Notwithstanding the argument posted by others about the large amount of government funding in our phone network infrastructure (I don't know about any funding for cable companies), there's the simple fact that these situations have happened before. I don't need to experiment, or rely on my admittedly limited experience running a communications backbone provider (quick, everyone raise your hands who have). I can just look at other examples where newcomers have tried to move into an area to see how that works. One example is a (relatively) small wireless ISP that encroached on Telus's territory. Now they're going bankrupt.
On a side note, I've always felt the path to greater wisdom wasn't doing it yourself first, but seeing if and how others had tried the same, and how they fared. The school of hard knocks is best attended by those who can't learn any other way.
I'd be curious about what the accuracy rate is, but yes, it looks like with a bit of patience you could get quite accurate results. It's still not as fast, or as automated as a series of audio or video recordings of just about any type or number of items.
You're operating on a single premise, one which I and a significant part of the world doesn't agree with. That is that monopolies and captive markets are alright (what some laughably call a 'free market'). I don't agree with them, my country in general doesn't agree with them, and it invalidates pretty much every statement in your comment. So make your sacrifices on the altar of the free market, and I'll make mine on the altar of socialism and the regulated market.
The key difference is that it takes roughly the same amount of time per page to scan a book, and it has to be done for each book. OTOH, once you break a DRM system, it applies to all eBooks that use it. Of course, if you really want to scan a book quickly, you could find ways, but the only ones I can think of will destroy the book (such as removing the binding and passing through a sheet-fed scanner). That adds a cost to bypassing the DRM that you don't have on, say, a DVD.
So you can't imagine a scenario where the content playback system will only play properly signed media? Sure, it's a broken system (for something that can play purchased media), but it's been tried before, and will be tried again. I'm hoping none of the future implementations succeed.
Netflix falls into this category. While I don't like DRM in principle, I can accept it in certain areas. Media rentals is one of them.
Come on. Either they'll reduce their prices again, or business will provide their employees with free internet, or a new provider will see a big huge opening -- which is most likely.
And then all they have to do is spend untold millions to make their own infrastructure, or rent from Bell/Rogers (which gets us back to the same start point). Probably unlike your company, Bell/Rogers have what is known as a natural monopoly, which is also seen with roads, power lines, radio stations, etc. There is a prohibitive startup cost, and/or land may not be available for it. Therefore, no one can say "Well, I'll just start my own infrastructure and charge reasonable rates for my service," because then Bell/Rogers just drop their prices to where they're making a nice profit instead of an unbelievable profit, the new company goes bankrupt (because they need to make some kind of profit and pay for all that infrastructure), they buy any beneficial infrastructure at fire sale rates, and prices go back to where they were before.
To expound on this, infrastructures are natural monopolies. There's no logical purpose from the consumer point of view to run multiple connections from your house to the greater network, and the costs for other companies to run their lines (unless done in conjunction with each other) are the same for each company running those lines. The only real working option I've seen so far is to treat the infrastructure operation as a (regulated) utility, and lease bandwidth to all service providers on an equal cost basis. Of course, there are ideological reasons for why this won't happen in some markets, and infrastructure/service companies will not want to relinquish the ability to leverage the monopoly provided by their infrastructure to improve the sales/profits of their services. Hence the regulated portion of the statement above.
Yes, it's a real shame when people start thinking like that. You start getting little things like the American Revolution, American Civil War, and World War II. Nothing good can come of that...
Not saying this act was the right thing to do, but there have been acts like this that I believe were perfectly valid and the right thing to do.
Before everyone starts speculating on why this was done and politics etc etc. Try to remember that people were killed and their families and they did not deserve such a thing regardless of your political affiliations. This doesn't solve anything.
Time to Godwin this whole thing. Bad people are people, too, and some really are better off dead. I'm not saying that's the case with her, but your statement is too general, and leads to it being false. Likewise, who deserves to die more than someone engaging in the act of killing others (that would be the gunmen in this scenario)?
I fail to see the need to drill to this lake so far below the surface. For one thing I would be worried about bringing back up who knows what with organisms and bacteria that we have not seen before that could be dangerous, also don't you think they would be contaminating this lake by drilling into it?
From the article:
Now, the team has satisfied the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which safeguards the continent's environment, that it's come up with a technique to sample the lake without contaminating it. Valery Lukin told New Scientist: "Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again." The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.
So is it going to freeze before it hits the top of the bore then? If not that means we're releasing whatever is in that water into our environment. That could be really really bad any way you look at it.
I'm not hopeful enough that it could release something giving us extreme life-extensions.
So, drilling a hole in the ground and sucking out millions of barrels of hydrocarbons, which have been isolated for thousands (or millions) of years, as well as any organisms living there is fine. Collecting a sample from a lake that has been isolated for thousands of years for research is the beginning of the apocalypse? I can only assume you're quite concerned about the Large Hadron Collider, as well.
How long can you maintain an average speed of 42 mph in an urban environment? The vehicle has that max speed, doesn't need to take corners the same way a vehicle or person does. I doubt that even a car a high-speed chase could maintain that long enough to escape the surveillance envelope and not get into an accident.
What they do with the 'incidental' surveillance information is still a concern, of course.
But some data is just bad (or irrelevant). "She has red hair - she's clearly a witch!" Sure, she has red hair, but that doesn't make people a witch, although it was a common belief in some regions at one time (typically, being really different, or rare, was a sign of evil in most primitive cultures).
Another good example of badly-applied data. Someone goes on a shooting rampage on a freeway. RandomInnocentGuy gets arrested, because he's been seen in the area previous to this incident, with video evidence! Of course, no need to mention the fact that he's been commuting on that route for the last two years, and the same video shows him merely passing through the area where the shooting occurred. The data is all good, but it's also irrelevant.
Now sure, at this point, it looks like we have a stupid guy who killed someone, and also happened to leave some rather weak electronic evidence behind. But the electronic evidence is still rather weak, and only gains strength if his wife died via one of the researched methods. And if searches like this are common (feel free to use Google Analytics or whatever), the value of that information in proving guilt is less, as well.
So as long as we have shortening of URLs and allow the cops to use browser cache as "evidence" then trolls are gonna be a hell of a lot worse threat than ever before.
Alternatively, law enforcement could accept that search history can have even less relevance to your actions than a shirt with a marijuana leaf logo on it. At least with the shirt, you have to choose to put it on, but it still has little bearing on whether or not you actually do pot.
We home school our kids, we believe in the Bible, and yet we view the whole "2012" thing as absurd, that the rapture is equally absurd, and that science does explain a LOT, but that there's also a lot it doesn't explain. We also don't think that the earth was created in 6 24 hour days and is only 6000 years old. That's ridiculous. We also don't think that dinosaur fossils were put here to test our faith. So in other words, we think for ourselves.
Now, there are those who are *exactly* as you describe, and of those we feel the same way you do. But, its not fair to use such a blanket statement. So let me correct it for you: "don't tell that to the *fundamentalist* homeschooled idiots...."
Moreover, what about the fundamentalist idiots who weren't homeschooled, or non-fundamentalist idiots? When you toss in things like source of education, religious affiliation, a number of subsets of religious beliefs, and then try to paint them all with the same brush, well, you might look like an idiot, too. I suspect the gpp may be a non-fundamentalist, non-rapture-believing, non-homeschooled, non-Mayan-doomsday-believing, non-Bible-believing variety of idiot. Of course, that group is pretty big, too. My general rule is to just watch out for idiots, and idiocy, which some generally intelligent people fall for in some part of their world view, as well.
Basic logic lesson. An absolute is refuted with a single example to the contrary. The refutation of an absolute is not broken by an example to the contrary, but by a comprehensive list that disagrees.
So if you say all require you to wear seat belts, and he says some few don't, your absolute is negated. Attempting to refute that with your vague, likely incomplete, list doesn't work.
Then there's the whole worldview that some people have that they should be allowed to assess personal risks themselves and make their own decisions based on their unique needs. You may not have heard, but some people suffer major health issues being forced to remain in a certain uncomfortable position for multiple hours. Possibly more so than the people who the doctor is called on the PA for.
You know, the entirety of your argument can be easily negated by simply changing the recommendation to: people in the queue go to a cashier when the conveyor has enough free space to start putting down their items. At worst, you'll have only one person who is slowing down just you. All other slow people will be averaged against the queue, and the average time over the day (or any period when the queue is not empty) will be exactly the same as multiple queues (one per checkout), if not better.
The one thing I like about banks in my area is that they tend to favor queues. This is especially practical there because there is no way to tell who will be fast and who will be slow, and the only penalty incurred is walking from the end of the queue to the cashier.
Of course, I doubt I've changed your opinion at all. Your basic lack of knowledge on the nature and proper usage of queues is pretty much exemplified when you said:
Maybe we should switch to two customers behind each register before forming a big line?
Not because it sounds remarkably similar to what I said above (there is one subtle difference), but because a queue can hold zero people! Know what you do in that instance? Yep, go to a free cashier, just as if the queue didn't exist at all. I know it's amazing, but we've had the concept of 0 for over a thousand years. Try using it somewhere besides as a placeholder in big numbers.
And how does a single line affect traffic in the store when you have 40+ people jamming up your main aisle on one side?
And where exactly do you envision those people standing when there isn't one big queue? Maybe we could make the queue there?
We might well learn something if we could get a cat to respond to The Polar Express, but getting cats to do ANYTHING reliably in a behavioral study is a pain in the ass. You'd be better trying it on dogs.
How are dogs any better? From everything I've seen, they will do whatever gives them the most treats.
We need to address issues exactly, not bundle them under the hazy "net neutrality" topic.
Except in the US, where it's technically feasible to have a single vote by congress include any and all of these issues, as well as a law mandating that cows wear runners in June. Good old riders.
If you can't distance yourself in a situation like that, then law enforcement shouldn't be for you. Now, I realize that you aren't in law-enforcement, your girlfriend is.
This, to me, is similar to expecting unbiased information from journalists. I am aware that it's hard. But just because something is hard is no reason to not put that conscious effort in. For jobs that require judgment and the ability to be objective, such as police officers, journalists, and judges, really should be held to that higher standard where their jobs affect the public welfare.
(perhaps you've seen the original, more-closely-guarded-than-military-secrets BC rather than the summary?)
While I didn't personally see the telescope Galileo used to look at the planets, or hear it from his mouth that planets circle the sun, I still believe he did these things. Why? Multiple, reputable sources. Just as they've shown videos of Obama's birth certificate on various television networks, etc. I haven't seen it in person, but people who identify documents and forgeries say it's real. Nothing I can do will refute their assertions due to my lack of skill in that area, nor do I think it is necessary.
Of course, you may continue to believe that the entire government and election officials (Republican and Democrat alike) were part of some secret conspiracy to get Obama elected for some unknown reason inherently linked to the fact that he's not an American citizen. If it isn't linked to the fact he isn't an American citizen, the great conspirators could have found someone else from the 300M population of the US who would be a better, less controversial agent. But I try to keep my paranoia in the realm of the plausible.
Looks like I have another company to add to my long list of people who tick me off with copyrights. Technically this could apply to any item you buy while outside of the US that happens to have a logo on it. People who say I can't sell my stuff because they put their logo on it tick me off.
Mind you, I don't generally buy logo'd items anyway. I don't feel a need to be validated by others based on the brands I purchase, and I can't think of any other reason to have it displayed (except as me advertising for the company, after paying them a premium for the opportunity).
When a single heart attack and the resulting operation can consume a quarter of a persons lifetime earnings, not savings, expecting that the individual should just pay for it, whether they be young, old, or in the prime of their life, is disingenuous. Couple this with the social impact of an unhealthy population, and pretending that healthcare isn't a social issue, as opposed to a personal issue, is incredibly shortsighted.
Not unlike the individual in the prime of his life that thinks it's an unnecessary burden on himself if he's expected to chip in and help pay for universal healthcare.
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Notwithstanding the argument posted by others about the large amount of government funding in our phone network infrastructure (I don't know about any funding for cable companies), there's the simple fact that these situations have happened before. I don't need to experiment, or rely on my admittedly limited experience running a communications backbone provider (quick, everyone raise your hands who have). I can just look at other examples where newcomers have tried to move into an area to see how that works. One example is a (relatively) small wireless ISP that encroached on Telus's territory. Now they're going bankrupt.
On a side note, I've always felt the path to greater wisdom wasn't doing it yourself first, but seeing if and how others had tried the same, and how they fared. The school of hard knocks is best attended by those who can't learn any other way.
I'd be curious about what the accuracy rate is, but yes, it looks like with a bit of patience you could get quite accurate results. It's still not as fast, or as automated as a series of audio or video recordings of just about any type or number of items.
You're operating on a single premise, one which I and a significant part of the world doesn't agree with. That is that monopolies and captive markets are alright (what some laughably call a 'free market'). I don't agree with them, my country in general doesn't agree with them, and it invalidates pretty much every statement in your comment. So make your sacrifices on the altar of the free market, and I'll make mine on the altar of socialism and the regulated market.
The key difference is that it takes roughly the same amount of time per page to scan a book, and it has to be done for each book. OTOH, once you break a DRM system, it applies to all eBooks that use it. Of course, if you really want to scan a book quickly, you could find ways, but the only ones I can think of will destroy the book (such as removing the binding and passing through a sheet-fed scanner). That adds a cost to bypassing the DRM that you don't have on, say, a DVD.
It can't encumber anything that presently exists.
So you can't imagine a scenario where the content playback system will only play properly signed media? Sure, it's a broken system (for something that can play purchased media), but it's been tried before, and will be tried again. I'm hoping none of the future implementations succeed.
Netflix falls into this category. While I don't like DRM in principle, I can accept it in certain areas. Media rentals is one of them.
Come on. Either they'll reduce their prices again, or business will provide their employees with free internet, or a new provider will see a big huge opening -- which is most likely.
And then all they have to do is spend untold millions to make their own infrastructure, or rent from Bell/Rogers (which gets us back to the same start point). Probably unlike your company, Bell/Rogers have what is known as a natural monopoly, which is also seen with roads, power lines, radio stations, etc. There is a prohibitive startup cost, and/or land may not be available for it. Therefore, no one can say "Well, I'll just start my own infrastructure and charge reasonable rates for my service," because then Bell/Rogers just drop their prices to where they're making a nice profit instead of an unbelievable profit, the new company goes bankrupt (because they need to make some kind of profit and pay for all that infrastructure), they buy any beneficial infrastructure at fire sale rates, and prices go back to where they were before.
To expound on this, infrastructures are natural monopolies. There's no logical purpose from the consumer point of view to run multiple connections from your house to the greater network, and the costs for other companies to run their lines (unless done in conjunction with each other) are the same for each company running those lines. The only real working option I've seen so far is to treat the infrastructure operation as a (regulated) utility, and lease bandwidth to all service providers on an equal cost basis. Of course, there are ideological reasons for why this won't happen in some markets, and infrastructure/service companies will not want to relinquish the ability to leverage the monopoly provided by their infrastructure to improve the sales/profits of their services. Hence the regulated portion of the statement above.
Yes, it's a real shame when people start thinking like that. You start getting little things like the American Revolution, American Civil War, and World War II. Nothing good can come of that...
Not saying this act was the right thing to do, but there have been acts like this that I believe were perfectly valid and the right thing to do.
Before everyone starts speculating on why this was done and politics etc etc. Try to remember that people were killed and their families and they did not deserve such a thing regardless of your political affiliations. This doesn't solve anything.
Time to Godwin this whole thing. Bad people are people, too, and some really are better off dead. I'm not saying that's the case with her, but your statement is too general, and leads to it being false. Likewise, who deserves to die more than someone engaging in the act of killing others (that would be the gunmen in this scenario)?
I fail to see the need to drill to this lake so far below the surface. For one thing I would be worried about bringing back up who knows what with organisms and bacteria that we have not seen before that could be dangerous, also don't you think they would be contaminating this lake by drilling into it?
From the article:
Now, the team has satisfied the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which safeguards the continent's environment, that it's come up with a technique to sample the lake without contaminating it. Valery Lukin told New Scientist: "Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again." The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.
I think it's similar to this mission at Lake Ellsworth.
So is it going to freeze before it hits the top of the bore then? If not that means we're releasing whatever is in that water into our environment. That could be really really bad any way you look at it. I'm not hopeful enough that it could release something giving us extreme life-extensions.
So, drilling a hole in the ground and sucking out millions of barrels of hydrocarbons, which have been isolated for thousands (or millions) of years, as well as any organisms living there is fine. Collecting a sample from a lake that has been isolated for thousands of years for research is the beginning of the apocalypse? I can only assume you're quite concerned about the Large Hadron Collider, as well.
How long can you maintain an average speed of 42 mph in an urban environment? The vehicle has that max speed, doesn't need to take corners the same way a vehicle or person does. I doubt that even a car a high-speed chase could maintain that long enough to escape the surveillance envelope and not get into an accident.
What they do with the 'incidental' surveillance information is still a concern, of course.
But some data is just bad (or irrelevant). "She has red hair - she's clearly a witch!" Sure, she has red hair, but that doesn't make people a witch, although it was a common belief in some regions at one time (typically, being really different, or rare, was a sign of evil in most primitive cultures).
Another good example of badly-applied data. Someone goes on a shooting rampage on a freeway. RandomInnocentGuy gets arrested, because he's been seen in the area previous to this incident, with video evidence! Of course, no need to mention the fact that he's been commuting on that route for the last two years, and the same video shows him merely passing through the area where the shooting occurred. The data is all good, but it's also irrelevant.
Now sure, at this point, it looks like we have a stupid guy who killed someone, and also happened to leave some rather weak electronic evidence behind. But the electronic evidence is still rather weak, and only gains strength if his wife died via one of the researched methods. And if searches like this are common (feel free to use Google Analytics or whatever), the value of that information in proving guilt is less, as well.
Coool, a coffin with wifi. Gotto get me one of them when I die. :)
When I die and they lay me to rest
I want one with wi-fi, that's the best!
So as long as we have shortening of URLs and allow the cops to use browser cache as "evidence" then trolls are gonna be a hell of a lot worse threat than ever before.
Alternatively, law enforcement could accept that search history can have even less relevance to your actions than a shirt with a marijuana leaf logo on it. At least with the shirt, you have to choose to put it on, but it still has little bearing on whether or not you actually do pot.
We home school our kids, we believe in the Bible, and yet we view the whole "2012" thing as absurd, that the rapture is equally absurd, and that science does explain a LOT, but that there's also a lot it doesn't explain. We also don't think that the earth was created in 6 24 hour days and is only 6000 years old. That's ridiculous. We also don't think that dinosaur fossils were put here to test our faith. So in other words, we think for ourselves.
Now, there are those who are *exactly* as you describe, and of those we feel the same way you do. But, its not fair to use such a blanket statement. So let me correct it for you: "don't tell that to the *fundamentalist* homeschooled idiots...."
Moreover, what about the fundamentalist idiots who weren't homeschooled, or non-fundamentalist idiots? When you toss in things like source of education, religious affiliation, a number of subsets of religious beliefs, and then try to paint them all with the same brush, well, you might look like an idiot, too. I suspect the gpp may be a non-fundamentalist, non-rapture-believing, non-homeschooled, non-Mayan-doomsday-believing, non-Bible-believing variety of idiot. Of course, that group is pretty big, too. My general rule is to just watch out for idiots, and idiocy, which some generally intelligent people fall for in some part of their world view, as well.
Basic logic lesson. An absolute is refuted with a single example to the contrary. The refutation of an absolute is not broken by an example to the contrary, but by a comprehensive list that disagrees.
So if you say all require you to wear seat belts, and he says some few don't, your absolute is negated. Attempting to refute that with your vague, likely incomplete, list doesn't work.
Then there's the whole worldview that some people have that they should be allowed to assess personal risks themselves and make their own decisions based on their unique needs. You may not have heard, but some people suffer major health issues being forced to remain in a certain uncomfortable position for multiple hours. Possibly more so than the people who the doctor is called on the PA for.
You know, the entirety of your argument can be easily negated by simply changing the recommendation to: people in the queue go to a cashier when the conveyor has enough free space to start putting down their items. At worst, you'll have only one person who is slowing down just you. All other slow people will be averaged against the queue, and the average time over the day (or any period when the queue is not empty) will be exactly the same as multiple queues (one per checkout), if not better.
The one thing I like about banks in my area is that they tend to favor queues. This is especially practical there because there is no way to tell who will be fast and who will be slow, and the only penalty incurred is walking from the end of the queue to the cashier.
Of course, I doubt I've changed your opinion at all. Your basic lack of knowledge on the nature and proper usage of queues is pretty much exemplified when you said:
Maybe we should switch to two customers behind each register before forming a big line?
Not because it sounds remarkably similar to what I said above (there is one subtle difference), but because a queue can hold zero people! Know what you do in that instance? Yep, go to a free cashier, just as if the queue didn't exist at all. I know it's amazing, but we've had the concept of 0 for over a thousand years. Try using it somewhere besides as a placeholder in big numbers.
And how does a single line affect traffic in the store when you have 40+ people jamming up your main aisle on one side?
And where exactly do you envision those people standing when there isn't one big queue? Maybe we could make the queue there?
We might well learn something if we could get a cat to respond to The Polar Express, but getting cats to do ANYTHING reliably in a behavioral study is a pain in the ass. You'd be better trying it on dogs.
How are dogs any better? From everything I've seen, they will do whatever gives them the most treats.
We need to address issues exactly, not bundle them under the hazy "net neutrality" topic.
Except in the US, where it's technically feasible to have a single vote by congress include any and all of these issues, as well as a law mandating that cows wear runners in June. Good old riders.
If you can't distance yourself in a situation like that, then law enforcement shouldn't be for you. Now, I realize that you aren't in law-enforcement, your girlfriend is.
This, to me, is similar to expecting unbiased information from journalists. I am aware that it's hard. But just because something is hard is no reason to not put that conscious effort in. For jobs that require judgment and the ability to be objective, such as police officers, journalists, and judges, really should be held to that higher standard where their jobs affect the public welfare.
I'd love to see a law where it was likewise illegal for any public employee to LIE during any interactions with the public.
Finally, cops will actually have to answer the question "Are you a cop?" truthfully.
This presupposes that there is never a reason for a cop to go undercover.
(perhaps you've seen the original, more-closely-guarded-than-military-secrets BC rather than the summary?)
While I didn't personally see the telescope Galileo used to look at the planets, or hear it from his mouth that planets circle the sun, I still believe he did these things. Why? Multiple, reputable sources. Just as they've shown videos of Obama's birth certificate on various television networks, etc. I haven't seen it in person, but people who identify documents and forgeries say it's real. Nothing I can do will refute their assertions due to my lack of skill in that area, nor do I think it is necessary.
Of course, you may continue to believe that the entire government and election officials (Republican and Democrat alike) were part of some secret conspiracy to get Obama elected for some unknown reason inherently linked to the fact that he's not an American citizen. If it isn't linked to the fact he isn't an American citizen, the great conspirators could have found someone else from the 300M population of the US who would be a better, less controversial agent. But I try to keep my paranoia in the realm of the plausible.
Looks like I have another company to add to my long list of people who tick me off with copyrights. Technically this could apply to any item you buy while outside of the US that happens to have a logo on it. People who say I can't sell my stuff because they put their logo on it tick me off.
Mind you, I don't generally buy logo'd items anyway. I don't feel a need to be validated by others based on the brands I purchase, and I can't think of any other reason to have it displayed (except as me advertising for the company, after paying them a premium for the opportunity).
Well, at least the US isn't hampered by silly little things like the right to a speedy trial. Oh wait...
When a single heart attack and the resulting operation can consume a quarter of a persons lifetime earnings, not savings, expecting that the individual should just pay for it, whether they be young, old, or in the prime of their life, is disingenuous. Couple this with the social impact of an unhealthy population, and pretending that healthcare isn't a social issue, as opposed to a personal issue, is incredibly shortsighted.
Not unlike the individual in the prime of his life that thinks it's an unnecessary burden on himself if he's expected to chip in and help pay for universal healthcare.