This is one of the rare times I'm going to say, "That strains credulity even for me."
Technically feasible? No question. But what possible spying value could be had from determining which channel of drek out of hundreds that a household is watching? Cable TV is essentially one huge Dr. Seuss pipe of mental pollution subdivided into smaller pipes. The consumer at home turns the spigot on for one of the smaller pipes, and pretends he has been given a choice and lives in freedom.
Dont they realize that some would choose to be without the tv all together rather than having to pay more and more for less.
Yeah, they're pretty obtuse. See how their profit model writhes and melts away like the Wicked Witch just because you choose to do without?
The masses need to wise up, too. Otherwise they just keep getting milked, and subsidizing the problem. It's the same with paying taxes, by the way. April 15th is coming up. Don't you think we should tip the government a little extra this year for all their great service to us?
One thing advertisers don't seem to understand is that I actually like catching a new ad when I watch TV at a friend's place. Many of them are very artistic, cute, and funny.
Sure they do. They don't care. There's a different agenda at work here.
But even a good joke told 5-6 times per day wears thin.
A strong enough EMP would destroy data on all unprotected computers within its radius, and specific ELF frequencies affect emotions via the human nervous system - there's a Riot setting.
It's possible to sell a corporation's stock short, if you believe their share price will soon plummet and you promise to buy up the stock by a certain date. The result is Sell High, Buy Low. If Microsoft lost nearly all their data, their equipment blew out, and the employees were throwing conference room chairs out through the third floor window, I suspect their stock prices would decline.
I remember when the content delivery industries were just starting out... shady guys in dark trenchcoats on street corners and back alleys. "Psst! Wanna try some cable TV? The first one's free."
You do not comprise the large, apathetic marketing demographic they're catering to. They don't care, but will continue squeezing everybody else to compensate for the losses and then some. And we still won't have functional media infrastructure to boot.
You can't read any replies to this message without agreeing to pay me $5. You can read this message just fine, so there's due notice. Incidentally, every other Slashdot user now includes the same provision on their posts. Enjoy your time here on Slashdot.
Additionally, who do you suggest "wake up"? That things like this are wrong are pretty self-evident. But the People haven't been insisting on accountability from their governments and the corporations it enables. "Occupy" means to take up space, and the People have been doing that for generations. Organized activity is what's needed. As I mentioned when Slashdot posted the story about the NSA building a new superpowered decryption center, federal taxes are due April 15th. Let's all tip them better this year for providing all this great service.
To subsidize what they're doing and then complain to others about it is quite irrational.
Yes, this is known as "qualifying your signature". Even attorneys will tell you it's okay, but I've had more than one cop threaten to jail me if I continued "defacing the ticket".
There's also a very good case for them being unenforceable due to being "compelled to contract". This case has not been made.
The original meaning of the term involved any contract that was just too heinous, against the law or against the public morals. Modern America now uses the phrase to refer only to contracts which are too one-sided, in which one party has too much control.
That becomes relevant for the following reason: The standard thinking is that anyone is free to simply not make a contract, even a EULA. ("Fine, just don't use the product.") This is no longer feasible in the software world, and increasingly in the rest of it as well. For a person or company to do that, there would need to be a similar product or service that doesn't have a EULA which creates similar problems. And that almost never happens. Because nearly every product or service does this now, it becomes untenable to live effectively - or work competitively or efficiently - in the world without accepting horrendous EULAs... one is then contracting under duress of sorts, and therefore indirectly compelled to contract.
Thanks for the correction! Yeah, I keep forgetting people are still making the distinction. There's a high-level political effort behind the scenes to unify Korea, and so on my mental map they've become synonymous.
The OP also failed to mention Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" speech along with all the various speeches from him and others in their government saying Israel has no right to exist. I've never really supported the seeming "Israel First" politics of the US government over the last few decades, but to say that Iran only wants to get along with its neighbors and be good little world citizens is a bit off.
It's not, but it certainly seems like that for those who aren't familiar with the Khazars.
Khazaria was a little kingdom just north of Baghdad. One day, their king decreed that the whole country adopt Judaism as a sort of national nom de plume. The Khazarian people took on that identity, adopting the blue star as their symbol (the actual symbol of Judaism is the menorah) and they dispersed throughout the world, getting into the banking, media, political and educational sectors of the various countries. A lot of the anti-Semitic things we hear from certain groups are actually about the Khazars, not the Jews. These are the people that gave Walt Disney trouble for the majority of his career. They follow the Elder Protocols of Zion, attempting to sabotage and take down the other countries by eroding the systems they emplace themselves into, undermining public education, moral sense of right and wrong, and using plenty of revisionist history. Simultaneously, they seek to displace the actual Jewish people collectively, and establish claim that identity for themselves. They're the ones who founded Israel, right on someone else's territory, and fight grievously to keep and expand it. Genuine Jewish people actually protest this sort of thing - the Torah forbids even having a Jewish state - but are unheard. Ask a Jewish person about this sometime. The Khazars don't even use fences, but prefer sentry guns instead - to make their neighbors have to guess where the boundary line is. As a result, their neighbors back off and they can just move the sentry guns further out. Check out "The Khazarian Conspiracy" on YouTube. It's fascinating stuff.
Similar: Iran recently decided to quit selling its oil to Europe, probably due to a lot of the political corruption and strong-arming tactics. The press blatantly misreported it as: Europe decides to stop buying Iran's oil.
It's possible this/. story is describing some of the backlash from Iran's decision to do that.
Wonder if that would be enough to make a surface that's a solid-state conveyor belt. It would stay right where it's at, and just sort of ripples items along its surface in waves.
As for the lesbian couple, you may well be right. I wasn't there on that occasion, and only heard about it afterward. My own experiences were pretty weird: at both church feeds I was at, a head staff member came over and told me to leave. No reason given. When, honestly baffled, I calmly asked them why, they extended the ban to "permanent". It sounds bizarre to write, but I was there.
The Homeless Services Center (which is the one I use) is a private non-profit that's funded by a slurry of government and private grant monies. The rest are churches. With each, the major problem appears to be a lack of oversight or accountability. The situation is the same: You have people deputized with controlling, managing and distributing donated resources at a local level. If they choose to serve their own agenda in addition - sometimes eclipsing their stated agenda - there really isn't anything implemented to sort it out that they can't find a way to maneuver around.
But yes, church-provided services have shown less tendency towards corruption, though my sample for non-churches is pretty much one. I did stay at a phenomenal shelter when I was in Berkeley to get some dental services that weren't available in my area. The Harrison House used to be a conventionally-run shelter, until they adopted a different client-run method that works devastatingly well. Clients are assigned a specific chore each week by Delegates they elected. If clients are having a problem with something, the Delegates sort it out. Delegates hold the other Clients accountable (for their behavior, chores, hygiene, etc.). The few paid Management staff hold the Delegates accountable. And there are weekly meetings where the Clients, en masse, hold the Management staff publicly accountable so there's transparency, and vote on the shelter's policies and decisions. It's been going on for years and works extremely well. There's been interest adopting this system at other shelters, but all their process paperwork is non-digital (there are boxes of binders with info, supplements, rules, forms, etc. to make this happen) that can't be shipped - people from other shelters would have to come over there personally, and that has not happened.
Government-run shelters could be a good idea at some point, but won't be until the government is sorted out. Interesting historical note: In the 1920's and 30's, the government started to get into the whole charitable aspect of things because, until then, the majority of it had been taken on by private charities. Ostensibly this was to ensure availability and quality of service, but government likes to expand its authority and influence anywhere it can - it can justify an increase in size that way. More personnel, more budget, larger personal domains of influence. Presenting a government-based solution displaces the social need for other approaches. Governments like that just fine. In the States, the only reason I'm aware of that the government has been paring down its homeless services funding is because it's trying to forestall the day when it admits it's run completely out of money. If not for that, we'd probably have government-run shelters all over the place, just like the privatized jail services industries. There's profit in people, unfortunately.
I was about to make a smug comment about how those zany citizens in Europe need to demand better accountability from their political representatives.
Then I remember that I live in this U.S.. Where the politicians have purported to make this law, despite the Constitution rendering it void the moment it was penned. And then people salute it regardless, because it was signed and must therefore be official.
The bill is talking about "orphaned works" which are those works that will never again see the light of day because no owner claims them. It is likely that when the copyright expires in 70 years, with nobody to preserve them, or assign their rights to a publisher who can, these works will be completely lost to humanity.
Wait. Don't most of our historical documents and records meet this description? Yow!
Nobody is arguing that this is a bad idea, but the recording industry lobbies see it as the "sharp end of the sword" when it comes to copyright reform, so they will fight against it vehemently.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the rare times I'm going to say, "That strains credulity even for me."
Technically feasible? No question. But what possible spying value could be had from determining which channel of drek out of hundreds that a household is watching? Cable TV is essentially one huge Dr. Seuss pipe of mental pollution subdivided into smaller pipes. The consumer at home turns the spigot on for one of the smaller pipes, and pretends he has been given a choice and lives in freedom.
Dont they realize that some would choose to be without the tv all together rather than having to pay more and more for less.
Yeah, they're pretty obtuse. See how their profit model writhes and melts away like the Wicked Witch just because you choose to do without?
The masses need to wise up, too. Otherwise they just keep getting milked, and subsidizing the problem. It's the same with paying taxes, by the way. April 15th is coming up. Don't you think we should tip the government a little extra this year for all their great service to us?
Cooler if everyone did it.
Please don't marginalize the sane people. Somewhere there's a kegger that desperately needs you.
Then I for one am glad they don't build Pacemakers.
Consider e-mailing your qualifications to the company. They'll probably pass them on to Legal if anything, and you'll never hear about them again.
Feel free to disqualify all sorts of things in that e-mail, and add all manner of qualifications as well.
One thing advertisers don't seem to understand is that I actually like catching a new ad when I watch TV at a friend's place. Many of them are very artistic, cute, and funny.
Sure they do. They don't care. There's a different agenda at work here.
But even a good joke told 5-6 times per day wears thin.
drip... drip... drip... drip... drip... drip...
A strong enough EMP would destroy data on all unprotected computers within its radius, and specific ELF frequencies affect emotions via the human nervous system - there's a Riot setting.
It's possible to sell a corporation's stock short, if you believe their share price will soon plummet and you promise to buy up the stock by a certain date. The result is Sell High, Buy Low. If Microsoft lost nearly all their data, their equipment blew out, and the employees were throwing conference room chairs out through the third floor window, I suspect their stock prices would decline.
Go nuts.
I remember when the content delivery industries were just starting out... shady guys in dark trenchcoats on street corners and back alleys. "Psst! Wanna try some cable TV? The first one's free."
You do not comprise the large, apathetic marketing demographic they're catering to. They don't care, but will continue squeezing everybody else to compensate for the losses and then some. And we still won't have functional media infrastructure to boot.
Slightly more accurate, but no better:
You can't read any replies to this message without agreeing to pay me $5. You can read this message just fine, so there's due notice. Incidentally, every other Slashdot user now includes the same provision on their posts. Enjoy your time here on Slashdot.
Additionally, who do you suggest "wake up"? That things like this are wrong are pretty self-evident. But the People haven't been insisting on accountability from their governments and the corporations it enables. "Occupy" means to take up space, and the People have been doing that for generations. Organized activity is what's needed. As I mentioned when Slashdot posted the story about the NSA building a new superpowered decryption center, federal taxes are due April 15th. Let's all tip them better this year for providing all this great service.
To subsidize what they're doing and then complain to others about it is quite irrational.
Yes, this is known as "qualifying your signature". Even attorneys will tell you it's okay, but I've had more than one cop threaten to jail me if I continued "defacing the ticket".
There's also a very good case for them being unenforceable due to being "compelled to contract". This case has not been made.
The original meaning of the term involved any contract that was just too heinous, against the law or against the public morals. Modern America now uses the phrase to refer only to contracts which are too one-sided, in which one party has too much control.
That becomes relevant for the following reason: The standard thinking is that anyone is free to simply not make a contract, even a EULA. ("Fine, just don't use the product.") This is no longer feasible in the software world, and increasingly in the rest of it as well. For a person or company to do that, there would need to be a similar product or service that doesn't have a EULA which creates similar problems. And that almost never happens. Because nearly every product or service does this now, it becomes untenable to live effectively - or work competitively or efficiently - in the world without accepting horrendous EULAs... one is then contracting under duress of sorts, and therefore indirectly compelled to contract.
Chuck Yeager was a famous child pilot. Despite being an orphan, he broke the sound barrier while he was still in grade school.
Hence, this would be the Chuck Yeager "of the adult world".
Thanks for the correction! Yeah, I keep forgetting people are still making the distinction. There's a high-level political effort behind the scenes to unify Korea, and so on my mental map they've become synonymous.
The OP also failed to mention Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" speech along with all the various speeches from him and others in their government saying Israel has no right to exist. I've never really supported the seeming "Israel First" politics of the US government over the last few decades, but to say that Iran only wants to get along with its neighbors and be good little world citizens is a bit off.
It's not, but it certainly seems like that for those who aren't familiar with the Khazars.
Khazaria was a little kingdom just north of Baghdad. One day, their king decreed that the whole country adopt Judaism as a sort of national nom de plume. The Khazarian people took on that identity, adopting the blue star as their symbol (the actual symbol of Judaism is the menorah) and they dispersed throughout the world, getting into the banking, media, political and educational sectors of the various countries. A lot of the anti-Semitic things we hear from certain groups are actually about the Khazars, not the Jews. These are the people that gave Walt Disney trouble for the majority of his career. They follow the Elder Protocols of Zion, attempting to sabotage and take down the other countries by eroding the systems they emplace themselves into, undermining public education, moral sense of right and wrong, and using plenty of revisionist history. Simultaneously, they seek to displace the actual Jewish people collectively, and establish claim that identity for themselves. They're the ones who founded Israel, right on someone else's territory, and fight grievously to keep and expand it. Genuine Jewish people actually protest this sort of thing - the Torah forbids even having a Jewish state - but are unheard. Ask a Jewish person about this sometime. The Khazars don't even use fences, but prefer sentry guns instead - to make their neighbors have to guess where the boundary line is. As a result, their neighbors back off and they can just move the sentry guns further out. Check out "The Khazarian Conspiracy" on YouTube. It's fascinating stuff.
Correct, and rather obvious.
Similar: Iran recently decided to quit selling its oil to Europe, probably due to a lot of the political corruption and strong-arming tactics. The press blatantly misreported it as: Europe decides to stop buying Iran's oil.
It's possible this /. story is describing some of the backlash from Iran's decision to do that.
After that, they'll start producing mini-mammoths - great as Service Animals.
Transition to The Flintstones, 3% complete.
Forget their nuclear capabilities. We now have a bigger problem.
Wonder if that would be enough to make a surface that's a solid-state conveyor belt. It would stay right where it's at, and just sort of ripples items along its surface in waves.
"Would you like your newspaper in e-paper or Braille format, sir?"
Ooh, variable-textured prophylactics and, um, novelty items. Right on.
Your federal taxes are due on April 15th. Let's all tip them a little bit more for providing us with such great service.
As for the lesbian couple, you may well be right. I wasn't there on that occasion, and only heard about it afterward. My own experiences were pretty weird: at both church feeds I was at, a head staff member came over and told me to leave. No reason given. When, honestly baffled, I calmly asked them why, they extended the ban to "permanent". It sounds bizarre to write, but I was there.
The Homeless Services Center (which is the one I use) is a private non-profit that's funded by a slurry of government and private grant monies. The rest are churches. With each, the major problem appears to be a lack of oversight or accountability. The situation is the same: You have people deputized with controlling, managing and distributing donated resources at a local level. If they choose to serve their own agenda in addition - sometimes eclipsing their stated agenda - there really isn't anything implemented to sort it out that they can't find a way to maneuver around.
But yes, church-provided services have shown less tendency towards corruption, though my sample for non-churches is pretty much one. I did stay at a phenomenal shelter when I was in Berkeley to get some dental services that weren't available in my area. The Harrison House used to be a conventionally-run shelter, until they adopted a different client-run method that works devastatingly well. Clients are assigned a specific chore each week by Delegates they elected. If clients are having a problem with something, the Delegates sort it out. Delegates hold the other Clients accountable (for their behavior, chores, hygiene, etc.). The few paid Management staff hold the Delegates accountable. And there are weekly meetings where the Clients, en masse, hold the Management staff publicly accountable so there's transparency, and vote on the shelter's policies and decisions. It's been going on for years and works extremely well. There's been interest adopting this system at other shelters, but all their process paperwork is non-digital (there are boxes of binders with info, supplements, rules, forms, etc. to make this happen) that can't be shipped - people from other shelters would have to come over there personally, and that has not happened.
Government-run shelters could be a good idea at some point, but won't be until the government is sorted out. Interesting historical note: In the 1920's and 30's, the government started to get into the whole charitable aspect of things because, until then, the majority of it had been taken on by private charities. Ostensibly this was to ensure availability and quality of service, but government likes to expand its authority and influence anywhere it can - it can justify an increase in size that way. More personnel, more budget, larger personal domains of influence. Presenting a government-based solution displaces the social need for other approaches. Governments like that just fine. In the States, the only reason I'm aware of that the government has been paring down its homeless services funding is because it's trying to forestall the day when it admits it's run completely out of money. If not for that, we'd probably have government-run shelters all over the place, just like the privatized jail services industries. There's profit in people, unfortunately.
For those of you playing at home, the link that Slashdot invisibled from my post was: http://nothingchanged.org/
I was about to make a smug comment about how those zany citizens in Europe need to demand better accountability from their political representatives.
Then I remember that I live in this U.S.. Where the politicians have purported to make this law, despite the Constitution rendering it void the moment it was penned. And then people salute it regardless, because it was signed and must therefore be official.
The bill is talking about "orphaned works" which are those works that will never again see the light of day because no owner claims them. It is likely that when the copyright expires in 70 years, with nobody to preserve them, or assign their rights to a publisher who can, these works will be completely lost to humanity.
Wait. Don't most of our historical documents and records meet this description? Yow!
Nobody is arguing that this is a bad idea, but the recording industry lobbies see it as the "sharp end of the sword" when it comes to copyright reform, so they will fight against it vehemently.
Oh. Well at least it's for a good cause.