I'm excited to see the other half of this experiment, where they publish content on the web without DRM and see how it goes... I don't expect it to ever happen, though. That is exactly what they've been fighting this entire time. Content owners have never liked the idea of distributing content online without any DRM, it's been extremely difficult just getting them to come this far from not wanting to distribute online at all. If they ever do try something outside of tightly controlled distribution services, it will be long after those services are generating enough revenue to make any new experiment look as if it's not worth it. The people in control of the entertainment industry are greedy to a point of stupidity, they are control freaks, and they have a long history of refusing to adapt to new technology. Even supposedly family-friendly Disney creates artificial scarcity by pulling movies from store shelves for years at a time, they love that control. You suggest that if there's money to be made on a DRM-free internet, that's where money will stay. I ask you then, why are they trying to incorporate into the HTML5 standard something which would effectively put DRM on the web before attempting to make any money without it? I believe the answer is that they have no interest in even trying anything they don't believe they can control entirely, it's why new technology has always frightened them.
I remember people saying the same thing about Diablo 2, though. Maybe D3 entertained fewer people, I still turn it on here and there but I admit I haven't been a regular in some time. The point is, had they put the game out after two years of development, there's nothing to suggest it wouldn't have had all the same problems along with a heap of new ones. I'll grant you that there's nothing saying it wouldn't have turned out better, but that's because development time doesn't mean anything in regards to the end result.
There is a sweet spot of time spent for game development. My guess on that is 18-36 months. Once game development hits 3 years, the graphics engine on which it is built is old enough to be noticeable compared to the newer content.
Starcraft 2's release timeline is longer than that, and I don't feel the graphics are noticeably worse than newer MMOs, although to be honest I'm such a Starcraft fan it wouldn't matter and I'd keep playing SC2 anyway. Development on that started in 2003, so it was still 7 years before the first third of it was released, and some would argue the whole game hasn't even been released yet.
WoW took 4-5 years initially, and was buggy at release just like every other MMORPG ever has been but it might be the most successful game in history. Not the most loved, but quite possibly the most successful single title ever.
D3 took 11 years, and while it takes a lot of flak (rightfully so) over the AH and the DRM, the actual game is a fun hack n' slash, true to the titles that came before it. Those two big flaws would've been there regardless of development time.
DNF is a bad example, the game was terrible regardless of graphics, people were willing to give it a go knowing full well the graphics would be outdated but the game itself was just awful. Development time had nothing to do with that failure, either, it was just a bad game that people were really excited for.
TOR was an MMO made by people who put out great single player RPGs, the result was a great single-player RPG that had some MMO "features" added in which ruined it, and that was another mistake dev time had nothing to do with. Less time would only have resulted in a buggier release with fewer features and the same frustrations.
Nothing you say actually suggests a link between development time and the quality of the resulting product. If I were to go on listing games with 18-36 months of development time that came out bad, I could go on for days, any long-time gamer with Google's help certainly could. That doesn't mean that's a bad timeline either. The fact is, Blizzard rebooting the project will have no real effect we'll ever see on the outcome.
Look, once a computer program (any program really) goes too far over schedule there is something wrong with it. Titan being delayed and large scale developer changes means that game is fatally flawed and they're probably looking to push it to any functional state possible so they can sell a crappy ass game to as many unsuspecting fools as possible.
There was no schedule, the project was not announced yet. They said they're rebooting it, which suggests they're starting over, and they're going to take much longer than they expected to develop it. Nothing that's happened suggests they're actually trying to "push it to any functional state possible" to rush out crap, it's the exact opposite. They're going to take longer with it because they think it's not good enough. If Blizzard thought it was fatally flawed, they would cancel it, as they have in the past.
It seems like you've developed a bias against longer development times for no real reason. You're complaints don't even match up, longer development time would never suggest an attempt to sell a crappy game, it'd be easier to duct tape it together and release it if they think it'd be bad anyway. You, sir, are little more than a troll.
Yet another Brit puts his two pence in. Guess what? You guys are the reason we have the Second Amendment.
Do you mean because our second amendment is derived from their own bill of rights? Most people forget that this country was largely made up of Englishmen, and many of our ideas are based on ones that existed already, and this is one of them. The right to bear arms was considered a natural right, not even a written law until after a King had attempted to disarm his subjects. And now, even though the right to bear arms is also made clear in their bill of rights, firearms are still heavily regulated in England without infringing on peoples' rights. How is this possible? Easy, they understand the right to bear arms doesn't mean anyone and everyone should be allowed to own assault weapons. There are guns in England, despite what many Americans seem to think, they're just regulated. And it would make sense for us to follow suit, given that the main argument against gun control is really just a reference to England's own laws.
Nobody is trying to say if you print a gun and use it, it's the gun's fault. The blame still falls wholly on the person who committed the crime. What you don't seem to understand is that laws are meant to keep people safe and secure, not just punish people after the fact. Nobody needs to prove they can't handle drinking and driving to be told not to do it, there's no reason to wait until people get hurt to stop something. Treating rules and regulations as an attack on your person is just being childish. As for 3d printing guns in particular, I'd support a method of stopping it as long as it didn't interfere with anything else, I just don't know if that's even possible. The reasoning is straightforward: Guns are regulated, making them at home bypasses regulation. Nobody would think twice about shutting down a lab producing alternatives to prescription drugs, it's really the same thing. Somehow with guns people get it in their heads the rules should all be different, that because they're mentioned in the constitution we can't regulate them. This is not the case. Even freedom of speech is regulated to some degree, primarily to keep people from inciting violence. Laws are not there because somebody assumes you can't be responsible, laws are there because it's been proven time and time again that in a group as large as this country, there are enough people who can't be responsible to justify regulating dangerous things. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have crime, everyone would just be good and responsible because it's what's right.
Actually, I think you need to look up the definition of socialism. The government owning the factories is a part of one possible implementation, but what you describe is pretty much the definition of socialism. While you're at it, you should look up fascism, too. Forcing people to hire humans could be done under a fascist government, but that's not all. As it is, we live in a republic that people call a democracy, and still there are equal opportunity employment laws that often do result in being forced to hire one person over another not based on merit but on characteristics that shouldn't even be considered in the hiring process. I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other on those laws, I'm just pointing out that you don't seem to understand what you're saying.
1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).
People can own shares in Google, too. It doesn't mean people just have shares in Google, they still need to earn money to buy them.
2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.
Ah, I see, you expect people of the world to endorse socialism. I'm not sure what sorcery you intend to use to force this, or how you think we can successfully transition to such a system, but I'm interested to hear it. Keep in mind, human nature has always been the big problem with things like socialism; in general, people don't want to be equal, they want more, and they certainly don't want to hand what they've earned to their neighbor who didn't earn it.
Actually, it's more like making a DVD player that gets you the DVD for free - it makes sense for thieves, but pisses off the people who spend their time and money providing the content you just stole. The problem here is the ads are the payment for the service. You can call it user friendly, but it's user friendly like piracy is. Now, I'm actually fine with pirating content that's made deliberately unavailable (Disney!) or is particularly hard to find, like for me it's typically certain old foreign movies with subtitles, but Youtube is a service that provides all sorts of videos for free in an easily searchable database, in exchange all you're supposed to do is sit through a fifteen second ad. Even without this app, WP8 users had access to it through the site, just not a specialized app. Youtube is what I wish cable would turn into, it's sickening that I have to pay over $200 for cable and still sit through ads while being severely limited to what I can watch when. Even on-demand rotates movies monthly, AND has an additional fee for new movies. Youtube is a steal, if you don't want to watch the ad you can take fifteen seconds to mentally thank the original developers for having and implementing such a great idea, and Google for turning it into something with lasting power.
As for being against other ad-blockers, I use one to block intrusive ads, but I turn it off for site I frequent (like Slashdot) with the exception of overly intrusive ones. I don't bother trying to skip Youtube ads because they're not a big deal and aren't even on many videos I've seen, although to be fair I don't go on Youtube often.
I never claimed it would be 100% effective, I was pointing out that saying we shouldn't have it because it wouldn't be 100% effective is not logical. So really, if you were paying attention, I was saying it won't be 100% effective but we should do it anyway because it will help.
As for your right to own a gun, I'm alright with that, unless you specifically want to own assault weapons, which is just crazy. Before you respond, here's my reasoning, simplified for your simple mind. Whatever is easy for your average joe to get will be easy for criminals to get. An AR for home defense is an accident waiting to happen, odds are your home will not be invaded by anything you need more than a couple shots to take down, because as many who oppose gun control will tell you most crimes committed using firearms are committed with handguns, not assault weapons. If you think you need an AR to fight against the tyranny of the government, one possibility is you expect to fight the military, in which case you are hopelessly outgunned anyway, not to mention that possibility depends on the military (made up of people like you and I) being alright with attacking their friends and families. The next possibility is civil war, in which case you're fighting your neighbors (probably even moreso than in the first civil war) and being able to own an AR yourself means so can they, so that doesn't really work out. After this handful of situations we have invasion by another country, which would also result in you being hopelessly outgunned. I'm probably missing some example, but you get where this is going, there's no real benefit to owning assault weapons.
The second amendment does not say you have a right to buy the biggest gun ever made just so you can imagine something else was that big, I'm sure if they knew what an effective killing tool firearms would turn into they would've been a bit more restrictive even then. Now, I respect the constitution and I think it's an important document that establishes certain basic rights, but even the folks who wrote it made it easy to change because they knew it wasn't perfect. I really think people need to stop pointing to a 200 year old document as if it's infallible. And I'm sure you'll shoot back and tell me how disrespectful it is to say that or how unpatriotic I'm being, but if you ask me that's backwards. The Constitution was never intended to be unalterable, that's why they created a process to allow changes to be made to it, it's only supposed to need a majority vote. And unlike the first amendment, that could realistically happen with the second.
Finally, let me tell you that as a gun owner myself, I don't think they need to take away all firearms and I don't think it'd ever happen, despite people saying requiring paperwork is the first step towards that. Where I live, paperwork has been required for as long as I can remember, and my first time filling it out I did make a mistake. I didn't go to jail, I was never charged or fined or even spoken to by the police. I had to fill the form out again. Wow! Huge hassle to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, right? If you do something stupid, like lie about a criminal conviction, it probably isn't an accident and I hope they do make a federal case out of it as well as keep you from owning a gun. As for your gun registry concerns, I fail to see the huge problem with a gun registry. I have a big problem with all of the other information the government seems to be collecting, such as yesterday's story about them saving all digital communications, but a national gun registry seems like a fantastic idea. If every recovered bullet could be compared to a database of bullets fired from guns prior to their sale, it'd make finding murder weapons much easier. They'd still need to actually find it and perform all the usual tests, but if they can quickly find the original purchaser it could speed things up.
Worst. Thinking. Ever. "Current laws aren't 100% effective, so let's not bother with them anymore." This suggests you don't support any law against anything, ever, because it might not be 100% effective. I'm hoping that's not the case, and if it is, may your wish come true and your neighbor shoot you and take your stuff, because laws aren't going to stop him anyway. Beyond that fatal flaw in this silly argument, your comparison is drugs. Certain key differences between the drug and gun markets make it an absurd comparison. Without going into far too much detail, the big difference is that guns start off being sold legally before they hit the streets. I don't mean guns legally purchased are stolen, I mean the laws are so lax that criminals have numerous ways to get them through legal channels. They'll either have someone else purchase the gun for them, or see a corrupt gun dealer to buy them off him. What's important about this? Their means for acquiring guns is still based entirely on the LEGAL AVAILABILITY of them. If they weren't so easily available, there wouldn't be so many on the street. I find it disturbing that so many people gloss over this basic piece of logic. Guns are only so available to criminals because it's so easy so get them legally. Now, I'm not for taking everyone's guns away as NRA nuts seem to think everyone opposed to them is, but I do see a dire need for reform, and polls suggest that almost all of America agrees. The problem is while we're all saying, "Just let us run better background checks and get rid of huge loopholes people use to avoid them!" there's a small percentage of people shouting back "You can't have our freedom! The constitution says we can have guns!" and it's making it impossible to come to an agreement.
The problem with using cost as a major argument against renewable energy sources is that the price of gas has skyrocketed in the last decade. The price this year is close to three times what it was when I started driving (about 12 years ago, bigger difference for older folks I'm sure) and I don't see anything to suggest the price won't continue to go up. This is in contrast to renewable energy which, while still far more expensive than fossil fuels, are decreasing in price. So while the easy thing to say is renewable energy is too expensive, the facts actually suggest that in another decade or two it'll be the other way around even if we don't increase our efforts in studying renewable energy. I don't believe we can magically switch tomorrow, I do believe we need to start taking a switch seriously now though and begin what will be a long, slow transition period. It's going to cost more in the short term, but it'll be cheaper long term.
I'm not sure what big difference your pointing out in the way the law should be carried out, you seem to agree that you need a warrant to obtain emails, which is the same case as searching a house. As for the 4th Amendment using the term "house" specifically, it actually says "persons, houses, papers, and effects," so there shouldn't be any difference at all in the way it's interpreted for your email, unless you want to claim that because people use digital documents now instead of actual paper there are no rules.
Part of me does agree that you should encrypt sensitive data. On the other hand, if anybody else broke into and read your email, you'd never say it was your own fault for not encrypting it, nor would anyone else. Encryption can be a pain, and if you're emailing back and forth with someone who isn't computer savvy, there's a good chance they won't be able to figure it out anyway. Privacy shouldn't be an opt-in situation, you don't default to not having any because you don't go out of your way to keep it. We have laws that state you can't record a conversation that happens in public without their permission, I can't think of a time where you would have less of an expectation of privacy than a conversation in a public place, but even that isn't legal to record (State by state, check yours!) without permission.
Have you ever rented a home? By your logic, you have no expectation of privacy in a rented property or hotel room. You might be interested to know that it's already well established that (outside of television) your landlord can't even consent to a police search of your property, unless they meet the normal requirements for such consent such as if they also live there. Your email being stored on a server is like that, you're renting the space from the server owner, according to the terms they set forth when you signed up for the account. Unless those terms say they can go through your email or grant permission for others to go through your email, this is still illegal. I'll admit, laws regarding the physical world and the internet don't line up 1:1, but suggesting that there should be no privacy at all on the internet because of the way the internet works is a bit nuts.
I'm curious as to your sourcing. A quick browse through the last eleven years of FOIA reports shows the backlog at the end of every year under the Obama administration has been lower then the the lowest year under the Bush administration, unless they're lying on their reports. It might also be worth noting the highest backlog under Obama was his first year in office, where Bush's first year was his lowest, indicating the trend is the opposite of what you imply. If fewer requests are being answered, then it must mean fewer have been made, because a smaller number are going unanswered. I do remember Guantanamo, and I understand the difference between a giving an order and having it followed (not that it excuses Obama entirely) but that's not the same thing I was talking about, the order I referred to seems to have been obeyed, I'd venture to guess that's one of the reasons the backlog is so much smaller now. So without excusing his administration for their wrongdoings, it seems things have been more transparent under Obama.
Well, considering Bush in his first year issued an executive order limiting the FOIA (first time it was limited since Reagan) and Obama repealed that executive order in his first month in office, I think we're still doing better. Is it perfect? No. But to say it isn't any better is just showing how unfairly biased you are. Things should be and could be better, but there's no one guy to blame here. I pointed out Bush's limiting of the FOIA but he wasn't the first guy to lie to the American people either, it's been going on for as long as the country has existed. Disagree with Obama because of the mistakes he's made, because he has made them, instead of holding him to some insanely high expectation that he would somehow magically change the way our government has worked for centuries.
Considering the delay was six years, the request took place during the Bush administration, and under his administration it was never answered. So what exactly is your point? It's high time we stopped making these into republican-democrat issues when it's really much broader than that. One guys points out Obama lies, another points out Bush lies, and we all just point fingers claiming the other party is worse instead of realizing they're both pulling the same shit. Wrong is wrong, it's not any worse because the guy you didn't vote for did it this time, especially when the guy you DID vote for was doing the exact same thing right before him.
Let's all pick fights over things that aren't happening! Nobody said don't respect the law, all I said was I'm opposed to the way it works now. You really are being a dick for the sole purpose of being a dick. Nobody's trying to impress you, and nobody is using anything as an excuse. You are making shit up and being an idiot, congratulations on being remarkably stupid even for the Slashdot crowd. Bravo.
I'm sorry for the confusion, but you're talking about something totally different, that has literally nothing to do with the story. This isn't even an entire page, it's exactly what you see for results in the picture, and a dead link. Go try it. Sure, from there maybe you can find the actual cached page, and you can search all you want for a legal precedent showing that Google cache (which has been going on for, what, a decade?) is actually illegal, I welcome it, but it will still have nothing to do with the story. That's why I thought you were stating Slashdot is illegal, because this story is more like finding an old Slashdot story on the same site that quotes a few lines in a forum post. As for it being posted publicly, if you can dig out the TOS for that old site and show me they can't do whatever they want with what you post, or some evidence they didn't want the PUBLIC to see their page in every form possible (even cached by Google, usually ads are intact from what I've seen) then maybe, maybe the cached page is illegal. But considering time-shifting TV shows is still happening legally, I'm not worried about time-shifting websites. But even if it is, the key thing for you to understand right now, is it will still have nothing to do with this story. This is not a copyright issue.
To clarify, I realize I was mistaken stating Amplify should've had filters in place when they didn't run the domain at the time, I lost myself a bit in the rant, sorry. But, that doesn't change anything else I said, and doesn't alleviate Amplify of their responsibility, as it should be common practice to investigate any name you're intending to use for a product, even more so a specific domain you know has been used.
You realize you're on Slashdot stating you think Slashdot is illegal, right? Good, now that we're through that... This isn't really a copyright issue, at all. Information was posted in a public forum, and it ended up staying public. This is like someone's kid putting an offensive sign on their lawn and someone else took a picture before they took it down. It's perfectly legal from any standpoint. As for "philosophically" being opposed to copyright, I'm not, I'm only opposed to the way the laws are currently structured and from what I've seen most people on this side of the argument are in the same boat. I write as a hobby, if I struck gold and had a book published, I should be able to keep other people from copying and redistributing that book for profit for a few years. But, my children's children should not be able to sue people for using my characters forty years after I die. Reasonable people support reasonable copyright laws. But, again, this story has nothing to do with copyright, the archived material was posted publicly, not in some members-only section. Does it make Amplify look bad? Sure. Is it Google's fault? Nope, Amplify should've implemented a decent filtration system that flags comments like that for review before making it on the site, it's not as if the technology doesn't exist.
This logic leads to terrible things. If someone is stopped with that much money and it's found, it still needs to be linked to a crime for it to be considered illegal. You can't just have cash and go to jail, even $800,000, so to say that someone else should refuse to serve you and report you for not actually committing a crime is pretty crazy. It actually stands to reason that if someone is paying to put a secret compartment into their vehicle for something legal, it would be items of great value or maybe large amounts of cash. Unless he opens that compartment and finds drugs, he really doesn't know and shouldn't be forced to assume the worst lest he be prosecuted.
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I'm excited to see the other half of this experiment, where they publish content on the web without DRM and see how it goes... I don't expect it to ever happen, though. That is exactly what they've been fighting this entire time. Content owners have never liked the idea of distributing content online without any DRM, it's been extremely difficult just getting them to come this far from not wanting to distribute online at all. If they ever do try something outside of tightly controlled distribution services, it will be long after those services are generating enough revenue to make any new experiment look as if it's not worth it. The people in control of the entertainment industry are greedy to a point of stupidity, they are control freaks, and they have a long history of refusing to adapt to new technology. Even supposedly family-friendly Disney creates artificial scarcity by pulling movies from store shelves for years at a time, they love that control. You suggest that if there's money to be made on a DRM-free internet, that's where money will stay. I ask you then, why are they trying to incorporate into the HTML5 standard something which would effectively put DRM on the web before attempting to make any money without it? I believe the answer is that they have no interest in even trying anything they don't believe they can control entirely, it's why new technology has always frightened them.
I remember people saying the same thing about Diablo 2, though. Maybe D3 entertained fewer people, I still turn it on here and there but I admit I haven't been a regular in some time. The point is, had they put the game out after two years of development, there's nothing to suggest it wouldn't have had all the same problems along with a heap of new ones. I'll grant you that there's nothing saying it wouldn't have turned out better, but that's because development time doesn't mean anything in regards to the end result.
Also, I know SC2 is an RTS, I just didn't realize I did that until after I hit submit. Who needs proofreading?
There is a sweet spot of time spent for game development. My guess on that is 18-36 months. Once game development hits 3 years, the graphics engine on which it is built is old enough to be noticeable compared to the newer content.
Starcraft 2's release timeline is longer than that, and I don't feel the graphics are noticeably worse than newer MMOs, although to be honest I'm such a Starcraft fan it wouldn't matter and I'd keep playing SC2 anyway. Development on that started in 2003, so it was still 7 years before the first third of it was released, and some would argue the whole game hasn't even been released yet.
WoW took 4-5 years initially, and was buggy at release just like every other MMORPG ever has been but it might be the most successful game in history. Not the most loved, but quite possibly the most successful single title ever.
D3 took 11 years, and while it takes a lot of flak (rightfully so) over the AH and the DRM, the actual game is a fun hack n' slash, true to the titles that came before it. Those two big flaws would've been there regardless of development time.
DNF is a bad example, the game was terrible regardless of graphics, people were willing to give it a go knowing full well the graphics would be outdated but the game itself was just awful. Development time had nothing to do with that failure, either, it was just a bad game that people were really excited for.
TOR was an MMO made by people who put out great single player RPGs, the result was a great single-player RPG that had some MMO "features" added in which ruined it, and that was another mistake dev time had nothing to do with. Less time would only have resulted in a buggier release with fewer features and the same frustrations.
Nothing you say actually suggests a link between development time and the quality of the resulting product. If I were to go on listing games with 18-36 months of development time that came out bad, I could go on for days, any long-time gamer with Google's help certainly could. That doesn't mean that's a bad timeline either. The fact is, Blizzard rebooting the project will have no real effect we'll ever see on the outcome.
Look, once a computer program (any program really) goes too far over schedule there is something wrong with it. Titan being delayed and large scale developer changes means that game is fatally flawed and they're probably looking to push it to any functional state possible so they can sell a crappy ass game to as many unsuspecting fools as possible.
There was no schedule, the project was not announced yet. They said they're rebooting it, which suggests they're starting over, and they're going to take much longer than they expected to develop it. Nothing that's happened suggests they're actually trying to "push it to any functional state possible" to rush out crap, it's the exact opposite. They're going to take longer with it because they think it's not good enough. If Blizzard thought it was fatally flawed, they would cancel it, as they have in the past.
It seems like you've developed a bias against longer development times for no real reason. You're complaints don't even match up, longer development time would never suggest an attempt to sell a crappy game, it'd be easier to duct tape it together and release it if they think it'd be bad anyway. You, sir, are little more than a troll.
Yet another Brit puts his two pence in. Guess what? You guys are the reason we have the Second Amendment.
Do you mean because our second amendment is derived from their own bill of rights? Most people forget that this country was largely made up of Englishmen, and many of our ideas are based on ones that existed already, and this is one of them. The right to bear arms was considered a natural right, not even a written law until after a King had attempted to disarm his subjects. And now, even though the right to bear arms is also made clear in their bill of rights, firearms are still heavily regulated in England without infringing on peoples' rights. How is this possible? Easy, they understand the right to bear arms doesn't mean anyone and everyone should be allowed to own assault weapons. There are guns in England, despite what many Americans seem to think, they're just regulated. And it would make sense for us to follow suit, given that the main argument against gun control is really just a reference to England's own laws.
Nobody is trying to say if you print a gun and use it, it's the gun's fault. The blame still falls wholly on the person who committed the crime. What you don't seem to understand is that laws are meant to keep people safe and secure, not just punish people after the fact. Nobody needs to prove they can't handle drinking and driving to be told not to do it, there's no reason to wait until people get hurt to stop something. Treating rules and regulations as an attack on your person is just being childish. As for 3d printing guns in particular, I'd support a method of stopping it as long as it didn't interfere with anything else, I just don't know if that's even possible. The reasoning is straightforward: Guns are regulated, making them at home bypasses regulation. Nobody would think twice about shutting down a lab producing alternatives to prescription drugs, it's really the same thing. Somehow with guns people get it in their heads the rules should all be different, that because they're mentioned in the constitution we can't regulate them. This is not the case. Even freedom of speech is regulated to some degree, primarily to keep people from inciting violence. Laws are not there because somebody assumes you can't be responsible, laws are there because it's been proven time and time again that in a group as large as this country, there are enough people who can't be responsible to justify regulating dangerous things. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have crime, everyone would just be good and responsible because it's what's right.
Actually, I think you need to look up the definition of socialism. The government owning the factories is a part of one possible implementation, but what you describe is pretty much the definition of socialism. While you're at it, you should look up fascism, too. Forcing people to hire humans could be done under a fascist government, but that's not all. As it is, we live in a republic that people call a democracy, and still there are equal opportunity employment laws that often do result in being forced to hire one person over another not based on merit but on characteristics that shouldn't even be considered in the hiring process. I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other on those laws, I'm just pointing out that you don't seem to understand what you're saying.
1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).
People can own shares in Google, too. It doesn't mean people just have shares in Google, they still need to earn money to buy them.
2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.
Ah, I see, you expect people of the world to endorse socialism. I'm not sure what sorcery you intend to use to force this, or how you think we can successfully transition to such a system, but I'm interested to hear it. Keep in mind, human nature has always been the big problem with things like socialism; in general, people don't want to be equal, they want more, and they certainly don't want to hand what they've earned to their neighbor who didn't earn it.
Actually, it's more like making a DVD player that gets you the DVD for free - it makes sense for thieves, but pisses off the people who spend their time and money providing the content you just stole. The problem here is the ads are the payment for the service. You can call it user friendly, but it's user friendly like piracy is. Now, I'm actually fine with pirating content that's made deliberately unavailable (Disney!) or is particularly hard to find, like for me it's typically certain old foreign movies with subtitles, but Youtube is a service that provides all sorts of videos for free in an easily searchable database, in exchange all you're supposed to do is sit through a fifteen second ad. Even without this app, WP8 users had access to it through the site, just not a specialized app. Youtube is what I wish cable would turn into, it's sickening that I have to pay over $200 for cable and still sit through ads while being severely limited to what I can watch when. Even on-demand rotates movies monthly, AND has an additional fee for new movies. Youtube is a steal, if you don't want to watch the ad you can take fifteen seconds to mentally thank the original developers for having and implementing such a great idea, and Google for turning it into something with lasting power.
As for being against other ad-blockers, I use one to block intrusive ads, but I turn it off for site I frequent (like Slashdot) with the exception of overly intrusive ones. I don't bother trying to skip Youtube ads because they're not a big deal and aren't even on many videos I've seen, although to be fair I don't go on Youtube often.
I never claimed it would be 100% effective, I was pointing out that saying we shouldn't have it because it wouldn't be 100% effective is not logical. So really, if you were paying attention, I was saying it won't be 100% effective but we should do it anyway because it will help.
As for your right to own a gun, I'm alright with that, unless you specifically want to own assault weapons, which is just crazy. Before you respond, here's my reasoning, simplified for your simple mind. Whatever is easy for your average joe to get will be easy for criminals to get. An AR for home defense is an accident waiting to happen, odds are your home will not be invaded by anything you need more than a couple shots to take down, because as many who oppose gun control will tell you most crimes committed using firearms are committed with handguns, not assault weapons. If you think you need an AR to fight against the tyranny of the government, one possibility is you expect to fight the military, in which case you are hopelessly outgunned anyway, not to mention that possibility depends on the military (made up of people like you and I) being alright with attacking their friends and families. The next possibility is civil war, in which case you're fighting your neighbors (probably even moreso than in the first civil war) and being able to own an AR yourself means so can they, so that doesn't really work out. After this handful of situations we have invasion by another country, which would also result in you being hopelessly outgunned. I'm probably missing some example, but you get where this is going, there's no real benefit to owning assault weapons.
The second amendment does not say you have a right to buy the biggest gun ever made just so you can imagine something else was that big, I'm sure if they knew what an effective killing tool firearms would turn into they would've been a bit more restrictive even then. Now, I respect the constitution and I think it's an important document that establishes certain basic rights, but even the folks who wrote it made it easy to change because they knew it wasn't perfect. I really think people need to stop pointing to a 200 year old document as if it's infallible. And I'm sure you'll shoot back and tell me how disrespectful it is to say that or how unpatriotic I'm being, but if you ask me that's backwards. The Constitution was never intended to be unalterable, that's why they created a process to allow changes to be made to it, it's only supposed to need a majority vote. And unlike the first amendment, that could realistically happen with the second.
Finally, let me tell you that as a gun owner myself, I don't think they need to take away all firearms and I don't think it'd ever happen, despite people saying requiring paperwork is the first step towards that. Where I live, paperwork has been required for as long as I can remember, and my first time filling it out I did make a mistake. I didn't go to jail, I was never charged or fined or even spoken to by the police. I had to fill the form out again. Wow! Huge hassle to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, right? If you do something stupid, like lie about a criminal conviction, it probably isn't an accident and I hope they do make a federal case out of it as well as keep you from owning a gun. As for your gun registry concerns, I fail to see the huge problem with a gun registry. I have a big problem with all of the other information the government seems to be collecting, such as yesterday's story about them saving all digital communications, but a national gun registry seems like a fantastic idea. If every recovered bullet could be compared to a database of bullets fired from guns prior to their sale, it'd make finding murder weapons much easier. They'd still need to actually find it and perform all the usual tests, but if they can quickly find the original purchaser it could speed things up.
Worst. Thinking. Ever. "Current laws aren't 100% effective, so let's not bother with them anymore." This suggests you don't support any law against anything, ever, because it might not be 100% effective. I'm hoping that's not the case, and if it is, may your wish come true and your neighbor shoot you and take your stuff, because laws aren't going to stop him anyway. Beyond that fatal flaw in this silly argument, your comparison is drugs. Certain key differences between the drug and gun markets make it an absurd comparison. Without going into far too much detail, the big difference is that guns start off being sold legally before they hit the streets. I don't mean guns legally purchased are stolen, I mean the laws are so lax that criminals have numerous ways to get them through legal channels. They'll either have someone else purchase the gun for them, or see a corrupt gun dealer to buy them off him. What's important about this? Their means for acquiring guns is still based entirely on the LEGAL AVAILABILITY of them. If they weren't so easily available, there wouldn't be so many on the street. I find it disturbing that so many people gloss over this basic piece of logic. Guns are only so available to criminals because it's so easy so get them legally. Now, I'm not for taking everyone's guns away as NRA nuts seem to think everyone opposed to them is, but I do see a dire need for reform, and polls suggest that almost all of America agrees. The problem is while we're all saying, "Just let us run better background checks and get rid of huge loopholes people use to avoid them!" there's a small percentage of people shouting back "You can't have our freedom! The constitution says we can have guns!" and it's making it impossible to come to an agreement.
The problem with using cost as a major argument against renewable energy sources is that the price of gas has skyrocketed in the last decade. The price this year is close to three times what it was when I started driving (about 12 years ago, bigger difference for older folks I'm sure) and I don't see anything to suggest the price won't continue to go up. This is in contrast to renewable energy which, while still far more expensive than fossil fuels, are decreasing in price. So while the easy thing to say is renewable energy is too expensive, the facts actually suggest that in another decade or two it'll be the other way around even if we don't increase our efforts in studying renewable energy. I don't believe we can magically switch tomorrow, I do believe we need to start taking a switch seriously now though and begin what will be a long, slow transition period. It's going to cost more in the short term, but it'll be cheaper long term.
I'm not sure what big difference your pointing out in the way the law should be carried out, you seem to agree that you need a warrant to obtain emails, which is the same case as searching a house. As for the 4th Amendment using the term "house" specifically, it actually says "persons, houses, papers, and effects," so there shouldn't be any difference at all in the way it's interpreted for your email, unless you want to claim that because people use digital documents now instead of actual paper there are no rules.
Ah yeah I see what you mean now. I do agree!
Part of me does agree that you should encrypt sensitive data. On the other hand, if anybody else broke into and read your email, you'd never say it was your own fault for not encrypting it, nor would anyone else. Encryption can be a pain, and if you're emailing back and forth with someone who isn't computer savvy, there's a good chance they won't be able to figure it out anyway. Privacy shouldn't be an opt-in situation, you don't default to not having any because you don't go out of your way to keep it. We have laws that state you can't record a conversation that happens in public without their permission, I can't think of a time where you would have less of an expectation of privacy than a conversation in a public place, but even that isn't legal to record (State by state, check yours!) without permission.
Have you ever rented a home? By your logic, you have no expectation of privacy in a rented property or hotel room. You might be interested to know that it's already well established that (outside of television) your landlord can't even consent to a police search of your property, unless they meet the normal requirements for such consent such as if they also live there. Your email being stored on a server is like that, you're renting the space from the server owner, according to the terms they set forth when you signed up for the account. Unless those terms say they can go through your email or grant permission for others to go through your email, this is still illegal. I'll admit, laws regarding the physical world and the internet don't line up 1:1, but suggesting that there should be no privacy at all on the internet because of the way the internet works is a bit nuts.
Wish I could edit. Twelve years of reports, not eleven.
I'm curious as to your sourcing. A quick browse through the last eleven years of FOIA reports shows the backlog at the end of every year under the Obama administration has been lower then the the lowest year under the Bush administration, unless they're lying on their reports. It might also be worth noting the highest backlog under Obama was his first year in office, where Bush's first year was his lowest, indicating the trend is the opposite of what you imply. If fewer requests are being answered, then it must mean fewer have been made, because a smaller number are going unanswered. I do remember Guantanamo, and I understand the difference between a giving an order and having it followed (not that it excuses Obama entirely) but that's not the same thing I was talking about, the order I referred to seems to have been obeyed, I'd venture to guess that's one of the reasons the backlog is so much smaller now. So without excusing his administration for their wrongdoings, it seems things have been more transparent under Obama.
Well, considering Bush in his first year issued an executive order limiting the FOIA (first time it was limited since Reagan) and Obama repealed that executive order in his first month in office, I think we're still doing better. Is it perfect? No. But to say it isn't any better is just showing how unfairly biased you are. Things should be and could be better, but there's no one guy to blame here. I pointed out Bush's limiting of the FOIA but he wasn't the first guy to lie to the American people either, it's been going on for as long as the country has existed. Disagree with Obama because of the mistakes he's made, because he has made them, instead of holding him to some insanely high expectation that he would somehow magically change the way our government has worked for centuries.
Considering the delay was six years, the request took place during the Bush administration, and under his administration it was never answered. So what exactly is your point? It's high time we stopped making these into republican-democrat issues when it's really much broader than that. One guys points out Obama lies, another points out Bush lies, and we all just point fingers claiming the other party is worse instead of realizing they're both pulling the same shit. Wrong is wrong, it's not any worse because the guy you didn't vote for did it this time, especially when the guy you DID vote for was doing the exact same thing right before him.
Let's all pick fights over things that aren't happening! Nobody said don't respect the law, all I said was I'm opposed to the way it works now. You really are being a dick for the sole purpose of being a dick. Nobody's trying to impress you, and nobody is using anything as an excuse. You are making shit up and being an idiot, congratulations on being remarkably stupid even for the Slashdot crowd. Bravo.
I'm sorry for the confusion, but you're talking about something totally different, that has literally nothing to do with the story. This isn't even an entire page, it's exactly what you see for results in the picture, and a dead link. Go try it. Sure, from there maybe you can find the actual cached page, and you can search all you want for a legal precedent showing that Google cache (which has been going on for, what, a decade?) is actually illegal, I welcome it, but it will still have nothing to do with the story. That's why I thought you were stating Slashdot is illegal, because this story is more like finding an old Slashdot story on the same site that quotes a few lines in a forum post. As for it being posted publicly, if you can dig out the TOS for that old site and show me they can't do whatever they want with what you post, or some evidence they didn't want the PUBLIC to see their page in every form possible (even cached by Google, usually ads are intact from what I've seen) then maybe, maybe the cached page is illegal. But considering time-shifting TV shows is still happening legally, I'm not worried about time-shifting websites. But even if it is, the key thing for you to understand right now, is it will still have nothing to do with this story. This is not a copyright issue.
To clarify, I realize I was mistaken stating Amplify should've had filters in place when they didn't run the domain at the time, I lost myself a bit in the rant, sorry. But, that doesn't change anything else I said, and doesn't alleviate Amplify of their responsibility, as it should be common practice to investigate any name you're intending to use for a product, even more so a specific domain you know has been used.
You realize you're on Slashdot stating you think Slashdot is illegal, right? Good, now that we're through that... This isn't really a copyright issue, at all. Information was posted in a public forum, and it ended up staying public. This is like someone's kid putting an offensive sign on their lawn and someone else took a picture before they took it down. It's perfectly legal from any standpoint. As for "philosophically" being opposed to copyright, I'm not, I'm only opposed to the way the laws are currently structured and from what I've seen most people on this side of the argument are in the same boat. I write as a hobby, if I struck gold and had a book published, I should be able to keep other people from copying and redistributing that book for profit for a few years. But, my children's children should not be able to sue people for using my characters forty years after I die. Reasonable people support reasonable copyright laws. But, again, this story has nothing to do with copyright, the archived material was posted publicly, not in some members-only section. Does it make Amplify look bad? Sure. Is it Google's fault? Nope, Amplify should've implemented a decent filtration system that flags comments like that for review before making it on the site, it's not as if the technology doesn't exist.
This logic leads to terrible things. If someone is stopped with that much money and it's found, it still needs to be linked to a crime for it to be considered illegal. You can't just have cash and go to jail, even $800,000, so to say that someone else should refuse to serve you and report you for not actually committing a crime is pretty crazy. It actually stands to reason that if someone is paying to put a secret compartment into their vehicle for something legal, it would be items of great value or maybe large amounts of cash. Unless he opens that compartment and finds drugs, he really doesn't know and shouldn't be forced to assume the worst lest he be prosecuted.