I was thinking if you take the exemption and subsequently infect someone you have liability for medical expenses, or criminal liability in the case of death.
If your decision only affected you, run wild. That's your choice and your right.
If you infect someone else and make them seriously ill or cause death... well, that's no longer just you affected by that damned decision, is it?
Or, better yet, Auto Industry, come up with a "standard" that we can "upgrade" our systems quickly and easily.
You're joking, right?
I'm sorry, but as cool of an idea it is, it's completely laughable.
They view these things as differentiating features and competitive advantages. They also make huge amounts of money on the upgrades and the bells and whistles.
I remember back in 1995/1996 or so... a 1.44MB floppy with a bootable image of QNX. It booted onto pretty much any machine we could find, identified all of the devices, found the ethernet, and had a web browser.
It was faster and more robust than Windows 95 was by a bloody long shot.
Blackberry bought QNX because it has had a reputation as being pretty bomb proof for a long time.
the police actually had no reason at all to arrest him
And that's kind of the problem. While the police are illegally arresting you, and you say "what the hell are you arresting me for", then they trump up the charge to resisting arrest.
At this point, there is no defensible reason for every damned police officer to be wearing a camera. We can't trust them, so we have to more or less treat them as needing objective evidence to prove their version of events.
None of this "they said/you said" crap. Objective, video and audio recording of the entire interaction. Mandatory as part of all duties, and archived.
Start putting some of these guys in prison for this kind of crap, and it might start to sink in.
I'd knock him the fuck out and make him prove in court that I didn't need to.
Tough talk on the interwebs, but that's all it is.
When you're being tased, or shot, or beaten senseless only to have a group of cops all lie about what happened... your bravado will be so much electrons and hype. And they'll circle the wagons to say it was all you, and unless someone else gets a video of it... you'll be pretty much screwed.
I'm not saying I disagree with your assessment. I just don't think it's going to work quite so well as you seem to think.
And then of course you have to assume once they get their own version of the story straight you move on to:
5) giving a false statement 6) dereliction of duty 7) possibly perjury if it's a sworn statement
By the time you get police doing this kind of crap, they're well past the point where they have any business being in law enforcement, because they're just plain criminals.
Start putting these cops in jail with the rest of the gangsters. That's all they are.
You want to curb the problem? Have some high profile prosecutions.
Charge them criminally, kick them off the force, strip them of their pensions, make examples of them. It should be a felony for a police officer to do this, because they wield so much more power in this equation.
If the police aren't going to bother either learning, or following the law... they have no business being police officers. If they can't get it through their heads they have no right to prevent this, then when they do it, bloody well lay charges.
The police are becoming thugs. And if they want to be thugs and criminals, start treating them as such.
And if the "good" cops won't stand up and get rid of the bad cops, they're just as guilty.
None of this circling the blue wall crap, and being on paid suspension. Fire the bastards.
Earlier this year, both Apple and Dell unveiled "5K" displays that nearly doubled the number of pixels of 4K displays. 4K already brutalizes top-end graphics cards and lacks widely available video content, and yet here we are looking at the prospect of 5K.
Fuck it, we're going to 5K...
I predict that this technology will be adopted for computers FAR before it is adopted for TV in any meaningful sense.
Know why? Consumers got raped in the last HD format war. People bought gear which subsequently wasn't supported.
I have no intention of lining the electronics industry with the money to replace my TV, my amp, my DVD player. The stuff I own is relatively new, and works just fine.
The reason content for 4K is slow catching on because consumers are all thinking "why the hell would I switch to yet another format?" I expect we'll see 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K... and all before the vast majority of consumers give a damn.
My view of 4K for TV is a big "I don't care, because it's expensive, pointless, and pretty removed from being a need".
Are we defining "dead" as "widely used despite being a pathetic security hole", or are we sticking with the more traditional "nobody uses it any more".
Because if we're defining "dead" in the latter sense, as much as I wish you were right, I'd have to say you're probably wrong.
No, wait, I'm not surprised at all. Flash has been a security hole for as long as it has existed.
I don't understand why people let web sites run arbitrary code. Adobe made a horrible platform from a security perspective, and it's been pretty much constantly in the headlines since.
I honestly don't know why people continue to trust the damned thing, and can't believe the sheer number of times I've heard it's been a vector for security holes. Donzens? Hundreds?
There are many other brands of brewers that make single serving coffee and none of them force you to use any particular brand of cup.
So, on the off beat chance you don't know this...
Most of those single serving cups are, in fact, the k-cup form factor. The patents for those expired several years ago, and everybody could make compatible stuff. Because, really, it's a little plastic tub with coffee in it and it isn't rocket science. You can buy them anywhere, and find lots of makers which support them.
Now... this is the new hotness. The K-cup 2.0, with DRM.
So, all of those brands of brewers and cups you could buy? You still can. Nothing about those has changed. Your older Keurig machine? Nothing has changed with that either.
But, if you end up buying a newer Keurig machine... suddenly you get DRM, specifically because it's the razor blade business model, and Keurig has decided you must buy from them.
Well, then might I suggest wearing a condom, a helmet, and elbow pads the next time you make coffee?
Me, I'll go with my open source espresso machine which lets me put any coffee of my choosing in, and produce any of several different cup sizes, depending on how long I keep the water flowing.
What part of get off my lawn was ambiguous? It says "I'm old, now fuck off".
Except as you get older you stop fetishizing technology, and decide that "no, I really don't care about this shiny bauble, because Matlock is going to be on soon, and I need to find my sweater".
I still own and use a lot of technology, some of which was invented after the steam-powered interwebs became unfashionable.
I've seen and used technology long enough to know that today's really shiny new toy is tomorrow's discarded detritus which didn't really improve my life any. Which means I've got the perspective to go straight to "I fail to see how this actually benefits me".
I'd say around 85-90% of all apps I've installed on my tablet become something I don't use fairly quickly and get uninstalled. (Yes, I know what they are and how to use one.)
I make my living working with technology, but I'm not completely beholden to it, and don't use it just simply because it exists. It needs to add value to my life, or it's just a nuisance and a gimmick.
And, quite frankly, having my drivers license as an app on a phone? Not so much with the adding of value, and really high on the "annoying and eroding my privacy" front.
If you think technology peaked in 2006 why do you even read new Slashdot articles?
Because, when you get old enough, terrorizing the youngsters becomes a hobby unto itself... and because half of the wet behind the ears punks around here don't remember enough technology to know a damned thing about it, and are clueless enough to believe there's always been a fucking app for that.
But, after 30+ years of playing with, or working with technology... I don't always think "hot damn, I need one of those". I think "yeah, we had something kinda like that 20+ years ago, and it was pointless then, too".
Because that sounds like an awesome idea... have your phone set to provide any other device with your ID upon request. What could possibly go wrong?
You think the police officer is going to give you time to go in, enable NFC, and then bump?
No, sorry. Your idea sounds silly, because it means everyone walks around with their phone in a moronic mode which says anybody can access the stuff a police officer can just by proximity.
Or are you suggesting the cell phones natively have a "law enforcement" mode? Like that won't get hacked or abused.
I have a better idea... stick with ID cards, and tell the cop that without a warrant he can stay the hell away from your phone, no, you can't search my car, and I would like to talk to my lawyer before I answer any more questions.
Assume the police are going to violate your rights, and make them prove otherwise. Don't be rude to them, but don't offer them anything either.
Make the police understand that if they're going to systematically violate our rights, we're going to assume they're crooked and not trustworthy.
But more important, will there soon be laws REQUIRING people to carry a phone?
You won't be required to have one.
But it will be illegal to not have one. And it will also be illegal to not unlock it upon request from law enforcement.
See, they're not allowed to search your phone, so if they change it so you're required to provide it to them, it's much easier.
Especially if you're within 100 miles of the border. Then not having a phone/refusing to unlock it means they can trump up the charges to the point they can include DHS, seize it, and search it anyway -- and legally compel you to unlock it since it is now a matter of national security.
Papers please, comrade. Give us the code for your phone or we'll beat it out of you.
Seriously, I'm getting tired of the endless stream of apps.
The world is an app, I have an app, everybody has an app... it's lots of hype, and very little long-term proven benefit.
I really hope we reach peak app soon, and people STFU about apps.
Yes, fine, you have software. We've had software for decades. But now it's on a phone or a tablet. So it's an app, and it's super awesome, and we need to dedicate countless hours of coverage to it.
And every drooling idiot is racing to ensure they're stuff is available on an app, and telling us how our lives will be improved and perfected by apps, and how if we're not writing an app we'll fall behind and become fossilized.
You know what? Millions of people don't use smart phones, don't use an app for everything, and can conclude our normal bodily functions without relying on an app.
I bet 99.9% of all apps are crap, or won't be around in 5 years. But, like the.com era, you can become a billionaire by saying you have an idea for an app.
Blah blah blah.. take your damned app and get off my lawn.
Well, you are now being put on notice that you're a moron.:-P
I don't worship government. I don't trust it any more than I trust corporations. And I sure as hell con't trust corporations either. I think government needs someone to keep them in check. But I also think corporations need someone to keep them in check.
I'm not a communist, nor am I a capitalist. Because I think both taken to idiotic extremes are dangerous and toxic, and simply don't work as people claim they do.
We couldn't function without government, but sometimes we can barely function with it. Corporations exist, but I don't consider them and their profits to be some moral ideal, or that profit at any costs is a good idea. In fact, I think it needs to be balanced against society's needs and safety.
Too much regulation is crippling. Not enough is dangerous and harmful.
You hit the nail on the head. Human nature is the problem, and I, for one, don't want that extinguished
I don't want it extinguished, I want it acknowledged, and not simply waved away as an unsupportable premise in some damned ism.
Any of these isms which makes assumptions about human nature being inherently good, or how people will behave better once we force them to follow our ism, or assumes humans will play nice and fair and not cheat... those isms become idiotic and trite, because they are an overly simplified model which is detached from reality.
And the free market is one of those. It is founded on untenable premises which ignore human reality, and it isn't borne out by fact and human behavior. Yet it gets trotted out as the solution to everything.
Stop worrying about this my team vs. your team minutia and live your life.
LOL, on this we agree.
As far as I know, I'm not technically on any team. I think several teams have some good ideas, and over time good ideas become Bad Reality. But I think they're all equally full of some garbage which don't hold water.
I think reality exists, humans can and will do stupid and corrupt things, and that anybody who claims to have all the answers is full of shit.
All categorical statements are wrong or incomplete. And slavishly following any ism to "all this or all that" is for simpletons.
So, yes, reality is complicated, nuanced, fucked up, and imperfect. But it's all we have.
What I don't have patience for is people who claim to be able to sum all that reality up into their favorite pet theory which neatly answers all questions. Those people I consider to be full of shit, and dangerous.
Me, I'm mostly full of shit and harmless, because I can tell you for a fact I don't have any answers.;-)
The article shows pictures of running apps in full screen on a wide screen monitor, resulting in huge amounts of wasted space on the screen.
And, I'm sorry, but if you haven't discovered that windows can be sized and don't need to be ran in full screen... you're a moron
There are some apps which make sens to run in full screen, because they have a lot of stuff in it.
But a web browser? Really? You can have two side by side windows of web browsers open on a wide screen monitor.
I'm not saying there aren't cases where running in portrait mode might not be useful. I'm sure there are, because portrait monitors have existed for a long time. But I am saying the arguments and pictures used to support this claim are facile, simplistic, and written by someone who believes all apps run in feel screen all the time.
Because that's how governments work these days... whoever has the deepest pockets to pay the government to pass laws which favor them wins.
Welcome to the oligarchy. America is as mired in this crap as anyone else, if not more.
The world is now largely defined in terms of corporate interests, and governments will do anything they're asked for the most part.
And since the copyright cartels have been leading this charge, don't be surprised that they're further fucking things up for their own short-term interests.
Pretty much the only thing I can see that connects these three are that a US company operating abroad sometimes doesn't find a service that's legal in the US to be legal or practical in $RANDOM_COUNTY_THAT_ISNT_MERICA
Conversely, American companies need to grow into the rest of the world to keep their shareholders happy and keep revenues moving upwards.
America has largely put it's eggs into the basket of global technology corporations who keep expanding their markets indefinitely, and buoy the stock market, and make corporate executives and stockholders happy, and give you the illusion you have a thriving economy.
When Google and Microsoft and companies like that start running into roadblocks in the rest of the world... you might start to discover that the global Ponzi scheme which is the stock market and globalization is a house of cards.
So, when American corporations rely on expanding into $RANDOM_COUNTRY_THAT_ISNT_MERICA, and when that doesn't go according to plan... you just might find yourselves staring at the emperor's bare ass.
The stock markets have been moving steadily away from fundamentals, and moving towards the unsustainable notion that every company grows every year indefinitely.
That can't keep happening.
And when it stops happening, you may well discover that a lot of the wealth which passes through Wall Street and other exchanges is completely fictional and not sustainable.
There's a government failure here, let the free market fix it.
Oh, horse shit.
You're delusional. The free market doesn't exist. It doesn't solve problems. It doesn't achieve optimal outcomes.
It's a fucking abstraction describing long-term outcomes under a perfect hypothetical model based on crap assumptions, not some divine entity.
Adam Mith's invisible hand works wonders, it will fix this too.
In practice, the only thing Smith's "invisible hand" is doing is picking your pocket and giving you the finger.
It isn't some magical entity. It doesn't make good choices. It doesn't care what happens to you. It doesn't actually care if you have perfect information. It doesn't really exist.
The invisible hand is the collective actions of the market over an extended period of time -- and collectively the market is rigged, and people are gaming the system. The invisible hand won't fix that.
The premise that the free market achieves perfect outcomes over the long haul assumes the system isn't corrupt, and that the players aren't actively undermining it.
But humans are corrupt, and always will be. Which means in practice the "free market" devolves into cartels and other things which try to stop the market from being free.
It doesn't exist. Has never existed. Cannot exist. And if by accident it briefly existed, it would be undermined immediately by the humans.
But... but... they're a tech company... they have an app... they dispatch using technology. My god, can't you see that this is completely different from a taxi company?
Why, being a tech company, and having an app... they're nothing at all like a cab company.
Sure, they dispatch drivers to pick you up and drive you somewhere else for money, but... it's done with a freakin' app, that makes it totally different. Because with an app, the cabs are dispatched with the help of unicorns and kittens.
Yeah, whatever.
My problem with Uber is there is no way to make their argument about being magically exempted from regulation stick. You can't just decree that laws don't apply to you. You can't just decree that your car-for-hire service isn't a car-for-hire service just because the drivers don't work for you.
Their spokespeople have been trained to sound collectively delusional, and either they know they're full of shit, or have drank so much of the kool aid they really believe they're a different kind of entity.
The problem is, they're not the ones who define what they are and what laws apply.
So, yawn, this is just a continuation of the.COM era, except this time it's with smart phones and apps.
You suddenly become worth billions of dollars, when you don't have billions in assets or even revenue. It's an overhyped stock, in an overhyped market, by people who are convinced they're something new.
Except for the GPS part, you've been able to dial #taxi for years. A cellphone doesn't magically make you not a taxi.
Uber is just hype, and once the law establishes they're just a taxi company trying to pretend otherwise.
Claiming you're a technology company who just enables scheduling for illegal cabs just won't cut it.
Except while the real advertisers will see a 25% payout reduction, the market will also see 25% of the ad expense budget from companies go to scammers. Not the best free market outcome.
In all honesty, I don't really see this as being much different from High Frequency Trading, or half of the other crap companies do -- price fixing, collusion, non-poaching/non-compete agreements. Basically anything they can do to manipulate the system in their favor, and skim a little off the top.
Someone is always gaming the system, which is why your free market is a complete myth. Someone is always cheating, and someone always will be. You will never arrive at this mythical free market.
But at least the scammers are more honest about what they do than the financial institutions and multinationals
The notion of a "best free market outcome" is a complete joke.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking if you take the exemption and subsequently infect someone you have liability for medical expenses, or criminal liability in the case of death.
If your decision only affected you, run wild. That's your choice and your right.
If you infect someone else and make them seriously ill or cause death ... well, that's no longer just you affected by that damned decision, is it?
This isn't a decision which is made in an vacuum.
You're joking, right?
I'm sorry, but as cool of an idea it is, it's completely laughable.
They view these things as differentiating features and competitive advantages. They also make huge amounts of money on the upgrades and the bells and whistles.
Not gonna happen, as much as we'd like to see it.
You're an idiot, aren't you?
I remember back in 1995/1996 or so ... a 1.44MB floppy with a bootable image of QNX. It booted onto pretty much any machine we could find, identified all of the devices, found the ethernet, and had a web browser.
It was faster and more robust than Windows 95 was by a bloody long shot.
Blackberry bought QNX because it has had a reputation as being pretty bomb proof for a long time.
And that's kind of the problem. While the police are illegally arresting you, and you say "what the hell are you arresting me for", then they trump up the charge to resisting arrest.
At this point, there is no defensible reason for every damned police officer to be wearing a camera. We can't trust them, so we have to more or less treat them as needing objective evidence to prove their version of events.
None of this "they said/you said" crap. Objective, video and audio recording of the entire interaction. Mandatory as part of all duties, and archived.
Start putting some of these guys in prison for this kind of crap, and it might start to sink in.
Tough talk on the interwebs, but that's all it is.
When you're being tased, or shot, or beaten senseless only to have a group of cops all lie about what happened ... your bravado will be so much electrons and hype. And they'll circle the wagons to say it was all you, and unless someone else gets a video of it ... you'll be pretty much screwed.
I'm not saying I disagree with your assessment. I just don't think it's going to work quite so well as you seem to think.
And then of course you have to assume once they get their own version of the story straight you move on to:
5) giving a false statement
6) dereliction of duty
7) possibly perjury if it's a sworn statement
By the time you get police doing this kind of crap, they're well past the point where they have any business being in law enforcement, because they're just plain criminals.
Start putting these cops in jail with the rest of the gangsters. That's all they are.
You want to curb the problem? Have some high profile prosecutions.
Charge them criminally, kick them off the force, strip them of their pensions, make examples of them. It should be a felony for a police officer to do this, because they wield so much more power in this equation.
If the police aren't going to bother either learning, or following the law ... they have no business being police officers. If they can't get it through their heads they have no right to prevent this, then when they do it, bloody well lay charges.
The police are becoming thugs. And if they want to be thugs and criminals, start treating them as such.
And if the "good" cops won't stand up and get rid of the bad cops, they're just as guilty.
None of this circling the blue wall crap, and being on paid suspension. Fire the bastards.
Fuck it, we're going to 5K ...
I predict that this technology will be adopted for computers FAR before it is adopted for TV in any meaningful sense.
Know why? Consumers got raped in the last HD format war. People bought gear which subsequently wasn't supported.
I have no intention of lining the electronics industry with the money to replace my TV, my amp, my DVD player. The stuff I own is relatively new, and works just fine.
The reason content for 4K is slow catching on because consumers are all thinking "why the hell would I switch to yet another format?" I expect we'll see 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K ... and all before the vast majority of consumers give a damn.
My view of 4K for TV is a big "I don't care, because it's expensive, pointless, and pretty removed from being a need".
I won't be surprised if it flops.
Are we defining "dead" as "widely used despite being a pathetic security hole", or are we sticking with the more traditional "nobody uses it any more".
Because if we're defining "dead" in the latter sense, as much as I wish you were right, I'd have to say you're probably wrong.
I'm completely shocked to hear this.
No, wait, I'm not surprised at all. Flash has been a security hole for as long as it has existed.
I don't understand why people let web sites run arbitrary code. Adobe made a horrible platform from a security perspective, and it's been pretty much constantly in the headlines since.
I honestly don't know why people continue to trust the damned thing, and can't believe the sheer number of times I've heard it's been a vector for security holes. Donzens? Hundreds?
Seriously, just stop running the damned thing.
So, on the off beat chance you don't know this ...
Most of those single serving cups are, in fact, the k-cup form factor. The patents for those expired several years ago, and everybody could make compatible stuff. Because, really, it's a little plastic tub with coffee in it and it isn't rocket science. You can buy them anywhere, and find lots of makers which support them.
Now ... this is the new hotness. The K-cup 2.0, with DRM.
So, all of those brands of brewers and cups you could buy? You still can. Nothing about those has changed. Your older Keurig machine? Nothing has changed with that either.
But, if you end up buying a newer Keurig machine ... suddenly you get DRM, specifically because it's the razor blade business model, and Keurig has decided you must buy from them.
I would rather end up with liquid coffee and coffee grounds as waste products. The plastic and mylar? Not so much.
You know, they've had ground coffee in various flavors for literally decades, it's a solved problem. You can buy the bean whole or ground.
Maybe, maybe not ... but they've had this remarkable invention called a kettle for most of recorded human history.
Well, then might I suggest wearing a condom, a helmet, and elbow pads the next time you make coffee?
Me, I'll go with my open source espresso machine which lets me put any coffee of my choosing in, and produce any of several different cup sizes, depending on how long I keep the water flowing.
No vendor lock-in, FTW!!
What part of get off my lawn was ambiguous? It says "I'm old, now fuck off".
Except as you get older you stop fetishizing technology, and decide that "no, I really don't care about this shiny bauble, because Matlock is going to be on soon, and I need to find my sweater".
I still own and use a lot of technology, some of which was invented after the steam-powered interwebs became unfashionable.
I've seen and used technology long enough to know that today's really shiny new toy is tomorrow's discarded detritus which didn't really improve my life any. Which means I've got the perspective to go straight to "I fail to see how this actually benefits me".
I'd say around 85-90% of all apps I've installed on my tablet become something I don't use fairly quickly and get uninstalled. (Yes, I know what they are and how to use one.)
I make my living working with technology, but I'm not completely beholden to it, and don't use it just simply because it exists. It needs to add value to my life, or it's just a nuisance and a gimmick.
And, quite frankly, having my drivers license as an app on a phone? Not so much with the adding of value, and really high on the "annoying and eroding my privacy" front.
Because, when you get old enough, terrorizing the youngsters becomes a hobby unto itself ... and because half of the wet behind the ears punks around here don't remember enough technology to know a damned thing about it, and are clueless enough to believe there's always been a fucking app for that.
But, after 30+ years of playing with, or working with technology ... I don't always think "hot damn, I need one of those". I think "yeah, we had something kinda like that 20+ years ago, and it was pointless then, too".
Because that sounds like an awesome idea ... have your phone set to provide any other device with your ID upon request. What could possibly go wrong?
You think the police officer is going to give you time to go in, enable NFC, and then bump?
No, sorry. Your idea sounds silly, because it means everyone walks around with their phone in a moronic mode which says anybody can access the stuff a police officer can just by proximity.
Or are you suggesting the cell phones natively have a "law enforcement" mode? Like that won't get hacked or abused.
I have a better idea ... stick with ID cards, and tell the cop that without a warrant he can stay the hell away from your phone, no, you can't search my car, and I would like to talk to my lawyer before I answer any more questions.
Assume the police are going to violate your rights, and make them prove otherwise. Don't be rude to them, but don't offer them anything either.
Make the police understand that if they're going to systematically violate our rights, we're going to assume they're crooked and not trustworthy.
You won't be required to have one.
But it will be illegal to not have one. And it will also be illegal to not unlock it upon request from law enforcement.
See, they're not allowed to search your phone, so if they change it so you're required to provide it to them, it's much easier.
Especially if you're within 100 miles of the border. Then not having a phone/refusing to unlock it means they can trump up the charges to the point they can include DHS, seize it, and search it anyway -- and legally compel you to unlock it since it is now a matter of national security.
Papers please, comrade. Give us the code for your phone or we'll beat it out of you.
Seriously, I'm getting tired of the endless stream of apps.
The world is an app, I have an app, everybody has an app ... it's lots of hype, and very little long-term proven benefit.
I really hope we reach peak app soon, and people STFU about apps.
Yes, fine, you have software. We've had software for decades. But now it's on a phone or a tablet. So it's an app, and it's super awesome, and we need to dedicate countless hours of coverage to it.
And every drooling idiot is racing to ensure they're stuff is available on an app, and telling us how our lives will be improved and perfected by apps, and how if we're not writing an app we'll fall behind and become fossilized.
You know what? Millions of people don't use smart phones, don't use an app for everything, and can conclude our normal bodily functions without relying on an app.
I bet 99.9% of all apps are crap, or won't be around in 5 years. But, like the .com era, you can become a billionaire by saying you have an idea for an app.
Blah blah blah .. take your damned app and get off my lawn.
Well, you are now being put on notice that you're a moron. :-P
I don't worship government. I don't trust it any more than I trust corporations. And I sure as hell con't trust corporations either. I think government needs someone to keep them in check. But I also think corporations need someone to keep them in check.
I'm not a communist, nor am I a capitalist. Because I think both taken to idiotic extremes are dangerous and toxic, and simply don't work as people claim they do.
We couldn't function without government, but sometimes we can barely function with it. Corporations exist, but I don't consider them and their profits to be some moral ideal, or that profit at any costs is a good idea. In fact, I think it needs to be balanced against society's needs and safety.
Too much regulation is crippling. Not enough is dangerous and harmful.
I don't want it extinguished, I want it acknowledged, and not simply waved away as an unsupportable premise in some damned ism.
Any of these isms which makes assumptions about human nature being inherently good, or how people will behave better once we force them to follow our ism, or assumes humans will play nice and fair and not cheat ... those isms become idiotic and trite, because they are an overly simplified model which is detached from reality.
And the free market is one of those. It is founded on untenable premises which ignore human reality, and it isn't borne out by fact and human behavior. Yet it gets trotted out as the solution to everything.
LOL, on this we agree.
As far as I know, I'm not technically on any team. I think several teams have some good ideas, and over time good ideas become Bad Reality. But I think they're all equally full of some garbage which don't hold water.
I think reality exists, humans can and will do stupid and corrupt things, and that anybody who claims to have all the answers is full of shit.
All categorical statements are wrong or incomplete. And slavishly following any ism to "all this or all that" is for simpletons.
So, yes, reality is complicated, nuanced, fucked up, and imperfect. But it's all we have.
What I don't have patience for is people who claim to be able to sum all that reality up into their favorite pet theory which neatly answers all questions. Those people I consider to be full of shit, and dangerous.
Me, I'm mostly full of shit and harmless, because I can tell you for a fact I don't have any answers. ;-)
The article shows pictures of running apps in full screen on a wide screen monitor, resulting in huge amounts of wasted space on the screen.
And, I'm sorry, but if you haven't discovered that windows can be sized and don't need to be ran in full screen ... you're a moron
There are some apps which make sens to run in full screen, because they have a lot of stuff in it.
But a web browser? Really? You can have two side by side windows of web browsers open on a wide screen monitor.
I'm not saying there aren't cases where running in portrait mode might not be useful. I'm sure there are, because portrait monitors have existed for a long time. But I am saying the arguments and pictures used to support this claim are facile, simplistic, and written by someone who believes all apps run in feel screen all the time.
You don't think it will really only cost $33 million, do you?
By the time they pad out the budget, get some money for black projects, pay $10K for a hammer ... this should easily hit a few hundred million.
Because that's how governments work these days ... whoever has the deepest pockets to pay the government to pass laws which favor them wins.
Welcome to the oligarchy. America is as mired in this crap as anyone else, if not more.
The world is now largely defined in terms of corporate interests, and governments will do anything they're asked for the most part.
And since the copyright cartels have been leading this charge, don't be surprised that they're further fucking things up for their own short-term interests.
Conversely, American companies need to grow into the rest of the world to keep their shareholders happy and keep revenues moving upwards.
America has largely put it's eggs into the basket of global technology corporations who keep expanding their markets indefinitely, and buoy the stock market, and make corporate executives and stockholders happy, and give you the illusion you have a thriving economy.
When Google and Microsoft and companies like that start running into roadblocks in the rest of the world ... you might start to discover that the global Ponzi scheme which is the stock market and globalization is a house of cards.
So, when American corporations rely on expanding into $RANDOM_COUNTRY_THAT_ISNT_MERICA, and when that doesn't go according to plan ... you just might find yourselves staring at the emperor's bare ass.
The stock markets have been moving steadily away from fundamentals, and moving towards the unsustainable notion that every company grows every year indefinitely.
That can't keep happening.
And when it stops happening, you may well discover that a lot of the wealth which passes through Wall Street and other exchanges is completely fictional and not sustainable.
Oh, horse shit.
You're delusional. The free market doesn't exist. It doesn't solve problems. It doesn't achieve optimal outcomes.
It's a fucking abstraction describing long-term outcomes under a perfect hypothetical model based on crap assumptions, not some divine entity.
In practice, the only thing Smith's "invisible hand" is doing is picking your pocket and giving you the finger.
It isn't some magical entity. It doesn't make good choices. It doesn't care what happens to you. It doesn't actually care if you have perfect information. It doesn't really exist.
The invisible hand is the collective actions of the market over an extended period of time -- and collectively the market is rigged, and people are gaming the system. The invisible hand won't fix that.
The premise that the free market achieves perfect outcomes over the long haul assumes the system isn't corrupt, and that the players aren't actively undermining it.
But humans are corrupt, and always will be. Which means in practice the "free market" devolves into cartels and other things which try to stop the market from being free.
It doesn't exist. Has never existed. Cannot exist. And if by accident it briefly existed, it would be undermined immediately by the humans.
But ... but ... they're a tech company ... they have an app ... they dispatch using technology. My god, can't you see that this is completely different from a taxi company?
Why, being a tech company, and having an app ... they're nothing at all like a cab company.
Sure, they dispatch drivers to pick you up and drive you somewhere else for money, but ... it's done with a freakin' app, that makes it totally different. Because with an app, the cabs are dispatched with the help of unicorns and kittens.
Yeah, whatever.
My problem with Uber is there is no way to make their argument about being magically exempted from regulation stick. You can't just decree that laws don't apply to you. You can't just decree that your car-for-hire service isn't a car-for-hire service just because the drivers don't work for you.
Their spokespeople have been trained to sound collectively delusional, and either they know they're full of shit, or have drank so much of the kool aid they really believe they're a different kind of entity.
The problem is, they're not the ones who define what they are and what laws apply.
So, yawn, this is just a continuation of the .COM era, except this time it's with smart phones and apps.
You suddenly become worth billions of dollars, when you don't have billions in assets or even revenue. It's an overhyped stock, in an overhyped market, by people who are convinced they're something new.
Except for the GPS part, you've been able to dial #taxi for years. A cellphone doesn't magically make you not a taxi.
Uber is just hype, and once the law establishes they're just a taxi company trying to pretend otherwise.
Claiming you're a technology company who just enables scheduling for illegal cabs just won't cut it.
In all honesty, I don't really see this as being much different from High Frequency Trading, or half of the other crap companies do -- price fixing, collusion, non-poaching/non-compete agreements. Basically anything they can do to manipulate the system in their favor, and skim a little off the top.
Someone is always gaming the system, which is why your free market is a complete myth. Someone is always cheating, and someone always will be. You will never arrive at this mythical free market.
But at least the scammers are more honest about what they do than the financial institutions and multinationals
The notion of a "best free market outcome" is a complete joke.