Unfortunately, restricting government data requests to a broad range isn't very helpful
Of course it's not very helpful. It was never meant to be, nobody really expected it to be, and I'm sure they went to significant effort to ensure that no utility crept in by accident. As soon as the government allows or does anything, it is foregone that it won't be helpful or useful in any way. It is a tautology.
You have more than you need. I know because you have a computer and free time to post on Slashdot. Why aren't you donating 90% of your pay to hunger relief? Why don't you donate it to the Federal Government for healthcare? After all, failure to do so is murder. I guarantee they'll take your check! Don't know where to send it because you're too lazy to ask? Still murder. You could at least donate it to a local shelter. You don't need more than one set of clothes either. Or a car. You don't need the computer you're staring at right now. Liquidate and donate! Or are you selfish?
Reason 1: Because I have a mission critical business app (not maintained by me) that runs on 2.x, so that's what's installed on my machine as the default. Of course I have 3.x too, but to use it I have to specify the version explicitly. It's extra hoops to jump through.
Reason 2: Because I mostly use python as a fancy scripting language. For product development or serious lifting I use C. I don't particularly care if my version is 2.x, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Reason 2a: It's a flippin' scripting language. I don't want it to be more rigorous than it already is!
Reason 3: Everyone else at work relies on 2.6. Someone else is already supporting those 2.6 installations. If I make a project for 3.x, now I'm on the hook for getting everyone to install 3.x alongside their 2.x, I have to write docs, and when they have problems I have to handhold them through it. No thanks, I'll use what someone else is already supporting.
Reason 4: They are two different languages. I don't stop using C just because C++ and Java and C# exist. There is room on my system for multiple languages. Go ahead and develop whatever you want, but I will choose what I want to use. I have no obligation to learn a new language just because it makes you happy. You're the one who moved to a new sandbox, don't whine if others choose not to join you there.
Reason 5: Python 3 is similar enough to be confusing, but different enough to be aggravating. Really I just don't care enough. I think I'd rather move to a whole new language than wrestle the moving-target anaconda.
Nah, it won't be the machines taking over. When machines become advanced enough, the 1% will no longer need the rest of us humans to grow their food, to make their toys, to be their servants and chauffers. Why would they pay us to do nothing? Why let us use up food and oxygen? It will be time to exterminate the teeming masses. In the name of sustainability, no doubt.
You and I agree on this, so don't blow a gasket. You don't want to pay for me. I don't want to pay for you. We both know that medical expenses are real and we've both taken responsibility for that.
I do have insurance (as I clearly stated), it does cover me fully if something catastrophic happens, and I can afford my deductible. Don't you think I considered the numbers before I signed up? I'm approaching 50 and there are significant medical bills in my near future. I've planned for them.
And yes I do pay, indirectly through my employer. I don't pay my premiums out of pocket, I pay them with my own sweat. It's not free and it's not cheap. And I still don't benefit from those premiums (even though they are credited to me as a taxable benefit), it all goes to paying other people's bills.
Nor am I advocating that people not buy insurance. I'm saying the PPACA is a loser's game, and it doesn't surprise me when people opt out. They didn't have insurance before for a reason; why would they want it now? There's no benefit. The system is broken, and Obamacare doesn't fix it, it only makes the brokenness permanent and rigs the game to ensure that you and I keep on paying for everyone else, like we have been all along. And anyone who buys insurance stops being a receiver and starts being a giver. That's a fool's choice. It's a protection racket, only instead of breaking our legs they threaten to bankrupt us with astronomical bills.
The solution is to control costs. We can start by dismantling the AMA's medieval "doctors guild" and reining in the lawyers. Insurance should not be necessary.
Funny, everyone complains about the disparity between the rich and the rest of us, but they fail to see that the whole point of insurance is so that the privileged can extort ridiculous amounts of money from everyone else, for services we cannot refuse. If there were no insurance, they could bill us but they wouldn't get paid. So who benefits from insurance? After all, we are still guaranteed basic ER treatment even if we can't pay. No, insurance benefits the rich, by guaranteeing their paychecks at the expense of the poor. And since the poor can't afford it, they put us on a lifetime payment plan called an insurance policy, selling us their service whether we actually use it or not.
We are told we are free. We are told that our money and our property is our own. We are told that our government answers to us. We are told we are not socialist. And most of us believe these things, though none of them are true the way we think they are, they are only illusions. The system keeps us indentured economically. It is designed to, because those who profit from it also control it. Over many decades we were lured in voluntarily, we have been giving up our rights and our freedom and our voice in exchange for toys and promises and pleasures. And that was our own fault for being selfish and greedy; though we were also tricked. But now it is becoming more and more entrenched in law, and where once we had to give these things voluntarily, now they are increasingly being taken.
I sympathize with people who have little or no health coverage. It has to be horrible and frightening. However, the fact of the matter and the fact of this world is that things aren't free and better things are more expensive. Especially in health care. The solution isn't "gimme shit free you guise!". The solution has to involve targeting the fucking ridiculous expenses. Why isn't anyone doing that? The reason we have to come up with these complex bullshit schemes for "cheap/free healthcare" that is neither of those things is because the medical industry can charge such ridiculous prices to health insurers, because health insurers disperse the cost among a great number of people and institutions. To the point where people don't quite realize how bad they're getting fucked. And, instead of people saying "fuck that, stop letting them milk prices", they say "fuck that, make my fellow man pay my way!".
I think only 44 people caring about not getting ripped by health care companies constitutes mass stupidity.
You mean only 44 people were stupid enough to fall for the rip-off, or else in sufficiently desperate medical need.
Have you actually looked at the cost/benefit of the plans in Oregon's ACA offerings? I did. The cheapest bronze plan (and the ACA is supposed to benefit the poor right?) costs 119/mo. Sounds like a bargain right? But after considering the 5250.00 deductible, and the fact that it only covers 60% of costs after the deductible is met, you'd have to spend 198.00 a month in medical bills to break even on having insurance, vs paying out of pocket.
Maybe a silver or gold plan is better? Here's the "highest quality" silver plan according to Oregon's ACA website: 242.00/mo premiums, but it doesn't pay for itself unless you have at least 300.00/mo in health costs. Invariably the better the plan, the higher the break even point, and thus the worse the value. Of course its disguised with low copays and stuff. The only way these are worthwhile is if you have very high costs, month after month.
Oh, and those are the subsidized rates. For someone like me, with an income, the premiums will be much higher, adn therefore the break even will also be correspondingly higher.
This is a huge scam... I spend maybe 300 a year... and I'm in my mid 40s, well past the point of being a "young invincible". I pay it out of pocket through a HDHP. Why would I want to go spend 1200 a year for a super cheap plan, which won't even pay anything because I'll never even get past the deductible? My out of pocket would quintuple, up to 1500/year, with absolutely no benefit.
For "young invicibles" with health costs approaching zero, one is WAY better off paying 600/year in penalties and paying your medical costs out of pocket, than getting suckered into Obamacare.
I know it's supposed to be some sort of communistic wealth redistribution. I am supposed to pay more than my fair share so that someone else can pay less than theirs. Fuck that! Why are they so special? I work for my money, I paid my dues, and no it wasn't fun. It was sacrifice. That I paid. Where the hell is my special treatment? Maybe I should quit my job and let you all support ME for free. Raise my taxes enough, take away my motivation for work and maybe I'll do just that.
Google had implicit trust due to laziness and ignorance and the whole benefit of the doubt thing. Google knew all along there is no actual privacy, but their customers didn't see it as an issue, and Google profited off the difference - exploiting and selling that data that their users did not think to protect, and offering cloud services to people who did not consider whether the cloud was secure.
The NSA scandal blew that wide open. Now their whole business model is in jeopardy. Where previously they said trust us, now everyone is saying lets go overseas to find someone trustworthy. Trust cannot be regained, so what Google needs to do is convince everyone that trust is not an issue. You can't trust us, but you really shouldn't trust anyone. And look: it won't impact your profits, and it fact it will save you a lot of money.
So Google is eating their own dog food, playing their own guinea pig. They'll work out the technologies on themselves. They'll say look its working for us, and you should do this too. If they can pull this off - simultaneously eliminate trust and save money doing it - corporate America will be compelled to follow whether they like it or not, because they can't deny the dollars. And like sheep, the public will follow whatever their corporate overlords are doing.
This has an additional benefit: Google can now say to people: hey privacy isn't our problem, it's yours. If you have something to hide that's your responsibility. This can of course be spun as "save the children" vs. "hiding criminal activity from the NSA" to give it some teeth. It lets Google totally off the hook and gives them carte blanche to do anything they want with your data. I'm thinking they'll still give us the tools to do it, but they know that most people are too lazy and complacent to bother, and those few smart or paranoid enough to do to do it will only make themselves targets to the gov't. Except for corporations, who get a free pass to maintain privacy. Once the ecosystem shifts to no trust and no privacy, and laws are passed restricting "technologies that could be used to conceal criminal activity," it will be hard to have any privacy without going offline. (And really, it already is.)
This not only saves Google's business plan, it accelerates it. I'll bet Facebook is going to be all over this too.
Customer: Hello Comcast? I would like to cancel my service.
Comcast: No can do, you have ten months left on your contract. Oh and check out our new streaming video service, for the same price as Netflix but way faster!! The first three months are free.
The internet is only "empowering" because they allow it. Which means it is not empowering at all, because they are not actually threatened by it.
It is easy to turn it off, just pull a plug. And they haven't even begun the process of locking it down. Once they mandate authentication as a prerequisite for access it's pretty much game over. Try using your phone anonymously! Seriously, would you use your phone to plan a terrorist attack? Soon the entire internet will be like that, whether we like it or not, and we'll be back to the days of clandestine face to face meetings in lonely places if we want privacy... except good luck getting there, with cameras on the street corners (Hi, UK!), drones in the air (Hi, USA!), and cars reporting your movements with GPS (whassup, Oregon!), cops demanding to see the papers of pedestrians (its for immigration, really).
The internet gives an illusion of power, an illusion of actually making your voice heard, an illusion of anonymity. Even the best anonymity we have is crackable by the NSA with sufficient motivation. Your voice? Drowned in a sea of clamor, cat pictures, celeb gossip, and media propaganda. Yet the feds can still hear you crystal clear, pick you out of the crowd and send a SWAT team to your house at 2am. Too bad they are the only ones. Slashdot, you're preaching to the choir here. It's just another soapbox illusion, gets us all riled up but we're still cooking with all the other frogs, with no escape and little hope.
Yes, although this is eventually true of men too, from what I've seen.
Many males, by the time they're in their 40s and 50s, have moved on from coding to architecture, management, multifunctional roles like customer engineering liasons, highly specialized SWE roles like JVM optimization, or have switched careers altogether. Hard to compete with the young kids who'll work 12 hours a day for pizza.
In other words, by the time the women are ready to come back, the men (of the same age) aren't generally doing that work anymore either. So it wouldn't be appropriate for women to return to that role. The main difference is that men tend to stay with it longer, through the family years, where women bail sooner. And that's good. People gravitate to what they are intereted in, and where there is demand. It is a fact that women are better at raising young kids, and more importantly they want to do it more than men do. We all know it.
The sexes are not interchangeable. They can fill the same roles, because as a rule humans are remarkably adaptable and intelligence goes a long way to compensate for gaps in natural talent. But often, one or the other will be better precisely because of talent or interest. The edge may be small but it is still significant.
For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type roles where there are a zillion little things to keep track of all at once. I don't understand why, but I often see this pattern, and I see that women often to a better job than men do in these roles. Women are better at staying home with small children; if society pushes them in that direction maybe its because there is good reason for it. Men are better at focused attention. You don't need studies to tell you this, it's everywhere, it's obvious to anyone with even a little intelligence or intuition. Of course women can be good software engineers, and depending on individual talent and interest, may be as good or better than men. Humans are varied. Some men excel at things that women are usually better at. And that's all good. But it is foolish and ignorant to pretend that there is no difference, that differences do not exist in the population as a whole.
Talent is extremely hard to measure, but interest and motivation are very easy to see. Personally I think that interest is far more important than talent. It goes back to that large brain thing. We can learn to be what we want to be. And in my opinion, most women don't want to do software engineering. Why should I care? Why they be forced to do what they don't want to do, in the name of political correctness? I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?
Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
Are they? Or are they just further along in their plans? Everything that other countries are doing, your govt wants to do, and would if they thought they could get away with it. No govt is better than others, just some leashes are shorter than others.
Easy. You get copyright on the new derived work you produce. The older work you based it on expires normally.
So with Blade Runner, after 14 years anyone can produce a 'Directors Cut' and each producer will own a 14 year copyright on their Directors Cut. As long as you can keep producing these and selling them you can keep the money flowing in and keep something copyrighted. If you slack off or run out of ideas, the gravy train ends. But either way, the public gets the use of the original.
Don't want the public to have it? Keep it as a trade secret and don't let anyone ever see it. Want to hold onto Mickey Mouse? Treat it as a trademark, not a copyright.
There is no reason the law needs be be longer than a paragraph. Keep it simple and rational. (Oh wait, this is the federal puppet government we're talking about... nevermind...)
Well yeah, but that sounds like you're gargling thumbtacks and then ends in a coughing fit. Unless you're a death metal vocalist, then it's pretty easy.
That is a simplistic view. You assume that it could be better, and you assume that people could actually choose to make it that way. The fact is people vote selfishly and foolishly, and no matter how much they are punished by the consequences, they never learn.
If I am given the choice of two evils, and I cast my vote for the what I perceive to be the lesser evil (doing my best to see through the media propaganda) in order to minimize the damage, shall I be held responsible for all that person's actions? Is it better to not vote at all, and let the candidate's cronies cast all the votes and basically run unopposed? If you don't allow me to have good choices, don't hold me accountable for bad ones.
That said, I also agree: people who vote for politicians who promise government handouts and special privileges and war deserve the corrupt government they get. In the end democracy eats itself, and so I cast my vote to delay that, knowing that we haven't really come up with a better system. Better to limp along with corrupt half functional government than embrace revolution (with all the suffering that brings), knowing that the revolution will at best only give us more of the same, and very likely something worse. Humanity is depraved and ruins everything it touches.
They are "private" companies: it is not censorship, and they are free to run their business as they see fit. If you disagree with how they do it, then start your own business selling the stuff they won't. After all, if its legal and there's a market for it, all they did by walking away is open the door for a start-up. If there's no market, or you don't wish to tar yourself by association, then don't complain that they feel the same way.
Here's how I think it will go down: At least some of this stuff is worth too much money to just ignore. The big guys like Amazon will de-list stuff to satisfy the outrage, then quietly add most of it back. They'll put a new policy in place to limit the most extreme/gross stuff (which is fine with me), and then send notices to all the affected authors/publishers that they can re-submit their titles. 99% will be quietly reinstated, we won't miss or even notice the remaining 1%, and it will be as if nothing happened. If the outrage blows back up, they'll point to their new policy, pat themselves on the back and ignore it.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, restricting government data requests to a broad range isn't very helpful
Of course it's not very helpful. It was never meant to be, nobody really expected it to be, and I'm sure they went to significant effort to ensure that no utility crept in by accident. As soon as the government allows or does anything, it is foregone that it won't be helpful or useful in any way. It is a tautology.
There should be an app for that...
You have more than you need. I know because you have a computer and free time to post on Slashdot. Why aren't you donating 90% of your pay to hunger relief? Why don't you donate it to the Federal Government for healthcare? After all, failure to do so is murder. I guarantee they'll take your check! Don't know where to send it because you're too lazy to ask? Still murder. You could at least donate it to a local shelter. You don't need more than one set of clothes either. Or a car. You don't need the computer you're staring at right now. Liquidate and donate! Or are you selfish?
Whats this about every US citizen?
Driving four abreast at the speed limit.
Reason 1: Because I have a mission critical business app (not maintained by me) that runs on 2.x, so that's what's installed on my machine as the default. Of course I have 3.x too, but to use it I have to specify the version explicitly. It's extra hoops to jump through.
Reason 2: Because I mostly use python as a fancy scripting language. For product development or serious lifting I use C. I don't particularly care if my version is 2.x, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Reason 2a: It's a flippin' scripting language. I don't want it to be more rigorous than it already is!
Reason 3: Everyone else at work relies on 2.6. Someone else is already supporting those 2.6 installations. If I make a project for 3.x, now I'm on the hook for getting everyone to install 3.x alongside their 2.x, I have to write docs, and when they have problems I have to handhold them through it. No thanks, I'll use what someone else is already supporting.
Reason 4: They are two different languages. I don't stop using C just because C++ and Java and C# exist. There is room on my system for multiple languages. Go ahead and develop whatever you want, but I will choose what I want to use. I have no obligation to learn a new language just because it makes you happy. You're the one who moved to a new sandbox, don't whine if others choose not to join you there.
Reason 5: Python 3 is similar enough to be confusing, but different enough to be aggravating. Really I just don't care enough. I think I'd rather move to a whole new language than wrestle the moving-target anaconda.
Also known as "brown matter"
Nah, it won't be the machines taking over. When machines become advanced enough, the 1% will no longer need the rest of us humans to grow their food, to make their toys, to be their servants and chauffers. Why would they pay us to do nothing? Why let us use up food and oxygen? It will be time to exterminate the teeming masses. In the name of sustainability, no doubt.
Clearly ten fingers, two buttocks, and a nose.
You and I agree on this, so don't blow a gasket. You don't want to pay for me. I don't want to pay for you. We both know that medical expenses are real and we've both taken responsibility for that.
I do have insurance (as I clearly stated), it does cover me fully if something catastrophic happens, and I can afford my deductible. Don't you think I considered the numbers before I signed up? I'm approaching 50 and there are significant medical bills in my near future. I've planned for them.
And yes I do pay, indirectly through my employer. I don't pay my premiums out of pocket, I pay them with my own sweat. It's not free and it's not cheap. And I still don't benefit from those premiums (even though they are credited to me as a taxable benefit), it all goes to paying other people's bills.
Nor am I advocating that people not buy insurance. I'm saying the PPACA is a loser's game, and it doesn't surprise me when people opt out. They didn't have insurance before for a reason; why would they want it now? There's no benefit. The system is broken, and Obamacare doesn't fix it, it only makes the brokenness permanent and rigs the game to ensure that you and I keep on paying for everyone else, like we have been all along. And anyone who buys insurance stops being a receiver and starts being a giver. That's a fool's choice. It's a protection racket, only instead of breaking our legs they threaten to bankrupt us with astronomical bills.
The solution is to control costs. We can start by dismantling the AMA's medieval "doctors guild" and reining in the lawyers. Insurance should not be necessary.
Funny, everyone complains about the disparity between the rich and the rest of us, but they fail to see that the whole point of insurance is so that the privileged can extort ridiculous amounts of money from everyone else, for services we cannot refuse. If there were no insurance, they could bill us but they wouldn't get paid. So who benefits from insurance? After all, we are still guaranteed basic ER treatment even if we can't pay. No, insurance benefits the rich, by guaranteeing their paychecks at the expense of the poor. And since the poor can't afford it, they put us on a lifetime payment plan called an insurance policy, selling us their service whether we actually use it or not.
We are told we are free. We are told that our money and our property is our own. We are told that our government answers to us. We are told we are not socialist. And most of us believe these things, though none of them are true the way we think they are, they are only illusions. The system keeps us indentured economically. It is designed to, because those who profit from it also control it. Over many decades we were lured in voluntarily, we have been giving up our rights and our freedom and our voice in exchange for toys and promises and pleasures. And that was our own fault for being selfish and greedy; though we were also tricked. But now it is becoming more and more entrenched in law, and where once we had to give these things voluntarily, now they are increasingly being taken.
I sympathize with people who have little or no health coverage. It has to be horrible and frightening. However, the fact of the matter and the fact of this world is that things aren't free and better things are more expensive. Especially in health care. The solution isn't "gimme shit free you guise!". The solution has to involve targeting the fucking ridiculous expenses. Why isn't anyone doing that? The reason we have to come up with these complex bullshit schemes for "cheap/free healthcare" that is neither of those things is because the medical industry can charge such ridiculous prices to health insurers, because health insurers disperse the cost among a great number of people and institutions. To the point where people don't quite realize how bad they're getting fucked. And, instead of people saying "fuck that, stop letting them milk prices", they say "fuck that, make my fellow man pay my way!".
Exactly. Quoted because it needs to be repeated.
I think only 44 people caring about not getting ripped by health care companies constitutes mass stupidity.
You mean only 44 people were stupid enough to fall for the rip-off, or else in sufficiently desperate medical need.
Have you actually looked at the cost/benefit of the plans in Oregon's ACA offerings? I did. The cheapest bronze plan (and the ACA is supposed to benefit the poor right?) costs 119/mo. Sounds like a bargain right? But after considering the 5250.00 deductible, and the fact that it only covers 60% of costs after the deductible is met, you'd have to spend 198.00 a month in medical bills to break even on having insurance, vs paying out of pocket.
Maybe a silver or gold plan is better? Here's the "highest quality" silver plan according to Oregon's ACA website: 242.00/mo premiums, but it doesn't pay for itself unless you have at least 300.00/mo in health costs. Invariably the better the plan, the higher the break even point, and thus the worse the value. Of course its disguised with low copays and stuff. The only way these are worthwhile is if you have very high costs, month after month.
Oh, and those are the subsidized rates. For someone like me, with an income, the premiums will be much higher, adn therefore the break even will also be correspondingly higher.
This is a huge scam... I spend maybe 300 a year... and I'm in my mid 40s, well past the point of being a "young invincible". I pay it out of pocket through a HDHP. Why would I want to go spend 1200 a year for a super cheap plan, which won't even pay anything because I'll never even get past the deductible? My out of pocket would quintuple, up to 1500/year, with absolutely no benefit.
For "young invicibles" with health costs approaching zero, one is WAY better off paying 600/year in penalties and paying your medical costs out of pocket, than getting suckered into Obamacare.
I know it's supposed to be some sort of communistic wealth redistribution. I am supposed to pay more than my fair share so that someone else can pay less than theirs. Fuck that! Why are they so special? I work for my money, I paid my dues, and no it wasn't fun. It was sacrifice. That I paid. Where the hell is my special treatment? Maybe I should quit my job and let you all support ME for free. Raise my taxes enough, take away my motivation for work and maybe I'll do just that.
Bacon lubricant (lard) on a sandwich? What are you, German?
Google had implicit trust due to laziness and ignorance and the whole benefit of the doubt thing. Google knew all along there is no actual privacy, but their customers didn't see it as an issue, and Google profited off the difference - exploiting and selling that data that their users did not think to protect, and offering cloud services to people who did not consider whether the cloud was secure.
The NSA scandal blew that wide open. Now their whole business model is in jeopardy. Where previously they said trust us, now everyone is saying lets go overseas to find someone trustworthy. Trust cannot be regained, so what Google needs to do is convince everyone that trust is not an issue. You can't trust us, but you really shouldn't trust anyone. And look: it won't impact your profits, and it fact it will save you a lot of money.
So Google is eating their own dog food, playing their own guinea pig. They'll work out the technologies on themselves. They'll say look its working for us, and you should do this too. If they can pull this off - simultaneously eliminate trust and save money doing it - corporate America will be compelled to follow whether they like it or not, because they can't deny the dollars. And like sheep, the public will follow whatever their corporate overlords are doing.
This has an additional benefit: Google can now say to people: hey privacy isn't our problem, it's yours. If you have something to hide that's your responsibility. This can of course be spun as "save the children" vs. "hiding criminal activity from the NSA" to give it some teeth. It lets Google totally off the hook and gives them carte blanche to do anything they want with your data. I'm thinking they'll still give us the tools to do it, but they know that most people are too lazy and complacent to bother, and those few smart or paranoid enough to do to do it will only make themselves targets to the gov't. Except for corporations, who get a free pass to maintain privacy. Once the ecosystem shifts to no trust and no privacy, and laws are passed restricting "technologies that could be used to conceal criminal activity," it will be hard to have any privacy without going offline. (And really, it already is.)
This not only saves Google's business plan, it accelerates it. I'll bet Facebook is going to be all over this too.
Customer: Hello Comcast? I would like to cancel my service.
Comcast: No can do, you have ten months left on your contract. Oh and check out our new streaming video service, for the same price as Netflix but way faster!! The first three months are free.
Customer: Yay!
The internet is only "empowering" because they allow it. Which means it is not empowering at all, because they are not actually threatened by it.
It is easy to turn it off, just pull a plug. And they haven't even begun the process of locking it down. Once they mandate authentication as a prerequisite for access it's pretty much game over. Try using your phone anonymously! Seriously, would you use your phone to plan a terrorist attack? Soon the entire internet will be like that, whether we like it or not, and we'll be back to the days of clandestine face to face meetings in lonely places if we want privacy... except good luck getting there, with cameras on the street corners (Hi, UK!), drones in the air (Hi, USA!), and cars reporting your movements with GPS (whassup, Oregon!), cops demanding to see the papers of pedestrians (its for immigration, really).
The internet gives an illusion of power, an illusion of actually making your voice heard, an illusion of anonymity. Even the best anonymity we have is crackable by the NSA with sufficient motivation. Your voice? Drowned in a sea of clamor, cat pictures, celeb gossip, and media propaganda. Yet the feds can still hear you crystal clear, pick you out of the crowd and send a SWAT team to your house at 2am. Too bad they are the only ones. Slashdot, you're preaching to the choir here. It's just another soapbox illusion, gets us all riled up but we're still cooking with all the other frogs, with no escape and little hope.
Exactly. The incumbent ISP has the benefit of privileges granted by the pubic.
But sadly, the privileges often end up being no-hairs-attached.
Ah yes, meat emissions. That says it all, I think.
Yes, although this is eventually true of men too, from what I've seen.
Many males, by the time they're in their 40s and 50s, have moved on from coding to architecture, management, multifunctional roles like customer engineering liasons, highly specialized SWE roles like JVM optimization, or have switched careers altogether. Hard to compete with the young kids who'll work 12 hours a day for pizza.
In other words, by the time the women are ready to come back, the men (of the same age) aren't generally doing that work anymore either. So it wouldn't be appropriate for women to return to that role. The main difference is that men tend to stay with it longer, through the family years, where women bail sooner. And that's good. People gravitate to what they are intereted in, and where there is demand. It is a fact that women are better at raising young kids, and more importantly they want to do it more than men do. We all know it.
The sexes are not interchangeable. They can fill the same roles, because as a rule humans are remarkably adaptable and intelligence goes a long way to compensate for gaps in natural talent. But often, one or the other will be better precisely because of talent or interest. The edge may be small but it is still significant.
For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type roles where there are a zillion little things to keep track of all at once. I don't understand why, but I often see this pattern, and I see that women often to a better job than men do in these roles. Women are better at staying home with small children; if society pushes them in that direction maybe its because there is good reason for it. Men are better at focused attention. You don't need studies to tell you this, it's everywhere, it's obvious to anyone with even a little intelligence or intuition. Of course women can be good software engineers, and depending on individual talent and interest, may be as good or better than men. Humans are varied. Some men excel at things that women are usually better at. And that's all good. But it is foolish and ignorant to pretend that there is no difference, that differences do not exist in the population as a whole.
Talent is extremely hard to measure, but interest and motivation are very easy to see. Personally I think that interest is far more important than talent. It goes back to that large brain thing. We can learn to be what we want to be. And in my opinion, most women don't want to do software engineering. Why should I care? Why they be forced to do what they don't want to do, in the name of political correctness? I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?
Wake up, everyone: a lot of other countries are a lot worse and deserve your vitriol more.
Are they? Or are they just further along in their plans? Everything that other countries are doing, your govt wants to do, and would if they thought they could get away with it. No govt is better than others, just some leashes are shorter than others.
LMAO!
Easy. You get copyright on the new derived work you produce. The older work you based it on expires normally.
So with Blade Runner, after 14 years anyone can produce a 'Directors Cut' and each producer will own a 14 year copyright on their Directors Cut. As long as you can keep producing these and selling them you can keep the money flowing in and keep something copyrighted. If you slack off or run out of ideas, the gravy train ends. But either way, the public gets the use of the original.
Don't want the public to have it? Keep it as a trade secret and don't let anyone ever see it. Want to hold onto Mickey Mouse? Treat it as a trademark, not a copyright.
There is no reason the law needs be be longer than a paragraph. Keep it simple and rational. (Oh wait, this is the federal puppet government we're talking about... nevermind...)
Well yeah, but that sounds like you're gargling thumbtacks and then ends in a coughing fit. Unless you're a death metal vocalist, then it's pretty easy.
That is a simplistic view. You assume that it could be better, and you assume that people could actually choose to make it that way. The fact is people vote selfishly and foolishly, and no matter how much they are punished by the consequences, they never learn.
If I am given the choice of two evils, and I cast my vote for the what I perceive to be the lesser evil (doing my best to see through the media propaganda) in order to minimize the damage, shall I be held responsible for all that person's actions? Is it better to not vote at all, and let the candidate's cronies cast all the votes and basically run unopposed? If you don't allow me to have good choices, don't hold me accountable for bad ones.
That said, I also agree: people who vote for politicians who promise government handouts and special privileges and war deserve the corrupt government they get. In the end democracy eats itself, and so I cast my vote to delay that, knowing that we haven't really come up with a better system. Better to limp along with corrupt half functional government than embrace revolution (with all the suffering that brings), knowing that the revolution will at best only give us more of the same, and very likely something worse. Humanity is depraved and ruins everything it touches.
They are "private" companies: it is not censorship, and they are free to run their business as they see fit. If you disagree with how they do it, then start your own business selling the stuff they won't. After all, if its legal and there's a market for it, all they did by walking away is open the door for a start-up. If there's no market, or you don't wish to tar yourself by association, then don't complain that they feel the same way.
Here's how I think it will go down: At least some of this stuff is worth too much money to just ignore. The big guys like Amazon will de-list stuff to satisfy the outrage, then quietly add most of it back. They'll put a new policy in place to limit the most extreme/gross stuff (which is fine with me), and then send notices to all the affected authors/publishers that they can re-submit their titles. 99% will be quietly reinstated, we won't miss or even notice the remaining 1%, and it will be as if nothing happened. If the outrage blows back up, they'll point to their new policy, pat themselves on the back and ignore it.