Years ago, I read a great article by Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini about Transactional Analysis and how it relates to UIs and such. I don't remember if it's in any of his books or in the Apple Developer newsletters of yore. I'm having a hard time finding it, unfortunately. But in the article, he recounts a story about selling televisions with digital remotes--back when these were brand new.
The story goes that when TVs first got digital remote controls, the salesmen would show the customer the remote because, at the time, the ability to change the channel from across the room was new and novel and pretty cool! But the customer would always say the same thing: "I'm not so lazy that I can't get off the damn couch and change the channel!" And, let's be honest, how would you respond to that? "Actually, sir, you are that lazy. Or you will be once you have this." Keep in mind that the only time you saw a TV with a remote was in a hospital or if you had older parents/grandparents who couldn't get off the damn couch and change the channel. If you were young and spry, you had no business using a remote! Having a remote was a sign that you were old...
Once they said that, they weren't interested in TVs with remotes and no amount of salesmanship would change their mind.
So the solution that Tog brought up wasn't to sell the customer on having a remote control, but to sell them on digital tuning. "Digital tuning is great! No more having to fiddle with all the fine tuning knobs to get the best picture! Just choose the channel and it will immediately lock it in! No knobs to break or get serviced--after all, you should have your TV serviced every year so that you don't end up having to use a pair of pliers to change the channel. So you'll save money in the long run because there'll be less need for service! Digital tuning is a boon to mankind!"
Once you've convinced the TV buyer that they really want a TV with digital tuning, you throw in the remote: "And the fun part is that they can then make a cool remote control to change the channels!" The idea was that you're buying a better TV that happened to have a remote (which was a smart decision) rather than buying a remote controlled TV (which was a lazy decision). In fact, so the story goes, one day the salesman neglected to even mention the remote. The customer bought the TV and salesman brought out a bunch of boxes, one of which contained the remote. When the customer said, "What's that?" and the salesman said, "Oh, that's the remote," the customer immediately started off with, "I'm not so lazy that I..."
The whole thing is presented in the frame of Transactional Analysis and the Parent/Adult/Child context (ie, you want to have an appropriate balance of smart and cool in your products) and is a very interesting read.
I can see this argument. If some African-American person is voting when I don't think they should, beating up a few of them pour encourager les autres is definitely a hate crime because the reason for my actions is to frighten others.
I'm even willing to say that if I beat up someone purely because he's an African-American and he's done nothing to me, it's a hate crime.
On the other hand, getting into a fight with my African-American roomate because he's a dick? Not a hate crime.
You really have to be able to prove prejudice and intent. If I beat up my African-American roomate because he's an annoying prick and that means that you, as an African-American, feel concerned for your safety because of this, that's your problem.
Or they don't do facial recognition at all, only triggering "male/female" and "going in/going out" and don't store the information beyond that, as it says in TFA had you bothered to read it.
Which is perfectly fine. The problem is those images are arguably valuable. While the company may only use them for their intended purpose, if I come along and offer them tons of money for those images, think they'll turn me down? They're not being dishonest--they're still only triggering on those things you describe. They just don't mention what the other people are using the images for.
But I can think of a few private investigators who would give their eye-teeth to be able to look at those pictures to find cheating spouses. I'm sure the police wouldn't mind this either--being able to look at a license plate and find out how many drinks the owner of the car has had that night and when they had it? Stalkers, celebrity photographers being able to track when a specific person goes into a bar?
Sorry, but warp drive technology isn't exactly around the corner [...]
And it won't ever be unless we actually start figuring this stuff out.
I somewhat agree, don't get me wrong: "Future of the human race?" Self-important much? Puhleeze.
But let's go back a hundred or so years. Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with building the first successful airplane. Without their work, you wouldn't be hopping on that jetliner to go where you want in a few hours.
Now there are a bunch of steps in between the Wright Flyer and a Boeing 787. But you don't just wake up one morning and build a 787, either. So there's lots of stuff that has to happen beforehand. That's where we are now and we won't get to domed cities on the Moon with a million people and other fantastical stuff without spending the time upfront to figure out how the heck we keep 6 people alive in orbit.
It is government that gave Comcast its monopoly over my neighborhood. If government were downsized, the monopoly would be gone. Other companies like Apple or MSN or Time-Warner could enter the market and give us some choice.
Well, that depends on where you live, doesn't it?
It's also quite possible that Comcast would come in and build it's network--you know, place their wires under the street--and offer service. Time-Warner would come in, look at the expense on running their own wires, see they have competition which is going to limit how much they can charge and how quickly they will make back that investment and say, "Nah. Not worth it."
On the other hand, if The Government lays down the wires and allows these companies to use them to deliver services (charging them all an equal fee for use of the wires), then you might actually have quite a bit of competition. Of course, that wouldn't be a good thing because "Government Owning Stuff Is Bad."
And, depending further upon where you live, Comcast might show up, take one look, and say, "No way would this be worth it." Then you got nothing.
Where I live, companies have been granted a monopoly by the city to provide telephone and cable service. Years ago, I was having some problems with my cable and was getting nowhere dealing with the cable company. That's when I discovered that the city actually paid someone to keep track of these sorts of issues and try to get them resolved. I contacted him and let him know the issues I was having with the cable company. He said he'd look into it. The next day, I had the folks at the cable company calling and saying how they'd like to get to the bottom of this problem. A couple days later, everything was hunky-dory.
Now, I live in a denser area, but there may be an equivalent person in your town/city government.
Despite the lack of active campaigning, Paul signaled that he and his supporters would still continue trying to win delegates at state conventions, a tactic that the Texas congressman has been using with some success recently.
So it's not over. You just won't see his campaign ads on the TeeVee in California, New Jersey, and Utah.
Jobs and Sculley weren't getting along about various things and Jobs wanted the board to get rid of Sculley or at least settle the whole "Who's in charge" question. Sculley was supposed to be in China but came back/didn't go because of this. There was the big meeting in the board room and, ultimately, Jobs lost.
Keep in mind that, at the time, Jobs had been in charge of one of the company's biggest failures at the time, the Apple III. Macintosh wasn't looking too good--sales were well below Apple's estimates--which was also Jobs' baby. So here's a guy who has cost the company a ton of money and he's asking the board to put him in charge.
Jobs was "demoted" to Senior President in charge of Absolutely Nothing, given an office in Siberia, and would be trotted out on occasion to say something was "insanely great." Needless to say, Steve wasn't thrilled with this, and left.
So you're both right. Technically, Steve quit. Realistically, he was ousted.
I assume they start at 0, since the code is also checking to see if fromIndex < 0. So either the code is wrong on one end or the other, but for all I know about Java, indexes could start at zero and go up to the number given...
private static void checkRange(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
if (fromIndex > toIndex)
throw new InvalidArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
if (toIndex > arrayLen)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);
if (fromIndex < 0)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex); }
See? Now it's completely different!
Random aside: Is it just me, or is this going to fail if toIndex == arrayLen? If the array has 100 items, array[100] = 0 will be bad but rangeCheck(100, 17, 100) will not throw an exception.
While I agree with you, I'm not sure it's the same.
Even if I don't have a car, roads are pretty useful things. People bring me stuff from other places in the United States on those roads. That's why I have no problem paying for roads in Idaho, even though I have no intention of using them.
Conversely, I don't really get any benefit from paying for someone else's car insurance.
The difference is that they'll be in constant communication at the time, so that if one car needs to stop, it will give plenty of notice to other cars, who will all apply their brakes at the same time at different strengths, so they will decelerate in unison. Cars traveling a half-meter apart on the highway will stop a half-meter apart, too.
I wonder about this. You make the assumption that all vehicles are created equally. My little red sports car has a different stopping distance than the SUV carrying a family of four and their dog. And at least in areas like Southern California, where you are what you drive, I don't think everybody is going to run out and buy identical pods.
Keep in mind that insurance companies are aware that if you get cancer from the X rays, they'll be on the hook for chemo, surgery, and rad therapy which can easily run into the $250,000+ range [...]
But by the time you get cancer (remember, it's not one X-Ray, it's lots of X-Rays), you'll have a different company by then. Or they'll come up with some other excuse to drop you...
Apple should not have such a requirement, because they did not have an anti-trust suit lost.
But that was for something else.
See, it was determined that Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems for Intel-based computers. They then took advantage of that monopoly to unfairly compete against Netscape through various means, both technical and non-technical. That's the illegal part--you can't leverage one monopoly to compete in another market. Remember, having a monopoly is not illegal. Using that monopoly the make another one is illegal.
(As an aside, I still think iTunes monopoly hold of the downloadable music market is eventually going to bite Apple in the bum, but that's another story.)
Where is Microsoft's monopoly that they are abusing?
I can create anything on my desktop and upload it to my phone. I can take any app a friend makes and upload it to my phone. Apple is not involved in any way [...]
Except for that $99 a year you pay Apple for the privilege.
It seems that by your logic people should be able to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
You can go into a crowded theater and yell "Fire!" all you want. However, if people panic and rush to the doors and some of them are trampled, you may end up in court. In which case, you cannot use "Free Speech" as a defense.
There are certain cases where "free speech" needs to be curtailed and this in one of them.
There may very well be--none that immediately come to mind. But this is definitely not one of them.
Years ago, there was a movie called "Minority Report" where psychics used their power to see the future in order to determine who was going to commit a crime and to stop them before they actually did it. What a great movie--and a great idea. If we could only stop crimes before they happen, then nobody would be killed, robbed, beaten, or anything like that.
Unfortunately, we don't have that ability to see into the future. We can only guess at what might happen. The problem is, we're looking at worst-case thinking and then trying to prevent that.
Some of the examples I've seen is that people could be pushed off the platform. And if they were pushed off the platform, they might hurt themselves. Or they might fall onto the third rail and be killed! Or they might fall in front of an oncoming train and be hit! That would be horrible! Thus, we must curtail our basic rights based on the chance that someone could die a horrible death. And not even necessarily a good chance--after all, people do survive falling off subway platforms.
[...] rights to assume safety in a public place, rights to peaceably assemble without violence of others, the right to leave trains without being harassed, etc
I wasn't aware that the "right to assume safety in a public place" was in the Bill of Rights. Damn those activist judges!
You do not have the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater as the saying goes
Actually, you have every right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. However, you cannot use "Free Speech" as a defense if you are brought to trial for the deaths of the people being trampled.
In short, I have every right to tell everyone to crowd into a BART station and shut it down. However, if someone is injured because of this, I can be held responsible.
For example, you say that "Overcrowding of a station will very likely cause safety issues." Again, there's that weasel word again, "very likely" (which I missed above). Nothing assured. Perhaps there will be no safety issue whatsoever. But it could happen.
Welcome to the exciting world of pre-crime! If something could happen, we must stop it!
You're taking up space in the park and using their resources. You're not just getting something for free, your actions are literally costing Disney money
That's the best you've got--"you're taking up space." You're going to tell me about how I'm breathing oxygen, too, huh?
How am I costing Disney money? Disney is going to operate the park whether I'm there or not, so it's not like they're paying extra for electricity to haul my fat white ass up the side of Space Mountain.
How does me geting a free copy of a CD hurt you?
To drag your "using resources" argument back into the fray, resources were used to write and record that music. Resources were used to create that movie. My purchase of a movie ticket or CD or online download helped defray those costs. Your illegal downloading did not.
So, basically, I'm the one who's paying for the content that you're enjoying. That hurts me.
Or, to put it another way, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who enjoys the resources that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a guitar and write a song. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
[...] we all could come up with scenarios where it might save lives to cut off service.
As I've said before, if your scenario contains the words "could", "might", or "possibly," then there's no reason to cut off cell phone service.
Also, keep in mind that giving the capability means that it will be misused. Remember the article from yesterday or the day before about how England created various systems to block child pornography--you know, to protect the children--which are now being used by the copyright police?
Slashdot Mirror
Years ago, I read a great article by Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini about Transactional Analysis and how it relates to UIs and such. I don't remember if it's in any of his books or in the Apple Developer newsletters of yore. I'm having a hard time finding it, unfortunately. But in the article, he recounts a story about selling televisions with digital remotes--back when these were brand new.
The story goes that when TVs first got digital remote controls, the salesmen would show the customer the remote because, at the time, the ability to change the channel from across the room was new and novel and pretty cool! But the customer would always say the same thing: "I'm not so lazy that I can't get off the damn couch and change the channel!" And, let's be honest, how would you respond to that? "Actually, sir, you are that lazy. Or you will be once you have this." Keep in mind that the only time you saw a TV with a remote was in a hospital or if you had older parents/grandparents who couldn't get off the damn couch and change the channel. If you were young and spry, you had no business using a remote! Having a remote was a sign that you were old...
Once they said that, they weren't interested in TVs with remotes and no amount of salesmanship would change their mind.
So the solution that Tog brought up wasn't to sell the customer on having a remote control, but to sell them on digital tuning. "Digital tuning is great! No more having to fiddle with all the fine tuning knobs to get the best picture! Just choose the channel and it will immediately lock it in! No knobs to break or get serviced--after all, you should have your TV serviced every year so that you don't end up having to use a pair of pliers to change the channel. So you'll save money in the long run because there'll be less need for service! Digital tuning is a boon to mankind!"
Once you've convinced the TV buyer that they really want a TV with digital tuning, you throw in the remote: "And the fun part is that they can then make a cool remote control to change the channels!" The idea was that you're buying a better TV that happened to have a remote (which was a smart decision) rather than buying a remote controlled TV (which was a lazy decision). In fact, so the story goes, one day the salesman neglected to even mention the remote. The customer bought the TV and salesman brought out a bunch of boxes, one of which contained the remote. When the customer said, "What's that?" and the salesman said, "Oh, that's the remote," the customer immediately started off with, "I'm not so lazy that I..."
The whole thing is presented in the frame of Transactional Analysis and the Parent/Adult/Child context (ie, you want to have an appropriate balance of smart and cool in your products) and is a very interesting read.
I can see this argument. If some African-American person is voting when I don't think they should, beating up a few of them pour encourager les autres is definitely a hate crime because the reason for my actions is to frighten others.
I'm even willing to say that if I beat up someone purely because he's an African-American and he's done nothing to me, it's a hate crime.
On the other hand, getting into a fight with my African-American roomate because he's a dick? Not a hate crime.
You really have to be able to prove prejudice and intent. If I beat up my African-American roomate because he's an annoying prick and that means that you, as an African-American, feel concerned for your safety because of this, that's your problem.
Or they don't do facial recognition at all, only triggering "male/female" and "going in/going out" and don't store the information beyond that, as it says in TFA had you bothered to read it.
Which is perfectly fine. The problem is those images are arguably valuable. While the company may only use them for their intended purpose, if I come along and offer them tons of money for those images, think they'll turn me down? They're not being dishonest--they're still only triggering on those things you describe. They just don't mention what the other people are using the images for.
But I can think of a few private investigators who would give their eye-teeth to be able to look at those pictures to find cheating spouses. I'm sure the police wouldn't mind this either--being able to look at a license plate and find out how many drinks the owner of the car has had that night and when they had it? Stalkers, celebrity photographers being able to track when a specific person goes into a bar?
There's big money to be made in voyeurism.
Shouldn't that be "Like" the above? :^D
Sorry, but warp drive technology isn't exactly around the corner [...]
And it won't ever be unless we actually start figuring this stuff out.
I somewhat agree, don't get me wrong: "Future of the human race?" Self-important much? Puhleeze.
But let's go back a hundred or so years. Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with building the first successful airplane. Without their work, you wouldn't be hopping on that jetliner to go where you want in a few hours.
Now there are a bunch of steps in between the Wright Flyer and a Boeing 787. But you don't just wake up one morning and build a 787, either. So there's lots of stuff that has to happen beforehand. That's where we are now and we won't get to domed cities on the Moon with a million people and other fantastical stuff without spending the time upfront to figure out how the heck we keep 6 people alive in orbit.
It is government that gave Comcast its monopoly over my neighborhood. If government were downsized, the monopoly would be gone. Other companies like Apple or MSN or Time-Warner could enter the market and give us some choice.
Well, that depends on where you live, doesn't it?
It's also quite possible that Comcast would come in and build it's network--you know, place their wires under the street--and offer service. Time-Warner would come in, look at the expense on running their own wires, see they have competition which is going to limit how much they can charge and how quickly they will make back that investment and say, "Nah. Not worth it."
On the other hand, if The Government lays down the wires and allows these companies to use them to deliver services (charging them all an equal fee for use of the wires), then you might actually have quite a bit of competition. Of course, that wouldn't be a good thing because "Government Owning Stuff Is Bad."
And, depending further upon where you live, Comcast might show up, take one look, and say, "No way would this be worth it." Then you got nothing.
Also check for local agencies.
Where I live, companies have been granted a monopoly by the city to provide telephone and cable service. Years ago, I was having some problems with my cable and was getting nowhere dealing with the cable company. That's when I discovered that the city actually paid someone to keep track of these sorts of issues and try to get them resolved. I contacted him and let him know the issues I was having with the cable company. He said he'd look into it. The next day, I had the folks at the cable company calling and saying how they'd like to get to the bottom of this problem. A couple days later, everything was hunky-dory.
Now, I live in a denser area, but there may be an equivalent person in your town/city government.
Uh...here's one.
I gotta admit, that was my first reaction, too. Missed it by that much...
From the same article:
So it's not over. You just won't see his campaign ads on the TeeVee in California, New Jersey, and Utah.
IDC suggests it's 68%.
Well...for appropriate definitions of "Ousted."
Jobs and Sculley weren't getting along about various things and Jobs wanted the board to get rid of Sculley or at least settle the whole "Who's in charge" question. Sculley was supposed to be in China but came back/didn't go because of this. There was the big meeting in the board room and, ultimately, Jobs lost.
Keep in mind that, at the time, Jobs had been in charge of one of the company's biggest failures at the time, the Apple III. Macintosh wasn't looking too good--sales were well below Apple's estimates--which was also Jobs' baby. So here's a guy who has cost the company a ton of money and he's asking the board to put him in charge.
Jobs was "demoted" to Senior President in charge of Absolutely Nothing, given an office in Siberia, and would be trotted out on occasion to say something was "insanely great." Needless to say, Steve wasn't thrilled with this, and left.
So you're both right. Technically, Steve quit. Realistically, he was ousted.
I assume they start at 0, since the code is also checking to see if fromIndex < 0. So either the code is wrong on one end or the other, but for all I know about Java, indexes could start at zero and go up to the number given...
private static void checkRange(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex)
{
if (fromIndex > toIndex)
throw new InvalidArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
if (toIndex > arrayLen)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);
if (fromIndex < 0)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex);
}
See? Now it's completely different!
Random aside: Is it just me, or is this going to fail if toIndex == arrayLen? If the array has 100 items, array[100] = 0 will be bad but rangeCheck(100, 17, 100) will not throw an exception.
Or am I missing something? I don't know Java...
While I agree with you, I'm not sure it's the same.
Even if I don't have a car, roads are pretty useful things. People bring me stuff from other places in the United States on those roads. That's why I have no problem paying for roads in Idaho, even though I have no intention of using them.
Conversely, I don't really get any benefit from paying for someone else's car insurance.
The difference is that they'll be in constant communication at the time, so that if one car needs to stop, it will give plenty of notice to other cars, who will all apply their brakes at the same time at different strengths, so they will decelerate in unison. Cars traveling a half-meter apart on the highway will stop a half-meter apart, too.
I wonder about this. You make the assumption that all vehicles are created equally. My little red sports car has a different stopping distance than the SUV carrying a family of four and their dog. And at least in areas like Southern California, where you are what you drive, I don't think everybody is going to run out and buy identical pods.
Keep in mind that insurance companies are aware that if you get cancer from the X rays, they'll be on the hook for chemo, surgery, and rad therapy which can easily run into the $250,000+ range [...]
But by the time you get cancer (remember, it's not one X-Ray, it's lots of X-Rays), you'll have a different company by then. Or they'll come up with some other excuse to drop you...
Also, it doesn't hurt to ask if there's an acceptable alternative, such as ultrasound or MRI, that doesn't rely on X-rays.
"There is, but it is not covered by your health insurance."
Apple should not have such a requirement, because they did not have an anti-trust suit lost.
But that was for something else.
See, it was determined that Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems for Intel-based computers. They then took advantage of that monopoly to unfairly compete against Netscape through various means, both technical and non-technical. That's the illegal part--you can't leverage one monopoly to compete in another market. Remember, having a monopoly is not illegal. Using that monopoly the make another one is illegal.
(As an aside, I still think iTunes monopoly hold of the downloadable music market is eventually going to bite Apple in the bum, but that's another story.)
Where is Microsoft's monopoly that they are abusing?
Is it tacky? Heck yeah. Illegal? Nope.
I can create anything on my desktop and upload it to my phone. I can take any app a friend makes and upload it to my phone. Apple is not involved in any way [...]
Except for that $99 a year you pay Apple for the privilege.
Nice try, Troll.
Dihydrogenmonoxide is just not IUPAC conform.
And that's sort of the point. Let's break it up.
Di = Die!
Hydrogen = Bad Stuff--Hydrogen Bombs, Hindenburg, etc.
Monoxide = Bad Stuff--Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
So, if you're trying to get the media to help with your culture-jam, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" sounds far worse than "Oxygen Hydride."
Never let reality get in the way of a good story.
It seems that by your logic people should be able to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
You can go into a crowded theater and yell "Fire!" all you want. However, if people panic and rush to the doors and some of them are trampled, you may end up in court. In which case, you cannot use "Free Speech" as a defense.
There are certain cases where "free speech" needs to be curtailed and this in one of them.
There may very well be--none that immediately come to mind. But this is definitely not one of them.
Years ago, there was a movie called "Minority Report" where psychics used their power to see the future in order to determine who was going to commit a crime and to stop them before they actually did it. What a great movie--and a great idea. If we could only stop crimes before they happen, then nobody would be killed, robbed, beaten, or anything like that.
Unfortunately, we don't have that ability to see into the future. We can only guess at what might happen. The problem is, we're looking at worst-case thinking and then trying to prevent that.
Some of the examples I've seen is that people could be pushed off the platform. And if they were pushed off the platform, they might hurt themselves. Or they might fall onto the third rail and be killed! Or they might fall in front of an oncoming train and be hit! That would be horrible! Thus, we must curtail our basic rights based on the chance that someone could die a horrible death. And not even necessarily a good chance--after all, people do survive falling off subway platforms.
[...] rights to assume safety in a public place, rights to peaceably assemble without violence of others, the right to leave trains without being harassed, etc
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I wasn't aware that the "right to assume safety in a public place" was in the Bill of Rights. Damn those activist judges!
You do not have the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater as the saying goes
Actually, you have every right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. However, you cannot use "Free Speech" as a defense if you are brought to trial for the deaths of the people being trampled.
In short, I have every right to tell everyone to crowd into a BART station and shut it down. However, if someone is injured because of this, I can be held responsible.
For example, you say that "Overcrowding of a station will very likely cause safety issues." Again, there's that weasel word again, "very likely" (which I missed above). Nothing assured. Perhaps there will be no safety issue whatsoever. But it could happen.
Welcome to the exciting world of pre-crime! If something could happen, we must stop it!
You're taking up space in the park and using their resources. You're not just getting something for free, your actions are literally costing Disney money
That's the best you've got--"you're taking up space." You're going to tell me about how I'm breathing oxygen, too, huh?
How am I costing Disney money? Disney is going to operate the park whether I'm there or not, so it's not like they're paying extra for electricity to haul my fat white ass up the side of Space Mountain.
How does me geting a free copy of a CD hurt you?
To drag your "using resources" argument back into the fray, resources were used to write and record that music. Resources were used to create that movie. My purchase of a movie ticket or CD or online download helped defray those costs. Your illegal downloading did not.
So, basically, I'm the one who's paying for the content that you're enjoying. That hurts me.
Or, to put it another way, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who enjoys the resources that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a guitar and write a song. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Sorry. Couldn't resist. :^D
[...] we all could come up with scenarios where it might save lives to cut off service.
As I've said before, if your scenario contains the words "could", "might", or "possibly," then there's no reason to cut off cell phone service.
Also, keep in mind that giving the capability means that it will be misused. Remember the article from yesterday or the day before about how England created various systems to block child pornography--you know, to protect the children--which are now being used by the copyright police?
It is about moving protest to safe areas and not stopping them.
Hear hear! BART should be setting up Free Speech Zones!