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To elaborate Zeach's comment:
FF had a long release cycle, where major versions came out about on a yearly basis. When FF n+1 came out, it was a rather large step. I remember seeing tons of post about when FF3 came out.
Then Chrome/Chromium came out. They completely downplayed the version number thing (remember going to getfirefox.com and seeing "Get Firefox 3.0!"). Anyway, for Chrome, it was always just "Get Chrome". I can't even tell you the version of Chrome I'm on, because it doesn't matter and I don't care; auto updates and hidden version numbers. As a result, almost everyone is running the most current version (which is good), and updates could be pushed quicker (also good!).
Then Mozilla (FF) was like "hey that's a good idea", but then almost entirely missed the point, still made FF n an obvious thing, and didn't auto update. So instead, it left a lot of uniformed people wondering why it took years for FF 3, and months for FF 10, ect ...
Did that help? |
Here's my Firefox brain spewage rant potted meat product in the new and improved easy opening can!
Feature creep .
The Firefox team is beginning to make FF worse as time goes on and they don't see it. As a whole, they have not learned the lessons of others failures. The computer industry has a name for it, it's called feature creep.
A PDF viewer? What the hell does a PDF viewer have any business doing in a web browser ? That's what PDF viewers are for! The fact that it's disabled by default is irrelevant, it should not even be in there in the first place. It's just as stupid as putting an [Internet connected web browser in the door of a refridgerator]( YES, they actually do exist but WTF do you need an Internet connected web browser in the door of a refrigerator for?
Looking back at history, do you know why Eudora was an awesome email program? Because it did email and ONLY email. It was very good at what it did, it never crashed on me and the entire Eudora team did their best to produce the best email program they could. You have probably heard the term, "Jack of all trades, Master of None." Eudora was a master of email, Qualcomm made a great email program and it complied with the MBOX email file standard which made transporting your email files to some other email program such as Pine or Elm a breeze.
Looking at the other end, I think that Outlook is a piece of shit, its an email program, a calendar, a personal information manager and it has something called the Outlook Social Connector that allows you to communicate with social websites such as Twitter and Facebook? WTF? In an email program? When I install a program, I want their best effort at the primary function of the program, I don't want a hodge podge of warm crap that's passed off as the next best thing! Bullshit, give me a best in class tool that does it's primary function to the best of the developer's ability, not this master of none shit. AOL software is the poster child for master of none.
Ask ANY engineer, no matter the profession, they will tell you that anytime you increase complexity, you increase the probability of failure on an exponential scale.
If you show up at a job to install CAT6 cable with only a Swiss Army Knife, you'll get laughed off the job site and quite possibly fired. Technically, you could use a SAK to install a network in a building but it's not the right tool for the job, there are specialized tools that perform only one function and they do those jobs exceptionally well because their design has been well thought out and they save time and as everyone knows, time is money. No SAK's on the job.
Look at Netscape, I started using it when it was at version .93. It was just a web browser and it did it's job just great. It was small and it was fast for it's time. When everyone was on dialup and you were lucky to get 33,600bps, it was only a 5MB download where IE was something like 80MB at the time. That made a huge difference.
Then came Netscape Navigator where they integrated an email program, news reader and a chat program into the browser.
That's when it really started to go down hill, they looked at the interoperability of Microsoft products and said, we can do that with the browser by gluing together these other programs into the browser!
How many people were on the development team, I don't recall but the point being, it's finite. Now a portion of those people become the email team, another group becomes the chat team and news reader team, they had to develop that functionality and make it play well with the other sections. The knowledge-base of grey matter for Netscape was just cut by three quarters, do you think that'll improve the browser?
Later, Firefox emerged from the Netscape / AOL ashes because of Navigator's failure. The core group of developers wanted the Internet to be as it should have been, now they've lost that vision with this bloated crap ware and accelerated release schedule just to keep up with Chrome? It's affecting the quality in the end.
Now this release schedule every 6 weeks creates an artificial stress that does not need to be there, I used to have a roommate that worked at Qualcomm and when they had a shipping date for a piece of software, he slept in his office and didn't even come home for a week. Imagine doing that every 6 weeks? Gallo had it right in their wine commercials, they wouldn't release a wine before it's time. That's the right way to do it when it comes to software.
You see this in "Internet suites" all the time in antivirus programs and even in hardware, these all in one printers. When HP slaps on a mediocre scanner on top of a mediocre printer and tosses in a fax, you don't get the best in class on each of those devices and if one thing breaks, the whole damn thing breaks.
Every new release gives the developers an opportunity to tinker with something that's not broken, you see it with this new orange button look. Granted, if you figured out how to revert it back to the old File Edit View look, great but millions of people don't know how. Then they made the transport control buttons even smaller! The back and forward buttons used to be green and rather large, now they are about 25% of the original size and white on an Aero background which may frequently change color to white when a program with a white background is behind it.
Why? Hitting a smaller back button does not improve the program, for people with degraded motor skills such as people with Parkinson's, trying to click on a smaller button is absolutely tops in their list of things they needed changed in the browser.
Automatic updates?
Are you fucking kidding me? I want to administer my computers, not the Mozilla team. I very deliberately do not upgrade at 1st notice, I'll let somebody else be the guinea pig for Mozilla or Microsoft for that matter. There have been way too many cases in the software world where automatic updates have screwed up installations, no thanks, I can afford to wait a day or two while I read the tech sites to see if there is a massive fuck up unleashed unto the world, of which I do not want to be any part of. COUGH AVG / McAfee / Microsoft / Symantec COUGH
There had better be a way to disable that shit or else I'm going to have to find a different web browser to use.
Well, that's all I have to spew on the subject for now, that may change in the future. That's my opinion, what's yours? |
Song matching is a tricky science. Like image matching, they have to match songs based on similarity, not exact matching. If they used exact matching, users who encoded their music at different bitrates may sound different than other bitrates (think jpeg lossyness) thus they wont be a 100% match to the original. In order for Google music to find song matches, they must compare the song against their own database of music and report back the closest song in their database (say maybe 95% similarity). For many songs, the explicit vs censored version may be so close (maybe less than 5% similarity) that the matching algorithm cannot tell the difference thus reporting incorrectly. |
Worst top"? What does that mean?
> Even worse for the Cupertino-based company, the iPhone 5 didn’t even crack the top-three at Verizon Wireless (VZ) as the Motorola RAZR MAXX HD, the Motorola RAZR HD and the Galaxy S III claimed top honors at the nation’s leading carrier.
Ah, so Consumer Reports listed the three highest rated cell phones and the iPhone was third in two of the carriers, thereby making them the worst top rated, if you define "top rated" as "one of the top three". |
There are several problems with this:
It appears to require a lamp inside it. The lamp likely uses electricity. The electricity in France mostly comes from nuclear power, but still it's not "for free".
That carbon dioxide is stored as algal biomass. That biomass will need to be harvested periodically. This will take some effort (drain water, replace with fresh fertilized water).
Growing phytoplankton isn't trivial. Cultures crash every so often. When they do, you need to drain and sterilize the culture vessel, refill, reinoculate etc.
Source: I've grown several species of phyto for my fish and coral. |
We saw this last week (will find post later)
This is just a real-time adaptation of the usual prerendered solution
It only looks real, but it doesn't feel real. Absorption is unaccounted for and water doesn't bounce like that. |
Buy RAM.
All computers are slow if you load more apps at once then they can handle... OS X is especially bad in low RAM situations though as it's disk paging tends to be a pig. Windows disk paging is not as taxing so you don't notice low ram situations as frequent.
I believe this is due to the difference between NT and Unix. Unix systems (like OS X) don't page until you're absolutely out of RAM which means when you hit that ceiling the performance hit is huge as it has to make room before it can continue operation. NT (Windows kernel) tends to constantly page things in and out at random meaning if you do hit the ceiling it already has XXXXmb paged and can drop them from RAM immediately (less immediate performance hit). I'm not an expert, this is just how I've come to understand the two different systems. So Windows is always paging so you don't notice it happening as frequently, OS X is not doing any paging until you're literally out of ram which causes an immediate noticeable stop in performance while it pages enough to make room for what you need - while this is happening your system will be nearly completely locked with the spinning beach ball. |
I am FAR from being someone who supports this kind of thing, just saying that to state my bias upfront. I know that theres is very little chance this technology could be removed now that they have it already, and I will admit that the 48hour thing is a good place to start compermise wise.
personally however, i say run the plates against the the list (also checking for expired tabs and such a presume) and then dump the data. 2 days is suspicious to me, to easy to process the data, transfer it to a special server, and technically delete the raw data and be able to say they did but really its just for show. |
This is nothing new. Some task local force dealing with drugs/gangs, the DOD, and a couple state troopers came over to my university one day and gathered all the engineers for a presentation.
They basically were asking for our help to help combat drug smuggling and one of their ideas included synchronizing databases that kept this information being pulled from the roads.
Basically if someone came from well Memphis, TN then tracked to Houston, TX about 6 hours later, then tracked to the border of TX/Mexico (apparently a very common drug running corridor) then it would flag that car as suspicious for the border patrol to take a closer look.
Needless to say out of all the engineers the most qualified were the 5 CS majors (including me) to help with that but well I knew if I got myself involved there will be hell to pay sometime down the road. I can't say about my fellow colleagues but well just as a warning they are working on providing a national car monitoring network. |
Because on 9/11, we had a choice: to be angry, unite, rise up, and all take the fight together to the country that was protecting the people who did this to us, or to be afraid, cower in our homes and apartments and under the figurative bed, and hope that mostly non-existent grown-ups and professionals would protect us. Because nearly all of our political class at the time were "chickenhawks," that is to say physical cowards who, in their youth, advocated for war while being too cowardly to serve themselves, we faced a relentless several-year propaganda campaign aimed at making us into the same kinds of cowards that they were. The overwhelming majority of us bought it, and became the Bed-Wetter Nation that we now are, and looked the other way, because the overwhelming majority of us were willing to accept that we Bed-Wetters don't need to know what the Grown-Ups are doing to keep us safe. |
Very slowly through little incremental steps, which on their own seem ok and in some instances even people want them, but eventually these can build up to something misshapen and unintended. I think Norway have it good where they can't make a new law or a change to an existing one until a certain amount of time has passed. Might be a year I think although I haven't checked it recently. This stupid all sort of rushed through laws from coming into play. Then again we all could learn a bit from them tbh. |
Google for Osama's letter to the usa, around the year 2000.
IMO, it goes like this:
1) "Al Qaeda" (AQ) wants the foreigners (ie. USA) to stop invading their lands (Islamic lands).
2) AQ wants foreigners (ie. USA) to apologize for all the deaths they've caused.
3) AQ wants foreigners (ie. USA) to make peace with Islam nations.
4) AQ wants foreigners (ie. USA) to convert to Islam (lol?). The letter from Osama has some quite interesting religious zealotry. See note below.
5) AQ wants all non Islam nations to join Islam.
Note: This is all about religion, or is it? The previously mentioned letter has a lot of zealotry in it, I found it hard to read because it is so extreme. IMO, Osama was a very smart man. He wants justice for the foreign injustice in his country and/or against his people (people being middle eastern descent). Osama knew the only way to get back to those attacking his people was to use religion to incite unrest. (Still my opinion here:) Osama uses Islam (not saying he isn't a believer, he is abusing the extreme zealotry) to light the fires of other Islamist against his enemies. It has been shown that poor education and religion is a way to create religious armies (see jihads, crusades, etc.). |
What he's saying makes sense to me, but this is where I'm coming from: |
Bandwidth literally costs them nothing and even if they charge for it to recoup infrastructure costs then it sure as hell doesn't cost $50 for 2GB like they would have you believe in the case of cell phones or 20 cents a gig going off of Comcast's overage fees. On the most expensive segment of the Internet, [the West Africa Cable System]( bandwidth only costs 2 cents a gigabyte! And that's with a 200% markup factored in!!!
If we look at actual residential connections and not an undersea cable for a more realistic view, you'd find that it costs about 5 cents to stream an HD movie from Netflix :
>The average encoding rate for video streamed to the Xbox 360 is about 2000Kbps. That means one person watching a two hour movie would transfer roughly 1.8GB of data. For high definition movies, the average encoding bitrate is around 3200Kbps and one user would transfer about 3GB of data. Worst case, imagine that every customer wants to watch Netflix every night at exactly the same time. And let’s make it even worse – let’s imagine that a household has multiple people in it, and there are three simultaneous Netflix feeds going to each customer. Now we need approximately 10 megabits/second for each customer. During a three or four hour window every night, the demand caused by this Netflix loading caps the number of Internet accounts we can give out. The undersea cable can only handle 5 terabits/second, so we can have at most:
>5 terabits per second / 10 megabits per second = 500,000 customers
>So we have to spread the $3 billion cost of the cable over those 500,000 customers. What does that work out to per month?
>In 10 years there are 120 months, so:
>$3 billion / 120 months / 500,000 customers = $50 per customer per month.
>$50/month is the worst case scenario.
>We are assuming that every single customer will be watching 3 simultaneous high def Netflix movies (10 megabits/second) simultaneously. The pipeline can handle that kind of worst-case load, with a 200% profit margin, for $50/month. And that would be some of the most expensive bandwidth in the world.
>What is the cost per gigabyte now?
>If you assume that each customer is allocated a true 10 megabits/second (call it 1 megabyte/second) pipe, and if you assume that each customer fully uses that allocation for 6 hours a day, each customer is pulling 21 gigabytes per day, or roughly 600 gigabytes per month.
>$50/600 = 8.3 cents per gigabyte.
>In other words, Internet service can be provided profitably for pennies per gigabyte in the absolute worst case scenario.
Just for reference, Verizon's wireless network handled 1.9 terabytes just during the Super Bowl alone, so while it isn't published, you can bet their network can support more than 5 terabits a second especially considering they offer their customers way more than 10 mbps on both wireless and wired connections.
Now I believe that they can charge for data to make a profit and sustain their business. But when they overcharge as much as they do, want to be paid three times for a service they are already being paid for by me, put in fast lanes and preferred access connections, pocket government grants and funds instead of using it to upgrade, having 90% of subscriber fees end up being profit and only 10% for maintenance and upgrades, and finally posting over $2 billion in profits for each quarter (they could not charge for data and still be in the billions for profit) and reinvesting very little of that into infrastructure but instead into CO's and politicians' pockets and writing their own laws bringing about regulatory capture and creating duopolies? That is where I have a problem and think we should knock ISPs down a few notches into common carriers. |
Every form of contact is addressed the same. We only treat un-categorizable comments differently. Almost everything gets a print or emailed response to save us time. Remember, Senators represent millions of people. If you call, a staffer will say, "thank you for calling, we appreciate your comments, the senator released a statement on this issue two weeks ago. You can find it xxxxx. I under stand your concerns. What is your name and address so I can make sure you're from our state? Thank you. The Senator likes to respond to his constituents, can you please provide an email address and phone number? Thank you. If the senator adds anything to his position on this issue, we'll be sure to let you know."
Basically, it is the aggregate of your responses that make a difference, not the individual response. Due to the number of calls/emails/mail we get, we treat dissertations and one sentence comments the same. The length of your comment determines the length of your response though, and you will get a response if you ask for one.
So... |
I think it's fairly obvious now that department of Comcast has preventing cancellation rates tied directly to either compensation or employment.
What's funny is that providing amazing customer service when someone is cancelling seems like the best way to get them back eventually... That guy ain't ever going back to Comcast now though.
When he (or at least some people) initially call it's likely for monetary reasons... But provide them with horrible customer service when cancelling certain may impact their decision when the other provider raises their prices. |
So many things....
A. I don't care how far you strip down windows, it's not a "Steam" OS. No matter how mobile they wanted it to be, it's still not going to be as lightweight as Chrome. Trust me I've tried....
B. An A4?? Really?? That's basically like buying an off brand Celeron because the cost was too high.
C. Sure the Chromebook has seen growth, but that is mostly due to their ease of use in a classroom. They are still struggling in retail location and if they do sell, they are most likely returned with 15 days. When I worked for HP we got so many emails on how terrible the big box sales were.
D. "most entry-level PCs, which typically cost around $1,000, Google’s various Chromebooks average at about $300." ....that's just bad writing. There are plenty of what I would consider entry level PCs. Take [this]( $569 Lenovo or [this]( $649 Asus which are both well over entry level.
E. You can't really attack a machine for having a 16Gb HDD that heavily requires a data connection and then turn around put out your 32Gb model that will rely on that precious space to run traditional programs. After a copy of Windows, Office, and a media program of your choice are on their you will barely have room for any personal media...guess Microsoft would recommend their OneDrive or whatever they decided to brand it this year.
F. This is yet another example of Microsoft's inability to produce an innovative product of any real value. The have the resources and talent to restore themselves if they would only take a step back. What's worse is that the traditional manufacturers that helped build the industry have adopted this follow the leader mentality and can't seem to figure out why product after product makes little or no foothold in the market. |
When I came back from uni I was shocked to see my parents installed their WiFi router in the extension. Not just in the extension but on the extreme far right side of the extension, the side furthest from the rest of the whole fucking house. So my garden has WiFi coverage throughout but you can only get online in about two rooms of their place.
Obviously I went out and got WiFi extender as soon as I moved in but I still can't believe I had to. Even worse, I can't believe whoever installed it for them didn't say "You do know this is a ridiculous place to put a router right?" |
It seems quite difficult even with that "simple" equation, and ut seems reflection rate/absorbtions/signals through walls are not really taken into account. |
Never really looked into it so I'm not sure how it works. Does it interfere any with the power going through it? How do the speeds measure up to the more conventional solutions? |
because Uncle Sam has already paid for them.
Okay the the feds give you 5 APCs or whatever. Now you have to invest it modifying them for your needs, mainteance (lets sign an expensive contract with General Atomics), insurance, fuel, etc.
Before, your swat team were fine using just a van. Now you've got massive liabilities in place. Now the mayor is getting endless phone calls from the policeman's union about how the police budget needs to increase because of all these toys. Now he's on the phone with legislators that are going to raise your property bill.
On top of it, none of this is really "paid for." The feds are deficiet spending. So they're signing loans in our names that we need to pay off, with interest, for this shit they don't even need. Umm thanks? We're better off selling this stuff to third-world militaries for a profit. Or gifting it to the National Gurd.
I'm not the type of person to buy into conspiracy theories, but holy hell, is this military to police program a goddamn nightmare and the road to a police state. Worse, this stuff isn't going to NYC or Chicago where it could, arguably, be of use. Its going to some bumfuck rural areas full of corrupt police who want some nice toys for their itchy trigger finger. Look at the Ferguson police photos for more. |
The federal government/Congress can't just pass a law requiring body cameras. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists ~20 powers that Congress has. (The President and Supreme Court have less).
They tend to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to affect activity on a local/state level. I personally feel that's a stretch, but the Supreme Court allows them to regulate wheat growing, gun making, hacking, etc etc. under that clause.
It would be difficult to argue that a city police officer 'affects or is involved in interstate or foreign commerce', so the ICC isn't an option. My skeptical side says that because GoPros are made outside the US, the Congress could pass a law about them, but that is a super-stretch.
So, essentially, the 'power of the purse' is the best tool that Washington has to regulate local police. |
In this case, your statement seems like a pretty strong one, don't you think?
The FCC is not banned from enforcing under section 706. The courts basically said, if you try to use 706 for your authority, it has to look different than regulation under Title II. So they would need to structure it in such a way that it looked different than common carrier regulations.
Another option is the case-by-case basis approach. Now, as the the FCC proposed this, it garnered wide critique from Reddit and the internet because it allowed companies to fault first, and then on a case by case basis ban. But this authority exercised in a different way - say forcing companies to get special permission from the FCC if they wanted to try to make something not-neutral for legitimate purposes (maybe streaming life-dependent-medical devices or something), then this might actually be workable. Idk.
The third option is Title II. Title II is very complicated and its a HUGE book of regulations. The way title II works, since it was in place to regulate a different industry (telephone monopolies), once you put it into place a whole bunch of regulations come into immediate effect. One very tiny part of the book includes regulatory authority to uphold NN. Unfortunately, this is NOT one of the things that come into immediate effect. So Title II itself does not guarantee NN.
The big bad wolf (the companies), say that Title II could do a whole lot of harm to the industry and essentially break the internet. Now, who knows if that's true, it might be. But what's important is that in any case we do something - we should seriously look at Title II to see how troublesome it is.
If it is troublesome, we should find a better way to regulate these jokers. Like an actual law...with the force of law...instead of courts trying to decipher an old law...let's just lobby Congress to pass a new one. |
I was Mormon for 15 years, atheist for 15 years and am now an active progressive Christian. I think I have a little to share on all three perspectives, and why one might switch from one to the other. I think it mostly boils down to institutional culture, and the way an individual experiences it.
Mormons are predominantly conservative. This pretty much cuts across all social, political and economic definitions. This intense conservatism certainly has its "kookier" sides, like denying evolution, free-market fundamentalism and accepting some really racist scriptures without much question, but these aren't really defining aspects of the Mormon experience. I think a lot of these issues simply don't matter to practicing Mormons. Things like family time, showing up in Church on Sunday, keeping the Word of Wisdom and paying attention to sports are far more important to your average Mormon. In a phrase, it's intellectually shallow. You preoccupy yourself with the mundane and let "faith" resolve all of the big issues.
When I was in high school, I started developing a much stronger interest social justice issues, which was matched with a rational-humanist perspective on most big questions. It became obvious that the "Bible wasn't written by God," that science is the path to empirical knowledge and that issues in the greater community mattered more than my moral standards. We'd spend Sundays talking about the depravity of a Ricky Martin video, and I'd go back to school to talk about the Song of Solomon. You start to get a feeling of the cognitive dissonance.
Anyway, I put a deadline of Easter 1999 to get one last experience of "truth." Instead of talking about redemption and sacrifice, Church was about some other petty moral issue. Most of my family members thought that it was pretty silly. I walked away and never went back.
But there's a funny side to being an atheist too, and you touch on it well. Atheists are often wont to say things like "I don't believe any of them are real," and they have the same fundamentalist readings of the Scriptures that all of the Bible belters love. It turns out that both sides of this little debate can be wrong. You can read the Bible seriously (my Bible is the New Oxford annotated) and experience [religion as a metaphor for our relationship to the Universe]( You can enjoy the sense of community, and you can see religion as a platform for social organization and campaigning. King, Malcolm X and Ghandi were all very religion people, and religion was a motivating force for each.
Just because something isn't factual doesn't necessarily stop it from being true. It took awhile to figure that out.
Obviously, I've made my choices, but I see the merit in all three viewpoints. Mormons, for all intents and purposes, are just conservative Christians. You don't do much thinking, but you enjoy your family and your community. You'll notice that they're happy and nice. And why wouldn't you if you fit comfortably into your small definition of how the world works? Atheism is great for developing a humanist viewpoint, but I also found it limiting. To quote Heisenberg , "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."
And that's why I'm a Christian. |
The rules are 8 pages long according to the guy who wrote them, the rest of the 317 pages are explanations of why the FCC has the authority to pass them. The whole point about not seeing the rules yet is pretty much a smoke screen also because the FCC has to allow 30 days of public comment once they are revealed. So once they are finalized we get 30 days to read them over and complain/comment. Both of these "worries" are coming from one side to try and muddle and confuse people. |
Because (seriously) the GOP has one or more think tanks that write the talking points for the party line and distribute them to party members. Ever since Reagan, the GOP has been "encouraged" (very strongly) to talk, walk, and vote in lockstep.
As a political strategy, this has been very effective. The only currently practical way to combat this is to do pretty much the same thing on the other side.
So we end up with deadlock. |
The problem here is that the hardware isn't usable without the software. To sell them separately they would have to sell what is effectively useless hardware. And that is why people get so upset about this. If the hardware were usable for its intended purpose without the software then there wouldn't be a issue.
Also, copyright by itself doesn't prohibit (at least in the US) modifying the software. It prohibits distributing/sharing the software (modified or not.) It is a) the DMCA and b) practical restrictions (encryption, etc.) on installing other software onto the hardware that are the problem. Both of those would not be relevant if the software and hardware were sold as separate products. |
Most of you are missing what is really going on here. There are two things engine HP increase and DEF/EGR delete kits, both are costing them money.
Most tractors have the same engine block and drive components over several different models with the only major differences being HP and price. So I currently have a 9330 tractor which is 375HP, which is the same as 9430 which is 425HP, but $35,000 more expensive. There is a big 3rd party market out there that would make my 9330 the same HP as the 9430 for $2000. Only thing that is required is plugging in a control box, an hour of labour and I have the extra HP. is one company that offers HP increases with just a computer program.
The other thing that JD and other manufactures are trying to stop is DEF and EGR(exhaust gas re-circulation) delete kits. These products both just about eliminate emissions but are extremely costly to maintain and can be very hard on the engines themselves. So an entire industry has sprung up offering kits to remove this equipment off not just tractors but all diesel engines. JD and other manufactures are supposedly worried about liability from the EPA if it is possible to modify this equipment.
There is also the added benefit of having to bring your equipment into a JD dealer for service because they are the only ones with the equipment to read the trouble codes etc.... |
No the USA already told them to downgrade it and put command over the system over to USA military as required.. |
Sarah Palin could go to Africa and help out giving people malaria vaccines and post the clip on fox news without any other advertisement and get more votes than any 3rd party candidate even has in his/her pool of potential voters. |
I've had it with AT&T also. I bought a used Nokia N95 and happily used it without the data plan (I have WiFi everywhere). A month after I sign a new 2 year contract with them, they suddenly classify it as a "smartphone", and force me to use one of their new tiered data plans or suffer the ETF. |
I went to Microcenter, and was looking at the TVs. Saw an amazing 42" HANNspree. The display model looked incredible, and I saw that they were selling it for 500 usd. So I hopped on my BB, found amazing reviews on newegg, and also that newegg was selling it 40 bucks cheaper with free shipping. I asked the sales associate if they would match the price. 15 minutes later he came back and said yes. He carted the TV all the way through the checkout line and helped with putting it into my car. |
Yes and this article is only relevant to otherwise stoned geeks accidentally wandering into best buy in search of the funniest console game – then again they wouldn't care.
True transparency has always existed, and people who bother looking already know about sites that offer price comparisons. |
This article seems to argue the opposite of what you're saying.]( From the article:
>Our nucleus accumbens (NAcc), which is the pleasure center of the brain, releases the hormone dopamine, which is the precursor of adrenaline. Dopamine is very, very powerful. Scientists James Olds and Peter Milner discovered that when rats are overstimulated with dopamine release, they’ll literally die of pleasure (pg. 35).
>
>So, the stronger we want something the stronger our NAcc activation, and the more dopamine is released.
>
>Knowing this, scientists can literally tell if we’re going to buy an item before we even know it. It happens that fast.
>
>How Stores Prime Us To Spend More:
>
>Let’s go back to Costco. You know what you see when you walk through the door of every Costco store?
>
>You see all those huge, gleaming flat screen tvs. Who wouldn’t love a big flat screen? We see these things and guess what happens? Our NAcc kicks in, and dopamine is released.
>
>But, we may not have $1,200 to drop on a new Sony. So we walk on.
>
>Then, we pass the jewelry counter. And the designer handbags. And the DeWalt tools. And the leather easy chairs.
>
>With each look, our NAcc is being prodded, and the dopamine is flowing good. We want that. And that. And that. We get into a state of wanting.
>
>All this is doing is conditioning us to crave a reward.
>
>What’s key to understand about all this is that we may not buy a $1,200 flat screen that day. Or that $800 easy chair. Or that $300 hand bag.
>
>But our brains have been incredibly stimulated by now to want a reward. So, we’ll probably buy that $12 box of cookies. And maybe that beautiful $20 hyacinth bush for the front porch. And, what the heck, that $30 jacket.
>
>After all, we think, $62 is way less than those other things, right? And besides, we deserve a treat. |
I walked into a Borders once, about a year ago. Needed a few puter learnin' books. Spent some time reading, picked out four of em. Right as I was about to head to the counter to pay, I whipped out my iphone, hooked into the Border's free wifi and checked prices on Amazon.com using the Amazon iphone app. Found out I could save about 60 bucks if I was willing to wait a couple days for shipping. I looked around sheepishly, completed the transaction on my iphone, dumped the books on a table where some poor underpaid worker with no benefits would have to re-file them, and walked out. I never felt so dirty, yet so free. |
Some things that Yahoo! actually does well (but don't tell anybody, because it's not fashionable right now):
[Sports coverage]( -- some of the top sports writers on the internet, and you don't have to pay ESPN "insider" fees.
Local Search well before either of the other two.
[Community Projects]( -- I guarantee if Google had done this, it would have been reddit front page material.
There's a lot of other cool projects, but I'd better stop before I start getting "nice try, Yahoo!" replies. |
Here is the [original](
direct quote:
"But he does not plan to give specifics to police, who would face hurdles in using some of the methods he employed"
and that they planned to give away the info at a conference next week, not sell it as some "journalists" have claimed. |
Or the anarchic freedom of Anon becomes a genuine political cause célèbre. I think looking forward there is going to be a necessity to address the freedom afforded to us by the internet. As an adult I prize my ability to freely express myself online and the protection to do so in an open arena. I totally agree with the juvenile tag of anon as they stand today but that's not to say that the ethos and methods are in any way irrelevant.
You could look to the example of the baby boomers and how their generation was viewed early on and the impact their personal and group attitudes/methods/philosophies have greatly immpacted on the world today. For this reason I believe that Anon is greater than the sum of it's parts not only in a contemporary setting but will also be in a historical context. To give an example, within 10 years I aim to be drafting government policy on education. Two of my contemporaries are careerists who have similar views which have both originated and been integrated into the loose cloud of what we call Anon. think about that; there will be people in government who read 4chan. All joking aside, Anon represents a significant connect to a new cultural identity. And it's not going to go away. It will change given generations, and yes, as you point out maturity, complacency and fear will drastically alter the shape of that culture; however the core values and beliefs are not going to go away. The anarchic nature of the Internet was not caused by groups like Anon, Anon was simply the product of unfettered communication from a specific demographic. |
What do you mean, has lost control?
I suppose a better wording would have been "malfunctioned" rather than "lost control". There's no question that a computer can do things much more efficiently and accurately than a human under normal circumstances, but my point was that if (and like I said, this would obviously be a much rarer occurrence than a human-caused accident) something were to cause a computer to slip up or even fail completely, (be it a software glitch, or even something as dumb as the owner failing to perform proper maintenance on his/her vehicle) I don't think we should rule out the possibility that the results could be more severe, especially without any manual intervention.
>If you mean what if it fails, I would imagine anything this critically relied upon will be engineered to withstand a partial failure, and reboot/replace parts on the fly.
Engineering and the real world are not necessarily the same thing - people might get lazy/cheap and skimp on maintenance, companies with poor quality control might accidentally ship defective products, etc.
As shadow14l mentioned, aircraft and automobiles aren't a fair comparison. A huge amount of time, money, and effort goes into certification and quality control of every piece on an aircraft. And once an airplane rolls of the production line, it is (in the case of any airliner) constantly attended-to with comprehensive, federally-mandated maintenance programs. When it comes to autoflight systems, there is a lot of redundancy (especially with data inputs) and I wouldn't be surprised if it was uneconomical for automakers to build in the same standards of reliability into a personal vehicle. Remember that automakers are still businesses, too. |
As a non-driver as well, I'd rather that people transitioned to an already proven technology that can carry people around efficiently rather than experimenting with self-driven cars. [Fully automated metro]( lines have been around for decades and are extremely safe. They're much more cost-efficient than having all the drivers in a city switch to self driven cars at once, which is also an enormous waste of resources. Self-driven cars don't immediately solve problems of congestion either, whereas a high-capacity rapid transit system can. Not to mention ancillary benefits like transit-oriented development and so on.
And if you're transitioning to a system where people don't even own their own cars (e.g. like a Zipcar), then you are basically just using a crappy form of automated public transit that doesn't even have its own private right of way. The only thing you get out of this is not having to share a space with other human beings, which is often an unfortunate expression of racism or classism anyway. |
I don't mean to sound ignorant here, but 1984 was based in a time when the Soviet Union still existed. Big brother was the internet, which at the time was a war-fighting machine. Well today the internet is female. Over 51% of internet users are female, while before it was manly a male dominated weapon. So please, stop overreacting because there is no way SOPA is going to pass, lawmakers will be too scared of the repercussions of voting for the bill. The bill claimed it would save jobs, but it actually would destroy the U.S. tech industry, no one in their right mind would vote for that, especially JERBS republicans. I am so sick and tired of 1984 comparisons everyday I talk to my friends, and now here. |
The fact is facebook was in no way the first or the best doing this. The fact is corporations have paid billions of dollars to do this. Whether it be through adware, spyware or ad-tracking. Facebook is really just the most apparent and out in the open one. Honestly facebook isn't the worst offender here. I say that because of how widespread it is that people know Facebook tracks things and sells your information to companies. The worst offenders are the ones that you almost never find out they are following you. Honestly the reason why privacy and security on the internet is so poor is that ignorant people get on it with delusions of complete anonymity. That is and will never be the case. |
Revenge on who?
I've never heard of upload.to before, but I'm guessing they're another file locker type site.
It's no longer available in the USA and I'm sure some douche at a studio or label has a big smirk on their face since this is what they ultimately want, to inconvenience/ punish many just to prevent a few from being able to easily copy their material. |
From the link: "There is no question that the government has money to fund NASA..."
I think there is a question, actually. A BIG question. The fact that they come up with money for other things that are even less important, is not proof they can afford it. They are borrowing and printing this money!
Yes, we can literally print as much money as we need for anything we want over at the Fed--but all that does is hurt the value of the dollar and increase inflation. We're setting ourselves up for a currency crisis, and when a catalyst happens that bursts the bubble, and foreigners decide to dump their dollar holdings en masse--we're going to be in such big economic trouble that most people can't actually comprehend it.
EVERYTHING should be cut, by a whole lot, immediately. But that won't happen because we're not going to elect Ron Paul.
Instead, what our leaders will tout as "cuts," will actually be cuts from "the baseline," which only means they spent less than the planned increase in spending; they will increase spending a bit less than they had planned, call it a cut, and then give you the figure of what we're "saving" over a ten-year period, so that it sounds that much bigger.
And nothing will change until we have a crisis so terrible that we have no choice but to embrace sound money and spending only what we actually have. |
I have been reading this thread and the comments in since it was posted and it has sparked some discussion between some coworkers of mine over dinner while we are on travel.
I work for NASA on one of the budget line items listed. I, obviously, tend to agree that the NASA budget should be increased, and that the TSA budget is a little ridiculous. However, I don't think NASA is without fault in this equation and should just be given more money...just because.
I read a comment (i believe it was in this thread) about how if NASA announced that UFOs were landing, we would get all the funding we wanted. This is quite accurate, in my opinion. I have been talking to colleagues above my level and at my same level saying that NASA needs to do more with exciting the public about their different projects. When the moon landing aired was broadcast, I would bet that NASA had a million new applications the very next day with excited scientists dreaming of going to the moon and further. Kids grew up excited to be scientists at NAsA or to become astronauts. Since then, NAsA has not been able to generate that sort of wide spread interest with any of their projects. The ISS, James Webb, Mars Rover...all reasonably public interest areas, but nothing on the level of the moon landing.
We, as an organization, need to get back to that. We need to inspire the world again. Inspire young kids to become future cutting edge scientists. NASA was (still is IMO but not publicly) the premier engineering organization in the government and private sector. We have to nurture creativity back into the organization instead of being terrified to try anything new for fear of failure. Too many engineers are bought up (through education) in the very strict guidelines of engineering work...and once they arrive at their destination they are told "ok now be creative". We have to stop that trend. Put creativity and excitement back into the work. "I am working on an antenna power system" not quite as exciting as "I am working on a more efficient power system for an antenna that is going to get data back from the edge of the solar system" . Lame example but the point is to get people excited about the work. There are a few projects out there trying to do that. For example, the 100year spaceship (not totally sure on the name) is one of those future thinking projects that we should be looking at. Generate some interest. Start a social/viral campaign to get younger scientists back interested in the program instead of dreaming of google (love them btw).
When Gingrich Made the comment about the moon base he was ripped apart. Dear god, why? Has everyone stopped dreaming about space exploration? The funny thing about that is that there was a program guideline to do exactly what he was saying. But apparently he's crazy. I have no great love for Gingrich but I refuse to believe that hearing someone say "we are going to colonize the moon"
doesn't generate some excitement in you. Some small part, that little kid inside, screaming "YES! Let's do it!"...before the cynical, creativity-oppressing side comes back with the gag.
I am not an SES or a g15 in a managerial role in the organization. I am not the project lead on any exploration project looking for funding for just my project. I am a 30year old engineer (youngest on our team) who wants to see NASA become the powerhouse of engineering it should be. I want to be excited about the future of space exploration. I want to hear about new technologies which we are being put on spacecraft to get us to an exo planet. I want to colonize the moon. |
I'd be very hesitant to draw a black letter holding of CISPA's unconstitutionality from Katz...
1) Katz primarily holds that "The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution provides constitutional protection to individuals and not to particular places. The two-part test for this protection is introduced by J. Harlan. First, the person must have exhibited an actual expectation of privacy and, second, that expectation must be reasonable." In this case, Katz entered a public phone booth AND closed the door. The court found that because he closed the door, he had an actual expectation to privacy which, even though he was using a public phone booth, was reasonable.
2) Therefore, Katz is important in relation to CISPA because it gives the Sp. Ct. a basis for jumping into the interpretation of what expectations of privacy are reasonable for search and seizure via electronic communication. But the court could find that CISPA is "reasonable" in the day and age we live in (or vice versa.)
3) Ultimately the court's discretion in interpretation will depend on the justices political viewpoints (defining "reasonable") and which four justices can convince the see-saw 5th vote to their side. |
organization"
Guy confirmed for knowing exactly jack shit about Anonymous or anything else.
Everything else is bullshit, too. Anonymous isn't an organization. They don't have information. There is no "they". They have power, but not nearly as much as he pretends. They can DDoS a few websites. They might crack a few passwords. Anything else? Hell no. |
Real or not, I don't care. But what really matters is the idea behind it. People think that the government is an entity of full controlling power of inconceivable things that would make us shit bricks even if we had a single glimpse of classified information.
NEW FLASH FOLKS: The information classified secretly is to protect you. Most of it is information on suspects, and criminal organizations. If what government agencies know gets out, then the criminals will act in an invasive manner.
How about nuclear weapons then? Well, we can explain in detail and there's no way in hell any person or group of ill intent can apply and supply such a complex project. But still, it's best within our interest to keep it classified for those whom do have the capabilities.
What I'm saying is, quit thinking that the government is evil, and is withholding massive amounts of secrets like they are a schematic for total world enslaving. It's all a secret for your safety. If everyone knows, then the very people who wish to kill you, your family, the nation, will have the major benefit of knowing what we know. |
Learn what constitutes a fallacy before you accuse someone of making one. Also be sure that you aren't fucking making one in the first place, dipshit.
I am not misrepresenting your position. In neither case can you prove that the assertion is untrue. In neither case can you assume that the assertion is true because it is unproven that it is false. In both cases the chances of the assertion being true are highly unlikely anyway and both claims scream "absolute fucking bullshit!" by virtue of their sheer ridiculousness.
Your claim ("...if it can't be disproved then it must be taken seriously") is a textbook case of an argument from ignorance ([argumentum ad ignorantiam]( It's a patently false and incredibly fucking stupid position to take. It's why I called you out on it. |
There actually can be a difference, in terms of the eye diagram (having to do with the inductance and capacitance of the cables). But most digital transmission systems have forward-error-correction, so even with a poor eye diagram, the end result will be binary (just like the signal being transmitted): it either makes it or it doesn't.
Other aspects that can effect quality of a cable: build quality (solder joints, wires types (stranded, solid), diameters, and materials); connector durability (how long until it starts fritzing out - technical term there); shielding from EMI (electromagnetic interference); resistance, capacitance, and inductance (which can be controlled by selecting the medium (copper, steel, whatever; solid,braided wires, etc), the dielectric between the signal wires and the shielding, the material and arrangement of the shielding). All of this will effect the eye diagram of the high-speed-serial signal that is HDMI, and the maximum speed at which you can transmit bits. Too much capacitance, for example, means that at a given signal drive strength, the slew rate (rate at which the signal changes from a logic 0 to logic 1) will be slower, meaning you'll have to slow down the transmitter/receiver to wait for the signal voltage to make it all the way to logic 1 in the correct period of time.
Of course, the HDMI spec probably specs out acceptable capacitance, resistance, and inductance in cables that can be called "HDMI cables", so as long as you buy a relatively legit cable, you'll be fine.
None of it will effect the quality of the end-signal (again, it either gets there or it doesn't). It's not an analog system, so it doesn't matter if the waveform is attenuated, so long as it's not attenuated so much that a 1 (anything over a certain threshold voltage), and a 0 (anything under another, generally different threshold voltage) are distinguishable by the end receiver.
Also, nearly any (well-designed) high speed serial system will use LVDS (low voltage differential signaling), which is virtually immune to EMI, so they don't even really need shielding. |
Seriously. It's been obvious for years they've been doing this. Companies just don't seem to understand people want likes on their facebook posts. That doesn't mean anybody but that person cares about the likes. When I see 1.5million likes on a page, it doesn't make me think any different about that company (note I'd only see this from the company's website, I'm not target audience and don't cruise fb past my page).
Companies think that the number of likes they have reflects well on them. No one honestly cares about the number of likes a company has, do they? No, we're not liking you because we actually like you, we're doing it because you'll give us 50 gold coins in your app store game. |
No one honestly cares about the number of likes a company has, do they?
sometimes, when your friends "like" something on facebook, it will show up on the sidebar as a suggested thing you might like. it's not about changing your perception of the brand, it's about raising your level of awareness that the company exists, has a product, and would like to sell it to you. |
I joined Facebook back in 2003, because much like the sites that we love today, Facebook was simple, elegant and at the time non-intrusive.
I look at it today and Facebook is the new MySpace. MySpace was awful for so many reasons, most of all their overly complicated backdrop setup, resulting in many gaudy pages that I had to scroll down at least 3 miles to find something. MySpace was arrogant. They felt they had the user base whose critical mass couldn’t leave… Well that was a great fucking bet Tom… They dropped MySpace like it was hot.
It is terrible because at one point Facebook was a good place to go, where everyone could have their home page: This is me, this is what I do, these are my friends, and here are some pictures... Importantly you could control who saw your personal information. Simple and great, but now with all these shitty games they've added, not to mention the subtle privacy changes that Facebook users have grown used to dealing with, the Facebook experience (to sound corporate) is shit.
I think Facebook really nailed it when they came out. For those of us who remember, some of the first sites that took a stab at social media: The god awful web rings of the mid-90’s, Geocities – the first free web hosting, Friendster - the internet was still making its way into the home, MySpace - terrible lag, terrible layout, terrible interface, became overconfident in the loyalty of their user base. Facebook - In the beginning nailed it, but it seems they haven't learned from MySpace's mistakes... |
I guess I'll pop in here and make a few quick points using my knowledge of the relevant law.
1: They are rulemaking via a provision in the DMCA that allows the Library of Congress (of all people...) to essentially provide escape hatches against DMCA anti-circumvention laws. In my opinion, this is Congress trying to deliberately avoid the more pro-public hand of a judge, but whatever, I'm not a politician, I don't know. Long story short, it's bullshit administrative law, not legislation per se .
2: It appears on a quick glance that this is an interpretation of an old rule and not rulemaking per se. The "record" is likely the original record in determining that cell phones were okay to jailbreak. I'm too tired (at 3AM) to bother figuring out what the full posture of this ruling is, but, at least on first glance, it does not appear to be an explicit and definitive statement that they find that tablets should not be jailbroken -- more like the current exceptions do not apply to it. |
Well, your ISPs are pretty shitty, if that's what you mean.
At first I thought, maybe you'd get some leeway because you're an island and a lot of your interwebs bandwidth has to come from far away... but there are a few ISPs who deliver proper internets without caps.
So, what is going wrong? Is your market broken? Do your people prefer the caps? Do you just not care somehow? How is this possible? |
There is a general hatred against the various content-producing companies in America (and the world at large) for not supporting digital distribution systems. Our current state of technology easily allows us to watch any kind of video content on almost any device - phone, tablet, laptop, PC, TV, gaming console and whatnot. This is possible, and sites like The Pirate Bay are living and breathing evidence for this.
The issue is: If people were to open another Pirate Bay where you enter your credit card data once and then pay the price for every file you load, that site would probably be drowning in cash. It just doesn't exist. You do have sites like iTunes, but they do not offer many shows, and newer episodes are rarely, if ever, available.
The situation is even worse for movies. Most of them are not released for download at all, and if they are, not in High Quality. I might be able to buy a Blue Ray a year after the movie is released, but I don't want that. My tablet doesn't play Blue Rays, and my 1TB drive can store 50 HD movies without occupying a whole shelf. Should I still decide to buy one, the content producers have implemented various measures to stop me (their paying customer) from converting the movie into a more convenient format.
Half the posts here are probably about Game of Thrones or HBO in general - the only way to get access to these episodes is to get an $80 cable subscription or some shit, and, as a German living in Germany, I can't even do that. The only thing I can possibly get on TV is some half-assed translation where half the jokes are gone, and watching everything a year after everyone else has already seen it kind of ruins the experience. I would gladly pay various US media outlets for their services; they just don't want my money. |
When I was a kid, I asked my uncle why he charged so little in his vending machines. He explained to me that he charged 50 cents for a soda, a vending machine at an airport charges $1.50 for a soda. All operating costs being the same (he didn't bother explaining the costs to rent the space at the airport), the difference in profit per can is $1.25. He could still make money by charging less by selling more soda. The customer will buy a soda from the airport machines because they have no other options. Chances are, they won't be a repeat customer. They know it's a bad deal. He puts his machines in a break room & has multiple repeat customers. He can restock his machines once a week, where as the machines at the airport can go a month or longer with the same amount of product. |
How exactly is hbos business model failing?
> well hbo has been having record profits since GoT was debuted
You're right -- it might fail them one day , if everyone drops cable. But it's certainly not failing them right now .
It's a move that drives away certain costumers, sure -- those of who would pay for a "premium" add-on on Netflix. But what they lose with us, they're making up for with the people who will pay the $70-$90 cable costs first , so they can then pay the extra $20 to have HBO. Also, I'm pretty sure the cable companies are giving HBO plenty of incentives to do this -- HBO is, I'd say, the one reason why many people still even keep cable (I know for a fact that the only time I ever even consider cable is when I think about GoT.)
Also , keep in mind that Netflix costs $8 a month. People who have Netflix, as opposed to cable, are probably used to lower prices -- I'm not sure how well it would go over to, say, offer an HBO premium for $20-$25 a month like cable does. That's way more expensive than Netflix's base price. |
Tons of software is, but vilgrain is also correct in saying that it's a huge security hole. Recently at my shop, the help desk has been put in charge of contacting users that have outdated versions of Java. The problem is, some applications such as oh.. I don't know.. Kronos which is our platform for employees to check leave, pay history, etc., won't run unless a specific version of Java is installed. Our IT department has pushed a new version of Java that breaks this critical application for the sake of security sooo many times and ended up with a broken experience for the end user. Users end up reverting back to the older version and then that particular PC is stuck in this limbo of either being functional and vulnerable or non-functional and "secure". The help desk at that point is charged with calling end users, bugging them about the vulnerability and will ask permission to upgrade Java (they won't because they're smart to it by now) and shuffling/creating more paperwork/tickets then they have to. This continues until someone updates the applications servers to work with the new release. |
If a company headquartered in Germany ripped off a person in IL they can generally sue in IL. There is a famous VW products liability case about it (although VW just wanted to move the suit to where its US headquarters was, I think Delaware).
The fact Sun Woman did not actually receive money from anyone in the states (assuming) the court would not have jurisdiction. Even so, she is an individual, so it is very possible a Federal court would tell the plaintiff they had to sue her in Spain.
There is also the Alien Tort Statute which is used in special cases that no other court system will take, or if that court system is corrupt or biased. It is typically used for human rights cases even if neither the plaintiff or defendant is a US citizen.
There is a case pending where people from the Congo are suing Shell (Anglo/Dutch company) under this statute. They allege Shell paid local militia to clear locals from their land, clear meaning exactly what it sounds like. The Supreme Court is reviewing this case to determine if the Alien Torts Statute is overbroad.
You might be wondering what power federal courts have in a situation where the defendant isn't a citizen. On its face it does not seem like they would have any, but they can sanction Shell from doing business in the US which would be far more expensive for Shell than paying a judgement. That is the beauty of the statute, the US is one of the few markets in the world with enough clout to enforce a statute like this. Essentially a company can not ignore a judgement, because it is too costly to be shut out of the US market.
Ideally, I like what this stands for. "If you want access to US markets, dont commit human rights abuses. It does not matter if you're a US company or not." That said there are some flaws. It is much easier bribe doctors to falsify reports in the third world. This is allegedly what happened in the Chiquita Bananas case. Because the third world does not have the same trustworthiness of doctor or lab reports, you can see how this statute could be used for wrong as well. That said, I think it does more good than bad. Obviously no amount of money will bring back a murdered family member, but the threat of being shut out of the US market is definitely an incentive to behave. |
Go check out the rest of his posting history. Pro MS comments, and a very small handful of noncommittal comments that are all very close together chronologically. .
Edit: Look at his posting style from a few months ago compared to the last few weeks.
>
Hakin9 is even worse. [They are suing (warning: Polish)] ( one blogger back in Poland for article describing their publishing practices.
He describes how Hakin9 got trolled to publish a [nonsensical NMAP guide]( It's worth reading.
and
>
More news coming in from [Russia Today (live updates)] (
>- russian military found 6-meter crater from one of the meteorite fragments
>- early estimation of meteorite weight is about 10 tons
>- meteorie size estimation is between 5 and 10 meters
>- the atmosphere entry speed was between 15 and 20 km/s
>- the meteorite exploded 30 to 50 km above ground
Compared to:
> I didn't like it. Even though I was following W8 development from the beginning, so I had time to get familiar with the interface changes, I was scared. I liked all the changes MS made under the hood, but hell, metro made no sense to me. It made no sense at all, because I didn't understand the purpose.
and
>Me too. I still enjoy to see technology evolving, even though I am almost 40. I realize that Metro is the big part of W8, the most noticeable change for sure. But there is more to W8 than UI. Lot's of changes under the hood as well. |
I assume you are not trolling.. native apps have multitude of advantages over html5 apps. Here is an article that goes over some main points - |
ITT: An alarming lack of physicists. I'm pretty sure this was debunked a while back.
Edit: The reaction product produced copper that conspicuously had the same ratio of iron and other mineral impurities as copper mined from the earth. If the reaction truly was cold fusion the copper byproduct should be 100% pure, since the E-Cat is claiming to take Hydrogen+Nickle, fusing it, and creating copper. Now while Hydrogen+Nickle do have the right number of atomic particles to "make" copper, they don't for the impurities, and the fact that those impurities were in the same ratios as those of mined copper is extremely suspicious.
[Source](
> He cites the unlikelihood of a chemical reaction being strong enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier, the lack of gamma rays, the lack of explanation for the origin of the extra energy, the lack of the expected radioactivity after fusing a proton with 58Ni, the unexplained occurrence of 11% iron in the spent fuel, the 10% copper in the spent fuel strangely having the same isotopic ratios as natural copper, and the lack of any unstable copper isotope in the spent fuel as if the reactor only produced stable isotopes. |
If you go back and watch the first episode of voyager you'll see that he's actually super pumped about replicators (which no one else has in the delta quadrant). The reason that Neelix is always cooking stuff isn't because he doesn't LIKE replicated food it is because they are trying to ration their energy usage. In star trek it is easy to convert from energy to matter via a replicator, however you can't (for some reason) go in the other direction for fuel purposes. As a result when they have the chance to eat food that isn't replicated (and so doesn't drain their more difficult to replenish anti-matter or what ever the hell they power voyager with) they take it. Neelix's "enthusiasm" for non-replicated food is really just him trying to make the best of a bad situation and keep moral up. |
R&D, marketing, sales, and deploying the charging network (although I'm not sure if they're counting that as part of "Development services", or "Selling, general and administrative". Probably the later).
[Tesla is making a gross margin of 23.85%](
[Ford has a gross margin of 12.77%](
[GM has 13.32%](
[Toyota has 19.71%](
[Volkswagen has 7.17%](
etc.
Tesla is making good profits on a per vehicle basis, their problem is that they are not large enough yet for how much they're pouring into R&D.
.
Keep in mind that in the previous quarter Tesla lost $31M, and they lost $111M in this quarter last year.
This loss is not out of the ordinary for them (although they did have a profit in the quarter ended 2013-03-31)
. |
Today on Georgia Law
[OPEN TO INTERIOR OF POLICE STATION, CAPTAIN'S OFFICE
THE CAPTAIN IS SITTING IN HIS BIG LEATHER CHAIR STROKING HIS CHIN WHILE LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW. HIS EYES SHIFT TO THE FRAMED PHOTO HE'S HOLDING IN HIS HAND, A PHOTO OF HIS DEAD WIFE. HIS HANDS ARE QUIVERING AS HE RAISES A PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN GLASS OF WHISKY TO HIS LIPS, TAKING ANOTHER SIP IN HOPES OF NUMBING JUST A FRACTION OF THE PAIN HE FELT FROM HER ABSENCE.]
DETECTIVE HOLT: Sir, we've made a breakthrough in the case...
[THE CAPTAIN IS QUICKLY JOLTED BY THE PRESENCE OF DETECTIVE HOLT, SETTING HIS DRINK DOWN ABRUPTLY AND OUT OF SIGHT BELOW HIS DESK]
CAPTAIN: Holt! Jesus Fucking Christ, could you knock next time!?
DET HOLT: I'm sorry sir, it's just that we collected some more evidence and we think we've found our culprit.
CAPTAIN: Well... are you going to give me the file or am I going to have start digging for it up your boyfriend's ass?
[DETECTIVE HOLT, WITHOUT TRYING TO FURTHER PROVOKE THE CAPTAIN, WALKED OVER, PLACED THE FILE ON THE CAPTAIN'S DESK, AND LEFT. THE CAPTAIN OPENS THE FILE AND STARTS READING. WE WATCH THE EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE CHANGE FROM ANXIOUS TO SEEMINGLY INFURIATED. HE OPENS HIS DESK AND PULLS OUT A LITTLE BLACK PHONE AND MAKES A PHONECALL]
CAPTAIN: (No bullshit, straight-to-the-point) Hey... it's me... we need to meet. Same place, 8:00 PM. I'll have my guy pick you up at 7:00.
[EXTERIOR ALLEY ON A DARKER SIDE OF TOWN, AN ORANGE CAR IS SEEN PARKED IN THE SHADOWS OF THE ALLEY. A CAR IS SEEN PULLING UP ON THE STREET IN FRONT OF THE ALLEY, STOPPING TO LET A PERSON OUT, AND THEN DRIVING UP. A LIGHT ON THE BACK STOOP OF ONE OF THE BUILDINGS ILLUMINATES THE FACE OF A YOUNGER MAN, IN HIS 30s OR SO. THE YOUNG MAN'S NAME IS KAVEH]
KAVEH: Okay! (a moment of pause) I'm here!
A VOICE IN THE SHADOWS BY THE CAR: You've been getting sloppy, K.
KAVEH: What are you talking about? I've done ever... (Kaveh is cut-off)
VOICE IN THE SHADOWS: Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You've done everything? Everything what? That you could!? That I fucking told you to do!? Really!? THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!?
[THE ESTRANGED VOICE IS REVEALED WHEN THE MAN STEPS INTO THE LIGHT. IT'S NONE OTHER THAN THE CAPTAIN HIMSELF. HE RUSHES OVER AND STARTS BEATING KAVEH RELENTLESSLY WITH THE FILE OF EVIDENCE FOR A GOOD 10-15 SECONDS]
CAPTAIN: There are no words for how fucking stupid you are. Look at this shit! LOOK!
[THE CAPTAIN OPENS THE FILE AND ERRATICALLY SHUFFLES FOR THE EVIDENCE. HE FINDS A FEW SLIPS AND HANDS THEM TO THE PARTIALLY BLOODIED KAVEH. KAVEH LOOKS THROUGH THEM FOR A SECOND TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THEM]
KAVEH: What is all this?
CAPTAIN: Did you bring an extra chromosome with you today? Let me explain this in terms even you can understand... This [ holding up a photograph ] is you... from the security footage of the local school that you decided to plug your car into. THIS [ holding up an 'official'-looking document ] is the electric bill that you ran up not 1, 2, 3, or 4 cents on, no... 5 fucking cents worth of electricity! And THIS [ holding up another document ] is your identifying information because some fucking 4th grade hall monitor WROTE DOWN YOUR FUCKING LICENSE PLATE NUMBER!
[THE CAPTAIN THROWS THE PAPERS BACK INTO THE FOLDER]
CAPTAIN: So again... what did I tell you about our operation? We don't half-ass and we don't leave witnesses.
KAVEH: I'm sorry... I'll be more careful next time...
CAPTAIN: NEXT TIME!? I'm sorry, did you forget everything I just said!? YOU STOLE FIVE CENTS! FIVE FUCKING CENTS FROM A PUBLIC SCHOOL! Do you need some perspective on this? Five cents... five pennies... A WHOLE FUCKING NICKEL! This isn't fucking Hollywood, K! They're coming for you, and when they find you, they find me. I don't remember this being PART OF THE FUCKING DEAL!
KAVEH: I know! It was a mistake! I'll make sure it doesn't happen again...
CAPTAIN: You already had your chance to make sure things didn't happen. It's clear, now, who the competent one is here. Don't worry, you're right... things won't happen like that again.
KAVEH: RANDY, WAIT!
[THE SOUND OF A TASER GOES OFF AND KAVEH FALLS TO THE GROUND. THE CAPTAIN HOLDS THE TASER TO HIS BODY FOR AN EXTENDED AMOUNT OF TIME. IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT KAVEH PASSES IN THIS TIME DUE TO THE PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO ELECTRICITY.]
CAPTAIN: I'm sorry... brother... it was either me or them...
[THE CAPTAIN GETS UP AND WALKS BACK INTO THE SHADOWS CARRYING THE FILE. HE OPENS THE DOOR TO HIS CAR REVEALING A SLEEK, ALL-BLACK LEATHER INTERIOR AND TOSSES THE FILE INTO THE PASSENGER SEAT BEFORE UNPLUGGING HIS CAR FROM THE DARK OUTLET ON THE BRICK WALL. THE CAPTAIN PUT HIS CHARGING ADAPTER IN THE TRUNK OF HIS NEW 2014 TESLA MODEL S SERIES VEHICLE WITH ALUMINUM FRAMING AND IMPROVED BATTERY LIFE. THE CAPTAIN GETS INTO THE VEHICLE, ADMIRING THE FULL CHARGE ON HIS CAR WHICH EASILY GRANTS HIM THE ABILITY TO GO OVER 250 MILES PER GALLON HIGHWAY UNDER STANDARD DRIVING CONDITIONS WHILE, AT THE SAME TIME, LOOKING PARTIALLY TROUBLED BY THE GRITTY DEED HE COMMITTED ON HIS BUSINESS PARTNER AND OWN BROTHER. THE CAR IS SEEN DRIVING AWAY.]
[INTERIOR OF CAR, THE CAPTAIN IS BEHIND THE WHEEL. IMAGES OF WHAT JUST HAPPENED ARE FLASHING THROUGH HIS HEAD WHEN SUDDENLY HE VERBALIZES HIS THOUGHTS.]
CAPTAIN: If my brother was dropped off by my guy... then where did he park his... ( sudden stop and flash of awareness in the captain's eyes )
[THE BRAKES SLAM AND THE CAPTAIN MAKES A U-TURN SPEEDING OFF AS FAST AS HE CAN]
[WE SEE THROUGH THE FRONT WINDOW OF THE CAPTAIN'S CAR, AS IF SITTING IN THE BACKSEAT LOOKING FORWARD. THE CAR CAN BE SEEN APPROACHING BLURRY FLASHING BLUE AND RED LIGHTS. THEY COME INTO FOCUS SHOWING POLICE CARS AND FIRETRUCKS IN THE DISTANCE. ZOOMING OUT TO SEE THE EXTERIOR, WE SEE THE CAR RIDE UP THE ROAD THAT RUNS ALONGSIDE THE BIG BUILDING. WE CAN SEE POLICE CARS SURROUNDING A BURNING VEHICLE THAT FIREFIGHTERS ARE TRYING TO PUT OUT... AN ELECTRIC ADAPTER CAN BE SEEN RUNNING TO THE BUILDING.]
CAPTAIN: It's only a matter of time... I can't stay here any longer
[THE CAPTAIN SPEEDS OFF FROM PREVIOUSLY BEING STATIONARY, REACHING 60 MPH IN APPROXIMATELY 5.9 SECONDS IN HIS 2014 TESLA MODEL S ELECTRIC CAR] |
actually, when you read the continuation of the story (link down in the story comments) it starts to make sense. Basically the guy was rude, trespassing, have previously been told by the school not to use the court(he was the one playing, not his son, and nether goes to that middle school), and had been asked not to park where he had parked, or use that outlet (and nobody seemed to know for how long he had been using it, or for how much). He was also aggressively rude to the officer, whom mainly made his report to protect himself and preserve fotage, as the man accused him of having damaged his car, among other things. And to top it of, the police also explaines that they rely didn't have any middle ground to take, it was arrest or nothing, since there are no fines in place that fited in this case |
It's different in the US, and I think maybe it's a different plug and/or different power rates. Anyways, a standard home 120V outlet is 15A (breaker set about that). Things using them are designed to operate under 15A, and this works out to a max of 1800W give or take. A car will be designed to be somewhat under that (to prevent the breaker from tripping if it shares the circuit with something like a lightbulb). Usually 1600-1700W is the highest you see on things designed for a 120V socket. However people mention this car probably only draws 1000W, not a huge differance, so I'll go with 1700W. 1700W is 1.7kWh if it's plugged in for an hour, if it's plugged in for a half hour then it's ~0.85kWh. In the US, EnergyStar uses $0.11/kWh to estimate power, for a school in Georgia i'd bet it's lower (commercial rate, not residential which is what EnergyStar uses). Anyways, that works out to roughly 9.35 cents. Assuming 25 minutes and 1200W which is probably more realistic and a commercial rate of 0.09 cents an hour (much closer to [actual school rates]( it works out 2.7 cents which is what I bet it actually costs, maybe 3 cents when you add in extra fees. |
There's absolutely no way that's "theft" and I can't imagine a court will convict this guy.
For $0.05, I agree that it is very unlikely a prosecutor would bother with it if it got that far, but it could certainly be considered theft. Whether it is or not depends on state and possibly municipal laws and ordinances. Let's expand a bit and say that it is a high school with a handful of students with electric cars that all plug in and charge their cars for 8 hours every day all year long. Say 10 cars at $5 a charge (guesstimating with quickly googled figures) for 180 days. That's $9,000 for the school year. In the grand scheme, it's still not a ton of money, but it's enough to be concerned about.
To use a slightly more relevant example, and specifically to challenge your claim that
>It's generally assumed that when you have a right to be on someone's property, you have access to their basic services.
Let's say I have a neighbor who comes over often. I am happy to let him come in, drink my water, use the lights, use the bathroom, hell even grab some snacks. I would be pretty pissed to find out he has been hooking his electric car up to my outdoor outlets every day. Even if I let him come into the house and watch TV at his own leisure, I would still be able to take him to court for theft of electricity over the car.
Again, I agree going after $0.05 is pretty ridiculous, especially if it was a one time deal, but they certainly have a right to go after it. I think it comes down to reasonable use in most places. Charging a cell phone while waiting for a parent-teacher conference would likely fall under reasonable use, but fueling your vehicle probably wouldn't anywhere. It's certainly going to be an important and more common issue in the future when electric cars are ubiquitous. |
While it may seem like semetics, a news article is a better source. [here is a news article]( it pretty much says the same thing as the blog. Stating the same facts but a bit clearer. so to those who have said things about how the school should not have pressed charges.
"Ford said school officials had not asked them to press charges or arrest Kamooneh"
Ford being: Chamblee Police Sgt. Ernesto Ford
In other words this was the work completely of the police department. It sounds like an officer noticed the car was charging and took action.
~~
Now lets do a little math.
Soccer teams usually have what, 11 people on them? source i'm useing for rough numbers of players that makes it 25 people.
So lets assume the parents of the kids are the only ones showing up and they all only used one car to get to the game.
If all those people had Electric cars and charged their car at the school for 20 minutes that adds up to 1.25 cents. (using 5 cents worth of electricity each) Though this price is unrealistic. We are talking about youth games here. Using the same source for the player numbers, a kids game usually lasts a max of 40 minutes if you include a 10 minute half time. But lets for argument sake say there is enough outlets to do this for 25 people.
Now finding a number of games is difficult so I'm going to just pull a random number. Lets say there are 15 games at the school. that's only $18.75
It's a wonder why the school didn't care about pressing charges. |
Hate to ruin the circlejerk here boys, but here's the police statement:
> We received a 911 call advising that someone was plugged into the power outlet behind the middle school. The responding officer located the vehicle in the rear of the building at the kitchen loading dock up against the wall with a cord run to an outlet. The officer spent some time trying to determine whose vehicle it was. It was unlocked and he eventually began looking through the interior after verifying it did not belong to the school system.
>
> The officer, his marked patrol vehicle and the electric vehicle were all in clear view of the tennis courts. Eventually, a man on the courts told the officer that the man playing tennis with him owned the vehicle. The officer went to the courts and interviewed the vehicle owner. The officer's initial incident report gives a good indication of how difficult and argumentative the individual was to deal with. He made no attempt to apologize or simply say oops and he wouldn't do it again. Instead he continued being argumentative, acknowledged he did not have permission and then accused the officer of having damaged his car door. The officer told him that was not true and that the vehicle and existing damage was already on his vehicles video camera from when he drove up.
>
> Given the uncooperative attitude and accusations of damage to his vehicle, the officer chose to document the incident on an incident report. The report was listed as misdemeanor theft by taking. The officer had no way of knowing how much power had been consumed, how much it cost nor how long it had been charging.
>
> The report made its way to Sgt Ford's desk for a follow up investigation. He contacted the middle school and inquired of several administrative personnel whether the individual had permission to use power. He was advised no. Sgt. Ford showed a photo to the school resource officer who recognized Mr. Kamooneh. Sgt Ford was further advised that Mr. Kamooneh had previously been advised he was not allowed on the school tennis courts without permission from the school . This was apparently due to his interfering with the use of the tennis courts previously during school hours.
>
> Based upon the totality of these circumstances and without any expert advice on the amount of electricity that may have been used, Sgt Ford signed a theft warrant. The warrant was turned over to the DeKalb Sheriffs Dept for service because the individual lived in Decatur, not Chamblee. This is why he was arrested at a later time.
>
> I am sure that Sgt. Ford was feeling defensive when he said a theft is a theft and he would do it again. Ultimately, Sgt. Ford did make the decision to pursue the theft charges, but the decision was based on Mr. Kamooneh having been advised that he was not allowed on the property without permission. Had he complied with that notice none of this would have occurred. Mr. Kamooneh's son is not a student at the middle school and he was not the one playing tennis. Mr. Kamooneh was taking lessons himself. |
A few of my friends and I engineered a similar "mouth mouse" freshman year (about 18 months ago) with the intent to give quadriplegics better access to computers. Ours is made without pieces of an existing mouse and had our own written code. It is mechanically based instead of optical, and you can also adjust the sensitivity. Plus the cost was in line with an existing hand mouse. We can even surf the web with it!! I'll post pics or a video later |
Because it is not a big issue. Reddit's circle jerk is in full force on this with conspiracy theorist facts being treated as true.
It is optional. When you sign up for a new ISP from now you get asked if you want the filter in place - the question isn't about a 'porn' filter and just spoken of as a filter.
Existing connection are not effected - the filter is not retroactively applied
The ISPs have offered a filter like this as opt-in for ages. The only change is it is now opt-out.
This doesn't cost the tax payer anything as the ISPs provide the filter
We have had an opt-out filter like this on mobile phones and sim data contracts for years. This is no different to that other than applying to broadband.
It literally takes 5 seconds when ordering a new connection to opt-out, 1-2 mins to get it removed from a line it has been applied to and is there to make prude people feel better about the internet because 'now children can't get to porn unless their parents remove the filter on new lines' (that's what they think anyway -no matter how ineffective the filters are).
People saying that it is only the beginning and a slippery slope are wrong as we have a different system already - the complete blocking of specific piracy sites - that is a slippery slope as it is not optional and targets specific sites. If the government want to stop you getting to certain content there is an entirely different route they can take that is more effective than these filters. Whoever is claiming it will be used on political content is very wrong and a massive conspiracy theorist - the filters are a load of junk and although there are a lot of wrongs by various uk governments none of them have tried to silence political opposition by blocking access. |
I'd bet money that kids of previous generations learned to steal and hide porno mags in all sorts of creative places.
My friends and I spent a week building a "fort" in my backyard with the sole purpose of being our secret porn bunker. Spare plywood, nails, hinges and fabric. Forty feet long but only about three feet wide and three feet high. We had to crawl like tunnel rats to get around inside. At the opposite end of the entrance, there was "the chapel." Inside the chapel, a round room at the end of the main area of the fort, the walls were covered with pages torn from porno magazines from ground to ceiling.
There wasn't any kind of flooring but the stacks of pornography inside made dirty knees worth it.
Guess it wasn't built to code because a few days after we built it, it was torn down when some kid got a nail stuck in his head. |
Labour do speak shit. They've concerned themselves with being the opposition that they disagree with everything the government does, even the occasional things that are good ideas. It doesn't come across as passion, or fighting for core issues, but as an incessant hum that has no real solutions, only hatred. Am I happy with the current government? Nope. Does Labour offer anything solid that makes me think they'd be any better? Not in the slightest.
The huge problem with both is that they have become the raving man in the corner, more concerned with what they believe is the right thing to do than doing the work to actually figure out the right thing to do. Both parties ignore advisors when it doesn't fit ideology because they can't, as a collective group, just step back, say "wait a sec guys, have we considered that the people we might call experts are right, and we're about to do something fucking stupid?" then actually consider the evidence.
And the real problem is the voters. If the Lib Dems had got in as a majority I would have more confidence in a government being rational, but they fucked themselves at the negotiating table (I don't really think, based on what they're like currently, that a Labour Dem government would be any better at making good decisions - I might like them better because I'm more left, but I don't think that the right decision would be made for the right reasons any more often).
Unfortunately it might be too late - parties are too big to change, and none of them seems bothered unless the tabloids are talking about it or it is ideological. Perhaps we really do need to look at the power structures we have and how to move away from the whole concept of party politics (to be replaced with another democratic system). Idk. |
Look into the War Powers Resolution days without a declaration of war by Congress, except when there is an emergency.
>My guess is people started ignoring the constitution or, if you're to be believed, are grossly misinterpreting it.
Look at section 8 of the Constitution.
The Constitution never mentions "Declaration of War" and only really says that Congress has the power to declare War. If anything, the Constitution says that a formal declaration of war is not required, because every major power of Congress is listed in Section 8, but never says that Congress must declare war, only that it is allowed to. This is partially what the War Powers Resolution hoped to fix.
Many feel that the War Powers Resolution has been violated multiple times. However, many times the US wants to engage in war without actually declaring war, so has skirted around the issue with things like the Iraq Resolution was dismissed because even though war wasn't declared by Congress, it was sort of accepted, through funding and allowing the war to happen without really arguing. After all, the original purpose of the War Powers Resolution was to limit the president's power, but now Congress is being forced to declare war, even though neither the president nor Congress want to do so. |
and then wait to make money while they gain bad press from the people who haven't received their product?
Even if they can sell for retail, their price would need to be about double what it is right now, and at that price they're competing with a lot of better printers. |
This is proof that open source software can be just as insecure as closed-source. If enough people don't comb through the hundreds of thousands of lines of code, or if an "evil" contributor decides to go to great lengths to hide something in an open source platform, it could slip by. |
Because I'm tired of people who try to broach this topic from the other side with moderate opinions who are immediately downvoted to hell and branded as NSA shills. It's a bit like being an atheist in a conservative town and you get so tired of defending yourself that you start seeing everything as an attack. |
Interesting how you assume Facebook backing will suddenly let them create a time machine. First of all, it's only been like two years. Most hardware companies spend up to five years before they release, they just don't tell you about it. Designing, testing, manufacturing and shipping hardware takes a lot of time. The only reason you feel like it's been forever is because they have been talking, discussing and showcasing their prototypes since the very start.
Secondly, they don't have the Facebook money yet, they also can't just change their long term plans mid manufacturing and cancel all their deals with manufacturing companies either.
Finally, they need content. They need games. What good does a piece of hardware for your PC do if you can't do anything with it? They can't just magically pull out 10 games that has been built for VR and ship it. You also can't just port games made for monitors to VR if you are expecting a pleasant experience. Making games for VR is very different from games on your monitor. There's tons of factors to consider. Such as making sure the player doesn't get nauseous, the head movement feels right, the scale is right, no traditional cutscenes etc. That's why they have spent time making development kits, allowing developers to figure out these things and make good content. Why would you want to buy VR goggles if you can't do anything with it? If you really want it as soon as possible, order a DK2, use google and figure this stuff out yourself. If not, wait for the consumer release. You literally have to do nothing but go about your day. That's how easy it is to wait. |
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
Why did the guy call the Controller's office? For those that aren't aware, the Controller is the head of the accounting dept. There was no need for him to call the Controller's office. On top of that, this guy works at a public accounting firm (Big 4 by the way they describe it), and then he tells the Controller they should get investigated by the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board)? I'm sorry, but that was straight up stupid. The article also mentions that his firm "does business" with Comcast, which seems like his firm provides some kind of assurance or tax services to them. And one thing is for sure, he wouldn't have been able to get the Controller's phone number unless someone at his firm had it, and the only way someone would have it is if they were providing such services to them.
This is how the professional services industry works. You say things like that to a client of the firm, expect to get fired. Case in point: at the accounting firm I work for, we had a new hire who accused the CFO of a client of ours of fraud and was yelling at him. He got fired the next day.
Comcast is a shitty company, but he really earned his lay off, from what I read. If you have a problem with the service, call customer service and deal with them. I understand that they are difficult to deal with, but as a professional, you shouldn't take advantage of protected information (Controller's office number), and then essentially accuse Comcast of fraud (PCAOB investigation), especially if you work for the accounting firm that provides services to them.
This story goes beyond just "he canceled his services, then got fired for it." There's a whole lot more to it than that. This would have happened (and I'm sure has definitely happened) with another company. Don't accuse your clients of fraud. |
The scariest thing about this is that consumerist feels the need to include a |
I'd like to give a shout out to The Consumerist for the |
My job is done from home. Not only that but three of the 4 residents at my home work similar jobs or for the same company. We have a choice of ISPs here sure. We can get 12mbit from ATT, or my current ~170mbit service from Comcast. The ATT service is about $10 less a month but is practically unusable for my job, let alone the streaming needs of 4 adults. I have a personal VPN and proxy service I use plus my business VPN for work and they are nearly constantly on.
The fact that Comcast is the only option I have terrifies me more than I can describe because my life literally revolves around my internet service. We were forced into getting the X1 service, which didn't work for nearly 2 months when we started with 30+ calls to comcast and being bounced between the cable TV and X1 special tech support. The one thing that came up repeatedly was that they noticed heavy VPN traffic and tried to say it was somehow at fault for my cable box not working. After two months literally without warning the box started working and Comcast failed to have an answer as to why it started working which is hilarious to me.
Fast forward two months and I call to have the wifi deactivated on my comcast provided modem as I don't want to be sharing my ~170mbit service with my neighbors who have slower service just because Comcast decided all our routers should be hot spots. The web interface for disabling the "feature" has never worked, the option just isn't present and every time I log in to this day it STILL tries to sell me the X1 triple play I still have and besides the billing dept no one at Comcast has ever realized we even have the X1 service. It works, so I've literally given up on the idea that I can get my account sorted out and I dread the day I must end my service (hopefully Google fiber will come along)as I know it's going to be an unending string of calls to people I can barely understand who know less about my account than I know about particle physics. |
Listen, I know everyone loves to jump on the "Comcast is the devil" bandwagon, and that's fine. In a lot of ways they are.
Ask yourself one question, though. Why.
Why would the world's largest multimedia conglomerate go through this much trouble to screw over a single person?
I realize this probably wasn't the work of the entire company, so we'll say it's one person within Comcast. Probably the last customer rep he spoke to. So we'll assume that's the case. Why would that rep take time out of his or her work day, between talking to dozens of unhappy customers, to look up this particular guy online, find his employer, do the research to discover his employer is linked to Comcast, and persuade their superior to persuade their superior to persuade their superior to call this guy's employer and persuade them to fire him?
Doesn't that seem just a LITTLE farfetched? |
That's great and all, but if the said modem isn't "their" modem good luck getting any sort of help with technical issues. They'll just say contact the manufacture of said modem for support
-OR -
They'll run around saying all the wiring in your house/location is shit and needs to be done, but to send a tech out is 50$ a pop and does nothing but do the same shit i've tried for 6 months. |
Because Comcast isn't some small mom and pop shop they're doing tax work for, it's a huge billion dollar corporation that a B4 firm is doing consulting work with. Big4 firms treat ethical violations as a HUGE deal and would fire an employee if they have reason to believe that they are breaking the codes of ethics. |
You sound like you live in the NYC area. 300/20, yup. I can't tell you the trouble this shit has caused. Why? Well, there are about 3 friggen people between NJ, NYC and upstate NY who know exactly what kind of networking card they have. When I try to explain to a customer that they will never get more than 54mbps because their laptop only has a b/g networking card in it, they think I'm trying to sell them on that fancy shmancy headlight fluid all the automobile enthusiasts love to use!
I try to tell them that while both Volkswagens and Audi are technically both European automobiles, and they are very, very similar, their performace will be vastly different thanks to the engineering and technology. Yeah, no, shouldn't have even bothered. They think this too is complete bullshit and Time Warner isn't living up to our end of the bargain. Sorry honey, your Compaq Presario from 15 years ago does NOT have built in wifi capability, and no, we should not be responsible to provide you that capability, and you'll never EVER get the speeds you subscribe to, because your computer is ancient.
But, you know, fuck us, because even after showing the customer through google searches how they need to upgrade their stuff, showing the customer how incorrect they are, we're still Time Warner, and you still pay your bill every (other) month (you broke jackass) so we need to work our fuckin magic over the phone (while you continue to not listen to a fucking word we say) and turn your into box of dust and regrets into a modern, functioning computer.
I genuinely love my job, and the people I work with are amazing people, all technically sound and hard workers. We care, about each other and you guys, the hard working (or not) Americans (or not) who simply want to get online. |
A long time ago I had comcast, after returning all their shit they claimed I owed 50 bucks for "unreturned equipment", tried calling bla bla bla. Eventually ends up in collections, ignore it because fuck them. Was at one point considering buying a house (didn't, long story). It showed up on the credit report and the finance guy more or less said that due to the low amount and company it meant fuck-all to them, and the unpaid medical bills (hit by an uninsured driver and no health insurance of my own, only what my personal car insurance covered) were not even considered. |
Fuck Comcast, I'm calling them tomorrow and switching to Centurylink (albeit a little slower, but more reliable and less aggravating to deal with).
Hah! You and I should have a chat, I could have you listen to quite a few recorded phone calls that you might find interesting.
Since last spring, my household has given them over $1700 in payments, been forced into buying a brand-new modem directly from them on 2 separate occasions (one of which died almost immediately), had a modem-rental service pushed us during every call; our service was severed 3 times for a non-payment, but with no reason given to me at all (auto-withdrawl, so a bullshit claim), and have been going through a cycle of fighting, paying, re-paying and then fighting some more in order to keep a $23.00 overpayment from being tacked onto my month bill.
$1,700 and close to 100 hours arguing with untrained tech support in a different country, phone transfers and disconnections, call-backs that were never received, and frustration that leaves me taking a goddamn clonazepam and 5 ibuprofen when I hang up the phone.
They "had to change out the wires" in the box behind my house three times in 7 months, but they're still marked as being Qwest lines. Each time they had a tech working, I lost service for about 2 1/2 weeks, but was still billed for that time. My ul/dl speeds have gotten no better, even with the changes. I've run multiple speed tests, including with programs other than theirs, and I'm not getting what I'm paying for.
My newest modem should be arriving in the mail tomorrow (an odyssey to find, since Centurylink has only approved a handful of shit brands and models - one of which hasn't been made in almost three years - for use on their lines/network). Anything different, and say so long to support.
Data packets come in chunks every .25 second to 4 minutes (I used a TMobile 4Glte and a dish network account to compare them by logging on to IRC and see which account was booted first), depending on the time of day, so maintaining a steady IRC or Skype video connection is almost impossible. Forget streaming video. I get better connectivity by using my phone as a wireless hotspot.
Customer service calls take at least two hours each, and it's always with someone who has a heavy Indian accent, and needs for everything to be repeated over and over before they understand what is being said to them.
From a (now former) Centurylink link customer: Stick with the evil you know! You aren't getting anything better; you're just starting over from scratch somewhere else. You're getting the same amount of bullshit, and slower speeds. |
Pride has multiple meanings. It doesn't just mean pride in one's accomplishments but also pride in one's qualities or, in the context that Cook is using it in, awareness of one's dignity.
Carlin is saying "It's weird to be proud of something you didn't do," which is fair. It is weird to be proud of that like if I were to say that I'm proud of building the Great Wall. People would, rightfully, look at me funny.
But pride, like I said, has multiple meanings. Gay people have had it rough in our history. For centuries we were told to bury it deep down, to hide our feelings. We were told that if we acted on those feelings we were dirty and disgusting, worthy of living on the fringes of society and deserving of whatever moral, legal, social, and political retribution we got. In short, being gay was something to be ashamed of (and people still tell us that.) That's what "pride" means for gays, it is a movement to remove the shame and stigma from being gay. If a gay person is saying "I'm proud to be gay," they're saying "I am not ashamed to be gay. I am not burying my identity down deep and I will not let you use my homosexuality as an excuse to deny me my rights as a human being and as a citizen." That is pride, being aware of one's dignity. It's about ending the shame .
The same for other related "pride" movements, including the ones that Carlin criticizes. Columbus Day was created and St. Patty's Day was pushed as an "Irish holiday" in the US when Irish and Italian immigrants faced incredible discrimination, when they were treated as less than human, were not afforded the benefits of living in a civil society (like police protection or, at the very least, not being harrassed by police). Social groups pushed those holidays for the same reason pride is a big deal in the gay community: saying "We are not ashamed of being _ !" Yes, it is a little odd when those elements are still celebrated nowadays when there's little-to-no discrimination against those groups here in the US, but "celebrating things you have no control over" was not the original purpose of those events, ending the shame/stigma was. Besides, in the modern day, I think they help us reflect on the diversity of the country which is never a bad thing. The debate about Columbus Day, in particular, is useful from our modern perspective because every year it comes around, it opens the debate up about the man and his legacy versus the whitewashed history. Also not a bad thing to have. |
Just goes to show that time is really relative as it's only 2014 in certain parts of the world.
Quick aside: I worked with hundreds of millennials over the course of about 2 years when I managed a "transition team" and a special project team composed entirely of new hires. To their credit, 99% of them were cool with people of all races, religions, and sexualities. To be completely unbiased, there were some issues with work ethic and a sense of entitlement with a small minority, but, for the most part, working with them and learning how the next generation ticks gives me hope for the future. |
While the specs certainly seem underwhelming for the price, I think that Apple have taken a bit of a different approach with this Macbook by basically combining qualities of their iPad and a normal laptop. Just like the iPad, the new Macbook has only a single port for charging and peripherals, which makes sense if you consider its battery life. The idea is that this laptop is meant to be used off of battery most of the time, like a true mobile device. Just like the iPad, the new Macbook has a slim footprint, passive cooling, and a keyboard that doesn't provide much touch feedback. The side effect of all of this is that users will have to spend more for adapters and wireless peripherals, but iPad users have been doing that for years without complaint. Of course the Macbook is a full-fledged x86 laptop with a much larger price tag compared to an ARM tablet, so the trick for Apple is really in changing the expectations of ordinary users on how an ordinary laptop is meant to function. |
This is pretty easy, at least on Linux. Install Linux with LUKS - this is easy to do with the Ubuntu alternate installer. You'll need a password initially, but we can get rid of this later.
As you're installing, you'll need a boot partition. You have two options here. You can put your boot partition on the hard drive so you can get to GRUB without having the USB key, or you can put the boot partition on your USB key so your computer will report no bootable operating systems.
Finish the LUKS installation and boot to your system using the password you chose earlier. If you haven't already done so, plug in your flash drive. If it is not your boot partition, you will need to add the flash drive to /etc/fstab so it has a standard mount point. Once it's mounted there, run
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mountpoint/keyfile bs=1024 count=1
To generate a random key. Then run
sudo cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda2 /mountpoint/keyfile
(and enter your password) to make the disk bootable off of that key.
Then you need to edit /etc/crypttab. Here you will add a name for the encrpyted device (ls /dev/mapper/ to find out what it is. It's probably something like sda2_crypt, or <UUID>_crypt). Next you need the source device (/dev/sda2, perhaps). Last, you'll put the location of the key file - this will be the flash drive's mount point followed by the location of the file on the drive. man crypttab for more details about this config file.
Run
sudo update-initramfs -u
When you reboot, it should boot automatically, grabbing the key off of the USB device. If it boots successfully, you'll want to remove the password you entered earlier.
sudo cryptsetup luksDelKey 0
Now the only way to boot your computer is with the flash drive plugged in. |
Dropbox is amazing, though when I first signed up a couple years ago I was disappointed to find that you were limited to only syncing the main Dropbox folder. Luckily, there's a simple workaround to allow you to easily sync folders in multiple locations. So for example, if you want to sync a specific savegame folder, or chat logs for your fav IM program across multiple computers, you don't have to configure them to store these files in the Dropbox folder.
It's accomplished through the use of junctions . There's [more information]( on the forum, though it might require some searching. In Windows, my method is to move the folder I want to sync into the Dropbox folder, then use [Link Shell Extension]( to create a junction back to the original location so Windows sees the folder at both places.
Selective sync is apparently coming in the new 0.8 branch, but until then this works perfectly for me. If you need any more information, feel free to ask, and if you find this at all useful, I'd appreciate you using my referral link to sign up! |
In many cases (HP, Dell, Gateway...), the OEM has "tweaked" the Windows install in such a way that a vanilla Retail or OEM CD for Windows 7 or Vista won't work. You actually need the Dell or HP or Gateway branded install disks.
Fortunately, all these companies are happy to sell you a copy of those disks for your machine for the low price of $30-$60 a piece.
If you were lucky enough to create your restore CDs when you purchased the computer, then you don't need to buy the recovery disks for that particular machine. |
It's amazing that he actually says what's wrong with it, and then dismisses it in the same breath. His followup to that then describes how Apple and Amazon have sold huge numbers of virtual items, which of course are, thanks to the EULA and said court case, just licensed, and could now be subject to his statement that vendors can now change their license terms at will. |
there needs to be a free certificate authority for SSL to be used by the majority of sites, both small and large. however, if a certificate authority is free, then who will be performing the checks to ensure that they are who they say they are?
when you pay a certificate authority, you are pretty much just buying their name and recognition. "Oh, Verisign says these guys are legit. I feel safer entering my credit card credentials now".
self-signed SSL certs are just as secure as ones signed by a major CA, but in a way I think people treat self-signed SSL signs as less secure than regular HTTP sites because of the, "OH NOES!! THIS SITE IS UNTRUSTED!! YOU WANT TO ADD AN EXCEPTION??" dialog when visiting a self-signed site.
Another issue with SSL is that they require unique IP addresses. A webhost can put dozens of regular HTTP sites on a single IP address, but each HTTPS site requires its own unique IP address. This will not be an issue when IPv6 becomes mainstream, but right now with IPv4 already on low reserves... it's not going to happen. |
Earlier I thought anon's treatment of HBGary was a bit harsh, they were just a bunch of incompetents trying to get a little attention. Now however, I think they deserve it. While anonymous have done both good and bad, I firmly believe that wikileaks does good and necessary work. Hope HBGary bites the dust before long. |
Looks like falsified information to me. I've downloaded the exposed emails and I can't find anything to verify a "proposed attack" on wikileaks. And even if I had found a couple emails about it or some documents, I don't know how much I would trust it... illegally obtained and then in the hands of criminals/hackers for who knows how long? Especially a group like Anonymous whose membership includes some of the most childish denizens of the net... |
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