..with the landline, I just never answer it,that's it. I don't give that number out, so I know any incoming is bogus. It is used for outgoing calls or for backup internet access only. Friends and family get the cell number.
Enron caused a ton of "reliable" utlity power to be unavailable or "dirty" off and on and it went on for months and not a single governmental regulator found out about it while it was happening. It was done on purpose to shaft people out of more money by creating an artificial scarcity. I also think it goes on all the time in the oil industry,m but I can't prove it. And this latest fast price drop at the gas pump right before the election..uh, huh, another "coincidence". I know gasoline/diesel isn't a public monopoly/utility, but it might as well be, it's just as important as electricity to most everyone,(even to people who don't drive themselves) and I bet if you took a poll most folks would think there's pricing shenanigans (in other words mistrust) going on there all the time.
Now you know wy some of us have some solar power and some generators. Electricity 100% of the time is a good thing, quite useful. It tends to go out with grid supplied when you really want it and need it, such as storms, etc, let alone during any potential future "terrorist" attack.
...to be one day reading a joint press release from MS and IBM and Apple and HP and a large, large list of other major companies all holding a news conference where they decry software patents and business process patents as a really bad idea, and call on Congress to just change the law, and in the meantime they promise to not persue a single additional one. *That* would be impressive and give a better sense of confidence and true intent.
Until then, it is like the global status of nuclear weapons. Some nations have them (but they won't give them all the way up nor allow any smaller nations to have them), some nations don't have them but apparently want them, there has been some noise about never using them (again) or reducing the total numbers,etc, maybe all the way to "none", but until the "no nukes anyplace anytime for any reason" process is transparent and open to anyone anywhere and any time to inspect and verify-sorry, *no trust*. I trust none of the above with nuclear weapons, to never be dinks with them. I trust none of the above with software or business process patents to never be dinks with them. The old adage is still true, talk is cheap.
I'm not so sure on the cars and costs though. I am old enough to have owned studebakers when the company was still around for example, so I know about manual chokes (and miss them actually)(and vent windows) and have had several flathead engined vehicles. Cost wise, 12-18 month loans were the norms for new cars back then IIRC.
Your other points on the electronics are interesting and part of the musing. I think it would be hard to *not* start using computers once you enter any sort of IC age.
Notice they didn't NAME the voting black box make/model/manufacturer? That has to have been done on purpose. This is the wash post, not the east elbow gazette. I am guessing that was an on-purpose political editorial decision, not an oversight.
There are numerous other examples of reporters (in the west) either getting jail time or being threatened with it for various coverage. It goes way back in US hisotry. In the civil war and the first world war a lot of newspapers were closed and editors were jailed or threatened with jailing. Lincon imprisoned a lot, we had the "alien and sedition act" thing as well.
The 40s-50s era level non computerised tech probably represents the nadir of that level of human engineering ingenuity then, and a lot of it was quite good and functional. We had global commerce and trade, electrical delivery, wireless communicatons, home entertainments that cheaply duplicated art, all aspects of transportation short of space travel were possible including fairly rapid around the world travel, various medical advances, etc, etc. After that point computers started impacting all levels of society and all other tech.
Be an interesting sci-fi angle, what would have happened if we had kept going, but without *computers?
*I won't class for casual conversation mechanical computers/adding machines/slide rules, etc as computers for the posit,I mean conventional "as we know it today electronic" computers
That's an interesting idea there, if it was extrapolated. I just recently got broadband (wireless motorola canopy, good stuff, love it), but for *years* was stuck on dialup so a lot of stuff I wanted to do with the net was about umpossible or a severe PITA. Like I wanted to casually try a lot of distros, download some free to copy movies, etc, plus just surf faster, get to read a lot of news and opinion pieces and papers, etc, plus try to keep up with my OS updates, which is a pain on dialup. Now just suppose for a fee, you could checkbox off a menu and add in your custom surfing and download links you want, all of it, who cares, google vids, indy music, large images, etc as long as they are legal, and the company charges you by the megabyte delivered on disk,or by "full" DVD, etc, like netflix does movies sort of, it gets mailed to you. "Enhanced" dialup. You get that disk (and get to keep it) and use their mailer that comes with it to send in your next "internet menu" request, or just do a form on their page with your slow dialup connection. One stop shopping in other words for the content that is just too much of a pain on dialup-which millions of people are still stuck with, and it might not change too much for years either. Some places due to low population and large distances from big switches are just not attractive to broadband delivery companies..
Sort of the takeout food or pizza delivery deal, just with data-the customer picks what he wants, the company with the fat pipes custom burns the disks with all the data and webpages and vids and whatnot indicated, etc, for some reasonable fee.
With the number of crooked Cxx whatevers out there and lower level managers who just go along with the bogus stuff,claiming they "didn't know", potential employees need a better way to check on *employers* before considering applying there for a job. Look at all the grunt level folks who got hosed working for Enron for instance. Heh, we also need mandated insurance for employees where if their bosses get nailed breaking the law,and that borks the company, that they automatically receive some nice chunk of change to get them through the next job search. This all the laws automatically default in favor of the already rich stuff is getting way out of hand.
That thing is going to change computing paradigms. Once it starts shipping in million unit chunks, and it will despite the naysayers, a lot of kids who will be growing up and becoming their country's nerds and engineers will have the experience of linux as the first OS they have seen and used. That particular Fedora variant will become the most installed distro as well. MS is dominant in the western nations from past installed base and some business applications and because it comes pre installed on less expensive machines. In all other areas it's because of gaming and the outright ease of piracy and the "who cares" attitude there, again, easy and cheap. Once MS and the WTO make piracy harder, eliminating the easy and cheap part, their product becomes less worth it, what they want to charge for it anyway. Stuff changes and it doesn't take too long in terms of years. Look at hybrid cars, just 5 years ago they were being dumped on, very few people bought them, most people hooted at them, yuk yuk yuk, never buy one, etc, the bulk of the car industry was even reluctant to build them-but look now, they are the fastest growing segment in that industry and all the manufacturers of note are either selling them or are close to selling them. That didn't take long to completely alter a major industry, it caught most of the marketing "experts" flatfooted as well. I know I live in bubbaland, where conventional pickups and SUVs are king-and those things are lined up rows and rows deep at the local car lots and they have to throw zero percent financing at them to sell them., but there's waiting lists for the hybrids, and now they are making SUV hybrids, because they will sell those. I would guess pickup variants will be coming next, along with a big switch from gasoline powered to diesel powered. Stuff changes fast.
...that it's easy to get. And credit and credit cards got popular way back when *job security* was taken as a given. People didn't jump around as much, because they were headed towards that pension, and outsourcing wasn't a factor near as much. You can still get credit issued today, but they don't insist that along with getting the credit that you have adequate income insurance to take care of the credit payments if you get laid off or your job goes *elsewhere*. This could be fixed with one new law, just like you need insurance to drive for instance, but I bet the lending industry would try to stop it. And one more-make ARMS illegal. That's just a bad news way to get credit as many people are finding out now who went for that "make easy money because credit was easy and looked to be cheap forever" real estate scheme that has been going on for some years now.
Really, just use a simple computer with a lot of RAM, no hard drive, an optical drive, and any of the live cd distros out there. That's as close and as cheap and functional and secure as you can get without a lot of hoop jumping. The mini distros are perfect, they run entirely in the RAM and get ejected after booting, freeing up the drive to put other disks in if you want to. You could also just skip the optical drive and use a USB flash drive and keep it locked to read only if you wanted to.
You are correct. And increasingly governments all over want to regulate the net as to content and access issues, and they could do that more easily by eventually mandated a certain "standard" of hardware and software that coincidently falls into the closed source monopoly camp, because they can guarantee it in the code and allegedly keep it "secret" so the net predators and terrorists can't "use it against the people" or some such. Trusted/treacherous computing all the way to the hardware level will be the largest threat in the future.
In a way it is, in another it isn't. We've had anti dscrimination laws on the books for awhile now here, discrimination against handicapped people is one of them, I see no reason to give websites slack thinking they could get away with blatantly not caring and being discriminatory if they are open to the public. If you want a closed site, invite only, pass protected-who cares then, your business, go for it, code however you want it. Open to the public, different story, alter your code a scosh to make it more accessible..
And yes, some places have had to alter practices before, and it cost them time and money, in fact, it usually does everytime alaw gets passed or enforced. This isn't new at all, not even close to new, it's how laws evolve all the time. It happens in a lot of businesses. Look at electrical generation. Years ago, public utilities made regular coal plants, bun coal, generate electricity with steam boilers and turbines, thick black smoke goesd off into the sky, shareholders make "profit", customers get electricity-but everyone got to breathe some rather toxic stuff.. Then it was determined that just allowing unrestricted emissions was a bad idea. Those plants now have to start to install scrubbers, etc at their expense and tough noogies because it is in the general public interesdt to dfo so.. It was legal then to operate the plant as it stood, but later they had to modify what they were doing. So how again is this website case different? It's not near as I can see, same general idea, law says such and such is a better idea and in the general public better interest. suck it up. What you are saying, if I am reading this right, is you think because the coal plant wasn't built with the scrubbers in the first place, and they don't want them, and it was legal back then, that now they shouldn't be required to change/alter what they do, even if society and laws determine that it is in the public good -which is all a law really is anyway, codfiying some alleged public do or don't do? they can just keep their old design forever? Here's another example- It used to be legal to sell cars without seatbelts-now they are mandatory for all new cars sold, and even a much older car, if driven on the street, needs to add the belts-at the owner's expense. And so on, there are any number of laws like that currently being enforced, so I don't think this is any new style of precedent.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't have a problem with making them change based on new laws, especially when they make sense like that. some I do some I don't, in this instance I don't have a problem with it. Sometimes we re-think things and change our minds, and our government and society and laws change to reflect these new thoughts. Some times it costs you money, other times you wind up making money from it, sometimes it's a big ho hum. Just depends. It's how civilization and governments work now, and I am the first to admit there are a lot of flaws, but the alternative-no laws at all, a pure might makes right, caveat emptor hienlein styled ultra libertarian anything-goes fantasy world like that-I'll pass. Until humans evolve a little more socially and psychologically-we need some form of government and laws. Unfortunately.
Oh, as to the boycotts and whatnot-you don't understand. Not only boycotts being made illegal for a time, they were just a *reflection* of the ingrained institutionalised racism and "apartness" that lead to private violence. A lot of private violence and heartache and despair. Once people are allowed to openly and blatantly discriminate like that, it leads eventually to pain suffereing death and violence. That's what happens. To make a civil-ization, to have to make being civil the legal way to live, else it de evolves into violence. Like I said, been there, done that, seen that. Voluntary doesn't work all that well. I wish it did but it doesn't. Even on the web, I still see discrimination, I just was at a website that wouldn't let me access some content because it said I needed
You mean a boycott? I remember when advocating an economic boycott because a business wouldn't cater to blacks was illegal, and those people got arrested. I mean I personally remember it as an old civil rights worker would remember it. I remember seeing a sign at a city boundary, welcome to xxxxville, with the signs -> kiwanis, moose, elks, no niggers allowed. Yes. for real,. saw that. That's what happens once you go that "who cares it's my business" way. In your private life, if all you want to do is hang out with left handed lutheran latvians-go ahead. If you operate a public business-be prepared to be open to the public-to people, any old people. On the web, off the web, it doesn't matter. We've already tried the other way and it didn't work *so bad* that we explicitly made some more detailed laws about it.
We have governments to level the playing field and make things a little fairer over all. Just some, because it works. Not doing it leads to..well..warlords and the middle ages scene again. Eventually anyway. One step leads to another to another to another, until you got total separation and a lot of conflicts. Don't know about you but I sure would like less conflicts. Just seems nicer.
I've heard the same complaints about human rights being "enforced" since..well a long time ago now. None of it panned out, once laws were in place,and enforced, society adapted at least enough to get on with life a little better. Believe me, you don't want to live in a society with a lot of hate and mistrust and schisms in business and local government, etc, it just sucks man, it sucks. It's hideous middle ages nasty mega suckitude. Been there, done that, breathed the gas and dodged the clubs and stupid police dogs. Kinda lucked out there, lot of my friends didn't. Civil rights-human rights-it's all tied together. Just like free speech, free speech means nothing unless you are just as passionate about it for the dude who's ideas you hate as you are for your own speech.
This disabilities act/idea/goal with the web pages is a reasonably good idea, and ya, some places will have to suck it up and code something a little simpler so that more people can navigate and use the site-so what? What's wrong with that really? We are gradually getting away from that "IE" only BS as well-double plus good. It also helps makes sites faster for those still stuck on dialup, still millions and millions of people. Alt text for images? Why is that hard or wrong? Having some regular links instead of Flash links? That's a *good* idea.
When I go to some store, and go to park the car, I can see special handicapped parking places near the door. Am I pissed about it? That I can't park there, that I have to walk further than that, that maybe what I pay for something inside is some tiny bit more expensive because they had to make a few special parking spaces? Absolutely not! If I choose I can go park at the farthest away slot and calmly walk into the store. There's folks out there would pay a million cash if they could do that-but they can't, and no amount of money would help them do that. At least getting closer to the door helps the situation-it's a compromise. This is a similar deal with the websites-it's just a human and humane and civilly cool thing to do.
.... the FCC public licensed broadcasters carrying the two party only debates, they would be forced to include several candidates each time, instead of the top two skull and bones globalist party candidates. The league of women voters *stopped* sponsoring the debates over this issue, saying it was unfair and counter democratic, yet the "licensed" broadcasters are going along with the debate hijacking, effectively locking in this two criminal gang power sharing conspiracy. And yes, that is what it is, RICO action. They refuse to cover anyone but the two parties, they won't say no to the demands of the two parties, they just go along with it. That's not journalism, that's controlled propoganda. They are a major part of the problem here, yet they seem to get a free skate and rubber stamped public airwave license renewals for decades and now generations. Now when we had third parties in the debates, the numbers were growing fast for third alternative parties, we had some news coverage and then the debates. That scared the crap out of the billionaire establishment. Then the R and D co-conspirators decided that wouldn't do at all so they insisted on just their allegedly different candidates only.
All this is is prima facie evidence of the continual erosion into a "one party with two barely different wings" dictatorship. The only difference between the two wings is which born-with rights they want to screw you out of. Between the two of them they have them all covered and have effectively hijacked government and the political process and turned it into a big jobs program for their cronies. There's your wasted vote right there, no matter which of those two wings "wins" you'll still be screwed and get your pocket picked and be forced to smile and say "thankyou massa!".
Right now the R wing controls both houses and the executive branch-see any problems? I sure do. I can also distinctly remember when the big D party controlled both houses and the executive branch. Guess what? Illegal huge war based on lies,(the tonkin gulf attack lies) free speech rights trampled on daily, the feds infilitrating the peace and anti slavery movement and using agent provocatuers, some mighty strange political assassinations with a lot of peculiarities to them indicating connected governmental hijinks, the government using the spy agencies and federal police to spy on "opponents", news people co-opted, fake news, illegal kickback scandals and bribery stuff all the time, propping up tinpot dictators overseas, kow-towing to globalist corporate interests, etc, etc, basically the same shit you see now. *Nothing* has changed, it's the same.
It doesn't matter D or R "in control" because they are into power sharing with each other. Two cooperating gangs. They keep up the illusion of differences to maintain command and control, to keep the grass roots activists doing useless busy work so they think they are doing something important, and that's it. It's a *farce*.
There's no practical difference. Those wings are both corrupt beyond any hope of repair. There is no choice unless you vote anything but those two wings of the same globalist party, and now it won't matter with blackbox voting, something *both* wings pushed as hard as they could.
OK, this is fun, I'm still just a baby neogeezer but see what I can do here... I'll try to do some more geezer things the young kids here won't believe...that gas lighter was a good one, never seen that one..
Ok, my grandma still had an icebox and the iceman used a horse and wagon, came down the alley to make the ice deliveries. This was similar, mid 50s in Detroit. Hmmm...I've made nickle phone calls, got gasoline at 12 cents a gallon, and used a phone that was bolted to the wall and had the separate earphone and mouth piece, one of those old wooden jobs (my other granny's phone actually). Oh! Here's a cool one, when I was in school it was common for some of us who were hunters or target shooters to take our rifles to school with us so we could all go shooting after school let out in the afternoon. I can see the helicopters and SWAT teams now....pretty funny, and we had no massacres that I recall...
Your turn! I hope some young guys are reading this...
Thanks, cool stuff! I went looking and googling some more on the electric floats, some of them look still practical. Hopefully at least *some* of the big car companies will start offering pure electric vehicles. I bet if they don't the chinese will, they are already heavy into electric bikes and scooters.
I think one of those, with the "generator trailer" concept for long hauls, would be quite nice and practical. I know I'd like to be topping off a little truck off my solar panels all the time, if I could get one. I know you can build one from a kit, but I would prefer to just buy one already built (used and cheaper and finance-able once they have been on the market for awhile, like I get all my vehicles), because I have more than enough projects right now.
I'm still gonna get a horse though one of these days....
Thanks for the reply and the link! I like to find out about electric vehicles. In the US, the first president ro ride in an automobile rode in an electric car, T. Roosevelt in a Columbia Victoria.
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A cult is two or more people who believe in something you don't.
..with the landline, I just never answer it,that's it. I don't give that number out, so I know any incoming is bogus. It is used for outgoing calls or for backup internet access only. Friends and family get the cell number.
Enron caused a ton of "reliable" utlity power to be unavailable or "dirty" off and on and it went on for months and not a single governmental regulator found out about it while it was happening. It was done on purpose to shaft people out of more money by creating an artificial scarcity. I also think it goes on all the time in the oil industry,m but I can't prove it. And this latest fast price drop at the gas pump right before the election..uh, huh, another "coincidence". I know gasoline/diesel isn't a public monopoly/utility, but it might as well be, it's just as important as electricity to most everyone,(even to people who don't drive themselves) and I bet if you took a poll most folks would think there's pricing shenanigans (in other words mistrust) going on there all the time.
Now you know wy some of us have some solar power and some generators. Electricity 100% of the time is a good thing, quite useful. It tends to go out with grid supplied when you really want it and need it, such as storms, etc, let alone during any potential future "terrorist" attack.
We need a way to safely harvest methane hydrates. Solve that question, you'll be *rich*. Screw up, another extinction event! Good times!
...to be one day reading a joint press release from MS and IBM and Apple and HP and a large, large list of other major companies all holding a news conference where they decry software patents and business process patents as a really bad idea, and call on Congress to just change the law, and in the meantime they promise to not persue a single additional one. *That* would be impressive and give a better sense of confidence and true intent.
Until then, it is like the global status of nuclear weapons. Some nations have them (but they won't give them all the way up nor allow any smaller nations to have them), some nations don't have them but apparently want them, there has been some noise about never using them (again) or reducing the total numbers,etc, maybe all the way to "none", but until the "no nukes anyplace anytime for any reason" process is transparent and open to anyone anywhere and any time to inspect and verify-sorry, *no trust*. I trust none of the above with nuclear weapons, to never be dinks with them. I trust none of the above with software or business process patents to never be dinks with them. The old adage is still true, talk is cheap.
I'm not so sure on the cars and costs though. I am old enough to have owned studebakers when the company was still around for example, so I know about manual chokes (and miss them actually)(and vent windows) and have had several flathead engined vehicles. Cost wise, 12-18 month loans were the norms for new cars back then IIRC.
Your other points on the electronics are interesting and part of the musing. I think it would be hard to *not* start using computers once you enter any sort of IC age.
Notice they didn't NAME the voting black box make/model/manufacturer? That has to have been done on purpose. This is the wash post, not the east elbow gazette. I am guessing that was an on-purpose political editorial decision, not an oversight.
You are correct! My bad! Must be zogheimer's kicking in....let's switch it to "apex" or "zenith" or something like that.
Greg Palast is now facing federal criminal charges for doing a story on Katrina evacuees in a camp near an Exxon refinery.
There are numerous other examples of reporters (in the west) either getting jail time or being threatened with it for various coverage. It goes way back in US hisotry. In the civil war and the first world war a lot of newspapers were closed and editors were jailed or threatened with jailing. Lincon imprisoned a lot, we had the "alien and sedition act" thing as well.
The 40s-50s era level non computerised tech probably represents the nadir of that level of human engineering ingenuity then, and a lot of it was quite good and functional. We had global commerce and trade, electrical delivery, wireless communicatons, home entertainments that cheaply duplicated art, all aspects of transportation short of space travel were possible including fairly rapid around the world travel, various medical advances, etc, etc. After that point computers started impacting all levels of society and all other tech.
Be an interesting sci-fi angle, what would have happened if we had kept going, but without *computers?
*I won't class for casual conversation mechanical computers/adding machines/slide rules, etc as computers for the posit,I mean conventional "as we know it today electronic" computers
That's an interesting idea there, if it was extrapolated. I just recently got broadband (wireless motorola canopy, good stuff, love it), but for *years* was stuck on dialup so a lot of stuff I wanted to do with the net was about umpossible or a severe PITA. Like I wanted to casually try a lot of distros, download some free to copy movies, etc, plus just surf faster, get to read a lot of news and opinion pieces and papers, etc, plus try to keep up with my OS updates, which is a pain on dialup. Now just suppose for a fee, you could checkbox off a menu and add in your custom surfing and download links you want, all of it, who cares, google vids, indy music, large images, etc as long as they are legal, and the company charges you by the megabyte delivered on disk,or by "full" DVD, etc, like netflix does movies sort of, it gets mailed to you. "Enhanced" dialup. You get that disk (and get to keep it) and use their mailer that comes with it to send in your next "internet menu" request, or just do a form on their page with your slow dialup connection. One stop shopping in other words for the content that is just too much of a pain on dialup-which millions of people are still stuck with, and it might not change too much for years either. Some places due to low population and large distances from big switches are just not attractive to broadband delivery companies..
Sort of the takeout food or pizza delivery deal, just with data-the customer picks what he wants, the company with the fat pipes custom burns the disks with all the data and webpages and vids and whatnot indicated, etc, for some reasonable fee.
...still work, too. I know all my older HDDs are still quite functional.
With the number of crooked Cxx whatevers out there and lower level managers who just go along with the bogus stuff,claiming they "didn't know", potential employees need a better way to check on *employers* before considering applying there for a job. Look at all the grunt level folks who got hosed working for Enron for instance. Heh, we also need mandated insurance for employees where if their bosses get nailed breaking the law,and that borks the company, that they automatically receive some nice chunk of change to get them through the next job search. This all the laws automatically default in favor of the already rich stuff is getting way out of hand.
That thing is going to change computing paradigms. Once it starts shipping in million unit chunks, and it will despite the naysayers, a lot of kids who will be growing up and becoming their country's nerds and engineers will have the experience of linux as the first OS they have seen and used. That particular Fedora variant will become the most installed distro as well. MS is dominant in the western nations from past installed base and some business applications and because it comes pre installed on less expensive machines. In all other areas it's because of gaming and the outright ease of piracy and the "who cares" attitude there, again, easy and cheap. Once MS and the WTO make piracy harder, eliminating the easy and cheap part, their product becomes less worth it, what they want to charge for it anyway. Stuff changes and it doesn't take too long in terms of years. Look at hybrid cars, just 5 years ago they were being dumped on, very few people bought them, most people hooted at them, yuk yuk yuk, never buy one, etc, the bulk of the car industry was even reluctant to build them-but look now, they are the fastest growing segment in that industry and all the manufacturers of note are either selling them or are close to selling them. That didn't take long to completely alter a major industry, it caught most of the marketing "experts" flatfooted as well. I know I live in bubbaland, where conventional pickups and SUVs are king-and those things are lined up rows and rows deep at the local car lots and they have to throw zero percent financing at them to sell them., but there's waiting lists for the hybrids, and now they are making SUV hybrids, because they will sell those. I would guess pickup variants will be coming next, along with a big switch from gasoline powered to diesel powered. Stuff changes fast.
...that it's easy to get. And credit and credit cards got popular way back when *job security* was taken as a given. People didn't jump around as much, because they were headed towards that pension, and outsourcing wasn't a factor near as much. You can still get credit issued today, but they don't insist that along with getting the credit that you have adequate income insurance to take care of the credit payments if you get laid off or your job goes *elsewhere*. This could be fixed with one new law, just like you need insurance to drive for instance, but I bet the lending industry would try to stop it. And one more-make ARMS illegal. That's just a bad news way to get credit as many people are finding out now who went for that "make easy money because credit was easy and looked to be cheap forever" real estate scheme that has been going on for some years now.
Really, just use a simple computer with a lot of RAM, no hard drive, an optical drive, and any of the live cd distros out there. That's as close and as cheap and functional and secure as you can get without a lot of hoop jumping. The mini distros are perfect, they run entirely in the RAM and get ejected after booting, freeing up the drive to put other disks in if you want to. You could also just skip the optical drive and use a USB flash drive and keep it locked to read only if you wanted to.
You are correct. And increasingly governments all over want to regulate the net as to content and access issues, and they could do that more easily by eventually mandated a certain "standard" of hardware and software that coincidently falls into the closed source monopoly camp, because they can guarantee it in the code and allegedly keep it "secret" so the net predators and terrorists can't "use it against the people" or some such. Trusted/treacherous computing all the way to the hardware level will be the largest threat in the future.
In a way it is, in another it isn't. We've had anti dscrimination laws on the books for awhile now here, discrimination against handicapped people is one of them, I see no reason to give websites slack thinking they could get away with blatantly not caring and being discriminatory if they are open to the public. If you want a closed site, invite only, pass protected-who cares then, your business, go for it, code however you want it. Open to the public, different story, alter your code a scosh to make it more accessible..
And yes, some places have had to alter practices before, and it cost them time and money, in fact, it usually does everytime alaw gets passed or enforced. This isn't new at all, not even close to new, it's how laws evolve all the time. It happens in a lot of businesses. Look at electrical generation. Years ago, public utilities made regular coal plants, bun coal, generate electricity with steam boilers and turbines, thick black smoke goesd off into the sky, shareholders make "profit", customers get electricity-but everyone got to breathe some rather toxic stuff.. Then it was determined that just allowing unrestricted emissions was a bad idea. Those plants now have to start to install scrubbers, etc at their expense and tough noogies because it is in the general public interesdt to dfo so.. It was legal then to operate the plant as it stood, but later they had to modify what they were doing. So how again is this website case different? It's not near as I can see, same general idea, law says such and such is a better idea and in the general public better interest. suck it up. What you are saying, if I am reading this right, is you think because the coal plant wasn't built with the scrubbers in the first place, and they don't want them, and it was legal back then, that now they shouldn't be required to change/alter what they do, even if society and laws determine that it is in the public good -which is all a law really is anyway, codfiying some alleged public do or don't do? they can just keep their old design forever? Here's another example- It used to be legal to sell cars without seatbelts-now they are mandatory for all new cars sold, and even a much older car, if driven on the street, needs to add the belts-at the owner's expense. And so on, there are any number of laws like that currently being enforced, so I don't think this is any new style of precedent.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, I don't have a problem with making them change based on new laws, especially when they make sense like that. some I do some I don't, in this instance I don't have a problem with it. Sometimes we re-think things and change our minds, and our government and society and laws change to reflect these new thoughts. Some times it costs you money, other times you wind up making money from it, sometimes it's a big ho hum. Just depends. It's how civilization and governments work now, and I am the first to admit there are a lot of flaws, but the alternative-no laws at all, a pure might makes right, caveat emptor hienlein styled ultra libertarian anything-goes fantasy world like that-I'll pass. Until humans evolve a little more socially and psychologically-we need some form of government and laws. Unfortunately.
Oh, as to the boycotts and whatnot-you don't understand. Not only boycotts being made illegal for a time, they were just a *reflection* of the ingrained institutionalised racism and "apartness" that lead to private violence. A lot of private violence and heartache and despair. Once people are allowed to openly and blatantly discriminate like that, it leads eventually to pain suffereing death and violence. That's what happens. To make a civil-ization, to have to make being civil the legal way to live, else it de evolves into violence. Like I said, been there, done that, seen that. Voluntary doesn't work all that well. I wish it did but it doesn't. Even on the web, I still see discrimination, I just was at a website that wouldn't let me access some content because it said I needed
You mean a boycott? I remember when advocating an economic boycott because a business wouldn't cater to blacks was illegal, and those people got arrested. I mean I personally remember it as an old civil rights worker would remember it. I remember seeing a sign at a city boundary, welcome to xxxxville, with the signs -> kiwanis, moose, elks, no niggers allowed. Yes. for real,. saw that. That's what happens once you go that "who cares it's my business" way. In your private life, if all you want to do is hang out with left handed lutheran latvians-go ahead. If you operate a public business-be prepared to be open to the public-to people, any old people. On the web, off the web, it doesn't matter. We've already tried the other way and it didn't work *so bad* that we explicitly made some more detailed laws about it.
We have governments to level the playing field and make things a little fairer over all. Just some, because it works. Not doing it leads to..well..warlords and the middle ages scene again. Eventually anyway. One step leads to another to another to another, until you got total separation and a lot of conflicts. Don't know about you but I sure would like less conflicts. Just seems nicer.
I've heard the same complaints about human rights being "enforced" since..well a long time ago now. None of it panned out, once laws were in place,and enforced, society adapted at least enough to get on with life a little better. Believe me, you don't want to live in a society with a lot of hate and mistrust and schisms in business and local government, etc, it just sucks man, it sucks. It's hideous middle ages nasty mega suckitude. Been there, done that, breathed the gas and dodged the clubs and stupid police dogs. Kinda lucked out there, lot of my friends didn't. Civil rights-human rights-it's all tied together. Just like free speech, free speech means nothing unless you are just as passionate about it for the dude who's ideas you hate as you are for your own speech.
This disabilities act/idea/goal with the web pages is a reasonably good idea, and ya, some places will have to suck it up and code something a little simpler so that more people can navigate and use the site-so what? What's wrong with that really? We are gradually getting away from that "IE" only BS as well-double plus good. It also helps makes sites faster for those still stuck on dialup, still millions and millions of people. Alt text for images? Why is that hard or wrong? Having some regular links instead of Flash links? That's a *good* idea.
When I go to some store, and go to park the car, I can see special handicapped parking places near the door. Am I pissed about it? That I can't park there, that I have to walk further than that, that maybe what I pay for something inside is some tiny bit more expensive because they had to make a few special parking spaces? Absolutely not! If I choose I can go park at the farthest away slot and calmly walk into the store. There's folks out there would pay a million cash if they could do that-but they can't, and no amount of money would help them do that. At least getting closer to the door helps the situation-it's a compromise. This is a similar deal with the websites-it's just a human and humane and civilly cool thing to do.
.... the FCC public licensed broadcasters carrying the two party only debates, they would be forced to include several candidates each time, instead of the top two skull and bones globalist party candidates. The league of women voters *stopped* sponsoring the debates over this issue, saying it was unfair and counter democratic, yet the "licensed" broadcasters are going along with the debate hijacking, effectively locking in this two criminal gang power sharing conspiracy. And yes, that is what it is, RICO action. They refuse to cover anyone but the two parties, they won't say no to the demands of the two parties, they just go along with it. That's not journalism, that's controlled propoganda. They are a major part of the problem here, yet they seem to get a free skate and rubber stamped public airwave license renewals for decades and now generations. Now when we had third parties in the debates, the numbers were growing fast for third alternative parties, we had some news coverage and then the debates. That scared the crap out of the billionaire establishment. Then the R and D co-conspirators decided that wouldn't do at all so they insisted on just their allegedly different candidates only.
All this is is prima facie evidence of the continual erosion into a "one party with two barely different wings" dictatorship. The only difference between the two wings is which born-with rights they want to screw you out of. Between the two of them they have them all covered and have effectively hijacked government and the political process and turned it into a big jobs program for their cronies. There's your wasted vote right there, no matter which of those two wings "wins" you'll still be screwed and get your pocket picked and be forced to smile and say "thankyou massa!".
Right now the R wing controls both houses and the executive branch-see any problems? I sure do. I can also distinctly remember when the big D party controlled both houses and the executive branch. Guess what? Illegal huge war based on lies,(the tonkin gulf attack lies) free speech rights trampled on daily, the feds infilitrating the peace and anti slavery movement and using agent provocatuers, some mighty strange political assassinations with a lot of peculiarities to them indicating connected governmental hijinks, the government using the spy agencies and federal police to spy on "opponents", news people co-opted, fake news, illegal kickback scandals and bribery stuff all the time, propping up tinpot dictators overseas, kow-towing to globalist corporate interests, etc, etc, basically the same shit you see now. *Nothing* has changed, it's the same.
It doesn't matter D or R "in control" because they are into power sharing with each other. Two cooperating gangs. They keep up the illusion of differences to maintain command and control, to keep the grass roots activists doing useless busy work so they think they are doing something important, and that's it. It's a *farce*.
There's no practical difference. Those wings are both corrupt beyond any hope of repair. There is no choice unless you vote anything but those two wings of the same globalist party, and now it won't matter with blackbox voting, something *both* wings pushed as hard as they could.
Sure, I'll ask! What are some of the more unusual cultural differences you have experienced?
OK, this is fun, I'm still just a baby neogeezer but see what I can do here... I'll try to do some more geezer things the young kids here won't believe...that gas lighter was a good one, never seen that one..
Ok, my grandma still had an icebox and the iceman used a horse and wagon, came down the alley to make the ice deliveries. This was similar, mid 50s in Detroit. Hmmm...I've made nickle phone calls, got gasoline at 12 cents a gallon, and used a phone that was bolted to the wall and had the separate earphone and mouth piece, one of those old wooden jobs (my other granny's phone actually). Oh! Here's a cool one, when I was in school it was common for some of us who were hunters or target shooters to take our rifles to school with us so we could all go shooting after school let out in the afternoon. I can see the helicopters and SWAT teams now....pretty funny, and we had no massacres that I recall...
Your turn! I hope some young guys are reading this...
Thanks, cool stuff! I went looking and googling some more on the electric floats, some of them look still practical. Hopefully at least *some* of the big car companies will start offering pure electric vehicles. I bet if they don't the chinese will, they are already heavy into electric bikes and scooters.
I think one of those, with the "generator trailer" concept for long hauls, would be quite nice and practical. I know I'd like to be topping off a little truck off my solar panels all the time, if I could get one. I know you can build one from a kit, but I would prefer to just buy one already built (used and cheaper and finance-able once they have been on the market for awhile, like I get all my vehicles), because I have more than enough projects right now.
I'm still gonna get a horse though one of these days....
Thanks for the reply and the link! I like to find out about electric vehicles. In the US, the first president ro ride in an automobile rode in an electric car, T. Roosevelt in a Columbia Victoria.