For those of us not as interested in illegality, there is also Netflix, YouTube Red (for normal YT content without ads plus some unique programming), Hulu Plus (a few things will have a very short, single ad at the beginning and end), and purchasing tv seasons and movies a la carte via any number of services (Amazon, Google, etc).
That's fine until you want to watch something that's not available on those services, in which case, ads it is. I personally have a subscription to both Netflix and HBO.
Honestly, this ad skip blocking is fully consistent with what I've seen among other cable providers. CenturyLink Prism seemed to do exactly this before I ditched it last month.
If you want a truly ad free experience, (and who doesn't?) I'd suggest piracy.
You should probably pay attention to Microsoft's latest privacy disclosure. Edge and IE BOTH very much do spy on you. Microsoft records every URL you visit and every search term you type, including in competing search engines. So if you thought you had privacy when searching in duck duck go when used with edge/ie, you are wrong, as Microsoft does and will log it, and presumably even associate it with your name if you use a Microsoft account.
This is actually the whole point of Microsoft pushing edge/IE so hard: They KNOW Bing ultimately can't compete with Google in its current state, and thus neither can Cortana. The only way they can make it compete is if they can start recording what websites end users ultimately view after searching, thus knowing what content is actually relevant to given search terms.
If nobody uses edge/IE, then doing this is much more difficult, but Microsoft does try other approaches too. I know for example that Microsoft is now pushing some Bing extensions for third party browsers, and is even known to show a taskbar pop-up above the browser icon asking you to install it in some cases if you run windows 10.
I actually just reformatted my daily driver desktop PC, installing the creator's update, and the new marketing pressure is real.
The first boot after install loads a cortana screen that doesn't go away until you click the mic mute button, with not one but three prompts to use a Microsoft account.
When you finally get to the desktop and use edge for the one and only purpose that most people use it for, it doesn't stop there. You type "Firefox download" in the search bar, and the first thing you get is a prompt to stick with edge. After you install Firefox and click to set it as default, the windows 10 default settings applet loads a blank screen (this repeated after multiple attempts.) So to change the default browser, you have to open that settings applet manually. Once you try to select Firefox as your default browser, you get another prompt telling you to try edge first, which you then have to dismiss to finally change the default.
really REALLY bad comparison, at last count Hotmail/outlook accounts still outnumbered gmail accounts, and that is with gmail being forced on many android users.
Whatever figures you're using probably are based on either throwaway accounts or contact information that just hasn't been updated in 20 years. Likewise, the loss of geocities must have been a huge setback for Microsoft.
I'm not sure about this. You seem to be suggesting that he should have yielded to authoritarianism without being able to state his case.
This isn't authoritarianism any more than having a post deleted on a web forum by a moderator is authoritarianism. Aircraft owned by airlines are in fact private property.
Are United assholes for doing this? Yep, but don't try to confuse the issue.
A more appropriate analogy would be Hotmail vs Gmail. And yes, Microsoft didn't go down without a fight, but their fight just wasn't anywhere near being good enough.
Or maybe the whole project was born from mplayer and a pirated Xbox SDK. Oh, and they justified not releasing the GPLed source code since they only released it through piracy sites.
Nope, sorry, but the lack of specification in terms of elector selection IS a weakness
It seems pretty clear to me:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
In other words, how the electors are sent is entirely up to the state legislature.
If the state legislator wants to send electors that it chooses arbitrarily, it may do so. If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote within its jurisdiction, it may do so. If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote of the entire nation, it may do so.
It's flexible, which is quite a strength. Otherwise, you may as well argue that skyscrapers in Japan are weak because they bend and flex instead of being rigid. The rigid buildings don't survive earthquakes.
Actually, it is, when you realize that the whole point of state's deciding the Presidency over the people is resoundingly claimed as the intent.
That's not the intent. The intent is that it's up to the state legislature how exactly they want to do it. It's quite simple. If they want to do it over the people, that's up to them. If they want to do it based on referendum (which is how it currently works in all 50 states) that is up to them.
Sadly, there's a lot of intransigence to that, because people are so defensive about the Constitution
That's actually the way the constitution was designed: Simple, deliberately vague in some cases to allow wiggle room, and difficult to change. And as it turns out, the US constitution is the oldest written constitution still in use today. And there's a reason for that: Things that don't bend break. In other words: In a large population, you're invariably going to get people who think and behave differently from one another as co-cultures form, and over time people's attitudes change. Our current system is highly flexible to that end due to its simplicity, and if you make it overly complex and/or inflexible, then it will break, which is also why it is resistant to change by design.
But I'm only being jocular, at the tendency of people to use that word as a verb, as if it were the default.
Or you could just do what I do and simply say "go look it up". Alas, your life is defined by Microsoft, so you're a walking talking Microsoft ad, and likewise I doubt you understand much outside of anything Microsoft tells you, including the legislative history of the US.
The part [gpo.gov] where it's not in Amendments 2-10.
Which is fine, except for the part that individual states had their own rules contrary to the bill of rights up until they were incorporated. And in fact, they still do for the ones that haven't been fully incorporated. If you don't believe me, look up McDonald v. City of Chicago.
As for the rest of your post, I'm somewhat done with this topic as it has gone stale, so idc anymore.
That's right, there are people so pissed at the Electoral College nonsense, that they'll use its own weakness against it.
No, they're not. That is not a "weakness", nor are they using anything against it. They're still participating in it EXACTLY as intended. You're kind of dumb and probably won't understand what I'm about to explain (because you've already demonstrated a rather profound ignorance of the whole thing) but I'll explain anyways:
In the original days of the constitution, several states (such as New York for example) had no general election for POTUS. That is, individual citizens did not and were not allowed to vote for the president. Instead, the state government decided through its own processes how it would send electors. Typically the way it worked is the citizens would vote for their state government, and either their state senators or the governor would decide on its own who it would send to vote for the president. Those were, and still are, the only votes that actually count for anything at all.
Now, if a state government decides that it wants to totally disregard what its own population does and instead cast its electoral votes based on what the national polls show, that is fully within the purview of the constitution as it is written, and thus perfectly legal. There is nothing "weak" about this, nor is it in any way working against itself.
People don't like its bullshit. Except when they get elected, of course.
If this was truly the case, then it would have gone away a long time ago through a constitutional amendment.
Yep, and what part of "Congress shall make no law" did you miss? Even the bill of rights itself has clear hints that it wasn't intended for use at the state level, and in fact all thirteen of the original states had state sanctioned, official religions for periods long after the constitution was ratified:
And why on earth would the fourteenth amendment need a due process clause if the fifth already had identical one, according to you? In fact, the fourteenth amendment alone is the basis of the incorporation doctrine.
After the election in 2016, and the following riots from anyone who disagreed with the election in 2016, do YOU want the average tax payer to be in charge of what top-tier researchers are actually researching?
That's actually a really solid point. I felt a little embarrassed for the example our country set when electing Trump, but I felt even more embarrassed at the example our country set when masses of people...well...let's just put it like it is: protested democracy.
You have just described why Americans spend so much on healthcare and get so little compared to countries with "socialized" medical systems. The process applies to more than just drugs for comparatively rare diseases.
As of recently, yes, though I suspect they'll get hit sooner or later. My guess is that the legal process has already started, but these things do take time.
"Conspiracy theorist" is a bit dated, but that was the line pushed from the 60s or so.
Current conspiracy theories include things like "jet contrails are actually mind control chemtrails", with proof of this often being i.e. pictures of barrels inside of passenger jets, and some contrails being colored in appearance. Of course, if you look deeper you'll find that these have nothing to do with mind control or any other secretive plot, but they use the fact that water barels used to simulate rapid passenger movement on a jumbo jet actually exist, and the fact that contrails can and do appear different colors (surprise, just like regular clouds, owing to the same effect that makes rainbows a thing) somehow means it's actually true that the secret plot really exists.
My favorite ongoing conspiracy theory (because it happens to be about the field I work in) is that IPv6 is a plot by Cisco and the NWO to take over the world. Yes, I'm serious, this is what conspiracy theory people actually think:
As I said in an earlier post, I like how hardcore and bold the NWO is. A teeny fraction of the world's internet users use IPv6, and Cisco and the other globalist cyber false-flagger corporations believe all of the world's sheeple will just ease into the new global cattle pen with no resistance.
You're just plain delusional about this (and that's putting it nicely.)
She did; he didn't. She won the vote. Handily.
No, she didn't. The Constitution is very specific that the only vote that matters for POTUS is that of the electoral college. Trump won, handily, by the rules of the constitution. Whether or not you agree with the constitution is your own opinion that you are welcome to, but Trump did play by the rules, and under said rules, he won by a landslide.
Furthermore, Trump only achieved the presidency on a technical basis which was created by a bunch of red-state electors acting well outside their intended charter
First of all, you're deciding whether they were red or blue based entirely on the popular vote in their particular state on that particular day. In fact, if you look at the map on a per-county basis, most of the states look quite purple to me, including the ones you'd plainly label as blue:
Second of all, the electors did exactly what they were "chartered" (as you put it) to do, with only four exceptions, and three of those were lawfully intended to vote for Hillary but instead voted for Colin Powell.
If it makes you happy to pretend that Trump "won" in any sense that is meaningful
Are you dumb or something? He won in the one and ONLY sense that is meaningful by law.
Honestly with as delusional as you are being about this, I wouldn't be surprised if you're the kind of jackoff who blocked public streets and wanted to raise hell simply because the election, which went exactly as legally prescribed, didn't go your way. And by the way, this country was built from the ground up as a republic, not a democracy. This means that by design, a popular vote typically doesn't necessarily overrule checks and balances, and we have various provisions (such as inalienable rights) that a simple majority vote cannot take away. And in my opinion, direct democracy would in fact be a mistake. If you disagree, then go watch C-SPAN for at least 8 hours a day, for every day of your life, because that's the equivalent of what you'd be asking every person in this country to do.
Not that I wanted Trump to win mind you, but this nonsense about Hillary being the real winner is exactly that.
He's spot on as well. The liberal media will decide on what's fact and what's not. Remember how Hitlery had the election in the bag! Trump had no way of winning. That was fun to watch though. Crying libtards at hitlery's convention. Classic stuff!
The problem with that was the statisticians made some big errors (essentially, putting too much emphasis on the popular vote) and the democrats really took it for granted, and then cried foul when they didn't get the result that they just assumed was guaranteed.
While I'm not thrilled at a Trump victory, I do take a bit of solace in seeing Hillary lose.
In other words, 7 correct facts with one subtle error that looks correct at first glance (in this case, step 5) but it really isn't, and it causes your answer to be completely false.
While that may be your impression it doesn't fit the data we have here in the real world. Windows have always supported installation of programs from several sources and the addition of the application store didn't change that.
And how do you reconcile this statement (in your absolute terms) with Windows RT, Windows 8 app framework, Xbox (which Microsoft claims is a Windows 10 device in its propagandized statistical reports,) Windows Phone/Mobile, and the upcoming Windows 10 Cloud only permitting Windows Store applications? Every single one of these examples is real world, and it deeply contrasts with your statement.
I think banning outside applications is the overall plan, (note how they refer to non store applications as legacy) just they need a critical mass of applications and adoption before they can pull it off.
They only allowed sideloading after a failed windows 8 and a few windows 10 builds couldn't muster any interest, with several developers being outspoken about Microsoft's tight control of the overall platform.
For further evidence of what I'm saying, see Windows RT and the upcoming Windows 10 Cloud.
Except on WinRT style devices, which I think is what GP is referring to, including the upcoming sequel that is trying to be a ChromeOS clone. (I believe the code name is Windows 10 Cloud, which is just windows 10 except you can only install stuff from the store.)
Slashdot Mirror
For those of us not as interested in illegality, there is also Netflix, YouTube Red (for normal YT content without ads plus some unique programming), Hulu Plus (a few things will have a very short, single ad at the beginning and end), and purchasing tv seasons and movies a la carte via any number of services (Amazon, Google, etc).
That's fine until you want to watch something that's not available on those services, in which case, ads it is. I personally have a subscription to both Netflix and HBO.
Honestly, this ad skip blocking is fully consistent with what I've seen among other cable providers. CenturyLink Prism seemed to do exactly this before I ditched it last month.
If you want a truly ad free experience, (and who doesn't?) I'd suggest piracy.
You should probably pay attention to Microsoft's latest privacy disclosure. Edge and IE BOTH very much do spy on you. Microsoft records every URL you visit and every search term you type, including in competing search engines. So if you thought you had privacy when searching in duck duck go when used with edge/ie, you are wrong, as Microsoft does and will log it, and presumably even associate it with your name if you use a Microsoft account.
This is actually the whole point of Microsoft pushing edge/IE so hard: They KNOW Bing ultimately can't compete with Google in its current state, and thus neither can Cortana. The only way they can make it compete is if they can start recording what websites end users ultimately view after searching, thus knowing what content is actually relevant to given search terms.
If nobody uses edge/IE, then doing this is much more difficult, but Microsoft does try other approaches too. I know for example that Microsoft is now pushing some Bing extensions for third party browsers, and is even known to show a taskbar pop-up above the browser icon asking you to install it in some cases if you run windows 10.
I actually just reformatted my daily driver desktop PC, installing the creator's update, and the new marketing pressure is real.
The first boot after install loads a cortana screen that doesn't go away until you click the mic mute button, with not one but three prompts to use a Microsoft account.
When you finally get to the desktop and use edge for the one and only purpose that most people use it for, it doesn't stop there. You type "Firefox download" in the search bar, and the first thing you get is a prompt to stick with edge. After you install Firefox and click to set it as default, the windows 10 default settings applet loads a blank screen (this repeated after multiple attempts.) So to change the default browser, you have to open that settings applet manually. Once you try to select Firefox as your default browser, you get another prompt telling you to try edge first, which you then have to dismiss to finally change the default.
really REALLY bad comparison, at last count Hotmail/outlook accounts still outnumbered gmail accounts, and that is with gmail being forced on many android users.
Whatever figures you're using probably are based on either throwaway accounts or contact information that just hasn't been updated in 20 years. Likewise, the loss of geocities must have been a huge setback for Microsoft.
I'm not sure about this. You seem to be suggesting that he should have yielded to authoritarianism without being able to state his case.
This isn't authoritarianism any more than having a post deleted on a web forum by a moderator is authoritarianism. Aircraft owned by airlines are in fact private property.
Are United assholes for doing this? Yep, but don't try to confuse the issue.
A more appropriate analogy would be Hotmail vs Gmail. And yes, Microsoft didn't go down without a fight, but their fight just wasn't anywhere near being good enough.
Or maybe the whole project was born from mplayer and a pirated Xbox SDK. Oh, and they justified not releasing the GPLed source code since they only released it through piracy sites.
Now, tell me what its original purpose was again?
Nope, sorry, but the lack of specification in terms of elector selection IS a weakness
It seems pretty clear to me:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
In other words, how the electors are sent is entirely up to the state legislature.
If the state legislator wants to send electors that it chooses arbitrarily, it may do so.
If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote within its jurisdiction, it may do so.
If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote of the entire nation, it may do so.
It's flexible, which is quite a strength. Otherwise, you may as well argue that skyscrapers in Japan are weak because they bend and flex instead of being rigid. The rigid buildings don't survive earthquakes.
Actually, it is, when you realize that the whole point of state's deciding the Presidency over the people is resoundingly claimed as the intent.
That's not the intent. The intent is that it's up to the state legislature how exactly they want to do it. It's quite simple. If they want to do it over the people, that's up to them. If they want to do it based on referendum (which is how it currently works in all 50 states) that is up to them.
Sadly, there's a lot of intransigence to that, because people are so defensive about the Constitution
That's actually the way the constitution was designed: Simple, deliberately vague in some cases to allow wiggle room, and difficult to change. And as it turns out, the US constitution is the oldest written constitution still in use today. And there's a reason for that: Things that don't bend break. In other words: In a large population, you're invariably going to get people who think and behave differently from one another as co-cultures form, and over time people's attitudes change. Our current system is highly flexible to that end due to its simplicity, and if you make it overly complex and/or inflexible, then it will break, which is also why it is resistant to change by design.
But I'm only being jocular, at the tendency of people to use that word as a verb, as if it were the default.
Or you could just do what I do and simply say "go look it up". Alas, your life is defined by Microsoft, so you're a walking talking Microsoft ad, and likewise I doubt you understand much outside of anything Microsoft tells you, including the legislative history of the US.
The part [gpo.gov] where it's not in Amendments 2-10.
Which is fine, except for the part that individual states had their own rules contrary to the bill of rights up until they were incorporated. And in fact, they still do for the ones that haven't been fully incorporated. If you don't believe me, look up McDonald v. City of Chicago.
As for the rest of your post, I'm somewhat done with this topic as it has gone stale, so idc anymore.
That's right, there are people so pissed at the Electoral College nonsense, that they'll use its own weakness against it.
No, they're not. That is not a "weakness", nor are they using anything against it. They're still participating in it EXACTLY as intended. You're kind of dumb and probably won't understand what I'm about to explain (because you've already demonstrated a rather profound ignorance of the whole thing) but I'll explain anyways:
In the original days of the constitution, several states (such as New York for example) had no general election for POTUS. That is, individual citizens did not and were not allowed to vote for the president. Instead, the state government decided through its own processes how it would send electors. Typically the way it worked is the citizens would vote for their state government, and either their state senators or the governor would decide on its own who it would send to vote for the president. Those were, and still are, the only votes that actually count for anything at all.
Now, if a state government decides that it wants to totally disregard what its own population does and instead cast its electoral votes based on what the national polls show, that is fully within the purview of the constitution as it is written, and thus perfectly legal. There is nothing "weak" about this, nor is it in any way working against itself.
People don't like its bullshit. Except when they get elected, of course.
If this was truly the case, then it would have gone away a long time ago through a constitutional amendment.
Get back to me after you figure out what the preview button does.
You should Bing
Well there's your problem, and no thanks.
the literal text of the Constitution.
Yep, and what part of "Congress shall make no law" did you miss? Even the bill of rights itself has clear hints that it wasn't intended for use at the state level, and in fact all thirteen of the original states had state sanctioned, official religions for periods long after the constitution was ratified:
http://undergod.procon.org/vie...
And why on earth would the fourteenth amendment need a due process clause if the fifth already had identical one, according to you? In fact, the fourteenth amendment alone is the basis of the incorporation doctrine.
Or when your ideology is that everything public sector is good.
After the election in 2016, and the following riots from anyone who disagreed with the election in 2016, do YOU want the average tax payer to be in charge of what top-tier researchers are actually researching?
That's actually a really solid point. I felt a little embarrassed for the example our country set when electing Trump, but I felt even more embarrassed at the example our country set when masses of people...well...let's just put it like it is: protested democracy.
You have just described why Americans spend so much on healthcare and get so little compared to countries with "socialized" medical systems. The process applies to more than just drugs for comparatively rare diseases.
Likely, yes.
As of recently, yes, though I suspect they'll get hit sooner or later. My guess is that the legal process has already started, but these things do take time.
"Conspiracy theorist" is a bit dated, but that was the line pushed from the 60s or so.
Current conspiracy theories include things like "jet contrails are actually mind control chemtrails", with proof of this often being i.e. pictures of barrels inside of passenger jets, and some contrails being colored in appearance. Of course, if you look deeper you'll find that these have nothing to do with mind control or any other secretive plot, but they use the fact that water barels used to simulate rapid passenger movement on a jumbo jet actually exist, and the fact that contrails can and do appear different colors (surprise, just like regular clouds, owing to the same effect that makes rainbows a thing) somehow means it's actually true that the secret plot really exists.
My favorite ongoing conspiracy theory (because it happens to be about the field I work in) is that IPv6 is a plot by Cisco and the NWO to take over the world. Yes, I'm serious, this is what conspiracy theory people actually think:
As I said in an earlier post, I like how hardcore and bold the NWO is. A teeny fraction of the world's internet users use IPv6, and Cisco and the other globalist cyber false-flagger corporations believe all of the world's sheeple will just ease into the new global cattle pen with no resistance.
IPv6 must be resisted.
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/...
So yeah, the term conspiracy theory is still quite valid.
You're just plain delusional about this (and that's putting it nicely.)
She did; he didn't. She won the vote. Handily.
No, she didn't. The Constitution is very specific that the only vote that matters for POTUS is that of the electoral college. Trump won, handily, by the rules of the constitution. Whether or not you agree with the constitution is your own opinion that you are welcome to, but Trump did play by the rules, and under said rules, he won by a landslide.
Furthermore, Trump only achieved the presidency on a technical basis which was created by a bunch of red-state electors acting well outside their intended charter
First of all, you're deciding whether they were red or blue based entirely on the popular vote in their particular state on that particular day. In fact, if you look at the map on a per-county basis, most of the states look quite purple to me, including the ones you'd plainly label as blue:
http://www.awildpoliticalnerd....
Second of all, the electors did exactly what they were "chartered" (as you put it) to do, with only four exceptions, and three of those were lawfully intended to vote for Hillary but instead voted for Colin Powell.
If it makes you happy to pretend that Trump "won" in any sense that is meaningful
Are you dumb or something? He won in the one and ONLY sense that is meaningful by law.
Honestly with as delusional as you are being about this, I wouldn't be surprised if you're the kind of jackoff who blocked public streets and wanted to raise hell simply because the election, which went exactly as legally prescribed, didn't go your way. And by the way, this country was built from the ground up as a republic, not a democracy. This means that by design, a popular vote typically doesn't necessarily overrule checks and balances, and we have various provisions (such as inalienable rights) that a simple majority vote cannot take away. And in my opinion, direct democracy would in fact be a mistake. If you disagree, then go watch C-SPAN for at least 8 hours a day, for every day of your life, because that's the equivalent of what you'd be asking every person in this country to do.
Not that I wanted Trump to win mind you, but this nonsense about Hillary being the real winner is exactly that.
He's spot on as well. The liberal media will decide on what's fact and what's not. Remember how Hitlery had the election in the bag! Trump had no way of winning. That was fun to watch though. Crying libtards at hitlery's convention. Classic stuff!
The problem with that was the statisticians made some big errors (essentially, putting too much emphasis on the popular vote) and the democrats really took it for granted, and then cried foul when they didn't get the result that they just assumed was guaranteed.
While I'm not thrilled at a Trump victory, I do take a bit of solace in seeing Hillary lose.
In math terms, I think it would be akin to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In other words, 7 correct facts with one subtle error that looks correct at first glance (in this case, step 5) but it really isn't, and it causes your answer to be completely false.
Windows RT is depreciated, as are the tablets.
Microsoft still has a hard-on for the concept though, and it seems that they are wanting to bring it back from the dead:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/m...
While that may be your impression it doesn't fit the data we have here in the real world. Windows have always supported installation of programs from several sources and the addition of the application store didn't change that.
And how do you reconcile this statement (in your absolute terms) with Windows RT, Windows 8 app framework, Xbox (which Microsoft claims is a Windows 10 device in its propagandized statistical reports,) Windows Phone/Mobile, and the upcoming Windows 10 Cloud only permitting Windows Store applications? Every single one of these examples is real world, and it deeply contrasts with your statement.
I think banning outside applications is the overall plan, (note how they refer to non store applications as legacy) just they need a critical mass of applications and adoption before they can pull it off.
They only allowed sideloading after a failed windows 8 and a few windows 10 builds couldn't muster any interest, with several developers being outspoken about Microsoft's tight control of the overall platform.
For further evidence of what I'm saying, see Windows RT and the upcoming Windows 10 Cloud.
Except on WinRT style devices, which I think is what GP is referring to, including the upcoming sequel that is trying to be a ChromeOS clone. (I believe the code name is Windows 10 Cloud, which is just windows 10 except you can only install stuff from the store.)