Okay, this is getting word and legally questionable. Sales tax, is exactly that. You can tax non-essential services/goods. If the shift is from one industry to another for the same service type, it is taxed the same way. Move from local video store to online streaming makes not difference unless implemented badly: you are taxed for the service regardless of how it's provided. If you add fees to specific services, that is basically a luxury or sin tax which is traditionally used to dissuade people from using that product or service. Examples like tobacco, alcohol or the like. Problem is if you add what is basically a sin tax on streaming, that is a penalty on the entire industry. And a sin tax on streaming is a pandora's box. To make it fair or impartial you'd have to apply the same to movie theatres, theatre, or anything that delivers an entertainment service. It's high questionable which is why one court threw it out already. These states need to either raise taxes in general (which they don't do because it would cost some officials their elected positions) or find a justifiable sin tax on some industry that you can prove does public harm. Otherwise, it's just a way to try to hide an additional tax so official can say they haven't raised taxes in general. It would be curious to know why these states focus on video distribution services. As far as justifying an official sin tax on the industry, that unlike tobacco or alcohol, will take more studies/proof to justify. Better off taxing marajuana. You can easily put a sin tax on that which is ethically/legally/politically acceptable, and you'd get tons of revenue anyway. We are about to do that in Canada, and we aren't falling apart. (We've been using tons of weed for years with the police mostly turning a blind eye and we're doing okay so far, the new laws next year will get a ton in taxes).
This is why we need to redo the current US patent laws. They don't encourage innovation, they just protect corporations at the expense of public benefit. In addition, they actually inhibit innovation and intellectual evolution.
I remember being told (may or may not be true) that children who were allowed to play in the mud and get dirty were less likely to develop allergy to peanuts. Something about developing a tolerance. I forget the details. It's good to know we have a way of treating those who are affected, even if for a relatively short time.
That doesn't work. Here in Toronto, we build more housing in the form of condo's, so-called town houses, and even a few rental properties (but mostly condo's or townhouses with 750-850 sq. ft). Because of speculation, everyone charges the same crazy rents (including individual condo owners rental) and rental prices have not gone down. The only glimmer of hope is that the the housing bubble appears to have finally burst here. But more housing doesn't result in lower rent/property prices if you have people speculating that they can charge the same high prices and get someone to pay it. Foreign speculation and flipping have played a big part in the increasing insane housing and rental prices here. Lots of that in Vancouver and likely San Fran as well.
I never failed to get screwed when I got refurbished years ago, so I learned...better used than refurbished. Reason being, refurbished products typically are defective products under warranty so the customer typically gets a repaired tested refurbished device (new devices should be sent if under warranty but...especially with hard drives, you get items typically labeled "refurbished" or "reconditioned") and the warranty of course doesn't get a time reset. When it comes to refurbishing items, companies are not particularly picky or detailed oriented. As long as it boots or passes a very rudimentary scan, that passes and is set to the RMA requester, customer, sales force, whatever. In this case it backfired because someone got cheap with the battery.
As for fake batteries from China, gee what a surprise.
We are about to increased our minimum wage from $11.40 to $15. Restaurants are openly declaring significant layoffs. McDonald's is using Kiosks, and supermarkets in Toronto has started using a lot of self-serve checkout booths. in Ontario, we may also have universal minimal income doing as well (being discussed). It's going to be an interesting shift.
Apparently the magic number is around $30-40k/year salary when managers start considering replacing those employees with robots and/or AI. People in this salary area are most likely to be replaced by automation, or possibly an AI. We'll see how this pans out, but I'm a little worried the AI (not quite working in self-driving cars yet.:D)
Amazon is certainly driving the robotic force forward. I saw a sign near Chicago announcing they are hiring for the new Amazon warehouse there, but that is probably just to get started with transition team, and after the robot force is in full force. I'm guessing 12-18 months before a portion of the new hires are out of work due to increased automation.( A guess, but hey why now).
Okay, not only do we give the government an excuse to crack down on ANYONE in the this web space, but we've made it harder to find these people (if they commit any illegal or violent acts) unless you are already one of them or being recruited by them. Driving groups like this into dark alleys doesn't remove the problem, it just makes it harder to see. Short term comfort for long term harm. (Anyone for junk/fast food?)
We tell the world we have free speech, yet here we are proving otherwise. To be clear, I don't like what is going on and I do believe Trump has encouraged the neo-nazis, "white pride", white supremacists and and hate groups to come out of their holes. And yes, they now have the courage to mobilize and organize (somewhat, heaven help us if they ever truly organize).
The problem is if we respond to this with actions of fear, like suppressing opinion and speech, whether we agree or not, we turn ourselves into the likes of Putin, Xi (Chinese president) and Vajiralongkorn( king of Thailand) who instantly take measure to stop anyone saying anything they don't like, especially if it questions their authority or their policies.
Free speech can bring all sorts of things to light, good and bad. And we have to respond to both equally: With intelligence, rationale and restraint when we disagree. If we can't do this, the efforts of those like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, were for naught. The ACLU has been condemned by many for defending the rights of some of these groups to speak. But those are the real defenders of American values: Whether they disagree or disagree with people, they defend our civil liberties without prejudice. So long as it's only speech, we need to be true to the values we claim demonstrate our ability to have real dialogue among our citizens and government leaders.
The real problem with this rally was bringing weapons. The allowing of a POLITICAL (not military or mob style) is fine, but the bringing of weapons is where the line should have been drawn. (and easy enough to use politically: Police see baseball bats/shields, they get together and say "you may only proceed if you leave your 'equipment' here." A quickly improvised response unfortunately consisted mostly of people who were reacting rather than acting, and the result was baseball bats were brought by many of them as well. Trump uses this as an excuse to support the neo-nazis indirectly. This tragically lead to someone being killed. Even more tragic: There is footage that suggests that the death was not in fact a direct attack at all, but a neo-nazi who attended the rally panicking after his car was attacked by a protester a baseball bat (https://www.allenbwest.com/2017/08/14/new-shock-theory-emerges-charlottesville-drivers-motive-blowing-minds/).
So where does this leave us: Hopefully a lesson that knee-jerk reactions, like pulling any opinions or sites from the Internet that we don't like are the wrong response. Okay, child porn, is one thing and pulling that I encourage because the actions to create such material are monstrous. But pulling political statements, even racists ones, from the Internet because we don't like or are afraid of it brings us to a lower level and long term consequences are horrifying to imagine. Basically we become fascists, whatever our good intentions. While legally people can make their own statements to not support it by showing it on the media they control, when you are a media company (including Internet) one has a great responsibility if they truly believe in the right to free speech. They must have the courage to allow what they don't like to be said, as long as the speech content itself is not created by morally or ethically questionable actions (like child porn). There was a film I remember, "To Kill A Mockingbird". Perhaps we should all review it.
To use Benjamin Franklin's statement (and yes he didn't address it specifically for civil liberties but I think it works so...): "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" I would substitute "Civil" for "essential", especially pertaining to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We should try to be responsible, but we should not eliminate it when a few people use it in a way we don't agree with. (Another film "Absence of Malice" gives a good example of this.
Sounds a lot like the UK government actually WANTS to keep those weaknesses. Wonder if some were built in. Hmmm.
It may sound far fetched, but what other sane reason would you try to prevent people finding weakness, thus enabling them to be fixed? Unless this is a conspiracy to keep "backdoors" in the process of anonymizing data, it's just encouraging people to find those vulnerable points and NOT report them. Hackers much be laughing their butts off.
Someone wants to make trouble (and Damore may well be part of this commentary), but at the end of the day it can be interpreted that Damore's writing can be a disruptive element in the workplace. "An employee does not have free reign [sic] to engage in political speech that disrupts the workplace". Creating undue anger or contention in the work place can certainly be disruptive and detrimental to morale. That alone will cover it. Also, the memo appears to have been the breaking point, but not alone the root cause. Documentation showing his skill is not on par with his peers or the standards of Google can turn a "retaliation" into something overdue, and needed to happen before the work environment was affected. All employers have the right and duty to protect their work environment from harmful elements. I think this is simply a tool to pressure Google into a generous settlement, but if it goes to court, aside from Google being able to drag this out to the point it bankruts Damore, they can simply state they were protecting their good standing employees from a harmful element, who was already on shaky ground anyway. I'm not sure if this applies, but if this is an "at will "employee I think they can be fired for any reason but I'm not a lawyer nor is it clear he was an "at will" employee.
I'd have to argue "yes": It's personal. Anything derogatory that is personal has no place at work as it's not professional. Just like employees shouldn't be keeping personal photos on company storage devices/backups, as long as nobody else is hurt or business doesn't suffer people can voluntarily turn a blind eye. However, if it has the potential to harm the required storage space available to others for critical business operations data, the rule of thumb is, keep your personal/family photos off the company drives (Plus it doesn't protect your family privacy very well). Blacklists like that on company property can cause emotional harm and reduce ability for a business employees to work effectively with each other. Therefore I'd argue it has no place in the office.
A formal "blacklist" of employees on record is just foolish. Performance reports are one thing (and confidential) but a personal preferences blacklist isn't wise. Anyone who kept this sort of list on any team of mine would be of serious concern to me for two reasons:
1. their clear lack of judgement because if such a list were discovered it would be damming to management and to co-workers.
2. It would show an inability to be flexible professionally. Personal politics are exactly that: Personal. If that can't be kept outside the office then that person by definition is not being a professional.
We all have to work with peers we don't like at some point. Working with people we like is nice, but we are in a office to do a job. Either to earn a paycheck or perhaps something more noble or altruistic. (More are the former)
Very few offices I know will tolerate "not working with" any co-worker unless that co-worker had committed acts that violated basic comfort standards for the office, like abusive verbal behaviour, hazing or stuff like that. To me it's a wonder that a group of presumably intelligent people like those employed at Google would be doing anything like this in a matter that was easily verified.
The only apps I install are open source and I firewall my phone with droidwall. The reason: I was once recruited (I turned it down) to create a database to organize the "telemtry" data collected by a number of apps. To quote one of the executives, "These people out there have no idea how much data is collected". The EULA's say data "may be "collected but don't specify what in most cases, and I don't have time to analyze the apps traffic packets. Banking apps are getting a bad rep in Canada too because of the data people are discovering is being collected. The safest assumption is, if it's not open source for the public to audit, it's probably sending data the app developers can sell/make money off of and legally installing the app is "permission" (?!? laws need to be modified to protect the public). And if the apps doesn't explicitly tell you what it's collecting, it's like Windows 10: Collecting as much as it can. With a GPS (which I always turn off), text log, possible email, all log and a video camera, that is a LOT of data that could be collected. Welcome to a brave new world. Convenience comes at the price of security. I've yet to see an exception to this.
As much as well all hate to say it, and hate to talk about it, we humans are the biggest contributor to CO2. The other problems is we take down more trees that absorb CO2. We know all this of course. But the biggest 2 parts oft his equation are probably that while the birth rates of 1st world major nations (Especially Japan) are low, the nation of the poor sections or large countries (India, and rural areas of China due to farmland and some parts of Africa, which is one of the largest continents in the world, (Look up the Gall-Peter's Projection world map if you think it's not) have higher birth rates, and have for years. Which is why we are now at 7.5 billion people and counting.
We probably need to be talking about that issue rather than ignoring it because talking about it means having to ask what we should do. I'm not advocating anything like ignoring human rights, or mass population "adjustments", but we do need to talk about it. It's not going away because we remain relatively silent compared to all the other green house gas sources that make it to the media. And food waste from that 7.5 billion going to landfills where it rots, generating huge greenhouse gas emissions. And why? Because people make more money throwing leftover food from groceries away than giving it away. So when we talk about world hunger, or even starting people due to food banks being empty, I look at and my mind reels. That also needs to change as western society at least is a food disposable society now. Kind of like Japan's disposable economy in the 80-90's before their long recession: They were throwing away working appliances/tools because new ones were out and going to a used goods shop was socially low class and companies made more money when people threw their old goods away. (Foreigners living there could get free home furnishings as long as they were discrete about it).
Anyway, we've got lots of reasons for CO2, and pets for me are low on my radar of greenhouse gas sources in light of things like this. We need to plant a lot more trees and stop deforestation immediate (to eat of the CO2) and then stop richer societies from being so wasteful on food. Easiest thing to tackle because taking on the big 7.5 'B' problem..
Taxi drivers (confirmed in Canada, probably similar in USA, can't really speak for the rest of the world) have to pay much more in insurance fees. Not to say they couldn't find ways to be more competitive pricewise, but there is one issue. Ubers drivers from reports, make per hour than, say a delivery guy. It is a part-time freelance position basically, so in terms of hours they are many options. This isn't need, it's simply greed. Just like Uber doesn't need to reseasrch or implement times they can demand higher fees, but they do it simply because they believe they can. like many businesses.
Well no surprise there. When you have systems that just increase prices blindly when there appears to be less supply, of course the drivers are going to take advantage. The drivers as well as the owners are all playing the same game. And of course, we all lose. The idea of automatically increasing a price due to perceived lack is easy to abuse and fake. The real problem is there is no government agency holding Uber subject to any regulations or lawas that would control such of abuse. This is clearly price/market fixing, but the government agencies always seems to wait until someone does the obvious, look for a platform to exploit for elections, and then they do something very minor (or nothing in reality because the corrupt business greases the wheel). This is what info collected from those apps installed was used for ladies and gentlemen. Apps aren't needed for this service (web portals are fine) but they get sweet info for the business to exploit. The Drivers just made it more obvious and spelled out for us what we would already know if we were paying attention. It's no less wrong for the drivers than it is for Uber. At least Taxi drivers aren't at liberty to do this sort of rate hiking, at least not in North America to my knowledge, but then again, they are regulated. Uber is not. I was never a fan, not because I'm loyal to taxi drivers, but because the history of these services, the mandatory use of an app for this services, as well as the personality of the owner, all pointed to behavior of this nature. We either need more competition to keep Uber honest or people need to boycott Uber until they use a flat model pricing model. Easier to compare against the competition.
I'm not sure why someone marked you as "zero" because your point is certainly informative and thanks for that. Of course the definition of "essential liberty" is up for grabs in this context. But I personally consider the civil liberties that many fought hard to secure essential to an truly honest government. (Otherwise you have tyranny in my view like China, Russa, North Korea, and possibly Poland (signed some controversial law expanding presidential powers there) if they aren't careful. Thailand would also qualify. But as you point is again valid and I think you for properly informing us. If I had any moderation points I'd give you one. (or 2 if I could). Thanks.
Sure, real people don't need encryption, and honest people don't need privacy. (You can trust marketing companies....TRUST me). No one will abuse people's personal info as long as it's public and available to all, especially the government. Of course that logic might 50% apply if you always agreed with your government (like Trump), never voiced an opinion that that created inconvenience for those in power and never wanted a meaning opinion voiced. Mao believed in all this too, as does Putin. But do we really want to be in such company directly or indirectly?
Snowden correctly stated: You only have nothing to hide, if you have nothing to say.. Another famous quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Those who give up their civil liberties for a little extra safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Okay, if you are collecting data, you are collecting for only one reason: To profit from it. I've yet to see an exception of when a company collects data, it eventually sells it in part or has a whole for maximum profit. I think at this point people have finally begun to realize that if someone in tech can be abused it will, and with vigor. Everyone who said "we won't sell your data" has been caught collecting data and selling it in one form or another. Microsoft, they collection so much from Windows 10, and cars with Skype installed (?!?), tablets and so on. Using it to pump ads at people through Windows 10/Skype/Office 365. At&T, Google included (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/why-googles-spying-on-use_b_3530296.html). Basically, it can be sold it will. So the folks at Roomba could at least stop trying to insult our intelligence. The who purpose of the data collection is to monetize it. That boils down to selling it, one way or another.
President Obama allowed (and in this case encouraged) a lot of programs and policies that basically violated privacy of it's citizens, violated the constitution (see the data dragnet and court ruling on the programs revealed by Snowden), violated due process (see rendition of Americans) and even violated foreign sovereignty (see Drone programs). Every president has worked to increase the powers of it's position since George Bush Senior. We are losing credibility that we govern under a rule of law as we continue to erode due process, and find new ways muzzle and control U.S. citizens. Now any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have. Question is, what the next attack on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and due process is to come this term.
If you read between the lines it talks about users of limited numbers which include people who had smoked 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. Which isn't a lot (my parents were chain smokers so 100 in a lifetime is pretty low). Also includes people who included at least 1 e-cigarette as a smoker. Fully addicted smokers generally have smoked significantly more. if you only smoke a few it's easier to quit. I haven't have time to fully analyze the data, but this feels like a pitch to lower "sin taxes" as well as get E-cigarettes allowed in countries that ban it. To say e-cigarettes are a quitting aid tool is misleading, especially in this study which seems to leave too much room for manipulation. Feels like when Intel said Rambus Ram was superior to DDR at in insane scale, only for people to discover that Intel rugged the test so the results would be in favor of Rambus but Rambus actually did worse in real world situations.
Not to say that paint wasn't useful at early beginnings, but we have so many alternatives that are better it's comic to see MS paint these days. We have many free open source options factly superior (and has been for years). Among these:
1. The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org),
2. Krita (https://krita.org)
3. Inkscape (http://inkscape.org)
4. Pinta (https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/ ) (new)
There are others but these seem to have more traction. The Gimp is well know and I've used that the most for my graphic editing. Works well for me as does Inkscape.
MS Paint was good for simple demonstrations in kiddie classes, but MS Paint, while it works, has been had no enhancements in forever. So..it's time. RIP MS Paint.
In the USA it's done all the time. We have different reports on unemployment. One of these reports generally given out the mass media includes rosier numbers. The US Census has a methodology for counting homeless, but the reports we see talked about do not including the following as unemployed:
1. Homeless
2. Those who have given up looking (often out of frustration)
3. Underemployed.
So numbers can be misleading depending on whose you read. I'm seeing as I type this a post spelling out the U1-6 metris which give a clearer picture. We all have to be careful and question what we read. Often key information is omitted so you don't know what you are in fact reading. As my old math teacher used to tell his statistics class: "Statistics can lie".
The number of things that could go wrong with this enterprise are huge. If this starts a military escalation in robotics world wide we could all be in trouble. We already have drones doing all sorts of things like assassinations, especially in Pakistan (surprised they haven't yelled about acts of war given the casualties), or the potential to hack the systems coordinating these proposed drone swarms and turn them against us. I doubt this would be directly connected to the Internet (Internet Of Things (Iot) Is already a joke in IT security these days), but would probably be controlled via satellites, and that could be intercepted or jammed. All someone has to do is capture a few, reverse engineer them, and viola, you make some of your own. This is one of those things where, it looks cool, but just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should. You could argue benefits in say,construction (lots of researching/testing going on to make use of mini drones to do work in that area because many smaller robots potentially could have more power than one large one, like the insect strength-mass ratio), but as weapons, that could be terrifying. I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing about drone strikes in our own back yard. (See the Val Kilmer film "Real Genius", they just about got it right).
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, this is getting word and legally questionable. Sales tax, is exactly that. You can tax non-essential services/goods. If the shift is from one industry to another for the same service type, it is taxed the same way. Move from local video store to online streaming makes not difference unless implemented badly: you are taxed for the service regardless of how it's provided. If you add fees to specific services, that is basically a luxury or sin tax which is traditionally used to dissuade people from using that product or service. Examples like tobacco, alcohol or the like. Problem is if you add what is basically a sin tax on streaming, that is a penalty on the entire industry. And a sin tax on streaming is a pandora's box. To make it fair or impartial you'd have to apply the same to movie theatres, theatre, or anything that delivers an entertainment service. It's high questionable which is why one court threw it out already. These states need to either raise taxes in general (which they don't do because it would cost some officials their elected positions) or find a justifiable sin tax on some industry that you can prove does public harm. Otherwise, it's just a way to try to hide an additional tax so official can say they haven't raised taxes in general. It would be curious to know why these states focus on video distribution services. As far as justifying an official sin tax on the industry, that unlike tobacco or alcohol, will take more studies/proof to justify. Better off taxing marajuana. You can easily put a sin tax on that which is ethically/legally/politically acceptable, and you'd get tons of revenue anyway. We are about to do that in Canada, and we aren't falling apart. (We've been using tons of weed for years with the police mostly turning a blind eye and we're doing okay so far, the new laws next year will get a ton in taxes).
This is why we need to redo the current US patent laws. They don't encourage innovation, they just protect corporations at the expense of public benefit. In addition, they actually inhibit innovation and intellectual evolution.
I remember being told (may or may not be true) that children who were allowed to play in the mud and get dirty were less likely to develop allergy to peanuts. Something about developing a tolerance. I forget the details. It's good to know we have a way of treating those who are affected, even if for a relatively short time.
That doesn't work. Here in Toronto, we build more housing in the form of condo's, so-called town houses, and even a few rental properties (but mostly condo's or townhouses with 750-850 sq. ft). Because of speculation, everyone charges the same crazy rents (including individual condo owners rental) and rental prices have not gone down. The only glimmer of hope is that the the housing bubble appears to have finally burst here. But more housing doesn't result in lower rent/property prices if you have people speculating that they can charge the same high prices and get someone to pay it. Foreign speculation and flipping have played a big part in the increasing insane housing and rental prices here. Lots of that in Vancouver and likely San Fran as well.
I never failed to get screwed when I got refurbished years ago, so I learned...better used than refurbished. Reason being, refurbished products typically are defective products under warranty so the customer typically gets a repaired tested refurbished device (new devices should be sent if under warranty but...especially with hard drives, you get items typically labeled "refurbished" or "reconditioned") and the warranty of course doesn't get a time reset. When it comes to refurbishing items, companies are not particularly picky or detailed oriented. As long as it boots or passes a very rudimentary scan, that passes and is set to the RMA requester, customer, sales force, whatever. In this case it backfired because someone got cheap with the battery.
As for fake batteries from China, gee what a surprise.
We are about to increased our minimum wage from $11.40 to $15. Restaurants are openly declaring significant layoffs. McDonald's is using Kiosks, and supermarkets in Toronto has started using a lot of self-serve checkout booths. in Ontario, we may also have universal minimal income doing as well (being discussed). It's going to be an interesting shift.
:D)
Apparently the magic number is around $30-40k/year salary when managers start considering replacing those employees with robots and/or AI. People in this salary area are most likely to be replaced by automation, or possibly an AI. We'll see how this pans out, but I'm a little worried the AI (not quite working in self-driving cars yet.
Amazon is certainly driving the robotic force forward. I saw a sign near Chicago announcing they are hiring for the new Amazon warehouse there, but that is probably just to get started with transition team, and after the robot force is in full force. I'm guessing 12-18 months before a portion of the new hires are out of work due to increased automation.( A guess, but hey why now).
Okay, not only do we give the government an excuse to crack down on ANYONE in the this web space, but we've made it harder to find these people (if they commit any illegal or violent acts) unless you are already one of them or being recruited by them. Driving groups like this into dark alleys doesn't remove the problem, it just makes it harder to see. Short term comfort for long term harm. (Anyone for junk/fast food?)
We tell the world we have free speech, yet here we are proving otherwise. To be clear, I don't like what is going on and I do believe Trump has encouraged the neo-nazis, "white pride", white supremacists and and hate groups to come out of their holes. And yes, they now have the courage to mobilize and organize (somewhat, heaven help us if they ever truly organize).
The problem is if we respond to this with actions of fear, like suppressing opinion and speech, whether we agree or not, we turn ourselves into the likes of Putin, Xi (Chinese president) and Vajiralongkorn( king of Thailand) who instantly take measure to stop anyone saying anything they don't like, especially if it questions their authority or their policies.
Free speech can bring all sorts of things to light, good and bad. And we have to respond to both equally: With intelligence, rationale and restraint when we disagree. If we can't do this, the efforts of those like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, were for naught. The ACLU has been condemned by many for defending the rights of some of these groups to speak. But those are the real defenders of American values: Whether they disagree or disagree with people, they defend our civil liberties without prejudice. So long as it's only speech, we need to be true to the values we claim demonstrate our ability to have real dialogue among our citizens and government leaders.
The real problem with this rally was bringing weapons. The allowing of a POLITICAL (not military or mob style) is fine, but the bringing of weapons is where the line should have been drawn. (and easy enough to use politically: Police see baseball bats/shields, they get together and say "you may only proceed if you leave your 'equipment' here." A quickly improvised response unfortunately consisted mostly of people who were reacting rather than acting, and the result was baseball bats were brought by many of them as well. Trump uses this as an excuse to support the neo-nazis indirectly. This tragically lead to someone being killed. Even more tragic: There is footage that suggests that the death was not in fact a direct attack at all, but a neo-nazi who attended the rally panicking after his car was attacked by a protester a baseball bat (https://www.allenbwest.com/2017/08/14/new-shock-theory-emerges-charlottesville-drivers-motive-blowing-minds/).
So where does this leave us: Hopefully a lesson that knee-jerk reactions, like pulling any opinions or sites from the Internet that we don't like are the wrong response. Okay, child porn, is one thing and pulling that I encourage because the actions to create such material are monstrous. But pulling political statements, even racists ones, from the Internet because we don't like or are afraid of it brings us to a lower level and long term consequences are horrifying to imagine. Basically we become fascists, whatever our good intentions. While legally people can make their own statements to not support it by showing it on the media they control, when you are a media company (including Internet) one has a great responsibility if they truly believe in the right to free speech. They must have the courage to allow what they don't like to be said, as long as the speech content itself is not created by morally or ethically questionable actions (like child porn). There was a film I remember, "To Kill A Mockingbird". Perhaps we should all review it.
To use Benjamin Franklin's statement (and yes he didn't address it specifically for civil liberties but I think it works so...): "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" I would substitute "Civil" for "essential", especially pertaining to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We should try to be responsible, but we should not eliminate it when a few people use it in a way we don't agree with. (Another film "Absence of Malice" gives a good example of this.
Sounds a lot like the UK government actually WANTS to keep those weaknesses. Wonder if some were built in. Hmmm.
It may sound far fetched, but what other sane reason would you try to prevent people finding weakness, thus enabling them to be fixed? Unless this is a conspiracy to keep "backdoors" in the process of anonymizing data, it's just encouraging people to find those vulnerable points and NOT report them. Hackers much be laughing their butts off.
Someone wants to make trouble (and Damore may well be part of this commentary), but at the end of the day it can be interpreted that Damore's writing can be a disruptive element in the workplace. "An employee does not have free reign [sic] to engage in political speech that disrupts the workplace". Creating undue anger or contention in the work place can certainly be disruptive and detrimental to morale. That alone will cover it. Also, the memo appears to have been the breaking point, but not alone the root cause. Documentation showing his skill is not on par with his peers or the standards of Google can turn a "retaliation" into something overdue, and needed to happen before the work environment was affected. All employers have the right and duty to protect their work environment from harmful elements. I think this is simply a tool to pressure Google into a generous settlement, but if it goes to court, aside from Google being able to drag this out to the point it bankruts Damore, they can simply state they were protecting their good standing employees from a harmful element, who was already on shaky ground anyway. I'm not sure if this applies, but if this is an "at will "employee I think they can be fired for any reason but I'm not a lawyer nor is it clear he was an "at will" employee.
I'd have to argue "yes": It's personal. Anything derogatory that is personal has no place at work as it's not professional. Just like employees shouldn't be keeping personal photos on company storage devices/backups, as long as nobody else is hurt or business doesn't suffer people can voluntarily turn a blind eye. However, if it has the potential to harm the required storage space available to others for critical business operations data, the rule of thumb is, keep your personal/family photos off the company drives (Plus it doesn't protect your family privacy very well). Blacklists like that on company property can cause emotional harm and reduce ability for a business employees to work effectively with each other. Therefore I'd argue it has no place in the office.
A formal "blacklist" of employees on record is just foolish. Performance reports are one thing (and confidential) but a personal preferences blacklist isn't wise. Anyone who kept this sort of list on any team of mine would be of serious concern to me for two reasons:
1. their clear lack of judgement because if such a list were discovered it would be damming to management and to co-workers.
2. It would show an inability to be flexible professionally. Personal politics are exactly that: Personal. If that can't be kept outside the office then that person by definition is not being a professional.
We all have to work with peers we don't like at some point. Working with people we like is nice, but we are in a office to do a job. Either to earn a paycheck or perhaps something more noble or altruistic. (More are the former)
Very few offices I know will tolerate "not working with" any co-worker unless that co-worker had committed acts that violated basic comfort standards for the office, like abusive verbal behaviour, hazing or stuff like that. To me it's a wonder that a group of presumably intelligent people like those employed at Google would be doing anything like this in a matter that was easily verified.
Unless there is an vulnerability that is unreported (undiscovered or intentionally undisclosed)
The only apps I install are open source and I firewall my phone with droidwall. The reason: I was once recruited (I turned it down) to create a database to organize the "telemtry" data collected by a number of apps. To quote one of the executives, "These people out there have no idea how much data is collected". The EULA's say data "may be "collected but don't specify what in most cases, and I don't have time to analyze the apps traffic packets. Banking apps are getting a bad rep in Canada too because of the data people are discovering is being collected. The safest assumption is, if it's not open source for the public to audit, it's probably sending data the app developers can sell/make money off of and legally installing the app is "permission" (?!? laws need to be modified to protect the public). And if the apps doesn't explicitly tell you what it's collecting, it's like Windows 10: Collecting as much as it can. With a GPS (which I always turn off), text log, possible email, all log and a video camera, that is a LOT of data that could be collected. Welcome to a brave new world. Convenience comes at the price of security. I've yet to see an exception to this.
As much as well all hate to say it, and hate to talk about it, we humans are the biggest contributor to CO2. The other problems is we take down more trees that absorb CO2. We know all this of course. But the biggest 2 parts oft his equation are probably that while the birth rates of 1st world major nations (Especially Japan) are low, the nation of the poor sections or large countries (India, and rural areas of China due to farmland and some parts of Africa, which is one of the largest continents in the world, (Look up the Gall-Peter's Projection world map if you think it's not) have higher birth rates, and have for years. Which is why we are now at 7.5 billion people and counting.
We probably need to be talking about that issue rather than ignoring it because talking about it means having to ask what we should do. I'm not advocating anything like ignoring human rights, or mass population "adjustments", but we do need to talk about it. It's not going away because we remain relatively silent compared to all the other green house gas sources that make it to the media. And food waste from that 7.5 billion going to landfills where it rots, generating huge greenhouse gas emissions. And why? Because people make more money throwing leftover food from groceries away than giving it away. So when we talk about world hunger, or even starting people due to food banks being empty, I look at and my mind reels. That also needs to change as western society at least is a food disposable society now. Kind of like Japan's disposable economy in the 80-90's before their long recession: They were throwing away working appliances/tools because new ones were out and going to a used goods shop was socially low class and companies made more money when people threw their old goods away. (Foreigners living there could get free home furnishings as long as they were discrete about it).
Anyway, we've got lots of reasons for CO2, and pets for me are low on my radar of greenhouse gas sources in light of things like this. We need to plant a lot more trees and stop deforestation immediate (to eat of the CO2) and then stop richer societies from being so wasteful on food. Easiest thing to tackle because taking on the big 7.5 'B' problem..
Taxi drivers (confirmed in Canada, probably similar in USA, can't really speak for the rest of the world) have to pay much more in insurance fees. Not to say they couldn't find ways to be more competitive pricewise, but there is one issue. Ubers drivers from reports, make per hour than, say a delivery guy. It is a part-time freelance position basically, so in terms of hours they are many options. This isn't need, it's simply greed. Just like Uber doesn't need to reseasrch or implement times they can demand higher fees, but they do it simply because they believe they can. like many businesses.
Well no surprise there. When you have systems that just increase prices blindly when there appears to be less supply, of course the drivers are going to take advantage. The drivers as well as the owners are all playing the same game. And of course, we all lose. The idea of automatically increasing a price due to perceived lack is easy to abuse and fake. The real problem is there is no government agency holding Uber subject to any regulations or lawas that would control such of abuse. This is clearly price/market fixing, but the government agencies always seems to wait until someone does the obvious, look for a platform to exploit for elections, and then they do something very minor (or nothing in reality because the corrupt business greases the wheel). This is what info collected from those apps installed was used for ladies and gentlemen. Apps aren't needed for this service (web portals are fine) but they get sweet info for the business to exploit. The Drivers just made it more obvious and spelled out for us what we would already know if we were paying attention. It's no less wrong for the drivers than it is for Uber. At least Taxi drivers aren't at liberty to do this sort of rate hiking, at least not in North America to my knowledge, but then again, they are regulated. Uber is not. I was never a fan, not because I'm loyal to taxi drivers, but because the history of these services, the mandatory use of an app for this services, as well as the personality of the owner, all pointed to behavior of this nature. We either need more competition to keep Uber honest or people need to boycott Uber until they use a flat model pricing model. Easier to compare against the competition.
I'm not sure why someone marked you as "zero" because your point is certainly informative and thanks for that. Of course the definition of "essential liberty" is up for grabs in this context. But I personally consider the civil liberties that many fought hard to secure essential to an truly honest government. (Otherwise you have tyranny in my view like China, Russa, North Korea, and possibly Poland (signed some controversial law expanding presidential powers there) if they aren't careful. Thailand would also qualify. But as you point is again valid and I think you for properly informing us. If I had any moderation points I'd give you one. (or 2 if I could). Thanks.
Sure, real people don't need encryption, and honest people don't need privacy. (You can trust marketing companies....TRUST me). No one will abuse people's personal info as long as it's public and available to all, especially the government. Of course that logic might 50% apply if you always agreed with your government (like Trump), never voiced an opinion that that created inconvenience for those in power and never wanted a meaning opinion voiced. Mao believed in all this too, as does Putin. But do we really want to be in such company directly or indirectly?
Snowden correctly stated: You only have nothing to hide, if you have nothing to say.. Another famous quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Those who give up their civil liberties for a little extra safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Okay, if you are collecting data, you are collecting for only one reason: To profit from it. I've yet to see an exception of when a company collects data, it eventually sells it in part or has a whole for maximum profit. I think at this point people have finally begun to realize that if someone in tech can be abused it will, and with vigor. Everyone who said "we won't sell your data" has been caught collecting data and selling it in one form or another. Microsoft, they collection so much from Windows 10, and cars with Skype installed (?!?), tablets and so on. Using it to pump ads at people through Windows 10/Skype/Office 365. At&T, Google included (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/why-googles-spying-on-use_b_3530296.html). Basically, it can be sold it will. So the folks at Roomba could at least stop trying to insult our intelligence. The who purpose of the data collection is to monetize it. That boils down to selling it, one way or another.
President Obama allowed (and in this case encouraged) a lot of programs and policies that basically violated privacy of it's citizens, violated the constitution (see the data dragnet and court ruling on the programs revealed by Snowden), violated due process (see rendition of Americans) and even violated foreign sovereignty (see Drone programs). Every president has worked to increase the powers of it's position since George Bush Senior. We are losing credibility that we govern under a rule of law as we continue to erode due process, and find new ways muzzle and control U.S. citizens. Now any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have. Question is, what the next attack on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and due process is to come this term.
If you read between the lines it talks about users of limited numbers which include people who had smoked 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. Which isn't a lot (my parents were chain smokers so 100 in a lifetime is pretty low). Also includes people who included at least 1 e-cigarette as a smoker. Fully addicted smokers generally have smoked significantly more. if you only smoke a few it's easier to quit. I haven't have time to fully analyze the data, but this feels like a pitch to lower "sin taxes" as well as get E-cigarettes allowed in countries that ban it. To say e-cigarettes are a quitting aid tool is misleading, especially in this study which seems to leave too much room for manipulation. Feels like when Intel said Rambus Ram was superior to DDR at in insane scale, only for people to discover that Intel rugged the test so the results would be in favor of Rambus but Rambus actually did worse in real world situations.
Not to say that paint wasn't useful at early beginnings, but we have so many alternatives that are better it's comic to see MS paint these days. We have many free open source options factly superior (and has been for years). Among these:
1. The Gimp (http://www.gimp.org),
2. Krita (https://krita.org)
3. Inkscape (http://inkscape.org)
4. Pinta (https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/ ) (new) There are others but these seem to have more traction. The Gimp is well know and I've used that the most for my graphic editing. Works well for me as does Inkscape. MS Paint was good for simple demonstrations in kiddie classes, but MS Paint, while it works, has been had no enhancements in forever. So..it's time. RIP MS Paint.
In the USA it's done all the time. We have different reports on unemployment. One of these reports generally given out the mass media includes rosier numbers. The US Census has a methodology for counting homeless, but the reports we see talked about do not including the following as unemployed:
1. Homeless 2. Those who have given up looking (often out of frustration) 3. Underemployed. So numbers can be misleading depending on whose you read. I'm seeing as I type this a post spelling out the U1-6 metris which give a clearer picture. We all have to be careful and question what we read. Often key information is omitted so you don't know what you are in fact reading. As my old math teacher used to tell his statistics class: "Statistics can lie".
The number of things that could go wrong with this enterprise are huge. If this starts a military escalation in robotics world wide we could all be in trouble. We already have drones doing all sorts of things like assassinations, especially in Pakistan (surprised they haven't yelled about acts of war given the casualties), or the potential to hack the systems coordinating these proposed drone swarms and turn them against us. I doubt this would be directly connected to the Internet (Internet Of Things (Iot) Is already a joke in IT security these days), but would probably be controlled via satellites, and that could be intercepted or jammed. All someone has to do is capture a few, reverse engineer them, and viola, you make some of your own. This is one of those things where, it looks cool, but just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should. You could argue benefits in say ,construction (lots of researching/testing going on to make use of mini drones to do work in that area because many smaller robots potentially could have more power than one large one, like the insect strength-mass ratio), but as weapons, that could be terrifying. I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing about drone strikes in our own back yard. (See the Val Kilmer film "Real Genius", they just about got it right).