My Android phone does not sync with GMail at all. You don't need to root the phone to turn it off, it's right there in Settings -- Accounts and sync.
And of course I created a separate GMail account for the phone, which I don't use for anything. (Not that I really use my main GMail account for much other than testing -- why in the world would I want to hand my e-mail over to Google for scrutiny? I'm a geek, I have a VPS.)
Relying on "the cloud" -- whether it be Google's cloud, Apple's cloud, Amazon's cloud, whoever's -- to preserve your data, is not an informed and rational choice. Fortunately, Android users do not have to make that choice.
All contact information on android phones are synced with your gmail account as contacts.
"Synced with" does not imply "will lose data if cut off from". Furthermore, you can turn off syncing. My Android phone does not sync with GMail at all; Google does not need my contacts list.
Why is this claptrap from a creationist, which is not published in a climatology journal but one about remote sensing technology, being treated like it was actual climate science?
then you can implement Twitter using the Google+ API
What Google+ API? Has one come out in the past few days? I'm waiting, because Google+ is useless to me until I can access it via an API. I can post to Facebook or Twitter via RSS or third-party clients.
seeing as how most people are treating it as Facebook without the privacy issues.
Without the privacy issues? Unless you are careful, Google knows what you're searching the web for. It knows what locations you're asking directions to. It may have your e-mail on its servers. And now it has your social graph.
Google+'s privacy issues are an order of magnitude greater than Facebook's, just because it's Google.
College in general is a SCAM! Most of what I've learned I've learned outside of college. I remember most of my teachers weren't all that bright. Those that can't teach ya know!
Maybe college was better 20 years ago, or maybe you went to a crappy school. But my undergrad years were, mostly, a great learning experience, in both CS and in my electives. I've learned a lot since then, sure (would be a damned shame if I stopped learning two decades ago), but I can trace a lot of my self-directed education back to roots in my classes at the University of Maryland from 1987-1991.
It doesn't cost anything to show some damn respect for others' beliefs, even if you disagree.
If it doesn't cost anything, then there's no reason for the regulations regarding headwear in photos in the first place, and those regulations should be removed for everyone -- not just those claiming a religious exemption.
If, OTOH, there is some way in which wearing headgear in these photos makes them less useful, then there is a cost involved.
If the purpose of the photo is for identification, then it makes sense to allow a person to wear headgear which does not obscure their identity and which they consistently and customarily wear, whether for cultural, religious, or aesthetic (wigs, etc.) reasons. There should not be a singular exemption for religion. This brave Pastafarian's actions show the flaw in the regulations.
...in a room full of devices brought about by the space age.
Spin-offs are a lousy argument for putting humans into space. If you want neat devices for use here on Earth, give money to creative and smart people to develop those; don't give them money to create neat devices to use in orbit and then see if some of them can be adapted for use on Earth.
I think there are very good reasons to put machines into deep space, and possibly good ones to put humans into cis-lunar space. But the spin-off argument isn't one of them.
Aside from the damage to the scenery, are there any environmental consequences of shaving off the top of a mountain?
If you can seriously ask this question, shame on you for not paying attention to a huge on-going ecological disaster.
In brief: yes. Mountaintop removal has horrid consequences. From the wik:
A January 2010 report in the journal Science reviews current peer-reviewed studies and water quality data and explores the consequences of mountaintop mining. It concludes that mountaintop mining has serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address.[3] For example, the extensive tracts of deciduous forests destroyed by mountaintop mining support several endangered species and some of the highest biodiversity in North America. There is a particular problem with burial of headwater streams by valley fills which causes permanent loss of ecosystems that play critical roles in ecological processes. In addition, increases in metal ions, pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids due to elevated concentrations of sulfate are closely linked to the extent of mining in West Virginia watersheds.[3] Declines in stream biodiversity have been linked to the level of mining disturbance in West Virginia watersheds.[34]
Published studies also show a high potential for human health impacts. These may result from contact with streams or exposure to airborne toxins and dust. Adult hospitalization for chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension are elevated as a result of county-level coal production. Rates of mortality, lung cancer, as well as chronic heart, lung and kidney disease are also increased.[3]
A United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental impact statement finds that streams near some valley fills from mountaintop removal contain higher levels of minerals in the water and decreased aquatic biodiversity.[6] The statement also estimates that 724 miles (1,165 km) of Appalachian streams were buried by valley fills between 1985 to 2001.[6] On September 28 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyâ(TM)s (EPA) independent Science Advisory Board (SAB) released their first draft review of EPAâ(TM)s research into the water quality impacts of valley fills associated with mountaintop mining, agreeing with EPAâ(TM)s conclusion that valley fills are associated with increased levels of conductivity threatening aquatic life in surface waters.[35]
But when I imagined this scenario in my mind, I was imagining walking into someplace like a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and fucking them over
How is this "fucking them over"? It seems no more so than seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store, than going home and searching on-line for a better deal. Or indeed, seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store and then buying it at another brick-and-mortar store that you know has better prices. You are not ethically or legally obligated to purchase something at Store X just because you first see it at Store X.
And hell, you could easily stand in front of their table with your thumb up and have your friend shoot the picture and walk away. (You'd even own the copyright on that photo!)
If you think that studying "English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like" is "wasting your precious time", then apparently you have no interest in being an educated human being. You want a trade school, not a college or university.
If that's all you want, fine; but if I were seeking to hire someone, for anything but scutwork I'd take the educated human being with a breadth of intellectual knowledge but perhaps lacking a fine point or two of skill, over a trade school graduate with specialized but limited skills.
You might want to think more about this and come back to the question after you grow up a little.
There comes a point at which you have to draw a line.
And that line is "do your actions credibly threaten to harm another people or interfere with their rights?" Your neighbor drinking a six-pack of beer, smoking a joint, or shooting heroin does none of those things, so long as it stays in their home. Irresponsible behavior, on the other hand, is irresponsible whether its origins lie in stupidity, drug use, mental illness, or ignorance, and must be dealt with. Drug use is almost orthogonal to the question.
Personally, my ideal world would be one in which no one had any desire for chemical stimulus.
Considering that drug use is found throughout the animal kingdom, and that even capital punishment has failed to end the use of various drugs throughout human history, good luck with that. Meanwhile, those of us in the reality-based community will be working for ways to preserve liberty and reduce harm by ending the War on (Some) Drugs.
Are you saying that the decision to not force other people to cough up money to support social programs means "not loving thy neighbor"? That's absurd.
May I suggest the words of the founder of Xianity himself on taxes? "Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's." Like all property not based directly on use or occupation, money is a creation of the state; the state taking its own share back out of what it creates is not "forcing" anyone to do anything. You're free to try to live without state-created money, or state-created 'property rights" to land and the resources extracted from it. Let me know how that works out for you.
Conservatives (and the Religious Right) are far more likely than liberals to give of their **own** money to support "love thy neighbor" programs.
Conservatives are far more likely to live in states that receive more from the federal government than they pay out. To some degree, that money that red state conservatives claim as their "own" is coming from the parts of the country that are actually productive -- by and large, the bluer states.
Then there's that fact that donating to a church counts as donating to a charity. And then there's the question of who is giving more: the person who gives up a potentially lucrative career to work in one of the helping professions, or some banker fsckwad who screw people all week long and then donates to charity on Sunday?
Put it all together and yes, its pretty clear that, by and large, the mindless zealotry of the Religious Right and of the modern conservative movement does little to help the poor -- and in fact by rotting away the foundations of our economy, harms them.
It was therefore right (in the sense of the community he was working in/for) to get rid of him.
You are either ignorant of what happened to Turing, or a total asshole.
Turing was not just let go from an intelligence related job, which would be bad enough. He was convicted of "indecency" and made to undergo chemical castration via estrogen injections. There is nothing "right" about what happened to him.
The comment about your collection collecting dust should be offer a hint as to its future. If it's not a priority, it will be one of the first things to go when you need the space, are moving, etc..
My fire extinguishers also have dust on them. This does not mean they are going to be thrown away if I need more space. Frequency of access has a low correlation with value.
So someone invented a blanket term that covered several existing terms, solely to confuse people? To what end?
To profit, of course. Making patents and copyrights sound like a form of "property" makes people think that if we reign in copyright laws, its the same sort of action as the government taking away someone's house. You point out that that they could get stronger laws by simply asking Congress for them -- why do you think citizens let them get away with that shit? Because they frame it as "We're protecting property rights, just like your right to keep your house." It's bullshit, of course, but between the distractions of popular culture and the grind most citizens must endure just to pay the rent and buy food, few see through it.
As for trademark, calling it "property" lets mark holders censor discussion and stifle creativity of potential competitors. The legitimate use of trademark is consumer protection, not the ability of XYZCorp to prevent you from registering XYZCorpSucks.com
But most banks cannot create or destroy money (unless by destroy you mean remove money from people's hands).
Banks create money by loaning out more than they have.
I put $100 into a checking account at Alice's Bank. You come and borrow $50 for that same bank. I write a check for $90 to the grocery store. The grocery store has $90, you've got $50, and there's still $10 in my account -- total $150 in circulation, all from $100.
We can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, as to whether that $50 is created out of thin air or out of some value that you gave to the bank (collateral, or just your promise to repay), but there's no doubt that fractional reserve banking basically creates money.
No, but it's still stupid in that all you do is pay people according to their popularity, and give no consideration to what works are actually being read by specific people.
Money is fungible. You seem to have this visions of dollar bills with your name on them flowing to one artist or another. It does not work that way.
I just don't get the logic behind this "compensate the most popular ones"
It's the same result you get in selling any product -- the most popular ones make the most money. What is there not to "get" here?
Say back in the days of LPs, 99 people buy the album by band A and you buy the album by band B. Band A gets 99% of the album revenues. Now say that in the days of taxed downloads, 99 people download the the album by band A and you download the album by band B. Ok, Band A gets 99% of the download tax revenues. Same end result.
We can have other mechanisms, grants and the like, to support the art that's not ppopular nobody really likes but some critics think is "important".
While I do disagree with the horror that the War on Drugs has caused American society, many drugs that are illegal for recreational use simply cannot be legalized because the social problems they would create compared to the two we have to deal with now would be enormous.
What "social problems"? Every point you've mentioned is an argument for ending Prohibition. Yes, when we end Prohibition, heroin might well be safer than nicotine or hard liquor. This is a good thing.
Do you somehow think that everyone is going to become a junkie? No. Are you going to start shooting heroin into your eyeballs when it's legal? (If that is that case, then I'm sorry; but your personal weaknesses do not justify the use of force against others.)
Post-Prohibition, opium smoking or other milder opiates will be far more popular, and their popularity will to some extent displace the use of alcohol. Social problems associated with drug abuse will greatly decrease when people can inexpensively get clean drugs. And when their addictions are no longer criminalized, people who do have problems will be more willing to get help.
Copyright, to take just one form of IP, has a legal history going back at least 300 years.
Only by retcon. "Intellectual property" is a fairly new confusion, meant to obscure the distinctions between copyright, patent, and trademark. IP does not have a 300 year history.
Slashdot Mirror
And instead you're stuck with Apple's version of the cloud bullshit. Apple is certainly at least as evil, and probably more so, as Google.
My Android phone does not sync with GMail at all. You don't need to root the phone to turn it off, it's right there in Settings -- Accounts and sync.
And of course I created a separate GMail account for the phone, which I don't use for anything. (Not that I really use my main GMail account for much other than testing -- why in the world would I want to hand my e-mail over to Google for scrutiny? I'm a geek, I have a VPS.)
Relying on "the cloud" -- whether it be Google's cloud, Apple's cloud, Amazon's cloud, whoever's -- to preserve your data, is not an informed and rational choice. Fortunately, Android users do not have to make that choice.
"Synced with" does not imply "will lose data if cut off from". Furthermore, you can turn off syncing. My Android phone does not sync with GMail at all; Google does not need my contacts list.
Your post reeks of anti-Android FUD.
Why is this claptrap from a creationist, which is not published in a climatology journal but one about remote sensing technology, being treated like it was actual climate science?
What Google+ API? Has one come out in the past few days? I'm waiting, because Google+ is useless to me until I can access it via an API. I can post to Facebook or Twitter via RSS or third-party clients.
What are these "Google Ads" of which you speak? Of course you can avoid being presented with them. Yes, most people don't bother to avoid them, but you can.
Without the privacy issues? Unless you are careful, Google knows what you're searching the web for. It knows what locations you're asking directions to. It may have your e-mail on its servers. And now it has your social graph.
Google+'s privacy issues are an order of magnitude greater than Facebook's, just because it's Google.
Maybe college was better 20 years ago, or maybe you went to a crappy school. But my undergrad years were, mostly, a great learning experience, in both CS and in my electives. I've learned a lot since then, sure (would be a damned shame if I stopped learning two decades ago), but I can trace a lot of my self-directed education back to roots in my classes at the University of Maryland from 1987-1991.
You're missing the point, Mac. Most of the human race is partly of Neanderthal stock. Ipso facto, there's plenty of us still around.
If it doesn't cost anything, then there's no reason for the regulations regarding headwear in photos in the first place, and those regulations should be removed for everyone -- not just those claiming a religious exemption.
If, OTOH, there is some way in which wearing headgear in these photos makes them less useful, then there is a cost involved.
If the purpose of the photo is for identification, then it makes sense to allow a person to wear headgear which does not obscure their identity and which they consistently and customarily wear, whether for cultural, religious, or aesthetic (wigs, etc.) reasons. There should not be a singular exemption for religion. This brave Pastafarian's actions show the flaw in the regulations.
Spin-offs are a lousy argument for putting humans into space. If you want neat devices for use here on Earth, give money to creative and smart people to develop those; don't give them money to create neat devices to use in orbit and then see if some of them can be adapted for use on Earth.
I think there are very good reasons to put machines into deep space, and possibly good ones to put humans into cis-lunar space. But the spin-off argument isn't one of them.
If this is costing millions of dollars, You're Doing It Wrong.
If you can seriously ask this question, shame on you for not paying attention to a huge on-going ecological disaster.
In brief: yes. Mountaintop removal has horrid consequences. From the wik:
See also here and here and here.
How is this "fucking them over"? It seems no more so than seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store, than going home and searching on-line for a better deal. Or indeed, seeing an item in a brick-and-mortar store and then buying it at another brick-and-mortar store that you know has better prices. You are not ethically or legally obligated to purchase something at Store X just because you first see it at Store X.
You'd have violated the ethical subjectright of the author, and possibly (depending on jurisdiction) their legal right of publicity or right of privacy. Not really comparable.
If you think that studying "English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like" is "wasting your precious time", then apparently you have no interest in being an educated human being. You want a trade school, not a college or university.
If that's all you want, fine; but if I were seeking to hire someone, for anything but scutwork I'd take the educated human being with a breadth of intellectual knowledge but perhaps lacking a fine point or two of skill, over a trade school graduate with specialized but limited skills.
You might want to think more about this and come back to the question after you grow up a little.
Many people here "illegally" pay taxes. And they avoid petty crimes because of being busted can get the deported.
So, the "lazy illegal" stereotype? Bullshit.
You do know that cannabis can be consumed by means other than burning it and inhaling the smoke, right?
And that line is "do your actions credibly threaten to harm another people or interfere with their rights?" Your neighbor drinking a six-pack of beer, smoking a joint, or shooting heroin does none of those things, so long as it stays in their home. Irresponsible behavior, on the other hand, is irresponsible whether its origins lie in stupidity, drug use, mental illness, or ignorance, and must be dealt with. Drug use is almost orthogonal to the question.
Considering that drug use is found throughout the animal kingdom, and that even capital punishment has failed to end the use of various drugs throughout human history, good luck with that. Meanwhile, those of us in the reality-based community will be working for ways to preserve liberty and reduce harm by ending the War on (Some) Drugs.
May I suggest the words of the founder of Xianity himself on taxes? "Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's." Like all property not based directly on use or occupation, money is a creation of the state; the state taking its own share back out of what it creates is not "forcing" anyone to do anything. You're free to try to live without state-created money, or state-created 'property rights" to land and the resources extracted from it. Let me know how that works out for you.
Conservatives are far more likely to live in states that receive more from the federal government than they pay out. To some degree, that money that red state conservatives claim as their "own" is coming from the parts of the country that are actually productive -- by and large, the bluer states.
Then there's that fact that donating to a church counts as donating to a charity. And then there's the question of who is giving more: the person who gives up a potentially lucrative career to work in one of the helping professions, or some banker fsckwad who screw people all week long and then donates to charity on Sunday?
Put it all together and yes, its pretty clear that, by and large, the mindless zealotry of the Religious Right and of the modern conservative movement does little to help the poor -- and in fact by rotting away the foundations of our economy, harms them.
You are either ignorant of what happened to Turing, or a total asshole.
Turing was not just let go from an intelligence related job, which would be bad enough. He was convicted of "indecency" and made to undergo chemical castration via estrogen injections. There is nothing "right" about what happened to him.
My fire extinguishers also have dust on them. This does not mean they are going to be thrown away if I need more space. Frequency of access has a low correlation with value.
To profit, of course. Making patents and copyrights sound like a form of "property" makes people think that if we reign in copyright laws, its the same sort of action as the government taking away someone's house. You point out that that they could get stronger laws by simply asking Congress for them -- why do you think citizens let them get away with that shit? Because they frame it as "We're protecting property rights, just like your right to keep your house." It's bullshit, of course, but between the distractions of popular culture and the grind most citizens must endure just to pay the rent and buy food, few see through it.
As for trademark, calling it "property" lets mark holders censor discussion and stifle creativity of potential competitors. The legitimate use of trademark is consumer protection, not the ability of XYZCorp to prevent you from registering XYZCorpSucks.com
Banks create money by loaning out more than they have.
I put $100 into a checking account at Alice's Bank. You come and borrow $50 for that same bank. I write a check for $90 to the grocery store. The grocery store has $90, you've got $50, and there's still $10 in my account -- total $150 in circulation, all from $100.
We can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, as to whether that $50 is created out of thin air or out of some value that you gave to the bank (collateral, or just your promise to repay), but there's no doubt that fractional reserve banking basically creates money.
Money is fungible. You seem to have this visions of dollar bills with your name on them flowing to one artist or another. It does not work that way.
It's the same result you get in selling any product -- the most popular ones make the most money. What is there not to "get" here?
Say back in the days of LPs, 99 people buy the album by band A and you buy the album by band B. Band A gets 99% of the album revenues. Now say that in the days of taxed downloads, 99 people download the the album by band A and you download the album by band B. Ok, Band A gets 99% of the download tax revenues. Same end result.
We can have other mechanisms, grants and the like, to support the art that's not ppopular nobody really likes but some critics think is "important".
What "social problems"? Every point you've mentioned is an argument for ending Prohibition. Yes, when we end Prohibition, heroin might well be safer than nicotine or hard liquor. This is a good thing.
Do you somehow think that everyone is going to become a junkie? No. Are you going to start shooting heroin into your eyeballs when it's legal? (If that is that case, then I'm sorry; but your personal weaknesses do not justify the use of force against others.)
Post-Prohibition, opium smoking or other milder opiates will be far more popular, and their popularity will to some extent displace the use of alcohol. Social problems associated with drug abuse will greatly decrease when people can inexpensively get clean drugs. And when their addictions are no longer criminalized, people who do have problems will be more willing to get help.
Only by retcon. "Intellectual property" is a fairly new confusion, meant to obscure the distinctions between copyright, patent, and trademark. IP does not have a 300 year history.