What could make wind and solar more expensive in the future?
Taxes as arbitrary support for deeply emplaced power sources such as coal and oil are one possibility. Contractor limitations and rules are another. Grid-tie requirements are another. Materials disposal is another. Licensing is another. Zoning is another. Etc.
There is no technology that government cannot make more expensive, inconvenient, and less efficient than it needs to be.
Don't worry. No one is going to upset the rich people's apple-cart here; no one else can afford to bribe the legislators to arrange the tax code to suit them.
We don't get to vote for the boss. The boss is the person who fills the lobbyist's pockets and tells them under what conditions to fork over said money. The boss is the person who arranges that little junket Thailand, or the Bahamas, or Las Vegas. The boss is that person who makes sure that congress-critter McTurd's second cousin Tedwina gets an absolutely amazing price on that succulent little bit of property. The boss is that guy who sees to it that post-congress, there's a $$k/event speaking tour waiting the wings. The boss is the guy with that awesome stock tip.
And sure as hell, the boss is not us.
But yes, new boss, same as old boss. Because no change in boss. At all. Has nothing to do with elections.
Well then the first thing Google should do is go back to text ads that didn't drag our poor browsers all over the damned web. You know, the actual reasonable ads that they put out once upon a time. That would be great.
Here's a quick example: let's say there was a magic piece of software that could make any business 50% more efficient overnight. Would you really say that any business should be denied use of that software?
I would say that denying the creator an economic benefit, if that's what the creator felt was the appropriate recompense, would be a very serious antisocial and ethically degenerate act.
I would also say that any business that could improve efficiency 50% without otherwise harming itself and society should do so if at all possible.
It's not just one or the other. Things aren't black and white in favor of the end-user here.
I do. Among other things, I am associated with the publishing industry and have put quite a bit of thought into the matter from that perspective.
In this kind of case, which is publishing and dissemination of the results of scientific research, if that dissemination is intended to be done without charge, then the answer is trivial: Put it on a website and let the world see it. Put your credentials on the website and let fly.
If it isn't intended to be free of charge, then pay what is asked or move on without the work product, whatever it is. Of course, if the research was paid for by the public -- IOW taxes -- then as far as I'm concerned, the public already owns it. That's pretty straightforward no matter how you look at it. For where would the authority over such research product come from? From the public. Because that's what (in the US, can't speak for other countries) government is supposed to be: an arm of the public.
In the case of art and software, I would like to see a public funding mechanism that incorporates the idea of basic income for everyone, and rewards proportionate to readership / userbase / other appropriate measure of valued incorporation into the social matrix. I think we're going to hit something along the lines of basic income sooner than most think (due to actual independent artificial intelligence, along with not intelligent, but rather very clever software agents working on our behalf), and then we'll be in the interesting position of being able to make a different decision with regard to what to do about/with creatives, because no one will be starving -- that simply won't fly as an argument. You want to make PD or some other form of freeware your whole life, hair on you, you can -- and I am sure some people will.
Right now, inasmuch as we're not there yet, things are not only commercial, they are very commercial, and there seem to be two significant problems, one at each end of the issue. At the top, there is congress, which is pretty much in the pocket of anyone who has money in that pocket and is willing to spread it around. This has led to what I consider absurd copyright lengths, no protection whatsoever from predation at the agent / publisher level for artists without great power and at least a modicum of foresight, and draconian penalties for tiny violations of the Mandates From Above.
At the bottom, there is this ridiculous "information wants to be free" meme, which I see as the product of too much pressure on the buyer, price-wise, and not enough education as to the fact that artists and other IP creators actually have to, you know, eat and stuff. And for those that don't earn squat during the creative process, those earnings may actually have to come from the dissemination of the IP itself when / if it reaches a marketable state. That "information wants to be free" meme needs to be countered wherever it raises its disingenuous little head. Not only because it is stupidly wrong, but because it is actually toxic to a significant portion of the creative process. While that is being done, we need to push congress to nudge this situation back into reasonable boundaries.
And therein lies the real problem, as I see it. We've lost control of congress. So that means, I think, that we're going to have to wait for social change that inevitably goes around congress itself. I don't want that to come at the expense of a bunch of creatives getting shafted (certainly not any more than they already are, either.) But AI and clever software... I honestly think that's going to do what the voters refuse to do, and that is put congress into a position where they have absolutely no choice in the matter.
The data wants to be free, and so it uses us to get there.
Information is information, just like rocks are rocks and clouds are clouds. These bits of reality don't "want" anything. They don't "use" anything. We want things. We use things. And that entire meme is: you, wanting to use something at no cost -- no matter how much work it took to get it into a state where it would be of use to you.
And the people who spent the time and money in order to produce that thing you want to use? They want to eat and have somewhere to live.
The US constitution (can't speak for other countries, not trying to, either) says congress has the power to arrange the legal system specifically so those people are rewarded. I'm not saying they've done a great job (I don't think they have, actually) but they sure as hell have the legitimate power to do so.
Information costs time and/or money to produce. The copyright and patent systems provide mechanisms (albeit rather dysfunctional at this time) for information creators to be compensated for that production. When people make end runs around the compensation by copying it without recompense, then the reward is reduced or eliminated, and the motivation for that producer, and other producers later on and elsewhere who might also have made that choice is reduced or eliminated.
Pretending that copying without compensation makes everything okay is disingenuous -- at best.
If a creator of information chooses to give it to you, that is perfectly fine. But if they don't, then it is simply not a given that you have any right at all to take it on your own terms.
First of all, the choice he made was his. So it's perfectly okay that he made that choice, no question other choices were available to him (including not being disobedient in the first place) and his choice, too, was a form of resisting and inconveniencing the system.
But it doesn't mean others will take the same path. One of the things about civil disobedience is that it not only makes a public case and presents risks to the disobedient person(s), it costs the system money and time and energy to deal with. Staying alive furthers those effects, so someone who actually cares about this might well specifically choose to do that. Probably should, if they think the issue can actually be resolved, because the possibility exists that whatever they did will be forgiven if a correction to the faulty legislation is brought to bear.
Secondly, the choice described in TFS - to disobey and hide the behavior - is, like many others we have seen around this issue, not really civil disobedience. If it was, it would be practiced in the open, so that others in society could see the problem, the resistance to the problem, and the costs of the problem to society and make new and different choices if that seems to be the thing to do. When this kind of act is done by simply sneaking around, a lot of those things (not all) fall by the wayside. What you have instead is a lot more akin to run of the mill crime than to civil disobedience with a positive social intent.
I actually agree that the copyright and patent system is not functioning well. I also agree that civil disobedience is a socially acceptable and potentially effective way to work against the problems when people feel they simply must act.
But just taking IP without permission or compensation and hiding the act? No. There's a very good reason we provide the opportunity for improving one's economic standing via IP, one I have yet to hear a decent argument against as long as we are living in a more-or-less capitalist economic society. If we're to address the failures in the current legal system as it relates to IP, sneaking around and hiding what is being done about it seems to be to be entirely the wrong way to go about it.
Some of this stuff is pure gold, and I think it actually helps Amazon overall, as it gets people to go to the site, and hang around on it, and think about it.
You may be misunderstanding the risk, such as it is.
o Siri is given instructions via RF injection and incidental demodulation within the phone's mic input electronics.
o Siri performs an action you didn't ask it to do.
o You won't necessarily hear the instructions come in. In the cable, it's RF. Your earphones would also have to demodulate the signal. If they're purely inductive (most headphones are), they won't do that. If the circuitry they are plugged in to doesn't provide incidental demodulation (a lot less likely than an input like a mic input), it won't get back to the earphones that way either. Last chance is anything you say is fed back to your earphones by Siri / etc. Does it do that? My Galaxy Note 3 doesn't do that with Google voice. Why would it, anyway?
o If you're not looking at your phone, you might not even be aware this had happened. You might even be asleep. I nap with my earphones in, listening to music, on a fairly regular basis, for instance.
So while it's extremely unlikely to be any kind of an immediate threat because of the equipment and proximity issues, it actually might be able to cause problems in those rare cases where those issues do not prevent it. Mostly it depends on what the phone can be told to do, and what portion of that it will do without further interaction / confirmation.
Time for an aftermarket add-on that goes in the phone jack that contains a low pass filter. Inductors, capacitors, pcb, input jack, output spike/plug, case.
If the paranoia grows sufficiently (or the threat actually does), it could be quite a moneymaker. You could probably sell a bunch at a premium to the various TLAs either way, as some of them are what one could reasonably describe as "professionally paranoid."
Fancy ones could have a LED that lights up using the shunted RF energy. A LED! Imagine that!
Or you could build in a thingy that wraps around the phone case over to right next to the camera, and when the LED goes off, it could be detected by the camera, and the phone could vibrate. No, wait, that means someone might be able to remotely sex you up. That's no good.
Really fancy ones could have a LED that lights in the infrared band, so no one could see it but the owner, using some fancy active spy/eyeglasses. Well, and the guy with the infrared scope on his sniper rifle. So perhaps not.:)
Of course, the business model will fall flat on its face when iPhone X / Android hardware X comes out with said RFI filtering built-in. and a detection that can drive the LED, an app, etc.
Ok, look. Let's just get rid of this researcher so This Can Never Happen Again*
-------------
* All due respect to South Park's 2D inhabitants and their observatory-destroying ways
** No need to thank me, I plan to continue to use my engineering design chops to secure the Safety Of Our Nation.
*** JFC, now I can't get my tongue out of my cheek. This getting old shite is getting old.
It's not the FCC, or at least not just the FCC, that one has to worry about here. I certify a non-complying device, airport radar is complicit in an incident involving injury or loss of life, and the lawyers come marching in -- the FCC's fine(s) would be the least of my problems.
Also, your operation of non-type-approved equipment is different in nature. You are one transmission source, whereas certification of a class of devices is top-down. The number of transmission sources the certifier is responsible for may be very large. Risk increases accordingly. So not really all that similar in terms of potential consequences.
I'm not trying to be difficult or contrary here, I just don't agree.
Typically it is. This is why in the sense that "corporations are like people", the people they are "like" are sociopaths and psychopaths. And you know what happens to the rights of sociopaths and psychopaths... that's exactly what should happen to the rights of corporations. We could call the rules that govern these changes in the status of their rights... hmmm... how about regulations? It's not punishment, we just know they're out of their fucking minds, so for everyone's good...
Perhaps they "tend" to be, but I've never seen one with a reflection problem myself. My phone (phablet, I guess) isn't noticeably glossy.
That may be good in moderate light to see movies, but is horrible to read.
My phone (Galaxy Note 3) is just fine to read on in moderate light. So's my iPad. It's a little heavy though, so I almost always use the phone.
And forget at sunshine.
I can read in sunshine just fine. I have to turn the brightness on the phone up to max, but when I do, it's perfectly readable. Battery life suffers, though.
I should also mention I read a bit. I read about a novel a day, worst case one every two days. I've had no reading problems worthy of the name on tablet or phone that are display-related. Brightness is fine, contrast is fine, detail / legibility is fine, available font range perfectly satisfactory. Dimming the display at night seems to result in high quality sleep -- not really seeing that problem, though I do not doubt it's a real one for some people.
I'd pay a premium for an android tablet with a decent color e-ink display and google play store
So would I. A considerable premium. I'd even accept considerably less-than-good color, as long as I could tell one thing from another. The battery life benefits alone would make it worth it to me. Reading in sunlight is also something I do, but I never seem to remember to have brought the e-ink Kindle along with me to wherever. So I end up reading in the Kindle app on my Galaxy Note 3 phone, which I like and am 100% comfortable with, except in daylight, where it can do the job, but the battery gets used up in a fraction of the time because of the maxed out brightness setting.
There can be any number of software developers on a WiFi driver project. I am asking that just one of them has gone through the Gordon West / W5YI book on the GROL+Radar and has taken the test
But Bruce, if that's all you're asking, then what you are really asking is that someone with no actual guarantee of competence certify the work (and take responsibility for it.) Not only does it do nothing useful in assuring the device is actually in compliance, it drops a great deal of responsibility and accountability on that person's shoulders that they would be very unwise to accept. I mean, considering the legal anvils falling out of the sky on such people as they have been known to do in our society.
A certification is exactly this: "I say this device is okay"
I would never say that. And I'm very competent in most of these areas as well as meeting the criteria you set forth here.
The reason I don't trust online movie ratings is because Dr. Who is popular. And Dr. Who is not something I can tolerate. In short, a large part of the populace's taste is not my taste, so those stars... meaningless to me.
And sure enough, there are movies I loved that got poor ratings, and movies I thought were utter tripe that got high rankings.
Same thing goes for Silkel and Ebert and that class of professional opinionators. Their taste is not my taste. So they can't be trusted by me.
With this in mind, a site's questionable rounding of 4.1 to 4.5... not even on the radar.
Slashdot Mirror
Taxes as arbitrary support for deeply emplaced power sources such as coal and oil are one possibility. Contractor limitations and rules are another. Grid-tie requirements are another. Materials disposal is another. Licensing is another. Zoning is another. Etc.
There is no technology that government cannot make more expensive, inconvenient, and less efficient than it needs to be.
I can't hear you through the hysteria and panic.
Don't worry. No one is going to upset the rich people's apple-cart here; no one else can afford to bribe the legislators to arrange the tax code to suit them.
Just keep in mind that you can do that if someone makes a more advanced camera for it. If this ends up being a sideshow, no one is likely to do that.
It's not that easy to make a good camera. And someone has to make the more advanced software for the more advanced camera, too.
Not saying it can't happen, but it's not a given, just because the phone is modular. I wish it were.
We don't get to vote for the boss. The boss is the person who fills the lobbyist's pockets and tells them under what conditions to fork over said money. The boss is the person who arranges that little junket Thailand, or the Bahamas, or Las Vegas. The boss is that person who makes sure that congress-critter McTurd's second cousin Tedwina gets an absolutely amazing price on that succulent little bit of property. The boss is that guy who sees to it that post-congress, there's a $$k/event speaking tour waiting the wings. The boss is the guy with that awesome stock tip.
And sure as hell, the boss is not us.
But yes, new boss, same as old boss. Because no change in boss. At all. Has nothing to do with elections.
Oh yes, I use the hosts file. You bet.
That wasn't my point. It's okay, don't worry about it.
Interesting that you think the proper response to a story about the evils of advertising is to... advertise your stuff.
Just interesting. :)
Well then the first thing Google should do is go back to text ads that didn't drag our poor browsers all over the damned web. You know, the actual reasonable ads that they put out once upon a time. That would be great.
I would say that denying the creator an economic benefit, if that's what the creator felt was the appropriate recompense, would be a very serious antisocial and ethically degenerate act.
I would also say that any business that could improve efficiency 50% without otherwise harming itself and society should do so if at all possible.
It's not just one or the other. Things aren't black and white in favor of the end-user here.
Now that was funny. That's like telling a professional chef they don't know anything about making food. :) Keep 'em coming.
I do. Among other things, I am associated with the publishing industry and have put quite a bit of thought into the matter from that perspective.
In this kind of case, which is publishing and dissemination of the results of scientific research, if that dissemination is intended to be done without charge, then the answer is trivial: Put it on a website and let the world see it. Put your credentials on the website and let fly.
If it isn't intended to be free of charge, then pay what is asked or move on without the work product, whatever it is. Of course, if the research was paid for by the public -- IOW taxes -- then as far as I'm concerned, the public already owns it. That's pretty straightforward no matter how you look at it. For where would the authority over such research product come from? From the public. Because that's what (in the US, can't speak for other countries) government is supposed to be: an arm of the public.
In the case of art and software, I would like to see a public funding mechanism that incorporates the idea of basic income for everyone, and rewards proportionate to readership / userbase / other appropriate measure of valued incorporation into the social matrix. I think we're going to hit something along the lines of basic income sooner than most think (due to actual independent artificial intelligence, along with not intelligent, but rather very clever software agents working on our behalf), and then we'll be in the interesting position of being able to make a different decision with regard to what to do about/with creatives, because no one will be starving -- that simply won't fly as an argument. You want to make PD or some other form of freeware your whole life, hair on you, you can -- and I am sure some people will.
Right now, inasmuch as we're not there yet, things are not only commercial, they are very commercial, and there seem to be two significant problems, one at each end of the issue. At the top, there is congress, which is pretty much in the pocket of anyone who has money in that pocket and is willing to spread it around. This has led to what I consider absurd copyright lengths, no protection whatsoever from predation at the agent / publisher level for artists without great power and at least a modicum of foresight, and draconian penalties for tiny violations of the Mandates From Above.
At the bottom, there is this ridiculous "information wants to be free" meme, which I see as the product of too much pressure on the buyer, price-wise, and not enough education as to the fact that artists and other IP creators actually have to, you know, eat and stuff. And for those that don't earn squat during the creative process, those earnings may actually have to come from the dissemination of the IP itself when / if it reaches a marketable state. That "information wants to be free" meme needs to be countered wherever it raises its disingenuous little head. Not only because it is stupidly wrong, but because it is actually toxic to a significant portion of the creative process. While that is being done, we need to push congress to nudge this situation back into reasonable boundaries.
And therein lies the real problem, as I see it. We've lost control of congress. So that means, I think, that we're going to have to wait for social change that inevitably goes around congress itself. I don't want that to come at the expense of a bunch of creatives getting shafted (certainly not any more than they already are, either.) But AI and clever software... I honestly think that's going to do what the voters refuse to do, and that is put congress into a position where they have absolutely no choice in the matter.
Information is information, just like rocks are rocks and clouds are clouds. These bits of reality don't "want" anything. They don't "use" anything. We want things. We use things. And that entire meme is: you, wanting to use something at no cost -- no matter how much work it took to get it into a state where it would be of use to you.
And the people who spent the time and money in order to produce that thing you want to use? They want to eat and have somewhere to live.
The US constitution (can't speak for other countries, not trying to, either) says congress has the power to arrange the legal system specifically so those people are rewarded. I'm not saying they've done a great job (I don't think they have, actually) but they sure as hell have the legitimate power to do so.
End of story.
Information costs time and/or money to produce. The copyright and patent systems provide mechanisms (albeit rather dysfunctional at this time) for information creators to be compensated for that production. When people make end runs around the compensation by copying it without recompense, then the reward is reduced or eliminated, and the motivation for that producer, and other producers later on and elsewhere who might also have made that choice is reduced or eliminated.
Pretending that copying without compensation makes everything okay is disingenuous -- at best.
If a creator of information chooses to give it to you, that is perfectly fine. But if they don't, then it is simply not a given that you have any right at all to take it on your own terms.
First of all, the choice he made was his. So it's perfectly okay that he made that choice, no question other choices were available to him (including not being disobedient in the first place) and his choice, too, was a form of resisting and inconveniencing the system.
But it doesn't mean others will take the same path. One of the things about civil disobedience is that it not only makes a public case and presents risks to the disobedient person(s), it costs the system money and time and energy to deal with. Staying alive furthers those effects, so someone who actually cares about this might well specifically choose to do that. Probably should, if they think the issue can actually be resolved, because the possibility exists that whatever they did will be forgiven if a correction to the faulty legislation is brought to bear.
Secondly, the choice described in TFS - to disobey and hide the behavior - is, like many others we have seen around this issue, not really civil disobedience. If it was, it would be practiced in the open, so that others in society could see the problem, the resistance to the problem, and the costs of the problem to society and make new and different choices if that seems to be the thing to do. When this kind of act is done by simply sneaking around, a lot of those things (not all) fall by the wayside. What you have instead is a lot more akin to run of the mill crime than to civil disobedience with a positive social intent.
I actually agree that the copyright and patent system is not functioning well. I also agree that civil disobedience is a socially acceptable and potentially effective way to work against the problems when people feel they simply must act.
But just taking IP without permission or compensation and hiding the act? No. There's a very good reason we provide the opportunity for improving one's economic standing via IP, one I have yet to hear a decent argument against as long as we are living in a more-or-less capitalist economic society. If we're to address the failures in the current legal system as it relates to IP, sneaking around and hiding what is being done about it seems to be to be entirely the wrong way to go about it.
It's not "the democracy line." It's "the constitutional republic line."
I worry about losing the funny ones. Like these.
Some of this stuff is pure gold, and I think it actually helps Amazon overall, as it gets people to go to the site, and hang around on it, and think about it.
You may be misunderstanding the risk, such as it is.
o Siri is given instructions via RF injection and incidental demodulation within the phone's mic input electronics.
o Siri performs an action you didn't ask it to do.
o You won't necessarily hear the instructions come in. In the cable, it's RF. Your earphones would also have to demodulate the signal. If they're purely inductive (most headphones are), they won't do that. If the circuitry they are plugged in to doesn't provide incidental demodulation (a lot less likely than an input like a mic input), it won't get back to the earphones that way either. Last chance is anything you say is fed back to your earphones by Siri / etc. Does it do that? My Galaxy Note 3 doesn't do that with Google voice. Why would it, anyway?
o If you're not looking at your phone, you might not even be aware this had happened. You might even be asleep. I nap with my earphones in, listening to music, on a fairly regular basis, for instance.
So while it's extremely unlikely to be any kind of an immediate threat because of the equipment and proximity issues, it actually might be able to cause problems in those rare cases where those issues do not prevent it. Mostly it depends on what the phone can be told to do, and what portion of that it will do without further interaction / confirmation.
Time for an aftermarket add-on that goes in the phone jack that contains a low pass filter. Inductors, capacitors, pcb, input jack, output spike/plug, case.
If the paranoia grows sufficiently (or the threat actually does), it could be quite a moneymaker. You could probably sell a bunch at a premium to the various TLAs either way, as some of them are what one could reasonably describe as "professionally paranoid."
Fancy ones could have a LED that lights up using the shunted RF energy. A LED! Imagine that!
Or you could build in a thingy that wraps around the phone case over to right next to the camera, and when the LED goes off, it could be detected by the camera, and the phone could vibrate. No, wait, that means someone might be able to remotely sex you up. That's no good.
Really fancy ones could have a LED that lights in the infrared band, so no one could see it but the owner, using some fancy active spy/eyeglasses. Well, and the guy with the infrared scope on his sniper rifle. So perhaps not. :)
Of course, the business model will fall flat on its face when iPhone X / Android hardware X comes out with said RFI filtering built-in. and a detection that can drive the LED, an app, etc.
Ok, look. Let's just get rid of this researcher so This Can Never Happen Again*
-------------
* All due respect to South Park's 2D inhabitants and their observatory-destroying ways
** No need to thank me, I plan to continue to use my engineering design chops to secure the Safety Of Our Nation.
*** JFC, now I can't get my tongue out of my cheek. This getting old shite is getting old.
It's not the FCC, or at least not just the FCC, that one has to worry about here. I certify a non-complying device, airport radar is complicit in an incident involving injury or loss of life, and the lawyers come marching in -- the FCC's fine(s) would be the least of my problems.
Also, your operation of non-type-approved equipment is different in nature. You are one transmission source, whereas certification of a class of devices is top-down. The number of transmission sources the certifier is responsible for may be very large. Risk increases accordingly. So not really all that similar in terms of potential consequences.
I'm not trying to be difficult or contrary here, I just don't agree.
Typically it is. This is why in the sense that "corporations are like people", the people they are "like" are sociopaths and psychopaths. And you know what happens to the rights of sociopaths and psychopaths... that's exactly what should happen to the rights of corporations. We could call the rules that govern these changes in the status of their rights... hmmm... how about regulations? It's not punishment, we just know they're out of their fucking minds, so for everyone's good...
I'd read that with great interest. :)
Perhaps they "tend" to be, but I've never seen one with a reflection problem myself. My phone (phablet, I guess) isn't noticeably glossy.
My phone (Galaxy Note 3) is just fine to read on in moderate light. So's my iPad. It's a little heavy though, so I almost always use the phone.
I can read in sunshine just fine. I have to turn the brightness on the phone up to max, but when I do, it's perfectly readable. Battery life suffers, though.
I should also mention I read a bit. I read about a novel a day, worst case one every two days. I've had no reading problems worthy of the name on tablet or phone that are display-related. Brightness is fine, contrast is fine, detail / legibility is fine, available font range perfectly satisfactory. Dimming the display at night seems to result in high quality sleep -- not really seeing that problem, though I do not doubt it's a real one for some people.
Got anything else?
So would I. A considerable premium. I'd even accept considerably less-than-good color, as long as I could tell one thing from another. The battery life benefits alone would make it worth it to me. Reading in sunlight is also something I do, but I never seem to remember to have brought the e-ink Kindle along with me to wherever. So I end up reading in the Kindle app on my Galaxy Note 3 phone, which I like and am 100% comfortable with, except in daylight, where it can do the job, but the battery gets used up in a fraction of the time because of the maxed out brightness setting.
But Bruce, if that's all you're asking, then what you are really asking is that someone with no actual guarantee of competence certify the work (and take responsibility for it.) Not only does it do nothing useful in assuring the device is actually in compliance, it drops a great deal of responsibility and accountability on that person's shoulders that they would be very unwise to accept. I mean, considering the legal anvils falling out of the sky on such people as they have been known to do in our society.
A certification is exactly this: " I say this device is okay"
I would never say that. And I'm very competent in most of these areas as well as meeting the criteria you set forth here.
The reason I don't trust online movie ratings is because Dr. Who is popular. And Dr. Who is not something I can tolerate. In short, a large part of the populace's taste is not my taste, so those stars... meaningless to me.
And sure enough, there are movies I loved that got poor ratings, and movies I thought were utter tripe that got high rankings.
Same thing goes for Silkel and Ebert and that class of professional opinionators. Their taste is not my taste. So they can't be trusted by me.
With this in mind, a site's questionable rounding of 4.1 to 4.5... not even on the radar.