You don't have to be a prequel fan to appreciate that Milennium Falcon shot. That maneuver is beautiful aerial acrobatics, and to anybody familiar with even the most rudimentary concepts of flight, it marks the Falcon as an incredible piece of machinery worthy of its legend. Not to mention, if Han Solo is at the helm then it turns out he actually does know a few maneuvers. We've been waiting since the 1970's for him to make good on that bragging.
That ball droid could conceivably be built, and would be an awesome toy. Imagine: segway-like computer driven gyroscopes, wifi remote control with smartphone app controller, and mobility with an operating principle similar to a ball mouse in reverse. Instead of a ball turning wheels on perpendicular axes to sense motion, wheels on perpendicular axes turn a ball to affect motion.
The droid toy could be placed atop any ball of the right size, and it would be balanced and mobile. Add a HD digital camera, and you actually have something pretty useful for amateur film making too. Stabilizer for the camera? Now it's a cheaper replacement for cameras on sleds and rails.
So, this toy has the potential to be a tool. And it wouldn't look very different from the cute little droid in the film either. I already want one!
Actually, anonymity is very easy. Have you ever identified the author of a bathroom stall poem using only their writing? It's useful anonymity that's hard. In the case of transactions, total anonymity is impossible.
This is actually very simple. So simple, in fact, that I'm surprised everybody doesn't already understand it. Electronic anonymity is entirely dependent upon electronic security, and electronic security is inversely proportional to usefulness. Your computer is most secure disassembled in boxes before you use it the first time. And you can't even guarantee malware isn't already present on an embedded chip, while back doors are almost certainly built into some of the hardware.
Electronic anonymity is not a term that should be used to mean, "Nobody at all can tell who I am." It's only useful and not misleading when it's used to mean, "Random people who have no reason to care who I am don't know who I am."
There is no perfect system, but using one that makes it possible to electronically alter results is a bonehead move. Windows still gets regular security updates after all the time it has been around and despite all the resources under Microsoft's command. We're not likely to see secure voting machines any time soon, and we don't see potential cases of hacking investigated like breaches of banks or businesses would be.
So, we put less resources into securing electronic voting than we put into gadgets and toys, we don't investigate or punish breaches, and discussions about how to improve anything usually get met by people claiming "conspiracy theory" or otherwise derailing conversation. Seriously though, we identify and counter security threats in USB gadgets more effectively. How can we possibly be this stupid?
Data about catastrophic threats must be retained. Minor threats are quite likely either inconsequential or already squashed. Don't computer scientists sometimes hack each other or target each other with malware (with consent) as a kind of contest to sharpen their security skills? If Einstein works in the best possible way, even little blips like that are recorded, and if they're significant then surely the scientists are either publishing papers or implementing solutions already. I'd expect the remainder of non-catastrophic events to be covered by security software like antivirus or to be so deprecated or ineffective that there's no reason to care.
Since the catastrophic event data must be retained indefinitely, I think they're doing exactly the right thing. Of course user data will get caught in the crossfire! And if the government published that data on some public website, privacy advocates would rightfully howl. Since they seem to be doing things the right way here, the article just tells me that some people have angst seeking an issue. That, or they're paranoid.
Wow, thanks for the link! I shouldn't be surprised that consumer products already exist, but I am.
As for what I'd use it for, probably Star Citizen right off the bat. That's especially true if they later allow FOV adjustment so I can convert a large flat display into a large wrap around display.
For work purposes, I wouldn't stretch a display across tiled monitors. It's more useful to have separate desktops to keep multiple references and tools available at all times.
These would be great for multi-monitor displays of enormous size. You can start with 4x3 and eventually upgrade to 16x9. Well, assuming you can manage to connect that many and setup output properly.
What follows assumes that none of the climate change deniers here are shills.
That's not entirely why these people do this. Craziness, I mean. Religion isn't really it either, so much as something usually involved with it. There are three things about human beings that lead to climate change deniers, to include the anthropogenic deniers who don't deny the change itself.
The first influence is that people will usually believe anything repeated to them often enough. Certain pundits have been drilling climate change denial into the heads of viewers for more than a decade.
The second is that people will believe anything tied to their identity. That's why I brought up church. It's not the spiritual beliefs that give rise to this though. It happens that the social groups in churches tend to be deniers, people conform to the ideas of their social groups, and that conformity becomes a part of their identity. It is very difficult for people to accept that any idea supporting their identity is false, no matter how much proof they're shown.
The third is that when the potential solutions to a problem are politically inconvenient, people tend to pretend that there is no problem in the first place. It has only recently been shown that a change to clean energy isn't feasible on the scales necessary to address climate change, and it has been known for years now that the carbon balance approach is too easily rendered ineffectual through politics. Many people still think that recognizing the truth will mean admitting to solutions they consider inconvenient, even though those approaches would not work. So, they push climate change denial.
I bet that the third group finances those who influence the second, and by the time people are part of the first group, they will never, ever be swayed. They'll continue thinking as they do until the day their hearts stop beating, no matter what happens, what evidence they're shown to the contrary, or who shows it to them. But since most of these people have zero impact on policy and big business, that's not what bothers me.
What bothers me is that the more of those three groups somebody fits into, the more they're likely to be hostile to those who disagree with them. They'll call you a troll for daring to suggest that they don't know everything. Off the Internet, I've seen people fly into rages over this kind of thing. I've seen it take people to the brink of trading blows. Once an idea is that deeply rooted, you can't even have a conversation about reality because these people will come around and stink up the place.
You use the word "facts". Let's talk about facts. Suppose I tried to debate this nutjob.
First of all, this person already decided what they "believe," and everything they read will be twisted into evidence supporting their predetermined conclusion. Therefore, right off the bat, actual debate is impossible. They've already decided what they think is true.
So, we'd go back and forth. They would post evidence supporting their perspective, and off to Google I'd go to dig up rebuttals from actual climatologists. That will take time because the climate change denial groups are always generating new bunk data, new misinterpretations of published papers, and new misrepresentations of past quotes. One can't just keep a database of counterevidence because they've always got new bullshit.
After however much time I'd spend researching rebuttals, that person would just keep replying with more bullshit. They either wouldn't read the counterpoints or wouldn't understand them. Then they'd pull out the ever-present Final Tactic by telling me that they know what they're talking about because they're a pilot, physics student, congressional aide, or whatever. They'll try to follow up bunk "science" with anecdote.
By the time the whole thing concluded, I will have failed to convince them because it was never a possibility to begin with. They will have failed to convince me because I actually look at the science and don't delude myself. Then, out there somewhere at their keyboard will sit some layperson who just wants to get along with their church group, some paid anti-climate change shill, or just an everyday idiot repeating what they've been told.
So.
1. They won't convince anybody.
2. Nobody can convince them.
Therefore, their bringing the subject up to start with is masturbatory and annoying. It accomplishes nothing that walking into a movie theater and announcing over a megaphone that the world is flat wouldn't accomplish.
The most constructive response is thus, "God damnit, can you just stop this already?" Optionally, this may be peppered with, "Please just go away."
Your first sentence ignores the problem itself. When telecoms are split up, the wide region once covered by one is cut up into areas still each serviced by one company. It's the monopolies that make problems, and nothing has happened to change that.
First things first, assets purchased with tax dollars should belong to the citizens. Municipal governments should manage access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure, and it's a little late to worry about socialism because the fiber sitting unused was bought and paid for by the people as it is. Municipal governments must then have strict rules to ensure that access to the fiber fosters competition and eschews favoritism. Neither business size nor the amount of money the business has or spends on anything should be factors; only whether the business has equipment that can use the infrastructure and the ability to reach consumers.
Why are we focusing on coax? See, that's just a symptom of the real problem with all this recent lobbyist activity: cable television is dying, so the cable companies want to commandeer the Internet and make it work the way cable did. The problem is that what makes the Internet so useful is that it *doesn't* work like cable. I can study a new programming language at the same time as I play the ABC Song for my child, and I don't have to pay somebody not responsible for that content in order to access it.
It's not all about coax. That's only one piece of the overall situation, and we should begin by treating public property as public anyway. Telecoms should never have been given both tax dollars to build infrastructure and ownership of that infrastructure. That's worse than socialism; it's a national socialism/communism hybrid. Let's call it national communism. We don't need it. Not one American who wasn't in the legislature or White House agreed to give those crooks a free gift. Why the hell should we gift companies who only take from us and never give back?
We've been calling this comet "Rosetta" thanks to the media, but it's actual name is 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta is the name of a probe that photographed it. But it does have a certain ring to it that may better stick in the minds of your average news reader.
The comet has a rotation period of about twelve and a half hours. Its orbit lasts 2,398 days. We may be calling that a "Rosetta year" soon. To actually calculate whether the comet's orientation will allow sunlight to strike the main panels for longer stretches, we'd need to know more about the cliff it's under. The ESA is no doubt crunching those numbers now, but it's possible that if this situation will resolve itself then it will take years.
A smaller panel got sunlight when the drill was used to rotate the probe. So, if it is powered down and we wait, it should eventually charge back up. Each time that happens, the ESA can work at getting it into a better position, little by little.
It's not dead; it's just napping. It will eventually be back online. The big question is, when? If the ESA knew for sure, they'd probable tell us. So, we wait.
It's a misconception reinforced by law enforcement. Hollywood just helps out because it works as a plot device. The subject asks if the detective is a cop, the detective says no, and the subject proceeds to self-incriminate.
Polygraph tests generally can't be used as evidence in court, so they're nothing more than very weak probable cause tools. Meanwhile, probable cause is so cheap and easy to come by in front of today's judges that polygraph is a relic that isn't even needed anymore. It's science fiction.
The whole idea behind polygraph is that when you lie, your heart rate changes and you sweat more, so the conductivity of your skin changes. But this is false in both directions. Heart rate and skin conductivity can change due to other stimuli, such as (perhaps) sitting in a chair being subjected to a deeply flawed test that will help to determine whether you to prison despite innocence. In the other direction, some people can lie without exhibiting any kind of physiological "tell".
The polygraph test is and always has been a bogus fortune-teller's tool. They might as well indict somebody for explaining why astrology doesn't work.
Here we are on a site where strangers can rate what we say, potentially burying it where others won't get the chance to read it, and we're complaining that governments are vaguely coming around to the same idea? Aww, come on now, haven't we gotten this pattern yet? Legislators are always going to be years behind everybody else in leveraging tech, and will always try to apply it on a broader scale. Do I need to start listing all the sites that have user moderation, post or content scoring, or "report" buttons?
Obviously, because there are so many websites that make it work, there are ways to make it work. Whether it will be abused by consumers (including trolls, shills, marketers, etc etc) to the point of uselessness depends entirely upon the implementation. Whether it will be abused by politicians to control the ideas we're exposed to ultimately depends upon the same thing it always has: whether we keep talking to each other.
The concept we have all gotten used to by now is that we have the right to speak, but not a right to be heard. Again, the fact that you're here means that you've already accepted that. People just don't trust governments to do the same, and site owners may not want the government doing it for them. Obviously there are other options, so it's just a matter of making the right tools.
Have you ever used a "webrep" browser plugin? Personally, I think it would be refreshing and useful to have one that works.
Time is a factor. If you're running late, and the choice is thirty bucks for a cab, five bucks for Uber or Lyft, or two bucks and an hour wait, you're going to call Uber or Lyft. Only the largest cities have half-decent public transportation. In the area where I life, more than half the city has no service from public transportation because the upper middle class and wealthy politicians are afraid it would bring undesirables to their neighborhoods.
But this just shows that comparing these services the way that the article has is an ill-formed inquiry. Asking the question around leads to so many other factors to consider that we can only answer, "It depends."
None of the circumstances where the new services are preferable are enough to kill public transportation.
It's dumb and obvious to anybody who knows anything about tech. That is, nobody in politics. That is, nobody responsible for deciding whether to use these machines. When policy is drafted by people who just say whatever the highest bidder pays them to say, it helps to point out the obvious.
We pay for infrastructure expansion with our taxes, and ATT is legally obligated to spend that money as mandated. Considering that they are blatantly telling us that they refuse to do that, I think an audit is long overdue.
A NASA airfield is not a consumer product or service. Google's leasing it has no immediate impact upon anything related to consumers directly. A "consumer watchdog" chiming in on this is like Gordon Ramsey engaging Stephen Hawking in a debate about black holes.
The Internet is now composed of companies that together, large and small, form a far greater economic power than the ancient and dying cable companies pushing this. Consequently, if the rules passed are harmful then the vote will be followed by a torrent of lawsuits. Cable shills in government think that because online companies don't capture regulation at an equal rate, that they're weak. But those companies will not go quietly into that good night either, so I think that ancient, dying industry may be in for a very rude awakening.
I sincerely hope it involves an audit of tax dollars that have been legally obligated expenditures on infrastructure expansion and service improvement. I hope so because if it does, then it will also involve hard time for the people behind this. They've expanded infrastructure, but probably not at the scale provided for by the tax. On top of that, a lot of the expansion has amounted to cables that aren't used. 2015 and 2016 are shaping up to be very, very bad years for the cable industry.
I hope that SAG actors start transitioning back to the big screen in a hurry, or Hollywood will be caught in the fallout.
Sure, but I'm just taking the opportunity to point out that there's a solution that won't defeat the purpose of having the cameras in place to begin with. The cameras protect both officers and civilians, but it is inevitable that police will want to lock down footage so that it can be used to assist prosecution but not to hold officers accountable for misconduct. Dash cams already get that treatment in many places by getting "lost".
Privacy is a hot button issue right now, so it is great rhetoric to try and sway people to oppose these cams. That would not be in our best interest. So, it's well-timed to show before the conversation reaches maturity that there's a solution that doesn't render the cameras useless for protecting civilians as well as cops.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to be a prequel fan to appreciate that Milennium Falcon shot. That maneuver is beautiful aerial acrobatics, and to anybody familiar with even the most rudimentary concepts of flight, it marks the Falcon as an incredible piece of machinery worthy of its legend. Not to mention, if Han Solo is at the helm then it turns out he actually does know a few maneuvers. We've been waiting since the 1970's for him to make good on that bragging.
That ball droid could conceivably be built, and would be an awesome toy. Imagine: segway-like computer driven gyroscopes, wifi remote control with smartphone app controller, and mobility with an operating principle similar to a ball mouse in reverse. Instead of a ball turning wheels on perpendicular axes to sense motion, wheels on perpendicular axes turn a ball to affect motion.
The droid toy could be placed atop any ball of the right size, and it would be balanced and mobile. Add a HD digital camera, and you actually have something pretty useful for amateur film making too. Stabilizer for the camera? Now it's a cheaper replacement for cameras on sleds and rails.
So, this toy has the potential to be a tool. And it wouldn't look very different from the cute little droid in the film either. I already want one!
Actually, anonymity is very easy. Have you ever identified the author of a bathroom stall poem using only their writing? It's useful anonymity that's hard. In the case of transactions, total anonymity is impossible.
This is actually very simple. So simple, in fact, that I'm surprised everybody doesn't already understand it. Electronic anonymity is entirely dependent upon electronic security, and electronic security is inversely proportional to usefulness. Your computer is most secure disassembled in boxes before you use it the first time. And you can't even guarantee malware isn't already present on an embedded chip, while back doors are almost certainly built into some of the hardware.
Electronic anonymity is not a term that should be used to mean, "Nobody at all can tell who I am." It's only useful and not misleading when it's used to mean, "Random people who have no reason to care who I am don't know who I am."
There is no perfect system, but using one that makes it possible to electronically alter results is a bonehead move. Windows still gets regular security updates after all the time it has been around and despite all the resources under Microsoft's command. We're not likely to see secure voting machines any time soon, and we don't see potential cases of hacking investigated like breaches of banks or businesses would be.
So, we put less resources into securing electronic voting than we put into gadgets and toys, we don't investigate or punish breaches, and discussions about how to improve anything usually get met by people claiming "conspiracy theory" or otherwise derailing conversation. Seriously though, we identify and counter security threats in USB gadgets more effectively. How can we possibly be this stupid?
Data about catastrophic threats must be retained. Minor threats are quite likely either inconsequential or already squashed. Don't computer scientists sometimes hack each other or target each other with malware (with consent) as a kind of contest to sharpen their security skills? If Einstein works in the best possible way, even little blips like that are recorded, and if they're significant then surely the scientists are either publishing papers or implementing solutions already. I'd expect the remainder of non-catastrophic events to be covered by security software like antivirus or to be so deprecated or ineffective that there's no reason to care.
Since the catastrophic event data must be retained indefinitely, I think they're doing exactly the right thing. Of course user data will get caught in the crossfire! And if the government published that data on some public website, privacy advocates would rightfully howl. Since they seem to be doing things the right way here, the article just tells me that some people have angst seeking an issue. That, or they're paranoid.
Wow, thanks for the link! I shouldn't be surprised that consumer products already exist, but I am.
As for what I'd use it for, probably Star Citizen right off the bat. That's especially true if they later allow FOV adjustment so I can convert a large flat display into a large wrap around display.
For work purposes, I wouldn't stretch a display across tiled monitors. It's more useful to have separate desktops to keep multiple references and tools available at all times.
These would be great for multi-monitor displays of enormous size. You can start with 4x3 and eventually upgrade to 16x9. Well, assuming you can manage to connect that many and setup output properly.
What follows assumes that none of the climate change deniers here are shills.
That's not entirely why these people do this. Craziness, I mean. Religion isn't really it either, so much as something usually involved with it. There are three things about human beings that lead to climate change deniers, to include the anthropogenic deniers who don't deny the change itself.
The first influence is that people will usually believe anything repeated to them often enough. Certain pundits have been drilling climate change denial into the heads of viewers for more than a decade.
The second is that people will believe anything tied to their identity. That's why I brought up church. It's not the spiritual beliefs that give rise to this though. It happens that the social groups in churches tend to be deniers, people conform to the ideas of their social groups, and that conformity becomes a part of their identity. It is very difficult for people to accept that any idea supporting their identity is false, no matter how much proof they're shown.
The third is that when the potential solutions to a problem are politically inconvenient, people tend to pretend that there is no problem in the first place. It has only recently been shown that a change to clean energy isn't feasible on the scales necessary to address climate change, and it has been known for years now that the carbon balance approach is too easily rendered ineffectual through politics. Many people still think that recognizing the truth will mean admitting to solutions they consider inconvenient, even though those approaches would not work. So, they push climate change denial.
I bet that the third group finances those who influence the second, and by the time people are part of the first group, they will never, ever be swayed. They'll continue thinking as they do until the day their hearts stop beating, no matter what happens, what evidence they're shown to the contrary, or who shows it to them. But since most of these people have zero impact on policy and big business, that's not what bothers me.
What bothers me is that the more of those three groups somebody fits into, the more they're likely to be hostile to those who disagree with them. They'll call you a troll for daring to suggest that they don't know everything. Off the Internet, I've seen people fly into rages over this kind of thing. I've seen it take people to the brink of trading blows. Once an idea is that deeply rooted, you can't even have a conversation about reality because these people will come around and stink up the place.
I don't care for online climate change deniers.
You use the word "facts". Let's talk about facts. Suppose I tried to debate this nutjob.
First of all, this person already decided what they "believe," and everything they read will be twisted into evidence supporting their predetermined conclusion. Therefore, right off the bat, actual debate is impossible. They've already decided what they think is true.
So, we'd go back and forth. They would post evidence supporting their perspective, and off to Google I'd go to dig up rebuttals from actual climatologists. That will take time because the climate change denial groups are always generating new bunk data, new misinterpretations of published papers, and new misrepresentations of past quotes. One can't just keep a database of counterevidence because they've always got new bullshit.
After however much time I'd spend researching rebuttals, that person would just keep replying with more bullshit. They either wouldn't read the counterpoints or wouldn't understand them. Then they'd pull out the ever-present Final Tactic by telling me that they know what they're talking about because they're a pilot, physics student, congressional aide, or whatever. They'll try to follow up bunk "science" with anecdote.
By the time the whole thing concluded, I will have failed to convince them because it was never a possibility to begin with. They will have failed to convince me because I actually look at the science and don't delude myself. Then, out there somewhere at their keyboard will sit some layperson who just wants to get along with their church group, some paid anti-climate change shill, or just an everyday idiot repeating what they've been told.
So.
1. They won't convince anybody.
2. Nobody can convince them.
Therefore, their bringing the subject up to start with is masturbatory and annoying. It accomplishes nothing that walking into a movie theater and announcing over a megaphone that the world is flat wouldn't accomplish.
The most constructive response is thus, "God damnit, can you just stop this already?" Optionally, this may be peppered with, "Please just go away."
God damnit, can you just stop this already?
Now, robots have rights.
Unfortunately, another poster has pointed out that the battery is freezing. Seems the fjords have iced over.
The fact that it benefits them and that we don't like some things they've done do not together imply that this is automatically a bad thing.
This is simple. Tech firms benefit when people are more competent with tech.
Your first sentence ignores the problem itself. When telecoms are split up, the wide region once covered by one is cut up into areas still each serviced by one company. It's the monopolies that make problems, and nothing has happened to change that.
First things first, assets purchased with tax dollars should belong to the citizens. Municipal governments should manage access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure, and it's a little late to worry about socialism because the fiber sitting unused was bought and paid for by the people as it is. Municipal governments must then have strict rules to ensure that access to the fiber fosters competition and eschews favoritism. Neither business size nor the amount of money the business has or spends on anything should be factors; only whether the business has equipment that can use the infrastructure and the ability to reach consumers.
Why are we focusing on coax? See, that's just a symptom of the real problem with all this recent lobbyist activity: cable television is dying, so the cable companies want to commandeer the Internet and make it work the way cable did. The problem is that what makes the Internet so useful is that it *doesn't* work like cable. I can study a new programming language at the same time as I play the ABC Song for my child, and I don't have to pay somebody not responsible for that content in order to access it.
It's not all about coax. That's only one piece of the overall situation, and we should begin by treating public property as public anyway. Telecoms should never have been given both tax dollars to build infrastructure and ownership of that infrastructure. That's worse than socialism; it's a national socialism/communism hybrid. Let's call it national communism. We don't need it. Not one American who wasn't in the legislature or White House agreed to give those crooks a free gift. Why the hell should we gift companies who only take from us and never give back?
First things first.
We've been calling this comet "Rosetta" thanks to the media, but it's actual name is 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta is the name of a probe that photographed it. But it does have a certain ring to it that may better stick in the minds of your average news reader.
The comet has a rotation period of about twelve and a half hours. Its orbit lasts 2,398 days. We may be calling that a "Rosetta year" soon. To actually calculate whether the comet's orientation will allow sunlight to strike the main panels for longer stretches, we'd need to know more about the cliff it's under. The ESA is no doubt crunching those numbers now, but it's possible that if this situation will resolve itself then it will take years.
A smaller panel got sunlight when the drill was used to rotate the probe. So, if it is powered down and we wait, it should eventually charge back up. Each time that happens, the ESA can work at getting it into a better position, little by little.
It's not dead; it's just napping. It will eventually be back online. The big question is, when? If the ESA knew for sure, they'd probable tell us. So, we wait.
It's a misconception reinforced by law enforcement. Hollywood just helps out because it works as a plot device. The subject asks if the detective is a cop, the detective says no, and the subject proceeds to self-incriminate.
Polygraph tests generally can't be used as evidence in court, so they're nothing more than very weak probable cause tools. Meanwhile, probable cause is so cheap and easy to come by in front of today's judges that polygraph is a relic that isn't even needed anymore. It's science fiction.
The whole idea behind polygraph is that when you lie, your heart rate changes and you sweat more, so the conductivity of your skin changes. But this is false in both directions. Heart rate and skin conductivity can change due to other stimuli, such as (perhaps) sitting in a chair being subjected to a deeply flawed test that will help to determine whether you to prison despite innocence. In the other direction, some people can lie without exhibiting any kind of physiological "tell".
The polygraph test is and always has been a bogus fortune-teller's tool. They might as well indict somebody for explaining why astrology doesn't work.
Politics is about convincing people. What they're being convinced of is about money.
Here we are on a site where strangers can rate what we say, potentially burying it where others won't get the chance to read it, and we're complaining that governments are vaguely coming around to the same idea? Aww, come on now, haven't we gotten this pattern yet? Legislators are always going to be years behind everybody else in leveraging tech, and will always try to apply it on a broader scale. Do I need to start listing all the sites that have user moderation, post or content scoring, or "report" buttons?
Obviously, because there are so many websites that make it work, there are ways to make it work. Whether it will be abused by consumers (including trolls, shills, marketers, etc etc) to the point of uselessness depends entirely upon the implementation. Whether it will be abused by politicians to control the ideas we're exposed to ultimately depends upon the same thing it always has: whether we keep talking to each other.
The concept we have all gotten used to by now is that we have the right to speak, but not a right to be heard. Again, the fact that you're here means that you've already accepted that. People just don't trust governments to do the same, and site owners may not want the government doing it for them. Obviously there are other options, so it's just a matter of making the right tools.
Have you ever used a "webrep" browser plugin? Personally, I think it would be refreshing and useful to have one that works.
Time is a factor. If you're running late, and the choice is thirty bucks for a cab, five bucks for Uber or Lyft, or two bucks and an hour wait, you're going to call Uber or Lyft. Only the largest cities have half-decent public transportation. In the area where I life, more than half the city has no service from public transportation because the upper middle class and wealthy politicians are afraid it would bring undesirables to their neighborhoods.
But this just shows that comparing these services the way that the article has is an ill-formed inquiry. Asking the question around leads to so many other factors to consider that we can only answer, "It depends."
None of the circumstances where the new services are preferable are enough to kill public transportation.
It's dumb and obvious to anybody who knows anything about tech. That is, nobody in politics. That is, nobody responsible for deciding whether to use these machines. When policy is drafted by people who just say whatever the highest bidder pays them to say, it helps to point out the obvious.
We pay for infrastructure expansion with our taxes, and ATT is legally obligated to spend that money as mandated. Considering that they are blatantly telling us that they refuse to do that, I think an audit is long overdue.
A NASA airfield is not a consumer product or service. Google's leasing it has no immediate impact upon anything related to consumers directly. A "consumer watchdog" chiming in on this is like Gordon Ramsey engaging Stephen Hawking in a debate about black holes.
The Internet is now composed of companies that together, large and small, form a far greater economic power than the ancient and dying cable companies pushing this. Consequently, if the rules passed are harmful then the vote will be followed by a torrent of lawsuits. Cable shills in government think that because online companies don't capture regulation at an equal rate, that they're weak. But those companies will not go quietly into that good night either, so I think that ancient, dying industry may be in for a very rude awakening.
I sincerely hope it involves an audit of tax dollars that have been legally obligated expenditures on infrastructure expansion and service improvement. I hope so because if it does, then it will also involve hard time for the people behind this. They've expanded infrastructure, but probably not at the scale provided for by the tax. On top of that, a lot of the expansion has amounted to cables that aren't used. 2015 and 2016 are shaping up to be very, very bad years for the cable industry.
I hope that SAG actors start transitioning back to the big screen in a hurry, or Hollywood will be caught in the fallout.
Sure, but I'm just taking the opportunity to point out that there's a solution that won't defeat the purpose of having the cameras in place to begin with. The cameras protect both officers and civilians, but it is inevitable that police will want to lock down footage so that it can be used to assist prosecution but not to hold officers accountable for misconduct. Dash cams already get that treatment in many places by getting "lost". Privacy is a hot button issue right now, so it is great rhetoric to try and sway people to oppose these cams. That would not be in our best interest. So, it's well-timed to show before the conversation reaches maturity that there's a solution that doesn't render the cameras useless for protecting civilians as well as cops.