But there is... It's called stalking. Go stake out a playground and take pictures of all the little kids... See just how fast they find something you did wrong when you have two years of pictures...
Watch Numbers... Even with their "armchair mathematics" approach the stuff they point out is getting easier every day.
I think a big problem is that police really aren't there to "protect" they are there to referee the fight according to the law when there is disagreement. For a long time they were called "officers of the peace" to mediate disputes before they turned "not peaceful". It's only been since Prohibition that Police were tasked with FINDING crimes NOT REPORTED by citizens personal disputes.
This isn't "survailance" this is massive record keeping... So they can FIND something you did wrong LATER. that is against the spirit of the Constitution as you can possibly get.
This isn't tagging you for billing a road toll. It is not doing a one-time check for parking violations... This is just recording what every car is doing..
Remember, POLICE organizations have said that speed trap or check point apps populated by CITIZENS are a threat to law enforcement... How is this any different?
So, does anybody know a way to build a license plate grabber, that can post to a DB in real time. It would seem if enough people set them up around town the could set up a public tracking service. Sounds like fun!
Along the lines of what we were talking about earlier, "privacy" is only a concern because there is always something other people in society will "punish" you for. Classic case.... masturbating to porn on the internet... IN a free society why would that be "shameful". It's "freedom" to touch yourself, and it's free speech to post those images... right. Yet we worry about our "privacy" because the combination of those two things that like 50% plus of Americans do in private can make you lose job promotions or make the neighbors hassle you??? The same thing with Facebook... everybody knows kids drink at college, and everyone knows kids have sex "less than carefully". again a huge portion of College goers did it, and brag about it etc... but if there's a "PICTURE" of it... then suddenly you're of "bad moral fibre" (whatever that is nowdays) so you're not qualified to sit in a cube and file TPS reports??? The very idea of "registering" actual offenders is only something new in society since the 1990's... now every body is afraid of doing something that might be "registered".
Back to having lots of railroad tracks and golden leashes.... Something as simple as being a Ren Faire fan makes people think you're weird... and that's what keeps people in line. My wife has a friend that is very "open minded" and in to all sorts of stuff...(practicing paganism, has boyfriends and girlfriends, LARPs, etc and she's HOT with a boyfriend in a rock band... like a little slashdot fantasy chic!) nothing remotely illegal, but being a lady at 25 she works in rather "uptight" companies and gets really upset about anybody even MENTIONING her on Facebook or even taking pictures at a "black tie" party because something might offend.. Really, she's got a Master's degree and an awesome job.... is something wrong because she's not Mrs. Babymaker (and then her professional career would be toast for not being "dedicated" enough...) That's like the DEFINITION of what's wrong with society right now... she's just not a perfect ENOUGH little worker bee so she's upset about "loss of privacy" all the time.
in other news, Domestic violence and violent crime in general is down historically, during a severe recession, in spite of setting precedents like you can't spank your children in public. For the most part people are "just trying to get along" at a point better than I've seen in the last 20 years or so. A good portion of that is thanks to people having access to these drugs BEFORE they do something stupid and beat up their kids or get divorced... often because the drugs are economically cheaper than trying to be on your own now.
I'd argue the only people NOT "getting along" are those like the politicians, businessmen, bankers that are all upset because we haven't bounced back to 20%+ profits again. For the most part "regular folks" have been in a slide since 2000. I know my personal household income DROPPED every year from 2000-2007 (and at least half my friends as well) even though I got "raises" and didn't get laid off. Between demanding longer hours, cut bonuses, increased medical payments, etc my take home has dropped even MORE. Just about every household I know has one person "off the job market" because other than "odd jobs" even official "part time" work is hard to come by (it's mostly full time plus weekends and holidays and without benefits now).
Back to people though, most younger people are actually NICER in my opinion than in the past. Of course THEY are the ones on "whatever it takes" to work a 40 hour a week job AND go to college at the same time. Since much of the stigma of the drugs has worn off, more people feel confident being on them.
Google CAN'T afford to act against Facebook because Google makes money from appearing to a fair advertiser... So the damage to Google's good will would be worse than messing with Facebook. Frankly, Facebook is only worth a few Billion, and most of that "stock value" not revenue... Google has that kind of CASH in their piggy bank.
Facebook CAN'T be sold to anybody now, they have too many conflicting companies with "buy in" like Microsoft but that have more interest in seeing Facebook "NOT" go to somebody else... not in seeing Facebook necessarily do WELL.
Who's really more scary here? After all Google (ok or maybe Apple) is now the new Microsoft with more cash than GOD right now.... they can "casually" wipe out out 25% of Facebook users in 60 days or less... Ouch! Over-active 20% project here.
#1 and #5 are really the problem. Now that content providers woke up, they'd rather just deal with Comcast and TW directly. Heck, NBC and Comcast have the same owners now... Why share anything?
Streaming is cheap, and cable provides own most of the high speed pipe to homes anyway. What I'm seeing is that all the providers would rather add streaming "free" to the existing tiers to keep you locked into the high priced cable plans with 75% content you don't even want.
The only real power Netflix had was with the back catalog, but now that Netflix has to tell their numbers to studios for streaming, all the good stuff, no matter how old is pulled... Even stuff from the 70's and 80's will have two sequels but not the original...
Now with the "crackdown" on Redbox and Netflix, even the older physical copies are being pulled from circulation. Even Apple is having a hard time keeping PAID content stocked without the 30 day penalty.. And again older stuff "goes missing" from iTunes on a regular basis as well.
But realize that the phone company gets a large percentage as fees to the "service" company right back in their pocket. So they get the money up front when you pay your bill, hold it from the service provider until past time to dispute, and get "handling" fees for the trouble.. Half the "fraudulent charge" is going to the phone company... Even if you dispute the charge because they just take the fee from the other schmucks that didnt contest the charge.
This is like getting charged for INCOMING texts and the phone company doing nothing about spammers.
Exactly, about the only thing you can do when you get a call like that is stop them mid-sentence, politely say "no thank you", "goodbye" and then HANG UP. dont listen to the whole speech, don't say anything else.. Just "click... Booooo"
They prey on keeping you talking long enough to "trap" you. Don't give them a chance. You don't have to be rude or mean, just hang up.
It is not theft because large corporations profit from it. At least that is the best explanation I can derive from observing the US justice system.
From a business view it is a "victimless" problem. The Telephone company gets free money.. A $1 of a $3 fee is HUGE!! and they just charge the "service" back (less the fee,of course) when the customer actually protests.
The law that makes Credit Card companies pay attention is the $50 customer liability rule. They legally have to hold the charge immediately. The BIGGER difference is that the Credit Card company PAID somebody that money. So when people put illegal credit charges and run with the money they owe the BANK. (i.e. Big business)
The telephone has very little stake because most of a 900 or Collect call goes right to their pockets anyway... For something they payed like a nickle in actual cost for. There is no financial incentive for the telephone company NOT to simply wait you out to pay up.
The ultimate crime is that a $50 phone/internet bill can accumulate $500+ in charges... At All!!!! Without some kind of special written contract understanding in advance. Especially land lines should have no room for extra charges, and it is a PAIN to get the account "locked" in my experience the phone company unlocks accounts every few months, just out of spite for customers because mine would get "unlocked" through no action of mone, and sure enough there would be an extra charge on there.
Note the article about the Evils of Microtransactions below... And realize Phone Companies INVENTED the idea if a walled garden only they held the billing keys to Lon, long ago.
To a point, exactly the case. If they have phone service "broadband" should not be that hard. In 1996 it was defined as 256kbps.. That's cake over all but really awful copper. And they don't have THAT yet.
Frankly, for the price in the article, somebody was being robbed blind. This would be the case for broadband over Powerlines, or something like that.. If only to reduce the cost and maintenance of the last mile... But telcos fight BoP even harder than environmentalists.
Exactly, that's the law, and totally Constitutional... YOU owe the use tax. This applies to thing like cars or machines that have titles ad well. It's just hard to get little people to comply. In the cast of something like a car, you pay th the state where you purchased, and submit the recipt in your state.. There's a formula for calculating the difference so you don't pay more than the highest rate one time.
I think states should just have credit card companies collect the fee as banks are licensed to operate in the state, for your location... Problem solved. There's no need to keep the more complex tax rates as things like food bought online aren't really necessities and the state can keep the locality taxes up-to-date or tell them to sod off. Local credit purchases would indicate the sales tax was already paid at the register, easy peasy!
The same is true of retail space. The vast majority of malls fall under the same thinking... Just a glorified "storage shed" that the Gap or Apple dosen't own either. Even less so than a server in most cases.
I think states need the money. I have always thought the way to get the money was through the credit card banks. They are not licensed to operate unless they follow whatever laws the state wants. They have your legal address and s business relationship IN your locality, so they can easily calculate your sales tax, leaving interstate retailers free to do their work!
I'll add one more thing. Except in rare cases of a violent crime, in most US juristictions even COPS that catch your kid shoplifting or throwing rocks through windows do not have the ability to search a minor beyond a basic search for actual weapons until either a parent is present AND consenting, or the minor child is actually CHARGED with a crime in front of a judge.
The RIGHT of minors not to be searched in the rest of the USA is rather absolute, except maybe in a school where they claim to have a parent's rights.
It's only a "right" if you can FIGHT over it! Filling out a form as a complaint is not a "right" that's a suggestion at best.
Frankly, anybody that "randomly selects" children is doing it as a power trip anyway. Her kids were probably noisy and they knew they could provoke her.
This is why the Arabs laugh their asses off at us. If you tried to grope up someone's kids in an Arab country the male escort would be within their duty to cut your hand off on the spot to defend their honor... If you had a badge or not. Even their Kings can't trump those religious laws and duties... Hmm.
Ironically, in the countries we are fighting touching somebodies child like this is against their religious laws...
A "right" is just that... The natural order of things. See the current idea of "rights" is all backwards. See stealing is against the law not because it's morally wrong to steal... But in absence of broader rules it is my "right of the jungle tooth and claw" to fight you for it until you give up or die.
A mother has the same RIGHT to fulfill her natural instincts to protect hr children. Just like you wouldn't expect to molest a wild Bear or Lion cub on presence of its mother... Why would somebody expect to feel up somebody's child like that?
If the law is such a good idea, let's send Mrs. O's girls through the same random, no clearances TSA lackey... Roll the cameras, that would make GOOD YouTube footage!!! The fun thing is that most TSA lackeys wouldn't even know who they were...
But YOU only have TWO eyeballs, how many channels do you need? There's only 24 hours a day.
Of all the chanels on your cable box only about twenty have (vaguely) original content during prime time anyway. Also realize many channels play a game of putting similar shows against each other... So vaguely sci-fi shows have to be on the same day. Also, you have to pay $5-$10 per extra box, and rental fee per DVR... So cable is more like $80 compared to $16 for Netflix...
Now if I could buy HBO streaming directly from my cable provider they'd have my money! Let's face it, we pay for "100 channels" but 1/2 of the programming is infomercials, and the other half is reruns....
Every time a cop tells a lie to scare somebody the "tree of liberty" needs refeshed. They already have a badge and gun with ridiculous low standards for "properly" using either.. It's time for Sun Tso or Machavelli style discipline in the ranks.
For all those right wing Bible thumpers out there conviction of a crime in the Bible took two witnesses... The only punishment for lying was molten lead poured down your throat... Let's hold BOTH sides to the same book at least!!!
Ha, ha... The most common one they sue over is FAT32 on removable media. I'd venture the real reason we're not seeing more pushback is that these OEMS ALSO make Windows phones and other Windows devices. I'd venture MS shows up ready to revoke their license to sell windows (along with the discounts retroactively) which becomes something nasty... Who's willing to be BANNED from selling windows (other than Apple which already has a wide cross license in their pocket) ?
Frankly Google needs to step up and hit Microsoft on these points.
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Like the Auto-BAN?
But there is... It's called stalking. Go stake out a playground and take pictures of all the little kids... See just how fast they find something you did wrong when you have two years of pictures...
Watch Numbers... Even with their "armchair mathematics" approach the stuff they point out is getting easier every day.
I think a big problem is that police really aren't there to "protect" they are there to referee the fight according to the law when there is disagreement. For a long time they were called "officers of the peace" to mediate disputes before they turned "not peaceful". It's only been since Prohibition that Police were tasked with FINDING crimes NOT REPORTED by citizens personal disputes.
This isn't "survailance" this is massive record keeping... So they can FIND something you did wrong LATER. that is against the spirit of the Constitution as you can possibly get.
This isn't tagging you for billing a road toll. It is not doing a one-time check for parking violations... This is just recording what every car is doing..
Remember, POLICE organizations have said that speed trap or check point apps populated by CITIZENS are a threat to law enforcement... How is this any different?
So, does anybody know a way to build a license plate grabber, that can post to a DB in real time. It would seem if enough people set them up around town the could set up a public tracking service. Sounds like fun!
So will Apple bring back the Speed Trap apps??? After all, those are just a list of places the public sees officers staked out often, right!
Along the lines of what we were talking about earlier, "privacy" is only a concern because there is always something other people in society will "punish" you for. Classic case.... masturbating to porn on the internet... IN a free society why would that be "shameful". It's "freedom" to touch yourself, and it's free speech to post those images... right. Yet we worry about our "privacy" because the combination of those two things that like 50% plus of Americans do in private can make you lose job promotions or make the neighbors hassle you??? The same thing with Facebook... everybody knows kids drink at college, and everyone knows kids have sex "less than carefully". again a huge portion of College goers did it, and brag about it etc... but if there's a "PICTURE" of it... then suddenly you're of "bad moral fibre" (whatever that is nowdays) so you're not qualified to sit in a cube and file TPS reports??? The very idea of "registering" actual offenders is only something new in society since the 1990's... now every body is afraid of doing something that might be "registered".
Back to having lots of railroad tracks and golden leashes.... Something as simple as being a Ren Faire fan makes people think you're weird... and that's what keeps people in line. My wife has a friend that is very "open minded" and in to all sorts of stuff...(practicing paganism, has boyfriends and girlfriends, LARPs, etc and she's HOT with a boyfriend in a rock band... like a little slashdot fantasy chic!) nothing remotely illegal, but being a lady at 25 she works in rather "uptight" companies and gets really upset about anybody even MENTIONING her on Facebook or even taking pictures at a "black tie" party because something might offend.. Really, she's got a Master's degree and an awesome job.... is something wrong because she's not Mrs. Babymaker (and then her professional career would be toast for not being "dedicated" enough...) That's like the DEFINITION of what's wrong with society right now... she's just not a perfect ENOUGH little worker bee so she's upset about "loss of privacy" all the time.
in other news, Domestic violence and violent crime in general is down historically, during a severe recession, in spite of setting precedents like you can't spank your children in public. For the most part people are "just trying to get along" at a point better than I've seen in the last 20 years or so. A good portion of that is thanks to people having access to these drugs BEFORE they do something stupid and beat up their kids or get divorced... often because the drugs are economically cheaper than trying to be on your own now.
I'd argue the only people NOT "getting along" are those like the politicians, businessmen, bankers that are all upset because we haven't bounced back to 20%+ profits again. For the most part "regular folks" have been in a slide since 2000. I know my personal household income DROPPED every year from 2000-2007 (and at least half my friends as well) even though I got "raises" and didn't get laid off. Between demanding longer hours, cut bonuses, increased medical payments, etc my take home has dropped even MORE. Just about every household I know has one person "off the job market" because other than "odd jobs" even official "part time" work is hard to come by (it's mostly full time plus weekends and holidays and without benefits now).
Back to people though, most younger people are actually NICER in my opinion than in the past. Of course THEY are the ones on "whatever it takes" to work a 40 hour a week job AND go to college at the same time. Since much of the stigma of the drugs has worn off, more people feel confident being on them.
vision:
"Whiny douchbags + sandy vj" somebody should eventually be happy about it.
Google CAN'T afford to act against Facebook because Google makes money from appearing to a fair advertiser... So the damage to Google's good will would be worse than messing with Facebook. Frankly, Facebook is only worth a few Billion, and most of that "stock value" not revenue... Google has that kind of CASH in their piggy bank.
Facebook CAN'T be sold to anybody now, they have too many conflicting companies with "buy in" like Microsoft but that have more interest in seeing Facebook "NOT" go to somebody else... not in seeing Facebook necessarily do WELL.
Who's really more scary here? After all Google (ok or maybe Apple) is now the new Microsoft with more cash than GOD right now.... they can "casually" wipe out out 25% of Facebook users in 60 days or less... Ouch! Over-active 20% project here.
They want to sell THEIR on demand services with that bandwidth... Cable has better markup that Netflix now that they have the pipe AND eyeballs!
#1 and #5 are really the problem. Now that content providers woke up, they'd rather just deal with Comcast and TW directly. Heck, NBC and Comcast have the same owners now... Why share anything?
Streaming is cheap, and cable provides own most of the high speed pipe to homes anyway. What I'm seeing is that all the providers would rather add streaming "free" to the existing tiers to keep you locked into the high priced cable plans with 75% content you don't even want.
The only real power Netflix had was with the back catalog, but now that Netflix has to tell their numbers to studios for streaming, all the good stuff, no matter how old is pulled... Even stuff from the 70's and 80's will have two sequels but not the original...
Now with the "crackdown" on Redbox and Netflix, even the older physical copies are being pulled from circulation. Even Apple is having a hard time keeping PAID content stocked without the 30 day penalty.. And again older stuff "goes missing" from iTunes on a regular basis as well.
But realize that the phone company gets a large percentage as fees to the "service" company right back in their pocket. So they get the money up front when you pay your bill, hold it from the service provider until past time to dispute, and get "handling" fees for the trouble.. Half the "fraudulent charge" is going to the phone company... Even if you dispute the charge because they just take the fee from the other schmucks that didnt contest the charge.
This is like getting charged for INCOMING texts and the phone company doing nothing about spammers.
Exactly, about the only thing you can do when you get a call like that is stop them mid-sentence, politely say "no thank you", "goodbye" and then HANG UP. dont listen to the whole speech, don't say anything else.. Just "click... Booooo"
They prey on keeping you talking long enough to "trap" you. Don't give them a chance. You don't have to be rude or mean, just hang up.
It is not theft because large corporations profit from it. At least that is the best explanation I can derive from observing the US justice system.
From a business view it is a "victimless" problem. The Telephone company gets free money.. A $1 of a $3 fee is HUGE!! and they just charge the "service" back (less the fee,of course) when the customer actually protests.
The law that makes Credit Card companies pay attention is the $50 customer liability rule. They legally have to hold the charge immediately. The BIGGER difference is that the Credit Card company PAID somebody that money. So when people put illegal credit charges and run with the money they owe the BANK. (i.e. Big business)
The telephone has very little stake because most of a 900 or Collect call goes right to their pockets anyway... For something they payed like a nickle in actual cost for. There is no financial incentive for the telephone company NOT to simply wait you out to pay up.
The ultimate crime is that a $50 phone/internet bill can accumulate $500+ in charges... At All!!!! Without some kind of special written contract understanding in advance. Especially land lines should have no room for extra charges, and it is a PAIN to get the account "locked" in my experience the phone company unlocks accounts every few months, just out of spite for customers because mine would get "unlocked" through no action of mone, and sure enough there would be an extra charge on there.
Note the article about the Evils of Microtransactions below... And realize Phone Companies INVENTED the idea if a walled garden only they held the billing keys to Lon, long ago.
Those are "required" by the regulators though... Crooked, but that's how "adjustments" work when they go thru big bureaucracy.
To a point, exactly the case. If they have phone service "broadband" should not be that hard. In 1996 it was defined as 256kbps.. That's cake over all but really awful copper. And they don't have THAT yet.
Frankly, for the price in the article, somebody was being robbed blind. This would be the case for broadband over Powerlines, or something like that.. If only to reduce the cost and maintenance of the last mile ... But telcos fight BoP even harder than environmentalists.
Exactly, that's the law, and totally Constitutional... YOU owe the use tax. This applies to thing like cars or machines that have titles ad well. It's just hard to get little people to comply. In the cast of something like a car, you pay th the state where you purchased, and submit the recipt in your state.. There's a formula for calculating the difference so you don't pay more than the highest rate one time.
I think states should just have credit card companies collect the fee as banks are licensed to operate in the state, for your location... Problem solved. There's no need to keep the more complex tax rates as things like food bought online aren't really necessities and the state can keep the locality taxes up-to-date or tell them to sod off. Local credit purchases would indicate the sales tax was already paid at the register, easy peasy!
The same is true of retail space. The vast majority of malls fall under the same thinking... Just a glorified "storage shed" that the Gap or Apple dosen't own either. Even less so than a server in most cases.
I think states need the money. I have always thought the way to get the money was through the credit card banks. They are not licensed to operate unless they follow whatever laws the state wants. They have your legal address and s business relationship IN your locality, so they can easily calculate your sales tax, leaving interstate retailers free to do their work!
I'll add one more thing. Except in rare cases of a violent crime, in most US juristictions even COPS that catch your kid shoplifting or throwing rocks through windows do not have the ability to search a minor beyond a basic search for actual weapons until either a parent is present AND consenting, or the minor child is actually CHARGED with a crime in front of a judge.
The RIGHT of minors not to be searched in the rest of the USA is rather absolute, except maybe in a school where they claim to have a parent's rights.
It's only a "right" if you can FIGHT over it! Filling out a form as a complaint is not a "right" that's a suggestion at best.
Frankly, anybody that "randomly selects" children is doing it as a power trip anyway. Her kids were probably noisy and they knew they could provoke her.
This is why the Arabs laugh their asses off at us. If you tried to grope up someone's kids in an Arab country the male escort would be within their duty to cut your hand off on the spot to defend their honor... If you had a badge or not. Even their Kings can't trump those religious laws and duties... Hmm.
Ironically, in the countries we are fighting touching somebodies child like this is against their religious laws...
A "right" is just that... The natural order of things. See the current idea of "rights" is all backwards. See stealing is against the law not because it's morally wrong to steal... But in absence of broader rules it is my "right of the jungle tooth and claw" to fight you for it until you give up or die.
A mother has the same RIGHT to fulfill her natural instincts to protect hr children. Just like you wouldn't expect to molest a wild Bear or Lion cub on presence of its mother... Why would somebody expect to feel up somebody's child like that?
If the law is such a good idea, let's send Mrs. O's girls through the same random, no clearances TSA lackey... Roll the cameras, that would make GOOD YouTube footage!!! The fun thing is that most TSA lackeys wouldn't even know who they were...
But YOU only have TWO eyeballs, how many channels do you need? There's only 24 hours a day.
Of all the chanels on your cable box only about twenty have (vaguely) original content during prime time anyway. Also realize many channels play a game of putting similar shows against each other... So vaguely sci-fi shows have to be on the same day. Also, you have to pay $5-$10 per extra box, and rental fee per DVR... So cable is more like $80 compared to $16 for Netflix...
Now if I could buy HBO streaming directly from my cable provider they'd have my money! Let's face it, we pay for "100 channels" but 1/2 of the programming is infomercials, and the other half is reruns....
Every time a cop tells a lie to scare somebody the "tree of liberty" needs refeshed. They already have a badge and gun with ridiculous low standards for "properly" using either.. It's time for Sun Tso or Machavelli style discipline in the ranks.
For all those right wing Bible thumpers out there conviction of a crime in the Bible took two witnesses... The only punishment for lying was molten lead poured down your throat... Let's hold BOTH sides to the same book at least!!!
Ha, ha...
The most common one they sue over is FAT32 on removable media. I'd venture the real reason we're not seeing more pushback is that these OEMS ALSO make Windows phones and other Windows devices. I'd venture MS shows up ready to revoke their license to sell windows (along with the discounts retroactively) which becomes something nasty... Who's willing to be BANNED from selling windows (other than Apple which already has a wide cross license in their pocket) ?
Frankly Google needs to step up and hit Microsoft on these points.
If you have to put THAT much effort ... You're a Trekkie. Sorry.
But I thought it was in a box?