If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel known to aggressively fund research that generates the most alarming and sensationalist predictions, doesn't think we will 'poison the waters with enough carbon' until 2100, a little less than 100 years from now, then we are in pretty good shape! Not only have we as humans already collectively been making enough change (beating our own governments goals for increasing solar panel production, and reducing alternative energy costs) to slowly halt the ongoing effects of climate change, with new emerging technologies such as improved energy storage, tomahawk fusion reactors that actually work, and god knows what we will invent tomorrow... we will probably reverse the course of ocean acidification by 2050!
That completely downplays the costs associated with filtering content. Youtubes ContentID system is far from perfect. It doesn't even hit 80% accuracy. Trying to auto-detect and ban ALL uploads of a single song is just ridiculously hard to do. And when I take a song like the beatles 'revolution' and layer it over my own unique video, basically making my own beatles music video, the resulting content should be considered 'fair use' since its a remixed work, the new work is my own. Music labels decry this as piracy but it should be considered a legitimate form of art expression, and therefore protected by free speech. ALSO: the article completely ignores the fact that music services such as spotify and Pandora are paying TOO MUCH to license music from labels. They used to have to pay one royalty to play one song on their service. Then the music industry manipulated the government and now Pandora has to pay one royalty to play one song FOR EACH USER. When you have thousands of users listening simultaneously, thats a LOT of royalty fees.
From my point of view, its not that youtube isn't paying enough, its that everyone else is being forced to pay too much.
Here is the main problem I see with using the Blockchain for identity purposes:
1) Government Introduces fancy new blockchain identity system
2) I take your Government-issued-id, social-security-number (stolen via already used methods) and maybe even your fingerprint that I lifted from your coffee mug
3) I take your 'records' to the government office, register your info in the blockchain, and get the private key sent to myself
4) I now have control over your blockchain-issued identity. I can use this to conduct identity theft, getting credit cards, wellfare, car loans, all in your name
5) Now because the blockchain is 'immutable' unless all the miners on the blockchain are government owned, no one can 'correct' the entry I have control of your identity and no one can change it! bwahahaha
The ONE SINGULAR benefit of centralized government control of this database is that I can go to a judge and say 'this guy isn't me, someone stole my identity, and I think that someone is Jim'. Then the judge can have jim brought before the court, have him tried of identity theft, and even if jim doesn't get jail time, the judge can have the government documents modified so that I am now in control, I can use the law to have the credit reporting agencies correct their reports and scrub the entries created by JIM because I have the judicial verdict to show them
Because scaling the transactions was becoming a problem. SegWit is supposed to allow for future development of the 'lighting network' which is supposed to allow thousands of transactions a second instead of just hundreds. Its a technological problem, for which there are multiple solutions. We'll just have to let the market work itself out.
Interesting times if you are an amateur economist.
If they set up arbitrary procedures, review boards etc. to handle FOIA requests, thats not our fault. Its the fault of the agencies. The fact is most of this information is NOT readily available to the public because these agencies all have something to hide. PII is to often used as an excuse to redact information that makes a bureaucrat look bad personally. Heck, even if it does violate 4th admendment, they should release the information. That will make people wake up and realize just how much info the government is collecting on us and then maybe there would be more backlash against this trend. If the FBI has any personally identifiable information about me I want to know! And I want everyone else to know that they know!
Some of my relatives are 'whiskey snobs' and would make fun of me for diluting it (just slightly) with water for better taste. Now I can tell them I have science to back me up!
Because enforcing copyright law with 100% accuracy on a video sharing website is basically impossible. Doing it with even 80% accuracy is highly improbable.
The government does not maintain an infallible list of all content that is copyrighted and who the copyright owners are. Therefore there is no such 'list' that a program can reference to identify copyrighted (and more importantly, non-copyrighted or public domain) works with 100% accuracy. Compound that with the fact that there is no program, deep learned or not, that can identify video with 100% accuracy and you have to conclude that there will ALWAYS be so-called 'illegal' copyrighted content on video and file sharing websites.
Maybe instead of continuing to have laws that defy technological reality, we can just reform our copyright laws. Any by 'reform' I mean 'abolish'. (Though some would be happy with 'reduce copyright term to some arbitrary number less than life of author + 150 years)
I come to slashdot for the community that tears apart mainstream science articles that overly hype or misrepresent the content of the actual study
I come to slashdot for the politics of open source vs. proprietary closed source code.
I come to slashdot for the articles regarding politicians attempt to compromise our communication networks in the guise of 'safety' or 'fighting terrorism/pedophiles'
I come to slashdot for articles about new tech breakthroughs that could effect our lives in the near-future
I don't come to slashdot for general politics, if there is only one article on the front page related to an issue that every other news blog/website is loosing their minds over, i'm fine with that. Better one article about the subject that is vaguely related to tech than dozens of articles about the same damn thing like/r/politics
reproducing psilocybin is way, WAAY easier than reproducing cannabis in bacteria. I say cannabis and not "THC" because while THC has been reproduced in a chemical laboratory, there are about 12 different variants, and hundreds of other terpenes and cannabinoids in the cannabis plant that are unidentified, chemical reproduction procedures are unknown, and how they interact with THC and the human brain are mostly unkown. psilocybin is basically just one chemical, while the cannabis plant is dozens of different chemicals, and different strains produce different combinations that effect humans differently. This is why some strains of weed give people energy and focus, while other strains cause 'couch lock' making a user feel sedated, pain-free and want to sit down and listen to music:) Some strains cause the 'munchies' and are very effective at relieving nausea, while others are not. How these mechanisms work and how they can be reproduced in a laboratory is mostly unknown. Every single cannabis plant is basically a miniature chemical producing facility so trying to get this to work with E. coli is a lot more complicated than you might think.
just using straight up THC is undesirable for many medical patients and even recreational users
Fundamental human rights are fundamental to all humans, just because some Governments don't respect citizens rights doesn't mean those citizens don't have rights, it just means their government is morally bankrupt. Read the declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson, it wasn't just a declaration of human rights for Americans, it was a declaration for all mankind.
When governments become corrupt abusers, it is not just the right, nay the DUTY of the abused to rise up, overthrow the government, and institute a new form of government that will respect the rights of the people and derive their power from the consent of the governed.
The Chinese government opened up the genie bottle when they let their citizens own property and earn wages from selling labor. Now that the citizens have had a taste of freedom they will inevitably demand more. It might take time and a few setbacks, but eventually there will be revolution. Its just the natural course of human events...
Oh man, there is a huge body of philosophical, moral, religious, and political writings about natural rights, their origin and application. Unfortunately its not part of any official school curriculum so when you come across someone well-versed in the subject talking about it... well its like trying to understand concepts of multiplication without understanding addition. Tom Woods recently did an excellent speech introducing the origins of it:
http://tomwoods.com/ep-969-whe...
unfortunately he doesn't have any links on that page to written work on the subject. I have read some EXCELLENT primers on the topic, but of course can't remember/find any of them right now. So now I am in the unenviable position of trying to explain the topic (as an armchair philosopher) in a few sentences to someone on the internet, hoping to word it in such a way that it doesn't seem ridiculous.
It starts of with a basic proposition, that all humans own their own bodies. That is to say, a rational adult has exclusive control over their own bodies. Even in tribal pre-historical society, if I tried to come up to you and cut your organs out for an experiment, the other tribemembers would have some serious problems with this. You at LEAST need the person's permission before carving them up. This basic moral reasoning, that you can't just go around chopping up other people, seems to be a moral universal standard. (Yes I know, barbarians, solders and war and all that, but its usually two tribes in conflict, we are focusing on behavior amongst tribe members in a somewhat civilized society) From this moral universal standard that people own their own bodies, and therefore have exclusive control over it (deciding to get it pierced or tattooed or not, deciding to donate an organ, etc.) from that one basic principle, you can also (in a perfectly logical, rational way) derive property rights, from which all other 'natural rights' come from. Its not that lighting will strike you if you murder another person or anything, its that it is a biological reality that only I can control the movements of my arms, the speech coming from my mouth, and the people I choose to associate with. Attempting to prevent a person from moving their body, generating certain sounds from their mouth, or associating with certain people can be considered universally morally wrong, because it violates the basic universal moral standard (and biological reality) that people own/control their own bodies, and shouldn't be stopped from doing so unless it is harming another person in some way.
please listen to the podcast i linked to, as it goes into more depth in the subject and is more eloquent than my writing. Its also worth noting that John Locke is considered the 'breakthrough writer' who took what people had been discussing regarding 'natural rights' for several centuries, and put it together into a comprehensive philosophy. This philosophy greatly influenced the American Revolution and the thinking of our first 4 presidents, who enshrined these concepts in American Law. Read any of John Locks books today, still a great read, and may not seem revolutionary today, but remember he published his books anonymously because his head would have been chopped off by monarchs if he didn't. His writing was LITERALLY revolutionary, as it inspired revolution amongst the colonies, and influenced western law in several countries for two centuries and counting.
Yeah cause we can trust that this advanced location tracking feature won't be abused by governments to spy on its citizens. Its not like apple had to stand up against the intelligence industrial complex of multiple nations and tell them that encryption is part of the right of free speech and they won't submit to weakened encryption, or assist governments in decrypting phones outside of due process and in violations of ones 4th amendment rights.
For non-americans out there: 4th amendment right is your right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Its a right that pre-dates and existed before the United States, is an unalienable right of all humans not just Americans, and if your government doesn't already promise/guarantee such a right in a written and binding document similar to the U.S constitution, you should demand one from your government!
Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker? Then you miss an important exit in the time it takes the GPS to regain signal and re-calculate?
This happened several times for me, along with the realization that I was becoming more and more directionally challenged by relying 100% on GPS. I still use GPS to this day. But you know what? Usually before you click the 'guide me with your sweet voice, robot lady' button, the GPS app (google maps for me) plots out a course on a map for you that is zoomable and superior to any written map. I take a few minutes to analyze the route, using my brain to plot out the course and making notes of possible alternative routes. This way you have the course in your head, you can still get there if the GPS signal is lost or the app crashes, you are still exercising the part of your brain that modern humans should keep, and you can rely on the GPS lady until things go awry.
I recommend all humans do this, you never know when you will be without a GPS device in your hometown (or even farther!) trying to get home. Its a basic survival technique, and I have learned over the years not to let basic survival techniques be lost to technological dependence. (e.g. know how to use CPR, and don't expect to be able to look up on youtube 'how to perform CPR' in an emergency)
Also: If you live in America and you are going from one state to another, you don't really need GPS, or a map to get there. The roads are numbered according to orientation, the signs are aplenty leading you to the next major destination. If you are in New Mexico and want to go to Denver, just follow signs for 'Pueblo' then follow signs for 'Denver'. Its probably the most user-friendly road navigation system ever created.
I guess i just disagree with what they call "Moderate Regulation" looked at some of the states listed as that and it still seems pretty harsh, so thats more like 21 states with lots of mandates. That's still better than I thought it was so thanks for the reference!
Chicago's "Plan" already ruined most of these kids lives by giving them terrible education. Illinois's "Plan" has the whole state on the edge of bankruptcy, unable to pay its current bills and having to call an emergency session of congress. Yes, these people should TOTALLY be making a "Plan" for our kids to plan their future. OR they can shut the f up and let the kids dig the state out of the hole the planners created.
We need to get rid of state mandates for public education. Before you freak out, notice I didn't say 'Get Rid of public education' I said 'get rid of mandates'.
I would much rather put my kid through Coursera, Khan Academy, Liberty Classrom, or "Ron Paul's Home school Curriculum" but if the state I live in mandates my kid still go to what is essential a prison for 8 hours a day to be taught a bunch of falsehoods like "World War II got us out of the great depression" and "Alexander Hamilton was a great founding father" or "The constitution is a living document" then all the great "Netflixes of education" in the world won't help. Kids get burned out by bad "education" systems and then think learning isn't fun.
Rule of law absolutely helps protect the people, their property, and ensures that companies make money ethically without trampling on the rights of others. Unelected bureaucratic regulatory agencies? Not so much. They usually end up being 'captured' by the very industries they pretend to regulate. In many cases in history the industry itself actually asks/calls for regulation, so that they can take it over and end up with an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
I have hemmed and hawed about how closed off and unrepairable/un-upgradable the smart devices are these days. When my PC's hard drive breaks, i just buy a new one and place it in there. Can't play the latest video game? Looks like I just need to upgrade the graphics card. System getting slower and unresponsive every day? Time to re-install the OS and start with a fresh clean slate! I can't do ANY of these with my old smart devices. I have an old samsung phone i would love to install a fresh image on, because it would make an excellent Mp3 player with its vast storage and touch screen. To bad there is no legit way to install a new OS onto the thing.
As much as I want to blame the 'evil manufacturers' I don't see many people willing to take their smartphones in for repair. The cellular companies often will replace a broken phone for free or at a severely discounted rate and customers don't seem to mind trading in their two year old phones that still work just fine and would be even better if the OS could be freshly installed, for a brand new phone offered for FREE by the cellular network company. I blame the consumers for not caring that their freedom to repair and reuse electronics is being taken away. I blame the consumers and manufacturers for being so uncaring about what this does to the environment. WE are ultimately the problem and I'm not sure a law can fix this any more than a law banning sale of alcohol can get rid of alcoholism
Well I completely disagree, sure on a spiritual, philosophical level the primary goal of each person should not be to make money. But if you are providing a service others find valuable, or manufacturing a product millions of others want to buy, you are doing good in this world. Unlike the time of Jesus its possible to make money in an ethical fashion. I sometimes even wonder who has done more to feed the world, the catholic church which donates millions of dollars every year and thousands of canned goods to the homeless? Or McDonalds, which has served BILLIONS and BILLIONS of hamburgers for such a low cost even a panhandler can pay for a meal after just an hour of begging on the streets?
Once again politics tries to divide us and make US-Russia relations worse, while commerce tries to keep us together because it turns out it doesn't matter what country you are from, we ALL want to MAKE MONEY!
For any country to think they can force their political views on a company operating out of another country. I wonder, if Google has no Canadian offices, no Canadian employees, what, if anything, can Canada actually DO to enforce this ruling? Can't Google ignore the ruling? Wouldn't some Libertarians argue they have a moral obligation to ignore the ruling? (since it obviously infringes on the freedom of speech, and negatively effects Googles customers)
Video games have pioneered this territory already, the greatest results being "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" and "Mass Effect" which resemble "Choose your own adventure movies" Look to the studio telltales' "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" which resemble "Choose your own adventure T.V. Series" They all expose a huge limitation which is basically, "No, the user will not be 'writing' their own stories"
what ends up happening is you write about 2-3 "serious branches" that affect the main plotline, this ends up giving you about 3-5 different stories with the same basic exposition and denouement. you can generate several more branches for side plots that don't really effect the main story, but every choice you give the 'viewer' or 'player' doubles the amount of content you create. In the serial games made by telltale, they usually branch out in the beggining, but will 'funnel back' into the same starting point for season 2. So yeah, you decided to save the accountant instead of the shopkeeper, but 4 episodes later the accountant ends up dying anyway so it doesn't really effect the over arching plot
The most polished example IMHO was "Star Wars: Knights of the old republic" in that game you don't really 'chose your own story' No matter what choices you make, you will be come a jedi in the first act and defeat the evil villain in the third act. But what your choices DO affect is the tone and context. If you make mostly "light side of the force" decisions, the story is a tale of redemption. If you make mostly 'dark side' choices it ends up being a tale of revenge. They both make sense in the overall context of the plot, both have an amazing twist in the second act, both can effect you emotionally, but at the end of the day no matter what decisions you make, you experience the same story as everyone else
i'm pretty sure netflix series are going to end up doing the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel known to aggressively fund research that generates the most alarming and sensationalist predictions, doesn't think we will 'poison the waters with enough carbon' until 2100, a little less than 100 years from now, then we are in pretty good shape! Not only have we as humans already collectively been making enough change (beating our own governments goals for increasing solar panel production, and reducing alternative energy costs) to slowly halt the ongoing effects of climate change, with new emerging technologies such as improved energy storage, tomahawk fusion reactors that actually work, and god knows what we will invent tomorrow... we will probably reverse the course of ocean acidification by 2050!
Now if we could just get him to apologize for Windows 98, ME, and 10...
That completely downplays the costs associated with filtering content. Youtubes ContentID system is far from perfect. It doesn't even hit 80% accuracy. Trying to auto-detect and ban ALL uploads of a single song is just ridiculously hard to do. And when I take a song like the beatles 'revolution' and layer it over my own unique video, basically making my own beatles music video, the resulting content should be considered 'fair use' since its a remixed work, the new work is my own. Music labels decry this as piracy but it should be considered a legitimate form of art expression, and therefore protected by free speech. ALSO: the article completely ignores the fact that music services such as spotify and Pandora are paying TOO MUCH to license music from labels. They used to have to pay one royalty to play one song on their service. Then the music industry manipulated the government and now Pandora has to pay one royalty to play one song FOR EACH USER. When you have thousands of users listening simultaneously, thats a LOT of royalty fees.
From my point of view, its not that youtube isn't paying enough, its that everyone else is being forced to pay too much.
The ONE SINGULAR benefit of centralized government control of this database is that I can go to a judge and say 'this guy isn't me, someone stole my identity, and I think that someone is Jim'. Then the judge can have jim brought before the court, have him tried of identity theft, and even if jim doesn't get jail time, the judge can have the government documents modified so that I am now in control, I can use the law to have the credit reporting agencies correct their reports and scrub the entries created by JIM because I have the judicial verdict to show them
Because scaling the transactions was becoming a problem. SegWit is supposed to allow for future development of the 'lighting network' which is supposed to allow thousands of transactions a second instead of just hundreds. Its a technological problem, for which there are multiple solutions. We'll just have to let the market work itself out.
Interesting times if you are an amateur economist.
If they set up arbitrary procedures, review boards etc. to handle FOIA requests, thats not our fault. Its the fault of the agencies. The fact is most of this information is NOT readily available to the public because these agencies all have something to hide. PII is to often used as an excuse to redact information that makes a bureaucrat look bad personally. Heck, even if it does violate 4th admendment, they should release the information. That will make people wake up and realize just how much info the government is collecting on us and then maybe there would be more backlash against this trend. If the FBI has any personally identifiable information about me I want to know! And I want everyone else to know that they know!
Some of my relatives are 'whiskey snobs' and would make fun of me for diluting it (just slightly) with water for better taste. Now I can tell them I have science to back me up!
Because enforcing copyright law with 100% accuracy on a video sharing website is basically impossible. Doing it with even 80% accuracy is highly improbable.
The government does not maintain an infallible list of all content that is copyrighted and who the copyright owners are. Therefore there is no such 'list' that a program can reference to identify copyrighted (and more importantly, non-copyrighted or public domain) works with 100% accuracy. Compound that with the fact that there is no program, deep learned or not, that can identify video with 100% accuracy and you have to conclude that there will ALWAYS be so-called 'illegal' copyrighted content on video and file sharing websites.
Maybe instead of continuing to have laws that defy technological reality, we can just reform our copyright laws. Any by 'reform' I mean 'abolish'. (Though some would be happy with 'reduce copyright term to some arbitrary number less than life of author + 150 years)
I come to slashdot for the community that tears apart mainstream science articles that overly hype or misrepresent the content of the actual study
/r/politics
I come to slashdot for the politics of open source vs. proprietary closed source code.
I come to slashdot for the articles regarding politicians attempt to compromise our communication networks in the guise of 'safety' or 'fighting terrorism/pedophiles'
I come to slashdot for articles about new tech breakthroughs that could effect our lives in the near-future
I don't come to slashdot for general politics, if there is only one article on the front page related to an issue that every other news blog/website is loosing their minds over, i'm fine with that. Better one article about the subject that is vaguely related to tech than dozens of articles about the same damn thing like
reproducing psilocybin is way, WAAY easier than reproducing cannabis in bacteria. I say cannabis and not "THC" because while THC has been reproduced in a chemical laboratory, there are about 12 different variants, and hundreds of other terpenes and cannabinoids in the cannabis plant that are unidentified, chemical reproduction procedures are unknown, and how they interact with THC and the human brain are mostly unkown. psilocybin is basically just one chemical, while the cannabis plant is dozens of different chemicals, and different strains produce different combinations that effect humans differently. This is why some strains of weed give people energy and focus, while other strains cause 'couch lock' making a user feel sedated, pain-free and want to sit down and listen to music :) Some strains cause the 'munchies' and are very effective at relieving nausea, while others are not. How these mechanisms work and how they can be reproduced in a laboratory is mostly unknown. Every single cannabis plant is basically a miniature chemical producing facility so trying to get this to work with E. coli is a lot more complicated than you might think.
just using straight up THC is undesirable for many medical patients and even recreational users
SOURCE: I've been living in Colorado for 2 years
Fundamental human rights are fundamental to all humans, just because some Governments don't respect citizens rights doesn't mean those citizens don't have rights, it just means their government is morally bankrupt. Read the declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson, it wasn't just a declaration of human rights for Americans, it was a declaration for all mankind.
When governments become corrupt abusers, it is not just the right, nay the DUTY of the abused to rise up, overthrow the government, and institute a new form of government that will respect the rights of the people and derive their power from the consent of the governed.
The Chinese government opened up the genie bottle when they let their citizens own property and earn wages from selling labor. Now that the citizens have had a taste of freedom they will inevitably demand more. It might take time and a few setbacks, but eventually there will be revolution. Its just the natural course of human events...
Oh man, there is a huge body of philosophical, moral, religious, and political writings about natural rights, their origin and application. Unfortunately its not part of any official school curriculum so when you come across someone well-versed in the subject talking about it... well its like trying to understand concepts of multiplication without understanding addition. Tom Woods recently did an excellent speech introducing the origins of it: http://tomwoods.com/ep-969-whe... unfortunately he doesn't have any links on that page to written work on the subject. I have read some EXCELLENT primers on the topic, but of course can't remember/find any of them right now. So now I am in the unenviable position of trying to explain the topic (as an armchair philosopher) in a few sentences to someone on the internet, hoping to word it in such a way that it doesn't seem ridiculous.
It starts of with a basic proposition, that all humans own their own bodies. That is to say, a rational adult has exclusive control over their own bodies. Even in tribal pre-historical society, if I tried to come up to you and cut your organs out for an experiment, the other tribemembers would have some serious problems with this. You at LEAST need the person's permission before carving them up. This basic moral reasoning, that you can't just go around chopping up other people, seems to be a moral universal standard. (Yes I know, barbarians, solders and war and all that, but its usually two tribes in conflict, we are focusing on behavior amongst tribe members in a somewhat civilized society) From this moral universal standard that people own their own bodies, and therefore have exclusive control over it (deciding to get it pierced or tattooed or not, deciding to donate an organ, etc.) from that one basic principle, you can also (in a perfectly logical, rational way) derive property rights, from which all other 'natural rights' come from. Its not that lighting will strike you if you murder another person or anything, its that it is a biological reality that only I can control the movements of my arms, the speech coming from my mouth, and the people I choose to associate with. Attempting to prevent a person from moving their body, generating certain sounds from their mouth, or associating with certain people can be considered universally morally wrong, because it violates the basic universal moral standard (and biological reality) that people own/control their own bodies, and shouldn't be stopped from doing so unless it is harming another person in some way.
please listen to the podcast i linked to, as it goes into more depth in the subject and is more eloquent than my writing. Its also worth noting that John Locke is considered the 'breakthrough writer' who took what people had been discussing regarding 'natural rights' for several centuries, and put it together into a comprehensive philosophy. This philosophy greatly influenced the American Revolution and the thinking of our first 4 presidents, who enshrined these concepts in American Law. Read any of John Locks books today, still a great read, and may not seem revolutionary today, but remember he published his books anonymously because his head would have been chopped off by monarchs if he didn't. His writing was LITERALLY revolutionary, as it inspired revolution amongst the colonies, and influenced western law in several countries for two centuries and counting.
Yeah cause we can trust that this advanced location tracking feature won't be abused by governments to spy on its citizens. Its not like apple had to stand up against the intelligence industrial complex of multiple nations and tell them that encryption is part of the right of free speech and they won't submit to weakened encryption, or assist governments in decrypting phones outside of due process and in violations of ones 4th amendment rights.
For non-americans out there: 4th amendment right is your right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Its a right that pre-dates and existed before the United States, is an unalienable right of all humans not just Americans, and if your government doesn't already promise/guarantee such a right in a written and binding document similar to the U.S constitution, you should demand one from your government!
Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker? Then you miss an important exit in the time it takes the GPS to regain signal and re-calculate? This happened several times for me, along with the realization that I was becoming more and more directionally challenged by relying 100% on GPS. I still use GPS to this day. But you know what? Usually before you click the 'guide me with your sweet voice, robot lady' button, the GPS app (google maps for me) plots out a course on a map for you that is zoomable and superior to any written map. I take a few minutes to analyze the route, using my brain to plot out the course and making notes of possible alternative routes. This way you have the course in your head, you can still get there if the GPS signal is lost or the app crashes, you are still exercising the part of your brain that modern humans should keep, and you can rely on the GPS lady until things go awry.
I recommend all humans do this, you never know when you will be without a GPS device in your hometown (or even farther!) trying to get home. Its a basic survival technique, and I have learned over the years not to let basic survival techniques be lost to technological dependence. (e.g. know how to use CPR, and don't expect to be able to look up on youtube 'how to perform CPR' in an emergency)
Also: If you live in America and you are going from one state to another, you don't really need GPS, or a map to get there. The roads are numbered according to orientation, the signs are aplenty leading you to the next major destination. If you are in New Mexico and want to go to Denver, just follow signs for 'Pueblo' then follow signs for 'Denver'. Its probably the most user-friendly road navigation system ever created.
I guess i just disagree with what they call "Moderate Regulation" looked at some of the states listed as that and it still seems pretty harsh, so thats more like 21 states with lots of mandates. That's still better than I thought it was so thanks for the reference!
Chicago's "Plan" already ruined most of these kids lives by giving them terrible education. Illinois's "Plan" has the whole state on the edge of bankruptcy, unable to pay its current bills and having to call an emergency session of congress. Yes, these people should TOTALLY be making a "Plan" for our kids to plan their future. OR they can shut the f up and let the kids dig the state out of the hole the planners created.
We need to get rid of state mandates for public education. Before you freak out, notice I didn't say 'Get Rid of public education' I said 'get rid of mandates'. I would much rather put my kid through Coursera, Khan Academy, Liberty Classrom, or "Ron Paul's Home school Curriculum" but if the state I live in mandates my kid still go to what is essential a prison for 8 hours a day to be taught a bunch of falsehoods like "World War II got us out of the great depression" and "Alexander Hamilton was a great founding father" or "The constitution is a living document" then all the great "Netflixes of education" in the world won't help. Kids get burned out by bad "education" systems and then think learning isn't fun.
Rule of law absolutely helps protect the people, their property, and ensures that companies make money ethically without trampling on the rights of others. Unelected bureaucratic regulatory agencies? Not so much. They usually end up being 'captured' by the very industries they pretend to regulate. In many cases in history the industry itself actually asks/calls for regulation, so that they can take it over and end up with an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
I have hemmed and hawed about how closed off and unrepairable/un-upgradable the smart devices are these days. When my PC's hard drive breaks, i just buy a new one and place it in there. Can't play the latest video game? Looks like I just need to upgrade the graphics card. System getting slower and unresponsive every day? Time to re-install the OS and start with a fresh clean slate! I can't do ANY of these with my old smart devices. I have an old samsung phone i would love to install a fresh image on, because it would make an excellent Mp3 player with its vast storage and touch screen. To bad there is no legit way to install a new OS onto the thing.
As much as I want to blame the 'evil manufacturers' I don't see many people willing to take their smartphones in for repair. The cellular companies often will replace a broken phone for free or at a severely discounted rate and customers don't seem to mind trading in their two year old phones that still work just fine and would be even better if the OS could be freshly installed, for a brand new phone offered for FREE by the cellular network company. I blame the consumers for not caring that their freedom to repair and reuse electronics is being taken away. I blame the consumers and manufacturers for being so uncaring about what this does to the environment. WE are ultimately the problem and I'm not sure a law can fix this any more than a law banning sale of alcohol can get rid of alcoholism
Well I completely disagree, sure on a spiritual, philosophical level the primary goal of each person should not be to make money. But if you are providing a service others find valuable, or manufacturing a product millions of others want to buy, you are doing good in this world. Unlike the time of Jesus its possible to make money in an ethical fashion. I sometimes even wonder who has done more to feed the world, the catholic church which donates millions of dollars every year and thousands of canned goods to the homeless? Or McDonalds, which has served BILLIONS and BILLIONS of hamburgers for such a low cost even a panhandler can pay for a meal after just an hour of begging on the streets?
Once again politics tries to divide us and make US-Russia relations worse, while commerce tries to keep us together because it turns out it doesn't matter what country you are from, we ALL want to MAKE MONEY!
For any country to think they can force their political views on a company operating out of another country. I wonder, if Google has no Canadian offices, no Canadian employees, what, if anything, can Canada actually DO to enforce this ruling? Can't Google ignore the ruling? Wouldn't some Libertarians argue they have a moral obligation to ignore the ruling? (since it obviously infringes on the freedom of speech, and negatively effects Googles customers)
Science is answering the real questions!
Video games have pioneered this territory already, the greatest results being "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" and "Mass Effect" which resemble "Choose your own adventure movies" Look to the studio telltales' "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" which resemble "Choose your own adventure T.V. Series" They all expose a huge limitation which is basically, "No, the user will not be 'writing' their own stories"
what ends up happening is you write about 2-3 "serious branches" that affect the main plotline, this ends up giving you about 3-5 different stories with the same basic exposition and denouement. you can generate several more branches for side plots that don't really effect the main story, but every choice you give the 'viewer' or 'player' doubles the amount of content you create. In the serial games made by telltale, they usually branch out in the beggining, but will 'funnel back' into the same starting point for season 2. So yeah, you decided to save the accountant instead of the shopkeeper, but 4 episodes later the accountant ends up dying anyway so it doesn't really effect the over arching plot
The most polished example IMHO was "Star Wars: Knights of the old republic" in that game you don't really 'chose your own story' No matter what choices you make, you will be come a jedi in the first act and defeat the evil villain in the third act. But what your choices DO affect is the tone and context. If you make mostly "light side of the force" decisions, the story is a tale of redemption. If you make mostly 'dark side' choices it ends up being a tale of revenge. They both make sense in the overall context of the plot, both have an amazing twist in the second act, both can effect you emotionally, but at the end of the day no matter what decisions you make, you experience the same story as everyone else
i'm pretty sure netflix series are going to end up doing the same thing.
Finally, a college who's textbooks don't cost $200 (used) and can be sold back for $50 at the end of the semester!