Although some people definitely do have unreasonable demands, I think you're giving too much credit to the companies. I know they have the right to do whatever they like, but if I think they're being price-gouging asshats then I'm still going to complain about their service.
If you're advertising unlimited, give me unlimited or stop fucking lying in your adverts. Note that I'm well aware that a true unlimited service would be prohibitively expensive, and that overselling is what makes pricing reasonable (Dreamhost's blog entry is pretty good on the subject), so I'm fine with caps.
A 250GB monthly cap for a home internet connection sounds perfectly reasonable. A 1GB cap for a low priced mobile service sounds fine. 10-15GB or so for a higher tier mobile package is sensible, I'd say. All of these should have low priced per-GB fees above the cap.
For now it seems that people won't/can't vote with their wallets on the issue, so I can't blame the companies for screwing us over in search of more profit (that's what companies are built to do). What I can do, however, is post rants like this in the hope of encouraging more people to switch to a better ISP if there's one available, even at a slightly higher cost.
I agree completely that speed limits should be set sensibly to the road, and that it often isn't the case now, but do you really think that lack of enforcement is the best way to solve that problem?
I know the law is imperfect, but surely it's better to try to fix it than to bitch when technology allows it to be applied thoroughly?
We have a whole shitload of stupid laws on the books that are rarely enforced (not necessarily saying current speed limits are or aren't one of them), and this just leads to a situation where the cops can easily grab you for something or other if they happen to feel like it. Impeding the enforcement of these laws just allows more to pile up. The only real solution is near 100% enforcement - either the law will be generally accepted or you'll finally manage to piss off so many people that the law is changed.
I was thinking just that. I seem to remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't just pad your budget, you should multiply it by 1000. If you show 'great self-sacrifice' by taking only 10% (or even 1%) of your initial request you're still going to be laughing for a very long time.
You're also talking about arrests as if they were convictions. I'm sure the evidence against someone arrested post-search in an airport is likely to be fairly solid, but it's still good to remember that they aren't guilty until being convicted in a court of law.
Not just parents, peer group. I'm sure plenty of/.ers are more than familiar with the general anti-intellectual sentiment found in many schools, especially among the 'cool kids' and young-ish age groups.
However hard one tries, it's difficult to remain motivated when having a wide vocabulary or advanced mathematical skills singles you out as 'weird'. A competitive academic environment, on the other hand, not only keeps motivation up but if anything pushes kids to spend extra time on their work, to help them 'win'.
In either case, though, a balance is needed. Overly pushy parents and excess competition seem to lead to social problems and feelings of inadequacy.
Although I believe in captialism, this is just wrong.
Expecting corporations (or, often, people) to do the 'right' or 'moral' thing, at a net loss to themselves, is a losing battle. The evidence is everywhere. Decry this as the harbinger of our society's doom if you must, but don't waste time trying to kid yourself that it's not the case.
Legislate in such a way that it's cheaper for Intel to desalinate ocean water on site and they'll start doing so (or possibly move to a different jurisdiction, if that turns out cheaper). Simple.
And I value the experience of visiting/living in a diverse range of places, witnessing the culture and meeting new friends there, safe in the knowledge that my other friends and family are easy to contact from around the world, or on the end of an airline ticket if I want to visit.
Wealth doesn't just give you material objects, it gives you a significant measure of freedom and flexibility.
I like the random data idea. A lot. We've tried petitioning and achieved nothing, so more direct (but still legal and safe) action seems sensible.
It looks like a very good form of peaceful protest: they've agreed to monitor our connections, so in return we will swamp their monitoring tools with more data than they can hope to handle.
From a technical standpoint, a quick search has turned up CSpace, which looks to me like a decent starting point. Any enterprising slashdotters feel like putting something together?
Yes, but they need to subpoena them, which is a lot more work than automated monitoring.
More to the point, though, I said the more of the web goes SSL, my point being that something like the great firewall of China would be much harder to implement if most sites are on secure connections, thus only endpoints are known. Dissident news pages could be replicated across 'legitimate' domains, for example. Without live packet inspection it becomes much harder to decide who to block.
With Google providing security even for relatively non-sensitive data, there is hope of others following suit.
Look, there's nothing wrong with "man". It referred to "human" long before it referred to "male human".
A little off topic, but do you have a link for that?
I was always under the impression that it meant 'male human', but past societal attitudes had allowed for the females to be referred to under the same collective term, as the males took precedence. I'd be interested to know if I was mistaken.
I'd be very surprised if Wacom were willing to cannibalise sales of the Cintiq range by putting equivalent quality digitisers in tablet PCs.
They don't even seem to make it particularly well publicised which laptops are using their brand of digitisers, which to me seems as though they want the money for the hardware without risking brand erosion from a lower quality product.
Out of genuine interest: do you believe he's likely to face 'reasonable' consequences for his actions if tried in the US?
This is a man with a slight mental illness who used default passwords on public-facing servers to look for evidence of UFOs. Stupid as hell, sure, and probably deserving of some level of punishment (although I'd be inclined to suggest psychiatric treatment), but not remotely worthy of several decades in an American federal prison, IMO.
Do you think he would realistically get less than ten years if tried in the US on national security related charges? Do you think that would be an acceptable punishment if he were sentenced as such?
There's an article here from a few years ago that says they're either gamma or high-energy x-ray scanners. I'm no medic, but I'd be inclined to think that powerful ionising radiation sources like that are the kind of thing you'd do well to avoid.
Oddly, though, despite the fact that the article subtitle poses the question "do they cause any harm to personnel?", I don't actually see any reference to an answer in the text.
I'm more than aware that "don't fly" is, at best, a poor option, but if you've got some extra time there's always sea travel, which is actually often a lot of fun. Costs are variable, and can be very steep, but it's often possible to pay a reasonable rate for a spare room on a working ship (usually a big freighter).
Completely agreed. I don't know which is worse - the fact that people can't accept that the risk from terrorism is minimal, or the fact that an awful lot of this is simply security theatre which probably won't be exposed as such because the threat is minimal.
I've mentioned it a few times before, but one of the major reasons I refuse to believe the sincerity of measures like this scanning technology is that one can purchase large glass bottles in any airport departure lounge. A glass bottle is a far more effective weapon than many of the other items that they'll confiscate from hand luggage, yet I've never even seen the issue mentioned.
I'd be very much inclined to believe that the author of the article would agree with you. He's been in the IT Crowd a few times, which was the source of this.
I'd recommend Look Around You, it's (IMHO) far better than The Peter Serafinowicz Show. Of course, Shaun of the Dead (also mentioned in the article) is absolutely brilliant, and should be required viewing for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds reasonable, although your suggested prices seem very high, even for mobile data.
Although some people definitely do have unreasonable demands, I think you're giving too much credit to the companies. I know they have the right to do whatever they like, but if I think they're being price-gouging asshats then I'm still going to complain about their service.
If you're advertising unlimited, give me unlimited or stop fucking lying in your adverts. Note that I'm well aware that a true unlimited service would be prohibitively expensive, and that overselling is what makes pricing reasonable (Dreamhost's blog entry is pretty good on the subject), so I'm fine with caps.
A 250GB monthly cap for a home internet connection sounds perfectly reasonable. A 1GB cap for a low priced mobile service sounds fine. 10-15GB or so for a higher tier mobile package is sensible, I'd say. All of these should have low priced per-GB fees above the cap.
For now it seems that people won't/can't vote with their wallets on the issue, so I can't blame the companies for screwing us over in search of more profit (that's what companies are built to do). What I can do, however, is post rants like this in the hope of encouraging more people to switch to a better ISP if there's one available, even at a slightly higher cost.
Didn't realise that was the case, and I totally agree with you that a system of that type is just asking to be abused.
I don't think that fact conflicts with anything I said, though.
I agree completely that speed limits should be set sensibly to the road, and that it often isn't the case now, but do you really think that lack of enforcement is the best way to solve that problem?
I know the law is imperfect, but surely it's better to try to fix it than to bitch when technology allows it to be applied thoroughly?
We have a whole shitload of stupid laws on the books that are rarely enforced (not necessarily saying current speed limits are or aren't one of them), and this just leads to a situation where the cops can easily grab you for something or other if they happen to feel like it. Impeding the enforcement of these laws just allows more to pile up. The only real solution is near 100% enforcement - either the law will be generally accepted or you'll finally manage to piss off so many people that the law is changed.
Or they 'graciously' settle for 1% and still laugh all the way to the bank.
I was thinking just that. I seem to remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't just pad your budget, you should multiply it by 1000. If you show 'great self-sacrifice' by taking only 10% (or even 1%) of your initial request you're still going to be laughing for a very long time.
75,000%, actually.
You're also talking about arrests as if they were convictions. I'm sure the evidence against someone arrested post-search in an airport is likely to be fairly solid, but it's still good to remember that they aren't guilty until being convicted in a court of law.
Not just parents, peer group. I'm sure plenty of /.ers are more than familiar with the general anti-intellectual sentiment found in many schools, especially among the 'cool kids' and young-ish age groups.
However hard one tries, it's difficult to remain motivated when having a wide vocabulary or advanced mathematical skills singles you out as 'weird'. A competitive academic environment, on the other hand, not only keeps motivation up but if anything pushes kids to spend extra time on their work, to help them 'win'.
In either case, though, a balance is needed. Overly pushy parents and excess competition seem to lead to social problems and feelings of inadequacy.
Although I believe in captialism, this is just wrong.
Expecting corporations (or, often, people) to do the 'right' or 'moral' thing, at a net loss to themselves, is a losing battle. The evidence is everywhere. Decry this as the harbinger of our society's doom if you must, but don't waste time trying to kid yourself that it's not the case.
Legislate in such a way that it's cheaper for Intel to desalinate ocean water on site and they'll start doing so (or possibly move to a different jurisdiction, if that turns out cheaper). Simple.
And I value the experience of visiting/living in a diverse range of places, witnessing the culture and meeting new friends there, safe in the knowledge that my other friends and family are easy to contact from around the world, or on the end of an airline ticket if I want to visit.
Wealth doesn't just give you material objects, it gives you a significant measure of freedom and flexibility.
I like the random data idea. A lot. We've tried petitioning and achieved nothing, so more direct (but still legal and safe) action seems sensible.
It looks like a very good form of peaceful protest: they've agreed to monitor our connections, so in return we will swamp their monitoring tools with more data than they can hope to handle.
From a technical standpoint, a quick search has turned up CSpace, which looks to me like a decent starting point. Any enterprising slashdotters feel like putting something together?
Yes, but they need to subpoena them, which is a lot more work than automated monitoring.
More to the point, though, I said the more of the web goes SSL, my point being that something like the great firewall of China would be much harder to implement if most sites are on secure connections, thus only endpoints are known. Dissident news pages could be replicated across 'legitimate' domains, for example. Without live packet inspection it becomes much harder to decide who to block.
With Google providing security even for relatively non-sensitive data, there is hope of others following suit.
The more of the web goes SSL, the harder it will be for governments to pervasively monitor/censor anything. Google is a positive first step.
You can also edit the "keyword.URL" option in about:config to change the default address bar behaviour.
Look, there's nothing wrong with "man". It referred to "human" long before it referred to "male human".
A little off topic, but do you have a link for that?
I was always under the impression that it meant 'male human', but past societal attitudes had allowed for the females to be referred to under the same collective term, as the males took precedence. I'd be interested to know if I was mistaken.
I'd be very surprised if Wacom were willing to cannibalise sales of the Cintiq range by putting equivalent quality digitisers in tablet PCs.
They don't even seem to make it particularly well publicised which laptops are using their brand of digitisers, which to me seems as though they want the money for the hardware without risking brand erosion from a lower quality product.
Out of genuine interest: do you believe he's likely to face 'reasonable' consequences for his actions if tried in the US?
This is a man with a slight mental illness who used default passwords on public-facing servers to look for evidence of UFOs. Stupid as hell, sure, and probably deserving of some level of punishment (although I'd be inclined to suggest psychiatric treatment), but not remotely worthy of several decades in an American federal prison, IMO.
Do you think he would realistically get less than ten years if tried in the US on national security related charges? Do you think that would be an acceptable punishment if he were sentenced as such?
Airline travel was only for a few elites fifty years ago, what's so wierd about it being only for a few elites now?
The fact that the barrier is an artificial consequence of government imposed asshattery rather than of the expense of air travel?
There's an article here from a few years ago that says they're either gamma or high-energy x-ray scanners. I'm no medic, but I'd be inclined to think that powerful ionising radiation sources like that are the kind of thing you'd do well to avoid.
Oddly, though, despite the fact that the article subtitle poses the question "do they cause any harm to personnel?", I don't actually see any reference to an answer in the text.
I'm more than aware that "don't fly" is, at best, a poor option, but if you've got some extra time there's always sea travel, which is actually often a lot of fun. Costs are variable, and can be very steep, but it's often possible to pay a reasonable rate for a spare room on a working ship (usually a big freighter).
Looks like it's mandatory.
Completely agreed. I don't know which is worse - the fact that people can't accept that the risk from terrorism is minimal, or the fact that an awful lot of this is simply security theatre which probably won't be exposed as such because the threat is minimal.
I've mentioned it a few times before, but one of the major reasons I refuse to believe the sincerity of measures like this scanning technology is that one can purchase large glass bottles in any airport departure lounge. A glass bottle is a far more effective weapon than many of the other items that they'll confiscate from hand luggage, yet I've never even seen the issue mentioned.
I'd be very much inclined to believe that the author of the article would agree with you. He's been in the IT Crowd a few times, which was the source of this.
I'd recommend Look Around You, it's (IMHO) far better than The Peter Serafinowicz Show. Of course, Shaun of the Dead (also mentioned in the article) is absolutely brilliant, and should be required viewing for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.