The United States also has a military-based holiday on November 11th (Veterans Day). Unlike Memorial Day, many businesses/institutions don't take that day off either. Not sure if you know about it, but based on your description I'd say Veterans Day sounds more like Remembrance Day than Memorial Day - which these days is more known for hot dogs, parties, and retail "sales events" than cleaning up grave sites and remembering veterans' sacrifices.
If ANY part of your being grateful has to do with Eich's anti-gay-marriage views and his support of Prop 8 in CA, then you're an over-reactionary idiot. Just like Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal), who recently pushed out a governing board member for his sexual fetish and got punched in the face by the Drupal "community" for being too corporate and concerned about image.
Those kinds of potentially company-altering decisions should never be made over hurt feelings of some random group.
What the hell is the FCC doing voting on something like this with only three members (two unfilled vacancies)? Would we want a Supreme Court with only 60% of its seats filled (let alone only three people) making choices of this magnitude? This has the potential of being the FCC's Roe V. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, etc.? No way in hell... And that's exactly what the FCC is doing here.
And two of the three members were the ones that voted against it in 2015 are still members. We all know Ajit Pai lives in his own world on this issue and wouldn't change his mind if God himself told him to, and listen to what Michael O'Reilly (an Obama appointee, BTW) said in 2015:
"Commissioner Michael O’Reilly criticized the proposal to reverse Title II: “I see no need for net neutrality rules. I am far more troubled the commission is charting for Title II.” He continued, calling the move a “monumental and unlawful power grab.”
O’Reilly then called the forbearance of certain Title II provisions “fauxbearance.”
If you read those statements, you can see that this was over before it began.
This is fair and good point. At some point in the future it must be addressed (if that's even possible).
That doesn't mean that the principles behind Net Neutrality shouldn't be upheld, however. If ISPs A, B, or C collude then it all becomes moot without regulations.
I honest didn't give a damn about all the weird stuff Uber and its CEO have been doing to various parties. All politics, embarrassments, etc. - don't care... As long as 1) the ride is cheaper, and 2) the drivers are good, that's fine.
This change, however, strikes a nerve for me personally. It's a combination of Big Brotherly data accumulation and usage against people, along with a heaping helping of, "Screw you, rich boy," shakedown.
If this is the way data collection is going, and how it'll be used, then THIS kind of abuse of people's wallets may finally be what wakes up the average Joe as to why privacy still matters.
* Ecowatch.com: Short, short version - "We all need to change big time. All electric everything. No gas (natural or liquid) powered anything. Regulate everything bad out of existence to force the lifestyle equally on everyone. Give up cars for walking/biking/public transportation. Give up suburban home for high density cities. Minimize trucking in favor of more rail. Forget plastic and other petroleum-based products you can't reuse. Global trade must shrink. Eat local. It'll be hard, but it'll be worth it." -- Uh... nope. That hippie utopia isn't gonna fly in its entirety.
* Stanford article summary: To get it, we must 1) turn 1% of all landmass on Earth into solar and wind production, 2) end all internal combustion technology, 3) cut energy consumption by 30% across the board, 4) create a ENORMOUS (and potentially fragile) grid to move power well enough to get power everywhere while hoping that hydroelectric can fill in the gaps to cover everywhere at all times, and 5) recycle better to get enough rare earth metals to build everything. We currently have less than 1% of all solar and wind turbines in place. That's a HUGE transformation necessary for the entire world that would involve a lot of sacrifice and political will by all. No NIMBY attitudes, no corporate meddling or profiteering/corruption. Trillions spent to upgrade... Not gonna happen 100% of the way in today's selfish political environment.
* National Geographic article: Doesn't anywhere in its own text promise 100% clean energy. Only references other hopeful, articles like the pie-in-the-sky Stanford article above. It does say that various sources suggest that 1) we can cut consumption by 44% by 2050. 2) we can double productivity by 2030, and 3) "produce 80 to 90 percent of America’s electricity from proven" renewables.
* Scientific American article is behind a registration. Can't read.
* Greenpeace article: Only country aiming to be 100% renewable energy by 2050? Denmark, surrounded by oceans (for tidal power) and has a tiny landmass to power. Every other point is based in the same logic as the Stanford article above. Huge smart grid, everyone accepting windmills + solar panels and any problems with them (no NIMBY), etc.
I'm not trolling, IMO. I'm just looking at it from a pragmatic POV. And the referenced continued advancements in solar and wind give me hope for good change. If we can get to a majority of renewables while we ALSO research better Stage III+ nuclear fission reactors (and the ever-elusive nuclear fusion energy source), that's great.
In the meantime, just don't expect the average world citizen to give up the comforts we have put together for ourselves without having reasonable alternatives. We can't all walk to work in MegaCity One, shop for everything at the farmer's market (miles away), have bamboo flooring and wear hemp clothes.
I agree on the climate change issue and that we should stick to pushing forward with moving away from PRIMARILY using fossil fuels, but a U.S. economy based on wind + solar is impossible - a pipe dream. Don't act like a climate change denier; Look at the numbers. Wind and solar can't cover a fraction of what the U.S. consumes, and until a major energy breakthrough happens and is implemented, we're going to have to burn SOME coal.
How do you expect educated people to take the pro-climate-change POV seriously when you're making claims like that?
And the whole vitriol for Trump thing is wearing super thin. Remember how the Dems felt about the Kenyan birth certificate "issue", and how retarded and pointless it all sounded? Well, guess what the Dems look like when they're complaining about the whole Trump/Russia connection. They are no better than Trump himself and any other retard who challenged Obama over that birth certificate.
That's bad, but it's not the worst spoiler ever, IMO. I'd go with Terminator Genisys, spoiling the biggest plot point by far (John Connor is now a prototype terminator.) Imagine how great that reveal would've been in an otherwise forgettable movie, but someone in marketing had to screw that up.
I agree with what you said; I think you must've misunderstood what I meant.
By immature students, I meant the ones that aren't mature enough to even try and listen to the lecture at all. The ones that have their heads elsewhere: Games, porn, cars, pranks, sex, whatever; It's a total waste of time to lecture them traditionally. Give them the info, make a "help desk" available, and they can sink or swim.
Local news reporting still tries to inform you about what's going on around your town/city.
Most news from the larger media companies and the networks, however - especially the regurgitated "breaking news" from 24/7 cable news networks - is just gossip. Long gone are the days of covering stories with journalistic integrity (see CNN and the 1991 Gulf War, compared to Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room", for comparison's sake.)
Still have my HP 48G. While it looks like a dinosaur now compared to other tools, that thing was great for doing a lot of stuff back in the 90s.
And it still works great today. You just have to throw in some AAAs to get it going again. (Just don't pull out the last AAA or you lose your data;)).
Good press: Exposing bad actors in a conspiracy that are trying to remain anonymous.
Bad press: Exposing an accidental good actor that specifically asked to remain anonymous so he could do his work.
This was like outing a police officer's name and address after he nails a low-level gang leader. It could get very messy for this 22 year old online. Hacked social media accounts, DDOSed any personally managed online resources (web servers, etc.). And that's if it's a low-level script kiddie type trying to make some cash - and not some more malevolent group.
Celebrity isn't what you want in that line of work...
1) The topic is something that is learning an algorithm (solving for x^2 = 9), or memorizing important facts ("how many votes does it take for a presidential veto to be overridden?"). Or...
2) The students aren't mature enough to interact with the presenter as an interested or thoughtful peer on a topic. Children learn discipline from listening to and studying information given by authority figures. Adults, however, can read stuff on their own and then interact with the authority figures to grow their own knowledge, ask questions, etc.
Anecdotal, but still: "A significant percentage (20%+) are dead wood that literally do NOTHING for the firm. They will never type a line of code - and are there solely for marketing brochures and sales pitches. When you combine, 'We have 50 devs ready to work for your project,' with the lower prices for their services, that pitch sounds pretty good to naive managers looking for reasons to pick one company over another."
When you have practices like that going on, you're going to have a LOT of rotten apples in the Indian dev barrel.
Western Russia IS part of Europe. And it's not a small part, either. I don't think Hitler's forces ever made it to Asia, but they still conquered millions of square miles of Russia before retreating.
And after this is done what prevents one the parceled out smaller corporations from expanding their business enough to regain and over take the size of the original corporation?
If a company controls more than a pre-defined percentage of the market, they would be required to break off some of it completely (into its own, separate business entity - no legal collusion). It would then compete against its former "parent" in the same market. They still have the ability to make a ton of money, while keeping the business(es) on their toes.
As for the rest, I agree with everything you said about personal responsibility. Remember that I said that the haves need to give more voluntarily - not all through tax collection. And the poor would only accept what they NEED - not enough to make themselves equal.
It'd be a pipe dream of a utopia that would require a complete paradigm shift. It would require humility and gratitude across the board, and the complete removal of social classes/stratification; No more, "I'm better than you because I have more," crap.
The worst part of the whole discussion: It's not a right of the poor to have gigabit speeds. And the rich shouldn't be forced to give up their wealth. There's no easy solution.
The only solution is for the haves to voluntarily care for the poor - and for have-nots to avoid being covetous assholes that focus on complaining about not getting enough (i.e. the world owes them a living.)
To help bring that about, both sides would need to come closer together, figuratively and literally. Personalize the whole thing. Remove the anonymity and distance between parties. Force people to see the effects of what they're doing to "the other side" - so both sides' plight could be understood better.
The first real world step would be to 1) break apart larger corporations (especially the "too big to fail" kind) to bring business leaders back down to the real world the rest of us live in while providing them an opportunity to accrue wealth, AND 2) shrink down the scale of federal (and some state) government entitlement programs. Have local community leaders dole any federal and state government aid out more personally - and have the local wealthy people help the poor, and the local poor help those wealthy people by becoming solid, educated, positive citizens.
It sounds like an impossible fairy tale to hope for, but IMO it's the only real way to have everyone in society to be lifted up temporally and spiritually and establish peace and happiness around the world. Anything else is doomed to fail, sooner or later.
"Throw out the burdensome regulations that shackle corporations that are dying to provide a better internet to all! Especially those regulations that require a modern internet be equal (net neutrality) and available to all - kill 'em! They're standing in the way of profit growth.. I mean, market forces that would provide a faster internet for everyone."
"Look... Let's be real.. if those nigg&&cough^^cough^^hack$##... poor people could just afford to pay for it, it'd be there already..."
As much as it makes sense in a perfect, ivory towered world to get rid of seemingly superfluous or harmful regulations, the real world needs government-backed regulations with teeth. Yes, many regulations are not fair nor ideal, and they definitely create resistance against efficiency. But they are the only thing that keeps a lid on the real world problems that are ultimately based in greed and soulless profit motive by companies that are way too large for the world's own good.
Some of it, yeah - but not all. Not everyone agrees on capital punishment - even within the LDS church. And paid (and usually corrupted) clergy are commonplace and accepted in Western society. Baptizing babies is completely ridiculous because babies can't repent of their sins, but millions of Christians are still baptized that way today every year. The American empire and peace in its homelands will fall apart if we ever cut way back on military spending and don't act like decent people to each other and around the globe.
It clarifies these debatable issues and becomes a philosophical guidepost for the American continent, for this time - which is what makes it unique. It didn't come from the Middle East, China, India, Mecca, etc. - it was written for the New World.
As a work of fiction, it still makes those points in its stories as allegories/legends, etc..
Slashdot Mirror
The United States also has a military-based holiday on November 11th (Veterans Day). Unlike Memorial Day, many businesses/institutions don't take that day off either. Not sure if you know about it, but based on your description I'd say Veterans Day sounds more like Remembrance Day than Memorial Day - which these days is more known for hot dogs, parties, and retail "sales events" than cleaning up grave sites and remembering veterans' sacrifices.
If ANY part of your being grateful has to do with Eich's anti-gay-marriage views and his support of Prop 8 in CA, then you're an over-reactionary idiot. Just like Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal), who recently pushed out a governing board member for his sexual fetish and got punched in the face by the Drupal "community" for being too corporate and concerned about image.
Those kinds of potentially company-altering decisions should never be made over hurt feelings of some random group.
Why not take a shot that the board is ignorant of technology and afraid enough to pay up, just in case?
What the hell is the FCC doing voting on something like this with only three members (two unfilled vacancies)? Would we want a Supreme Court with only 60% of its seats filled (let alone only three people) making choices of this magnitude? This has the potential of being the FCC's Roe V. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, etc.? No way in hell... And that's exactly what the FCC is doing here.
And two of the three members were the ones that voted against it in 2015 are still members. We all know Ajit Pai lives in his own world on this issue and wouldn't change his mind if God himself told him to, and listen to what Michael O'Reilly (an Obama appointee, BTW) said in 2015:
"Commissioner Michael O’Reilly criticized the proposal to reverse Title II: “I see no need for net neutrality rules. I am far more troubled the commission is charting for Title II.” He continued, calling the move a “monumental and unlawful power grab.”
O’Reilly then called the forbearance of certain Title II provisions “fauxbearance.”
If you read those statements, you can see that this was over before it began.
This is fair and good point. At some point in the future it must be addressed (if that's even possible).
That doesn't mean that the principles behind Net Neutrality shouldn't be upheld, however. If ISPs A, B, or C collude then it all becomes moot without regulations.
I honest didn't give a damn about all the weird stuff Uber and its CEO have been doing to various parties. All politics, embarrassments, etc. - don't care... As long as 1) the ride is cheaper, and 2) the drivers are good, that's fine.
This change, however, strikes a nerve for me personally. It's a combination of Big Brotherly data accumulation and usage against people, along with a heaping helping of, "Screw you, rich boy," shakedown.
If this is the way data collection is going, and how it'll be used, then THIS kind of abuse of people's wallets may finally be what wakes up the average Joe as to why privacy still matters.
* Ecowatch.com: Short, short version - "We all need to change big time. All electric everything. No gas (natural or liquid) powered anything. Regulate everything bad out of existence to force the lifestyle equally on everyone. Give up cars for walking/biking/public transportation. Give up suburban home for high density cities. Minimize trucking in favor of more rail. Forget plastic and other petroleum-based products you can't reuse. Global trade must shrink. Eat local. It'll be hard, but it'll be worth it." -- Uh... nope. That hippie utopia isn't gonna fly in its entirety.
* Stanford article summary: To get it, we must 1) turn 1% of all landmass on Earth into solar and wind production, 2) end all internal combustion technology, 3) cut energy consumption by 30% across the board, 4) create a ENORMOUS (and potentially fragile) grid to move power well enough to get power everywhere while hoping that hydroelectric can fill in the gaps to cover everywhere at all times, and 5) recycle better to get enough rare earth metals to build everything. We currently have less than 1% of all solar and wind turbines in place. That's a HUGE transformation necessary for the entire world that would involve a lot of sacrifice and political will by all. No NIMBY attitudes, no corporate meddling or profiteering/corruption. Trillions spent to upgrade... Not gonna happen 100% of the way in today's selfish political environment.
* National Geographic article: Doesn't anywhere in its own text promise 100% clean energy. Only references other hopeful, articles like the pie-in-the-sky Stanford article above. It does say that various sources suggest that 1) we can cut consumption by 44% by 2050. 2) we can double productivity by 2030, and 3) "produce 80 to 90 percent of America’s electricity from proven" renewables.
* Scientific American article is behind a registration. Can't read.
* Greenpeace article: Only country aiming to be 100% renewable energy by 2050? Denmark, surrounded by oceans (for tidal power) and has a tiny landmass to power. Every other point is based in the same logic as the Stanford article above. Huge smart grid, everyone accepting windmills + solar panels and any problems with them (no NIMBY), etc.
I'm not trolling, IMO. I'm just looking at it from a pragmatic POV. And the referenced continued advancements in solar and wind give me hope for good change. If we can get to a majority of renewables while we ALSO research better Stage III+ nuclear fission reactors (and the ever-elusive nuclear fusion energy source), that's great.
In the meantime, just don't expect the average world citizen to give up the comforts we have put together for ourselves without having reasonable alternatives. We can't all walk to work in MegaCity One, shop for everything at the farmer's market (miles away), have bamboo flooring and wear hemp clothes.
I'd love to read about this if I'm wrong.
based on renewable solar and wind energy
I agree on the climate change issue and that we should stick to pushing forward with moving away from PRIMARILY using fossil fuels, but a U.S. economy based on wind + solar is impossible - a pipe dream. Don't act like a climate change denier; Look at the numbers. Wind and solar can't cover a fraction of what the U.S. consumes, and until a major energy breakthrough happens and is implemented, we're going to have to burn SOME coal.
How do you expect educated people to take the pro-climate-change POV seriously when you're making claims like that?
And the whole vitriol for Trump thing is wearing super thin. Remember how the Dems felt about the Kenyan birth certificate "issue", and how retarded and pointless it all sounded? Well, guess what the Dems look like when they're complaining about the whole Trump/Russia connection. They are no better than Trump himself and any other retard who challenged Obama over that birth certificate.
That's bad, but it's not the worst spoiler ever, IMO. I'd go with Terminator Genisys, spoiling the biggest plot point by far (John Connor is now a prototype terminator.) Imagine how great that reveal would've been in an otherwise forgettable movie, but someone in marketing had to screw that up.
Studio C nailed this with The Movie Trailer That Spoils Everything.
I agree with what you said; I think you must've misunderstood what I meant. By immature students, I meant the ones that aren't mature enough to even try and listen to the lecture at all. The ones that have their heads elsewhere: Games, porn, cars, pranks, sex, whatever; It's a total waste of time to lecture them traditionally. Give them the info, make a "help desk" available, and they can sink or swim.
Local news reporting still tries to inform you about what's going on around your town/city.
Most news from the larger media companies and the networks, however - especially the regurgitated "breaking news" from 24/7 cable news networks - is just gossip. Long gone are the days of covering stories with journalistic integrity (see CNN and the 1991 Gulf War, compared to Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room", for comparison's sake.)
Still have my HP 48G. While it looks like a dinosaur now compared to other tools, that thing was great for doing a lot of stuff back in the 90s. And it still works great today. You just have to throw in some AAAs to get it going again. (Just don't pull out the last AAA or you lose your data ;)).
Good press: Exposing bad actors in a conspiracy that are trying to remain anonymous.
Bad press: Exposing an accidental good actor that specifically asked to remain anonymous so he could do his work.
This was like outing a police officer's name and address after he nails a low-level gang leader. It could get very messy for this 22 year old online. Hacked social media accounts, DDOSed any personally managed online resources (web servers, etc.). And that's if it's a low-level script kiddie type trying to make some cash - and not some more malevolent group.
Celebrity isn't what you want in that line of work...
Tradtional lectures are better when:
1) The topic is something that is learning an algorithm (solving for x^2 = 9), or memorizing important facts ("how many votes does it take for a presidential veto to be overridden?").
Or... 2) The students aren't mature enough to interact with the presenter as an interested or thoughtful peer on a topic. Children learn discipline from listening to and studying information given by authority figures. Adults, however, can read stuff on their own and then interact with the authority figures to grow their own knowledge, ask questions, etc.
Anecdotal, but still: "A significant percentage (20%+) are dead wood that literally do NOTHING for the firm. They will never type a line of code - and are there solely for marketing brochures and sales pitches. When you combine, 'We have 50 devs ready to work for your project,' with the lower prices for their services, that pitch sounds pretty good to naive managers looking for reasons to pick one company over another."
When you have practices like that going on, you're going to have a LOT of rotten apples in the Indian dev barrel.
Western Russia IS part of Europe. And it's not a small part, either. I don't think Hitler's forces ever made it to Asia, but they still conquered millions of square miles of Russia before retreating.
Peer reviewed is better than privately funded and vouched for with good marketing (and a wink).
And after this is done what prevents one the parceled out smaller corporations from expanding their business enough to regain and over take the size of the original corporation?
If a company controls more than a pre-defined percentage of the market, they would be required to break off some of it completely (into its own, separate business entity - no legal collusion). It would then compete against its former "parent" in the same market. They still have the ability to make a ton of money, while keeping the business(es) on their toes.
As for the rest, I agree with everything you said about personal responsibility. Remember that I said that the haves need to give more voluntarily - not all through tax collection. And the poor would only accept what they NEED - not enough to make themselves equal.
It'd be a pipe dream of a utopia that would require a complete paradigm shift. It would require humility and gratitude across the board, and the complete removal of social classes/stratification; No more, "I'm better than you because I have more," crap.
It wouldn't be easy, but it would be worth it.
The worst part of the whole discussion: It's not a right of the poor to have gigabit speeds. And the rich shouldn't be forced to give up their wealth. There's no easy solution.
The only solution is for the haves to voluntarily care for the poor - and for have-nots to avoid being covetous assholes that focus on complaining about not getting enough (i.e. the world owes them a living.)
To help bring that about, both sides would need to come closer together, figuratively and literally. Personalize the whole thing. Remove the anonymity and distance between parties. Force people to see the effects of what they're doing to "the other side" - so both sides' plight could be understood better.
The first real world step would be to 1) break apart larger corporations (especially the "too big to fail" kind) to bring business leaders back down to the real world the rest of us live in while providing them an opportunity to accrue wealth, AND 2) shrink down the scale of federal (and some state) government entitlement programs. Have local community leaders dole any federal and state government aid out more personally - and have the local wealthy people help the poor, and the local poor help those wealthy people by becoming solid, educated, positive citizens.
It sounds like an impossible fairy tale to hope for, but IMO it's the only real way to have everyone in society to be lifted up temporally and spiritually and establish peace and happiness around the world. Anything else is doomed to fail, sooner or later.
"Throw out the burdensome regulations that shackle corporations that are dying to provide a better internet to all! Especially those regulations that require a modern internet be equal (net neutrality) and available to all - kill 'em! They're standing in the way of profit growth.. I mean, market forces that would provide a faster internet for everyone."
"Look... Let's be real.. if those nigg&&cough^^cough^^hack$##... poor people could just afford to pay for it, it'd be there already..."
As much as it makes sense in a perfect, ivory towered world to get rid of seemingly superfluous or harmful regulations, the real world needs government-backed regulations with teeth. Yes, many regulations are not fair nor ideal, and they definitely create resistance against efficiency. But they are the only thing that keeps a lid on the real world problems that are ultimately based in greed and soulless profit motive by companies that are way too large for the world's own good.
Let me sadly fix your logic for you.
Caring doesn't matter if the people in control don't.
Nope - just Moroni.
Some of it, yeah - but not all. Not everyone agrees on capital punishment - even within the LDS church. And paid (and usually corrupted) clergy are commonplace and accepted in Western society. Baptizing babies is completely ridiculous because babies can't repent of their sins, but millions of Christians are still baptized that way today every year. The American empire and peace in its homelands will fall apart if we ever cut way back on military spending and don't act like decent people to each other and around the globe.
It clarifies these debatable issues and becomes a philosophical guidepost for the American continent, for this time - which is what makes it unique. It didn't come from the Middle East, China, India, Mecca, etc. - it was written for the New World.
As a work of fiction, it still makes those points in its stories as allegories/legends, etc..