I'd say there's a pretty significant difference though between doing it to prove that a broken device is indeed broken (ie, for a warranty repair) to save on shipping costs compared to breaking a perfectly functional device just to get it out of the market. And I'm betting when they ask you to do it for a warranty they aren't bragging about how "sustainable" it is and saying that smashing the thing with a hammer is "recycling" it...
Oh my god... It's not just that they can't compete with their old products; it's also another forced upgrade scheme. You buy the new one and agree as part of the deal to brick your old one. Then the new one arrives and it sucks. Now what? Return it and stick with the old one? Too late, your old one is already signed up to self-destruct.
Yeah, that's clear enough, although I'm not sure if that intention ever translated to reality. But what's equally clear is that "recycle mode" has literally zero impact on creating or maintaining such a program. Therefore we can only conclude that it was designed instead to reduce resale rates for perfectly functional devices.
Of course, just sending the device back would ALSO prevent it from being resold, and provides basically the same assurance on user data -- if you trust Sonos to wipe the data from your device with recycle mode, then you ought to trust Sonos to wipe the data when they receive your device for recycling.
They don't actually want you to send it back though -- that would cost them money, unless they charge you for it, and if they charge for it then people won't do it. They don't want you to resell it either though, because if someone can use the old device, maybe they won't buy a new one! So what they ultimately want is for you to throw the thing in the trash so you pay for the disposal and nobody else gets any use out of it. And they're willing to give a small reward to anyone who can prove that they did it. Which is precisely the one thing which this recycle mode accomplishes.
Couple weeks ago there was a big fire in Philadelphia at the same time as an active shooter a few miles from me. It was interesting to compare the response. The firefighters went rushing in to a burning building, without knowing how many people may be inside, without knowing when the building might fall, putting their own lives in imminent danger to get the job done. The police, meanwhile, surrounded the area, then went to a secure room to watch camera footage for a while, then called the fire department to bring in their robot so they could send that in first to confirm that the shooter had, in fact, already killed himself hours ago. Both groups thought there was an active threat and people were in imminent danger. The firefighters put themselves at risk to save others. The police put others at risk by spending SEVERAL HOURS verifying that they would be safe themselves before attempting to enter the building and rescue the wounded. Every single one of those cowards ought to be looking for a new job right now...
Yeah, I never went to the library a single time until senior year, and that was only because I didn't feel like paying for the textbook so I used the library's copy to do my homework.
Maybe the reporter got that backwards -- going to the library is a risk. It means you aren't wealthy enough. Helps the administration identify the most profitable customers.
"If we can skip classes and still do well on the tests? That's on the professor."
I suspect that's their biggest fear.
Look at comp sci for example, since that's what I did. I've been programming pretty much my entire life. Did "Hello, World!" style stuff in QBASIC before I reached first grade, started learning C-style languages by grade 5. By the time I was a freshman in college, "Introduction to Object Oriented Programming" had been a review the first TWO times I already took it, and the university still insisted that I do it all over again. So I'm sitting there with more than 10 years of experience having taught myself through the Internet, in classes beside kids who didn't decide to learn to program until they got to college and had to pick a major. And that was at a pretty good school. Now that I'm in the workforce, I'm sitting beside people who literally didn't know how to power on a PC until they got to university.
Once upon a time, if you wanted to be a blacksmith, you could go sit around the blacksmith shop, watching and asking questions, and eventually you could become an apprentice and get into the job. Then we took the kids out of the workplaces and stuck them all in school, and ended up with a fairly uniform system of education. You could maybe learn some older information from the library or some kids might be privileged enough to get enrolled in additional programs, but generally students were learning at a fairly consistent rate. But now we're back to a place where self-driven education is common and effective, kids are learning stuff from websites and YouTube, and sometimes even staying more current than the textbooks their schools are using...but the schools are still trying to pretend they're running an industrial assembly line with every student exactly the same. And when kids start getting bored and skipping class and still getting straight-As, it hurts the reputation of the university, and of course like any business run by an idiot they choose to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause...
Makes as much sense as tracking the students. What's the university worried about, that they're getting money for nothing?
It reminds me a bit of back when the music industry seemed so convinced that they were just one big lawsuit away from getting people to start buying CDs again. Changing technology is changing the business, but they'd rather try to force customers to stick to the old model rather than figuring out how to do something new...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That feeling of ambivalence
Technically, yes, it does. A business removing content is, by definition, censorship of that content. I listed two sources for that statement already, not sure what more you want for "any case in which this determination was made"...
So, "your house, your rules", unless you want those rules to be no nazis, because in that case you have to let them speak anyway because kicking them out is a greater danger...?
Classes that require discussion are typically small. You can't have much of a discussion between two hundred people packed into a lecture hall. So is it REALLY that difficult for the professor to check off which students are absent? That's how it was always handled when I was in school -- if they cared about attendance, they'd monitor it themselves and make it a part of your grade. If it didn't matter, they wouldn't check. Unfortunately, there started to be more pressure from administrators to do it for all classes. Some professors started taking attendance and outright telling students that they had no choice in the matter and would rather not. Other professors told the students not to worry, that they were going to mark everyone present every day because the administrators were idiots who didn't know what they're doing. Now it's all going to be automated, so regardless of if attendance actually matters, regardless of what the professor thinks about the material they are teaching, regardless of if the university is forcing you to take "Introduction to Object Oriented Programming in Java" for the THIRD FREAKING TIME because they have no policy to test out of it...you'll still have to be present every single day because there's no flexibility and no ability to reason with this kind of automation.
These are the kinds of policies that lead to 19 year old kids sitting in the back corner getting drunk from a vodka-filled water bottle at 10am three times a week just to cope with the boredom. Been there, done that.
Yeah...I've never had a phone on which I enabled Bluetooth. Never had a use for it.
If I were currently in college, I'd be looking into building/buying wifi/bluetooth jammers. Illegal, but if it had a short enough range (ie, enough for your entire class to be incorrectly flagged as "absent") and you can probably get away with it for quite a while. Especially if you only use it intermittently. Share it with a couple friends and activate whenever you notice someone actually absent.
I did a Neilson survey 2-3 years ago, and it was a paper log book that I filled out by hand for a couple weeks and mailed back to them.
They said to log EVERYTHING you watched on TV, regardless of if it was network, streaming, anything....so what they got from me was basically just a list of YouTube channels... :)
They couldn't automate it these days even if they wanted to. It's no longer as simple as just plugging in to the cable box and seeing which channel it's tuned to. Now you'd have to integrate with every single streaming platform and all of their apps on all the various supported platforms...probably far easier to just use the paper logs.
"Only" 63k/yr puts her at double the average income in the US. In fact, a full 80% of the country earns less than that. Being at the lower end of the top 20% does not make you "poor".
"But it points out a basic hypocrisy if left to stand - if the point of a product is that it contains no meat - and we all know what 'meat' means - then why hint that it looks, smells, and tastes like a meat? Isn't the whole point of vegetarianism/vegan is that you don't want this? Or is it like the abortion debate, imposing a point of view 'we don't eat meat so you meat eaters should not do so either'."
I love cheeseburgers. I don't like that producing them requires mass slaughter and environmental destruction. I would guess that only a small minority of people who choose to be vegan/vegetarian do it solely because they don't like the taste/texture/appearance of meat. Most of them have other reasons.
It's not about converting vegetarians and vegans back. It's about preventing future conversions. It's about people like me. I know vegetarian eating is better in terms of health and the environment...but I also love a good cheeseburger. If you can gimme something that looks, feels, and tastes like a cheeseburger but is made without meat -- and they're getting pretty close to being able to do that -- I would buy that instead of real meat every time I had the choice. Even if it cost a bit more (within reason...I'm not paying fifty bucks for every burger).
Humans are creatures of habit. It's far easier to change your actions if you can keep the habits surrounding them. It's hard to figure out a whole new set of vegan meals; it's very easy to just replace one box of meat with another box of "meat".
Right, neither one has an obligation to carry anything, and I never claimed they did. My point was merely that getting booted from Facebook would likely be more harmful to the average business or organization than getting booted from Cloudflare, and it's therefore rather silly to argue that Cloudflare ought to be treated as some kind of government utility that is required to host any and all content solely because of the "harm" caused by getting booted.
In case you missed it, the first paragraph of my previous post was a quote that I was arguing against...
On the post: Sonos' Wasteful 'Recycle Mode' Bricks Perfectly Usable Tech
Re: Re:
I'd say there's a pretty significant difference though between doing it to prove that a broken device is indeed broken (ie, for a warranty repair) to save on shipping costs compared to breaking a perfectly functional device just to get it out of the market. And I'm betting when they ask you to do it for a warranty they aren't bragging about how "sustainable" it is and saying that smashing the thing with a hammer is "recycling" it...
On the post: Sonos' Wasteful 'Recycle Mode' Bricks Perfectly Usable Tech
Re: "sustainability is non-negotiable"
Oh my god... It's not just that they can't compete with their old products; it's also another forced upgrade scheme. You buy the new one and agree as part of the deal to brick your old one. Then the new one arrives and it sucks. Now what? Return it and stick with the old one? Too late, your old one is already signed up to self-destruct.
On the post: Sonos' Wasteful 'Recycle Mode' Bricks Perfectly Usable Tech
Re:
Yeah, that's clear enough, although I'm not sure if that intention ever translated to reality. But what's equally clear is that "recycle mode" has literally zero impact on creating or maintaining such a program. Therefore we can only conclude that it was designed instead to reduce resale rates for perfectly functional devices.
Of course, just sending the device back would ALSO prevent it from being resold, and provides basically the same assurance on user data -- if you trust Sonos to wipe the data from your device with recycle mode, then you ought to trust Sonos to wipe the data when they receive your device for recycling.
They don't actually want you to send it back though -- that would cost them money, unless they charge you for it, and if they charge for it then people won't do it. They don't want you to resell it either though, because if someone can use the old device, maybe they won't buy a new one! So what they ultimately want is for you to throw the thing in the trash so you pay for the disposal and nobody else gets any use out of it. And they're willing to give a small reward to anyone who can prove that they did it. Which is precisely the one thing which this recycle mode accomplishes.
On the post: Multi-Agency Task Force Raid House To Arrest Someone Already In Jail, Shoot Woman In House Multiple Times Because Reasons
Re: Re: Re:
So your solution to that crime is to let the criminals get away with it? Or do you have anything USEFUL to contribute?
On the post: Multi-Agency Task Force Raid House To Arrest Someone Already In Jail, Shoot Woman In House Multiple Times Because Reasons
Re: Re: Re:
Couple weeks ago there was a big fire in Philadelphia at the same time as an active shooter a few miles from me. It was interesting to compare the response. The firefighters went rushing in to a burning building, without knowing how many people may be inside, without knowing when the building might fall, putting their own lives in imminent danger to get the job done. The police, meanwhile, surrounded the area, then went to a secure room to watch camera footage for a while, then called the fire department to bring in their robot so they could send that in first to confirm that the shooter had, in fact, already killed himself hours ago. Both groups thought there was an active threat and people were in imminent danger. The firefighters put themselves at risk to save others. The police put others at risk by spending SEVERAL HOURS verifying that they would be safe themselves before attempting to enter the building and rescue the wounded. Every single one of those cowards ought to be looking for a new job right now...
On the post: Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal
Re:
Yeah, I never went to the library a single time until senior year, and that was only because I didn't feel like paying for the textbook so I used the library's copy to do my homework.
Maybe the reporter got that backwards -- going to the library is a risk. It means you aren't wealthy enough. Helps the administration identify the most profitable customers.
On the post: Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal
Re: Re: I don't get it...
"If we can skip classes and still do well on the tests? That's on the professor."
I suspect that's their biggest fear.
Look at comp sci for example, since that's what I did. I've been programming pretty much my entire life. Did "Hello, World!" style stuff in QBASIC before I reached first grade, started learning C-style languages by grade 5. By the time I was a freshman in college, "Introduction to Object Oriented Programming" had been a review the first TWO times I already took it, and the university still insisted that I do it all over again. So I'm sitting there with more than 10 years of experience having taught myself through the Internet, in classes beside kids who didn't decide to learn to program until they got to college and had to pick a major. And that was at a pretty good school. Now that I'm in the workforce, I'm sitting beside people who literally didn't know how to power on a PC until they got to university.
Once upon a time, if you wanted to be a blacksmith, you could go sit around the blacksmith shop, watching and asking questions, and eventually you could become an apprentice and get into the job. Then we took the kids out of the workplaces and stuck them all in school, and ended up with a fairly uniform system of education. You could maybe learn some older information from the library or some kids might be privileged enough to get enrolled in additional programs, but generally students were learning at a fairly consistent rate. But now we're back to a place where self-driven education is common and effective, kids are learning stuff from websites and YouTube, and sometimes even staying more current than the textbooks their schools are using...but the schools are still trying to pretend they're running an industrial assembly line with every student exactly the same. And when kids start getting bored and skipping class and still getting straight-As, it hurts the reputation of the university, and of course like any business run by an idiot they choose to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause...
On the post: Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal
Re: Re: great possibilities
Makes as much sense as tracking the students. What's the university worried about, that they're getting money for nothing?
It reminds me a bit of back when the music industry seemed so convinced that they were just one big lawsuit away from getting people to start buying CDs again. Changing technology is changing the business, but they'd rather try to force customers to stick to the old model rather than figuring out how to do something new...
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That feeling of ambivalence
Technically, yes, it does. A business removing content is, by definition, censorship of that content. I listed two sources for that statement already, not sure what more you want for "any case in which this determination was made"...
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not so funny now is it?
So, "your house, your rules", unless you want those rules to be no nazis, because in that case you have to let them speak anyway because kicking them out is a greater danger...?
On the post: Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal
Re: Re: Re: great possibilities
That is more or less the problem.
Classes that require discussion are typically small. You can't have much of a discussion between two hundred people packed into a lecture hall. So is it REALLY that difficult for the professor to check off which students are absent? That's how it was always handled when I was in school -- if they cared about attendance, they'd monitor it themselves and make it a part of your grade. If it didn't matter, they wouldn't check. Unfortunately, there started to be more pressure from administrators to do it for all classes. Some professors started taking attendance and outright telling students that they had no choice in the matter and would rather not. Other professors told the students not to worry, that they were going to mark everyone present every day because the administrators were idiots who didn't know what they're doing. Now it's all going to be automated, so regardless of if attendance actually matters, regardless of what the professor thinks about the material they are teaching, regardless of if the university is forcing you to take "Introduction to Object Oriented Programming in Java" for the THIRD FREAKING TIME because they have no policy to test out of it...you'll still have to be present every single day because there's no flexibility and no ability to reason with this kind of automation.
These are the kinds of policies that lead to 19 year old kids sitting in the back corner getting drunk from a vodka-filled water bottle at 10am three times a week just to cope with the boredom. Been there, done that.
On the post: Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal
Re: Re: Re: Re: great possibilities
Yeah...I've never had a phone on which I enabled Bluetooth. Never had a use for it.
If I were currently in college, I'd be looking into building/buying wifi/bluetooth jammers. Illegal, but if it had a short enough range (ie, enough for your entire class to be incorrectly flagged as "absent") and you can probably get away with it for quite a while. Especially if you only use it intermittently. Share it with a couple friends and activate whenever you notice someone actually absent.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That feeling of ambivalence
Firstly, can you find any dictionary which agrees with that definition? Because dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster do not.
Secondly, if it's not relevant to anything that was being discussed, then what exactly was the point of the comment?
On the post: New Law Finally Bans Bullshit Cable TV Fees
Re: Re:
Yeah, we do in the US too, they just usually spin it as a discount for electronic billing.
On the post: New Law Finally Bans Bullshit Cable TV Fees
Re: Re: Re: But how much do they really get paid.
I did a Neilson survey 2-3 years ago, and it was a paper log book that I filled out by hand for a couple weeks and mailed back to them.
They said to log EVERYTHING you watched on TV, regardless of if it was network, streaming, anything....so what they got from me was basically just a list of YouTube channels... :)
They couldn't automate it these days even if they wanted to. It's no longer as simple as just plugging in to the cable box and seeing which channel it's tuned to. Now you'd have to integrate with every single streaming platform and all of their apps on all the various supported platforms...probably far easier to just use the paper logs.
On the post: New Law Finally Bans Bullshit Cable TV Fees
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: but...
"Only" 63k/yr puts her at double the average income in the US. In fact, a full 80% of the country earns less than that. Being at the lower end of the top 20% does not make you "poor".
On the post: Federal Court Blocks Unconstitutional Arkansas Law That Prevents Plant-Based Food Companies From Using Meat Words
Re: Re: this has nothing to do with "free speech"
"Those same great, unwashed masses would in all likelihood be the first ones at the same court suing over the labeling."
Various forms of "veggie burgers" have been on store shelves since the 80s. If people were going to sue over that, it would have happened already.
On the post: Federal Court Blocks Unconstitutional Arkansas Law That Prevents Plant-Based Food Companies From Using Meat Words
Re: Yes, but...
"But it points out a basic hypocrisy if left to stand - if the point of a product is that it contains no meat - and we all know what 'meat' means - then why hint that it looks, smells, and tastes like a meat? Isn't the whole point of vegetarianism/vegan is that you don't want this? Or is it like the abortion debate, imposing a point of view 'we don't eat meat so you meat eaters should not do so either'."
I love cheeseburgers. I don't like that producing them requires mass slaughter and environmental destruction. I would guess that only a small minority of people who choose to be vegan/vegetarian do it solely because they don't like the taste/texture/appearance of meat. Most of them have other reasons.
On the post: Federal Court Blocks Unconstitutional Arkansas Law That Prevents Plant-Based Food Companies From Using Meat Words
Re:
It's not about converting vegetarians and vegans back. It's about preventing future conversions. It's about people like me. I know vegetarian eating is better in terms of health and the environment...but I also love a good cheeseburger. If you can gimme something that looks, feels, and tastes like a cheeseburger but is made without meat -- and they're getting pretty close to being able to do that -- I would buy that instead of real meat every time I had the choice. Even if it cost a bit more (within reason...I'm not paying fifty bucks for every burger).
Humans are creatures of habit. It's far easier to change your actions if you can keep the habits surrounding them. It's hard to figure out a whole new set of vegan meals; it's very easy to just replace one box of meat with another box of "meat".
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re:
Right, neither one has an obligation to carry anything, and I never claimed they did. My point was merely that getting booted from Facebook would likely be more harmful to the average business or organization than getting booted from Cloudflare, and it's therefore rather silly to argue that Cloudflare ought to be treated as some kind of government utility that is required to host any and all content solely because of the "harm" caused by getting booted.
In case you missed it, the first paragraph of my previous post was a quote that I was arguing against...
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