Most of the "bullying" that I remember from childhood was not physical, but psychological.
Sometimes things got physical but nobody was stealing other kid's lunch money. That's as cartoonish to me as the anecdote about how the kid that always got picked on learned to stand up for himself and one day he beat the hell out of the bully and sent him home crying and nobody ever messed with that kid ever again.
Didn't Opie do that once on the Andy Griffith show? (Yes, he did - the bully's name was Sheldon and he was taking Opie's nickel for milk every day. So one day after talking to Andy about it Opie "lit into him like a windmill in a tornado"). I seem to recall there being a similar Leave it to Beaver episode too.
If only real life were like those old black and white TV shows.
Instead I suspect Facebook is a big thing in the social world of today's kid. They'll talk about it at school and if you're not on it you're isolated. You're not cool if you don't get any likes and you become excluded and ostracized.
It's the things that the collective group will say and not just online. Remember, these kids see each other 5 days a week in school. They can avoid FB, but that's more like the bullies keeping you away from what all the cool kids are doing.
Or if not FB whatever kids are into these days. Imagine some kid hears about the latest social media fad at school and goes home and sets up a new profile eager to join in on the fun and immediately he or she is assaulted by the same people who forced them off Facebook.
I started learning a little German recently and apparently Zuckerberg translates to Sugar Mountain and now every time I read anything about Facebook I hear Neil Young.
With the barkers and the colored balloons, of course.
It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it.
It's funny because I only read about half the summary and decided it was a good idea.
It's not like I'll get to vote on it anyway since I don't live in California. I guess their campaign budgets are getting too large though because I've seen a number of commercials for issues in California (Proposition 61? What's that? I don't care).
So your post prompted me to read the whole summary, but I still wasn't really swayed by that last sentence. I don't really see a good argument against it. Legislation is a slow and tortuous process and it should be. Give the world 3 days to pick apart your legislation and object to certain parts if they're objectionable.
This is why we need mandatory voting. You can't suppress the vote when it's required.
I disagree very strongly with the concept of mandatory voting. If someone cannot be bothered to exercise their right to vote without the threat of legal penalties how in the hell do you expect them to make an informed decision?
I'm completely in favor of removing any barriers to voting that people may face, even if they'll vote for what I view as the completely wrong choices but there's no reason to encourage mindless voting.
Voting is hard, at least for me. My ballot is only about 1/3 filled out right now because I haven't researched all the amendments and candidates that are on my ballot. I'm not going to vote party line. I don't do that.
And there are about 15 judges on my ballot that I know absolutely nothing about other than that they are already judges. Shall I vote Yes to retain them as judges?
I don't know. I'll Google all of them and unless something really stands out about them either favorably or unfavorably I'm not going to have enough information to go on. I'm not going to research all the cases that were presented to them and read their decisions. Ain't nobody got time for that. There's a good chance I'll just abstain from voting for or against them retaining their seats because I really cannot make an informed decision in most cases.
I've already filled in the circle next to my choice for President and I've already voted against my Congressman (although in truth, I hope he wins - and he will), but I'm unsure about who to vote for as my Senator and a couple of state legislators.
I anticipate I'll spend most of Monday researching candidates and issues that I haven't yet decided on.
And will I do it justice? Will I actually comprehend the issues well enough to make the best choices? Shall I go with my grandfather's philosophy which was to just vote "no" if there's any doubt? Well, vote "no" and vote Republican I think was his philosophy, but I've already voted for a Libertarian, a Republican and a Democrat and I've also voted for one state Amendment and against another.
I encourage everyone to stay home on election day, but I definitely won't stand in your way if you want to vote. It's your right to vote, but if you don't care enough to get off the couch and do it, it's probably best that you don't.
No really, I am at least until I buy another computer. And I might try to make sure that people have successfully installed Linux on the model I buy next but every time I've played with it, it's ended badly.
When Microsoft start nagging me to get Windows 10 I started playing with Linux in a Virtual Machine. It was not my first foray into the Linux world, but it ended up being just as bad as earlier attempts. Actually, Linux seemed to work okay in the virtual machine even though it was a bit slow (I tried several different ones) - I attributed the slowness to running in a VM. When I tried to boot Linux directly though it would work okay for maybe as long as 5 minutes and then slow to a crawl.
I tried to find help on the many Linux forums available on the internet. Perhaps my search skills are weak, but I failed.
This is why so many of us stick with Windows. For all its faults, it generally works and we don't have to mess around with it too much.
And while I can't claim to be a master of the command line I'm not completely ignorant either. If it takes that long for me to try (and fail) to replace Windows there's no way the average joe is going to even try.
I still dream of installing Linux as a replacement for Windows, but most days I just want to use my computer and not try to figure out how to install a completely new OS. Having only one computer doesn't really help the situation. If I screw up that one I'm without a computer until I can fix it - and I can't even go online if it's down.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this site, but it looks like most of us are okay although I have seen signs in convenience stores before telling people that masks were not allowed inside.
I need you or your retained attorney of records to return the call. The issue at hand is extremely time sensitive. My phone number is 213-289-####.
Do not disregard this message and do return the call. Now if you don't return the call and I don't hear from your attorney either then the only thing I can do is wish you a good luck as the situation totally unfolds on you. Good bye.
I blocked part of the phone number just in case it belongs to some innocent person, but it probably doesn't and I was tempted to leave it. The phone number is also different every time they call anyway, but the message is the same.
Anyway, the message sounds so ominous but also so ridiculous. It doesn't give a hint at who is delivering this threat. Could it be the IRS? An old landlord? My ex-wife? It's the best, because by not saying it could apply to almost anyone.
I do have an unpaid parking ticket from about 25 years ago.
I guess "good luck" is on my side though because the situation has not totally unfolded on me.
I agree. I don't even usually pay in cash and my credit card offers me the luxury of spending way more cash than I would ever like to carry around, but $300 is about right. If for some reason my credit card stops working or I lose it (both of which have happened to me before), $300 should be more than enough to see me through to whenever I can fix it.
I've lost cash before too, but it's only cash and I can only lose as much as I carry on me.
I'm sure Tim Cook has a different financial outlook and views on spending than I do. I am down to one credit card. I used to have two, but I never used the other one so the bank refused to renew it. I don't trust debit cards and I'm not going to use my (android) phone to pay so it's credit card or cash. Everybody still takes cash.
There's a commercial that asks "What's in your wallet?". I'm curious. What's in Tim Cook's wallet? Does he even need a wallet or is there an app for everything from his driver's license to his credit cards. Okay, he doesn't need credit cards because he can use Apple Pay.
But you can't use Apple Pay everywhere, can you?
Oh right, the summary says he only makes most of his purchases with Apple Pay.
I have no idea what Tim Cook is worth, but the idea that someone as rich as he probably is thinks he knows how the common man spends money is laughable.
And I also bet he keeps some cash on hand, just in case.
I used to be a football fan. I used to go to games. Then it slowly dawned on me that my favorite team wasn't owned by people who cared about winning. It was all about money.
Yeah, call me naive for not figuring that out sooner.
The labor disputes weren't enough for me, but when the owner started threatening to move to Florida I started getting turned off. They didn't move to Florida, but they did move to Tennessee.
The only good thing about sports in my opinion for the last 15-20 years is when there's a good scandal and NFL coaches turning on a major sponsor ranks right up there.
They can't give teams their choice of technology because of sponsors who bought the whole league. They can't give teams full control of their devices because there are too many cheaters. They make billions annually but even partnered with Microsoft they cannot satisfy their coaches with their technology.
Hearing stuff like the announcers referred to their Microsoft Surfaces as iPads for the first couple of seasons is just icing on the cake.
Some have said it's just problems with wireless connectivity and thousands of fans in the same place all using their cell phones but couldn't they overcome that if it is what the problem really is?
Not that I care much. I have 2 twitter accounts, one for my cat and one so I can keep up with the latest inane things that Jeremy Clarkson, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and John McAffee say and McAffee is kind of annoying so I'm thinking of unfollowing him
I'm sure the NYTimes will be up by the time I want to click on a link to them if they're not up already.
Reddit seems to be working as does Fark, YouTube and Netflix. I know those last three weren't mentioned but I frequent those sites.
Disqus is down if anyone but trolls care.
LOL, I just put in nytimes.com and got an attempted browser hijack. I got about 5 pop-ups trying to scare me. I managed to close them too fast to read exactly what they said.
The phishing email that Podesta received on March 19 contained a URL, created with the popular Bitly shortening service, pointing to a longer URL that, to an untrained eye, looked like a Google link.
I can sympathize with Podesta for not knowing much if anything about how the internet works, but is he so oblivious that he's never heard you shouldn't click any old link that lands in your Inbox?
Maybe Podesta and many other people just zone out when they hear the multitude of stories over the years about not trusting e-mail and not clicking on links you're unsure of.
He should at least realize that he's a high value target for hackers. He should at least have someone on his staff who would make sure he understands a few basic things to not fall prey so easily and it appears one of those things should have been to forward any e-mail relating to any computer-related issue no matter how legitimate looking to that person.
Maybe whoever set up his computer for him told him it was totally secure and he believed them.
Can we ever develop a kind of "herd immunity" from phishing attacks?
Please, explain how it is that a DirecTV or U-verse employee in Nevada or India can tell you the precise monthly cost, including all local taxes, franchise fees, and whatever else for a subscriber at an address in Florida, but Comcast -- with local offices throughout their service area -- can't do it.
As Number Two once said "That would be telling".
CenturyLink won't do it either.
I believe that's by design. Obviously they can. They have no problem when it comes to billing you.
As others have pointed out it's to hide the cost of service.
If that's their plan I hope it's a very long-term plan because although I think some of the original series are great I think some of them aren't and it's going to take a long time for them to build up a large enough catalog to be self-sufficient and by the time they do I'll have seen most of the ones I care to - if I haven't died of old age by then.
I agree. 25 or so years ago I was young and naive and had never heard of this and I remember being somewhat shocked when it came up during a meeting with one of the execs where I worked.
They were getting 26 cents for each customer (IIRC). They were a regional chain of formal wear stores. Imagine how hungry marketers are to have access to people planning weddings. Or just teenagers needing to rent a limo for prom or whatever.
That's fairly targeted marketing I guess and most of the customers probably didn't mind the direct mail they got as a result, but I'd much rather they be required to get their customers to opt-in to such marketing and not just a clause buried somewhere deep in fine print that no reasonable person should be expected to read - just to buy a wedding dress or rent a tux.
Get them to at least check a box saying they agree to such a thing. I actually probably would agree to it in many cases.
I just had a thought. I wonder how many people buying customer data from them were divorce attorneys looking for eventual business.
I'm not very knowledgeable about all the details but I believe you're right.
I see the non-exclusive franchise agreements as a double-edged sword though.
From my city's website (which I imagine is fairly typical):
The City has a non-exclusive cable franchise agreement in effect with the local subsidiary of Comcast Corporation. It became effective on August 1, 2015 and expires on July 31, 2025
And it goes on to say they're required to provide service to all residents and that they're granted access to right of way easements.
That actually doesn't sound too bad. It would suck if certain residents were left out of the cable (and broadband) market because they lived somewhere that just wasn't worth it to connect only them. It would also suck if the cable company didn't have access to your non-subscribing neighbor's easement to lay the cable.
OTOH, I imagine that any smaller upstart cable company that wants to get access would also be bound by such requirements to serve all residents and that creates a huge barrier to entry especially considering the market will be split and it is probably easier to keep existing customers than to get new ones.
A friend of mine lives just outside of city limits in a residential neighborhood and he can't get Comcast. He gets some small cable company I can't remember the name of right now.
I'm unaware of any legal barriers keeping Comcast out of his neighborhood so I can only guess they don't see building out more infrastructure to compete doesn't seem profitable enough to them.
But I imagine his cable company might want to compete with Comcast in town if only they could develop it slowly, block by block. I'm just speculating there - maybe they're content to serve only non-city dwellers? Maybe they fear Comcast is too big to compete with and they have an unwritten agreement not to try to venture into each other's territories.
I suppose the city could say that they have a number of years to get around to hooking up the whole city, but is it really realistic to expect the small cable company to penetrate every part of the city while competing with a giant like Comcast even given years? Maybe they could give them access one chunk at a time.
I'm inclined to think we should declare the infrastructure a public monopoly, but do we do that to all technologies which provide broadband service? Maybe. I'm just rambling at this point.
I don't see any really good solutions.
I'll admit that I hate cable companies especially Comcast and so will probably always side against them. Where I live it's either them or DSL and fortunately the DSL provider here is very competitive for internet anyway.
I don't have much of a choice I'm not a big fan of the DSL provider either, but they're faster, cheaper and and more reliable than Comcast.
So is it even possible for there ever to be much more than a duopoly at best in most of the US?
Some people point to Europe as a model to follow. This is only anecdotal, but I was talking to someone from Ireland the other day who was complaining about her internet service as if she had Comcast. She did have choices, but they all went over the same lines which apparently are badly managed.
Many years ago I worked at a place where they would hand out catalogs to all the employees every holiday season as their "gift" and you could pick out anything you wanted.
Of course there is literally nothing in the catalog that I wanted and it's all cheap junk anyway. So I got a simple pedometer. Nothing fancy, just an LCD showing number of steps. I know I wore it at least one day just out of curiosity but it quickly got put away and forgotten about.
Now I'm actually a bit more than curious about my fitness and if it's a simple arm or ankle band that I didn't have to think about and wasn't uncomfortable that tracked several points of data I think I would wear it until my personal fitness was no longer such a concern to me.
I haven't gotten as far as researching all the available options but the ones I've looked at so far all demand way too many permissions with their apps and there is no way to opt out of sharing the data with them. The only thing an app needs to do is collect the data and display it nicely on the screen and perhaps export it for use by other applications that I choose and control.
I might even willingly opt-in to sharing it but I demand the option to at least opt-out of such sharing.
Or at least give a significant discount on the product for having to share my data which will surely be monetized somehow.
Building an artificial coastline in the center of the Garbage Patch.
Instead of using nets, The Ocean Cleanup uses solid screens which catches the floating plastic, but allows sea life to pass underneath the barrier with the current.
It's all detailed there, but basically the current goes around in a big circle, they build the "artificial coastline", funnel it to a central point and collect it.
If one lives in a state that trump or Clinton is clearly going to win, one may as well vote for Johnson - assuming you don't care much for trump or Clinton.
Gary Johnson has 3 very good qualities that make him worthy of my vote:
1: He's not trump 2: He's not Clinton 3: He's not going to win
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Most of the "bullying" that I remember from childhood was not physical, but psychological.
Sometimes things got physical but nobody was stealing other kid's lunch money. That's as cartoonish to me as the anecdote about how the kid that always got picked on learned to stand up for himself and one day he beat the hell out of the bully and sent him home crying and nobody ever messed with that kid ever again.
Didn't Opie do that once on the Andy Griffith show? (Yes, he did - the bully's name was Sheldon and he was taking Opie's nickel for milk every day. So one day after talking to Andy about it Opie "lit into him like a windmill in a tornado"). I seem to recall there being a similar Leave it to Beaver episode too.
If only real life were like those old black and white TV shows.
Instead I suspect Facebook is a big thing in the social world of today's kid. They'll talk about it at school and if you're not on it you're isolated. You're not cool if you don't get any likes and you become excluded and ostracized.
It's the things that the collective group will say and not just online. Remember, these kids see each other 5 days a week in school. They can avoid FB, but that's more like the bullies keeping you away from what all the cool kids are doing.
Or if not FB whatever kids are into these days. Imagine some kid hears about the latest social media fad at school and goes home and sets up a new profile eager to join in on the fun and immediately he or she is assaulted by the same people who forced them off Facebook.
We'll be hearing a lot about Clinton for a long time, not just from her supporters but from trump's supporters well.
Any criticism no matter how valid will be met with "But Clinton would have been worse" or something similar.
I started learning a little German recently and apparently Zuckerberg translates to Sugar Mountain and now every time I read anything about Facebook I hear Neil Young.
With the barkers and the colored balloons, of course.
It annoys me that the summary decided that it is a bad law solely by the side funding it.
It's funny because I only read about half the summary and decided it was a good idea.
It's not like I'll get to vote on it anyway since I don't live in California. I guess their campaign budgets are getting too large though because I've seen a number of commercials for issues in California (Proposition 61? What's that? I don't care).
So your post prompted me to read the whole summary, but I still wasn't really swayed by that last sentence. I don't really see a good argument against it. Legislation is a slow and tortuous process and it should be. Give the world 3 days to pick apart your legislation and object to certain parts if they're objectionable.
This is why we need mandatory voting. You can't suppress the vote when it's required.
I disagree very strongly with the concept of mandatory voting. If someone cannot be bothered to exercise their right to vote without the threat of legal penalties how in the hell do you expect them to make an informed decision?
I'm completely in favor of removing any barriers to voting that people may face, even if they'll vote for what I view as the completely wrong choices but there's no reason to encourage mindless voting.
Voting is hard, at least for me. My ballot is only about 1/3 filled out right now because I haven't researched all the amendments and candidates that are on my ballot. I'm not going to vote party line. I don't do that.
And there are about 15 judges on my ballot that I know absolutely nothing about other than that they are already judges. Shall I vote Yes to retain them as judges?
I don't know. I'll Google all of them and unless something really stands out about them either favorably or unfavorably I'm not going to have enough information to go on. I'm not going to research all the cases that were presented to them and read their decisions. Ain't nobody got time for that. There's a good chance I'll just abstain from voting for or against them retaining their seats because I really cannot make an informed decision in most cases.
I've already filled in the circle next to my choice for President and I've already voted against my Congressman (although in truth, I hope he wins - and he will), but I'm unsure about who to vote for as my Senator and a couple of state legislators.
I anticipate I'll spend most of Monday researching candidates and issues that I haven't yet decided on.
And will I do it justice? Will I actually comprehend the issues well enough to make the best choices? Shall I go with my grandfather's philosophy which was to just vote "no" if there's any doubt? Well, vote "no" and vote Republican I think was his philosophy, but I've already voted for a Libertarian, a Republican and a Democrat and I've also voted for one state Amendment and against another.
I encourage everyone to stay home on election day, but I definitely won't stand in your way if you want to vote. It's your right to vote, but if you don't care enough to get off the couch and do it, it's probably best that you don't.
Not me, man. I'm sticking with Windows 8.1!
No really, I am at least until I buy another computer. And I might try to make sure that people have successfully installed Linux on the model I buy next but every time I've played with it, it's ended badly.
When Microsoft start nagging me to get Windows 10 I started playing with Linux in a Virtual Machine. It was not my first foray into the Linux world, but it ended up being just as bad as earlier attempts. Actually, Linux seemed to work okay in the virtual machine even though it was a bit slow (I tried several different ones) - I attributed the slowness to running in a VM. When I tried to boot Linux directly though it would work okay for maybe as long as 5 minutes and then slow to a crawl.
I tried to find help on the many Linux forums available on the internet. Perhaps my search skills are weak, but I failed.
This is why so many of us stick with Windows. For all its faults, it generally works and we don't have to mess around with it too much.
And while I can't claim to be a master of the command line I'm not completely ignorant either. If it takes that long for me to try (and fail) to replace Windows there's no way the average joe is going to even try.
I still dream of installing Linux as a replacement for Windows, but most days I just want to use my computer and not try to figure out how to install a completely new OS. Having only one computer doesn't really help the situation. If I screw up that one I'm without a computer until I can fix it - and I can't even go online if it's down.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this site, but it looks like most of us are okay although I have seen signs in convenience stores before telling people that masks were not allowed inside.
State Codes Related To Wearing Masks
Some states that do have laws have exemptions, like Minnesota:
unless based on religious beliefs, or incidental to amusement, entertainment, protection from weather, or medical treatment
You are not alone in that.
I've been getting the following for months.
I need you or your retained attorney of records to return the call. The issue at hand is extremely time sensitive. My phone number is 213-289-####.
Do not disregard this message and do return the call. Now if you don't return the call and I don't hear from your attorney either then the only thing I can do is wish you a good luck as the situation totally unfolds on you. Good bye.
I blocked part of the phone number just in case it belongs to some innocent person, but it probably doesn't and I was tempted to leave it. The phone number is also different every time they call anyway, but the message is the same.
Anyway, the message sounds so ominous but also so ridiculous. It doesn't give a hint at who is delivering this threat. Could it be the IRS? An old landlord? My ex-wife? It's the best, because by not saying it could apply to almost anyone.
I do have an unpaid parking ticket from about 25 years ago.
I guess "good luck" is on my side though because the situation has not totally unfolded on me.
I agree. I don't even usually pay in cash and my credit card offers me the luxury of spending way more cash than I would ever like to carry around, but $300 is about right. If for some reason my credit card stops working or I lose it (both of which have happened to me before), $300 should be more than enough to see me through to whenever I can fix it.
I've lost cash before too, but it's only cash and I can only lose as much as I carry on me.
I'm sure Tim Cook has a different financial outlook and views on spending than I do. I am down to one credit card. I used to have two, but I never used the other one so the bank refused to renew it. I don't trust debit cards and I'm not going to use my (android) phone to pay so it's credit card or cash. Everybody still takes cash.
There's a commercial that asks "What's in your wallet?". I'm curious. What's in Tim Cook's wallet? Does he even need a wallet or is there an app for everything from his driver's license to his credit cards. Okay, he doesn't need credit cards because he can use Apple Pay.
But you can't use Apple Pay everywhere, can you?
Oh right, the summary says he only makes most of his purchases with Apple Pay.
I have no idea what Tim Cook is worth, but the idea that someone as rich as he probably is thinks he knows how the common man spends money is laughable.
And I also bet he keeps some cash on hand, just in case.
I used to be a football fan. I used to go to games. Then it slowly dawned on me that my favorite team wasn't owned by people who cared about winning. It was all about money.
Yeah, call me naive for not figuring that out sooner.
The labor disputes weren't enough for me, but when the owner started threatening to move to Florida I started getting turned off. They didn't move to Florida, but they did move to Tennessee.
The only good thing about sports in my opinion for the last 15-20 years is when there's a good scandal and NFL coaches turning on a major sponsor ranks right up there.
They can't give teams their choice of technology because of sponsors who bought the whole league. They can't give teams full control of their devices because there are too many cheaters. They make billions annually but even partnered with Microsoft they cannot satisfy their coaches with their technology.
Hearing stuff like the announcers referred to their Microsoft Surfaces as iPads for the first couple of seasons is just icing on the cake.
Some have said it's just problems with wireless connectivity and thousands of fans in the same place all using their cell phones but couldn't they overcome that if it is what the problem really is?
I meant to add something to the effect that the internet is far from dead.
Not that I care much. I have 2 twitter accounts, one for my cat and one so I can keep up with the latest inane things that Jeremy Clarkson, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and John McAffee say and McAffee is kind of annoying so I'm thinking of unfollowing him
I'm sure the NYTimes will be up by the time I want to click on a link to them if they're not up already.
Reddit seems to be working as does Fark, YouTube and Netflix. I know those last three weren't mentioned but I frequent those sites.
Disqus is down if anyone but trolls care.
LOL, I just put in nytimes.com and got an attempted browser hijack. I got about 5 pop-ups trying to scare me. I managed to close them too fast to read exactly what they said.
The phishing email that Podesta received on March 19 contained a URL, created with the popular Bitly shortening service, pointing to a longer URL that, to an untrained eye, looked like a Google link.
I can sympathize with Podesta for not knowing much if anything about how the internet works, but is he so oblivious that he's never heard you shouldn't click any old link that lands in your Inbox?
Maybe Podesta and many other people just zone out when they hear the multitude of stories over the years about not trusting e-mail and not clicking on links you're unsure of.
He should at least realize that he's a high value target for hackers. He should at least have someone on his staff who would make sure he understands a few basic things to not fall prey so easily and it appears one of those things should have been to forward any e-mail relating to any computer-related issue no matter how legitimate looking to that person.
Maybe whoever set up his computer for him told him it was totally secure and he believed them.
Can we ever develop a kind of "herd immunity" from phishing attacks?
I'm very pleased with my phone's hardware. It came out 2 years ago and I've had it for about 18 months.
What I'm dissatisfied with is the fact that it's still running Lollipop.
Overall though it really hasn't affected my overall happiness in life.
Please, explain how it is that a DirecTV or U-verse employee in Nevada or India can tell you the precise monthly cost, including all local taxes, franchise fees, and whatever else for a subscriber at an address in Florida, but Comcast -- with local offices throughout their service area -- can't do it.
As Number Two once said "That would be telling".
CenturyLink won't do it either.
I believe that's by design. Obviously they can. They have no problem when it comes to billing you.
As others have pointed out it's to hide the cost of service.
I think the first time I saw this in action was in The Dead Pool (the Dirty Harry movie, not Deadpool).
It was just an RC car with explosives, but the only difference here is that the "drones" are capable of flight.
I'm sure it's been done in other works of fiction as well.
If that's their plan I hope it's a very long-term plan because although I think some of the original series are great I think some of them aren't and it's going to take a long time for them to build up a large enough catalog to be self-sufficient and by the time they do I'll have seen most of the ones I care to - if I haven't died of old age by then.
According to Wikipedia, this is only true since 2012 when Village Voice Media separated their newspaper company, which then consisted of eleven weekly alternative newspapers and their affiliated web properties, from Backpage, leaving Backpage in control of shareholders Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin.
It's been over 10 years since I picked up one of their free newspapers, but it used to literally be the back page.
I agree. 25 or so years ago I was young and naive and had never heard of this and I remember being somewhat shocked when it came up during a meeting with one of the execs where I worked.
They were getting 26 cents for each customer (IIRC). They were a regional chain of formal wear stores. Imagine how hungry marketers are to have access to people planning weddings. Or just teenagers needing to rent a limo for prom or whatever.
That's fairly targeted marketing I guess and most of the customers probably didn't mind the direct mail they got as a result, but I'd much rather they be required to get their customers to opt-in to such marketing and not just a clause buried somewhere deep in fine print that no reasonable person should be expected to read - just to buy a wedding dress or rent a tux.
Get them to at least check a box saying they agree to such a thing. I actually probably would agree to it in many cases.
I just had a thought. I wonder how many people buying customer data from them were divorce attorneys looking for eventual business.
I'm not very knowledgeable about all the details but I believe you're right.
I see the non-exclusive franchise agreements as a double-edged sword though.
From my city's website (which I imagine is fairly typical):
The City has a non-exclusive cable franchise agreement in effect with the local subsidiary of Comcast Corporation. It became effective on August 1, 2015 and expires on July 31, 2025
And it goes on to say they're required to provide service to all residents and that they're granted access to right of way easements.
That actually doesn't sound too bad. It would suck if certain residents were left out of the cable (and broadband) market because they lived somewhere that just wasn't worth it to connect only them. It would also suck if the cable company didn't have access to your non-subscribing neighbor's easement to lay the cable.
OTOH, I imagine that any smaller upstart cable company that wants to get access would also be bound by such requirements to serve all residents and that creates a huge barrier to entry especially considering the market will be split and it is probably easier to keep existing customers than to get new ones.
A friend of mine lives just outside of city limits in a residential neighborhood and he can't get Comcast. He gets some small cable company I can't remember the name of right now.
I'm unaware of any legal barriers keeping Comcast out of his neighborhood so I can only guess they don't see building out more infrastructure to compete doesn't seem profitable enough to them.
But I imagine his cable company might want to compete with Comcast in town if only they could develop it slowly, block by block. I'm just speculating there - maybe they're content to serve only non-city dwellers? Maybe they fear Comcast is too big to compete with and they have an unwritten agreement not to try to venture into each other's territories.
I suppose the city could say that they have a number of years to get around to hooking up the whole city, but is it really realistic to expect the small cable company to penetrate every part of the city while competing with a giant like Comcast even given years? Maybe they could give them access one chunk at a time.
I'm inclined to think we should declare the infrastructure a public monopoly, but do we do that to all technologies which provide broadband service? Maybe. I'm just rambling at this point.
I don't see any really good solutions.
I'll admit that I hate cable companies especially Comcast and so will probably always side against them. Where I live it's either them or DSL and fortunately the DSL provider here is very competitive for internet anyway.
I don't have much of a choice I'm not a big fan of the DSL provider either, but they're faster, cheaper and and more reliable than Comcast.
So is it even possible for there ever to be much more than a duopoly at best in most of the US?
Some people point to Europe as a model to follow. This is only anecdotal, but I was talking to someone from Ireland the other day who was complaining about her internet service as if she had Comcast. She did have choices, but they all went over the same lines which apparently are badly managed.
Many years ago I worked at a place where they would hand out catalogs to all the employees every holiday season as their "gift" and you could pick out anything you wanted.
Of course there is literally nothing in the catalog that I wanted and it's all cheap junk anyway. So I got a simple pedometer. Nothing fancy, just an LCD showing number of steps. I know I wore it at least one day just out of curiosity but it quickly got put away and forgotten about.
Now I'm actually a bit more than curious about my fitness and if it's a simple arm or ankle band that I didn't have to think about and wasn't uncomfortable that tracked several points of data I think I would wear it until my personal fitness was no longer such a concern to me.
I haven't gotten as far as researching all the available options but the ones I've looked at so far all demand way too many permissions with their apps and there is no way to opt out of sharing the data with them. The only thing an app needs to do is collect the data and display it nicely on the screen and perhaps export it for use by other applications that I choose and control.
I might even willingly opt-in to sharing it but I demand the option to at least opt-out of such sharing.
Or at least give a significant discount on the product for having to share my data which will surely be monetized somehow.
That was what I was wondering too but it's not going through a sieve.
From the Ocean Cleanup site: https://www.theoceancleanup.co...
Building an artificial coastline in the center of the Garbage Patch.
Instead of using nets, The Ocean Cleanup uses solid screens which catches the floating plastic, but allows sea life to pass underneath the barrier with the current.
It's all detailed there, but basically the current goes around in a big circle, they build the "artificial coastline", funnel it to a central point and collect it.
Phobia does mean fear and I think it's pretty clear that many people fear Muslims.
But it seems phobia has evolved to also imply hatred as in "homophobia". Do homophobic people really "fear" gay people? Or do they hate them?
If one lives in a state that trump or Clinton is clearly going to win, one may as well vote for Johnson - assuming you don't care much for trump or Clinton.
Gary Johnson has 3 very good qualities that make him worthy of my vote:
1: He's not trump
2: He's not Clinton
3: He's not going to win