"...but you'll never in our lifetime get people "comfortable" with some creepy asshole filming them out in public. " are you young? I can see many technologies in use today that would be seen as 'creepy' and never going to be accepted in the 70's.
People will get used to it, because people can get use to anything.
People might "get over" in broad strokes the concept of stationary security cameras, but I have a hard time believing we'll ever be "A-Okay" with roving glassholes filming everything, everywhere, including them. Consider: Still cameras have existed for 150+ years and to-this-day we have violent physical confrontations involving people who don't want to be photographed by creepy strangers on the street. I have a hard time believing a technology to make such rude and invasive behavior "normal" is going to work. Probably the early adopters will just keep getting beaten up until the fad ends and the next "revolutionary useless technology" comes along.
Given that much more hidden spy cameras are available for far less than the $1500 cost of Glass, what will it take for general acceptance to finally take hold?
Your question is nonsensical: Those people would likely be even more furious if they knew your clothes were covered in pinhole spy cameras.
The problem is people don't like having creepy strangers record them in public, regardless of whether they have the "right" to do so or not. The issue is the human discomfort and you might get to a point where people won't just kick your ass for looking at them while wearing Google Glass (or similar invasive, idiotic, and useless products) but you'll never in our lifetime get people "comfortable" with some creepy asshole filming them out in public. Nor will you ever get them comfortable with the perception that they're being recorded.
I wonder what the over/under on somebody hacking Google Glass to disable the "recording" light is--assuming such a hack doesn't exist already in the wild and we just haven't heard about it.
The constitutional protections, and by extension US citizens, take in in the ass yet again.
I am not aware of a constitutional right to commit fraud. The project this person agreed to appear in bore zero resemblance to this one, and while it is true--she definitely has no right to control the work product she agreed to appear in, she has every right to sue over this other work that essentially puts her in the crosshairs of terrorists--totally without permission.
Why would anybody favor such an expensive and ineffective option (with so many shortcomings) when the carriers could just be required to keep a database of unique identifiers (don't quote me--I think they're called IMEI numbers) of phones reported stolen and simply blacklist those phones from their networks.
Then, a person can report their phone stolen and the carriers make it useless because none of them are allowed to service it while it is in the "stolen" database.
Yes, that's what co-location is: Somebody else pays you for physical access to your site for long-term deployment of equipment. So the "physical access" requirement isn't exactly some sort of "evil scheme" netflix invented to screw over Comcast.
This part is nonsensical:
Everything from physical access requirements to the ol' "By the way we may host other, non-Netflix content on these things in the future, and we'll charge people for the privilege, but you'll still have to treat it as Netflix data and not expect any money for carrying it on your network".
1) They already charge people to access their service now, and in a way that apparently harms Comcast/ISPs in general, so we have zero difference from the status quo--the ISPs already have accepted this as "normal" and I don't see how they can ever change that without essentially erasing the entire Internet and starting over.
2) If Netflix hosts other people's data on those systems... so what? It's to Comcast's benefit--the more content that users stream that way (as opposed to over their expensive peering links) the happier their customers will be.
3) Comcast already gets money to carry all of this data--they get it from their subscribers. They're caterwauling for a double-dip opportunity--the right to bill not just for bandwidth to users, but for the same bandwidth again to companies providing content.
Netflix has a program where they'll colocate some servers containing a content cache on a segment of the ISPs network so that their peering connections aren't getting beaten to death--why wouldn't these companies get involved in such a program other than as a means to squeeze more money from Netflix, their subscribers, or both.
Sure they are. I know quite a few people who were fired with crazy good severance packages. Sure, they weren't set for life, but being able to piss around for 3 months before even _starting_ to look for a job is sure as hell an overpayment.
But that's just the point: It is extremely rare for somebody outside of the C-suite to get such a privilege.
Outside of c-level executives, such lavish and generous severance packages are occasionally found in situations where the person worked at a place for decades and got laid off in year 25 or something like that. There is no other job category I can name where you can completely just ruin the business, screw the pooch utterly, and still not just get severance, but indeed, be contractually entitled to walk away with a multi-million dollar severance package. Most people fired for cause (i.e. incompetence) are not given fat severance packages--they may get 4-6 weeks pay in exchange for signing something saying they won't sue the company, but that would basically be it. But even if your professional bud gets three whole months salary, so what?
C-suite guys routinely get fired with millions in their pockets.
The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay "feels really crappy" is not a problem. The fact that executive pay being so disproportionate to employee pay destabilizes society by destroying the middle class is a problem!
Not to mention that it also, over time, erodes and eventually destroys the value in these companies as they shed employees and shunt more and more of the profits to the C-suite for disbursement as bonuses, high salaries, and lavish perks. That massive largesse encourages the taking of huge risks to generate the short-term gains required to ring up the eye-popping bonuses.
When they fail, the company gets hurt, maybe goes bankrupt, but the price is payed by working people in the form of layoffs.
It would distort the free market and no one would take the risk or the very hard work like 70 hour work weeks, MBAs, and other things for dozens of years without the compensation.
Doing so would make great talent do something else or not try as hard and everyone looses out.
Once upon a time these earnings were effectively capped by vigorous oversight from boards of directors, and that didn't seem to create a mass-exodus of talent, nor did it in-any-way slow down innovation or competition.
Plus, if somebody is really so "talented" they have "earned" $100 million per year I would postulate their time would be better spent starting their own business so instead of just getting a "cut" of the company's profits he gets all of them. Certainly if he's actually worth $100 million he's got more than enough talent to make that happen.
If someone is paid too much the market takes care of that with something called a firing.
CEOs aren't "fired" the same way you and I are. You want them gone? Great! You trigger their golden parachute and they're set for life! Such total lack of accountability is what leads to blundering performers walking away richer than an oil tycoon for delivering zero value, or in some cases, erasing millions in value through mismanagement. Sears comes to mind, as the spectacular recent example of some arrogant hedge-fund asshole negotiating an enormous pay package for himself and then nearly putting the company under in just a couple short years.
And the fact that you'd try to conflate such masters of the universe with a salaryman's layoff sort of underscores why your point of view is more than a little half baked. Maybe quarter-baked? But even that's generous.
Everybody else's full-handle is used in their submissions (including people with SPACES and names 3-5x longer than mine) so why am I "Karl C" and not "Karl Cocknozzle?"
Truncating my last name is an insult to generations of Cocknozzles that have come before me.
"No, you shouldn't worry about prioritization, in fact it can help startups."
What? Wasn't that what everyone was worried about to begin with? That those with all the purse strings would be able to lock out these very startups you're claiming will benefit the most from this setup?
Their comments fly in the face of logic and basic economics.
Once the ISPs can double-dip, charging twice for the same bandwidth, there will exist a tremendous disincentive to carrying any traffic they can't double-dip on. Worst case scenario, "startups" without enormous financial backing will simply be stuck on the Internet slow-lane.
Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"?
If the person walking down the sidewalk is mixed in with the protesters they may not. But shutting down cell towers effects everyone in the area not just a few people who may be innocently mixed in with the protesters. Add the fact that most people not involved are going to avoid protest area and your argument is fallacious.
Tell that to the several hundred New Yorkers arrested during Occupy Wall Street whose only crime was working adjacent to where Occupy was holding action that day. What's fallacious is the idea that people not following the protests, or protest movements, have any clue when, where, or why protests would be going on in order to "avoid" the area. Occupy was in Zucotti partk, but then they'd move around the city with announcements on Twitter--if I'm not protesting (or not "with" whatever movement they're protesting on behalf of) why would I be following them on Twitter?
Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names?
As phone location information gets more accurate they just have to identify them by geographic location. Even with current technology this is going to cause far less collateral damage than shutting down whole cell towers. And I never said anything about only affecting the protestors. It's simple a case of limiting collateral damage.
Except we've already established that "geographic location" is insufficient in most major cities... Am I "on the list" because my phone is on my desk by the window and a protest is going on outside? How "good" do you think that location data is going to "get," and why would having it be better than it is now be necessary? Or even possible for consumer-gear? They hard-limited consumer GPS to accuracies no-better-than several hundred feet after 9/11 (apparently some idiot thought the terrorists used GPS to find the WTC rather than just looking for the tallest buildings in New York...) and I can't imagine that being lifted so we could pursue some hare-brained scheme like this.
Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.
But they don't sweep up everyone in a square mile of the protests which is the effect of shutting down cell towers. You seem to think if you can't completely eliminate collateral damage it's pointless to even try to limit it.
Correct, but so what? If we're assuming civil discourse and order has degenerated to the point where the police would consider "targeted shutdowns" of individual mobile phones to be "okay" I'm not sure why they'd care one iota about the non-protesters out there? Yeah, a phone shutoff might mobilize some people to action... But others might just assume their phone is goofed up and use a landline.
The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.
This is where you're really off base. Trampling on the rights of people who haven't done anything wrong engenders dissent. It certainly doesn't stifle it. At best it may limit people acting on their dissension out of fear but it certainly isn't going to endear them to the state more. The idea that abusing people will make them like you more is idiotic. Past police states worked through fear of voicing dissension. Any attempt
Arresting someone for theft under $10 ("Monster-In-Law" on DVD retails for about $5) seems to be a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars. A more efficient punishment would be to seize wages/tax refunds/etc. in the amount of the theft + some additional punitive amount.
I am not clear on why failing to return one solitary DVD would be a criminal matter in the first place. She didn't steal it: She violated her rental agreement. That would seem, sensibly, to be a civil matter in any sensible universe. The video store owner's remedy would be to sue her in small claims court and recover his $15-20 that way, rather than wasting thousands of dollars in police resources, jail facilities, and prosecutor's office resources to pursue a patently ludicrous criminal investigation, arrest, trial, and punishment.
Creationism actually is a theory. It is just not supported by evidence at all and quite a few established facts contradict it. So it is a theory with a very low probability of being a model for reality and hence not worthy of study.
My recollection of the scientific method from 7th grade says that an idea you have no evidence for and wish to test is a hypothesis, not a theory.
You're missing the point. Shutting down the cell tower is going to affect far more people than the protestors. You're going to actually add to the number of people motivated to protest. With a targeted kill switch you can just affect the actually protestors.
Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"? Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names? Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.
Also, the point of cutting off phones isn't to target "people" individually, it is to prevent coordination among groups. An enumerated list does come with less "collateral damage" but also means anybody misidentified as "not a protester" who actually is can still use their phone to coordinate with others. The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.
Just cutting off mobile service to an area is heavy-handed, but it also guarantees the protesters can't use mobiles to coordinate their moves.
Ah, but if your phone is wrecked and you have to go in to get it fixed, they'll be able to identify if you were one of the people in the demonstration, and therefore be able to prove you were there and charge you.
It's one thing to just shut down all comms, it's another thing to be able to have some persistent evidence you were one of the people who they targeted.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to add another layer of tinfoil to my hat.
There are literally countless ways that are far more effective and accurate than that...
Better yet, imagine how useful a phone kill switch would be during widespread citizen protests?
"For public safety, we have to shut off everyone's phone. And because terrorism."
Actually, they don't need a kill switch for the phones to do this--there are a lot fewer devices to shut off if you simply shutdown the cell-towers in the area to cutoff communication.
"PowerPoint" is a Microsoft Office phenomenon... If you standardized on LibreOffice you wouldn't be creating "powerpoints," and your board-room projector station would presumably also be running LibreOffice, making your concerns basically meaningless because you wouldn't be using PowerPoint to create the presentation, and you wouldn't be using PowerPoint to present the presentation. So why should I be worried, again?
And even if you "have to have" PowerPoint for some ungodly reason (it's a crutch for people who don't make good speeches or presentations--work on your skills don't just cling to the crutch/band-aid for your lack of those skills) you can buy one or two copies retail without signing the six-figure Microsoft enterprise agreement...
Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though
He joined in January 2000 when according to that link, the stock was at 48.94. Today the stock is at 36.50. Managing a -25% return over 14 years is not a good thing.
Did the stock split between 1/2000 and today? Did it pay dividends between those dates? Did you count either of those against your figures our just figure out that 36.50 was around 25% less than 48.94?
In the Thomas Drake case, the administration retroactively marked documents as classified, saying, 'he knew they should have been classified.'
He should have a pretty good case in appeals court, then: It's utterly unconstitutional to be punished for an action that wasn't a crime when you took the action. Whether it should have been classified or not is completely not his fault or responsibility.
The choice isn't between AMC and a competitor, in many markets, but often between AMC and not going to the movies.
I opted for option 2 about 7 years ago, when I realised how cheap projectors and competent 5.1 surround sound systems had got. It spent around £250 on a projector and a set of speakers, which I drove from a DVD player. My local cinemas all had really bad equalisation in their sound (far too much base, no midrange, so you got too-loud explosions and talking was hard to hear) and had so much dust in their projector lenses that I got a better quality experience at home and could sit in comfy chairs, drink beer, and pause the movie whenever I wanted.
I have gotten more "do it at home" oriented too, mainly because AMC sucks and in my area are one of the only choices for first-run movies. I could go to a different (almost as shitty) chain if I am willing to drive 35-40 minutes downtown, but that's annoying, and really mucks up the dynamics of "This is too crowded, let's leave, get a refund, and come back some other time when we can find a seat" into "I drove 40 mintues, I'll be damned if I'm leaving without seeing a movie!"
As I walk through all of this I'm beginning to see the benefits of abandoning ship on the movie theaters forever... But my living room is a somewhat awkward shape for theater purposes... Ah well, maybe when we move...
If they're so terrible, why do you keep going back there and arguing with them about your bag?
"You guys totally suck! You don't know how to run a business! Here, take my money!!"
It's no wonder everything is going down the shitter in America these days. People just sit around on online forums and bitch and complain about stuff, but never actually do anything to force a change: they keep throwing their money at the same shitty companies, and keep voting for the same shitty politicians, and expecting things to improve somehow.
The choice isn't between AMC and a competitor, in many markets, but often between AMC and not going to the movies. This is the ugliness of the monopoly, at work. Sure, you can live without going to the movies, but it is, for the most part, a fun thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not translate it into a useful language, like Klingon?
"...but you'll never in our lifetime get people "comfortable" with some creepy asshole filming them out in public. "
are you young? I can see many technologies in use today that would be seen as 'creepy' and never going to be accepted in the 70's.
People will get used to it, because people can get use to anything.
People might "get over" in broad strokes the concept of stationary security cameras, but I have a hard time believing we'll ever be "A-Okay" with roving glassholes filming everything, everywhere, including them. Consider: Still cameras have existed for 150+ years and to-this-day we have violent physical confrontations involving people who don't want to be photographed by creepy strangers on the street. I have a hard time believing a technology to make such rude and invasive behavior "normal" is going to work. Probably the early adopters will just keep getting beaten up until the fad ends and the next "revolutionary useless technology" comes along.
Your question is nonsensical: Those people would likely be even more furious if they knew your clothes were covered in pinhole spy cameras.
The problem is people don't like having creepy strangers record them in public, regardless of whether they have the "right" to do so or not. The issue is the human discomfort and you might get to a point where people won't just kick your ass for looking at them while wearing Google Glass (or similar invasive, idiotic, and useless products) but you'll never in our lifetime get people "comfortable" with some creepy asshole filming them out in public. Nor will you ever get them comfortable with the perception that they're being recorded.
I wonder what the over/under on somebody hacking Google Glass to disable the "recording" light is--assuming such a hack doesn't exist already in the wild and we just haven't heard about it.
I am not aware of a constitutional right to commit fraud. The project this person agreed to appear in bore zero resemblance to this one, and while it is true--she definitely has no right to control the work product she agreed to appear in, she has every right to sue over this other work that essentially puts her in the crosshairs of terrorists--totally without permission.
Oh, that's right. Unregulated currency free from government interference. Enjoy!
Yeah, there aren't enough breaths of air in this world for all of the well-deserved "I told you so"s that will be thrown around...
Why would anybody favor such an expensive and ineffective option (with so many shortcomings) when the carriers could just be required to keep a database of unique identifiers (don't quote me--I think they're called IMEI numbers) of phones reported stolen and simply blacklist those phones from their networks.
Then, a person can report their phone stolen and the carriers make it useless because none of them are allowed to service it while it is in the "stolen" database.
No "kill-switch" required.
Yes, that's what co-location is: Somebody else pays you for physical access to your site for long-term deployment of equipment. So the "physical access" requirement isn't exactly some sort of "evil scheme" netflix invented to screw over Comcast.
This part is nonsensical:
1) They already charge people to access their service now, and in a way that apparently harms Comcast/ISPs in general, so we have zero difference from the status quo--the ISPs already have accepted this as "normal" and I don't see how they can ever change that without essentially erasing the entire Internet and starting over.
2) If Netflix hosts other people's data on those systems... so what? It's to Comcast's benefit--the more content that users stream that way (as opposed to over their expensive peering links) the happier their customers will be.
3) Comcast already gets money to carry all of this data--they get it from their subscribers. They're caterwauling for a double-dip opportunity--the right to bill not just for bandwidth to users, but for the same bandwidth again to companies providing content.
Netflix has a program where they'll colocate some servers containing a content cache on a segment of the ISPs network so that their peering connections aren't getting beaten to death--why wouldn't these companies get involved in such a program other than as a means to squeeze more money from Netflix, their subscribers, or both.
Sure they are. I know quite a few people who were fired with crazy good severance packages. Sure, they weren't set for life, but being able to piss around for 3 months before even _starting_ to look for a job is sure as hell an overpayment.
But that's just the point: It is extremely rare for somebody outside of the C-suite to get such a privilege.
Outside of c-level executives, such lavish and generous severance packages are occasionally found in situations where the person worked at a place for decades and got laid off in year 25 or something like that. There is no other job category I can name where you can completely just ruin the business, screw the pooch utterly, and still not just get severance, but indeed, be contractually entitled to walk away with a multi-million dollar severance package. Most people fired for cause (i.e. incompetence) are not given fat severance packages--they may get 4-6 weeks pay in exchange for signing something saying they won't sue the company, but that would basically be it. But even if your professional bud gets three whole months salary, so what?
C-suite guys routinely get fired with millions in their pockets.
Not to mention that it also, over time, erodes and eventually destroys the value in these companies as they shed employees and shunt more and more of the profits to the C-suite for disbursement as bonuses, high salaries, and lavish perks. That massive largesse encourages the taking of huge risks to generate the short-term gains required to ring up the eye-popping bonuses.
When they fail, the company gets hurt, maybe goes bankrupt, but the price is payed by working people in the form of layoffs.
It would distort the free market and no one would take the risk or the very hard work like 70 hour work weeks, MBAs, and other things for dozens of years without the compensation.
Doing so would make great talent do something else or not try as hard and everyone looses out.
Once upon a time these earnings were effectively capped by vigorous oversight from boards of directors, and that didn't seem to create a mass-exodus of talent, nor did it in-any-way slow down innovation or competition.
Plus, if somebody is really so "talented" they have "earned" $100 million per year I would postulate their time would be better spent starting their own business so instead of just getting a "cut" of the company's profits he gets all of them. Certainly if he's actually worth $100 million he's got more than enough talent to make that happen.
CEOs aren't "fired" the same way you and I are. You want them gone? Great! You trigger their golden parachute and they're set for life! Such total lack of accountability is what leads to blundering performers walking away richer than an oil tycoon for delivering zero value, or in some cases, erasing millions in value through mismanagement. Sears comes to mind, as the spectacular recent example of some arrogant hedge-fund asshole negotiating an enormous pay package for himself and then nearly putting the company under in just a couple short years.
And the fact that you'd try to conflate such masters of the universe with a salaryman's layoff sort of underscores why your point of view is more than a little half baked. Maybe quarter-baked? But even that's generous.
Everybody else's full-handle is used in their submissions (including people with SPACES and names 3-5x longer than mine) so why am I "Karl C" and not "Karl Cocknozzle?"
Truncating my last name is an insult to generations of Cocknozzles that have come before me.
"No, you shouldn't worry about prioritization, in fact it can help startups."
What? Wasn't that what everyone was worried about to begin with? That those with all the purse strings would be able to lock out these very startups you're claiming will benefit the most from this setup?
Their comments fly in the face of logic and basic economics.
Once the ISPs can double-dip, charging twice for the same bandwidth, there will exist a tremendous disincentive to carrying any traffic they can't double-dip on. Worst case scenario, "startups" without enormous financial backing will simply be stuck on the Internet slow-lane.
"Help startups"? My ass!
Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"?
If the person walking down the sidewalk is mixed in with the protesters they may not. But shutting down cell towers effects everyone in the area not just a few people who may be innocently mixed in with the protesters. Add the fact that most people not involved are going to avoid protest area and your argument is fallacious.
Tell that to the several hundred New Yorkers arrested during Occupy Wall Street whose only crime was working adjacent to where Occupy was holding action that day. What's fallacious is the idea that people not following the protests, or protest movements, have any clue when, where, or why protests would be going on in order to "avoid" the area. Occupy was in Zucotti partk, but then they'd move around the city with announcements on Twitter--if I'm not protesting (or not "with" whatever movement they're protesting on behalf of) why would I be following them on Twitter?
Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names?
As phone location information gets more accurate they just have to identify them by geographic location. Even with current technology this is going to cause far less collateral damage than shutting down whole cell towers. And I never said anything about only affecting the protestors. It's simple a case of limiting collateral damage.
Except we've already established that "geographic location" is insufficient in most major cities... Am I "on the list" because my phone is on my desk by the window and a protest is going on outside? How "good" do you think that location data is going to "get," and why would having it be better than it is now be necessary? Or even possible for consumer-gear? They hard-limited consumer GPS to accuracies no-better-than several hundred feet after 9/11 (apparently some idiot thought the terrorists used GPS to find the WTC rather than just looking for the tallest buildings in New York...) and I can't imagine that being lifted so we could pursue some hare-brained scheme like this.
Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.
But they don't sweep up everyone in a square mile of the protests which is the effect of shutting down cell towers. You seem to think if you can't completely eliminate collateral damage it's pointless to even try to limit it.
Correct, but so what? If we're assuming civil discourse and order has degenerated to the point where the police would consider "targeted shutdowns" of individual mobile phones to be "okay" I'm not sure why they'd care one iota about the non-protesters out there? Yeah, a phone shutoff might mobilize some people to action... But others might just assume their phone is goofed up and use a landline.
The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.
This is where you're really off base. Trampling on the rights of people who haven't done anything wrong engenders dissent. It certainly doesn't stifle it. At best it may limit people acting on their dissension out of fear but it certainly isn't going to endear them to the state more. The idea that abusing people will make them like you more is idiotic. Past police states worked through fear of voicing dissension. Any attempt
Arresting someone for theft under $10 ("Monster-In-Law" on DVD retails for about $5) seems to be a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars. A more efficient punishment would be to seize wages/tax refunds/etc. in the amount of the theft + some additional punitive amount.
I am not clear on why failing to return one solitary DVD would be a criminal matter in the first place. She didn't steal it: She violated her rental agreement. That would seem, sensibly, to be a civil matter in any sensible universe. The video store owner's remedy would be to sue her in small claims court and recover his $15-20 that way, rather than wasting thousands of dollars in police resources, jail facilities, and prosecutor's office resources to pursue a patently ludicrous criminal investigation, arrest, trial, and punishment.
The good news is that after three years it still tastes better than Dominos.
Creationism actually is a theory. It is just not supported by evidence at all and quite a few established facts contradict it. So it is a theory with a very low probability of being a model for reality and hence not worthy of study.
My recollection of the scientific method from 7th grade says that an idea you have no evidence for and wish to test is a hypothesis, not a theory.
You're missing the point. Shutting down the cell tower is going to affect far more people than the protestors. You're going to actually add to the number of people motivated to protest. With a targeted kill switch you can just affect the actually protestors.
Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"? Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names? Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.
Also, the point of cutting off phones isn't to target "people" individually, it is to prevent coordination among groups. An enumerated list does come with less "collateral damage" but also means anybody misidentified as "not a protester" who actually is can still use their phone to coordinate with others. The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.
Just cutting off mobile service to an area is heavy-handed, but it also guarantees the protesters can't use mobiles to coordinate their moves.
Ah, but if your phone is wrecked and you have to go in to get it fixed, they'll be able to identify if you were one of the people in the demonstration, and therefore be able to prove you were there and charge you.
It's one thing to just shut down all comms, it's another thing to be able to have some persistent evidence you were one of the people who they targeted.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to add another layer of tinfoil to my hat.
There are literally countless ways that are far more effective and accurate than that...
Better yet, imagine how useful a phone kill switch would be during widespread citizen protests?
"For public safety, we have to shut off everyone's phone. And because terrorism."
Actually, they don't need a kill switch for the phones to do this--there are a lot fewer devices to shut off if you simply shutdown the cell-towers in the area to cutoff communication.
"PowerPoint" is a Microsoft Office phenomenon... If you standardized on LibreOffice you wouldn't be creating "powerpoints," and your board-room projector station would presumably also be running LibreOffice, making your concerns basically meaningless because you wouldn't be using PowerPoint to create the presentation, and you wouldn't be using PowerPoint to present the presentation. So why should I be worried, again?
And even if you "have to have" PowerPoint for some ungodly reason (it's a crutch for people who don't make good speeches or presentations--work on your skills don't just cling to the crutch/band-aid for your lack of those skills) you can buy one or two copies retail without signing the six-figure Microsoft enterprise agreement...
Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though
He joined in January 2000 when according to that link, the stock was at 48.94. Today the stock is at 36.50. Managing a -25% return over 14 years is not a good thing.
Did the stock split between 1/2000 and today? Did it pay dividends between those dates? Did you count either of those against your figures our just figure out that 36.50 was around 25% less than 48.94?
He should have a pretty good case in appeals court, then: It's utterly unconstitutional to be punished for an action that wasn't a crime when you took the action. Whether it should have been classified or not is completely not his fault or responsibility.
The choice isn't between AMC and a competitor, in many markets, but often between AMC and not going to the movies.
I opted for option 2 about 7 years ago, when I realised how cheap projectors and competent 5.1 surround sound systems had got. It spent around £250 on a projector and a set of speakers, which I drove from a DVD player. My local cinemas all had really bad equalisation in their sound (far too much base, no midrange, so you got too-loud explosions and talking was hard to hear) and had so much dust in their projector lenses that I got a better quality experience at home and could sit in comfy chairs, drink beer, and pause the movie whenever I wanted.
I have gotten more "do it at home" oriented too, mainly because AMC sucks and in my area are one of the only choices for first-run movies. I could go to a different (almost as shitty) chain if I am willing to drive 35-40 minutes downtown, but that's annoying, and really mucks up the dynamics of "This is too crowded, let's leave, get a refund, and come back some other time when we can find a seat" into "I drove 40 mintues, I'll be damned if I'm leaving without seeing a movie!"
As I walk through all of this I'm beginning to see the benefits of abandoning ship on the movie theaters forever... But my living room is a somewhat awkward shape for theater purposes... Ah well, maybe when we move...
If they're so terrible, why do you keep going back there and arguing with them about your bag?
"You guys totally suck! You don't know how to run a business! Here, take my money!!"
It's no wonder everything is going down the shitter in America these days. People just sit around on online forums and bitch and complain about stuff, but never actually do anything to force a change: they keep throwing their money at the same shitty companies, and keep voting for the same shitty politicians, and expecting things to improve somehow.
The choice isn't between AMC and a competitor, in many markets, but often between AMC and not going to the movies. This is the ugliness of the monopoly, at work. Sure, you can live without going to the movies, but it is, for the most part, a fun thing to do.