The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.
If you are worried about the education get a tutor and do some homework with the kid, but 8 hours a day learning reading, writing, social studies, math, and science from Mom & Dad doesn't prepare them for any sort of real world.
And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad... and frankly the fact that he is intelligently debating with his kid about the ethics of copyright is probably the best possible outcome.
Sometimes I think the democrats should just disband the party and then register as rebublicans, along with all the democrat voters. Start winning internal primaries in blue states... as republicans.
Take it over from the inside... like Trump himself did. Then everyone is a republican, and the farce of the whole party system is evident... because they'll still have the exact same people with the exact same positions in the exact same chairs.
I knew it was silent and I knew I wasn't hearing anything. But I was also subconsciously putting in a thud each time too. I even closed my eyes and I was still imagining the thud at the correct interval.
The condition where people can see color in sound, or visualize time, taste colors etc; a sensory experience in other senses based on the sensory input on another sense. And like synethesia its surely a continuum; where some people don't hear a thud at all, some people like us can't help but imagine the thud in our minds but know its not a 'real sound', and its likely some people well and truly hear it, and can't tell that the sound originated in their mind instead of the world around them.
The flipside, is that they don't need to access the criminals communications, they can simply prosecute them for having communications they can't access. Because THAT will be illegal now.
Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Even if they trust trump to the end of the world (which is batshit crazy all on its own), their rabid distrust of everyone else should slap them back down to earth.
Give the whitehouse a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.
No matter what happens, whether it's 3 or 7 years, the next president will *not* be Trump.
We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.
key word being 'ostensibly Christian'; they're not Christian... at most they're just 'team Christian', and only when it suits. We're about to watch "ostensible Christians" in Alabama elect a pedophile because he's on the same team as the sexual predator in chief.
Is that realistic though? Comcast may start their streaming service but there's little chance they'll entice me even if it's a $1 less a month than Netflix and even with the same selection if I'm used to Netflix.
What if netflix constantly drops out, times out, buffers; and their service is buttery smooth?
As for the upstart streaming service, Comcast likely wouldn't be slowing them down
Because? What financial reason does comcast have not to slow them down?
What I find off is that almost all scenarios without NN are hypothetical
Because you should fill the lake with lead so you have a concrete non-hypothetical example to reference when making decisions whether to dump lead in the lake?
"We should have laws to prevent ISPs from acting as monopolies towards consumers, not to prevent them from acting unfairly to obscenely profitable companies."
The point is that the NN laws that force them to treat their own service, the same as the service from obscenely profitable companies, also forces them to treat the service from [new startup] the same.
without NN, comcast prioritizes its own streaming service since that's hte most profitable since it owns it. Then it tells netflix, well... pay us a huge pile of money and we'll let packets from our customers reach your service too. because that's still hugely profitable for comcast.
But the new upstart streaming service? Comcast doesn't want another competitor to its own streaming service. They let netflix on for a huge pile of cash... but your new startup. It doesn't have that huge pile of cash to pay comcasts ransom, so its going to die on the vine.
NN would ensure bandwidth to the new streaming startup is prioritized the same.
This is in the consumers interest. I am paying my ISP to send my packets accross the network to the services I want to consume. I am paying for the pakcets the service sends back to me. That's literally service I pay my ISP for.
The ISP should be neutral in that, they shouldn't be allowed to inject themselves in an decide which destinations work best, base on how much money those destinations are coughing up. And they shouldn't be allowed to freeze out competitors by screwing with the traffic. Given internet access is virtually a utility and in many respects the last mile is a monopoly or duopoly the 'market' cannot ensure consumers can choose a provider that offers them the type of neutral service it wants, so it HAS to be regulated.
Your ISP's own streaming service will get priority. Netflix / Google / Apple / FB have enough cash to throw at the ISP to buy their way in.
youtube-next, or itunes-next from some new startup... that goes nowhere. Comcast, etc isn't going to give their traffic any bandwidth without a ransom. Customers get shitty performance / connectivity, and the service dies.
"How exactly would you improve on a compact, low mouse travel distance UI, with user customizable organization methods"
Let's see:
I wouldn't make it a popup window that has tendency to disappear on its under a variety of situations that don't involve the user wanting it to disappear.
I certainly wouldn't make it fixed size and crammed into a corner.
I wouldn't do a hierarchical tree navigation with a single vertical panel showing just one level of one branch. We have far better tree navigation GUI.
And I definitely wouldn't mix the system administration elements with the user configured application elements.
Nor would I make it so cumbersome to manage. The 'stuff I need' vs 'everything installed on the PC' all mashed together, plus control panels and turning it off.
"Windows 7's Start Menu is clearly an evolved design centered around practical application."
It evolved by throwing everything into it, like a kitchen sink, with no real plan.
Windows 10's system admin stuff on the right click is a big improvement -- I love that. Windows 10's settings and control panel situation is just miserable. The search has improved over 7 a lot. The menu is vertically resizable which is a step in the right direction. The tree navigation is still pretty weak. Manuging custom start menu folders by moving it to toolbars is actually an improvement... but on that still needs more improvement.
cortana is fine for desktop search, but its annoying that you have to tell it not to suggest shit from the web, news headlines, the stupid app store.
I quite like spotlight on OSX, and launchpad isn't bad either -- far better than windows 8, but still kind of clunky. The problem hasn't been fully solved yet. ClassicShell however wasn't a step forward, its just stuck holding onto a mediocre past.
"Anyone with a lot of software and hardware benefited from the ability to organise program shortcuts into folders"
Ok. So your idea of the optimum way to do that was to cram everything on your computer into a popup window overloaded with tons of other unrelated functions?? Really?
Why not just create a folder hierchy with shortcuts, documents, files, and anything you want in it organized howerver you want it, and only with what you want it.
Then rightclick on the taskbar, select 'toolbars', add a toolbar, and select your little folder hierarchy, and voila.
Or divide it up and add multiple toolbars to the taskbar.
"Of course modern users only need facebook and a full frontal lobotomy so won't be needing customiseable start menus."
Windows 10 gives you as many customizable heirarchical popup menus from the taskbar as you want. You claim to be some sort of power user, yet you seem dead set against learning even the barest minimum about the operating system's power user features. Perhaps you've already received your lobotomy?
Giving people what they don't want at any price, including "free", is not a substute for giving them what they want.
Seriously, we've all been there... I feel like watching, I don't know... "Dr. Strangelove" and netflix doesn't have it so it suggests "Dr. Strange", "Young Frankenstein", "House of cards", "Pulp Fiction", "Oliver Stone's Untold History of the..."
So I torrent Dr. Strangelove, because I've already seen, or do not care to see any of those titles; and I *want* to see Dr. Strangelove.
As a consumer I don't like the idea of bittorrent throttling at all, even if I haven't used it myself but I want to be able to.
See, right there bit torrent traffic shouldn't be 'throttled' per se, but it, along with email, and other bulk non-realtime services, should be least priority. VOIP, gaming, etc and other such real-time monitoring should be highest priority. regular web browsing in the middle.
The important thing to note is that despite a lot of bleating by the ISPs about this, this is really nothing to do with net neutrality. Most net neutrality proponents are fine with sensible traffic shaping to the benefit of all users. If my 5GB torrent takes 20 seconds longer to complete so that your phone call doesn't have 10 two second audio dropouts, that just makes sense. When the pipe is full, some traffic has to be dropped, and dropping it based on service type is fine. drop a few torrent packets and keep the voip packets is fine and does not violate net neutrality.
dropping voip packets to competitors voip services, while keeping voip packets from the servcie we own / partner with/ get revenue from however does violate net neutrality.
"Would you care to link to the specific page that has that info?"
Pretty simple: paid prioritization / availability of some internet sites and providers over others:
example 1: without net neutrality, the ISP can offer a package that only allows access to their own properties. Does the ISP own a streaming service, then your internet service can only reach that service, you the customer can't reach netflix or hulu. Maybe they offer a higher tier internet package you can buy that will let you visit these services... or maybe they don't.
example 2: without net neutrality, the ISP can throttle netflix traffic to a crawl unless netflix pays some fee to your ISP. I mean sure the customers are already paying a fee to access netflix via the internet service, perhaps they are even paying extra just for permission to reach netflix but that's not important. They can also go after payments from each service and server with a "pay us, or people visiting from our network will be throttled to minimal speeds".
The effect of the loss of net neutrality is that:
a) services owned by the ISP do not have to be treated the same as other services. They can do whatever they want to make sure competing services are not reachable, not usable, or cost a lot more.
b) large services will pay the ransoms to the ISP to get their services to consumers. So facebook and netflix will pay the ISP for premium access. This serves to enrich the ISP, and entrench the big players.
If facebook-next comes along, or youtube-next comes along but doesn't have the money to pay all the ISPs not to block or throttle them into oblvious, then oblivion is where they'll stay. Even if they can pay their own hosting and bandwith costs, they also have to pay EACH ISP the ransom due to send those packets to the ISPs customers.
The resulting internt will have a few dozen channels owned by large companies, most of which will belong to the ISPs themselves, and a few more behemoths like apple etc that can afford the pay to be reachable.
Your new website or service, dies on the vine. Comcast users aren't going to pay comcast extra money each month to reach your site, and you can't afford to pay comcast and every other provider money to reach their customers.
Do not get me wrong, Windows10's start button/menu/shell leave a lot to be desired, but are functional enough to do the job.
This is a fair statement.
And the flipside of it is that Windows 7's start menu is itself a dogs breakfast of poor usability and poor design choices.
Given a choice between windows 7 and windows 10, I'll take 10. Neither is perfect, but 10 is better than 7. I've removed all the tiles on mine so its basically just a menu. Hit windows and start typing works well, and there is lots of useful stuff on the right click menu.
Win8 was an abortion with its hot corners, and full screen nonsense... and well like you said, Windows 10 is passable. But windows 7 was not the pinnacle of all that was good. It was clunky and awkward and about the only reason people want it is 'familiarity'. Familiarity is valuable, but it should get in the way of progress. Win10's menu is flawed, but it is progress.
"A number of older people I know consider us to already be at the point you mentioned"
If they think machines run our lives now, ask them if they think farms ran our lives before? Because in that sense sire they are right; but also in that sense... so what... that has always been the nature of life. We have always been in some sense "controlled" by the need to do a think.
But in the sense of us being subservient to AI... no, that's a whole other bailiwick. Or do they really see no difference between the man whose day is largely dictated by the needs of his farm and a man in slavery?
"Eventually, we will either integrate with AI or something else will happen."
You seem to be arguing that there is no need to concern ourselves with how that integration goes, or what exactly happens.
Your a pioneer setting sail to new lands with the attitude that "eventually we will get there and make a wonderful new life for ourselves, or something else happens".
This isn't a time for laissez faire -- this is time to plan, so we get the best chance at outcomes we want. Some of those 'something else happens' outcomes aren't great... drowning on the way, freezing or starvation on arrival, killed by natives or diseases... maybe we should at least try to steer the ship, and bring some food, blankets, medicine, and weapons.
"There's no reason to worry about it, because for example, if you "cease to exist", you aren't likely to experience anything at all."
Again... the pioneer on the ship is generally quite concerned about the possibility he ceases to exist, and is usually quite motivated to prevent that from happening. So batten down the hatches and lash yourself to the mast when the storm hits, i don't know about you, but I don't want to sink or go overboard and shortly thereafter 'case to exist'.
I'm more than happy to extend my capabilities by uplinking and having access to more and better capabilities.
That's neat. I especially like how you think it'll be you, in charge, doing the uplinking, and expanding your capabilities.
What if its not you? What if the AI is in control, not you? And your just an extension of its capabilities, to offer it access to more and better capabilities? Maybe you'll know you've been tricked and get to live out the rest of your life as a slave (fair turnaround right? After all... isn't that what you were planning to do to the AI?
Or maybe, whatever constitutes 'you' ceases to exist, and your mortal coil is just an extension of the AI that now operates it. So your body's still stomping around, and its got access to all kinds information and capabilitiy it didn't used to have... too bad you aren't there anymore to enjoy it though.
"Why are people ignoring the fact that we already have cyborgs among us, and that their capabilities becoming more powerful is not a bad thing."
Nobody is ignoring that, but the end game is is that that if the AI matches or surpasses humans, it will no longer be subservient to us.
What happens when you are the AI's tool, pet, lab rat, or annoying insect? How is that a 'good thing' ?
"I want a local account with locally-saved password, not one that's tied to a Microsoft account. Yes, it can be done,"
I just did a fresh install of the fall update on a system. It's a lot less obnoxious than it used to be. Yeah, it still steers you towards a microsoft account, but the path to not do do that is now pretty clearly marked, where before at its worst, you practically had to "fail" to connect to the microsoft cloud before it would grudgingly offer to let you use a local account.
"Nor do I want WiFi passwords "cared and shared" with the world."
What network wifi/analyzers are you using? The ones I've tried have been pretty much garbage, and the free versions are stuffed to the brim with ads and while the ads go away if you pay, I'm not sure I'd trust that any other tracking did.
"I have my bank's app, which I'm sure is safe."
I'm absolutely sure its not malware. I'm a lot less sure that they aren't tracking us more than they need to be, especially as the app from my bank is an ad vector for several of the banks services, so they are likely using tracking and analytics and telemetry to target and track 'enagement' etc with those ads.
"I have 3 apps from online job sites, which I trust to be safe."
"Paranoid much? Samsung phones already have a feature called smart stay, which keeps the screen on if you're looking at it. I"
I have an S7 edge, and find that feature is more annoying than useful, because it doesn't work that well. Your right though, I haven't heard of any privacy issues related to that. Doesn't mean there aren't any. Do we know if that's included back in the telemetry sent to samsung... how often you look at the phone, and for how long; or if it fingerprints the faces and reports back how many different people... etc. I hope its not doing any of that, but I don't know one way or the other.
With the amount of BS these companies try to pull right now, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
" The feature described in this article can be used for the convenience of users and also to improve privacy if it's used correctly."
Yes, the article covered that. I'm pointing out what the article didn't consider.
"It's also relatively easy to defeat a camera by covering it up."
Why should I ever have to "defeat" my phone. It's *my* phone.
1) to charge extra when more than one person watches netflix? 2) to do targeted advertising based on who is looking? 3) to pause commercials if I look away until I face the screen again? 4) to pause ads if the other person looks away, to make sure they see the ads too?
5) to pause the video if I look away.
6) to black out your screen any time someone else happens to look at it. great if you to don't want your bf/gf/wife/husband to see the text messages your sending... not so great if you are trying to *show* him/her the text messages your sending. And truly annoying the moment your kids and friends figure out they can black your phone out by glancing at the screen, and start doing it just to mess with you.
Why is the camera even on? Camera should only be on, when I turn it on. Yet another feature from google I don't want.
Meanwhile, it won't tell if I'm being recorded by 40 other cameras. So its a false sense of security at best.
"Unless you work in a licensed professio, job requirements often represent an "ideal candidate wish list" by the employer. Smart job seekers know that and aren't afraid to apply to jobs where the fit isn't clear or the requirement match isn't all there."
Pretty much this. I just dealt with a recruiting company for the first time on the hiring side, and it really is interesting and eye-opening.
A lot of the stuff is just buckets. And the required experience in years next to it is really. For example we wanted people with 5+ years experience in front end web application developement (any kind), and we wanted people with typescript and Angular 2 experience. Obviously we don't want people with 5 years Angular 2 experience, but that's what it looks like we're asking for.
And the college degree stuff... yeah. That can serve lots of purposes -- most degrees reflect a fair bit of writing and organization and motivation etc so its good to see. And if you've got too many applicants its a good way to filter it a bit. (Although if you are hiring a junior position and have too many applicants filtering it to just people who are over qualified and will either refuse the offered salary, or accept it but then jump ship the minute they find something better is counter productive.
Slashdot Mirror
The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.
If you are worried about the education get a tutor and do some homework with the kid, but 8 hours a day learning reading, writing, social studies, math, and science from Mom & Dad doesn't prepare them for any sort of real world.
And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad... and frankly the fact that he is intelligently debating with his kid about the ethics of copyright is probably the best possible outcome.
Sometimes I think the democrats should just disband the party and then register as rebublicans, along with all the democrat voters. Start winning internal primaries in blue states... as republicans.
Take it over from the inside... like Trump himself did. Then everyone is a republican, and the farce of the whole party system is evident... because they'll still have the exact same people with the exact same positions in the exact same chairs.
That about sums it up for me too.
I knew it was silent and I knew I wasn't hearing anything. But I was also subconsciously putting in a thud each time too. I even closed my eyes and I was still imagining the thud at the correct interval.
Gestalt theory is part of it; i suspect synethesia is another part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The condition where people can see color in sound, or visualize time, taste colors etc; a sensory experience in other senses based on the sensory input on another sense. And like synethesia its surely a continuum; where some people don't hear a thud at all, some people like us can't help but imagine the thud in our minds but know its not a 'real sound', and its likely some people well and truly hear it, and can't tell that the sound originated in their mind instead of the world around them.
The flipside, is that they don't need to access the criminals communications, they can simply prosecute them for having communications they can't access. Because THAT will be illegal now.
Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Even if they trust trump to the end of the world (which is batshit crazy all on its own), their rabid distrust of everyone else should slap them back down to earth.
Give the whitehouse a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.
No matter what happens, whether it's 3 or 7 years, the next president will *not* be Trump.
We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.
key word being 'ostensibly Christian'; they're not Christian... at most they're just 'team Christian', and only when it suits. We're about to watch "ostensible Christians" in Alabama elect a pedophile because he's on the same team as the sexual predator in chief.
Is that realistic though? Comcast may start their streaming service but there's little chance they'll entice me even if it's a $1 less a month than Netflix and even with the same selection if I'm used to Netflix.
What if netflix constantly drops out, times out, buffers; and their service is buttery smooth?
As for the upstart streaming service, Comcast likely wouldn't be slowing them down
Because? What financial reason does comcast have not to slow them down?
What I find off is that almost all scenarios without NN are hypothetical
Because you should fill the lake with lead so you have a concrete non-hypothetical example to reference when making decisions whether to dump lead in the lake?
"We should have laws to prevent ISPs from acting as monopolies towards consumers, not to prevent them from acting unfairly to obscenely profitable companies."
The point is that the NN laws that force them to treat their own service, the same as the service from obscenely profitable companies, also forces them to treat the service from [new startup] the same.
without NN, comcast prioritizes its own streaming service since that's hte most profitable since it owns it. Then it tells netflix, well... pay us a huge pile of money and we'll let packets from our customers reach your service too. because that's still hugely profitable for comcast.
But the new upstart streaming service? Comcast doesn't want another competitor to its own streaming service. They let netflix on for a huge pile of cash... but your new startup. It doesn't have that huge pile of cash to pay comcasts ransom, so its going to die on the vine.
NN would ensure bandwidth to the new streaming startup is prioritized the same.
This is in the consumers interest. I am paying my ISP to send my packets accross the network to the services I want to consume. I am paying for the pakcets the service sends back to me. That's literally service I pay my ISP for.
The ISP should be neutral in that, they shouldn't be allowed to inject themselves in an decide which destinations work best, base on how much money those destinations are coughing up. And they shouldn't be allowed to freeze out competitors by screwing with the traffic. Given internet access is virtually a utility and in many respects the last mile is a monopoly or duopoly the 'market' cannot ensure consumers can choose a provider that offers them the type of neutral service it wants, so it HAS to be regulated.
netflix dvd is only available in the states.
Mod up. This is precisely true.
Your ISP's own streaming service will get priority. Netflix / Google / Apple / FB have enough cash to throw at the ISP to buy their way in.
youtube-next, or itunes-next from some new startup... that goes nowhere. Comcast, etc isn't going to give their traffic any bandwidth without a ransom. Customers get shitty performance / connectivity, and the service dies.
The monopoly situation gets worse, not better.
"How exactly would you improve on a compact, low mouse travel distance UI, with user customizable organization methods"
Let's see:
I wouldn't make it a popup window that has tendency to disappear on its under a variety of situations that don't involve the user wanting it to disappear.
I certainly wouldn't make it fixed size and crammed into a corner.
I wouldn't do a hierarchical tree navigation with a single vertical panel showing just one level of one branch. We have far better tree navigation GUI.
And I definitely wouldn't mix the system administration elements with the user configured application elements.
Nor would I make it so cumbersome to manage. The 'stuff I need' vs 'everything installed on the PC' all mashed together, plus control panels and turning it off.
"Windows 7's Start Menu is clearly an evolved design centered around practical application."
It evolved by throwing everything into it, like a kitchen sink, with no real plan.
Windows 10's system admin stuff on the right click is a big improvement -- I love that. Windows 10's settings and control panel situation is just miserable. The search has improved over 7 a lot. The menu is vertically resizable which is a step in the right direction. The tree navigation is still pretty weak. Manuging custom start menu folders by moving it to toolbars is actually an improvement... but on that still needs more improvement.
cortana is fine for desktop search, but its annoying that you have to tell it not to suggest shit from the web, news headlines, the stupid app store.
I quite like spotlight on OSX, and launchpad isn't bad either -- far better than windows 8, but still kind of clunky. The problem hasn't been fully solved yet. ClassicShell however wasn't a step forward, its just stuck holding onto a mediocre past.
"Anyone with a lot of software and hardware benefited from the ability to organise program shortcuts into folders"
Ok. So your idea of the optimum way to do that was to cram everything on your computer into a popup window overloaded with tons of other unrelated functions?? Really?
Why not just create a folder hierchy with shortcuts, documents, files, and anything you want in it organized howerver you want it, and only with what you want it.
Then rightclick on the taskbar, select 'toolbars', add a toolbar, and select your little folder hierarchy, and voila.
Or divide it up and add multiple toolbars to the taskbar.
"Of course modern users only need facebook and a full frontal lobotomy so won't be needing customiseable start menus."
Windows 10 gives you as many customizable heirarchical popup menus from the taskbar as you want. You claim to be some sort of power user, yet you seem dead set against learning even the barest minimum about the operating system's power user features. Perhaps you've already received your lobotomy?
Giving people what they don't want at any price, including "free", is not a substute for giving them what they want.
Seriously, we've all been there... I feel like watching, I don't know... "Dr. Strangelove" and netflix doesn't have it so it suggests "Dr. Strange", "Young Frankenstein", "House of cards", "Pulp Fiction", "Oliver Stone's Untold History of the..."
So I torrent Dr. Strangelove, because I've already seen, or do not care to see any of those titles; and I *want* to see Dr. Strangelove.
As a consumer I don't like the idea of bittorrent throttling at all, even if I haven't used it myself but I want to be able to.
See, right there bit torrent traffic shouldn't be 'throttled' per se, but it, along with email, and other bulk non-realtime services, should be least priority. VOIP, gaming, etc and other such real-time monitoring should be highest priority. regular web browsing in the middle.
The important thing to note is that despite a lot of bleating by the ISPs about this, this is really nothing to do with net neutrality. Most net neutrality proponents are fine with sensible traffic shaping to the benefit of all users. If my 5GB torrent takes 20 seconds longer to complete so that your phone call doesn't have 10 two second audio dropouts, that just makes sense. When the pipe is full, some traffic has to be dropped, and dropping it based on service type is fine. drop a few torrent packets and keep the voip packets is fine and does not violate net neutrality.
dropping voip packets to competitors voip services, while keeping voip packets from the servcie we own / partner with/ get revenue from however does violate net neutrality.
"Would you care to link to the specific page that has that info?"
Pretty simple:
paid prioritization / availability of some internet sites and providers over others:
example 1: without net neutrality, the ISP can offer a package that only allows access to their own properties. Does the ISP own a streaming service, then your internet service can only reach that service, you the customer can't reach netflix or hulu. Maybe they offer a higher tier internet package you can buy that will let you visit these services... or maybe they don't.
example 2: without net neutrality, the ISP can throttle netflix traffic to a crawl unless netflix pays some fee to your ISP. I mean sure the customers are already paying a fee to access netflix via the internet service, perhaps they are even paying extra just for permission to reach netflix but that's not important. They can also go after payments from each service and server with a "pay us, or people visiting from our network will be throttled to minimal speeds".
The effect of the loss of net neutrality is that:
a) services owned by the ISP do not have to be treated the same as other services. They can do whatever they want to make sure competing services are not reachable, not usable, or cost a lot more.
b) large services will pay the ransoms to the ISP to get their services to consumers. So facebook and netflix will pay the ISP for premium access. This serves to enrich the ISP, and entrench the big players.
If facebook-next comes along, or youtube-next comes along but doesn't have the money to pay all the ISPs not to block or throttle them into oblvious, then oblivion is where they'll stay. Even if they can pay their own hosting and bandwith costs, they also have to pay EACH ISP the ransom due to send those packets to the ISPs customers.
The resulting internt will have a few dozen channels owned by large companies, most of which will belong to the ISPs themselves, and a few more behemoths like apple etc that can afford the pay to be reachable.
Your new website or service, dies on the vine. Comcast users aren't going to pay comcast extra money each month to reach your site, and you can't afford to pay comcast and every other provider money to reach their customers.
Do not get me wrong, Windows10's start button/menu/shell leave a lot to be desired, but are functional enough to do the job.
This is a fair statement.
And the flipside of it is that Windows 7's start menu is itself a dogs breakfast of poor usability and poor design choices.
Given a choice between windows 7 and windows 10, I'll take 10. Neither is perfect, but 10 is better than 7. I've removed all the tiles on mine so its basically just a menu. Hit windows and start typing works well, and there is lots of useful stuff on the right click menu.
Win8 was an abortion with its hot corners, and full screen nonsense... and well like you said, Windows 10 is passable. But windows 7 was not the pinnacle of all that was good. It was clunky and awkward and about the only reason people want it is 'familiarity'. Familiarity is valuable, but it should get in the way of progress. Win10's menu is flawed, but it is progress.
"A number of older people I know consider us to already be at the point you mentioned"
If they think machines run our lives now, ask them if they think farms ran our lives before? Because in that sense sire they are right; but also in that sense... so what... that has always been the nature of life. We have always been in some sense "controlled" by the need to do a think.
But in the sense of us being subservient to AI ... no, that's a whole other bailiwick. Or do they really see no difference between the man whose day is largely dictated by the needs of his farm and a man in slavery?
"Eventually, we will either integrate with AI or something else will happen."
You seem to be arguing that there is no need to concern ourselves with how that integration goes, or what exactly happens.
Your a pioneer setting sail to new lands with the attitude that "eventually we will get there and make a wonderful new life for ourselves, or something else happens".
This isn't a time for laissez faire -- this is time to plan, so we get the best chance at outcomes we want. Some of those 'something else happens' outcomes aren't great... drowning on the way, freezing or starvation on arrival, killed by natives or diseases... maybe we should at least try to steer the ship, and bring some food, blankets, medicine, and weapons.
"There's no reason to worry about it, because for example, if you "cease to exist", you aren't likely to experience anything at all."
Again... the pioneer on the ship is generally quite concerned about the possibility he ceases to exist, and is usually quite motivated to prevent that from happening. So batten down the hatches and lash yourself to the mast when the storm hits, i don't know about you, but I don't want to sink or go overboard and shortly thereafter 'case to exist'.
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I'm more than happy to extend my capabilities by uplinking and having access to more and better capabilities.
That's neat. I especially like how you think it'll be you, in charge, doing the uplinking, and expanding your capabilities.
What if its not you? What if the AI is in control, not you? And your just an extension of its capabilities, to offer it access to more and better capabilities? Maybe you'll know you've been tricked and get to live out the rest of your life as a slave (fair turnaround right? After all... isn't that what you were planning to do to the AI?
Or maybe, whatever constitutes 'you' ceases to exist, and your mortal coil is just an extension of the AI that now operates it. So your body's still stomping around, and its got access to all kinds information and capabilitiy it didn't used to have... too bad you aren't there anymore to enjoy it though.
"Why are people ignoring the fact that we already have cyborgs among us, and that their capabilities becoming more powerful is not a bad thing."
Nobody is ignoring that, but the end game is is that that if the AI matches or surpasses humans, it will no longer be subservient to us.
What happens when you are the AI's tool, pet, lab rat, or annoying insect? How is that a 'good thing' ?
Which TLD was reserved for that purpose?
localhost? no.
example? nope.
invalid? hell no.
test? maybe... but no... not really, if you actually read the RFC.
And "dev" isn't "test" anyway... hell many of us have BOTH.
"I want a local account with locally-saved password, not one that's tied to a Microsoft account. Yes, it can be done,"
I just did a fresh install of the fall update on a system. It's a lot less obnoxious than it used to be. Yeah, it still steers you towards a microsoft account, but the path to not do do that is now pretty clearly marked, where before at its worst, you practically had to "fail" to connect to the microsoft cloud before it would grudgingly offer to let you use a local account.
"Nor do I want WiFi passwords "cared and shared" with the world."
I thought that had been killed.
I agree with the rest of your post.
What network wifi/analyzers are you using? The ones I've tried have been pretty much garbage, and the free versions are stuffed to the brim with ads and while the ads go away if you pay, I'm not sure I'd trust that any other tracking did.
"I have my bank's app, which I'm sure is safe."
I'm absolutely sure its not malware. I'm a lot less sure that they aren't tracking us more than they need to be, especially as the app from my bank is an ad vector for several of the banks services, so they are likely using tracking and analytics and telemetry to target and track 'enagement' etc with those ads.
"I have 3 apps from online job sites, which I trust to be safe."
As above.
Its not that a PBX would be too costly... its "why bother"? Its not even on their radar as a 'problem' that needs 'fixing'.
You should really learn to use blockquote tags.
They're awesome!
I use them all the time. Sometimes I don't close them properly; and I'm far to lazy to preview posts. ;)
"Paranoid much? Samsung phones already have a feature called smart stay, which keeps the screen on if you're looking at it. I"
I have an S7 edge, and find that feature is more annoying than useful, because it doesn't work that well. Your right though, I haven't heard of any privacy issues related to that. Doesn't mean there aren't any. Do we know if that's included back in the telemetry sent to samsung... how often you look at the phone, and for how long; or if it fingerprints the faces and reports back how many different people... etc. I hope its not doing any of that, but I don't know one way or the other.
With the amount of BS these companies try to pull right now, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
" The feature described in this article can be used for the convenience of users and also to improve privacy if it's used correctly."
Yes, the article covered that. I'm pointing out what the article didn't consider.
"It's also relatively easy to defeat a camera by covering it up."
Why should I ever have to "defeat" my phone. It's *my* phone.
1) to charge extra when more than one person watches netflix?
2) to do targeted advertising based on who is looking?
3) to pause commercials if I look away until I face the screen again?
4) to pause ads if the other person looks away, to make sure they see the ads too?
5) to pause the video if I look away.
6) to black out your screen any time someone else happens to look at it. great if you to don't want your bf/gf/wife/husband to see the text messages your sending... not so great if you are trying to *show* him/her the text messages your sending. And truly annoying the moment your kids and friends figure out they can black your phone out by glancing at the screen, and start doing it just to mess with you.
Why is the camera even on? Camera should only be on, when I turn it on. Yet another feature from google I don't want.
Meanwhile, it won't tell if I'm being recorded by 40 other cameras. So its a false sense of security at best.
"Unless you work in a licensed professio, job requirements often represent an "ideal candidate wish list" by the employer. Smart job seekers know that and aren't afraid to apply to jobs where the fit isn't clear or the requirement match isn't all there."
Pretty much this. I just dealt with a recruiting company for the first time on the hiring side, and it really is interesting and eye-opening.
A lot of the stuff is just buckets. And the required experience in years next to it is really. For example we wanted people with 5+ years experience in front end web application developement (any kind), and we wanted people with typescript and Angular 2 experience. Obviously we don't want people with 5 years Angular 2 experience, but that's what it looks like we're asking for.
And the college degree stuff... yeah. That can serve lots of purposes -- most degrees reflect a fair bit of writing and organization and motivation etc so its good to see. And if you've got too many applicants its a good way to filter it a bit. (Although if you are hiring a junior position and have too many applicants filtering it to just people who are over qualified and will either refuse the offered salary, or accept it but then jump ship the minute they find something better is counter productive.