Ah yes, the "you took money so we own you" argument.
As opposed to the "Well, now that I'm rich, I don't want to pay taxes!! No No No NO NO NO NO!!!!" argument?
These same people have the gall to bitch and cry about the "entitled". Give me a fucking break. Who told them they were entitled to a tax-free existence?
I have a suggestion. Since the U.S. should value education for its citizens to compete in the world, and since the Republicans believe in free enterprise, and since the Democrats dislike the oil companies for whatever reasons, let's take the $6 Billion the federal government gives in tax breaks/subsidies to the oil companies and use it to cover the student loan rates. What Republican could be against a government directed industrial policy, what Democrat could be against screwing the oil companies out of a few bucks? Everyone wins.
While I can't speak for Democrats as a whole, as someone who is decidedly liberal (but not necessarily a Democrat, the party is just barely left-of-center, as you can plainly see when you compare our 'left' with the 'left' in Europe), I have no problem with oil companies. What I have a problem with is skirting regulations to save a buck when they're making more money then they ever have in history, skimping on safety protection for the people manning their rigs, and most of all, the way they've somehow managed to not only convince the congressmen they've bribed but a significant portion of the American people that they still deserve those 10 figure subsidies.
The people you'll see champing at the bit for 'free markets' are often the same people that defend the government transferring billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to megacorporations because the megacorps don't want to fund their own risk, but they damn sure demand they get to pocket the whole fucking reward come tax time. It's completely ridiculous and really makes me wonder who the fuck could possibly think that is appropriate, especially people that don't have a direct vested interest (i.e., stockholders). Their opinions I can understand, but the other 99.99999% of the population, no fucking idea...
I keep forgetting that every wealthy person in this country was raised by wolves and was just lucky enough to be blessed by Jesus at birth with a good business acumen and the contacts necessary to become wealthy in the first place.
Every single fucking millionaire born in this country has had their upbringing subsidized by the state just the same as anyone else in this country. This meme that keeps going around on the right that they did it all on their own, completely divorced from the 'socialist' crap they endlessly bitch about now that it's their turn to fucking pay in to the system, is such complete and utter horseshit that it baffles the mind that there are still morons out there that believe it.
For one thing, what "the average joe at work" does is none of my concern. My privacy concerns as far as my boss seeing that I'm surfing the internet when I'm supposed to be working far outweigh anything I'm worried about as far as Google goes. Perhaps the "average joe at work" should be more concerned with not fucking around on the internet all day, especially if their activities are secretive and/or sensitive enough to actually give a fuck. The "at work" argument immediately goes out the window.
Being stalked by someone is so totally removed from being tracked by Google that it's completely ridiculous to equate them and expect to be taken seriously, not by me anyway. I've actually been stalked by an ex-girlfriend to the point where it took me literally calling the cops right in front of her to get her to leave me the fuck alone and stay away from me. Is Google calling you 38 times a day and filling your voice mail box with alternating "I love you/I hate you" messages? Are they leaving notes on your car while you're at work? Are they going after other people you may interact with to tell them to find their own goddamned man? Are they calling you from outside your house at 11 o'clock at night telling you that they know you're home because the lights are on and you need to come right down right this second to talk to them or they're going to commit suicide in your driveway and it's going to be all your fault? You're not fucking being stalked.
You're not helpless. The world is not out to get you, and neither is Google. Bitching about tracking cookies when you know how trivial it is for you to circumvent them yourself is a waste of energy. As for communicating with others that don't care, then I guess you've got a fucking decision to make, huh? You're still not helpless. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, you just don't want to deal with the inconvenience around actually doing so. Boo fucking hoo. Maybe it's time to dump the internet entirely? It's the only way to be sure...
I read somewhere that Uwe Bole is subsidized by Germany due to their laws in support of the arts. While I typically cheer this on, in Uwe Bole's case, they should make an exception and throw him in the fucking clink for crimes against humanity.
You mock, but that is precisely what is happening, and there isn't a fucking thing that the MAFIAA can do about it...
This war on piracy is going to be the MAFIAA's Vietnam. Billions upon billions spent, and not a fucking thing to show for it but the majority of the people in the U.S. (and abroad) hating your fucking guts. What is it exactly they're trying to accomplish? The pirated copies are a superior product in almost every way. No bullshit previews, unskippable finger-wagging about piracy (on the legit copy, no less), DRM bullshit, whether in the form of encryption keys or locking it to online accounts such as iTunes or Amazon...
Ignorance to the alternatives kept the majority of the population from being dirty pirates for a long time (I myself made a fair amount selling mix discs back in the early days of Napster and cd burners due solely to this phenomenon, because nowhere could people legitimately buy a disc with the songs THEY fucking wanted on it nor did most have the high-speed internet connection that made it feasible to download themselves) but that's changing every day. I've taught people in their 60's how to torrent. The cat's long out of the bag...
No, but the better question to ask is: When the majority of the population does not believe that there is anything morally wrong with openly sharing media among family and friends, how can it still be against the law? A study released during the SOPA debate (that I cannot find for the life of me, but was here on/.) showed that something like 70% of the population felt that there was nothing wrong with sharing music and movies. What the MAFIAA wants is irrelevant to them; and it shows in the fact that a similar sized portion of the population admitted to sharing media within the last 30 days.
The laws are supposed to reflect the will of the populace and the social mores of the people. When they stand at odds with the will of the majority of the people, how can it be the people that are wrong? Isn't it the law itself that is then wrong and should be abolished?
They don't want people turning to the internet for THEIR content in violation of their chosen business model. As stated, that's their right. Don't like it? Don't buy their stuff.
Exactly! Torrent it instead, for free!
They need to get their thick, stupid heads around the fact that many, many people don't give a fuck about their profit margin or not. I read a study back during the SOPA debate that showed something like 70% of the population has no problem whatsoever with sharing media among family and friends. The general population is not behind them on this, which is why they're never, ever going to stop piracy.
If the majority of society thinks that we should be able to share media with our friends and family, where does that leave the MAFIAA? When a law makes the majority of the population criminals, is it really the population that's fucked up, or the law itself? Social mores change. 100 years ago someone trying to marry a partner of the same sex would have likely been locked in a mental asylum across most of the U.S. (if not ran out of town/beaten and left for dead). Today gay marriage is recognized in 6 states as well as D.C., and it will probably be recognized federally within a generation.
What will the MAFIAA do when they can't even bribe our government enough to keep the public at bay? What happens when the Pirate Party migrates to the U.S. and starts chipping away at IP and copyright laws? Are they going to stamp their feet, take their ball and go home? Or will we finally see the oft-promised "death of all media"? The only reason they have these rights is because they were granted to them by the people. We gave them those rights, and we can damned sure take them away. The government's been taking away the rights of the people in the name of security for the last 11 years, so you can damn sure bet your ass that the government can take some rights away from "people" that exist solely on paper in the form of articles of incorporation.
Even someone flipping burgers can afford quality living when they're utilizing their funds wisely.
Minimum Wage: $7.25/hour. At 40 hours a week (doubtful, all minimum wage factories like McDonalds only hire people part-time to get around regulations requiring them to offer benefits, which, depending on the state, could be someone working up to 35 hours a week or less, 5 whole hours short of a full 40 hour week) that is $290 a week before taxes and shit come out. Figuring 25% is gone right off the top, you're down to $217.50 a week, or $870 a month.
You show me the "quality living" you can find for less than $1000 a month. There's a reason why so many minimum wage earners are still on government assistance even despite having a job.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely in agreement as far as budgeting goes, but people that make such a piss-poor wage are still being subsidized by tax dollars, which is why poverty is so bad in places where Walmart and McDonalds are the main employer in town. These corporations get the benefit of a cheap labor force and likely still collect government money for hiring minorities, thus bringing the amount they're really paying down even further. I used to work overnight at Target years ago, and it was common knowledge that the state was giving Target half of the hourly wage in the form of grants in exchange for hiring a bunch of Serbians that came here under refugee status back in the late 90's. These people were given homes, had taxes annulled, owned their own businesses (that changed hands every so often to avoid taxes) and even drove BMW's and shit to work for their $10 an hour. Which is exactly why Target always gave them preferential treatment when it comes to hiring....unofficially, of course. It was surely just a coincidence that there were 9 of them hired to every single non-Serbian.
Read my other response. Fire-proof boxes have existed for decades, my mother's is rated to something like 4500 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 hours, plenty long enough to get a house fire under control. Off-site storage can be accomplished by simply taking the drive to a friend's house for safe keeping (or, for more secure solutions, a safe-deposit box at your local bank). No stupid "cloud" bullshit required.
People did this shit for years, so I guess I don't understand the difficulty in doing so now. Is it that hard to get off the couch? Is a one-time investment in a fire-proof box really more of a pain in the ass than dealing with a bunch of social networks and cloud storage sites that may or may not be around tomorrow? Like I said, people are making something so fucking easy so complicated because ZOMG THE CLOUD WE MUST USE THE CLOUD FOR EVVVVERRRRYYYYYTTHHHHIIINNGGGGGG!!!!1!!11
While the worries are somewhat understandable, I think people are becoming a little hysterical over this. There have been dangerous "death-trap" cars on the roads since the beginning of the automobile. Clearly it is a danger that society is willing to accept, and AI controlled vehicles will be no different. People were terrified of the first cars on the road, too, and we laugh about that shit now, just as I'm sure our children and grand-children will laugh hysterically at the thought of society being terrified of a computer-driven car...
Outside of all the anti-Google hysteria (which frankly has nothing to do with the feasibility of an A.I. driver), the arguments are pretty much baseless. We trust computers to fly us around in metal tubes 35,000 feet above the earth at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour and are comfortable with the fact that, statistically speaking, we're going to be just fine. Of course it needs a little work before it's perfected, but nothing is ever going to be 100% perfect. In my mind, the most important thing of all is the ability for the human being sitting in the driver's seat to over-ride the AI immediately in the event of an emergency, which I'm 100% positive was built in from day one because to do otherwise would be completely retarded (and Google is not retarded). As with auto-pilot on planes (or even cruise control on a car), auto-drive will probably be most utilized on long haul, highway driving, something that I think would be trivial for AI to do compared to, say, navigating the inner-city dodging pedestrians and cyclists and double-parked delivery vehicles and what-not.
Every time you visit a website with google ads you are tracked.
You mean those Google ads that I block using Adblock Plus?
Every time you visit a site with google analytics you get tracked.
You mean that Google Analytics junk that I block using NoScript?
Again, who forced you to use Gmail or buy an Android phone? Nobody. Your problem isn't that your data is being mined, it's that other people don't care as much as you do. Boo fucking hoo. Keep ranting on the interwebs, though, I'm sure that you'll soon convince everyone how evil Google is...
Avoiding Google on the internet is as simple as installing a couple plugins and not using any of their services. You're not helpless and you know it. Instead of ranting, instead, why not instruct people how to use those tools?
Which is still a hell of a lot more secure than uploading it to some random "cloud storage" provider and banking on the fact that, not only will your shit not get appropriated for their own use (as the ToS of Facebook and others imply), but that said cloud storage provider will even be around indefinitely. It doesn't have to be something as unlikely as a business failure, all it takes is the government to swoop in take the fucking servers because "OMG TERRORISM" or block the domain because "OMG PIRACY" and you're fucked. I'm almost positive that every ToS for every cloud storage provider out there has language to the effect that they're not liable for pretty much anything that could possibly happen to your data short of them deliberately torching their servers themselves.
My mother is a professional photographer in Alaska, and she fills up two 2TB hard drives every 4-6 months with her photos (both RAW and 'shopped since she sells prints online). One drive goes to a safe deposit box at her local bank. The other stays at home in a fireproof box so she can access the data outside of bank hours.
Off-site storage is all well and good (and prudent), but I guess what I don't understand is why Facebook (or social networks in general) of all things? Who the hell would trust a company that makes it's money on scraping customer data (to include scanning photos so it can 'suggest' people to tag in them)? If the data is so important to a person that they don't want to lose it, why is it not important enough to care about the fundamental flaws in cloud storage as it exists today? And with the rash of government seizures and shit, who would trust any of these 'cloud' storage providers with data that important in the first place?
There are a lot of questions surrounding the viability of cloud storage in the long term, but there aren't many as regards the viability of a hard drive in the long term. Fill it up, take it to a trusted friend's house, and boom: off-site storage, and it costs you nothing but the cost of an external hard drive. No questions about ownership or worries about government seizures (hence the 'trusted friend's' part), and certainly no bullshit trying to figure out how to retrieve a metric shit-ton of personal data from a social network that has no vested interest whatsoever in helping you do so.
When did people stop backing up shit locally they don't want to lose in a hard drive failure?
Not backup as in upload to fucking Facebook, or host on a cloud storage site, but as in having another hard drive to put the shit on? Am I a relic of a long-forgotten age because I have an external HDD with a backup of all my digital photos and documents?
I swear to Christ, it's like people have just gotten so fucking stupid since the advent of "the cloud", they want to find a way to shove it into every facet of their lives online whether it's practical or not. You can buy a 2TB Western Digital USB 3.0 external HDD for like $100, plenty big enough to hold every photo the average person has probably ever taken with room to spare.
It seems that way because unlike the extreme left, the extreme right does not own the mass media.
I love how skewed the right has become that they actually still spout that bullshit about the "extreme left" owning the media.
If anything, the media is centrist (which explains why the idiocy of the tea party isn't immediately laughed off the air every time it comes up), it's just the extremely vocal minority of far-right whackjobs with a bullshit persecution complex keep screaming because the rest of the media doesn't echo their nonsense the way Limbaugh and Glenn Beck do. I mean, the very fact that Sarah Palin was treated as a serious candidate, despite what a complete and utter moron she is, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the media is mostly centrist. A "leftist" media would have laughed her stupid ass right off the airwaves after her first Katie Couric interview, when she asked hard-hitting questions like "What do you read?"
But they do care, mightily, about making a $100 million investment based on laws that appear and disappear.
As opposed to the $100 million investment they make in order to get their own laws passed, just like every other major corporation with a presence in the U.S.?
Forgive me if I'm less than sympathetic that the laws weren't made solely to ensure their profitability in providing a product to a "free" market.
Get a little older. By 40 or so, you'll find it's often just too difficult to try to get three people in the same place at the same time to go to the movies, yet alone keep up with everything that's going on in everybody's lives.
I'm not too far off, now (33) and obviously it's difficult for everyone to get together with work and kids and the trappings of day to day life, but like I said, we still manage just fine without Facebook. Sure, some of our "circle" uses FB to communicate with each other, but they still make sure that us non-FB friends get the word and are included. That, to me, isn't too much to expect for someone that would call themselves my friend.
We all have email addresses and internet at home, and most of us that aren't on FB have smartphones capable of sending and receiving email (and chat, and text, and calls) so all it requires is someone to log into their email and send us an invite. We do it all the time. It's trivial to send a group email, obviously. This bullshit with creating a public event and inviting everyone on Facebook seems like more steps then just composing a group email at the outset. EVERYONE has an email account these days. No need to exclude people at all...unless, like I said, the person planning the event just can't be arsed to send out an email or text, and again, those people do not fit the definition of "friend" to me at all.
Now, the "old friends" thing, honestly, I grew up an Army brat, so I'm a lot more pragmatic when it comes to friends: If I haven't talked to someone in years, then they're not my friend anymore. Not that I bear them any ill will, but people change, and friendships are constantly evolving. I'm curious what they "did with their life", but only curious...obviously it doesn't much matter to me since I haven't even talked to them in up to 20 years. I hope they're doing well, I'm not a prick or one of those people that has to constantly measure myself against their high school and college buddies to feel good about myself, and honestly it has zero bearing on my life whatsoever. Why waste the time with a cursory friendship that exists only through a service like Facebook when I have real friends that I can call anytime, day or night, if I ever needed anything at all? Those are the people that matter to me, not the million acquaintances I've had over my life...
I think we just have much different types of friends. Even my friends on Facebook don't announce their illnesses or family issues on there, really (that I know of)...they call me, and I do whatever I can for them, whether it's being a shoulder to cry on or a couch to crash on if there are marital issues going on...
Of course it's no wonder. Getting voted out of office should be the least of the worries of the incumbents in government these days. If things keep trotting down this path they're going to end up needing to be airlifted out before the mobs get a hold of them. Who could have guessed that the poor and middle-class would have revolted in the face of "austerity measures"? Anyone that's ever opened a history book.
It is hard to avoid it when the vast majority of your social circle uses it to communicate and plan events.
The vast majority of my social circle doesn't fuck around with Facebook at all and we manage to communicate and plan events...
Maybe it's time to reexamine why they're in your circle to begin with if you leaving Facebook is going to actually strain your friendship? If they can't be arsed to shoot an email or text message to the guy that doesn't want to waste his time reading stupid bullshit (90% of Facebook status updates), then they're probably not your friend in the first place. I had friends that didn't own a cellphone until recently, but we still managed to include them by (GASP) picking up the fucking phone, dialing their home phone number, and leaving a message if they didn't answer. Not one of us said "God, fuck that guy; if he doesn't have a cell phone capable of receiving text messages, I'm not even going to bother talking to him at all..."
Just another example of how Facebook has cheapened the meaning of "friend" to include everyone you've ever come into contact with. If they won't include you if they can't message you in one particular way then they ain't your friends.
Agreed. I lost a lot of respect for him when he opined that Universal health care is equivalent to slavery last year, but I'll be the first to cheer him on in this regard if he can do something about the ridiculous waste that is the TSA.
I actually proctored the TSA tests off and on from '06-'08. Besides the fact that the questions themselves were a joke (I remember one in particular being "Have you ever lived in a house you thought was haunted?"), the majority of the people sitting for them looked like they were either under the influence of narcotics, or at least had more than a passing familiarity with them, not to mention gang tats and other evidence that these people were not the best and brightest by any stretch.
I haven't traveled by air since, and barring a death in the immediate family that makes such a trip completely unavoidable, that's not going to change anytime soon. I honestly can't understand how parents can let their kids be patted down by these animals...although I'm betting if they were as familiar with the types of people that sit for the tests, and how ridiculously worthless the tests were themselves, that the airports would either be completely empty or full of rioters...
Robbing the mass of people scrambling to make a living in a declining economy to plant a flag on a desert orb borders on psychopathy.
Tell you what, how about we all get to pick and choose what our tax dollars support? I'll go ahead and make sure no fucking oil company, multibillion dollar corporation, or other collection of ridiculously wealthy assholes get my tax dollars for no other reason than the fact that they bribe our government officials, and you can go ahead and scratch NASA off your list.
I'm willing to bet most Americans would rather put their tax dollars into research that benefits all mankind, such as that driven by NASA, then subsidizing the profit margin of an already profitable organization. Which is precisely why we'll never get the chance.
How many childless couples do you think subsidized your fucking education? Do people stop paying property taxes for schools when their kids graduate? Can you imagine how quickly our education system would fall apart if it wasn't a cost borne by all of society? Or are you one of those people that doesn't give much of a shit unless you benefit directly from a given program?
I bet if we cut every subsidy to an already profitable business in this country we could fund NASA ten times over. The problem is, NASA doesn't throw billions of dollars at lobbyists and public relations campaigns like certain "clean energy through natural gas fracking" commercials I see every 3 fucking minutes on CNN...so they don't have shills like you to advocate for them, just us losers that see the benefit in pure research.
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Ah yes, the "you took money so we own you" argument.
As opposed to the "Well, now that I'm rich, I don't want to pay taxes!! No No No NO NO NO NO!!!!" argument?
These same people have the gall to bitch and cry about the "entitled". Give me a fucking break. Who told them they were entitled to a tax-free existence?
I have a suggestion. Since the U.S. should value education for its citizens to compete in the world, and since the Republicans believe in free enterprise, and since the Democrats dislike the oil companies for whatever reasons, let's take the $6 Billion the federal government gives in tax breaks/subsidies to the oil companies and use it to cover the student loan rates. What Republican could be against a government directed industrial policy, what Democrat could be against screwing the oil companies out of a few bucks? Everyone wins.
While I can't speak for Democrats as a whole, as someone who is decidedly liberal (but not necessarily a Democrat, the party is just barely left-of-center, as you can plainly see when you compare our 'left' with the 'left' in Europe), I have no problem with oil companies. What I have a problem with is skirting regulations to save a buck when they're making more money then they ever have in history, skimping on safety protection for the people manning their rigs, and most of all, the way they've somehow managed to not only convince the congressmen they've bribed but a significant portion of the American people that they still deserve those 10 figure subsidies.
The people you'll see champing at the bit for 'free markets' are often the same people that defend the government transferring billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to megacorporations because the megacorps don't want to fund their own risk, but they damn sure demand they get to pocket the whole fucking reward come tax time. It's completely ridiculous and really makes me wonder who the fuck could possibly think that is appropriate, especially people that don't have a direct vested interest (i.e., stockholders). Their opinions I can understand, but the other 99.99999% of the population, no fucking idea...
I keep forgetting that every wealthy person in this country was raised by wolves and was just lucky enough to be blessed by Jesus at birth with a good business acumen and the contacts necessary to become wealthy in the first place.
Every single fucking millionaire born in this country has had their upbringing subsidized by the state just the same as anyone else in this country. This meme that keeps going around on the right that they did it all on their own, completely divorced from the 'socialist' crap they endlessly bitch about now that it's their turn to fucking pay in to the system, is such complete and utter horseshit that it baffles the mind that there are still morons out there that believe it.
For one thing, what "the average joe at work" does is none of my concern. My privacy concerns as far as my boss seeing that I'm surfing the internet when I'm supposed to be working far outweigh anything I'm worried about as far as Google goes. Perhaps the "average joe at work" should be more concerned with not fucking around on the internet all day, especially if their activities are secretive and/or sensitive enough to actually give a fuck. The "at work" argument immediately goes out the window.
Being stalked by someone is so totally removed from being tracked by Google that it's completely ridiculous to equate them and expect to be taken seriously, not by me anyway. I've actually been stalked by an ex-girlfriend to the point where it took me literally calling the cops right in front of her to get her to leave me the fuck alone and stay away from me. Is Google calling you 38 times a day and filling your voice mail box with alternating "I love you/I hate you" messages? Are they leaving notes on your car while you're at work? Are they going after other people you may interact with to tell them to find their own goddamned man? Are they calling you from outside your house at 11 o'clock at night telling you that they know you're home because the lights are on and you need to come right down right this second to talk to them or they're going to commit suicide in your driveway and it's going to be all your fault? You're not fucking being stalked.
You're not helpless. The world is not out to get you, and neither is Google. Bitching about tracking cookies when you know how trivial it is for you to circumvent them yourself is a waste of energy. As for communicating with others that don't care, then I guess you've got a fucking decision to make, huh? You're still not helpless. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, you just don't want to deal with the inconvenience around actually doing so. Boo fucking hoo. Maybe it's time to dump the internet entirely? It's the only way to be sure...
I read somewhere that Uwe Bole is subsidized by Germany due to their laws in support of the arts. While I typically cheer this on, in Uwe Bole's case, they should make an exception and throw him in the fucking clink for crimes against humanity.
You mock, but that is precisely what is happening, and there isn't a fucking thing that the MAFIAA can do about it...
This war on piracy is going to be the MAFIAA's Vietnam. Billions upon billions spent, and not a fucking thing to show for it but the majority of the people in the U.S. (and abroad) hating your fucking guts. What is it exactly they're trying to accomplish? The pirated copies are a superior product in almost every way. No bullshit previews, unskippable finger-wagging about piracy (on the legit copy, no less), DRM bullshit, whether in the form of encryption keys or locking it to online accounts such as iTunes or Amazon...
Ignorance to the alternatives kept the majority of the population from being dirty pirates for a long time (I myself made a fair amount selling mix discs back in the early days of Napster and cd burners due solely to this phenomenon, because nowhere could people legitimately buy a disc with the songs THEY fucking wanted on it nor did most have the high-speed internet connection that made it feasible to download themselves) but that's changing every day. I've taught people in their 60's how to torrent. The cat's long out of the bag...
No, but the better question to ask is: When the majority of the population does not believe that there is anything morally wrong with openly sharing media among family and friends, how can it still be against the law? A study released during the SOPA debate (that I cannot find for the life of me, but was here on /.) showed that something like 70% of the population felt that there was nothing wrong with sharing music and movies. What the MAFIAA wants is irrelevant to them; and it shows in the fact that a similar sized portion of the population admitted to sharing media within the last 30 days.
The laws are supposed to reflect the will of the populace and the social mores of the people. When they stand at odds with the will of the majority of the people, how can it be the people that are wrong? Isn't it the law itself that is then wrong and should be abolished?
They don't want people turning to the internet for THEIR content in violation of their chosen business model. As stated, that's their right. Don't like it? Don't buy their stuff.
Exactly! Torrent it instead, for free!
They need to get their thick, stupid heads around the fact that many, many people don't give a fuck about their profit margin or not. I read a study back during the SOPA debate that showed something like 70% of the population has no problem whatsoever with sharing media among family and friends. The general population is not behind them on this, which is why they're never, ever going to stop piracy.
If the majority of society thinks that we should be able to share media with our friends and family, where does that leave the MAFIAA? When a law makes the majority of the population criminals, is it really the population that's fucked up, or the law itself? Social mores change. 100 years ago someone trying to marry a partner of the same sex would have likely been locked in a mental asylum across most of the U.S. (if not ran out of town/beaten and left for dead). Today gay marriage is recognized in 6 states as well as D.C., and it will probably be recognized federally within a generation.
What will the MAFIAA do when they can't even bribe our government enough to keep the public at bay? What happens when the Pirate Party migrates to the U.S. and starts chipping away at IP and copyright laws? Are they going to stamp their feet, take their ball and go home? Or will we finally see the oft-promised "death of all media"? The only reason they have these rights is because they were granted to them by the people. We gave them those rights, and we can damned sure take them away. The government's been taking away the rights of the people in the name of security for the last 11 years, so you can damn sure bet your ass that the government can take some rights away from "people" that exist solely on paper in the form of articles of incorporation.
Wow, that's so much more convenient than pouring it in my ass...
Even someone flipping burgers can afford quality living when they're utilizing their funds wisely.
Minimum Wage: $7.25/hour. At 40 hours a week (doubtful, all minimum wage factories like McDonalds only hire people part-time to get around regulations requiring them to offer benefits, which, depending on the state, could be someone working up to 35 hours a week or less, 5 whole hours short of a full 40 hour week) that is $290 a week before taxes and shit come out. Figuring 25% is gone right off the top, you're down to $217.50 a week, or $870 a month.
You show me the "quality living" you can find for less than $1000 a month. There's a reason why so many minimum wage earners are still on government assistance even despite having a job.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely in agreement as far as budgeting goes, but people that make such a piss-poor wage are still being subsidized by tax dollars, which is why poverty is so bad in places where Walmart and McDonalds are the main employer in town. These corporations get the benefit of a cheap labor force and likely still collect government money for hiring minorities, thus bringing the amount they're really paying down even further. I used to work overnight at Target years ago, and it was common knowledge that the state was giving Target half of the hourly wage in the form of grants in exchange for hiring a bunch of Serbians that came here under refugee status back in the late 90's. These people were given homes, had taxes annulled, owned their own businesses (that changed hands every so often to avoid taxes) and even drove BMW's and shit to work for their $10 an hour. Which is exactly why Target always gave them preferential treatment when it comes to hiring....unofficially, of course. It was surely just a coincidence that there were 9 of them hired to every single non-Serbian.
Read my other response. Fire-proof boxes have existed for decades, my mother's is rated to something like 4500 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 hours, plenty long enough to get a house fire under control. Off-site storage can be accomplished by simply taking the drive to a friend's house for safe keeping (or, for more secure solutions, a safe-deposit box at your local bank). No stupid "cloud" bullshit required.
People did this shit for years, so I guess I don't understand the difficulty in doing so now. Is it that hard to get off the couch? Is a one-time investment in a fire-proof box really more of a pain in the ass than dealing with a bunch of social networks and cloud storage sites that may or may not be around tomorrow? Like I said, people are making something so fucking easy so complicated because ZOMG THE CLOUD WE MUST USE THE CLOUD FOR EVVVVERRRRYYYYYTTHHHHIIINNGGGGGG!!!!1!!11
While the worries are somewhat understandable, I think people are becoming a little hysterical over this. There have been dangerous "death-trap" cars on the roads since the beginning of the automobile. Clearly it is a danger that society is willing to accept, and AI controlled vehicles will be no different. People were terrified of the first cars on the road, too, and we laugh about that shit now, just as I'm sure our children and grand-children will laugh hysterically at the thought of society being terrified of a computer-driven car...
Outside of all the anti-Google hysteria (which frankly has nothing to do with the feasibility of an A.I. driver), the arguments are pretty much baseless. We trust computers to fly us around in metal tubes 35,000 feet above the earth at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour and are comfortable with the fact that, statistically speaking, we're going to be just fine. Of course it needs a little work before it's perfected, but nothing is ever going to be 100% perfect. In my mind, the most important thing of all is the ability for the human being sitting in the driver's seat to over-ride the AI immediately in the event of an emergency, which I'm 100% positive was built in from day one because to do otherwise would be completely retarded (and Google is not retarded). As with auto-pilot on planes (or even cruise control on a car), auto-drive will probably be most utilized on long haul, highway driving, something that I think would be trivial for AI to do compared to, say, navigating the inner-city dodging pedestrians and cyclists and double-parked delivery vehicles and what-not.
Every time you visit a website with google ads you are tracked.
You mean those Google ads that I block using Adblock Plus?
Every time you visit a site with google analytics you get tracked.
You mean that Google Analytics junk that I block using NoScript?
Again, who forced you to use Gmail or buy an Android phone? Nobody. Your problem isn't that your data is being mined, it's that other people don't care as much as you do. Boo fucking hoo. Keep ranting on the interwebs, though, I'm sure that you'll soon convince everyone how evil Google is...
Avoiding Google on the internet is as simple as installing a couple plugins and not using any of their services. You're not helpless and you know it. Instead of ranting, instead, why not instruct people how to use those tools?
Which is still a hell of a lot more secure than uploading it to some random "cloud storage" provider and banking on the fact that, not only will your shit not get appropriated for their own use (as the ToS of Facebook and others imply), but that said cloud storage provider will even be around indefinitely. It doesn't have to be something as unlikely as a business failure, all it takes is the government to swoop in take the fucking servers because "OMG TERRORISM" or block the domain because "OMG PIRACY" and you're fucked. I'm almost positive that every ToS for every cloud storage provider out there has language to the effect that they're not liable for pretty much anything that could possibly happen to your data short of them deliberately torching their servers themselves.
My mother is a professional photographer in Alaska, and she fills up two 2TB hard drives every 4-6 months with her photos (both RAW and 'shopped since she sells prints online). One drive goes to a safe deposit box at her local bank. The other stays at home in a fireproof box so she can access the data outside of bank hours.
Off-site storage is all well and good (and prudent), but I guess what I don't understand is why Facebook (or social networks in general) of all things? Who the hell would trust a company that makes it's money on scraping customer data (to include scanning photos so it can 'suggest' people to tag in them)? If the data is so important to a person that they don't want to lose it, why is it not important enough to care about the fundamental flaws in cloud storage as it exists today? And with the rash of government seizures and shit, who would trust any of these 'cloud' storage providers with data that important in the first place?
There are a lot of questions surrounding the viability of cloud storage in the long term, but there aren't many as regards the viability of a hard drive in the long term. Fill it up, take it to a trusted friend's house, and boom: off-site storage, and it costs you nothing but the cost of an external hard drive. No questions about ownership or worries about government seizures (hence the 'trusted friend's' part), and certainly no bullshit trying to figure out how to retrieve a metric shit-ton of personal data from a social network that has no vested interest whatsoever in helping you do so.
When did people stop backing up shit locally they don't want to lose in a hard drive failure?
Not backup as in upload to fucking Facebook, or host on a cloud storage site, but as in having another hard drive to put the shit on? Am I a relic of a long-forgotten age because I have an external HDD with a backup of all my digital photos and documents?
I swear to Christ, it's like people have just gotten so fucking stupid since the advent of "the cloud", they want to find a way to shove it into every facet of their lives online whether it's practical or not. You can buy a 2TB Western Digital USB 3.0 external HDD for like $100, plenty big enough to hold every photo the average person has probably ever taken with room to spare.
It seems that way because unlike the extreme left, the extreme right does not own the mass media.
I love how skewed the right has become that they actually still spout that bullshit about the "extreme left" owning the media.
If anything, the media is centrist (which explains why the idiocy of the tea party isn't immediately laughed off the air every time it comes up), it's just the extremely vocal minority of far-right whackjobs with a bullshit persecution complex keep screaming because the rest of the media doesn't echo their nonsense the way Limbaugh and Glenn Beck do. I mean, the very fact that Sarah Palin was treated as a serious candidate, despite what a complete and utter moron she is, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the media is mostly centrist. A "leftist" media would have laughed her stupid ass right off the airwaves after her first Katie Couric interview, when she asked hard-hitting questions like "What do you read?"
But they do care, mightily, about making a $100 million investment based on laws that appear and disappear.
As opposed to the $100 million investment they make in order to get their own laws passed, just like every other major corporation with a presence in the U.S.?
Forgive me if I'm less than sympathetic that the laws weren't made solely to ensure their profitability in providing a product to a "free" market.
I sense a new Slashdot poll in the making...
Get a little older. By 40 or so, you'll find it's often just too difficult to try to get three people in the same place at the same time to go to the movies, yet alone keep up with everything that's going on in everybody's lives.
I'm not too far off, now (33) and obviously it's difficult for everyone to get together with work and kids and the trappings of day to day life, but like I said, we still manage just fine without Facebook. Sure, some of our "circle" uses FB to communicate with each other, but they still make sure that us non-FB friends get the word and are included. That, to me, isn't too much to expect for someone that would call themselves my friend.
We all have email addresses and internet at home, and most of us that aren't on FB have smartphones capable of sending and receiving email (and chat, and text, and calls) so all it requires is someone to log into their email and send us an invite. We do it all the time. It's trivial to send a group email, obviously. This bullshit with creating a public event and inviting everyone on Facebook seems like more steps then just composing a group email at the outset. EVERYONE has an email account these days. No need to exclude people at all...unless, like I said, the person planning the event just can't be arsed to send out an email or text, and again, those people do not fit the definition of "friend" to me at all.
Now, the "old friends" thing, honestly, I grew up an Army brat, so I'm a lot more pragmatic when it comes to friends: If I haven't talked to someone in years, then they're not my friend anymore. Not that I bear them any ill will, but people change, and friendships are constantly evolving. I'm curious what they "did with their life", but only curious...obviously it doesn't much matter to me since I haven't even talked to them in up to 20 years. I hope they're doing well, I'm not a prick or one of those people that has to constantly measure myself against their high school and college buddies to feel good about myself, and honestly it has zero bearing on my life whatsoever. Why waste the time with a cursory friendship that exists only through a service like Facebook when I have real friends that I can call anytime, day or night, if I ever needed anything at all? Those are the people that matter to me, not the million acquaintances I've had over my life...
I think we just have much different types of friends. Even my friends on Facebook don't announce their illnesses or family issues on there, really (that I know of)...they call me, and I do whatever I can for them, whether it's being a shoulder to cry on or a couch to crash on if there are marital issues going on...
Of course it's no wonder. Getting voted out of office should be the least of the worries of the incumbents in government these days. If things keep trotting down this path they're going to end up needing to be airlifted out before the mobs get a hold of them. Who could have guessed that the poor and middle-class would have revolted in the face of "austerity measures"? Anyone that's ever opened a history book.
Or just download all your media and get a superior product for free.
It is hard to avoid it when the vast majority of your social circle uses it to communicate and plan events.
The vast majority of my social circle doesn't fuck around with Facebook at all and we manage to communicate and plan events...
Maybe it's time to reexamine why they're in your circle to begin with if you leaving Facebook is going to actually strain your friendship? If they can't be arsed to shoot an email or text message to the guy that doesn't want to waste his time reading stupid bullshit (90% of Facebook status updates), then they're probably not your friend in the first place. I had friends that didn't own a cellphone until recently, but we still managed to include them by (GASP) picking up the fucking phone, dialing their home phone number, and leaving a message if they didn't answer. Not one of us said "God, fuck that guy; if he doesn't have a cell phone capable of receiving text messages, I'm not even going to bother talking to him at all..."
Just another example of how Facebook has cheapened the meaning of "friend" to include everyone you've ever come into contact with. If they won't include you if they can't message you in one particular way then they ain't your friends.
No, I just wrote it. Can you link me to the article with the fark comment? I'm curious to see what you're thinking of...
Agreed. I lost a lot of respect for him when he opined that Universal health care is equivalent to slavery last year, but I'll be the first to cheer him on in this regard if he can do something about the ridiculous waste that is the TSA.
I actually proctored the TSA tests off and on from '06-'08. Besides the fact that the questions themselves were a joke (I remember one in particular being "Have you ever lived in a house you thought was haunted?"), the majority of the people sitting for them looked like they were either under the influence of narcotics, or at least had more than a passing familiarity with them, not to mention gang tats and other evidence that these people were not the best and brightest by any stretch.
I haven't traveled by air since, and barring a death in the immediate family that makes such a trip completely unavoidable, that's not going to change anytime soon. I honestly can't understand how parents can let their kids be patted down by these animals...although I'm betting if they were as familiar with the types of people that sit for the tests, and how ridiculously worthless the tests were themselves, that the airports would either be completely empty or full of rioters...
Robbing the mass of people scrambling to make a living in a declining economy to plant a flag on a desert orb borders on psychopathy.
Tell you what, how about we all get to pick and choose what our tax dollars support? I'll go ahead and make sure no fucking oil company, multibillion dollar corporation, or other collection of ridiculously wealthy assholes get my tax dollars for no other reason than the fact that they bribe our government officials, and you can go ahead and scratch NASA off your list.
I'm willing to bet most Americans would rather put their tax dollars into research that benefits all mankind, such as that driven by NASA, then subsidizing the profit margin of an already profitable organization. Which is precisely why we'll never get the chance.
How many childless couples do you think subsidized your fucking education? Do people stop paying property taxes for schools when their kids graduate? Can you imagine how quickly our education system would fall apart if it wasn't a cost borne by all of society? Or are you one of those people that doesn't give much of a shit unless you benefit directly from a given program?
I bet if we cut every subsidy to an already profitable business in this country we could fund NASA ten times over. The problem is, NASA doesn't throw billions of dollars at lobbyists and public relations campaigns like certain "clean energy through natural gas fracking" commercials I see every 3 fucking minutes on CNN...so they don't have shills like you to advocate for them, just us losers that see the benefit in pure research.