Off the top of my head... Distracted driving is a crime in many states now (where distracted has been interpreted more or less broadly to include electronic devices or even eating while driving). Having a phone playing Spotify/Pandora/$X into your car stereo can be a punishable offense in MA, OR, WA, NY, etc.
Just because there have not been actual convictions for said offenses does not mean they are not prosecutable. Depending on the state, simply interacting with an electronic device while driving (to change the station for example), can be a punishable offense.
Distracted driving is now the leading cause of traffic accidents, above even speeding and drunk driving. That to me is a strong sign that it ought to be illegal.
Also, traffic infractions usually aren't crimes or misdemeanor in most jurisdictions.
To be fair it probably always has been the leading cause. Especially if you include things like yelling at your kids to stop messing with each other, day dreaming, etc. The issue isn't that it is dangerous, the issue is that it is selectively enforced.
Also, regardless of the level of criminality, driving infractions can be/are selectively enforced. Being pulled over for being distracted can quickly lead to being arrested for some other offense, or for the police to search your car, or even for them to claim you were aggressive and shoot you dead.
Fancy-ass houses and condos are consumption. Most of these people buy up a place, then completely gut it, replacing everything with the new trendy kitchen or whatever. Even if they sold it for more than they paid, there's no way they made money on it after renovations, taxes, utilities, upkeep, and staffing.
Yeah. Thanks. And nevermind that cost is a function of demand. It's simple...they cost more because they can. People's health is so f'ed they have no choice. Try this: look at the cost of those pills and then look at the p/c occurrence of the diseases they enable in that country? Again, go back to the pull quote from the OP.
Decrease demand (i.e., stop eating and lifestyle'ing in ways that are unhealthy) and prices will fall. But we refuse to prevent the preventable, and then complain about costs?
My point is simple. You can't talk responsibility about healthcare and costs without talking about personal health and personal responsibility for health. Health and healthiness drives healthcare cost.
I could easily be mistaken, but I think that wasn't intended to be an accusation/insinuation?
> ... sounds like it contains ...
I interpreted that as referring to the "Russia/'hacked election' meme" having psyops-ish markings, not my paragraph. That seems to fit with the final comment about it appearing to be "pretty successful".
1) Russia is not a "European" country. Though it does exert influence in that sphere and has a 'European Russia'. Anecdotally most Russians I've met would bristle at Russia being called a "European" territory.
2) If Manafort, Flynn, Sessions, etc had non-shady dealings with Russia you would think they wouldn't have to be so shady about how they present those dealings. Sessions wouldn't have to explicitly commit perjury in front of the Senate to try and hide his interactions with Russian officials if they were normal interactions.
3) If you're taking large amounts of money (say for real estate deals) from Russian state banks and oligarchs you're playing a dangerous game of being in someone's pocket.
>1) Russia is not a "European" country. Though it does exert influence in that sphere and has a 'European Russia'.
As previously mentioned, Russia is by far the world's largest state. Though their land area extends across Asia, Russian culture, customs, religion, and heritage are undoubtedly Euro-centric. Almost 80% of Russian citizens live in "European Russia" [0]. By every calculation except raw geography, Russia is rightly classified European.
Moscow is about 1000 miles east of Berlin. It's 3000 miles west of Beijing.
>2) If Manafort, Flynn, Sessions, etc had non-shady dealings with Russia you would think they wouldn't have to be so shady about how they present those dealings. Sessions wouldn't have to explicitly commit perjury in front of the Senate to try and hide his interactions with Russian officials if they were normal interactions.
I really don't want descend into this unending pit of politically-motivated "nuh-uh", "yuh-huh" accusations about imaginary events and anonymous sources, but I'd at least suggest that you soften your tone re: Sessions. He has not been charged with, let alone convicted of, perjury. You state it as if it's an irrefutable reality.
I think that your bias is leaking through a little bit.
He lied in his confirmation hearing after being pressed on an issue. Then admitted he was not truthful after it was publicized. Lots of people (especially in Gov) get away with that sort of stuff without conviction. That seems to have been a large point of the last election no? Different set of rules for everyone else and all that.
I'd say my posts were drenched in bias from the very start. I'm amazed you missed it ;)
Why is net neutrality important again?
Is anyone ready to respond with a defense of Comcast's monopoly on high speed ISP service? (edit: in many cities and locations)
I don't see how net neutrality regulations will stop trademark and copyright abuses, which is the case here. Now if Comcast were found to be hijacking or blocking the site in question, that's a net neutrality issue (as well as a likely civil issue in a US court).
But there is no trademark or copyright abuse here. The domain and website in question - comcastroturf - is protected under fair use. It's not impersonating Comcast in any way.
The concern is that if they're willing to be aggressive jerks in a situation like this, why make it easier for them to actually hijack or block the site? Of course, net neutrality is about much more than that, but that's how I understood the direct tie-in here.
The connection is pretty obvious. But I'll spell it out.
Comcast appears to be using patent troll level fuckery in an attempt to further their goal of stopping net neutrality. A goal, which itself is about controlling the flow of information, and mirrors this attempt to control information.
Attempts to control (like turtles) go all the way down.
I think the point is not that net neutrality would somehow stop Comcast from abusing its trademark like this, but rather that absent net neutrality Comcast probably would be hijacking or blocking it.
No spacecraft can hope match terrestiral latency, the speed of light is not your friend. There was an identical push for space ISPs in the 90's. Iridium was the only sucessful leo space "ISP". Elon has been sucessful with what he says he will do but all these space bases "ISPs" are vaporware until they deliver. Look at the joke of oneweb with their botched softbank merger with intelsat, consilidating billions of dollars of existing debt to fund another few billion to develop a new constillation does not bode well.
Echostar is doing a good job with their proven GEO ISP constillation. With several billion in the bank they are the most promising to be sucessful, keep an eye on their HTS development over the next couple years. The problem with GEO ISPs is they have 1-2s latency :(
Latency is not a problem for low orbit. You're adding a few hundred miles to the trip, which adds single-digit milliseconds of latency. Cost is a huge problem (that's why Iridium went bankrupt) but SpaceX will be able to launch their constellation far more cheaply than it cost Iridium in the 90s.
I agree that they're vaporware until they deliver, but latency isn't going to be the killer.
SpaceX was the launch provider for a 10-sat Iridium cluster 3 weeks ago so they must have restructured favorably as that launch succeeded on May 2, 2017.
The original Iridium was viable when it came to operating costs, they just had no hope of success when they also had to pay back the ~$6 billion in capital costs it took to build and launch the satellites.
The current incarnation of Iridium bought the constellation for only $35 million, effectively discharging the massive debt and allowing them to profitably operate the satellites without having to pay back what it cost to put them up in the first place.
Come forward to today and satellites are cheaper and more capable, demand for communications is higher, and launch services are much cheaper, so Iridium thinks they'll be able to put up a next generation constellation without repeating their history. It looks like they're planning on spending about $2.1 billion to build the satellites and $800 million to launch them, which puts the new constellation at about one third the cost of the original taking inflation into account, while being vastly more capable. (The current Iridium system gets you a connection which provides either a single voice line or 2.4kbps (!) data service. The next generation will go up to 1.5Mbps.)
Iridium is a fascinating story of hubris, spectacular failure, and eventual success.
Unrelated fun fact, an Iridium satellite was involved in the first accidental collision of two satellites. Iridium 33 collided with the defunct Kosmos-2251 in 2009. The relative speed was over 26,000MPH and sprayed a bunch of debris around the two orbits. Iridium has spares in orbit, so they were able to patch up the constellation without much trouble.
SpaceX carried an Iridium cluster 3 weeks ago. OneWeb, as you noted; also exists. Google has designs in the space and you can see a company like Planet (or even Planet) eyeing the economics of this. My point was that there are companies putting pressure on terrestrial ISPs.
As to latency; their tech woul;d be ~750[1] miles from the ground. They are targeting 1Gbps capabilities[2] vs a global avg of terrestrial companies around 20gbps. I don't know how viable that number is; but if it is physically possible then hitting 1/100th of that would still put immense pressure on ISPS as the floor for your weakest offering is 10gbps to be competitive. 2019 is scheduled date; so presumably 2020.
What large donations from Russia did Clinton receive? Were they comparable to Trump's MANY funding streams from Russian banks? Or multiple of his campaign advisers (not to mention his pick for NSA) having deep Russian ties?
Also wasn't Trump the guy falling all over himself to praise Putin/Russia both on Twitter and in-person? Or explicitly asking for Russia to publish more leaks during one of the presidential debates?
Seems like you have your information pretty mixed up (or simply made up).
Can you post a substantial source for any of your claims?
>Or multiple of his campaign advisers (not to mention his pick for NSA) having deep Russian ties?
On this note, I just want to point out that Russia is the only European country in the world's 10 most populous countries, and that Russia controls more land than any other country on earth (almost twice as much as the second-largest landholder, China).
It should be no surprise that Americans involved in international business will have substantial connections to such a significant world entity.
It's really kind of silly to hear people holding any previous dealing in Russia against anyone that has a remote connection to Donald Trump.
Just because there have not been actual convictions for said offenses does not mean they are not prosecutable. Depending on the state, simply interacting with an electronic device while driving (to change the station for example), can be a punishable offense.