ESPN would then raise their price to compensate for the lost income. If they lose 4/5ths of the people that had access, they need to raise their price quite a bit for them to stay solvent. $3 per subscriber now, but with 1/5th the number of subscribers they'd ask $15.
Two problems with that analysis. 1. If they raise the price too much, more people will drop and they'll wind up losing money anyway. That old joke about how someone makes up for selling a product at a loss ("volume, volume, volume") doesn't apply.
2. With a more accurate viewer count, they can raise their ad prices to cover the lost revenue. I.e., if they are part of a large package that, say, 1 000 000 people on a system pay for, they have to charge less than they could to advertisers because the viewers are less qualified. If they are ala carte and 100 000 people buy the channel, then they are reasonably sure that 100 000 people watch at least some of the programs and can charge more for more eyeballs. "One million have access to" is less valuable than "one hundred thousand pay extra to receive".
No I don't - I want to pay a la carte and let the market decide what lives and dies.
You realize that this attitude is what results in the broadcast channels being filled with stuff like "Dancing with the Stars... starring Bristol Palin" and "American Idol" and "The Bachelor(ette)" and "Cops" and "Cheaters" and "The View" and "The Talk" and "Dr. Oz" and "Oprah" and "Dr. Phil" and "Steve Wilkos" and eight hours a day of "Today" and such.
WTF, since when can you call something free if it costs $6 a mo?
When you are Charlie Ergen and the customer is something that keeps sending you money and not something that needs careful tending and support.
Oh, God, don't get me started on Disk network... I walked away ten years ago after they pulled the "free DVR... $5/month" stunt with me and I've never regretted it.
so after two DWI's they put a W in front of the number? here we just revoke the licence (for 1year for first office for life after second)
Hmm. So which is better? Assume that someone who has done something twice will be guilty of the same thing for the rest of his life and never let him drive again? Or let people around him know that he's been convicted of something twice so they can keep an eye on him and will be more likely to report suspicious driving (crossing the center line, crossing the fog line, sudden changes in speed, etc) but allow him to otherwise drive a car?
You know the W isn't for the cops, it is for the public. The cops have access to his driving history and can see everything, including tickets and DUIs.
One of the final nails in the coffin is when you realize (or are told) that you can apply scientific methods to religious questions, and hence that nothing is sacred.
This statement is a direct result of the loss of true scientific method today. When science becomes essentially nothing but religion, people start trying to apply it to religion itself. No, you cannot apply true science to religions questions. There are no experiments you can perform in that venue.
(Not all science, but several of the major public scientific "debates" are nothing more than religion -- faith in things unseen. "Nobody saw the universe created, but we know that it happened via...". )
I think religious people can be scientific, but scientific people cannot be religious. Doubting Thomas was right to doubt.
People who understand the difference between the concepts of science and religion can easily do both. Gregor Mendel was, IIRC, a monk. Religious man doing good science. It's harder finding opposite examples because some scientists have the same belief that you do -- that they can apply science to religious questions. When they fail they deny religion altogether (because it isn't SCIENCE!) and ridicule those of their fellows who can differentiate science from faith.
If a government where as incompetent as the HP board, they would have be voted out by now.
History disproves your hypothesis. Many incompetent managers in government are appointed, not elected. For example, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission is appointed. I have yet to hear a single word about them as part of a gubernatorial campaign. There is, effectively, no voter oversite.
Similarly, ODOT and DMV. Who thinks that voting out the current governor will do anything to improve DMV or any other administrative office in the state government? Doesn't happen.
With a government-owned operation the stakeholders (voters) have an incentive to fix the problem.
No, they don't. The customers do, but customers may not be shareholders (taxpayers) or even voters. If a badly run government operation doesn't impact you, you are unlikely to vote to change anything, even if you thought that voting would solve anything (which it usually doesn't).
That still leaves the problem that many large companies are badly run which hurts their employees, customers and the overall economy. It's a fundamental flaw in capitalism as implemented.
It's a fundamental flaw in human beings -- the ability to make mistakes -- and will appear in any economic system with just as bad a consequence. You must already know that a badly run government-owned operation can cause harm to employees and customers and the economy, too, just as a badly run co-op, or any other group organized under any other system.
Replace "Zabundi" with "Iran" and "forbidden topics" with "anything that can be construed as irreverent to Islam" and now we're talking.
But not talking about US net neutrality rules, unfortunately, which is the topic of this discussion and the context for which the guarantee of legality can be made.
For example, my router is dying to send me daily status reports by e-mail, and I would love to send them anywhere but root's local mailbox. However, AT&T refuses to open port 25 (unless I upgrade to a business account) to let the MTA relay the messages to a more practical e-mail address.
I don't understand. If the email from your router is getting to root on a local system, then use a procmail filter rule to forward that email where you want it to go.
Why aren't you sending it to a different user on the local system which is then aliased to the desired recipient?
I can't see how AT&T not letting your router talk directly to any arbitrary outside mail server is preventing you from forwarding the email through the local system where you can connect. Do you not have email access out in the first place? If you do, then use the smart relay features of your local system to relay the email through AT&T's regular mail servers.
Which is a moot point anyways, considering that there are subsidies and that the wires cross public property in getting to their final destination.
Which is the real moot point, because, as I pointed out, someone's wire crossing a public right of way does not convert that wire into public property, any more than my driveway crossing a right of way converts my driveway into public property. And, as I pointed out, the analogy fails because Sidewalk Co doesn't own the sidewalk, it's a public right of way in and of itself. Now, if Sidewalk Co put in concrete paved pathways on property that it owns, then it has every right to charge people 5$/month to walk on them, or walk faster than X.
By the way, look up the meaning of "franchise fee". It's a fee that companies that use the public rights of way pay to the local governments for the privilege of using those rights of way. Using a right of way is not a subsidy that would convert the privately owned wires into public property.
As for the examples you give of laws that limit the actions of corporations, you are not listing anything that is a contractual issue. How you get to use company A's wires is a matter of contract between you and that company. How company A deals with the environment is not. How it deals with worker safety is not. How it deals with hiring practices is not.
The fact remains, the wires are not public property. There really is no "public internet" involved here. The "inter" part should be a clue. It is a network between many different organizations, most of whom are private companies. And no, sorry, discrimination deals with people, not packets, so anti-discrimination laws don't apply.
Like hell. I happen to own the copyright to the number 0x65,
Ok, so you aren't planning on any civil or reasonable discussion. Check.
Also, just because your website is legal *here* does not mean it's legal in The People's Republic of Zabundi.
Well, good thing that the FCC doesn't write the rules for The People's Republic of Zabundi where the assholes live.
The Zabundi Grand Council has stated numerous times that your site is grossly illegal due to the forbidden topics you mention, and would arrest you on the spot if it had an extradition treaty with anyone.
This has, of course, great significance in a discussion of the FCC implementation of US net neutrality rules. Somehow. I guess.
But you have to pay Sidewalk-Co a $20/month fee to walk faster than 5'/minute downtown.
Analogy failure. Sidewalk Co. doesn't own the sidewalk. The ISP owns the wires. Even though they may run on or across public rights of way, they do not become public property.
My driveway crosses the sidewalk, and serves dual function in that location. Would you argue that my entire driveway has become public property simply because it crosses a right of way? My driveway leads into my garage. Is my garage, by being connected to my driveway, also public property?
At best, your argument would make the specific wires and/or fibers that run on public rights of way public property. The servers in the private buildings that those wires connect to, however, are not on public rights of way and are thus still private property. Good luck getting your packets onto those public wires and fibers without using private servers at each end.
Then sent those people to jail. I think a simple 25 year sentence with no possibility of parole would be fine.
When sending email becomes a crime, only criminals will send email. Blocking botnets from being able to damage the rest of the net is a good thing. That botnet that your ISP is blocking from connecting to outside port 25 SMTP servers is causing damage to other people, including other users of the ISP.
I have no interest in sending spam. I just want to send normal emails to friends, family and sometimes when forced to coworkers.
An ISP blocking access to port 25 other than on their servers isn't preventing you from doing that.
I do not want to be forced to continue to rent servers from someone else. I like being self reliant.
You don't have to rent a server from someone else to send email. You will always be using someone else's servers when you do, you cannot avoid it. Unless, of course, you own the remote server. In that case, simply assign it an incoming port other than 25 for smtp. Nobody says you have to use the well defined port numbers for communications between your own systems. I've lost count of the number of times I've used an unfirewalled port in other people's networks to create links for things that are normally on other port numbers. UUCP on port 80? No problem. Telnet on port 22. Ditto. Got a firewall that only allows outsiders to connect to a web server? Run an ssh server on port 80, problem solved.
As long as you are using someone else's network, you will never be self-reliant. You will always need to depend on someone else.
Residential internet typically blocks connections FROM randomhighport TO your port 25.
And, to prevent botnets from being able to do much damage when Joe Customer clicks the wrong link on the web pages he visits and his Windows system gets pwned, they also block connections FROM their customers on ANY port to any but a few restricted systems on port 25.
Botnets, at least historically, spew garbage by bypassing intermediate mail servers (that can implement throttles, etc) and talking directly to the destination. They run very simple clients, and often don't bother with retries. That's why greylisting works.
Not being able to get connections from outside to your own port 25 is a different issue than not being able to connect to random systems outside on their port 25. And neither has anything to do with net neutrality.
If lawful is interpreted as "an application or webpage that is guaranteed to have no illegal content" the whole internet would have to be shut down in the US. HTTP, SMTP and BitTorrent all can be and are used to disseminate content that breaks the law.
You're kidding, right? You really want to make the argument that because a website uses HTTP, and HTTP can be used to disseminate illegal content, that the website should be blocked as containing illegal content? Are you an **AA shill?
I can guarantee that the website I run has no illegal content, and would thus meet the definition you propose for "lawful", because I put the content there and know the status. The fact that someone else uses their website to distribute CP in no way changes the lawfulness of my site.
They've also hidden what would normally be a non-perishable item hidden around the corner of my house. The only problem was that it was rainy season, and the normally non-perishable dried plant item happily absorbed the water and grew a heavy layer of green fuzz. Stinky green fuzz. Stinky green fuzz in a soggy cardboard box.
In case you didn't know, UPS now has a "deliver by USPS" (spelling is correct, US Postal Service) option. You can have a package shipped across country UPS ground in official brown-logo UPS trucks, only to be delivered to the local POST OFFICE, which will then take another day to sort it out and deliver it to the corporate mail unit, which will then take yet another day to sort it out and do final delivery. Instead of simply leaving it at the normal USP delivery point two doors down the hall, where someone responsible will sign for it and deliver it immediately.
This. UPS availability and service just blows for people who have jobs outside the home and can't loll around all day waiting for a package.
Not for me. They just pried open my locked front screen door and hid the package there. And when the replacement arrived, after I reported that the first one had never arrived, they simply hid the second one right next to the first.
Their only mistake was that two packages didn't quite fit, so the locked screen door was slightly ajar and I noticed it when I got home that night. If they had been better at hiding things, I might never have noticed.
the fact that a company purchasing the scraps of the company that entered into this agreement is no longer willing to honor those conditions is a little disconcerting;
I would say that a company that WOULD honor a set of conditions that it was not party to in the face of a hefty profit would be the surprise. "No longer willing" implies that they were once willing to do so, something that isn't true. They've never been willing to protect Border's data and were not part of any privacy agreement between customers and Borders.
Borders said they wouldn't use the data. Borders is the one who broke the agreement by including that data in the sale, but I doubt they had much say in the matter now that they are bankrupt.
That's why I always paid cash when I went into the now-empty local Borders, and never used their frequent buyer card despite being asked every time I checked out if I wanted one.
Without children, it will be challenging to have intellectual innovations, a viable work force, a military, or potential explorers in fifty, sixty, or a hundred years.
Without children, we won't need intellectual innovations, a viable work force, a military or potential explorers in a hundred years. Maybe 120. Imagine that; in just 120 years we could solve all the world's problems with literacy, population density, war, poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. Guaranteed.
It's hard to fault someone for having kids they could support when the new inability to support them is something they have little control over.
OTH, it is reasonable to fault them when their existing situation means they cannot support one child, and yet they go ahead and have three or four.
What I haven't seen mentioned is the obvious. If they sue and win, the contract is most likely undone and they don't have rights to the book. If they leave the matter as is, they have paid for the rights to his autobiography and thus can publish it.
Okay for those of you for whom science wasn't your primary interest, a quick refresher. First there's a phenomenon. You observe it. Then you come up with a theory to explain it. Next you create an experiment to test your theory. You collect data.
If the environmental scientists were the only ones talking, it would be significant, but scientist from virtually every field of scientist are making contributions to the larger conversation of global climate change and now doctors, economists, geologist, meteorologists, chemists, biologists, sociologist, ecologists and computer scientists are saying important things about climate change as each adds new pieces to the puzzle.
When did "conversation" replace "experiment" in science? Exactly what experiments did the economists bring to the table?
Thermometer readings are not subject to interpretation.
Thermometer readings are subject to all kinds of errors and probelms. Painting the box they are mounted in the wrong color, mounting the box in an asphalt parking lot. No louvers on the box. One of the columnists for Analog did an article talking about how NOAA had messed up the installations of many of their sites.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Thermometers are not involved in the vast majority of temperature readings today. Most are satellite based. It wasn't but a dozen years ago I remember seeing a peer-reviewed article talking about the MIScalibration of the satellite temperature measurements and what the new, correct algorithm ought to be. Temps went up a few degrees overnight, as I recall.
And, of course, thermometers were involved in NONE of the temperature "measurements" prior to their invention, which was, globally speaking, very recent. From this:
"What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714."
And before that, the earliest thermoscope with any calibration was just 1612:
"In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio became the first inventor to put a numerical scale on his thermoscope. It was perhaps the first crude clinical thermometer, as it was designed to be place in a patient's mouth for temperature taking. "
Anything that talks about temperatures prior to 1700 in any objective way is using some proxy measurement. You certainly didn't think that someone who says he knows what the temperature of the planet was 10,000 years ago was actually quoting a NOAA measurement, did you?
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ESPN would then raise their price to compensate for the lost income. If they lose 4/5ths of the people that had access, they need to raise their price quite a bit for them to stay solvent. $3 per subscriber now, but with 1/5th the number of subscribers they'd ask $15.
Two problems with that analysis. 1. If they raise the price too much, more people will drop and they'll wind up losing money anyway. That old joke about how someone makes up for selling a product at a loss ("volume, volume, volume") doesn't apply.
2. With a more accurate viewer count, they can raise their ad prices to cover the lost revenue. I.e., if they are part of a large package that, say, 1 000 000 people on a system pay for, they have to charge less than they could to advertisers because the viewers are less qualified. If they are ala carte and 100 000 people buy the channel, then they are reasonably sure that 100 000 people watch at least some of the programs and can charge more for more eyeballs. "One million have access to" is less valuable than "one hundred thousand pay extra to receive".
No I don't - I want to pay a la carte and let the market decide what lives and dies.
You realize that this attitude is what results in the broadcast channels being filled with stuff like "Dancing with the Stars... starring Bristol Palin" and "American Idol" and "The Bachelor(ette)" and "Cops" and "Cheaters" and "The View" and "The Talk" and "Dr. Oz" and "Oprah" and "Dr. Phil" and "Steve Wilkos" and eight hours a day of "Today" and such.
WTF, since when can you call something free if it costs $6 a mo?
When you are Charlie Ergen and the customer is something that keeps sending you money and not something that needs careful tending and support.
Oh, God, don't get me started on Disk network ... I walked away ten years ago after they pulled the "free DVR ... $5/month" stunt with me and I've never regretted it.
so after two DWI's they put a W in front of the number? here we just revoke the licence (for 1year for first office for life after second)
Hmm. So which is better? Assume that someone who has done something twice will be guilty of the same thing for the rest of his life and never let him drive again? Or let people around him know that he's been convicted of something twice so they can keep an eye on him and will be more likely to report suspicious driving (crossing the center line, crossing the fog line, sudden changes in speed, etc) but allow him to otherwise drive a car?
You know the W isn't for the cops, it is for the public. The cops have access to his driving history and can see everything, including tickets and DUIs.
One of the final nails in the coffin is when you realize (or are told) that you can apply scientific methods to religious questions, and hence that nothing is sacred.
This statement is a direct result of the loss of true scientific method today. When science becomes essentially nothing but religion, people start trying to apply it to religion itself. No, you cannot apply true science to religions questions. There are no experiments you can perform in that venue.
(Not all science, but several of the major public scientific "debates" are nothing more than religion -- faith in things unseen. "Nobody saw the universe created, but we know that it happened via...". )
I think religious people can be scientific, but scientific people cannot be religious. Doubting Thomas was right to doubt.
People who understand the difference between the concepts of science and religion can easily do both. Gregor Mendel was, IIRC, a monk. Religious man doing good science. It's harder finding opposite examples because some scientists have the same belief that you do -- that they can apply science to religious questions. When they fail they deny religion altogether (because it isn't SCIENCE!) and ridicule those of their fellows who can differentiate science from faith.
If a government where as incompetent as the HP board, they would have be voted out by now.
History disproves your hypothesis. Many incompetent managers in government are appointed, not elected. For example, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission is appointed. I have yet to hear a single word about them as part of a gubernatorial campaign. There is, effectively, no voter oversite.
Similarly, ODOT and DMV. Who thinks that voting out the current governor will do anything to improve DMV or any other administrative office in the state government? Doesn't happen.
With a government-owned operation the stakeholders (voters) have an incentive to fix the problem.
No, they don't. The customers do, but customers may not be shareholders (taxpayers) or even voters. If a badly run government operation doesn't impact you, you are unlikely to vote to change anything, even if you thought that voting would solve anything (which it usually doesn't).
That still leaves the problem that many large companies are badly run which hurts their employees, customers and the overall economy. It's a fundamental flaw in capitalism as implemented.
It's a fundamental flaw in human beings -- the ability to make mistakes -- and will appear in any economic system with just as bad a consequence. You must already know that a badly run government-owned operation can cause harm to employees and customers and the economy, too, just as a badly run co-op, or any other group organized under any other system.
Replace "Zabundi" with "Iran" and "forbidden topics" with "anything that can be construed as irreverent to Islam" and now we're talking.
But not talking about US net neutrality rules, unfortunately, which is the topic of this discussion and the context for which the guarantee of legality can be made.
For example, my router is dying to send me daily status reports by e-mail, and I would love to send them anywhere but root's local mailbox. However, AT&T refuses to open port 25 (unless I upgrade to a business account) to let the MTA relay the messages to a more practical e-mail address.
I don't understand. If the email from your router is getting to root on a local system, then use a procmail filter rule to forward that email where you want it to go.
Why aren't you sending it to a different user on the local system which is then aliased to the desired recipient?
I can't see how AT&T not letting your router talk directly to any arbitrary outside mail server is preventing you from forwarding the email through the local system where you can connect. Do you not have email access out in the first place? If you do, then use the smart relay features of your local system to relay the email through AT&T's regular mail servers.
What am I missing here?
Do you think we should let FedEx own the roads?
Do you think you own the FedEx trucks because they drive on the roads?
Which is a moot point anyways, considering that there are subsidies and that the wires cross public property in getting to their final destination.
Which is the real moot point, because, as I pointed out, someone's wire crossing a public right of way does not convert that wire into public property, any more than my driveway crossing a right of way converts my driveway into public property. And, as I pointed out, the analogy fails because Sidewalk Co doesn't own the sidewalk, it's a public right of way in and of itself. Now, if Sidewalk Co put in concrete paved pathways on property that it owns, then it has every right to charge people 5$/month to walk on them, or walk faster than X.
By the way, look up the meaning of "franchise fee". It's a fee that companies that use the public rights of way pay to the local governments for the privilege of using those rights of way. Using a right of way is not a subsidy that would convert the privately owned wires into public property.
As for the examples you give of laws that limit the actions of corporations, you are not listing anything that is a contractual issue. How you get to use company A's wires is a matter of contract between you and that company. How company A deals with the environment is not. How it deals with worker safety is not. How it deals with hiring practices is not.
The fact remains, the wires are not public property. There really is no "public internet" involved here. The "inter" part should be a clue. It is a network between many different organizations, most of whom are private companies. And no, sorry, discrimination deals with people, not packets, so anti-discrimination laws don't apply.
Like hell. I happen to own the copyright to the number 0x65,
Ok, so you aren't planning on any civil or reasonable discussion. Check.
Also, just because your website is legal *here* does not mean it's legal in The People's Republic of Zabundi.
Well, good thing that the FCC doesn't write the rules for The People's Republic of Zabundi where the assholes live.
The Zabundi Grand Council has stated numerous times that your site is grossly illegal due to the forbidden topics you mention, and would arrest you on the spot if it had an extradition treaty with anyone.
This has, of course, great significance in a discussion of the FCC implementation of US net neutrality rules. Somehow. I guess.
But you have to pay Sidewalk-Co a $20/month fee to walk faster than 5'/minute downtown.
Analogy failure. Sidewalk Co. doesn't own the sidewalk. The ISP owns the wires. Even though they may run on or across public rights of way, they do not become public property.
My driveway crosses the sidewalk, and serves dual function in that location. Would you argue that my entire driveway has become public property simply because it crosses a right of way? My driveway leads into my garage. Is my garage, by being connected to my driveway, also public property?
At best, your argument would make the specific wires and/or fibers that run on public rights of way public property. The servers in the private buildings that those wires connect to, however, are not on public rights of way and are thus still private property. Good luck getting your packets onto those public wires and fibers without using private servers at each end.
Then sent those people to jail. I think a simple 25 year sentence with no possibility of parole would be fine.
When sending email becomes a crime, only criminals will send email. Blocking botnets from being able to damage the rest of the net is a good thing. That botnet that your ISP is blocking from connecting to outside port 25 SMTP servers is causing damage to other people, including other users of the ISP.
I have no interest in sending spam. I just want to send normal emails to friends, family and sometimes when forced to coworkers.
An ISP blocking access to port 25 other than on their servers isn't preventing you from doing that.
I do not want to be forced to continue to rent servers from someone else. I like being self reliant.
You don't have to rent a server from someone else to send email. You will always be using someone else's servers when you do, you cannot avoid it. Unless, of course, you own the remote server. In that case, simply assign it an incoming port other than 25 for smtp. Nobody says you have to use the well defined port numbers for communications between your own systems. I've lost count of the number of times I've used an unfirewalled port in other people's networks to create links for things that are normally on other port numbers. UUCP on port 80? No problem. Telnet on port 22. Ditto. Got a firewall that only allows outsiders to connect to a web server? Run an ssh server on port 80, problem solved.
As long as you are using someone else's network, you will never be self-reliant. You will always need to depend on someone else.
Residential internet typically blocks connections FROM randomhighport TO your port 25.
And, to prevent botnets from being able to do much damage when Joe Customer clicks the wrong link on the web pages he visits and his Windows system gets pwned, they also block connections FROM their customers on ANY port to any but a few restricted systems on port 25.
Botnets, at least historically, spew garbage by bypassing intermediate mail servers (that can implement throttles, etc) and talking directly to the destination. They run very simple clients, and often don't bother with retries. That's why greylisting works.
Not being able to get connections from outside to your own port 25 is a different issue than not being able to connect to random systems outside on their port 25. And neither has anything to do with net neutrality.
If lawful is interpreted as "an application or webpage that is guaranteed to have no illegal content" the whole internet would have to be shut down in the US. HTTP, SMTP and BitTorrent all can be and are used to disseminate content that breaks the law.
You're kidding, right? You really want to make the argument that because a website uses HTTP, and HTTP can be used to disseminate illegal content, that the website should be blocked as containing illegal content? Are you an **AA shill?
I can guarantee that the website I run has no illegal content, and would thus meet the definition you propose for "lawful", because I put the content there and know the status. The fact that someone else uses their website to distribute CP in no way changes the lawfulness of my site.
In case you didn't know, UPS now has a "deliver by USPS" (spelling is correct, US Postal Service) option. You can have a package shipped across country UPS ground in official brown-logo UPS trucks, only to be delivered to the local POST OFFICE, which will then take another day to sort it out and deliver it to the corporate mail unit, which will then take yet another day to sort it out and do final delivery. Instead of simply leaving it at the normal USP delivery point two doors down the hall, where someone responsible will sign for it and deliver it immediately.
This. UPS availability and service just blows for people who have jobs outside the home and can't loll around all day waiting for a package.
Not for me. They just pried open my locked front screen door and hid the package there. And when the replacement arrived, after I reported that the first one had never arrived, they simply hid the second one right next to the first.
Their only mistake was that two packages didn't quite fit, so the locked screen door was slightly ajar and I noticed it when I got home that night. If they had been better at hiding things, I might never have noticed.
the fact that a company purchasing the scraps of the company that entered into this agreement is no longer willing to honor those conditions is a little disconcerting;
I would say that a company that WOULD honor a set of conditions that it was not party to in the face of a hefty profit would be the surprise. "No longer willing" implies that they were once willing to do so, something that isn't true. They've never been willing to protect Border's data and were not part of any privacy agreement between customers and Borders.
Borders said they wouldn't use the data. Borders is the one who broke the agreement by including that data in the sale, but I doubt they had much say in the matter now that they are bankrupt.
That's why I always paid cash when I went into the now-empty local Borders, and never used their frequent buyer card despite being asked every time I checked out if I wanted one.
Without children, it will be challenging to have intellectual innovations, a viable work force, a military, or potential explorers in fifty, sixty, or a hundred years.
Without children, we won't need intellectual innovations, a viable work force, a military or potential explorers in a hundred years. Maybe 120. Imagine that; in just 120 years we could solve all the world's problems with literacy, population density, war, poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. Guaranteed.
It's hard to fault someone for having kids they could support when the new inability to support them is something they have little control over.
OTH, it is reasonable to fault them when their existing situation means they cannot support one child, and yet they go ahead and have three or four.
"Lithuanian amusement park worker and current PhD candidate in London's Royal College of Art's Design Interactions department, Julijonas Urbonas,
What I haven't seen mentioned is the obvious. If they sue and win, the contract is most likely undone and they don't have rights to the book. If they leave the matter as is, they have paid for the rights to his autobiography and thus can publish it.
Okay for those of you for whom science wasn't your primary interest, a quick refresher. First there's a phenomenon. You observe it. Then you come up with a theory to explain it. Next you create an experiment to test your theory. You collect data.
If the environmental scientists were the only ones talking, it would be significant, but scientist from virtually every field of scientist are making contributions to the larger conversation of global climate change and now doctors, economists, geologist, meteorologists, chemists, biologists, sociologist, ecologists and computer scientists are saying important things about climate change as each adds new pieces to the puzzle.
When did "conversation" replace "experiment" in science? Exactly what experiments did the economists bring to the table?
Thermometer readings are not subject to interpretation.
Thermometer readings are subject to all kinds of errors and probelms. Painting the box they are mounted in the wrong color, mounting the box in an asphalt parking lot. No louvers on the box. One of the columnists for Analog did an article talking about how NOAA had messed up the installations of many of their sites.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Thermometers are not involved in the vast majority of temperature readings today. Most are satellite based. It wasn't but a dozen years ago I remember seeing a peer-reviewed article talking about the MIScalibration of the satellite temperature measurements and what the new, correct algorithm ought to be. Temps went up a few degrees overnight, as I recall.
And, of course, thermometers were involved in NONE of the temperature "measurements" prior to their invention, which was, globally speaking, very recent. From this:
"What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714."
And before that, the earliest thermoscope with any calibration was just 1612:
"In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio became the first inventor to put a numerical scale on his thermoscope. It was perhaps the first crude clinical thermometer, as it was designed to be place in a patient's mouth for temperature taking. "
Anything that talks about temperatures prior to 1700 in any objective way is using some proxy measurement. You certainly didn't think that someone who says he knows what the temperature of the planet was 10,000 years ago was actually quoting a NOAA measurement, did you?
Anyway, it is a tautology that a species interbred with it's evolutionary predecessors.
Ahh, but not that "modern man" did so with prehistoric predecessors. I'm interested in hearing that "modern" applies to anything prior to, oh, 0 BCE.