When I watched Star Trek back in the early 90's, I guess I assumed that all of the processing of voice input was happening right there locally in the computer. Heck, even in the late 90's and early 2000's, our desktop computers had text-to-speech software that didn't require an internet connection. So why did developers decide that all of that processing had to happen remotely, with voice recordings being transmitted to some server?
That, and all the damn analytics, is enough to keep me away. I don't mind, for example, being under the watchful eye of the camera system that I set up to record to a computer with no internet connection. I do mind, especially given the poor track record of IOT device security, when my devices transmit that audio and video to another party that I can be guaranteed is analyzing and using the data for advertising, profiling, or other purposes.
I don't think that's quite right. Do you know of a city in the USA where the number of free travel lanes on an interstate has been reduced to accommodate HOT lanes? The ones I'm familiar with, the HOT lanes were added onto the shoulder or median. The northwest corridor project in Atlanta, for example, the new lanes are being built above the existing travel lanes on a causeway. IIRC there is even a federal law that prevents any more existing interstate lanes from being converted to toll.
What's to stop them from adding a logo or ad banner directly onto the image so that, for example, the bottom 1/4 of the embedded image contains "Hosted by Photobucket, and sponsored by..."
If Ebay or Etsy have an issue with that, they can easily prevent embedded images from Photobucket in posts on their site and force their users to utilize another service.
Four out of five dentists agree... that if you poll a large enough sample size and are dishonest in how you report the numbers, you can get statistics to say anything. Did they have to ask 500 ISPs to find those 22?
Issues like LGBT equality, abortion, and the like are only given so much attention because the relatively small percentage of people who actually care strongly about those things are the same people who show up to vote. It's well known that groups like young millenials and racial minorities don't turn up at the polls in as high percentages as older, white, middle class fundamentalist conservatives, so politicians focus on the issues that are most likely to mobilize that voter base.
Regardless of what one thinks about Trump and the far right, his campaign promises and politics fall in line perfectly with what the most vocal, most likely to turn up at the polls, voters wanted to hear. It turned out to be a brilliant strategy.
I live in an extremely conservative state, and run in some circles that are traditionally very far to the right, and even still I'd say that less than one in 20 people I know are religious fundamentalists or ardent Trump supporters who get fired up about those issues, while maybe 10 percent toe the party line just because, but a majority either don't express political views openly or are fairly moderate in their thinking and couldn't care less about issues like LGBT rights or other things that don't impact them personally. Maybe 5-10% of my acquaintances are on the far left side of the political spectrum, and care passionately about things like marriage equality and gun restrictions.
But who shows up in greater numbers at the polls to vote in every primary and general election? It's that 15 percent on the right who are the most vocal about the hot button issues.
You extrapolate 'bearing arms' to owning whatever catastrophically powerful weapons that you care to list.
No, they don't. Go back and reread the second to last paragraph.
Besides, the analysis of the historical meaning and interpretation of the constitution that they outlined is almost universally accepted as valid. It takes a very creative reinterpretation of both language and the glut of historic evidence to suggest that the second amendment didn't originally apply to the need for... a well armed militia composed of The People.
You may have heard the phrase "living document" applied to the constitution... and while, yes, that terms is very politically loaded, I'd suggest doing a little research on it if you want to learn a little about the various ways that people on all sides of the political spectrum attempt to interpret that "ancient document" in light of modern society. The constitution itself actually spells out the means by which the document can be revised or terminated (hence, the many amendments that have been added over the years) but up to this point the nation as a whole has decided to continue to amend and reinterpret the constitution rather than throw it out.
GP said they never check at the gate. Your id will always be checked at the security line.
The only time I've ever had a gate agent check ID, was when trying to make an itinerary change to a buddy/standby pass at the gate when nobody in our party had their airline ID badge visible.
I have a bottle of that very same stuff in my lab right now, same grade, from the same supplier. Notice the the terms "Reagent Grade" and "Assay Percent Range 99%"? Those mean that, in reality, it's not exactly high quality.
What's the other 1%? Well, on the side of the bottle is listed a "certificate of analysis" that includes, among other things, lead, copper, sulfur, and chloride ions along with their approximate concentrations. Still want that in your body? Well, for what I use it for (creating buffer solutions) I don't care if those are present, but if I need the ACS/analytical/pharmaceutical grades, those are going to cost significantly more (they start at around $60 for the same quantity rather than $8 for that bottle of low purity stuff you linked to).
Trump does this because it's part of his style, and it's worked well for him in the past as a leadership strategy: throw a bunch of stuff out there and see what sticks, then shrug off as a joke or hyperbole the stuff that gets a bad response. It serves at least four purposes:
- it keeps opponents on their toes since they're never quite sure when he is exaggerating or not.
- it plays well into "dog whistle" politics because supporters can outwardly claim that some appalling statement wasn't really serious, while secretly convincing themselves that it really was.
- makes it easy to get rid of underlings. You failed to accomplish the task I gave you? You don't know me well enough to know that I was serious about it this one time? You're fired!
- allows him to shirk responsibility for failure. Oh, that plan didn't actually work out? I never meant for it to anyway.
I used to work under a boss who had this same leadership style, and I'll say this: as an employee, it sucked.
Did you just dismiss a book on the subject and then offer your own off-the-cuff opinion as fact?
Maybe they did, but I can't say I blame them. The book summary provides no evidence for any of the author's claims, and given that the Mises Institute is an ultra-libertarian think tank that also proposes privatizing everything from police to navigable waterways and aquifers, I can't say I'm convinced either. I lean libertarian myself, but I find many of their positions to be extreme.
I have a friend who pays $250 a year dues to a road association that maintains (contracts to maintain) the roads in her area. That's 7% of the Town's taxes on the same property and they don't maintain those rural roads.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused there. I think you're saying that these are dues that she pays voluntarily and not a mandatory fee or tax (say, as in a homeowners association)? Is $250 equal to 7% of the total property taxes that she pays? Is the maintained area a private road, a neighborhood, all the roads in the town, the rural roads outside of the town, or all of the above?
So then just use something like uBlock Origin with one of the anti-adblock lists enabled.
Website owners can implement adblock checks all they want, but somebody will come along and develop a way to circumvent it. When the website gets updated, someone will just update the blocklist again. the more popular the website, generally the shorter the delay. Each time it happens, the site developers need to expend time and resources if they want to stay on top of the arms race.
The baby boomers voted to give themselves those things when they had retired.
Exactly! And you how much I would love to be able to make the same choice! After retirement, my father is able to draw from a pension and a 401(k) from the two employers he worked at over his lifetime, and it's more than enough to live comfortably. At this point I only have the latter, and it will not be nearly enough to support even my basic needs when I retire. And for the very reasons you mention, it's nearly impossible for me to save beyond that. What savings I do have, I pray that nobody in my family ever has a major illness, because even with insurance it would be wiped out overnight.
Who was is that said, the old American dream was a house in the suburbs, two cars, and a pension; the new American dream is being able to afford the rent?
Mostly what Kurig got right is that it's actually a single serving electric kettle that makes few assumptions about what you want to pour water over/into.
The cofee makers I'm familiar with make the mistake of assuming that you always want the same beverage (coffee, and often a single blend of coffee) and use a single hopper that may not work for otehr types of beverages at all. The also often dispense several servings at once.
That works poorly in a shared environment like an office (or family residence) where different people like different things and people are more willing to wait their turn for the devoice than to wait for the device to finish dispensing for everyone.
That's true of the more expensive Keurig devices, but the entry level ones I've seen used most often in offices are actually very basic, only brew one way, and are actually more work and time than simply using a small four-cup drip coffeemaker. The one in our office, you have to pour in a single serving of water (it doesn't have a large reservoir like the fancier ones do) then insert the cup and fold over the top, and hit the brew button and wait for it to warm up. In the time it takes to brew two cups you could have made two pots of "4 cups" and split that between 3-4 people, or one 10-cup pot and split it between everyone.
Heck, for the cost of one of the more expensive Keurig machines (not to mention the K-cups) you can buy a really cheap steam espresso machine that makes coffee the way you want it. For $100-200 you can easily find something used that's not as top-of-the-line as something you'd see at a coffee shop, but that still makes a great cup of coffee and even steams milk. Sure, it can be a lot of work, but I can prepare just about any beverage imaginable from a simple americano (espresso diluted with hot water until it's drop coffee strength) to cappuccinos and mochas if I'm so inclined. Buy some syrups and a can of whipped cream and you can make up a beverage that rivals just about anything a coffee shop would sell but at a fraction of the cost.
I suppose convenience is a factor, though. At work my compromise (because I can't stand the crappy stuff that comes in K-cups) is to fill a reusable filter with my favorite grind. The filter cost about $10 and the coffee can be whatever I want to use, but almost everybody else still insists on using the disposable cups... because they don't like to have to rinse out the used grounds from the filter.
There are two factors at play here. One, employers these days no longer offer as many incentives that lead to employee retention, and instead treat them as a disposable "human resource" to be squeezed in the eternal quest to maximize profit. It's virtually impossible to find an employer with a pension plan any more, and even benefits such as retirement and health insurance are becoming increasingly rare.
All of those benefits were taken for granted 30 years ago. When I was growing up in the 80's, the assumption was that you go to college, get a degree, then immediately get hired by a company and start building your retirement savings and pension while slowly working your way up the corporate ladder within the organization. These days, that's not as common. The baby boomers had those things, and lived under the assumption that each generation would be a little more well off than the last. Thus we were all told that if we worked just a little harder, we'd be more successful at the American dream.
Second, the loss of benefits and the downward trend of wages meant that more of us in the gen-x/pre-millenial generation spent years trying to delude ourselves that those types of job benefits were "just around the corner" and that our current job was just a stepping stone to the career that would give us job security and retirement savings. Now the reality of the new economy has set in and the benefits are vanishing, and most millennials have realized that in many cases the job they have is as good as it's going to get. Switching employers is also getting harder because there is so much competition these days; an opening that at one time would get 20-30 applicants now receives hundreds of applications from people looking for that elusive career.
See, that just goes to show you how risky it is to use a phone while driving... AC managed to accidentally tap both the Preview AND submit buttons before they finished typing!
Early iterations of MacOS made a distinction between aplications and desk accessories; one notable difference being that only one of the former could be run at a time while the latter included small utilities such as a calculator and stickies that could be run simultaneously. Features that we take for granted such as multithreading, hierarchical file systems with folders, and a command line came later, and have since become ubiquitous. Well, except on iOS which has removed some of that functionality... it's interesting how things have come full circle.
There's nothing hypocritical about making a distinction between not wanting countless unknown entities (i.e. advertisers) tracking one's every move on the internet, and wanting to participate in an online discussion anonymously. Those are two completely separate issues. If I want to contribute to discussion here I do so by choice, and I voluntarily give up a small amount of privacy to do so.
That being said, I do support changing the rules for AC posting (even though it'll probably never happen) as follows: allow AC posts only from logged in users, and tie negative moderation (but not positive) to their karma. Then, at least, abusive posts are traceable back to an account, though not by normal users, and there is still reduced incentive act the part of a troll. Sure, someone could just create new throwaway accounts, but it adds one more hurdle.
One thing you can be sure of, they'll go out of their way to ensure as painful experience as possible for those using services not in the "fast lane". Notice the key text in TFS "to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content" (emphasis mine) but you can guarantee that there will be no limits on how slow the base service will be, and certainly the minimum speed will be so slow as to be ludicrous. Want more than 256kbps access to our select bundle of websites included in this premium package? Pay for the fast lane!
Telcos already pulled crap like this in past decades. Back in the 90's we had a house in a rural area, and there was some big push to get phone/dialup service to rural residents. We had a 28k modem at the time, and after upgrading to a blazing fast 56k we discovered no increase in speed. After some back and forth, and numerous technicians concluding that the issue was in the external lines and not because of a wiring issue in hour house, the phone company ultimately refused to do anything because, apparently, they were only required to provide up to 14kbps! Even by 1995 standards that was slow enough as to be practically unusable.
And why the hell would you just single out video games.
Probably because they were posting to a/. discussion about... video games?
I do agree that our popular media tend to take death more lightly than they should at times (images of 90's action movies in which gun-wielding heroes mow down streams of bad guys come to mind) but I can say that I've seen proportionally more movies than video games that treat death as a serious subject with a broad range of implications for the surviving characters.
I take it you've never experienced real poverty? $300 over 5 years ($60 a year) might seem minuscule to you, and honestly it doesn't seem like much to me either, but to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck and has to constantly choose between, say, buying groceries this week or paying the water bill so that it doesn't get cut off again, saving money can be virtually impossible.
I know it's popular these days to brush off those in poverty and accuse them of either making bad choices, or squandering their money, or being lazy, but some of the poorest people I know are also some of the most disciplined. It takes more discipline than I have to live off of white bread and sliced cheese for three days so that you can pay an electric bill, or to stay home on a Friday night because the $4 that you'd spend on bus fare or gasoline to visit a friend across town is needed for the laundromat, but those are the types of choices that people in poverty have to face every day!
To someone in the middle class, $60 a year on shoes doesn't seem like much. What about clothes? A winter coat? Furniture? Blankets for your bed? And god forbid you want some luxury item like a vacuum cleaner or you have an unexpected medical expense.
It does make a difference if the ban covers a hub city for that airline. Say you are flying from Paris to Chicago and have a choice of flying on Emirates with a layover in a laptop ban country, versus flying an American carrier with a layover in Germany. This could sway that decision.
You know what's even worse? Trying to hide those tabletop kiosks from a toddler. Our two-year old sees the screen and wants to play with it, and it doesn't help that they load it up with rotating pictures of desserts and other goodies, but also advertisements for cute games... which, conveniently, you have to pay to play. I'm over having to sit with the thing in my lap the entire meal, so I'd rather just avoid those restaurants these days.
Slashdot Mirror
When I watched Star Trek back in the early 90's, I guess I assumed that all of the processing of voice input was happening right there locally in the computer. Heck, even in the late 90's and early 2000's, our desktop computers had text-to-speech software that didn't require an internet connection. So why did developers decide that all of that processing had to happen remotely, with voice recordings being transmitted to some server?
That, and all the damn analytics, is enough to keep me away. I don't mind, for example, being under the watchful eye of the camera system that I set up to record to a computer with no internet connection. I do mind, especially given the poor track record of IOT device security, when my devices transmit that audio and video to another party that I can be guaranteed is analyzing and using the data for advertising, profiling, or other purposes.
I don't think that's quite right. Do you know of a city in the USA where the number of free travel lanes on an interstate has been reduced to accommodate HOT lanes? The ones I'm familiar with, the HOT lanes were added onto the shoulder or median. The northwest corridor project in Atlanta, for example, the new lanes are being built above the existing travel lanes on a causeway. IIRC there is even a federal law that prevents any more existing interstate lanes from being converted to toll.
What's to stop them from adding a logo or ad banner directly onto the image so that, for example, the bottom 1/4 of the embedded image contains "Hosted by Photobucket, and sponsored by..."
If Ebay or Etsy have an issue with that, they can easily prevent embedded images from Photobucket in posts on their site and force their users to utilize another service.
Four out of five dentists agree... that if you poll a large enough sample size and are dishonest in how you report the numbers, you can get statistics to say anything. Did they have to ask 500 ISPs to find those 22?
Issues like LGBT equality, abortion, and the like are only given so much attention because the relatively small percentage of people who actually care strongly about those things are the same people who show up to vote. It's well known that groups like young millenials and racial minorities don't turn up at the polls in as high percentages as older, white, middle class fundamentalist conservatives, so politicians focus on the issues that are most likely to mobilize that voter base.
Regardless of what one thinks about Trump and the far right, his campaign promises and politics fall in line perfectly with what the most vocal, most likely to turn up at the polls, voters wanted to hear. It turned out to be a brilliant strategy.
I live in an extremely conservative state, and run in some circles that are traditionally very far to the right, and even still I'd say that less than one in 20 people I know are religious fundamentalists or ardent Trump supporters who get fired up about those issues, while maybe 10 percent toe the party line just because, but a majority either don't express political views openly or are fairly moderate in their thinking and couldn't care less about issues like LGBT rights or other things that don't impact them personally. Maybe 5-10% of my acquaintances are on the far left side of the political spectrum, and care passionately about things like marriage equality and gun restrictions.
But who shows up in greater numbers at the polls to vote in every primary and general election? It's that 15 percent on the right who are the most vocal about the hot button issues.
You extrapolate 'bearing arms' to owning whatever catastrophically powerful weapons that you care to list.
No, they don't. Go back and reread the second to last paragraph.
Besides, the analysis of the historical meaning and interpretation of the constitution that they outlined is almost universally accepted as valid. It takes a very creative reinterpretation of both language and the glut of historic evidence to suggest that the second amendment didn't originally apply to the need for... a well armed militia composed of The People.
You may have heard the phrase "living document" applied to the constitution... and while, yes, that terms is very politically loaded, I'd suggest doing a little research on it if you want to learn a little about the various ways that people on all sides of the political spectrum attempt to interpret that "ancient document" in light of modern society. The constitution itself actually spells out the means by which the document can be revised or terminated (hence, the many amendments that have been added over the years) but up to this point the nation as a whole has decided to continue to amend and reinterpret the constitution rather than throw it out.
GP said they never check at the gate. Your id will always be checked at the security line.
The only time I've ever had a gate agent check ID, was when trying to make an itinerary change to a buddy/standby pass at the gate when nobody in our party had their airline ID badge visible.
I have a bottle of that very same stuff in my lab right now, same grade, from the same supplier. Notice the the terms "Reagent Grade" and "Assay Percent Range 99%"? Those mean that, in reality, it's not exactly high quality.
What's the other 1%? Well, on the side of the bottle is listed a "certificate of analysis" that includes, among other things, lead, copper, sulfur, and chloride ions along with their approximate concentrations. Still want that in your body? Well, for what I use it for (creating buffer solutions) I don't care if those are present, but if I need the ACS/analytical/pharmaceutical grades, those are going to cost significantly more (they start at around $60 for the same quantity rather than $8 for that bottle of low purity stuff you linked to).
Trump does this because it's part of his style, and it's worked well for him in the past as a leadership strategy: throw a bunch of stuff out there and see what sticks, then shrug off as a joke or hyperbole the stuff that gets a bad response. It serves at least four purposes:
- it keeps opponents on their toes since they're never quite sure when he is exaggerating or not.
- it plays well into "dog whistle" politics because supporters can outwardly claim that some appalling statement wasn't really serious, while secretly convincing themselves that it really was.
- makes it easy to get rid of underlings. You failed to accomplish the task I gave you? You don't know me well enough to know that I was serious about it this one time? You're fired!
- allows him to shirk responsibility for failure. Oh, that plan didn't actually work out? I never meant for it to anyway.
I used to work under a boss who had this same leadership style, and I'll say this: as an employee, it sucked.
Did you just dismiss a book on the subject and then offer your own off-the-cuff opinion as fact?
Maybe they did, but I can't say I blame them. The book summary provides no evidence for any of the author's claims, and given that the Mises Institute is an ultra-libertarian think tank that also proposes privatizing everything from police to navigable waterways and aquifers, I can't say I'm convinced either. I lean libertarian myself, but I find many of their positions to be extreme.
I have a friend who pays $250 a year dues to a road association that maintains (contracts to maintain) the roads in her area. That's 7% of the Town's taxes on the same property and they don't maintain those rural roads.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused there. I think you're saying that these are dues that she pays voluntarily and not a mandatory fee or tax (say, as in a homeowners association)? Is $250 equal to 7% of the total property taxes that she pays? Is the maintained area a private road, a neighborhood, all the roads in the town, the rural roads outside of the town, or all of the above?
So then just use something like uBlock Origin with one of the anti-adblock lists enabled.
Website owners can implement adblock checks all they want, but somebody will come along and develop a way to circumvent it. When the website gets updated, someone will just update the blocklist again. the more popular the website, generally the shorter the delay. Each time it happens, the site developers need to expend time and resources if they want to stay on top of the arms race.
The baby boomers voted to give themselves those things when they had retired.
Exactly! And you how much I would love to be able to make the same choice! After retirement, my father is able to draw from a pension and a 401(k) from the two employers he worked at over his lifetime, and it's more than enough to live comfortably. At this point I only have the latter, and it will not be nearly enough to support even my basic needs when I retire. And for the very reasons you mention, it's nearly impossible for me to save beyond that. What savings I do have, I pray that nobody in my family ever has a major illness, because even with insurance it would be wiped out overnight.
Who was is that said, the old American dream was a house in the suburbs, two cars, and a pension; the new American dream is being able to afford the rent?
Mostly what Kurig got right is that it's actually a single serving electric kettle that makes few assumptions about what you want to pour water over/into.
The cofee makers I'm familiar with make the mistake of assuming that you always want the same beverage (coffee, and often a single blend of coffee) and use a single hopper that may not work for otehr types of beverages at all. The also often dispense several servings at once.
That works poorly in a shared environment like an office (or family residence) where different people like different things and people are more willing to wait their turn for the devoice than to wait for the device to finish dispensing for everyone.
That's true of the more expensive Keurig devices, but the entry level ones I've seen used most often in offices are actually very basic, only brew one way, and are actually more work and time than simply using a small four-cup drip coffeemaker. The one in our office, you have to pour in a single serving of water (it doesn't have a large reservoir like the fancier ones do) then insert the cup and fold over the top, and hit the brew button and wait for it to warm up. In the time it takes to brew two cups you could have made two pots of "4 cups" and split that between 3-4 people, or one 10-cup pot and split it between everyone.
Heck, for the cost of one of the more expensive Keurig machines (not to mention the K-cups) you can buy a really cheap steam espresso machine that makes coffee the way you want it. For $100-200 you can easily find something used that's not as top-of-the-line as something you'd see at a coffee shop, but that still makes a great cup of coffee and even steams milk. Sure, it can be a lot of work, but I can prepare just about any beverage imaginable from a simple americano (espresso diluted with hot water until it's drop coffee strength) to cappuccinos and mochas if I'm so inclined. Buy some syrups and a can of whipped cream and you can make up a beverage that rivals just about anything a coffee shop would sell but at a fraction of the cost.
I suppose convenience is a factor, though. At work my compromise (because I can't stand the crappy stuff that comes in K-cups) is to fill a reusable filter with my favorite grind. The filter cost about $10 and the coffee can be whatever I want to use, but almost everybody else still insists on using the disposable cups... because they don't like to have to rinse out the used grounds from the filter.
There are two factors at play here. One, employers these days no longer offer as many incentives that lead to employee retention, and instead treat them as a disposable "human resource" to be squeezed in the eternal quest to maximize profit. It's virtually impossible to find an employer with a pension plan any more, and even benefits such as retirement and health insurance are becoming increasingly rare.
All of those benefits were taken for granted 30 years ago. When I was growing up in the 80's, the assumption was that you go to college, get a degree, then immediately get hired by a company and start building your retirement savings and pension while slowly working your way up the corporate ladder within the organization. These days, that's not as common. The baby boomers had those things, and lived under the assumption that each generation would be a little more well off than the last. Thus we were all told that if we worked just a little harder, we'd be more successful at the American dream.
Second, the loss of benefits and the downward trend of wages meant that more of us in the gen-x/pre-millenial generation spent years trying to delude ourselves that those types of job benefits were "just around the corner" and that our current job was just a stepping stone to the career that would give us job security and retirement savings. Now the reality of the new economy has set in and the benefits are vanishing, and most millennials have realized that in many cases the job they have is as good as it's going to get. Switching employers is also getting harder because there is so much competition these days; an opening that at one time would get 20-30 applicants now receives hundreds of applications from people looking for that elusive career.
See, that just goes to show you how risky it is to use a phone while driving... AC managed to accidentally tap both the Preview AND submit buttons before they finished typing!
Early iterations of MacOS made a distinction between aplications and desk accessories; one notable difference being that only one of the former could be run at a time while the latter included small utilities such as a calculator and stickies that could be run simultaneously. Features that we take for granted such as multithreading, hierarchical file systems with folders, and a command line came later, and have since become ubiquitous. Well, except on iOS which has removed some of that functionality... it's interesting how things have come full circle.
There's nothing hypocritical about making a distinction between not wanting countless unknown entities (i.e. advertisers) tracking one's every move on the internet, and wanting to participate in an online discussion anonymously. Those are two completely separate issues. If I want to contribute to discussion here I do so by choice, and I voluntarily give up a small amount of privacy to do so.
That being said, I do support changing the rules for AC posting (even though it'll probably never happen) as follows: allow AC posts only from logged in users, and tie negative moderation (but not positive) to their karma. Then, at least, abusive posts are traceable back to an account, though not by normal users, and there is still reduced incentive act the part of a troll. Sure, someone could just create new throwaway accounts, but it adds one more hurdle.
Or more likely it will be both. Netflix pays a fee to be included in a bundle, then charge consumers to subscribe to the bundle.
One thing you can be sure of, they'll go out of their way to ensure as painful experience as possible for those using services not in the "fast lane". Notice the key text in TFS "to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content" (emphasis mine) but you can guarantee that there will be no limits on how slow the base service will be, and certainly the minimum speed will be so slow as to be ludicrous. Want more than 256kbps access to our select bundle of websites included in this premium package? Pay for the fast lane!
Telcos already pulled crap like this in past decades. Back in the 90's we had a house in a rural area, and there was some big push to get phone/dialup service to rural residents. We had a 28k modem at the time, and after upgrading to a blazing fast 56k we discovered no increase in speed. After some back and forth, and numerous technicians concluding that the issue was in the external lines and not because of a wiring issue in hour house, the phone company ultimately refused to do anything because, apparently, they were only required to provide up to 14kbps! Even by 1995 standards that was slow enough as to be practically unusable.
And why the hell would you just single out video games.
Probably because they were posting to a /. discussion about... video games?
I do agree that our popular media tend to take death more lightly than they should at times (images of 90's action movies in which gun-wielding heroes mow down streams of bad guys come to mind) but I can say that I've seen proportionally more movies than video games that treat death as a serious subject with a broad range of implications for the surviving characters.
I take it you've never experienced real poverty? $300 over 5 years ($60 a year) might seem minuscule to you, and honestly it doesn't seem like much to me either, but to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck and has to constantly choose between, say, buying groceries this week or paying the water bill so that it doesn't get cut off again, saving money can be virtually impossible.
I know it's popular these days to brush off those in poverty and accuse them of either making bad choices, or squandering their money, or being lazy, but some of the poorest people I know are also some of the most disciplined. It takes more discipline than I have to live off of white bread and sliced cheese for three days so that you can pay an electric bill, or to stay home on a Friday night because the $4 that you'd spend on bus fare or gasoline to visit a friend across town is needed for the laundromat, but those are the types of choices that people in poverty have to face every day!
To someone in the middle class, $60 a year on shoes doesn't seem like much. What about clothes? A winter coat? Furniture? Blankets for your bed? And god forbid you want some luxury item like a vacuum cleaner or you have an unexpected medical expense.
You are right, AC, but you know the point of my post had nothing to do with the example cities.
It does make a difference if the ban covers a hub city for that airline. Say you are flying from Paris to Chicago and have a choice of flying on Emirates with a layover in a laptop ban country, versus flying an American carrier with a layover in Germany. This could sway that decision.
Did I just hear the whooooosh of an autonomous ship sailing by?
You know what's even worse? Trying to hide those tabletop kiosks from a toddler. Our two-year old sees the screen and wants to play with it, and it doesn't help that they load it up with rotating pictures of desserts and other goodies, but also advertisements for cute games... which, conveniently, you have to pay to play. I'm over having to sit with the thing in my lap the entire meal, so I'd rather just avoid those restaurants these days.