Just what the phone company needs to charge us even more money... a new-fangled phone system.
And, of course, while they're robbing us blind for something which should already be cheap and ubiquitous (but now newly gets to be the new expensive hotness), Big Brother should have an even easier time tracking everybody.
Why the fuck does the future always have to seem like bleak-cyberpunk?
Because there is no way we don't end up spending twice as much for essentially the same service.
Which will be great for the big telcos (which are oddly now all the cable companies who keep merging so there's no actual competition). For the rest of us, not so much.
And, if it's good for big business, you can bet the FCC will approve it -- because that's what they're paid to do.
And, of course, the marketing weenies will call it "HD-Phone", or "Phone 3.0", or some equal bullshit.
No kidding. They'll tax the hell out of electricity to make up for lost gasoline taxes...nothing is free...
So, a little thought experiment, because this is about solar.
I buy some solar panels, or they're built into my car. From there, I never use your electricity, I use my electricity. And, if I own the solar infrastructure, the energy is free, give or take my investment and maintenance costs.
So either you're going to heavily tax the solar panels under the guise that it denies you the opportunity to tax me later. Or you're going to tax me on the basis that I have solar power, which denies you the opportunity to tax me.
If you start taxing people on the basis of things they're not doing, or for failure to consume those things from a company which charges you... then the MPAA is going to insist on taxing me based on the movies I don't see, because after all, I'm clearly the reason your movie didn't make any money, because I didn't pay to see it. And McDonald's will want to tax me for all their crappy food I don't eat. The Saudi's will insist I be taxed because I'm not using oil, so I'm depriving them of revenue.
I just don't see your system working. If I have a stand-alone solar array, and I charge my car with it using none of your resources -- on what basis do you think you can tax me? Because you feel entitled to it?
If we reach a point where people can charge their own cars with their own solar panels, suddenly there is free energy, and nothing on which to tax people, and no revenue for companies.
Which is why many people believe the energy companies will actively prevent this from happening.
Which means sooner or later they will be doing this for people who disagree politically, or who oppose funding increases, or just because they can.
When your state security can put anybody on the radar of law enforcement and conceal their involvement, then it will be abused, and possibly for personal gain (your ex's new husband needs some closer scrutiny maybe?)
This just smacks of some of the worst of McCarthyism where lives can be ruined because someone decides it's convenient.
You don't have a free society when you can be subject to trumped up charges used to mask the real reasons. But increasingly, 'free' is irrelevant under the program of "appearing safe".
Oh, we see you criticized our agency... let's see what we can dig up, oooh, says here you're having an affair, that should be enough to discredit you and draw attention away from us.
Those who run this will continue to say it's legal, and even if it isn't legal, it's Too Important to stop doing it.
And then they'll just have to find more creative ways to hide that people are being charged on the basis of illegal spying -- why no your honor, this was a routine traffic stop, and his laptop fell open.
Because, I'm pretty sure I've seen stories about how the spy agencies have been briefing law enforcement in how to cover up the involvement of the three-letter-agencies.
So, they'll continue to break the law, and then they'll just lie about where the information came from.
The comparisons to the Stasi get more relevant every day, and many of us are old enough to remember the old "papers please, comrade" jokes.
Sadly, we're heading there, to the applause of some, and horror of others.
I can see this leading to some pretty costly discovery for companies being sued.
Because it's going to amount to "in order for us to prove you violated our patent, we need you to hand over all of your information so we can find the proof".
I hope there is a provision for saying "OK, but we're going to charge you $100 million for our time in getting this" -- because otherwise this just allows the patent trolls to cause the people they accuse to incur massive costs which might make settling cheaper.
You shouldn't be able to make someone bear the cost of you suing them based on something you can't prove without them doing the work for you.
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit, where the most they ever found was, what, 7 lines of infringing code which SCO themselves had nicked from AT&T UNIX?
You have to wait for old folks to die off, and young folks to start caring enough to vote. In my mind, it's an inevitability. Circa 2100.
By which point they'll have passed even more terrible laws, and there will be several new generations of people in government invested in keeping things the same.
Prisons are supposed to be a massive, for-profit industry to allow corporations the maximum opportunity to leverage synergies and enhance shareholder value, and your justice system is meant to feed as many people as possible into it.
They may have powerful corporate backers, but these are the kinds of things that the younger generations just aren't going to put up with much longer.
And as long as you convince the older generations (or the wealthy) that you're being tough on crime, doing your best to cut taxes, and cutting social spending... they'll keep voting for you. Because they don't give a damn about much else.
And, as we saw from the Occupy protests... they'll just turn the national security forces against them, and either deem them to be terrorists, or actively work to find other ways to make sure they can't get very far -- which is easy when you monitor everyone's communications just in case you need to single someone out later.
Even democracies suffer from those in power trying to keep the world the way they want it, and there's a huge imbalance of power.
I agree with your hope. I'm just far less confident in it.
Is this guy a martyr or do we just chalk this up as another politician with crazy ideas that won't pass the majority test?
You seem awfully confident it couldn't get passed into law.
I'm less certain of that. The copyright owners and their lobbyists are working to chip away at our rights to make them secondary to theirs -- because they essentially want all digital technology to be controlled and used as they allow us.
I fear this could be something which happens eventually. And I fear that they will be pushing this exact same agenda elsewhere.
Case in point, the FBI gets called in because someone was wearing Google Glasses in a movie theater, even though he wasn't recording. And ICE and DHS do domain takedowns of places suspected of violating copyright (or facilitating it).
Governments are increasingly becoming tools of corporations to enforce their wishes on us.
So what you and I is becoming irrelevant, it's what the big corporations can pay for. And they have far more money than we do.
But doesn't that translate to "gaining market share in an overall shrinking market"?
If we're to believe recent stats, and increasingly tablets are outstripping sales of PCs, then in the short term Lenovo could continue to increase their share. But, if the market is correspondingly getting smaller.
This gets them into the server business, which presumably is a lot more resistant to stuff like tablets -- because, nobody is going to run their enterprise software on a tablet.:-P
Whistleblowing would be reporting to a higher authority wrongdoing within the government.
Except when those who are the 'higher authority' say "nothing to see here, move along", then doing it through government channels is pointless.
When your government is knowingly breaking the law and doing stuff like this, you pretty much can't gain anything by telling them it's happening, because they don't care.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
If your website needs a dedicated app on mobile platforms, you're either doing something wrong or doing something unethical.
Are you kidding me? I'd say at least 50% of the web sites I visit these days have a "download our app" link. I'd say over 90% have a "like us on Facebook" or "Follow us on Twitter" link.
Now, I believe this precludes neither wrong nor unethical (or both), but it seems the marketing weenies have decided that "ZOMG, we need teh app".
Me, I don't know why people don't just use the web -- though, that becomes perilous when they decide "I see you're on a mobile device, so let me redirect you to our shitty mobile website so it's not possible to find the link you were following".
In my experience, every mobile web site I've been redirected to is complete crap.
Never, as soon as it's then, then it will be now (but then), but then will refer to a different then than now, and a different now than now because it's then.
Then the now that will be used then is what we now refer to as then. Then we'll have another then from the now that is then, and the then then becomes now. The now we use right now will no longer apply, but the then we use now could still apply then if then was further out than then as of now and then.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but I figure you could guess right with 50% accuracy, and then if you guessed right and claim you calculated it nobody will know the difference.
If it predicts the next 10 or so, maybe. But anything else is mostly just PR.
Not since they put in the network filters. ;-)
Just what the phone company needs to charge us even more money ... a new-fangled phone system.
And, of course, while they're robbing us blind for something which should already be cheap and ubiquitous (but now newly gets to be the new expensive hotness), Big Brother should have an even easier time tracking everybody.
Why the fuck does the future always have to seem like bleak-cyberpunk?
Because there is no way we don't end up spending twice as much for essentially the same service.
Which will be great for the big telcos (which are oddly now all the cable companies who keep merging so there's no actual competition). For the rest of us, not so much.
And, if it's good for big business, you can bet the FCC will approve it -- because that's what they're paid to do.
And, of course, the marketing weenies will call it "HD-Phone", or "Phone 3.0", or some equal bullshit.
So imagine a perfectly spherical, super-conducting library of infinite density ... oh, is that not what you meant? :-P
So, a little thought experiment, because this is about solar.
I buy some solar panels, or they're built into my car. From there, I never use your electricity, I use my electricity. And, if I own the solar infrastructure, the energy is free, give or take my investment and maintenance costs.
So either you're going to heavily tax the solar panels under the guise that it denies you the opportunity to tax me later. Or you're going to tax me on the basis that I have solar power, which denies you the opportunity to tax me.
If you start taxing people on the basis of things they're not doing, or for failure to consume those things from a company which charges you ... then the MPAA is going to insist on taxing me based on the movies I don't see, because after all, I'm clearly the reason your movie didn't make any money, because I didn't pay to see it. And McDonald's will want to tax me for all their crappy food I don't eat. The Saudi's will insist I be taxed because I'm not using oil, so I'm depriving them of revenue.
I just don't see your system working. If I have a stand-alone solar array, and I charge my car with it using none of your resources -- on what basis do you think you can tax me? Because you feel entitled to it?
If we reach a point where people can charge their own cars with their own solar panels, suddenly there is free energy, and nothing on which to tax people, and no revenue for companies.
Which is why many people believe the energy companies will actively prevent this from happening.
Apparently they have the wacky notion of harnessing the energy from the sun. It's actually the 5th word in the summary.
Crazy, right? As if you could get energy from the sun.
Which means sooner or later they will be doing this for people who disagree politically, or who oppose funding increases, or just because they can.
When your state security can put anybody on the radar of law enforcement and conceal their involvement, then it will be abused, and possibly for personal gain (your ex's new husband needs some closer scrutiny maybe?)
This just smacks of some of the worst of McCarthyism where lives can be ruined because someone decides it's convenient.
You don't have a free society when you can be subject to trumped up charges used to mask the real reasons. But increasingly, 'free' is irrelevant under the program of "appearing safe".
Oh, we see you criticized our agency ... let's see what we can dig up, oooh, says here you're having an affair, that should be enough to discredit you and draw attention away from us.
Those who run this will continue to say it's legal, and even if it isn't legal, it's Too Important to stop doing it.
And then they'll just have to find more creative ways to hide that people are being charged on the basis of illegal spying -- why no your honor, this was a routine traffic stop, and his laptop fell open.
Because, I'm pretty sure I've seen stories about how the spy agencies have been briefing law enforcement in how to cover up the involvement of the three-letter-agencies.
So, they'll continue to break the law, and then they'll just lie about where the information came from.
The comparisons to the Stasi get more relevant every day, and many of us are old enough to remember the old "papers please, comrade" jokes.
Sadly, we're heading there, to the applause of some, and horror of others.
But ... but ... spieling cunts.
Not that I normally defend the /. editors ... but all of the major news agencies were reporting it as FBI initially.
So it was a pretty widespread thing.
Sorry, should have put infringing in air quotes to make that more clear that it was never really infringing in the first place.
If that were true, would SCOTUS have been ruling on it?
That they were ruling on this to me suggests it may not have been quite so clear.
Because otherwise it wouldn't need to be decided by SCOTUS.
I can see this leading to some pretty costly discovery for companies being sued.
Because it's going to amount to "in order for us to prove you violated our patent, we need you to hand over all of your information so we can find the proof".
I hope there is a provision for saying "OK, but we're going to charge you $100 million for our time in getting this" -- because otherwise this just allows the patent trolls to cause the people they accuse to incur massive costs which might make settling cheaper.
You shouldn't be able to make someone bear the cost of you suing them based on something you can't prove without them doing the work for you.
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit, where the most they ever found was, what, 7 lines of infringing code which SCO themselves had nicked from AT&T UNIX?
By which point they'll have passed even more terrible laws, and there will be several new generations of people in government invested in keeping things the same.
Bah, it's also an oblique reference to Iron Man 3 -- try to pay attention next time, this will be on the final exam. ;-)
Really? As it was reported (fairly widely) it was FBI.
Still, the irony of DHS doing this makes the agency as draconian as the name initially suggested it would eventually be.
I'll try not to trigger Godwin's law, but ...
Then you're doing it wrong.
Prisons are supposed to be a massive, for-profit industry to allow corporations the maximum opportunity to leverage synergies and enhance shareholder value, and your justice system is meant to feed as many people as possible into it.
Sheesh, don't you guys know anything?
*sigh* If only that wasn't apparently true.
And as long as you convince the older generations (or the wealthy) that you're being tough on crime, doing your best to cut taxes, and cutting social spending ... they'll keep voting for you. Because they don't give a damn about much else.
And, as we saw from the Occupy protests ... they'll just turn the national security forces against them, and either deem them to be terrorists, or actively work to find other ways to make sure they can't get very far -- which is easy when you monitor everyone's communications just in case you need to single someone out later.
Even democracies suffer from those in power trying to keep the world the way they want it, and there's a huge imbalance of power.
I agree with your hope. I'm just far less confident in it.
You seem awfully confident it couldn't get passed into law.
I'm less certain of that. The copyright owners and their lobbyists are working to chip away at our rights to make them secondary to theirs -- because they essentially want all digital technology to be controlled and used as they allow us.
I fear this could be something which happens eventually. And I fear that they will be pushing this exact same agenda elsewhere.
Case in point, the FBI gets called in because someone was wearing Google Glasses in a movie theater, even though he wasn't recording. And ICE and DHS do domain takedowns of places suspected of violating copyright (or facilitating it).
Governments are increasingly becoming tools of corporations to enforce their wishes on us.
So what you and I is becoming irrelevant, it's what the big corporations can pay for. And they have far more money than we do.
But doesn't that translate to "gaining market share in an overall shrinking market"?
If we're to believe recent stats, and increasingly tablets are outstripping sales of PCs, then in the short term Lenovo could continue to increase their share. But, if the market is correspondingly getting smaller.
This gets them into the server business, which presumably is a lot more resistant to stuff like tablets -- because, nobody is going to run their enterprise software on a tablet. :-P
Except when those who are the 'higher authority' say "nothing to see here, move along", then doing it through government channels is pointless.
When your government is knowingly breaking the law and doing stuff like this, you pretty much can't gain anything by telling them it's happening, because they don't care.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
History is written by the victors.
-- Winston Churchill
Are you kidding me? I'd say at least 50% of the web sites I visit these days have a "download our app" link. I'd say over 90% have a "like us on Facebook" or "Follow us on Twitter" link.
Now, I believe this precludes neither wrong nor unethical (or both), but it seems the marketing weenies have decided that "ZOMG, we need teh app".
Me, I don't know why people don't just use the web -- though, that becomes perilous when they decide "I see you're on a mobile device, so let me redirect you to our shitty mobile website so it's not possible to find the link you were following".
In my experience, every mobile web site I've been redirected to is complete crap.
That wasn't true even when Taco was around. Not even close. :-P
Never, as soon as it's then, then it will be now (but then), but then will refer to a different then than now, and a different now than now because it's then.
Then the now that will be used then is what we now refer to as then. Then we'll have another then from the now that is then, and the then then becomes now. The now we use right now will no longer apply, but the then we use now could still apply then if then was further out than then as of now and then.
And it's turtles all the way down. ;-)