Or the whole Google/China thing being related to the back doors they put in place for law enforcement easy access...
It is disturbing to how quickly people are willing to give up all of their info to Google. Some other points to remember... Google has asked the NSA to come help them secure their network. The conflict of interests there is staggering. For the NSA to succeed at their given mission they rely heavily on insecure systems so they can gather information. They have absolutely ZERO interest in assisting to secure any product that foreign (or domestic) actors are using. Now, they really aren't supposed to be collecting on citizens and all, but if those citizens willingly gave all of the information to someone, and they just happened to see that information while helping that someone "secure their network", that would probably be a pretty different story... Even if no one at Google is actually "in" on it, you can bet your ass that the NSA is going make damned sure that they understand every corner of the Google network and any defenses employed at a bare minimum.
Remember folks. Our very own U.S. Government has that whole Constitution thing that goes MUCH farther in actually defining "Don't Be Evil". Most people easily accept that the U.S. Government has frequently overstepped the boundaries laid out in the Constitution, yet why is it that Google can trot out "Don't Be Evil" and everyone quickly accepts that is enough.
CAPTCHA: Congress - How ironic...
Uhm...what price? Less foreigners coming into the country? I don't think you have actually been paying attention. That is EXACTLY what they want. That isn't a "price" that is a "goal". The folks that put most of this psychotic crap into place manage to blame EVERYTHING on a few things. Gays marrying, women working, and foreigners entering the country. The only things they don't specifically blame one of those three issues for they simply pin on those godless liberals for supporting the gays marrying, the women working, and foreigners entering the country.
Government is a scam to tax us... Sure...they sorta provide useful services, but anymore the percentage of their doings, taxings, and spendings as it relates to those things like police, fire departments, roads, is such a tiny fraction of the shit they are actually up to it is pathetic.
Also...it is the defense contractors that you have to worry about screaming "but, the jobs!". Government bailing out defense contractors to save jobs is what Eisenhower warned about and the neocon's have taken it as the guidebook for economic planning. Forever Wars are pretty profitable when you are the guy building the weapons.
Forcing kids to do homework or eat vegetables or stopping drunk drivers, rapists, murders, thieves, genocidal dictators, slave owners/traders, and so on is all morally wrong? To say "almost always" is a little overboard, not that I disagree with the notion you are trying to get across. I just think the situations in which it is not morally wrong to stop someone happen a lot more often than you imply.
In this case...the trouble is that the government is giving verizon special permission in order for them to operate their service (frequency usage, tower locations, etc). Additionally, the whole notion of contracts that one side can unilaterally change at any given time is pretty stupid too.
That said, fraud is one of those things that should be stopped. There are plenty of conmen that tell "the truth" but do it with so much smoke and mirror tapdancing that people still sign up. What you are attempting to do is blame the victim by letting verizon totally of the hook. So...they say it is to help subsidize the phone. Why is it that I would get subjected to the termination fee if I brought my own phone? This also adds to the issue that they claim they recoup the cost of the phone through their rates and the ETF makes up for the people who leave early. Well...why don't I get a lower rate for bringing my own phone? Or why don't I get my rate reduced after I have paid back the subsidized portion of the phone? I am guessing you haven't seen the leaked meetings where they talk about how many billions they make using various fraudulent billing tactics. They force people to burn minutes as they sit through the ever growing "welcome to your verizon voice mail and blah blah blah and blah and blah blah blah pres blah blah blah" messages.
I agree that we shouldn't hire the government to force Verizon to do things against their will. However, calling them out for deceptive and fraudulent bullshit is not the same. (Their argument for why they hide the ETF is that it is 'not important' and they got busted on that when it was decided that big ETFs qualify as materially important pieces of a contract). I think the best solution would actually to slap "users of any service provided using these frequencies cannot be subject to early termination fees or have their service terminated for excessive roaming" in the fine print of the agreements they have with the FCC to even operate. I bet they would scream bloody murder at such a one sided contract change...and then we can tell them "Well you shouldn't have signed anything with the FCC, you could have started your service in the Sahara where there is no FCC."
I bet there will be some good jobs to be had at Umbrella Corp. I can't wait! I hear they have some great underground areas I could hide out in until everything clears up.
There are much cheaper and effective ways to piss off a Republican and it isn't exactly difficult to convince a Republican that your money should be their money. (Ok, to be fair, that last part applies to all politicians, but Republicans are the only ones eager to explain to you that isn't what they stand for while they take the money...not unlike this very case...funny that...)
Don't bother trying. "Rar Rar evil Socialists" types don't have the braincells required to understand that, let alone any of the concepts involved. This is evident in the whole "stealing" garbage you have gotten in reply. One of the key pieces is the meritocracy piece that is disconnected from social status, that those who truely excel at what they do are rewarded rather than those who just happened to inherit their position in society.
In practice the ideas fail miserably in any environment where there isn't 100% willing participation. However, the reality is that it is a better system when it does work. I cannot even begin to imagine the dysfunction of a "capitalist" family life. Families behave in very socialist/communist ways and it has worked very well for a very long time. Now, if we could just convince all of those "woo hoo capitalism is always the bestest for everything" types to live that way at home they will die off as their children starve because they were not able to produce anything worth exchanging for food and care.
At the end of the day idiots and zealots cannot disconnect ideas rather than implementation from good/evil. Human sacrifice isn't necessarily evil. Implemented in basements by people with robes and candles and knives and brainwashed victims...yeah...I think we can agree that is probably pretty evil. Implemented on the battlefield by men and women in uniform making willing sacrifices...we give out great honors and medals to people who engage in that kind of sacrifice for their fellow soldiers.
Well, color me shocked. You just repeated the talking points of a Republican and didn't get modded into oblivion. Even more surprising is that it got a +5 Insightful. I wonder if the groupthink is waning, or if it is that no one knew that Eisenhower was actually a Republican. My guess is most people here didn't know he was a Republican since he sounds so different than the current breed.
For those of you watching at home... Go look up the speech that this came from. The man had no kind words for the military industrial complex and it wasn't just a passing mention. He also had some amazing dialog about what he thinks of the people who would promote the idea of "preemtive war".
I want to build me a frankenPOTUS using Jefferson, Eisenhower, and a handful of others. Maybe then we could get shit back on track.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?