That all depends on just how big of a television you're planning on getting.
You alluded to the reason [the main one for most normal people anyway] in your post:
"The size (42") does matter, depending on how close one sits to the screen."
I'm old enough to remember when SD color and 19" was considered a really big deal. Such a huge television was only suitable for the living room. Nowadays I regularly hear of people putting 40" class televisions in their bedrooms. 70"+ are common and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see 100"+ televisions become a common sight in living rooms everywhere.
So, just how far away will you have to sit from your gigantic television to stop seeing pixels at 1080p? Is your living room that large?
With 1080p and 20"-40" sets it was a question of how close you had to sit to be able to tell the difference between DVD (480p) and HD (1080p).
With sets approaching or exceeding 100" and finite room sizes, I think the new question is how high does the resolution need to be (4K, 8K) so that you no longer see the individual pixels on the screen.
Wow, I never realized that the US had it's own Schengen Agreement, or that it was so close to being suspended.
For years American (as in U.S. of A.) citizens have enjoyed the freedom to travel between states without presenting papers. After realizing that the The Articles of Confederation [or what Europe is presently trying with the European Union] wasn't working, we got that shiny new fangled Constitution. Sure there were some dark times; slavery, civil war, commies, but for the most part people were free to travel between states without any form of government issued ID.
I guess we'll all have a nice story to tell our grandkids, how back in the day you could travel from one end of this country to the other with nothing more than the clothes on your back.
Sure, it's only about boarding airplanes, now. Next it'll be trains, and boats, and buses, and cars. Finally, even walking across a border will require the proper government approved ID.
Just look at how many governors [granted, mostly republican governors at the moment, but have you seen the current republican presidential candidates?] want to dictate just which immigrants should be allowed in their states?
On the bright side, once everyone has their passport we can try to get all 67 stamps, 50 states, 16 territories, and the District of Columbia. It'll be even better than collecting all of those state quarters.
There's going to be one heck of a bump in VPN use if/when this goes through.
Just picture it;
A creepy cartoon guy (representing ISPs) peeking up under Little Bo Peep's dress as she surfs Macy's with a shady gov guy watching over both of them.
A shady cartoon lady, in the guise of an old fashioned phone operator, between your computer and your doctor's, passing notes to the government.
Cartoon hands coming out of a monitor, uncomfortably caressing a small child who is on the internet stretching back to a questionable person sporting a large and recognizable (pick one; AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) corporate logo. A grizzled Uncle Sam like character (recovering from a two week binge) grins slyly behind the unfortunate fondler with one hand on it's shoulder.
New Tag line: VPNs are not just for pirates anymore..
I think a large part of the problem is that we consistently use the wrong metaphor in the digital realm and this contributes to the mess we are in (as does the unabashed greed of certain players).
No one ever actually downloads anything.
Now go back and reread that last sentence, I'll wait. Ruminate and let it really sink in.
I"m serious, whether it's songs, images, movies, or just data caps, no one in the history of the internet has ever downloaded anything.
Here's an example:
You have a desktop computer with a 500 GB hard drive. You fill it up with 100GB of operating system and program related files, and then download 55GB of music, and 300GB of movie and television files. How big is your hard drive now? If you had actually downloaded anything, then you should have at least an 855GB hard drive now right? What, it's still only 500GB? How can that be?
If I have 1 DVD of the Matrix, and a 6 DVD set of Season 1 of Supernatural I have 7 DVDs. When I go out and purchase the other 9 seasons I will have 61 DVDs.
Now someone will most likely point out that if I downloaded those other 9 seasons and burned them to DVD I would also have 61 disks, so that proves I downloaded something right? Not so fast. First I would have had to buy 54 blank disks. I have those disks even before I wrote anything on them. All I accomplished when I copied those episodes to those disks was to rearrange the patterns of ones and zeros. I didn't download anything. If were to calculate PI to a gazillion digits, saved that to a text file and burned those on the 54 blank disks instead, I would still have the same number of disks.
All digital media just contain directions. The directions on how to recreate some text, or a picture, or song, or movie, etc. It's like a magical blackboard or Etch A Sketch. The capacity it just how big it is, how many words or lines you can write on it and still be able to read it. If I had a blank white board, and a really talented artist who could look at a picture and recreate it on my white board, would you say that I had downloaded that picture? Why not? It's what your computer does every time you save a picture.
When you download a book, some other computer tells your computer how to write the words from it's book onto your computer so that later on your computer can display the same book. The analog version would be if you wanted a copy of a book and instead of going out and buying one, you bought a blank personal diary. Then you found someone else who had the book and had them read it to you over the phone, writing down every word that they said into your previously blank pages. When you were all done you wouldn't say you had downloaded a copy of that book, would you? Could anyone, with a straight face, claim that you had stolen that book? Then why do people say that about the exact same things when they were done with a computer?
Perhaps you are wondering that all of the above has to do with data caps. Well if no one ever actually downloads anything how does it make any sense to charge you based on the amount that you download?
All computers do when they share information, is tell each other how to write in their own books, blackboards, Etcha a Sketches, what the other computer already knows. No one ever actually sends anything physical across a network. A more accurate analogy would be a good ol fashioned POTS phone call.
Computer A, lets call it Alice contacts computer B, lets call it Bob and wants to know what the current stock prices are on the Tokyo stock exchange. Alice calls Bob and asks for the information, Bob reads them off and Alice writes them down. Now by consulting Alice, you can check on how your stocks are doing this morning. So how much data did you download? I guess you could add up how many pages the information takes up. 1 page, 10 pages, 100 pages. That would be like charging you based on the number of words spoken.
Imagine your cell phone plan, the phone company charges you $0.10 a minute (Net10) [and here's the strange part] limits you to 5000 words a month. After that they charge $10 per 100 words. For an additional $35 / month you can use all the words you want. You better start talking in some kind of abbreviation heavy code, or be willing to pay the overages. Stupid right?
Your internet access is pretty much the same, you purchase the right to connect with a certain speed talker for $ x.xx / month usually. For a low price you get a slow talker, and old timer who pauses and stammers. For a little more, your average office worker, for still more an excited fast talking teen. If you are really lucky (1GB+) you can get a superfast, hopped up on methamphetamine and way too many red bulls speed talker.
Data Caps are like the phone company charging you by the word, on top of what they are already charging you for the connection. Perversely, the more you paid for your connection, the less you are allowed to use it.
There's a reason why dial-up was charged based on the minutes your were connected. It was the only resource you were actually consuming, connection time. Anyone remember AOL? For $9.95 base fee, you got 5 hours of online access, after that it was $2.95 an hour? 1200 baud -> 2400 baud -> 36.6K baud -> 52K baud, more words per minute, still charged by the minute.
When an ISP tries to claim internet access is like the water company, and you should be charged more for using more, they are just taking advantage of the popular misconception to gouge you and your pocketbook. There is no shortage of bits or bytes, because everyone's just flipping the bits they already have. It's not like clean water, that will somehow run out. It's like people talking (just really efficient tireless mechanical people talking in code really fast).
Internet access pricing should have followed the same trajectory as voice calls. Charges per minute followed by charges per hour, until just finally a flat charge for access whether you use it or not. Whatever you are using it for, voice or data, eventually the cost of maintaining the network far outstrips the cost of actually using the network. If the provider only charges when you actually use it, they would have to charge an exorbitant price just to keep the lights on. Instead, like a fitness club, you charge a flat rate knowing that most people won't use it that much and a few will be on that exercise bike 8 hours a day 7 days a week. Although, unlike a fitness club, it's much cheaper to scale up capacity then it is to rent a larger warehouse and but dozens more treadmills and exercise bikes.
I think if more people started using a more appropriate metaphor, then these shenanigans would be a lot more obvious and harder to pull off.
Keep asking the same questions until they get the answer they are looking for.
copyright
encryption
intermediary liability
With all of the similar survey's and consultancies lately does anyone else get feeling that the powers that be will simply keep asking the same questions until they get the answer they are looking for?
Rep. Michael McCaul is a genius, all we need to do to accomplish the impossible is to bring together a disparate group of people into the same room. Just think of all the things that are now possible:
perpetual motion machines
limitless clean free energy
software without bugs
gravity that falls up
healthy junk food
painless way to reverse climate change
an end to poverty
and end to disease
eternal youthful life
It's just a matter of finding the right group of people to put together in the same room.
Although I think even the good 'ol McCaul would be unable to;
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
both come to mind. Speech you don't agree with becomes terrorist propaganda while speech you do is the voice of the resistance.
Which is just a long way of saying, even if you get it, it will never enough of what you want to it to be.
To this day there are probably some folks over in England still miffed about those bloody colonial terrorists in that breakaway province now known as the United States of America.
The No-Fly list is simply a list of people that are too dangerous to allow to fly, but too innocent to actually arrest.
At the end of the day, it's just an official list of people someone in the government doesn't like, or that someone in the government negligently added to.
It's just the more widely used version of Gitmo.
Another artifact of the;
"We must do something." "This is something." "Therefore we must do this."
Sounds like you are talking about good ol fashioned police / intelligence work. You know, the kind that doesn't require the police / intelligence agencies to plant bugs in all our phones, video cameras in all our bedrooms, and amass warehouses full of information that takes so long to process it's only good at figuring out who committed a crime / attack after it's happened.
[well that the official reason anyway]
I think that's just too much work for our modern forces.
I think what the sound wall also seems to be forgetting is that encoded is not the same as encrypted.
Even if the powers that be got their wish and made the entire world less safe and less private, that probably still wouldn't stop terrorists (or your garden variety criminal) from secretly communicating. People have been doing it since Roman times, heck probably since biblical times.
person0: "Is the bread fresh this morning?"
person1: "That depends, are you interested in the wheat or the rye?"
person0: "Oh, the wheat, the rye is too strong for me."
person1: "Not really, it's a couple of days old, but it's still tasty."
So what where these people really talking about?
an illicit explosives transaction
a drug deal
human trafficking
if the bread at the local bakery is any good
Other than making it a little more work to get to, would the fact that it was encrypted or in plain text make it any easier for law enforcement to understand?
Removing encryption makes everyone less safe and is just a road bump to any serious criminal or terrorist organization.
Re: Re: No, see the NRA for another example of this
For the intelligence community, gun control advocates, the military industrial complex, there is a different sort of logic at work.
Event and especially tragic events, are nothing more than an opportunity, a means, to advance their chosen cause or agenda.
They all try to scare us. When we are scared, we don't think straight. We think with our guts. We want to be protected. All they have to do is claim that their solution will protect us. Make the bad go away. Ca-ching instant sale.
If there isn't a tragedy, no problem, simply make one up.
The US has been in the longest continuous state of war in its history. It's a war against an idea not an enemy, and so it can go on for as long as those in power find it useful.... or until we wake up, shake off the shackles of fear and declare it over.
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
–James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)
Yes, there is a side calling for more whenever there's a shooting, and it's not the NRA [admittedly there are always a few unaffiliated from both sides, but I'm talking about organizations here].
Look back over the last few publicized incidents, college shootings, Sandy Hook, etc. The call was for stricter gun control laws. After Sandy Hook, NY and CT even passed them.
When the elementary school and then the was church was shot up gun control advocates cried out for universal background checks conveniently forgetting that the shooters who purchased their guns did so even after passing a background check.
So, just like the intelligence community, when surveillance didn't stop the last attack, that just means we need MORE surveillance.
Gun control advocates think that since background checks didn't stop the last criminal from getting his guns, even though he passed those background checks the answer is to have more people [mostly not criminals] undergo background checks that have already been proven not to work.
I think when you are standing in a glass house, the stones you throw only end up breaking your own windows.
Not really, it's more like requiring every wall to be equipped with 24/7 video surveillance so that when ever anyone walks by the wall and sees anything that disturbs their sensibilities, they are allowed to get a copy of footage of the person who wrote it.
I almost forgot, they also want the university to post a guard at every wall, and make sure they get everyone who wants to write anything's name, address, age, gender, race, ssn, political affiliation, list of organizations donated to, list of organization memberships, social media accounts, email addresses used, twitter handle and NetFlix/Amazon Prime viewing history.
Oh, and a clear image front facing, side facing, oblique, and from behind to facilitate identification of requested images at a later time.
epileptic seizures triggered by auto playing full screen ads
carpal tunnel from being forced to respond to other people's drivel
falling off your seat after reading something hilarious
stroke/heart attack from reading someone else's opinions that you didn't want to see
While people may write some hurtful and insensitive things online, things that might even go so far as to qualify as harassment, libel, or [heaven forbid] a crime under some wishy washy hurt feelings statute, I have a hard time equating anything anyone could possible write on a app like Yik yak with violence.
If anyone thinks otherwise, they should be forced to trade cyber violence with the good 'ol fashioned real violence. They can write their most violent messages on Yik Yak and for every message they send a MMA fighter gets to hit them.
....I wonder just how many posts it will take for them to admit that there is no such thing as cyber violence.
All the folks (in the US of course) should be calling their Senators to let them know how they feel.
I've contacted mine to express my extreme displeasure, bordering on revulsion, at my senator's support for this 4th amendment trampling, corporate privacy destroying, broad government surveillance bill disguised as cyber security legislation.
For those few lucky folks whose senators actually voted against this, you should probably call yours too and give them an; "Atta boy".
One more step in the transformation of the government...
This is just one more step in the transformation of the government from serving the people to serving the corporations.
Treaties written by corporate interests, bypassing the nominally republic processes.
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (written by corporation naturally) set up a separate,but not equal, legal system heavily tilted toward corporations and against traditional governments.
United States DOJ helps Hollywood enforce civil copyright law, with an announcement from Disney's headquarters.
So the fact the the Canadian Health agency is more concerned with Pharma profits [after recently being sued by Pharma for denying them an evergreened patent] than the health of their citizens, is sadly not surprising.
Just one more step toward our new corporate overloads...
On the post: Warner Brothers, Intel Begin Futile Legal Assault To Defend Ultra HD And 4K DRM
Re: Is more necessary or just better to some?
You alluded to the reason [the main one for most normal people anyway] in your post:
I'm old enough to remember when SD color and 19" was considered a really big deal. Such a huge television was only suitable for the living room. Nowadays I regularly hear of people putting 40" class televisions in their bedrooms. 70"+ are common and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see 100"+ televisions become a common sight in living rooms everywhere.
So, just how far away will you have to sit from your gigantic television to stop seeing pixels at 1080p? Is your living room that large?
With 1080p and 20"-40" sets it was a question of how close you had to sit to be able to tell the difference between DVD (480p) and HD (1080p).
With sets approaching or exceeding 100" and finite room sizes, I think the new question is how high does the resolution need to be (4K, 8K) so that you no longer see the individual pixels on the screen.
That's my take anyway.
On the post: Who Needs A No-Fly List When You Can Just Ground 91 Million Citizens?
Who knew the US had a Schengen Agreement?
For years American (as in U.S. of A.) citizens have enjoyed the freedom to travel between states without presenting papers. After realizing that the The Articles of Confederation [or what Europe is presently trying with the European Union] wasn't working, we got that shiny new fangled Constitution. Sure there were some dark times; slavery, civil war, commies, but for the most part people were free to travel between states without any form of government issued ID.
I guess we'll all have a nice story to tell our grandkids, how back in the day you could travel from one end of this country to the other with nothing more than the clothes on your back.
Sure, it's only about boarding airplanes, now. Next it'll be trains, and boats, and buses, and cars. Finally, even walking across a border will require the proper government approved ID.
Just look at how many governors [granted, mostly republican governors at the moment, but have you seen the current republican presidential candidates?] want to dictate just which immigrants should be allowed in their states?
On the bright side, once everyone has their passport we can try to get all 67 stamps, 50 states, 16 territories, and the District of Columbia. It'll be even better than collecting all of those state quarters.
On the post: Why The New CISA Is So Bad For Privacy
Invest in VPN stock now.
There's going to be one heck of a bump in VPN use if/when this goes through.
Just picture it;
A creepy cartoon guy (representing ISPs) peeking up under Little Bo Peep's dress as she surfs Macy's with a shady gov guy watching over both of them.
A shady cartoon lady, in the guise of an old fashioned phone operator, between your computer and your doctor's, passing notes to the government.
Cartoon hands coming out of a monitor, uncomfortably caressing a small child who is on the internet stretching back to a questionable person sporting a large and recognizable (pick one; AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) corporate logo. A grizzled Uncle Sam like character (recovering from a two week binge) grins slyly behind the unfortunate fondler with one hand on it's shoulder.
New Tag line: VPNs are not just for pirates anymore..
On the post: FCC Boss Mocks Unfair Comcast Broadband Caps At Industry Dinner, Still Hasn't Done Squat About It
We are using the wrong metaphor....
Now go back and reread that last sentence, I'll wait. Ruminate and let it really sink in.
I"m serious, whether it's songs, images, movies, or just data caps, no one in the history of the internet has ever downloaded anything.
Here's an example:
You have a desktop computer with a 500 GB hard drive. You fill it up with 100GB of operating system and program related files, and then download 55GB of music, and 300GB of movie and television files. How big is your hard drive now? If you had actually downloaded anything, then you should have at least an 855GB hard drive now right? What, it's still only 500GB? How can that be?
If I have 1 DVD of the Matrix, and a 6 DVD set of Season 1 of Supernatural I have 7 DVDs. When I go out and purchase the other 9 seasons I will have 61 DVDs.
Now someone will most likely point out that if I downloaded those other 9 seasons and burned them to DVD I would also have 61 disks, so that proves I downloaded something right? Not so fast. First I would have had to buy 54 blank disks. I have those disks even before I wrote anything on them. All I accomplished when I copied those episodes to those disks was to rearrange the patterns of ones and zeros. I didn't download anything. If were to calculate PI to a gazillion digits, saved that to a text file and burned those on the 54 blank disks instead, I would still have the same number of disks.
All digital media just contain directions. The directions on how to recreate some text, or a picture, or song, or movie, etc. It's like a magical blackboard or Etch A Sketch. The capacity it just how big it is, how many words or lines you can write on it and still be able to read it. If I had a blank white board, and a really talented artist who could look at a picture and recreate it on my white board, would you say that I had downloaded that picture? Why not? It's what your computer does every time you save a picture.
When you download a book, some other computer tells your computer how to write the words from it's book onto your computer so that later on your computer can display the same book. The analog version would be if you wanted a copy of a book and instead of going out and buying one, you bought a blank personal diary. Then you found someone else who had the book and had them read it to you over the phone, writing down every word that they said into your previously blank pages. When you were all done you wouldn't say you had downloaded a copy of that book, would you? Could anyone, with a straight face, claim that you had stolen that book? Then why do people say that about the exact same things when they were done with a computer?
Perhaps you are wondering that all of the above has to do with data caps. Well if no one ever actually downloads anything how does it make any sense to charge you based on the amount that you download?
All computers do when they share information, is tell each other how to write in their own books, blackboards, Etcha a Sketches, what the other computer already knows. No one ever actually sends anything physical across a network. A more accurate analogy would be a good ol fashioned POTS phone call.
Computer A, lets call it Alice contacts computer B, lets call it Bob and wants to know what the current stock prices are on the Tokyo stock exchange. Alice calls Bob and asks for the information, Bob reads them off and Alice writes them down. Now by consulting Alice, you can check on how your stocks are doing this morning. So how much data did you download? I guess you could add up how many pages the information takes up. 1 page, 10 pages, 100 pages. That would be like charging you based on the number of words spoken.
Imagine your cell phone plan, the phone company charges you $0.10 a minute (Net10) [and here's the strange part] limits you to 5000 words a month. After that they charge $10 per 100 words. For an additional $35 / month you can use all the words you want. You better start talking in some kind of abbreviation heavy code, or be willing to pay the overages. Stupid right?
Your internet access is pretty much the same, you purchase the right to connect with a certain speed talker for $ x.xx / month usually. For a low price you get a slow talker, and old timer who pauses and stammers. For a little more, your average office worker, for still more an excited fast talking teen. If you are really lucky (1GB+) you can get a superfast, hopped up on methamphetamine and way too many red bulls speed talker.
Data Caps are like the phone company charging you by the word, on top of what they are already charging you for the connection. Perversely, the more you paid for your connection, the less you are allowed to use it.
There's a reason why dial-up was charged based on the minutes your were connected. It was the only resource you were actually consuming, connection time. Anyone remember AOL? For $9.95 base fee, you got 5 hours of online access, after that it was $2.95 an hour? 1200 baud -> 2400 baud -> 36.6K baud -> 52K baud, more words per minute, still charged by the minute.
When an ISP tries to claim internet access is like the water company, and you should be charged more for using more, they are just taking advantage of the popular misconception to gouge you and your pocketbook. There is no shortage of bits or bytes, because everyone's just flipping the bits they already have. It's not like clean water, that will somehow run out. It's like people talking (just really efficient tireless mechanical people talking in code really fast).
Internet access pricing should have followed the same trajectory as voice calls. Charges per minute followed by charges per hour, until just finally a flat charge for access whether you use it or not. Whatever you are using it for, voice or data, eventually the cost of maintaining the network far outstrips the cost of actually using the network. If the provider only charges when you actually use it, they would have to charge an exorbitant price just to keep the lights on. Instead, like a fitness club, you charge a flat rate knowing that most people won't use it that much and a few will be on that exercise bike 8 hours a day 7 days a week. Although, unlike a fitness club, it's much cheaper to scale up capacity then it is to rent a larger warehouse and but dozens more treadmills and exercise bikes.
I think if more people started using a more appropriate metaphor, then these shenanigans would be a lot more obvious and harder to pull off.
Just my $0.02.
On the post: This Survey Sucks, And The Internet Needs You To Fill It Out
Keep asking the same questions until they get the answer they are looking for.
With all of the similar survey's and consultancies lately does anyone else get feeling that the powers that be will simply keep asking the same questions until they get the answer they are looking for?
On the post: Rep. Michael McCaul Proposes 'Commission' To 'Force' Silicon Valley To Undermine Encryption
Rep. Michael McCaul is a genius...
It's just a matter of finding the right group of people to put together in the same room.
Although I think even the good 'ol McCaul would be unable to;
On the post: Eric Schmidt Suggests Building A 'Spell Checker' For Online Harassment And Other Bad Things Online
History is written by the victors...
and
both come to mind. Speech you don't agree with becomes terrorist propaganda while speech you do is the voice of the resistance.
Which is just a long way of saying, even if you get it, it will never enough of what you want to it to be.
To this day there are probably some folks over in England still miffed about those bloody colonial terrorists in that breakaway province now known as the United States of America.
On the post: No Matter What You Think Of Gun Control, Relying On The No Fly List For Anything Is Monumentally Stupid
Too guilty to fly, not guilty enough to arrest.
At the end of the day, it's just an official list of people someone in the government doesn't like, or that someone in the government negligently added to.
It's just the more widely used version of Gitmo.
Another artifact of the;
On the post: After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
Re: Re: encoded != encrypted
[well that the official reason anyway]
I think that's just too much work for our modern forces.
On the post: After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
Re: Re:
"I don't know...."
"Aaaaahhhhhhgggg......."
On the post: After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
encoded != encrypted
Even if the powers that be got their wish and made the entire world less safe and less private, that probably still wouldn't stop terrorists (or your garden variety criminal) from secretly communicating. People have been doing it since Roman times, heck probably since biblical times.
So what where these people really talking about?
Other than making it a little more work to get to, would the fact that it was encrypted or in plain text make it any easier for law enforcement to understand?
Removing encryption makes everyone less safe and is just a road bump to any serious criminal or terrorist organization.
On the post: Is There Any Evidence In The World That Would Convince Intelligence Community That More Surveillance Isn't The Answer?
Re: Faith based reasoning
When you don't, no evidence is enough.
On the post: Is There Any Evidence In The World That Would Convince Intelligence Community That More Surveillance Isn't The Answer?
Re: Re: No, see the NRA for another example of this
Event and especially tragic events, are nothing more than an opportunity, a means, to advance their chosen cause or agenda.
They all try to scare us. When we are scared, we don't think straight. We think with our guts. We want to be protected. All they have to do is claim that their solution will protect us. Make the bad go away. Ca-ching instant sale.
If there isn't a tragedy, no problem, simply make one up.
The US has been in the longest continuous state of war in its history. It's a war against an idea not an enemy, and so it can go on for as long as those in power find it useful.... or until we wake up, shake off the shackles of fear and declare it over.
On the post: Is There Any Evidence In The World That Would Convince Intelligence Community That More Surveillance Isn't The Answer?
The only way to get a dead horse to win....
is to beat him harder.
The beatings will continue...
until moral improves.
The only way to prevent terrorists from turning our society into a rigid, ideologically pure, police state....
is to do it ourselves.
On the post: Is There Any Evidence In The World That Would Convince Intelligence Community That More Surveillance Isn't The Answer?
Re: No, see the NRA for another example of this
Look back over the last few publicized incidents, college shootings, Sandy Hook, etc. The call was for stricter gun control laws. After Sandy Hook, NY and CT even passed them.
When the elementary school and then the was church was shot up gun control advocates cried out for universal background checks conveniently forgetting that the shooters who purchased their guns did so even after passing a background check.
So, just like the intelligence community, when surveillance didn't stop the last attack, that just means we need MORE surveillance.
Gun control advocates think that since background checks didn't stop the last criminal from getting his guns, even though he passed those background checks the answer is to have more people [mostly not criminals] undergo background checks that have already been proven not to work.
I think when you are standing in a glass house, the stones you throw only end up breaking your own windows.
On the post: Advocacy Groups, Lawyers Want Dept. Of Education To Enforce Campus Yik Yak Bans, Encourage First Amendment Violations
Re: Doh
I almost forgot, they also want the university to post a guard at every wall, and make sure they get everyone who wants to write anything's name, address, age, gender, race, ssn, political affiliation, list of organizations donated to, list of organization memberships, social media accounts, email addresses used, twitter handle and NetFlix/Amazon Prime viewing history.
Oh, and a clear image front facing, side facing, oblique, and from behind to facilitate identification of requested images at a later time.
See, not much at all.
On the post: Advocacy Groups, Lawyers Want Dept. Of Education To Enforce Campus Yik Yak Bans, Encourage First Amendment Violations
Cyber violence?
While people may write some hurtful and insensitive things online, things that might even go so far as to qualify as harassment, libel, or [heaven forbid] a crime under some wishy washy hurt feelings statute, I have a hard time equating anything anyone could possible write on a app like Yik yak with violence.
If anyone thinks otherwise, they should be forced to trade cyber violence with the good 'ol fashioned real violence. They can write their most violent messages on Yik Yak and for every message they send a MMA fighter gets to hit them.
....I wonder just how many posts it will take for them to admit that there is no such thing as cyber violence.
On the post: CISA Moves Forward: These 83 Senators Just Voted To Expand Surveillance
Express your personal displeasure.....
I've contacted mine to express my extreme displeasure, bordering on revulsion, at my senator's support for this 4th amendment trampling, corporate privacy destroying, broad government surveillance bill disguised as cyber security legislation.
For those few lucky folks whose senators actually voted against this, you should probably call yours too and give them an; "Atta boy".
On the post: Health Canada Threatens To Sue Doctor If He Reveals Whether Clinical Trials Data Shows A Drug Is Safe Or Effective
One more step in the transformation of the government...
Treaties written by corporate interests, bypassing the nominally republic processes.
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (written by corporation naturally) set up a separate,but not equal, legal system heavily tilted toward corporations and against traditional governments.
United States DOJ helps Hollywood enforce civil copyright law, with an announcement from Disney's headquarters.
So the fact the the Canadian Health agency is more concerned with Pharma profits [after recently being sued by Pharma for denying them an evergreened patent] than the health of their citizens, is sadly not surprising.
Just one more step toward our new corporate overloads...
On the post: The Trend Of Killing News Comment Sections Because You 'Just Really Value Conversation' Stupidly Continues
Re: Re: Anyone can 'report' the news these days....
copy/paste that article directly into their website?
write another article based on the same facts exposed by the original article?
something else entirely?
Or do you just like calling things bullshit?
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