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Comment Re:I like it. (Score 1) 306

I don't want distribution channels singlehandedly pricing things. That power only leads to abuses as well.

eBooks should be priced by the "maker", but private people should be able to sell their copy, to provide pressure on the market kinda like used cars do to new cars. Personally I think ebooks would be well served at 2.99 or so a for the average book, instead of pricing them as if they still had to support large book stores and all the inbetweens from there back to the printer plus disposing of unsold copies.

Some books have to be expensive for the author to recoup their cost for a limited audience who won't care if the book is $100 or $125. You know, studies of the dung of wood beetles devouring maple flooring complete with color pics, etc. And at $5, it's not going to sell any more copies and we just get the tyranny of the mainstream, where everyone shoots for a piece of the bellcurve near the middle.

At the same time, the textbook market would collapse for the most part if most institutions went the way of the japanese and printed 6 week sheets to give to HS and undergraduate college students. Since these subjects don't change all that much, it would be trivial if all the highschools in one state banded together to get this done. And then have that effort domino effect.

Comment Not a Slippery Slope (Score 5, Insightful) 186

This isn't a slippery slope, this is simply a cliff. There is no right to be forgotten, because it would mean I don't have a right to remember and thus share that memory.

Think about it, if I printed a memoir in the 1960s, and have, perhaps negative, anecdotes of various people, would that book have had to be recalled from the shelves a few years later just because the right to forget kicked in? Oh right, internet. Changes everything.

The human species is going to have to grow up a little. First as an audience and consumer of the net, and realize that just because it's on the internet (or even wikipedia) doesn't mean it's true. It also has to realize what people said in the past doesn't always pose a true reflection of their current selves - that people change and evolve. Especially from a younger age like 13.

Second, it will have to grow up as individuals and realize, when you put it out there, you put it out there. And no nanny state can fix it.

They can only provide the illusion of fixing it. Because search engines outside the EU are going to ignore this. And savvy people inside the EU will be able to access those with ease, while the heavy handed censorship will only provide the drones with comfort they are taken care of.

Guess what a person's right to be forgotten would turn into in the US? Corporations, who are people, would jump in it.

Why is this being pushed so hard now anyway? Well, Germany got it's hand caught in the cookie jar along with the NSA. It's BundesNachrichtenDienst (BND) works alongside with and is just as if not more invasive than the NSA.

Of course, Merkel gets to put on her show and dance about being outraged her phone is tapped, but she says nothing about how complicit she is in tapping everyone elses phones in her country.

And don't think the EU countries are any more innocent in this.

So instead of really protecting the right to privacy, by people who want privacy in the here and now, by pushing bulletproof encryption standards without backdoors and other actual net positives for their citizens, they just put up this debate of this none-issue that feels really good but does nothing except what government is typically good at - banning certain behaviors from private entities and censoring hot potatoes from public eyes. Ony it's third speciality, making a tax for this, is missing and probably coming. Perhaps an ISP tax that will "help monitor and enforce your privacy online", which is code for another 1000 workers at the BND trading people's naked selfies.

So putting this as some slippery slope is unhelpful. It implies that this is an actual issue that needs to be hammered out. No. It's just bullshit sand-in-the-face for those who don't see what's really going on.

Comment Re:Lacking details (Score 1) 203

I actually think the whole thing was a ruse to sell his Bustin' Jieber app.

1. Make 3D printing claim. (Bonus for wearing Google Glasses while doing so.)
2. People check you out.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Having a ready to buy shitty app fits neatly into #3. The fact is that the school seems to incentivize kids towards bullshit business lingo, innovating this and that. I doubt their math and science is that strong as the Bullshit Dept. I applaud them requiring kids to have a business though.

Smoke and mirrors, razzle and dazzle. Congrats kid, you have a bright future in this country.

Comment Re:why? (Score 3, Insightful) 346

Is google gonna have to run tech support everytime someone mistakenly sends an email?

Should the USPS intercept a letter upon request everytime someone made a mistake in sending it out?

No, it's not doggone reasonable. In fact, it's so unreasonable, that only a company with the pull of Goldman Sachs can demand it.

Do you think you go to google with the same request, they'll bow down to you? Do you think the courts would have granted it so fast?

Of course not, because it's a drain on their resource to help some dumbass rectify his own damn mistake.

Comment Faith in God (Score -1, Troll) 299

By 1977, his bodyâ(TM)s radiation count had fallen by about 80 percent. When the worker returned home, friends and church members avoided him. His minister finally had to tell people it was safe to be around him.

What, wasn't their faith in god strong enough? It works wonders for children without vaccinations...

Comment Re:IF.. (Score 4, Interesting) 561

Really? I don't find the legitimate ones bad at all. Much better than the SAT for testing raw, innate intelligence.

IQ is like a brightness of a flashlight. It's potential. Brighter is better, but it doesn't guarantee you point it at a useful direction, or even use it for anything useful at all other than to study playboy under the bedsheets.

I would think if they took recent Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences, they would be trending above average and by a margin.

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