If there's one thing 2017 has taught me, it's that national and international news is not essential information.
Thank you for your valuable input, Mr President.
Indeed. From the horse's mouth, "I Love the Poorly Educated".
I think this is a good idea too. NYT's paywall is $15/mo. I presume Wash. Post is similar.
This is the current problem with such sites -- that's too expensive. Back when you had to subscribe to newspapers, they didn't cost that much even with the additional expense of printing and distributing physical paper.
Actually, daily delivery subscriptions DID cost that much and more, at least for the big papers like the NYT, Wash Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, etc., particularly if the big fat Sunday edition was included. And that was still a bargain over buying a copy at the newsstand.
Adjust for inflation, $15/mo. is a deal.
I'd first say internet users have short memories, but we more remember everything being free, because it used to be slow and experimental and buggy and... mostly free of spam and trolls (yeah, yeah, get off my lawn). Truth is, lots of Internet users would rather spend $15/mo. on something else... like Netflix, HBO, Hulu-plus, the Sling ESPN package... shucks, if you have to actually read the thing rather than just watch it, it's like you're putting in half the work!
No disagreement, but give cats a break... dogs have been domesticated at least 10 times longer than cats, and humans still don't do much to change the cat gene pool. That's right: even today, cats way-more-often-than-not procreate without human intervention, while dogs tend to be "bred" on purpose for something we like.
Consequently, there's a lot less pressure toward human-friendly traits in cats than there is for dogs. The opposite, actually, if you live in a neighborhood where people let their cats out each night, so they're free hook up with whatever feral bite-and-scratcher happens to be ruling the alleyway.
OTOH, what cats are supposed to do, they do really really well: kill disease-carrying rodents. The human race owes a huge debt to these creatures for keeping the rats from eating us alive, albeit we're the ones who attracted the rats in the first place with all the garbage we throw out into the streets. It's only recently we started thinking pest control is a job for the chemical industry and we started confining these half-wild animals in our homes as pets.
I think it is simply a huge black hole for time that could be productively used for employment, study, personal enrichment, and trolling slashdot. With the additional benefit of avoiding more ads. Don't get me started about TV.
True this. But let's not start sounding like our grandparents, blaming the fall of Western Civilization on that blasted idiot box. We survived. So will the kids who grew up with the Internet.
Big Picture, Mr. Idiot Pai is simply performing a pivot; attempting to duck the controversy about Net-Neutrality with a head-fake toward the boogeyman of mean, mean social media (and the rich, nasty, West-Coast libs who own it). Let your mind go soft and go "Gosh, maybe the Internet would be nicer if ISP's could charge more against nasty social-media sites and newspapers that pick on helpless political hacks like Pai and his sweet dear leader." Think nice thoughts while Pai's FCC junks Net-Neutrality and Title II with a party-line vote to open the floodgates to vast new opportunities for ISP profits. I wonder which of his relatives is flush flush flush with Verizon and Comcast stock, ready to take off once they finally have the right to get a piece of every successful internet business' action.
Put simple, you wanna stream that Disney movie? Not on Comcast's wires you won't, not unless Disney pays Comcast a little extra for that bandwidth. Money money money that will eventually trickle out of you. Oh, sure, you can just pirate from a torrent... but wait! without Net-Neutrality, your ISP can shut that off, completely. VPN? Now they're calling it a business application, costs extra to carry those packets. The possibilities for new fees are as boundless as the Internet itself, with that silly Net-Neutrality out of the way.
So, your point is light and more rigid materials. You haven't answered sjbe's point of slow, bulky, and cannot fly in inclement weather. No matter how light you make your airframe, an airship is always going to be bulky because of how buoyancy works; to float, it must be lighter than an equal volume of the surrounding fluid. But being less weight is awful in view of winds and storms, and being bulky sucks for achieving any appreciable speed.
So, at best, you're offering the public a mode of transport that is slower than airplanes, takes up more room at an airport, and flights must be canceled if wind gusts along the route get too high, winds that a 777 can punch through with barely a bump. And yet still your airship must slurp tons of fuel to fight wind-resistance and air currents. Who's gonna buy a ticket for that? You wanna get somewhere, you're better off walking or taking a bus.
The nail in the coffin is the lighter-than-air substance. Hydrogen? Expensive and burns, see Hindenburg. Helium? Expensive, planet Earth is running out of the stuff, and retrieving what there is often comes as a byproduct of dirty fossil fuel drilling. And they both leak like mad from whatever container you put it in, especially something lightweight for floating, consequence of being such tiny atoms. Worse, you got to bleed even more of it right out into the atmosphere in order to land. Lighter, more rigid materials don't do shit for this. Dirigibles suck. Own it.
My money's on this whole thread being completely off-topic. A first-poster troll, snarking on the NYT and pay-walled sites, sends
Of course, this may all be rendered moot if your ISP decides
> So by your logic...
There is no logic. Just trolling. It's AC, and completely off-topic, even the title. Might have been dropped here by a bot, or at best a drive-by cut-n-paste. There's no conversation here, poster is likely long gone. Not worth your time.
and by law completely subject to regulation... IF we choose to exercise it. Our man Mr. Pai chooses not to, let whoever do whatever, and thus we are fucked.
Correct. In America, if the popular vote runs too close, the electoral college gives the crown to the moron. Twice now.
You might not have liked Hillary, but guaranteed she wouldn't have put Ajit "corporate bitch/tool" Pai in charge of the FCC.
To start, it says that a string of 5's is more interesting than TFA.
10% off the top... I think there's a money-back guarantee if you die and prove you didn't go to heaven.
Sounds like a devil's bargain.
Bribery is at least logical, and can be outlawed. The cult of the free market on the other hand cannot be reasoned with, nor can you jail someone for it.
Bribery can be obfuscated, and the strongest "cult" is the one with the most money to build the biggest church on the most valuable piece of property. Politician say "GOVERNMENT NO MAKE JOBS!!!", corporation/fat-cat say "Good boy, now roll-over while Daddy pays Super-PAC to produce vicious attack-ads to run at all hours on all channels of his big cable network spanning every district."
Politician say "Big cable GOOD! Big cable GOOD!"
Not sure that's what TP is saying: think what's being said is that consumer-protection and control by "giant corporates" might not have been on this Justice Department's mind, given that Big T don't like CNN, and vice-versa. I would guess the thinking goes that if it was News Corp. trying to merge with ATT, this Justice Dep't might not be so quick to require them to drop the Fox News network.
Flying cars, and even self-driving cars, encourage MORE cars and there's nowhere to put them(*).
People watch the Jetsons and think the flying car is the ultimate future. No. The ultimate Jetsons future is the folding car, where at the end of his commute George pushes a button and his flying car folds up into a briefcase small enough to lie on his desk. Work on that, NASA!
* Okay, maybe your self-driving car can drop you off, then drive itself away somewhere, sit around, chatting with other self-driving cars about how their owners treat them, maybe get itself into trouble in a traffic jam just when you page it to come pick you up. Great. Your own car tells you it's going to be late because some asshole autonomous Bolt won't get out of lane. Then it'll get all hurt when you hitch a ride with a friend, sulks in the garage for a week before an online update cheers it up again.
You fool! You give them the secret they needed! The last piece in their nefarious design! Now they will be unstoppable!
"Loose lips bring AI apocalypse."
Remember to say hello to your bank teller.
