If you deleted your account before the order was given, you'd probably get away with it. But if the judge ordered you to give the password, and you went home and deleted your account and then said, "HA, sorry, here's my password, I DELETED MY ACCOUNT SUCKERS," you'd piss off the judge, probably end up in contempt of court, and surely would be on the losing end of any further ruling the judge makes.
If you think giving up your facebook password is bad, just imagine how much more painful giving up the legal maximum in child support, child custody, assets, and everything else in the settlement would be. Comply with the order, you might end up with a fairly equitable divorce; defy the order, and you can bet the judge will side with your soon-to-be-ex everywhere he can, in addition to slapping you with sanctions for contempt of court.
How do corporations achieve power of any sort? There are two mechanisms:
1) By producing goods that satisfy a need people have, and selling it to those people at a profitable price point; if they do this successfully for some time, they develop a brand image, which can give them a certain amount of goodwill and respect from consumers, based on a history of success. This is "earned" power, which is voluntarily given by customers who happen to appreciate the work that a corporation is doing. And it ends the moment that corporation stops pleasing its customers.
2) By lobbying the government to grant them power - unearned advantages in the form of "buying" the writing of specific laws relevant to their industry that benefit themselves while harming consumers, and competition. This ends... well, never. Unless the government can no longer grant these sorts of powers to the corporations, no matter how much money they spend on lobbying.
If you eliminate the means by why corporations achieve these extortionary ends - by say, strictly curtailing the power of government to GRANT these extortionary "favors," it's hard to argue that limiting the scope, invasiveness and power of the government amounts to "granting power to the corporations."
Of course, this requires that voters & consumers be educated, and that elected representatives possess a shred of integrity; if neither is willing to develop or exercise those faculties - with voters penalizing candidates who have whored themselves out to special interests by not voting for them, and politicians not whoring themselves out to special interests - then as Thomas Jefferson reputedly opined, we get the government we deserve.
Did you click the wrong "reply" link? Because your response seems at best tangentially related to anything I said.
I said: These companies are monopolies now because the government granted them monopoly status - the government decided to limit competition in these utilities, and now it's up to them to try and regulate in a fashion that might not be necessary had there been a real competitive market.
You said: "WRONG. These companies wouldn't even exist without the government."
I'm not sure how that "wrong" fits in with your point that is, essentially, agreeing with my statement that the government had a (heavy) hand in constructing the non-competitive communications landscape we have today.
This would explain the massive proliferation of governments whose sole purpose is murdering innocent civilians, right? Governments are made up of people - often the same people they govern, and who live right alongside citizens of that government.
Here's the major difference between what I said about corporations, and the s/corporation/government/g twist: governments, by their very nature, are established with the sole legal right, authority, and sanction to do violence on behalf of its citizenry. A corporation cannot - legally - lock up an offender, even somebody who is stealing their stuff. They must petition the government, using appropriate legal mechanisms, to intervene and use force on their behalf. Any corporation that started trying to run its own prison & judicial system would be put out of existence in moments by the government.
The fact that the government is legally entitled to use force on its own citizens (law enforcement) and on other people (via the military) is exactly why granting more power to the government is, as I said, "more evil" than granting more power to corporations (which essentially means that the corporations, in a free market, must establish their power in the market by producing goods people wish to voluntarily buy, at a price people wish to voluntarily part with.) The government can point a gun at you and say "Go buy health insurance." A corporation can urge you to, suggest that you do so, take out billion dollar advertising deals to convince you to buy health insurance, but they cannot, at the end of the day, threaten you with force if you do not.
And this is WHY corporations are in bed with the government, as you rightly note. They see that for the small cost of lobbying... they can force people to become their customers, and eliminate competitive threats. The government has the power to do this, which is the reason why government should have severely constrained powers, and any powers granted to the government should not be granted on a whim. Decentralize the authority as much as possible, and you've created conditions for personal freedom. Centralize authority, and you end up with an increasingly draconian collusion of government & industry, resulting in interference in the freedoms of citizens.
Of the two (granting government more power, or granting corporations more power), neither is a "good" thing, but I've at least got a chance with the unarmed con man... not so much with the guy pointing a pistol at my head.
Your argument seems to be based on the fact that the government is a static thing, its not, its a representative of the people elected by the people.
Certainly elected by the people. Representing the people? That's debatable.
Corporations are not representatives of the people and do not have the interests of the people in their interests.
This would explain the massive proliferation of companies whose sole business is murdering innocent civilians, right? Corporations are made up of people - often the same people they do business with, and who live right alongside customers of that corporation. And any corporation without the interests of its customers (the people) at heart is not going to remain in business long, barring government force (e.g., granted monopoly status, or restrictive regulations which raise barriers to entry into a market.)
Corporations are responsive, as well. A small-but-vocal minority of people have been lobbying for marijuana legalization for years. A small-but-vocal minority of people have been lobbying for tuna companies to require dolphin-safe fishing practices for years. Who achieved their aims first? If you hit a corporation in its pocket book, it adjusts its policies, or it dies. Try not paying your taxes, let me know how that works out for you when they toss you in a federal prison.
What you're doing is arguing that a few large multinational corporations going rogue undermines the very concept of the free market, when in fact the vast majority of those corporations went rogue because people trusted the government (Hello, SEC!) to regulate, monitor, and oversee these companies and ensure that they weren't doing anything too risky, or corrupt. The government failed in that responsibility, and a few large corporations were caught with their pants down. What about the - literally - millions of small and mid-sized corporations that make up the bulk of the economy, and who have largely run their operations ethically and honestly? If the market was as inherently dangerous and corrupt and inhuman as you seem to think, then it would be newsworthy only when a business operated ethically - not when a few business behave badly.
The idea that "the market" will decide to buy their products or not is also a fallacy, with the size of corporations and the power they hold they often times leave consumers no choice.
Give me an example of what you mean by this. What products, specifically, are you unable to find an alternative for?
Private organisations should NEVER hold more power than the representatives of the people and anyone who thinks the other way around hasn't fully thought through what they are proposing.
I agree - but I answered your either/or question as it was posed - either the government, or corporations, get more power - then pointed out it was a false dichotomy. I'm all for power (and thus freedom) residing where it should: with the people, and with as-local-as-possible government where appropriate. But given the choice between giving power to the government, or leaving the power up to the "free market" to work out a practical solution to... I'd choose free market in many (perhaps even most) instances, because the "free market" can't (legally) deprive me of life and liberty if I disagree with its solution. The government can.
Clearly no one explained natural monopolies to you.
You overlooked point three about monopolies, and in my mind, the one that's most relevant to net neutrality: Cable & telephone providers are not "natural" monopolies - they are government-sanctioned monopolies given sole authority to provide service to an area by local government. These are the companies we are also relying on to provide us with internet service today.
Unfortunately, the government has screwed us into a scenario of limited choice; it now falls to the government to tell the companies they're forcing us to do business with that those companies may not throttle or limit our access to a service we are paying for. Imagine if your electric company said "Well, we're only going to let you draw enough current to operate a hair dryer because you run your dishwasher during peak hours."
Odd how the "free market" US has one or maybe two ISPs in any given town
It's not odd at all, when you consider that cable and telephone services (i.e., the companies that are also the typical ISPs) have historically been granted monopoly status by local government to provide service to an area.
Please show your work: why, exactly, would you expect free market levels of choice in a segment of the market where government regularly interferes & grants legal monopolies to specific players?
Of the two alternatives in your false dichotomy, giving corporations more power is certainly the lesser evil.
Why? Because Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle don't have legal authority to kick in your doors and imprison you, or execute you if you don't like their policies and refuse to do business with them. Try arguing that line of reasoning ("I don't like your policies, and so I don't do business with you!") next time you're tossed in jail for having a joint on you during a traffic stop. The government most certainly does have the authority to kick in your doors and imprison you, and you're very unlikely to win your case on due process grounds.
Of course, this *is* a false dichotomy; one can be conservative without favoring giving more power to corporations. One can also be liberal without favoring giving more power to the government. Let's not conflate the terms "liberal" and "conservative" with "Democrat" and "Republican," because they're not the same.
"For a vast majority of us, it is already ubiquitous."
Not "It is ubiquitous for everybody everywhere." Many - probably a majority - of the people around you are never out of range of a decent connection to a cell tower during their normal daily routine. The last time I was off the network was when I was on a plane at 40,000 feet. You apparently travel out of range of a network connection frequently, and happily, there will always be the option of local non-networked storage for you. And for those of us who are increasingly able to have a network connection anywhere we go... tying into the network can save us a lot of time and hassle.
As a counter-example to your off-the-grid living, I work and play on 3 separate computers - 2 laptops and a desktop - a smart phone, and an iPad - services like Dropbox and other sync/filestore services are a godsend for me. I don't have to spend 20 minutes searching for "that one version of the file that I made when I was at that client site, and saved to some network location on one of those computers, but now can't remember where it was..." - before services like that, I emailed stuff to myself constantly. Email was my on-the-go version control, transfer & sync service, and it was a nightmare to manage without losing changes. I think the "cloud" has plenty to offer people with appropriate use cases, and I don't think for a second that it will ever replace stand-alone computers, merely augment them.
So, uhm, how is that different to what we have now?
Noticed that, did you? Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
Only real disagreement I have with you is your comment about network access being ubiquitous. For a vast majority of us, it already is via - at a minimum - 3G on a mobile, and the coverage continues to improve, and will continue to improve; During the course of my normal day, I am never out of range of a cell network, and I'd venture a bet that a fairly high percentage of the population (certainly higher than 50%) works under similar conditions. If you live in any reasonably well populated area... you've likely got access to at least one 3G provider.
As you said, the "original" cloud idea was of a thin client, but that is no longer the case - terms evolve. What "cloud" computing is now is mostly a marketing term that means your data gets stored somewhere off in a server farm, and it's accessible via the internet. Not particularly fancy, and not anything we haven't been capable of doing for years now, but that doesn't mean it's a useless concept. Not sure why you seem so particularly offended by what is, essentially, a marketing term.
Better hope that line isn't used in a lawsuit against WebM.
"Your Honor, WebM is like H.264's identical twin." "So you're saying it's the same?" "Yes. But completely different." "So it's not a twin?" "Oh no, it's an identical twin. Just totally not the same in any way that would get us in trouble. Take our word for it."
modern phones are powerful enough to run stuff like a word processor, why on earth would you cripple them by forcing them to be thin clients?
You wouldn't. You'd write a word processor that resides native on the device and makes use of the local processing power, and tie its filestore to a service like dropbox, where the relatively small text document can be autosaved, and then available from any device with access to that dropbox store.
And then you'd realize that services like dropbox can easily cache content locally on the device, and that if network connection cuts out, you just wait for network connectivity to resume and then resync with your "cloud" storage. Wireless internet access will only continue to get faster, more ubiquitous, and less power-hungry.
I doubt many people are ever going to be running entire word processing applications over the network, but I think it's likely we'll continue to see more and more application data move into the "cloud," which will be the reference data which will be (perhaps) mirrored to local on-device caches while you're using it.
Grind the "lol socialism" axe elsewhere. Liberal democracy is a term, which has a specific meaning, and all 4 of the countries from "somewhat socialistic Scandinavia" certainly exhibit clear indications that they are liberal democracies.
I see, so a group primarily comprised of affluent white people (with a few token minorities mixed in) get unlimited veto authority over all pending federal legislation! What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
How about we not reinvent the wheel, and simply let the people... elect representatives... to craft & vote on legislation for them?
How about instead of requiring the system to be incorruptible (an impossible task), we elect candidates who aren't corrupt, and toss them out on their ass if it's found that they are corrupt, or have been corrupted? Self-healing / self-correction in the system is far more important than the system being immune to compromise.
How about we educate ourselves about issues before we spout off with opinions and solutions, rather than building some sort of infernal machine that makes all our decisions for us?
How about we demand that journalists behave as journalists, rather than editorialists, and report facts, so that we may be a better-educated public?
The problem isn't that "the system is totally corrupt and broken," the problem is that the people operating the system are fucking morans who keep electing other morans who mouth the same promises and consistently fail to deliver after being elected, election after election after election, and expect them to run the system properly. Look at it this way: if you put a retard at the controls of the LHC, do you really expect ground-breaking science to happen?
You're aware that numerous groups (including ones whose political aims and goals you likely support quite fervently) engage in lobbying too, right? Unions lobby for better labor protection and business regulations; Environmental groups lobby for better wetlands protection and stricter emissions regulations; Are you going to suggest that these groups will now be put to death for treason if they hire somebody to represent them and meet with legislators about issues near and dear to the members of the group doing that hiring?
And if that's your opinion, don't you think that seems a bit... well... dictatorial? And wouldn't that just result in higher levels of corruption than the system you seem to think is so corrupt?
twenty who are "perceved to be less corrupt"; that does not mean that they are less corruptible.
But in broad strokes, looking at that list you'll find that most of the countries at the top of your list are fairly liberal democracies/republics. I'd say that offers a pretty strong suggestion that liberal democracy and free market economies are relatively less corruptible than the alternatives.
That "Manufacturers" section is pretty much a who's who of the Android ecosystem.
How else do you think they get access to a year's worth of call center records and other data from the manufacturers? That's not generally publicly available information. Do you think Apple and Microsoft hand them a bundle of money and say, "Make shit up about our competition, but make it sound sciency, so say you analyzed statistics and stuff!"
This report was likely commissioned by multiple clients (manufacturers & mobile operators) who handed over their aggregate call center data to the research firm and said, "Tell us what you see." And what they see is that Android handsets seem to have a higher hardware failure rate.
Calling cheap, low-end phones "cheap low-end phones" doesn't mean that every other product made by the company is a cheap piece of junk. It's too bad those washing machines are irrelevant to a discussion of the quality of "garbage low end phones."
Unless those washing machines run Android too? It must be a real bitch to fit them in your pocket though... people said the iPad was too big!
Yeah. It couldn't possibly be that in their race to gain market share and push out the latest and greatest iPhone killer with slightly better specs & performance, the phone manufacturers are using cheaper hardware, and spending less time testing & QC'ing the hardware and software in an effort to maintain a reasonable (i.e., sustainable) profit margin, and thus are producing hardware that is slightly more likely to break or malfunction.
That would just be inconceivable.
If you dig into the stats, you'll probably find that certain models, brands, or styles of Android phone are more likely to break - my guess would be that they're the low-end (cheap) smartphones, and not the Galaxy S, Nexus, Droid and other "flagship" lines. But they *are* Android phones, and this simply part of the downside to Android's openness: carriers will load Android onto junky bottom-end phones that tend to break because they're made with very cheap parts.
I've noticed a few things with my iPhone 4, seems to specifically be related to out-ranging a wifi signal to plain-old 3g AT&T. When I do this, I've noticed that sometimes the phone ends up getting quite warm to the touch, and the battery drains at a very fast rate. I fixed the problem once by turning the phone off & back on, and since then by engaging airplane mode, then turning it off. My guess is something (could be third-party apps, even) goes rogue when it is active & your network connection goes off wifi, because I haven't seen it every time I leave the house, but I have seen it a few times, so there are certainly conditions where it seems to trigger.
iOS 5.0.1 beta is available today, and one of the first bullets in the update notice is "iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixes including: Fixes bugs affecting battery life." I'm guessing that most of the battery issues are software bugs that will get fixed when this 5.0.1 build goes live
No, Apple's alternative is light-years ahead of BBM. You see, it's actually online and operational.
Yes, that's a cheap shot. But let's recap, shall we? GGP asks, "What are the new features of iOS 5?" I respond, "Here's a list Apple published, and a quick synopsis - read the full list if you want a comprehensive review." You then jump in with, "Android and Blackberry already do all of those things better - I'm sure of it. I haven't used iOS 5, and I don't really know how any of these features work, or how the alternatives I just heard about today work, but it's Apple, so I'm going to assume that they all suck, are insecure, and all of this is just Apple struggling to keep up with competitors."
How is any of your babble in any way relevant to the question at hand? Namely: "What new features are in iOS 5?" Go grind your axe elsewhere.
The crime was theft. Under California Penal Code. This is what he was sentenced for. Do you think that judges routinely hand out sentences for the monstrous crime of "being a big poopy head"?
He found some prototype in a bar. It was not his. By taking possession of it, he took on custodial obligations for that phone, which include returning the phone to its rightful owner, or turning it in to the police, so that the police may find the rightful owner. Those are your only two options as a finder of lost items over a certain dollar value under the law. You either return it to the owner, or turn it in to the police and tell them that you couldn't find the rightful owner. If you try to find the owner, and you are unable to, your ONLY OTHER LEGAL OPTION is to turn the phone over to the police. You don't get to hold it, take 3 days to half-assedly search for the owner, and then say "Wow, it's mine!" If you do anything but reuinte the item with its owner, or turn it over to the police, this is considered theft.
If you take an item that is, in the eyes of the law, stolen, and attempt to sell it to another person, then you are selling stolen goods, which simply compounds the crime you've committed.
This has nothing to do with "Apple making its own laws" - these laws have been on the books in California for YEARS. The phone was obviously valuable. The guy who found it did not perform the duties required of a custodial caretaker under the law, and thus went from custodian to thief. When they tracked him down, they charged him with theft, and now he gets slapped on the wrist for it. Sounds like the legal system is working exactly as intended.
If there's no identifying information on the sidewalk with it (e.g., a wallet or purse), then I would turn the money in to the police, and tell them where and when I found it, as well as how much money was found with an inventory of denominations. (e.g., "I found $500, 10 $20's, 2 $50's, and 2 $100's, on the sidewalk outside Radio Shack at some address on date X, time Y." I'd also go inside to tell the owner of the store I found it outside that if anybody came in looking for the money, they should go to the local police department and pick up their lost items.
If there is identifying information with it, I'd try to contact the person first, using the phone book, facebook, and linkedin. If I couldn't find them through any of those means, I'd revert back to bringing the items to the police, and tell the police what methods I had tried to contact the owner already.
In fact, I did this about 3 years ago when I found a wallet on the sidewalk. And the person who lost the wallet got their money back, and I refused the hundred bucks he offered me as a reward. And I felt pretty good knowing that I helped make somebody's crap day turn out pretty good.
The law establishes an expectation that they will do one of three things: 1) Leave the item there, and let somebody else deal with finding it; 2) Take custody of the item, and attempt to return the item to the owner; if you do this, you DO have some legal obligations under the law as a custodial caretaker of the item which you have taken custody of - you may not destroy it, appropriate it, sell it, etc. 3) Take custody of the item for only so long as it takes to deliver the item to the police, with a statement of where you found the item and the circumstances under which it was found; the police will then take responsibility for trying to reunite the item with its owner;
After you do one of those 3 things, several things may happen.
If you choose to take custody of the item, and are unable - for any reason - to return it to its owner, you are then obligated to turn the device over to the police, who will perform the same duties that they would have if you had taken it to them immediately (step 3 above).
If you bring it to the police, and they are unable to return the item to its owner, they will typically *sell* the item in an attempt to recover the department's costs for advertising the found item. At that point, you might be able to take ownership of the item by purchasing it from the police department, often at a significant discount.
There is no "finder's keepers" in law, and when you find and take possession of something, you are obligated under the law to make an attempt to return the item to its owner, or bring it to the police. And that's why this guy is getting fines, community service, and probation.
Slashdot Mirror
If you deleted your account before the order was given, you'd probably get away with it. But if the judge ordered you to give the password, and you went home and deleted your account and then said, "HA, sorry, here's my password, I DELETED MY ACCOUNT SUCKERS," you'd piss off the judge, probably end up in contempt of court, and surely would be on the losing end of any further ruling the judge makes.
If you think giving up your facebook password is bad, just imagine how much more painful giving up the legal maximum in child support, child custody, assets, and everything else in the settlement would be. Comply with the order, you might end up with a fairly equitable divorce; defy the order, and you can bet the judge will side with your soon-to-be-ex everywhere he can, in addition to slapping you with sanctions for contempt of court.
How do corporations achieve power of any sort? There are two mechanisms:
1) By producing goods that satisfy a need people have, and selling it to those people at a profitable price point; if they do this successfully for some time, they develop a brand image, which can give them a certain amount of goodwill and respect from consumers, based on a history of success. This is "earned" power, which is voluntarily given by customers who happen to appreciate the work that a corporation is doing. And it ends the moment that corporation stops pleasing its customers.
2) By lobbying the government to grant them power - unearned advantages in the form of "buying" the writing of specific laws relevant to their industry that benefit themselves while harming consumers, and competition. This ends... well, never. Unless the government can no longer grant these sorts of powers to the corporations, no matter how much money they spend on lobbying.
If you eliminate the means by why corporations achieve these extortionary ends - by say, strictly curtailing the power of government to GRANT these extortionary "favors," it's hard to argue that limiting the scope, invasiveness and power of the government amounts to "granting power to the corporations."
Of course, this requires that voters & consumers be educated, and that elected representatives possess a shred of integrity; if neither is willing to develop or exercise those faculties - with voters penalizing candidates who have whored themselves out to special interests by not voting for them, and politicians not whoring themselves out to special interests - then as Thomas Jefferson reputedly opined, we get the government we deserve.
Did you click the wrong "reply" link? Because your response seems at best tangentially related to anything I said.
I said: These companies are monopolies now because the government granted them monopoly status - the government decided to limit competition in these utilities, and now it's up to them to try and regulate in a fashion that might not be necessary had there been a real competitive market.
You said: "WRONG. These companies wouldn't even exist without the government."
I'm not sure how that "wrong" fits in with your point that is, essentially, agreeing with my statement that the government had a (heavy) hand in constructing the non-competitive communications landscape we have today.
Here's the major difference between what I said about corporations, and the s/corporation/government/g twist: governments, by their very nature, are established with the sole legal right, authority, and sanction to do violence on behalf of its citizenry. A corporation cannot - legally - lock up an offender, even somebody who is stealing their stuff. They must petition the government, using appropriate legal mechanisms, to intervene and use force on their behalf. Any corporation that started trying to run its own prison & judicial system would be put out of existence in moments by the government.
The fact that the government is legally entitled to use force on its own citizens (law enforcement) and on other people (via the military) is exactly why granting more power to the government is, as I said, "more evil" than granting more power to corporations (which essentially means that the corporations, in a free market, must establish their power in the market by producing goods people wish to voluntarily buy, at a price people wish to voluntarily part with.) The government can point a gun at you and say "Go buy health insurance." A corporation can urge you to, suggest that you do so, take out billion dollar advertising deals to convince you to buy health insurance, but they cannot, at the end of the day, threaten you with force if you do not.
And this is WHY corporations are in bed with the government, as you rightly note. They see that for the small cost of lobbying... they can force people to become their customers, and eliminate competitive threats. The government has the power to do this, which is the reason why government should have severely constrained powers, and any powers granted to the government should not be granted on a whim. Decentralize the authority as much as possible, and you've created conditions for personal freedom. Centralize authority, and you end up with an increasingly draconian collusion of government & industry, resulting in interference in the freedoms of citizens.
Of the two (granting government more power, or granting corporations more power), neither is a "good" thing, but I've at least got a chance with the unarmed con man... not so much with the guy pointing a pistol at my head.
Certainly elected by the people. Representing the people? That's debatable.
This would explain the massive proliferation of companies whose sole business is murdering innocent civilians, right? Corporations are made up of people - often the same people they do business with, and who live right alongside customers of that corporation. And any corporation without the interests of its customers (the people) at heart is not going to remain in business long, barring government force (e.g., granted monopoly status, or restrictive regulations which raise barriers to entry into a market.)
Corporations are responsive, as well. A small-but-vocal minority of people have been lobbying for marijuana legalization for years. A small-but-vocal minority of people have been lobbying for tuna companies to require dolphin-safe fishing practices for years. Who achieved their aims first? If you hit a corporation in its pocket book, it adjusts its policies, or it dies. Try not paying your taxes, let me know how that works out for you when they toss you in a federal prison.
What you're doing is arguing that a few large multinational corporations going rogue undermines the very concept of the free market, when in fact the vast majority of those corporations went rogue because people trusted the government (Hello, SEC!) to regulate, monitor, and oversee these companies and ensure that they weren't doing anything too risky, or corrupt. The government failed in that responsibility, and a few large corporations were caught with their pants down. What about the - literally - millions of small and mid-sized corporations that make up the bulk of the economy, and who have largely run their operations ethically and honestly? If the market was as inherently dangerous and corrupt and inhuman as you seem to think, then it would be newsworthy only when a business operated ethically - not when a few business behave badly.
Give me an example of what you mean by this. What products, specifically, are you unable to find an alternative for?
I agree - but I answered your either/or question as it was posed - either the government, or corporations, get more power - then pointed out it was a false dichotomy. I'm all for power (and thus freedom) residing where it should: with the people, and with as-local-as-possible government where appropriate. But given the choice between giving power to the government, or leaving the power up to the "free market" to work out a practical solution to... I'd choose free market in many (perhaps even most) instances, because the "free market" can't (legally) deprive me of life and liberty if I disagree with its solution. The government can.
You overlooked point three about monopolies, and in my mind, the one that's most relevant to net neutrality: Cable & telephone providers are not "natural" monopolies - they are government-sanctioned monopolies given sole authority to provide service to an area by local government. These are the companies we are also relying on to provide us with internet service today.
Unfortunately, the government has screwed us into a scenario of limited choice; it now falls to the government to tell the companies they're forcing us to do business with that those companies may not throttle or limit our access to a service we are paying for. Imagine if your electric company said "Well, we're only going to let you draw enough current to operate a hair dryer because you run your dishwasher during peak hours."
It's not odd at all, when you consider that cable and telephone services (i.e., the companies that are also the typical ISPs) have historically been granted monopoly status by local government to provide service to an area.
Please show your work: why, exactly, would you expect free market levels of choice in a segment of the market where government regularly interferes & grants legal monopolies to specific players?
Of the two alternatives in your false dichotomy, giving corporations more power is certainly the lesser evil.
Why? Because Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle don't have legal authority to kick in your doors and imprison you, or execute you if you don't like their policies and refuse to do business with them. Try arguing that line of reasoning ("I don't like your policies, and so I don't do business with you!") next time you're tossed in jail for having a joint on you during a traffic stop. The government most certainly does have the authority to kick in your doors and imprison you, and you're very unlikely to win your case on due process grounds.
Of course, this *is* a false dichotomy; one can be conservative without favoring giving more power to corporations. One can also be liberal without favoring giving more power to the government. Let's not conflate the terms "liberal" and "conservative" with "Democrat" and "Republican," because they're not the same.
"For a vast majority of us, it is already ubiquitous."
Not "It is ubiquitous for everybody everywhere." Many - probably a majority - of the people around you are never out of range of a decent connection to a cell tower during their normal daily routine. The last time I was off the network was when I was on a plane at 40,000 feet. You apparently travel out of range of a network connection frequently, and happily, there will always be the option of local non-networked storage for you. And for those of us who are increasingly able to have a network connection anywhere we go... tying into the network can save us a lot of time and hassle.
As a counter-example to your off-the-grid living, I work and play on 3 separate computers - 2 laptops and a desktop - a smart phone, and an iPad - services like Dropbox and other sync/filestore services are a godsend for me. I don't have to spend 20 minutes searching for "that one version of the file that I made when I was at that client site, and saved to some network location on one of those computers, but now can't remember where it was..." - before services like that, I emailed stuff to myself constantly. Email was my on-the-go version control, transfer & sync service, and it was a nightmare to manage without losing changes. I think the "cloud" has plenty to offer people with appropriate use cases, and I don't think for a second that it will ever replace stand-alone computers, merely augment them.
Noticed that, did you? Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
Only real disagreement I have with you is your comment about network access being ubiquitous. For a vast majority of us, it already is via - at a minimum - 3G on a mobile, and the coverage continues to improve, and will continue to improve; During the course of my normal day, I am never out of range of a cell network, and I'd venture a bet that a fairly high percentage of the population (certainly higher than 50%) works under similar conditions. If you live in any reasonably well populated area... you've likely got access to at least one 3G provider.
As you said, the "original" cloud idea was of a thin client, but that is no longer the case - terms evolve. What "cloud" computing is now is mostly a marketing term that means your data gets stored somewhere off in a server farm, and it's accessible via the internet. Not particularly fancy, and not anything we haven't been capable of doing for years now, but that doesn't mean it's a useless concept. Not sure why you seem so particularly offended by what is, essentially, a marketing term.
Better hope that line isn't used in a lawsuit against WebM.
"Your Honor, WebM is like H.264's identical twin."
"So you're saying it's the same?"
"Yes. But completely different."
"So it's not a twin?"
"Oh no, it's an identical twin. Just totally not the same in any way that would get us in trouble. Take our word for it."
You wouldn't. You'd write a word processor that resides native on the device and makes use of the local processing power, and tie its filestore to a service like dropbox, where the relatively small text document can be autosaved, and then available from any device with access to that dropbox store.
And then you'd realize that services like dropbox can easily cache content locally on the device, and that if network connection cuts out, you just wait for network connectivity to resume and then resync with your "cloud" storage. Wireless internet access will only continue to get faster, more ubiquitous, and less power-hungry.
I doubt many people are ever going to be running entire word processing applications over the network, but I think it's likely we'll continue to see more and more application data move into the "cloud," which will be the reference data which will be (perhaps) mirrored to local on-device caches while you're using it.
Grind the "lol socialism" axe elsewhere. Liberal democracy is a term, which has a specific meaning, and all 4 of the countries from "somewhat socialistic Scandinavia" certainly exhibit clear indications that they are liberal democracies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy
I see, so a group primarily comprised of affluent white people (with a few token minorities mixed in) get unlimited veto authority over all pending federal legislation! What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
How about we not reinvent the wheel, and simply let the people... elect representatives... to craft & vote on legislation for them?
How about instead of requiring the system to be incorruptible (an impossible task), we elect candidates who aren't corrupt, and toss them out on their ass if it's found that they are corrupt, or have been corrupted? Self-healing / self-correction in the system is far more important than the system being immune to compromise.
How about we educate ourselves about issues before we spout off with opinions and solutions, rather than building some sort of infernal machine that makes all our decisions for us?
How about we demand that journalists behave as journalists, rather than editorialists, and report facts, so that we may be a better-educated public?
The problem isn't that "the system is totally corrupt and broken," the problem is that the people operating the system are fucking morans who keep electing other morans who mouth the same promises and consistently fail to deliver after being elected, election after election after election, and expect them to run the system properly. Look at it this way: if you put a retard at the controls of the LHC, do you really expect ground-breaking science to happen?
You're aware that numerous groups (including ones whose political aims and goals you likely support quite fervently) engage in lobbying too, right? Unions lobby for better labor protection and business regulations; Environmental groups lobby for better wetlands protection and stricter emissions regulations; Are you going to suggest that these groups will now be put to death for treason if they hire somebody to represent them and meet with legislators about issues near and dear to the members of the group doing that hiring?
And if that's your opinion, don't you think that seems a bit... well... dictatorial? And wouldn't that just result in higher levels of corruption than the system you seem to think is so corrupt?
twenty who are "perceved to be less corrupt"; that does not mean that they are less corruptible.
But in broad strokes, looking at that list you'll find that most of the countries at the top of your list are fairly liberal democracies/republics. I'd say that offers a pretty strong suggestion that liberal democracy and free market economies are relatively less corruptible than the alternatives.
http://www.wds.co/about/clients.asp
That "Manufacturers" section is pretty much a who's who of the Android ecosystem.
How else do you think they get access to a year's worth of call center records and other data from the manufacturers? That's not generally publicly available information. Do you think Apple and Microsoft hand them a bundle of money and say, "Make shit up about our competition, but make it sound sciency, so say you analyzed statistics and stuff!"
This report was likely commissioned by multiple clients (manufacturers & mobile operators) who handed over their aggregate call center data to the research firm and said, "Tell us what you see." And what they see is that Android handsets seem to have a higher hardware failure rate.
Calling cheap, low-end phones "cheap low-end phones" doesn't mean that every other product made by the company is a cheap piece of junk. It's too bad those washing machines are irrelevant to a discussion of the quality of "garbage low end phones."
Unless those washing machines run Android too? It must be a real bitch to fit them in your pocket though... people said the iPad was too big!
Yeah. It couldn't possibly be that in their race to gain market share and push out the latest and greatest iPhone killer with slightly better specs & performance, the phone manufacturers are using cheaper hardware, and spending less time testing & QC'ing the hardware and software in an effort to maintain a reasonable (i.e., sustainable) profit margin, and thus are producing hardware that is slightly more likely to break or malfunction.
That would just be inconceivable.
If you dig into the stats, you'll probably find that certain models, brands, or styles of Android phone are more likely to break - my guess would be that they're the low-end (cheap) smartphones, and not the Galaxy S, Nexus, Droid and other "flagship" lines. But they *are* Android phones, and this simply part of the downside to Android's openness: carriers will load Android onto junky bottom-end phones that tend to break because they're made with very cheap parts.
I've noticed a few things with my iPhone 4, seems to specifically be related to out-ranging a wifi signal to plain-old 3g AT&T. When I do this, I've noticed that sometimes the phone ends up getting quite warm to the touch, and the battery drains at a very fast rate. I fixed the problem once by turning the phone off & back on, and since then by engaging airplane mode, then turning it off. My guess is something (could be third-party apps, even) goes rogue when it is active & your network connection goes off wifi, because I haven't seen it every time I leave the house, but I have seen it a few times, so there are certainly conditions where it seems to trigger.
iOS 5.0.1 beta is available today, and one of the first bullets in the update notice is "iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixes including: Fixes bugs affecting battery life." I'm guessing that most of the battery issues are software bugs that will get fixed when this 5.0.1 build goes live
No, Apple's alternative is light-years ahead of BBM. You see, it's actually online and operational.
Yes, that's a cheap shot. But let's recap, shall we?
GGP asks, "What are the new features of iOS 5?"
I respond, "Here's a list Apple published, and a quick synopsis - read the full list if you want a comprehensive review."
You then jump in with, "Android and Blackberry already do all of those things better - I'm sure of it. I haven't used iOS 5, and I don't really know how any of these features work, or how the alternatives I just heard about today work, but it's Apple, so I'm going to assume that they all suck, are insecure, and all of this is just Apple struggling to keep up with competitors."
How is any of your babble in any way relevant to the question at hand? Namely: "What new features are in iOS 5?" Go grind your axe elsewhere.
The crime was theft. Under California Penal Code. This is what he was sentenced for. Do you think that judges routinely hand out sentences for the monstrous crime of "being a big poopy head"?
He found some prototype in a bar. It was not his. By taking possession of it, he took on custodial obligations for that phone, which include returning the phone to its rightful owner, or turning it in to the police, so that the police may find the rightful owner. Those are your only two options as a finder of lost items over a certain dollar value under the law. You either return it to the owner, or turn it in to the police and tell them that you couldn't find the rightful owner. If you try to find the owner, and you are unable to, your ONLY OTHER LEGAL OPTION is to turn the phone over to the police. You don't get to hold it, take 3 days to half-assedly search for the owner, and then say "Wow, it's mine!" If you do anything but reuinte the item with its owner, or turn it over to the police, this is considered theft.
If you take an item that is, in the eyes of the law, stolen, and attempt to sell it to another person, then you are selling stolen goods, which simply compounds the crime you've committed.
This has nothing to do with "Apple making its own laws" - these laws have been on the books in California for YEARS. The phone was obviously valuable. The guy who found it did not perform the duties required of a custodial caretaker under the law, and thus went from custodian to thief. When they tracked him down, they charged him with theft, and now he gets slapped on the wrist for it. Sounds like the legal system is working exactly as intended.
Actually, it is really theft - it is defined as theft in the applicable laws.
What else do you call "appropriating something that doesn't belong to you," if not theft?
If there's no identifying information on the sidewalk with it (e.g., a wallet or purse), then I would turn the money in to the police, and tell them where and when I found it, as well as how much money was found with an inventory of denominations. (e.g., "I found $500, 10 $20's, 2 $50's, and 2 $100's, on the sidewalk outside Radio Shack at some address on date X, time Y." I'd also go inside to tell the owner of the store I found it outside that if anybody came in looking for the money, they should go to the local police department and pick up their lost items.
If there is identifying information with it, I'd try to contact the person first, using the phone book, facebook, and linkedin. If I couldn't find them through any of those means, I'd revert back to bringing the items to the police, and tell the police what methods I had tried to contact the owner already.
In fact, I did this about 3 years ago when I found a wallet on the sidewalk. And the person who lost the wallet got their money back, and I refused the hundred bucks he offered me as a reward. And I felt pretty good knowing that I helped make somebody's crap day turn out pretty good.
The law establishes an expectation that they will do one of three things:
1) Leave the item there, and let somebody else deal with finding it;
2) Take custody of the item, and attempt to return the item to the owner; if you do this, you DO have some legal obligations under the law as a custodial caretaker of the item which you have taken custody of - you may not destroy it, appropriate it, sell it, etc.
3) Take custody of the item for only so long as it takes to deliver the item to the police, with a statement of where you found the item and the circumstances under which it was found; the police will then take responsibility for trying to reunite the item with its owner;
After you do one of those 3 things, several things may happen.
If you choose to take custody of the item, and are unable - for any reason - to return it to its owner, you are then obligated to turn the device over to the police, who will perform the same duties that they would have if you had taken it to them immediately (step 3 above).
If you bring it to the police, and they are unable to return the item to its owner, they will typically *sell* the item in an attempt to recover the department's costs for advertising the found item. At that point, you might be able to take ownership of the item by purchasing it from the police department, often at a significant discount.
There is no "finder's keepers" in law, and when you find and take possession of something, you are obligated under the law to make an attempt to return the item to its owner, or bring it to the police. And that's why this guy is getting fines, community service, and probation.