Games Cicconi used to work in the white house. He is the dude they send over to promise campaign funds in exchange for getting government policy that suits AT&T's agenda. The fight of Net Neutrality is going to be the ultimate showdown between the people and lobbying efforts from the ultra wealthy. Who really wields more power in this country? Does choosing representatives really make a difference? Will the allure of $$$ always corrupt those we put in charge, no matter who we choose?
James Cicconi is a corrupt corporate elite if there ever was one. AT&T is trying to purchase T-Mobile. He's also claiming that consumers will be hurt and experience higher prices if the merge deal is blocked. This guy is head of lobbying efforts against net neutrality and for the T-Mobile merger. His points are quite easily debunked and if it weren't for the insane amounts of lobbying money being spent, even politicians would laugh at his face. Instead, politicians who agree and meet with AT&T should be voted out of office. I don't care if they're Democrats, Republicans, or any other party.
It's insanity that anyone would even consider allowing AT&T to charge more for the type of content that is being served. As consumers, we need urgent protection from those that will keep the internet from progressing and fulfilling its potential. As consumers, we should pay for a gigabyte. If that gigabyte is a gigabyte of video or a gigabyte of a game download, it's none of their effing business. If I am a content provider, and I want to serve my video or games to consumers, why in the hell should I pay more because my 1s and 0s represent video? I will be the first mofo to volunteer to live on mars if net neutrality is destroyed. I firmly believe that this is the one issue that will wake the population up to kick the asses of those who, through lobbying, put the government in their pockets without giving a flying f what it will mean to society and technological progress for decades to come.
> Absolutely. Especially when the most prolific computer book author in the industry, who is also handicapped, argues against them
That guy is an asshole. Straight and simple. Would you like to know why? See, my girlfriend has a disability and actually needs a van accessible spot or she is TRAPPED IN HER CAR. Then she sees this asshole talking against handicap parking spots that she needs the way you and I need tires on our cars to use it. Without these spots she wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Here's the kicker, this asshole is disabled but he DOESN'T NEED a van accessible spot to exit his vehicle! So yes, it's much easier for him to speak out against these spots when he isn't 100% dependent on them to do anything other than stay home all day without the help of others. He's throwing other people who need handicap spots under the bus on that one.
Because they want to charge you for the privilege. Remember, corporations are machines built to make money and that is all. They will fight anything that reduces the amount of money they can make no matter how completely idiotic and absurd it is. Politicians have already sided with corporations, democrats and republicans alike. Here's hoping judges are not as easily bought off and will have some common sense.
With all that is going down around the country, this is what they spend our money on? With the unemployment the way it is, social security not keeping up with inflation, and people having trouble making it, THIS is what my tax dollars are being spent on?
As a genome researcher, I'd like to point out that I, for one, do not have nearly enough genome data. I simply need about 512GB of RAM on a computer with a hard drive that is about 100x faster than my current SSD, and processing power about 1000x cheaper. Right now, I bite the bullet and carefully construct data structures and implement all sorts of tricks make the most out of the RAM I do have, minimize how much I have to use a hard drive, and extract every bit of performance available out of my 8 core machine. I wait around and eventually get things done, but my research would go way faster and be more sophisticated if I didn't have these hardware limitations.
I'm pretty sure the music industry gets to tax us for private profits and prosecute us despite the tax. They're businesses and they will do whatever it takes to maximize profit. Right or wrong is not a variable in their equation.
Red means higher risk and green means lower risk. There's a legend on the top left. Click on the circle that represents your ancestral origins. You can see the predicted increase in risk (likelihood ratio). It also traces the migration path your ancestors took to found your ancestral population. Click the other figure (Human Relationships) on the top left to see the same stuff but on a view that shows how all relationships on the map are related.
Plenty of hoarders will attempt to buy them, thereby creating demand for them. There will always be some people who want to hoard bitcoins and not generate the bitcoins personally. They will want to buy them at market prices. This constant demand will ensure transactions keep occuring. Look at any bitcoin exchange and you'll see that there is no shortage of transactions and the "hoarding" isn't bringing bitcoin transactions to a standstill by any means. My advice is put in a few hundred dollars on bitcoins.
A court of law does not decide whether something is ethical or not. It only decides whether something is legal or not. Corporations have a huge influence on what becomes "legal" and as such, get away with things a lot of people consider unethical (e.g. removing a linux install option from the PS3 after it was bought and paid for or making it illegal to open and modify a piece of electronic equipment after it is purchased). Assuming the neighbors is just a regular neighbor and never fuked you over the same way SONY has, then it is an improper comparison to make.
I smell BS. If someone ever tries to charge Bush and/or Obama for blatantly violating their oaths of office and the constitution, Obama will be able to say he didn't technically sign the bill into law and can not be held liable.
All this focus on the safety issue really exposes the critical flaws in logic we are committing. These cars are already safer than human drivers. If these cars took over today, we'd have fewer fatalities a year than we do now. That should be the end of it, but people are still going to complain because we'll accept 100 deaths caused by a human driver before we accept one death caused by a AI controlled car. Not to mention that any death caused by the AI controlled car would result in a massive investigation and therefore the death rate would asymptotically approach zero, unlike with human drivers where there's a bad driver born every second. The massively increased safety is still only one of the many benefits associated with this technology. There are a lot of people with severe disabilities who will have the roads open to them for the first time in their lives. It's hard to imagine for us what that is like because we were all able to drive at 15/16 years old. There are older people who are no longer able to drive as well and will now be able to. You can go bar hopping without worrying about getting a ride home. Cars will be significantly more efficient since the accident rates would plummet, cars can be made of lighter material. Electric motors would be more of an option since cars will be lighter and we will not be burdened with having to find an electric charge station for our cars. Parking will never be an issue again. We will be dropped off and picked up right at the front of any building. The list goes on and on people. Let's put all of these illogical fears behind us and help usher in a new age in human civilization before we're all old and gray.
> I think we can be pretty sure they wouldn't have
I disagree. The Winklevii had the exclusivity to Harvard thing down first, which arguably made facebook what it is. The concept that they'd expand is perfectly logical as more users = more $$$.
It's convenient for him to say that his ambition was never to be local now and to assume that the Winklevii were against expansion, but this facebook drama intrigues me and I've read about it. I've never come across any evidence supporting your retort. We'll never really know what the Winklevii had in mind.
I don't think it was the "elegant design" that made facebook successful, but the initial exclusivity to Harvard and subsequent expansions. That IS what the Winklevii had in mind Mark.
There's no telling if the Winklevii would have taken the site in the same direction did if they weren't screwed over. Facebook was initially local as well.
We're entering one ugly fucked up future where people who had certain types of surgeries will have to get used to being interrogated and searched every time they enter a major event wherever they go. Where people can see you and you entire family naked all the time. Carry something that resembles a gun? You'll probably be on a government list somewhere. If this is a representative democracy, why do these things happen? Our leaders are bought and paid for by people selling such security theater. I don't get how people can justify spending money on this crap when people in this country still don't have access to publicly financed healthcare for every single citizen, regardless of their ability to pay. We're willing to protect the public from a bomb, but not cancer? Where is the logic in that? Oh, that's right, Senators and politicians want to feel safe when they go to a baseball game.
I'm starting a new robotics project. I already have my base built but I'm having trouble interfacing the joystick currently set up to control the base with a computer, if anyone has any expertise on this, I'd appreciate some advice.
This is the biggest indicator ever that the ps3 system is completely doomed. This is a last ditch desperate effort to reap some more profit from the system. I have serious doubts customers will put up with this much. How far does the corporate d*ck have to be shoved up Sony's customers' asses before they stop buying from them?
Anybody who truly understands the details of what transpired here and who has at least a shred of respect for the truth understand we live in a Kleptocracy.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more they want to get rid of regulations for corporations. We, the little people, still will be heavily regulated for their benefit.
I'm glad it's at least difficult. I'm still disappointed that Net Neutrality is facing such opposition. I guess it's cheaper to kill Net Neutrality by buying senators than to actually improve the infrastructure and give people more bandwidth and lower latency.
Without net neutrality, would corporations be able to stop the underground p2p separate internet called Freenet? Would they be able to do anything about encrypted p2p communications? If so, they're just ruining legitimate and innovative business ventures like Hulu.com, which would ironically drive many people to use p2p to watch those shows. Unless they can kill p2p too. Maybe we should operate under the assumption that freedom of speech on the internet is doomed and focus on decentralized tools like Freenet that are hard if not impossible to stymie.
The last thing we want is governments deciding what is and isn't "contrary to public good" and therefore should be censored. Freedom of speech is far too valuable to allow any "extremist" to come along, say some nasty things, and have us lose our civil rights. Ahmadinejad exclaimed that they curtail access to porn because it harms society. Once government starts making these calls, these rights will never be granted again until we colonize mars and say "fuck you" to earth's governments.
What about kids? If a parent does not want his kid to go through the naked-scanner, will the parent then be forced to watch his kid be groped? They grab on to the buttocks now and go between the legs until they feel "resistance" aka testicles.
Slashdot Mirror
Games Cicconi used to work in the white house. He is the dude they send over to promise campaign funds in exchange for getting government policy that suits AT&T's agenda. The fight of Net Neutrality is going to be the ultimate showdown between the people and lobbying efforts from the ultra wealthy. Who really wields more power in this country? Does choosing representatives really make a difference? Will the allure of $$$ always corrupt those we put in charge, no matter who we choose?
James Cicconi is a corrupt corporate elite if there ever was one. AT&T is trying to purchase T-Mobile. He's also claiming that consumers will be hurt and experience higher prices if the merge deal is blocked. This guy is head of lobbying efforts against net neutrality and for the T-Mobile merger. His points are quite easily debunked and if it weren't for the insane amounts of lobbying money being spent, even politicians would laugh at his face. Instead, politicians who agree and meet with AT&T should be voted out of office. I don't care if they're Democrats, Republicans, or any other party. It's insanity that anyone would even consider allowing AT&T to charge more for the type of content that is being served. As consumers, we need urgent protection from those that will keep the internet from progressing and fulfilling its potential. As consumers, we should pay for a gigabyte. If that gigabyte is a gigabyte of video or a gigabyte of a game download, it's none of their effing business. If I am a content provider, and I want to serve my video or games to consumers, why in the hell should I pay more because my 1s and 0s represent video? I will be the first mofo to volunteer to live on mars if net neutrality is destroyed. I firmly believe that this is the one issue that will wake the population up to kick the asses of those who, through lobbying, put the government in their pockets without giving a flying f what it will mean to society and technological progress for decades to come.
> Absolutely. Especially when the most prolific computer book author in the industry, who is also handicapped, argues against them That guy is an asshole. Straight and simple. Would you like to know why? See, my girlfriend has a disability and actually needs a van accessible spot or she is TRAPPED IN HER CAR. Then she sees this asshole talking against handicap parking spots that she needs the way you and I need tires on our cars to use it. Without these spots she wouldn't be able to go anywhere. Here's the kicker, this asshole is disabled but he DOESN'T NEED a van accessible spot to exit his vehicle! So yes, it's much easier for him to speak out against these spots when he isn't 100% dependent on them to do anything other than stay home all day without the help of others. He's throwing other people who need handicap spots under the bus on that one.
Because they want to charge you for the privilege. Remember, corporations are machines built to make money and that is all. They will fight anything that reduces the amount of money they can make no matter how completely idiotic and absurd it is. Politicians have already sided with corporations, democrats and republicans alike. Here's hoping judges are not as easily bought off and will have some common sense.
With all that is going down around the country, this is what they spend our money on? With the unemployment the way it is, social security not keeping up with inflation, and people having trouble making it, THIS is what my tax dollars are being spent on?
As a genome researcher, I'd like to point out that I, for one, do not have nearly enough genome data. I simply need about 512GB of RAM on a computer with a hard drive that is about 100x faster than my current SSD, and processing power about 1000x cheaper. Right now, I bite the bullet and carefully construct data structures and implement all sorts of tricks make the most out of the RAM I do have, minimize how much I have to use a hard drive, and extract every bit of performance available out of my 8 core machine. I wait around and eventually get things done, but my research would go way faster and be more sophisticated if I didn't have these hardware limitations.
I'm pretty sure the music industry gets to tax us for private profits and prosecute us despite the tax. They're businesses and they will do whatever it takes to maximize profit. Right or wrong is not a variable in their equation.
Red means higher risk and green means lower risk. There's a legend on the top left. Click on the circle that represents your ancestral origins. You can see the predicted increase in risk (likelihood ratio). It also traces the migration path your ancestors took to found your ancestral population. Click the other figure (Human Relationships) on the top left to see the same stuff but on a view that shows how all relationships on the map are related.
Plenty of hoarders will attempt to buy them, thereby creating demand for them. There will always be some people who want to hoard bitcoins and not generate the bitcoins personally. They will want to buy them at market prices. This constant demand will ensure transactions keep occuring. Look at any bitcoin exchange and you'll see that there is no shortage of transactions and the "hoarding" isn't bringing bitcoin transactions to a standstill by any means. My advice is put in a few hundred dollars on bitcoins.
A court of law does not decide whether something is ethical or not. It only decides whether something is legal or not. Corporations have a huge influence on what becomes "legal" and as such, get away with things a lot of people consider unethical (e.g. removing a linux install option from the PS3 after it was bought and paid for or making it illegal to open and modify a piece of electronic equipment after it is purchased). Assuming the neighbors is just a regular neighbor and never fuked you over the same way SONY has, then it is an improper comparison to make.
I smell BS. If someone ever tries to charge Bush and/or Obama for blatantly violating their oaths of office and the constitution, Obama will be able to say he didn't technically sign the bill into law and can not be held liable.
All this focus on the safety issue really exposes the critical flaws in logic we are committing. These cars are already safer than human drivers. If these cars took over today, we'd have fewer fatalities a year than we do now. That should be the end of it, but people are still going to complain because we'll accept 100 deaths caused by a human driver before we accept one death caused by a AI controlled car. Not to mention that any death caused by the AI controlled car would result in a massive investigation and therefore the death rate would asymptotically approach zero, unlike with human drivers where there's a bad driver born every second. The massively increased safety is still only one of the many benefits associated with this technology. There are a lot of people with severe disabilities who will have the roads open to them for the first time in their lives. It's hard to imagine for us what that is like because we were all able to drive at 15/16 years old. There are older people who are no longer able to drive as well and will now be able to. You can go bar hopping without worrying about getting a ride home. Cars will be significantly more efficient since the accident rates would plummet, cars can be made of lighter material. Electric motors would be more of an option since cars will be lighter and we will not be burdened with having to find an electric charge station for our cars. Parking will never be an issue again. We will be dropped off and picked up right at the front of any building. The list goes on and on people. Let's put all of these illogical fears behind us and help usher in a new age in human civilization before we're all old and gray.
> I think we can be pretty sure they wouldn't have I disagree. The Winklevii had the exclusivity to Harvard thing down first, which arguably made facebook what it is. The concept that they'd expand is perfectly logical as more users = more $$$.
It's convenient for him to say that his ambition was never to be local now and to assume that the Winklevii were against expansion, but this facebook drama intrigues me and I've read about it. I've never come across any evidence supporting your retort. We'll never really know what the Winklevii had in mind. I don't think it was the "elegant design" that made facebook successful, but the initial exclusivity to Harvard and subsequent expansions. That IS what the Winklevii had in mind Mark.
There's no telling if the Winklevii would have taken the site in the same direction did if they weren't screwed over. Facebook was initially local as well.
We're entering one ugly fucked up future where people who had certain types of surgeries will have to get used to being interrogated and searched every time they enter a major event wherever they go. Where people can see you and you entire family naked all the time. Carry something that resembles a gun? You'll probably be on a government list somewhere. If this is a representative democracy, why do these things happen? Our leaders are bought and paid for by people selling such security theater. I don't get how people can justify spending money on this crap when people in this country still don't have access to publicly financed healthcare for every single citizen, regardless of their ability to pay. We're willing to protect the public from a bomb, but not cancer? Where is the logic in that? Oh, that's right, Senators and politicians want to feel safe when they go to a baseball game.
I'm starting a new robotics project. I already have my base built but I'm having trouble interfacing the joystick currently set up to control the base with a computer, if anyone has any expertise on this, I'd appreciate some advice.
This is the biggest indicator ever that the ps3 system is completely doomed. This is a last ditch desperate effort to reap some more profit from the system. I have serious doubts customers will put up with this much. How far does the corporate d*ck have to be shoved up Sony's customers' asses before they stop buying from them?
Anybody who truly understands the details of what transpired here and who has at least a shred of respect for the truth understand we live in a Kleptocracy.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more they want to get rid of regulations for corporations. We, the little people, still will be heavily regulated for their benefit.
I'm glad it's at least difficult. I'm still disappointed that Net Neutrality is facing such opposition. I guess it's cheaper to kill Net Neutrality by buying senators than to actually improve the infrastructure and give people more bandwidth and lower latency.
Without net neutrality, would corporations be able to stop the underground p2p separate internet called Freenet? Would they be able to do anything about encrypted p2p communications? If so, they're just ruining legitimate and innovative business ventures like Hulu.com, which would ironically drive many people to use p2p to watch those shows. Unless they can kill p2p too. Maybe we should operate under the assumption that freedom of speech on the internet is doomed and focus on decentralized tools like Freenet that are hard if not impossible to stymie.
The last thing we want is governments deciding what is and isn't "contrary to public good" and therefore should be censored. Freedom of speech is far too valuable to allow any "extremist" to come along, say some nasty things, and have us lose our civil rights. Ahmadinejad exclaimed that they curtail access to porn because it harms society. Once government starts making these calls, these rights will never be granted again until we colonize mars and say "fuck you" to earth's governments.
What about kids? If a parent does not want his kid to go through the naked-scanner, will the parent then be forced to watch his kid be groped? They grab on to the buttocks now and go between the legs until they feel "resistance" aka testicles.
Supply and demand is fine. These people are greasing up the wheels of commerce. The real question is why aren't bookstores doing this?