Do you have facts to back up when the rule was created, or are you just taking any chance to paint this as a purely one-sided political issue? I can't find a reference to say, can you provide one?
In any case, the Dems do not hesitate to use the rules to their advantage even when not in control -- that's how the whole sit-in thing started. So, don't be so quick to say "nah".
And if you think the scientists aren't trying to disprove climate change you can think again.
Where will their next grant come from, and for what research, if they disprove one of biggest crises in the last few decades? Funding is limited. It can't be spent on things that aren't important. If climate change isn't real, then it isn't important enough to fund. The money being spent by local areas to create tsunami/flood inundation maps and predictions would dry up if there was no change in sea level -- a piece of the climate change puzzle -- as just one example. A large part of the USGS budget is spent on doing just that kind of work.
They would all love to find out that man-made climate change was wrong because it would be an easy Nobel Prize for showing what it was.
Scientific method doesn't required finding the One True Source for a phenomena when one disproves a prior hypothesis for the cause. Finding out that AGW was of limited impact doesn't prove what the main one(s) is/are, so there is no guarantee of the "easy Nobel Prize". It's probably easier to get one for just being elected President of the US than for finding the real cause were it not AGW.
Nonsense. The whole of Congress exists for political purposes.
Perhaps you misunderstand what "political purposes" means? The whole of congress exists to create legislation and funding in conformance to their duties as outlined in the US Constitution.
The "whole of Congress" does not exist as a forum for members to stand up and campaign for votes from their constituents. That is what I mean by "political purposes".
Speeches made by Senators and Representatives are all political.
The fact that many of them take advantage of the situation to make such speeches does not mean that it is the reason the congress exists.
And CSPAN is there to record ongoing politics.
No, C-SPAN is there to avoid political use of the system; a non-partisan viewer of the process. They fail miserably at times, but that, too, does not mean their purpose is to be political.
The purpose of the rules in Congress are not, or at least should not be, to silence the opinions of those who disagree with the political party in power.
The opinions are not silenced. Members of congress have special privileges in communicating with their constituents. They are just not permitted to use the house floor for political purposes, one of the long standing rules that congressional members are subject to due to their positions, your belief that the 1st Amendment is unrestricted notwithstanding.
But at least you did admit that the Republicans are not trying to make it illegal, just attach a penalty to an existing rule that previously had none.
If our elected officials are too cowardly or unethical such that they act one way when they are being watched vs when they are not watched,
Please tell me that you do not act differently when you are being watched than when you are not. Please tell me that MOST people do not act differently. Please tell me that our cherished celebrities do not act differently -- have you ever seen some of the photos of them when they don't think anyone is watching, compared to when they do?
It is not cowardly to use an opportunity for free video time to speak to one's constituents and show them how hard you are working for them. It may be unethical, but that depends on the purpose for the video in large part. I don't know where you get the "nonsensically" or "against their better judgement" just because they act differently. In fact, it would seem to be in their best judgement to do so.
I fail to see how closed doors would improve their behavior
I fail to see how you can call a house floor session that is carried on almost every cable tv system in the county as behind "closed doors". I also fail to see a problem with rules against using the house floor for political gain while no session is in progress.
Members of the legislature are still citizens, if I remember correctly.
Members of the legislature already have a lot of laws and rules limiting their rights to free speech because of their position. Campaign finance, for one category. Robert's Rules of Order during legislative sessions for another.
Rules that are intended to stop the process on the floor from becoming media circuses are a good thing. Too many elected officials view the ability to get up and yammer on while being covered by C-SPAN as a great way to show their constituents how hard they work, and they speechify only to get their faces in front of the public. Some "debates" are held only for publicity and not for clarity.
Were the Dems in control of the house, I'm sure they'd have no trouble using the existing rules to turn the cameras off.
Republicans respond by trying to make streaming illegal.
Actually, Republicans respond by adding a penalty to the existing rules against photos and videos from the floor. From TFS:
Taking photo or video had already been prohibited on the floor, but was never enforced.
I.e., they aren't making it illegal. It was already against house rules.
What's remarkable is that the video while the house was out of session was being done for purely political purposes, something that C-SPAN was created to avoid.
There is an edit function. I'm using it now. You get a box to type text into, and you can go and edit it, and then you can preview it to see what it looks like. How much more editing do you need? You want to edit what has already been posted instead of thinking about what you say before you post it. I understand. But you are told as soon as you submit -- if you don't like what you see online you should have previewed.
As for an "edit" button for twits. That's about as stupid as a "recall" button for email messages. Twitter is a push service. Email is a distributed push-to-the-final server service. Once you tweet, people see it and it is on their device. Once you email, it's on someone else's server.
Yes, let's have a "recall" or "edit" for tweets, so that I can laugh as loudly at people who think they can recall a tweet as I do at those who think they can recall an email from my email client so I won't see whatever mistake it is they made.
All my points disappeared without notice a while back when I went over a year without flying. Thanks a lot, United Airlines.
The MilagePlus website shows the expiration date for accrued miles. Mine is sometime in 2018, currently.
For those who don't use United, they used to have a four digit PIN code to go with the MileagePlus identifier. It was published how easy it was to break in using that system, so United went to a system with a user selectable password. In addition, they now alert whenever a user accesses through an unrecognized device, prompting a two or three security question test before allowing access.
I don't know what the "six-digit code" being referred to is. There is a six character record identifier attached to each itinerary. The difference between 1 million possibilities and the 2,176,782,336 (>2 billion) is significant when it comes to "guessing".
Nothing. And what thegarbz is forgetting, and I almost forgot about, is that the alleged killer is saying he was asleep during the time of the murder. And he's forgetting that Alexa does record when it is spoken to.
It is clearly possible that the killer made a request of Alexa during the time he claims he was asleep. Once you have a time-saving convenience tool you are likely to use it out of force of habit. Killers are stupid enough to google for info about how to do it right even when there is a browser cache and google record of the searches; what is to say that this guy didn't ask for info on how to get rid of a body or blood from Alexa? Or what the weather was, or even "Alexa, what time is it?"
A recording of the suspect's voice at 2:12AM asking Alexa what time it is would be crippling to his already lame alibi. That may be all the police are looking for.
Depends on what they are asking for. If they know that the person said "Alexia, where should I hide the body." Then yes. If not then they are stupid.
No.
Err no, no one ever thought this was stupid.
Err, yes, some people did.
It was known from the very earliest mobile phone implementations that carriers knew where the phones were.
First, no, not to the accuracy that they currently are, second, most people think the phone actually has to have a GPS turned on for this to happen, and third, early AMPS services did not need to have the location accuracy that current LTE services do. (LTE data rates actually adjust based on distance to the device.) This information you claim was ubiquitous actually wasn't. Users didn't then, and most still don't, know anything about this. To the vast majority of users these things are magic. Keep in mind, you are in a forum that is supposed to be "news for nerds". That is a hint that you might know a bit more about technology than most people, so using what you know as a baseline for "most people" is just ridiculous.
Remember, it was well into the cell phone revolution that people got upset because they learned that everything they said could be picked up on a television set! This is a PHONE! It's PRIVATE! Uhh, no, it's RADIO and it is ANALOG, and it is transmitted in the CLEAR. That doesn't make those people stupid, it makes them ignorant. The stupid people were the legislators who ignored the intelligent people who said "it's radio, what do you expect?" and then created laws to cripple radio receivers instead of force encryption on the signals.
On the flip side here it looks like "A microphone, clearly it records everything so let's get a warrant for it" which is absurd and stupid.
No, it is perhaps ignorant of the technical details of the specific system, but it is neither absurd nor stupid to think a device that is designed to send audio across the net might actually have done so. Not "clearly it records", but "clearly it CAN record", which is quite true, and something that those awfully stupid people who have smart TVs that listen in to their conversations didn't think of. It turns out the "stupid" people who thought "my TV can listen to me" were the smart ones; the stupid ones were those who believed the corporate statements and thought it was stupid to believe that a device with a microphone connected to the internet might be sending overheard audio off to the corporate masters.
For example, it would be stupid to assume that a device that can decode one trigger word ("Alexa!") could not be programmed to decode another ("HELP ME"), especially considering the growing market for elderly and other remote assistance devices.
Do you think Amazon is ignorant of the market for services to people who could use a device that responds to "help me, I've fallen and can't get up", especially since that meme has been installed in the marketplace as the quintessential cry for help? They may not have completed the testing or gotten all the legal liability issues covered, but it may be in the devices they are selling now. Do you know they haven't? How do you expect the police, who are not technical experts, to know they haven't?
And before people start telling me how easy it is to test for this, let me say this. I don't care. I don't have one, I don't plan on having one. And it is irrelevant if I, or anyone else here, can test for that, because the police don't have that ability and they don't need it. They can ask for any data the device has sent back to Amazon and let Amazon deal with it. It is not stupid or absurd to ask, given the technology involved.
Not having an Amazon Echo won't stop the police asking for very stupid things if you are a murder suspect.
Why is it stupid to see a device that is designed to send audio across the net and ask for any audio that it might have sent across the net? Especially when they are trying to solve a murder.
Not too long ago people would have thought it was stupid for law enforcement to ask for cell phone position data for lost people from the carriers, especially if the lost person had a cell phone and could call out for help in the first place. But cell phone position data is becoming the main resource for search and rescue and saving lives, because even a phone that shows "no service" for voice can provide enough data to the carrier for them to locate it pretty well. The chances of someone surviving are much much greater when the search area collapses from tens or hundreds of square miles down to a box 1/4 mile on a side.
A few months ago there was a search for a missing group of 3 people. Ground and aircraft resources were called out, and the cell data was requested. Air search of that location saw nothing. Then, three days later, when the people who were trying not to be found got hungry and decided to come out, they were found -- exactly where the call phone data said they were.
We get new technology all the time. What some people think is stupid to ask for may be easy to get and very valuable.
So I guess the moral of the story is that if you are being strangled in a hot tub, you could do worse than yelling "Hey Siri! Call the police!" with your final breath.
Except for the fact that I have (allegedly) turned off the voice activation for my phone, I would expect that it would respond along the lines "My name is Okay Google, thank you very much" were I to yell that. So no, there isn't much worse I could do than yell "Hey Siri", unless I thought the killer was carrying a Siri-enabled iPhone and his Siri would obey my command and rat him out.
"Hey Siri, ignore any cries for help or screams of pain for the next fifteen minutes" might be something that Apple uses to trigger a recording.
my dad has a voice command TV, it listens to him yell at politicians and hippies, I don't think it actually activates anything,
I have for sale at a reasonable price a "voice command rock". It listens when you yell about politicians and hippies, doesn't actually activate anything, AND you don't need to worry that it is secretly recording your political outbursts for later corrective counseling. Unlike the need to trust your local librarian that they do not keep records of what books you borrow, or your phone company recording your calls, or viewing records from your set top cable box, there truly is no record of anything kept by this VCR.
There is, however, an embedded identification should you install this VCR someplace it should not be, such as by sending it into a local police station through a plate glass window.
Alcohol taxes will never go away. Alcohol taxes are one of those destroyers of democracy predicted by de Tocqueville when he said, paraphrasing heavily, that democracy can survive only until a majority realizes that they can tax a minority to pay for things they want.
Alcohol taxes are an easy winner in any tax levy vote because nobody wants to be seen as a heavy drinker, and thus a vote to add another tax to alcohol will not be a problem for them. Excise taxes on yachts and fancy cars, ditto.
We're seeing this happen at warp speed in Oregon with taxes on pot. Pot went from illegal to medical, and taxing medicine is still seen as a bad thing so it didn't happen. Now that it is legal for recreational use, every level of government is falling over themselves implementing taxes. There aren't many "pot heads" who vote, so it's an easy winner.
On the other hand, our fair city thought about implementing a "cell phone tax". It wasn't fair that cell phone users were such a large percentage of calls to 911, so cell phone users needed to be taxed to pay for that. (We will ignore that cell phone calls to 911 are a good thing, and that their number increased mainly because they are PORTABLE devices that will be most convenient in an emergency.) This idea got shot down because WE are cell phone users, vs. the THEM that smokes pot or drinks hard liquor.
So, as long as alcohol taxes only impact alcoholics, and nobody wants to admit to being one, alcohol taxes will never go away.
As a PhD researcher who works with soft (research) money, I'd say you have no idea how grant funding and annual salaries work in the slightest.
As a PhD researcher who has worked under research funding for 25 years and continues to do so, I'd say I have a very good knowledge of how the system works.
In addition, if we were to show conclusively tomorrow that human beings have absolutely zero effect on climate, the only people who might be out of work
When did I say people would be out of work? Do you understand what tenure is? Or how research faculty can transition to teaching faculty when their grants don't get funded? I think I already pointed out that research scientists who lose grants will have to transition, which is a very different job with very different peer recognition. You don't write papers anymore, you don't have grad students to do research because you can't pay them. I said all of this already.
Real researchers with the math and physics and model expertise to work on climate can work on a wide variety of subjects.
Yes, they can. They can teach, or if they can find another topic that is as well funded they have a reasonable chance of getting a grant in a new area of research approved. If they are suddenly writing grants for topics in which they have little expertise or status they will likely find their grants don't get funded, and then they become teachers. The stories about huge grants to study trivial things like the mating habits of grubs are mostly apocryphal, even though they were the fodder for Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards. Money is getting tighter unless you are trying to solve a crisis; global climate change is one such. When it stops being a crisis, or someone wants to prove it is not one, money dries up. You can't keep the same number of people researching climate change when the money is cut in half and allocated to another more critical area of research. Even a grade school student should be able to understand that.
How come 90% astronomers don't claim bunches of asteroids are headed our way soon, or 90% of solar experts claiming the sun will go nova soon,
Yada yada yada. Because none of those fields are trying at attribute causes to directly observable phenomena without a pure experimental basis to show causality, perhaps. Sorry, did you think you were making a serious argument?
Study their house, vacations, and daily habits and see if their material goods exceed their official annual salary.
You do realize, I hope, that most of the climatologists you are talking about get their official annual salary precisely because they are researching global climate change and ways to mitigate it. If they didn't have a research topic that justified a lot of money, there wouldn't be a lot of money given to them. Saying "global climate change isn't a problem" is a tacit admission that they don't think the topic justifies a lot of money for research anymore.
I say that only because it is the common accusation applied to those climatologists and other scientists who work in industry, that they're being bought and paid for by getting an "official annual salary" from someone who wants them to have an acceptable opinion. While industry funding is more likely to be shut off cold than an "official annual salary" for an academic research scientist, if the latter doesn't have research funding then he's going to become teaching faculty and limited in what he can do outside of that. No graduate students, no conferences or papers.. a very bleak existence for someone who wants to do research for a living.
One may argue they are favoring the preferences of their employers to keep their jobs, but a good many are funded by private universities, and some close to retirement.
Funding from private universities is still funding, and even those who have retired have friends and colleagues who would be upset to lose their funding. And surprising enough, being a retired professor doesn't mean your funding ends.
Denying the crisis that is getting well funded at the moment is, however, how funding can come to an end.
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet? Under the concept of "protecting nature" we must stop you from exhaling.
Under the concept of "protecting nature", however, we can accept the dangers of allowing you to continue to breathe because we theorize that you have some value to society that offsets the risk.
The former is the stupid way to "protect nature". The latter is the rational way. The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
As you have just demonstrated.
Any time you ignore the true beliefs of those whose opinions differ from yours and instead ascribe your own strict constructionism to what you think they ought to believe, and then accuse them of horrific things, you're playing that game.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
The very reason for prices being so high in cities, is because people all want to live in the cities, because that's where employment can be found.
That's not the direct cause. Were there sufficient accommodations for them all the prices would not go up as much. It is the SCARCITY that is created by DEMAND that causes the prices to go up. Five million people looking for four million apartments in NYC is why the prices are high; why there are five million people is irrelevant. They could all be looking for housing in NYC because they like smog and being shoulder to shoulder with their neighbor and have no interest in working in the city and the prices would still be high.
So now you move the DEMAND out to the rural and currently less populated areas because people don't have to work and they flee the cesspool big cities. That DEMAND hits the current supply and -- drives the prices up. You've got people trying to live on UBI and they still can't find a place to live because the prices have just gone above their ability to pay. And the people who already lived there are SO happy that they are now going to be paying more, too. This is not a Good Thing.
But, we are told, that scads of "greedy landlords" are going to build scads of new cheap housing for all these UBI people. They aren't building scads of new housing for employed people in areas where there is existing demand for such housing (I live in one such place), but they'll leap at the chance to build when UBI comes about. They'll all be thinking "I have a lot of people who can pay $1000/month and I won't build anything to meet that demand, but wow look at all the people who can pay $250/month -- I gotta build!" Except that the demand for land will go up, increasing costs for that, demand for skilled trades will go up, increasing costs for them, and in some places there just isn't land enough to build enough rodent cages on. (And depending on the "greedy" landlords to fix the problem of housing supply is kind of admitting that "greed" isn't a bad thing, isn't it?)
Just the fact that there are more people, results in more economic activity.
This is the fallacy that all jobs are the same. An influx of UBI-level population won't create high paying jobs in an area, it will create a demand for more LOW paying jobs, like grocery clerks and burger flippers. If there happens to be a source of good paying jobs in the area, they aren't suddenly going to need to hire a lot more people because those good paying jobs are generally serving a wide geographical area (national in many cases). Doubling the local population doesn't double the demand for their products. Now, if the greedy bastard landlords do suddenly decide to build rodent cages for the UBI folks and create a demand for tradesmen, those won't be the UBI folks getting the jobs, and it will be temporary if it happens at all. After all, demand doesn't create supply today, expecting things to change tomorrow is lunacy.
Additionally, the influx of "economic activity" will be from people who are living on UBI -- food, clothing, and shelter -- who aren't going to be able to spend a lot for extraneous things. Demand will go up for some services, stay the same for others.
And you know that those low paying jobs that are now more in demand (service industry) are some of the jobs being automated out of existence. So no, dumping a lot of low income people into an area isn't the boon to the local economy that you think it will be. Were it to be true, then Cabrini-Green would have been paradise and not hell.
As I described above, it's not a 'problem' that you're moving to someone else's backyard.
Uh, yeah, moving people out of the cities into the rural areas is moving the problems they have (unemployment, etc) into someone else's backyard. How can you claim that it isn't?
No strings attached means greatly reduced overhead compared to maintaining the 'wel
If people didn't need to make a living, many would do what they are passionate about, not just grind out 40 hrs.
People living on UBI won't have enough money to start businesses. If they did, then it isn't truly BASIC income, is it?
And all the folks sitting on their ass collecting the UBI will have the money to spend on those things.
If people living on UBI have money to spend on extras like microbrews and eating out, then it really isn't BASIC income, is it?
It's never not worth making more money with UBI,
If I am getting enough money to visit the local microbreweries and buy art and eat out on UBI, and to make more money I have to take a low paying, 40 hour a week job that I hate, then yes, it is not worth making more money with UBI.
... there aren't enough jobs for everyone to be employed.
Eventually you'll reach the point where there are so few people working that you'll have to tax them at >100% to pay for all the people who aren't.
And as soon as the people who live off other people's tax dollars becomes the majority, you'll learn what DeTocqevilles comment about democracy surviving in such conditions means. If we aren't already pretty much there already...
a $700/month unit might be $1.03/sqft, while a $1,400/month unit in the same area is only $0.76/sqft.... Do you see the problem here?
Yes, it's obvious. Your proposed $570 or so monthly UBI is more than $100/month less than the lowest monthly rent. Your "stable income" people can't afford to rent those apartments.
You'll find that any such influx has always and currently does reliably lead to an expansion of the housing market.
You are wrong. Amazingly and wonderfully wrong. In the city where I live there is an annual influx of new potential tenants, but the expansion of the housing market is miniscule, if any. The market is near capacity occupied, yet nobody is falling all over themselves trying to build more low cost, or even high cost, mass housing to meet that demand. This forces new tenants to live out of the city, increasing their costs while the costs for in-city tenants remain high due to high demand and low supply.
The system I described creates a multi-hundred-million-dollars-per-month profit opportunity.
I've already run through the numbers you suggested. The return on investment isn't there.
Greedy landlords are going to be on that like stink on shit;
Where are these "greedy landlords" going to come from when they aren't already building to meet the demand?
That's banned now, but would be significant for a 244sqft flat)
You truly do want people living like caged rodents. Do you not realize how small a 244 sqft flat is? Tiny living is a new affectation for those who can afford it; it's not how you want to force hundreds of thousands of people to live.
Surprisingly enough, what rich people think about their property value isn't going to factor into it much.
Other than the fact that the rich people who own the land you want the cages built on get to set the price the land sells for, which has a significant impact on how likely those cages are to be built.
As a side effect; the influx of people will generate economic activity in those areas.
I don't know that creating a scarcity of affordable housing "in those areas" and thus driving the prices up will be a Good Thing. You'll wind up creating markets with 99% or better occupancy, landlords who will increase prices for the people already there who can pay more, and leave the immigrants who want to live like caged rodents on UBI payments without anyplace they can afford. In exchange for higher costs of living, you'll get an influx of people with no disposable income -- nothing to spend on anything but necessities -- which won't create buttloads of jobs to offset the costs.
UBI will have a harmonising effect on the economy where cities become less of a focal point for economic activity.
This sounds like a situation of "moved the problem to someone else's backyard" and "it looks like we care because we're handing out other people's money but we don't actually have to care". These are hallmarks of existing welfare programs, so what's actually new?
I understand the desire of city dwellers to move their problems off into the sticks, and to make living in rural areas as bad as living in the city that rural dwellers escaped from, but I don't accept it as a solution to the problems of city dwellers.
Slashdot Mirror
In any case, the Dems do not hesitate to use the rules to their advantage even when not in control -- that's how the whole sit-in thing started. So, don't be so quick to say "nah".
And if you think the scientists aren't trying to disprove climate change you can think again.
Where will their next grant come from, and for what research, if they disprove one of biggest crises in the last few decades? Funding is limited. It can't be spent on things that aren't important. If climate change isn't real, then it isn't important enough to fund. The money being spent by local areas to create tsunami/flood inundation maps and predictions would dry up if there was no change in sea level -- a piece of the climate change puzzle -- as just one example. A large part of the USGS budget is spent on doing just that kind of work.
They would all love to find out that man-made climate change was wrong because it would be an easy Nobel Prize for showing what it was.
Scientific method doesn't required finding the One True Source for a phenomena when one disproves a prior hypothesis for the cause. Finding out that AGW was of limited impact doesn't prove what the main one(s) is/are, so there is no guarantee of the "easy Nobel Prize". It's probably easier to get one for just being elected President of the US than for finding the real cause were it not AGW.
Nonsense. The whole of Congress exists for political purposes.
Perhaps you misunderstand what "political purposes" means? The whole of congress exists to create legislation and funding in conformance to their duties as outlined in the US Constitution.
The "whole of Congress" does not exist as a forum for members to stand up and campaign for votes from their constituents. That is what I mean by "political purposes".
Speeches made by Senators and Representatives are all political.
The fact that many of them take advantage of the situation to make such speeches does not mean that it is the reason the congress exists.
And CSPAN is there to record ongoing politics.
No, C-SPAN is there to avoid political use of the system; a non-partisan viewer of the process. They fail miserably at times, but that, too, does not mean their purpose is to be political.
The purpose of the rules in Congress are not, or at least should not be, to silence the opinions of those who disagree with the political party in power.
The opinions are not silenced. Members of congress have special privileges in communicating with their constituents. They are just not permitted to use the house floor for political purposes, one of the long standing rules that congressional members are subject to due to their positions, your belief that the 1st Amendment is unrestricted notwithstanding.
But at least you did admit that the Republicans are not trying to make it illegal, just attach a penalty to an existing rule that previously had none.
If our elected officials are too cowardly or unethical such that they act one way when they are being watched vs when they are not watched,
Please tell me that you do not act differently when you are being watched than when you are not. Please tell me that MOST people do not act differently. Please tell me that our cherished celebrities do not act differently -- have you ever seen some of the photos of them when they don't think anyone is watching, compared to when they do?
It is not cowardly to use an opportunity for free video time to speak to one's constituents and show them how hard you are working for them. It may be unethical, but that depends on the purpose for the video in large part. I don't know where you get the "nonsensically" or "against their better judgement" just because they act differently. In fact, it would seem to be in their best judgement to do so.
I fail to see how closed doors would improve their behavior
I fail to see how you can call a house floor session that is carried on almost every cable tv system in the county as behind "closed doors". I also fail to see a problem with rules against using the house floor for political gain while no session is in progress.
Members of the legislature are still citizens, if I remember correctly.
Members of the legislature already have a lot of laws and rules limiting their rights to free speech because of their position. Campaign finance, for one category. Robert's Rules of Order during legislative sessions for another.
Rules that are intended to stop the process on the floor from becoming media circuses are a good thing. Too many elected officials view the ability to get up and yammer on while being covered by C-SPAN as a great way to show their constituents how hard they work, and they speechify only to get their faces in front of the public. Some "debates" are held only for publicity and not for clarity.
Were the Dems in control of the house, I'm sure they'd have no trouble using the existing rules to turn the cameras off.
Republicans respond by trying to make streaming illegal.
Actually, Republicans respond by adding a penalty to the existing rules against photos and videos from the floor. From TFS:
I.e., they aren't making it illegal. It was already against house rules.
What's remarkable is that the video while the house was out of session was being done for purely political purposes, something that C-SPAN was created to avoid.
As for an "edit" button for twits. That's about as stupid as a "recall" button for email messages. Twitter is a push service. Email is a distributed push-to-the-final server service. Once you tweet, people see it and it is on their device. Once you email, it's on someone else's server.
Yes, let's have a "recall" or "edit" for tweets, so that I can laugh as loudly at people who think they can recall a tweet as I do at those who think they can recall an email from my email client so I won't see whatever mistake it is they made.
All my points disappeared without notice a while back when I went over a year without flying. Thanks a lot, United Airlines.
The MilagePlus website shows the expiration date for accrued miles. Mine is sometime in 2018, currently.
For those who don't use United, they used to have a four digit PIN code to go with the MileagePlus identifier. It was published how easy it was to break in using that system, so United went to a system with a user selectable password. In addition, they now alert whenever a user accesses through an unrecognized device, prompting a two or three security question test before allowing access.
I don't know what the "six-digit code" being referred to is. There is a six character record identifier attached to each itinerary. The difference between 1 million possibilities and the 2,176,782,336 (>2 billion) is significant when it comes to "guessing".
And really, what does this cost the police?
Nothing. And what thegarbz is forgetting, and I almost forgot about, is that the alleged killer is saying he was asleep during the time of the murder. And he's forgetting that Alexa does record when it is spoken to.
It is clearly possible that the killer made a request of Alexa during the time he claims he was asleep. Once you have a time-saving convenience tool you are likely to use it out of force of habit. Killers are stupid enough to google for info about how to do it right even when there is a browser cache and google record of the searches; what is to say that this guy didn't ask for info on how to get rid of a body or blood from Alexa? Or what the weather was, or even "Alexa, what time is it?"
A recording of the suspect's voice at 2:12AM asking Alexa what time it is would be crippling to his already lame alibi. That may be all the police are looking for.
Depends on what they are asking for. If they know that the person said "Alexia, where should I hide the body." Then yes. If not then they are stupid.
No.
Err no, no one ever thought this was stupid.
Err, yes, some people did.
It was known from the very earliest mobile phone implementations that carriers knew where the phones were.
First, no, not to the accuracy that they currently are, second, most people think the phone actually has to have a GPS turned on for this to happen, and third, early AMPS services did not need to have the location accuracy that current LTE services do. (LTE data rates actually adjust based on distance to the device.) This information you claim was ubiquitous actually wasn't. Users didn't then, and most still don't, know anything about this. To the vast majority of users these things are magic. Keep in mind, you are in a forum that is supposed to be "news for nerds". That is a hint that you might know a bit more about technology than most people, so using what you know as a baseline for "most people" is just ridiculous.
Remember, it was well into the cell phone revolution that people got upset because they learned that everything they said could be picked up on a television set! This is a PHONE! It's PRIVATE! Uhh, no, it's RADIO and it is ANALOG, and it is transmitted in the CLEAR. That doesn't make those people stupid, it makes them ignorant. The stupid people were the legislators who ignored the intelligent people who said "it's radio, what do you expect?" and then created laws to cripple radio receivers instead of force encryption on the signals.
On the flip side here it looks like "A microphone, clearly it records everything so let's get a warrant for it" which is absurd and stupid.
No, it is perhaps ignorant of the technical details of the specific system, but it is neither absurd nor stupid to think a device that is designed to send audio across the net might actually have done so. Not "clearly it records", but "clearly it CAN record", which is quite true, and something that those awfully stupid people who have smart TVs that listen in to their conversations didn't think of. It turns out the "stupid" people who thought "my TV can listen to me" were the smart ones; the stupid ones were those who believed the corporate statements and thought it was stupid to believe that a device with a microphone connected to the internet might be sending overheard audio off to the corporate masters.
For example, it would be stupid to assume that a device that can decode one trigger word ("Alexa!") could not be programmed to decode another ("HELP ME"), especially considering the growing market for elderly and other remote assistance devices. Do you think Amazon is ignorant of the market for services to people who could use a device that responds to "help me, I've fallen and can't get up", especially since that meme has been installed in the marketplace as the quintessential cry for help? They may not have completed the testing or gotten all the legal liability issues covered, but it may be in the devices they are selling now. Do you know they haven't? How do you expect the police, who are not technical experts, to know they haven't?
And before people start telling me how easy it is to test for this, let me say this. I don't care. I don't have one, I don't plan on having one. And it is irrelevant if I, or anyone else here, can test for that, because the police don't have that ability and they don't need it. They can ask for any data the device has sent back to Amazon and let Amazon deal with it. It is not stupid or absurd to ask, given the technology involved.
Not having an Amazon Echo won't stop the police asking for very stupid things if you are a murder suspect.
Why is it stupid to see a device that is designed to send audio across the net and ask for any audio that it might have sent across the net? Especially when they are trying to solve a murder.
Not too long ago people would have thought it was stupid for law enforcement to ask for cell phone position data for lost people from the carriers, especially if the lost person had a cell phone and could call out for help in the first place. But cell phone position data is becoming the main resource for search and rescue and saving lives, because even a phone that shows "no service" for voice can provide enough data to the carrier for them to locate it pretty well. The chances of someone surviving are much much greater when the search area collapses from tens or hundreds of square miles down to a box 1/4 mile on a side.
A few months ago there was a search for a missing group of 3 people. Ground and aircraft resources were called out, and the cell data was requested. Air search of that location saw nothing. Then, three days later, when the people who were trying not to be found got hungry and decided to come out, they were found -- exactly where the call phone data said they were.
We get new technology all the time. What some people think is stupid to ask for may be easy to get and very valuable.
So I guess the moral of the story is that if you are being strangled in a hot tub, you could do worse than yelling "Hey Siri! Call the police!" with your final breath.
Except for the fact that I have (allegedly) turned off the voice activation for my phone, I would expect that it would respond along the lines "My name is Okay Google, thank you very much" were I to yell that. So no, there isn't much worse I could do than yell "Hey Siri", unless I thought the killer was carrying a Siri-enabled iPhone and his Siri would obey my command and rat him out.
"Hey Siri, ignore any cries for help or screams of pain for the next fifteen minutes" might be something that Apple uses to trigger a recording.
my dad has a voice command TV, it listens to him yell at politicians and hippies, I don't think it actually activates anything,
I have for sale at a reasonable price a "voice command rock". It listens when you yell about politicians and hippies, doesn't actually activate anything, AND you don't need to worry that it is secretly recording your political outbursts for later corrective counseling. Unlike the need to trust your local librarian that they do not keep records of what books you borrow, or your phone company recording your calls, or viewing records from your set top cable box, there truly is no record of anything kept by this VCR.
There is, however, an embedded identification should you install this VCR someplace it should not be, such as by sending it into a local police station through a plate glass window.
Patent pending.
If the alcohol taxes went away,
Alcohol taxes will never go away. Alcohol taxes are one of those destroyers of democracy predicted by de Tocqueville when he said, paraphrasing heavily, that democracy can survive only until a majority realizes that they can tax a minority to pay for things they want.
Alcohol taxes are an easy winner in any tax levy vote because nobody wants to be seen as a heavy drinker, and thus a vote to add another tax to alcohol will not be a problem for them. Excise taxes on yachts and fancy cars, ditto.
We're seeing this happen at warp speed in Oregon with taxes on pot. Pot went from illegal to medical, and taxing medicine is still seen as a bad thing so it didn't happen. Now that it is legal for recreational use, every level of government is falling over themselves implementing taxes. There aren't many "pot heads" who vote, so it's an easy winner.
On the other hand, our fair city thought about implementing a "cell phone tax". It wasn't fair that cell phone users were such a large percentage of calls to 911, so cell phone users needed to be taxed to pay for that. (We will ignore that cell phone calls to 911 are a good thing, and that their number increased mainly because they are PORTABLE devices that will be most convenient in an emergency.) This idea got shot down because WE are cell phone users, vs. the THEM that smokes pot or drinks hard liquor.
So, as long as alcohol taxes only impact alcoholics, and nobody wants to admit to being one, alcohol taxes will never go away.
As a PhD researcher who works with soft (research) money, I'd say you have no idea how grant funding and annual salaries work in the slightest.
As a PhD researcher who has worked under research funding for 25 years and continues to do so, I'd say I have a very good knowledge of how the system works.
In addition, if we were to show conclusively tomorrow that human beings have absolutely zero effect on climate, the only people who might be out of work
When did I say people would be out of work? Do you understand what tenure is? Or how research faculty can transition to teaching faculty when their grants don't get funded? I think I already pointed out that research scientists who lose grants will have to transition, which is a very different job with very different peer recognition. You don't write papers anymore, you don't have grad students to do research because you can't pay them. I said all of this already.
Real researchers with the math and physics and model expertise to work on climate can work on a wide variety of subjects.
Yes, they can. They can teach, or if they can find another topic that is as well funded they have a reasonable chance of getting a grant in a new area of research approved. If they are suddenly writing grants for topics in which they have little expertise or status they will likely find their grants don't get funded, and then they become teachers. The stories about huge grants to study trivial things like the mating habits of grubs are mostly apocryphal, even though they were the fodder for Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards. Money is getting tighter unless you are trying to solve a crisis; global climate change is one such. When it stops being a crisis, or someone wants to prove it is not one, money dries up. You can't keep the same number of people researching climate change when the money is cut in half and allocated to another more critical area of research. Even a grade school student should be able to understand that.
Nonsense.
Are you saying that a clearly observable fact is "stupid"? Did you just prove my point for me? Yes, you did. Thanks.
Why doesn't this phenomenon inflict OTHER fields?
Who says it doesn't?
How come 90% astronomers don't claim bunches of asteroids are headed our way soon, or 90% of solar experts claiming the sun will go nova soon,
Yada yada yada. Because none of those fields are trying at attribute causes to directly observable phenomena without a pure experimental basis to show causality, perhaps. Sorry, did you think you were making a serious argument?
Study their house, vacations, and daily habits and see if their material goods exceed their official annual salary.
You do realize, I hope, that most of the climatologists you are talking about get their official annual salary precisely because they are researching global climate change and ways to mitigate it. If they didn't have a research topic that justified a lot of money, there wouldn't be a lot of money given to them. Saying "global climate change isn't a problem" is a tacit admission that they don't think the topic justifies a lot of money for research anymore.
I say that only because it is the common accusation applied to those climatologists and other scientists who work in industry, that they're being bought and paid for by getting an "official annual salary" from someone who wants them to have an acceptable opinion. While industry funding is more likely to be shut off cold than an "official annual salary" for an academic research scientist, if the latter doesn't have research funding then he's going to become teaching faculty and limited in what he can do outside of that. No graduate students, no conferences or papers .. a very bleak existence for someone who wants to do research for a living.
One may argue they are favoring the preferences of their employers to keep their jobs, but a good many are funded by private universities, and some close to retirement.
Funding from private universities is still funding, and even those who have retired have friends and colleagues who would be upset to lose their funding. And surprising enough, being a retired professor doesn't mean your funding ends.
Denying the crisis that is getting well funded at the moment is, however, how funding can come to an end.
Protecting nature is stupid?
There is "protecting nature" and "protecting nature." Did you know, every time you exhale, you increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is adding to global climate change and the decimation of the planet? Under the concept of "protecting nature" we must stop you from exhaling. Under the concept of "protecting nature", however, we can accept the dangers of allowing you to continue to breathe because we theorize that you have some value to society that offsets the risk.
The former is the stupid way to "protect nature". The latter is the rational way. The former is what Obama has just done, with an expectation that anyone who dares suggest it is stupid to do it that way will have people claiming that there is no other way to "protect nature". Thus the obvious goal of anyone who rejects the extremist method of "do nothing at all that might ever have accidental negative consequences that can be fixed" being attacked for wanting to "destroy nature". This makes the issue a political football instead of a reasoned response to scientific and technological concerns.
As you have just demonstrated.
Any time you ignore the true beliefs of those whose opinions differ from yours and instead ascribe your own strict constructionism to what you think they ought to believe, and then accuse them of horrific things, you're playing that game.
This is the game that was played with waterboarding, as an example. Those who didn't approve of torture but didn't think waterboarding was torture were accused of approving of torture because "obviously" waterboarding IS torture and thus approving of waterboarding was approving of torture in general. It makes for wonderful rants and great political grandstanding, but sheds very little light on the issue.
The very reason for prices being so high in cities, is because people all want to live in the cities, because that's where employment can be found.
That's not the direct cause. Were there sufficient accommodations for them all the prices would not go up as much. It is the SCARCITY that is created by DEMAND that causes the prices to go up. Five million people looking for four million apartments in NYC is why the prices are high; why there are five million people is irrelevant. They could all be looking for housing in NYC because they like smog and being shoulder to shoulder with their neighbor and have no interest in working in the city and the prices would still be high.
So now you move the DEMAND out to the rural and currently less populated areas because people don't have to work and they flee the cesspool big cities. That DEMAND hits the current supply and -- drives the prices up. You've got people trying to live on UBI and they still can't find a place to live because the prices have just gone above their ability to pay. And the people who already lived there are SO happy that they are now going to be paying more, too. This is not a Good Thing.
But, we are told, that scads of "greedy landlords" are going to build scads of new cheap housing for all these UBI people. They aren't building scads of new housing for employed people in areas where there is existing demand for such housing (I live in one such place), but they'll leap at the chance to build when UBI comes about. They'll all be thinking "I have a lot of people who can pay $1000/month and I won't build anything to meet that demand, but wow look at all the people who can pay $250/month -- I gotta build!" Except that the demand for land will go up, increasing costs for that, demand for skilled trades will go up, increasing costs for them, and in some places there just isn't land enough to build enough rodent cages on. (And depending on the "greedy" landlords to fix the problem of housing supply is kind of admitting that "greed" isn't a bad thing, isn't it?)
Just the fact that there are more people, results in more economic activity.
This is the fallacy that all jobs are the same. An influx of UBI-level population won't create high paying jobs in an area, it will create a demand for more LOW paying jobs, like grocery clerks and burger flippers. If there happens to be a source of good paying jobs in the area, they aren't suddenly going to need to hire a lot more people because those good paying jobs are generally serving a wide geographical area (national in many cases). Doubling the local population doesn't double the demand for their products. Now, if the greedy bastard landlords do suddenly decide to build rodent cages for the UBI folks and create a demand for tradesmen, those won't be the UBI folks getting the jobs, and it will be temporary if it happens at all. After all, demand doesn't create supply today, expecting things to change tomorrow is lunacy.
Additionally, the influx of "economic activity" will be from people who are living on UBI -- food, clothing, and shelter -- who aren't going to be able to spend a lot for extraneous things. Demand will go up for some services, stay the same for others.
And you know that those low paying jobs that are now more in demand (service industry) are some of the jobs being automated out of existence. So no, dumping a lot of low income people into an area isn't the boon to the local economy that you think it will be. Were it to be true, then Cabrini-Green would have been paradise and not hell.
As I described above, it's not a 'problem' that you're moving to someone else's backyard.
Uh, yeah, moving people out of the cities into the rural areas is moving the problems they have (unemployment, etc) into someone else's backyard. How can you claim that it isn't?
No strings attached means greatly reduced overhead compared to maintaining the 'wel
the cell's machinery then shuttles it through its system with sudden bursts of speed -- up to 99.4 nanometers per second
Don't let the Street Outlaw 405 gang know about this, they'll be absolutely green with jealousy!
If people didn't need to make a living, many would do what they are passionate about, not just grind out 40 hrs.
People living on UBI won't have enough money to start businesses. If they did, then it isn't truly BASIC income, is it?
And all the folks sitting on their ass collecting the UBI will have the money to spend on those things.
If people living on UBI have money to spend on extras like microbrews and eating out, then it really isn't BASIC income, is it?
It's never not worth making more money with UBI,
If I am getting enough money to visit the local microbreweries and buy art and eat out on UBI, and to make more money I have to take a low paying, 40 hour a week job that I hate, then yes, it is not worth making more money with UBI.
... there aren't enough jobs for everyone to be employed.
Eventually you'll reach the point where there are so few people working that you'll have to tax them at >100% to pay for all the people who aren't.
And as soon as the people who live off other people's tax dollars becomes the majority, you'll learn what DeTocqevilles comment about democracy surviving in such conditions means. If we aren't already pretty much there already...
a $700/month unit might be $1.03/sqft, while a $1,400/month unit in the same area is only $0.76/sqft. ... Do you see the problem here?
Yes, it's obvious. Your proposed $570 or so monthly UBI is more than $100/month less than the lowest monthly rent. Your "stable income" people can't afford to rent those apartments.
You'll find that any such influx has always and currently does reliably lead to an expansion of the housing market.
You are wrong. Amazingly and wonderfully wrong. In the city where I live there is an annual influx of new potential tenants, but the expansion of the housing market is miniscule, if any. The market is near capacity occupied, yet nobody is falling all over themselves trying to build more low cost, or even high cost, mass housing to meet that demand. This forces new tenants to live out of the city, increasing their costs while the costs for in-city tenants remain high due to high demand and low supply.
The system I described creates a multi-hundred-million-dollars-per-month profit opportunity.
I've already run through the numbers you suggested. The return on investment isn't there.
Greedy landlords are going to be on that like stink on shit;
Where are these "greedy landlords" going to come from when they aren't already building to meet the demand?
That's banned now, but would be significant for a 244sqft flat)
You truly do want people living like caged rodents. Do you not realize how small a 244 sqft flat is? Tiny living is a new affectation for those who can afford it; it's not how you want to force hundreds of thousands of people to live.
Surprisingly enough, what rich people think about their property value isn't going to factor into it much.
Other than the fact that the rich people who own the land you want the cages built on get to set the price the land sells for, which has a significant impact on how likely those cages are to be built.
As a side effect; the influx of people will generate economic activity in those areas.
I don't know that creating a scarcity of affordable housing "in those areas" and thus driving the prices up will be a Good Thing. You'll wind up creating markets with 99% or better occupancy, landlords who will increase prices for the people already there who can pay more, and leave the immigrants who want to live like caged rodents on UBI payments without anyplace they can afford. In exchange for higher costs of living, you'll get an influx of people with no disposable income -- nothing to spend on anything but necessities -- which won't create buttloads of jobs to offset the costs.
UBI will have a harmonising effect on the economy where cities become less of a focal point for economic activity.
This sounds like a situation of "moved the problem to someone else's backyard" and "it looks like we care because we're handing out other people's money but we don't actually have to care". These are hallmarks of existing welfare programs, so what's actually new?
I understand the desire of city dwellers to move their problems off into the sticks, and to make living in rural areas as bad as living in the city that rural dwellers escaped from, but I don't accept it as a solution to the problems of city dwellers.