If we are going to hold snapchat liable for idiots who choose to drive a vehicle at high speeds and crashing then we also need to hold smart phone makers for adding the feature to use the phone (especially for texting) while driving. Many people crash because they are attempting to text while driving even though smart phone manufacturers have repeatedly told users that they should not use their smart phone while driving. It would be reasonable that smart phone makers would have known that people would text while driving so aren't they liable if someone chooses to use their smart phone (against the recommendations of the manufacturer) to text while driving? After all, the smart phone maker should have left out the ability to text from the phone or adding some sensors to will not allow someone who is stupid enough to text while driving to do so. What were car makers thinking putting engines in cars that can reach speeds of 130 MPH or faster. Don't they know that some idiot will attempt to drive a vehicle at high speeds? They strongly recommend that you don't drive a car at such high speeds and will advise you that you could void your warranty if there is evidence that you were driving your vehicle at such speeds but people still are dumb enough to try it and sometimes they crash which is another reason automakers don't recommend you drive at such high speeds.
This is the fault of the idiot who attempted to drive 107 MPH and only him. If we are going to blame snapchat then perhaps we should blame the manufacturer of this persons car for building an engine that can reach such a speed, other manufacturers for failing to build a car that can withstand any crash including being hit by a car going 107 MPH, all levels of government for designing a highway where someone is capable of driving recklessly without being stopped by law enforcement, etc. Sure a manufacturer will tell you that their car can go a maximum speed of 130 MPH but would also explain that it is highly recommended that you don't attempt to drive at high speeds since chances are you will crash and if you cause damage to your engine, transmission, or other moving parts, they will not cover repairs under warranty since they don't recommend customers drive their vehicle at such speeds. Common sense would also tell you that this is a bad idea.
How do you define a threat to themselves or others. There are many mentally ill people who are not a threat to themselves or others. Do we institutionalize everyone diagnosed with a mental illness even though you can have two people diagnosed with an illness like schizophrenia where one person is potentially a threat to themselves or others while the other person isn't a threat at all. With treatment a lot of mentally ill people are able to function in society and are not a threat to anyone.
It seems like a broad brush to paint all people who are mentally ill as a threat to society. Most of the mentally ill are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the one committing a violent crime. If we had institutionalization today how do we define someone who is mentally ill? There are some people who are diagnosed with a mental illness who are contributing to society and able to live independently. There are a lot of people who have been successfully treated with medications and other techniques who actively contribute to society. I agree that something needs to be done about people who live on the streets who suffer from a mental illness who are unwilling to get help or unwilling to continue treatment including faithfully taking medications and other treatments. They are in a position where they are unable to take care of themselves but a lot of other mentally ill people are able to take care of themselves and function in society. This reminds me of a classmate I had in grade school in the early 80s. Her parents were repeatedly told by educators that their daughter had a mental illness and should be institutionalized. Her parents were opposed to having her institutionalized and had to fight the school district to allow her to attend school. This student had difficulties socializing but had a normal IQ and she was capable of learning and taking care of herself. Because she was diagnosed and considered to not be normal, educators wanted to remove her from their school. Her parents not only had to endure educators who felt their daughter should be in an institution but also harassment and even physical attacks their daughter had to endure while attending school. There are mentally ill people who are able to take care of themselves and even more can be productive members of society if they are treated and are willing to continue their treatment such as taking medications daily. I would hate to see people be institutionalized because they have been diagnosed with a mental illness without any determination if they are truly unable to function in society.
Maybe the true cause in lost revenue can be traced to a lot of customers not viewing the websites anymore. A lot of media companies do a poor job of designing their website leaving users with a bug riddled mess and the advertisements. Some have decided to tell me what stories I will be interested in viewing and I don't agree with their belief that these stories would interest me. Some have made it so you have to advance through several pages of flash animation for a slideshow in order to read the article and to go back to the site you were before you read this story you have to press the back button in order to advance through all the photos or animation in a slideshow again. Some have even relied on Facebook posts and Twitter feeds to tell their story. If I wanted to see Facebook posts or Twitter Feeds about a story, I will create a facebook or Twitter account and see these posts myself rather than going to a news site to see their cherry picked posts. CNN and other sites have changed their "Terms of Service" recently and when you go to their site in large red print is a message stating that their terms of use or privacy policy has changed and by using their site, you are agreeing to these updated terms of service or privacy policy. Who has time to read pages of information about their new terms of use or privacy policy? If I see such a message, I just go to another site to read about this story who doesn't announce in a big red message that they changed their terms of service or privacy policy and your use of their site indicates you agree to these new terms. Since I don't have much bandwidth, I avoid video coverage but many news sites (even newspapers who writes their stories in print) will only offer videos to watch so if you want to read at your own leisure, you will need to go to another site. Some have tried to hard to get people to sign on to Facebook or Twitter while on their site when not all of their audience have Facebook or Twitter Accounts and some who do are not interested in having Facebook or Twitter collect the stories you read. Some sites offer an "ad-free" option if you are a paying subscriber but once you log in to their exclusive non-ad section, you are bombarded by ads or greeted by the message that you will need to disable your ad blocking software. If you are paying not to have ads then why should you be served up ads or be required to disable any ad blocking software in order to view their exclusive ad-free site?
I won't be opting in by downloading this browser. I think ad designers also need to realize that some of us have slow internet connections (I have only 1.5 Mbps) and these video ads steal precious bandwidth. It is also hard for me to read a website when there is video advertisements playing that I cannot stop which is the main reason (in addition to security) that I use NoScript and AdBlock.
How are they going to insure the ads are safe. Even reputable sites have been subject to drive by download attacks and they have gone with an internet advertiser who insisted that they serve only safe ads. In addition, should a user be forced to give up bandwidth, and be annoyed as they are trying to read because of some obnoxious video playing? A lot of people have slower internet connections and these ads steal a bigger chunk of their bandwidth meaning it will take much longer for them to browse sites. These ads are run on the users computer which also steals clock cycles from their CPU to serve up these annoying advertisements.
Isn't Comcast who happens to be the leader in most markets planning on a data cap? If they are successful, the rest of the high speed ISP's will also see data caps as a good idea. For example, Verizon was the first cellular carrier to consider data caps and most of the remaining carriers followed suit. There are some that may have unlimited plans but you usually get lousy service from them so it isn't worth switching to their unlimited plan. Some carriers such as Centurylink already have a form of data cap such as if your household uses a certain amount of bandwidth, they will tell these customers that they will need to buy a business ISP plan.
When are television advertisers going to complain that nobody watches their commercials and ask TV makers to build a detector to sense when people watching TV leave the room during a commercial break? Aren't these TV advertisers in the same boat as internet website advertisers. If everybody is using commercial breaks to use the bathroom or do something else other than watching TV nobody watches their commercials and they have wasted their money paying to have a commercial aired on network TV. Advertisers and site who use flash animation also need to realize that users often block flash animation for security reason and because they are annoyed when they go to a website to read and some obnoxious video starts to play distracting their attention. In addition, if a person has a low bandwidth connection (some have as slow as 1.5 Mbps internet speeds and some rural users are using dial-up). If they allowed these bandwidth stealing ads to load, they would be waiting 10 or 15 minutes for each website to open. Why should a user be forced to have an advertisement steal their own bandwidth, run on their own computer, and even put their computer at risk of infection? I often use the 10 second rule when I go to a website. If it takes more than 10 seconds for a website to load I simply go to another site. There are many sites out there who have so much bandwidth stealing ads that I gave up trying to use their sites until I was able to block ads.
I assume that in order for him to catch these illegal acts he has to: 1) obtained video footage of the alleged prostitute and john engaging in a sexual act, and 2) capture an exchange of cash with proof that this exchange of cash was exclusively for sex which is what must be proven in most states to successfully convict someone of prostitution. How does he do this without violating both parties reasonable expectation of privacy or trespassing onto private property (even a flyover with a drone can be considered a form of trespassing)? It can also be considered a form of harassment. It would seem that he could easily catch what he thought was an illegal act of prostitution only to find out after the police conduct an investigation that this wasn't prostitution at all. For example, a guy pays an escort where there is no expectation of sex. A lot of people do hire escorts for companionship and no intentions of sexual contact. The escort in question rarely engages in sexual acts with her clients but just one time while Mr. Bates was filming did conduct a sexual act. Keep in mind that the person paying her was paying for her companionship and there was no expectation of sexual contact with her and he was only paying her for her companionship. Mr. Bates captures the exchange of money and the sexual act. Technically this isn't prostitution since there was no expectation of sexual contact for the exchange of cash, the client was paying for her companionship. Another example is a couple rents out a hotel room because they want to keep their relationship secret from others. Mr. Bates captures them having sex by peering into a window with his camera (which in itself is illegal) and also captures an exchange of cash. It turns out this couple engaged in consensual sex and he she needed a loan from her friend and he gave her this money with expectation that she will repay this loan. She wasn't being paid at all, he loaned her money because she needed money. If it turns out that what Mr. Bates captured wasn't prostitution couldn't he get into serious trouble? Can't he get into trouble for violating both parties reasonable expectation of privacy especially if he physically flies a drone onto private property? With him posting footage of alleged prostitution activities, couldn't he get into trouble for violating peoples right to privacy and possibly libel for making a claim that they are engaging in prostitution when it turns out they weren't engaging in prostitution? Isn't it considered voyeurism to record sexual acts even if he is capturing illegal prostitution?
With the FBI hiring an Israeli company to hack into Apple's iPhone, you should be asking the FBI for help. Creating a back door so that you can retrieve photos of your deceased son will also create the unintended consequence of rendering the encryption useless like it currently is since it has been cracked. It will only be a matter of time before someone other than the FBI will either steal what the FBI and this company created or figure out on their own how to exploit this same vulnerability unless Apple patches this vulnerability. Fortunately for people who rely on secure encryption, the FBI and this firm will not be interested in helping Apple secure their iPhone from this vulnerability since they also lose the ability to hack into iPhones if Apple plugs this hole.
Under the DMCA, a company can get your post deleted if you take a photo of a companies intellectual property. For example if you take a photo of you riding a train and post it on facebook. The railroad can have your photo taken down if it features one of their locomotives or rolling stock because they can legally claim that locomotives and rail cars are their intellectual property. If you take a photo of a city landscape, an owner of a stadium or other building in the background can claim you violated their intellectual property, copyright, or trademark by having their building in the background of a photo you took. Trump successfully argued his name is intellectual property in order to shut down web sites that sell "Dump Trump" T-shirts. Technically someone like Trump can use the same argument to silence critics by saying that you cannot publish an article about them without their consent and obviously they won't give consent to someone who plans to criticize them. If you take a video and post it on youtube, facebook, etc and you forgot or didn't realize there is music in the background, it gets deleted. If your video contains the logo of a corporation in the background, technically the company can sue you or have your video deleted. The funny thing is this law doesn't protect people from having their work stolen who are not big corporations. For example, someone could steal a photo taken by me or someone else and publish it on Facebook. Since I'm not a big company and there may not be absolute proof that this was indeed a photo taken by me and copyrighted, I cannot have it taken down. Technically photos you take are copyright protected but Facebook says in their terms of service that you legally give up your copyright when you use their services so they can legally take your photo and publish it without your consent and even claim copyright ownership of the photo that you are the author of.
Under current law a site can be seized by the federal government on allegations that it is illegally hosting copyright material. If someone records their child dancing to music and places it on YouTube or a social networking site, the artist who wrote the song can legally sue to have the video removed. The DMCA is already overkill and doesn't need to be strengthened. Can they provide proof that they are still losing money because of piracy?
It shouldn't come as any surprise. The government has been known to keep a list of people who want the TSA abolished, people who are members of organizations such as the ACLU, EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation), EPIC and other groups. They have been known to keep tabs on people who want the Patriot Act or the Department of Homeland Security abolished. Shortly after the Edward Snowden revelations, there were politicians asking how Snowden was able to receive a security clearance when he was seen with EFF stickers and was a donor to EFF. They advocated for government officials conducting security clearance investigations to check into records the FBI has to see if they are members of an organization such as EFF since they are concerned that someone who is a member and opposed to domestic surveillance would be a threat to handling classified information. It shouldn't come as a surprise that they are looking at bumper stickers and with license plate readers deployed almost everywhere they most likely not only get a photo of your license plate but also bumper stickers as you drive past these readers.
Very true! I also wouldn't think I should be at fault if I owned such a car and it crashed. Since it wasn't being driven by the operator since it is automatic then it should be whoever wrote the code that is at fault. I don't trust AI enough to trust that it can safely drive my car. If a self-driving car is purchased, the person shouldn't have to buy liability coverage since they technically aren't driving the car and if it gets into an accident, they weren't the ones operating the car.
Good point! I don't trust the equipment a car or truck currently has that relies on computers since there is always the chance there is a bug in the system or a glitch in the computer system itself could cause such a system to fail and there may be no warning and it may be impossible for the car manufacturer to track down the bug. For example I owned a truck prior to the one I traded it in for that I currently own. This truck had all kinds of weird things happen such as the power locks suddenly not working, a dome light turning on and draining the battery while the vehicle is parked and the doors are locked, the headlights turning on while the car is in a parking lot, random braking problems, engine cutting off without warning, etc. Many customers reported these problems online but dealers would simply tell them they never heard of these problems. In my case I had some problems that could have potentially caused an accident. In one case I applied the brakes and the ABS system incorrectly detected that my brakes were locking up and kept pumping but not stopping my truck. Researching this problem online there were other owners who had this happen on sites such as Edmonds. One even blew through a stop sign and crashed but the police didn't give him a ticket since he had a passenger who witnessed him attempting to stop his vehicle and the driver behind him indicated his brake lights were on so he was attempting to stop his vehicle and as he indicated but his brakes failed. It was just this one time that my brakes failed and I was able to stop my truck the next time I applied the brakes a short time later. In another case I was driving on an interstate going 65 MPH when my theft deterrent light suddenly turned on and my engine cut off. I was able to get my truck safely onto the road shoulder but was lucky I didn't have anyone behind me or I would have been hit. I successfully restarted my engine as I was on the side of the interstate and it started right up and I didn't get any light from the theft deterrent system and drove it to the dealer. The dealer could not find anything wrong with my truck and dismissed it as user error (that I simply had too much weight on my key chain even though my truck key was the only thing on the key-chain and it was the same key chain I got from the dealer when I purchased the truck). The dealer couldn't explain the theft deterrent light other than explaining that the theft deterrent system doesn't check they key while my truck is in operation and there is no way that this light could have came on. Researching online, I found some people who reported the exact same problem. Systems can fail and I wouldn't want to rely on such a system, if there is a problem with the system it could take a while before a manufacturer fixes the problem if they do fix it since it would be easy to mistake a problem reported by customers as impossible or dismiss the problem as a user error instead of a problem with a system. In some cases there may not be a way to disable a system that you believe has problems with it. This could leave you stranded with a self-driving car (or smart car) if you find a problem and would have to have it towed for repairs since it cannot be driven manually.
Very true. In a lot of cases the Department of transportation also provides conflicting information. For example they may say that a construction project is finished even though they are still finishing the construction project. The department of transportation could have their records saying that the left lane ends when it is now the right lane that ends. In some cases even the local city may not know that their own public works department has temporary closed a road due to a ruptured water main and the road is closed to all traffic. How will these smart cars detect such a sudden road closure that may not update quickly. For example, the fire department could close down a road due to a fire and allowing traffic to travel along a road could interfere with their ability to put out a fire. The police could suddenly close down a road because of an accident or block a highway entrance because they are responding to a car driving the wrong way on the highway and they are trying to block all entrance ramps to prevent people from getting onto the highway until they can find and stop the wrong way driver before they crash into someone.
You do bring up a good point. What if there is a bug in the firmware and as a direct result of this bug, your car crashes? Should you be held responsible for something that is beyond your control? You had no idea of this bug and google may have no idea until after this accident that there is a bug in their system. I would assume it should be Google's fault in such an accident. I'm sure many insurance companies would agree saying that their customer operated their vehicle in a safe manner and didn't cause the accident and they shouldn't be the ones who pay for the accident since it isn't the fault of their customer. I'm uncertain of traffic law but I would assume that if you had no idea of such a problem with the system, you wouldn't be at fault. For example, if you apply the brakes and the brakes fail due to a defect in workmanship the automaker could be considered at fault and sued by an insurance company since this is a safety issue that they are responsible for and there was no way for the customer to know that there was a defect in their braking system that could fail and cause a crash. If you knowingly were driving around with bad brakes and crashed it would still be your fault in an accident since you didn't get your brakes fixed and drove with this condition. In addition, what if you knew there was a problem with your self-driving cars but cannot disable the self-driving feature. Are you expected not to drive your car and have it towed to a mechanic once Google comes up with a firmware update?
I think the system should have a way to operate a self-driving car manually in the event there is a problem with the system. I'd hate to be stuck in a car going 65 MPH and find out that there is a glitch that can cause it to crash into another car and you cannot temporary disable the self-driving system and "go manual" until this is fixed. Some issues may take a long time to figure out and it could be when a driver relies on this system to operate safely that they realize there is a glitch in the system. For example, I had truck with an ABS sensor that went bad which resulted in my ABS system not being able to stop at all as it continuously detected a brake lock condition when there wasn't a brake lock condition. The ABS testing system didn't detect this problem but I was able to pull out the fuse to the ABS system to temporary drive my vehicle without crashing to get it fixed. Some cars and trucks may not even have a way to disable ABS and in such a case the person would be screwed and would either crash or have to have their vehicle towed to a mechanic when the car would be fully operational (minus the ABS system and only conventional brakes of course) with the ABS system disabled. A self-driving car should have a steering wheel and other equipment in the event the self-driving system fails so that a driver isn't stranded and can simply "go manual" an manually drive the car to a mechanic to make repairs to the self-driving system.
I can see Google's point since a lot of people took their driving test years ago and some barely passed. Some states require a written exam after a certain amount of time and some states even allow people to take this exam open book if they are renewing their drivers license. This written test can also include a bunch of unrelated questions such as how high of a blood alcohol level can you legally have before you're legally drunk or how many months is your license suspended on a DUI conviction. These question have nothing to do with safely operating a motor vehicle and most people realize alcohol does impair their ability to drive and avoid driving if they have been drinking. As long as you have a valid drivers license, your car is insured, and your car registration is current (you passed the required safety and emissions inspections) you can legally drive. If someone currently is an unsafe driver it would take years before they would eventually lose their drivers license. For example, if people report the person as an unsafe driver to police they really cannot do anything unless they actually observe this driver driving unsafely or this driver gets into a lot of accidents. In this case all the driver has to do is retake the written test with a passing score and they may even be able to take the test open book to retain their drivers license. Even if you are required to take a behind the wheel test I know some people who took the test on a driving course and some have missed a red light or stop sign and still passed the driving part of the test. The driving course doesn't test for conditions such as pedestrians crossing the street or the ability of the driver to share the load with bicycles and being able to see pedestrians in a crosswalk, motorcycles, and bicycles when making turns. The test also doesn't test if the person has bad habits such as following others too closely to the point that they would be unable to stop if the person suddenly slows or stops, a person who makes dangerous lane changes, a person who doesn't pay attention to their surroundings, etc.
The problem is there actually isn't a talent gap at all. They could find plenty of people who have some kind of IT degree but prefer the cheap wages of H-1B workers. I believe some major IT companies have even set up training centers in India and Pakistan to train foreign workers to gain IT skills. Even if the numbers of IT grads dropped there are plenty of former IT workers who are still interested in a job who are working a lower paying IT job or even working in an unrelated field. It will probably get worse since some politicians have promised to eliminate limit the amount of H-1B Visa's that can be granted by the US Government. A lot of companies will use H-1B workers to train in the US and give them positions in their outsourced facilities when they return to their home country. To get around the H-1B requirement that they can only hire if there are no qualified workers, they advertise a job with qualifications that most IT workers cannot possibly qualify for then give the job to an H-1B worker when they eliminate all the American applicants because they "are not qualified". These companies can care less about investing in America because they prefer H-1B applicants and outsourcing IT jobs.
Like anyone else who uses the Twitter Platform to harass or belittle someone else which is a violation of their terms of service, Twitter should suspend or terminate Trump's account. Is it fair that Trump repeatedly violates these terms of service when others have unintentionally violated terms of service and had their twitter accounts suspended or removed? Twitter should enforce their terms of service regardless of who the account holder is.
I'm surprised they haven't fired Marissa Mayer! A lot of longtime Yahoo customers left Yahoo after they changed their email interface getting rid of a lot of features customers enjoyed with their email application. The new application was also buggy and some people reported losing emails stored on their account. After one designer said that sometimes people need to be kicked in the groin to appreciate good software design, email customers realized Yahoo won't return to Yahoo's classic email or give them the option to stick with what works and left in droves. The interface of Yahoo news started to be disliked by customers because of it's endless scrollbar and people started only receiving fluf news stories supposedly based on their interests. Eventually customers left Yahoo news in droves which is probably why they were losing revenue from advertisements on Yahoo news. I was a longtime Yahoo user that started using Yahoo in the mid-1990s, after they changed their email interface I was one of the droves of customers who left especially when you couldn't even trust that any email someone sends to you or you send to them will get delivered. Half the time I would be scrolling through my emails and would get some numerical error number and get logged out. I have reason to believe there was a bug in their software that allowed hackers to steal passwords since I had my account broken into despite having a very difficult to guess password that would not easily be discovered by brute force attacks. It was a pain to get my account back since Yahoo had gotten rid of customer support and I couldn't find help. I finally gave up on yahoo a couple of years ago. You can read many customer complaint sites such as pissedcustomer.com where people are still indicating how they could not get into their email one day and had troubles getting help from yahoo. Some have said that numbers that use to work are now disconnected and if they are able to get through to Yahoo after waiting two or three hours, they get some rude person who has no idea how to help them with a thick accent that they cannot understand. I think Marissa Mayer got in over her head and wasn't willing to admit it and kept blaming others when things didn't go as planned as a lot of senior Yahoo officials have also left Yahoo along with employees who voluntarily left or were fired to save money. I've heard employee morale has been at an all time low at Yahoo ever since Marissa took over. I don't know if anyone else could have turned yahoo around but it was obvious after 2 years that Marissa was in over her head but she is still with Yahoo to this day.
I woke up one morning to find my Windows 7 Laptop was attempting to run Windows 10 for the first time but crashed because my laptop wasn't compatible with Windows 10. If this installation were successful and I was upgraded without consent, how am I agreeing to their EULA? Before you could simply abort the installation and refuse to install the product if you didn't agree with the EULA. In my upgrade to Windows 10, I was never given the option to accept or decline the EULA license that came with Windows 10. I just woke up in the morning and realized while I was asleep my laptop was upgraded to Windows 10 but that the upgrade failed because my laptop wasn't compatible with Windows 10. I ended up having to wipe the entire hard drive and reinstall Windows 7 and recovered some of my previous files from backups I made. After this incident, I have chosen not to use Windows at all but still will have to use it for some tasks but the rest of my computers run Linux and I've been happy with Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
If we are going to hold snapchat liable for idiots who choose to drive a vehicle at high speeds and crashing then we also need to hold smart phone makers for adding the feature to use the phone (especially for texting) while driving. Many people crash because they are attempting to text while driving even though smart phone manufacturers have repeatedly told users that they should not use their smart phone while driving. It would be reasonable that smart phone makers would have known that people would text while driving so aren't they liable if someone chooses to use their smart phone (against the recommendations of the manufacturer) to text while driving? After all, the smart phone maker should have left out the ability to text from the phone or adding some sensors to will not allow someone who is stupid enough to text while driving to do so. What were car makers thinking putting engines in cars that can reach speeds of 130 MPH or faster. Don't they know that some idiot will attempt to drive a vehicle at high speeds? They strongly recommend that you don't drive a car at such high speeds and will advise you that you could void your warranty if there is evidence that you were driving your vehicle at such speeds but people still are dumb enough to try it and sometimes they crash which is another reason automakers don't recommend you drive at such high speeds.
This is the fault of the idiot who attempted to drive 107 MPH and only him. If we are going to blame snapchat then perhaps we should blame the manufacturer of this persons car for building an engine that can reach such a speed, other manufacturers for failing to build a car that can withstand any crash including being hit by a car going 107 MPH, all levels of government for designing a highway where someone is capable of driving recklessly without being stopped by law enforcement, etc. Sure a manufacturer will tell you that their car can go a maximum speed of 130 MPH but would also explain that it is highly recommended that you don't attempt to drive at high speeds since chances are you will crash and if you cause damage to your engine, transmission, or other moving parts, they will not cover repairs under warranty since they don't recommend customers drive their vehicle at such speeds. Common sense would also tell you that this is a bad idea.
How do you define a threat to themselves or others. There are many mentally ill people who are not a threat to themselves or others. Do we institutionalize everyone diagnosed with a mental illness even though you can have two people diagnosed with an illness like schizophrenia where one person is potentially a threat to themselves or others while the other person isn't a threat at all. With treatment a lot of mentally ill people are able to function in society and are not a threat to anyone.
It seems like a broad brush to paint all people who are mentally ill as a threat to society. Most of the mentally ill are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the one committing a violent crime. If we had institutionalization today how do we define someone who is mentally ill? There are some people who are diagnosed with a mental illness who are contributing to society and able to live independently. There are a lot of people who have been successfully treated with medications and other techniques who actively contribute to society. I agree that something needs to be done about people who live on the streets who suffer from a mental illness who are unwilling to get help or unwilling to continue treatment including faithfully taking medications and other treatments. They are in a position where they are unable to take care of themselves but a lot of other mentally ill people are able to take care of themselves and function in society. This reminds me of a classmate I had in grade school in the early 80s. Her parents were repeatedly told by educators that their daughter had a mental illness and should be institutionalized. Her parents were opposed to having her institutionalized and had to fight the school district to allow her to attend school. This student had difficulties socializing but had a normal IQ and she was capable of learning and taking care of herself. Because she was diagnosed and considered to not be normal, educators wanted to remove her from their school. Her parents not only had to endure educators who felt their daughter should be in an institution but also harassment and even physical attacks their daughter had to endure while attending school. There are mentally ill people who are able to take care of themselves and even more can be productive members of society if they are treated and are willing to continue their treatment such as taking medications daily. I would hate to see people be institutionalized because they have been diagnosed with a mental illness without any determination if they are truly unable to function in society.
Maybe the true cause in lost revenue can be traced to a lot of customers not viewing the websites anymore. A lot of media companies do a poor job of designing their website leaving users with a bug riddled mess and the advertisements. Some have decided to tell me what stories I will be interested in viewing and I don't agree with their belief that these stories would interest me. Some have made it so you have to advance through several pages of flash animation for a slideshow in order to read the article and to go back to the site you were before you read this story you have to press the back button in order to advance through all the photos or animation in a slideshow again. Some have even relied on Facebook posts and Twitter feeds to tell their story. If I wanted to see Facebook posts or Twitter Feeds about a story, I will create a facebook or Twitter account and see these posts myself rather than going to a news site to see their cherry picked posts. CNN and other sites have changed their "Terms of Service" recently and when you go to their site in large red print is a message stating that their terms of use or privacy policy has changed and by using their site, you are agreeing to these updated terms of service or privacy policy. Who has time to read pages of information about their new terms of use or privacy policy? If I see such a message, I just go to another site to read about this story who doesn't announce in a big red message that they changed their terms of service or privacy policy and your use of their site indicates you agree to these new terms. Since I don't have much bandwidth, I avoid video coverage but many news sites (even newspapers who writes their stories in print) will only offer videos to watch so if you want to read at your own leisure, you will need to go to another site. Some have tried to hard to get people to sign on to Facebook or Twitter while on their site when not all of their audience have Facebook or Twitter Accounts and some who do are not interested in having Facebook or Twitter collect the stories you read. Some sites offer an "ad-free" option if you are a paying subscriber but once you log in to their exclusive non-ad section, you are bombarded by ads or greeted by the message that you will need to disable your ad blocking software. If you are paying not to have ads then why should you be served up ads or be required to disable any ad blocking software in order to view their exclusive ad-free site?
I won't be opting in by downloading this browser. I think ad designers also need to realize that some of us have slow internet connections (I have only 1.5 Mbps) and these video ads steal precious bandwidth. It is also hard for me to read a website when there is video advertisements playing that I cannot stop which is the main reason (in addition to security) that I use NoScript and AdBlock.
How are they going to insure the ads are safe. Even reputable sites have been subject to drive by download attacks and they have gone with an internet advertiser who insisted that they serve only safe ads. In addition, should a user be forced to give up bandwidth, and be annoyed as they are trying to read because of some obnoxious video playing? A lot of people have slower internet connections and these ads steal a bigger chunk of their bandwidth meaning it will take much longer for them to browse sites. These ads are run on the users computer which also steals clock cycles from their CPU to serve up these annoying advertisements.
Isn't Comcast who happens to be the leader in most markets planning on a data cap? If they are successful, the rest of the high speed ISP's will also see data caps as a good idea. For example, Verizon was the first cellular carrier to consider data caps and most of the remaining carriers followed suit. There are some that may have unlimited plans but you usually get lousy service from them so it isn't worth switching to their unlimited plan. Some carriers such as Centurylink already have a form of data cap such as if your household uses a certain amount of bandwidth, they will tell these customers that they will need to buy a business ISP plan.
When are television advertisers going to complain that nobody watches their commercials and ask TV makers to build a detector to sense when people watching TV leave the room during a commercial break? Aren't these TV advertisers in the same boat as internet website advertisers. If everybody is using commercial breaks to use the bathroom or do something else other than watching TV nobody watches their commercials and they have wasted their money paying to have a commercial aired on network TV. Advertisers and site who use flash animation also need to realize that users often block flash animation for security reason and because they are annoyed when they go to a website to read and some obnoxious video starts to play distracting their attention. In addition, if a person has a low bandwidth connection (some have as slow as 1.5 Mbps internet speeds and some rural users are using dial-up). If they allowed these bandwidth stealing ads to load, they would be waiting 10 or 15 minutes for each website to open. Why should a user be forced to have an advertisement steal their own bandwidth, run on their own computer, and even put their computer at risk of infection? I often use the 10 second rule when I go to a website. If it takes more than 10 seconds for a website to load I simply go to another site. There are many sites out there who have so much bandwidth stealing ads that I gave up trying to use their sites until I was able to block ads.
If one of these ads infects my computer in a drive by download attack?
I assume that in order for him to catch these illegal acts he has to: 1) obtained video footage of the alleged prostitute and john engaging in a sexual act, and 2) capture an exchange of cash with proof that this exchange of cash was exclusively for sex which is what must be proven in most states to successfully convict someone of prostitution. How does he do this without violating both parties reasonable expectation of privacy or trespassing onto private property (even a flyover with a drone can be considered a form of trespassing)? It can also be considered a form of harassment. It would seem that he could easily catch what he thought was an illegal act of prostitution only to find out after the police conduct an investigation that this wasn't prostitution at all. For example, a guy pays an escort where there is no expectation of sex. A lot of people do hire escorts for companionship and no intentions of sexual contact. The escort in question rarely engages in sexual acts with her clients but just one time while Mr. Bates was filming did conduct a sexual act. Keep in mind that the person paying her was paying for her companionship and there was no expectation of sexual contact with her and he was only paying her for her companionship. Mr. Bates captures the exchange of money and the sexual act. Technically this isn't prostitution since there was no expectation of sexual contact for the exchange of cash, the client was paying for her companionship. Another example is a couple rents out a hotel room because they want to keep their relationship secret from others. Mr. Bates captures them having sex by peering into a window with his camera (which in itself is illegal) and also captures an exchange of cash. It turns out this couple engaged in consensual sex and he she needed a loan from her friend and he gave her this money with expectation that she will repay this loan. She wasn't being paid at all, he loaned her money because she needed money. If it turns out that what Mr. Bates captured wasn't prostitution couldn't he get into serious trouble? Can't he get into trouble for violating both parties reasonable expectation of privacy especially if he physically flies a drone onto private property? With him posting footage of alleged prostitution activities, couldn't he get into trouble for violating peoples right to privacy and possibly libel for making a claim that they are engaging in prostitution when it turns out they weren't engaging in prostitution? Isn't it considered voyeurism to record sexual acts even if he is capturing illegal prostitution?
With the FBI hiring an Israeli company to hack into Apple's iPhone, you should be asking the FBI for help. Creating a back door so that you can retrieve photos of your deceased son will also create the unintended consequence of rendering the encryption useless like it currently is since it has been cracked. It will only be a matter of time before someone other than the FBI will either steal what the FBI and this company created or figure out on their own how to exploit this same vulnerability unless Apple patches this vulnerability. Fortunately for people who rely on secure encryption, the FBI and this firm will not be interested in helping Apple secure their iPhone from this vulnerability since they also lose the ability to hack into iPhones if Apple plugs this hole.
Under the DMCA, a company can get your post deleted if you take a photo of a companies intellectual property. For example if you take a photo of you riding a train and post it on facebook. The railroad can have your photo taken down if it features one of their locomotives or rolling stock because they can legally claim that locomotives and rail cars are their intellectual property. If you take a photo of a city landscape, an owner of a stadium or other building in the background can claim you violated their intellectual property, copyright, or trademark by having their building in the background of a photo you took. Trump successfully argued his name is intellectual property in order to shut down web sites that sell "Dump Trump" T-shirts. Technically someone like Trump can use the same argument to silence critics by saying that you cannot publish an article about them without their consent and obviously they won't give consent to someone who plans to criticize them. If you take a video and post it on youtube, facebook, etc and you forgot or didn't realize there is music in the background, it gets deleted. If your video contains the logo of a corporation in the background, technically the company can sue you or have your video deleted. The funny thing is this law doesn't protect people from having their work stolen who are not big corporations. For example, someone could steal a photo taken by me or someone else and publish it on Facebook. Since I'm not a big company and there may not be absolute proof that this was indeed a photo taken by me and copyrighted, I cannot have it taken down. Technically photos you take are copyright protected but Facebook says in their terms of service that you legally give up your copyright when you use their services so they can legally take your photo and publish it without your consent and even claim copyright ownership of the photo that you are the author of.
Under current law a site can be seized by the federal government on allegations that it is illegally hosting copyright material. If someone records their child dancing to music and places it on YouTube or a social networking site, the artist who wrote the song can legally sue to have the video removed. The DMCA is already overkill and doesn't need to be strengthened. Can they provide proof that they are still losing money because of piracy?
It shouldn't come as any surprise. The government has been known to keep a list of people who want the TSA abolished, people who are members of organizations such as the ACLU, EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation), EPIC and other groups. They have been known to keep tabs on people who want the Patriot Act or the Department of Homeland Security abolished. Shortly after the Edward Snowden revelations, there were politicians asking how Snowden was able to receive a security clearance when he was seen with EFF stickers and was a donor to EFF. They advocated for government officials conducting security clearance investigations to check into records the FBI has to see if they are members of an organization such as EFF since they are concerned that someone who is a member and opposed to domestic surveillance would be a threat to handling classified information. It shouldn't come as a surprise that they are looking at bumper stickers and with license plate readers deployed almost everywhere they most likely not only get a photo of your license plate but also bumper stickers as you drive past these readers.
Very true! I also wouldn't think I should be at fault if I owned such a car and it crashed. Since it wasn't being driven by the operator since it is automatic then it should be whoever wrote the code that is at fault. I don't trust AI enough to trust that it can safely drive my car. If a self-driving car is purchased, the person shouldn't have to buy liability coverage since they technically aren't driving the car and if it gets into an accident, they weren't the ones operating the car.
Good point! I don't trust the equipment a car or truck currently has that relies on computers since there is always the chance there is a bug in the system or a glitch in the computer system itself could cause such a system to fail and there may be no warning and it may be impossible for the car manufacturer to track down the bug. For example I owned a truck prior to the one I traded it in for that I currently own. This truck had all kinds of weird things happen such as the power locks suddenly not working, a dome light turning on and draining the battery while the vehicle is parked and the doors are locked, the headlights turning on while the car is in a parking lot, random braking problems, engine cutting off without warning, etc. Many customers reported these problems online but dealers would simply tell them they never heard of these problems. In my case I had some problems that could have potentially caused an accident. In one case I applied the brakes and the ABS system incorrectly detected that my brakes were locking up and kept pumping but not stopping my truck. Researching this problem online there were other owners who had this happen on sites such as Edmonds. One even blew through a stop sign and crashed but the police didn't give him a ticket since he had a passenger who witnessed him attempting to stop his vehicle and the driver behind him indicated his brake lights were on so he was attempting to stop his vehicle and as he indicated but his brakes failed. It was just this one time that my brakes failed and I was able to stop my truck the next time I applied the brakes a short time later. In another case I was driving on an interstate going 65 MPH when my theft deterrent light suddenly turned on and my engine cut off. I was able to get my truck safely onto the road shoulder but was lucky I didn't have anyone behind me or I would have been hit. I successfully restarted my engine as I was on the side of the interstate and it started right up and I didn't get any light from the theft deterrent system and drove it to the dealer. The dealer could not find anything wrong with my truck and dismissed it as user error (that I simply had too much weight on my key chain even though my truck key was the only thing on the key-chain and it was the same key chain I got from the dealer when I purchased the truck). The dealer couldn't explain the theft deterrent light other than explaining that the theft deterrent system doesn't check they key while my truck is in operation and there is no way that this light could have came on. Researching online, I found some people who reported the exact same problem. Systems can fail and I wouldn't want to rely on such a system, if there is a problem with the system it could take a while before a manufacturer fixes the problem if they do fix it since it would be easy to mistake a problem reported by customers as impossible or dismiss the problem as a user error instead of a problem with a system. In some cases there may not be a way to disable a system that you believe has problems with it. This could leave you stranded with a self-driving car (or smart car) if you find a problem and would have to have it towed for repairs since it cannot be driven manually.
Very true. In a lot of cases the Department of transportation also provides conflicting information. For example they may say that a construction project is finished even though they are still finishing the construction project. The department of transportation could have their records saying that the left lane ends when it is now the right lane that ends. In some cases even the local city may not know that their own public works department has temporary closed a road due to a ruptured water main and the road is closed to all traffic. How will these smart cars detect such a sudden road closure that may not update quickly. For example, the fire department could close down a road due to a fire and allowing traffic to travel along a road could interfere with their ability to put out a fire. The police could suddenly close down a road because of an accident or block a highway entrance because they are responding to a car driving the wrong way on the highway and they are trying to block all entrance ramps to prevent people from getting onto the highway until they can find and stop the wrong way driver before they crash into someone.
You do bring up a good point. What if there is a bug in the firmware and as a direct result of this bug, your car crashes? Should you be held responsible for something that is beyond your control? You had no idea of this bug and google may have no idea until after this accident that there is a bug in their system. I would assume it should be Google's fault in such an accident. I'm sure many insurance companies would agree saying that their customer operated their vehicle in a safe manner and didn't cause the accident and they shouldn't be the ones who pay for the accident since it isn't the fault of their customer. I'm uncertain of traffic law but I would assume that if you had no idea of such a problem with the system, you wouldn't be at fault. For example, if you apply the brakes and the brakes fail due to a defect in workmanship the automaker could be considered at fault and sued by an insurance company since this is a safety issue that they are responsible for and there was no way for the customer to know that there was a defect in their braking system that could fail and cause a crash. If you knowingly were driving around with bad brakes and crashed it would still be your fault in an accident since you didn't get your brakes fixed and drove with this condition. In addition, what if you knew there was a problem with your self-driving cars but cannot disable the self-driving feature. Are you expected not to drive your car and have it towed to a mechanic once Google comes up with a firmware update?
I think the system should have a way to operate a self-driving car manually in the event there is a problem with the system. I'd hate to be stuck in a car going 65 MPH and find out that there is a glitch that can cause it to crash into another car and you cannot temporary disable the self-driving system and "go manual" until this is fixed. Some issues may take a long time to figure out and it could be when a driver relies on this system to operate safely that they realize there is a glitch in the system. For example, I had truck with an ABS sensor that went bad which resulted in my ABS system not being able to stop at all as it continuously detected a brake lock condition when there wasn't a brake lock condition. The ABS testing system didn't detect this problem but I was able to pull out the fuse to the ABS system to temporary drive my vehicle without crashing to get it fixed. Some cars and trucks may not even have a way to disable ABS and in such a case the person would be screwed and would either crash or have to have their vehicle towed to a mechanic when the car would be fully operational (minus the ABS system and only conventional brakes of course) with the ABS system disabled. A self-driving car should have a steering wheel and other equipment in the event the self-driving system fails so that a driver isn't stranded and can simply "go manual" an manually drive the car to a mechanic to make repairs to the self-driving system.
I can see Google's point since a lot of people took their driving test years ago and some barely passed. Some states require a written exam after a certain amount of time and some states even allow people to take this exam open book if they are renewing their drivers license. This written test can also include a bunch of unrelated questions such as how high of a blood alcohol level can you legally have before you're legally drunk or how many months is your license suspended on a DUI conviction. These question have nothing to do with safely operating a motor vehicle and most people realize alcohol does impair their ability to drive and avoid driving if they have been drinking. As long as you have a valid drivers license, your car is insured, and your car registration is current (you passed the required safety and emissions inspections) you can legally drive. If someone currently is an unsafe driver it would take years before they would eventually lose their drivers license. For example, if people report the person as an unsafe driver to police they really cannot do anything unless they actually observe this driver driving unsafely or this driver gets into a lot of accidents. In this case all the driver has to do is retake the written test with a passing score and they may even be able to take the test open book to retain their drivers license. Even if you are required to take a behind the wheel test I know some people who took the test on a driving course and some have missed a red light or stop sign and still passed the driving part of the test. The driving course doesn't test for conditions such as pedestrians crossing the street or the ability of the driver to share the load with bicycles and being able to see pedestrians in a crosswalk, motorcycles, and bicycles when making turns. The test also doesn't test if the person has bad habits such as following others too closely to the point that they would be unable to stop if the person suddenly slows or stops, a person who makes dangerous lane changes, a person who doesn't pay attention to their surroundings, etc.
The problem is there actually isn't a talent gap at all. They could find plenty of people who have some kind of IT degree but prefer the cheap wages of H-1B workers. I believe some major IT companies have even set up training centers in India and Pakistan to train foreign workers to gain IT skills. Even if the numbers of IT grads dropped there are plenty of former IT workers who are still interested in a job who are working a lower paying IT job or even working in an unrelated field. It will probably get worse since some politicians have promised to eliminate limit the amount of H-1B Visa's that can be granted by the US Government. A lot of companies will use H-1B workers to train in the US and give them positions in their outsourced facilities when they return to their home country. To get around the H-1B requirement that they can only hire if there are no qualified workers, they advertise a job with qualifications that most IT workers cannot possibly qualify for then give the job to an H-1B worker when they eliminate all the American applicants because they "are not qualified". These companies can care less about investing in America because they prefer H-1B applicants and outsourcing IT jobs.
Like anyone else who uses the Twitter Platform to harass or belittle someone else which is a violation of their terms of service, Twitter should suspend or terminate Trump's account. Is it fair that Trump repeatedly violates these terms of service when others have unintentionally violated terms of service and had their twitter accounts suspended or removed? Twitter should enforce their terms of service regardless of who the account holder is.
I'm surprised they haven't fired Marissa Mayer! A lot of longtime Yahoo customers left Yahoo after they changed their email interface getting rid of a lot of features customers enjoyed with their email application. The new application was also buggy and some people reported losing emails stored on their account. After one designer said that sometimes people need to be kicked in the groin to appreciate good software design, email customers realized Yahoo won't return to Yahoo's classic email or give them the option to stick with what works and left in droves. The interface of Yahoo news started to be disliked by customers because of it's endless scrollbar and people started only receiving fluf news stories supposedly based on their interests. Eventually customers left Yahoo news in droves which is probably why they were losing revenue from advertisements on Yahoo news. I was a longtime Yahoo user that started using Yahoo in the mid-1990s, after they changed their email interface I was one of the droves of customers who left especially when you couldn't even trust that any email someone sends to you or you send to them will get delivered. Half the time I would be scrolling through my emails and would get some numerical error number and get logged out. I have reason to believe there was a bug in their software that allowed hackers to steal passwords since I had my account broken into despite having a very difficult to guess password that would not easily be discovered by brute force attacks. It was a pain to get my account back since Yahoo had gotten rid of customer support and I couldn't find help. I finally gave up on yahoo a couple of years ago. You can read many customer complaint sites such as pissedcustomer.com where people are still indicating how they could not get into their email one day and had troubles getting help from yahoo. Some have said that numbers that use to work are now disconnected and if they are able to get through to Yahoo after waiting two or three hours, they get some rude person who has no idea how to help them with a thick accent that they cannot understand. I think Marissa Mayer got in over her head and wasn't willing to admit it and kept blaming others when things didn't go as planned as a lot of senior Yahoo officials have also left Yahoo along with employees who voluntarily left or were fired to save money. I've heard employee morale has been at an all time low at Yahoo ever since Marissa took over. I don't know if anyone else could have turned yahoo around but it was obvious after 2 years that Marissa was in over her head but she is still with Yahoo to this day.
I woke up one morning to find my Windows 7 Laptop was attempting to run Windows 10 for the first time but crashed because my laptop wasn't compatible with Windows 10. If this installation were successful and I was upgraded without consent, how am I agreeing to their EULA? Before you could simply abort the installation and refuse to install the product if you didn't agree with the EULA. In my upgrade to Windows 10, I was never given the option to accept or decline the EULA license that came with Windows 10. I just woke up in the morning and realized while I was asleep my laptop was upgraded to Windows 10 but that the upgrade failed because my laptop wasn't compatible with Windows 10. I ended up having to wipe the entire hard drive and reinstall Windows 7 and recovered some of my previous files from backups I made. After this incident, I have chosen not to use Windows at all but still will have to use it for some tasks but the rest of my computers run Linux and I've been happy with Linux.