Yeah. It's a good thing that Viacomm isn't a multinational organization that, through lobbying and PACs, donates tons of money to politicians...not to mention donations to politicians from its upper management on a private basis, otherwise I'd be worried too!
I tend to think it's more about price fixing. They're charging what the market will pay. If they keep bumping the cost of text messages on a per message basis, more people will pay the monthly fee for unlimited.
I still find it fascinating that I have an unlimited data plan with minutes that roll-over, and since talking mobile to mobile on people that have the same carrier (which happens to be the majority of the people talk to regularly), I've got minutes to burn. I can call them, or log in to a web-email app and email them, for my monthly fee. But sending a text message is so taxing on the providers system, apparently, that they need to charge extra for it.
Both parties are in favor of increasing government control. On one side, you have a party that's voting to increase power because it's what they want to do, regardless of what their constituents have to say. On the other, you have a party that secretly wants to increase power, but has more vocal constituents. So instead of just voting to increase power, they vote to increase power and say things like "it's an election year" and "we can't afford to appear soft on."
There's *always* an election coming up. If you don't vote for people with a backbone when the chips are down, and keep accepting the excuses, nothing will ever change.
Why bother with something covert when you can just subpoena all the information from ISP's? That way even people that avoid Windows can get caught, too.
It sorta depends on how detailed the transactions are. If the "detailed" transaction is just that I received amount of money, that's one thing. If it's that I received amount of money for from , that's something else entirely.
I can understand the desire to stop fraud, but there's a line that should be drawn in protection of privacy.
The point about them still being active with no problems after 50 years still stands, though. There have been very tragic nuclear accidents, which serve as a reminder that it's not something to be trifled with. But nuclear power has also been reliable and stable for various countries for years.
The downside to some of the audible cues is that, at least amongst people I know, the use of cordless phones is prevalent. And most of the people I know tend to immediately write off any abnormality (shifts in volume, clicking, etc.) in their conversation as being because of the phone. Which is probably the case. Either that or I need a better class of acquaintances.
It's a classic YMMV. A lot of movies that have been recommended to me by Netflix (as an aside, how is that "pushing" it's movies on you, it's not like it autofills your queue, but I digress), have turned out to be pretty good. A lot of the movies I like tend to not be powerhouse studio productions, and the quality on smaller houses and independent films can vary greatly. Netflix recommended movies are another resource I can use to figure out whether something might be worth watching, and it certainly brings some stuff to the fore that I wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
Perhaps your usage model is just that significantly different from those of us using queues. I have so many movies queued up right now that it's almost a surprise what movies show up. I like it that way. My wife doesn't have many movies queued up. With multiple movies, it doesn't matter. We each get movies we want to watch when we send movies back.
Under the new scheme, assuming that we don't check our queues every day, or the day we send them back, or whatever time works best to make sure a movie isn't pushed back in the queue, there's not an easy way to control which movies are going to arrive to ensure we both get stuff we want to watch. And it's certainly not as easy as DOING NOTHING.
Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.
Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.
I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies. Most of the movies she likes, I don't like. Rather than add movies and bump stuff she wants to see off the queue, I could maintain my own queue. The onus was on Netflix to keep up with it. Going forward, it's going to be on us. And the fall-back movies if the one of the ones at the top of or queue can't get shipped is going to be a craps shoot. Maybe she'll get a movie she enjoys, maybe all the ones that come won't interest her at all.
The only thing I didn't like about the separate queues was that only the primary account holder could browse the instant movies. My wife never used the feature, and I avoided rating movies I watched for fear it would distort the movies picked as ones she'd like to see. Which brings up another point...how can multiple family members track movies they like nowadays and have accurate recommended features? "This one's a special case...apparently she like romantic comedies and really bad horror movies!"
For some classes of customers, they have to expect a certain number of calls over most other customers. Small Business customers are likely one of those classes, as they tend to not have their own IT staff. Charging them a premium for a near EOL (again) OS, allows Dell to recoup some of the costs associated with testing multiple flavors of XP on a continuing basis on systems that don't already have that cost built in (yes, I'm making the assumption they build that in to their different other classes of PC).
Let's face it... A lot of these techniques have been used in the "war" on drugs for a while now. We got three strikes laws, a drug czar, military forces in operation in foreign countries as "advisors." No knock warrants have been served, complete with requisite old ladies being shot for no reason. And the outrage isn't there.
If we don't even care about what's going on in our own country, why do you think we'd care about what goes on in others, whether it's our troops or not?
Do you foresee a high utilization of civilian contractors? Knowing that there are some restrictions on people that can be recruited into the Army for any number of reasons (asthma, medications, criminal records), do you see a need for either more lax recruiting guidelines for some of the "front line" troops in the cyber warfare field, or a higher use of civilian (or at least non-Army) personnels?
More importantly, I have to know how a reviewer really rated other games that I like. As the article points out, some metrics are easily measurable. Others are not. If I read a review of a RTS from a person that hates the genre, they're low review might be meaningless. Alternately, if they love the game, it might be an indication that the game reviewed is so good I can't pass it up. Or that the reviewer got a bunch of swag for reviewing the game.
It sounds like they're in discussions about it. Presumably the DA wouldn't leak something about a deal of that nature unless he's really bad at his job. I would think that kind of publicity from the DA could earn him some censure, at he very least.
Long terms in prison tend to be the result of mandatory minimum sentences. Politicians, in a zeal to "fight crime!!111" have placed certain minimum terms on crimes, so judges can have their hands tied in sentencing. For the record, depending on which case you're thinking of, the US couple got 99 days in jail. And none of it was related to the death of their child, it was for neglect of their other four children (being underweight and malnourished).
I dunno. To my mind, this is more like making a choice between eating a full steak dinner for the price of admission, but having the option to buy a hot dog for $4.00. Sure, if you're in a hurry you can get the hot dog. But it's silly for them to charge you more for the hot dog when they're letting you get the steak dinner for free.
I've often believed (known?) that text messaging is just a last refuge of the cell phone companies to squeeze a little extra money out of their consumers. As it is, on my carrier, I get unlimited calling to people on the same carrier all day, every day. I get unlimited calling to anybody, regardless of carrier, on nights and weekends. I even pay to have unlimited data transfer. But if I send more than number of text messages a month, it adds up substantially.
Good thing they've got all those teenagers hooked on it.
It could've said "Microsoft and Newscorp have banded together to make the proper sacrifices to Cthulhu to ensure their bid for Yahoo! is accepted." At least then the circle of evil would be complete.
This will merely attract the obsessive ultra-right crusaders to dump "left wing bias" en masse on everything.
Actually, a quick look at the site makes it look like the "far left kool-aid drinkers" (I think that's the right way to put it) are dumping "right wing bias" en masse on everything.
You are right, though. It's still not an accurate measure of bias. Some of the new stories appear to be filtered primarily by source rather than any particular bias. And some of the stories exist in the gray area, and don't have a really discernible bias.
As the trend continues, people are going to be even less likely to hear opposing points of view. If your circle of friends is the only group that sends you news, and your circle of friends tends to think/agree with your point of view, you'll be even more insulated.
There would likely still be a huge market. Even if everyone was forced to donate organs, which isn't such a good idea in my opinion, there would be plenty of reasons why the organs from one particular donor or another can't be used. From horrendous accidents, cancer, the presence of any number of diseases... Even the medications the person was on, or places the person has visited might get them off the list. I can't even donate blood for a couple of years because I visited the Dominican Republic.
The "advantage" people obtaining the organs fraudulently have is that they can make their organs fit the bill.
Since most politicians have been pitifully inadequate, it actually helps them to have a lot of time spent on barely scratching the surface of very complex subjects coupled with them discussing how pitiful the other politicians are (regardless of the fact that their views are almost lockstep with one another). If in-depth information of value ever really got out to the public at large, I'm willing to bet that most politicians currently in power would be looking for some new jobs.
We won't see sensible tech legislation until the people that have some sensible ideas are donating more money to politicians than the people who don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. It's a good thing that Viacomm isn't a multinational organization that, through lobbying and PACs, donates tons of money to politicians...not to mention donations to politicians from its upper management on a private basis, otherwise I'd be worried too!
:(
Oh crap
I tend to think it's more about price fixing. They're charging what the market will pay. If they keep bumping the cost of text messages on a per message basis, more people will pay the monthly fee for unlimited.
I still find it fascinating that I have an unlimited data plan with minutes that roll-over, and since talking mobile to mobile on people that have the same carrier (which happens to be the majority of the people talk to regularly), I've got minutes to burn. I can call them, or log in to a web-email app and email them, for my monthly fee. But sending a text message is so taxing on the providers system, apparently, that they need to charge extra for it.
Both parties are in favor of increasing government control. On one side, you have a party that's voting to increase power because it's what they want to do, regardless of what their constituents have to say. On the other, you have a party that secretly wants to increase power, but has more vocal constituents. So instead of just voting to increase power, they vote to increase power and say things like "it's an election year" and "we can't afford to appear soft on ."
There's *always* an election coming up. If you don't vote for people with a backbone when the chips are down, and keep accepting the excuses, nothing will ever change.
Why bother with something covert when you can just subpoena all the information from ISP's? That way even people that avoid Windows can get caught, too.
It sorta depends on how detailed the transactions are. If the "detailed" transaction is just that I received amount of money, that's one thing. If it's that I received amount of money for from , that's something else entirely.
I can understand the desire to stop fraud, but there's a line that should be drawn in protection of privacy.
The point about them still being active with no problems after 50 years still stands, though. There have been very tragic nuclear accidents, which serve as a reminder that it's not something to be trifled with. But nuclear power has also been reliable and stable for various countries for years.
The downside to some of the audible cues is that, at least amongst people I know, the use of cordless phones is prevalent. And most of the people I know tend to immediately write off any abnormality (shifts in volume, clicking, etc.) in their conversation as being because of the phone. Which is probably the case. Either that or I need a better class of acquaintances.
It's a classic YMMV. A lot of movies that have been recommended to me by Netflix (as an aside, how is that "pushing" it's movies on you, it's not like it autofills your queue, but I digress), have turned out to be pretty good. A lot of the movies I like tend to not be powerhouse studio productions, and the quality on smaller houses and independent films can vary greatly. Netflix recommended movies are another resource I can use to figure out whether something might be worth watching, and it certainly brings some stuff to the fore that I wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
Perhaps your usage model is just that significantly different from those of us using queues. I have so many movies queued up right now that it's almost a surprise what movies show up. I like it that way. My wife doesn't have many movies queued up. With multiple movies, it doesn't matter. We each get movies we want to watch when we send movies back.
Under the new scheme, assuming that we don't check our queues every day, or the day we send them back, or whatever time works best to make sure a movie isn't pushed back in the queue, there's not an easy way to control which movies are going to arrive to ensure we both get stuff we want to watch. And it's certainly not as easy as DOING NOTHING.
Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.
Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.
I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies. Most of the movies she likes, I don't like. Rather than add movies and bump stuff she wants to see off the queue, I could maintain my own queue. The onus was on Netflix to keep up with it. Going forward, it's going to be on us. And the fall-back movies if the one of the ones at the top of or queue can't get shipped is going to be a craps shoot. Maybe she'll get a movie she enjoys, maybe all the ones that come won't interest her at all.
The only thing I didn't like about the separate queues was that only the primary account holder could browse the instant movies. My wife never used the feature, and I avoided rating movies I watched for fear it would distort the movies picked as ones she'd like to see. Which brings up another point...how can multiple family members track movies they like nowadays and have accurate recommended features? "This one's a special case...apparently she like romantic comedies and really bad horror movies!"
For some classes of customers, they have to expect a certain number of calls over most other customers. Small Business customers are likely one of those classes, as they tend to not have their own IT staff. Charging them a premium for a near EOL (again) OS, allows Dell to recoup some of the costs associated with testing multiple flavors of XP on a continuing basis on systems that don't already have that cost built in (yes, I'm making the assumption they build that in to their different other classes of PC).
Let's face it... A lot of these techniques have been used in the "war" on drugs for a while now. We got three strikes laws, a drug czar, military forces in operation in foreign countries as "advisors." No knock warrants have been served, complete with requisite old ladies being shot for no reason. And the outrage isn't there.
If we don't even care about what's going on in our own country, why do you think we'd care about what goes on in others, whether it's our troops or not?
Do you foresee a high utilization of civilian contractors? Knowing that there are some restrictions on people that can be recruited into the Army for any number of reasons (asthma, medications, criminal records), do you see a need for either more lax recruiting guidelines for some of the "front line" troops in the cyber warfare field, or a higher use of civilian (or at least non-Army) personnels?
A slashdotter jumping to conclusions without reading the article and blindly assuming the summary is gospel?
I'M SHOCKED! Meh, you get the idea.
More importantly, I have to know how a reviewer really rated other games that I like. As the article points out, some metrics are easily measurable. Others are not. If I read a review of a RTS from a person that hates the genre, they're low review might be meaningless. Alternately, if they love the game, it might be an indication that the game reviewed is so good I can't pass it up. Or that the reviewer got a bunch of swag for reviewing the game.
It sounds like they're in discussions about it. Presumably the DA wouldn't leak something about a deal of that nature unless he's really bad at his job. I would think that kind of publicity from the DA could earn him some censure, at he very least.
Long terms in prison tend to be the result of mandatory minimum sentences. Politicians, in a zeal to "fight crime!!111" have placed certain minimum terms on crimes, so judges can have their hands tied in sentencing. For the record, depending on which case you're thinking of, the US couple got 99 days in jail. And none of it was related to the death of their child, it was for neglect of their other four children (being underweight and malnourished).
I dunno. To my mind, this is more like making a choice between eating a full steak dinner for the price of admission, but having the option to buy a hot dog for $4.00. Sure, if you're in a hurry you can get the hot dog. But it's silly for them to charge you more for the hot dog when they're letting you get the steak dinner for free.
I've often believed (known?) that text messaging is just a last refuge of the cell phone companies to squeeze a little extra money out of their consumers. As it is, on my carrier, I get unlimited calling to people on the same carrier all day, every day. I get unlimited calling to anybody, regardless of carrier, on nights and weekends. I even pay to have unlimited data transfer. But if I send more than number of text messages a month, it adds up substantially.
Good thing they've got all those teenagers hooked on it.
It could've said "Microsoft and Newscorp have banded together to make the proper sacrifices to Cthulhu to ensure their bid for Yahoo! is accepted." At least then the circle of evil would be complete.
This will merely attract the obsessive ultra-right crusaders to dump "left wing bias" en masse on everything.
Actually, a quick look at the site makes it look like the "far left kool-aid drinkers" (I think that's the right way to put it) are dumping "right wing bias" en masse on everything.
You are right, though. It's still not an accurate measure of bias. Some of the new stories appear to be filtered primarily by source rather than any particular bias. And some of the stories exist in the gray area, and don't have a really discernible bias.
As the trend continues, people are going to be even less likely to hear opposing points of view. If your circle of friends is the only group that sends you news, and your circle of friends tends to think/agree with your point of view, you'll be even more insulated.
There would likely still be a huge market. Even if everyone was forced to donate organs, which isn't such a good idea in my opinion, there would be plenty of reasons why the organs from one particular donor or another can't be used. From horrendous accidents, cancer, the presence of any number of diseases... Even the medications the person was on, or places the person has visited might get them off the list. I can't even donate blood for a couple of years because I visited the Dominican Republic.
The "advantage" people obtaining the organs fraudulently have is that they can make their organs fit the bill.
Since most politicians have been pitifully inadequate, it actually helps them to have a lot of time spent on barely scratching the surface of very complex subjects coupled with them discussing how pitiful the other politicians are (regardless of the fact that their views are almost lockstep with one another). If in-depth information of value ever really got out to the public at large, I'm willing to bet that most politicians currently in power would be looking for some new jobs.
We won't see sensible tech legislation until the people that have some sensible ideas are donating more money to politicians than the people who don't.