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Comment Re:Simple answer... (Score 1) 484

Because there are obvious safety issues with crossing a road outside a crosswalk, whereas you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a similar rationale for carrying ±2 grams of pot.

It, again comes does to removing judgment and making clear lines. First, the premises of both laws: crossing the street can be done safely or unsafely; smoking pot by yourself is not harming anyone but providing pot for others could be a harm to others. Now, how to enforce them without making vague rules: lines painted where it's permitted; a mass measure to determine how much is more than for oneself.

Of course, there are times when one can cross safely outside the lines and there are times when one wants to smoke a lot more, but if we make laws to encourage one type of behavior it's better for those laws to be clear. Lines and numbers do that; that's why there's a number.

One can disagree with the number, but that's how limits work. Same goes for BAC or number of times you enter the country on a visa or amount of money you can carry across a border without declaring it or value of a gift you can give without it being taxable income or so many other things.

Comment Re:Board games are forever... (Score 1) 171

Both video games and board games can be very good. I've noticed years ago that there are so many games out there of all formats, that I will never have time to play them all so I've cut my budget in all gaming categories. I used to have boxes of rarely played board games (hello Die Macher) and gigabytes of rarely played video games (hello Theater of War). Now when I want to game I look through my library and play one of those. Most of the time I find something enjoyable to play (hello Baldur's Gate 2 I didn't finish back in the day and hello Amun Ra that's still amazing fun). I still acquire new games, but much more slowly.

Board games address your six points, but so can video games. The only ones that they can't address are #2 as they do require battery power.

Comment Re:Privacy means local storage (Score 2) 99

The major difference is that a company given a letter (not a subpoena) has no incentive to not hand over the data. It's not like consumers have ever shown they care (enough, via the bottom line). Companies know this. That's why Amazon shut down WikiLeaks with only a phone call (no subpoena) and no one cared that the government could just silence a website they disagreed with without even making a legal argument. That's why scuba shops handed over their customer lists to the FBI when asked, without a subpoena. There are so many other cases of companies thinking "well, it's not like the customer cares, we can be nice to the government and not even piss anyone off".

In the case of the subpoena, yes you gain nothing by storing the data yourself. In the case of a letter or phone call asking nicely, you have far more control. You can ignore it. A company may or may not.

Comment Re: Doesn't apply to Google (Score 1) 73

That other eco system doesn't deliver updates to every single device on the same day.

Well, I don't know what you mean by "every single device", since not all updates are for every device. But, they do *offer* the update to every *eligible* device starting on one single day. If a customer wants the update, they touch a button. If a customer has automatic updates, they'll get it sometime "soon", where "soon" is indeed staggered and might be a day or so later. For people that want it, they get it day 1. For people that don't care or pay attention, they get it anytime from day 1 to day N (where N in my experience has been single digits. For people that don't want it, they never get it.

Comment Re: Doesn't apply to Google (Score 1) 73

I don't use an Android device, so I have nothing to complain about. I was under the impression that Nexus devices did not have carrier-specific-bits, which is why I was trying to understand the reason for a delay. Network saturation makes no sense, since it's clear that other eco system can handle a release day over the same networks. Testing makes no sense, since Google tests their bits before giving it to carriers. If the carriers want to integrate other bits for other devices, fine, but why delay Nexus updates for that reason?

Comment Re: Doesn't apply to Google (Score 1) 73

From what I understand, Google hands over bits to the carriers, and the carriers then choose a timetable for automatic updates. The argument that saturating (really, how big are these updates and how many devices that this is a major concern?) networks makes sense here, but the number of models does not. The issues stemming from number of models will be caught by Google's testing before the release bits get sent to the carriers.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 602

I agree with you that writing fair and sensible tax regulation is difficult, but I feel like your example, being specifically contrived to make your point, weakens your argument. Your purchase of coffee from is one transaction. Starbucks UK buying beans from Starbucks Luxembourg is a different transaction. Starbucks Luxembourg buying beans from Jamaica is a different transaction. Starbucks Ireland providing HR services to Starbucks UK is a different transaction. One could write regulation on a per-transaction basis. By pointing out that a simple cup of coffee purchase can be broken down to a lot of supporting transactions, while true, you are adding complexity which hides the really insidious complexity of webs of corporate entity ownership.

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