Instead of giving Century Link 3 billion dollars to build the infrastructure and then have a monopoly where they can overcharge the customer, let's take that 3 billion and have the government build the infrastructure. Then we let any company who want so use it do so for a small fee. Then not only do we have infrastructure, but we also have competition and at least a small income from the lines, which is better for everyone.
Sure, FedEx can tell you exactly where a package is, until they can't anymore. It's not like they don't lose packages. The only reason they can track them as well as they do is because they are going to a limit number of areas where they are scanned going in and out of each. And they still lose them sometime. Unless we are going to have immigrant get scanned in everywhere they go, there isn't a way to track people the same way we track packages.
Assuming I believe them (which I do for places that have someone else offering gigabit but less so for other places), this is how it will go. If you are in a town with a competitor offering gigabit speeds, it will cost around $100 a month. If you are in a town without a competitor offering gigabit internet, they either will not offer gigabit speed (although they will probably add the infrastructure for when a competitor does) or they will charge $300 a month for it and it will have to be bundled with cable to get that price. Comcast has no real interest in offering better speeds and are being forced to because other companies are. That is the bottom line.
Why are we assuming the other employees are not capable of understanding this? When they ask, the company says "Joe makes more because he has specialized skill X that the rest of you don't have". They may then learn that skill and be more useful to the company in which case they should make more or they don't learn the skill and stay where they are.
And what of the more real life version of this? A company needs to hire 3 people and find 3 equally qualified applicants that they want. The company has budgeted $50000 per job for salary. They offer the first $40000 because they only made $40000 at their last job and they accept. They offer the second $40000 and he counter offers with $44000 and they accept. The last comes from a high paying company so they offer him $55000 and he accepts. You now have 3 equally qualified candidates doing the same work making 3 completely different salaries and overall, the company is coming out ahead because they aren't spending as much as they thought the jobs were actually worth. When they compare salaries and see the difference the lower 2 should demand an increase since they are doing the same job as the highest paid one for less money.
I can definitely see where this could become a problem. A lot of the "girl" toys are playing directly into the gender stereotypes to get girls interested. If you want girls to like it, make it pink and put flowers on it. Instead of working to actually make it something that would actually interest girls (or god forbid both boys and girls) they just slap some paint on it and give it a girly name.
The bigger issue though is that they have to make "girl" things because most of them are specifically geared towards boys. That is why the answer they come up with is to make it girly. There is no reason we need special Legos in a pink box with cats and houses specifically for girls. Just stop specifically targeting boys with your marketing and girls will want to play with it (see the ads from the 70s that have both genders in the ads). More stereotypes are not the answer to the current stereotypes.
You won't see a huge influx of successful attacks right after support ends. I doubt people are sitting on 2003 vulnerabilities and not using them, just waiting for support to end. If they have them and they work, they would use them now when there are more targets and before someone else uses it and it gets patched. The issue will be when new cross platform vulnerabilities are found that work on 2003. Since those won't be patched, they will continue to remain vulnerable to them. But I don;t imagine there will be a bunch of attacks on 2003 just because ti leaves support.
Unfortunately, there isn't anything really to do to increase your privacy unless you want to give everything up. Sure, I could start using PGP and encrypt all my emails. That would work great until I actually wanted to send and email to someone, because no one else I know uses PGP. I can use a "secure" search engine, but there is no way to tell if it is really secure or if I am just using an inferior product to make myself feel better. Sure, I can avoid Facebook and Twitter and everything else, but again, I then give up easy contact with those that do. The government has back doors into everything, so unless I avoid anything they might be able to access (which frankly is pretty much everything) there isn't anything I can really do.
I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.
Passwords are not a perfect solution, no one denies that. But overall, they are a good solution, especially when combined with something like and RSA key or Google authentication. Biometrics seems easier and more secure, and on the face it is. The issue with biometrics is that once there is a way around it, there is no way to change it. So you fingerprint is secure today. But tomorrow someone comes up with a way to fake your fingerprint. You are now stuck because you can't change you fingerprint. With a password, if it is hacked you can change it. With biometrics, if they are hacked you are entirely screwed because it can't be changed (which is the point of biometrics). Sorry, I'll stick with passwords for now.
I can see the revised police procedure manual now.
"When a suspect resists, but them in a "warm embrace" by placing your arm around their throat and squeezing." "If a suspect does not follow your instructions, give them a "gentle scalp massage" with your night stick." "Once a suspect is down, form a "cuddle pile" of 6 or 7 officers on top of them until they stop struggling."
While this is a great idea that works in the rest of the world, there is no way it can work here. Our tax system is too screwed up for it to work in the US. Most other countries don't have different taxes for different types of income, tax deferred income, tax deductions, tax rebates, and any number of other things to deal with. It would work for people with very simple tax returns but our system is too screwed up for it to work for most people.
This is the same reason a flat tax would never work in the US. No one wants to give up their loopholes and deductions and the only way a flat tax works is if all that goes away.
There is no need to state that though, that is already covered by existing law (minus fair use exemptions). And even if that is what they meant, no where does it say the NFL's accounts and description. It simple says accounts and descriptions.
While it is true this is what they say, it doesn't make it illegal. Think about it for a second. They are basically saying that without their express permissions, Jimmy Kimmel can't say "Did you see the game yesterday? Can you believe the final touchdown play where Joe Blow ran past 6 defenders to score?" That would be a broadcast of a description of the game. Just because you are broadcasting your retelling of the game doesn't make it any different. The NFL can't stop you from describing what you watched.
The bigger problem is that a lot of these channels will probably go away if they get rid of bundling. A lot of the smaller niche channels survive until they can support themselves by being bundled with more popular channels (and many of them never make any money and totally live off of other channels). If bundling is gone, then every channel basically has to be making money in a short amount of time or they will be gone.
For example, I would bet dollars to donuts that the Sci-Fi channel didn't make any money for years. It survived because it was bundled with other channels so cable companies were forced to carry it. Basically, unbundling means the channels downgrade to the lowest common denominator because no one will be willing to spend the money on hoping a channel can find it's audience.
Technology is part of the reason we can't get away from work, the other is the change in overtime rules. It used to be that companies had to pay overtime for hours worked over 40. This meant that when people left their job, they also left their work at their job in general. Even if you could call someone at home and ask them a question, you didn't. Unfortunately, the overtime rules were eroded to the point that almost no one gets overtime. If you work in an office setting at all, you are expected to put in more than 40 hours a week every single week and not get paid for it. Since they don't have to pay overtime, there is no issue with calling and emailing people at all hours and expecting them to answer. Technology made it easier to get a hold of people outside of business hours, but the reduction of overtime meant that it was okay to do it, which is the bigger issue.
While this may be the way it worked, the issue is that they didn't tell users this. Instead of telling users "music you added manually will be overwritten" they threw up a generic error and then told the user they had to factory reset the phone. It's fine i your sync deletes the stuff on the phone and overwrites it with the stuff from the computer. It's not alright if you purposely hide this fact from the user so they don't know what is going on.
Except they still have to be on the voter rolls. It isn't like without voter ID laws anyone can just walk up and say "I want to vote here". There is still voter registration that happens. Unless you know a specific voter and their polling place for each of those people you just picked up, you aren't going to get anywhere at the polling station.
The fact is that most of the voter fraud happens not at the polls but with absentee ballots. Of course the republicans don't want to touch those because they are used by old people and soldiers, which are their bread and butter.
I'm not going to rant about how guilty Darren Wilson was. To tell the truth, I don't know if he was guilty. But I just don't understand how there wasn't enough evidence to at least take this to trial. There were multiple witnesses saying that Mike Brown had his hands up and was not attacking Darren Wilson when he was shot. This alone to me is enough to at least take it to trial and see all the evidence to try and figure out exactly what happened.
Unfortunately, all of the emphasis has been on everything except what it should have been. It doesn't matter what Mike Brown was doing before the confrontation, or if he smoked pot. It doesn't even matter what happened with the struggle at the car (whether Mike Brown dove through the window trying for the gun or Darren Wilson grabbed him and pull him in the window). The only thing that matter is what was going on when Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown. If Mike Brown was standing (or kneeling as some reports say) with his hands up and not attacking anyone, then Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown. If Mike Brown was charging to attack Darren Wilson when he was shot, then is was a good shooting. Unfortunately, with this grand jury decision, we will never get an answer to that. I just don't understand how with the witnesses that have come forward, they couldn't find enough evidence that maybe there was wrong doing to want all the evidence to come out so we can have answers.
Unfortunately, Hydrogen won't take off (at least in the US). The reason is fairly simple, gas stations don't want it to. The current gasoline infrastructure won't work as is for Hydrogen, and the gas companies and providers don;t want to retrofit to be able to handle it. Tesla has the advantage of being able to create it's own infrastructure outside of gas stations, since all they need is a power line. But with having to have holding tanks and dispensers, Hydrogen is going to be locked into using existing gas stations rather than being able to easily set up their own. Gas stations and providers aren't going to pay the money to retrofit for Hydrogen until there is a tipping point of people with Hydrogen cars, but that's won't come until there are stations selling Hydrogen to make their cars useful.
It always amazes me that people still try to bash Microsoft over the (bad) things they did in the 90s. Apple has become everything we always feared Microsoft would be, but without all the backlash and bashing. This is truly a "We're not done until 3rd party stuff doesn't work" situation that everyone always suggested MS had (and MS probably did have to some extent). They are purposely disabling an industry standard for anything other than their drivers to force people to use their overpriced upgrade hardware. Yes, you can disable this "feature" but to do so you have to disable ALL driver signing on the system, thus removing a big security protection. Apple is by far one of the worst companies as far as policies and screwing people, and yet no one ever seems to say much about it even as people still write Micro$oft. Maybe it's because there isn't a cute little way to put a dollar sign in their name.
But what is the difference between this and hiring someone under age for any other job? You can't work at McDonalds until you are 16 (in most places), so should we require licenses for all fast food employees to ensure everyone is 16? Requiring a license is entirely different and separate from making sure employees are of legal age for their profession.
The open records request and fulfillment isn't the issue here. If the government licenses someone, you should be able to request the information of everyone with that license (although I'm not sure home information should be included since it is a professional license). This would be the easiest way to see who is and isn't a licensed professional.
The issue is why in the bloody hell is the government licensing dancers? There is no reason to do that other than they want to collect some extra fees from people. There is no professional service being offered that a license would effect. The purpose of licensing professionals is to ensure that the person meets some basic requirements. Unless they are going to try and require a minimum cup size or dancing ability, there isn't anything to license here.
The reason companies keep doing this stuff is that they have deemed it cost effective. Let's assume they get caught 90% of the time. That means that would have to pay $31500 in fines for the 9 times they were caught and would save $40000 for the time they didn't. They are coming out ahead so the fine are just a cost of doing business. These tiny little fines are not going to stop things like this from happening. At minimum, the fine should be the same amount they would have "saved"(preferably more). At best, we should start putting people in jail for breaking the law just like we do regular people who break the law.
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Instead of giving Century Link 3 billion dollars to build the infrastructure and then have a monopoly where they can overcharge the customer, let's take that 3 billion and have the government build the infrastructure. Then we let any company who want so use it do so for a small fee. Then not only do we have infrastructure, but we also have competition and at least a small income from the lines, which is better for everyone.
Sure, FedEx can tell you exactly where a package is, until they can't anymore. It's not like they don't lose packages. The only reason they can track them as well as they do is because they are going to a limit number of areas where they are scanned going in and out of each. And they still lose them sometime. Unless we are going to have immigrant get scanned in everywhere they go, there isn't a way to track people the same way we track packages.
Assuming I believe them (which I do for places that have someone else offering gigabit but less so for other places), this is how it will go. If you are in a town with a competitor offering gigabit speeds, it will cost around $100 a month. If you are in a town without a competitor offering gigabit internet, they either will not offer gigabit speed (although they will probably add the infrastructure for when a competitor does) or they will charge $300 a month for it and it will have to be bundled with cable to get that price. Comcast has no real interest in offering better speeds and are being forced to because other companies are. That is the bottom line.
So they banned Carlos Mencia's twitter account?
Why are we assuming the other employees are not capable of understanding this? When they ask, the company says "Joe makes more because he has specialized skill X that the rest of you don't have". They may then learn that skill and be more useful to the company in which case they should make more or they don't learn the skill and stay where they are.
And what of the more real life version of this? A company needs to hire 3 people and find 3 equally qualified applicants that they want. The company has budgeted $50000 per job for salary. They offer the first $40000 because they only made $40000 at their last job and they accept. They offer the second $40000 and he counter offers with $44000 and they accept. The last comes from a high paying company so they offer him $55000 and he accepts. You now have 3 equally qualified candidates doing the same work making 3 completely different salaries and overall, the company is coming out ahead because they aren't spending as much as they thought the jobs were actually worth. When they compare salaries and see the difference the lower 2 should demand an increase since they are doing the same job as the highest paid one for less money.
I can definitely see where this could become a problem. A lot of the "girl" toys are playing directly into the gender stereotypes to get girls interested. If you want girls to like it, make it pink and put flowers on it. Instead of working to actually make it something that would actually interest girls (or god forbid both boys and girls) they just slap some paint on it and give it a girly name.
The bigger issue though is that they have to make "girl" things because most of them are specifically geared towards boys. That is why the answer they come up with is to make it girly. There is no reason we need special Legos in a pink box with cats and houses specifically for girls. Just stop specifically targeting boys with your marketing and girls will want to play with it (see the ads from the 70s that have both genders in the ads). More stereotypes are not the answer to the current stereotypes.
You won't see a huge influx of successful attacks right after support ends. I doubt people are sitting on 2003 vulnerabilities and not using them, just waiting for support to end. If they have them and they work, they would use them now when there are more targets and before someone else uses it and it gets patched. The issue will be when new cross platform vulnerabilities are found that work on 2003. Since those won't be patched, they will continue to remain vulnerable to them. But I don;t imagine there will be a bunch of attacks on 2003 just because ti leaves support.
Unfortunately, there isn't anything really to do to increase your privacy unless you want to give everything up. Sure, I could start using PGP and encrypt all my emails. That would work great until I actually wanted to send and email to someone, because no one else I know uses PGP. I can use a "secure" search engine, but there is no way to tell if it is really secure or if I am just using an inferior product to make myself feel better. Sure, I can avoid Facebook and Twitter and everything else, but again, I then give up easy contact with those that do. The government has back doors into everything, so unless I avoid anything they might be able to access (which frankly is pretty much everything) there isn't anything I can really do.
I never understood this type of reaction. Yes, they are eating a boatload of calories through everything else, but at least they are cutting out a few hundred with the diet coke. Yes, it won't make them thin, but at least they are doing something to try and get healthier and possible lose a little weight, which they should be applauded for. You are probably the same type of person that goes to gym and tells people they should just quit because they aren't lifting enough weight or only doing cardio. The fact is, they are doing something, which is more than some people do and should be encouraged.
Passwords are not a perfect solution, no one denies that. But overall, they are a good solution, especially when combined with something like and RSA key or Google authentication. Biometrics seems easier and more secure, and on the face it is. The issue with biometrics is that once there is a way around it, there is no way to change it. So you fingerprint is secure today. But tomorrow someone comes up with a way to fake your fingerprint. You are now stuck because you can't change you fingerprint. With a password, if it is hacked you can change it. With biometrics, if they are hacked you are entirely screwed because it can't be changed (which is the point of biometrics). Sorry, I'll stick with passwords for now.
I can see the revised police procedure manual now.
"When a suspect resists, but them in a "warm embrace" by placing your arm around their throat and squeezing."
"If a suspect does not follow your instructions, give them a "gentle scalp massage" with your night stick."
"Once a suspect is down, form a "cuddle pile" of 6 or 7 officers on top of them until they stop struggling."
While this is a great idea that works in the rest of the world, there is no way it can work here. Our tax system is too screwed up for it to work in the US. Most other countries don't have different taxes for different types of income, tax deferred income, tax deductions, tax rebates, and any number of other things to deal with. It would work for people with very simple tax returns but our system is too screwed up for it to work for most people.
This is the same reason a flat tax would never work in the US. No one wants to give up their loopholes and deductions and the only way a flat tax works is if all that goes away.
There is no need to state that though, that is already covered by existing law (minus fair use exemptions). And even if that is what they meant, no where does it say the NFL's accounts and description. It simple says accounts and descriptions.
While it is true this is what they say, it doesn't make it illegal. Think about it for a second. They are basically saying that without their express permissions, Jimmy Kimmel can't say "Did you see the game yesterday? Can you believe the final touchdown play where Joe Blow ran past 6 defenders to score?" That would be a broadcast of a description of the game. Just because you are broadcasting your retelling of the game doesn't make it any different. The NFL can't stop you from describing what you watched.
I predict that within 10 years GreatLand Connections will be purchased by Comcast/TW.
The bigger problem is that a lot of these channels will probably go away if they get rid of bundling. A lot of the smaller niche channels survive until they can support themselves by being bundled with more popular channels (and many of them never make any money and totally live off of other channels). If bundling is gone, then every channel basically has to be making money in a short amount of time or they will be gone.
For example, I would bet dollars to donuts that the Sci-Fi channel didn't make any money for years. It survived because it was bundled with other channels so cable companies were forced to carry it. Basically, unbundling means the channels downgrade to the lowest common denominator because no one will be willing to spend the money on hoping a channel can find it's audience.
Technology is part of the reason we can't get away from work, the other is the change in overtime rules. It used to be that companies had to pay overtime for hours worked over 40. This meant that when people left their job, they also left their work at their job in general. Even if you could call someone at home and ask them a question, you didn't. Unfortunately, the overtime rules were eroded to the point that almost no one gets overtime. If you work in an office setting at all, you are expected to put in more than 40 hours a week every single week and not get paid for it. Since they don't have to pay overtime, there is no issue with calling and emailing people at all hours and expecting them to answer. Technology made it easier to get a hold of people outside of business hours, but the reduction of overtime meant that it was okay to do it, which is the bigger issue.
While this may be the way it worked, the issue is that they didn't tell users this. Instead of telling users "music you added manually will be overwritten" they threw up a generic error and then told the user they had to factory reset the phone. It's fine i your sync deletes the stuff on the phone and overwrites it with the stuff from the computer. It's not alright if you purposely hide this fact from the user so they don't know what is going on.
Except they still have to be on the voter rolls. It isn't like without voter ID laws anyone can just walk up and say "I want to vote here". There is still voter registration that happens. Unless you know a specific voter and their polling place for each of those people you just picked up, you aren't going to get anywhere at the polling station.
The fact is that most of the voter fraud happens not at the polls but with absentee ballots. Of course the republicans don't want to touch those because they are used by old people and soldiers, which are their bread and butter.
I'm not going to rant about how guilty Darren Wilson was. To tell the truth, I don't know if he was guilty. But I just don't understand how there wasn't enough evidence to at least take this to trial. There were multiple witnesses saying that Mike Brown had his hands up and was not attacking Darren Wilson when he was shot. This alone to me is enough to at least take it to trial and see all the evidence to try and figure out exactly what happened.
Unfortunately, all of the emphasis has been on everything except what it should have been. It doesn't matter what Mike Brown was doing before the confrontation, or if he smoked pot. It doesn't even matter what happened with the struggle at the car (whether Mike Brown dove through the window trying for the gun or Darren Wilson grabbed him and pull him in the window). The only thing that matter is what was going on when Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown. If Mike Brown was standing (or kneeling as some reports say) with his hands up and not attacking anyone, then Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown. If Mike Brown was charging to attack Darren Wilson when he was shot, then is was a good shooting. Unfortunately, with this grand jury decision, we will never get an answer to that. I just don't understand how with the witnesses that have come forward, they couldn't find enough evidence that maybe there was wrong doing to want all the evidence to come out so we can have answers.
Unfortunately, Hydrogen won't take off (at least in the US). The reason is fairly simple, gas stations don't want it to. The current gasoline infrastructure won't work as is for Hydrogen, and the gas companies and providers don;t want to retrofit to be able to handle it. Tesla has the advantage of being able to create it's own infrastructure outside of gas stations, since all they need is a power line. But with having to have holding tanks and dispensers, Hydrogen is going to be locked into using existing gas stations rather than being able to easily set up their own. Gas stations and providers aren't going to pay the money to retrofit for Hydrogen until there is a tipping point of people with Hydrogen cars, but that's won't come until there are stations selling Hydrogen to make their cars useful.
It always amazes me that people still try to bash Microsoft over the (bad) things they did in the 90s. Apple has become everything we always feared Microsoft would be, but without all the backlash and bashing. This is truly a "We're not done until 3rd party stuff doesn't work" situation that everyone always suggested MS had (and MS probably did have to some extent). They are purposely disabling an industry standard for anything other than their drivers to force people to use their overpriced upgrade hardware. Yes, you can disable this "feature" but to do so you have to disable ALL driver signing on the system, thus removing a big security protection. Apple is by far one of the worst companies as far as policies and screwing people, and yet no one ever seems to say much about it even as people still write Micro$oft. Maybe it's because there isn't a cute little way to put a dollar sign in their name.
But what is the difference between this and hiring someone under age for any other job? You can't work at McDonalds until you are 16 (in most places), so should we require licenses for all fast food employees to ensure everyone is 16? Requiring a license is entirely different and separate from making sure employees are of legal age for their profession.
The open records request and fulfillment isn't the issue here. If the government licenses someone, you should be able to request the information of everyone with that license (although I'm not sure home information should be included since it is a professional license). This would be the easiest way to see who is and isn't a licensed professional.
The issue is why in the bloody hell is the government licensing dancers? There is no reason to do that other than they want to collect some extra fees from people. There is no professional service being offered that a license would effect. The purpose of licensing professionals is to ensure that the person meets some basic requirements. Unless they are going to try and require a minimum cup size or dancing ability, there isn't anything to license here.
The reason companies keep doing this stuff is that they have deemed it cost effective. Let's assume they get caught 90% of the time. That means that would have to pay $31500 in fines for the 9 times they were caught and would save $40000 for the time they didn't. They are coming out ahead so the fine are just a cost of doing business. These tiny little fines are not going to stop things like this from happening. At minimum, the fine should be the same amount they would have "saved"(preferably more). At best, we should start putting people in jail for breaking the law just like we do regular people who break the law.