If I can’t own it, I’m not buying it.

As someone who used to download C64 games in the 1980s, from a BBS, trust me. Pirating existed decades before BitTorrent.

Decades.

Don’t forget to include the hacked controller firmware that reports the drive size as triple what it actually is.

Then that’s changed since the last time I toyed with the idea. Which, granted, was probably 20 years ago…

The big issue is that your network provider is also the physical provider, and there’s no real competition as a result.

When most people got their Internet service over telephone lines, your ISP didn’t need to also own the telephone lines, they just needed some telephone numbers.

When the telcos themselves got into the business of providing internet access, they pushed out the competition.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, written by a Republican Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic president (Clinton) is largely responsible for the current state of affairs.

The “Information Superhighway” is a toll road, built by taxes, but owned by private corporations.

What’s crazy is that the government paid these corporations to build this infrastructure.

When your government pays, say, a road building company to build roads, one doesn’t then grant the ownership of those roads to that company.

But that is EXACTLY what we did with our communications infrastructure.

What’s crazy is you can build a kit plane for less than what this costs, and flying a kit plane does NOT need a pilot license in the US.

It’s Apple. They make everything other than just using their own stuff harder.

It’s kinda their whole shtick.

If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it! 🤣

Prebuilt is almost always the wrong answer. That holds true in way more fields than just technology as well.

The phrase “bought versus built” comes to mind.

You can almost always build exactly what you need for less money or headache than you think.

Will you maybe spend a little more than buying some cheap one-off? Possibly. However, the best part of building it yourself is that you’ll also typically know exactly what you’ve got, and if you use off-the-shelf parts, replacements and upgrades are easier in the long run.

TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.

Except you don’t need to have bought one to be affected by it. Maybe your employer bought one, and infected a computer you use at work.

I am tired of US citizens misunderstanding the entire point of the 1st amendment.

It has absolutely nothing to do with private companies. You can just not use their services. It has to do with the us and state governments not being able to jail you for talking trash about them.

Keep in mind that, at the time, the monarchy of England was known for jailing people who talked badly about them.

This was to prevent that. It wasn’t to make sure Bobby could tell Janie she was a cunt, and her not be able to slap him.

I have a kid. She turns 18 in September. I thought it was funny.

I also still make jokes about my mom, and she is now sitting on top of a shelf at Dad’s house as of a few months ago.

Equality does not truly exist until everyone is equally armed. Money can only be synonymous with power, as long as the people allow it to be.

When two groups of people are more or less equally armed, neither has the advantage over the other.

What many people fail to realize is that while armaments have changed over thousands of years, as long as there appears to be a balance of power, peace happens.

But once one group or another no longer perceives “the other” as being equal in power to them war is inevitable.

That, in a nutshell, is what is happening today in the USA.

When one group of people has weapons, and the other doesn’t, it won’t be long before the first group decides the 2nd group looks like easy pickings.

Difference is the school isn’t going to confiscate my kid’s watch (yet)

I’ve been rockin my HL3170CDW for many years now. I have absolutely no issues with this printer, and I’ll buy nothing else.

This existed briefly, but was quickly removed because big box retailers complained that people were looking at the real stats instead of big numbers in their ads.

Banning something is not the market regulating itself. That’s outside forces regulating the market…

Yes please. Can’t be much worse than what we have now.

I’m predicting they build it in just 2 or 3 cities, then quit.

Again.