The problem with that is that they can "presume" all they want, but they still have less money coming in. Granted, it doesn't address the aforementioned issue of needing a critical mass of participants for the boycott to be successful, but the mere act of assuming a given cause for a reduced revenue stream doesn't magically restore the revenue stream to previous levels.
Adblock used to have an option to do just that. It disappeared many versions ago.
Pity, because it was a good idea if you really wanted to stick it to the advertisers. You'd lose the bandwidth savings as the ad content would still download, but if you're unmetered and sporting a vendetta against marketroids it was a great option to use.
Punitive damages would be fine too. I don't really care whether the clever dude MAKES millions, as long as those involved in six-strikes LOSE the millions.
I'm not certain that the rationale is bullshit. It worked once, so it's at least logically sound. I think the problem is more a matter of A. imbalance in power between the citizenry and the authorities and B. the willingness, or lack thereof, of the populace to mobilize against an oppressive government. It doesn't help that companies designing and building passive protective gear (i.e. nothing that can do harm, only protect against it) like THOR Shield are only selling to law-enforcement and thus further contributing to that imbalance.
You make a good point, though, about Occupy. I think it'd be great if a company (Something like ProtesTek Inc. or some other such name) started designing lightweight protective gear for protestors to wear, with metallic lining that protects against TASERs (and possibly millimeter-wave ADS weapons), headgear that's hardened against batons and has ear protection to neutralize LRADs, built in squirt bottles for the Maalox-water solution to neutralize pepper spray and, uh, integrated waste collection (a la Fremen stillsuits) and maybe cellular communications in case of kettling. Sure it'd cost a fortune, but something like that would arguably be better than an armed uprising as it would force authorities to level with the people once their fancy tech-tricks aren't effective anymore.
They exist. Qik, UStream, and TapIn are among them. TapIn in particular was designed for protestors and recording authorities, and provides no means to delete footage on the recording device itself - it must be done from the user's account page, by which time the video will have been downloaded and redistributed beyond the user's (or the police's) ability to control.
Problem is that Jesusland states in the Deep South have more to worry about from some oceanborn disaster than residents of northern blue states like Illinois or Wisconsin. Geologically speaking, the "liberal north" is closer to the center of the North American landmass than the "god-fearing south" is - especially when compared to Texas, Louisiana and the FL panhandle.
I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.
I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.
"The freaking rules," however, are in flagrant violation of at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the biggest "freaking rule" in the nation, the Constitution. Some of us take issue with this and so security becomes a big deal.
Well, granted this is anecdotal, but I just did (almost exactly) that a few months ago. Chicago to Philadelphia and back via Amtrak, and it was all because of the TSA. 36-hour round trip when I've made the same journey by plane in the past and had it take only about 1:45. $300 train fare (after route 42 business-class upgrade and tax) when, due to family members working for Southwest Airlines, I could've flown free.
I'm far from the only one, too. Amtrak's ridership is at a record high and there are a lot of people saying it's all because airports are the worst places in the country now, due 100% to TSA.
And you know what? I'd do it all again. Traveling by train, aside from respecting my rights and dignity, was just plain nicer and more fun than flying. Better legroom, the most polite and friendly staff I've ever interacted with, amenities worth taking advantage of, and the ability to actually look at scenery and pick out interesting detail instead of saying "oh, look, another nondescript dot 35.000 feet away."
So don't write off rail just yet. Air travel sucks enough to push people toward it and make it economically viable. Hell, if they sold it solely on the premise of "speed-competitive with flying, but no TSA" they'd pick up customers in droves. The one bad thing about abolishing TSA is that it would hurt rail travel as people once again became willing to fly.
Except that PreCheck doesn't guarantee anything at all. They still say "we reserve the right to harass you and shred your 4th-Amendment rights just because we can. But if we decide not to, we're giving that special privilege to those who have already forked over cash and information."
No, a better plan is to make TSA-sympathizing political suicide and force Congress to abolish the agency and take all their jobs away. "But creating jobs looks good and I have to create jobs to get reelected!" Nope, not if we fire you based on the kind of jobs (TSA) you're creating/preserving, you don't.
Doesn't always work that way. There are apps like Qik, Ustream, and TapIn that record directly to web-hosted services and which people can watch live as they stream. TapIn in particular was designed for cases exactly like this, uploading immediately and providing no way to delete the video off the server from the phone itself. It's no longer stored on any equipment owned by the videographer and by the time the police can take any action against the company hosting the video, (ostensibly) millions will already have viewed it, saved it, shared it, etc.
Apps like these really deserve more publicity because they're the best weapon we have against police misconduct. Proof of misconduct that immediately becomes widely-available and which is immune to police coverups.
If the crash occurred near a body of water, it's most likely due to laser-equipped sharks. If it happened a sufficient distance from such a geographical feature, it is categorically due to a land shark attack and will be filed as such. Land shark involvement does not rule out laser assistance in the incident. Also, either scenario has a nonzero probability of involving sharks of above-average intelligence or cybernetic bodily components. Due to administrative inefficiencies, classification has not yet drawn suitable parallels between electronic processing capacity and biological intellect, and so robot shark involvement is considered mutually exclusive with genetically-engineered supergenius shark involvement.
Editor's note: The above comment does not account for fatality statistics involving laser-equipped sharks, land sharks, genetically-engineered supergenius sharks, or robot sharks.
We can at least help stop them from getting MORE invasive and let them stagnate for a while. Below is a link to another White House petition to stop TSA from fulfilling their oft-touted plan to expand into rail travel "screening." For many, many reasons, not least of which is the fact that attacks against trains can happen anywhere along the tens of thousands of miles of tracks in the US, TSA screening at train stations is a really, really fucking stupid idea.
"We The People" requires petitions to hit 150 signatures before they're publicly visible. Please consider signing to at least help push it to that point.
(Disclaimer: I created this petition and also submitted it as a Slashdot story - it did not get accepted.)
You want an Endless Ideas BeBook Club S. I bought one around the start of 2012 and it's amazing. I have yet to throw a format at it that it can't read and it has an SD slot right on the bottom - says it can address up to 32GB (so probably no SDXC, but considering that with several hundred eBooks I still haven't filled up the onboard 2GB of storage, I don't think that's going to see me losing sleep). No wireless, so the only way to get anything on (or, more to the point, off) is via SD card or a USB connection. After "Kindlegate" (you can shoot me now) that's actually a plus rather than a drawback.
It's apparently a rebadged OnyxBook, but I had bought an Onyx Boox 60 (or was it the Boox X60...the one with the same button layout as the Club S, but black and green) for my brother and had to return it and get him a Nook instead because the Onyx device had massive firmware problems that a reflash didn't solve. Crashing, failing to boot, freezing, you name it.
Unfortunately Endless Ideas is having supply problems and so aren't shipping to anywhere outside...Benelux, I think...for the moment. I'm eagerly awaiting the day they do start shipping worldwide again because I kinda want to get one of these for everyone I know. It's that good.
They do - "Interfering with the screening process." They threaten fines of up to $11,000, but it's done via a civil lawsuit and to date, they've never successfully applied it. I get the distinct impression it's one of those things they don't want to see looked at too closely in court because it would crumble easily. Better to keep it uncertain so they can harass the traveling public with the threat of it. Officious Nazi pigfuckers.
Major correction: TSA screeners, despite having fake tin badges and cop-a-like uniforms, are NOT law-enforcement officers and have absolutely zero authority to do anything other than say "Sorry, you can't enter the airport terminal today, try again tomorrow." That's it. They cannot make arrests, they cannot detain you, they are forbidden from carrying firearms on the job and some have actually been arrested themselves for using their TSA uniforms and toy badges to impersonate real law officers.
I don't fault you for thinking they're LEOs - they've gone to great lengths to dupe people into believing that (reference the STRIP Act that would undo this) and are meeting with a disturbing level of success - but I do try to counter these misconceptions when I see them.
Psychological connotation. The police and the military are not the same organization and do not have the same purpose. Police are supposed to maintain and protect the peace within a society. The military is a tool for waging war against foreign aggressors. By outfitting the police with military-style equipment, even if it's strictly defensive equipment, we give the impression that the police are now like the military in that they are here to make war. This is not the message we want to send, even indirectly by way of appearance, to the communities that the police are charged with protecting.
Good, I'm glad it helps people predict where the police are. The police are civil servants, employees of a public institution. They have no expectation of privacy and already too many material and political advantages over the people they're supposed to "serve and protect." Considering the recent militarization of police (why does the Tampa, FL police department have an APC that looks like a goddamn TANK?), the shift toward "less-lethal" weapons that police are more willing to use regularly against people who did nothing to deserve their application, and the culture in many police departments of lie-and-deny to cover for police abuse, it's frankly about time the people had something that pushes back and that the police can't do anything to stop.
One of the most heartening things I recall seeing on this front was the police overreach at the UC Davis protests. Go watch a video of it. Once Lt. John Adrian Pike starts pepper-spraying the seated protestors, count how many cell phone cameras go up, making sure the whole world can see exactly what happened from every angle. The police chief tried to say the cops felt threatened and were penned in, but widely-available footage proved that she was lying through her teeth. Were it not for the recordings, she may have gotten away with it and dishonestly discredited the protestors' side of the story.
Between this, "Cop Recorder" (another iPhone/Android app), and Trapster, we at least are developing our own toolkit to use to force police to be accountable and considerate of the people. If it makes the police's job harder, oh well, boo-hoo, they can cry me a river. Being a cop isn't SUPPOSED to be easy and if they get fancy tech toys like tasers, disorientation strobes, and military-style body armor, it's only fair that the people get their own tools to make sure the police cannot hide their misdeeds.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that is that they can "presume" all they want, but they still have less money coming in. Granted, it doesn't address the aforementioned issue of needing a critical mass of participants for the boycott to be successful, but the mere act of assuming a given cause for a reduced revenue stream doesn't magically restore the revenue stream to previous levels.
Sorry, but completeness and jazzed-up embellishments are completely different aspects of the product. There's just norway to compare the two.
Adblock used to have an option to do just that. It disappeared many versions ago.
Pity, because it was a good idea if you really wanted to stick it to the advertisers. You'd lose the bandwidth savings as the ad content would still download, but if you're unmetered and sporting a vendetta against marketroids it was a great option to use.
Are you...like...a crazy person?
Punitive damages would be fine too. I don't really care whether the clever dude MAKES millions, as long as those involved in six-strikes LOSE the millions.
From the mouths of programmers...
I'm not certain that the rationale is bullshit. It worked once, so it's at least logically sound. I think the problem is more a matter of A. imbalance in power between the citizenry and the authorities and B. the willingness, or lack thereof, of the populace to mobilize against an oppressive government. It doesn't help that companies designing and building passive protective gear (i.e. nothing that can do harm, only protect against it) like THOR Shield are only selling to law-enforcement and thus further contributing to that imbalance.
You make a good point, though, about Occupy. I think it'd be great if a company (Something like ProtesTek Inc. or some other such name) started designing lightweight protective gear for protestors to wear, with metallic lining that protects against TASERs (and possibly millimeter-wave ADS weapons), headgear that's hardened against batons and has ear protection to neutralize LRADs, built in squirt bottles for the Maalox-water solution to neutralize pepper spray and, uh, integrated waste collection (a la Fremen stillsuits) and maybe cellular communications in case of kettling. Sure it'd cost a fortune, but something like that would arguably be better than an armed uprising as it would force authorities to level with the people once their fancy tech-tricks aren't effective anymore.
The game playing "perp" remains safe in the basement as no one has fixed the ED-209 "stair problem" yet...
Well, little Billy, when an AT-AT and a Dalek love each other very, very much...
They exist. Qik, UStream, and TapIn are among them. TapIn in particular was designed for protestors and recording authorities, and provides no means to delete footage on the recording device itself - it must be done from the user's account page, by which time the video will have been downloaded and redistributed beyond the user's (or the police's) ability to control.
But how can you be sure?
Problem is that Jesusland states in the Deep South have more to worry about from some oceanborn disaster than residents of northern blue states like Illinois or Wisconsin. Geologically speaking, the "liberal north" is closer to the center of the North American landmass than the "god-fearing south" is - especially when compared to Texas, Louisiana and the FL panhandle.
I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.
I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.
We really need a "-1 Trying Desperately to Get That Image Out of My Head"
"The freaking rules," however, are in flagrant violation of at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the biggest "freaking rule" in the nation, the Constitution. Some of us take issue with this and so security becomes a big deal.
Well, granted this is anecdotal, but I just did (almost exactly) that a few months ago. Chicago to Philadelphia and back via Amtrak, and it was all because of the TSA. 36-hour round trip when I've made the same journey by plane in the past and had it take only about 1:45. $300 train fare (after route 42 business-class upgrade and tax) when, due to family members working for Southwest Airlines, I could've flown free.
I'm far from the only one, too. Amtrak's ridership is at a record high and there are a lot of people saying it's all because airports are the worst places in the country now, due 100% to TSA.
And you know what? I'd do it all again. Traveling by train, aside from respecting my rights and dignity, was just plain nicer and more fun than flying. Better legroom, the most polite and friendly staff I've ever interacted with, amenities worth taking advantage of, and the ability to actually look at scenery and pick out interesting detail instead of saying "oh, look, another nondescript dot 35.000 feet away."
So don't write off rail just yet. Air travel sucks enough to push people toward it and make it economically viable. Hell, if they sold it solely on the premise of "speed-competitive with flying, but no TSA" they'd pick up customers in droves. The one bad thing about abolishing TSA is that it would hurt rail travel as people once again became willing to fly.
Except that PreCheck doesn't guarantee anything at all. They still say "we reserve the right to harass you and shred your 4th-Amendment rights just because we can. But if we decide not to, we're giving that special privilege to those who have already forked over cash and information."
No, a better plan is to make TSA-sympathizing political suicide and force Congress to abolish the agency and take all their jobs away. "But creating jobs looks good and I have to create jobs to get reelected!" Nope, not if we fire you based on the kind of jobs (TSA) you're creating/preserving, you don't.
Doesn't always work that way. There are apps like Qik, Ustream, and TapIn that record directly to web-hosted services and which people can watch live as they stream. TapIn in particular was designed for cases exactly like this, uploading immediately and providing no way to delete the video off the server from the phone itself. It's no longer stored on any equipment owned by the videographer and by the time the police can take any action against the company hosting the video, (ostensibly) millions will already have viewed it, saved it, shared it, etc.
Apps like these really deserve more publicity because they're the best weapon we have against police misconduct. Proof of misconduct that immediately becomes widely-available and which is immune to police coverups.
If the crash occurred near a body of water, it's most likely due to laser-equipped sharks. If it happened a sufficient distance from such a geographical feature, it is categorically due to a land shark attack and will be filed as such. Land shark involvement does not rule out laser assistance in the incident. Also, either scenario has a nonzero probability of involving sharks of above-average intelligence or cybernetic bodily components. Due to administrative inefficiencies, classification has not yet drawn suitable parallels between electronic processing capacity and biological intellect, and so robot shark involvement is considered mutually exclusive with genetically-engineered supergenius shark involvement.
Editor's note: The above comment does not account for fatality statistics involving laser-equipped sharks, land sharks, genetically-engineered supergenius sharks, or robot sharks.
We can at least help stop them from getting MORE invasive and let them stagnate for a while. Below is a link to another White House petition to stop TSA from fulfilling their oft-touted plan to expand into rail travel "screening." For many, many reasons, not least of which is the fact that attacks against trains can happen anywhere along the tens of thousands of miles of tracks in the US, TSA screening at train stations is a really, really fucking stupid idea.
"We The People" requires petitions to hit 150 signatures before they're publicly visible. Please consider signing to at least help push it to that point.
(Disclaimer: I created this petition and also submitted it as a Slashdot story - it did not get accepted.)
http://wh.gov/Okf6
You want an Endless Ideas BeBook Club S. I bought one around the start of 2012 and it's amazing. I have yet to throw a format at it that it can't read and it has an SD slot right on the bottom - says it can address up to 32GB (so probably no SDXC, but considering that with several hundred eBooks I still haven't filled up the onboard 2GB of storage, I don't think that's going to see me losing sleep). No wireless, so the only way to get anything on (or, more to the point, off) is via SD card or a USB connection. After "Kindlegate" (you can shoot me now) that's actually a plus rather than a drawback.
It's apparently a rebadged OnyxBook, but I had bought an Onyx Boox 60 (or was it the Boox X60...the one with the same button layout as the Club S, but black and green) for my brother and had to return it and get him a Nook instead because the Onyx device had massive firmware problems that a reflash didn't solve. Crashing, failing to boot, freezing, you name it.
Unfortunately Endless Ideas is having supply problems and so aren't shipping to anywhere outside...Benelux, I think...for the moment. I'm eagerly awaiting the day they do start shipping worldwide again because I kinda want to get one of these for everyone I know. It's that good.
They do - "Interfering with the screening process." They threaten fines of up to $11,000, but it's done via a civil lawsuit and to date, they've never successfully applied it. I get the distinct impression it's one of those things they don't want to see looked at too closely in court because it would crumble easily. Better to keep it uncertain so they can harass the traveling public with the threat of it. Officious Nazi pigfuckers.
Major correction: TSA screeners, despite having fake tin badges and cop-a-like uniforms, are NOT law-enforcement officers and have absolutely zero authority to do anything other than say "Sorry, you can't enter the airport terminal today, try again tomorrow." That's it. They cannot make arrests, they cannot detain you, they are forbidden from carrying firearms on the job and some have actually been arrested themselves for using their TSA uniforms and toy badges to impersonate real law officers.
I don't fault you for thinking they're LEOs - they've gone to great lengths to dupe people into believing that (reference the STRIP Act that would undo this) and are meeting with a disturbing level of success - but I do try to counter these misconceptions when I see them.
Psychological connotation. The police and the military are not the same organization and do not have the same purpose. Police are supposed to maintain and protect the peace within a society. The military is a tool for waging war against foreign aggressors. By outfitting the police with military-style equipment, even if it's strictly defensive equipment, we give the impression that the police are now like the military in that they are here to make war. This is not the message we want to send, even indirectly by way of appearance, to the communities that the police are charged with protecting.
Good, I'm glad it helps people predict where the police are. The police are civil servants, employees of a public institution. They have no expectation of privacy and already too many material and political advantages over the people they're supposed to "serve and protect." Considering the recent militarization of police (why does the Tampa, FL police department have an APC that looks like a goddamn TANK?), the shift toward "less-lethal" weapons that police are more willing to use regularly against people who did nothing to deserve their application, and the culture in many police departments of lie-and-deny to cover for police abuse, it's frankly about time the people had something that pushes back and that the police can't do anything to stop.
One of the most heartening things I recall seeing on this front was the police overreach at the UC Davis protests. Go watch a video of it. Once Lt. John Adrian Pike starts pepper-spraying the seated protestors, count how many cell phone cameras go up, making sure the whole world can see exactly what happened from every angle. The police chief tried to say the cops felt threatened and were penned in, but widely-available footage proved that she was lying through her teeth. Were it not for the recordings, she may have gotten away with it and dishonestly discredited the protestors' side of the story.
Between this, "Cop Recorder" (another iPhone/Android app), and Trapster, we at least are developing our own toolkit to use to force police to be accountable and considerate of the people. If it makes the police's job harder, oh well, boo-hoo, they can cry me a river. Being a cop isn't SUPPOSED to be easy and if they get fancy tech toys like tasers, disorientation strobes, and military-style body armor, it's only fair that the people get their own tools to make sure the police cannot hide their misdeeds.