Politicians do get fired. We call them elections. In fact I'm pretty sure California has some ever-so-wonderful recall laws on the books if you can't wait.
Yeah, the amounts don't bother me. I would take exception to something as silly as untied shoelaces being demerit-worthy, and thus I would wonder about the application of even more reasonable-sounding rules, but that's really just a minor quibble overall. It's still good enough to see if it seems to work.
Welcome to Chicago my friend! Where you are charged Chicago sales tax, Cook County sales tax, and Illinois sales tax. And god help you if you want to buy something like a soda, where you pay an extra fat tax of 3%. I guess that's easier to account for than half your store being in different places, but only barely.
I believe the effective rate ends up just under 10% for normal items. If you get hit with any of the extra hits (3% soda, 1% prepared foods, probably others) it will be over 10% every time. It's pretty ridiculous.
I don't disagree with you, but companies pitch a fit over it.
There's actually a very comparable situation going on right now. Recently an FCC rule took effect that required airlines to include taxes and fees in the airfare they list. Now Spirit Airlines runs a huge banner at the top of their pages that says: "WARNING: New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares." And believe me, Slashdot does not permit enough HTML to make it as obnoxious as they do!
In some ways they have a point. At least when you order a $1 item and end up paying $1.08 you know to be mad at the government about that 8 cents. In other ways you have a point. I want to know how much something actually costs, not how much it should cost in some mythical tax-free situation. That's especially true of something like airfare, where that extra amount could easily be over $100. Spirit is a low-cost carrier, but for example last time I visited friends in Australia (3 years ago I believe) the airfare was around $2200 -- the taxes and fees brought it up something over $2400 if I remember right. That's a significant difference and certainly something that needs to be budgeted for. Knowing that in advance is helpful since it's not like I can opt not to pay those taxes and fees.
Of course the simple compromise is to show the actual costs including taxes and fees and then require that it be broken down somewhere else: On your receipt, confirmation email, before you type in your payment information -- whatever suits the particular situation. But compromise is a dirty word in American culture these days, so it will all depend on which faction can steamroll the other into doing it their way.
I could maybe, maaaaaybe feel sorry for regular ISPs. There's undeniably a lot of piracy that goes on that inflates bandwidth usage beyond their predictions for reasonable.
But that's not a significant issue on phones. Instead the phone companies are complaining about users doing the exact fucking things they market their phones as doing! "Your phone now plays YouTube videos!" "Whoa whoa whoa! Why are you guys watching so many videos on your phone? How could we possibly have predicted such a thing?" "Hey, now you can review that PowerPoint presentation in the cab!" "Whoa whoa whoa, why are you downloading files and shit?!" Well let me think about that for a while guys. Clearly the thought I've given the matter in this post alone exceeds what AT&T and their billions of dollars of profit gave it.
Infrastructure is expensive. We get it. Hey, guess what? So are your phones, the mandatory data plan, smartphone fee and regular service fees over a multi-year contract. Nobody feels sorry for you for overselling your service even more than you calculated you were going to. Shut up and provide customers the service they bought with those billions of dollars of profit you make every quarter, even in one of the worst economies since the Depression. You'll find nobody here shedding a tear for you.
It probably came from the West Wing episode The Portland Trip [s2.e07], and quite frankly it's more insightful that way.
As far as "play[ing] telephone," the air date of the episode in question was 11/15/2000, which looks like it predates Norquist's quote, the earliest date for which that I have found is mid 2001 with citations as far out as 2004. Perhaps Norquist was the one playing telephone. Or perhaps you're just playing "taking shots at people for no reason?"
There has to be a line drawn between OMG-FREEDOM-AT-ALL-COSTS and posting sexual pictures of children.
Why? You have posted like 18 bajillion times in this thread (I may be exaggerating slightly) and not one of them has done anything other than beg the question.
So tell us what the harm is that we have to draw the line where you choose. How is a girl significantly harmed by posting a picture on Facebook with crappy privacy settings such that a "Facebook stalker"--your words--takes it and re-posts it to Reddit? Hell, take it a step further. Let's pretend this teen or pre-teen girl is super plugged-in and knows what the hell Reddit is, and about these subgroups or whatever the hell they are called, and checks every day to see if her photos are posted and thus actually knows, immediately and without doubt, that it has been done. Explain the harm.
There is some real, honest to god exploitation going on in the world. There are girls (and boys for that matter) who are kidnapped and forced to be prostitutes or pose for these kinds of pictures, and those people should be found and shot. These are not those. There are people who exploit their family members or neighbors. These are not those. Having a photo on a hard drive or a Reddit group that the "victims" probably never even kno about is not them. Pictures they take themselves and post with crappy privacy settings are not them.
You're right: A line needs to be drawn, but unless you can come up with something better than "it's creepy" for why it should be drawn not at the people actually exploiting the children but at people who like it, then I'm going to have to side with people like Stallman who have a logical position.
Yes, I find it creepy too. No, I am not interested in legislating my morality. I have no interest in the law getting involved unless somebody can show me real, unequivocal proof that somebody's behavior is a detriment to others. "I wank to a picture of you LULZ!" doesn't qualify in my mind.
This isn't a person's development we're talking about, where we can dismiss it by going "oh, poor Islam, his brain just isn't fully developed yet. Give him some time."
This is an organization who has had a dozen lifetimes just in your 600 year timeframe to watch and to see how things work without being insecure, murderous pricks, and that's not to mention the however many more lifetimes they have had to "mature" to begin with. At this point there is little to say but that they are actively rejecting the concept.
This is not a defense of Christianity, nor is it some ridiculous finger pointing as to who started it; I think all religions are a pox upon the world. But the idea that Islam somehow should get an extra 600 years to find itself before being criticized as extremist or intolerant is ludicrous. It's not the middle ages anymore.
Depending on the use case, of course, I actually think storage is one of the things that the Cloud can do really well. I wouldn't recommend it for data you only have one copy of, but that's true of pretty much any storage scheme if that data is important to you.
However, for things like backups, it's a pretty good idea. Let somebody else manage the logistics of the storage itself, replacing failing hardware, redundancy, etc and use economies of scale to do so cheaper than I could. Plus you get an offsite backup just by its nature. About the only thing I dislike about the idea is at least in the US, upload speeds still tend to be quite a bit lower than download speeds. I have my fastest upstream so far now at home--I think it runs about 6Mbps, which is obviously not a lot. It's rather cumbersome for lots of files or large files, but at the same time that's only a once-per-file concern.
Frankly I just wish it was cheaper. I have a friend sending me a metric asston of video files--yes, all legal and no, it's not porn!--and I would like to get a copy up, but when I say metric asston I mean it. 6TB would be a high-end estimate. In any event, if it was less than 4 I would be shocked. I priced out S3 for that, and it was like $600. A month. So that's not an option. Other services I've seen either won't tell you how much that kind of load would be or they go in increments (ie, $9/mo/10GB) that make it clear it would be prohibitive. If Google can do better I would certainly be interested, but I suspect "buy another set of hard drives" is going to end up the only realistic choice.
OP's statement may not be accurate--I would particularly be leery of "most"--but I wouldn't say it did not have basis in fact.
I remember a psychology professor in university stating two things about psychology: 1) The mere act of talking about things helps; I don't think anybody would disagree with that one, and 2) most mental illness gets better on its own.
Boiling that down to "most people just need someone to listen to them" is an oversimplification and possibly an overreach on scope, but it's not baseless. The mere act of talking to somebody, and the time periods over which it happens, are a significant part of the healing all by themselves.
Also, it's not clear what the OP meant by "shrink." There is a difference between a psychologist (a doctor of psychology) and a psychiatrist (a medical doctor specializing in the mind). Psychiatrists can prescribe drugs, which if nothing else increases their possible effect on their patients. Psychologists can not (in almost all cases), and so talking and their advice is all there is to their therapy.
Part of the issue may also be that "mental illness" has become a pretty broad term, so much so that I have heard things like 25% of people have mental illnesses. When you cast a wide net, the fact that things usually get better on their own catches more people.
So, I think by now a lot of good conversations (and a fair bit of trolling!) have been started in this thread about Google, the changes they want to make, etc. I see no reason to add to that.
What I want to know is simpler: How in the world does EPIC feel it has standing to sue the FCC?
It could sue Google, certainly -- probably as EPIC, but if not it could do it as individual users because each of those users can claim to be effected. But that's where their beef is, and that's where any perceived harm is. The FCC's not blocking a company's change doesn't make them liable for it and it certainly doesn't make them the cause of a tort that EPIC can sue to redress. If there is a violation of law or rights, it originates from Google.
The FCC and Google have an agreement and this may well be in violation of it -- but that is between the FCC and Google. The idea that you can sue a government agency to force it to act in the way you want is pretty ludicrous on its face. How far do you think I would get if I sued the Department of Justice for not arresting Chris Dodd over his claims that the MPAA basically owns the congressmen it donates to?
In finest Slashdot tradition, I am not a lawyer -- but I fully expect this lawsuit to be slapped out of court in short order for lack of standing.
I am happy to pay reasonable costs as well (I am a Netflix streaming subscriber and have Amazon Prime as well).
However I don't consider the Amazon PPV prices for TV shows to be reasonable for anything more than an "oops, I missed one, let me grab it." It's not suitable for watching the entire series. $1.99 x ~22 episodes in a season puts the cost at almost $44. That's essentially the price of the DVD boxed set, and another $1/episode for HD. No thanks. If I'm going to pay that price I'll get the physical product and rip myself digital copies.
Further, there are a lot of shows that I simply have not found on any legitimate service regardless of price. Home Improvement (the Tim Allen sitcom) is one example; not on Netflix, not on Amazon (the Prime selection or otherwise), not on Hulu. Doesn't matter if I'm willing to pay. Baywatch is another. (I watch it for the uh, cinematic quality.) Simply not available digitally anywhere legitimate that I have found. So fuck 'em, illegitimate it is!
Opinions, of course, are a good thing to look for on Facebook/social networks. Factual information isn't; even if the information you get is good they're probably just going to end up sending you to a result they got through Google anyway. It's also a decent place to look--assuming your friends have similar interests--if you don't know how to formulate the query you want. For example, sometimes when I'm searching Google I spend the first couple of searches just trying to figure out what the search term I'm looking for is. Search engines don't tend to do well when you can only describe a concept and not name it, but other human beings are really good at parsing that sort of thing, assuming they know the answer.
Local information is also good if you have local Facebook friends. Finding a contractor, for example, or a daycare or dog walker or whatever. These people have to be local to you anyway, so if your friends have any experience with those local businesses their opinions are going to be highly valuable.
Factual searches, searches where you know exactly what you want and just need to find it, those aren't great for social networks. You're just offloading the work of actually searching onto your friends.
So is he right that the search market is shrinking? Yeah, I'm sure he is. The better question, however, is whether it is shrinking in any meaningful way.
Yep. I know some interns are unpaid--maybe a majority for all I know--but I was paid well when I did an internship in the mid 2000s.
Maybe that has changed with the economy, but I kind of doubt it. There has always been two camps and probably always will be: Those who use internships as free labor, and those who use internships to look for potential hires. The latter are extremely likely to do what they can to make the job appear desirable, including actually paying their interns.
A child is not and never will be able to provide informed consent
I suppose that depends on your definition of a child. We seem to have drawn a rather arbitrary line in the sand of 18 years old, and if we're sticking to that then I disagree entirely with your statement.
Further, if that is what we believe, why do we not throw two 15 year olds who have sex in jail (ironically unless they sent a naked picture to one another--sigh!)? It's certainly frowned upon and with good reason, but if our logic is "no child will ever be able to provide informed consent" then that entirely consensual act is magically not consensual and is rape. Ironically, I suppose we would have to charge both sides with raping the other at the same time unless we wanted to go the sexist route and declare it's always the man's fault.
In any event, we don't do that. We don't charge and jail children for consensual sex with children their same age. Yet again, some magic pixie dust falls and if it's an 18 year old and a 14 year old it's statutory rape and OMG THE CHILDREN!
I firmly believe there is a point at which the law should step in. A three year old cannot given informed consent. People in positions of power over their "partner" should be held to a higher standard. But a teenager? It may be a horrible decision, it may be one they regret for the rest of their lives, but uninformed? No, I don't think so. And if we're going the way of "the risk assessment centers of a child's brain are not developed!" then awesome. Nobody gets to have sex until their mid 20s then--that is where the science is currently pointing us in terms of development in those areas of the brain--and this line in the sand at 18 is still bullshit.
My point isn't to defend pedophillia, especially the real, unequivocal cases (such as those in that California school right now or what went on in the Catholic Church). My point is that we have a shallow definition, born almost exclusively from a need to write a definition down at all. (Wouldn't it be nice if we could rely on police and prosecutors to exercise good judgment? But I digress.) Basing distinctions on that shallow definition is not solid footing.
so there is unlikely to ever be a situation where children are seen as acceptable sexual partners.
But they were. Twelve or thirteen year olds were married all the time a couple hundred years ago and nobody raised much of a fuss. Any time some twat wants to rile up Muslims he just screams "YOUR PROPHET WAS A PEDOPHILE!" Do you believe that changed because of the science or the idea of informed consent? I don't. I think it changed because people started living longer and could afford to wait. That is not a moral decision. I honestly don't know what the point was when it went from "perfectly acceptable and expected" to "wrong" to "eew, burn them with the fires of hell!" That's certainly not logically consistent. If our position is not logical, who is to say how the emotional will change going forward?
If we can't [read the patents], then no, we cannot agree the patent system is idiotic
I disagree. We may not be able to discuss or agree that the specific patents in question are idiotic without reading the claims, but we can still discuss the patent system as a whole.
If the system promotes a world where two companies can have legal pissing matches all around the world, taking turns having each others' products yanked off the market (and then reinstated!) then I would call that a pretty retarded system, regardless of the merits of the particular patents. That Apple's patents are design patents makes it more clear.
And you really think that's going to work? You really think the US government is going to go "aw shucks, some hackers got us, time to shutter the FBI?" You really think it won't be the direct opposite reaction, where the FBI clammers that it needs more funding for cyber security and Senators go "well no shit, you just got hacked?" Can I have some of whatever it is you are smoking?
Let's pretend for a moment that your drug-induced worldview actually comes to fruition. By some incredibly strange twist of fate, the US Government goes "that's the last straw FBI! You're done!" You believe that this will not simply result in the creation of some new agency with identical function, or the expansion of an existing agency to fulfill that identical function? You think there are enough congressmen and senators who think the FBI is worthless and unworthy of funding but who can't be bothered to save the country billions of dollars a year by closing it until some loose collection of hackers embarrasses it a few times?
I don't know, I'm having an awfully hard time figuring out how the hell you can believe the things you seem to believe, much less believe it so strongly and so smugly that you would insult somebody else's intelligence over it. Then again you haven't shared the drugs yet, so that probably explains it.
You're kidding, right? The Republican party walks in lock-step more than anybody. They manage to obstruct everything even when the Democrats would only need to peel a half dozen votes off. That would not be the case if they were truly divided. Pretty much every wedge issue is something the entire Republican party agrees on: Abortion, gun control, size of government, economic theory, healthcare/insurance. At best, the Republicans think they should be done at the state level, but their opinions on them do not actually differ. About the only thing there is friction on is the military--and the libertarians who want to reduce it don't exist in sufficient numbers to make any difference.
When the difference between "entrenched political corporate interest" and "libertarian small government movement" is that one wants the government to get the hell out of business because it thinks it does a bad job and one wants government to get the hell out of business because it doesn't belong there, that's not a divided party.
Not that the Democrats are super divided either, but they are definitely moreso.
You have the Democrats who oppose gun control, especially ones who come from the south. You have the Democrats who oppose abortion (by which I mean it being at all legal; most of them, at least ostensibly, claim to oppose abortion itself). You have deficit hawks, so-called "Blue Dog Democrats," who oppose deficit spending and trend socially conservative. In fact, it was that kind of Democrat who was elected disproportionately in 2008. (It was also that kind of Democrat who was defeated disproportionately in 2010. These Democrats essentially are the kind who win in Republican districts and thus are constantly vulnerable.) You have hawks, like Joe Lieberman (not technically a Democrat anymore, but he caucuses with them and the difference is technicality at this point). You have the ones interested in civil rights, but counterbalanced by the people who continue to support idiocy like the PATRIOT act extension or the NDAA with its crazy-ass provisions about trying Americans in military courts.
Both parties are homogonous overall. But the Democrats win Republican seats by moving to their right, while Republicans win seats by moving to, well, their right.
All the people complaining about companies not being 'persons' in regard to free-speech rights should be careful [. ..] at most, you could find out who made all the decisions and go back and sue their estates.
Why?
The idea that if a corporation isn't a person that it's nothing at all is a false dichotomy. A corporation is a legal construct. We can attach whatever we want to that construct (and technically we do -- corporations exist explicitly to serve the public good in most states, as an example). If we want to cease the illusion of it being a person and yet still attach legal liability for its actions, we can do that.
It almost seems like Google is trying to argue that First Sale doesn't apply, because "copies are not material objects".
I don't agree with you, but even if I did, don't bother looking for these kind of legal/logical gotcha's; that's not how the legal system works.
It is not at all uncommon to see a defense team put forth an argument like: I didn't kill her. And even if I did, it was self defense. And even if it wasn't, there were extenuating circumstances. And even if there weren't, it was a crime of passion. And if not, I'm a great guy and deserve to be convicted under a lesser crime! (They don't quite phrase it that way of course, but that is the essence of the argument.)
Logically, people look at that and go -- "what the fuck? What are you arguing here?" But legally it is not only sound strategy, but fully expected and required of a competent defense. It's similar in civil law. Remember, much as it might seem otherwise sometimes it's not a defendent/respondent's job to prove innocence -- it's to poke enough holes that the other side can't prove guilt/liability.
As I said, though, I don't agree with your conclusion. Google is simply saying "you guys can't have it both ways." They're not taking a position on the issues they're raising, at least not in the quotes you have; they're simply pointing out what they consider to be the plaintiff trying to have it both ways and saying "sorry, no. Pick one: It's a material object subject to one law or a non-material object not subject to either."
You're complaining that he pronounced the acronym? That's a pretty common thing in English, at least in the last few decades.
Unless you say L-A-S-E-R, N-A-T-O, A-I-D-S and S-C-U-B-A, among others--and though I don't know you, let me say I officially doubt it--then you're really just judging somebody over his decision on where to draw the line between acronyms that should be pronounced and those that should be spelled out. Frankly I have no problem with pronouncing any acronym that pronounces smoothly. (Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
Oh, I'm sure you're right. Copyright law gives them the right to control distribution and public performance, however, and it makes no mention of what motives they may use to do so.
Frankly I consider it win-win: Either a judge finds copyright law absurd and lets Gingrich keep using it in pretty clear violation of copyright, or he orders him to stop and Gingrich gets spanked for his double standard. (Or he stops using it voluntarily, which I basically consider to be a non-judicial spanking in this case.)
Unfortunately, they pushed it a little too far this time, as their blind partisanship made them out to be the fools they are.
Personally I think putting words into other peoples' mouths, inventing some hypothetical scenario and then the response your invented scenario would garner, ascribing motivations to people you do not know and in fact know nothing about, insulting an entire half of the country politically and then claiming they are operating from blind partisanship makes you out to be the fool that you are.
It's also hilarious, though not in any way you intended.
Slashdot Mirror
Politicians do get fired. We call them elections. In fact I'm pretty sure California has some ever-so-wonderful recall laws on the books if you can't wait.
Yeah, the amounts don't bother me. I would take exception to something as silly as untied shoelaces being demerit-worthy, and thus I would wonder about the application of even more reasonable-sounding rules, but that's really just a minor quibble overall. It's still good enough to see if it seems to work.
Welcome to Chicago my friend! Where you are charged Chicago sales tax, Cook County sales tax, and Illinois sales tax. And god help you if you want to buy something like a soda, where you pay an extra fat tax of 3%. I guess that's easier to account for than half your store being in different places, but only barely.
I believe the effective rate ends up just under 10% for normal items. If you get hit with any of the extra hits (3% soda, 1% prepared foods, probably others) it will be over 10% every time. It's pretty ridiculous.
I don't disagree with you, but companies pitch a fit over it.
There's actually a very comparable situation going on right now. Recently an FCC rule took effect that required airlines to include taxes and fees in the airfare they list. Now Spirit Airlines runs a huge banner at the top of their pages that says: "WARNING: New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares." And believe me, Slashdot does not permit enough HTML to make it as obnoxious as they do!
In some ways they have a point. At least when you order a $1 item and end up paying $1.08 you know to be mad at the government about that 8 cents. In other ways you have a point. I want to know how much something actually costs, not how much it should cost in some mythical tax-free situation. That's especially true of something like airfare, where that extra amount could easily be over $100. Spirit is a low-cost carrier, but for example last time I visited friends in Australia (3 years ago I believe) the airfare was around $2200 -- the taxes and fees brought it up something over $2400 if I remember right. That's a significant difference and certainly something that needs to be budgeted for. Knowing that in advance is helpful since it's not like I can opt not to pay those taxes and fees.
Of course the simple compromise is to show the actual costs including taxes and fees and then require that it be broken down somewhere else: On your receipt, confirmation email, before you type in your payment information -- whatever suits the particular situation. But compromise is a dirty word in American culture these days, so it will all depend on which faction can steamroll the other into doing it their way.
I agree completely.
I could maybe, maaaaaybe feel sorry for regular ISPs. There's undeniably a lot of piracy that goes on that inflates bandwidth usage beyond their predictions for reasonable.
But that's not a significant issue on phones. Instead the phone companies are complaining about users doing the exact fucking things they market their phones as doing! "Your phone now plays YouTube videos!" "Whoa whoa whoa! Why are you guys watching so many videos on your phone? How could we possibly have predicted such a thing?" "Hey, now you can review that PowerPoint presentation in the cab!" "Whoa whoa whoa, why are you downloading files and shit?!" Well let me think about that for a while guys. Clearly the thought I've given the matter in this post alone exceeds what AT&T and their billions of dollars of profit gave it.
Infrastructure is expensive. We get it. Hey, guess what? So are your phones, the mandatory data plan, smartphone fee and regular service fees over a multi-year contract. Nobody feels sorry for you for overselling your service even more than you calculated you were going to. Shut up and provide customers the service they bought with those billions of dollars of profit you make every quarter, even in one of the worst economies since the Depression. You'll find nobody here shedding a tear for you.
It probably came from the West Wing episode The Portland Trip [s2.e07], and quite frankly it's more insightful that way.
As far as "play[ing] telephone," the air date of the episode in question was 11/15/2000, which looks like it predates Norquist's quote, the earliest date for which that I have found is mid 2001 with citations as far out as 2004. Perhaps Norquist was the one playing telephone. Or perhaps you're just playing "taking shots at people for no reason?"
Why? You have posted like 18 bajillion times in this thread (I may be exaggerating slightly) and not one of them has done anything other than beg the question.
So tell us what the harm is that we have to draw the line where you choose. How is a girl significantly harmed by posting a picture on Facebook with crappy privacy settings such that a "Facebook stalker"--your words--takes it and re-posts it to Reddit? Hell, take it a step further. Let's pretend this teen or pre-teen girl is super plugged-in and knows what the hell Reddit is, and about these subgroups or whatever the hell they are called, and checks every day to see if her photos are posted and thus actually knows, immediately and without doubt, that it has been done. Explain the harm.
There is some real, honest to god exploitation going on in the world. There are girls (and boys for that matter) who are kidnapped and forced to be prostitutes or pose for these kinds of pictures, and those people should be found and shot. These are not those. There are people who exploit their family members or neighbors. These are not those. Having a photo on a hard drive or a Reddit group that the "victims" probably never even kno about is not them. Pictures they take themselves and post with crappy privacy settings are not them.
You're right: A line needs to be drawn, but unless you can come up with something better than "it's creepy" for why it should be drawn not at the people actually exploiting the children but at people who like it, then I'm going to have to side with people like Stallman who have a logical position.
Yes, I find it creepy too. No, I am not interested in legislating my morality. I have no interest in the law getting involved unless somebody can show me real, unequivocal proof that somebody's behavior is a detriment to others. "I wank to a picture of you LULZ!" doesn't qualify in my mind.
But why should we?
This isn't a person's development we're talking about, where we can dismiss it by going "oh, poor Islam, his brain just isn't fully developed yet. Give him some time."
This is an organization who has had a dozen lifetimes just in your 600 year timeframe to watch and to see how things work without being insecure, murderous pricks, and that's not to mention the however many more lifetimes they have had to "mature" to begin with. At this point there is little to say but that they are actively rejecting the concept.
This is not a defense of Christianity, nor is it some ridiculous finger pointing as to who started it; I think all religions are a pox upon the world. But the idea that Islam somehow should get an extra 600 years to find itself before being criticized as extremist or intolerant is ludicrous. It's not the middle ages anymore.
Depending on the use case, of course, I actually think storage is one of the things that the Cloud can do really well. I wouldn't recommend it for data you only have one copy of, but that's true of pretty much any storage scheme if that data is important to you.
However, for things like backups, it's a pretty good idea. Let somebody else manage the logistics of the storage itself, replacing failing hardware, redundancy, etc and use economies of scale to do so cheaper than I could. Plus you get an offsite backup just by its nature. About the only thing I dislike about the idea is at least in the US, upload speeds still tend to be quite a bit lower than download speeds. I have my fastest upstream so far now at home--I think it runs about 6Mbps, which is obviously not a lot. It's rather cumbersome for lots of files or large files, but at the same time that's only a once-per-file concern.
Frankly I just wish it was cheaper. I have a friend sending me a metric asston of video files--yes, all legal and no, it's not porn!--and I would like to get a copy up, but when I say metric asston I mean it. 6TB would be a high-end estimate. In any event, if it was less than 4 I would be shocked. I priced out S3 for that, and it was like $600. A month. So that's not an option. Other services I've seen either won't tell you how much that kind of load would be or they go in increments (ie, $9/mo/10GB) that make it clear it would be prohibitive. If Google can do better I would certainly be interested, but I suspect "buy another set of hard drives" is going to end up the only realistic choice.
OP's statement may not be accurate--I would particularly be leery of "most"--but I wouldn't say it did not have basis in fact.
I remember a psychology professor in university stating two things about psychology: 1) The mere act of talking about things helps; I don't think anybody would disagree with that one, and 2) most mental illness gets better on its own.
Boiling that down to "most people just need someone to listen to them" is an oversimplification and possibly an overreach on scope, but it's not baseless. The mere act of talking to somebody, and the time periods over which it happens, are a significant part of the healing all by themselves.
Also, it's not clear what the OP meant by "shrink." There is a difference between a psychologist (a doctor of psychology) and a psychiatrist (a medical doctor specializing in the mind). Psychiatrists can prescribe drugs, which if nothing else increases their possible effect on their patients. Psychologists can not (in almost all cases), and so talking and their advice is all there is to their therapy.
Part of the issue may also be that "mental illness" has become a pretty broad term, so much so that I have heard things like 25% of people have mental illnesses. When you cast a wide net, the fact that things usually get better on their own catches more people.
So, I think by now a lot of good conversations (and a fair bit of trolling!) have been started in this thread about Google, the changes they want to make, etc. I see no reason to add to that.
What I want to know is simpler: How in the world does EPIC feel it has standing to sue the FCC?
It could sue Google, certainly -- probably as EPIC, but if not it could do it as individual users because each of those users can claim to be effected. But that's where their beef is, and that's where any perceived harm is. The FCC's not blocking a company's change doesn't make them liable for it and it certainly doesn't make them the cause of a tort that EPIC can sue to redress. If there is a violation of law or rights, it originates from Google.
The FCC and Google have an agreement and this may well be in violation of it -- but that is between the FCC and Google. The idea that you can sue a government agency to force it to act in the way you want is pretty ludicrous on its face. How far do you think I would get if I sued the Department of Justice for not arresting Chris Dodd over his claims that the MPAA basically owns the congressmen it donates to?
In finest Slashdot tradition, I am not a lawyer -- but I fully expect this lawsuit to be slapped out of court in short order for lack of standing.
I am happy to pay reasonable costs as well (I am a Netflix streaming subscriber and have Amazon Prime as well).
However I don't consider the Amazon PPV prices for TV shows to be reasonable for anything more than an "oops, I missed one, let me grab it." It's not suitable for watching the entire series. $1.99 x ~22 episodes in a season puts the cost at almost $44. That's essentially the price of the DVD boxed set, and another $1/episode for HD. No thanks. If I'm going to pay that price I'll get the physical product and rip myself digital copies.
Further, there are a lot of shows that I simply have not found on any legitimate service regardless of price. Home Improvement (the Tim Allen sitcom) is one example; not on Netflix, not on Amazon (the Prime selection or otherwise), not on Hulu. Doesn't matter if I'm willing to pay. Baywatch is another. (I watch it for the uh, cinematic quality.) Simply not available digitally anywhere legitimate that I have found. So fuck 'em, illegitimate it is!
I guess it depends on what you're looking for.
Opinions, of course, are a good thing to look for on Facebook/social networks. Factual information isn't; even if the information you get is good they're probably just going to end up sending you to a result they got through Google anyway. It's also a decent place to look--assuming your friends have similar interests--if you don't know how to formulate the query you want. For example, sometimes when I'm searching Google I spend the first couple of searches just trying to figure out what the search term I'm looking for is. Search engines don't tend to do well when you can only describe a concept and not name it, but other human beings are really good at parsing that sort of thing, assuming they know the answer.
Local information is also good if you have local Facebook friends. Finding a contractor, for example, or a daycare or dog walker or whatever. These people have to be local to you anyway, so if your friends have any experience with those local businesses their opinions are going to be highly valuable.
Factual searches, searches where you know exactly what you want and just need to find it, those aren't great for social networks. You're just offloading the work of actually searching onto your friends.
So is he right that the search market is shrinking? Yeah, I'm sure he is. The better question, however, is whether it is shrinking in any meaningful way.
Yep. I know some interns are unpaid--maybe a majority for all I know--but I was paid well when I did an internship in the mid 2000s.
Maybe that has changed with the economy, but I kind of doubt it. There has always been two camps and probably always will be: Those who use internships as free labor, and those who use internships to look for potential hires. The latter are extremely likely to do what they can to make the job appear desirable, including actually paying their interns.
I suppose that depends on your definition of a child. We seem to have drawn a rather arbitrary line in the sand of 18 years old, and if we're sticking to that then I disagree entirely with your statement.
Further, if that is what we believe, why do we not throw two 15 year olds who have sex in jail (ironically unless they sent a naked picture to one another--sigh!)? It's certainly frowned upon and with good reason, but if our logic is "no child will ever be able to provide informed consent" then that entirely consensual act is magically not consensual and is rape. Ironically, I suppose we would have to charge both sides with raping the other at the same time unless we wanted to go the sexist route and declare it's always the man's fault.
In any event, we don't do that. We don't charge and jail children for consensual sex with children their same age. Yet again, some magic pixie dust falls and if it's an 18 year old and a 14 year old it's statutory rape and OMG THE CHILDREN!
I firmly believe there is a point at which the law should step in. A three year old cannot given informed consent. People in positions of power over their "partner" should be held to a higher standard. But a teenager? It may be a horrible decision, it may be one they regret for the rest of their lives, but uninformed? No, I don't think so. And if we're going the way of "the risk assessment centers of a child's brain are not developed!" then awesome. Nobody gets to have sex until their mid 20s then--that is where the science is currently pointing us in terms of development in those areas of the brain--and this line in the sand at 18 is still bullshit.
My point isn't to defend pedophillia, especially the real, unequivocal cases (such as those in that California school right now or what went on in the Catholic Church). My point is that we have a shallow definition, born almost exclusively from a need to write a definition down at all. (Wouldn't it be nice if we could rely on police and prosecutors to exercise good judgment? But I digress.) Basing distinctions on that shallow definition is not solid footing.
But they were. Twelve or thirteen year olds were married all the time a couple hundred years ago and nobody raised much of a fuss. Any time some twat wants to rile up Muslims he just screams "YOUR PROPHET WAS A PEDOPHILE!" Do you believe that changed because of the science or the idea of informed consent? I don't. I think it changed because people started living longer and could afford to wait. That is not a moral decision. I honestly don't know what the point was when it went from "perfectly acceptable and expected" to "wrong" to "eew, burn them with the fires of hell!" That's certainly not logically consistent. If our position is not logical, who is to say how the emotional will change going forward?
I disagree. We may not be able to discuss or agree that the specific patents in question are idiotic without reading the claims, but we can still discuss the patent system as a whole.
If the system promotes a world where two companies can have legal pissing matches all around the world, taking turns having each others' products yanked off the market (and then reinstated!) then I would call that a pretty retarded system, regardless of the merits of the particular patents. That Apple's patents are design patents makes it more clear.
And you really think that's going to work? You really think the US government is going to go "aw shucks, some hackers got us, time to shutter the FBI?" You really think it won't be the direct opposite reaction, where the FBI clammers that it needs more funding for cyber security and Senators go "well no shit, you just got hacked?" Can I have some of whatever it is you are smoking?
Let's pretend for a moment that your drug-induced worldview actually comes to fruition. By some incredibly strange twist of fate, the US Government goes "that's the last straw FBI! You're done!" You believe that this will not simply result in the creation of some new agency with identical function, or the expansion of an existing agency to fulfill that identical function? You think there are enough congressmen and senators who think the FBI is worthless and unworthy of funding but who can't be bothered to save the country billions of dollars a year by closing it until some loose collection of hackers embarrasses it a few times?
I don't know, I'm having an awfully hard time figuring out how the hell you can believe the things you seem to believe, much less believe it so strongly and so smugly that you would insult somebody else's intelligence over it. Then again you haven't shared the drugs yet, so that probably explains it.
You're kidding, right? The Republican party walks in lock-step more than anybody. They manage to obstruct everything even when the Democrats would only need to peel a half dozen votes off. That would not be the case if they were truly divided. Pretty much every wedge issue is something the entire Republican party agrees on: Abortion, gun control, size of government, economic theory, healthcare/insurance. At best, the Republicans think they should be done at the state level, but their opinions on them do not actually differ. About the only thing there is friction on is the military--and the libertarians who want to reduce it don't exist in sufficient numbers to make any difference.
When the difference between "entrenched political corporate interest" and "libertarian small government movement" is that one wants the government to get the hell out of business because it thinks it does a bad job and one wants government to get the hell out of business because it doesn't belong there, that's not a divided party.
Not that the Democrats are super divided either, but they are definitely moreso.
You have the Democrats who oppose gun control, especially ones who come from the south. You have the Democrats who oppose abortion (by which I mean it being at all legal; most of them, at least ostensibly, claim to oppose abortion itself). You have deficit hawks, so-called "Blue Dog Democrats," who oppose deficit spending and trend socially conservative. In fact, it was that kind of Democrat who was elected disproportionately in 2008. (It was also that kind of Democrat who was defeated disproportionately in 2010. These Democrats essentially are the kind who win in Republican districts and thus are constantly vulnerable.) You have hawks, like Joe Lieberman (not technically a Democrat anymore, but he caucuses with them and the difference is technicality at this point). You have the ones interested in civil rights, but counterbalanced by the people who continue to support idiocy like the PATRIOT act extension or the NDAA with its crazy-ass provisions about trying Americans in military courts.
Both parties are homogonous overall. But the Democrats win Republican seats by moving to their right, while Republicans win seats by moving to, well, their right.
Why?
The idea that if a corporation isn't a person that it's nothing at all is a false dichotomy. A corporation is a legal construct. We can attach whatever we want to that construct (and technically we do -- corporations exist explicitly to serve the public good in most states, as an example). If we want to cease the illusion of it being a person and yet still attach legal liability for its actions, we can do that.
I don't agree with you, but even if I did, don't bother looking for these kind of legal/logical gotcha's; that's not how the legal system works.
It is not at all uncommon to see a defense team put forth an argument like: I didn't kill her. And even if I did, it was self defense. And even if it wasn't, there were extenuating circumstances. And even if there weren't, it was a crime of passion. And if not, I'm a great guy and deserve to be convicted under a lesser crime! (They don't quite phrase it that way of course, but that is the essence of the argument.)
Logically, people look at that and go -- "what the fuck? What are you arguing here?" But legally it is not only sound strategy, but fully expected and required of a competent defense. It's similar in civil law. Remember, much as it might seem otherwise sometimes it's not a defendent/respondent's job to prove innocence -- it's to poke enough holes that the other side can't prove guilt/liability.
As I said, though, I don't agree with your conclusion. Google is simply saying "you guys can't have it both ways." They're not taking a position on the issues they're raising, at least not in the quotes you have; they're simply pointing out what they consider to be the plaintiff trying to have it both ways and saying "sorry, no. Pick one: It's a material object subject to one law or a non-material object not subject to either."
And how fast a website responds to DMCA requests has what to do with how Swedish law handles copyright issues?
You're complaining that he pronounced the acronym? That's a pretty common thing in English, at least in the last few decades.
Unless you say L-A-S-E-R, N-A-T-O, A-I-D-S and S-C-U-B-A, among others--and though I don't know you, let me say I officially doubt it--then you're really just judging somebody over his decision on where to draw the line between acronyms that should be pronounced and those that should be spelled out. Frankly I have no problem with pronouncing any acronym that pronounces smoothly. (Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
Oh, I'm sure you're right. Copyright law gives them the right to control distribution and public performance, however, and it makes no mention of what motives they may use to do so.
Frankly I consider it win-win: Either a judge finds copyright law absurd and lets Gingrich keep using it in pretty clear violation of copyright, or he orders him to stop and Gingrich gets spanked for his double standard. (Or he stops using it voluntarily, which I basically consider to be a non-judicial spanking in this case.)
You're suggesting that he commit perjury, and got modded to +4?
Personally I think putting words into other peoples' mouths, inventing some hypothetical scenario and then the response your invented scenario would garner, ascribing motivations to people you do not know and in fact know nothing about, insulting an entire half of the country politically and then claiming they are operating from blind partisanship makes you out to be the fool that you are.
It's also hilarious, though not in any way you intended.