1. If the kid was brought up to be a shooter, it's quite possible that the 9mm would be his favorite "toy".
How many school shootings were caused by parents actively training their kids to be school shooters? Training them how to use guns doesn't count...I'm talking about ones where the parents taught the kid(s) specifically to kill people.
I'll wait.
The issue is what the toy represents. A gun represents violence, something the school is trying to keep out. If the rules say "no toy guns, projectiles, weapons, etc" then the rule is the same as on every other day.
Guns, and toy guns, don't represent anything other than what YOU decide they do. For me guns have always represented freedom, justice, and safety. Growing up, with guns in my house, a military family, and trusting the police, I saw guns as something that were there to protect me from those who would do me harm.
The issue is that KIDS do not understand how something can be perfectly OK at home but suddenly is the most horrible thing ever at school. The school is undermining the parents in the worst way possible, assigning it's values to kids rather than being a place of learning. It's not the school's place to teach right and wrong, what's good and bad...that's the parents job. All it does is confuse kids and punish someone who hasn't done anything wrong.
I do agree that it's not really the teacher's fault...but I do believe that a little bit of common sense is required when teaching kids. Anyone with children knows that your kids do stuff you don't want them to. That's part of learning. I don't flip out and spank my daughter every time she bites...I teach her proper behavior. Is biting against the "rules" of our house? Yes. Does that mean I need to punish her every time she breaks the rule even a little bit? It's called common sense, and we should be teaching it to our kids, not destroying it!
Technically true, but it would be hard to argue that the Bill of Rights was intended to remove whole sections of the newly formed Constitution.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. - U.S. Constitution
So, explain to me, in logical terms, how our current system of copyright meets the intent of this statement?
How does how does "prevent anyone from using 'my' idea, regardless of monetary gain" equal "promote the Progress," how does "everything created, regardless of how meaningful" equal "Science and useful Arts," and how does "a human lifetime plus 70 years or 120 years after creation/95 years after publication" equal "limited Times?"
Current copyright and the constitution are so far apart at this point they may as well not even be related.
Actually, copyright is provided for in the body of the Constitution, which the amendments are by definition supposed to override. So I think there is a serious argument that copyright is unconstitutional.
I would argue current copyright is unconstitutional because it completely deviates from the intent of the constitution, not because of any ammendments.
People get hung up over "well, technology has made copying easier, therefore we need stronger copyright laws! The founding fathers would never have envisioned the internet!" But this is irrelevant. Their intent was quite clear...the purpose of copyright was to encourage people to create. At the time, this was done by giving creators a small (14 year) boost to profit from their work, then it would go to the public. The intent, however, was for everyone to benefit from these creations and discoveries.
Current copyright does not meet that intent. It actively stifles creativity (as does spreadsheet marketing, but that's another issue). It's a tool that's been stolen by obsolete distribution businesses and forged into a weapon to generate money by draining it from creators and consumers alike (who, incidentally, are often the same people).
Seriously, though, explain how our current copyright law is meets the intent of the constitution. I'm curious.
Re: Anti-cop website Techdirt flies same flag, as usual.
3) Newark PD, to take a specific instance, should always be allowed to punch their non-compliant suspects. I live near Newark, worked in Newark, went to school in Newark. Newark PD is, if anything, too restrained with some of the walking crap that lives there.
You mean the very people they're sworn to protect? The police officer's oath is something along these lines:
I [name] do swear that I will well and truly serve our sovereign country and state, as a police officer without favor or affection, malice or ill-will, until I am legally discharged, that I will see and cause our community's peace to be kept and preserved, and that I will prevent to the best of my power all offenses against that peace, and that, while I continue to be a police officer, I will, to the best of my skill and knowledge, discharge all the duties thereof, faithfully, according to law.
So help me God.
Maybe Newark's is a bit different (they don't have it posted anywhere I could find). But it's probably close. Think about that oath. Think about the parts about preserving the peace, being without malice or ill-will, and performing all duties according to law.
Our law grants citizens protections, and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty of crime. The purpose of this oath is to protect the peace of the community, and to do so without malice or ill-will. Yet with this statement, this assumption, that the very people you are there to protect are "walking crap" you have betrayed everything you swore in that oath.
As a military service member for eight years, I have never once considered soldiers who commit war crimes "good soldiers with a bad set of circumstances." They were soldiers that betrayed their oath. Service members require discipline, and are supposed to be BETTER than those they fight against. Guess what? That's hard. Boo hoo, if you can't handle it, GET OUT.
It's not anti-cop to point out criminal behavior. If the police were doing their jobs right they should be identifying and eliminating this behavior. The military does this all the time; I've personally been involved in numerous courts martial, many of which resulted in discharges. It's not shameful to have bad members of your organizations...it's shameful to allow it to continue or try and cover it up.
And if the police are unable to take care of themselves, those being abused need to be heard. Techdirt is trying to help cops do what they should be doing themselves.
If you don't believe that, you're one of the bad ones...by your own oath. Sorry.
Re: Re: Anti-cop website Techdirt flies same flag, as usual.
you're at it, make sure war criminals can only be tried by other soldiers too. What could go wrong?
Technically we do this, in most cases. For most violations of the UCMJ (military law) they are tried by a court martial, who's "jury" (not actually called a jury) is made of up service members. In other words, most military crimes are tried by the military.
That being said, the police are not the military, and follow different rules.
I really hope you don't actually believe this...you lose any moral high ground by condoning not just murder, but murder of the agressor and his entire family.
That's not necessary. It's evil. Does our justice system need to be reformed? Absolutely, and at many levels. Is the murder of innocents the method to create that reform? Absolutely not.
You can't claim "justice" and "killing kids" in the same sentence and be entirely sane. Just a thought.
I'm still struggling to figure out where the "right to be forgotten" comes from. For example, if I watched my friend get hopeless drunk and make out with an [overweight homely individual], do they have the right to make it so I can't tell all my other friends about it? Or does he have the right to make me forget about it completely? What if I wrote it in my journal, could he have the court confiscate it and destroy it?
If not, why does the internet get special rules? Honestly, if I were Google, I'd just stop working completely in Europe. They can definitely afford it, and may end up breaking even by saving tons of time and effort (and lawyer money) trying to comply with an impossible demand.
Then let's see how long it takes EU to repeal this silly law.
Except there was a deliberate attempt from the outset by those in charge, removed from the actual action, to formulate a plan which included formulating a legal justification for these actions that attempted to separate them from what they actually were.
How is this different from what I said? I never stated that the justification only existed at the level of those doing the torturing. I specifically discussed that authority is a dangerous tool.
The upper echelons used the justification of "fight terrorism" and "defeat the enemy" as enablers that created an environment where torture and other war crimes were likely to exist. The more removed you are from the effects of a crime, the more likely it is that someone will be able to justify those actions.
The CIA torture program was caused by the group...in this case, the U.S. government (primarily) and the U.S. people (indirectly). Nobody likes talking about the second part, of course, because few people like taking responsibility for uncomfortable things. If the American people hadn't been willing to give up the oversight and freedom we did as a fear reaction to 9/11 it would have been a different story. You, as an individual, may not have given up those rights, but we, as a nation, did. It doesn't excuse the U.S. government's actions, but it didn't happen in a vacuum, either.
It's not the first time the U.S. has committed civil rights atrocities at a national level. Our history is filled with them. But if we ignore the actual causes, if we just say "well, it was the government's fault!" to avoid taking any responsibility ourselves, then it's just going to keep on happening.
The government is the child of the U.S. population. Sometimes it acts in ways we don't like, and sometimes it gets in trouble without our help. But closing our eyes and pretending we had no influence on its behavior is not only a lie, but will never fix the behavior. Maybe we need to stop avoiding our kid and start influencing it's actions so it'll make better decisions.
He linked an example, and TD has reported on numerous other examples. It's far more likely that for the past two years hardly anyone has even noticed the issue.
As a matter of fact, if you check out their Yelp page, amongst the hundreds of 1 star and joke 5 star reviews submitted today, you can go back and see the FIRST review from 4/7/2010 was a 1 star review, and there are other bad reviews (11/27/2012, 1/1/2013, 11/21/2013, 4/2/2014). Only one of them mentions getting threatened with $500. So if the policy "worked" why did 5 out of 13 reviews give it one star prior to the article pointing out the $500 charge?
So no, nobody has done a comprehensive study on review surpression, but that doesn't make the conclusion any less true based on the examples we have seen. When you have data indicating supression of bad reviews causes negative backlash, and no data indicating otherwise, it's kind of silly to establish the burden of proof based on theoretical "lost bad reviews" (*cough* similar to "lost sales *cough*).
What sort of things could angry staffers do and what would the impact usually be?
Quite a bit, actually. I think people underestimate just how much any sort of high-level leader relies on their staff for decision making. A member of congress naturally has a ton of issues on their plate and they rely on their staff to give them advice on the best course of action. Most of the time, unless the advice is way off, the congressperson is going to follow it.
Likewise, top-level leaders tend to be very protective of their staff. Feinstein was most likely legitimately angry when the CIA hacked her staffer's computers. Now those same staffers have a strong reason to dislike the people doing the redaction, and you put them in the same room with someone who's already angry on their behalf...
These guys probably won't even have to try very hard to convince her it's in the nation's (and her career's) best interest to blow this thing as open as she can. And when it comes to rejecting the redactions, she's not going to be reading it and analyzing it herself...her staff is going to be going through it line-by-line and playing each change off the letter of the law for classified information.
Trust me, anyone who's worked on a government staff learns how to "lawyer" really fast, and they get extremely good at playing the rules. While it's certainly possible that their influence may be low, in all likelihood they've been waiting for this.
Technically true. Torture can work. It's less accurate than flipping a coin, but hey, sometimes you get the right answer.
Others have hit some of the research...I'd recommend doing some of your own. For years I believed torture was effective-but-distasteful, then I actually looked it up, and I found out that it was less effective than random chance.
From a purely accurate standpoint, the statement should have been "torture is rarely effective and never justified." The key is the second part.
Seriously, though, look it up. It'll only hurt for a minute.
No, it was a legitimate question. There is no such thing as perfect security. By your logic, if you don't use a Linux-based operating system with advanced cryptology and custom code you "deserve everything you get." Guess what? Not everyone has the access or technical knowledge to be perfectly secure. Keep in mind, even if you do all of that stuff, you still aren't completely secure.
This is like saying that if a guy gets mugged on the street and has his wallet stolen he "desevered everything he got" because he wasn't a black belt in karate, or that a homeowner who gets his house broken into "deserved everything they got" because they didn't install bars on all the windows, barbed wire fence, and a 24-hour armed guard.
The fault always lies with the criminal, not the person they've abused. Sure, victims usually have ways to avoid becomming easy to exploit, but when they're exploited, it's still the criminal's fault. While I wouldn't use IE on my home computer for exactly the reasons you listed (it's not very secure) and others (the interface is stupid and slow), I still don't believe someone who gets their computer hacked or otherwise exploited is at fault.
Alexis Ohanian said it well in the Munk debate with Glen Greenwald..."It's like if the [city] police learned about a flaw in all the locks in [your city], one which makes it easier to break into your home, and instead of telling people about it and having it fixed they keep that information to themselves so they can use it if they need to get into someone's house to stop crime." (paraphrase mine).
Some of us work in jobs that only use IE. I don't use it on any of my home computers, but stupidity on the case of the user is NOT always their reason for IE.
Case in point: I'm writing this on IE from a work computer. It is literally impossible for me to use another browser. Heck, my employer still uses Internet Explorer 8.
How can it be legal to come in and say "well these goods you bought will be unavailable after X date with not way to get them, let alone view them ever again".
Psh, this is nothing. Think about City of Heroes...long time players bought the game, two expansions, a monthly subscription, and after it turned free-to-play, probably in-game items for real money.
Then NCSoft decided to shut down the servers, forbid anyone from making their own, and kill the game completely. All that money people spent on the game? Gone.
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, and you can argue all day that "they weren't buying the game, they were only buying a license to play the game" but for most people these are the same thing, cryptic EULA language notwithstanding.
As people lose more and more of what they've bought I think this issue is going to get some serious attention.
Um, Excel can do all of that. You can show formulas instead of results, you can assign cells and ranges specific names, and has an actual (if basic) programming language behind its macros.
The thing is that Excel is designed for simple stuff. It can do more complex things but it isn't really designed for it. Excel is great for small forms with a couple of automatically formatted outputs, or a home budget, or keeping track of documents in a small office. It is not designed for advanced statistical analysis of gene structures.
Office is designed with several specialized tools for specific purposes rather than one swiss army knife that tries to do everything. You can make a presentation in Word, a simple spreadsheet in Access, and write a report in Powerpoint. It works. It just doesn't do it well.
There was an easy way to avoid this, which a simple Google search would have revealed...click the upper left box to select the entire sheet, and change the drop down box from "General" to "Text." Problem solved.
I personally use Excel extensively in my own job and am very familiar with both its strengths and its limitations. Is it perfect? Heck, no...I'd love for the ability to write formulas in multiple lines, sort of like how VBA is formatted, to help keep track of coding in a complex sheet when macros aren't an option (usually due to business rules). But overall the quick formatting of data is useful for prototyping and reformatting data, creating useful rosters and graphs, and other simple tasks when your boss asks for a quick analysis of something.
This is like complaining that using the flat side of a power drill to hammer a nail isn't very easy. Why not use a hammer? Well, I want to use my power drill, screw hammers.
Sorry. It's not the drill's fault you don't know how to use a hammer.
Facts out of the way? Why would you want to do that? The facts are the good part! Let's start now...
"First: Verizon is not charging people to pay to remove the throttle. It's simply reducing speed. So the notion this is a bold attempt at more revenue is simply wrong."
Verizon is not charging people to pay to remove the throttle. They're just only throttling the people who don't pay extra (via caps). So I guess you're right...Verizon isn't charging you to remove throttling, they're just throttling you if you don't pay extra. Oh, wait. That's the same thing.
Second: Why is this letter not being sent to T-Mobile, who does the exact same thing at 2GB, regardless of network usage?
T-Mobile doesn't only throttle its unlimited data plan members. It's the difference between a road with a speed limit of 55 mph and a road with a speed limit of 55 mph, unless you're driving a BMW, then the speed limit is 65 mph.
The rest of your comment
You say being capped is a revenue-generating ploy, which is the most accurate statement in your entire post, then proceed to completely miss the point on why it's a revenue-generating ploy. Data caps don't solve network congestion.
This entire press release was talking about throttling unlimited data customers, in other words, those without data caps. This naturally encourages them to choose unthrottled data cap plans...which you already stated is a "revenue-generating ploy."
In conclusion, you are siding with Verizon for a revenue-generating ploy. Sorry.
I have to be the one to ask...what is one-way mapping? Couldn't find it on google, is there another term? Obviously you can't compress infinitively (duh) but I'm curious as to what method he'd come up with.
THIS. Very much this. Artists put a lot of their personality and ego into their work (in general). To see that work "devalued", even if it ends up making them more money, makes them feel like their work isn't as valuable.
People don't really create true art for money. It's the big fallacy in the entire copyright debate; if you took away every monetary incentive to create art it would not stop art from being created. It probably wouldn't affect it all that much, really, you'd just have less people doing it exclusively.
This is what publishers feed off of. They boost the artists egos, make them feel like their stuff is important, sell it at insane prices beyond what it's worth, and give them a pittance in return. The trick is that they promote the artist's creations, which makes the artist feel like their stuff is worth more. It's like when you make something awesome in Minecraft...nobody is going to pay you for it, but it feels good if someone looks at it and says "Wow, that's neat!"
From an economic standpoint artists are losing out on publisher deals. But the publishers make them feel like their stuff is valuable (even as they basically steal it). Thus artists keep promoting the publishers and ignore the economics.
The publishers are a business. They know the same thing as Amazon, and know that they could make higher profits by lowering prices. They also know that will hurt the artists' egos and possibly reveal the ultimate truth...that the publishers aren't necessary. They're playing a long game against another business (Amazon) at the expense of the same people they've been exploiting for years (artists).
Shockingly, they're still good at exploiting them. This should come as no surprise to anyone, especially not Amazon. Amazon is playing it's own long game...if artists figure out they can drop the publishers and earn way more money by dealing directly with Amazon then Amazon could potentially get a bigger piece of the pie, or at least make themselves extremely attractive to authors who now get the full 70% profit rather than the mysterious X% profits they get now (probably like 10% or less).
On the post: 4th Grader Suspended For Properly Completing Assignment With A Nerf Gun
Re: Re: Re:
How many school shootings were caused by parents actively training their kids to be school shooters? Training them how to use guns doesn't count...I'm talking about ones where the parents taught the kid(s) specifically to kill people.
I'll wait.
The issue is what the toy represents. A gun represents violence, something the school is trying to keep out. If the rules say "no toy guns, projectiles, weapons, etc" then the rule is the same as on every other day.
Guns, and toy guns, don't represent anything other than what YOU decide they do. For me guns have always represented freedom, justice, and safety. Growing up, with guns in my house, a military family, and trusting the police, I saw guns as something that were there to protect me from those who would do me harm.
The issue is that KIDS do not understand how something can be perfectly OK at home but suddenly is the most horrible thing ever at school. The school is undermining the parents in the worst way possible, assigning it's values to kids rather than being a place of learning. It's not the school's place to teach right and wrong, what's good and bad...that's the parents job. All it does is confuse kids and punish someone who hasn't done anything wrong.
I do agree that it's not really the teacher's fault...but I do believe that a little bit of common sense is required when teaching kids. Anyone with children knows that your kids do stuff you don't want them to. That's part of learning. I don't flip out and spank my daughter every time she bites...I teach her proper behavior. Is biting against the "rules" of our house? Yes. Does that mean I need to punish her every time she breaks the rule even a little bit? It's called common sense, and we should be teaching it to our kids, not destroying it!
On the post: Recording Industry Exec Says It's Not Censorship To Block Sites He Doesn't Like
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. - U.S. Constitution
So, explain to me, in logical terms, how our current system of copyright meets the intent of this statement?
How does how does "prevent anyone from using 'my' idea, regardless of monetary gain" equal "promote the Progress," how does "everything created, regardless of how meaningful" equal "Science and useful Arts," and how does "a human lifetime plus 70 years or 120 years after creation/95 years after publication" equal "limited Times?"
Current copyright and the constitution are so far apart at this point they may as well not even be related.
Actually, copyright is provided for in the body of the Constitution, which the amendments are by definition supposed to override. So I think there is a serious argument that copyright is unconstitutional.
I would argue current copyright is unconstitutional because it completely deviates from the intent of the constitution, not because of any ammendments.
People get hung up over "well, technology has made copying easier, therefore we need stronger copyright laws! The founding fathers would never have envisioned the internet!" But this is irrelevant. Their intent was quite clear...the purpose of copyright was to encourage people to create. At the time, this was done by giving creators a small (14 year) boost to profit from their work, then it would go to the public. The intent, however, was for everyone to benefit from these creations and discoveries.
Current copyright does not meet that intent. It actively stifles creativity (as does spreadsheet marketing, but that's another issue). It's a tool that's been stolen by obsolete distribution businesses and forged into a weapon to generate money by draining it from creators and consumers alike (who, incidentally, are often the same people).
Seriously, though, explain how our current copyright law is meets the intent of the constitution. I'm curious.
On the post: Australia's Attorney General Says Metadata Collection Won't Track Your Web Surfing, Just The Web Addresses You Visit (Huh?)
Re:
Thank you.
On the post: Senators Slam White House For CIA Torture Report Redactions That Make It 'Incomprehensible'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm...kind of impressed, actually.
On the post: Internal Affairs Departments, District Attorneys' Offices Helping Keep Bad Cops From Being Held Accountable
Re: Anti-cop website Techdirt flies same flag, as usual.
You mean the very people they're sworn to protect? The police officer's oath is something along these lines:
I [name] do swear that I will well and truly serve our sovereign country and state, as a police officer without favor or affection, malice or ill-will, until I am legally discharged, that I will see and cause our community's peace to be kept and preserved, and that I will prevent to the best of my power all offenses against that peace, and that, while I continue to be a police officer, I will, to the best of my skill and knowledge, discharge all the duties thereof, faithfully, according to law.
So help me God.
Maybe Newark's is a bit different (they don't have it posted anywhere I could find). But it's probably close. Think about that oath. Think about the parts about preserving the peace, being without malice or ill-will, and performing all duties according to law.
Our law grants citizens protections, and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty of crime. The purpose of this oath is to protect the peace of the community, and to do so without malice or ill-will. Yet with this statement, this assumption, that the very people you are there to protect are "walking crap" you have betrayed everything you swore in that oath.
As a military service member for eight years, I have never once considered soldiers who commit war crimes "good soldiers with a bad set of circumstances." They were soldiers that betrayed their oath. Service members require discipline, and are supposed to be BETTER than those they fight against. Guess what? That's hard. Boo hoo, if you can't handle it, GET OUT.
It's not anti-cop to point out criminal behavior. If the police were doing their jobs right they should be identifying and eliminating this behavior. The military does this all the time; I've personally been involved in numerous courts martial, many of which resulted in discharges. It's not shameful to have bad members of your organizations...it's shameful to allow it to continue or try and cover it up.
And if the police are unable to take care of themselves, those being abused need to be heard. Techdirt is trying to help cops do what they should be doing themselves.
If you don't believe that, you're one of the bad ones...by your own oath. Sorry.
On the post: Internal Affairs Departments, District Attorneys' Offices Helping Keep Bad Cops From Being Held Accountable
Re: Re: Anti-cop website Techdirt flies same flag, as usual.
Technically we do this, in most cases. For most violations of the UCMJ (military law) they are tried by a court martial, who's "jury" (not actually called a jury) is made of up service members. In other words, most military crimes are tried by the military.
That being said, the police are not the military, and follow different rules.
On the post: Internal Affairs Departments, District Attorneys' Offices Helping Keep Bad Cops From Being Held Accountable
Re: Reprisal against the police.
I really hope you don't actually believe this...you lose any moral high ground by condoning not just murder, but murder of the agressor and his entire family.
That's not necessary. It's evil. Does our justice system need to be reformed? Absolutely, and at many levels. Is the murder of innocents the method to create that reform? Absolutely not.
You can't claim "justice" and "killing kids" in the same sentence and be entirely sane. Just a thought.
On the post: Google Struggling To Deal With Right To Be Forgotten Requests -- Will Now Delete Wikipedia Page From Search Results
If not, why does the internet get special rules? Honestly, if I were Google, I'd just stop working completely in Europe. They can definitely afford it, and may end up breaking even by saving tons of time and effort (and lawyer money) trying to comply with an impossible demand.
Then let's see how long it takes EU to repeal this silly law.
On the post: President Obama Claims CIA Torture Was Okay Because People Were Scared And The CIA Is A 'Tough Job'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Except there was a deliberate attempt from the outset by those in charge, removed from the actual action, to formulate a plan which included formulating a legal justification for these actions that attempted to separate them from what they actually were.
How is this different from what I said? I never stated that the justification only existed at the level of those doing the torturing. I specifically discussed that authority is a dangerous tool.
The upper echelons used the justification of "fight terrorism" and "defeat the enemy" as enablers that created an environment where torture and other war crimes were likely to exist. The more removed you are from the effects of a crime, the more likely it is that someone will be able to justify those actions.
The CIA torture program was caused by the group...in this case, the U.S. government (primarily) and the U.S. people (indirectly). Nobody likes talking about the second part, of course, because few people like taking responsibility for uncomfortable things. If the American people hadn't been willing to give up the oversight and freedom we did as a fear reaction to 9/11 it would have been a different story. You, as an individual, may not have given up those rights, but we, as a nation, did. It doesn't excuse the U.S. government's actions, but it didn't happen in a vacuum, either.
It's not the first time the U.S. has committed civil rights atrocities at a national level. Our history is filled with them. But if we ignore the actual causes, if we just say "well, it was the government's fault!" to avoid taking any responsibility ourselves, then it's just going to keep on happening.
The government is the child of the U.S. population. Sometimes it acts in ways we don't like, and sometimes it gets in trouble without our help. But closing our eyes and pretending we had no influence on its behavior is not only a lie, but will never fix the behavior. Maybe we need to stop avoiding our kid and start influencing it's actions so it'll make better decisions.
Just a thought.
On the post: New York Guest House Burns Own Reputation To The Ground By Trying To Charge Customers $500 For Bad Reviews
Re:
He linked an example, and TD has reported on numerous other examples. It's far more likely that for the past two years hardly anyone has even noticed the issue.
As a matter of fact, if you check out their Yelp page, amongst the hundreds of 1 star and joke 5 star reviews submitted today, you can go back and see the FIRST review from 4/7/2010 was a 1 star review, and there are other bad reviews (11/27/2012, 1/1/2013, 11/21/2013, 4/2/2014). Only one of them mentions getting threatened with $500. So if the policy "worked" why did 5 out of 13 reviews give it one star prior to the article pointing out the $500 charge?
So no, nobody has done a comprehensive study on review surpression, but that doesn't make the conclusion any less true based on the examples we have seen. When you have data indicating supression of bad reviews causes negative backlash, and no data indicating otherwise, it's kind of silly to establish the burden of proof based on theoretical "lost bad reviews" (*cough* similar to "lost sales *cough*).
On the post: White House Finishes Review Of CIA Terror Report: Feinstein Wants To Know Why It's Basically All Blacked Out
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Quite a bit, actually. I think people underestimate just how much any sort of high-level leader relies on their staff for decision making. A member of congress naturally has a ton of issues on their plate and they rely on their staff to give them advice on the best course of action. Most of the time, unless the advice is way off, the congressperson is going to follow it.
Likewise, top-level leaders tend to be very protective of their staff. Feinstein was most likely legitimately angry when the CIA hacked her staffer's computers. Now those same staffers have a strong reason to dislike the people doing the redaction, and you put them in the same room with someone who's already angry on their behalf...
These guys probably won't even have to try very hard to convince her it's in the nation's (and her career's) best interest to blow this thing as open as she can. And when it comes to rejecting the redactions, she's not going to be reading it and analyzing it herself...her staff is going to be going through it line-by-line and playing each change off the letter of the law for classified information.
Trust me, anyone who's worked on a government staff learns how to "lawyer" really fast, and they get extremely good at playing the rules. While it's certainly possible that their influence may be low, in all likelihood they've been waiting for this.
It'll be interesting to see how it works out.
On the post: President Obama Claims CIA Torture Was Okay Because People Were Scared And The CIA Is A 'Tough Job'
Re: Re: Re: Torture never works
Technically true. Torture can work. It's less accurate than flipping a coin, but hey, sometimes you get the right answer.
Others have hit some of the research...I'd recommend doing some of your own. For years I believed torture was effective-but-distasteful, then I actually looked it up, and I found out that it was less effective than random chance.
From a purely accurate standpoint, the statement should have been "torture is rarely effective and never justified." The key is the second part.
Seriously, though, look it up. It'll only hurt for a minute.
On the post: French Company That Sells Exploits To The NSA Sat On An Internet Explorer Vulnerability For Three Years
Re: Re: Re:
No, it was a legitimate question. There is no such thing as perfect security. By your logic, if you don't use a Linux-based operating system with advanced cryptology and custom code you "deserve everything you get." Guess what? Not everyone has the access or technical knowledge to be perfectly secure. Keep in mind, even if you do all of that stuff, you still aren't completely secure.
This is like saying that if a guy gets mugged on the street and has his wallet stolen he "desevered everything he got" because he wasn't a black belt in karate, or that a homeowner who gets his house broken into "deserved everything they got" because they didn't install bars on all the windows, barbed wire fence, and a 24-hour armed guard.
The fault always lies with the criminal, not the person they've abused. Sure, victims usually have ways to avoid becomming easy to exploit, but when they're exploited, it's still the criminal's fault. While I wouldn't use IE on my home computer for exactly the reasons you listed (it's not very secure) and others (the interface is stupid and slow), I still don't believe someone who gets their computer hacked or otherwise exploited is at fault.
Alexis Ohanian said it well in the Munk debate with Glen Greenwald..."It's like if the [city] police learned about a flaw in all the locks in [your city], one which makes it easier to break into your home, and instead of telling people about it and having it fixed they keep that information to themselves so they can use it if they need to get into someone's house to stop crime." (paraphrase mine).
How is this OK?
On the post: French Company That Sells Exploits To The NSA Sat On An Internet Explorer Vulnerability For Three Years
Re: Re: Re: Nobody of any worth or value uses IE
Case in point: I'm writing this on IE from a work computer. It is literally impossible for me to use another browser. Heck, my employer still uses Internet Explorer 8.
Oh freaking well.
On the post: DRM Performs Another Miracle, Turns Purchased Childrens Books Into Nothing At All
Re:
Psh, this is nothing. Think about City of Heroes...long time players bought the game, two expansions, a monthly subscription, and after it turned free-to-play, probably in-game items for real money.
Then NCSoft decided to shut down the servers, forbid anyone from making their own, and kill the game completely. All that money people spent on the game? Gone.
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, and you can argue all day that "they weren't buying the game, they were only buying a license to play the game" but for most people these are the same thing, cryptic EULA language notwithstanding.
As people lose more and more of what they've bought I think this issue is going to get some serious attention.
On the post: Using Spreadsheets In Bioinformatics Can Corrupt Data, Changing Gene Names Into Dates
Re: Once upon a time
The thing is that Excel is designed for simple stuff. It can do more complex things but it isn't really designed for it. Excel is great for small forms with a couple of automatically formatted outputs, or a home budget, or keeping track of documents in a small office. It is not designed for advanced statistical analysis of gene structures.
Office is designed with several specialized tools for specific purposes rather than one swiss army knife that tries to do everything. You can make a presentation in Word, a simple spreadsheet in Access, and write a report in Powerpoint. It works. It just doesn't do it well.
There was an easy way to avoid this, which a simple Google search would have revealed...click the upper left box to select the entire sheet, and change the drop down box from "General" to "Text." Problem solved.
I personally use Excel extensively in my own job and am very familiar with both its strengths and its limitations. Is it perfect? Heck, no...I'd love for the ability to write formulas in multiple lines, sort of like how VBA is formatted, to help keep track of coding in a complex sheet when macros aren't an option (usually due to business rules). But overall the quick formatting of data is useful for prototyping and reformatting data, creating useful rosters and graphs, and other simple tasks when your boss asks for a quick analysis of something.
This is like complaining that using the flat side of a power drill to hammer a nail isn't very easy. Why not use a hammer? Well, I want to use my power drill, screw hammers.
Sorry. It's not the drill's fault you don't know how to use a hammer.
On the post: FCC Is 'Deeply Troubled' By Verizon Wireless's New Throttling Plans
Re:
Facts out of the way? Why would you want to do that? The facts are the good part! Let's start now...
"First: Verizon is not charging people to pay to remove the throttle. It's simply reducing speed. So the notion this is a bold attempt at more revenue is simply wrong."
Verizon is not charging people to pay to remove the throttle. They're just only throttling the people who don't pay extra (via caps). So I guess you're right...Verizon isn't charging you to remove throttling, they're just throttling you if you don't pay extra. Oh, wait. That's the same thing.
Second: Why is this letter not being sent to T-Mobile, who does the exact same thing at 2GB, regardless of network usage?
T-Mobile doesn't only throttle its unlimited data plan members. It's the difference between a road with a speed limit of 55 mph and a road with a speed limit of 55 mph, unless you're driving a BMW, then the speed limit is 65 mph.
The rest of your comment
You say being capped is a revenue-generating ploy, which is the most accurate statement in your entire post, then proceed to completely miss the point on why it's a revenue-generating ploy. Data caps don't solve network congestion.
This entire press release was talking about throttling unlimited data customers, in other words, those without data caps. This naturally encourages them to choose unthrottled data cap plans...which you already stated is a "revenue-generating ploy."
In conclusion, you are siding with Verizon for a revenue-generating ploy. Sorry.
On the post: Keith Alexander: I'm Worth $1 Million Per Month Because I'm Patenting A Way To Stop Hackers (Which I Didn't Tell The NSA)
Re: Skeptical
On the post: Amazon To Hachette And Authors: Here, Let Us Explain Basic Price Elasticity To You
Re:
THIS. Very much this. Artists put a lot of their personality and ego into their work (in general). To see that work "devalued", even if it ends up making them more money, makes them feel like their work isn't as valuable.
People don't really create true art for money. It's the big fallacy in the entire copyright debate; if you took away every monetary incentive to create art it would not stop art from being created. It probably wouldn't affect it all that much, really, you'd just have less people doing it exclusively.
This is what publishers feed off of. They boost the artists egos, make them feel like their stuff is important, sell it at insane prices beyond what it's worth, and give them a pittance in return. The trick is that they promote the artist's creations, which makes the artist feel like their stuff is worth more. It's like when you make something awesome in Minecraft...nobody is going to pay you for it, but it feels good if someone looks at it and says "Wow, that's neat!"
From an economic standpoint artists are losing out on publisher deals. But the publishers make them feel like their stuff is valuable (even as they basically steal it). Thus artists keep promoting the publishers and ignore the economics.
The publishers are a business. They know the same thing as Amazon, and know that they could make higher profits by lowering prices. They also know that will hurt the artists' egos and possibly reveal the ultimate truth...that the publishers aren't necessary. They're playing a long game against another business (Amazon) at the expense of the same people they've been exploiting for years (artists).
Shockingly, they're still good at exploiting them. This should come as no surprise to anyone, especially not Amazon. Amazon is playing it's own long game...if artists figure out they can drop the publishers and earn way more money by dealing directly with Amazon then Amazon could potentially get a bigger piece of the pie, or at least make themselves extremely attractive to authors who now get the full 70% profit rather than the mysterious X% profits they get now (probably like 10% or less).
It'll be interesting to see where it goes.
On the post: Only A Giant Telco Could Introduce Bandwidth Throttling And Spin It As 'Network Optimization'
Re: Re:
Which he likely didn't actually say...
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