Let's see. I have a cell phone that I can take anywhere I go and will let people push notifications to me. OR I have an old desktop that is all that I can afford but I got "broadband internet" so people can VoIP me -- when I have the VoIP client running and they're using a compatible system and I am somewhere close to the computer and haven't turned it off because everyone has gone to bed.
Compared to a simple cell phone, "being online" is much less capable as a "telephone". Those who have rearranged their lives to make "being online" wonderfully efficient for them have lost sight of the vast majority of people.
For the other guy who implies getting a job requires 24/7 access to email -- email doesn't require broadband, and not every job is going to be provided by someone who has such a distorted view of the critical nature of his off-hours email. Anyone who treats email as "instant messaging" doesn't understand the technology or the limitations.
I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend...
Or a phone can allow the school to call you when you child is taken ill. Or your child can call you when they are in trouble and need help. Or the hospital can call you to tell you your child is there. Or you can call the police when you need help. Or you can call home to get someone to come bail you out of jail. Or...
None of which "being online" does very well at.
"Being online" is nice. Some people have restructured their lives to make it more important to them, but that's their choice, not a requirement.
... the internet shows you the world.
Yes, very nice when you don't have enough money to drive to the next city over, to see the world of places you can never afford to go. Will "the internet" show you directions to the library where you can use a public internet system?
If that's your working definition of democracy, you may want to revisit your civics lessons.
You should notice that I'm the one saying that assuming unanimous agreement is not how our government works.
The whole concept behind a government is that everyone agrees to abide by its rules.
The claim was that "By extrapolation, that means that the entire jurisdiction approved and agreed to pay taxes to benefit others in the area. That's how a republic works." This is not about abiding by the rules, it is a statement that everyone approves of the plan to install a fiber system and that everyone agrees to pay taxes to benefit others. I don't even need to find those people who don't approve of the plan, all I need to do is point out that a bill passed by representatives does NOT mean that everyone it applies to agrees.
The claim that everyone agrees to pay taxes for the altruistic "benefit of others", in a system where a failure to pay taxes can and does result in confiscation and sale of property, is too ridiculous to need serious rebuttal.
In a representative democracy, the representatives create those rules on behalf of individual citizens. Again, you don't have to agree that a particular rule is the best, but you do have to accept that your opinion is in the minority.
Uhh, no, I don't. The rules created by representatives are not necessarily the opinion of the majority. In fact, that was the reason for a representative form of government to start with. Not everyone has time to study every issue, and when our country was formed not everyone had access to the information like we do with the interwebs of today. The short answer is, no, I do NOT have to accept that my opinion is "in the minority". There are a lot of significant changes this country went through because people didn't just accept that they were "in the minority" and accept the rules.
This is why civilized cultures see bribery (or even "campaign contributions") as such a serious threat to society.
In other words, you support the idea that everyone agrees with a plan to install fiber internet and pay taxes for it because the representatives of the people voted for it, but that when the representatives of the people vote to approve a cable franchise it is only through bribery.
Either way, the legislature, being comprised of representatives of the jurisdiction involved approved such an action. By extrapolation, that means that the entire jurisdiction approved and agreed to pay taxes to benefit others in the area.
That's how a republic works.
No, actually, it isn't. Neither democracy nor representative forms of government force agreement upon everyone.
I would love to see this argument applied to the times a local or city council votes to grant a cable company a non-exclusive franchise to operate in their community. Usually, such an agreement is represented as the greedy cable company bribing city officials into giving them a government-granted monopoly. Under your "republic", it's really everyone in the community agreeing to this.
Oddly enough, my television hasn't been working for months, but my Internet hasn't had a problem.
Even more oddly, I haven't even bothered to call them to fix the TV.
I assume you are referring to your cable television and not the physical television set, based on the fact you haven't "call[ed] them" to fix it. Or maybe it's the TV set. Either way, you're paying the cable company for service you aren't using -- handing them money for no reason.
NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They've always been involved in actually researching new aerospace related technologies,
Air Traffic Control is a regulatory function, not research and development. NASA is not the regulatory agency for airspace. We don't need two. If it is to be done, the FAA should be doing this.
Does it matter? From the context, it's pretty clear that "U" stands for "university" somewhere in the US. Do you know of a "University of anything that starts with W" in the US that would become a federal agency just by accepting federal research grant money? I don't. That's the point.
nobody knows what you mean unless you're from the same state as you.
I always come from the same state as me. And people in other states can pretty much figure out it doesn't matter which UW we're talking about.
Yes, loaded firearms in public are not intimidating at all.
For the most part, no they aren't. For the most part, you don't know who has one and who does not. The vast majority of loaded firearms in public are concealed carry. If you are intimidated by the fact that someone may be a concealed carry holder, then I can only imagine what your behaviour would be were you to know isn't carrying. Are you going to be rude and obnoxious and assault this person, and you are only intimidated because you fear a reprisal? If you aren't going to bother him, he has no reason to bother you.
As far as "intimidation" goes, I am intimidated more by a large person with tattoos, or a biker with angry patches on his leathers, than by someone who I don't know is carrying a firearm. Should tattoos and bikers be outlawed?
No one would ever walk around with a loaded gun with the expectation that people would act differently because of fear of violence.
Carrying a firearm is not, in itself, violence, and if you fear what isn't happening, you need to resolve that on your own.
No group with violent or anti-social tendencies, say biker gangs, drug dealers, or gang members would ever take advantage of carrying guns to enable their law breaking activities.
So you're already admitting they are breaking the law, but you think that another law will somehow make them peaceful, decent human beings who wouldn't hurt a fly. We're pretty sure that these people will simply ignore the law, thereby creating a law that has no effect other than to make law abiding citizens into criminals (and to make it safer for those who break the law to hurt others because they will face less chance of being stopped.)
Bystanders would never be injured by stray gunfire.
"Stray" gunfire requires someone to break the law by firing a gun at someone. Blame the people who are breaking the law by using guns for already illegal purposes, not the ones who are carrying them for self defense. Because God knows there could never be a case where an armed citizen could stop the shooting spree of a deranged criminal and save a lot of lives -- glad you cleared THAT up for us.
When you start a discussion by referring to the people you disagree with as "nuts", you've pretty much given up the moral high ground on having an "adult conversation".
I could point out that "walking around with loaded firearms" doesn't hurt anyone, and those who wish to use a loaded firearm to hurt someone will simply ignore any laws that prevent everyone else from walking around with them. I'd also point out that "hurting someone with a loaded firearm" is also a law that people who wish to hurt others with a loaded firearms are ignoring, so you gain nothing by a prohibition on "walking around" with them.
It's already illegal to hurt someone with a loaded firearm, so what do you gain by prohibiting law abiding citizens from carrying them. What is the next law that will solve the problem of bad people doing bad things with guns -- a law against THINKING about loaded firearms?
and taxpayers refuse to pay for some other kid's schooling.
In addition to all the other things they're being expected to pay for. Taxation is a larger topic than just "what shall we spend on education?" And "education" has expanded into other things, like free breakfast and lunch programs, free iPads, etc. At higher education facilities, it often expands to "cultural centers" (so that students don' t have to join the great melting pot), or "success centers" that provide remedial education that the students didn't get in high school but were accepted into college anyway.
When property taxes expand to the point that it threatens the homes of taxpayers, the taxpayers often react by passing tax limits.
Education is no longer considered a public benefit,
Education is considered to be just one public benefit which has to be funded by a limited pot of money along with all the others.
80% of what you learn in college is via interaction.
"Remote learning" does not mean "no interaction".
The key to good answers are good questions, teaching you how to ask good questions is their goal. How many online classes teach you how to ask good questions?
"Their" is a very broad term that applies to a very large number of people. In many cases, "their" goal is to teach you the material that you need as a basis for more advanced classes.
I'd say the teaching of how to ask good questions depends on the instructor and not the medium you access him through, so the percentages will be similar.
For the good Universities around here, few credits transfer from Community Colleges to the University system.
Don't know where you live, but every one of my community college credits transferred to the state university I transferred to. I used the tuition cap (credits after 18/semester were free) to my advantage and wound up with three years of state school for the price of two in community college.
Of course, the state school wanted their money, so I had to take a year's worth of electives -- simple stuff to fill time. I still came out with no debt.
Few classes are online,
More and more are going online every day. Remote learning is the hot new thing in education.
There is a reason they have a 100% job placement post-graduation.
The only colleges I know that brag about their job placement for graduates are ones like ITT Tech and the other diploma mills.
Like I said in my original post, this is incorrect. A Canadian [sic][1] can subscribe to Netflix while on vacation in the States and there is no issue with them watching using the hotel's wifi.
That's right. Netflix has distribution rights to what he's watching in the US.
Then they go back home with 20 days left on the subscription and, like someone with a bottle of cheap medicine in their pocket, want to take their lawfully purchased product
Lawfully purchased for distribution in the US. Not in Canada.
And they can, using a VPN.
No, because while the VPN makes it look like they are still in the US, they no longer are. And they're using the VPN specifically to avoid the Netflix distribution limits.
Netflix can sign all of the agreements it wants,
Which the customer also agrees to.
1. "Canada" is an erroneous name that literally means "village".
It is also the official name of the country on the northern border of the US. If it is "erroneous", that is an issue for the Canadian government to deal with, not me. "America" is not the official name of any country and is a valid reference to anyone who lives in any of the American continents -- north, south, or central.
"I'm not authorized to sell you that" ==> not my problem.
It is when you actively bypass the system that enforces the distribution limits.
This analogy is actually spot-on: compare to a Canadian subscribing to Netflix in the USA while on vacation and then trying to watch it back at home.
No, it is significantly different. The pharmacy can legally sell to someone standing at the counter. They cannot legally send the product to a US customer who buys by mail. Similarly, Netflix has a distribution right to someone in the US; once they have to ship it across the border they don't have that right.
We may have an echo chamber in here, but I think your perception of the population as a whole is pretty skewed.
Yes, I think there is an echo chamber, and all the voices have a view that is similar. When you get out into the real world, things are not so clear. For example, I dare say that a vast majority of people on/. think the TSA does nothing but theater. Yet polls of the public as a whole show a different opinion. Yes, it was a shock to me to hear someone ahead of me in the TSA line actually say "they're protecting us" and they were glad they were there, but I learned from it./. is a monoculture in many respects, and extrapolating to the society as a whole is just nuts.
I very much doubt that "most people" consider recording something on a DVR and fast-forwarding the commercials stealing,
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who have not paid for something deliberately bypassing access controls to get access to it. And I expect that a significant number of people do consider that to be illegal (if not specifically "stealing"), or at a minimum unethical. Not on/., however.
It isn't "buying and using the exact same product that Americans [sic] are using," because Netflix didn't sell it to them. Netflix cannot legally sell it to them.
But the Canadians are obtaining content that they have paid for. They paid Netflix for content.
They cannot buy from Netflix that which Netflix has not sold them. Netflix cannot distribute in Canada things that they don't have a Canadian distribution right for. While you, and others, claim that "they paid for Netflix content", they only paid for the content that Netflix could legally sell them. And indeed, distribution of copyright material without a license is a crime.
A good analogy is a 15 year old walking into a convenience store, tossing $10 on the counter, and walking out with a case of beer. The store, while it can sell beer to some people, cannot sell beer to the minor. Because there was no sale it doesn't matter that there is a $10 bill on the counter, the minor is still stealing the beer. If the attendant takes the money to complete the transaction, he is committing a crime.
So, Netflix cannot sell Canadian residents access to the content that isn't licensed for Canada. You can't pay them for access to it, if you are in Canada.
Which is exactly why I do not consider the behavior "stealing". Netflix could cut down on 99% of this simply by tying Netflix.ca accounts to Canadian Netflix.
As you say, they choose not to do this. I can't say why, but I would guess that's because if that same account holder is in the US he can access that content because Netflix has the license to distribute it in the US -- where that Netflix customer now is.
They choose not to. I fail to see how this becomes the moral responsibility of the Canadian populace.
By itself, it doesn't. The "moral responsibility" comes in when a Canadian customer takes explicit steps to circumvent the access controls that Netflix does use to prevent distribution of material they don't have a license to distribute.
Yes, this is all "copyright", and/. people hate copyright for the most part. But it is the current law, and if you accept the idea of copyright at all (temporary monopoly on a work of art to support the production of art) then you have to accept the concept that the copyright holder can control where his works are sold. Otherwise what is the copyright other than a word? Once he sells one copy, that person can sell an infinite number of copies and pocket the profit that should go to the artist.
It might be a copyright violation however, since the intent of the distributor is to offer the content only in the USA.
Netflix cannot legally sell you the content that is licensed for US distribution if you are in Canada. By circumventing the access controls (use of a VPN to masquerade as being in the US) you are obtaining content that you have not paid for. I think it is a fallacy to think that most of society would not call that "stealing", even if a smaller fraction would consider it significant./. is a VERY self-selected population and sampling opinion here and extrapolating that to society as a whole is begging for error. It is the same kind of error that had the Chicago Tribune front page announce that Dewey beat Truman -- they did a telephone survey in a time when only rich people had telephones.
Now, Netflix could differentiate accounts so that Canadian customers could never access things they don't have a license to sell in Canada no matter what address they come in from.
The other "analogies" being floated, like it being stealing for a Canadian to eat in a US restaurant are nonsense, because the Canadian was in the US and paid for the food that was legally sold to him. The analogy of a US resident buying drugs in Canada is also equally flawed, since the Canadian pharmacy has authority to sell him the drugs, it is US law that interferes in bringing them over the border.
Cable companies originally offered a larger seclection of channels which wre commercial free.
There are still a lot of them, but they're mostly upper-tier subscription (e.g. movie) channels. The basic cable channels have always had ads, except for PEG, which still don't. There was never anyone sitting at the head end cutting the commercials out of the OTA stations they were carrying, so all those ads have always been there.
I cut cable when they drove me nuts with time/life commercials
Those infomercials are put on by the content provider when they have empty time to fill, not the cable company.
Hide their association from who, exactly? Air traffic control? It's not like you can see who registered a plane from the ground.
Ummmm, planes have these big numbers and things on the side that you can go look up here, and those same numbers are often used while talking to ATC by radio. That wireless thing that anyone can listen in on.
This statement just screams "we are breaking the rules and don't want to get caught"
No, this statement screams "there are nuts who would do deliberate damage to an airplane if they knew it was operated by the FBI and we're protecting the lives of the people who fly in them."
The only advertisements cable tv providers put on the content are in slots called "local avails" -- locally available ad slots. It's why you can see an ad for a local company on a national cable service. If the cable company didn't use that time, you're going to see a national ad from the content provider anyway.
Most aircraft accidents involve pilot error because there is always some mistake the pilot(s) make, even if it isn't the causal factor in the accident. And when there isn't enough information about an accident to assign it to mechanical failure (which can also be pilot error -- failure in pre-flight to notice a broken safety-wire on a critical fastener, for example) it will be pilot error.
Removing what is currently the leading cause of accidents doesn't mean absolute safety when another system that can fail in spectacular ways is introduced.
Just one example: how long have we known about integer rollover? And yet "we" just found out that a certain aircraft needs to be shut down and "rebooted" every so often because a timer in the APU was rolling over. Yet we believe we will have flawless computers flying and driving us where we want to go.
A cellphone and internet access are common basic necessities these days.
No, I'm sorry, they just aren't. YOU may have structured your life to depend on either or both, but it is quite possible to live a happy, full, productive life without either one. Those who have gotten so used to them that they would be lost without have also lost sight of what is truly necessary.
Sure, you could line poor people up in honeycombs and stick tubes for food, air, and waste into them
None of those functions have anything to do with a cellphone or the internet, and you're implying that I'm arguing that this is how "poor people" should be treated. That's insulting and dishonest.
First of all, we're not talking about "poor people", we're talking about unemployed ones. The OP was commenting on people sitting in the park all day instead of looking for or being at a job.
And second, the internet will not feed, clothe, nor de-waste anyone.
Of course not, if it were actually possible for them to learn another well-paying job.
So you are assuming that anyone whose job has been lost to automation is incapable of learning another job. That's insulting to the people you think you are helping.
Unless you are fairly advanced in age already, I suspect that within our own lifetimes all people may become unemployable, as there is no function you or I perform which is not capable of being automated,
Your worldview is extremely limited, I fear, and you need to get out more.
All jobs pay enough to live on?
"Not all jobs..."
That's a pretty bold assertion,
My assertion that you don't need your undefined "well paying" to make a job worth having is a much less tenuous assertion than yours that has people incapable of learning to do another job.
something like 15% of the Walmart workforce receives food stamps.
What a sad world when Walmart becomes the gold standard in jobs.
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Compared to a simple cell phone, "being online" is much less capable as a "telephone". Those who have rearranged their lives to make "being online" wonderfully efficient for them have lost sight of the vast majority of people.
For the other guy who implies getting a job requires 24/7 access to email -- email doesn't require broadband, and not every job is going to be provided by someone who has such a distorted view of the critical nature of his off-hours email. Anyone who treats email as "instant messaging" doesn't understand the technology or the limitations.
I'd place it as more important than phones. A phone can call a friend...
Or a phone can allow the school to call you when you child is taken ill. Or your child can call you when they are in trouble and need help. Or the hospital can call you to tell you your child is there. Or you can call the police when you need help. Or you can call home to get someone to come bail you out of jail. Or ...
None of which "being online" does very well at.
"Being online" is nice. Some people have restructured their lives to make it more important to them, but that's their choice, not a requirement.
... the internet shows you the world.
Yes, very nice when you don't have enough money to drive to the next city over, to see the world of places you can never afford to go. Will "the internet" show you directions to the library where you can use a public internet system?
If that's your working definition of democracy, you may want to revisit your civics lessons.
You should notice that I'm the one saying that assuming unanimous agreement is not how our government works.
The whole concept behind a government is that everyone agrees to abide by its rules.
The claim was that "By extrapolation, that means that the entire jurisdiction approved and agreed to pay taxes to benefit others in the area. That's how a republic works." This is not about abiding by the rules, it is a statement that everyone approves of the plan to install a fiber system and that everyone agrees to pay taxes to benefit others. I don't even need to find those people who don't approve of the plan, all I need to do is point out that a bill passed by representatives does NOT mean that everyone it applies to agrees.
The claim that everyone agrees to pay taxes for the altruistic "benefit of others", in a system where a failure to pay taxes can and does result in confiscation and sale of property, is too ridiculous to need serious rebuttal.
In a representative democracy, the representatives create those rules on behalf of individual citizens. Again, you don't have to agree that a particular rule is the best, but you do have to accept that your opinion is in the minority.
Uhh, no, I don't. The rules created by representatives are not necessarily the opinion of the majority. In fact, that was the reason for a representative form of government to start with. Not everyone has time to study every issue, and when our country was formed not everyone had access to the information like we do with the interwebs of today. The short answer is, no, I do NOT have to accept that my opinion is "in the minority". There are a lot of significant changes this country went through because people didn't just accept that they were "in the minority" and accept the rules.
This is why civilized cultures see bribery (or even "campaign contributions") as such a serious threat to society.
In other words, you support the idea that everyone agrees with a plan to install fiber internet and pay taxes for it because the representatives of the people voted for it, but that when the representatives of the people vote to approve a cable franchise it is only through bribery.
Either way, the legislature, being comprised of representatives of the jurisdiction involved approved such an action. By extrapolation, that means that the entire jurisdiction approved and agreed to pay taxes to benefit others in the area. That's how a republic works.
No, actually, it isn't. Neither democracy nor representative forms of government force agreement upon everyone.
I would love to see this argument applied to the times a local or city council votes to grant a cable company a non-exclusive franchise to operate in their community. Usually, such an agreement is represented as the greedy cable company bribing city officials into giving them a government-granted monopoly. Under your "republic", it's really everyone in the community agreeing to this.
Oddly enough, my television hasn't been working for months, but my Internet hasn't had a problem. Even more oddly, I haven't even bothered to call them to fix the TV.
I assume you are referring to your cable television and not the physical television set, based on the fact you haven't "call[ed] them" to fix it. Or maybe it's the TV set. Either way, you're paying the cable company for service you aren't using -- handing them money for no reason.
NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They've always been involved in actually researching new aerospace related technologies,
Air Traffic Control is a regulatory function, not research and development. NASA is not the regulatory agency for airspace. We don't need two. If it is to be done, the FAA should be doing this.
There's more than one "UW".
Does it matter? From the context, it's pretty clear that "U" stands for "university" somewhere in the US. Do you know of a "University of anything that starts with W" in the US that would become a federal agency just by accepting federal research grant money? I don't. That's the point.
nobody knows what you mean unless you're from the same state as you.
I always come from the same state as me. And people in other states can pretty much figure out it doesn't matter which UW we're talking about.
A lot of UW stuff runs out of the VA facilities.
That doesn't make UW a federal agency. UW websites aren't publicly-facing federal websites because of it.
but might be for others like John Hopkins
You mean this Johns Hopkins? The private research university? Why do you think they are a federal agency?
A big question for .edu is do research universities that get large amounts of funding have to go https as well.
Not because of this directive. Federal grants do not a federal agency create.
We know that this will apply to public-facing websites, so technically that would apply to a medical research hospital as part of a university
Public-facing federal websites. If you are a federally operated University, yes. Otherwise, no. USNA, USAFA, West Point, yes. UW, no.
Yes, loaded firearms in public are not intimidating at all.
For the most part, no they aren't. For the most part, you don't know who has one and who does not. The vast majority of loaded firearms in public are concealed carry. If you are intimidated by the fact that someone may be a concealed carry holder, then I can only imagine what your behaviour would be were you to know isn't carrying. Are you going to be rude and obnoxious and assault this person, and you are only intimidated because you fear a reprisal? If you aren't going to bother him, he has no reason to bother you.
As far as "intimidation" goes, I am intimidated more by a large person with tattoos, or a biker with angry patches on his leathers, than by someone who I don't know is carrying a firearm. Should tattoos and bikers be outlawed?
No one would ever walk around with a loaded gun with the expectation that people would act differently because of fear of violence.
Carrying a firearm is not, in itself, violence, and if you fear what isn't happening, you need to resolve that on your own.
No group with violent or anti-social tendencies, say biker gangs, drug dealers, or gang members would ever take advantage of carrying guns to enable their law breaking activities.
So you're already admitting they are breaking the law, but you think that another law will somehow make them peaceful, decent human beings who wouldn't hurt a fly. We're pretty sure that these people will simply ignore the law, thereby creating a law that has no effect other than to make law abiding citizens into criminals (and to make it safer for those who break the law to hurt others because they will face less chance of being stopped.)
Bystanders would never be injured by stray gunfire.
"Stray" gunfire requires someone to break the law by firing a gun at someone. Blame the people who are breaking the law by using guns for already illegal purposes, not the ones who are carrying them for self defense. Because God knows there could never be a case where an armed citizen could stop the shooting spree of a deranged criminal and save a lot of lives -- glad you cleared THAT up for us.
I could point out that "walking around with loaded firearms" doesn't hurt anyone, and those who wish to use a loaded firearm to hurt someone will simply ignore any laws that prevent everyone else from walking around with them. I'd also point out that "hurting someone with a loaded firearm" is also a law that people who wish to hurt others with a loaded firearms are ignoring, so you gain nothing by a prohibition on "walking around" with them.
It's already illegal to hurt someone with a loaded firearm, so what do you gain by prohibiting law abiding citizens from carrying them. What is the next law that will solve the problem of bad people doing bad things with guns -- a law against THINKING about loaded firearms?
and taxpayers refuse to pay for some other kid's schooling.
In addition to all the other things they're being expected to pay for. Taxation is a larger topic than just "what shall we spend on education?" And "education" has expanded into other things, like free breakfast and lunch programs, free iPads, etc. At higher education facilities, it often expands to "cultural centers" (so that students don' t have to join the great melting pot), or "success centers" that provide remedial education that the students didn't get in high school but were accepted into college anyway.
When property taxes expand to the point that it threatens the homes of taxpayers, the taxpayers often react by passing tax limits.
Education is no longer considered a public benefit,
Education is considered to be just one public benefit which has to be funded by a limited pot of money along with all the others.
80% of what you learn in college is via interaction.
"Remote learning" does not mean "no interaction".
The key to good answers are good questions, teaching you how to ask good questions is their goal. How many online classes teach you how to ask good questions?
"Their" is a very broad term that applies to a very large number of people. In many cases, "their" goal is to teach you the material that you need as a basis for more advanced classes.
I'd say the teaching of how to ask good questions depends on the instructor and not the medium you access him through, so the percentages will be similar.
For the good Universities around here, few credits transfer from Community Colleges to the University system.
Don't know where you live, but every one of my community college credits transferred to the state university I transferred to. I used the tuition cap (credits after 18/semester were free) to my advantage and wound up with three years of state school for the price of two in community college.
Of course, the state school wanted their money, so I had to take a year's worth of electives -- simple stuff to fill time. I still came out with no debt.
Few classes are online,
More and more are going online every day. Remote learning is the hot new thing in education.
There is a reason they have a 100% job placement post-graduation.
The only colleges I know that brag about their job placement for graduates are ones like ITT Tech and the other diploma mills.
Like I said in my original post, this is incorrect. A Canadian [sic][1] can subscribe to Netflix while on vacation in the States and there is no issue with them watching using the hotel's wifi.
That's right. Netflix has distribution rights to what he's watching in the US.
Then they go back home with 20 days left on the subscription and, like someone with a bottle of cheap medicine in their pocket, want to take their lawfully purchased product
Lawfully purchased for distribution in the US. Not in Canada.
And they can, using a VPN.
No, because while the VPN makes it look like they are still in the US, they no longer are. And they're using the VPN specifically to avoid the Netflix distribution limits.
Netflix can sign all of the agreements it wants,
Which the customer also agrees to.
1. "Canada" is an erroneous name that literally means "village".
It is also the official name of the country on the northern border of the US. If it is "erroneous", that is an issue for the Canadian government to deal with, not me. "America" is not the official name of any country and is a valid reference to anyone who lives in any of the American continents -- north, south, or central.
Are you talking about a different 'SI' that I'm not aware of?
I think he's talking about the 'SI' that is actually spelled "SAE".
"I'm not authorized to sell you that" ==> not my problem.
It is when you actively bypass the system that enforces the distribution limits.
This analogy is actually spot-on: compare to a Canadian subscribing to Netflix in the USA while on vacation and then trying to watch it back at home.
No, it is significantly different. The pharmacy can legally sell to someone standing at the counter. They cannot legally send the product to a US customer who buys by mail. Similarly, Netflix has a distribution right to someone in the US; once they have to ship it across the border they don't have that right.
We may have an echo chamber in here, but I think your perception of the population as a whole is pretty skewed.
Yes, I think there is an echo chamber, and all the voices have a view that is similar. When you get out into the real world, things are not so clear. For example, I dare say that a vast majority of people on /. think the TSA does nothing but theater. Yet polls of the public as a whole show a different opinion. Yes, it was a shock to me to hear someone ahead of me in the TSA line actually say "they're protecting us" and they were glad they were there, but I learned from it. /. is a monoculture in many respects, and extrapolating to the society as a whole is just nuts.
I very much doubt that "most people" consider recording something on a DVR and fast-forwarding the commercials stealing,
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who have not paid for something deliberately bypassing access controls to get access to it. And I expect that a significant number of people do consider that to be illegal (if not specifically "stealing"), or at a minimum unethical. Not on /., however.
It isn't "buying and using the exact same product that Americans [sic] are using," because Netflix didn't sell it to them. Netflix cannot legally sell it to them.
The part about the NSA monitoring domestic internet communications without a warrant is probably a story,
It would be. But the actual story is about the NSA monitoring international traffic, not domestic. Skip the bait, go to the NYT link.
But the Canadians are obtaining content that they have paid for. They paid Netflix for content.
They cannot buy from Netflix that which Netflix has not sold them. Netflix cannot distribute in Canada things that they don't have a Canadian distribution right for. While you, and others, claim that "they paid for Netflix content", they only paid for the content that Netflix could legally sell them. And indeed, distribution of copyright material without a license is a crime.
A good analogy is a 15 year old walking into a convenience store, tossing $10 on the counter, and walking out with a case of beer. The store, while it can sell beer to some people, cannot sell beer to the minor. Because there was no sale it doesn't matter that there is a $10 bill on the counter, the minor is still stealing the beer. If the attendant takes the money to complete the transaction, he is committing a crime.
So, Netflix cannot sell Canadian residents access to the content that isn't licensed for Canada. You can't pay them for access to it, if you are in Canada.
Which is exactly why I do not consider the behavior "stealing". Netflix could cut down on 99% of this simply by tying Netflix.ca accounts to Canadian Netflix.
As you say, they choose not to do this. I can't say why, but I would guess that's because if that same account holder is in the US he can access that content because Netflix has the license to distribute it in the US -- where that Netflix customer now is.
They choose not to. I fail to see how this becomes the moral responsibility of the Canadian populace.
By itself, it doesn't. The "moral responsibility" comes in when a Canadian customer takes explicit steps to circumvent the access controls that Netflix does use to prevent distribution of material they don't have a license to distribute.
Yes, this is all "copyright", and /. people hate copyright for the most part. But it is the current law, and if you accept the idea of copyright at all (temporary monopoly on a work of art to support the production of art) then you have to accept the concept that the copyright holder can control where his works are sold. Otherwise what is the copyright other than a word? Once he sells one copy, that person can sell an infinite number of copies and pocket the profit that should go to the artist.
It might be a copyright violation however, since the intent of the distributor is to offer the content only in the USA.
Netflix cannot legally sell you the content that is licensed for US distribution if you are in Canada. By circumventing the access controls (use of a VPN to masquerade as being in the US) you are obtaining content that you have not paid for. I think it is a fallacy to think that most of society would not call that "stealing", even if a smaller fraction would consider it significant. /. is a VERY self-selected population and sampling opinion here and extrapolating that to society as a whole is begging for error. It is the same kind of error that had the Chicago Tribune front page announce that Dewey beat Truman -- they did a telephone survey in a time when only rich people had telephones.
Now, Netflix could differentiate accounts so that Canadian customers could never access things they don't have a license to sell in Canada no matter what address they come in from.
The other "analogies" being floated, like it being stealing for a Canadian to eat in a US restaurant are nonsense, because the Canadian was in the US and paid for the food that was legally sold to him. The analogy of a US resident buying drugs in Canada is also equally flawed, since the Canadian pharmacy has authority to sell him the drugs, it is US law that interferes in bringing them over the border.
Cable companies originally offered a larger seclection of channels which wre commercial free.
There are still a lot of them, but they're mostly upper-tier subscription (e.g. movie) channels. The basic cable channels have always had ads, except for PEG, which still don't. There was never anyone sitting at the head end cutting the commercials out of the OTA stations they were carrying, so all those ads have always been there.
I cut cable when they drove me nuts with time/life commercials
Those infomercials are put on by the content provider when they have empty time to fill, not the cable company.
Hide their association from who, exactly? Air traffic control? It's not like you can see who registered a plane from the ground.
Ummmm, planes have these big numbers and things on the side that you can go look up here, and those same numbers are often used while talking to ATC by radio. That wireless thing that anyone can listen in on.
This statement just screams "we are breaking the rules and don't want to get caught"
No, this statement screams "there are nuts who would do deliberate damage to an airplane if they knew it was operated by the FBI and we're protecting the lives of the people who fly in them."
The only advertisements cable tv providers put on the content are in slots called "local avails" -- locally available ad slots. It's why you can see an ad for a local company on a national cable service. If the cable company didn't use that time, you're going to see a national ad from the content provider anyway.
Most aircraft accidents involve pilot error,
Most aircraft accidents involve pilot error because there is always some mistake the pilot(s) make, even if it isn't the causal factor in the accident. And when there isn't enough information about an accident to assign it to mechanical failure (which can also be pilot error -- failure in pre-flight to notice a broken safety-wire on a critical fastener, for example) it will be pilot error.
Removing what is currently the leading cause of accidents doesn't mean absolute safety when another system that can fail in spectacular ways is introduced.
Just one example: how long have we known about integer rollover? And yet "we" just found out that a certain aircraft needs to be shut down and "rebooted" every so often because a timer in the APU was rolling over. Yet we believe we will have flawless computers flying and driving us where we want to go.
A cellphone and internet access are common basic necessities these days.
No, I'm sorry, they just aren't. YOU may have structured your life to depend on either or both, but it is quite possible to live a happy, full, productive life without either one. Those who have gotten so used to them that they would be lost without have also lost sight of what is truly necessary.
Sure, you could line poor people up in honeycombs and stick tubes for food, air, and waste into them
None of those functions have anything to do with a cellphone or the internet, and you're implying that I'm arguing that this is how "poor people" should be treated. That's insulting and dishonest.
First of all, we're not talking about "poor people", we're talking about unemployed ones. The OP was commenting on people sitting in the park all day instead of looking for or being at a job.
And second, the internet will not feed, clothe, nor de-waste anyone.
Of course not, if it were actually possible for them to learn another well-paying job.
So you are assuming that anyone whose job has been lost to automation is incapable of learning another job. That's insulting to the people you think you are helping.
Unless you are fairly advanced in age already, I suspect that within our own lifetimes all people may become unemployable, as there is no function you or I perform which is not capable of being automated,
Your worldview is extremely limited, I fear, and you need to get out more.
All jobs pay enough to live on?
"Not all jobs..."
That's a pretty bold assertion,
My assertion that you don't need your undefined "well paying" to make a job worth having is a much less tenuous assertion than yours that has people incapable of learning to do another job.
something like 15% of the Walmart workforce receives food stamps.
What a sad world when Walmart becomes the gold standard in jobs.