The first story I read on this mentioned "subscription", "ad supported", and "no pricing was announced". If they only offer the subscription plus ads route, I say forget it. I would never ever pay for a service which included ads. Source: https://www.cordcuttersnews.co...
You could also rent DVDs/BluRays either from Netflix or from a local video store. We went with the local video store because we used to keep the Netflix DVDs forever, so we were effectively paying like $10 per rental or something like that. We're really lucky to still have a good DVD rental store nearby. It also feels good to support a local small business rather than megacorp inc.
Someone manipulated things to make Hillary and the DNC so vilified that these emotion-driven voters, feeling betrayed and upset, flipped from Bernie to his polar opposite. I think it just goes to show how little Americans actually pay attention to policies during an election.
I think that you missed a critical connection between Bernie and pre-election Trump that indicates that little to no manipulation of Bernie supporters was necessary. Something that would have appealed to a large overlapping section of the voters for both is that they both focused on the fact that middle- and lower-income Americans had been shafted economically by several decades of administrations from both parties. Then they both emphasized their intention to move boldly to change this trend at every opportunity. This was the main focus of both Bernie and Trump in their campaigns.
Bernie outlined specific plans, while Trump kept repeating his intention, but with plans and statements that shifted within hours. Still, I think a lot of people just appreciated the fact that Trump focused on this issue. This is in contrast to Hillary, who espoused basically the same ideas of the last several decades, which people rightly associated with getting shafted economically.
Long story short is that there was a lot more overlap between Bernie's and Trump's message than what you seem to acknowledge. It's no surprise that people who cared a lot more about the economic issues than the social issues (racism, sexism, etc) and were gullible enough to fall for Trump's stone cold lying flipped from Bernie to Trump.
Those are some sweeping claims you've made there with regard to "rail, post, utilities, you name it." It would be nice if you could provide some evidence to back it up. You don't need to even provide details, just names or other basic information of examples so we can research for ourselves.
From where I stand I can't think of any obvious examples of government-run infrastructure that has failed in the way you have described. At least not unless they were intentionally sabotaged by people and forces who oppose the idea of government-run infrastructure.
The US postal service is a prime example, where even with extreme requirements (geographic coverage) and unreasonable burdens (pension funding requirements not required of any other organization, private or public) placed on their operations they still provide a very good service for a very reasonable price.
Thanks for the informative post. I wasn't aware of any of that. I still think that it will be a small portion of authors who will make the choice to abandon those incentives you listed to publish with walmart/kobo. We shall see in time what happens.
For example, make it visible/readable from car-level only, so that cops can see it, but block out cameras on poles above and from the sides? For instance, a deep louver system would probably do the trick. Or perhaps some of those wild stickers to at least fool computer vision like was reported on a story here a couple of weeks back, so that this couldn't be automated?
It seems high time for someone to start working on devices to do this, if it's not already illegal to install one.
i.e. "Lead Balloon"? That about describes how well this is likely to go over.
I realized that the ebook market is completely locked into Amazon when I looked for certain ebooks and discovered that they are only available at Amazon, and not bn.com, for instance.
I presume that some authors/publishers (at least smaller ones) have determined that publishing on any other platform is just not worth the effort.
The only way this will change is with some antitrust action, or some other actual paradigm shift, not just the buzzword kind.
Wait, how is anything free even if you remove all labor costs? What about energy and raw materials?
Also if you addressed the above and were somehow able to make things completely for free, that only takes care of products. How about food, healthcare, housing?
My guess is that if it reaches the point where most labor is no longer needed they will choose your option A, i.e. exterminate them.
The whole line of thinking is crazy though, we are a long long way away from eliminating labor completely. Yes, jobs may be decimated, but it doesn't mean that there won't still be a lot of work to be done. Maintenance, building, healthcare, etc. This won't change likely in any of our lifetimes.
One would think so. It is a rather incredible decision. Here's a legal summary which includes a link to the full text of the decision: https://apps.americanbar.org/a...
[U]nless a person has a pre-existing right to be free of the threatened economic harm, threatening economic harm to induce a person to pay for a legitimate service is not extortion.
WTF??? What is a "legitimate service"? I guess the mafia has been doing it wrong this whole time. If only they had been offering a "legitimate service" with a threat of economic harm, rather than a questionable service with a threat of physical harm, they would have been in the clear.
Perhaps I'm missing something though. Here's another article about it, where they talk about this ruling being beneficial to protect review/complaint websites in general: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
I can see a need to protect the right of people to publish grievances with businesses, but this specific decision seems rather lopsided.
This mafia-like behavior from Yelp has already been through the courts, and they've won so far (circuit court level): http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...
My observations, not from direct experience (except Roku, which I own), but from stuff I've read. I follow this space fairly closely.
Roku: for simplicity and the largest amount of (legal) streaming options. Some of the UI may not be as slick as the competition, but it's fine. Only some older/smaller channels have pretty old-looking UIs. Android TV: if you want to pay more and have less simple, legal streaming options, but more general-purpose options, like web browsers, games, and yes, apps that facilitate access to pirated content. Fire TV: same as Android TV, but more deeply tied to Amazon services. This brings some advantages and some disadvantages, such as the Youtube app being pulled. Apple TV: as usual Apple has a nice interface and integration with Apple services, but is expensive and tightly locked down. Chromecast: requires another device, like a smartphone, tablet, or computer to work. This, to me, makes it not as simple a TV-watching experience as the self-contained devices above. Roll your own (HTPC, Android stick(?), etc): more work than any of the above, and what you gain probably won't justify it.
I own and always recommend Roku above all the others. It has been the most popular streaming platform for years now according to various surveys I've read. However, be aware that recently I've noticed that a few new channels have been releasing on the Android and Apple TV platforms first, presumably because the developers do the work for the mobile apps first (Android and iOS), then the related TV platforms, and then finally on Roku and others. This may be because Roku apparently is its own isolated platform development-wise, with little connection to any other platform. Another possibility is that developers who are not releasing mobile apps are using Apple and Android TV as smaller user bases to start rolling out their services with to work out kinks with apps and back-ends.
What alternative action do you propose that Sanders should have taken instead of running as a Democrat?
You do realize that both the Democratic and Republican parties have made state ballot access laws almost impossible for a 3rd party candidate to be in the ballot in all 50 states, right? And that's just one of the impediments to running as a 3rd-party or an independent candidate. Sanders did exactly what anyone who is serious about running for president needs to do.
Sorry, had to ask that because it was the first thing I thought of when I read the name of this object. I actually thought it was a hoax/prank for a second.
So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).
You are mistaken. There's a rich history of actual and intended net neutrality violations in the past before the regulations went into effect. Unfortunately the top link returned by a search on this currently offline, but here is some info pasted from this reddit thread:
There's nothing hypothetical about what ISPs will do when net neutrality is eliminated. I'm going to steal a comment previously posted by/u/Skrattybones and repost here:
2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.
2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones. 2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)
2011-2013, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace
2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (edit: they were fined $1.25million over this)
2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.
2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.
And...
2005, AT&T suggested giving preferential treatment to some web giants in exchange for money, starting the whole thing.
2014, Verizon and Comcast throttled Netflix data and held those customers hostage to a huge bribe from Netflix.
"Verizon lawyer Helgi Walker made the companyâ(TM)s intentions all too clear, saying the company wants to prioritize those websites and services that are willing to shell out for better access.": https://www.savetheinternet.co...
Also, the thing to realize is that violations of net neutrality are not likely to be reflected on a general speed test, or necessarily in the fees the ISPs charge. It's much more likely that they will violate it by charging the content providers, like they have already done with Netflix. It will be insidious, and most people will not notice unless they are watching very closely. The effects will like
How about they make this available to older phones like Nexus 4 and tablets like Nexus 7? Like someone else mentioned in the comments here, this throw away culture that makes (Android) phones and tablets outdated and not secure after 2-3 years (or less) is absolutely ridiculous and terrible.
Miami is nuts. At least Miami Beach. I visited there a couple of years ago and they had flooding going on all over the place, and sewer construction also going on all over the place, trying to whack the mole, so to speak. At the same time, I saw many new high-rise apartment/condo buildings being built in the same area. Cranes all over the place.
Then I learned that Miami can't benefit from a solution consisting of seawalls and levees like the Netherlands and New Orleans, because the whole ground is porous there, so the seawater would just seep in through the ground.
Yet the towers keep going up and the state government forbids any mention of climate change. Absolutely insane.
Netflix streaming was great at first - they had lots of good movies to watch. I seem to recall that their library was over 100,000 movies at one point. But that didn't last long. The movie studios starting charging a lot more and sometimes building their own competing services, such that it looks like we're trending toward 100 streaming sites with 1,000 movies each.
That's a made up figure of course, but that's just to make a point. The point is that with the splintering of the streaming services' film libraries, my local video store becomes competitive again. At this point they have a much better library of titles that I would like to watch than Netflix streaming does. And since I don't watch movies frequently enough to justify the monthly price for Netflix disc rentals, or to subscribe to multiple streaming services, the local video store wins by default.
While I agree with your general sentiment, if you look at the details of this specific issue it was actually pretty nefarious. The summary comes nowhere near describing what actually happened.
The Russian trolls tried to get people out for a demonstration by a (fake) group called "Heart of Texas" and ALSO to get other people out for a demonstration by a (fake) group called "United Muslims of America". At the same time. At the same place. In front of an Islamic center.
It shouldn't take much imagination, regardless of your political inclination, to see that this was an attempt to destabilize American society. It's also not hard to imagine that this will be a continuing threat. It actually reminds me of this Twilight Episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I thought you were exaggerating on the size, but they do reach a maximum of over one meter (three feet) long! And up to over three meters (nine feet) wingspan! Holy mackerel, I didn't realize that any eagles got that large.
The nature of the spam. If it had been for something even borderline legitimate, like "hey, we have xyz service or product you may be interested in", I would have figured they had definitely sold my address. But from what I recall it was really junky spam, like pharmaceuticals, pr0n, phishing, and scams. I highly doubt that Equifax would sell their customers' email addresses to purveyors of that crap, at least for a price that those people could afford to pay. Equifax had at least some reputation to protect.
That's why I reached the conclusion that they had had some breach back then. Perhaps not to the extent of this new one, with SSNs etc, but at least perhaps a passwd file or other more exposed database.
In 2009 I used an email address unique to equifax only, never used anywhere else (I use a different email address to register at each website, usually in the form of websitedomainname@mydomain) to register at their website for the annual free credit report.
In 2011, I start getting a bunch of spam at the equifax-specific address. Bad spam, as in it's very unlikely that the spammers obtained my address by just buying a mailing list from Equifax and more likely someone stole it from them.
In other words, they've had poor security for years and years.
An email address that I used ONLY for Equifax started getting spammed in 2011. They were breached back then. I contacted their customer service to report it and their response was that I needed to contact my email provider to check my spam settings.
Slashdot Mirror
The first story I read on this mentioned "subscription", "ad supported", and "no pricing was announced". If they only offer the subscription plus ads route, I say forget it. I would never ever pay for a service which included ads. Source: https://www.cordcuttersnews.co...
You could also rent DVDs/BluRays either from Netflix or from a local video store. We went with the local video store because we used to keep the Netflix DVDs forever, so we were effectively paying like $10 per rental or something like that. We're really lucky to still have a good DVD rental store nearby. It also feels good to support a local small business rather than megacorp inc.
Someone manipulated things to make Hillary and the DNC so vilified that these emotion-driven voters, feeling betrayed and upset, flipped from Bernie to his polar opposite. I think it just goes to show how little Americans actually pay attention to policies during an election.
I think that you missed a critical connection between Bernie and pre-election Trump that indicates that little to no manipulation of Bernie supporters was necessary. Something that would have appealed to a large overlapping section of the voters for both is that they both focused on the fact that middle- and lower-income Americans had been shafted economically by several decades of administrations from both parties. Then they both emphasized their intention to move boldly to change this trend at every opportunity. This was the main focus of both Bernie and Trump in their campaigns.
Bernie outlined specific plans, while Trump kept repeating his intention, but with plans and statements that shifted within hours. Still, I think a lot of people just appreciated the fact that Trump focused on this issue. This is in contrast to Hillary, who espoused basically the same ideas of the last several decades, which people rightly associated with getting shafted economically.
Long story short is that there was a lot more overlap between Bernie's and Trump's message than what you seem to acknowledge. It's no surprise that people who cared a lot more about the economic issues than the social issues (racism, sexism, etc) and were gullible enough to fall for Trump's stone cold lying flipped from Bernie to Trump.
Those are some sweeping claims you've made there with regard to "rail, post, utilities, you name it." It would be nice if you could provide some evidence to back it up. You don't need to even provide details, just names or other basic information of examples so we can research for ourselves.
From where I stand I can't think of any obvious examples of government-run infrastructure that has failed in the way you have described. At least not unless they were intentionally sabotaged by people and forces who oppose the idea of government-run infrastructure.
The US postal service is a prime example, where even with extreme requirements (geographic coverage) and unreasonable burdens (pension funding requirements not required of any other organization, private or public) placed on their operations they still provide a very good service for a very reasonable price.
The graph in the original article shows (for 55+ year olds):
Python: 68.2%
C: 70.8%
(a bunch of other languages, then)
Swift: 75% (emphasis mine)
Whoever wrote that didn't look at the graph for more than a second or two.
Thanks for the informative post. I wasn't aware of any of that. I still think that it will be a small portion of authors who will make the choice to abandon those incentives you listed to publish with walmart/kobo. We shall see in time what happens.
For example, make it visible/readable from car-level only, so that cops can see it, but block out cameras on poles above and from the sides? For instance, a deep louver system would probably do the trick. Or perhaps some of those wild stickers to at least fool computer vision like was reported on a story here a couple of weeks back, so that this couldn't be automated?
It seems high time for someone to start working on devices to do this, if it's not already illegal to install one.
i.e. "Lead Balloon"? That about describes how well this is likely to go over.
I realized that the ebook market is completely locked into Amazon when I looked for certain ebooks and discovered that they are only available at Amazon, and not bn.com, for instance.
I presume that some authors/publishers (at least smaller ones) have determined that publishing on any other platform is just not worth the effort.
The only way this will change is with some antitrust action, or some other actual paradigm shift, not just the buzzword kind.
Wait, how is anything free even if you remove all labor costs? What about energy and raw materials?
Also if you addressed the above and were somehow able to make things completely for free, that only takes care of products. How about food, healthcare, housing?
My guess is that if it reaches the point where most labor is no longer needed they will choose your option A, i.e. exterminate them.
The whole line of thinking is crazy though, we are a long long way away from eliminating labor completely. Yes, jobs may be decimated, but it doesn't mean that there won't still be a lot of work to be done. Maintenance, building, healthcare, etc. This won't change likely in any of our lifetimes.
One would think so. It is a rather incredible decision. Here's a legal summary which includes a link to the full text of the decision: https://apps.americanbar.org/a...
[U]nless a person has a pre-existing right to be free of the threatened economic harm, threatening economic harm to induce a person to pay for a legitimate service is not extortion.
WTF??? What is a "legitimate service"? I guess the mafia has been doing it wrong this whole time. If only they had been offering a "legitimate service" with a threat of economic harm, rather than a questionable service with a threat of physical harm, they would have been in the clear.
Perhaps I'm missing something though. Here's another article about it, where they talk about this ruling being beneficial to protect review/complaint websites in general: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
I can see a need to protect the right of people to publish grievances with businesses, but this specific decision seems rather lopsided.
This mafia-like behavior from Yelp has already been through the courts, and they've won so far (circuit court level): http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...
My observations, not from direct experience (except Roku, which I own), but from stuff I've read. I follow this space fairly closely.
Roku: for simplicity and the largest amount of (legal) streaming options. Some of the UI may not be as slick as the competition, but it's fine. Only some older/smaller channels have pretty old-looking UIs.
Android TV: if you want to pay more and have less simple, legal streaming options, but more general-purpose options, like web browsers, games, and yes, apps that facilitate access to pirated content.
Fire TV: same as Android TV, but more deeply tied to Amazon services. This brings some advantages and some disadvantages, such as the Youtube app being pulled.
Apple TV: as usual Apple has a nice interface and integration with Apple services, but is expensive and tightly locked down.
Chromecast: requires another device, like a smartphone, tablet, or computer to work. This, to me, makes it not as simple a TV-watching experience as the self-contained devices above.
Roll your own (HTPC, Android stick(?), etc): more work than any of the above, and what you gain probably won't justify it.
I own and always recommend Roku above all the others. It has been the most popular streaming platform for years now according to various surveys I've read. However, be aware that recently I've noticed that a few new channels have been releasing on the Android and Apple TV platforms first, presumably because the developers do the work for the mobile apps first (Android and iOS), then the related TV platforms, and then finally on Roku and others. This may be because Roku apparently is its own isolated platform development-wise, with little connection to any other platform. Another possibility is that developers who are not releasing mobile apps are using Apple and Android TV as smaller user bases to start rolling out their services with to work out kinks with apps and back-ends.
What alternative action do you propose that Sanders should have taken instead of running as a Democrat?
You do realize that both the Democratic and Republican parties have made state ballot access laws almost impossible for a 3rd party candidate to be in the ballot in all 50 states, right? And that's just one of the impediments to running as a 3rd-party or an independent candidate. Sanders did exactly what anyone who is serious about running for president needs to do.
Sorry, had to ask that because it was the first thing I thought of when I read the name of this object. I actually thought it was a hoax/prank for a second.
So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).
You are mistaken. There's a rich history of actual and intended net neutrality violations in the past before the regulations went into effect. Unfortunately the top link returned by a search on this currently offline, but here is some info pasted from this reddit thread:
There's nothing hypothetical about what ISPs will do when net neutrality is eliminated. I'm going to steal a comment previously posted by /u/Skrattybones and repost here:
2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.
2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones. 2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except youtube. (edit: they actually sued the FCC over this)
2011-2013, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their bullshit. edit: this one happened literally months after the trio were busted collaborating with Google to block apps from the android marketplace
2012, Verizon was demanding google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction. (edit: they were fined $1.25million over this)
2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.
2013, Verizon literally stated that the only thing stopping them from favoring some content providers over other providers were the net neutrality rules in place.
And...
2005, AT&T suggested giving preferential treatment to some web giants in exchange for money, starting the whole thing.
2014, Verizon and Comcast throttled Netflix data and held those customers hostage to a huge bribe from Netflix.
Also, links for everything you just said.
Madison River Communications: https://www.cnet.com/news/telc...
Comcast hates pirates: https://www.lexology.com/libra... (article from '08)
AT&T VOIP hostage: https://www.wired.com/2009/10/...
Google wallet hostage: http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/0...
Verizon hates tethering apps: https://www.wired.com/2011/06/...
AT&T claimed blocking facetime wasn't a net neutrality issue: http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/2...
"Verizon lawyer Helgi Walker made the companyâ(TM)s intentions all too clear, saying the company wants to prioritize those websites and services that are willing to shell out for better access.": https://www.savetheinternet.co...
Also, the thing to realize is that violations of net neutrality are not likely to be reflected on a general speed test, or necessarily in the fees the ISPs charge. It's much more likely that they will violate it by charging the content providers, like they have already done with Netflix. It will be insidious, and most people will not notice unless they are watching very closely. The effects will like
How about they make this available to older phones like Nexus 4 and tablets like Nexus 7? Like someone else mentioned in the comments here, this throw away culture that makes (Android) phones and tablets outdated and not secure after 2-3 years (or less) is absolutely ridiculous and terrible.
Miami is nuts. At least Miami Beach. I visited there a couple of years ago and they had flooding going on all over the place, and sewer construction also going on all over the place, trying to whack the mole, so to speak. At the same time, I saw many new high-rise apartment/condo buildings being built in the same area. Cranes all over the place.
Then I learned that Miami can't benefit from a solution consisting of seawalls and levees like the Netherlands and New Orleans, because the whole ground is porous there, so the seawater would just seep in through the ground.
Yet the towers keep going up and the state government forbids any mention of climate change. Absolutely insane.
Netflix streaming was great at first - they had lots of good movies to watch. I seem to recall that their library was over 100,000 movies at one point. But that didn't last long. The movie studios starting charging a lot more and sometimes building their own competing services, such that it looks like we're trending toward 100 streaming sites with 1,000 movies each.
That's a made up figure of course, but that's just to make a point. The point is that with the splintering of the streaming services' film libraries, my local video store becomes competitive again. At this point they have a much better library of titles that I would like to watch than Netflix streaming does. And since I don't watch movies frequently enough to justify the monthly price for Netflix disc rentals, or to subscribe to multiple streaming services, the local video store wins by default.
While I agree with your general sentiment, if you look at the details of this specific issue it was actually pretty nefarious. The summary comes nowhere near describing what actually happened.
The Russian trolls tried to get people out for a demonstration by a (fake) group called "Heart of Texas" and ALSO to get other people out for a demonstration by a (fake) group called "United Muslims of America". At the same time. At the same place. In front of an Islamic center.
Here's an article with a lot more details about it (first hit that came up on a search): http://www.washingtonexaminer....
It shouldn't take much imagination, regardless of your political inclination, to see that this was an attempt to destabilize American society. It's also not hard to imagine that this will be a continuing threat. It actually reminds me of this Twilight Episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I thought you were exaggerating on the size, but they do reach a maximum of over one meter (three feet) long! And up to over three meters (nine feet) wingspan! Holy mackerel, I didn't realize that any eagles got that large.
Found an answer through a quick search: http://dinoanimals.com/animals...
That last picture of the white-tailed eagle. Imagine something that large flying toward you in anger like that. Amazing scary.
There's a whole series of articles on this at Naked Capitalism:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.co...
Uber Has Operating Losses of $2 Billion a Year, More Than Any Startup in History
Could be, but it didn't seem like it to me at the time. See my other reply with some further thoughts: https://slashdot.org/comments....
The nature of the spam. If it had been for something even borderline legitimate, like "hey, we have xyz service or product you may be interested in", I would have figured they had definitely sold my address. But from what I recall it was really junky spam, like pharmaceuticals, pr0n, phishing, and scams. I highly doubt that Equifax would sell their customers' email addresses to purveyors of that crap, at least for a price that those people could afford to pay. Equifax had at least some reputation to protect.
That's why I reached the conclusion that they had had some breach back then. Perhaps not to the extent of this new one, with SSNs etc, but at least perhaps a passwd file or other more exposed database.
As far as I know.
In 2009 I used an email address unique to equifax only, never used anywhere else (I use a different email address to register at each website, usually in the form of websitedomainname@mydomain) to register at their website for the annual free credit report.
In 2011, I start getting a bunch of spam at the equifax-specific address. Bad spam, as in it's very unlikely that the spammers obtained my address by just buying a mailing list from Equifax and more likely someone stole it from them.
In other words, they've had poor security for years and years.
An email address that I used ONLY for Equifax started getting spammed in 2011. They were breached back then. I contacted their customer service to report it and their response was that I needed to contact my email provider to check my spam settings.