The fact that there is only one CABLE system in a town due to an economic monopoly does not prevent someone from switching to any of the other, non-cable TV, ISPs. It's only misinformation that keeps them from doing it -- the misinformation that somehow there is just one ISP they can use. Why bother looking if everyone says you won't find one, even if when you look you actually will?
Of course it does. Where I'm at I can get any ISP I want, as long as I don't care that it's not broadband and comes over DSL. So effectively no, I can't get any broadband ISP I want. There is no competition.
Its even worse other places. At least in some areas of my town there is Verizon FIOS, not where I live, but where my daughter lives. She has a choice of 2 broadband providers, and any number of ISPs as long as she doesn't want broadband. My friend who lives outside town has no broadband providers available. He can't get cable. There is no FIOS. He gets Verizon 3G at great cost, which lets him use Google or Wikipedia, but would hit his monthly data cap in a couple of hours if he tried to use Netflix. Oh and he can get dial-up ISP over his POTS line, if it was actually hooked up, which it isn't.
So no you can't pick your ISP if you actually want a connection you can use.
I have Netflix. It really sucks for movies. Except for Disney fare (which will go away once Disney starts it's own streaming service) Netflix very seldom has any recent movies and few older ones. Also I expect many people get HBO just to get GoT.
So it's not about how much can someone watch, but about what they want to watch.
I don't consider a local company being allowed to spoof the number of their foreign call center a benign use. As a consumer I have a right to know if the company I'm doing business with is outsourcing their support services so I can make an inform decision about whether I want to do business with them.
It should be outright illegal for an individual or entity to spoof a caller ID number. The choices should be identify yourself or don't. If you choose not to ID then I should have the choice to automatically reject your number, as in it always goes directly to voicemail.
That solves the problem. Businesses and politicians don't like that solution? So what. I'm paying the phone bill. What gives them the right to intrude on what should be my private communication line to friends and business I want to talk to?
Do we really need to discuss the reality of socialized medicine? That reality being that in every country where it exists it survives because people can visit other venues where pay for play medical systems exist.
Britain has a system where individuals can buy insurance and use private healthcare if they can afford it.
Canadians come to the U.S. to get care that the Canadian system denies them.
Australians and Europeans travel to Asia to get the treatment unavailable to them in their own systems.
The one thing in common in all these cases? Only the well off get care. Everyone else hopes they don't get too sick of the wrong health problems. Most times they suffer only declining quality of life as what would be relatively minor problems blossom into long term problems as they wait weeks and months to get care that happens in just a short time for U.S. citizens with decent insurance or rich people. Other times they're offered a get out of life card rather than a cure because it's too expensive or they're too old (no longer socially productive.)
We've seen government run care in the U.S. and it's called the VA. If the scandal that is the VA doesn't wake you up to the reality of government run health care then you deserve what you get.
I think they went with a black Fury because Marvel Ultimate had a Nick Fury based on Samuel L. Jackson and the chance to actually cast the actor in the role was just too good a chance to pass up. Jackson has made a really good Fury, IMHO, and I'm looking forward to seeing him in his prime in Captain Marvel.
When you replace an existing white male character with a black woman for no other purpose than getting rid of the white male character that is both sexist and racist.
But I guess that's alight because, you know, white men deserve it.
My anger is reserved for those who have so little confidence in their own ability to create minority characters with their own interesting back story and character development that they feel the only way minority characters can prosper is to steal the reputation and readership of established white male characters.
Compare:
Black Panther a Marvel character with a long history of his own. His well made movie was a blockbuster.
Wonder Woman a DC character with a long history of her own. Her well made movie was the best of the entire DC releases.
Ghostbusters an attempt to replace well loved male characters with women. A complete failure.
Ocean's 8. Enough said.
Replacement of major Marvel Characters with gender swapping and blackwashing. Sales plummet.
Want to be successful? Create interesting minority characters who have their own story and their own mantel. Or have them steal the mantels of successful white male characters and see them fail as a property.
Where I live any place that tried to charge for parking would find itself a ghost town. One high end mall tried it. They became irrelevant as everyone just went to the other areas that did not try to charge for parking. Downtown charges, but unless you need to go to court or visit city hall no one goes downtown. Why would they? Except for the courts, jail and municipal buildings there's nothing down there.
At the present time the owners of the Uber vehicles, they just don't realize it.
They pay maintenance, gas and insurance.
Also how many of them are counting on their private operator insurance to cover them if they have an accident? They may be in for a surprise when after an accident, when the insurance company finds they were using their vehicle commercially and refuse to pay. The commercial insurance they aren't paying for is also a kind of subsidy.
I live in a coastal city, and my experience is closer to Cro Magnon than yours. No rapid transit, the bus system sucks and I could walk most places faster than taking the bus, as long as I don't mind walking an hour or so.
Places where public transportation and ride sharing will work in the U.S. are niche markets. Niche markets with large populations, but niche markets none the less.
You paid $120for an oil change? Man they saw you coming. Average price fro an oil change (according to Angie's List) is $46. The minimum was $25. That is certianly in line with what I usually pay.
I've got an SUV and buy good tires. I'd call $875 for 4 tires reasonable.
Maybe your dad figures that a company doing potentially risky public testing of new technology would hire someone actually qualified to be monitoring the technology, and not the least qualified person off the street that they can get for just above minimum wage.
And of course generally it doesn't provide a continuing income stream for the heirs and estates, it provides a continuing income stream fro the corporation that bought the rights to the work, in their mind for perpetuity.
Almost 99.99% of all copyright decisions have been made by the 9th circuit.
That is an interesting claim and seems very unlikely. Why have virtually no copyright cases come up in other circuits? Surely there are people pursuing copyright infringement outside of the western states. Do they not appeal their cases to the circuit court level?
Because the 9th circuit is in the pocket of the corporations holding the IP. It is a corporate friendly court and so corporations holding IP and wishing to sue attempted to get their case heard there. The 9th has pretty much done all they can to gut Fair Use.
This to me shows one of the problems with photographs and copyright. Many photos have an aspect of artistic and technical competences about them which makes them unique.
Quite a few others are in no way unique, this especially applies to something like a street photo. If 100 people stand in a particular place on a street corner and use a photo capturing device they will produce 100 different photos that are effectively identical except for the metadata on the digital file. How can such a cookie cutter set of effectively identical collections of pixels?
"Free" healthcare is a system that is in trouble in just about every jurisdiction where it is in existence.
50,000 Canadians a year travel to the U.S. to use our helathcare because they cannot get the equivalent treatment in Canada. 500,000 Australians travel to Asia for the same reason. Those that can afford it in Britain buy private insurance so they don't have to use NHS. Over a hundred thousand also go abroad for treatment rather than use NHS.
As the topper if you want to look at what government healthcare would look like in the U.S. just look at the Veterans Administration, and ask yourself if that's the kind of healthcare you want.
Don't fool yourself. Russia is only providing shelter because it serves their purpose in tweaking the U.S. If it ever becomes advantageous for Putin to turn Snowden over to the U.S. it will happen so fast his head will spin. Assange is finding Ecuador, after a change in government leadership, is about done with him too.
None of the countries mentioned are bastions of freedom. They are U.S. adversaries practicing realpolitik.
Except that is not factual at all. The Doctor's first companions were Ian and Barbara (and his granddaughter.) Throughout the classic Who run the Doctor had many male companions: Ian, Ben, Jamie, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Mike Yates, Harry Sullivan, Adric, Turlough. New Who had Adam Mitchell, Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Jackson Lake, Rory Williams.
The real problem isn't that the Doctor will be female, but the reason the Doctor will be female. No one would have blinked an eye if a female had been chosen instead of Capaldi. But after making the Master female and then practically budgeting viewers with the whole subject no one with a brain thinks that Whittaker being given the role is anything more than virtue signaling. The Doctor will be female not because it makes any sense in the story, but because of Political Correctness.
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The fact that there is only one CABLE system in a town due to an economic monopoly does not prevent someone from switching to any of the other, non-cable TV, ISPs. It's only misinformation that keeps them from doing it -- the misinformation that somehow there is just one ISP they can use. Why bother looking if everyone says you won't find one, even if when you look you actually will?
Of course it does. Where I'm at I can get any ISP I want, as long as I don't care that it's not broadband and comes over DSL. So effectively no, I can't get any broadband ISP I want. There is no competition.
Its even worse other places. At least in some areas of my town there is Verizon FIOS, not where I live, but where my daughter lives. She has a choice of 2 broadband providers, and any number of ISPs as long as she doesn't want broadband. My friend who lives outside town has no broadband providers available. He can't get cable. There is no FIOS. He gets Verizon 3G at great cost, which lets him use Google or Wikipedia, but would hit his monthly data cap in a couple of hours if he tried to use Netflix. Oh and he can get dial-up ISP over his POTS line, if it was actually hooked up, which it isn't.
So no you can't pick your ISP if you actually want a connection you can use.
I have Netflix. It really sucks for movies. Except for Disney fare (which will go away once Disney starts it's own streaming service) Netflix very seldom has any recent movies and few older ones. Also I expect many people get HBO just to get GoT.
So it's not about how much can someone watch, but about what they want to watch.
I don't consider a local company being allowed to spoof the number of their foreign call center a benign use. As a consumer I have a right to know if the company I'm doing business with is outsourcing their support services so I can make an inform decision about whether I want to do business with them.
It should be outright illegal for an individual or entity to spoof a caller ID number. The choices should be identify yourself or don't. If you choose not to ID then I should have the choice to automatically reject your number, as in it always goes directly to voicemail.
That solves the problem. Businesses and politicians don't like that solution? So what. I'm paying the phone bill. What gives them the right to intrude on what should be my private communication line to friends and business I want to talk to?
Nope. The hunters are conservationist, not environmentalist.
Conservationist believe that nature needs to be conserved so that future generations can continue to use it.
Environmentalist believe that humans are a blight on nature, and a better world would have no humans.
Do we really need to discuss the reality of socialized medicine? That reality being that in every country where it exists it survives because people can visit other venues where pay for play medical systems exist.
Britain has a system where individuals can buy insurance and use private healthcare if they can afford it.
Canadians come to the U.S. to get care that the Canadian system denies them.
Australians and Europeans travel to Asia to get the treatment unavailable to them in their own systems.
The one thing in common in all these cases? Only the well off get care. Everyone else hopes they don't get too sick of the wrong health problems. Most times they suffer only declining quality of life as what would be relatively minor problems blossom into long term problems as they wait weeks and months to get care that happens in just a short time for U.S. citizens with decent insurance or rich people. Other times they're offered a get out of life card rather than a cure because it's too expensive or they're too old (no longer socially productive.)
We've seen government run care in the U.S. and it's called the VA. If the scandal that is the VA doesn't wake you up to the reality of government run health care then you deserve what you get.
Define quickly.
100,000 years?
10,000 years?
1000 year?
even 100 years, provided it could be done cheaply enough
So quickly float away means nothing if the quickly is only relative to cosmological time and not human time
I've always figured the Russians hacked both the DNC and the RNC.
The DNC emails contained information on Hillary manipulating the primary system to steal the nomination from Bernie.
The RNC emails contained information on a bunch of legal fund raising and election procedural stuff.
Which would you have leaked?
Define lobbying in a way without loopholes?
Easy.
If you talk to a politician about an issue that is important to you it's legal.
If somebody pays you to talk to a politician about anything you should both go to jail.
Make that the law and 95% of our troubles in the U.S. would go away.
I think they went with a black Fury because Marvel Ultimate had a Nick Fury based on Samuel L. Jackson and the chance to actually cast the actor in the role was just too good a chance to pass up. Jackson has made a really good Fury, IMHO, and I'm looking forward to seeing him in his prime in Captain Marvel.
FDR's New Deal extended a normal cyclical economic depression into the Great Depression. It hurt far more people than it helped.
When you replace an existing white male character with a black woman for no other purpose than getting rid of the white male character that is both sexist and racist.
But I guess that's alight because, you know, white men deserve it.
My anger is reserved for those who have so little confidence in their own ability to create minority characters with their own interesting back story and character development that they feel the only way minority characters can prosper is to steal the reputation and readership of established white male characters.
Compare:
Black Panther a Marvel character with a long history of his own. His well made movie was a blockbuster.
Wonder Woman a DC character with a long history of her own. Her well made movie was the best of the entire DC releases.
Ghostbusters an attempt to replace well loved male characters with women. A complete failure.
Ocean's 8. Enough said.
Replacement of major Marvel Characters with gender swapping and blackwashing. Sales plummet.
Want to be successful? Create interesting minority characters who have their own story and their own mantel. Or have them steal the mantels of successful white male characters and see them fail as a property.
Where I live any place that tried to charge for parking would find itself a ghost town. One high end mall tried it. They became irrelevant as everyone just went to the other areas that did not try to charge for parking. Downtown charges, but unless you need to go to court or visit city hall no one goes downtown. Why would they? Except for the courts, jail and municipal buildings there's nothing down there.
At the present time the owners of the Uber vehicles, they just don't realize it.
They pay maintenance, gas and insurance.
Also how many of them are counting on their private operator insurance to cover them if they have an accident? They may be in for a surprise when after an accident, when the insurance company finds they were using their vehicle commercially and refuse to pay. The commercial insurance they aren't paying for is also a kind of subsidy.
I live in a coastal city, and my experience is closer to Cro Magnon than yours. No rapid transit, the bus system sucks and I could walk most places faster than taking the bus, as long as I don't mind walking an hour or so.
Places where public transportation and ride sharing will work in the U.S. are niche markets. Niche markets with large populations, but niche markets none the less.
You paid $120for an oil change? Man they saw you coming. Average price fro an oil change (according to Angie's List) is $46. The minimum was $25. That is certianly in line with what I usually pay.
I've got an SUV and buy good tires. I'd call $875 for 4 tires reasonable.
Looks like you're overpaying to me.
Since I park about 20 ft from my office I wouldn't expect to save much time on parking.
Maybe your dad figures that a company doing potentially risky public testing of new technology would hire someone actually qualified to be monitoring the technology, and not the least qualified person off the street that they can get for just above minimum wage.
And of course generally it doesn't provide a continuing income stream for the heirs and estates, it provides a continuing income stream fro the corporation that bought the rights to the work, in their mind for perpetuity.
Almost 99.99% of all copyright decisions have been made by the 9th circuit.
That is an interesting claim and seems very unlikely. Why have virtually no copyright cases come up in other circuits? Surely there are people pursuing copyright infringement outside of the western states. Do they not appeal their cases to the circuit court level?
Because the 9th circuit is in the pocket of the corporations holding the IP. It is a corporate friendly court and so corporations holding IP and wishing to sue attempted to get their case heard there. The 9th has pretty much done all they can to gut Fair Use.
Not entirely true. Single frame use and even clips are allowed under fair use for purposes of review, parody and educational use.
This to me shows one of the problems with photographs and copyright. Many photos have an aspect of artistic and technical competences about them which makes them unique.
Quite a few others are in no way unique, this especially applies to something like a street photo. If 100 people stand in a particular place on a street corner and use a photo capturing device they will produce 100 different photos that are effectively identical except for the metadata on the digital file. How can such a cookie cutter set of effectively identical collections of pixels?
"Free" healthcare is a system that is in trouble in just about every jurisdiction where it is in existence.
50,000 Canadians a year travel to the U.S. to use our helathcare because they cannot get the equivalent treatment in Canada. 500,000 Australians travel to Asia for the same reason. Those that can afford it in Britain buy private insurance so they don't have to use NHS. Over a hundred thousand also go abroad for treatment rather than use NHS.
As the topper if you want to look at what government healthcare would look like in the U.S. just look at the Veterans Administration, and ask yourself if that's the kind of healthcare you want.
Don't fool yourself. Russia is only providing shelter because it serves their purpose in tweaking the U.S. If it ever becomes advantageous for Putin to turn Snowden over to the U.S. it will happen so fast his head will spin. Assange is finding Ecuador, after a change in government leadership, is about done with him too.
None of the countries mentioned are bastions of freedom. They are U.S. adversaries practicing realpolitik.
Except that is not factual at all. The Doctor's first companions were Ian and Barbara (and his granddaughter.) Throughout the classic Who run the Doctor had many male companions: Ian, Ben, Jamie, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Mike Yates, Harry Sullivan, Adric, Turlough. New Who had Adam Mitchell, Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Jackson Lake, Rory Williams.
The real problem isn't that the Doctor will be female, but the reason the Doctor will be female. No one would have blinked an eye if a female had been chosen instead of Capaldi. But after making the Master female and then practically budgeting viewers with the whole subject no one with a brain thinks that Whittaker being given the role is anything more than virtue signaling. The Doctor will be female not because it makes any sense in the story, but because of Political Correctness.