I suppose one could argue that cities in the early - mid 20th century weren't as heavily populated. I could be wrong, but I would also assume that noise levels were much lower and the streets much less congested. Looking at old pictures of city life, you often see kids playing in the streets. I don't think that would be possible today.
> I suppose one could argue that cities in the early - mid 20th century weren't as heavily populated. I could be wrong, but I would also assume that noise levels were much lower and the streets much less congested.
That is wrong I think. Inner London for instance still hasn't recovered the population level that it had in the 1930's. There are also videos that show a lot of traffic, and huge numbers of pedestrians. Go back another 30-50 years and most of the traffic would have been horse-drawn carts, which means enormous amounts of excrement, and extreme levels of noise, because before the invention of pneumatic tires wheels were metal on stone.
True, European cities would still have been densely populated, but I was envisioning US cities from that time period since we are talking about the American 'burbs. (I could be wrong just as well.) I currently reside in DC and the old, original suburbs as well as what used to be considered the outskirts, have long been consumed by the metro area. Where it was once sparsely populated, it is now heavily populated, heavily paved and herds of cars as far as the eye can see.
I would argue this is done more as a psychological status symbol. If goods such as furniture and appliances are so cheap that your "average joe" can buy the latest appliance on a whim, the symbolism becomes diluted and your friends will be less inclined to make frequent purchases for these items. They will seek out new status symbols.
From my US perspective, I don't think anyone here believes that Sweden (or any other Scandinavian country for that matter) is some kind of wondrous utopia of social democracy without its own problems. What is going on is more of a growing sense of despair and frustration as we see other Western countries moving forward with social progress as we remain stuck in the 20th century, unable to figure out even the basics. Having a conversation regarding the "disposable culture" would not even be a blip on the radar in our political environment (mind you, this is an environment in which one of the main political parties has put forth a candidate who publicly stated that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese[1]). So, to see other countries discuss issues such as these is both literally and figuratively a foreign concept.
I'm with you. I see all kinds of progress and basic needs met in these other democracies. In the U.S., the situation is brutal for a lot of people with most political activity intentionally ignoring every real problem and solution we have to focus on side issues or outright superficial ones. That the corporate media makes money on the status quo and shapes its presentation accordingly means activists might never be able to get the solutions to enough people. I've pretty much given up on getting America in shape. Evaluating alternatives where their people at least try on a regular basis.
> I really hope ISP naming and shaming takes over, so we can make DDoS a little bit more difficult.
I think naming and shaming would have little impact and whatever impact it did have would be short lived. Consumers tend to have short attention spans and zero long term memory. Take the banking/finance industry for example, were egregious, predatory and at times criminal tactics are par for the course. Banking institutions are named and shamed all the time, yet the Bank of Americas, Wells Fargos and Goldman Sachs of the world still exist.
From what I hear about the US, many people there don't even have any alternative ISP to change to...
Also changing a service provider often can be a huge inconvenience for one. For instance, if I were to learn today that my ISP makes DDoS very easy and doesn't care about the issue, I'd have a choice between one or two random small providers I don't know, and two big telecom operators that are already on my "do no ISP-related business with" list due to their annoying telemarketing.
It's also fairly standard to suffer 1-2 weeks of outages when changing ISP's, which is somewhere between unwelcome and prohibitive for a lot of people. Worse, even places with "competitive" markets often have only one provider giving decent speeds - 1-5 Mbps maximum is not a realistic option for a lot of uses.
The banking industry is heavily regulated, and getting more so. Described criminal tactics as being "par for the course" is not true.
Also, regular consumers have little recourse against large banks for many reasons (e.g many consumers have little direct contact or influence with investment banks), which is who it is up to governments and regulators. ISPs are similar in some ways, but are way more consumer controlled.
Are we supposed to ignore that the media is 100% unified in stopping Trump from becoming president? I'm against Trump (who I believe to be a fascist and psychologically unstable) but I'm not going to pretend that it is honest to say that Trump literally asked Russia to hack Hillary's emails. I watched the entire press conference btw. If the election pitted Sanders against Bush the media would not hesitate to be this dishonest when attacking Sanders, it just so happens that by far the biggest outsider this year happens to be the biggest asshole too.
..two lobbyists who managed to find their way onto the five-person panel testifying. They represented the interests of traditional IT contractors, who seem to believe it is their right to overcharge taxpayers for complex computer systems that don’t work. Even though, as one congressperson at the hearing put it, those special interests are likely to view the USDS and 18F “with a jaundiced eye,” they were given the opportunity to seize on the authority issue as a way to cast doubts on the Obama tech surge.
I would say yes, as physically being on the inside gives you access to all of the nuances of a particular industry. Outside consulting companies and contractors have a hard time encapsulating these subtleties and, as such, is a major reason as to why enterprise software written for a specific industry is generally quite terrible.
Some nudie pics or vanilla porn would probably be the least of their worries. I can imagine that a service like imgur spends the bulk of their time cleaning up the nastier bits that inevitably creep their way into such a large site. How many companies really want to inherit a high maintenance mess for such little return? At least with Tumblr and Snapchat you have a strong brand. How many average Internet users outside of Reddit (or the 18-34 male demographic) have even heard of imgur?
