Nah, the Liberals are so used to it, they stopped complaining. The conservatives own the media (the traditional media at least) and complain endlessly about how they cover themselves.
Must be the same reason that vote fraud (especially when illegal immigrants vote) overwhelmingly favors Democrats.
Yet it's always the Democrats that are pushing for vote fraud reduction, and Republicans putting in Diebold and such, while claiming there's no voter fraud..
The last time I looked it was Republicans who were whipping up a panic over voter fraud and demanding photo IDs to combat this even though study after study had shown that voter fraud is not a huge issue in the US. Then a few Republican functionaries went on record and explained in interviews how several conservatives running for office had benefited from the photo ID requirement because people less likely to vote Republican had been required to jump through flaming hoops to get a photo ID. Now, what is the real problem? Voter fraud which is pretty much non existent? Or is it Republicans making sure that people likely to vote Democrat have a hard time getting their hands on a photo ID? Not that this is a debate I even understand (in the sense: why is this even an issue?). Where I come from your photo ID is something you need to have to make use of public services so people usually get one in their very early teens. Kids get a social security card which they use until they learn how to drive a scooter at 15 or a car at 17 and after that everybody uses their drivers license as voter ID except for the 3% of or so of the population that does not have a driver's license, usually for some medical reason. I can relate much more to the discussions in the US about gerrymandering by means of things like the creation of ridiculously shaped voting districts because that is one shenanigan that political parties in my country practice with the same amount of enthusiasm as their counterparts in the US.
I don't expect things to be perfect out of the box but if the US military occasionally has trouble how are we going to be protecting ourselves?
I used to prefer a Mossberg 535 because it's cheap, reliable and it can fire 3 1/2 in shells for extra range but receny I've grown partial to the method this guy used to solve his drone problem.
Wait, the BBC decided to continue Top Gear with new hosts? Why?!
Because Top Gear was their most successful program by a wide margin, even given the success of Downton Abbey. If they can recapture even a quarter of their original viewership, it will still be one of their most successful programs.
I think they completely failed at choosing their hosts, though. Like, across the board failed. They made zero good decisions.
I'd have to disagree with that. I kind of like Sabine Schmitz, her circuit of the Nuremberg ring in in that Fort Transit van was simply awesome. She didn't beat Clarkson's time in that van like she promised but she came close enough. She was 47 seconds faster in the Jag and only 9 seconds slower in the Transit which was enough to make Clarkson look like a third rate driver (him and a whole bunch of machos in sports cars who got overtaken along the way by a little German woman in a Transit van) and even Clarkson had to admit that.
Multi-terabyte hard drives are cheap. Fuck streaming. If I can't save it locally, I don't want it.
True... why would I let Wall Street investment banks and the undead corpses of the old record labels leech money out of my wallet with streaming services and on top of that pay for the bandwidth that eats up when I can flip them a bird by having local copies.
I sold my 400+ CD collection in ~2001 and haven't looked back.
I ripped my CD collection and stored it in the cellar. Eventually I'll probably throw it away since it's probably not worth enough money to pay for the gasoline I would burn driving to the nearest flea market and who wants CD's these day anyway. Show a CD to somebody under twenty and they look at you as if you just asked them to prepare their own food by skinning a deer with a flint hand axe and roasting the raw meat over a fire in the back yard instead of just eating the food that magically appears in the fridge every day. Having said that I wonder how long it will take before one has to pirate streaming services to get one's own no-strings-attached offline copies because all of the musicians are locked up in 'streaming only' contracts and are getting fucked over even worse by the streaming services than they were with the record labels? Hearing indie musicians talk their music seems to have become a promotional tool they use to sell vinyl records and T-shirts and tote bags and occasionally to generate a windfall of real money from live performances. Nobody except Wall Street banks and the old record labels who own the streaming services is making tons money off of streaming.
You sure sound like a Clinton drone with more nonsense that Trump is somehow like Hitler. Is that because he wants to protect borders from *illegal* immigrants? Or stem the flow of new voters who come from a fundamentalist religion that oppresses women? Is it because the Trump organization hires so few black people? Oh wait...he hired a higher percentage of African Americans and Latinos than anyone else in the race. Is it because he hates women? Evidence please. Is it because he hates Jews? Oh wait... His daughter is Jewish.
Talk about a "false scandal". Enough with your Clinton propaganda.
Trump isn't like Hitler, he's more like Mussolini without the uniform fetish. About "immigrant defence", he want's to build a stupid wall he claimed would cost 4 billion then, 6 then 8 then 12 billion. The border guard does not want a wall, they want border patrol in depth with mobile patrol teams and drones/helicopters, because they think the only thing a 30 foot wall will do is "create a market for 31 foot ladders" (That's a direct quote) and because something like half the illegal immigrants coming into the US are coming through airports or some alternative route that a wall wouldn't guard against and the same goes for drugs. If Trump builds that wall it will just drive the drug cartels to build more and bigger submarines and dig better tunnels. Furthermore the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that the maintenance costs of such a wall would exceed the construction cost within a decade. Can you please explain to us how Trump is going to make Mexico pay for it? And will Mexico just pay for the construction or the maintenance as well? Presumably Trump got this idea from the Israeli "security wall", this is what things are like at the "security wall" these days:
Regarding "a fundamentalist religion that oppresses women", you are presumably talking about Muslims there so all Muslims are religious fundamentalists who oppress women? Care to back that gross generalization up with some facts?
Finally, I don't think Trump actually and literally 'hates' women he's just an unabashed misogynist which is a psychological disorder that can take many forms and will not help his chances at the ballot box.
The same is true for Clinton. None of them likes the internet the way it is. Both will find a way to reshape it. Whichever wins, the online community loses.
Well in my defence I never said Clinton was somebody I'd be willing to vote for either. It's more of a choice between death by decapitation and death by being slowly burned alive.
Oh, maybe because Trump is a conservative populist who would think it a good idea to ban strong encryption, abolish net neutrality, increase the surveillance powers of the security services
And you think Clinton is any different? You're not paying attention.
Where did I say that? I'm getting pretty tired of this if-not-love-trump-then-must-love-clinton logic.
And Having the NSA spy on every citizen on earth isn't scary?? You fear Trump for what others have implemented. People is awakening from this false democracy and no longer fears a dictatorship, because there is already one ongonig. They just need to know who rules, they need to know the dictator. AS of today, we don't know who really rules USA and the west countries
I fear Trump because of the ways he may expand what others have implemented.
Oh, maybe because Trump is a conservative populist who would think it a good idea to ban strong encryption, abolish net neutrality, increase the surveillance powers of the security services,... the list goes on. I'm also pretty sure that a large portion of the US ner community is either hispanic, female or both and we all know what Trump's opinion is of people belonging to those groups.
There is a Russian underworld? I thought the Russian underworld successfully merged with the Russian government during the Yeltsin era and is now literally blossoming under Putin.
In 2007, Apple didn't even own the trademark "iPhone". Cisco even filed for an injunction against Apple right after the iPhone launched in 2007.
At least, the Chinese company registered the trademark before it used the name, which is a lot more than can be said of Apple. Should the Chinese company be penalized because Apple chose to completely ignore trademark law when it suited them. I sure hope not.
It sounded to me like the court said that there is very little chance that this purse manufacturer's use of the trademark iPhone would harm Apple's mobile phone sales in any way. Rulings like this are pretty common in cases where two companys in radically different lines of business like, say, a agricultural machinery manufacturer and a computer manufacturer, are using the same trademark. It is the equivalent to the judge having the folliwing co versation with the computer company's lawyer:
Judge: "So, let me get this straight. You have come here to complain that Tractors Inc. marketing this line of combine harvesters under the trademark "LigthninFast" is wrecking the sales of your line of laptop computers being marketed under the same name?"
Lawyer: Gives a long winded speech that boils dow to a single word, yes
Judge: "So exactly how many people fell prey to trademark confusion and bought a combine harvester by mistake instead of a laptop?"
Laeyer: "Uhhhhh...."
Judge: "Would it help if I introduced you to the full spectrum of things I can do to people who waste the court's time?"
Traditional TV is a steaming pile of crap. I watch more YouTube content created by random people with a camcorder than 'traditional TV'. In fact I'm amazed that 'traditional TV' hasn't gone the way of the dinosaurs yet. I tried to get a subscription to the local TV channel that has a monopoly on showing Game of Thrones, they told me that in order to get that channel I'd have to buy a 'value package' of 10 channel that included sports channels, a celebrity channel, a lifestyle channels... basically I'd have to pay for access to the channel I wanted and nine other channels pumping a steady stream of cultural sewage that I wouldn't watch to save my life. Short answer? No thanks! Next stop was trying to get access to the HBO directly only to be told by a very courteous and helpful HBO callcenter worker: "HBO is not available in your region". Apparently this is because of 'legal and licensing issues' which translates into: 'artificial trade barriers to rip off the consumer'. So having been frustrated at every turn in my quest to be an honest consumer and pay for the content my next stop was BitTorrent. I'll give Netflix credit for producing their own content rather than relying on the big content producers. Some of their series are pretty good and the stuff they make themselves is of course available everywhere, even in 'my region' so I got a subscription instead of downloading their stuff from BitTorrent because unlike 'traditional TV', Netflix didn't try to rip me off.
Should we pay attention to every rant? Even if it's a CEO of a company?
When I am ranting, I spew all kind of nonsense, threatening to exterminate all life on Earth, etc. Does it mean something beside the fact that I have a temper so hot that I can't restraint myself from public display of expressing it.
For those of us who have experienced the asynchronous effect of wireless Bluetooth headphone currently the norm on my iPad Pro, for instance, exactly how many generations and revisions of this are we going to go through over the next decade before it works at a level even close to analog? Historically, such proposals seem to rarely work as well as what they replace for a very long time, if ever.
Asynchronous audio is not a factor when listening to music which is what I do with my Bluetooth headphones about 95 percent of the time. The rest of the time I'm using the headphones while watching online videos on YouTube or some such site where asynchronous audio is common enough even with chorded analog headphones that I've quite frankly given up being annoyed over it and solved the problem by getting used to it. If I want to watch video in high quality with guaranteed synchronous audio I'm going to do that on my laptop or the TV and not on my phone or tablet although I could do that because my Bluetooth headphones have chord option so I can simply plug them into the analog audio port if I want to. The only real annoyance I have had with Bluetooth is that I sometimes get interference but that is a rare occurrence and flicking the phone into airplane mode usually fixes that issue.
The times are not nearly as few as you think. Anyone who listens to music at their desk at work, will almost always have the phone plugged in to charge at the same time.
Charging while using the headphones. Needs to be possible, or else this is an awful idea. The times when that particular case may arise may be few, but when it does, it's going to be really annoying.
I can't imagine that this wouldn't be considered, but no article I've read about this has mentioned it, unfortunately.
Huh, corded headphones... how quaint! I switched to Bluetooth headphones years ago and never looked back. Even if they delete the headphone jack and replace it with USB-C I can listen to music while charging the phone, I don't have to replace the earplugs every few months because the damn cable wore out, the headphones work as a cordless remote for the phone and I don't really mind the audio quality taking a hit because unlike thousands of Amazon reviewers I don't expect to get near live concert quality audio out a mobile device and a set of earbuds or even a high end set of foam padded headphones compact enough to fit in my pocket.
Adam Smith was never writing about what's called the "free market". He envisioned small-scale peer-to-peer reputation-driven interaction, not what we have.
Unrestricted freedom invariably leads to concentration of wealth and power into a few hands.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Should we be all upset that some storm wipes out a bunch of people we don't know on the other side of the planet, probably not. We should care for the planet because we need it, we should want to leave a rich fertile world for our children, but we should look out for our own. If Nature acts to reduce massively over populated regions of the world we should probably just be thankful it was not us.
Generally I agree with that except the part about not giving a shit when people I don't know are drowning. "Thou shalt do unto others as thou would have others do unto you.... etc..." I'm an atheist but I will still freely acknowledge that the Christians have some words to live by in their ancient scrolls.
Since when was the sea level predicted to rise so fast people would drown from it?
Sea levels rise, storm floods now start flooding areas that were previously farther from the coast and relatively safe, people cannot afford to just abandon their property and buy new land and build a new hose/farm in a safer place elsewhere because they are so poor they can hardly afford food, the government is to corrupt/apathetic/incompetent or just plain too poor to build flood defences which in many cases may even be a futile effort... result? Lots of people drown in storm floods in places like Bangladesh.
It simply won't happen until there is a compelling financial reason to do so.
Market forces always, eventually, win.
I'm pretty sure that if your hose is burning you won't bide your time and wait until there is a bear market in the fire extinguisher business so you can secure a fire extinguisher at the lowest possible price, you'll pay any price asked for a fire extinguisher so you can keep your house from burning down.... but then again boil a frog slowly, yada, yada, yada... (it doesn't work on frogs but apparently it will work on some free market fundamentalists).
Facebook is just a forum they should stay neutral and let the Democratic process work. While people may not agree with Trump it doesn't mean stop him from running for president. After all we are the same population whop allowed 2 terms for "W"
The Koch brothers are just a couple of stuffy ultra conservative business men, they should stay neutral but they aren't doing that and won't stop their political meddling any time soon. In a perfect world businesses and wealthy individuals would all stay neutral and allow the Democratic process to work but we don't live in a perfect world. So why should Facebook, which is basically a collection of latte slurping liberals, not use their money and position to mobilise other latte slurping liberals to get off their ass register to vote and cast their vote against the likes of Trump and Cruz to counteract the efforts of people like the Koch brothers? Conservative businesses people and bankers have been influencing politics for years and some of their activities directly threaten tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google et-al. who are widely known for their liberal stance and who thrive on the work of liberal and creative people so as far as I am concerned the tech giants should use their considerable power to influence the public in order to fight attacks by conservative backed lobbyists on things like net neutrality.
If we can have lists of "rogue nations" and "terrorist organisations" that it is illegal to deal with, then there's no reason why we can't also have lists of "rogue tax-haven nations" (like British Virgin Islands) and "tax-evasion organisations" (like Mossack Fonseca) that it is also illegal to deal with.
It should be a serious crime with huge penalties (both monetary and gaol time) to negotiate with or transact business with any government, company or organisation in one of the listed countries, or to own, operate or conduct business with any listed entity in the organisations list.
That would solve the problem at its source.
And before anyone says that Mossack Fonseca is a legal company that provides other services than just setup of shell companies and tax evasion, the same is true of Hamas. They are a huge humanitarian organisation in the Middle East, providing financial and medical aid and other services to those who need it. Unfortunately, they also have a nutcase terrorist militant wing - this gets them listed as a terrorist organisation and no amount of humanitarian work by the majority non-terrorist parts of Hamas will ever get them off that list.
The British Virgin Islands are not a country, they are a part of Britain. The problem here in the specific case of Great Britain is that they pass tax law reforms and anti tax-haven laws but then ensure that these do not apply to "the colonies of the empire" (did I overdose on sarcasm? to be fair they actually call these places: 'British overseas territories' these days, not colonies). Britain for all it's officially tough stance on tax dodging is in the habit of passing reforms with one hand while digging loop holes with the other because their precious financial industry thrives on tax dodging.
> More money doesn't fix anything, it just generates demand for
> even more money.
Why can't greedy capitalists ever learn this valuable lesson?
Because it is a side effect of greed? Greed affects certain parts of the brain. It cripples the part that handles common sense, completely switches off the morality centre and there is nothing you can do about it any more than you can stop your joystick from dripping if you get infected by a drug resistant Chlamydia Trachoma strain.
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Nah, the Liberals are so used to it, they stopped complaining. The conservatives own the media (the traditional media at least) and complain endlessly about how they cover themselves.
Must be the same reason that vote fraud (especially when illegal immigrants vote) overwhelmingly favors Democrats.
Yet it's always the Democrats that are pushing for vote fraud reduction, and Republicans putting in Diebold and such, while claiming there's no voter fraud..
The last time I looked it was Republicans who were whipping up a panic over voter fraud and demanding photo IDs to combat this even though study after study had shown that voter fraud is not a huge issue in the US. Then a few Republican functionaries went on record and explained in interviews how several conservatives running for office had benefited from the photo ID requirement because people less likely to vote Republican had been required to jump through flaming hoops to get a photo ID. Now, what is the real problem? Voter fraud which is pretty much non existent? Or is it Republicans making sure that people likely to vote Democrat have a hard time getting their hands on a photo ID? Not that this is a debate I even understand (in the sense: why is this even an issue?). Where I come from your photo ID is something you need to have to make use of public services so people usually get one in their very early teens. Kids get a social security card which they use until they learn how to drive a scooter at 15 or a car at 17 and after that everybody uses their drivers license as voter ID except for the 3% of or so of the population that does not have a driver's license, usually for some medical reason. I can relate much more to the discussions in the US about gerrymandering by means of things like the creation of ridiculously shaped voting districts because that is one shenanigan that political parties in my country practice with the same amount of enthusiasm as their counterparts in the US.
I don't expect things to be perfect out of the box but if the US military occasionally has trouble how are we going to be protecting ourselves?
I used to prefer a Mossberg 535 because it's cheap, reliable and it can fire 3 1/2 in shells for extra range but receny I've grown partial to the method this guy used to solve his drone problem.
Wait, the BBC decided to continue Top Gear with new hosts? Why?!
Because Top Gear was their most successful program by a wide margin, even given the success of Downton Abbey. If they can recapture even a quarter of their original viewership, it will still be one of their most successful programs.
I think they completely failed at choosing their hosts, though. Like, across the board failed. They made zero good decisions.
I'd have to disagree with that. I kind of like Sabine Schmitz, her circuit of the Nuremberg ring in in that Fort Transit van was simply awesome. She didn't beat Clarkson's time in that van like she promised but she came close enough. She was 47 seconds faster in the Jag and only 9 seconds slower in the Transit which was enough to make Clarkson look like a third rate driver (him and a whole bunch of machos in sports cars who got overtaken along the way by a little German woman in a Transit van) and even Clarkson had to admit that.
Multi-terabyte hard drives are cheap. Fuck streaming. If I can't save it locally, I don't want it.
True... why would I let Wall Street investment banks and the undead corpses of the old record labels leech money out of my wallet with streaming services and on top of that pay for the bandwidth that eats up when I can flip them a bird by having local copies.
I sold my 400+ CD collection in ~2001 and haven't looked back.
I ripped my CD collection and stored it in the cellar. Eventually I'll probably throw it away since it's probably not worth enough money to pay for the gasoline I would burn driving to the nearest flea market and who wants CD's these day anyway. Show a CD to somebody under twenty and they look at you as if you just asked them to prepare their own food by skinning a deer with a flint hand axe and roasting the raw meat over a fire in the back yard instead of just eating the food that magically appears in the fridge every day. Having said that I wonder how long it will take before one has to pirate streaming services to get one's own no-strings-attached offline copies because all of the musicians are locked up in 'streaming only' contracts and are getting fucked over even worse by the streaming services than they were with the record labels? Hearing indie musicians talk their music seems to have become a promotional tool they use to sell vinyl records and T-shirts and tote bags and occasionally to generate a windfall of real money from live performances. Nobody except Wall Street banks and the old record labels who own the streaming services is making tons money off of streaming.
You sure sound like a Clinton drone with more nonsense that Trump is somehow like Hitler. Is that because he wants to protect borders from *illegal* immigrants? Or stem the flow of new voters who come from a fundamentalist religion that oppresses women? Is it because the Trump organization hires so few black people? Oh wait...he hired a higher percentage of African Americans and Latinos than anyone else in the race. Is it because he hates women? Evidence please. Is it because he hates Jews? Oh wait... His daughter is Jewish.
Talk about a "false scandal". Enough with your Clinton propaganda.
Trump isn't like Hitler, he's more like Mussolini without the uniform fetish. About "immigrant defence", he want's to build a stupid wall he claimed would cost 4 billion then, 6 then 8 then 12 billion. The border guard does not want a wall, they want border patrol in depth with mobile patrol teams and drones/helicopters, because they think the only thing a 30 foot wall will do is "create a market for 31 foot ladders" (That's a direct quote) and because something like half the illegal immigrants coming into the US are coming through airports or some alternative route that a wall wouldn't guard against and the same goes for drugs. If Trump builds that wall it will just drive the drug cartels to build more and bigger submarines and dig better tunnels. Furthermore the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that the maintenance costs of such a wall would exceed the construction cost within a decade. Can you please explain to us how Trump is going to make Mexico pay for it? And will Mexico just pay for the construction or the maintenance as well? Presumably Trump got this idea from the Israeli "security wall", this is what things are like at the "security wall" these days: Regarding "a fundamentalist religion that oppresses women", you are presumably talking about Muslims there so all Muslims are religious fundamentalists who oppress women? Care to back that gross generalization up with some facts? Finally, I don't think Trump actually and literally 'hates' women he's just an unabashed misogynist which is a psychological disorder that can take many forms and will not help his chances at the ballot box.
The same is true for Clinton. None of them likes the internet the way it is. Both will find a way to reshape it. Whichever wins, the online community loses.
Well in my defence I never said Clinton was somebody I'd be willing to vote for either. It's more of a choice between death by decapitation and death by being slowly burned alive.
How is this news for nerds, stuff that matters?
because Trump is a conservative populist
BZZZ! Wrong. Trump is a progressive populist.
Running for president under the banners of one of the most conservative come-to-jesus party in the western world.
Oh, maybe because Trump is a conservative populist who would think it a good idea to ban strong encryption, abolish net neutrality, increase the surveillance powers of the security services
And you think Clinton is any different? You're not paying attention.
Where did I say that? I'm getting pretty tired of this if-not-love-trump-then-must-love-clinton logic.
And Having the NSA spy on every citizen on earth isn't scary?? You fear Trump for what others have implemented. People is awakening from this false democracy and no longer fears a dictatorship, because there is already one ongonig. They just need to know who rules, they need to know the dictator. AS of today, we don't know who really rules USA and the west countries
I fear Trump because of the ways he may expand what others have implemented.
How is this news for nerds, stuff that matters?
Oh, maybe because Trump is a conservative populist who would think it a good idea to ban strong encryption, abolish net neutrality, increase the surveillance powers of the security services, ... the list goes on. I'm also pretty sure that a large portion of the US ner community is either hispanic, female or both and we all know what Trump's opinion is of people belonging to those groups.
There is a Russian underworld? I thought the Russian underworld successfully merged with the Russian government during the Yeltsin era and is now literally blossoming under Putin.
The article is a bit misleading.
In 2007, Apple didn't even own the trademark "iPhone". Cisco even filed for an injunction against Apple right after the iPhone launched in 2007.
At least, the Chinese company registered the trademark before it used the name, which is a lot more than can be said of Apple. Should the Chinese company be penalized because Apple chose to completely ignore trademark law when it suited them. I sure hope not.
It sounded to me like the court said that there is very little chance that this purse manufacturer's use of the trademark iPhone would harm Apple's mobile phone sales in any way. Rulings like this are pretty common in cases where two companys in radically different lines of business like, say, a agricultural machinery manufacturer and a computer manufacturer, are using the same trademark. It is the equivalent to the judge having the folliwing co versation with the computer company's lawyer:
Judge: "So, let me get this straight. You have come here to complain that Tractors Inc. marketing this line of combine harvesters under the trademark "LigthninFast" is wrecking the sales of your line of laptop computers being marketed under the same name?"
Lawyer: Gives a long winded speech that boils dow to a single word, yes
Judge: "So exactly how many people fell prey to trademark confusion and bought a combine harvester by mistake instead of a laptop?"
Laeyer: "Uhhhhh...."
Judge: "Would it help if I introduced you to the full spectrum of things I can do to people who waste the court's time?"
Traditional TV is a steaming pile of crap. I watch more YouTube content created by random people with a camcorder than 'traditional TV'. In fact I'm amazed that 'traditional TV' hasn't gone the way of the dinosaurs yet. I tried to get a subscription to the local TV channel that has a monopoly on showing Game of Thrones, they told me that in order to get that channel I'd have to buy a 'value package' of 10 channel that included sports channels, a celebrity channel, a lifestyle channels... basically I'd have to pay for access to the channel I wanted and nine other channels pumping a steady stream of cultural sewage that I wouldn't watch to save my life. Short answer? No thanks! Next stop was trying to get access to the HBO directly only to be told by a very courteous and helpful HBO callcenter worker: "HBO is not available in your region". Apparently this is because of 'legal and licensing issues' which translates into: 'artificial trade barriers to rip off the consumer'. So having been frustrated at every turn in my quest to be an honest consumer and pay for the content my next stop was BitTorrent. I'll give Netflix credit for producing their own content rather than relying on the big content producers. Some of their series are pretty good and the stuff they make themselves is of course available everywhere, even in 'my region' so I got a subscription instead of downloading their stuff from BitTorrent because unlike 'traditional TV', Netflix didn't try to rip me off.
Should we pay attention to every rant? Even if it's a CEO of a company?
When I am ranting, I spew all kind of nonsense, threatening to exterminate all life on Earth, etc. Does it mean something beside the fact that I have a temper so hot that I can't restraint myself from public display of expressing it.
Galactus, is that you?
For those of us who have experienced the asynchronous effect of wireless Bluetooth headphone currently the norm on my iPad Pro, for instance, exactly how many generations and revisions of this are we going to go through over the next decade before it works at a level even close to analog? Historically, such proposals seem to rarely work as well as what they replace for a very long time, if ever.
Asynchronous audio is not a factor when listening to music which is what I do with my Bluetooth headphones about 95 percent of the time. The rest of the time I'm using the headphones while watching online videos on YouTube or some such site where asynchronous audio is common enough even with chorded analog headphones that I've quite frankly given up being annoyed over it and solved the problem by getting used to it. If I want to watch video in high quality with guaranteed synchronous audio I'm going to do that on my laptop or the TV and not on my phone or tablet although I could do that because my Bluetooth headphones have chord option so I can simply plug them into the analog audio port if I want to. The only real annoyance I have had with Bluetooth is that I sometimes get interference but that is a rare occurrence and flicking the phone into airplane mode usually fixes that issue.
The times are not nearly as few as you think. Anyone who listens to music at their desk at work, will almost always have the phone plugged in to charge at the same time.
Charging while using the headphones. Needs to be possible, or else this is an awful idea. The times when that particular case may arise may be few, but when it does, it's going to be really annoying. I can't imagine that this wouldn't be considered, but no article I've read about this has mentioned it, unfortunately.
Huh, corded headphones ... how quaint! I switched to Bluetooth headphones years ago and never looked back. Even if they delete the headphone jack and replace it with USB-C I can listen to music while charging the phone, I don't have to replace the earplugs every few months because the damn cable wore out, the headphones work as a cordless remote for the phone and I don't really mind the audio quality taking a hit because unlike thousands of Amazon reviewers I don't expect to get near live concert quality audio out a mobile device and a set of earbuds or even a high end set of foam padded headphones compact enough to fit in my pocket.
Adam Smith was never writing about what's called the "free market". He envisioned small-scale peer-to-peer reputation-driven interaction, not what we have.
Unrestricted freedom invariably leads to concentration of wealth and power into a few hands.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Should we be all upset that some storm wipes out a bunch of people we don't know on the other side of the planet, probably not. We should care for the planet because we need it, we should want to leave a rich fertile world for our children, but we should look out for our own. If Nature acts to reduce massively over populated regions of the world we should probably just be thankful it was not us.
Generally I agree with that except the part about not giving a shit when people I don't know are drowning. "Thou shalt do unto others as thou would have others do unto you.... etc..." I'm an atheist but I will still freely acknowledge that the Christians have some words to live by in their ancient scrolls.
Since when was the sea level predicted to rise so fast people would drown from it?
Sea levels rise, storm floods now start flooding areas that were previously farther from the coast and relatively safe, people cannot afford to just abandon their property and buy new land and build a new hose/farm in a safer place elsewhere because they are so poor they can hardly afford food, the government is to corrupt/apathetic/incompetent or just plain too poor to build flood defences which in many cases may even be a futile effort... result? Lots of people drown in storm floods in places like Bangladesh.
Something for those 323,995,528 * 0,99 = 320,755,573 million temporarily embarrassed millionaires to aspire to. <--- That was sarcasm.
It simply won't happen until there is a compelling financial reason to do so.
Market forces always, eventually, win.
I'm pretty sure that if your hose is burning you won't bide your time and wait until there is a bear market in the fire extinguisher business so you can secure a fire extinguisher at the lowest possible price, you'll pay any price asked for a fire extinguisher so you can keep your house from burning down.... but then again boil a frog slowly, yada, yada, yada... (it doesn't work on frogs but apparently it will work on some free market fundamentalists).
Facebook is just a forum they should stay neutral and let the Democratic process work. While people may not agree with Trump it doesn't mean stop him from running for president. After all we are the same population whop allowed 2 terms for "W"
The Koch brothers are just a couple of stuffy ultra conservative business men, they should stay neutral but they aren't doing that and won't stop their political meddling any time soon. In a perfect world businesses and wealthy individuals would all stay neutral and allow the Democratic process to work but we don't live in a perfect world. So why should Facebook, which is basically a collection of latte slurping liberals, not use their money and position to mobilise other latte slurping liberals to get off their ass register to vote and cast their vote against the likes of Trump and Cruz to counteract the efforts of people like the Koch brothers? Conservative businesses people and bankers have been influencing politics for years and some of their activities directly threaten tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Google et-al. who are widely known for their liberal stance and who thrive on the work of liberal and creative people so as far as I am concerned the tech giants should use their considerable power to influence the public in order to fight attacks by conservative backed lobbyists on things like net neutrality.
If we can have lists of "rogue nations" and "terrorist organisations" that it is illegal to deal with, then there's no reason why we can't also have lists of "rogue tax-haven nations" (like British Virgin Islands) and "tax-evasion organisations" (like Mossack Fonseca) that it is also illegal to deal with.
It should be a serious crime with huge penalties (both monetary and gaol time) to negotiate with or transact business with any government, company or organisation in one of the listed countries, or to own, operate or conduct business with any listed entity in the organisations list.
That would solve the problem at its source.
And before anyone says that Mossack Fonseca is a legal company that provides other services than just setup of shell companies and tax evasion, the same is true of Hamas. They are a huge humanitarian organisation in the Middle East, providing financial and medical aid and other services to those who need it. Unfortunately, they also have a nutcase terrorist militant wing - this gets them listed as a terrorist organisation and no amount of humanitarian work by the majority non-terrorist parts of Hamas will ever get them off that list.
The British Virgin Islands are not a country, they are a part of Britain. The problem here in the specific case of Great Britain is that they pass tax law reforms and anti tax-haven laws but then ensure that these do not apply to "the colonies of the empire" (did I overdose on sarcasm? to be fair they actually call these places: 'British overseas territories' these days, not colonies). Britain for all it's officially tough stance on tax dodging is in the habit of passing reforms with one hand while digging loop holes with the other because their precious financial industry thrives on tax dodging.
> More money doesn't fix anything, it just generates demand for > even more money.
Why can't greedy capitalists ever learn this valuable lesson?
Because it is a side effect of greed? Greed affects certain parts of the brain. It cripples the part that handles common sense, completely switches off the morality centre and there is nothing you can do about it any more than you can stop your joystick from dripping if you get infected by a drug resistant Chlamydia Trachoma strain.