Of course, as with any other stance, it's ultimately down to a question of just how much one cares to, or can afford to, or can stand to, or is practical, take it.
Vegan? There's precious little made that doesn't involve bits of some dead animal at some point in its manufacture, even if we exclude oil.
Gun control? It's generally accepted that it's a practical necessity for there to be at least some level of civilian firearm ownership, opinion just differs on where to draw what lines.
For huge numbers of end consumers, there's not much choice. With wage stagnation and general costs of living generally increasing, the cheap Chinese-made thing is all they can afford. If there even is an option made somewhere else. Assuming the other options aren't made by companies being just as exploitative.
The real question should be, "is it ethical for corporations to outsource all their manufacturing to China?"
I'm definitely in Camp Universal Income. Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on, and if you want more income on top of that, you can work. Guaranteed jobs for everyone on the face of it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it will wind up being the case that a lot of people are given pointless makework. As much as people do like to keep busy, no-one respects being given work that exists only for the sake of keeping them busy.
Only in that enough people lived long enough to reproduce to keep things going. Now that we have the know-how, many deaths that would have been inevitable are now preventable. Saying "well we don't really need this because humanity has scraped by without it" is a pretty callous attitude to have.
The issue isn't updates but people who don't apply updates at all.
This is exactly the idea behind Microsoft's forced updates: most people are never applying updates, which causes problems, so if the updates get applied without user intervention, problem solved. I don't think they're entirely wrong, but they went about implementing mandatory updates in a kind of brain dead way.
The forced updates of iOS have proven to be !ore secure than the fragmented updates of Android.
iOS doesn't have forced updates; it is always up to the user to decide to install updates or not, though Apple do a bit to encourage it. The difference between iOS and Android in terms of updates is that Apple as a matter of course rolls out security updates to every device currently supported (and they are supported for quite some time, contrary to the largely inaccurate stereotype of Apple devices getting thrown out and replaced annually) and new versions of iOS to basically all devices capable of running the new version. With android, it's left up to each hardware manufacturer to provide security updates and new versions for their devices. Many don't bother at all, many others do a couple of security updates and maybe a new version while the device in question is "current" before basically abandoning it. Even if a device is technically capable of running a new version, it's not usually an option to "go over the manufacturer's head" for updates; a build has to be tailored to the model in question, and while the wider open source community does offer some for some devices, it's very much a mixed bag of what's supported, how up-to-date it is, and even how trustworthy the third party is.
Maybe everyone is wrong but you. But maybe, just maybe, you're the one with a strange idea about what "modified" means.
If I plug a USB webcam into my desktop PC, my PC hasn't been modified, it's had a peripheral plugged into it to provide functionality it otherwise lacked. On unplugging said peripheral, my PC is back to being the same as it previously was. This cartridge of his can be plugged into any old NES, using the exact same interface as any other cartridge, and provide it additional functionality. On this cartridge being unplugged, the NES is back to being the same as it ever was. No actual modification has taken place; no chips added to the motherboard, no wires soldered to existing chips.
As another poster points out, a number of published NES games included additional hardware on the cartridge, and no-one's described a NES that's running one of those games as being modified because of it.
Yeah, the snark about the headline accuracy is really unnecessary; it's an impressive feat to do this with an unmodified NES, however it's achieved. And sure, there's probably ways to do it better. And sure, there's not much practical use for this specific thing. But it's a cool and interesting proof of concept; taking the knowledge gained from this, one could develop a NES cartridge that could make an unmodified NES do all sorts of things no-one would dream it's capable of.
The fact the cartridge would necessarily be itself a more powerful computer than the NES is neither here nor there, as is the fact that in most cases there'd be no practical point to including the NES in the equation versus just using the other hardware on its own or with less troublesome video output. It need not even be a NES that further work in this direction is done with; the basic theory would be applicable to other systems, even if implementation would be very different.
If it's not what was advertised/described, that's effectively defective from a consumer viewpoint: either way you're not getting what you think you're getting. Australian consumer law actually codifies this.
Really, it's more akin to my posts, rather than any Anonymous Cowards replying to my posts. There is the common thread, my username, attached to every post I've made. Looking at every post I've made and what I've said about my real life in them, one could build a profile on me - incomplete, but potentially enough to match to a profile from a different source.
Cryptocurrencies will be less anonymous than that. In my posts I could be embellishing the truth (or outright lying) enough to throw off a match, though careful enough analysis would counteract that to some degree. But a cryptocurrency ledger would be more definite; X amount paid to Y on Z date. One transaction in itself pretty meaningless, but payments are generally going to be for something, and unless you're seriously paranoid, you're not using a different throwaway wallet with no other traceable links for every single transaction. A pattern of purchases can be associated with a pattern of real-world movement of goods or provision of services. And of course, if you or one of the other parties gets careless about even one of the transactions and it gets tied to you, everything gets tied to you.
Anyone who's surprised by this isn't suspicious enough of the idea that a currency built on a permanent public ledger of transactions could possibly be anonymous.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet that a future generation's Edward Snowden will leak documents showing that Satoshi Nakamoto was on the NSA's payroll from the get-go.
It's a rather naive hope; to date the only use case where it offers any kind of meaningful advantage over other payment options is online trade of illicit goods and services. For anything where (pseudo-)anonymity isn't a high priority, the cons heavily outweigh the pros.
As I said, easier said than done. If what you're exchanging for cryptocurrency boils down to data - child abuse material, stolen credit card numbers/personal info, whatever else people trade in - it's less easy to tie to real world events, but still within the realm of possibility.
Bill believing crypto-currencies to be "anonymous" is just one more proof of him being detached from reality. Crypto-currencies are as transparent as could be - and people will be convicted for crimes they committed decades ago, due to the block-chains preserving the evidence forever.
They're not inherently anonymous, but they can be anonymous if you can keep your wallet and all transactions made separated from anything that personally identifies you. Easier said than done, naturally, but those using them for nefarious purposes are motivated to do so and seem to have reasonable success.
wasnt the body count on bastille day 86? IT seems that at a certain point, the crowd cant get out of the way because its too big.
Bastille Day Nice massacre July 2016, dead 85, 200 injured due to a heavily loaded delivery truck
At a certain point, yes. That point appears to be a crowd of tens of thousands at a public event on a national holiday. And in any case, people driving a vehicle through a crowd of people intending to kill as many as possible isn't terribly common, with or without gun control laws.
April 19th 1995, Oklahoma City, during our only assault weapon ban, 2 people using liquid fertilizer and a delivery truck killed 168 people and injured 680 others
Bombings are also a problem, sure. Like people driving into crowds, not a terribly common one, again with or without gun control laws. And in the wake of that one, laws were made regarding availability and supply of explosives and materials that can be used to make them...
April 20th, 1999, Columbine, during our only assault weapon ban, several kids armed with pistol caliber semi-automatics as well as pump action and breach-loading shotguns managed to kill 12 people and injure 21. What is really scary is that they had 99 home-made explosives that could have drastically increased this death toll.
What you're telling me there is that two people working together without access to AR-15s, between them killed 12 people. Compared to recently when one person working alone with access to an AR-15 killed 17. That without easy access to AR-15s, even when there is a shooting, there are fewer casualties. And that use of explosives in killing people is a lot more situational than with using guns, seeing as they didn't find the opportunity to use those explosives.
at the end of the day its about the ballistics and only the ballistics. any other type of definition and classification irritates me because its clearly not grounded in anything actually scientific or statistical.
The cartridges the guns take is a factor, sure, but it's far from the only thing that matters. Personally, I'd be more worried about someone with a pistol calibre carbine with a stock than someone with a pistol-grip-only weapon that fires rifle cartridges, if they're at anything even vaguely resembling range.
Still not a great argument against banning semi-automatic rifles. Speaking as someone living on one of the places where A) semi-auto rifles are banned, and B) someone has driven a car into a crowd of people, the car doesn't rack up the same body count, is limited to where it can go, etc.
The last mass shooting we had before the gun restrictions? 35 dead. The last time someone drove a car into a crowd? 6 dead.
You act like banning guns would stop gun violence....
If you ban guns tomorrow you'd still be able to buy guns the same way people buy drugs from drug dealers except there wouldn't be any background check done and there would be no waiting period.
And you act like if it can't be absolutely stopped, there's no value in at least greatly reducing it. Sure, a black market will exist, but if authorities put a decent amount of effort into enforcement, the barrier for entry should at least be too high for an angry teenager who wants to shoot up his school.
Sounds like you've never fired one. Aside from other uses, the ability to place a slug in a small target from 300 meters away without special optics or a bruised shoulder, constantly, is well... just plain fun.
Oh, well when you put it like that, of course, an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine is absolutely necessary. Shooting at a closer target just doesn't have the same satisfaction, the time and effort it takes to run the bolt on a bolt-action rifle is just unbearable when the target's just sitting there, and the sound of a.22 round hitting the target just doesn't measure up. And just think about all that time you'd be wasting, refilling a tiny magazine.
All of that totally makes it worth any yahoo being able to get a weapon that lets them quickly and efficiently kill a whole bunch of people, so what if they're just innocent kids. We can just go back to bumbling around with solutions that don't do a damn thing, like demonising music and video games and movies or pretending to give a shit about mental illness.
And, if you have to harvest game to eat, you couldn't find a better tool.
A bolt-action rifle or a shotgun (depending on type of game) is not only perfectly adequate for hunting, but generally more suitable than an assault rifle.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Enough bullshit to fertilise every farm and every vegetable patch in the world for a year. Guns will help you put up a fight against oppression (and if your organisation is organised enough, you might even win against it), but it won't prevent it, and it won't make you any safer during it. No would-be oppressor ever said "better not, they've got weapons"; they always do everything they can to get more soldiers, more weapons, bigger weapons, better weapons, strike first, divide and conquer.
And even if somehow guns did actually make people safer from oppression, it still wouldn't be worth the likelihood of some idiot neighbour or stupid high school kid being an irresponsible dickhead and shooting a bunch of innocent people.
People who don't think that small arms can be used to resist the US military haven't paid any attention to Afghanistan.
Frankly, that's more damning of the US military than it is a sign of small arms meaning much.
The police are murdering more people than mass shooters are. Take the guns away from the police, then we can talk about taking them away from ordinary citizens
Many of the problems with police in America murdering people ultimately come down to the fact that they're expecting to be shot and therefore get a bit more likely to pull the trigger. Police in parts of the world where guns aren't so readily available are nowhere near as trigger happy. This isn't to say police are all saints, because they certainly fucking aren't, but being so ready and eager to shoot at them isn't going to make them less likely to shoot you.
Yeah, this is clear-cut copyright infringement, and the headline is a flat out lie. If he was just refurbishing old hardware, no problem. If he was refurbishing old hardware and had made arrangements with Microsoft regarding copies of Windows, that would be fine. If he was refurbishing old hardware and pre-installing Linux or another operating system that allows copies to be handed out for free, still completely fine.
Whatever other details are going on, he got busted for distributing copyrighted software he didn't have the right to, not recycling hardware.
Going into World War 1, just about every power had at least some major equipment that was horrendously inadequate or impractical in some way. And/or just plain outdated. If we're as close to World War 3 starting as many people think we are, that's the situation now, between the new equipment like these faulty ships, the F-35, etc.
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Of course, as with any other stance, it's ultimately down to a question of just how much one cares to, or can afford to, or can stand to, or is practical, take it.
Vegan? There's precious little made that doesn't involve bits of some dead animal at some point in its manufacture, even if we exclude oil.
Gun control? It's generally accepted that it's a practical necessity for there to be at least some level of civilian firearm ownership, opinion just differs on where to draw what lines.
For huge numbers of end consumers, there's not much choice. With wage stagnation and general costs of living generally increasing, the cheap Chinese-made thing is all they can afford. If there even is an option made somewhere else. Assuming the other options aren't made by companies being just as exploitative.
The real question should be, "is it ethical for corporations to outsource all their manufacturing to China?"
I'm definitely in Camp Universal Income. Everyone gets enough to live comfortably enough on, and if you want more income on top of that, you can work. Guaranteed jobs for everyone on the face of it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it will wind up being the case that a lot of people are given pointless makework. As much as people do like to keep busy, no-one respects being given work that exists only for the sake of keeping them busy.
Only in that enough people lived long enough to reproduce to keep things going. Now that we have the know-how, many deaths that would have been inevitable are now preventable. Saying "well we don't really need this because humanity has scraped by without it" is a pretty callous attitude to have.
The issue isn't updates but people who don't apply updates at all.
This is exactly the idea behind Microsoft's forced updates: most people are never applying updates, which causes problems, so if the updates get applied without user intervention, problem solved. I don't think they're entirely wrong, but they went about implementing mandatory updates in a kind of brain dead way.
The forced updates of iOS have proven to be !ore secure than the fragmented updates of Android.
iOS doesn't have forced updates; it is always up to the user to decide to install updates or not, though Apple do a bit to encourage it. The difference between iOS and Android in terms of updates is that Apple as a matter of course rolls out security updates to every device currently supported (and they are supported for quite some time, contrary to the largely inaccurate stereotype of Apple devices getting thrown out and replaced annually) and new versions of iOS to basically all devices capable of running the new version. With android, it's left up to each hardware manufacturer to provide security updates and new versions for their devices. Many don't bother at all, many others do a couple of security updates and maybe a new version while the device in question is "current" before basically abandoning it. Even if a device is technically capable of running a new version, it's not usually an option to "go over the manufacturer's head" for updates; a build has to be tailored to the model in question, and while the wider open source community does offer some for some devices, it's very much a mixed bag of what's supported, how up-to-date it is, and even how trustworthy the third party is.
Maybe everyone is wrong but you. But maybe, just maybe, you're the one with a strange idea about what "modified" means.
If I plug a USB webcam into my desktop PC, my PC hasn't been modified, it's had a peripheral plugged into it to provide functionality it otherwise lacked. On unplugging said peripheral, my PC is back to being the same as it previously was. This cartridge of his can be plugged into any old NES, using the exact same interface as any other cartridge, and provide it additional functionality. On this cartridge being unplugged, the NES is back to being the same as it ever was. No actual modification has taken place; no chips added to the motherboard, no wires soldered to existing chips.
As another poster points out, a number of published NES games included additional hardware on the cartridge, and no-one's described a NES that's running one of those games as being modified because of it.
Yeah, the snark about the headline accuracy is really unnecessary; it's an impressive feat to do this with an unmodified NES, however it's achieved. And sure, there's probably ways to do it better. And sure, there's not much practical use for this specific thing. But it's a cool and interesting proof of concept; taking the knowledge gained from this, one could develop a NES cartridge that could make an unmodified NES do all sorts of things no-one would dream it's capable of.
The fact the cartridge would necessarily be itself a more powerful computer than the NES is neither here nor there, as is the fact that in most cases there'd be no practical point to including the NES in the equation versus just using the other hardware on its own or with less troublesome video output. It need not even be a NES that further work in this direction is done with; the basic theory would be applicable to other systems, even if implementation would be very different.
If it's not what was advertised/described, that's effectively defective from a consumer viewpoint: either way you're not getting what you think you're getting. Australian consumer law actually codifies this.
Really, it's more akin to my posts, rather than any Anonymous Cowards replying to my posts. There is the common thread, my username, attached to every post I've made. Looking at every post I've made and what I've said about my real life in them, one could build a profile on me - incomplete, but potentially enough to match to a profile from a different source.
Cryptocurrencies will be less anonymous than that. In my posts I could be embellishing the truth (or outright lying) enough to throw off a match, though careful enough analysis would counteract that to some degree. But a cryptocurrency ledger would be more definite; X amount paid to Y on Z date. One transaction in itself pretty meaningless, but payments are generally going to be for something, and unless you're seriously paranoid, you're not using a different throwaway wallet with no other traceable links for every single transaction. A pattern of purchases can be associated with a pattern of real-world movement of goods or provision of services. And of course, if you or one of the other parties gets careless about even one of the transactions and it gets tied to you, everything gets tied to you.
Anyone who's surprised by this isn't suspicious enough of the idea that a currency built on a permanent public ledger of transactions could possibly be anonymous.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet that a future generation's Edward Snowden will leak documents showing that Satoshi Nakamoto was on the NSA's payroll from the get-go.
It's a rather naive hope; to date the only use case where it offers any kind of meaningful advantage over other payment options is online trade of illicit goods and services. For anything where (pseudo-)anonymity isn't a high priority, the cons heavily outweigh the pros.
As I said, easier said than done. If what you're exchanging for cryptocurrency boils down to data - child abuse material, stolen credit card numbers/personal info, whatever else people trade in - it's less easy to tie to real world events, but still within the realm of possibility.
Diamonds can be useful too, it's just that most of their value (or perceived value, at least) is in their being a status symbol.
Bill believing crypto-currencies to be "anonymous" is just one more proof of him being detached from reality. Crypto-currencies are as transparent as could be - and people will be convicted for crimes they committed decades ago, due to the block-chains preserving the evidence forever.
They're not inherently anonymous, but they can be anonymous if you can keep your wallet and all transactions made separated from anything that personally identifies you. Easier said than done, naturally, but those using them for nefarious purposes are motivated to do so and seem to have reasonable success.
wasnt the body count on bastille day 86? IT seems that at a certain point, the crowd cant get out of the way because its too big.
Bastille Day Nice massacre July 2016, dead 85, 200 injured due to a heavily loaded delivery truck
At a certain point, yes. That point appears to be a crowd of tens of thousands at a public event on a national holiday. And in any case, people driving a vehicle through a crowd of people intending to kill as many as possible isn't terribly common, with or without gun control laws.
April 19th 1995, Oklahoma City, during our only assault weapon ban, 2 people using liquid fertilizer and a delivery truck killed 168 people and injured 680 others
Bombings are also a problem, sure. Like people driving into crowds, not a terribly common one, again with or without gun control laws. And in the wake of that one, laws were made regarding availability and supply of explosives and materials that can be used to make them...
April 20th, 1999, Columbine, during our only assault weapon ban, several kids armed with pistol caliber semi-automatics as well as pump action and breach-loading shotguns managed to kill 12 people and injure 21. What is really scary is that they had 99 home-made explosives that could have drastically increased this death toll.
What you're telling me there is that two people working together without access to AR-15s, between them killed 12 people. Compared to recently when one person working alone with access to an AR-15 killed 17. That without easy access to AR-15s, even when there is a shooting, there are fewer casualties. And that use of explosives in killing people is a lot more situational than with using guns, seeing as they didn't find the opportunity to use those explosives.
at the end of the day its about the ballistics and only the ballistics. any other type of definition and classification irritates me because its clearly not grounded in anything actually scientific or statistical.
The cartridges the guns take is a factor, sure, but it's far from the only thing that matters. Personally, I'd be more worried about someone with a pistol calibre carbine with a stock than someone with a pistol-grip-only weapon that fires rifle cartridges, if they're at anything even vaguely resembling range.
As would I, but it seems a lot of people out there are more about the quantity than quality.
Never said they couldn't.
Still not a great argument against banning semi-automatic rifles. Speaking as someone living on one of the places where A) semi-auto rifles are banned, and B) someone has driven a car into a crowd of people, the car doesn't rack up the same body count, is limited to where it can go, etc.
The last mass shooting we had before the gun restrictions? 35 dead. The last time someone drove a car into a crowd? 6 dead.
You act like banning guns would stop gun violence. ...
If you ban guns tomorrow you'd still be able to buy guns the same way people buy drugs from drug dealers except there wouldn't be any background check done and there would be no waiting period.
And you act like if it can't be absolutely stopped, there's no value in at least greatly reducing it. Sure, a black market will exist, but if authorities put a decent amount of effort into enforcement, the barrier for entry should at least be too high for an angry teenager who wants to shoot up his school.
That does not invalidate the point. More prisoners not only means more money for private prisons, it means continued employment for prison guards.
Sounds like you've never fired one. Aside from other uses, the ability to place a slug in a small target from 300 meters away without special optics or a bruised shoulder, constantly, is well... just plain fun.
Oh, well when you put it like that, of course, an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine is absolutely necessary. Shooting at a closer target just doesn't have the same satisfaction, the time and effort it takes to run the bolt on a bolt-action rifle is just unbearable when the target's just sitting there, and the sound of a .22 round hitting the target just doesn't measure up. And just think about all that time you'd be wasting, refilling a tiny magazine.
All of that totally makes it worth any yahoo being able to get a weapon that lets them quickly and efficiently kill a whole bunch of people, so what if they're just innocent kids. We can just go back to bumbling around with solutions that don't do a damn thing, like demonising music and video games and movies or pretending to give a shit about mental illness.
And, if you have to harvest game to eat, you couldn't find a better tool.
A bolt-action rifle or a shotgun (depending on type of game) is not only perfectly adequate for hunting, but generally more suitable than an assault rifle.
Guns do make people safer, from oppression.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Enough bullshit to fertilise every farm and every vegetable patch in the world for a year. Guns will help you put up a fight against oppression (and if your organisation is organised enough, you might even win against it), but it won't prevent it, and it won't make you any safer during it. No would-be oppressor ever said "better not, they've got weapons"; they always do everything they can to get more soldiers, more weapons, bigger weapons, better weapons, strike first, divide and conquer.
And even if somehow guns did actually make people safer from oppression, it still wouldn't be worth the likelihood of some idiot neighbour or stupid high school kid being an irresponsible dickhead and shooting a bunch of innocent people.
People who don't think that small arms can be used to resist the US military haven't paid any attention to Afghanistan.
Frankly, that's more damning of the US military than it is a sign of small arms meaning much.
The police are murdering more people than mass shooters are. Take the guns away from the police, then we can talk about taking them away from ordinary citizens
Many of the problems with police in America murdering people ultimately come down to the fact that they're expecting to be shot and therefore get a bit more likely to pull the trigger. Police in parts of the world where guns aren't so readily available are nowhere near as trigger happy. This isn't to say police are all saints, because they certainly fucking aren't, but being so ready and eager to shoot at them isn't going to make them less likely to shoot you.
Yeah, this is clear-cut copyright infringement, and the headline is a flat out lie. If he was just refurbishing old hardware, no problem. If he was refurbishing old hardware and had made arrangements with Microsoft regarding copies of Windows, that would be fine. If he was refurbishing old hardware and pre-installing Linux or another operating system that allows copies to be handed out for free, still completely fine.
Whatever other details are going on, he got busted for distributing copyrighted software he didn't have the right to, not recycling hardware.
Going into World War 1, just about every power had at least some major equipment that was horrendously inadequate or impractical in some way. And/or just plain outdated. If we're as close to World War 3 starting as many people think we are, that's the situation now, between the new equipment like these faulty ships, the F-35, etc.