I live in one in a Chicago suburb with one of the highest per capita income in the state, and the best speed AT&T offers here is 18MB down. This is a fairly recent boost from the 1.5MB max they offered a few years ago.
Meanwhile we have two cable providers, Comcast and WoW, that offer 1GB+. It would be great to have more competition, but I doubt AT&T would be interested.
I have to disagree with the title and premise that politics is not a game. Politics in this country, along with the entwined capitalist business world, has been a game since day one.
The majority of players in the arena at the federal level have always been playing a game and that game is to stay "in power" and benefit themselves and those they call friends. Now their "friends" may well include their constituents, but no politician has ever done what is best for literally everyone.
Even those with the "best intentions" are always playing the balancing game of needing to stay in office, in order to continue to push their agenda. How many times have you actually seen one of them commit political suicide just to do what is best for most Americans. It happens, but is so rare that it is considered an oddity.
In particular at the federal level these folks are so disconnected from the everyday lives of the people that they represent that it all just becomes a game to keep their office, improve their committee positions, push their agenda and so on.
An important thing to note is that it is always "their agenda". Not the peoples agenda, not their constituents agenda, but "their" agenda. They don't really represent even a majority of the people that voted for them. There agendas only represent those that are closest to them and have the most influence.
All of this leads to a great disconnect from how their decisions actually affect the country, and the world, at the level of the people they are supposed to represent. Which in turn makes it all just a game.
The biggest problem with treating like a game is that most people don't really understand how games work. Almost everyone assumes that a game must be zero sum and there MUST be a winner. This attitude is what has lead to where we are today. The change really needs to change to understand that the game does not need to be zero sum. Like the cooperative board games that have become popular in the past decade, the game can be played in a way that everyone, or at least almost everyone, can benefit and win.
Given the common definitions of insane/insanity Trump does seem to meet the criteria at times. He often does not seem to perceive the world or behave normally.
Insane
adjective
1.
in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.
Having been to the Ravinia Festival for at least a dozen concerts, I can confirm that they are in the "restaurant services" business. they have multiple restaurants on the grounds and you can rent them out on non-show dates.
The trademark claims about there being no others that use Ravinia in their name however are definitely bullshit.
In the Chicago area whenever anyone says the word Ravinia, they are talking about the music venue, not anything else. But that should not give them exclusive rights to the name.
Regardless of anything Trump has said in the past, as the President Elect shouldn't he have more important things he should be doing besides posting to Twitter? Like maybe making preparations to run the country.
They could be referring to stuff that is typically considered a trade secret. Something that may not be patentable, but as long as it is a secret you have a potential advantage. Classic examples of trade secrets are the recipe for Coca-Cola or Twinkies, the formula for WD-40, the algorithm used to create the New York Times Bestseller List.
I ran into this situation as well. A half dozen people mentioned seeing the Netflix price increase in the news and were wondering if they should cancel. When I mentioned that it was a one dollar increase they all went quite.
So there may well be something behind what Netflix said. They may be giving it more emphasis than it really had, but I think it is a real thing.
So what about handing the keys to a valet to park your car, or an attendant at a car wash, or the tow truck driver, auto service mechanic, etc. Do you need specific permission from your company for every possibility? Does the company have to create a legal document that spells out the exact details for all of these possibilities?
There are "failure to yield" laws out there. They just probably don't apply in this case.
Usually the laws address things like failure to yield to pedestrians or emergency vehicles. There are also some out there that specifically address roundabouts and traffic circles.
The thing is that more surveillance is the answer for the leaders of the intelligence community. It is just that the question they are trying to answer is different than the one you are asking.
For them the question is not how can we make things safer? The question they are trying to answer is how can I/we get more power and a bigger budget?
More surveillance most definitely answers the second question.
AT&T did this with U-verse. We got a bunch of mailings saying it was available. Yeah not so much seeing as they hadn't even bother deploying DSL to our neighborhood yet.
This was in a near Chicago suburb, in a neighborhood that has been fully built out since the 1980's. DSL only became available around 2010!
We do have two cable internet options Comcast and WOW.
While this is a dumb lawsuit there is something that a lot of people don't seem to understand about BCBS. They are not a single company and the original article gets this all wrong.
There are actually 60+ BCBS companies. One or more for each state. Although they are mostly owned by less than a dozen parent organizations these days.
Each individual company has a license to use the BCBS name and trademarks from the BCBS Association. They also have a bunch of other cross company agreements through the BCBS Association to honor each others pricing when covering things that occur outside each companies territory.
In this particular case it is the BCBS Association that is the trouble maker. Yeah a small technical detail, but a significant difference when you realize that the BCBS Association's main product is the trademarks they hold and license. They don't sell insurance themselves.
Some of the BCBS companies are nasty profit mongers, some are not. It all depends on how they were created and in what state. One very big thing that most people don't understand about insurance is that it was and still is regulated at the state level. So every state has different rules. Which is why there are so many BCBS companies. Back in the day insurance couldn't cross state lines. Just like banks used to be.
And a final note. I do not work for any BCBS company or any insurance company for that matter. I just know a moderate amount about them.
CDPR got most things right and they should be lauded for what they did get right. Unfortunately they still got a couple things wrong.
First, the video they have been showing at trades shows and online for going on a year now is higher resolution/fidelity than you can actually get in the game. Even on the most high powered kit. They purposely downgraded video for everyone because of the low power of consoles.
Second, they optimized some higher end features for only Nvidia video cards, and if you try to use them on AMD video cards you get very poor results. CDPR basically blames AMD for this.
Finally, there are a bunch of higher end graphical features in the released game that break things completely. CDPR knew about these bugs for a long time. They still left these features in the game even though they knew they were broken. Their answer is to just turn things down. If they knew these settings would not work correctly why did they even include them?
So they should get kudos for what they did right, but should also be called out for what they didn't get right as well.
Avoiding Competition
I live in one in a Chicago suburb with one of the highest per capita income in the state, and the best speed AT&T offers here is 18MB down. This is a fairly recent boost from the 1.5MB max they offered a few years ago.
Meanwhile we have two cable providers, Comcast and WoW, that offer 1GB+. It would be great to have more competition, but I doubt AT&T would be interested.
Maker Community
I see Instructables, but I would suggest adding a couple more "maker" associated sites as well. Maybe places like hackaday.com or thingiverse.com.
No, it is a game
I have to disagree with the title and premise that politics is not a game. Politics in this country, along with the entwined capitalist business world, has been a game since day one.
The majority of players in the arena at the federal level have always been playing a game and that game is to stay "in power" and benefit themselves and those they call friends. Now their "friends" may well include their constituents, but no politician has ever done what is best for literally everyone.
Even those with the "best intentions" are always playing the balancing game of needing to stay in office, in order to continue to push their agenda. How many times have you actually seen one of them commit political suicide just to do what is best for most Americans. It happens, but is so rare that it is considered an oddity.
In particular at the federal level these folks are so disconnected from the everyday lives of the people that they represent that it all just becomes a game to keep their office, improve their committee positions, push their agenda and so on.
An important thing to note is that it is always "their agenda". Not the peoples agenda, not their constituents agenda, but "their" agenda. They don't really represent even a majority of the people that voted for them. There agendas only represent those that are closest to them and have the most influence.
All of this leads to a great disconnect from how their decisions actually affect the country, and the world, at the level of the people they are supposed to represent. Which in turn makes it all just a game.
The biggest problem with treating like a game is that most people don't really understand how games work. Almost everyone assumes that a game must be zero sum and there MUST be a winner. This attitude is what has lead to where we are today. The change really needs to change to understand that the game does not need to be zero sum. Like the cooperative board games that have become popular in the past decade, the game can be played in a way that everyone, or at least almost everyone, can benefit and win.
Re:
Given the common definitions of insane/insanity Trump does seem to meet the criteria at times. He often does not seem to perceive the world or behave normally.
Insane
adjective
1.
in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.
(untitled comment)
The trademark claims about there being no others that use Ravinia in their name however are definitely bullshit.
In the Chicago area whenever anyone says the word Ravinia, they are talking about the music venue, not anything else. But that should not give them exclusive rights to the name.
Re: Re: Off Topic, but...
And Rocket Lab is hoping to launch the Electron rocket from New Zealand this week. <https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/05/23/rocket-lab-delays-debut-of-new-launcher-to-dodge-bad-weath er/>
More Important Things To Do
Re: Easy solution.. Longer patent terms
Re: Are we even reading the same article here?
Re:
So there may well be something behind what Netflix said. They may be giving it more emphasis than it really had, but I think it is a real thing.
Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re:
Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Usually the laws address things like failure to yield to pedestrians or emergency vehicles. There are also some out there that specifically address roundabouts and traffic circles.
Different Question
For them the question is not how can we make things safer? The question they are trying to answer is how can I/we get more power and a bigger budget?
More surveillance most definitely answers the second question.
Re: Re: Well there's your problem...
This was in a near Chicago suburb, in a neighborhood that has been fully built out since the 1980's. DSL only became available around 2010!
We do have two cable internet options Comcast and WOW.
There is more than one BCBS Company
There are actually 60+ BCBS companies. One or more for each state. Although they are mostly owned by less than a dozen parent organizations these days.
Each individual company has a license to use the BCBS name and trademarks from the BCBS Association. They also have a bunch of other cross company agreements through the BCBS Association to honor each others pricing when covering things that occur outside each companies territory.
In this particular case it is the BCBS Association that is the trouble maker. Yeah a small technical detail, but a significant difference when you realize that the BCBS Association's main product is the trademarks they hold and license. They don't sell insurance themselves.
Some of the BCBS companies are nasty profit mongers, some are not. It all depends on how they were created and in what state. One very big thing that most people don't understand about insurance is that it was and still is regulated at the state level. So every state has different rules. Which is why there are so many BCBS companies. Back in the day insurance couldn't cross state lines. Just like banks used to be.
And a final note. I do not work for any BCBS company or any insurance company for that matter. I just know a moderate amount about them.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Re: Don't pick a fight with a publisher
Not everything right
First, the video they have been showing at trades shows and online for going on a year now is higher resolution/fidelity than you can actually get in the game. Even on the most high powered kit. They purposely downgraded video for everyone because of the low power of consoles.
Second, they optimized some higher end features for only Nvidia video cards, and if you try to use them on AMD video cards you get very poor results. CDPR basically blames AMD for this.
Finally, there are a bunch of higher end graphical features in the released game that break things completely. CDPR knew about these bugs for a long time. They still left these features in the game even though they knew they were broken. Their answer is to just turn things down. If they knew these settings would not work correctly why did they even include them?
So they should get kudos for what they did right, but should also be called out for what they didn't get right as well.
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