We can always hope that some telco bigwig in California gets caught up in a wildfire that could have been prevented if they hadn't throttled EMS wireless connections.

...We're all part of the economy...

Stipulated. This law is meant to apply to companies that we entrust personal information to that we might think has some expectation of being private. While the impact of privacy regulations like this one may extend to parts of the economy beyond those companies, those are what I was talking about.

...You are forgetting that there are more companies involved than just one, and more than just the companies that you'd like to regulate into submission. If you get enacted a ridiculous privacy law it may raise the costs for anyone doing business with that data, and prices go up so they do continue to make a profit. You've ignored the ripple effect that those costs will have on the companies they deal with, and then the next level. "Profit" deals with that one company. "Prosperity" is the entire package...

No, I'm not forgetting that. I am (and was) asking a narrow question about the focus of these laws as they relate to privacy vs. the prosperity of the companies they would apply to.

If I'm meant to think of the wider implications, then in addition to the ripple effects of costs for ensuring compliance, we could discuss the potential rise of new businesses with privacy as a pillar of their platform or ones who focus on helping other businesses maintain compliance. Legislation that requires businesses operate in a certain way isn't new, and neither are new industries centered around such legislation.

If you want to be pedantic, fine. It'll just be really difficult to have a discussion about a topic when we don't agree on the topic.

...They didn't say profit. They said prosperity. Different word....

Well, yeah. It's a different word. In this context, the "prosperity of the economy" would be the prosperity of the companies impacted, which would be how well they are doing fiscally, right? I'm guessing you agree, because you also said:

...What good are privacy laws if you drive the economy into the crapper and the companies you are regulating go into bankruptcy because of them...

You're assuming, rather than asking a question of me. It *sounds* like you are arguing that the only way that these companies can be profitable (not go into bankruptcy) is to make sure that privacy laws don't interfere with their ability to make money. I realize that I may be misinterpreting that statement, but it's a pretty clear implication that brings me back to the question you said doesn't apply because I used a different word than they did.

I suppose I could rephrase my earlier inquiry, and ask if you think that prioritizing the ability for companies to make profit is a good approach to making laws concerning online privacy, since that sounded like it was a big part of what was being proposed.

ok, and I don't know the math well enough to feel I can speak intelligently, but...doesn't the whole article talk about octonions being the area of investigation. Which would not be quaternions, right?

...Through the White House National Economic Council, the Trump Administration aims to craft a consumer privacy protection policy that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity,..

Shouldn't the balance be between privacy and freedom of speech? Why is profit a consideration for online privacy rules? Are we saying that if we have laws that provide privacy protection, they *must* take the profits of companies that will need to comply with them into consideration when creating them?

Damn. At least it's not underhanded, I guess?

That's not a trolling statement. Just an observation that there were plenty of overtly racist statements being made at the time, sheesh.

Clearly a larger-than-normal quantity of mentally damaged racist bigots on the ol' slashdot today. Well, maybe it's a normal amount, but they're being racist bigots pretty loudly today.

There's definitely a benefit to posting AC when you hold an unpopular opinion, but are afraid to be associated with it. I acknowledge that, but the position that the AC I replied to here wasn't one with minimal support. Yes, reputation gets built and destroyed over names, and being thoughtful about what you post and thorough in analyzing your own thoughts and motivations and how they relate to those of the general public and of your own consideration of moral correctness is important to do when deciding what you share publicly, or in a way that can be associated with you.

Posting AC makes it impossible to tell whether a certain reply is a one-off troll or a persistent line of reasoning from an individual. Yes, I'm using a pseudonym, and I've used the same one since 1999, and all are free to indulge themselves with looking back at past replies of mine and even instances where my thinking has changed over time,

When I joined slashdot, the internet was a much more friendly place than it is now, but it was also more common to adopt a persona and present that instead of yourself. I agree that making your actual identity known is an invitation to abuse these days. Am I willing to put my real name on my posts on ./? Probably not, although to me, the difference between public name and login name is just as big as the difference between login name and anonymous. Maybe I'm just a frustrated person on the internet wishing he was arguing with someone slightly less faceless.

You make a good point, other AC.

So...no, but yes? You qualified that "nope" with a statement that given a sufficient expenditure of time the country would possibly have had said piece of technology? That's what I have been saying (along with saying that adding time and resources continues to increase the chance of gaining said knowledge up until it's acquired).

There are numerous examples of technological innovations happening independently across time and geographical location. Sometimes they are nearly simultaneous and sometimes not. None of that supports an assertion that you can keep knowledge in a silo ad infinitum without a concerted effort to sabotage the efforts of others seeking the same knowledge (assuming that knowledge is the result of naturally occurring phenomena or natural laws).

So, your counterargument is basically "no, I disagree, here are examples where countries used espionage".

Again, I understand what you're trying to say, and I'm disagreeing and saying that with or without espionage, China will catch up with us technologically. They have money, lots of people, and plenty of natural resources. Sure, we could deprive them of those, but it would require war, which I doubt we want to attempt.

Maybe the USSR couldn't replicate Pepsi, but they weren't exactly providing great incentives for people to be successful doing that. They didn't *need* to pay Ford and Fiat for automobile technology, they could have expended massive resources in promoting a capitalist economy that rewards companies for producing better products. That choice in economic models doesn't mean that their lack of success is because humans can only figure out technological things once, does it?

I'm not minimizing the effect that espionage has in the speed of advancement. I acknowledge that as true and evident. I completely reject the notion that by one country guarding its research, another country with similar resources and desire towards a general goal can be prevented from replicating it independently.

I used to think similarly, and then I realized that not having a problem with that meant that I assumed that the ability to judge of people and ability to assess the intentions of people are not likely to be wrong. If your own teenage kid sneaks out one night and re-enters the house in a manner consistent with that of a burglar, I sincerely hope you pause long enough to not kill them. It's a scenario that has happened more than once.

That aside, I don't think capital punishment is appropriate in cases where there's not an obvious intent by the criminal to harm or kill someone. He has a big wrench and is moving towards you? I might buy that you were in enough jeopardy to justify taking his life.

Life is the first of the inalienable rights that our constitution says we have a right to, and I think I agree with its importance in that document. It's not life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the ability to off some jackass who broke into your shit.

That's an incredibly obtuse response. It starts with an assumption, goes on to make a proposition that has has many good counter-arguments, makes an assertion that is questionable, and finishes with some quasi-intellectual statement about the relative worth of human lives. Worse yet, you posted AC just so nobody knows that it's *you* that thinks those things. I wonder why...

...also, are we really saying that the appropriate sentencing response to theft is death? I'm not on board with that. That's how you get people you are pretty sure stole something, but who didn't steal something, killed.

Ok, I see what you're getting at.

If you think it's possible to keep countries from determining other countries' offensive or defensive capabilities, stop encryption from being cracked ever-more-quickly, prevent new biological agents from popping up naturally or being bred, etc, then I would counter that history tends to indicate otherwise. Can espionage speed up progress that a competing nation makes? Sure, but it's not a requirement.

Intelligence, science, technology, and math aren't some hoardable commodities, they're things that exist apart from our desire to control them and that are there for us to discover in the natural world or among the humans in a given population.

Had you said that privilege makes that group more likely to *be* assholes, I'd concur. Then again, being an asshole makes you more resilient to them, I guess, so...yeah, whatever.