Simple, elegant, batshit retarded. You're basically saying "appoint a council of perfect guardians of rightness". It's the most authoritarian, opposite of project-goal design possible.
How do you see having an objective metric for measuring editorial effectiveness as "authoritarian"? I didn't suggest giving that team of "blessed authors" any special powers of their own. They would function just as "normal" (though anonymous) contributors, that the site itself happens to explicitly trust. No human intervention required, just a simple permissions modification trigger - If you try to delete good content, you lose that power. Simple as that.
Even in the unlikely situation that such a blessed author goes rogue and starts posting goatse spam, the defrocked editor would have no trouble whatsoever proving exactly what had happened on appeal.
Not one person has proposed a solution, because such solutions are almost exclusively of the "elegant, simple and wrong" variety.
Not true - I personally suggested a very, very simple change to implement in another post:
Take away editorial privileges from anyone with more deletions/reversions than actual contributions. Done.
I would also suggest the age-old technique of using known-quality data to audit the editors - Assemble a team of known-good content creators and have them contribute under a variety of pseudonyms. Instantly fire any editor that decides to measure his dick against that known-good content. Best of all, Jimbo doesn't even need to do that in secret - In fact, he shouldn't do it secretly... That way it puts all the editors on notice - Don't fuck with legit content if you want to keep your god-like powers.
I could keep going, but the Wiki staff already knows their real problem - They just lack the will to do anything about it.
Yes, because 4.3 million English language articles is a sure sign of the victory of "deletionists". Sorry you couldn't put yourself on wikipedia as "the smartest dude ever." I dare you to go to the delition log for today and tell me that more than 5% of them have the bearest hint of being related to an encyclopedia.
Do you notice how every post so far in this thread basically has made the same basic complaint about Wiki's power-tripping inner-circle editors?
You can, of course, choose to ignore that with flippant BS mocking the GPs intent. Or, you can take the hint that when a hundred random people all tell you the same thing, they probably don't all just have a grudge over having an ego-page repeatedly deleted.
The various "cliques" of power-tripping old-timers on Wikipedia has actively driven people away.
And most of the time, they can actually use Wiki's pointless rules (style, notoriety, original research) to justify their wholesale reduction of content to the least objectionable pablum possible, even going so far as to revert corrections back to the last known-incorrect state.
Make no mistake, many of wikis guidelines exist for a damned good reason, and I wouldn't suggest gutting them wholesale. Instead, I would gut their editorial staff that has perverted those reasons into mere excuses to behave like petty tyrants. Where to start? If someone has more deletions/reversions than contributions under their belt - See ya!
Care to inform us what car so that others may learn from your mistake and avoid that brand?
Oh, thought I had mentioned that - Hyundai. And as far as I could tell, all their current models come with this garbage. But really, the brand doesn't matter... The problem here involves them all pulling similar crap.
I seriously wonder how the aftermarket car radio market even exists anymore today, when the "radio" has become the primary interface to the car's computer.
Is that a problem with the iPhone or is it the US Carriers being greedy?
Yes to both, but more to the point, the problem comes from auto manufacturers not getting the same damned clue the rest of the world figured out 30 years ago - Use cheap commodity parts instead of rolling your own everything, and at least try to hide the fact that you can spy on your customers' every move.
I have a fairly new car, for example. It came with the manufacturer's in-house version of OnStar, which I adamantly refused to let them activate (you should have seen the look of horror on three different levels of the sales food-chain at my refusal - The manufacturer has clearly pushed them hard to get 100% compliance). Except, it just doesn't work that way - The dealership's own techs literally can't clear codes (including the easy ones like "oil change due") on the goddamned thing without processing the order through the manufacturer's website and having it download the change to my car via the built-in cell-enabled TMU module.
So, as a result, it nags me to register it every fucking time I start the car. On the bright side, A friend scored me a copy of the technician manuals for my model, so I had no trouble disabling the cell and GPS features of the TMU (hint: You can't, but you can leave them effectively trapped inside a faraday cage with no way to talk to the outside world). On the down side, the dealer will have no choice (practically, not just contractually) but to reconnect it every time I need even the most minor work done on my car.
"What, you don't want built-in emergency assistance?"
"I have a cell phone"
"The car knows your location and can dispatch EMS right to you"
"So does my phone"
"But your phone won't know if you rolled over and died in a ditch!"
"I won't really care, then, will I?"
The constitution specifically says congress has the right to regulate. It's IN the fucking amendment.
This argument will, of course, go nowhere because we both have a preferred interpretation of the 2nd amendment, but I at least have both grammar and history on my side. But the "fucking amendment"only refers to a "well regulated militia", not "a well-regulated firearm". More importantly, you have chosen the wrong definition of "regulated" to make that phrase better fit your worldview. Hint: Think "oil", not "laws".
The USA - By which I mean federal regulations, not individual states - Has absolutely no registration requirement for any small arms (non select-fire and less than or equal to.50 caliber).
It also has no mandatory waiting period, no mandatory background check (that restriction applies to a particular class of dealers, not to buyers), no ammunition capacity limits... And, the law by default allows both concealed and open carry.
Seven states (most of them pretty obvious) have registration requirements for all guns. Another seven have registration requirements for just pistols. All but two have requirements for concealed carry, but that applies to the person, not the guns. A whopping 33 states, however, allow relatively uninhibited open carry, with another 10 allowing licensed open carry. So realistically, in most of the US, you don't need to carry concealed, you can literally walk around with a rifle slung across your back and a holster on your hip.
You don't make hardware USB-compliant simply by having a PID&VID. And the process - as with most processes where numbers are assigned (consider, for example, the IANA) - doesn't admit subversion by buying up a block of numbers then re-selling.
RTFA. It specifically mentions three licensed vendors (Microchip, FTDI, and Openmoko) that already do exactly that. So no, this has nothing to do with quality control, and everything to do with control control.
Personally, though, I don't see the problem. VTM apparently thinks much too highly of their coveted IP, blinding them to the reality of their situation - They have "Xerox"ed themselves. Kleenex. Escalator. Genericization sucks, suckas!
USB has become so ubiquitous, products using it don't need to advertise that fact - If something comes with a visible USB A or B connector on it, end users will just plug it in without giving a second thought about what logos the box had on it.
As pointed out elsewhere, Facebook has the same odd puritanical streak as found throughout the USA. You can watch people being beheaded, but they still firmly forbid pictures of breastfeeding moms. The sight of a female breast might excite prurient passions, whereas watching a murder is just spiffy.
How about "honor rape" as practiced by the same barbarians going around beheading infidels? I mean, as long as any visible breasts get blurred out, of course - Wouldn't want to accidentally titillate any impressionable young viewers, after all. Where does Facebook stand on that?
I mean, since rape has its basis in power, not sex, Facebook should have no more problem with it than with plain ol' boring murder. So let us know, Zuckhead - The world needs to know where you draw the line on poor taste! I'd hate to get banned from your fine stream of ads for posting the "wrong" kind of torture porn.
Try "the one that will shoot you out of the sky if you missed dotting a single 'i' or greasing the right PAC's accounts".
Think shooting down a civilian rocket would result in public outrage? Try picturing the press release: "Terrorist cell comes dangerously close to success, only stopped after ballistic missile launch detected".
If you don't want to be discovered with Bluetooth, don't leave your devices in discoverable mode!
More to the point - What BT devices actually broadcast their availability continually? Both my cars actually pop up an on-demand 90 or 120 second countdown to show how long you have left to try to pair a device to them; all the devices I've tried pairing to them either do something similar, or even go so far as to do a single active sweep before giving up and going silent again.
Even as an admitted privacy nut, it surprises me that this works at all. From what I've seen, BT systems actually seem to do a pretty good job of keeping their mouths shut when not in use.
/ Keyboards and mice notwithstanding - Yeah, they pretty much chatter along continually, but then, they don't tend to have any hijackable capabilities, purely passive "timing" attacks aside.
I'll take the universal welfare state over some kind of ridiculous experiment in anarcho-capitalism.
The problem here involves the sheer number of people we have on the planet. Human life has basically no value anymore - We have 7000 "one in a million" geniuses on the planet at any given time.
I like the idea of a societal safety net. I honestly do. But really, we as a species don't need it - In fact, we as a species would do better if we let our weak and unproductive members die rather than drag them along for the ride.
generally a decent civil society that we all pay our share towards
We call that a work ethic in the US. Over 2/3rds of the population provably doesn't have one (based on the real employment rate of able-bodied adults - As opposed to the sham published "unemployment" rate, which only measures the small fraction of people both recently out of a job and actually looking for a new one). Any suggestion that depends on the majority of our species to "do the right thing" against their own self-interest will fail.
As a resident of a prosperous northern-European country with working infrastructure, a working healthcare system, relatively low poverty and homelessness levels, and generally a decent civil society
Translation: A racially, culturally, religiously homogenous nation that has historically had the luxury of ignoring national defense and which has weeded out those who would reject its core socialist values. Yup, a group of like-minded people can accomplish great things. Now secure your own sources of energy. Develop your own technologies. Defend your own borders. Deal with half your population hating the other half. Whoops, not so rosy now?
Now let's see if you're able to cut the internet cord. If not, then you're not a cord cutter.
Thank you, "adapted for big-screen/TV viewer", for subsidizing my dead-tree books. Sorry to sound like a snide dick, but once you got things rolling I decided, why not?
I'll admit I watch the occasional movie on Netflix, but seriously? If you think modern "push" media has a future, I have bridge to sell you. It still has the advantage only in purely linear storytelling. Move to any newer form of multipath stories (aka "video games"), or any form of on-demand stories (aka "books"), and you can consider the anomaly of the past 50 years of broadcast TV as... Well, as an anomaly. It grew fat on a niche composed of a captive audience starving for content. That demographic has vanished, time to move along.
At this point the British believe that the Chinese, the Russians, or both, have copies of all the documents that Snowden took.
Considering that Snowden shared those files with journalists on both sides of the pond, I see no reason to doubt that belief - Nor do I consider it particularly meaningful.
The British might as well believe that the Chinese and Russians have copies of NyanCat, for all it matters.
How about just letting most of us work from home, and only maintaining enough office space to host a handful of meeting/collaboration rooms? Bam, your whole "office building" just reduced to a 2nd story loft.
But hey, sure, let's instead try playing games with peoples' heads rather than address the real problem. And then the PHBs can ask themselves why the electric bill has actually gone up, when everyone starts keeping an electric space heater under their desk.
At age 8, I would never have allowed my parents unsupervised use of the home PC.
Now, by 12 or 13, I had learned enough about security basics to limit their access enough as to render them relatively harmless. But before that? No frickin' way - One "install our daily free coupon print driver" ad away from needing to do a total reimage.
Oh, wait... You meant... Ahahaahahhaaaaahah!!11!!1!!!!!
How quaint. As though non-IT professional parents have the least shot at keeping their kids off the internet. Cute notion, though.
Couldn't a proper service generate key pairs on the user's device and then just charge (or not if you prefer) for KB transmitted.
Yes. The problem? Most people suck at working with encryption - They either can't handle it at all, or they do something phenomenally stupid that exposes their private keys to the whole world.
Realistically, if not for the underlying need (for most people) that any encryption works completely transparently, we would have no need of specialty encrypted cloud storage in the first place - Just use TrueCrypt to work with your collection of encrypted files, and sync them back to your Google Drive or Dropbox or what-have-you when done. Bam, done. The fact that something as simple as that stumps most people pretty much proves my assertion
In fairness, CALEA requires backdoors from telecom firms, not independent website operators - Yet. But it already crossed that exact line, of requiring non-governmental entities to actively undermine their own best interests solely for the possible future convenience of the government.
Can't we go anywhere without being subjected to advertisements?
No, but you can learn the joy that comes from playing "make it stop talking".
Try this as an experiment - Wait for a reasonably busy day at Target (a particularly egregious offender for this experiment). Go up to one of their many end-cap monitors screaming ads at you.
And... Turn it off (some of them have no off switch, in which case, just unplug it). Simple as that.
At first people will look shocked, then guiltily relieved, as realization slowly dawns on them - You've done nothing wrong, and the screeching has stopped! A few will even take up the "cause", and on a good day, you can get a wave of ad-lessness to spread out from your starting point that keeps the store basically ad-free until the end of the day, when sadly, everyone will have forgotten that they don't need to put up with it.
Call me petty if you like, but little pleasures make life enjoyable. And I, for one, look forward to sensors that can weigh the product on the shelves, just to see how much fun we can have screwing with their error handling - How do they react to someone taking "half" of a can of tuna fish? How about adding one? Replacing one with two gallons of water? Fun fun fun!
Prolonging the life of people past their reproductive years has no effect on long-term population. Keeping more people alive long enough to reproduce, however, does. We want more people dying young, not less.
Furthermore... Accidents, by definition, happen accidentally. If you could prevent them, they wouldn't have happened.
As for suicide - If someone wants to die - Let 'em. Someday, if we don't get hit by a bus first, we all end up dying of something, and a great many of those somethings hurt. When that time comes, I fully intent to exercise my reality-given right (which no laws can ever take away from me) to put myself out of my misery.
What you fail to realise, when taking this "our money" stance, is the money SAVED by throwing them away.
You seem confused on the real intent of "the purge". It had nothing to do with freeing up space or reusing media or anything of the sort.
Didn't you ever wonder why the BBC archives have such a bizarre patchwork of content missing? Not entire years, or seasons, or shows, but just completely random, with concentrations in a few years/seasons/series, but even then not consistent.
The BBC purge had more in common with Tom (as in "& Jerry") having a soft-spoken white owner in reruns, than with any actual economics of the situation. Simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple, elegant, batshit retarded. You're basically saying "appoint a council of perfect guardians of rightness". It's the most authoritarian, opposite of project-goal design possible.
How do you see having an objective metric for measuring editorial effectiveness as "authoritarian"? I didn't suggest giving that team of "blessed authors" any special powers of their own. They would function just as "normal" (though anonymous) contributors, that the site itself happens to explicitly trust. No human intervention required, just a simple permissions modification trigger - If you try to delete good content, you lose that power. Simple as that.
Even in the unlikely situation that such a blessed author goes rogue and starts posting goatse spam, the defrocked editor would have no trouble whatsoever proving exactly what had happened on appeal.
If you planned to take a nap on the job - Why the hell wouldn't you close the door? It at least makes getting caught a bit less likely.
Not one person has proposed a solution, because such solutions are almost exclusively of the "elegant, simple and wrong" variety.
Not true - I personally suggested a very, very simple change to implement in another post:
Take away editorial privileges from anyone with more deletions/reversions than actual contributions. Done.
I would also suggest the age-old technique of using known-quality data to audit the editors - Assemble a team of known-good content creators and have them contribute under a variety of pseudonyms. Instantly fire any editor that decides to measure his dick against that known-good content. Best of all, Jimbo doesn't even need to do that in secret - In fact, he shouldn't do it secretly... That way it puts all the editors on notice - Don't fuck with legit content if you want to keep your god-like powers.
I could keep going, but the Wiki staff already knows their real problem - They just lack the will to do anything about it.
Yes, because 4.3 million English language articles is a sure sign of the victory of "deletionists". Sorry you couldn't put yourself on wikipedia as "the smartest dude ever." I dare you to go to the delition log for today and tell me that more than 5% of them have the bearest hint of being related to an encyclopedia.
Do you notice how every post so far in this thread basically has made the same basic complaint about Wiki's power-tripping inner-circle editors?
You can, of course, choose to ignore that with flippant BS mocking the GPs intent. Or, you can take the hint that when a hundred random people all tell you the same thing, they probably don't all just have a grudge over having an ego-page repeatedly deleted.
Why does this come as a surprise?
The various "cliques" of power-tripping old-timers on Wikipedia has actively driven people away.
And most of the time, they can actually use Wiki's pointless rules (style, notoriety, original research) to justify their wholesale reduction of content to the least objectionable pablum possible, even going so far as to revert corrections back to the last known-incorrect state.
Make no mistake, many of wikis guidelines exist for a damned good reason, and I wouldn't suggest gutting them wholesale. Instead, I would gut their editorial staff that has perverted those reasons into mere excuses to behave like petty tyrants. Where to start? If someone has more deletions/reversions than contributions under their belt - See ya!
Care to inform us what car so that others may learn from your mistake and avoid that brand?
Oh, thought I had mentioned that - Hyundai. And as far as I could tell, all their current models come with this garbage. But really, the brand doesn't matter... The problem here involves them all pulling similar crap.
I seriously wonder how the aftermarket car radio market even exists anymore today, when the "radio" has become the primary interface to the car's computer.
Is that a problem with the iPhone or is it the US Carriers being greedy?
Yes to both, but more to the point, the problem comes from auto manufacturers not getting the same damned clue the rest of the world figured out 30 years ago - Use cheap commodity parts instead of rolling your own everything, and at least try to hide the fact that you can spy on your customers' every move.
I have a fairly new car, for example. It came with the manufacturer's in-house version of OnStar, which I adamantly refused to let them activate (you should have seen the look of horror on three different levels of the sales food-chain at my refusal - The manufacturer has clearly pushed them hard to get 100% compliance). Except, it just doesn't work that way - The dealership's own techs literally can't clear codes (including the easy ones like "oil change due") on the goddamned thing without processing the order through the manufacturer's website and having it download the change to my car via the built-in cell-enabled TMU module.
So, as a result, it nags me to register it every fucking time I start the car. On the bright side, A friend scored me a copy of the technician manuals for my model, so I had no trouble disabling the cell and GPS features of the TMU (hint: You can't, but you can leave them effectively trapped inside a faraday cage with no way to talk to the outside world). On the down side, the dealer will have no choice (practically, not just contractually) but to reconnect it every time I need even the most minor work done on my car.
"What, you don't want built-in emergency assistance?"
"I have a cell phone"
"The car knows your location and can dispatch EMS right to you"
"So does my phone"
"But your phone won't know if you rolled over and died in a ditch!"
"I won't really care, then, will I?"
The constitution specifically says congress has the right to regulate. It's IN the fucking amendment.
This argument will, of course, go nowhere because we both have a preferred interpretation of the 2nd amendment, but I at least have both grammar and history on my side. But the "fucking amendment"only refers to a "well regulated militia", not "a well-regulated firearm". More importantly, you have chosen the wrong definition of "regulated" to make that phrase better fit your worldview. Hint: Think "oil", not "laws".
Not even that.
.50 caliber).
The USA - By which I mean federal regulations, not individual states - Has absolutely no registration requirement for any small arms (non select-fire and less than or equal to
It also has no mandatory waiting period, no mandatory background check (that restriction applies to a particular class of dealers, not to buyers), no ammunition capacity limits... And, the law by default allows both concealed and open carry.
Seven states (most of them pretty obvious) have registration requirements for all guns. Another seven have registration requirements for just pistols. All but two have requirements for concealed carry, but that applies to the person, not the guns. A whopping 33 states, however, allow relatively uninhibited open carry, with another 10 allowing licensed open carry. So realistically, in most of the US, you don't need to carry concealed, you can literally walk around with a rifle slung across your back and a holster on your hip.
You don't make hardware USB-compliant simply by having a PID&VID. And the process - as with most processes where numbers are assigned (consider, for example, the IANA) - doesn't admit subversion by buying up a block of numbers then re-selling.
RTFA. It specifically mentions three licensed vendors (Microchip, FTDI, and Openmoko) that already do exactly that. So no, this has nothing to do with quality control, and everything to do with control control.
Personally, though, I don't see the problem. VTM apparently thinks much too highly of their coveted IP, blinding them to the reality of their situation - They have "Xerox"ed themselves. Kleenex. Escalator. Genericization sucks, suckas!
USB has become so ubiquitous, products using it don't need to advertise that fact - If something comes with a visible USB A or B connector on it, end users will just plug it in without giving a second thought about what logos the box had on it.
As pointed out elsewhere, Facebook has the same odd puritanical streak as found throughout the USA. You can watch people being beheaded, but they still firmly forbid pictures of breastfeeding moms. The sight of a female breast might excite prurient passions, whereas watching a murder is just spiffy.
How about "honor rape" as practiced by the same barbarians going around beheading infidels? I mean, as long as any visible breasts get blurred out, of course - Wouldn't want to accidentally titillate any impressionable young viewers, after all. Where does Facebook stand on that?
I mean, since rape has its basis in power, not sex, Facebook should have no more problem with it than with plain ol' boring murder. So let us know, Zuckhead - The world needs to know where you draw the line on poor taste! I'd hate to get banned from your fine stream of ads for posting the "wrong" kind of torture porn.
What is "the appropriate state party"?
Try "the one that will shoot you out of the sky if you missed dotting a single 'i' or greasing the right PAC's accounts".
Think shooting down a civilian rocket would result in public outrage? Try picturing the press release: "Terrorist cell comes dangerously close to success, only stopped after ballistic missile launch detected".
If you don't want to be discovered with Bluetooth, don't leave your devices in discoverable mode!
More to the point - What BT devices actually broadcast their availability continually? Both my cars actually pop up an on-demand 90 or 120 second countdown to show how long you have left to try to pair a device to them; all the devices I've tried pairing to them either do something similar, or even go so far as to do a single active sweep before giving up and going silent again.
Even as an admitted privacy nut, it surprises me that this works at all. From what I've seen, BT systems actually seem to do a pretty good job of keeping their mouths shut when not in use.
/ Keyboards and mice notwithstanding - Yeah, they pretty much chatter along continually, but then, they don't tend to have any hijackable capabilities, purely passive "timing" attacks aside.
I did look for a citation, both before and after my post but came up empty.
In general, when you actively fail to prove the source of a quote, yet still use it as an assertion - That counts as lying.
Jus' sayin'.
I'll take the universal welfare state over some kind of ridiculous experiment in anarcho-capitalism.
The problem here involves the sheer number of people we have on the planet. Human life has basically no value anymore - We have 7000 "one in a million" geniuses on the planet at any given time.
I like the idea of a societal safety net. I honestly do. But really, we as a species don't need it - In fact, we as a species would do better if we let our weak and unproductive members die rather than drag them along for the ride.
generally a decent civil society that we all pay our share towards
We call that a work ethic in the US. Over 2/3rds of the population provably doesn't have one (based on the real employment rate of able-bodied adults - As opposed to the sham published "unemployment" rate, which only measures the small fraction of people both recently out of a job and actually looking for a new one). Any suggestion that depends on the majority of our species to "do the right thing" against their own self-interest will fail.
As a resident of a prosperous northern-European country with working infrastructure, a working healthcare system, relatively low poverty and homelessness levels, and generally a decent civil society
Translation: A racially, culturally, religiously homogenous nation that has historically had the luxury of ignoring national defense and which has weeded out those who would reject its core socialist values. Yup, a group of like-minded people can accomplish great things. Now secure your own sources of energy. Develop your own technologies. Defend your own borders. Deal with half your population hating the other half. Whoops, not so rosy now?
Now let's see if you're able to cut the internet cord. If not, then you're not a cord cutter.
Thank you, "adapted for big-screen/TV viewer", for subsidizing my dead-tree books. Sorry to sound like a snide dick, but once you got things rolling I decided, why not?
I'll admit I watch the occasional movie on Netflix, but seriously? If you think modern "push" media has a future, I have bridge to sell you. It still has the advantage only in purely linear storytelling. Move to any newer form of multipath stories (aka "video games"), or any form of on-demand stories (aka "books"), and you can consider the anomaly of the past 50 years of broadcast TV as... Well, as an anomaly. It grew fat on a niche composed of a captive audience starving for content. That demographic has vanished, time to move along.
At this point the British believe that the Chinese, the Russians, or both, have copies of all the documents that Snowden took.
Considering that Snowden shared those files with journalists on both sides of the pond, I see no reason to doubt that belief - Nor do I consider it particularly meaningful.
The British might as well believe that the Chinese and Russians have copies of NyanCat, for all it matters.
How about just letting most of us work from home, and only maintaining enough office space to host a handful of meeting/collaboration rooms? Bam, your whole "office building" just reduced to a 2nd story loft.
But hey, sure, let's instead try playing games with peoples' heads rather than address the real problem. And then the PHBs can ask themselves why the electric bill has actually gone up, when everyone starts keeping an electric space heater under their desk.
At age 8, I would never have allowed my parents unsupervised use of the home PC.
Now, by 12 or 13, I had learned enough about security basics to limit their access enough as to render them relatively harmless. But before that? No frickin' way - One "install our daily free coupon print driver" ad away from needing to do a total reimage.
Oh, wait... You meant... Ahahaahahhaaaaahah!!11!!1!!!!!
How quaint. As though non-IT professional parents have the least shot at keeping their kids off the internet. Cute notion, though.
Couldn't a proper service generate key pairs on the user's device and then just charge (or not if you prefer) for KB transmitted.
Yes. The problem? Most people suck at working with encryption - They either can't handle it at all, or they do something phenomenally stupid that exposes their private keys to the whole world.
Realistically, if not for the underlying need (for most people) that any encryption works completely transparently, we would have no need of specialty encrypted cloud storage in the first place - Just use TrueCrypt to work with your collection of encrypted files, and sync them back to your Google Drive or Dropbox or what-have-you when done. Bam, done. The fact that something as simple as that stumps most people pretty much proves my assertion
They have no legal authority to order people to make their websites police-friendly.
You sure about that?
In fairness, CALEA requires backdoors from telecom firms, not independent website operators - Yet. But it already crossed that exact line, of requiring non-governmental entities to actively undermine their own best interests solely for the possible future convenience of the government.
/ Hand me my fiddle.
Wow. Time to start stocking up on the fourth box.
These dumb fucks in charge really plan to see this through to the end. Not cool.
Can't we go anywhere without being subjected to advertisements?
No, but you can learn the joy that comes from playing "make it stop talking".
Try this as an experiment - Wait for a reasonably busy day at Target (a particularly egregious offender for this experiment). Go up to one of their many end-cap monitors screaming ads at you.
And... Turn it off (some of them have no off switch, in which case, just unplug it). Simple as that.
At first people will look shocked, then guiltily relieved, as realization slowly dawns on them - You've done nothing wrong, and the screeching has stopped! A few will even take up the "cause", and on a good day, you can get a wave of ad-lessness to spread out from your starting point that keeps the store basically ad-free until the end of the day, when sadly, everyone will have forgotten that they don't need to put up with it.
Call me petty if you like, but little pleasures make life enjoyable. And I, for one, look forward to sensors that can weigh the product on the shelves, just to see how much fun we can have screwing with their error handling - How do they react to someone taking "half" of a can of tuna fish? How about adding one? Replacing one with two gallons of water? Fun fun fun!
Prolonging the life of people past their reproductive years has no effect on long-term population. Keeping more people alive long enough to reproduce, however, does. We want more people dying young, not less.
Furthermore... Accidents, by definition, happen accidentally. If you could prevent them, they wouldn't have happened.
As for suicide - If someone wants to die - Let 'em. Someday, if we don't get hit by a bus first, we all end up dying of something, and a great many of those somethings hurt. When that time comes, I fully intent to exercise my reality-given right (which no laws can ever take away from me) to put myself out of my misery.
As for homicides, I dunno. Eat less lead?
What you fail to realise, when taking this "our money" stance, is the money SAVED by throwing them away.
You seem confused on the real intent of "the purge". It had nothing to do with freeing up space or reusing media or anything of the sort.
Didn't you ever wonder why the BBC archives have such a bizarre patchwork of content missing? Not entire years, or seasons, or shows, but just completely random, with concentrations in a few years/seasons/series, but even then not consistent.
The BBC purge had more in common with Tom (as in "& Jerry") having a soft-spoken white owner in reruns, than with any actual economics of the situation. Simple as that.