Actually I was reminded only of the fact that they use that arm to scan the underside, but not so much the Columbia disaster. Depends on your point of view I suppose.
There is ONE argument I can make in favor of promoting Facebook or some other social network: When the news in question is ongoing. I.e. something that, if reported on only as part of a normal news broadcast a few times a day, leaves out valuable information of some kind.
The recent devastation in Joplin, Missouri is a perfect example; until I heard that everyone I know there was safe, if homeless, I followed the story using the Facebook page for one of the city's radio stations (KZRG),at their suggestion. Not because I can't get that info from the radio station itself, but because it was more convenient for me, not being a resident of that state anymore, and because the "wall" therein also allowed for people to ask questions, make suggestions for places to donate, offer their own hands and tools to help in the cleanup, ask about missing loved ones, etc.
These things just don't seem to work all that well on regular websites, from what I've seen. I still dislike Facebook, but I do have an account there and it does have its uses.
To be accurate, they neither disappeared, nor chose the "wrong team", as GEOS was available for the Apple II as well. The company changed their name to "GeoWorks" when they went with the PC, and renamed their product "GeoWorks Ensemble". This eventually became "Breadbox Ensemble" when the company by that name bought the product line. They still call it that to this day, with references to PC/GEOS as its core software, though their website is hardly up-to-date.
Since "free" can have more than one meaning, many folks use phrases like "FLOSS" (where the "L" stands for "libre", from the Latin for "liberty"), "Free as in freedom, not beer", or they may change the capitalization on the word "free".
Just as citizens of certain countries consider themselves to be free, in that they are not oppressed by some regime, dictator, etc. and can move about and act more or less as they please, software can be defined in the same sense: by not being locked down by a given company or author, and being usable by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose, without the author or distributor of the software having much say in the matter. That's the "libre" or "freedom" definition of the word.
You're thinking of the "free of monetary cost" definition, hence the "beer" reference above, in that you could just download the software in question without paying anything.
Not all software that is free of monetary cost is necessarily particularly free in the "liberty" sense of the word. Any program that you can easily download, but which comes with a restrictive EULA probably falls into this category.
On the other hand, not all software that costs money is necessarily devoid of liberty. Some Linux distributions can be found on brick-and-mortar store shelves, and hence incur some small monetary cost, but carry no usage restrictions and have all of the source code available either in the package or online someplace.
There is also a third thing to consider: Companies like Red Hat, Canonical, etc. also sell support services, usually independent of whether their software/distribution has to be purchased or not. I can't speak for the financial details of such arrangements, but this is where these companies a significant portion of their money.
So, simply because we're pulling the money out of a theoretically different bucket that means it is magic money? Any time the government pulls money out of the economy for any purpose it creates drag and loss. No exceptions.
That money is going right back into the economy in the form of Medicare and Medicaid payouts to doctors and other health professionals, and Social Security paychecks to the various recipients, who then spend it on rent, utilities, food, etc. It isn't as if the government is supposed to be just hoarding the money. Is it working like it should? Probably not exactly. but it isn't completely busted.
Further, as you say below, the supposed trust fund will be totally broke in 20 years, probably less. When that happens, probably sooner, where do you think that money is going to come from? [...] What about the fact that entitlement spending is going to overtake the entire federal budget? When that happens, what then?
If the trust fund goes broke, it's because the government is dipping into it periodically to cover other expenses, which means we need to begin filling that pool back up faster than it is being drained. However, whether we have that fund or not is of little consequence, because Social Security is also paid for by incoming tax dollars, not just a one-time fund. For the expenditures to overtake the entire federal budget would be impossible by definition.
Since the population is continuously increasing, new taxpayers are constantly being added, adding money to the Social Security fund, and at the same time new recipients are constantly being added as well, taking money from that fund, and both at an ever increasing rate. If we want to get it back into balance, reduce the number of future recipients by making the qualifications a little more strict (but do so in ways that won't hurt those who truly need it), pay new recipients a little less (and by that I mean, reduce the maximum initial payouts), and consider the entirety of peoples' incomes (instead of only the first $90,000) when taxing them for Social Security purposes. If necessary, raise Social Security taxes slightly to compensate.
Besides all of that, even if you completely and totally kill Social Security, it won't affect the deficit or the existing debt, because those expenditures aren't used to calculate either figure, and the funds for that program come from a second tax stream, deliberately separated on your paycheck stub. Of course you're paying into both it and the general fund, but money paid into the Social Security fund cannot, by law, be used by the government for expenditures that should come from the general fund. Whether that law is obeyed is a matter of some debate - if it isn't, enforce it!
If Social Security revenues increase in some manner and end up with a surplus, the money has nowhere to go but to the recipients or back into the trust fund. On the other hand, if Congress were to kill that program, it would also have to kill its funding source by definition, leaving workers with one less tax item on their paychecks, and leaving the government right back where it started: with a grossly over-blown military budget, along with all the other expenditures, and not enough money in general-fund taxes to cover it all.
Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part. Just why do you think it is our responsibility to take care of you and yours?
Let's do some hard math: The average person gets 51 years of work out of his life if he starts at 14 and retires at 65. A 14 year old could theoretically make $8700 a year for their first two years at minimum wage, but he'll be lucky to make half of that. Call it $5000 to be generous. Lets suppose the kid manages to ramp up smoothly to $50,000 a year by age 25. That comes to about $320,000 gross by the end of that year. Let's suppose that he manages to continue making $50,000 a year, despite whatever the econo
When you put it that way, I think he'd be hard pressed to find an answer. However, that's because your math is wrong. A 95% drop in the value of something is the same as saying that the item in question retains only 5%, or 1/20 of its original value. A 98% drop leaves 2%, or 1/50 of the original value.
Few people would have a hard time finding things that saw a 20x increase in price over the past 98 years. Even a 50x increase isn't hard to find.
Just off the top of my head: Bread went from 5.6c/lb to about 60c/lb for the low quality stuff (10.7x increase). Hershey's chocolate went from 3c/oz to ~63c/oz (~21x). The daily edition of the New York Times went from 5c/issue to $2.00 (40x). Gold went from $20.67/oz to $1409.00/oz (~68.2x). A gallon of gasoline went from about 20 cents to $3.20 (16x). The Ford Model-T sold new for $550 in 1913, while the cheapest new car today is the Hyundai Accent, at around $10,700 (~19.5x).
According to the US government's published data, inflation sits at about 2100% relative to 1913 (as the CPI has risen from 9.8 to 220.2), consistent with the above figures, though some things have *way* outpaced inflation.
So, aside from the fact that Social Security is on a different income/expenditure stream than the rest of the federal budget, and thus doesn't contribute to the budget crisis...
What you're proposing would lead to an extremely poor quality of life, homelessness, or outright death for millions of Americans. My husband and I would be among those affected. Um, no. I don't think so.
The military is the biggest single money hog, between the official Defense section of the budget ($685B) and the various other programs that all fall under the heading of military research, defense, counterterrorism, etc., the government spends somewhere between $1.0 and $1.4 trillion. If you cut these items by 75% across the board, that's around $900 billion, and it still leaves the US as the largest military spender in the world. Trim the Discretionary fund ($660B) back by the same factor, and you're looking at almost $1.4 Trillion. If it weren't for the interest on the existing debt, that would be more than enough. Otherwise, we need to trim another ~$830 billion to get to a clearly break-even status (actually, a slight surplus, if I figure it right). Others have pointed out already that there are tons of other programs that lead directly to money spent with no genuinely worthwhile outcome, so start cutting those back too.
Medicare and Medicaid (part of the Health and Human Services section of the general budget) could be trimmed back some, but only after the ridiculous cost of medical care in this country is brought under strict control, and only with extreme care. Otherwise, too many people will lose critically-needed services.
Expenditures are only part of the problem, as we still need to find ways to increase revenue, or the existing debt is going nowhere. At 8% interest, it takes about $1.13 trillion in what would otherwise be a surplus to cover the $14.1 trillion debt, so $2.4 trillion worth of cuts to the current budget, if that's even possible in a sane manner, would only pay for the interest on that debt. More revenue is needed to avoid excessive budget cuts and to bring the principle part of the debt down in a timely manner. I see four ways to do that, in theory:
* Raise taxes: A bad idea outright, because the low and middle-income folks are the ones who would be hit hardest by such a thing, regardless of which specific taxes get raised, and right now is the worst possible time for such a thing to happen. Besides, the rich will just find ways around it.
* Find ways to increase the number of new taxpayers: Not much prospect there. Short of a population explosion, the only other sources I can see are illegal immigrants, but those folks are hard enough to track, let alone tax.
* Change/enforce the tax laws: All existing citizens (and businesses) who don't already do so should be forced to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us do. Rich or poor, pay your fair share, even if it's by withholding $5 a month from your paycheck. For the over $250,000 crowd, make it extremely unpalatable to dodge taxes. We all know such folks manage to find all kinds of ways to avoid paying taxes by way of write-offs, loopholes, offshore accounts, dummy corporations, etc., so eliminate the loopholes and make it really *really* suck for those who try to live above the law.
* Find new revenue streams: I'm sure there are all kinds of legit things that the federal government could do here that people wouldn't mind. Hell, set up theme parks, amusements, etc. where all proceeds go into the general fund. If necessary, raise admission fees on national parks and the like, or establish new fees where appropriate (but without getting stupid, lest you cut off your income stream from those sources entirely).
As for Social Security, everyone including SSA themselves keeps saying Social Security will go broke in 25 to 30 years. You can start by heavily forbidding any government project, program, agency, etc. from dipping into the Social Security budget for things that belong in the
One e-reader: everyone reads the same page. One book: everyone reads the same page. Two books: Two people can read. Each one reading a single book. (More, if they read the same page.)
You're missing the point...
If one is considering paper books, then for every person who wants to read a unique book at any given moment, (or be on a different page than anyone else), you must have one copy per person, whether they are all copies of the same work or all different works.
If one is considering ebook readers, then for every person who can be expected to want to read, you need one device per person, loaded with a large library of media. If the people don't have to bunch up around one person turning pages on a paper book, there's no reason they should need to do so with an ebook reader.
Clearly, with paper books you must supply a library that's at least as large as the maximum number of people you expect to see reading at any given point, multiplied by the largest number of books you expect any one person to check out at any given point, multiplied by at least a factor of perhaps 2 to allow for a reasonably large variety. On top of that, you need multiple copies of every book. For some, you need a large number of copies, either because you're dealing with students who need textbooks, or because you're dealing with some particularly popular literary work. As a guess, let's say that 10% of the total library falls into this category, and let's assume that there'll be enough copies of those works for 1% of the population. For the rest of the library, two copies each should do.
Let's pull some numbers out of a certain, dark place.
Assume a population of 1000.
At any given point, I figure 1/3 of them will be reading at least one book. For the sake of round numbers, call it 300 even. So, you need at least 300 unique books in the library.
Our hypothetical library allows two items to be checked out at any one time, so you now need 600 unique books.
Doubled for variety, 1200 unique books.
For the textbooks/popular works, 1% of the population * 10% of the library = 10*120 = 1200 copies
Doubling up the rest of the library for volume, (1200-120)*2 = 2160 books
That gives us a grand total of 3360 books in our hypothetical library, covering only 1200 unique titles. I think someone here gave a figure of around $7 for a cheaply-made book, so lets use that (personally, I don't think such a book will last). That comes to $23,520 for the books. Add a couple hundred thousand for the cost of a building to put everything in, a few hundred thousand more to staff it for a few years, and several tens of thousands for a few years' worth of electricity and other utilities, and perhaps $20,000 to ship everything and everyone to the location in question, and you're at over $600,000.
For the sake of comparison, by the way, my town's local library has over 128,000 volumes, serving a population of about 45,000. If you wanted to go with that ratio (about 2.85:1), you'd need about 2850 books for this hypothetical 1000-person population, but you would reduce the cost by only $5100.
With ebook readers, you need one device per person, plus a small number of extras in case of breakage.
5% overage is probably sufficient, meaning we need 1050 readers for a population of 1000. The kindle is selling for $139 retail right now, so let's use that figure. That's $145,950 for the readers, at retail.
If you stick to sources like the The Internet Archive, you've got 2.6 million free, unique works at your disposal, absolutely dwarfing the above hypothetical printed library by over three orders of magnitude.
Add about $3000 for a computer system and a few years' worth of satellite Internet (seed the computer with the above content first; about 750GB if I estimate it right).
Add a couple hundred thousand dollars to pay a couple of people for a few years to manage the Kindles and the above computer system. To save on costs, o
Stephen has, on at least one occasion, indicated his preference for the voice and style of expression of his existing gear, to the extent that he considers it "his" voice for all practical purposes.
The same can be said for Linux on an SSD. I have the same 60GB Vertex2 in two boxes here, and it takes roughly 4 seconds from the moment GRUB loads to the moment I see the XFCE desktop, plus perhaps 5 seconds to re-load my session. Counting the POST screen, I'd give it a grand total of 15 seconds from power-on to ready and idle.
Everything moves faster - I don't find myself waiting anymore. Except for Firefox, programs load from a cold start almost instantly. Since the CPU is more than capable of flooding even the fastest disks, programs that need to process large files just blast through the data faster. New programs install lightning fast. I've seen at least one instance of a several-GB file being created at ~249 MB/sec - right up there with the benchmarks we've all seen for SSD's. I can "only" get about 210 MB/sec out of dd or hdparm, though. Of course it takes no effort at all now to max out our gigabit LAN copying files around as usual (~110 MB/sec on larger files).
It took no special effort to get this kind of performance either, at least with Ubuntu "Maverick": just partition, install, and copy my data over like any other disk update.
SSD for the OS's and most of the home directory contents on the two machines, spinning rust for mass storage, external USB disk for incremental backups. Seems like the perfect solution for a normal home user, at least for now.
Another one is review sites. Say you want to buy a camera and you want to read reviews. Yeah, there are pro reviews, but you want reviews by real users. So you type in the word 'review' as well. Up come a ton of returns from the search engine......most of which say, "Be the first one to write a review". I have honestly used that phrase as a Boolean NOT just to try and get some useful content.
THIS!
I have lost count of the number of times I've run into exactly this problem, but now it's gotten so bad that even attempting to filter out those "be the first" results doesn't seem to work that well anymore. There just seem to be as many ways to say "zero reviews" as there are junk sites, enough so that I run out of "room" in my query before I manage to filter everything out. Google team, are you listening?
The parent's program may or may not be the killer app he hopes it to be, but he can and probably will still run into all kinds of land mines even if his program isn't all that impressive. The best example I know of is the Amiga XOR patent case:
Back in 1978, CAD-Track filed software patent #4197590, for what we all know is an extremely trivial function: repeated exclusive-OR of a screen region to make a flashing/moving cursor, instead of storing/restoring the under-cursor data in an off-screen buffer. It was granted April 8, 1980.
Sometime in 1992 or 1993, CAD-Track went under and was bought out [*].
In Sept. 1993, Commodore launched the CD32 console - a make-or-break move since they were already struggling at the time. The manufacturing facility they contracted with in the Philippines had a large quantity of them ready to ship (like any company should), and they all used this trick where it mattered, so it was way too late to change it. The new owners of the patent decided to enforce it, resulting in a federal no-sale injunction against the CD32, massive debts since much of that stock simply couldn't be sold, large amounts of stock being withheld by the manufacturing facility, supply problems (result of the withholding probably), and $10 million in patent royalty claims.
This is generally cited as the reason Commodore went bankrupt in April, 1994, the same year the XOR patent expired.
If it was that bad in the 1990's, just imagine the minefield that exists today.
-------------- [*] The assignee of the patent is listed as "NuGraphics, Inc." now. That's probably who bought out CAD-Track, but I can't seem to find a reference.
Assuming for the moment that both houses of congress were to compose and pass their respective iterations of such a bill, and the president were to veto it as you predict, you forget that congress can still override that veto if that bill has enough support. Granted, it practically takes an act of G*d for such a thing to occur, but the president does not, and never has had, the last word on legislation passed across his desk. As broken as our system is, checks-and-balances are still in place.
In the US it can become a federal criminal charge - and it can escalate to a felony charge.
That has been the law since the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act of 1997.
If and only if a government entity of some kind issues the lawsuit. Do you honestly think that the media companies would be suing only in civil court if they could be directly suing in the criminal courts? Instead, they lobby for changes to our laws, and press our ISPs and government agencies to expend resources to fight what they perceive to be this world-destroying problem.
P2P is all about "file sharing." The unlicensed wholesale re-distribution of protected works through P2P networks.
While P2P probably is primarily used for unlawful file sharing, that isn't its only use, we all know that here. To imply otherwise makes you unaware of its full potential.
That is why statutory damages apply - and it is why the geek would be the first to scream bloody murder if his uploaded shares could be successfully watermarked and traced back to him.
I think you mean "her", and I have no such watermarked shares to be spread around, because I don't buy from sources who do such things. I only buy physical media, because I can be reasonably sure that I can use that media indefinitely and anonymously.
Even though I am one of those who doesn't respond to commercials?
The geek is the gift of god in cross-examination.
His self-regard, and boundless sense of entitlement to a free media fix is the one message you want the jury to take away from his testimony.
As is evidenced by having moved it to the bottom of your reply, my statement was taken entirely out of context. Since I was using "Free to air TV" as an example, "commercials" should be taken literally, meaning advertisements. "Free to air" means I am not required by any law, process, device, contract, etc. to pay for in any way whatsoever the content which is transmitted, and that I am free to record that content and use that recording any way I see fit, whether it is an episode of a TV series, a song on a radio, or even a movie, provided I don't distribute it. As I said, I don't respond to commercials (whether on a "free to air" broadcast or not), so those who would profit from those commercials won't do so on my account.
There is no difference whatsoever in their profits or my costs for watching/listening to a "free to air" broadcast as it is transmitted, versus watching/listening to it via a downloaded file.
All of that aside, the only "entitlement" I feel is that which every American is supposed to be guaranteed by law - public domain after X years, the right to make backups, the right to record, that sort of thing. Furthermore, whether any of your commentary were correct or not is moot, because aside from the punishment not fitting the infraction, I plainly said in my post that "I choose not to download [...]", meaning I don't run any kind of P2P software, I don't download from warez/share sites, I don't use USEnet binaries, nor any other method that results in unlawful distribution of content.
I can afford to buy the content that I want, and I don't want to deal with the headaches if I get caught using any of the above tools, even if I'm doing something legitimate.
So, if I decide a TV program is out of the question for some reason (either because I can't receive it at all, or because I won't be there at broadcast time), then it is still a genuine crime that should be punishable by destroying my life with insane charges? Even though that TV content is available over free-to-air broadcast as well as freely accessible places like Hulu? Even though I am one of those who doesn't respond to commercials? Thankfully that hasn't happened to me, as I choose not to download if only to avoid the assholes out there who can't see the damage they're doing to their own brands.
The "crime": Downloading a copyrighted work.
The "fine": A demand for remittance to a private company, who claims to act on behalf of the copyright holder of the work in question, initially for an amount that is often thousands of times the fair market value of that work, and which is issued in such a manner as to bypass the courts and ignore due process entirely. If it goes to the courts, it can become a civil judgment reaching into the millions-of-dollars range (see Capitol v. Thomas, the defendant lost to the tune of $1.5M). At no point does it become a criminal charge.
The "time": Anywhere from a serious financial headache if you pay off the initial demand, to just plain bankruptcy if you lose in court. To most people, the latter may as well be life in prison.
Good analogy, and you're absolutely right, they brought this on themselves...and after receiving taxpayers' money from both sides of the border all those years ago. Still, if you distill all of this down, you still get one motivation: Greed.
A company generally defines a loss as anything which reduces total revenue over a given period, either because something causes them to expect to make less than their forecast models say they should, or because the suddenly expect to spend more than their models predict, or again actually did spend more. Profits are of course defined as the exact opposite, except that they seem to hold far less importance than losses, even when those losses are minuscule by comparison. To a company, predicted debits/credits are just as tangible as those already shown as settled in the previous quarter's financial report. Stupidest damn system I've seen short of RIAA/MPAA accounting.
So these companies can afford to do the buildouts that are needed, they're just too greedy to do it. They were given money to spend on this, but they didn't bother, and now to do so would somehow be a "loss". Nevermind that it would result in nice profits later. If all of these companies are making the huge losses I hear about from time to time, why are they still in business, you know?
There should be no caps, and no charge based on usage; bandwidth should be strictly flat rate.
Once you turn ion a transmitter, it will be sending *something* continuously, no matter what you feed to its input(s). It might be anything from dead air to the the latest movie release over Netflix, but there is still a signal present, which means it is expending energy. Similarly, once you turn on a router, it starts expending energy just staying awake and doing its job, no matter how much load it is carrying. Of course power usage will vary day-to-day in both cases, but once you factor in the thousands of such devices an ISP has, and the hundreds of thousands to millions of customers, the power usage will average out. Further, the hardware itself costs whatever it costs to repair or replace whether you use it heavily, lightly, or not at all. So, the equipment and the labor to go with its maintenance is another FIXED cost.
You gotta pay the geeks to make things actually work or the whole damn thing comes to a halt anyway. Such folks might have to work a little harder than usual to handle the needs of a high-bandwidth service - after all, faster services require faster software and hardware, which demands higher-skilled people to install and program such things. Such folks would rightfully demand a higher rate of pay. This is the only somewhat variable cost I can think of, BUT it isn't based on bandwidth usage, and sooner or later you'll have replaced all of those who couldn't do the job, so it goes into the FIXED category anyway.
As to the maintenance of the lines themselves, those lines will be the same pieces of fiber and/or copper, whether they're totally dead or fully loaded down with every last signal you can cram through them, save for copper wires possibly heating up if you push them enough. Those lines are going to fail at the same rate as they ordinarily would, they'll be installed in the same manner as before (there's no real reason not to, is there?), and you'll be paying the same techs as before to do the repair/install work, so that cost isn't going to change. Any such company is going to roll this into their normal budget as a FIXED cost.
Then there is the small matter of paying the various desk-bound employees, the company officers/partners, etc. Somehow, I get the impression that your average teller or tech support rep at the cable company will be the same and will get the same pay as any other time, whether the lines in a given area are stone dead or maxed out. Call centers will still be in Outer Mongolia as usual, and they'll still act like scripted robots. I'm sure the CEO wants his cut also. Most companies will work these things into their budget as an approximated FIXED cost as well.
As a side note, there is the issue of stocks and stockholders. I don't know how to figure this one, as stocks can vary wildly in value over just a second or two, let alone from one day to another, and it is impossible to know if an out-of-company stockholder will want to take a dividend when the time comes, sell it all at the first 0.1% drop in value, or whatever. Of course, the value of a stock is based on the perceived value of the company as a whole, which is influenced just as much by the intangibles like goodwill and respect as by actual assets or predicted revenue, so perhaps such things don't actually account for that much on the balance sheet.
That leaves only one thing: The bandwidth costs the ISPs pay to their upstream providers, but many ISPs are already bitching that they are constantly MAXED OUT. So, if they can't use any more, and they don't expect to use any less (or they wouldn't be complaining), their upstream provider's charges will end up as another FIXED cost. If there's a peering agreement in place, which I gather is the norm anyway, then the ISP is going to be paying a fixed cost anyway.
Some are comparing bandwidth to things like electricity, but those folks are ignoring a critical difference: electricity is billed by the amount used beca
Not to disagree with you - a kill switch is a stupid idea - but I can think of at least two scenarios where those little metal boxes can directly affect people:
Payroll for a company is handled by some contractor on one end of the country, but the company itself has to send its data to that payroll agency, and they're on the other end of the country, so they use the public Internet (and some really good security protocol, one would assume) to route that data. If the two computers at either side of the country can't make their data exchange on time because some bird brain decided to attack either of the two, or any of the computers in between on the network, or because someone decided to throw this proposed "kill switch", then a few thousand soccer moms/dads don't get paid for a while.
If that's not good enough, consider the use of the Internet in coordinating relief efforts in far-off disaster areas or simply general humanitarian activities around the globe. Much of that help seems to come from American citizens; kill the Internet for a significant amount of time, and you kill off their ability to organize, move money around to help their cause, etc., and a lot of people who were to receive that help will suffer.
The above two scenarios are examples of the reality of the world right now; we depend on the Internet too much to just shut it off in the face of some perceived "cyberattack" (G*d do people still honestly use that prefix?), so it isn't just a matter of "what sense would it make?", it's more like "are they crazy?!".
Seems to work fine for me. If I type "doctor who" (without the quotes), I get a few suggestions that don't include the word "torrent", and Instant Search results that match. However, if I add the word "torrent" to my terms, my autocomplete suggestions change to those which include that word, and the Instant Search results change to match as well, as though I'd used the press-Enter search to begin with (which is what I normally do - I don't like Instant Search).
The same holds true if I replace "torrent" with the any one of the names of the various popular websites associated with such files, or if I replace "doctor who" with any one of the various movies that are now in theaters.
In other words, there's no search results censorship here; if you don't want a torrent, you won't see such results by default now, and if you do, you add that word like you probably always did anyway and get the results you expected. The only thing that's changed is the autocomplete just doesn't suggest torrent-related results anymore. Whoop-dee-doo.
Either TorrentFreak is overreacting to whatever source they got their information from, or Google's rollout plan was changed after the article was written.
Slashdot Mirror
It's here because, as implied by Slashdot's tagline, it's "Stuff that Matters".
What about the increasing numbers of patrons that are behind her, and thus looking at her and her cell phone, as she makes her way forward?
Actually I was reminded only of the fact that they use that arm to scan the underside, but not so much the Columbia disaster. Depends on your point of view I suppose.
There is ONE argument I can make in favor of promoting Facebook or some other social network: When the news in question is ongoing. I.e. something that, if reported on only as part of a normal news broadcast a few times a day, leaves out valuable information of some kind.
The recent devastation in Joplin, Missouri is a perfect example; until I heard that everyone I know there was safe, if homeless, I followed the story using the Facebook page for one of the city's radio stations (KZRG),at their suggestion. Not because I can't get that info from the radio station itself, but because it was more convenient for me, not being a resident of that state anymore, and because the "wall" therein also allowed for people to ask questions, make suggestions for places to donate, offer their own hands and tools to help in the cleanup, ask about missing loved ones, etc.
These things just don't seem to work all that well on regular websites, from what I've seen. I still dislike Facebook, but I do have an account there and it does have its uses.
To be accurate, they neither disappeared, nor chose the "wrong team", as GEOS was available for the Apple II as well. The company changed their name to "GeoWorks" when they went with the PC, and renamed their product "GeoWorks Ensemble". This eventually became "Breadbox Ensemble" when the company by that name bought the product line. They still call it that to this day, with references to PC/GEOS as its core software, though their website is hardly up-to-date.
"...about as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh."
By allowing the accused to be thrown off the 'net? Note I didn't say tried and convicted. Due process or do nothing.
Oh how I wish I had mod points right now - this should me modded straight to +5, Funny.
I just about laughed myself silly. Thanks. :-D
Sad to think that there really are people out there that believe that sort of stuff. The scary part is you almost sound serious!
Since "free" can have more than one meaning, many folks use phrases like "FLOSS" (where the "L" stands for "libre", from the Latin for "liberty"), "Free as in freedom, not beer", or they may change the capitalization on the word "free".
Just as citizens of certain countries consider themselves to be free, in that they are not oppressed by some regime, dictator, etc. and can move about and act more or less as they please, software can be defined in the same sense: by not being locked down by a given company or author, and being usable by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose, without the author or distributor of the software having much say in the matter. That's the "libre" or "freedom" definition of the word.
You're thinking of the "free of monetary cost" definition, hence the "beer" reference above, in that you could just download the software in question without paying anything.
Not all software that is free of monetary cost is necessarily particularly free in the "liberty" sense of the word. Any program that you can easily download, but which comes with a restrictive EULA probably falls into this category.
On the other hand, not all software that costs money is necessarily devoid of liberty. Some Linux distributions can be found on brick-and-mortar store shelves, and hence incur some small monetary cost, but carry no usage restrictions and have all of the source code available either in the package or online someplace.
There is also a third thing to consider: Companies like Red Hat, Canonical, etc. also sell support services, usually independent of whether their software/distribution has to be purchased or not. I can't speak for the financial details of such arrangements, but this is where these companies a significant portion of their money.
So, simply because we're pulling the money out of a theoretically different bucket that means it is magic money? Any time the government pulls money out of the economy for any purpose it creates drag and loss. No exceptions.
That money is going right back into the economy in the form of Medicare and Medicaid payouts to doctors and other health professionals, and Social Security paychecks to the various recipients, who then spend it on rent, utilities, food, etc. It isn't as if the government is supposed to be just hoarding the money. Is it working like it should? Probably not exactly. but it isn't completely busted.
Further, as you say below, the supposed trust fund will be totally broke in 20 years, probably less. When that happens, probably sooner, where do you think that money is going to come from?
[...]
What about the fact that entitlement spending is going to overtake the entire federal budget? When that happens, what then?
If the trust fund goes broke, it's because the government is dipping into it periodically to cover other expenses, which means we need to begin filling that pool back up faster than it is being drained. However, whether we have that fund or not is of little consequence, because Social Security is also paid for by incoming tax dollars, not just a one-time fund. For the expenditures to overtake the entire federal budget would be impossible by definition.
Since the population is continuously increasing, new taxpayers are constantly being added, adding money to the Social Security fund, and at the same time new recipients are constantly being added as well, taking money from that fund, and both at an ever increasing rate. If we want to get it back into balance, reduce the number of future recipients by making the qualifications a little more strict (but do so in ways that won't hurt those who truly need it), pay new recipients a little less (and by that I mean, reduce the maximum initial payouts), and consider the entirety of peoples' incomes (instead of only the first $90,000) when taxing them for Social Security purposes. If necessary, raise Social Security taxes slightly to compensate.
Besides all of that, even if you completely and totally kill Social Security, it won't affect the deficit or the existing debt, because those expenditures aren't used to calculate either figure, and the funds for that program come from a second tax stream, deliberately separated on your paycheck stub. Of course you're paying into both it and the general fund, but money paid into the Social Security fund cannot, by law, be used by the government for expenditures that should come from the general fund. Whether that law is obeyed is a matter of some debate - if it isn't, enforce it!
If Social Security revenues increase in some manner and end up with a surplus, the money has nowhere to go but to the recipients or back into the trust fund. On the other hand, if Congress were to kill that program, it would also have to kill its funding source by definition, leaving workers with one less tax item on their paychecks, and leaving the government right back where it started: with a grossly over-blown military budget, along with all the other expenditures, and not enough money in general-fund taxes to cover it all.
Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part. Just why do you think it is our responsibility to take care of you and yours?
Let's do some hard math: The average person gets 51 years of work out of his life if he starts at 14 and retires at 65. A 14 year old could theoretically make $8700 a year for their first two years at minimum wage, but he'll be lucky to make half of that. Call it $5000 to be generous. Lets suppose the kid manages to ramp up smoothly to $50,000 a year by age 25. That comes to about $320,000 gross by the end of that year. Let's suppose that he manages to continue making $50,000 a year, despite whatever the econo
When you put it that way, I think he'd be hard pressed to find an answer. However, that's because your math is wrong. A 95% drop in the value of something is the same as saying that the item in question retains only 5%, or 1/20 of its original value. A 98% drop leaves 2%, or 1/50 of the original value.
Few people would have a hard time finding things that saw a 20x increase in price over the past 98 years. Even a 50x increase isn't hard to find.
Just off the top of my head: Bread went from 5.6c/lb to about 60c/lb for the low quality stuff (10.7x increase). Hershey's chocolate went from 3c/oz to ~63c/oz (~21x). The daily edition of the New York Times went from 5c/issue to $2.00 (40x). Gold went from $20.67/oz to $1409.00/oz (~68.2x). A gallon of gasoline went from about 20 cents to $3.20 (16x). The Ford Model-T sold new for $550 in 1913, while the cheapest new car today is the Hyundai Accent, at around $10,700 (~19.5x).
According to the US government's published data, inflation sits at about 2100% relative to 1913 (as the CPI has risen from 9.8 to 220.2), consistent with the above figures, though some things have *way* outpaced inflation.
So, aside from the fact that Social Security is on a different income/expenditure stream than the rest of the federal budget, and thus doesn't contribute to the budget crisis...
What you're proposing would lead to an extremely poor quality of life, homelessness, or outright death for millions of Americans. My husband and I would be among those affected. Um, no. I don't think so.
The military is the biggest single money hog, between the official Defense section of the budget ($685B) and the various other programs that all fall under the heading of military research, defense, counterterrorism, etc., the government spends somewhere between $1.0 and $1.4 trillion. If you cut these items by 75% across the board, that's around $900 billion, and it still leaves the US as the largest military spender in the world. Trim the Discretionary fund ($660B) back by the same factor, and you're looking at almost $1.4 Trillion. If it weren't for the interest on the existing debt, that would be more than enough. Otherwise, we need to trim another ~$830 billion to get to a clearly break-even status (actually, a slight surplus, if I figure it right). Others have pointed out already that there are tons of other programs that lead directly to money spent with no genuinely worthwhile outcome, so start cutting those back too.
Medicare and Medicaid (part of the Health and Human Services section of the general budget) could be trimmed back some, but only after the ridiculous cost of medical care in this country is brought under strict control, and only with extreme care. Otherwise, too many people will lose critically-needed services.
Expenditures are only part of the problem, as we still need to find ways to increase revenue, or the existing debt is going nowhere. At 8% interest, it takes about $1.13 trillion in what would otherwise be a surplus to cover the $14.1 trillion debt, so $2.4 trillion worth of cuts to the current budget, if that's even possible in a sane manner, would only pay for the interest on that debt. More revenue is needed to avoid excessive budget cuts and to bring the principle part of the debt down in a timely manner. I see four ways to do that, in theory:
* Raise taxes: A bad idea outright, because the low and middle-income folks are the ones who would be hit hardest by such a thing, regardless of which specific taxes get raised, and right now is the worst possible time for such a thing to happen. Besides, the rich will just find ways around it.
* Find ways to increase the number of new taxpayers: Not much prospect there. Short of a population explosion, the only other sources I can see are illegal immigrants, but those folks are hard enough to track, let alone tax.
* Change/enforce the tax laws: All existing citizens (and businesses) who don't already do so should be forced to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us do. Rich or poor, pay your fair share, even if it's by withholding $5 a month from your paycheck. For the over $250,000 crowd, make it extremely unpalatable to dodge taxes. We all know such folks manage to find all kinds of ways to avoid paying taxes by way of write-offs, loopholes, offshore accounts, dummy corporations, etc., so eliminate the loopholes and make it really *really* suck for those who try to live above the law.
* Find new revenue streams: I'm sure there are all kinds of legit things that the federal government could do here that people wouldn't mind. Hell, set up theme parks, amusements, etc. where all proceeds go into the general fund. If necessary, raise admission fees on national parks and the like, or establish new fees where appropriate (but without getting stupid, lest you cut off your income stream from those sources entirely).
As for Social Security, everyone including SSA themselves keeps saying Social Security will go broke in 25 to 30 years. You can start by heavily forbidding any government project, program, agency, etc. from dipping into the Social Security budget for things that belong in the
One e-reader: everyone reads the same page.
One book: everyone reads the same page.
Two books: Two people can read. Each one reading a single book. (More, if they read the same page.)
You're missing the point...
If one is considering paper books, then for every person who wants to read a unique book at any given moment, (or be on a different page than anyone else), you must have one copy per person, whether they are all copies of the same work or all different works.
If one is considering ebook readers, then for every person who can be expected to want to read, you need one device per person, loaded with a large library of media. If the people don't have to bunch up around one person turning pages on a paper book, there's no reason they should need to do so with an ebook reader.
Clearly, with paper books you must supply a library that's at least as large as the maximum number of people you expect to see reading at any given point, multiplied by the largest number of books you expect any one person to check out at any given point, multiplied by at least a factor of perhaps 2 to allow for a reasonably large variety. On top of that, you need multiple copies of every book. For some, you need a large number of copies, either because you're dealing with students who need textbooks, or because you're dealing with some particularly popular literary work. As a guess, let's say that 10% of the total library falls into this category, and let's assume that there'll be enough copies of those works for 1% of the population. For the rest of the library, two copies each should do.
Let's pull some numbers out of a certain, dark place.
Assume a population of 1000.
At any given point, I figure 1/3 of them will be reading at least one book. For the sake of round numbers, call it 300 even. So, you need at least 300 unique books in the library.
Our hypothetical library allows two items to be checked out at any one time, so you now need 600 unique books.
Doubled for variety, 1200 unique books.
For the textbooks/popular works, 1% of the population * 10% of the library = 10*120 = 1200 copies
Doubling up the rest of the library for volume, (1200-120)*2 = 2160 books
That gives us a grand total of 3360 books in our hypothetical library, covering only 1200 unique titles. I think someone here gave a figure of around $7 for a cheaply-made book, so lets use that (personally, I don't think such a book will last). That comes to $23,520 for the books. Add a couple hundred thousand for the cost of a building to put everything in, a few hundred thousand more to staff it for a few years, and several tens of thousands for a few years' worth of electricity and other utilities, and perhaps $20,000 to ship everything and everyone to the location in question, and you're at over $600,000.
For the sake of comparison, by the way, my town's local library has over 128,000 volumes, serving a population of about 45,000. If you wanted to go with that ratio (about 2.85:1), you'd need about 2850 books for this hypothetical 1000-person population, but you would reduce the cost by only $5100.
With ebook readers, you need one device per person, plus a small number of extras in case of breakage.
5% overage is probably sufficient, meaning we need 1050 readers for a population of 1000. The kindle is selling for $139 retail right now, so let's use that figure. That's $145,950 for the readers, at retail.
If you stick to sources like the The Internet Archive, you've got 2.6 million free, unique works at your disposal, absolutely dwarfing the above hypothetical printed library by over three orders of magnitude.
Add about $3000 for a computer system and a few years' worth of satellite Internet (seed the computer with the above content first; about 750GB if I estimate it right).
Add a couple hundred thousand dollars to pay a couple of people for a few years to manage the Kindles and the above computer system. To save on costs, o
Stephen has, on at least one occasion, indicated his preference for the voice and style of expression of his existing gear, to the extent that he considers it "his" voice for all practical purposes.
The same can be said for Linux on an SSD. I have the same 60GB Vertex2 in two boxes here, and it takes roughly 4 seconds from the moment GRUB loads to the moment I see the XFCE desktop, plus perhaps 5 seconds to re-load my session. Counting the POST screen, I'd give it a grand total of 15 seconds from power-on to ready and idle.
Everything moves faster - I don't find myself waiting anymore. Except for Firefox, programs load from a cold start almost instantly. Since the CPU is more than capable of flooding even the fastest disks, programs that need to process large files just blast through the data faster. New programs install lightning fast. I've seen at least one instance of a several-GB file being created at ~249 MB/sec - right up there with the benchmarks we've all seen for SSD's. I can "only" get about 210 MB/sec out of dd or hdparm, though. Of course it takes no effort at all now to max out our gigabit LAN copying files around as usual (~110 MB/sec on larger files).
It took no special effort to get this kind of performance either, at least with Ubuntu "Maverick": just partition, install, and copy my data over like any other disk update.
SSD for the OS's and most of the home directory contents on the two machines, spinning rust for mass storage, external USB disk for incremental backups. Seems like the perfect solution for a normal home user, at least for now.
Another one is review sites. Say you want to buy a camera and you want to read reviews. Yeah, there are pro reviews, but you want reviews by real users. So you type in the word 'review' as well. Up come a ton of returns from the search engine... ...most of which say, "Be the first one to write a review". I have honestly used that phrase as a Boolean NOT just to try and get some useful content.
THIS!
I have lost count of the number of times I've run into exactly this problem, but now it's gotten so bad that even attempting to filter out those "be the first" results doesn't seem to work that well anymore. There just seem to be as many ways to say "zero reviews" as there are junk sites, enough so that I run out of "room" in my query before I manage to filter everything out. Google team, are you listening?
The parent's program may or may not be the killer app he hopes it to be, but he can and probably will still run into all kinds of land mines even if his program isn't all that impressive. The best example I know of is the Amiga XOR patent case:
Back in 1978, CAD-Track filed software patent #4197590, for what we all know is an extremely trivial function: repeated exclusive-OR of a screen region to make a flashing/moving cursor, instead of storing/restoring the under-cursor data in an off-screen buffer. It was granted April 8, 1980.
Sometime in 1992 or 1993, CAD-Track went under and was bought out [*].
In Sept. 1993, Commodore launched the CD32 console - a make-or-break move since they were already struggling at the time. The manufacturing facility they contracted with in the Philippines had a large quantity of them ready to ship (like any company should), and they all used this trick where it mattered, so it was way too late to change it. The new owners of the patent decided to enforce it, resulting in a federal no-sale injunction against the CD32, massive debts since much of that stock simply couldn't be sold, large amounts of stock being withheld by the manufacturing facility, supply problems (result of the withholding probably), and $10 million in patent royalty claims.
This is generally cited as the reason Commodore went bankrupt in April, 1994, the same year the XOR patent expired.
If it was that bad in the 1990's, just imagine the minefield that exists today.
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[*] The assignee of the patent is listed as "NuGraphics, Inc." now. That's probably who bought out CAD-Track, but I can't seem to find a reference.
Assuming for the moment that both houses of congress were to compose and pass their respective iterations of such a bill, and the president were to veto it as you predict, you forget that congress can still override that veto if that bill has enough support. Granted, it practically takes an act of G*d for such a thing to occur, but the president does not, and never has had, the last word on legislation passed across his desk. As broken as our system is, checks-and-balances are still in place.
In the US it can become a federal criminal charge - and it can escalate to a felony charge.
That has been the law since the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act of 1997.
If and only if a government entity of some kind issues the lawsuit. Do you honestly think that the media companies would be suing only in civil court if they could be directly suing in the criminal courts? Instead, they lobby for changes to our laws, and press our ISPs and government agencies to expend resources to fight what they perceive to be this world-destroying problem.
P2P is all about "file sharing." The unlicensed wholesale re-distribution of protected works through P2P networks.
While P2P probably is primarily used for unlawful file sharing, that isn't its only use, we all know that here. To imply otherwise makes you unaware of its full potential.
That is why statutory damages apply - and it is why the geek would be the first to scream bloody murder if his uploaded shares could be successfully watermarked and traced back to him.
I think you mean "her", and I have no such watermarked shares to be spread around, because I don't buy from sources who do such things. I only buy physical media, because I can be reasonably sure that I can use that media indefinitely and anonymously.
Even though I am one of those who doesn't respond to commercials?
The geek is the gift of god in cross-examination.
His self-regard, and boundless sense of entitlement to a free media fix is the one message you want the jury to take away from his testimony.
As is evidenced by having moved it to the bottom of your reply, my statement was taken entirely out of context. Since I was using "Free to air TV" as an example, "commercials" should be taken literally, meaning advertisements. "Free to air" means I am not required by any law, process, device, contract, etc. to pay for in any way whatsoever the content which is transmitted, and that I am free to record that content and use that recording any way I see fit, whether it is an episode of a TV series, a song on a radio, or even a movie, provided I don't distribute it. As I said, I don't respond to commercials (whether on a "free to air" broadcast or not), so those who would profit from those commercials won't do so on my account.
There is no difference whatsoever in their profits or my costs for watching/listening to a "free to air" broadcast as it is transmitted, versus watching/listening to it via a downloaded file.
All of that aside, the only "entitlement" I feel is that which every American is supposed to be guaranteed by law - public domain after X years, the right to make backups, the right to record, that sort of thing. Furthermore, whether any of your commentary were correct or not is moot, because aside from the punishment not fitting the infraction, I plainly said in my post that "I choose not to download [...]", meaning I don't run any kind of P2P software, I don't download from warez/share sites, I don't use USEnet binaries, nor any other method that results in unlawful distribution of content.
I can afford to buy the content that I want, and I don't want to deal with the headaches if I get caught using any of the above tools, even if I'm doing something legitimate.
So, if I decide a TV program is out of the question for some reason (either because I can't receive it at all, or because I won't be there at broadcast time), then it is still a genuine crime that should be punishable by destroying my life with insane charges? Even though that TV content is available over free-to-air broadcast as well as freely accessible places like Hulu? Even though I am one of those who doesn't respond to commercials? Thankfully that hasn't happened to me, as I choose not to download if only to avoid the assholes out there who can't see the damage they're doing to their own brands.
The "crime": Downloading a copyrighted work.
The "fine": A demand for remittance to a private company, who claims to act on behalf of the copyright holder of the work in question, initially for an amount that is often thousands of times the fair market value of that work, and which is issued in such a manner as to bypass the courts and ignore due process entirely. If it goes to the courts, it can become a civil judgment reaching into the millions-of-dollars range (see Capitol v. Thomas, the defendant lost to the tune of $1.5M). At no point does it become a criminal charge.
The "time": Anywhere from a serious financial headache if you pay off the initial demand, to just plain bankruptcy if you lose in court. To most people, the latter may as well be life in prison.
Sorry, your argument doesn't fly here.
Good analogy, and you're absolutely right, they brought this on themselves...and after receiving taxpayers' money from both sides of the border all those years ago. Still, if you distill all of this down, you still get one motivation: Greed.
A company generally defines a loss as anything which reduces total revenue over a given period, either because something causes them to expect to make less than their forecast models say they should, or because the suddenly expect to spend more than their models predict, or again actually did spend more. Profits are of course defined as the exact opposite, except that they seem to hold far less importance than losses, even when those losses are minuscule by comparison. To a company, predicted debits/credits are just as tangible as those already shown as settled in the previous quarter's financial report. Stupidest damn system I've seen short of RIAA/MPAA accounting.
So these companies can afford to do the buildouts that are needed, they're just too greedy to do it. They were given money to spend on this, but they didn't bother, and now to do so would somehow be a "loss". Nevermind that it would result in nice profits later. If all of these companies are making the huge losses I hear about from time to time, why are they still in business, you know?
There should be no caps, and no charge based on usage; bandwidth should be strictly flat rate.
Once you turn ion a transmitter, it will be sending *something* continuously, no matter what you feed to its input(s). It might be anything from dead air to the the latest movie release over Netflix, but there is still a signal present, which means it is expending energy. Similarly, once you turn on a router, it starts expending energy just staying awake and doing its job, no matter how much load it is carrying. Of course power usage will vary day-to-day in both cases, but once you factor in the thousands of such devices an ISP has, and the hundreds of thousands to millions of customers, the power usage will average out. Further, the hardware itself costs whatever it costs to repair or replace whether you use it heavily, lightly, or not at all. So, the equipment and the labor to go with its maintenance is another FIXED cost.
You gotta pay the geeks to make things actually work or the whole damn thing comes to a halt anyway. Such folks might have to work a little harder than usual to handle the needs of a high-bandwidth service - after all, faster services require faster software and hardware, which demands higher-skilled people to install and program such things. Such folks would rightfully demand a higher rate of pay. This is the only somewhat variable cost I can think of, BUT it isn't based on bandwidth usage, and sooner or later you'll have replaced all of those who couldn't do the job, so it goes into the FIXED category anyway.
As to the maintenance of the lines themselves, those lines will be the same pieces of fiber and/or copper, whether they're totally dead or fully loaded down with every last signal you can cram through them, save for copper wires possibly heating up if you push them enough. Those lines are going to fail at the same rate as they ordinarily would, they'll be installed in the same manner as before (there's no real reason not to, is there?), and you'll be paying the same techs as before to do the repair/install work, so that cost isn't going to change. Any such company is going to roll this into their normal budget as a FIXED cost.
Then there is the small matter of paying the various desk-bound employees, the company officers/partners, etc. Somehow, I get the impression that your average teller or tech support rep at the cable company will be the same and will get the same pay as any other time, whether the lines in a given area are stone dead or maxed out. Call centers will still be in Outer Mongolia as usual, and they'll still act like scripted robots. I'm sure the CEO wants his cut also. Most companies will work these things into their budget as an approximated FIXED cost as well.
As a side note, there is the issue of stocks and stockholders. I don't know how to figure this one, as stocks can vary wildly in value over just a second or two, let alone from one day to another, and it is impossible to know if an out-of-company stockholder will want to take a dividend when the time comes, sell it all at the first 0.1% drop in value, or whatever. Of course, the value of a stock is based on the perceived value of the company as a whole, which is influenced just as much by the intangibles like goodwill and respect as by actual assets or predicted revenue, so perhaps such things don't actually account for that much on the balance sheet.
That leaves only one thing: The bandwidth costs the ISPs pay to their upstream providers, but many ISPs are already bitching that they are constantly MAXED OUT. So, if they can't use any more, and they don't expect to use any less (or they wouldn't be complaining), their upstream provider's charges will end up as another FIXED cost. If there's a peering agreement in place, which I gather is the norm anyway, then the ISP is going to be paying a fixed cost anyway.
Some are comparing bandwidth to things like electricity, but those folks are ignoring a critical difference: electricity is billed by the amount used beca
Not to disagree with you - a kill switch is a stupid idea - but I can think of at least two scenarios where those little metal boxes can directly affect people:
Payroll for a company is handled by some contractor on one end of the country, but the company itself has to send its data to that payroll agency, and they're on the other end of the country, so they use the public Internet (and some really good security protocol, one would assume) to route that data. If the two computers at either side of the country can't make their data exchange on time because some bird brain decided to attack either of the two, or any of the computers in between on the network, or because someone decided to throw this proposed "kill switch", then a few thousand soccer moms/dads don't get paid for a while.
If that's not good enough, consider the use of the Internet in coordinating relief efforts in far-off disaster areas or simply general humanitarian activities around the globe. Much of that help seems to come from American citizens; kill the Internet for a significant amount of time, and you kill off their ability to organize, move money around to help their cause, etc., and a lot of people who were to receive that help will suffer.
The above two scenarios are examples of the reality of the world right now; we depend on the Internet too much to just shut it off in the face of some perceived "cyberattack" (G*d do people still honestly use that prefix?), so it isn't just a matter of "what sense would it make?", it's more like "are they crazy?!".
Seems to work fine for me. If I type "doctor who" (without the quotes), I get a few suggestions that don't include the word "torrent", and Instant Search results that match. However, if I add the word "torrent" to my terms, my autocomplete suggestions change to those which include that word, and the Instant Search results change to match as well, as though I'd used the press-Enter search to begin with (which is what I normally do - I don't like Instant Search).
The same holds true if I replace "torrent" with the any one of the names of the various popular websites associated with such files, or if I replace "doctor who" with any one of the various movies that are now in theaters.
In other words, there's no search results censorship here; if you don't want a torrent, you won't see such results by default now, and if you do, you add that word like you probably always did anyway and get the results you expected. The only thing that's changed is the autocomplete just doesn't suggest torrent-related results anymore. Whoop-dee-doo.
Either TorrentFreak is overreacting to whatever source they got their information from, or Google's rollout plan was changed after the article was written.