Like Amazon, Netfix is more or less betting the house on original content. They've both figured out that whilst offering house-hold named content is a good way to pull in customers, the licensing and legal shenanigans make it a difficult game to be in long term. Instead, make sure you've got enough original content to keep people 'filled up'.
Amazon can even charge per-view or whatever, and even still, they want original content. Tells you something about the media industry, doesn't it?
As for Disney, they can go fuck themselves - there's already almost no Disney on UK Netfix, so if they pull the last of it off there it'll be no great loss. We've got a few of their films on DVD, but it's not like we have to say "yes" every time one of the kids asks to watch something we don't have, and we can wait for anything new they come up with - it's not that life changing that we need it right-bloody-now, and they don't have enough that we'd actually watch to want any sort of direct subscription to the Disney streaming service or whatever fuckup they're planning.
What Ferrari will do though, is to make an electric super car that is *beautiful* - something that seems to elude Tesla. For that reason, it'll be successful amongst the super-car buying super-rich. You don't want a minger parked next to your yacht, it'll ruin the lines;-)
IANAL, but I'd say most European businesses would not be able to use US-owned providers *at all* if this goes ahead. EU law would need special exceptions for US access to EU data, which I suspect just ain't gonna happen.
Even if I'm wrong about all this, it's a great opportunity for EU-based hosting providers to scoop up some big contracts from people hitherto using US owned providers. Be careful what you wish for...
in the short term, we'll not be seeing any of this anywhere at all.
In the medium term, we can expect that some part of the drug manufacturing process will include "3d printing" (ie. a machine that does some clever mixing/reacting or whatever, probably nothing like an actual 3D printer).
In the long term, I expect we'll see a variety of common drugs being made at the pharmacist on demand (a bit like you buy Dulux paint nowadays - they send the constituent colours to the store, who mix them (quite precisely) on demand). It won't do all drugs - definitely not any of the super-expensive specialist ones, but you might get headache pills or cough/cold medicine this way. That'll be quite cool because the shelf-life starts the day you buy them, not some time in the past when they were made hundreds or thousands of miles away.
In the very distant future, there'll be a machine which can make any drug on demand, using nothing but a hopper full of special pellets. It'll also be able to make drinks and food, and quite probably diamond rings too. I suspect my kids won't be around long enough to see that happening, but they might see some of the above.
When you go to the supermarket, do you find out the working conditions of your banana picker? Do people make sure the apple pickers have benefits? I'm from Nova Scotia's Annapolis valley where a lot of the apples in Eastern North America are grown and I will tell you that none of the greedy rich farm owners here pay more than a pittance for the pickers.
Actually, in some sense yes, I do. Although I'll agree that a lot of people buy the cheapest food they can find, and so the supply-chain care is unlikely to be as good in those sorts of supermarkets.
I'll bet a "worker on a pittance" in Nova Scotia looks like a king/queen compared to one in the factory talked about here. Most western nations have some minimum working/living conditions laws, but it seems China does not.
Back on topic: You bet Apple need to do something here. Sure, they might not have to do anything legally, but being the richest company in the world has a few moral obligations, which at least extend to a few earplugs and safety glasses. If this factory can't/won't provide them, then Apple needs to find one that will. I'm sure Apple wouldn't appreciate the precious silver-white apple with a bite taken out of it to be synonymous with sweatshops, premature death/illness, etc. These stories keep coming out, and it's always at an Apple supplier - it's only a matter of time.
The policy that would cause this to happen - without any malice by anyone, would be a rule that "all NSA desktops must have anti-malware installed", combined with choosing Kaspersky, a foreign company, as their vendor.
...and allowing the local Kaspersky server to talk to the mothership was a glaring mistake. The likes of the NSA ought be be able to use a virus scanner from any vendor and do so safely. If they're trying to make malware that products don't spot, then they need to run suites of all of the different vendors to try them out. If Kaspersky happened to get lucky, then good on 'em - the NSA sent them the data, they used it. Fair enough.
However, as someone pointed out above, the vector may have been that someone took documents out of the NSA and put them on a supposedly safe computer somewhere else that happened to have Kaspersky installed. In such a case, the NSA can't really be responsible for the data finding it's way to Kaspersky. However, Kaspersky can't really be responsible for stealing it either - whomever took the documents out of the NSA is to blame (but as they're probably an American, it's probably easier to blame the Russians).
Either way, the NSA has a leak - either a technical one that they should know better than to have, or a procedural one for which they need to do better security checks and whatnot to solve.
I notice that when my kids sneeze, a world of snot shoots out of their nose and generally forms two rather attractive lines down to their mouth (whereupon a tongue often appears to turn it into a tasty snack). Either way, it seems terribly effective - whatever was in their nose that caused the tickle leaves the building in short order.
I notice that almost no adult seems to have anywhere near that level of effectiveness - lots of noise, and no real action. Maybe a need to blow their nose, or sniff a bit afterwards, but that's about it.
Nothing to do with the 'off switch' you're talking about, but I wonder if it's a bit of 'social evolution' that our sneezes get less messy as we get older?
But how else would I know that I'm missing out on some really exciting stuff that's been going on recently - like the 2 pokes I've got. From ~10 years ago.
The Apple ecosystem is no longer the star of CES but instead things like Amazon's Alexa voice platform, and now Google's assistant voice platform is the clear ecosystem winners of CES.
This tells you something about how long Alexa/Google Home will be "stars" for, doesn't it?
I doubt it'll happen, but at least then someone can have a go a making a decent version of it. I just tried to use it - man it's confusing.
I know it's 'the done thing' to complain about every app change and re-skin, but Skype is the most confusing communications app of them all. Maybe they make it this confusing so that the feds don't bother to try to use it to snoop on people's conversations...?
I've got a 'smart' thermostat, but it's multi-zone, so each room gets it's own controls - that means one room can be cold while another is hot. It doesn't have voice control, but honestly, I set the schedules around about once or twice a year at most, and then just let it run. I can't really imagine needing voice as we scarcely even use the wall controls to change anything.
This $319 thing is cheaper than mine, but doesn't appear to have multi-zone. It's not so much a 'smart' system as 'stupid as they come, but with voice and mobile phone control' (oh, and "voice control that'll probably get killed off in a year or two").
Being able to break into phones might well move the 'real' criminals onto other ways to communicate, thus keeping the FBI out of the picture. However, it does generally have the effect of putting the criminals costs up a bit - thus more of the criminal spectrum moves towards the stupid end because they don't have the funds to remain secure.
Whilst it's of limited benefit, it's not entirely without benefit.
As for the acting part of the show - that costs nothing, yet has huge benefits (if it's really just acting).
1) Team A write version 1.0 of firmware for product X. Along the way, they put some hard-coded credentials in for testing. 2) Team B is tasked to work on firmware for product Y. They fork X1.0 as a starting point (possibly without clearly stating they are doing this to Team A, so Team A isn't really aware of their existence) 3) Team A fixes the issue in their code, makes 1.1 for product X. The uptake of the firmware by the public is 10% of the install base. 4) Poor internal communication, and the lack of urgency created by the poor up-take of the new firmware means Team B never hears about the update. 5) Team B produces 1.0 for product Y. 6) Product Y sells like hot-cakes, far eclipsing product X.
I don't know where you've worked, or for how long, but (4) seems to happen just about anywhere larger than a few hundred people. 'Commercial pressures' mean that Team B never really spend any time reviewing the code they inherited, and it's also possible Team B are the outsource, or the junior folks because they're only 'tweaking the code' for the new product, not writing low-level code from scratch.
I'll bet this sort of chain of events happens all over the place ("Team A" could be library or framwork writers, not just product folks). It probably doesn't 'leak' security problems every time though.
Products being glued or soldered up won't change as a result of this. This is only about products that perform less of their original function over time (as the iphones did). It's about products that stop working at some arbitrary time in the future, arguably like HP printers that suddenly won't accept non-HP ink.
Your ability to upgrade and/or replace components has nothing to do with 'planned obsolescence'. If you buy the fastest computer on earth today, but in a years time a new faster computer comes out - that's not planned obsolescence, that's just a product ageing.
Likewise, let's say you buy a phone that can run all the apps in all the app stores. In 6 months time, a new type of app is invented that your device can't run. Since your device is just a computer, it could (in theory) get a software update to let it run this new app format. If the manufacturer refuses to give your device that update, it's still not 'planned obsolescence' - it might be shitty after-sales care, but it's not illegal by this or any other law. Your device still does what it did when you bought it and there's no (legal) requirement to make products do more in the future than they do today.
Things start to get interesting with products like Tesla cars. I seem to remember a software update went out that reduced the amount you're allowed to exceed the speed limit in 'autopilot' mode. That sounds like 'planned obsolescence' because you now have less than you had when you bought the car, but since it's all illegal anyway, does it matter? IMHO I suspect it does still matter, because you might argue you drive on private roads or tracks or something, but the courts will decide one day, I suspect.
I'm inclined to agree, and I suspect Intel will negotiate (in court?) to do a recall of (say) all the chips on a device still in warranty or some such. That way there's at least a reasonable way to do it in a practical sense. Having a recall that you can't actually perform isn't really going to help anyone.
Not sure about the US, but in the UK there's provision in the law for stuff you couldn't possibly have known about. That is, let's say you make a teleporter and the world starts using it. If (in a few years time) it turns out that using it causes cancer, then you can't be held accountable if there was no way you could have known about it. Of course, once you did know about it and tried to cover it up, then you're absolutely liable. It's possible Intel could claim that they only found out about this problem in (say) 2014, thus they're only liable for the last three and a bit years of chip sales - but if some of the comments above are true, then they knew the risk when they designed the thing, and so almost certainly confirmed the problem sometime shortly afterwards.
I also wonder if I'd now be able to ask Apple for a replacement Macbook, as it's still in warranty and is 'broken'. This is somewhat untested because they could argue that it's still perfectly fine to use (perhaps in certain conditions), whereas I bought a machine which I believed would have reasonable security. Even if this whole idea was a bit shaky, it might cause Apple to go after Intel for all the laptops they've sold over the last few years. I'm sure they're currently talking to them about the chips they've ordered but haven't taken delivery of yet, and quite probably the last few batches they did receive though.
This may also set a precedent for all those dodgy webcams that turn out to be insecure... could be interesting.
Surely you 'set timers' all day long don't you? I mean, I probably spend literally microseconds per month setting timers that would be oh so much easier if only someone could give me a voice controlled one.
Even Amazon can't think of a good reason for Alexa on your PC. That's okay, neither can I.
This is obviously all just part of a plan to flood the market with Alexa so that literally every calculator and laser pen has it. Hell, you'll soon walk into some people's houses and say "hey Alexa" and have 5 devices all answer you. Setting timers will never be quite so easy as it is now. So long as Alexa is there though, then Google probably isn't (or can be kept out), and god forbid Cortana or Siri should ever get anywhere.
You make a good point - and in fact, if such censorship were in place, then any website still accessible must be "truthful" because the government has shutdown all the fake news sites. Thus, all Vlad (or anyone else) has to do is to create a site that isn't blocked and then receive all the baited clickers and more, all believing it must be "telling the truth 'they' don't want you to hear" because it's not blocked.
I seriously doubt anyone believes this proposal is a sensible one. It'll be political posturing in order to get funding for secret services and more draconian surveillance laws.
Here in the UK the whole market is different, but we lease our hybrid Outlander - it turns out it's about the same cost either way, and arguably less hassle with the lease.
We went to a dealer and chose the car. We asked the dealer about leases, he gave us a quote for monthly and other costs. We then went home and found another lease company with lower monthly costs. After lots of form filling and whatnot, a couple of weeks later went back to the dealer to pick up the car. Even though we're leasing, it's considered a "new green car on the road", so we get the government subsidised charge point at home, and because it's CO2/mile is lower than thresholds, we don't pay the London Congestion Charge. Essentially, we didn't miss out on any of the 'perks' for leasing that we'd have got for buying it outright.
I'm assuming the lease companies work out what risk they're prepared to accept and price the monthlies accordingly. I seriously doubt they'll lose money on aggregate, although they may on the odd car where they got their estimations wrong and the owner drove the car to the mileage limits or whatever. I'd expect they'll be able to sell our car on to an auction or dealer for more than (purchase price - 36 x monthly). I'd imagine they can negotiate a better discount from the dealer than we could (although probably not by a huge amount) which helps them out a bit more, and they can probably get a better resell value than we can too.
If batteries are a problem and reduce the resale value of these cars, then all that will happen is the monthly lease costs go up in the future. As I say, I seriously doubt the lease companies are going to lose money in the long run.
wow - some guy says "all the scientists in the world" as an off-hand comment, and you have to take it literally, ignoring any possible context for those words?
Then double wow - you say that because we're not investing in nuclear, climate change can't be much of a problem!? Let me put it another way - "because very few people worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, climate change can't be that much of a big deal".
The other thing of note is that Steamboat Willie and indeed Mickey Mouse are complete shit - did anyone ever watch these as a kid? When I was a kid, there wasn't that much "media" around to "consume", and even still this utter shit didn't make it to air.
I seriously doubt anyone will ever make any more money out of Steamboat Willie - ever (not even Disney). Digitally remastered Bluray? You've gotta be kidding. Even a Youtube of it would only get views in the first couple of months as people wondered what all the bunfight's been about for all these years.
As for Mickey - as you say he's trademarked, so that's a different ball game entirely. They can continue to use those ears and whatnot exclusively without any new laws to help them.
"good day kind sir, may I enquire what you are doing?" "Amagoogon" "I say, I'm not sure I understand. You have your 'what' on?"
What's with the 'tube' obsession? I mean, if you're going to compete, then compete - don't try and pass it off as similar because it's got a similar name. Being better than youtube is only as hard as getting users to post cat videos. It's not hard to do better that their terrible UX.
Slashdot Mirror
Fox News - as watched (and regularly praised) by the US President!
Tells you all you need to know ;-)
So even though you're exporting your filth to China, you're still the largest polluter in the Western world? Hmm...
[source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/3...
Like Amazon, Netfix is more or less betting the house on original content. They've both figured out that whilst offering house-hold named content is a good way to pull in customers, the licensing and legal shenanigans make it a difficult game to be in long term. Instead, make sure you've got enough original content to keep people 'filled up'.
Amazon can even charge per-view or whatever, and even still, they want original content. Tells you something about the media industry, doesn't it?
As for Disney, they can go fuck themselves - there's already almost no Disney on UK Netfix, so if they pull the last of it off there it'll be no great loss. We've got a few of their films on DVD, but it's not like we have to say "yes" every time one of the kids asks to watch something we don't have, and we can wait for anything new they come up with - it's not that life changing that we need it right-bloody-now, and they don't have enough that we'd actually watch to want any sort of direct subscription to the Disney streaming service or whatever fuckup they're planning.
What Ferrari will do though, is to make an electric super car that is *beautiful* - something that seems to elude Tesla. For that reason, it'll be successful amongst the super-car buying super-rich. You don't want a minger parked next to your yacht, it'll ruin the lines ;-)
IANAL, but I'd say most European businesses would not be able to use US-owned providers *at all* if this goes ahead. EU law would need special exceptions for US access to EU data, which I suspect just ain't gonna happen.
Even if I'm wrong about all this, it's a great opportunity for EU-based hosting providers to scoop up some big contracts from people hitherto using US owned providers. Be careful what you wish for...
in the short term, we'll not be seeing any of this anywhere at all.
In the medium term, we can expect that some part of the drug manufacturing process will include "3d printing" (ie. a machine that does some clever mixing/reacting or whatever, probably nothing like an actual 3D printer).
In the long term, I expect we'll see a variety of common drugs being made at the pharmacist on demand (a bit like you buy Dulux paint nowadays - they send the constituent colours to the store, who mix them (quite precisely) on demand). It won't do all drugs - definitely not any of the super-expensive specialist ones, but you might get headache pills or cough/cold medicine this way. That'll be quite cool because the shelf-life starts the day you buy them, not some time in the past when they were made hundreds or thousands of miles away.
In the very distant future, there'll be a machine which can make any drug on demand, using nothing but a hopper full of special pellets. It'll also be able to make drinks and food, and quite probably diamond rings too. I suspect my kids won't be around long enough to see that happening, but they might see some of the above.
I take it you've never pulled a 'push' door, have you?
When you go to the supermarket, do you find out the working conditions of your banana picker? Do people make sure the apple pickers have benefits? I'm from Nova Scotia's Annapolis valley where a lot of the apples in Eastern North America are grown and I will tell you that none of the greedy rich farm owners here pay more than a pittance for the pickers.
Actually, in some sense yes, I do. Although I'll agree that a lot of people buy the cheapest food they can find, and so the supply-chain care is unlikely to be as good in those sorts of supermarkets.
I'll bet a "worker on a pittance" in Nova Scotia looks like a king/queen compared to one in the factory talked about here. Most western nations have some minimum working/living conditions laws, but it seems China does not.
Back on topic: You bet Apple need to do something here. Sure, they might not have to do anything legally, but being the richest company in the world has a few moral obligations, which at least extend to a few earplugs and safety glasses. If this factory can't/won't provide them, then Apple needs to find one that will. I'm sure Apple wouldn't appreciate the precious silver-white apple with a bite taken out of it to be synonymous with sweatshops, premature death/illness, etc. These stories keep coming out, and it's always at an Apple supplier - it's only a matter of time.
Assuming this was the attack vector...
The policy that would cause this to happen - without any malice by anyone, would be a rule that "all NSA desktops must have anti-malware installed", combined with choosing Kaspersky, a foreign company, as their vendor.
...and allowing the local Kaspersky server to talk to the mothership was a glaring mistake. The likes of the NSA ought be be able to use a virus scanner from any vendor and do so safely. If they're trying to make malware that products don't spot, then they need to run suites of all of the different vendors to try them out. If Kaspersky happened to get lucky, then good on 'em - the NSA sent them the data, they used it. Fair enough.
However, as someone pointed out above, the vector may have been that someone took documents out of the NSA and put them on a supposedly safe computer somewhere else that happened to have Kaspersky installed. In such a case, the NSA can't really be responsible for the data finding it's way to Kaspersky. However, Kaspersky can't really be responsible for stealing it either - whomever took the documents out of the NSA is to blame (but as they're probably an American, it's probably easier to blame the Russians).
Either way, the NSA has a leak - either a technical one that they should know better than to have, or a procedural one for which they need to do better security checks and whatnot to solve.
I notice that when my kids sneeze, a world of snot shoots out of their nose and generally forms two rather attractive lines down to their mouth (whereupon a tongue often appears to turn it into a tasty snack). Either way, it seems terribly effective - whatever was in their nose that caused the tickle leaves the building in short order.
I notice that almost no adult seems to have anywhere near that level of effectiveness - lots of noise, and no real action. Maybe a need to blow their nose, or sniff a bit afterwards, but that's about it.
Nothing to do with the 'off switch' you're talking about, but I wonder if it's a bit of 'social evolution' that our sneezes get less messy as we get older?
But how else would I know that I'm missing out on some really exciting stuff that's been going on recently - like the 2 pokes I've got. From ~10 years ago.
It was quite well covered here in the UK by the BBC and others:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
http://www.independent.co.uk/v...
https://www.theguardian.com/fi...
It seems Catherine Deneuve has made a name for herself with this - just typing her name into Google turns up some of these links.
The Apple ecosystem is no longer the star of CES but instead things like Amazon's Alexa voice platform, and now Google's assistant voice platform is the clear ecosystem winners of CES.
This tells you something about how long Alexa/Google Home will be "stars" for, doesn't it?
I doubt it'll happen, but at least then someone can have a go a making a decent version of it. I just tried to use it - man it's confusing.
I know it's 'the done thing' to complain about every app change and re-skin, but Skype is the most confusing communications app of them all. Maybe they make it this confusing so that the feds don't bother to try to use it to snoop on people's conversations...?
I've got a 'smart' thermostat, but it's multi-zone, so each room gets it's own controls - that means one room can be cold while another is hot. It doesn't have voice control, but honestly, I set the schedules around about once or twice a year at most, and then just let it run. I can't really imagine needing voice as we scarcely even use the wall controls to change anything.
This $319 thing is cheaper than mine, but doesn't appear to have multi-zone. It's not so much a 'smart' system as 'stupid as they come, but with voice and mobile phone control' (oh, and "voice control that'll probably get killed off in a year or two").
Being able to break into phones might well move the 'real' criminals onto other ways to communicate, thus keeping the FBI out of the picture. However, it does generally have the effect of putting the criminals costs up a bit - thus more of the criminal spectrum moves towards the stupid end because they don't have the funds to remain secure.
Whilst it's of limited benefit, it's not entirely without benefit.
As for the acting part of the show - that costs nothing, yet has huge benefits (if it's really just acting).
1) Team A write version 1.0 of firmware for product X. Along the way, they put some hard-coded credentials in for testing.
2) Team B is tasked to work on firmware for product Y. They fork X1.0 as a starting point (possibly without clearly stating they are doing this to Team A, so Team A isn't really aware of their existence)
3) Team A fixes the issue in their code, makes 1.1 for product X. The uptake of the firmware by the public is 10% of the install base.
4) Poor internal communication, and the lack of urgency created by the poor up-take of the new firmware means Team B never hears about the update.
5) Team B produces 1.0 for product Y.
6) Product Y sells like hot-cakes, far eclipsing product X.
I don't know where you've worked, or for how long, but (4) seems to happen just about anywhere larger than a few hundred people. 'Commercial pressures' mean that Team B never really spend any time reviewing the code they inherited, and it's also possible Team B are the outsource, or the junior folks because they're only 'tweaking the code' for the new product, not writing low-level code from scratch.
I'll bet this sort of chain of events happens all over the place ("Team A" could be library or framwork writers, not just product folks). It probably doesn't 'leak' security problems every time though.
Products being glued or soldered up won't change as a result of this. This is only about products that perform less of their original function over time (as the iphones did). It's about products that stop working at some arbitrary time in the future, arguably like HP printers that suddenly won't accept non-HP ink.
Your ability to upgrade and/or replace components has nothing to do with 'planned obsolescence'. If you buy the fastest computer on earth today, but in a years time a new faster computer comes out - that's not planned obsolescence, that's just a product ageing.
Likewise, let's say you buy a phone that can run all the apps in all the app stores. In 6 months time, a new type of app is invented that your device can't run. Since your device is just a computer, it could (in theory) get a software update to let it run this new app format. If the manufacturer refuses to give your device that update, it's still not 'planned obsolescence' - it might be shitty after-sales care, but it's not illegal by this or any other law. Your device still does what it did when you bought it and there's no (legal) requirement to make products do more in the future than they do today.
Things start to get interesting with products like Tesla cars. I seem to remember a software update went out that reduced the amount you're allowed to exceed the speed limit in 'autopilot' mode. That sounds like 'planned obsolescence' because you now have less than you had when you bought the car, but since it's all illegal anyway, does it matter? IMHO I suspect it does still matter, because you might argue you drive on private roads or tracks or something, but the courts will decide one day, I suspect.
I'm inclined to agree, and I suspect Intel will negotiate (in court?) to do a recall of (say) all the chips on a device still in warranty or some such. That way there's at least a reasonable way to do it in a practical sense. Having a recall that you can't actually perform isn't really going to help anyone.
Not sure about the US, but in the UK there's provision in the law for stuff you couldn't possibly have known about. That is, let's say you make a teleporter and the world starts using it. If (in a few years time) it turns out that using it causes cancer, then you can't be held accountable if there was no way you could have known about it. Of course, once you did know about it and tried to cover it up, then you're absolutely liable. It's possible Intel could claim that they only found out about this problem in (say) 2014, thus they're only liable for the last three and a bit years of chip sales - but if some of the comments above are true, then they knew the risk when they designed the thing, and so almost certainly confirmed the problem sometime shortly afterwards.
I also wonder if I'd now be able to ask Apple for a replacement Macbook, as it's still in warranty and is 'broken'. This is somewhat untested because they could argue that it's still perfectly fine to use (perhaps in certain conditions), whereas I bought a machine which I believed would have reasonable security. Even if this whole idea was a bit shaky, it might cause Apple to go after Intel for all the laptops they've sold over the last few years. I'm sure they're currently talking to them about the chips they've ordered but haven't taken delivery of yet, and quite probably the last few batches they did receive though.
This may also set a precedent for all those dodgy webcams that turn out to be insecure... could be interesting.
Surely you 'set timers' all day long don't you? I mean, I probably spend literally microseconds per month setting timers that would be oh so much easier if only someone could give me a voice controlled one.
Even Amazon can't think of a good reason for Alexa on your PC. That's okay, neither can I.
This is obviously all just part of a plan to flood the market with Alexa so that literally every calculator and laser pen has it. Hell, you'll soon walk into some people's houses and say "hey Alexa" and have 5 devices all answer you. Setting timers will never be quite so easy as it is now. So long as Alexa is there though, then Google probably isn't (or can be kept out), and god forbid Cortana or Siri should ever get anywhere.
You make a good point - and in fact, if such censorship were in place, then any website still accessible must be "truthful" because the government has shutdown all the fake news sites. Thus, all Vlad (or anyone else) has to do is to create a site that isn't blocked and then receive all the baited clickers and more, all believing it must be "telling the truth 'they' don't want you to hear" because it's not blocked.
I seriously doubt anyone believes this proposal is a sensible one. It'll be political posturing in order to get funding for secret services and more draconian surveillance laws.
Here in the UK the whole market is different, but we lease our hybrid Outlander - it turns out it's about the same cost either way, and arguably less hassle with the lease.
We went to a dealer and chose the car. We asked the dealer about leases, he gave us a quote for monthly and other costs. We then went home and found another lease company with lower monthly costs. After lots of form filling and whatnot, a couple of weeks later went back to the dealer to pick up the car. Even though we're leasing, it's considered a "new green car on the road", so we get the government subsidised charge point at home, and because it's CO2/mile is lower than thresholds, we don't pay the London Congestion Charge. Essentially, we didn't miss out on any of the 'perks' for leasing that we'd have got for buying it outright.
I'm assuming the lease companies work out what risk they're prepared to accept and price the monthlies accordingly. I seriously doubt they'll lose money on aggregate, although they may on the odd car where they got their estimations wrong and the owner drove the car to the mileage limits or whatever. I'd expect they'll be able to sell our car on to an auction or dealer for more than (purchase price - 36 x monthly). I'd imagine they can negotiate a better discount from the dealer than we could (although probably not by a huge amount) which helps them out a bit more, and they can probably get a better resell value than we can too.
If batteries are a problem and reduce the resale value of these cars, then all that will happen is the monthly lease costs go up in the future. As I say, I seriously doubt the lease companies are going to lose money in the long run.
wow - some guy says "all the scientists in the world" as an off-hand comment, and you have to take it literally, ignoring any possible context for those words?
Then double wow - you say that because we're not investing in nuclear, climate change can't be much of a problem!? Let me put it another way - "because very few people worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, climate change can't be that much of a big deal".
The other thing of note is that Steamboat Willie and indeed Mickey Mouse are complete shit - did anyone ever watch these as a kid? When I was a kid, there wasn't that much "media" around to "consume", and even still this utter shit didn't make it to air.
I seriously doubt anyone will ever make any more money out of Steamboat Willie - ever (not even Disney). Digitally remastered Bluray? You've gotta be kidding. Even a Youtube of it would only get views in the first couple of months as people wondered what all the bunfight's been about for all these years.
As for Mickey - as you say he's trademarked, so that's a different ball game entirely. They can continue to use those ears and whatnot exclusively without any new laws to help them.
How about googzon? Youzon?
Amagoogon?
"good day kind sir, may I enquire what you are doing?"
"Amagoogon"
"I say, I'm not sure I understand. You have your 'what' on?"
What's with the 'tube' obsession? I mean, if you're going to compete, then compete - don't try and pass it off as similar because it's got a similar name. Being better than youtube is only as hard as getting users to post cat videos. It's not hard to do better that their terrible UX.