Ok, I'm sorry, I got about halfway before I had to stop otherwise I would have chainsawed my own ear drums.

Sorry, I don't really buy it. CNet wasn't owned by CBS until 2008. And even then the suggestion that it's some sort of conspiracy by disney or whoever to spread the use of file sharing seems really far-fetched.

Whenever I'm confronted by something like this I always ask "What's the profit motive?"* I don't really see the end game for the content producers here.

Exec A: hey let's distribute file-sharing software and then people will pirate our stuff without paying for it!
Exec B: errr, ok. How does this make us money?
Exec A: we'll sue a bunch of poor people for millions. They're bound to pay up and the negative publicity won't impact us at all.
Exec B: riiiiight. /backs away slowly

Frankly, I think it's far more likely that cnet, zdnet and so on were tech web sites run by tech guys whose owner hadn't a clue what they were doing. Meanwhile the tech guys were just doing what every other tech guys did and hosted the popular software. I can't actually credit the studios with that much understanding of the technology. "Never attribute to malice what can more easily be attributed to incompetence." Frankly, if anyone in the content industry were even slightly less retarded, they'd have done what valve did ages ago. When we get the movie/tv version of steam, this problem will largely go away.

* a good question to ask climate change deniers.

Homeland Security moves forward with 'pre-crime' detection

Ahhhhhhhhh. For realz?
Looks like they changed the vid. fixed. wtf cbs/cnet?!>> ^Sagemind:

?? Completely misleading title and tags - Woz is not even in this video ??

Wait! We can combine her idea with this technology! It's crazy enough that it may just work!

>> ^NetRunner:

First, the Post Office has been self-sufficient since the 80's. Your paycheck has nothing to do with it, unless you buy postage from the USPS.
Second, there's a difference between "inefficiency", and mandated universal service. What you describe is the latter.
And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.
Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.
As confrontational as all that sounds, I don't really have any particular attachment to seeing government be in the mail delivery business. I don't really see any point in the universal service requirement on snail mail anymore, either.
I'm game for upgrading to something like Finland's universal service for broadband internet, since keeping us all connected via an information network is why we had a government-subsidized post office in the first place.
If you guys sign on for that, I'm all for cutting the Post Office loose.


FedEx and UPS will fly USPS mail from point A to point B. USPS will deliver the last leg of Fedex and UPS parcels in certain areas. It works both ways. They all touch each other's junk.
But the enforced monopoly on private mail creates an oligopoly in the package delivery market. This is the greater evil of government enforced monopolies. Monopolies don't lead to ingenuity, resourcefulness, or efficiency. So markets, that are seemingly free, will emerge around the government controlled one. And since companies can gain a market advantage by piggybacking on government infrastructure and making political deals, then it leads to oligopolies where the consumers are given false choices at inflated prices in their goods and services. Think Verizon/AT&T, Comcast/Time Warner, Energy providers, etc.

The USPS is self-sufficient? The USPS has several billion dollar deficits every year. To stay in business it has to "borrow" money from the US Treasury each year. ("Borrow" because it'll get paid back right?) So... where does the Treasury get it's money from? *cough* ... Taxes?!?! Ok, so technically it isn't using tax money because really that money was spent a looong time ago with how the government has it's own deficits (in the trillions!).
Basically when the USPS brags that they don't get tax payer money, it's at best a misnomer. It's actually far worse. The USPS has to "borrow" money from the US treasury, who has to "borrow" money from the Federal Reserve. And since the Federal Reserve doesn't actually have any "reserves", it magically creates the money, which debases the currency, which causes inflation. So everyone does end up paying for the deficit, only it's with an invisible tax of lost purchasing power of their money, i.e. prices go up. Yet the "debt" holder still collects interest from the tax payers and can even demand payment in full which would probably lead to confiscation of public assets and/or selling of public assets to private companies. So the reality is the USPS does cost the tax payer. The tax payer pays the deficit. Twice. Plus interest. That's why public debt is such a dangerous matter. And also why most of the debt in the world is illegitimate.

>> ^chilaxe:

That's a good point, but I think it supports the argument that the USPS is highly inefficient. If services are genuinely more expensive out in rural areas, why should other people be subsidizing the price?
Bubbajoe in Redneckville can move closer to town if cheap mail is so important to him, and his decisions should have nothing to do with your and my paycheck.


First, the Post Office has been self-sufficient since the 80's. Your paycheck has nothing to do with it, unless you buy postage from the USPS.

Second, there's a difference between "inefficiency", and mandated universal service. What you describe is the latter.

And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.

Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.

As confrontational as all that sounds, I don't really have any particular attachment to seeing government be in the mail delivery business. I don't really see any point in the universal service requirement on snail mail anymore, either.

I'm game for upgrading to something like Finland's universal service for broadband internet, since keeping us all connected via an information network is why we had a government-subsidized post office in the first place.

If you guys sign on for that, I'm all for cutting the Post Office loose.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

I want to see them try this with a 40 inch CRT. Those things weigh a little over 300 lbs.(136 kg) each.


I still have my CRT TV from 1996.

I want to see them try this with a 40 inch CRT. Those things weigh a little over 300 lbs.(136 kg) each.

>> ^dag:

Hate to rain on your parade but they are probably clearing stock for this.


Why would I want the damn thing to be smaller?! Faster? Yes. Smaller? No. I'll be just fine with this minor upgrade.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Hate to rain on your parade but they are probably clearing stock for this.

i'd say this is 100% real, people who fall for Jeff Paul scams only buy computers because they can make millions if they buy one.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20007287-71.html

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, I've noticed a trend on cop videos where you always take up for them. This time around I'm just going to assume you're pulling for unions instead of cops who behave badly.


I've noticed a trend on cop videos that you generally act as if they're all scum, and treat every cherry-picked cellphone video posted on YouTube as incontrovertible proof of that.

Then you trot out your same old trope about how you think the police are literally accountable to no one, because nobody remembers a cop being fired over one of these things (though that's because they often don't care enough to remember it and follow up on it in a few months).

You know the last video of a cop pushing a protester off his bike that made the rounds a while back?

Guess what? That cop got fired.

here's interview w/ the guy and his current employer


Watch CBS News Videos Online

We already have Drivers Licenses (or State ID if you don't drive) and many other identification types, such as passports. And you need these to get a job. Like Paul says, the problem is failure to enforce the laws we already have in place. Although I don't subscribe to Paul's fearmongering in this case, I think a national ID card is a waste of time and will not solve anything.

For this meeting specifically, it was just a proposal and nothing serious is happening yet. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20000758-38.html)

>> ^Payback:
I wonder if the CEO wants where he lives, and where his children go to school, and what times they go there, to be shared with the pedophiles of his community.


He most certainly would not. For example, this article from CNET got Google CEO Eric Schmidt very upset when they published information about him that they obtained from Google searches.

Allegedly, Schmidt demanded a one year boycott of CNET.