Google Reader is the closest thing to a replacement...but it's really not. Basically it was an RSS reader with a *very* different UI and some widgets for things like gmail, weather, games, etc...

https://commons.lbl.gov/downlo...

And yeah, it was actually a pretty big deal when it shut down...were you living in a cave or something? ;)
https://www.google.com/search?...

That's funny. I've never paid a fee to use an ATM. Ever. Regardless of what ATM I use. I suggest you get a better bank, because if they nickle-and-dime you for crap like ATM withdrawals you are probably getting fuckin *screwed*.

And I find ATMs provide me a far better service. In fact, I currently live 500 miles away from the nearest branch of the only bank at which I have an account. Been like that for two years. Never had a problem. 90% of my banking is done online, and when I need cash I can go to any of the ATMs within walking distance or any of the dozens on my drive to/from work or literally just about anywhere in the goddamn *world* and pull out as much as I need. 24 hours a day, no line, no wait, no fee.

Try getting cash for the laundry machine from a bank teller at 8pm on a Sunday night....

39% of GLOBAL military spending is from the USA.

Second place is China -- at 9.5%. Then Russia, at 5.2%.

So, say we cut our current spending in half. Who exactly do you think is going to have the resources to invade? We'll still be devoting about twice as many resources to our military as *all of our enemies combined*. We can cut that spending. By a HELL of a lot. The only thing we'd lose is the ability to randomly invade a bunch of countries in the middle east and africa while we pretend to be the world's nanny.

And shit, we spend more than 4x as much as China, but we're in no rush to invade *them*. 8x as much as Russia, but there's still NOBODY who likes the idea of all-out war there either! We could probably cut far more than half and still be alright.

http://www.globalissues.org/ar...

No, it can't; that's an entirely arbitrary system up to the whims of whatever moderator gets the report and perhaps whether or not they ate breakfast that morning.

I'd rather have the not-quite-scammers than random takedowns of legitimate products. But hey, if you're not proposing *government* action, then have at it. I think it'd be bad for business, but there's plenty of room for competitors...

Now go find an auction site you can convince to implement that -- or go build one!

See...I was always a huge Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix supporter as well. I still remember the big online release party they had for 1.0. I raved about it so much in highschool my dad bought me a Firefox T-shirt (which was not the kind of thing he generally did...chips or candy from the store, sure, but he didn't just order crap for us)...which was my favorite T-shirt for several years.

But I haven't used it much since Chrome came out. I switch back and forth every few months, but I tend to favor chrome for performance and stability.

But I installed the nightly for Australis a while ago and was blown away. Firefox is FINALLY ahead of Chrome again, and it is *wonderful*! I can't wait to go home and update Firefox on all my systems.

I'm glad Firefox wants to be Chrome. Chrome is better. Now that Firefox is finally reaching that same level, maybe they can try to be *better*.

...so we won't go extinct, civilization as we know it will just collapse?

Or are you just going to ignore the parts of the post you're responding to that don't fit in to your bias?

Yes, humanity evolved and developed to our current state in a period of low atmospheric CO2. Nobody really denies that. It's pretty obvious.

But...we have no way of knowing if our current civilization -- or even the human species -- can survive a world with those higher CO2 levels. Most people would be in favor of acting to prevent massive natural disasters or the extinction of the entire human race if possible.

Not that I'm saying humanity WOULD go extinct...I think climate change will be very painful for us, and we should try to mitigate that, but we'll survive regardless. We're pretty damn good at that. But it could certainly set us back a few hundred/thousand years....along with causing millions of deaths...so it's probably a good thing to try to avoid.

I agree that it's not quite the same thing, but I think the lines are too fuzzy to be able to write a law or policy that can actually distinguish between the two.

If you didn't see it, go read the reply by an AC, it's basically the same argument I'm gonna make:

There is an implication on the internet that everything is authorized until it states otherwise. Nobody ever gave me permission to access Slashdot or Google or Facebook. I typed in the URL and it gave me access. Had I typed the URL and it came up with a password prompt and I went searching for a back door to get access to it anyway, THEN it would be unauthorized access.

I'm not saying no crime was committed here. There certainly was. Weev certainly knew that as well. But Weev did not commit the crime, he merely discovered it. AT&T *did* authorize him to access that information, and *that* is the crime.

I agree with you completely on those analogies. Where we disagree I think is our perception of how the internet functions.

The way I see it, AT&T *publicly published* that information. They shouldn't have, but they did. If they took all that information and stuck it in a book and sold that book to Barnes and Noble and I then went in and purchased that book, am *I* the criminal? That's absurd! The way I see it, if it's posted on a unsecured web site, that's the same as having it published in a physical book or newspaper.

AT&T made that information public. Once they do that, there can be no such thing as "unauthorized access". Weev did not commit a criminal act, he merely *discovered evidence of one*.

I think he's referring to Google Homepage, AKA iGoogle...they have nothing even remotely similar, although numerous *other* companies are now providing similar services...

That information is an infinite good! So long as they don't sell that information to anyone else, and only use it themselves to place ads. They don't sell it once, they get to sell it *every single time you visit one of their websites*. And with so many others using Google ads these days, they pretty much sell your information any time you load any website.

In this case, they really do make up for it with volume.

So if I hire a piano teacher for my kids, and he agrees to accept payment in, say, fresh oranges instead of cash, he then becomes a customer even if I'm not selling those oranges to anybody else?

Sorry, but that's not how it works. The form of payment is not what determines the relationship. I am not offering my personal information to anybody who is willing to pay. Google says 'here is the product, here is the price', and I pay it that price for their product.

If I was a vendor in this relationship, I would be the one setting the price.

Uh...my highschool managed that without any cloud servers. All our personal directories were on a network drive. Not that difficult. Followed you between classes, between years, between buildings anywhere in the district.

And in fact, my university (Penn State) managed to do the same thing even between Windows, Linux, Unix and Apple machines. And I was able to mount all of that as a local drive to my home systems as well.

Penn State University has LibreOffice installed on all of their lab computers. In fact, they've been using it so long some of the systems still have a version so old it's still called Star Office. But they've always got MS Office installed too. Any many professors consider anything submitted in any format other than .docx to not have been submitted at all -- I know people who have received zero credit for assignments they submitted as a .odt. That's the real problem. The kids understand this stuff, but their teachers not only don't know, they do everything they can to actively avoid having to learn!