Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"through shell companies so the sellers won't know they are selling to the DoD (so they can't jack up the price etc.)"
1. What makes you think the companies putting up bids aren't shell companies themselves?
2. What makes you think the bidders won't try to figure out that the buyer isn't the DoD in disguise?
Which poses a significant moral quandary. Which is more important: FREE speech or FAIR speech? This is important because fair speech cannot be completely free while free speech implies the freedom to use speech to squelch speech (the bullhorn effect).
"But that issue aside, the very basic problem about the US is that companies have the right to lobby. As long as that situation endures, The People will always be fighting an uphill battle for their rights."
Because according to SCOTUS precedent, companies ARE people; otherwise it can be argued they can't be tried, taxed, etc. Gonna be hard to fix that without Amending the Constitution.
"There is no way I'm going to give up the right to drive, even if it means ripping out or disabling any AV tech supplied by our overlords....."
Driving is NOT a right (it's not in any law or constitutional mandate), as the government owns the roads and regulates the vehicles. If you try to rip out the AV stuff, they'll probably use that as an excuse to impound your car.
And for people who MUST use the car to work and feed the spouse and kuds, we just kick ALL of them to the curb?
Or as put in an episode of Dragnet regarding abused wives staying with their abusing husbands, "Who's going to bring home the gtoceries?"
"And no doubt, we'll need another 'technology' to protect HVI from getting hacked. What these innovators need to do is come up with a 'computer' design that can successfully isolate one processes memory from the other."
Which is practically impossible because processes have no practical use without the ability to communicate with each other. And it's that communication channel that is, was, and always will be a point of vulnerability.
OUR point is that security will ALWAYS be tacked on as an afterthought because the first priority will ALWAYS be "Get the Bloody Job DONE." Unless security IS your job, security will NEVER be the first priority. Put it this way. You can BS around a wrong answer, you can't BS around a missed deadline.
"It's not (or shouldn't be) their right to demand that everyone else is punished in order for them to shirk that responsibility."
Not necessarily, because they could easily teach their children to be well-behaved criminals, which has knock-on effects for everyone else. No one lives in isolation.
The point is that there is a financial incentive to de-anonymize the Internet's netizens. Meaning there will ALWAYS be someone out there trying to connect the dots, no matter how much effort you put into scattering chaff, much like a letter in the mail, the required information (addresses) alone are enough to start painting a picture. Frankly, if you want to stay anonymous, don't communicate. EVER. In fact, don't even step out into public streets (as you never know where a camera is hidden).
"Even the argument that they make great learning tools is flawed. Personally I think it's better to start as you mean to go on. Learn the hard stuff, get over it, and get good. Never mind pissing around with toys first."
What you may call a toy others would call training wheels. I believe someone once said you have to learn to stand before you can learn to fly.
I believe it would take a lot more than that. After all, does Netflix hold a candle to YouTube? In the end those four little letters have such an allure that people would probably give their soul away as long as they see those magic words "Facebook is Free." As the comedian said, "You Can't Fix Stupid," and Stupid's gonna take the rest of us with them.
Actually, I drink Sunkist. It's not an advertised soda, and I settled on it after trying many other orange sodas and finding them lacking in orange flavor. I've also drunk RC which is also not advertised. Otherwise, it's usually whatever's convenient for me (I would really believe you if people made their restaurant/take-out choices based on the sodas they served).
Based on what I've read to this point, the victim was crossing the road, which ordinarily requires you to walk it across, as one is only supposed to ride along a road. Second, there wasn't a crosswalk there, so the victim was likely jaywalking. Third, the car didn't even attempt to stop, meaning it basically never saw the victim. This is there I'm not too clear because I don't know enough of the context to be sure the victim was visible for long enough to expect to be able to react.
Probably the next step will be for the letters and so on to cite US and state laws that (when viewed a certain way) require banks and the like to offer refunds for instances of fraud (sort of like chargeback requests for fraudulent credit card transactions). Adding the stain of legality may make more people take the bait in spite of countermoves by the firms because the customers will think the companies are trying to scam them and that if all else fails they can consult a lawyer.
No, Facebook is more a symptom of the problem. Remember there was MySpace before Facebook. The problem is people, period. Here's an article that posits this.
"That makes no sense. If staying in touch is that important, then one would think they'd be willing to go to the effort to have more than one means of doing so."
They can't AFFORD it. Why do you think I keep saying "Facebook is Free"? Have you seen the way of live in parts of Southeast Asia where the software companies don't bother chasing bootleggers because they can't expect honest customers in the first place? That destitute.
"...unless some rich billionaire who feels bad about the harm he's caused the world (hey Zuck, you listening?) starts one as a non-profit that doesn't take ads and maintains strict privacy controls."
Except even non-profits tend to solicit donations. I doubt even the richest man on Earth would be able to keep something as big as Facebook running for more than a year.
"How about telephones or are you post-telephone?"
YES! Phone calls costs, but "Facebook is Free."
"How about letters or are you post-letters?"
YES! Many of them are in the sticks. Letters to them get Return to Sender.
"Email? MySpace?"
YES! Internet access costs, but "Facebook is Free."
"If you can dispose of those to communicate only by FB, something you (plural) must have let happen by mutual consent because nobody actually forced it on you, then you can also dispose of FB."
I can't. Family First. And before Facebook, I would probably only learn of family I never knew about in funereal letters from others years after the fact.
"There were those who worried that the breakup of AT&T would destroy consumer value. That was probably marginal. The worry about the same in the face of a proposed M$ breakup was fairly clear (except that almost all of their offerings were garbage). In the case of G especially, but also f, it would be pretty much crazy to argue that a breakup would not destroy consumer value."
It would also probably, much like AT&T, not stick well. Instead of a telephone monopoly, the Baby Bells glommed back together into an oligopoly (the new AT&T, Verizon, et al) each as big as the old AT&T was originally. How do you stop such a breakup from gravitating back together again either through M&A or through attrition of underperformers?
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