Your argument is specious. If you, personally walked into my house, I could have you thrown out. Likewise, if you walked into my house with some friends of yours, I could have the lot of you thrown out. However, if you, personally, stood on the sidewalk in front of my house, there's nothing I can do about it (unless you're breaking other laws, e.g. drunk and disorderly).
Requiring permits creates opportunity for abuse. Who decides to whom to issue permits, and whom to deny permits? Did the mayor have a grudge against Unions? Maybe he'll lean on the permitting department to deny a permit to the union organizers. Does he have a good reason? Maybe he doesn't need one; you just have to make the requirements for the permits sufficiently confusing that every application has some flaw or other in it.
The fact that they're called permits implies that they are used to grant or deny permission for something which has already been explicitly granted by the highest law in the country. If you want to register protests for the sake of managing public safety (by which I mean knowing where to route ambulances), that's not the same sort of requirement as a "permit."
Engineering isn't bad per se, it's just the unintended consequences of modifying food crops when we don't really understand the entire nutrition process.
Which part of the First Amendment to the Constitution was unclear? No one should be able to require permits. They have a Right to Peaceably Assemble. Period.
Another poster has suggested learning carpentry, but you (like me) are probably better served by checking out an unfinished-furniture store. Their products are typically priced about the same as the Ikea junk, but made of real wood. As an upside, you pick exactly which colour you want when you stain or paint them. If you can't/don't want to stain or paint them yourself, most of the stores I've seen will do the finishing for a little bit extra, but it's still cheaper than designer shelves or even the common stuff from "real" furniture stores.
Having read the same comments you did, I think you're missing the point. Very few people are complaining that Netflix is doing the wrong thing by pushing streaming; lots of people are of the opinion that streaming is the future of content delivery. However, it's not ready to be the present of content delivery, and that's what most of us are lamenting. All those comments seem to end with "I'll see how things go, but if they screw up DVD rental, I'm out." I'm in the same boat - streaming is nice, but I signed up for Netflix for DVDs by mail.
For all that Steve Jobs believes it, Disc-based content delivery isn't dead, because no one has stepped up to provide the content and experience that at least some of us want. None of the fully licensed (**AA compliant) services provide equivalent features to the physical media experience: I want to be able to watch non-English-language content with subtitles, and I want full surround sound from my action movies. Some folks like to watch the "extra features" on the disc. None of us wants the bright red "buffering" screen. Since streaming services don't provide these features, we're not willing to switch, yet.
Presently, the best media-viewing experience possible is to obtain a physical DVD, rip it so that I can skip the out-of-date previews and commercials, and then watch it from a computer with appropriate A/V connections. Streaming has a lot of potential to let me skip a few of those steps, but they haven't realized that potential, yet.
Really? Qwikster? It's 2000 again? Apparently, this company will be around for about six months before fading into obscurity, like every other *ster brand. Bah.
Well, you 'are' sick, or you 'are' depressed. Why are you sick? You 'have' the flu, or you 'have' schizophrenia. The language is there, to be used as you like. One of the differences tends to be that most mental illnesses aren't considered contagious and have less-well-understood mechanisms. Phrases like "she's schizophrenic" and "he's cancerous" don't have the same connotation, because cancerous means something else.
Also, mental illnesses tend to have more of an impact on personality (i.e., who you are) than physical ones, and tend to last much longer (the flu lasts a week, something like bipolar disorder lasts essentially forever). Certain mental health issues are also a lot less stigmatized than they have ever been, mostly as a result of pharmaceutical companies and popular psychology.
The Inverse-Square Law would indicate that the intensity of EMR to which you're subjected from a nearby device (e.g., your TV) would be significant as compared to a distant device (e.g., a GPS satellite) because signal strength falls off with the square of the distance (something twice as far away has a signal one fourth as strong). My great-grandmother had a TV when I was a kid that made the hair on your arms stand up if you were standing next to it when it turned on (which you had to be, since that's where the power knob was). I suspect that it was kind of a special case (like most things in that house, it was pretty darn old), but still. That was a fair bit of charge.
Had a power outage for about 20 hours (storm related) a few weeks ago. It was amazing. So quiet, so dark. I almost didn't want to go to sleep (and admittedly, I almost couldn't!).
Sounds like a good opportunity for some unannounced double-blind testing. For example:
Test 1: Blanket the region in RF, similar levels and spectrum to an average suburb. You have enough radio telescopes in the area that no one will notice the extra emitter equipment being brought in, as long as its done sensibly. Measure the local activity by having nonchalant conversations with the alleged sufferers of RF sensitivity allergies (ideally you'd start building a rapport a few months ahead of time, so nothing seems amiss - plus I'm sure they have at least a few fun parties). You could even front as scientists studying their "illness" and interview them about their symptoms, etc., for an even better/more specific example. Bonus points for "But it's never bothered me up here in these hills" comments recorded on the day/week of the RF storm.
Test 2: Well after the first test, "leak" news of a test like the first, but don't broadcast any extra RF. Measure community reaction as in test 1. See what differences arise. If you have someone who's legitimately sensitive to RF, he or she will notice things, and likely say something (especially if you're asking around). If everyone is subject to the "nocebo" effect (term seen elsewhere in this thread - I kinda like it) you'll have predictable results.
Step 3: Publish! (like Profit!, but for academics)
My grandmother has a home number that was a prefix off from a local movie theater (they have long since changed it). They received a lot of calls for a while, and answered with something along the lines of "No, the correct number is ___." My grandfather had asked the theater to change their phone number, and they refused.
So, since they were uncooperative, my uncles decided to stop being helpful when people called the wrong number. They had a lot of fun making up fake movie times, fake movie names, and bogus specials (Bring a friend for free on Tuesdays! Get free popcorn if you give the following password between 5 and 6 on Saturday night!). Ah, to be a fly on the wall when those patrons walked into the theater...
I recall watching a documentary on Prohibition on PBS a few years ago wherein they described that the same company making boats and/or boat engines for the Feds were also making and selling engines and boats to the rum-runners that were a few HP more powerful, or a few knots faster. Not only did each side need/want to buy a faster boat each time there was an advance in speed, but the same company sold all the boats! First a slightly faster model to the Feds, then a just-a-bit-faster-than-that model to the smugglers, all the while raking in top dollar for each design.
Selling to both sides of a conflict is hardly a new business tactic.
What brands and models were they? I suppose it's possible you managed European imports, and a guy I knew had a crazy attachment for his Handspring Visor back in the day (no carrier branding on that) but I think that was an analog device (could be wrong - it was a decade ago, at least). I bought an unlocked Moto RAZR from Newegg around the same time the iPhone 3G was released, but it wasn't unbranded; it says Cingular all over it: software, logo stamp on the back, etc. One of the artifacts of the fragmentation of the US cell phone market across multiple competing technologies is that the carriers would much prefer the manufacturers sell any devices through them, which they then brand, and the manufacturers have no incentive not to go along.
I understand it may have been possible to buy phones like that direct from the manufacturer even back pre-iPhone, if you were a developer and had $$$$ to drop on a phone. I never saw one, though, and I've configured hundreds of cell phones (thousands, probably - all platforms, all carriers) to sync with computers, retrieve e-mail, etc.
For reference, those PalmOS and WinMo devices weren't unlocked, or unbranded. The Verizon ones had the VZ app installed, the sprint ones had Nascar apps installed (no, really, they did!) etc. Someone would get their new Treo, and we'd have to go find the download code so they could actually install VersaMail so they could get ActiveSync, and disable that stupid Verizon Mail application.* WinMo worked with ActiveSync out-of-box, but those other apps were still there.
The iPhone was, in fact, the first zero-shovelware "smartphone."
* You couldn't actually remove it, you just moved it so it was out of the way and told the client "Don't launch this one."
There's no blood test; you need to monitor brain activity. IMNSHO, they should stop permitting psychiatrists to diagnose ADHD or ASD, and leave it to the neurologists.
I am not entirely sure of all the details of the OP's story, but at least in most school districts and athletic conferences in the US, there is a link in one direction. While (technically and officially) athletic performance has no impact on grades (and at least in my school district it didn't), a certain minimum grade level is required to be eligible to play on school sports teams.
Thus, if the OP had managed to cause several of the football players' grades to drop (through whatever cockamamie scheme they had going) he could have rendered them ineligible to play for most of a season, thereby hurting their chances to get noticed by sports scouts, etc. The details are based in the mechanics of the US public education system, but I can explain them if you'd like.
(And yes, I mostly wrote this post as an excuse to use the word "cockamamie.")
You know what Apple really provides that makes it easier? Recovery. If someone's iPad or iPhone or whatever gets hosed, plug it in and restore to defaults, then resync the clean data. It's like rolling back a snapshot (takes a bit longer, true) in VMware. Users can play more, because the consequences for a misstep are significantly reduced.
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Your argument is specious. If you, personally walked into my house, I could have you thrown out. Likewise, if you walked into my house with some friends of yours, I could have the lot of you thrown out. However, if you, personally, stood on the sidewalk in front of my house, there's nothing I can do about it (unless you're breaking other laws, e.g. drunk and disorderly).
Requiring permits creates opportunity for abuse. Who decides to whom to issue permits, and whom to deny permits? Did the mayor have a grudge against Unions? Maybe he'll lean on the permitting department to deny a permit to the union organizers. Does he have a good reason? Maybe he doesn't need one; you just have to make the requirements for the permits sufficiently confusing that every application has some flaw or other in it.
The fact that they're called permits implies that they are used to grant or deny permission for something which has already been explicitly granted by the highest law in the country. If you want to register protests for the sake of managing public safety (by which I mean knowing where to route ambulances), that's not the same sort of requirement as a "permit."
I'm heading for the Pizza Hut salad bar.
There is something wrong with that statement. I can't quite say what it is, but there is definitely something wrong...
Free Speech Cages would be presumably unconstitutional, if there were any authority capable of upholding said Constitution. Alas.
Engineering isn't bad per se, it's just the unintended consequences of modifying food crops when we don't really understand the entire nutrition process.
If they had their permits
Which part of the First Amendment to the Constitution was unclear? No one should be able to require permits. They have a Right to Peaceably Assemble. Period.
Another poster has suggested learning carpentry, but you (like me) are probably better served by checking out an unfinished-furniture store. Their products are typically priced about the same as the Ikea junk, but made of real wood. As an upside, you pick exactly which colour you want when you stain or paint them. If you can't/don't want to stain or paint them yourself, most of the stores I've seen will do the finishing for a little bit extra, but it's still cheaper than designer shelves or even the common stuff from "real" furniture stores.
Having read the same comments you did, I think you're missing the point. Very few people are complaining that Netflix is doing the wrong thing by pushing streaming; lots of people are of the opinion that streaming is the future of content delivery. However, it's not ready to be the present of content delivery, and that's what most of us are lamenting. All those comments seem to end with "I'll see how things go, but if they screw up DVD rental, I'm out." I'm in the same boat - streaming is nice, but I signed up for Netflix for DVDs by mail.
For all that Steve Jobs believes it, Disc-based content delivery isn't dead, because no one has stepped up to provide the content and experience that at least some of us want. None of the fully licensed (**AA compliant) services provide equivalent features to the physical media experience: I want to be able to watch non-English-language content with subtitles, and I want full surround sound from my action movies. Some folks like to watch the "extra features" on the disc. None of us wants the bright red "buffering" screen. Since streaming services don't provide these features, we're not willing to switch, yet.
Presently, the best media-viewing experience possible is to obtain a physical DVD, rip it so that I can skip the out-of-date previews and commercials, and then watch it from a computer with appropriate A/V connections. Streaming has a lot of potential to let me skip a few of those steps, but they haven't realized that potential, yet.
Really? Qwikster? It's 2000 again? Apparently, this company will be around for about six months before fading into obscurity, like every other *ster brand. Bah.
Well, you 'are' sick, or you 'are' depressed. Why are you sick? You 'have' the flu, or you 'have' schizophrenia. The language is there, to be used as you like. One of the differences tends to be that most mental illnesses aren't considered contagious and have less-well-understood mechanisms. Phrases like "she's schizophrenic" and "he's cancerous" don't have the same connotation, because cancerous means something else.
Also, mental illnesses tend to have more of an impact on personality (i.e., who you are) than physical ones, and tend to last much longer (the flu lasts a week, something like bipolar disorder lasts essentially forever). Certain mental health issues are also a lot less stigmatized than they have ever been, mostly as a result of pharmaceutical companies and popular psychology.
The Inverse-Square Law would indicate that the intensity of EMR to which you're subjected from a nearby device (e.g., your TV) would be significant as compared to a distant device (e.g., a GPS satellite) because signal strength falls off with the square of the distance (something twice as far away has a signal one fourth as strong). My great-grandmother had a TV when I was a kid that made the hair on your arms stand up if you were standing next to it when it turned on (which you had to be, since that's where the power knob was). I suspect that it was kind of a special case (like most things in that house, it was pretty darn old), but still. That was a fair bit of charge.
I used to get that, but I found tuning to a different channel helped immensely.
(I know, I know, you mean the CRT whine. Pity you couldn't adjust refresh on TV tubes.)
Had a power outage for about 20 hours (storm related) a few weeks ago. It was amazing. So quiet, so dark. I almost didn't want to go to sleep (and admittedly, I almost couldn't!).
Sounds like a good opportunity for some unannounced double-blind testing. For example:
Test 1: Blanket the region in RF, similar levels and spectrum to an average suburb. You have enough radio telescopes in the area that no one will notice the extra emitter equipment being brought in, as long as its done sensibly. Measure the local activity by having nonchalant conversations with the alleged sufferers of RF sensitivity allergies (ideally you'd start building a rapport a few months ahead of time, so nothing seems amiss - plus I'm sure they have at least a few fun parties). You could even front as scientists studying their "illness" and interview them about their symptoms, etc., for an even better/more specific example. Bonus points for "But it's never bothered me up here in these hills" comments recorded on the day/week of the RF storm.
Test 2: Well after the first test, "leak" news of a test like the first, but don't broadcast any extra RF. Measure community reaction as in test 1. See what differences arise. If you have someone who's legitimately sensitive to RF, he or she will notice things, and likely say something (especially if you're asking around). If everyone is subject to the "nocebo" effect (term seen elsewhere in this thread - I kinda like it) you'll have predictable results.
Step 3: Publish! (like Profit!, but for academics)
It's not just the inhabitants who have expanding waistlines; America has bigger belts, these days. Bible, Rust, etc...
My grandmother has a home number that was a prefix off from a local movie theater (they have long since changed it). They received a lot of calls for a while, and answered with something along the lines of "No, the correct number is ___." My grandfather had asked the theater to change their phone number, and they refused.
So, since they were uncooperative, my uncles decided to stop being helpful when people called the wrong number. They had a lot of fun making up fake movie times, fake movie names, and bogus specials (Bring a friend for free on Tuesdays! Get free popcorn if you give the following password between 5 and 6 on Saturday night!). Ah, to be a fly on the wall when those patrons walked into the theater...
I recall watching a documentary on Prohibition on PBS a few years ago wherein they described that the same company making boats and/or boat engines for the Feds were also making and selling engines and boats to the rum-runners that were a few HP more powerful, or a few knots faster. Not only did each side need/want to buy a faster boat each time there was an advance in speed, but the same company sold all the boats! First a slightly faster model to the Feds, then a just-a-bit-faster-than-that model to the smugglers, all the while raking in top dollar for each design.
Selling to both sides of a conflict is hardly a new business tactic.
That's an underestimate. Sadly.
Eh, kinda. The resolution that the fax is capable of handling is a lot less than what an average scanner will do, so they're much cheaper to make.
And you've just explained by reference why Magic: The Gathering is frustrating as a casual game, too!
What brands and models were they? I suppose it's possible you managed European imports, and a guy I knew had a crazy attachment for his Handspring Visor back in the day (no carrier branding on that) but I think that was an analog device (could be wrong - it was a decade ago, at least). I bought an unlocked Moto RAZR from Newegg around the same time the iPhone 3G was released, but it wasn't unbranded; it says Cingular all over it: software, logo stamp on the back, etc. One of the artifacts of the fragmentation of the US cell phone market across multiple competing technologies is that the carriers would much prefer the manufacturers sell any devices through them, which they then brand, and the manufacturers have no incentive not to go along.
I understand it may have been possible to buy phones like that direct from the manufacturer even back pre-iPhone, if you were a developer and had $$$$ to drop on a phone. I never saw one, though, and I've configured hundreds of cell phones (thousands, probably - all platforms, all carriers) to sync with computers, retrieve e-mail, etc.
For reference, those PalmOS and WinMo devices weren't unlocked, or unbranded. The Verizon ones had the VZ app installed, the sprint ones had Nascar apps installed (no, really, they did!) etc. Someone would get their new Treo, and we'd have to go find the download code so they could actually install VersaMail so they could get ActiveSync, and disable that stupid Verizon Mail application.* WinMo worked with ActiveSync out-of-box, but those other apps were still there.
The iPhone was, in fact, the first zero-shovelware "smartphone."
* You couldn't actually remove it, you just moved it so it was out of the way and told the client "Don't launch this one."
There's no blood test; you need to monitor brain activity. IMNSHO, they should stop permitting psychiatrists to diagnose ADHD or ASD, and leave it to the neurologists.
What evidence do you have that there are no olympians who can name all eleven doctors?
I am not entirely sure of all the details of the OP's story, but at least in most school districts and athletic conferences in the US, there is a link in one direction. While (technically and officially) athletic performance has no impact on grades (and at least in my school district it didn't), a certain minimum grade level is required to be eligible to play on school sports teams.
Thus, if the OP had managed to cause several of the football players' grades to drop (through whatever cockamamie scheme they had going) he could have rendered them ineligible to play for most of a season, thereby hurting their chances to get noticed by sports scouts, etc. The details are based in the mechanics of the US public education system, but I can explain them if you'd like.
(And yes, I mostly wrote this post as an excuse to use the word "cockamamie.")
You know what Apple really provides that makes it easier? Recovery. If someone's iPad or iPhone or whatever gets hosed, plug it in and restore to defaults, then resync the clean data. It's like rolling back a snapshot (takes a bit longer, true) in VMware. Users can play more, because the consequences for a misstep are significantly reduced.