Maybe if you enlisted John Cameron to create a movie that blends Avatar and Cats? If he could add aspects of Transformers or Fast and Furious, that would be great.
I think you're onto something. Maybe Michael Bey and we add explosions.
So instead of passing laws to require policies to be written in such a way that they be understood by most people, we're now using A.I. to summarize in plain english what the policies contain.
So you are saying the developer had the ability to unilaterally change the laws in every country?
Yes, there may be a better solution, but that does not mean that working towards solutions in your grasp is a bad thing. If you only accept 100% perfect you'll never improve.
Take your username to heart - they did something which is a step in the right direction and within their ability. Celebrate that, don't dismiss their efforts because it's not the sweeping solution you want.
My favorite is the IBM M Types. I have two. They've lasted for almost 40 years.
I loved my Model M. I taught myself to type on a Vic-20 that really had a lot fo key travel and needed a hard press, so it sounded like a machine gun when I was writing (vs. coding, which usually was at a more sedate pace). One day when I showed up for work it no longer responded - later I foudn that some coworkers didn't like the sound. I wish they told me before someone took it into their own hands.
I spend less than that for an entire month of groceries.
Psychologically, you will value it more if you paid more for it. You will also defend your choice more if you have a greater stake in it.
You don't need to be Serena Williams. I think Randall vastly overestimated how difficult this would be with practice. While taking tennis lessons in jr. high, my serves were unusually accurate for my class. The instructor put small garbage cans into the corners of the service area and said he'd buy lunch for anyone who could hit them a dozen times. I hit them 22 times, the closest anyone else got was 7. (My serves were also among the hardest in the class, so I wasn't trading off speed for accuracy. It all comes down to a consistent toss and swing.)
This is actually addressed in Randal's blog post, about the the differences in hitting things on the ground in specific portions of the court vs. hitting something in the air. Being able to place a ball in bounds where you want it is a practical skill for a tennis player.
One group of programmers at my previous job had 2, sometimes 3, 24" monitors each.
Invariably, one monitor only displayed Outlook full-screen. Huge waste of money/space, if you ask me.
A classic blunder it not to realize that equipment is cheap and people are expensive.
Cost of a monitor - under $300 depreciated over 3 years - so $100 a year. Total compensation (including health care, PTO, bonuses, training, etc.) of a programmer. At least $60K. Amount of money earned due a 1% increase in efficiency? $600/year. So with very pessimistic assumptions, that monitor has completely paid for itself after 2 months and is earning money after that. And that's assuming replacing every three years, it's even better if it lasts for longer.
Oh, and 1% is about 36 seconds an hour of not fiddling around with it. If you don't think that's achievable, then rethink your assumptions.
It is pretty obvious that it is a massively bad idea.
I'd extend this to be that it's only a massively bad idea to anyone who would be affected by it. For a shareholder who is seeing reduction in recurring costs without a corresponding reduction in "soft costs" and efficiency, morale, and retention might (and do) think it's a good idea.
So if party A has agreed to a term of service that may be unilaterally updated by party B, and that sort of contract has been going on for decades so has been shown to be robust legally, why is it now suddenly against the contract for party B to do exactly what party A allowed them to do - update the terms of service unilaterally?
This doesn't focus on the right question. Really, we don't care how much Amazon deliveries contribute to global warming We care about how much more or less it adds than other transportation methods (including warehouse to distributor to store to your vehicle). And we don't even care abotu that for any one product, but for purchasing patterns over time. Parts of the distribution path will be more efficient due to bulk, parts less efficient. How does that work out?
If you had an official account it was still there and you had no access to it and what you paid for. These guys are literally hoarding stolen property.
Damn, you need to charge every single publisher who shut down am MMO with a crime now! They have copies of YOUR data. Hoarding stolen properety. YOU HAVE PROOVED *sic* THAT EVERY SINGLE SHUT DOWN MMO YOU CAN NOW PRESS CHARGES AGAINST.
Oh wait, no you can't. Read the T&C, you don't own those creations.
Now, could NCsoft chase them for holding stolen NCsoft data? Sure. Another reason why I could understand they wanted to stay under the radar. They aren't doing something legal and I don't celebrate them doing that. But your claims just show a lack of basic understanding.
"Hey Google!"
Respectfully, if you have a home assistant, you really aren't the target audience for a discussion about microphone privacy. If you can believe that some others do care about this (and the other posts on this thread should convince you that's the case), then your remarks are both pointless and inflammatory.
"Hey Alexa, what's the best model of tinfoil hat? Asking for a friend?"
If on the other hand you believe there is no possibility of bad actors among all the hardware/software/firmware makers (plus anyone who can hack these devices) you are misinformed. It seems that you were able to find amazon links, I suggest next use your favorite search engine to find the plentiful documented cases of abuse and educate yourself.
Any company will push for what bring them money. The time to push back is now while it's still a pilot. Some people with cheap access to lawyers looking for full refunds on their Sony smart TVs because of admitted malware installation. Organized boycotts of the companies. Charges for theft of services of internet access for unwanted ads. I'm sure there's more ideas, which regardless of individual merit have a nuisance factor that will signal to Sony and the others this is not acceptable.
It is natural for companies to try to make new & increased revenue streams. If it's in a way that you find intrusive you need to be willing to push back otherwise it will happen.
It's not just Microsoft, it's anyone who rents content to you. Had an interesting discussion with a friend a few months ago where he talked about all the content he'd bought from a well-known streaming service. I corrected him to tell him he'd rented it, not bought it. Even after multiple iterations of explanation, he still couldn't quite grasp that since it was held on someone else's servers and they could change their ToS any time they felt like it, all of his content was rented, not bought.
Silly thing was he'd actually already been burned by this service when they decided to withdraw access to content he'd paid for.
And I can't believe you're attempting to help the corporation brainwash your friend.
That is exactly what the corporations want, because it (a) puts all the power in their hands and (b) exonerates them of wrongdoing and punitive penalties for stealing the content he purchased.
YES, they can turn it off at any time. NO, that doesn't not mean that they have a unencumbered right do to so and can do so without penalty. It's corporate shills, intentional or otherwise, that convince people to give up their rights in favor of the company by not even trying to fight it.
What you should be doing is convincing your friend to push for not just reimbursement but also punitive damages for the material they already took away, as a sale had happened, and attempting to redefine a common-use term to be something completely different in the fine print of terms and conditions is something our legal system should protect us against. Go to small claims court and get a default judgement against them when they don't bother to send a lawyer, or more likely a settlement from their legal department because it's cheaper than sending a lawyer.
"if you pay for eBooks, music, movies, video games, or any other content from a store that uses DRM, then you aren't really buying those digital items so much as paying a license fee for the rights to access them... a right that can be revoked if the company decides to remove a title from your device unexpectedly or if a company shuts down a server that would normally handle the digital rights management features."
That is bullcrap that the companies do their best to get you to accept.
If you wish to license me something, list it as "License this eBook". If you list it as "Buy this eBook", then I will push that the action taken on my part was a purchase, which should supersede any terms and conditions because there is a clear and common use definition of the word "buy" in a retail transaction which they are in breach of.
If I do markup in a book, then in addition there is theft of some sort going on if a company pulls the license.
Do not accept companies redefining these things to put all of the power in their hands.
Not a solution for all robocalls, but a partial one for using up your mobile minutes. My understanding is that some countries issue mobile numbers from different blocks then land lines. And have enforced laws. So it's trivial for a robocaller to identify and remove mobile numbers, and real penalties if they don't. The robocallers police themselves to make sure they don't call mobile and hit hit with penalties and fines.
Now, this doesn't help out-of-country callers, but those at least probably have some costs per call which should reduce the number compared to domestic calls. Even the foreign call center ones probably currently have the calling being done domestically and then connecting you to an open line with a person if someone picks up - that's how to have a lot more robocallers going then agents to cut down on your human costs.
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong -- until the next person quits or is fired.
