I've been playing since release. Over the years, I have heard a lot of people quitting for various reasons--and I see that almost all of them have already been mentioned. But lately, when I ask people why they are quitting, I hear one reason much more than ever before:
Money.
A chunk of the fanbase may be becoming more cautious with their spending. I don't want to go off-topic, but people who are already worried about money (no job, less pay, etc.) may have an easier time quitting the game, and cancelling their subscription. Few that I've talked to have said that the $15 per month subscription was the only reason they were quitting, but many of them have mentioned it soon--if not immediately--after complaining about , gear, stale content, etc.
Why is all of the responsibility coming down to the ISP? Why should they make sure none of their customers uploads illegal content to e.g. YouTube and why should they remove it if noticed?
This is a simple broad-sweeping move to make the treaty more powerful. Holding ISPs responsible for everything sounds overly general because it's meant to be.
As an example, if YouTube is forced to heavily police its content, then another site will appear with less restrictions until they, too, are discovered by 'Those in Power', and so on and so forth. However, if the very ISPs that people would use to access any of those sites, present or future, are so intimidated by an ambiguous and powerful government rule that they will happily prevent people from even accessing anything that isn't expressly "approved", then you can begin to block the very idea of creating content providers that aren't closely monitored.
If shutting down copyright-infringing sites is like telling someone what ideas they can or cannot say, holding the ISPs responsible for Internet content is like going to the source and removing the ability to say the words the person would need to express the idea in their language, altogether. Things such as this copyright treaty are meant to remove the concept of open content by scaring people into silence.
As per the US Constitution, no state could be divided without the consent of the state legislature. So West Virginia couldn't legally become a state without the consent of the Virginia legislature, which of course never gave permission. But, like so many things during that period, on both sides, it was a case of "might makes right".
It's also that Virginia had declared its separation from the United States, and one could easily argue that the Restored Government of Virginia (the West Virginians seceding from the Confederacy) was a section of another country applying for statehood. After all, it was the rebels from a Confederate state--which would not be affected by the US Constitution--saying they wanted back in. When the Confederacy was conquered by the Federalists, there was the USA's state of West Virginia, and the CSA's Virginia.
What will be hard to find in a Wikipedia article is that tension between the eastern and western halves of Virginia had been growing for years, before the Civil War. Most tax money from the west half of Virginia went to the areas east of the mountains dividing the state. The west mined and logged, and the east took the resources, and most of the money. Virginia's secession from the USA was the final insult for many legislators from the west half, even though the people of what would become West Virginia were split as Confederate and Federalist sympathizers (nearly as many soldiers from WV fought for the CSA as the USA).
In the end, "might" didn't make "right." What finally ended the dispute was West Virginia agreeing to pay $12 million to Virginia for everything built in the state before the war. It was paid off around 70 years later. West Virginia bought its independence from Virginia through hearts and minds, money, and using a bloody war as leverage.
Are you nuts? There are strict requirements for "stalker" to apply. The ones you mention don't meet the criteria. At least not in New Jersey, where I live.
When people, such as yourself, are allowed to label people as a stalker simply because YOU think they are our society is falling apart.
I was recently charged with 'criminal harassment' by a women who gave me permission FIVE times to take pictures of her 'public spectacle" which she created for the world to see. Now, I have to spend money to defend my right to photographer her signs.
Oh, and no, you weren't stalking her. The key difference there was that--as you stated at the start of the stream of consciousness on your webpage--the person consented. I have freelance reporter friends, and I am aware of those lines.
On a personal note, and in the same theme of many arguments I see here, the growing perception of privacy as a binary thing is becoming disturbing. The popular trend in some Internet cultural groups is that if the information is there, it should be shouted from the rooftops. That's not black hat or white hat: that's just being reckless.
That fact that someone can track down volumes of data about me using a single piece of information may be used as justification for compiling and presenting my personal details to the world is signaling to me that we need to have a serious examination of privacy in the Information Age, and how we can simplify the controls, processes, and rights to our details. Some people enjoy exposing everything about themselves to the most casual search engine browses; I'm not one of those people, and I'm confident I'm not alone. The guy on the other side of my city shouldn't be able to know as much (or more) about me as my neighbor.
If that belief makes me "ignorant," a "Luddite," or just plain "nuts," please accuse me of such things; I will hear, look upon the upturned nose and sneer directed toward me, and proudly accept the remark if it means I disagree with anyone on this subject from whom I inspire that label. Such nasty sentiments remind me that though entirely closed information is bad, the other extremists' side of a completely transparent, privacy-less system would be equally miserable.
If you are going to have a right to privacy, it has to apply to everyone.
Wrong. It doesnt apply to everyone. It does not apply to public servants, nor does it apply to people who put themselves in the public eye.
If you don't like it, don't serve the public and don't become a matter of public interest.
Police activity is open to public review. Personal lives, outside of the job, are not.
If posting someone's home address does not endanger your life, can we post yours? For that matter, how come you are using an alias instead of your real name?
If you are going to have a right to privacy, it has to apply to everyone.
To make matters worse, it was even more than just a home address! Personal details, habits, mannerisms....
When you take a job that is constantly in the public spotlight (like "president") then yes, you're going to have a lot of your personal details in the public eye. You also have a trained security force working 24/7 to keep you safe. That's known when people take the job. When police officers go home, they are at the same level of security and protection as average citizens. At least, that's how it's supposed to be.
By recording and posting the details of these people's lives, the blogger went beyond tracking the police department's actions, and began hunting the people, themselves, which endangered their lives.
Even people convicted of murder don't get their personal information spread out over the Internet like this.
Regardless of the relationship between the involved parties (whether an officer investigating a woman without a warrant, or a woman investigating a policeman without a warrant), following someone, gathering information about them, then posting that information in a public place with the intent to complicate or endanger their life is harassment. It's usually just called "stalking."
She posted the location of that officer's home with the full knowledge that it could endanger his life. Also, she "detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; [and] hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them."
She was a stalker, simply put.
Yes, her speech is protected, but when she's actively attempting to endanger the lives of those officers, it crosses the line. And you can't tell me that posting the home address, photo of that home, and personal details of an officer isn't a move that will obviously endanger the policeman's life, and the lives of his family. If this were done to anyone, it would be dangerous.
True competition? Then why are your prices so high?
In a truly competitive market prices for comparable items converge towards a low price, as long as they aren't luxury items.
Look around in your supermarket. You can probably find ten different brands of bread, all costing roughly the same per unit of weight. The price will be fairly comparative to European prices (should be lower in the US as you have lower taxes and lower wages). That's true competition.
Not so in your cellphone market.
The press release (article) only compared the prices providers are charging for cell phone plans; from this, I am seeing many wild conjectures being drawn from the data. If everyone here on Slashdot wants to use this study to show that the plans cost more in one country than another, it's perfect for that.
The problem is that most people here want to use it to say that the overall price is higher (and perhaps unnecessarily so). That is Bad Math, and where people make terrible decisions based on too little information.
I am not an expert in the wireless business, but there are obvious missing pieces of information when someone makes the claim that the study shows the costs of cell phone usage in countries, or in any way allows someone to accuse providers of overpricing services.
This report is looking at the plan prices purely from a services provided. The report does not cover anything that would let anyone here declare a cell phone plan to be overpriced, or not. It is not an actual business report--it is a simple survey. There is no mention of infrastructure costs, cost of employees, or any other overhead for the businesses, nor any subsidies or other tax dollars that have been channelled from plethoras of taxes on the people that subscribe (and those that don't) to the cell phone plans. The report does not--and is not meant to--tell the real, total costs to subscribers and the public.
Oh, and here is the actual report, open for everyone--non-subscribers, included--to reference. Check the.pdf around page 278 for the mobile phone plan pricing analysis.
Too often, we forget that resources need to go into a business for products and services to exist at all. If something is cheap in one place and expensive in another, then the differences in the two local situations are probably why. Saying 'people are greedy, and the companies can be mean' is a childish response, an attempt to dehumanize an opponent (the companies, and by proxy, their people), and fails to answer anything.
Broad generalizations and declarations of "true competition" drawn from this OECD report are woefully lacking in substance. I can understand disagreements over free market vs. regulated market principles, but everyone should check their chest-thumping, nationalistic zeal before trying to sound like they understand the entire situation. There's nothing insightful about uninformed reasoning.
As employees, we called ourselves CellularShack and iPodHut. We couldn't satisfy the (once) dedicated customers and do-it-yourselfers that came to look through our dwindling electronics parts sections--all we could do was try to sell them an iPod or cellphone. It was a miserable feeling.
Personally, I like GadgetHovel. It conjures ideas of Sharper Image and other overpriced random junk dealers, as well as uses "hovel," which captures the cheap and trashy feeling I get every time I go into a RadioShack.
Maybe it's a good idea they're rebranding. To me, RadioShack ceased to exist long ago. At least the new name will make it clear to everyone.
Funny, instead of paying extra, I'd just use a hammer, or a desk drawer, or if in a real pinch my two hands to break the thing apart. Unless you're James Bond, I don't see how most folks would need any more than this, and if they do need more, they already have it.
I think using brute force to get into the IronKey drive would be a very bad idea. ThinkGeek sells an older version of the product the article covers, and even it had some pretty effective measures against breaking it apart.
Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.
So, use a hammer, desk drawer, or your hands, and it's still encrypted at best, and most likely just ruined and unreadable.
I would prefer that when people with the right to vote do vote, that their votes are recorded by other citizens with the right to vote, and the count is supervised by all interested parties. That way there is no question. To do it any other way is to introduce the potential for a tyrant to decide the vote beforehand.
With the current economic situation, I for one welcome the change to electronic voting. It should open up new and exciting black market industries for a much more broad and diverse audience, and may even breathe some new life into Internet cafes (granted, they'll be a little seedier than before, but it's new business!). Imagine the jobs!
I don't see it as something to worry about, personally. But then, I'm not a Canadian, so there might be something there I'm not aware of.
You clearly haven't been following the news. There is a secret extremist Canadian Christian denomination--the Order of the Burning Leaf--which seeks to undermine the sacred principles of democracy. In the last Parliament election, they changed two million votes to write-ins for "Rubber Moose," essentially disqualifying the votes (mostly because they couldn't agree which rubber moose was elected).
I think some people are worried what would happen if EVERY voice was heard.
I think that's putting words in people's mouths in place of logically retorting to the points of dissenting arguments. Just because they don't think online voting is a good idea doesn't mean they're pro-oppression--it just means they don't agree.
I have always viewed sections of news sites that allow for two-way communication--such as this part--to be the place for neutrality to be flexible; the comments are where the discussion occurs, because we can argue back and forth on an equal playing field.
The primary news posts you see on the news listing pages are the information gatekeepers, and to get as much as we can out of the concepts they present, they should try as much as they can to remain neutral.
The news post is like raw materials, and the comments section is where we take what was in the post and make things out of it. The more you process and refine those materials before the participants on Slashdot can banter, argue, and debate the ideas into whatever they wish to build, the more you limit the creative possibilities.
It's a step toward groupthink. It's why we sneer when a politician skews information, or when a poster makes some incredible conjecture from a flimsy fact. The more we would let the root content of the site become heavily opinionated, the more it limits ideas and makes us more like the people we call narrow-minded and foolish.
On two asides: 1) I think MS's software has been getting flimsy for years, and it's an effect of their attempts to gain vertical market share. They want to control the raws, methods, means, and final products in an industry that is constantly diversifying and evolving. That strategy is gaining them a lot of enemies, especially since new enemies can appear and establish overnight.
And 2) It took me a long time to make an account, and judging from your account number, you remember the less fanboy'ed days as much as I do. But a lot of the cronyism set in because we stopped muting all of them, regardless of what they espoused.
If a fact is good enough to praise or curse, then the confidence in the logos should trump the need for any pathos. Hard data, when strong and convincing enough, carries more power, truth, and confidence than snide jabs--in fact, the spiteful comments detract from the communicator's credibility when they're reporting. When it's just the facts, that's news--that's when it's journalism. Otherwise, it's as good as a LiveJournal post.
It pisses off Microsofties, who, being narcissistic freaks, can't stand being reminded that millions of intelligent people hate them, their software and their company with a passion.
I think it has more to do with wanting to see article descriptions that make an attempt at remaining neutral. Using "M$" is as charged and biased as saying "Linsux" or "crApple," and undermines the article post, making what would normally be a news post into an opinion editorial.
Many people want to make their own decisions, and not be told what to think of things before even investigating them. Isn't that kind of spirit how things like the OSS movement started, anyway--not being told what or how to do things, but doing them for themselves?
Can I just say I love your rage and how everyone seems to ignore it because you're speaking sense. "Bullshit, you motherfucking liar." "Now go back to sucking Obama's cock, you know-nothing retard." Brilliant, though I would have added a few !s for good measure.
Funny enough, if it hadn't been so filled with trashy language, I think it would have been modded up.
The revenue from the cap-and-trade scheme will make the deficit less severe.
True. However, if cap-and-trade totally crushes the US economy, tax revenues will fall off drastically, requiring more borrowing. As various industries start to fail thanks to hugely increased energy costs, a panicking White House will bail out more and more companies, requiring more borrowing.
It's bad news, seriously.
That's a nice thought, but while the endgame looks bad to you, it looks like a natural progression to others. The failure of companies and industries during that time, and the "rescues" that will follow, will just be proof that the politicians are the only group capable of managing the country--after all, we voted for them, right? So they must be the best, brightest, and most capable of making the right decisions. Elect a few people to administrate, and let them appoint satellite rulers to administrate. By that model, it's entirely natural for anything of value to be administered by the State.
And I sincerely wish I said that in sarcasm, but that is exactly how I hear our situation explained to me time and time again by those that support this kind of system. And quite honestly, it's was crushingly depressing to have heard someone argue for the first time as it was every time, thereafter.
I gave up. I'm leaving the country. The ship is sinking, and I'm the rat leaving the millions of captains to go down with it. Not that the global economy will do great when the US implodes, but that it will be better than being here. I'll come back in 30 years when everything recovers and it's the best country in the world again.
The other option is to stay and work through the chaos, building the network and strength to one day rebuild the hope and values that are being ground into the dirt.
Has it actually worked in those countries? Have they actually reduced their CO2 output, and if so, was it done by just shipping their 'dirty' industries to India or China?
Look at the current economies of those two countries and ask yourself that, again.
I call the existing scheme of state-environment relations as the "fuck the kids" model.
That's a fantastic coincidence! I call the scheme of disregard for economic realities that I'm seeing out of D.C. the "Fuck the Kids" model, too! Maybe we can combine them and really screw everything!
Oh, wait, they already passed the Cap and Tax Bill. Looks like they're trying that combined approach after all. If they thought we were environmentally irresponsible, just wait until even more manufacturing facilities move to places like China and India--who have vehemently opposed cap and tax systems--where the companies have no incentive whatsoever to follow the United States' policies.
So, what do we call an approach of combined economic and environmental foolishness? I know we're tempted to say "the Bush Administration," but he certainly wasn't the first to pull us down this path, and he's apparently not the last. What we have now is different candy-coated stupidity, but it's still stupidity.
The "I Don't Care Anymore" model? Maybe the "Doing Something Horrifically Wrong Is Better Than Not Doing It At All" model? Wait, I know. This is the "I'll Do This Even If It Takes Us All to Hell" model.
Or, as mentioned, we might be concerned that in the US we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba or Hungary, the worst in the developed world.
For the record, I'm here to fix a false statement. I don't care if this was posted yesterday, and I don't care what this argument is about--the parent is modded 5, and a statement this misleading about something so ethically charged I just have to fix it. I also really hate when numbers are skewed.
When I saw this quote, I absolutely had to see this for myself. One part of the statement is true, and even then, the point of the comment is splitting statistical hairs to prop up an argument. If there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, this is certainly a "statistic." Quick breakdown for perspective, and I'll even use the UN's numbers:
The UN says that 6.3 is the infant mortality rate in the United States. That's not a percentage, though. The US rate is 6.3 deaths per 1,000 (.0063%). Cuba? 5.1 deaths per 1,000 (.0051%). Hungary is 6.8 deaths per 1,000 (you guessed it:.0068%), making it 'worse.'
As a final note, even though the differences are equally minimal as the ones stated above, Greece (.0067%), Russia (.0167%), and Kuwait (.0081%) will be surprised to learn that though the UN considers them to be on the short list of part of the developed world, they are apparently ommited from the quoted 'fact' above.
This myth is BUSTED. (Always wanted to have a good reason to say that.)
Slashdot Mirror
I also work in aerospace, and a part of me is looking forward to having arguments about government regulation of the private space industry.
You know the Space Age is here when we publicly fight over its regulatory paperwork.
You can sell tickets to football games; you can't sell tickets to CS.
That may change.
At least taking away the birds' sense of navigation would explain why they're always crashing into pigs and buildings.
I've been playing since release. Over the years, I have heard a lot of people quitting for various reasons--and I see that almost all of them have already been mentioned. But lately, when I ask people why they are quitting, I hear one reason much more than ever before:
Money.
A chunk of the fanbase may be becoming more cautious with their spending. I don't want to go off-topic, but people who are already worried about money (no job, less pay, etc.) may have an easier time quitting the game, and cancelling their subscription. Few that I've talked to have said that the $15 per month subscription was the only reason they were quitting, but many of them have mentioned it soon--if not immediately--after complaining about , gear, stale content, etc.
This is a simple broad-sweeping move to make the treaty more powerful. Holding ISPs responsible for everything sounds overly general because it's meant to be.
As an example, if YouTube is forced to heavily police its content, then another site will appear with less restrictions until they, too, are discovered by 'Those in Power', and so on and so forth. However, if the very ISPs that people would use to access any of those sites, present or future, are so intimidated by an ambiguous and powerful government rule that they will happily prevent people from even accessing anything that isn't expressly "approved", then you can begin to block the very idea of creating content providers that aren't closely monitored.
If shutting down copyright-infringing sites is like telling someone what ideas they can or cannot say, holding the ISPs responsible for Internet content is like going to the source and removing the ability to say the words the person would need to express the idea in their language, altogether. Things such as this copyright treaty are meant to remove the concept of open content by scaring people into silence.
You know you're becoming a control freak when Homeland Security tells you that you're going too far.
As per the US Constitution, no state could be divided without the consent of the state legislature. So West Virginia couldn't legally become a state without the consent of the Virginia legislature, which of course never gave permission. But, like so many things during that period, on both sides, it was a case of "might makes right".
It's also that Virginia had declared its separation from the United States, and one could easily argue that the Restored Government of Virginia (the West Virginians seceding from the Confederacy) was a section of another country applying for statehood. After all, it was the rebels from a Confederate state--which would not be affected by the US Constitution--saying they wanted back in. When the Confederacy was conquered by the Federalists, there was the USA's state of West Virginia, and the CSA's Virginia.
What will be hard to find in a Wikipedia article is that tension between the eastern and western halves of Virginia had been growing for years, before the Civil War. Most tax money from the west half of Virginia went to the areas east of the mountains dividing the state. The west mined and logged, and the east took the resources, and most of the money. Virginia's secession from the USA was the final insult for many legislators from the west half, even though the people of what would become West Virginia were split as Confederate and Federalist sympathizers (nearly as many soldiers from WV fought for the CSA as the USA).
In the end, "might" didn't make "right." What finally ended the dispute was West Virginia agreeing to pay $12 million to Virginia for everything built in the state before the war. It was paid off around 70 years later. West Virginia bought its independence from Virginia through hearts and minds, money, and using a bloody war as leverage.
"It's usually just called "stalking""
Are you nuts? There are strict requirements for "stalker" to apply. The ones you mention don't meet the criteria. At least not in New Jersey, where I live.
When people, such as yourself, are allowed to label people as a stalker simply because YOU think they are our society is falling apart.
I was recently charged with 'criminal harassment' by a women who gave me permission FIVE times to take pictures of her 'public spectacle" which she created for the world to see. Now, I have to spend money to defend my right to photographer her signs.
Take a look here: http://berniesayers.com/ Look at the videos I took. See what you think.
Maybe I submit my story to SlashDot....Anyone want to do that??
I went through the site, and after reading through it a couple of times and watching the videos to assemble what the page is all about, I can safely say that the crazy New Jersey resident who has covered her house in signs to gain public attention isn't quite the same--or, really, at all the same--as the narcotics task force employee that has his house photo, address, habits, and mannerisms posted on an exposé-style blog. I cannot subscribe to the notion that the situation is so black-and-white.
Oh, and no, you weren't stalking her. The key difference there was that--as you stated at the start of the stream of consciousness on your webpage--the person consented. I have freelance reporter friends, and I am aware of those lines.
On a personal note, and in the same theme of many arguments I see here, the growing perception of privacy as a binary thing is becoming disturbing. The popular trend in some Internet cultural groups is that if the information is there, it should be shouted from the rooftops. That's not black hat or white hat: that's just being reckless.
That fact that someone can track down volumes of data about me using a single piece of information may be used as justification for compiling and presenting my personal details to the world is signaling to me that we need to have a serious examination of privacy in the Information Age, and how we can simplify the controls, processes, and rights to our details. Some people enjoy exposing everything about themselves to the most casual search engine browses; I'm not one of those people, and I'm confident I'm not alone. The guy on the other side of my city shouldn't be able to know as much (or more) about me as my neighbor.
If that belief makes me "ignorant," a "Luddite," or just plain "nuts," please accuse me of such things; I will hear, look upon the upturned nose and sneer directed toward me, and proudly accept the remark if it means I disagree with anyone on this subject from whom I inspire that label. Such nasty sentiments remind me that though entirely closed information is bad, the other extremists' side of a completely transparent, privacy-less system would be equally miserable.
If you are going to have a right to privacy, it has to apply to everyone.
Wrong. It doesnt apply to everyone. It does not apply to public servants, nor does it apply to people who put themselves in the public eye. If you don't like it, don't serve the public and don't become a matter of public interest.
Police activity is open to public review. Personal lives, outside of the job, are not.
If posting someone's home address does not endanger your life, can we post yours? For that matter, how come you are using an alias instead of your real name?
If you are going to have a right to privacy, it has to apply to everyone.
To make matters worse, it was even more than just a home address! Personal details, habits, mannerisms....
When you take a job that is constantly in the public spotlight (like "president") then yes, you're going to have a lot of your personal details in the public eye. You also have a trained security force working 24/7 to keep you safe. That's known when people take the job. When police officers go home, they are at the same level of security and protection as average citizens. At least, that's how it's supposed to be.
By recording and posting the details of these people's lives, the blogger went beyond tracking the police department's actions, and began hunting the people, themselves, which endangered their lives.
Even people convicted of murder don't get their personal information spread out over the Internet like this.
Regardless of the relationship between the involved parties (whether an officer investigating a woman without a warrant, or a woman investigating a policeman without a warrant), following someone, gathering information about them, then posting that information in a public place with the intent to complicate or endanger their life is harassment. It's usually just called "stalking."
She posted the location of that officer's home with the full knowledge that it could endanger his life. Also, she "detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; [and] hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them."
She was a stalker, simply put.
Yes, her speech is protected, but when she's actively attempting to endanger the lives of those officers, it crosses the line. And you can't tell me that posting the home address, photo of that home, and personal details of an officer isn't a move that will obviously endanger the policeman's life, and the lives of his family. If this were done to anyone, it would be dangerous.
True competition? Then why are your prices so high?
In a truly competitive market prices for comparable items converge towards a low price, as long as they aren't luxury items.
Look around in your supermarket. You can probably find ten different brands of bread, all costing roughly the same per unit of weight. The price will be fairly comparative to European prices (should be lower in the US as you have lower taxes and lower wages). That's true competition.
Not so in your cellphone market.
The press release (article) only compared the prices providers are charging for cell phone plans; from this, I am seeing many wild conjectures being drawn from the data. If everyone here on Slashdot wants to use this study to show that the plans cost more in one country than another, it's perfect for that.
.pdf around page 278 for the mobile phone plan pricing analysis.
The problem is that most people here want to use it to say that the overall price is higher (and perhaps unnecessarily so). That is Bad Math, and where people make terrible decisions based on too little information.
I am not an expert in the wireless business, but there are obvious missing pieces of information when someone makes the claim that the study shows the costs of cell phone usage in countries, or in any way allows someone to accuse providers of overpricing services.
This report is looking at the plan prices purely from a services provided. The report does not cover anything that would let anyone here declare a cell phone plan to be overpriced, or not. It is not an actual business report--it is a simple survey. There is no mention of infrastructure costs, cost of employees, or any other overhead for the businesses, nor any subsidies or other tax dollars that have been channelled from plethoras of taxes on the people that subscribe (and those that don't) to the cell phone plans. The report does not--and is not meant to--tell the real, total costs to subscribers and the public.
Oh, and here is the actual report, open for everyone--non-subscribers, included--to reference. Check the
Too often, we forget that resources need to go into a business for products and services to exist at all. If something is cheap in one place and expensive in another, then the differences in the two local situations are probably why. Saying 'people are greedy, and the companies can be mean' is a childish response, an attempt to dehumanize an opponent (the companies, and by proxy, their people), and fails to answer anything.
Broad generalizations and declarations of "true competition" drawn from this OECD report are woefully lacking in substance. I can understand disagreements over free market vs. regulated market principles, but everyone should check their chest-thumping, nationalistic zeal before trying to sound like they understand the entire situation. There's nothing insightful about uninformed reasoning.
As employees, we called ourselves CellularShack and iPodHut. We couldn't satisfy the (once) dedicated customers and do-it-yourselfers that came to look through our dwindling electronics parts sections--all we could do was try to sell them an iPod or cellphone. It was a miserable feeling.
Personally, I like GadgetHovel. It conjures ideas of Sharper Image and other overpriced random junk dealers, as well as uses "hovel," which captures the cheap and trashy feeling I get every time I go into a RadioShack.
Maybe it's a good idea they're rebranding. To me, RadioShack ceased to exist long ago. At least the new name will make it clear to everyone.
Funny, instead of paying extra, I'd just use a hammer, or a desk drawer, or if in a real pinch my two hands to break the thing apart. Unless you're James Bond, I don't see how most folks would need any more than this, and if they do need more, they already have it.
I think using brute force to get into the IronKey drive would be a very bad idea. ThinkGeek sells an older version of the product the article covers, and even it had some pretty effective measures against breaking it apart.
Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.
So, use a hammer, desk drawer, or your hands, and it's still encrypted at best, and most likely just ruined and unreadable.
I would prefer that when people with the right to vote do vote, that their votes are recorded by other citizens with the right to vote, and the count is supervised by all interested parties. That way there is no question. To do it any other way is to introduce the potential for a tyrant to decide the vote beforehand.
With the current economic situation, I for one welcome the change to electronic voting. It should open up new and exciting black market industries for a much more broad and diverse audience, and may even breathe some new life into Internet cafes (granted, they'll be a little seedier than before, but it's new business!). Imagine the jobs!
Really, though... I agree.
I don't see it as something to worry about, personally. But then, I'm not a Canadian, so there might be something there I'm not aware of.
You clearly haven't been following the news. There is a secret extremist Canadian Christian denomination--the Order of the Burning Leaf--which seeks to undermine the sacred principles of democracy. In the last Parliament election, they changed two million votes to write-ins for "Rubber Moose," essentially disqualifying the votes (mostly because they couldn't agree which rubber moose was elected).
Quite a tragedy, and an obvious cause for alarm.
I think some people are worried what would happen if EVERY voice was heard.
I think that's putting words in people's mouths in place of logically retorting to the points of dissenting arguments. Just because they don't think online voting is a good idea doesn't mean they're pro-oppression--it just means they don't agree.
I have always viewed sections of news sites that allow for two-way communication--such as this part--to be the place for neutrality to be flexible; the comments are where the discussion occurs, because we can argue back and forth on an equal playing field.
The primary news posts you see on the news listing pages are the information gatekeepers, and to get as much as we can out of the concepts they present, they should try as much as they can to remain neutral.
The news post is like raw materials, and the comments section is where we take what was in the post and make things out of it. The more you process and refine those materials before the participants on Slashdot can banter, argue, and debate the ideas into whatever they wish to build, the more you limit the creative possibilities.
It's a step toward groupthink. It's why we sneer when a politician skews information, or when a poster makes some incredible conjecture from a flimsy fact. The more we would let the root content of the site become heavily opinionated, the more it limits ideas and makes us more like the people we call narrow-minded and foolish.
On two asides: 1) I think MS's software has been getting flimsy for years, and it's an effect of their attempts to gain vertical market share. They want to control the raws, methods, means, and final products in an industry that is constantly diversifying and evolving. That strategy is gaining them a lot of enemies, especially since new enemies can appear and establish overnight.
And 2) It took me a long time to make an account, and judging from your account number, you remember the less fanboy'ed days as much as I do. But a lot of the cronyism set in because we stopped muting all of them, regardless of what they espoused.
If a fact is good enough to praise or curse, then the confidence in the logos should trump the need for any pathos. Hard data, when strong and convincing enough, carries more power, truth, and confidence than snide jabs--in fact, the spiteful comments detract from the communicator's credibility when they're reporting. When it's just the facts, that's news--that's when it's journalism. Otherwise, it's as good as a LiveJournal post.
It pisses off Microsofties, who, being narcissistic freaks, can't stand being reminded that millions of intelligent people hate them, their software and their company with a passion.
I think it has more to do with wanting to see article descriptions that make an attempt at remaining neutral. Using "M$" is as charged and biased as saying "Linsux" or "crApple," and undermines the article post, making what would normally be a news post into an opinion editorial.
Many people want to make their own decisions, and not be told what to think of things before even investigating them. Isn't that kind of spirit how things like the OSS movement started, anyway--not being told what or how to do things, but doing them for themselves?
Can I just say I love your rage and how everyone seems to ignore it because you're speaking sense. "Bullshit, you motherfucking liar." "Now go back to sucking Obama's cock, you know-nothing retard." Brilliant, though I would have added a few !s for good measure.
Funny enough, if it hadn't been so filled with trashy language, I think it would have been modded up.
The revenue from the cap-and-trade scheme will make the deficit less severe.
True. However, if cap-and-trade totally crushes the US economy, tax revenues will fall off drastically, requiring more borrowing. As various industries start to fail thanks to hugely increased energy costs, a panicking White House will bail out more and more companies, requiring more borrowing.
It's bad news, seriously.
That's a nice thought, but while the endgame looks bad to you, it looks like a natural progression to others. The failure of companies and industries during that time, and the "rescues" that will follow, will just be proof that the politicians are the only group capable of managing the country--after all, we voted for them, right? So they must be the best, brightest, and most capable of making the right decisions. Elect a few people to administrate, and let them appoint satellite rulers to administrate. By that model, it's entirely natural for anything of value to be administered by the State.
And I sincerely wish I said that in sarcasm, but that is exactly how I hear our situation explained to me time and time again by those that support this kind of system. And quite honestly, it's was crushingly depressing to have heard someone argue for the first time as it was every time, thereafter.
I gave up. I'm leaving the country. The ship is sinking, and I'm the rat leaving the millions of captains to go down with it. Not that the global economy will do great when the US implodes, but that it will be better than being here. I'll come back in 30 years when everything recovers and it's the best country in the world again.
The other option is to stay and work through the chaos, building the network and strength to one day rebuild the hope and values that are being ground into the dirt.
I can't blame you for how you feel, though.
Has it actually worked in those countries? Have they actually reduced their CO2 output, and if so, was it done by just shipping their 'dirty' industries to India or China?
Look at the current economies of those two countries and ask yourself that, again.
I call the existing scheme of state-environment relations as the "fuck the kids" model.
That's a fantastic coincidence! I call the scheme of disregard for economic realities that I'm seeing out of D.C. the "Fuck the Kids" model, too! Maybe we can combine them and really screw everything!
Oh, wait, they already passed the Cap and Tax Bill. Looks like they're trying that combined approach after all. If they thought we were environmentally irresponsible, just wait until even more manufacturing facilities move to places like China and India--who have vehemently opposed cap and tax systems--where the companies have no incentive whatsoever to follow the United States' policies.
So, what do we call an approach of combined economic and environmental foolishness? I know we're tempted to say "the Bush Administration," but he certainly wasn't the first to pull us down this path, and he's apparently not the last. What we have now is different candy-coated stupidity, but it's still stupidity.
The "I Don't Care Anymore" model? Maybe the "Doing Something Horrifically Wrong Is Better Than Not Doing It At All" model? Wait, I know. This is the "I'll Do This Even If It Takes Us All to Hell" model.
Or, as mentioned, we might be concerned that in the US we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba or Hungary, the worst in the developed world.
For the record, I'm here to fix a false statement. I don't care if this was posted yesterday, and I don't care what this argument is about--the parent is modded 5, and a statement this misleading about something so ethically charged I just have to fix it. I also really hate when numbers are skewed.
.0068%), making it 'worse.'
When I saw this quote, I absolutely had to see this for myself. One part of the statement is true, and even then, the point of the comment is splitting statistical hairs to prop up an argument. If there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, this is certainly a "statistic." Quick breakdown for perspective, and I'll even use the UN's numbers:
The UN says that 6.3 is the infant mortality rate in the United States. That's not a percentage, though.
The US rate is 6.3 deaths per 1,000 (.0063%).
Cuba? 5.1 deaths per 1,000 (.0051%).
Hungary is 6.8 deaths per 1,000 (you guessed it:
Let's put this into perspective. This is the chart the CDC provides. That looks ugly, doesn't it? That's "statistics" for you. Let's look at the real picture. (Don't mind my notes.)
As a final note, even though the differences are equally minimal as the ones stated above, Greece (.0067%), Russia (.0167%), and Kuwait (.0081%) will be surprised to learn that though the UN considers them to be on the short list of part of the developed world, they are apparently ommited from the quoted 'fact' above.
This myth is BUSTED. (Always wanted to have a good reason to say that.)