Cold Winter Theory? That seems ridiculously simplistic. How about a dry summer theory? If cold winters make people evolve because they need to figure out how to survive the winter, then the exact same argument would apply to people living in the middle of a massive desert. The harsh summers would push them to technology or whatever. Or what about peoples who live near the Arctic Circle -- they should be time travelers by now considering the harshness of their winters.
I think you are confusing technological knowledge with intelligence, and I'm willing to bet that the first appearance of a technology is due much more to some wild confluence of necessity, chance, state of the technology available prior, and resources to put it into practice. Once discovered, it spreads the easy way, via communication. But for people to pat themselves on the back and call themselves "more evolved" because they live in a place where some clever person was born, saw a need, a solution, and had the resources to make it work -- well, that could happen almost anywhere. You just won the tech lottery -- that doesn't make you evolved, it makes you lucky.
At least GWB would have been honest about cutting a deal with the Insurance Lobby -- Obama went around touting the public option after he'd already promised it would be killed.
Obama: A Constitutional law prof who cynically does everything in his power to violate and warp the Constitution -- from due process free execution to general warrants and surveillance. He is making the Executive coup perpetrated by GWB, the new normal, in essence, taking a chainsaw to the entire concept of the separation of powers in addition to the Bill of Rights. Oh yeah, he also murders people based on nothing but the fact their riding in a pickup, or whatever criteria count for a signature strike.
Snowden: A smart, articulate, and deeply principled self-educated individual who stood up for the rights of every person on the planet, and for those in America to be given the right to choose if we want to live under Big Brother or not (at least theoretically we get to choose).
Isn't it sad then that the DNC is at minimum, the equal of the GOP in bloodthirst.
Obama tripled the troops in Afghanistan, opposed the treaty on cluster bombs, drone bombs anyone he feels like, tried to extend Iraq, failed, and instead called himself a peacemaker.
Ford's pardon of Nixon was the point where it became blindingly obvious that there are two sets of legal rules -- those for the ruling class, and those for everyone else. It certainly existed prior to that, but since then, the Federal Government can even hide behind a facade of respectability.
Oh right King Bootlicker -- asking a question pertinent to a subject over which one is vested with oversight, is so, so, SO much worse than the felony (*) of committing perjury to Congress.
Catchy, but if you don't play, they just say you sympathize with the other side and line you up against the wall anyway. "You're either with us, or you're against us."
If you want to prevent child molestation, perhaps one way to accomplish that is to allow people an outlet which in fact, harms no children, such as stories or cartoons. Yeah, it's icky. But then so is murder, and billions of people enjoy fictionalized murder in the most gory ways fictionally possible. Look at murder rates: http://www.disastercenter.com/... (scroll down for the x/100k figure) -- they're the lowest now that they've been in half a century AND our movies and video games are more realistic and bloody than ever before imaginable. Not sayin' "causation"... but I'm guessing there are plenty of areas that have been studied showing that a safe legal outlet reduces unwanted behavior.
Here is an interesting example supporting your point FTA:
Merely stating the fact that certain groups do better than others -- as measured by income, test scores and so on -- is enough to provoke a firestorm in America today, and even charges of racism. The irony is that the facts actually debunk racial stereotypes.
There are some black and Hispanic groups in America that far outperform some white and Asian groups. Immigrants from many West Indian and African countries, such as Jamaica, Ghana, and Haiti, are climbing America's higher education ladder, but perhaps the most prominent are Nigerians. Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites.
By the same token, racism is adaptable. Adherents will just shift their focus from genetic factors, to cultural ones, and in fact, that is in a sense what the article suggests with the exceptionalism point.
Honestly, the more I think about this the more disturbing it is, particularly the inferiority thing. I've ended up doing fairly well by objective measures -- I'm from one of those successful cultural groups -- but I'm still very insecure and often deeply unhappy. At the end of it, we're dead, and I'm a good 2/3 of the way there, still wondering how I can waste so much of my life being unhappy.
I end up thinking about the immigrant wisdom of, "they can take everything from you, but they can't take your education" -- well, death takes that too and if you lead a life of suffering (for no good reason, just cultural BS) -- what the fuck good did it do you?
As an afterthought, perhaps the developer's attorneys knew their suit wouldn't stand up to a side by side comparison, informed their client that their only chance was to wing it with an expert (dime a dozen at $1000/hr), and hope for the best. In that case, the attorneys are home free. But... that seems pretty far fetched.
The part relevant to the discussion here starts on PDF page 8, line 26.
It appears that the developer's attorneys presented an expert witness who provided an opinion regarding the similarity of the games. However, they did not actually demonstrate the games to the jury, which would have allowed the jury to make a subjective determination for itself. The judge ruled that because the jury never actually saw the games, they did not have enough information to rule that the games were similar.
Anyway, the attorneys better hope they win on appeal or figure out how to settle (perhaps for no fee) --- otherwise, the developer's next lawsuit is one for malpractice.
Except those same boomers took every penny of that surplus and blew it by spending it in the regular budget. All that waste for the war on drugs, wars, police state, the military industrial complex, tax breaks to their buddies, all that Wall Street dick sucking... Now that they've blown their own savings, savings that could have supported the system, they expect everyone else to pay up for them... motherfucking greedy bastards.
Greens are interesting too... essentially libertarians with a greater willingness to ensure a social safety net and protect the commons (environment) from being abused by a few who profit at everyone else's expense.
Honestly though, I'd vote for either. The DNC and GOP are so corrupted by and enslaved to their donors, I'd be happy to see anyone kick their collective elephantine asses.
I think there are a few radicals in the GOP, at least more so than in the DNC. Amash for example. And perhaps the poster above is correct that the GOP is in the midst of a transformation. Basically at present, we have two neo-con parties, one which is tolerant of abortion and gay marriage, the other which is not. If the GOP conceded those social issues, there would be absolutely zero difference between the parties, and we have already seen some GOP members becoming supportive of gay marriage. So, in order to distinguish itself from the DNC, latching onto freedom and privacy is a good move.
Anyway, I see this as a hopeful sign, though I'm still not willing to vote for either party just yet. If the GOP as whole really does decide to become interested in freedom, I might change my tune -- till then I'll be voting 3d party.
Not saying it is a bad idea, just that it undermines the GP's argument that there is difference between this case and adoption cases in that in adoption cases, you can't adopt if you're going to get state assistance benefits, when clearly, the state will assist those too poor to do an adoption independently and such people are probably likely to end up on public assistance.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
In this context, I would think "adhere" means something along the lines of "devotion" -- the only country Snowden showed devotion to was the US. He certainly didn't wage war.
Snowden will not be able to make the case he'd like to make in court because, contrary to common sense, there is no public interest or whistleblower exception under the Espionage Act. In recent cases, prosecutors have convinced courts that the intent of the leaker, the value of leaks to the public, and the lack of harm caused by the leaks are irrelevant, and are therefore inadmissible in court.
This means Snowden would never be able to tell the jury that his intent was not to help foreign countries or harm the U.S., but to inform the American public about the government's secret interpretations of laws used to justify spying on millions of citizens without their knowledge.
Snowden would also not be able to explain to a jury that his leaks sparked more than a dozen bills in Congress, and half a dozen lawsuits, all designed to rein in unconstitutional surveillance. He wouldn't be allowed to explain how his leaks caught an official lying to Congress, or that they've led to an unprecedented review of government secrecy.
The jury would also not be able to hear how there's no demonstrable harm to the United States in releasing this information. And if the prosecution argued that some harm was suffered, Snowden wouldn't be able to explain that the enormous public benefits of these disclosures far outweighed any perceived harm.
And do computers usually come with apps you cannot uninstall? If it is a computer that functions as a phone, it should function that way. But it doesn't because unless you root it, it behaves in a very non-computer like fashion.
How is making what you don't want to have on the phone making people happy?
A person might well use twitter and never touch facebook or dropbox -- let that person install what he or she wants. Why force them to have those apps on the phone, potentially gathering data even if it is "disabled" -- whatever that means.
I don't particularly want a dumb phone, but none of the things I listed are things I want. I want things like Red Phone and Text Secure, Boggle, a calculator, web browser, kindle, drink mixing app, etc. etc. In fact, I've managed to download a bunch of stuff I actually want, as have billions of people around the world. I just can't get rid of the crap I don't actually want without rooting the phone. Which is absolutely ridiculous.
There is no reason to make everyone in the world suffer because someone deletes an app after confirming they want to delete an app. Even so, if an app can be deleted, it can be installed, and with something like facebook, where all the info is on FB's servers, what exactly would be lost by accidental deletion? Nothing. Just reinstall.
Ultimately, it's pretty easy to draw a line. Everything after "telephone" is an extra. Even SMS, though it could just arguably be included as not bloatware -- many people do use SMS, but it is not universal and not an essential characteristic of a telephone. I wouldn't gripe too much if SMS was considered not bloat, but I wouldn't have any problem having it labeled it bloat either because it is not actually a telephone function.
Email, web browsing, playing games, watching movies, texting/chatting -- those are all PC applications ported to phones and thus are not essential parts of a phone. They may be desirable or not to different people, in which case by all means, those people should feel free to download and install them.
Are you kidding? We're talking a cell phone. It has one primary function, which is to be a phone. I don't think anyone would think of the dialer app as bloatware, but even if it was deletable, it could also be installable.
Things not a primary function of a telephone that I can't delete:
Facebook -- fuck off and die already. Dropbox -- like I'd actually use this for backups? Gmail/hangouts/etc. etc. -- don't want it don't care. Polaris Office -- like I really want to write/edit docs on my freakin telephone? Slacker -- some stupid radio thing that randomly turns itself on. My car has a radio and my ipod connects fine. At least with Pandora, I get a choice to install it or not. This forced install of Slacker DECREASES the chance I'd ever use it. Twitter -- FFS! Flickr -- Ditto. Friend Stream -- I don't even know what this is, but from the name, I'm sure it isn't anything I want on my phone. Telenav -- my garmin is much more convenient and doesn't report my every move.
NONE of those things are phone functions. Making them deletable is totally good, right, proper... half tongue-in-cheek, I'd say that there should be substantial criminal penalties associated with making them undeletable. I paid for my phone up front -- $550 pre-tax. There should be enough profit in that price point to leave out the crapware.
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Cold Winter Theory? That seems ridiculously simplistic. How about a dry summer theory? If cold winters make people evolve because they need to figure out how to survive the winter, then the exact same argument would apply to people living in the middle of a massive desert. The harsh summers would push them to technology or whatever. Or what about peoples who live near the Arctic Circle -- they should be time travelers by now considering the harshness of their winters.
I think you are confusing technological knowledge with intelligence, and I'm willing to bet that the first appearance of a technology is due much more to some wild confluence of necessity, chance, state of the technology available prior, and resources to put it into practice. Once discovered, it spreads the easy way, via communication. But for people to pat themselves on the back and call themselves "more evolved" because they live in a place where some clever person was born, saw a need, a solution, and had the resources to make it work -- well, that could happen almost anywhere. You just won the tech lottery -- that doesn't make you evolved, it makes you lucky.
At least GWB would have been honest about cutting a deal with the Insurance Lobby -- Obama went around touting the public option after he'd already promised it would be killed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Obama gave us Nixon's health care plan, with the liberal parts stripped out. NOT AN ACHIEVEMENT.
Obama: A Constitutional law prof who cynically does everything in his power to violate and warp the Constitution -- from due process free execution to general warrants and surveillance. He is making the Executive coup perpetrated by GWB, the new normal, in essence, taking a chainsaw to the entire concept of the separation of powers in addition to the Bill of Rights. Oh yeah, he also murders people based on nothing but the fact their riding in a pickup, or whatever criteria count for a signature strike.
Snowden: A smart, articulate, and deeply principled self-educated individual who stood up for the rights of every person on the planet, and for those in America to be given the right to choose if we want to live under Big Brother or not (at least theoretically we get to choose).
Isn't it sad then that the DNC is at minimum, the equal of the GOP in bloodthirst.
Obama tripled the troops in Afghanistan, opposed the treaty on cluster bombs, drone bombs anyone he feels like, tried to extend Iraq, failed, and instead called himself a peacemaker.
You are actually part of the problem, at least in the sense that you've been duped into this idea that losing his job is punishment enough.
It's a fucking felony. A Federal crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Probably for each offense. Preferably in a PMITA Federal prison.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...
nots -- that's obviously "can't even hide"
Ford's pardon of Nixon was the point where it became blindingly obvious that there are two sets of legal rules -- those for the ruling class, and those for everyone else. It certainly existed prior to that, but since then, the Federal Government can even hide behind a facade of respectability.
Oh right King Bootlicker -- asking a question pertinent to a subject over which one is vested with oversight, is so, so, SO much worse than the felony (*) of committing perjury to Congress.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...
Catchy, but if you don't play, they just say you sympathize with the other side and line you up against the wall anyway. "You're either with us, or you're against us."
If you want to prevent child molestation, perhaps one way to accomplish that is to allow people an outlet which in fact, harms no children, such as stories or cartoons. Yeah, it's icky. But then so is murder, and billions of people enjoy fictionalized murder in the most gory ways fictionally possible. Look at murder rates: http://www.disastercenter.com/... (scroll down for the x/100k figure) -- they're the lowest now that they've been in half a century AND our movies and video games are more realistic and bloody than ever before imaginable. Not sayin' "causation" ... but I'm guessing there are plenty of areas that have been studied showing that a safe legal outlet reduces unwanted behavior.
Here is an interesting example supporting your point FTA:
By the same token, racism is adaptable. Adherents will just shift their focus from genetic factors, to cultural ones, and in fact, that is in a sense what the article suggests with the exceptionalism point.
Honestly, the more I think about this the more disturbing it is, particularly the inferiority thing. I've ended up doing fairly well by objective measures -- I'm from one of those successful cultural groups -- but I'm still very insecure and often deeply unhappy. At the end of it, we're dead, and I'm a good 2/3 of the way there, still wondering how I can waste so much of my life being unhappy.
I end up thinking about the immigrant wisdom of, "they can take everything from you, but they can't take your education" -- well, death takes that too and if you lead a life of suffering (for no good reason, just cultural BS) -- what the fuck good did it do you?
As an afterthought, perhaps the developer's attorneys knew their suit wouldn't stand up to a side by side comparison, informed their client that their only chance was to wing it with an expert (dime a dozen at $1000/hr), and hope for the best. In that case, the attorneys are home free. But ... that seems pretty far fetched.
here's a link to the decision.
http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/...
The part relevant to the discussion here starts on PDF page 8, line 26.
It appears that the developer's attorneys presented an expert witness who provided an opinion regarding the similarity of the games. However, they did not actually demonstrate the games to the jury, which would have allowed the jury to make a subjective determination for itself. The judge ruled that because the jury never actually saw the games, they did not have enough information to rule that the games were similar.
Anyway, the attorneys better hope they win on appeal or figure out how to settle (perhaps for no fee) --- otherwise, the developer's next lawsuit is one for malpractice.
Apparently you didn't really pay attention, it being so much more fun to criticize.
Jill Stein was the candidate last season. She's a medical doctor.
Except those same boomers took every penny of that surplus and blew it by spending it in the regular budget. All that waste for the war on drugs, wars, police state, the military industrial complex, tax breaks to their buddies, all that Wall Street dick sucking ... Now that they've blown their own savings, savings that could have supported the system, they expect everyone else to pay up for them ... motherfucking greedy bastards.
Greens are interesting too ... essentially libertarians with a greater willingness to ensure a social safety net and protect the commons (environment) from being abused by a few who profit at everyone else's expense.
Honestly though, I'd vote for either. The DNC and GOP are so corrupted by and enslaved to their donors, I'd be happy to see anyone kick their collective elephantine asses.
I think there are a few radicals in the GOP, at least more so than in the DNC. Amash for example. And perhaps the poster above is correct that the GOP is in the midst of a transformation. Basically at present, we have two neo-con parties, one which is tolerant of abortion and gay marriage, the other which is not. If the GOP conceded those social issues, there would be absolutely zero difference between the parties, and we have already seen some GOP members becoming supportive of gay marriage. So, in order to distinguish itself from the DNC, latching onto freedom and privacy is a good move.
Anyway, I see this as a hopeful sign, though I'm still not willing to vote for either party just yet. If the GOP as whole really does decide to become interested in freedom, I might change my tune -- till then I'll be voting 3d party.
Not saying it is a bad idea, just that it undermines the GP's argument that there is difference between this case and adoption cases in that in adoption cases, you can't adopt if you're going to get state assistance benefits, when clearly, the state will assist those too poor to do an adoption independently and such people are probably likely to end up on public assistance.
Ah yes -- the definition of Treason in Webster's trumps that in the US Constitution. You must be a member of Obama's legal team.
The treason definition is in the constitution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
In this context, I would think "adhere" means something along the lines of "devotion" -- the only country Snowden showed devotion to was the US. He certainly didn't wage war.
You could be on God or Satan's own legal team, and it wouldn't make difference. There is no way to have a fair trial in the US on this matter:
https://pressfreedomfoundation...
And do computers usually come with apps you cannot uninstall? If it is a computer that functions as a phone, it should function that way. But it doesn't because unless you root it, it behaves in a very non-computer like fashion.
How is making what you don't want to have on the phone making people happy?
A person might well use twitter and never touch facebook or dropbox -- let that person install what he or she wants. Why force them to have those apps on the phone, potentially gathering data even if it is "disabled" -- whatever that means.
I don't particularly want a dumb phone, but none of the things I listed are things I want. I want things like Red Phone and Text Secure, Boggle, a calculator, web browser, kindle, drink mixing app, etc. etc. In fact, I've managed to download a bunch of stuff I actually want, as have billions of people around the world. I just can't get rid of the crap I don't actually want without rooting the phone. Which is absolutely ridiculous.
There is no reason to make everyone in the world suffer because someone deletes an app after confirming they want to delete an app. Even so, if an app can be deleted, it can be installed, and with something like facebook, where all the info is on FB's servers, what exactly would be lost by accidental deletion? Nothing. Just reinstall.
Ultimately, it's pretty easy to draw a line. Everything after "telephone" is an extra. Even SMS, though it could just arguably be included as not bloatware -- many people do use SMS, but it is not universal and not an essential characteristic of a telephone. I wouldn't gripe too much if SMS was considered not bloat, but I wouldn't have any problem having it labeled it bloat either because it is not actually a telephone function.
Email, web browsing, playing games, watching movies, texting/chatting -- those are all PC applications ported to phones and thus are not essential parts of a phone. They may be desirable or not to different people, in which case by all means, those people should feel free to download and install them.
Are you kidding? We're talking a cell phone. It has one primary function, which is to be a phone. I don't think anyone would think of the dialer app as bloatware, but even if it was deletable, it could also be installable.
Things not a primary function of a telephone that I can't delete:
Facebook -- fuck off and die already.
Dropbox -- like I'd actually use this for backups?
Gmail/hangouts/etc. etc. -- don't want it don't care.
Polaris Office -- like I really want to write/edit docs on my freakin telephone?
Slacker -- some stupid radio thing that randomly turns itself on. My car has a radio and my ipod connects fine. At least with Pandora, I get a choice to install it or not. This forced install of Slacker DECREASES the chance I'd ever use it.
Twitter -- FFS!
Flickr -- Ditto.
Friend Stream -- I don't even know what this is, but from the name, I'm sure it isn't anything I want on my phone.
Telenav -- my garmin is much more convenient and doesn't report my every move.
NONE of those things are phone functions. Making them deletable is totally good, right, proper ... half tongue-in-cheek, I'd say that there should be substantial criminal penalties associated with making them undeletable. I paid for my phone up front -- $550 pre-tax. There should be enough profit in that price point to leave out the crapware.