate to stocking the photos.
I had this long and well worded remark that got swallowed up by the/. scripting it seems. To put it quickly pedophilia is traditionally defined by the prepubescence of the victims. Since we as society define minors and adults by the age of 18 and distinctions in puberty are largely subjective all pedophilia falls into this category though it's technically just lecherous. The distribution of photos is part of the criminal statute of pedophilia crimes. If you're asking why pedophilia is a crime I would suggest you refer to your psychological text for a deeper explanation. Victims who help perpetrate their own crimes don't get excused from their own actions.
The "three-strike" system has been removed from this florida law as we know it. The only thing left is if you get caught three individual times which is reason enough to have not done it once.
The "victim" is also the perpetrator just as in drug abuse, drunk driving, along with dozens if not hundreds of other laws. But in this particular case the victim should have known better, they made a conscious decision to photograph themselves nude. On top of that they then distributed it to others. There are multiple steps involved and this new Florida law essentially decriminalized the act but still acts as a deterrent. A punishment of 8 hours of community service and $60 is worse than an entire school seeing it? Or perhaps the student suffering with that photo lasting for the rest of their lives. The goal of this new law is to deter these incidents.
Why is it completely insane? There is NO reason to not consider it a sexual offense under logical reasoning. They took nude photos of a person under the age of 17. They then in turn distributed them. When they reach adulthood they're allowed to do whatever they please with their body. Until then they're children and don't have rights as you seem to insinuate.
The problem with the issue of sexting is that many if not most don't just end up between two consenting partners (they aren't adults so let's not conflate them.) They end up floating around between friends and sometimes schools. In one case it circulated around multiple school districts. So somewhere around 3000 kids were involved in the sexting.
Libertarians argue an inverse protection which tries to negate their need to follow laws. The arguments against sexting follow this approach but fail to account for reality. The argument that they're kids and shouldn't be punished by the law is obtuse. Age and ignorance doesn't excuse one from the law and when Florida actually tried to make a more appropriate law and they are still slandered.
They're often more accurate than you think. Unless Amazon is locking up 10-20 million parts at a time they're probably paying close to market prices for their parts. They're not buying capacity at factories, they're doing production runs. So where Apple has been able to use scale of economics and paying upfront without the cost of interest Amazon is most likely testing the waters and seeing if they can make a big run on these.
Funny how it all devolves down to investors and capital and then this assumption that the vast profits they collect aren't subject to R&D or infrastructure improvements. Also for the record, the vast majority of our cellular traffic gets filtered back into the wired system for cost and efficiency reasons. Expansion of the network to support the traffic isn't as great an issue as the telecoms want everybody to think simply because there is no money in increasing internet data speeds or uncapping the lines. Fundamentally they're trying to figure out how to profit beyond their flat profit intake for being the support network but since there is no value-added profit to be had without tiers and thus creating a have and have not situation that is artificial they are relying on flim-flam to make the cellular tower network seem stressed.
Also, cell towers aren't high-powered compared to electrical substations. The kind of power they draw is no greater than a large box store or a small office building and that is probably a generous estimate. Radio frequencies have no ill effect on life as we know it, microwave frequencies do. Since the towers put out in the regular radio range their actual danger is limited to the occasional bird running into it. In fact if the telecoms shared their towers they would be able to multiply their coverage without expanding their footprint. But that would require recognizing that they're just utilities and thus the tiered plans of service would be called into question.
To tell me how awful and pathetic I am for wanting to get unlimited data on phone plans when the cost of the running the network is miniscule and the path to upgrade is littered with egotistical claims. Seriously, this isn't surprising simply because the telecommunications industry has had such a long-held monopoly they know of no other way to operate. Even now Verizon is attempting to sue the FCC over net neutrality while getting the very thing it requested (freedom to discriminate on the wireless side as ATT is doing now). As it stands the Republicans are trying to pass a bill that would strip the FCC of their regulatory powers which is even worse. I can only hope and pray that 2012 sweeps the republicans out and limits their austerity measures to the already crippled economy and that the FCC re-evaluates their rules and puts wireless internet access in the same boat as wired.
The United States and to a lesser extent the European Union will continue to exert absolute dominance over the internet. If anything has been proven is that the internet is a loose association of cities (hubs) and highways (pathways). Non-English speaking countries essentially don't matter to the English-speaking internet except for Academia and Government reasons and both of those can rely on translation. What we may see occur is attacks on our hubs to try and break down the barriers or shut down our attacks rather than any sort of feudal control over the internet.
In other the words the future lays in whether or not China or Russia want to slap the English-speaking behemoth or whether we will quietly let them control the flow of free speech in their sphere of influence. If the past decade is any indication we're probably heading down the former rather than the latter as China gets more assertive and has to deal with a burgeoning middle-class that seeks outside information. Materialism can only quell the masses so far. Much like Voice of America is our propaganda over the radio the internet will become an inevitable battleground of ideologies. Short of China cutting the actual lines to the English-speaking western internet we're bound to filter in slowly if only rudimentary. But a crack in the dyke will eventually turn into a flood.
Then again perhaps I am merely an ultra-nationalist who supports some sort of fictional United States and desire a benevolent democracy of supreme power. But no, China and Russia are never going to dominate any part of the internet beyond their own language and with nearly half the planet speaking English the United States will continue to have an outsized position on the internet. Welcome to the 21st century, we're still kings.
Which has to maintain a certain level of hype. Not that their products aren't great or simple or whatever adjective you can think of. But simply put they are a manufacturing company of consumer electronics with a closed ecosystem. They need momentum and to maintain a healthy lead or they're going to collapse. All of the current apple-phile news is a product of that momentum. Remember when iMacs were cool for artists and the iPhone wasn't invented? They had a magazine out. Now they have atleast 3-4 on the B&N shelf last time I looked. All of this is part of the marketing of their image. They need to be ubiquitous in a way that Microsoft never was or could be. We've never seen a marketing approach like this before. The closest I could argue was when the 20th century brought about the advertising system all together and the flood of ads changed our world. Apple has to become the "computer" or the "smartphone" or inevitable momentum will wane and their ecosystem will start to suffer. So to wrap up my already too long point, these articles in general are a feeding frenzy for the media and PR alike because they maintain momentum and continue the narrative. Once this narrative ends with a failed product or a less than stellar quarter we're going to get blitzed with these kinds of articles even harder to restart the narrative.
Damn you for making a valid point. Damn you! I just find it frustrating when people get into these arguments and ignore the reality. I want Ford to make a fortune because they are my preferred car company and I like Coke over Pepsi. But do I want to pay a 300% markup on either of their products so they can stick it to their opposites? Not particularly. If anything I would rather them simply sell more at a margin so that both more people gain access and support my purely esoteric side.
Fanboys are Fanboys. But there has to be a logical end to our biased desires.
Why do people cite this as a positive? They're moving far less units per quarter than the others, if we're to believe the current North American sales rate Apple has such a huge markup that it's possibly double or triple the highest android on the market. In other words: Apple is ripping off customers. Perceived value or not iOS just isn't worth on a statistical level 300% more than Android. The whole reason Apple is even suing Samsung is over design because that is essentially what Apple sells. They are the Coach of the tech world, a far better purse could be had for far less but it is an issue of style over substance. I'm not a detractor of Apple either, I like the Mac OS X interface and wouldn't be against owning an iMac or a MacBook, I just can't justify paying such a HUGE premium on something that can't run half of the applications I want. I'm not even a serious power user in the IT field, I'm a professor. My department has some Mac users and some PC and I prefer my PC simply because it can see the mail server, access blackboard, access our proprietary student accounts system and give me maximum access.
That is an overly complex and ill-fated bill. Ultimately all they need to do is at the time of registration charge you for the mileage difference year-to-year. Also the mileage idea failed in general as it affects people not based on their ability to pay and disproportionately affects people who may use well-maintained roads while ignoring stop-and-go traffic that actually ruins inner-city and suburban roads. Also it would only work with OnStar vehicles as all others would fail to have it, so even if GM was 25% of the market I doubt they would be changing the TOS now to get that effect.
I also doubt that the people who want your information care because your car has to be hovering around the 7-10 year old mark unless they burned through Gen 1-4 in less than a year a piece. Still you should be fine. Interestingly enough the OnStar system has been designed to turn off your radio, flash a light, and play a tone when a person turns on the in-car microphone.
When the government ruled in favor of the black boxes in cars being the property of the owner and couldn't be used against them in the court of law the use of OnStar after being terminated to monitor them and then to sell the information is blatantly crossing the line. The information stored or sent is considered generated by the vehicle and should be privy to that ruling. I imagine it will go to court if OnStar starts selling info to insurance companies but it seems oddly unlikely right now as Progressive is introducing their own "snapshot discount" unit that does essentially the same thing. Arguably the direction of monitoring our driving for safety is driving us further and further towards an auto-piloted car world where manual control is only used in the event of an emergency or in local (urban or short distances off the grid).
As for the various "government wants to know where you are!" argument, it fails to meet the thought test. What vested interest does the government have in knowing where your car is at any time? They have the police and cameras at their disposal for this reason. The only real value for using OnStar in this way is already done, when the car is stolen the police can access the OnStar system if requested or given a warrant and find where it is located. This data mining is more so about getting the insurance industry to pay for info on you and your driving habits. But I find this whole situation dubious and refer back to my first argument, any information generated by your car is rightfully yours and while they can justify keeping info if you pay for the service but turning it off should prohibit them from keeping the info flow on.
Most complainers want their childhood back. This is what happens when a large fictional universe spans generations. Our children will treat the clone wars cartoons as the epitome. For the older crowd it'll be the original episodes.
Lucas has every right to stop selling older editions. The arguments surrounding this are a tiny part of the continuum of people who purchase star wars merch. So the article is essentially advocating fan fiction become canon in some sadly ironic way.
Did somebody seriously just accept and then promote the race to the bottom? Maybe if we starve our children or force them into abject poverty they'll work harder! *flexes his austerity muscles* Or perhaps we simply need to accept the reality of western society as a whole (which frankly includes India and China) are moving towards a middle-class consumer culture and that hard work has always been a questionable ideal since we have millions of accounts where workers since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution did just enough work to live comfortably/feed their families and no more. This whole "work yourself to death" ideology is a propaganda tool used during two world wars where the US had to go 24 hours a day to keep up with demand for war implements with a precursor in the protestant work ethic. Of course the protestant work ethic never existed either, it was merely a tool by protestants to justify their position over other Christians and non-Christians.
I remember as a kid thinking a computer in every classroom would aid and I still do. iPads are relatively costly compared to a desktop but for sheer mobility and the fact that that form factor is beginning to dominate our world then we need to learn to accept it and welcome it into our society. Course test scores aren't everything and the average slashdotter had above average grades but won't stop them from whining about the new aids that show up in the classroom even though they mostly had the advantage of better computers, teachers, and standards living in suburban/exurban US.
Having access to children after school is the greatest advantage a teacher can have. Most of my teachers growing up would have killed for that kind of access simply because it allowed them to forward important thoughts and news articles along with homework and other assignments and offer help after hours. For the most part slashdotters are well-educated, white, and male which is essentially the least affected group. At-risk students would benefit from a caring teacher offering structure even if only through facebook.
The whole premise of the law has been to curtail access to students by teachers in the event of a strike or other civil strife. The more the Republican/Right-wing politicians control against civil servants the better in their mind. Of course making a law that was explicit to the strike/contract negotiations would have been too obvious so they went for an overall ban trying to argue about sex offenders and other strange things. Ultimately it's an attempt to keep the well poisoned for their goals and prohibit teachers from interacting with students as human beings.
These stories get old fast. Two companies that don't do the same thing merge and suddenly there is a culture clash. Well DUH. But the likely scenario is that the vast majority of the actual workers (i.e. useful individuals) will be left unscathed by the transition while the top level management will be gutted in favor of Google-appointed individuals. The article quotes vague "market analysts" to justify selling off vast swathes of Motorola mobility so that financial advisers can make huge profits out of what could be a great collaboration. Google could alienate HTC, Samsung, and most of the rest of the cell phone makers and still have android be on top simply because Win Mo 7 is eventually going to be costly. MIcrosoft has made it clear they make money off licensing and want to get their cut up front which is the antithesis of Android where they take nothing off the top.
The story is half-baked by financiers and the same old MBA's turned journalists. What sounds like sound advice and knowledge is really a limited understanding with a healthy dose of dogma thrown in for good measure. I admit I like google a great deal but to argue they need to sell off Motorola in pieces to appease the other manufacturers is ludicrous. They have a small market share (2.4% according to the article) so any rise for them from google's deep pockets would be fine and create competition within the market for better phones.
Yes, yes it is the core purpose of copyright law because the freedom of speech is designed to allow people to speak out against more powerful entities whether they are governmental or private in nature. It doesn't allow you to post a billboard with the pass code to the bank vault at the first national bank. It doesn't allow you to post material that can be profited from either because otherwise our literary world would fall pray to cheap copies as it did PRIOR to copyright protection. Many authors saw no profit from their book sales prior to the invention of copyright because any diligent print shop could print it without paying the author as long as they had a typesetter and a copy of the book.
Cheap printing made copyrights a necessity. Just as now the internet has to deal with it being an easy duplication system. Last time I checked copyright holders have rights over their works being copied and this judge ruled fairly. If the value of the website was lost and proven to not be a copyright violator (which is laughable at this point, they're completely guilty) then they could sue for lost profits but otherwise it makes no sense. Judges are told to follow the spirit, the naysayers here are trying to play semantics and go the slippery slope route to try and prove some overstep when in reality this is a clear concise opinion that is aimed solely at this case so is highly unlikely to make case law unless these cases become more prevalent.
The "Internet anonymity is bad" meme? Perhaps your argument about government tracking meme is just as scripted and promoted by libertarians and right-wing hate groups? The world is moving forward and in an effort to keep abreast of it Real ID (i.e. using your real name for logging in) is the move necessary to start turning the internet from Tombstone into Phoenix. Times are changing, the internet isn't as wild as it once was. Anonymity was never guaranteed and frankly we in the US have social security numbers, bank cards, and hundreds if not thousands of ways of being tracked. The government is honestly the place group of people who care where we go and what we do until it has to respond in a crisis. Corporations have more of an interest than anything else.
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I'm saying from a LEGAL standpoint it's still pedophilia. When you go to law school you'll be allowed to argue with me over the legal standard. Until then why don't you take your soapbox and go home? I'm standing reiterating reality and you're soapboxing about being able to screw 17 year olds.
Owning pictures of certain things are against the law. They're against the law in the US, Western Europe, Russia, China, India, and for the most part the entire world. The few places that don't have laws against owning child pornography are small and strange. If they used a polaroid camera and passed the picture around like they used to things would be far different but instead in the world of instant distribution an attempt to cap their actions can only be met with a legal reaction. The perpetrator of the crime gets a tiny sentence for the first offense in Florida which is the first place to fix their laws versus other states that will force them on to sex offender lists forever.
Smith wrote a book prior to the Wealth of Nations advocating a better morality for dealings in this world. Smith if anything would have advocated for a harsher fine & perhaps forfeiture of property or profit.
LOL! You think sex with a 16 year old is pedophilia! Hahahahahaha... there's actually another term for that, and they're not "children" but rather "Young Adults." They're not "Pubescent" or "Pre-pubescent" but rather "Adolescent."
No you're an absolute idiot for ignoring what I said. I said that it falls under pedophilia and that we make no distinction. Go talk with an abnormal psychologist and you'll get the same answer. I noted it for the most part is just lecherous but it is still pornographic & since they are deemed children by the law still. But I feel special knowing a moron with the comprehension skills of a civet can misread what I wrote and make an ad hominem attack at a strawman.
Convenient to disregard any such argument that doesn't suit your particular argument. Nothing in that law has anything to do with "save the children" because ultimately the distribution of child pornography is another aspect of the world of pedophilia. I would ask you though where is it sane to believe that even a small sliver of the people charged with pedophilia were framed? I can respect that sadly a certain amount of people will be charged indiscriminately. But comparatively the vast majority have committed their crimes and frankly it makes me question your ethical status.
Ah see now I just committed a similar action. I disagree with your basic ethical position but only in respect to the fact that simply put pedophilia and much of it's tenets relate to stocking the photos.
I had this long and well worded remark that got swallowed up by the /. scripting it seems. To put it quickly pedophilia is traditionally defined by the prepubescence of the victims. Since we as society define minors and adults by the age of 18 and distinctions in puberty are largely subjective all pedophilia falls into this category though it's technically just lecherous. The distribution of photos is part of the criminal statute of pedophilia crimes. If you're asking why pedophilia is a crime I would suggest you refer to your psychological text for a deeper explanation. Victims who help perpetrate their own crimes don't get excused from their own actions.
The "three-strike" system has been removed from this florida law as we know it. The only thing left is if you get caught three individual times which is reason enough to have not done it once.
The "victim" is also the perpetrator just as in drug abuse, drunk driving, along with dozens if not hundreds of other laws. But in this particular case the victim should have known better, they made a conscious decision to photograph themselves nude. On top of that they then distributed it to others. There are multiple steps involved and this new Florida law essentially decriminalized the act but still acts as a deterrent. A punishment of 8 hours of community service and $60 is worse than an entire school seeing it? Or perhaps the student suffering with that photo lasting for the rest of their lives. The goal of this new law is to deter these incidents.
Why is it completely insane? There is NO reason to not consider it a sexual offense under logical reasoning. They took nude photos of a person under the age of 17. They then in turn distributed them. When they reach adulthood they're allowed to do whatever they please with their body. Until then they're children and don't have rights as you seem to insinuate.
The problem with the issue of sexting is that many if not most don't just end up between two consenting partners (they aren't adults so let's not conflate them.) They end up floating around between friends and sometimes schools. In one case it circulated around multiple school districts. So somewhere around 3000 kids were involved in the sexting.
Libertarians argue an inverse protection which tries to negate their need to follow laws. The arguments against sexting follow this approach but fail to account for reality. The argument that they're kids and shouldn't be punished by the law is obtuse. Age and ignorance doesn't excuse one from the law and when Florida actually tried to make a more appropriate law and they are still slandered.
They're often more accurate than you think. Unless Amazon is locking up 10-20 million parts at a time they're probably paying close to market prices for their parts. They're not buying capacity at factories, they're doing production runs. So where Apple has been able to use scale of economics and paying upfront without the cost of interest Amazon is most likely testing the waters and seeing if they can make a big run on these.
Funny how it all devolves down to investors and capital and then this assumption that the vast profits they collect aren't subject to R&D or infrastructure improvements. Also for the record, the vast majority of our cellular traffic gets filtered back into the wired system for cost and efficiency reasons. Expansion of the network to support the traffic isn't as great an issue as the telecoms want everybody to think simply because there is no money in increasing internet data speeds or uncapping the lines. Fundamentally they're trying to figure out how to profit beyond their flat profit intake for being the support network but since there is no value-added profit to be had without tiers and thus creating a have and have not situation that is artificial they are relying on flim-flam to make the cellular tower network seem stressed.
Also, cell towers aren't high-powered compared to electrical substations. The kind of power they draw is no greater than a large box store or a small office building and that is probably a generous estimate. Radio frequencies have no ill effect on life as we know it, microwave frequencies do. Since the towers put out in the regular radio range their actual danger is limited to the occasional bird running into it. In fact if the telecoms shared their towers they would be able to multiply their coverage without expanding their footprint. But that would require recognizing that they're just utilities and thus the tiered plans of service would be called into question.
To tell me how awful and pathetic I am for wanting to get unlimited data on phone plans when the cost of the running the network is miniscule and the path to upgrade is littered with egotistical claims. Seriously, this isn't surprising simply because the telecommunications industry has had such a long-held monopoly they know of no other way to operate. Even now Verizon is attempting to sue the FCC over net neutrality while getting the very thing it requested (freedom to discriminate on the wireless side as ATT is doing now). As it stands the Republicans are trying to pass a bill that would strip the FCC of their regulatory powers which is even worse. I can only hope and pray that 2012 sweeps the republicans out and limits their austerity measures to the already crippled economy and that the FCC re-evaluates their rules and puts wireless internet access in the same boat as wired.
The United States and to a lesser extent the European Union will continue to exert absolute dominance over the internet. If anything has been proven is that the internet is a loose association of cities (hubs) and highways (pathways). Non-English speaking countries essentially don't matter to the English-speaking internet except for Academia and Government reasons and both of those can rely on translation. What we may see occur is attacks on our hubs to try and break down the barriers or shut down our attacks rather than any sort of feudal control over the internet.
In other the words the future lays in whether or not China or Russia want to slap the English-speaking behemoth or whether we will quietly let them control the flow of free speech in their sphere of influence. If the past decade is any indication we're probably heading down the former rather than the latter as China gets more assertive and has to deal with a burgeoning middle-class that seeks outside information. Materialism can only quell the masses so far. Much like Voice of America is our propaganda over the radio the internet will become an inevitable battleground of ideologies. Short of China cutting the actual lines to the English-speaking western internet we're bound to filter in slowly if only rudimentary. But a crack in the dyke will eventually turn into a flood.
Then again perhaps I am merely an ultra-nationalist who supports some sort of fictional United States and desire a benevolent democracy of supreme power. But no, China and Russia are never going to dominate any part of the internet beyond their own language and with nearly half the planet speaking English the United States will continue to have an outsized position on the internet. Welcome to the 21st century, we're still kings.
Which has to maintain a certain level of hype. Not that their products aren't great or simple or whatever adjective you can think of. But simply put they are a manufacturing company of consumer electronics with a closed ecosystem. They need momentum and to maintain a healthy lead or they're going to collapse. All of the current apple-phile news is a product of that momentum. Remember when iMacs were cool for artists and the iPhone wasn't invented? They had a magazine out. Now they have atleast 3-4 on the B&N shelf last time I looked. All of this is part of the marketing of their image. They need to be ubiquitous in a way that Microsoft never was or could be. We've never seen a marketing approach like this before. The closest I could argue was when the 20th century brought about the advertising system all together and the flood of ads changed our world. Apple has to become the "computer" or the "smartphone" or inevitable momentum will wane and their ecosystem will start to suffer. So to wrap up my already too long point, these articles in general are a feeding frenzy for the media and PR alike because they maintain momentum and continue the narrative. Once this narrative ends with a failed product or a less than stellar quarter we're going to get blitzed with these kinds of articles even harder to restart the narrative.
Damn you for making a valid point. Damn you! I just find it frustrating when people get into these arguments and ignore the reality. I want Ford to make a fortune because they are my preferred car company and I like Coke over Pepsi. But do I want to pay a 300% markup on either of their products so they can stick it to their opposites? Not particularly. If anything I would rather them simply sell more at a margin so that both more people gain access and support my purely esoteric side.
Fanboys are Fanboys. But there has to be a logical end to our biased desires.
Why do people cite this as a positive? They're moving far less units per quarter than the others, if we're to believe the current North American sales rate Apple has such a huge markup that it's possibly double or triple the highest android on the market. In other words: Apple is ripping off customers. Perceived value or not iOS just isn't worth on a statistical level 300% more than Android. The whole reason Apple is even suing Samsung is over design because that is essentially what Apple sells. They are the Coach of the tech world, a far better purse could be had for far less but it is an issue of style over substance. I'm not a detractor of Apple either, I like the Mac OS X interface and wouldn't be against owning an iMac or a MacBook, I just can't justify paying such a HUGE premium on something that can't run half of the applications I want. I'm not even a serious power user in the IT field, I'm a professor. My department has some Mac users and some PC and I prefer my PC simply because it can see the mail server, access blackboard, access our proprietary student accounts system and give me maximum access.
That is an overly complex and ill-fated bill. Ultimately all they need to do is at the time of registration charge you for the mileage difference year-to-year. Also the mileage idea failed in general as it affects people not based on their ability to pay and disproportionately affects people who may use well-maintained roads while ignoring stop-and-go traffic that actually ruins inner-city and suburban roads. Also it would only work with OnStar vehicles as all others would fail to have it, so even if GM was 25% of the market I doubt they would be changing the TOS now to get that effect.
I also doubt that the people who want your information care because your car has to be hovering around the 7-10 year old mark unless they burned through Gen 1-4 in less than a year a piece. Still you should be fine. Interestingly enough the OnStar system has been designed to turn off your radio, flash a light, and play a tone when a person turns on the in-car microphone.
When the government ruled in favor of the black boxes in cars being the property of the owner and couldn't be used against them in the court of law the use of OnStar after being terminated to monitor them and then to sell the information is blatantly crossing the line. The information stored or sent is considered generated by the vehicle and should be privy to that ruling. I imagine it will go to court if OnStar starts selling info to insurance companies but it seems oddly unlikely right now as Progressive is introducing their own "snapshot discount" unit that does essentially the same thing. Arguably the direction of monitoring our driving for safety is driving us further and further towards an auto-piloted car world where manual control is only used in the event of an emergency or in local (urban or short distances off the grid).
As for the various "government wants to know where you are!" argument, it fails to meet the thought test. What vested interest does the government have in knowing where your car is at any time? They have the police and cameras at their disposal for this reason. The only real value for using OnStar in this way is already done, when the car is stolen the police can access the OnStar system if requested or given a warrant and find where it is located. This data mining is more so about getting the insurance industry to pay for info on you and your driving habits. But I find this whole situation dubious and refer back to my first argument, any information generated by your car is rightfully yours and while they can justify keeping info if you pay for the service but turning it off should prohibit them from keeping the info flow on.
Most complainers want their childhood back. This is what happens when a large fictional universe spans generations. Our children will treat the clone wars cartoons as the epitome. For the older crowd it'll be the original episodes.
Lucas has every right to stop selling older editions. The arguments surrounding this are a tiny part of the continuum of people who purchase star wars merch. So the article is essentially advocating fan fiction become canon in some sadly ironic way.
Did somebody seriously just accept and then promote the race to the bottom? Maybe if we starve our children or force them into abject poverty they'll work harder! *flexes his austerity muscles* Or perhaps we simply need to accept the reality of western society as a whole (which frankly includes India and China) are moving towards a middle-class consumer culture and that hard work has always been a questionable ideal since we have millions of accounts where workers since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution did just enough work to live comfortably/feed their families and no more. This whole "work yourself to death" ideology is a propaganda tool used during two world wars where the US had to go 24 hours a day to keep up with demand for war implements with a precursor in the protestant work ethic. Of course the protestant work ethic never existed either, it was merely a tool by protestants to justify their position over other Christians and non-Christians.
I remember as a kid thinking a computer in every classroom would aid and I still do. iPads are relatively costly compared to a desktop but for sheer mobility and the fact that that form factor is beginning to dominate our world then we need to learn to accept it and welcome it into our society. Course test scores aren't everything and the average slashdotter had above average grades but won't stop them from whining about the new aids that show up in the classroom even though they mostly had the advantage of better computers, teachers, and standards living in suburban/exurban US.
Having access to children after school is the greatest advantage a teacher can have. Most of my teachers growing up would have killed for that kind of access simply because it allowed them to forward important thoughts and news articles along with homework and other assignments and offer help after hours. For the most part slashdotters are well-educated, white, and male which is essentially the least affected group. At-risk students would benefit from a caring teacher offering structure even if only through facebook.
The whole premise of the law has been to curtail access to students by teachers in the event of a strike or other civil strife. The more the Republican/Right-wing politicians control against civil servants the better in their mind. Of course making a law that was explicit to the strike/contract negotiations would have been too obvious so they went for an overall ban trying to argue about sex offenders and other strange things. Ultimately it's an attempt to keep the well poisoned for their goals and prohibit teachers from interacting with students as human beings.
These stories get old fast. Two companies that don't do the same thing merge and suddenly there is a culture clash. Well DUH. But the likely scenario is that the vast majority of the actual workers (i.e. useful individuals) will be left unscathed by the transition while the top level management will be gutted in favor of Google-appointed individuals. The article quotes vague "market analysts" to justify selling off vast swathes of Motorola mobility so that financial advisers can make huge profits out of what could be a great collaboration. Google could alienate HTC, Samsung, and most of the rest of the cell phone makers and still have android be on top simply because Win Mo 7 is eventually going to be costly. MIcrosoft has made it clear they make money off licensing and want to get their cut up front which is the antithesis of Android where they take nothing off the top.
The story is half-baked by financiers and the same old MBA's turned journalists. What sounds like sound advice and knowledge is really a limited understanding with a healthy dose of dogma thrown in for good measure. I admit I like google a great deal but to argue they need to sell off Motorola in pieces to appease the other manufacturers is ludicrous. They have a small market share (2.4% according to the article) so any rise for them from google's deep pockets would be fine and create competition within the market for better phones.
Yes, yes it is the core purpose of copyright law because the freedom of speech is designed to allow people to speak out against more powerful entities whether they are governmental or private in nature. It doesn't allow you to post a billboard with the pass code to the bank vault at the first national bank. It doesn't allow you to post material that can be profited from either because otherwise our literary world would fall pray to cheap copies as it did PRIOR to copyright protection. Many authors saw no profit from their book sales prior to the invention of copyright because any diligent print shop could print it without paying the author as long as they had a typesetter and a copy of the book.
Cheap printing made copyrights a necessity. Just as now the internet has to deal with it being an easy duplication system. Last time I checked copyright holders have rights over their works being copied and this judge ruled fairly. If the value of the website was lost and proven to not be a copyright violator (which is laughable at this point, they're completely guilty) then they could sue for lost profits but otherwise it makes no sense. Judges are told to follow the spirit, the naysayers here are trying to play semantics and go the slippery slope route to try and prove some overstep when in reality this is a clear concise opinion that is aimed solely at this case so is highly unlikely to make case law unless these cases become more prevalent.
The "Internet anonymity is bad" meme? Perhaps your argument about government tracking meme is just as scripted and promoted by libertarians and right-wing hate groups? The world is moving forward and in an effort to keep abreast of it Real ID (i.e. using your real name for logging in) is the move necessary to start turning the internet from Tombstone into Phoenix. Times are changing, the internet isn't as wild as it once was. Anonymity was never guaranteed and frankly we in the US have social security numbers, bank cards, and hundreds if not thousands of ways of being tracked. The government is honestly the place group of people who care where we go and what we do until it has to respond in a crisis. Corporations have more of an interest than anything else.