I've never seen a commercial for POTS where they say "Can you hear me now? Good."
You don't remember Sprint's "pin-drop" commercials from the '80s, then. They based their pitch on the sound quality of their calls. This was long before cell-phones were in common usage; they were boasting about how much clearer POTS calls were using their service as opposed to that of their competitors. It was, in essence, the same claims Verizon would make twenty years later with their cell phones. Sprint was a long-distance carrier and its fiber-optic lines were a great improvement over the long-haul copper wires previously used.
Although it may simply be nostalgia clouding my memory, I do recall that was the period when sound quality overall greatly improved thanks to the switch-over to fiber optics. Nowadays, the sound quality of all calls - POTS or cellular, local or long distance - seems to gotten as bad as (or even worsened) when compared to the bad-old days prior to the upgrade. But even bad as POTS is currently, it still sounds far better than most cellphone calls.
At this point, any agent who recommends that his client accepts a contract that promises a percentage of the net profits should be dismissed immediately (as incompetent), or perhaps sued for not acting in his/her client's best interests.
While this is true, it also condemns the "accounting" used by Hollywood in the same breath.
Just because "that's the way it is" doesn't mean it is right.
Movies are incredibly profitable for the Hollywood corporations. If their accounting methods were fair and above board, requesting a percentage of the net profits would be an equally fair way to distribute the monies of a successful movie. The salaried workers of the studios would get their weekly pay-check, and the contracted directors, actors, etc. would get paid based on the quality of their work, encouraging them to make the best movie they can.
That lawyers and agents have to demand a piece of the gross is a symptom of the problem, not the solution.
The Hollywood system is corrupt to its core, so it is no wonder it garners so little sympathy from Slashdot, even when it sometimes is in the right. Having bilked so many people out of billions over the years, few feel any hypocrisy in rooting for their opponents if it means Hollywood gets some long overdue comeuppance.
As importantly, if you only encrypt things that you want keep secret, then you might as well not keep them secret at all. Not only are you waving a flag and essentially waving a red flag attracting Their* attention that you are now doing something covert ("I am done surfing Amazon.com and now intending to visit a forbidden website!"), it also makes it easier for Them to correlate your obfuscated traffic with traffic with the traffic that hits a forbidden site ("Hmmm, Bob went on Tor at 08:24:42.342 and at 08:24:42.359 traffic from a TOR exit node hit TheNSASucks.Com...").
On the other hand, if you disguise all your activity online, it makes it much harder for Them to do this sort of pattern matching.
So if you are going to use TOR - or use other similar privacy-protecting technologies or techniques - it is best used ALL the time and not just when you are doing something that specifically you don't want the bad guys to know about.
And as the previous poster indicated, just because what you are doing now isn't considered wrong doesn't mean it won't be considered immoral or illegal in the future, or used out of context by others to your disadvantage. As organizations become larger and more bureaucratic, they become more detached from the harm - intentional or otherwise - they can inflict on individuals. And it is not only governments who can cause this harm; corporations gather as much information about us and - as has been frequently been shown over the past few years - are far more careless about how they secure that information. As the old proverb goes, 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'; I'd rather try to keep as much of my life out of anyone else's hands rather than try to clean up the mess after that same information is being used against me.
* They, Their and Them are generic placeholders for whichever bad guys you think are watching you, be it the NSA, KGB, KKK or Santa Claus.
Did we make sure to get blood and saliva samples from the police officers and federal contractors as well?
I'd like to make sure that my samples aren't being mishandled due to drug- or alcohol-induced ineptitude.
I think this study was less to count the number of drunk drivers and more as a test to see how willing people are to give up their precious bodily fluids when demanded to do so by some random authority. Sort of checking to see if the frog has been boiled yet. Fortunately, it sounds as if some of those frogs were willing to still jump a little bit, as at least the named driver refused to everything but a breathalyzer.
So I'd say that yes, we should do any type of recording including video, sound and GPS data. But we also need PROPER ways to protect the individual rights of the coppers. If the GPS data is needed for statistical analysis then we should store it anonymously and in bulk with no way to tie it back to individual officers.
I'm all for that.
Right after they ensure the same things for the citizens they monitor. A protection that - at the moment - is sorely lacking and the government is showing great reluctance - and even opposition - to codifying. The various law-enforcement (and other unrelated) agencies are grabbing every bit of information about its citizens and compiling massive dossiers about each and every one of us, and despite claims that it is all just "anonymous metadata" it has been shown how easily this information can be tied together to get data about specific individuals. There needs to be some protection against this sort of Hoovering.*
Until that happens, I not only want every police officer monitored every second he is on duty, but every politician too. We've given them great power over us; it's time to ensure that it is being properly used. If they feel that this sort of intrusion into/their/ lives is too much, they can damn well be sure the same can be true of ours.
We're the bosses of this country. They're just the petty clerks we've hired to do the dirty work (although it sometimes seems the political caste thinks things are the other way around). That sort of authority ought to get us/something/!
* I named this tactic both after the vacuum and the unscrupulous FBI administrator who utilized similar, albeit low-tech, methods to do the same; clever, huh?;-)
But flying a plane into a building to use it as a suicide bomb isn't something that is going to be done frequently anyway. It was only as effective as it was because it was novel, and because four attacks were staged at once. A truck filled with explosives is much easier to get and as destructive.
The people who are really interested in this level of destruction are more likely to go with the more cost-effective method of garnering attention for their cause. I don't see suicide-hijackings becoming so common that passengers will automatically distrust an armed man enough that they will rush towards certain death in an attempt to forestall it.
People will believe the most unbelievable things when faced with overwhelming force. It's why seventy years ago millions marched quietly into "showers" to be put to their death despite overwhelming evidence rather than take a chance of surviving by rushing the armed guards. Our instincts scream at us that even a few minutes of extra life is considered a better alternative than a more immediate death should we act now.
The hijackers will lie and the the passengers will believe the lie.
With net-metering, the pay back to solar panel owners feeding the mains is basically the retail rate for power
Thank you. I was unaware - and quite surprised - by this. The retail rate, of course, includes bundled into it part of the maintenance costs so technically Arizona Public's - and the Arizona Corporation Commission's - argument does have merit.
I am surprised because I would have bet good money that the utilities would have arranged things so they bought back electricity at a lower rate than it cost them to generate the same amount of power - isn't that sort of conniving how corporations usually manage things here? - but in this case it works to the benefit of the customer.
Looking solely at the argument present by AP and the ACC, I now understand their logic. Of course, I don't/agree/ with their argument, since it focuses primarily on the short-term benefit of the power utility and does nothing to encourage moving us towards renewable energy sources, but as that was a factor that was cleverly ignored by the lawyers, I suppose their argument - limited in scope as it is - is sound.
Ultimately, I believe this will be taken to court. Hopefully there the larger implications of this decision will be tested and the ACC's judgement found wanting.
I'm not sure I understand the logic of the commission (that is, the logic of their stated argument, as opposed to the unspoken "we just got $3.7 million from the utilities so we'd better side with them" argument that we all suspect).
The Arizona Corporation Commission says that this fee is necessary because people who use solar are foisting off some of the maintenance cost onto the other customers who do not use solar panels.
Some residents installed solar-electric panels on their homes. Any excess energy they generate is sold back to the utilities, transmitted through the utilities infrastructure. The utilities are claiming that this is costing its other, non-solar customers money. But how?
It's not costing them money in infrastructure; that is still being paid for by all its customers - including those using solar power, as they are still hooked up to the grid and paying Arizona Public for the service (necessary, I suppose, for the occasional cloudy day in AZ). The maintenance costs of the lines are included in this service, just as they are for any other Arizona Public customer; it is not as if AP had to hook up any extra lines to these users of solar power, or as if the lines remain connected and the solar-customers aren't paying for the privilege.
The utility has to pay for the juice they receive back from these solar-customers, but they can then redistribute this power to other non-solar customers. AP need generate less electricity. I/suppose/ that AP might be operating at loss here if they have to pay out more per watt than it costs them to generate it themselves, but I have strong doubts this is the case. More likely, they are getting a deal on the extra volts and saving by not having to buy extra fuel for their generators.
In either case, I do not see how the use of solar would raise the cost of electricity for non-solar customers. Maintenance is shared equally among all customers, and purchased electricity from solar users saves the corporation money. There's no added cost to be passed on to non-solar customers.
There is a danger of becoming irrelevant (and unprofitable!) if solar usage takes off, but - while that may be the real concern of the utility - that is/not/ the argument that they are making.
Is the Arizona Corporation Commission's case that blatantly bogus or am just I missing something?
They assume the hijacker might be planning to crash the aircraft into a building and kill them anyway, so will keep fighting them no matter what.
I know this is the popular opinion, but I really have a hard time buying into this notion.
Yes, we have the example of Flight 93 but I think that's an exception to the rule as a direct result of the passengers learning of the three other attacks. In this case, there was direct evidence that the terrorists were very likely to destroy the airplane and this prodded the passengers into action.
However, barring similar circumstances I do not see a repetition of these events, especially if the hijackers have even a modicum of common sense. People are not generally prone to putting themselves in harms way unless the threat is dire and imminent. They are also very likely to believe any lies told convincing them that there is no imminent threat. I believe that all the hijackers need do to prevent another revolt is 1) appear appropriately menacing, 2) assure their prisoners that the ultimate goal is/not/ to immolate themselves and everyone else on the plane in some fiery statement of defiance, 3) prevent the passengers from learning the lie behind point no. 2. Given these circumstances, the passengers will remain in their seats rather than attempting to re-take the vehicle. I'd even wager that in these circumstances that any would-be heroes would be as likely restrained by their fellow passengers as by the criminals themselves.
I would in no way depend on the passengers to protect the plane as any sort of security measure.
I agree; I also am not completely opposed to a security check prior to boarding airplanes. I am, however, opposed to the excessive and pointless checks we are now forced to endure.
A pre-9/11 walk through a metal detector looking for recognizably metallic items - guns, large knives - is fine. It's quick and non-intrusive. It gets rid of all the low-hanging fruit; the idiots who haven't given much thought before giving in to their violent tendencies. Sure it won't catch the "professionals" but - as TFA indicates - if you are truly committed to the cause/nothing/ will stop you from that. Anything can be a deadly weapon in the right (or wrong, as the case may be) hands.
Forcing people to remove their shoes, or preventing people from boarding because they're carrying a big bottle of lotion or have the same name as a freedom fighter in some far off land, or any of the dozens of other inconveniences we put up with in the name of security are pointless hassles that do nothing to actually protect us. It is nothing more than bad theater to distract from the insolubility of the actual problem and to inculcate mindless obedience to authority.
What endangered US interests more than anything else was that they [the NSA] were doing this at all.
No, don't you see? If Snowden hadn't released all that info, nobody would have known that the NSA secretly had taps into every telecommunications company and data-center. With nothing but vague suspicions to the contrary, everyone else would have quite happy to continue using American servers, feeding money into the US economy and allowing the NSA to amass huge dossiers on everybody in the world!
But, no! Snowden had to reveal their shenanigans! Now nobody trusts the US telecommunications infrastructure, faith in the US government's word is at an all time low, the money-men are pulling out of lucrative deals with US corporations and the NSA's data-center isn't filling up quite as fast as it used to. It's all SNOWDEN'S fault, and not that of the agencies that were perpetrating these crimes. If Snowden had just kept his big mouth shut, nobody would have been any the wiser and everybody would have been quite happy with the way it was!
The sad thing is, I know people who earnestly believe the above. Living in ignorance of the crimes of your government is more comfortable than acknowledging its flaws, I suppose.
That should be the first question that crosses everybody's mind.
Put people on a watch list for doing something 100% legal? Sign me up.
Not only does it show those idiots we won't support that sort of nonsense (by which I mean the watch lists, although using a polygraph probably counts too) but it also drown them in noise, hopefully making the use of the list pointless.
And to answer my own question: you can place your order at Polygraph.com, with prices ranging from $20 to $60 dollars. I don't know (or care) if his methods are effective or not but it's worth shelling out a few bucks just to remind self-important lawmen that their thuggery not only is not going unnoticed, but is ultimately also is ineffective.
They keep these treaties secret as long as they can because they know that the people they represent would otherwise not countenance the agreements. They know this because every time they have tried to push forward these sorts of acts and people HAVE gotten wind of it, their constituents have raised a fuss and forced their representatives to back down. So now the politicians try to keep these laws hidden as long as they can, in order to provide the shortest opportunity during which people can voice their dissent.
There is no other reason for economic treaties and agreements to be kept secret. It is a purposeful attempt to circumvent the power of the people.
Anyone know the names of the people involved in writing this treaty (the negotiators and politicians)? These need to be publicly posted so people know who is responsible. It is as important - if not more so - than knowing the names of the senators and representatives who will vote in favor of it when it finally comes to Congress.
Remind Them that we are not afraid of them, and we will not bow.
Yes, I know the comment I am responding to was made in jest. I still don't think that we should - even in mockery - countenance the idea of obeisance to self-important bureaucrats for doing something we every right to do. It all too quickly turns from a half-hearted jest into a habit and then finally a becomes a requirement beneath which we are all forced to live. I'd rather just give them the finger openly from the start.
Thus I say in agreement with the GP: sudo killall politicians
While there may be some advantage for XBox-exclusive games, I can't see this taking off in general. It adds yet another layer of complexity, and can't be used in multi-platform games (and given the current market, many games require a multiple platform release to be profitable). Not to mention one of the strengths of a console platform is its consistency; developers didn't have to worry about different hardware and software configurations affecting their game; the evolving and frequently updated servers mentioned in the article seems the antithesis of this concept.
I have to say, I sort of agree. I barely use Google services so it doesn't effect me too much but they do seem to be pushing their Google+ product pretty heavily, and even I find it a bit annoying. I don't know if it's really popular or not (I have no interest in it); I just wish they wouldn't try to shove it in my face so much.
And btw Google, Ablehard Franklestein Snortheimer III/is/ my real name; who are you to say it isn't?
The US Constitution does not GIVE us rights. It enumerates areas where we allow the government to infringe upon our rights for the good of the nation. The first ten Amendments define some of our inalienable rights but are not a complete listing. Just because the right of privacy is not mentioned is not to imply it does not exist and cannot be claimed.
While I am sure most people on this site (and probably the poster to whom I am responding as well) are aware of this, I feel it is still an important distinction to be made. Our language dictates our thoughts and actions; let's be clear on this very important matter. We live in an era when there is an increasing belief that our governments have rightful sway over all aspects of our lives and are the source of all corporal power. This is in direct contradiction to the intent of the so-called "Founding Fathers", where the freedom and liberty of the individual were paramount and were only sacrificed - by the individuals - for the advantage of the common weal.
That is, the direction of power is from the people down to the government, and not the other way around. The people dictate, not the politicians. We willingly give, they do not grudgingly grant. Take and hold onto your rights; they are yours from birth, not a gift bestowed upon you by self-important men.
Mind you, archeologists aren't really/excited/ about ancient garbage. It's just that is often the only record of day-to-day life that exists for many civilizations. Not only is trash preserved thanks to it being buried by the constructions of more modern civilizations but it tends to present a less biased and broader view of the culture than do surviving manuscripts or art (which tend to ignore the less-popular beliefs and usually focus only on the rich and powerful).
But for all of the usefulness of garbage, archeologists would much prefer a trove like the Internet Archive. It is a fuller record, more easily dated and sorted and offers less possibility to be confused with the remains of an earlier or later people. Plus, nobody really likes picking through trash;-)
Then again, IA did preserve Geocities. Shafted again, Doctor Jones!
Alternately, you could use Albine'sDoNotTrackMe add-on if you don't want to use an add-on funded by advertisers and businesses paying them for ad data and compliance
Although from what I understand, the only info that both apps send back to the mothership is generic usage data, so the risk (or lack thereof) is probably the same for both.
Because wikipedia does so well being independent, along with all the PR folks hired to edit articles for corporations and edit them negatively for said corporations' competition?
Does that really affect how Wikipedia runs, though?
Sure, their content is often biased by monied interests, but that goes hand-in-hand with making a publicly-edited encylopedia. It would be difficult to crack down on that without at the same time infringing on the rights of individuals.
But has Wikipedia ever backed down or changed its policies because Coca Cola (or whomever) threatened to cut donations? That would be a fairer comparison, I think. Like the Mozilla Foundation, Wikipedia just is offering up a tool and largely leaves it up to its users to curate how that tool is used, for good or ill. Unfortunately, Mozilla is increasingly seen as being beholden to its advertising partners and some of its policies (reflected in their software) - such as the one mentioned in TFA - seem to reflect this. Have we seen similar actions from the Wikimedia Foundation?
All that money does is raise the bar. Those "donations" are used by the politicos for their re-election campaigns. They are used for advertising to sway the opinion of the majority to your favor. It used to be that politicians catered to small groups because - combined - those small groups could tip an election with their votes. Now they simply depend on marketing to blast a bland, pleasing face across the airways and depend on emotion to convince the electorate.
But if your protest can show - through vast numbers - that it already has the ear of the majority, you can bet the politicians will stand up and listen. Corporate and PAC "contributions" just mean that the groups have to be much larger than ever they were before before that happens.
Which is not to argue that we should do nothing to lessen money's corrupting influence on our political system. Just that protests and the combined will of the people still can have effect. Money just makes it far more difficult for individual voices to be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never seen a commercial for POTS where they say "Can you hear me now? Good."
You don't remember Sprint's "pin-drop" commercials from the '80s, then. They based their pitch on the sound quality of their calls. This was long before cell-phones were in common usage; they were boasting about how much clearer POTS calls were using their service as opposed to that of their competitors. It was, in essence, the same claims Verizon would make twenty years later with their cell phones. Sprint was a long-distance carrier and its fiber-optic lines were a great improvement over the long-haul copper wires previously used.
Although it may simply be nostalgia clouding my memory, I do recall that was the period when sound quality overall greatly improved thanks to the switch-over to fiber optics. Nowadays, the sound quality of all calls - POTS or cellular, local or long distance - seems to gotten as bad as (or even worsened) when compared to the bad-old days prior to the upgrade. But even bad as POTS is currently, it still sounds far better than most cellphone calls.
I see your vacuum-gapped computer and raise you a webcam + CAPSLock LED.
At this point, any agent who recommends that his client accepts a contract that promises a percentage of the net profits should be dismissed immediately (as incompetent), or perhaps sued for not acting in his/her client's best interests.
While this is true, it also condemns the "accounting" used by Hollywood in the same breath.
Just because "that's the way it is" doesn't mean it is right.
Movies are incredibly profitable for the Hollywood corporations. If their accounting methods were fair and above board, requesting a percentage of the net profits would be an equally fair way to distribute the monies of a successful movie. The salaried workers of the studios would get their weekly pay-check, and the contracted directors, actors, etc. would get paid based on the quality of their work, encouraging them to make the best movie they can.
That lawyers and agents have to demand a piece of the gross is a symptom of the problem, not the solution.
The Hollywood system is corrupt to its core, so it is no wonder it garners so little sympathy from Slashdot, even when it sometimes is in the right. Having bilked so many people out of billions over the years, few feel any hypocrisy in rooting for their opponents if it means Hollywood gets some long overdue comeuppance.
See what happens when you give these guys root access? ;-)
As importantly, if you only encrypt things that you want keep secret, then you might as well not keep them secret at all. Not only are you waving a flag and essentially waving a red flag attracting Their* attention that you are now doing something covert ("I am done surfing Amazon.com and now intending to visit a forbidden website!"), it also makes it easier for Them to correlate your obfuscated traffic with traffic with the traffic that hits a forbidden site ("Hmmm, Bob went on Tor at 08:24:42.342 and at 08:24:42.359 traffic from a TOR exit node hit TheNSASucks.Com...").
On the other hand, if you disguise all your activity online, it makes it much harder for Them to do this sort of pattern matching.
So if you are going to use TOR - or use other similar privacy-protecting technologies or techniques - it is best used ALL the time and not just when you are doing something that specifically you don't want the bad guys to know about.
And as the previous poster indicated, just because what you are doing now isn't considered wrong doesn't mean it won't be considered immoral or illegal in the future, or used out of context by others to your disadvantage. As organizations become larger and more bureaucratic, they become more detached from the harm - intentional or otherwise - they can inflict on individuals. And it is not only governments who can cause this harm; corporations gather as much information about us and - as has been frequently been shown over the past few years - are far more careless about how they secure that information. As the old proverb goes, 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'; I'd rather try to keep as much of my life out of anyone else's hands rather than try to clean up the mess after that same information is being used against me.
* They, Their and Them are generic placeholders for whichever bad guys you think are watching you, be it the NSA, KGB, KKK or Santa Claus.
Did we make sure to get blood and saliva samples from the police officers and federal contractors as well?
I'd like to make sure that my samples aren't being mishandled due to drug- or alcohol-induced ineptitude.
I think this study was less to count the number of drunk drivers and more as a test to see how willing people are to give up their precious bodily fluids when demanded to do so by some random authority. Sort of checking to see if the frog has been boiled yet. Fortunately, it sounds as if some of those frogs were willing to still jump a little bit, as at least the named driver refused to everything but a breathalyzer.
So I'd say that yes, we should do any type of recording including video, sound and GPS data. But we also need PROPER ways to protect the individual rights of the coppers. If the GPS data is needed for statistical analysis then we should store it anonymously and in bulk with no way to tie it back to individual officers.
I'm all for that.
Right after they ensure the same things for the citizens they monitor. A protection that - at the moment - is sorely lacking and the government is showing great reluctance - and even opposition - to codifying. The various law-enforcement (and other unrelated) agencies are grabbing every bit of information about its citizens and compiling massive dossiers about each and every one of us, and despite claims that it is all just "anonymous metadata" it has been shown how easily this information can be tied together to get data about specific individuals. There needs to be some protection against this sort of Hoovering.*
Until that happens, I not only want every police officer monitored every second he is on duty, but every politician too. We've given them great power over us; it's time to ensure that it is being properly used. If they feel that this sort of intrusion into /their/ lives is too much, they can damn well be sure the same can be true of ours.
We're the bosses of this country. They're just the petty clerks we've hired to do the dirty work (although it sometimes seems the political caste thinks things are the other way around). That sort of authority ought to get us /something/!
* I named this tactic both after the vacuum and the unscrupulous FBI administrator who utilized similar, albeit low-tech, methods to do the same; clever, huh? ;-)
But flying a plane into a building to use it as a suicide bomb isn't something that is going to be done frequently anyway. It was only as effective as it was because it was novel, and because four attacks were staged at once. A truck filled with explosives is much easier to get and as destructive.
The people who are really interested in this level of destruction are more likely to go with the more cost-effective method of garnering attention for their cause. I don't see suicide-hijackings becoming so common that passengers will automatically distrust an armed man enough that they will rush towards certain death in an attempt to forestall it.
People will believe the most unbelievable things when faced with overwhelming force. It's why seventy years ago millions marched quietly into "showers" to be put to their death despite overwhelming evidence rather than take a chance of surviving by rushing the armed guards. Our instincts scream at us that even a few minutes of extra life is considered a better alternative than a more immediate death should we act now.
The hijackers will lie and the the passengers will believe the lie.
With net-metering, the pay back to solar panel owners feeding the mains is basically the retail rate for power
Thank you. I was unaware - and quite surprised - by this. The retail rate, of course, includes bundled into it part of the maintenance costs so technically Arizona Public's - and the Arizona Corporation Commission's - argument does have merit.
I am surprised because I would have bet good money that the utilities would have arranged things so they bought back electricity at a lower rate than it cost them to generate the same amount of power - isn't that sort of conniving how corporations usually manage things here? - but in this case it works to the benefit of the customer.
Looking solely at the argument present by AP and the ACC, I now understand their logic. Of course, I don't /agree/ with their argument, since it focuses primarily on the short-term benefit of the power utility and does nothing to encourage moving us towards renewable energy sources, but as that was a factor that was cleverly ignored by the lawyers, I suppose their argument - limited in scope as it is - is sound.
Ultimately, I believe this will be taken to court. Hopefully there the larger implications of this decision will be tested and the ACC's judgement found wanting.
I'm not sure I understand the logic of the commission (that is, the logic of their stated argument, as opposed to the unspoken "we just got $3.7 million from the utilities so we'd better side with them" argument that we all suspect).
The Arizona Corporation Commission says that this fee is necessary because people who use solar are foisting off some of the maintenance cost onto the other customers who do not use solar panels.
Some residents installed solar-electric panels on their homes. Any excess energy they generate is sold back to the utilities, transmitted through the utilities infrastructure. The utilities are claiming that this is costing its other, non-solar customers money. But how?
It's not costing them money in infrastructure; that is still being paid for by all its customers - including those using solar power, as they are still hooked up to the grid and paying Arizona Public for the service (necessary, I suppose, for the occasional cloudy day in AZ). The maintenance costs of the lines are included in this service, just as they are for any other Arizona Public customer; it is not as if AP had to hook up any extra lines to these users of solar power, or as if the lines remain connected and the solar-customers aren't paying for the privilege.
The utility has to pay for the juice they receive back from these solar-customers, but they can then redistribute this power to other non-solar customers. AP need generate less electricity. I /suppose/ that AP might be operating at loss here if they have to pay out more per watt than it costs them to generate it themselves, but I have strong doubts this is the case. More likely, they are getting a deal on the extra volts and saving by not having to buy extra fuel for their generators.
In either case, I do not see how the use of solar would raise the cost of electricity for non-solar customers. Maintenance is shared equally among all customers, and purchased electricity from solar users saves the corporation money. There's no added cost to be passed on to non-solar customers.
There is a danger of becoming irrelevant (and unprofitable!) if solar usage takes off, but - while that may be the real concern of the utility - that is /not/ the argument that they are making.
Is the Arizona Corporation Commission's case that blatantly bogus or am just I missing something?
They assume the hijacker might be planning to crash the aircraft into a building and kill them anyway, so will keep fighting them no matter what.
I know this is the popular opinion, but I really have a hard time buying into this notion.
Yes, we have the example of Flight 93 but I think that's an exception to the rule as a direct result of the passengers learning of the three other attacks. In this case, there was direct evidence that the terrorists were very likely to destroy the airplane and this prodded the passengers into action.
However, barring similar circumstances I do not see a repetition of these events, especially if the hijackers have even a modicum of common sense. People are not generally prone to putting themselves in harms way unless the threat is dire and imminent. They are also very likely to believe any lies told convincing them that there is no imminent threat. I believe that all the hijackers need do to prevent another revolt is 1) appear appropriately menacing, 2) assure their prisoners that the ultimate goal is /not/ to immolate themselves and everyone else on the plane in some fiery statement of defiance, 3) prevent the passengers from learning the lie behind point no. 2. Given these circumstances, the passengers will remain in their seats rather than attempting to re-take the vehicle. I'd even wager that in these circumstances that any would-be heroes would be as likely restrained by their fellow passengers as by the criminals themselves.
I would in no way depend on the passengers to protect the plane as any sort of security measure.
I agree; I also am not completely opposed to a security check prior to boarding airplanes. I am, however, opposed to the excessive and pointless checks we are now forced to endure.
A pre-9/11 walk through a metal detector looking for recognizably metallic items - guns, large knives - is fine. It's quick and non-intrusive. It gets rid of all the low-hanging fruit; the idiots who haven't given much thought before giving in to their violent tendencies. Sure it won't catch the "professionals" but - as TFA indicates - if you are truly committed to the cause /nothing/ will stop you from that. Anything can be a deadly weapon in the right (or wrong, as the case may be) hands.
Forcing people to remove their shoes, or preventing people from boarding because they're carrying a big bottle of lotion or have the same name as a freedom fighter in some far off land, or any of the dozens of other inconveniences we put up with in the name of security are pointless hassles that do nothing to actually protect us. It is nothing more than bad theater to distract from the insolubility of the actual problem and to inculcate mindless obedience to authority.
What endangered US interests more than anything else was that they [the NSA] were doing this at all.
No, don't you see? If Snowden hadn't released all that info, nobody would have known that the NSA secretly had taps into every telecommunications company and data-center. With nothing but vague suspicions to the contrary, everyone else would have quite happy to continue using American servers, feeding money into the US economy and allowing the NSA to amass huge dossiers on everybody in the world!
But, no! Snowden had to reveal their shenanigans! Now nobody trusts the US telecommunications infrastructure, faith in the US government's word is at an all time low, the money-men are pulling out of lucrative deals with US corporations and the NSA's data-center isn't filling up quite as fast as it used to. It's all SNOWDEN'S fault, and not that of the agencies that were perpetrating these crimes. If Snowden had just kept his big mouth shut, nobody would have been any the wiser and everybody would have been quite happy with the way it was!
The sad thing is, I know people who earnestly believe the above. Living in ignorance of the crimes of your government is more comfortable than acknowledging its flaws, I suppose.
That should be the first question that crosses everybody's mind.
Put people on a watch list for doing something 100% legal? Sign me up.
Not only does it show those idiots we won't support that sort of nonsense (by which I mean the watch lists, although using a polygraph probably counts too) but it also drown them in noise, hopefully making the use of the list pointless.
And to answer my own question: you can place your order at Polygraph.com, with prices ranging from $20 to $60 dollars. I don't know (or care) if his methods are effective or not but it's worth shelling out a few bucks just to remind self-important lawmen that their thuggery not only is not going unnoticed, but is ultimately also is ineffective.
They keep these treaties secret as long as they can because they know that the people they represent would otherwise not countenance the agreements. They know this because every time they have tried to push forward these sorts of acts and people HAVE gotten wind of it, their constituents have raised a fuss and forced their representatives to back down. So now the politicians try to keep these laws hidden as long as they can, in order to provide the shortest opportunity during which people can voice their dissent.
There is no other reason for economic treaties and agreements to be kept secret. It is a purposeful attempt to circumvent the power of the people.
Anyone know the names of the people involved in writing this treaty (the negotiators and politicians)? These need to be publicly posted so people know who is responsible. It is as important - if not more so - than knowing the names of the senators and representatives who will vote in favor of it when it finally comes to Congress.
Desalinating salty water using sunlight?
Oh right.
IT'S CALLED RAIN!
(patent pending)
You realise GCHQ monitor slashdot?
All the more reason not to censor oneself.
Remind Them that we are not afraid of them, and we will not bow.
Yes, I know the comment I am responding to was made in jest. I still don't think that we should - even in mockery - countenance the idea of obeisance to self-important bureaucrats for doing something we every right to do. It all too quickly turns from a half-hearted jest into a habit and then finally a becomes a requirement beneath which we are all forced to live. I'd rather just give them the finger openly from the start.
Thus I say in agreement with the GP:
sudo killall politicians
For example, games for the Xbox 180 are going to have the option to use Azure to run game servers.
Although apparently, this is not without its down side:
Xbox One's Cloud Servers May Have to Reboot and Update Mid-Session, Says Microsoft
While there may be some advantage for XBox-exclusive games, I can't see this taking off in general. It adds yet another layer of complexity, and can't be used in multi-platform games (and given the current market, many games require a multiple
platform release to be profitable). Not to mention one of the strengths of a console platform is its consistency; developers didn't have to worry about different hardware and software configurations affecting their game; the evolving and frequently updated servers mentioned in the article seems the antithesis of this concept.
I saw this video earlier today. It seems strangely appropriate.
Dear Google...
I have to say, I sort of agree. I barely use Google services so it doesn't effect me too much but they do seem to be pushing their Google+ product pretty heavily, and even I find it a bit annoying. I don't know if it's really popular or not (I have no interest in it); I just wish they wouldn't try to shove it in my face so much.
And btw Google, Ablehard Franklestein Snortheimer III /is/ my real name; who are you to say it isn't?
Just an important reminder:
The US Constitution does not GIVE us rights. It enumerates areas where we allow the government to infringe upon our rights for the good of the nation. The first ten Amendments define some of our inalienable rights but are not a complete listing. Just because the right of privacy is not mentioned is not to imply it does not exist and cannot be claimed.
While I am sure most people on this site (and probably the poster to whom I am responding as well) are aware of this, I feel it is still an important distinction to be made. Our language dictates our thoughts and actions; let's be clear on this very important matter. We live in an era when there is an increasing belief that our governments have rightful sway over all aspects of our lives and are the source of all corporal power. This is in direct contradiction to the intent of the so-called "Founding Fathers", where the freedom and liberty of the individual were paramount and were only sacrificed - by the individuals - for the advantage of the common weal.
That is, the direction of power is from the people down to the government, and not the other way around. The people dictate, not the politicians. We willingly give, they do not grudgingly grant. Take and hold onto your rights; they are yours from birth, not a gift bestowed upon you by self-important men.
Mind you, archeologists aren't really /excited/ about ancient garbage. It's just that is often the only record of day-to-day life that exists for many civilizations. Not only is trash preserved thanks to it being buried by the constructions of more modern civilizations but it tends to present a less biased and broader view of the culture than do surviving manuscripts or art (which tend to ignore the less-popular beliefs and usually focus only on the rich and powerful).
But for all of the usefulness of garbage, archeologists would much prefer a trove like the Internet Archive. It is a fuller record, more easily dated and sorted and offers less possibility to be confused with the remains of an earlier or later people. Plus, nobody really likes picking through trash ;-)
Then again, IA did preserve Geocities. Shafted again, Doctor Jones!
Alternately, you could use Albine's DoNotTrackMe add-on if you don't want to use an add-on funded by advertisers and businesses paying them for ad data and compliance
Although from what I understand, the only info that both apps send back to the mothership is generic usage data, so the risk (or lack thereof) is probably the same for both.
Because wikipedia does so well being independent, along with all the PR folks hired to edit articles for corporations and edit them negatively for said corporations' competition?
Does that really affect how Wikipedia runs, though?
Sure, their content is often biased by monied interests, but that goes hand-in-hand with making a publicly-edited encylopedia. It would be difficult to crack down on that without at the same time infringing on the rights of individuals.
But has Wikipedia ever backed down or changed its policies because Coca Cola (or whomever) threatened to cut donations? That would be a fairer comparison, I think. Like the Mozilla Foundation, Wikipedia just is offering up a tool and largely leaves it up to its users to curate how that tool is used, for good or ill. Unfortunately, Mozilla is increasingly seen as being beholden to its advertising partners and some of its policies (reflected in their software) - such as the one mentioned in TFA - seem to reflect this. Have we seen similar actions from the Wikimedia Foundation?
No Wikipedia expert, so honestly wondering.
Why are they flying supersonic at altitudes where birds commonly fly anyway? Take it up a mile or two before you engage the afterburners.
Stay in the bird-danger zone only for take-offs and landings, and then your 190mph-resistant-to-turkey-carcass canopy is fine.
Which was probably the reasoning the engineers used when developing the Mach-1 trainer in the first place.
All that money does is raise the bar. Those "donations" are used by the politicos for their re-election campaigns. They are used for advertising to sway the opinion of the majority to your favor. It used to be that politicians catered to small groups because - combined - those small groups could tip an election with their votes. Now they simply depend on marketing to blast a bland, pleasing face across the airways and depend on emotion to convince the electorate.
But if your protest can show - through vast numbers - that it already has the ear of the majority, you can bet the politicians will stand up and listen. Corporate and PAC "contributions" just mean that the groups have to be much larger than ever they were before before that happens.
Which is not to argue that we should do nothing to lessen money's corrupting influence on our political system. Just that protests and the combined will of the people still can have effect. Money just makes it far more difficult for individual voices to be heard.