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A few years ago, I was taking a course in public policy that focused on minority representation. Part of the course focused on the positive and negative impacts of technology (e.g., what is the impact when a candidate has a web based campaign, but minorities don't have web access, and things like that). Being the only propeller-head in a room otherwise filled with campaign workers and politico-in-training, I became increasingly saddened at their confident misunderstandings off technological terms. When the professor raised the issue of "Net Neutrality," it became clear that everyone in the class, including the professor, thought that "Net Neutrality" simply meant that residential ISPs would have to charge all customers the same monthly fee for all tiers of service. [facepalm 1] One student argued by analogy that the telephone industry had progressed by leaps and bounds and is a paragon of consumer choice [facepalm 2], and it was able to build out and improve its network to cover the whole country with great cell service without any government intervention or price controls [facepalms 3 and 4]. |
Your analogy, while interesting, is ultimately not relevant. Let's deconstruct:
In both cases, the Government regulates. However, the actors behind the regulation are not analogous, they do not follow the same incentives, and their end-game is not the same.
HOV lanes represent a somewhat direct connection between the will of consumers (tax-payers) and the Government. HOV lanes (sometimes) incentivize the efficient use of our crowded highways. The government isn't looking to make a profit here: HOV lanes aren't for those who pay for the privilege, it's for those who reduce crowding. It seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.
On the other hand, the net-neutrality scenario represents a more complicated set of relationships. First, there's the consumer. Second, there's the ISP. Third, the content seller. Finally, the government as the regulator.
The problem with this setup is that the ISP effectively controls what content reaches the consumer, depending on which content seller pays the most. The end-game for the company is profit (note: not bad in-and-of itself). However, that incentive for profit has several negative-externalities (problems created by the profit-seeking behavior of the company that is not set-off with their profits.) For one, the consumer has no fucking idea which content has not been allowed through the 'tubes'. In other words, if Content Seller A pays ISP, while Content Seller B doesn't, it may be that B never gets its content across (this is just one situation). Accordingly, B's message is effectively quashed. This is precisely why Senator Al Franken called net-neutrality the biggest First-Amendment issue of our time.
There are myriad other reasons why people have argued for Net-Neutrality. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll just point out the lowest-common denominator: Net-Neutrality levels the playing field. It effectively doesn't allow for the monopolization of the internet. |
Net neutrality does not outlaw QOS or traffic shaping. Anything that falls under 'reasonable network management' is specifically allowed, and that's understood to mean QOS/shaping to ensure line quality among ISP customers. The law is written to target paid prioritization and blocking new media services from entry into the market, not so someone can make a node unusable by taking up all the bandwidth.
QOS/shaping of traffic by protocol is completely untouched and will continue as normal. QOS/shaping by source or destination other than that allowed by 'reasonable network management' practices will be scrutinized and watched.
The whole point of this is so
An ISP/media conglomorate can't artificially worsen a competitor's streaming video / movie / music / whatever service and favor their own via shaping. Companies like Netflix can't compete if the ISP is forcing all their traffic to chug along at 5KB/s while the ISP's own blazes by at 1.5MB/s.
Prevent so-called 'paid prioritization'. The gist is that if you pay a ransom fee to any given ISP, your traffic will be exempt from QOS/shaping. An example would be Comcast charging Youtube $X for every video streamed, else all Youtube traffic will suddenly fall to 5KB/s. ISPs will tell you it's only going to raise traffic speed and not lower it, but in the real world it'll effectively kill high-bandwidth sites that don't pay up to everyone. |
Net neutrality had a consistent and clear message when it was first formed, and that message was muddied on purpose by the ISPs. Well-meaning people claim that net neutrality means different things to different people, but that is largely due to the interference from net neutrality opponents.
Regardless, it is possible to talk about actual things that we want prevented, and that is what net neutrality advocates do. The problem is that opponents make claims about what the advocates run, and then the news folks and legislators run with those claims because it fits their own beliefs and agenda.
Then finally, we come to the FUD portion, where that misinformation is used to make people questions intentions that do not even exist. I hear a lot of hand-wringing about prohibiting QoS, but I haven't heard such a thing from the EFF, the FOSS, Google, or any of the big NN advocates. I have heard it from legislators opposed to NN, from libertarians opposed to any government intervention, and from ISPs. That is, this interpretation comes from people who oppose the movement, not from the movement itself. Its an inherently dishonest claim brought up to torpedo the movement.
I personally don't discuss net neutrality legislation because I am not sure that legislation is the correct solution at this time, which is why I try to qualify my statements regarding the legislation. It could be that some legislators added in wording that would impair ISP's ability to throttle or do QoS. If that is the case, then certainly that would need to be addressed. I would prefer that we not legislate it until we're sure that its a problem that consumers cannot realistically address. |
I was actually going to say that Canadian ISPs were actually moving towards this model, however, I found [an article from last month]( that states otherwise.
The CRTC (regulatory body for telecom) had previously ruled in favour of metered billing. Since, the PM's office has apparently stated it will repeal the decision if the CRTC doesn't do it first. |
Seriously wake up dude.
Comcast is greedy, do you agree? They want more money, and they feel that they can double dip and make both the source and the destination of any packet pay for it.
The way the Internet works (and has always worked) is that you only pay for the source of the traffic.
Comcast wants people to pay at both ends to ride their network, but no one else works this way, quite yet...
BTW, what Comcast is claiming with Level 3 is also BS. It's the filthy greed monster rearing it's head. Level 3 should start charging them additional for delivering a significantly greater amount of content to their end users. Comcast is relying on common ignorance to assert their claim, which unfortunately seems to be swaying some opinions. |
Ten years ago not everyone had a cell phone, not as many people used broadband services, streaming video content was nowhere near as ubiquitous, and the number of service providers was a bit higher, lots of places still had ( gasp ) competing services, and while people were exuberant about the possibilities of the internet, most of our favorite web 2.0 services and their corresponding benefits to corporations were in their infancy.
Fast forward to today, and the internet is changing the way we do everything and your grandmother has a touch screen phone and surfs Facebook.
The point of regulating this kind of thing is that this entire concept of the modern telcom infrastructure and the services it provides is a new technological chapter in society. Same reason you would be less inclined to worry about digital privacy before your credit card number existed in lots of places online, and the progenitors of the email system probably weren't thinking "someday, the majority of email traffic will be spam."
Also, I'd imagine that if the telcoms were thinking of long term strategies instead of short term profits, they wouldn't have to do things like institute caps to cover the bandwidth needs for pricey new smartphones, and we wouldn't be incredibly far behind so many other countries in terms of telcom infrastructure and the level of tech and services available to the actual consumer.
So if you're working at Comcast and you see this situation where you can make a lot more money by hiking rates and fighting in the legal system to block anything that jeopardizes your current position, you'd probably take advantage of that and quietly prep behind the scenes for when people eventually realize the endgame for your scenario is hurting their own bottom line and stifling progress.
Right now Comcast owns the studio that makes a bunch of my shows, the cable service I use to watch it on TV, the internet I'm typing on right now, and Hulu just for kicks.
Currently I watch lots of stuff on Netflix using that same internet, even though it competes with what I get on cable, and what I get on Hulu.
If I were in Comcast's position, I would filter bandwidth to be preferential to my own HD programming and Hulu. Assuming that it was legal to do so, what's to stop that kind of thing from happening?
Oh, but it's okay, if you really want to get "everything", you can just pay these extra fees!
And suddenly all the people who are bothered by something like that are put in a position of "get miffed over this trivial problem which you can do nothing about." or "give them more money."
Bottom line, this has been in the works for a while now, a real political mandate or some kind of regulation is really going to be necessary in terms of not only the internet, but intellectual property and the value of intangible things in general, especially since there are a lot of people being paid a lot of money to figure out how to charge you a penny per pageview or somesuch when you read the times online in the future. |
They might like it, but version has no bearing on Chrome. Chrome is just Chrome. It's always one version. Everyone runs the same codebase.
I work on web development. When my colleagues and I ask about a feature it goes like "Does Chrome support this?", not "Does Chrome 11 support this?". You don't need to know the version number like you do with something like Internet Explorer or Android. |
Two cents here (which is now worth more than American 2c ^_^) from an Australia:
We've been doing it since the internet started over here. We don't have unlimited broadband, we have quotas and to be perfectly honest, the prices aren't that bad...and we pay a hell of a lot more than you guys would simply because of the pipes we'd need to use to get our data across to us (either via the US or via Asia). |
Why does it matter what company did something first?
I'm legitimately interested. Thus far, in my years of wandering message boards and interacting with fans of various products and services I must ask; why, why does it matter what company did something first?
I really don't understand how this has any meaning to a consumer that isn't already engrossed in the brand.
It's very true Apple was the first company to put out a touch screen phone that's easy to use and marketed it properly so it would succeed and take consumer eye. That holds not relevance to what the market does no though.
To me this whole "WELL APPLE DID IT FIRST" logic is no different than school yard "WELL MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD" crap. It's said as though the fact a company did something first it automatically makes that company the best. This isn't true, and in fact quite the opposite. It's the companies later down the line that find success because they improve upon their competition.
This is one of the reasons Apple's comeback into computing has been so successful. Apple saw what it felt the PC market was doing wrong and changed it. This has had a reflection on how the PC market operates and how windows has been shaped. Now it's just a back and forth between the two companies improving on each other's ideas.
Sorry for the rant, but it's always been something that bothered me. |
Time and time again when reading posts here about piracy and TV / Movies we see the dinosaur business model.
Why shouldn't they be pleased that people want to watch (and will pay to) what is happening in US TV, the same as why they aren't pleased that people in the US have to resort to piracy to watch Downton Abbey or Sherlock?
The problem seems to be (and I am an ass who knows nothing) is that consumption is metered to maintain demand and allow room for things that most people don't really want to watch amongst the 'hits'.
As it is all demand driven specialisation occurs and opens up new markets (everyone complains about the sci-fi channel and the history channel, neither of which I have access to btw), which the greedy execs dilute or seem to have perverted from their original 'mission statements'.
Then we come to 'rights' - I can't watch years old episodes of One foot in the grave, the Young Ones, Old BBC Sherlock material, old Doctor Who on demand unless I wanted to pirate it, but I can watch 'Homes under the Hammer' or some other crap I am not interested in. |
Explain to me how you believe it is fair and just to engage in piracy.
According to my sense of morals and ideal righteousness, media is a form of art, and art is born of passion and should be shared with then world for mutual enjoyment. Morally, I think it is wrong for a musician to pour his heart and soul into a song, and have the only way for that to be shared is to be exploited by media conglomerates. This is especially ridiculous now that the cost of distribution is almost nothing thanks to the internet. In my magical moral world, art would not be a business, but remain a hobby to be shared. I believe artists would still be compensated to some extent through donations, branded items and that sort of thing, but the music itself should be spread as far and wide as possible. I don't think that this model, based on generosity, will succeed when people feel trapped by the current big business model. They will pirate and not give back, feeling at some level that they are now 'getting what they deserve'. |
I fuckin hate the entertainment mogul. Its greedy, self centered, and selfish. Half the people that wound up out there forgot why they started making movies, or music. They're more concerned with how quick they can make a buck that originality is flying out the window. They're setting up boundaries that were once meant to be broken; setting the sky as the limit when there is so much more beyond that sky. |
They left before they were on trial? Seriously, who would operate a site like the pirate bay, that claims it's based in Sweden, while at the same time being in Sweden personally. The Internet makes it possible to take part in a business located and officially based in that country while at the same time never being in that country yourself. That is the joke of this. These guys left long before. They simply operated an enterprise that's based in Sweden. |
I think it bothers Reddit as in that Reddit community at large has allergy to someone who tries to sue/close/censor internet sites. That is all.
Now in regards to actual intellectual rights of Blizzard. Ofcourse they do have their rights, but its rather selection of their products that's amusing. Diablo II is rather obsolete game. Games of that age goes on steam for 2euro/USD no matter how famous they were in the last millenium. Besides multiplayer mode requires battlenet account with valid CD key and all that. WoW on the other hand is MMO where multiplayer is the only option and FWIW subscribtion revenues are much much bigger than sales of actualu game. In fact some MMO's like "Reddit's beloved(©)" EVE Online gives away their game for free with free expansions twice a year because thats how MMO pay to play business model works. |
I would tell you, but since gravity isn't constant, but a long formula, so it's kind of hard, but possible to find. I'm also not sure the velocity/acceleration we will be dealing with. Will slingshotting be used?
Another big problem is the damn air drag. Then figuring out the energy loss due to heat. |
Caps do absolutely NOTHING.
If I am the only person using the network, it makes absolutely zero difference whether I download 100TB or 1 MB. It doesn't cost them any money to transmit data.
The only "problem" many ISP's face, is congestion. If many people use the network at the same time, and this usage exceeds the bandwidth of the main line, then the service will degrade.
Say theres a neighborhood with 10 houses that has a mainline going to it that has a bandwidth of 100 MBps.
Scenario 1: Each house has a 10MBps connection. It makes absolutely no difference to this company whether these 10 houses download 24/7 on stop, or not at all. The line is there and its not causing congestion. It costs them nothing to send electrons.
Scenario 2: Because it is unlikely that all 10 people will use all of their bandwidth all at the same time, many companies offer more. So now this company is offering 20MBps to each of the 10 houses, but still only a 100 MBps main line. Now there is no problem as long as the total usage does not exceed 100MBps, but the total would exceed 100 if everyone used >10MBps at the same time. This causes congestion and basically makes it impossible for people to get their advertised 20MBps.
Now this is what data caps are supposed to prevent, but hopefully you can see why they are flawed. If everyone only ever used 10MBps (but used it 24/7 for a month), they would most surely exceed their data cap, yet no congestion has been caused. Alternatively, 5 of the people only did all of their download between 12am and 6am (when the other users are not using it at all) but used all 20MBps for a month straight, they would be downloading far more than the hundred GB caps that are in place... yet once again, they have caused no actual congestion.
SO basically, data caps are a pure money making strategy. There is no practical reason at all for their usage because they contribute absolutely nothing.
As for an actual solution to congestion (or solutions):
1) The company can upgrade their main lines (or lower the bandwidth of their plans), so that the total combined bandwidth of all of the users does not exceed the bandwidth of the main line. Doing this means that no matter what the users do, it is impossible to cause congestion.
2) The company can offer a higher bandwidth, and then also a lower throttled bandwidth. (Number of users per mainline) (bandwidth) can exceed the mainline bandwidth but (num users) (throttled bandwidth) shouldnt.
This method allows users to receive higher speeds if the network is not being used at the current time, but during periods where many people are on the network and the bandwidth is needed, then max speeds are throttled down as to not cause congestion.
So hopefully that explanation helped. |
If he's on Comcast, they've been known to throttle, especially when they see bittorent traffic on your network. Someone also brought up in another thread that Comcast was censoring a certain porn site . |
People like me? You racist... (I'm guessing since you divined my tone you know my skin color as well).
I'm just saying it's easy for you-- the man who had nothing to do with any internet infrastructure and the costs of upkeep-- to say "it should be free!" Sure, we'd all like the internet to be free and there be no cap on bandwidth. But "how is this stuff legal??" is just an idiotic thing to say. I don't know what is ridiculous about me saying that since you did not put up the fucking capital to set the infrastructure up to tell them what they should do having know knowledge of their profit margins is plain ignorance.
People like me think of the actual reality of things, including the big picture. You just want the world to conform to how you want it. Hubris.
But yes, the internet along with computers and mobile devices is the greatest invention of our time. Why should it be free? Cars and trains were once the best invention, they are not free. Water is not free. Nothing but the fuckin' air is free. There is no inherent right to the internet. I want to assume you're a young person, but I have no right to. I would make my assumption only to say that it seems that the youth have a predilection that the world owes them something. The world does not owe you anything.
As for my tone, I'm fuckin' sorry. I've been watching fuckin' deadwood on hbogo all day on my unlimited bandwidth ISP. |
One of the largest near earth asteroids is 1036 Ganymed. It's 3.3x10^16 kg and presumed to contain iron and magnesium silicates. If it's 10% iron, that's $98 trillion at current rates. If it's 1% magnesium, that's $1.6 quadrillion. |
What you've done right there is twist the truth to suit your statement. Allow me to explain.
Child pornography is NOT legal in Japan to make, distribute, and/or sell. The only reason it is legal to own is so that the Japanese government didn't have to put 1/2 the population in jail when the law was passed. You see, prior to the United States government's direct involvement in Japan the Japanese were culturally different from the US. They had their own laws, beliefs, and moral code. One of their morals that we now object to, was identifying women/girls over the age of 13 to be mature enough to be depicted sexually.
After the war, the US pressured the Japanese to pass laws changing what should be considered to be child pornography. Considering, culturally, they previously saw nothing wrong in owning sexually explicit material of younger girls, the government realized that there had to be a very large percentage of the population that would have been guilty of the crime. So they simply adjusted the laws to restrict the creation of new content. This also allowed the government to preserve historical works that would have been considered illegal after the laws were passed.
What I find really appalling about all of this isn't the pornography or the US's attempted projection of its own politics and morality on another, arguably, superior culture. What really galls me is that the US has this attitude that the Japanese were barbarians because of this moral attitude about the age of consent. The truth is that only 150 years ago in the US women as young as 11 or 12 were being used to broker unions between families, often with men that were older. And there is no surprise really. When many women died in child birth and the average lifespan was 40. It was just a necessary evil. |
edit: turns out the Japanese article's sources are mostly dead links, and the [article you linked]( does not cite a source for the Japanese limit. So I'm inclined to stick with the [original English article]( I linked to, which cites [an NIH publication]( that clearly says the Japanese limit was lowered to 0.03 BAC in 2002.
Good find. So in an attempt to get to the bottom of this, the Japanese article on DUI is a little bit better sourced, and it cites the limit as [0.15 mg of alcohol per 1 liter of breath](
One source claims breathalyzers convert breath alcohol content (BrAC) translates to blood alcohol content (BAC) at a ratio of 2100:1 / 1 liter) = 19% BrAC by volume. So to get BAC, it's 19% BrAC / (2100 BrAC/BAC) = 0.9% BAC, or 0.009 BAC. Anyone care to check my math? |
There are core groups that won't switch to Mac from Windows. Gamers and major businesses being the most of them. I don't expect that at all.
Your average home user though, who uses their computer for mostly e-mail, social networking, photos and music, would have very little trouble switching to a Mac. I recently started using one myself (writing this from it), and it's really not that hard to switch. There are a lot of nuances I don't like (The menu always at the top, the + button not maximizing), but mostly everything I do for work (as a programmer) I can do just as well on the Mac. Open Office meets all of my needs and as soon as I find a free MP3 player (that's not iTunes), I'll be set.
I'll still keep a home PC for gaming, and probably keep my Vaio for any .NET stuff I might have to do. If PC and Laptop manufacturers get to a point where only Windows 8 is offered without an option for 7 and I'm due for an upgrade, I'll go to a Mac.
I'm not saying you're going to see Macs holding a 50% market share of computers in use because of Windows 8, but from what I've seen so far I can't in good conscience recommend a PC with Windows 8 to someone wanting to upgrade. I think the change from Windows 7 to OSX would be less than Windows 7 to Windows 8. I've been a long time advocate of Windows, but the user experience with 8 just flat out sucks.
For phones and tablets, I wouldn't expect a big change in Apple's market just because they're trendy and it's what people know. I can see Windows 8 on mobiles hurting Android devices though.
EDIT: The |
For the telephone part, later they go into other topics like Gaben reaching out to non game companies, linux gaming, etc:
The video claims that....
The U.S. taxpayers have been paying for infrastructure to the telecom companies for years in the form of tax incentives. There were deliverables that were to be met. None of these are met or even close to being met.
Fiber technology is better than copper and will fill our needs for data for years.
Google is coming out with free internet (DSL speed), $70 internet for gigabit, and $120 for internet and television. And Google is speculated to be doing this because google makes it's money off of us using the internet, and the telecoms are trying to limit the internet. |
I'm sorry but I have to address this issue. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was NOT to help the big telecom companies. The act was specifically to break up the monopoly OF the big telecom industry. The act gave tax breaks and discounts to anybody who wanted to start a small telecom business, and then subsequently forced the larger telecom companies, like AT&T for example, to host all of their customers on the AT&T network.
The purpose of this was so that these smaller companies could use the money they saved from the tax breaks and discounts to build their OWN infrastructure. Now let me tell you a little bit about how this actually went down. The years 1996 to 2008 saw a gigantic rise in competition from smaller start up companies. The problem was that these companies were not doing what they were supposed to with the money from their tax breaks, and instead were pocketing the profits. On top of this, their lawyers kept finding loopholes in the wording of the act, and in the end were getting phone service for pennies on the dollar.
These smaller companies actually owned nothing, nor invested in anything as they were supposed to. I will continue using AT&T as an example here since they are so well known. Telecom start-up company X-Comm would find a customer to switch to their service. They would send a request to AT&T asking to put the customer in service. From there, an AT&T service rep would write and order, which would get processed by an AT&T translations writer, which would go to a worker in the AT&T central office, who connected the service to the AT&T network. Then if the line had trouble, an AT&T service worker would call an AT&T technician who was dispatched to service the line provided by AT&T to the house of the customer, who was then billed by X-Comm.
Because of the loopholes these small companies found in the original Act, companies like the hypothetical X-Comm were literally paying $1-2 per line, then turning around and charging their customers $40-50 for the same thing. Basically the only thing these companies handled was billing, and whatever telecom provider was the main carrier for that region was forced to provide everything else.
Within the last 5 years a judged ruled that it had gotten out of hand, and any company that had not done what they were supposed to with these profits, which was to build their own infrastructure and hire their own techs and workers, would have to start providing their own service. Needless to say since they merely pocketed their profits and never invested any money, 90% of them went out of business. The few companies that actually did what they were supposed to are still around, and are still providing fierce competition for the big carriers. |
I would like to point to you what happened in france, both in january for mobiles, and 10 years ago for adsl.
Free telecom came out of nowhere, annihilated prices (more than 50% off in either case), then proceeded to instantly gain huge market share.
Quickly followed by the colluding players whining to high heavens about it, then aligning to the new prices, because, what can they do ?
And then Free decided that since prices were as low as they could be, they'd just add free stuff for the same price.
Which is how I'm currently paying 38 euros a month for digital TV (100 channels or so), unlimited landline with free calls to 80 countries, unlimited internet with free mail, free website hosting, cheap vod, and best of all, the box that does all of that also doubles as a cheap wii with some games, an html5 compatible browser, and a 250GB networked HD ...
Also paying 16 euros for unlimited everything on my phone. |
Here's my major question with this whole system. If there were say fair competition between providers of telecommunication, wouldn't there never be enough of a subscriber rate to reach the critical mass necessary for continued service?
For instance, say there were 15 companies that offered cable service. How in the hell are you going to make sure that all apartment complexes, residential homes, condos, etc. in a certain area are going to have a hookup to each of these services? Each company has to control their own transmission lines and with 15 of them going into every unit, it would simply be impossible.
In this sense, don't cable companies have to be a sort of natural monopoly? That way there isn't a whole ton of digging/constructing/placing of new lines all across the country every time a new provider surfaces.
Now, I'm not saying I agree with their practices, and to be honest, they should be regulated more efficiently, but shouldn't they have to exist in this state? |
That is totally my case. My old apartment had FiOS and I loved it. When I moved, the new location didn't have it so I was stuck with Time Warner, but the moment FiOS was available, I switched.
I love it. I have never had any serious issues with them, only when a couple of months ago they updated the firmware on the STB and that had a couple of issues like freezing once in a while, but that has gone away. I love the internet speeds that I get, and that has never changed a bit. I live in Buffalo, NY area. |
No. There's no form of referendum for federal laws. There are forms of referendum for state laws, which vary from state to state. When it comes to amendments, they must first be proposed, then they must be ratified.
An amendment e proposed by a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Or by a national convention called by Congress at the request of 2/3 of the state legislatures. The latter has never happened though.
The amendment may then be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. It can also be ratified in special conventions called in 3/4 of the states. The latter has only occurred once. |
It's also not like that in Germany. We have the RegTP (Regulatory Body for Telecommunications and P....andas? I don't know). Anyway, to a certain extent, they are telling telecommunications providers what they're allowed to charge. Also, we probably have a lot more competition, also in part enforced by the Regulators.
I pay 65€ a month for unlimited 50 MBit cable, including 25 HD channels and another card for my bedroom TV. 10€ more would get me 100 MBit, but for what. You can go cheaper via ADSL. I think it's ok. |
As I have been a long time lurker please be gentle towards my first post. However, as I have seen many incorrect labels placed on specific industries, please realize that Cable companies within the United States operate as oligopolies who avoid collusion, however through tactics that are as easy to understand as the 'Hoteling Model' are able to dominate this industry by effectively creating contracts with both broadcasting corporations, as well as other subsidiaries such as HBO, Showtime etc. and thus it is difficult for start-ups on entries into this industry. |
I don't see how this is a problem...
So what if the consumer doesn't intrinsically understand that all "Galaxy" devices are Android devices. Once they buy one they'll be forced to recognize that it's Android, and they'll be exposed to the Google Play store.
Maybe someone should tell the folks over at BGR that successful android devices aren't problems for Google, they are revenue generators...
Then again, their only source was [This Blog]( that admits that its data is "not entirely reliable", and makes no implication that such data is indicative of a problem for Google's brand image. |
I've been seeing posts and articles on the front page about how awful the American ISPs are for months. They're holding everybody down and we all know it, but how do we really fight them and make them step up and provide us with legitimate service? Obviously enough people are not going to just cancel their service to make a point, and I've heard the rumors about Google's free super-internet plan that will redefine our very existence but I'll believe it when I see it. I spread the word as much as I can, but the people I talk to are in the same boat, and then who do we talk to, our parents? They didn't grow up with the internet so it's unreasonable to expect them to want this sort of change badly enough to do anything.
I am a senior in college, and we only started having internet that could load a 240p youtube video in less than an hour since I've been here. We kept being promised faster internet and hardware upgrades time and again and nothing happened, so I wrote an email to the head of the tech department saying it was inexcusable that an institution that claims to be at the forefront of education didn't have functioning internet access. I don't know if it worked, but a couple weeks later we had the upgrades. I believe that if enough people badger the big ISPs, they will buckle and start making the necessary changes that will bring us literally up to speed with the rest of the world. Telling people how bad they are doesn't provide any comparison, and a 25-minute vimeo might not even work with the kind of poor connection speeds we're talking about (a friend of mine in Indiana still has to leave youtube loading overnight). I would instead encourage people to look up the simple numbers: your internet speed at it's best vs. South Korea's at its best. I think that's the best way to get Americans active, to show them something that somebody else is doing way better and all they have to do is demand the same from their provider. We know the prices don't match the service, we know it's not really that difficult to lay the cables down, but it's time that we broadcast that knowledge in a way that really gets people talking and doing something. |
so says the "economics Ph.D Candidate "
The author of that is currently an unpublished Ph.D Candidate... kind of a good estimate of how far their word goes.
Unrelated the author explicitly states that ( see linkdin profile) "...she helps mobile telecom professionals, executives, board members, and companies improve shareholder value." Not surprising this person takes personal offence to the book and certainly there is no conflict of interest reviewing works that could potentially not improve sharehold value. Actually they would probaly get fired if they said anything good about a book critical on the US telecom industry...
And serious wtf is with these 5 page "reviews". Either write a book report and hand it in to your 7th grade english teacher or write a properly cited and reasoned article critically analyzing the book. I'm sure you could tear that book apart - but at least do it with some kind of citications so your thought process is at least academically reproducible. |
Granted, Americans are often in an area of a bad internet service, but what about the UK? Are there any other guys in the UK here who aren't happy with their internet service?
What really bugs me is the service provider's constant advertisement of 'Up to 20mb download speed'. What they really mean is 'We supply 20mbs in about 25% of our coverage, and the large majority get sub-5mb speeds'.
I got my hopes up not too long ago. I was told that if one were to 'express an interest' in an internet speed boost, it would contribute to an area's priority for upgrade.
After looking around for this, and failing to find anything remotely similar, I came to the realisation that my only way of getting a faster speed was to upgrade to a fibre-optic connection. These were advertised to carry a ridiculous amount of download speed that dwarfed the standard phone-line connection.
I phoned my ISP and enquired, and I was swiftly notified that this broadband was not supported in my area. Beautiful.
Back to playing games and not being able to stream music at the same time without +999 ping spikes. |
Appropriately, you linked to an Australian site. Australia has a huge piracy rate of Game of Thrones. We're 0.003% .3% of the population and 10% of the downloaders of this show.
Why? TV shows here are just fucking impossible to get .
One time I thought I'd do the right thing and bought the whole season of Breaking Bad in advance. I caught up to the airing, the new episode came out, everyone online and at work was talking about it and... not available on iTunes. What? I did the right thing, I paid for it. Well, it turns out iTunes don't sell it until our stupid cable companies have had their turn. Even if you bought it in advance . Also, the company conveniently region locked the Blu-Ray and didn't make one for our region. So I couldn't even import it in HD. I bought the DVDs, long after I'd watched the episodes, but they are shit quality and have stupid ads and piracy warnings at the start. I've learned my lesson now - do not pay for your TV episodes, you'll get a worse deal than pirates even not counting price .
At least Breaking Bad is available eventually. America has My Little Pony in 1080p, we get... fuck nothing, no matter how long we wait. I ended up buying season one as it slowly released on DVD one disk per month for about 90$ total.
Even if you pay for expensive cable (and paying for TV is not as common as in the US, most people don't have it), you wait to see the episode. If you're lucky you might wait a week, if the show is more obscure you might wait a year.
Thinking about waiting for free to air? HAH. You'll be waiting literally a year for new episodes .
Netflix blocks Australians. Hulu blocks Australians. iTunes has stupid high prices and a crappy selection. Torrents however work great here.
Australian companies stick their fingers in their ears and go LALALALALA THE INTERNET DOESN'T EXIST LALALA.
Look at this ignorant asshole:
>However, Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (AFACT) managing director Neil Gane disagrees.
“Game of Thrones episode one of season two was released in Australia five days after it was in the US, but the fact that some consumers can get this for free is what migrates them towards illegally downloading it, Mr Gane told News.com.au.
Five days? FIVE DAYS? That's years in internet time. This isn't about price, people pay for shit all the time. What it comes down to is that, even money aside, even if piracy was more expensive than buying, it would still be worth it, because you get episodes without bullshit piracy warnings and ads at the start, in HD, the day after they come out on TV in America. |
Wave was probably one of the best project collaboration things out there. Everything was laid out so simply, different people could be added so simply, meetings could be held with no effort, live editing (which wasn't on any of Google's products then) was amazing, and all in all it was just a really sweet program. You just can't get the same things done with Docs than you could with wave.
And what annoys me even more is the fact that I read an article a couple months ago (I can't find it, but whatever) about how email is getting old and should be changed to something else - and what they described was basically wave. |
We already have, actually. There's articles elsewhere on this, but to sum things up: The printer most people will buy is a cheap, for-home printer because nobody wants to pay for a business-quality one when we aren't going to use it as often.
The problem being that if you just get a cheap printer, it's going to be a lot more likely to jam, a lot more likely to fuck up, etc. And there really isn't much a way to offer higher quality printers at much lower a price, considering the cost of production and shipping. |
Here's my issues with Windows RT, coming from an IT professional that was offered one by his employer to test it out (I won't go into details why we're testing, but it's a big deal here):
No real Outlook, and the Windows Mail and Calendar apps are a completely awful substitute for real Outlook (This will be fixed with the 8.1 release of RT which I haven't upgraded to yet.)
No third party VPN clients: The built-in Windows VPN client doesn't work with either our Legacy Cisco hardware (our chosen configuration of it) nor our Juniper VPN. Microsoft COMPLETELY dropped the ball with RT by not going to two major players in VPN and giving them incentive to have 0 day apps for RT or at the very least working with them to offer better VPN integration. Apple has excellent Cisco integration in both iOS and mac OSX. Also, just to be fair, Android's VPN doesn't work with our Cisco VPN either.
No WebEx support. Again, I guess Microsoft ran over Cisco's dog or something. There's neither a WebEx app nor Java support in RT to use WebEx.
0 Active Directory support. C'mon Microsoft, this is just you being up against the wall and too chickenshit to delay a product to give us something really worth having. I guess making everyone wait 5 years for the crap that was Vista made you think that releasing crap faster was the answer. I can't even get remote server admin tools.
Finally, the app store is just full of completely worthless apps. They've created this walled garden and are doing precisely fuck-all to control the proverbial weeds. Google Play can be a complete mess too, but Windows RT has one-upped Google in this regard. iTunes' appstore is the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction IMO.
Right now, all I use my RT tablet for is as a very compact RDP terminal to my Thinkpad at my desk and see absolutely no reason to spend my own money on such a device.
And to top this all off, once you get past the stupid tile start screen and the terrible Windows mail and messenger apps, RT's big brother is actually quite good. Windows 8 takes great advantage of UEFI boot and solid state drives. I RARELY reboot my Alienware laptop running Windows 8 vs my Desktop which I shut down and reboot daily. Seriously, the only complaint I have about Windows 8 is the interface. |
You have the NHS. In the US the value of health care paid for in part or fully by employers is significant. Vacations are valued less as more companies opt for a comprehensive PTO model where an employee starting out in a career may get 10-15 days PTO per year, which is supposed to cover vacation and sick days. There is no real benefit to vacations however a perception of value remains.
As for wages when the contract positions pay more than an equivalent salaried position the added costs of health care and lost wages from unpaid time off make it a near wash. Add to that the lack of continuity of full time work to gain experience over time (opposed to four jobs in three years, for example) dulls the eventual earning power of the contractor. |
I guess it's to be expected. Every person who lives in Virginia and works for the government is an asshole. Every person who lives in Virginia and works for a government contractor is a bigger asshole than the people who work for the government directly. |
Atlas Shrugged: Directive 10-289
Point One: All workers, wage earners, and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment…
Point Two: All industrial, commercial, manufacturing, and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit, nor leave, nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business…
Point Three: All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes, and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift… |
you are the second person ive run into this morning to be into robotic-y droid type stuff! :p I took robotics in hs a million years ago and I've been recently longing for an arduino or beagleboard or whatever and some robot bits to strap an old android phone to. I've also been fascinated for years with mesh WiFi, adhoc networking, long distance WiFi links etc. one year the seattlewireless folks (old community, point to point wireless network with nodes lighting up various parts of Seattle) had WiFi lit up from a small aircraft overhead during their annual picnic. mostly proof of concept, disaster relief stuff, but cooooooool none the less :D |
Is that just cause you don't like giving Google your info? I had a friend who made a huge deal about not joining G+ because it was too difficult and one day when he left his account signed in, I did it for him when he left the room. He thought I was ninja....what an idiot |
I never said it was fair or ideal. I never said be who you are online but keep it a secret irl. it saddens me to see people hide who they are for the company, respect and/or love of people who wouldn't accept someone for who they are. I get that coming out can lose you friends or family or your job, and I believe those people don't deserve people in their lives they can't accept, even if the transitional time is difficult and lonely. its up to everyone to remind people the (in this case homophobic) opinions of others can make us sad, dejected, fearful, or feel like there's something wrong with us, but we have the ability to act however we want, though I know no amount of action can bring someone back into your life once they have no interest on being there.
nobody deserves to be 'closeted' because of someone else's inability to act with tolerance and compassion. nobody wants to lose friends or family, but people can learn they're going to lose awesome people in their lives if they can't treat others as they would want to be treated. it sounds far fetched, but cutting a family member out of my life as a teenager because they didn't understand they needed to treat me with respect or lose me was a large part of them coming to terms with how they treated other people, and we were even able to eventually make amends. |
Hmm.. The congress has power "to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures."
It would be probably easier to shut down bitcoins than cat videos considering Constitution and future pissed-off wall street bankers
Bitcoin has lots of possibility but if it negatively influence dollars, I think congress will act right away.
Also, Cat videos are protected under First Amendment, freedom of expression. :) |
The volatility makes no difference when utilizing services like Bitpay that does the currency conversion and presents the required amount in bitcoins to satisfy the invoice at time of checkout and also guarantees that rate to the merchant to be deposited in their bank account next day |
Even BFLs grossly overpriced flagship model (worth $22,484) will only produce .39-44BTC/day.
It's possible his son was doing well a couple months ago though (if BFL ever shipped anything, that is :)) |
I had .68 BTC in my wallet in the SR.... then it got seized, which didn't matter at the time because one BTC was worth eh something around $150 selling, $175 buying...
But now my .68 bitcoin is worth nearly $700. I feel fucking dumb as shit. |
this is what I've been saying in the last few posts
its basically e-gold. it's new and crazy and rising like mad which is a huge red flag but could at the same time be the start of something new that we haven't seen before.
bitcoins are "rare" like gold or other things but even gold can be turned into something shiney to wear if it lost a chunk of its value and be sold as jewellry.. what the hell can a bitcoin do? its backed by nothing. its just some "thing" that everyone is buying to use as a currency, but the currency is so volatile that it is curious to know how many people are using it for legitimate trading of physical goods.
and that's the other thing aside from volatility. sure, its accepted at some places. how many vendors accept bitcoin? like 0.1% of all vendors? |
If you mean Bitcoins in general, check out [Wired.com's article on it]( Great resource.
If you mean you don't understand the crazy sudden surge in price, it's because it's a bubble. If enough people believe that something has value, its value will keep increasing. Bitcoins were created for exchange of goods and services online anonymously and quickly with no central control. As they became more and more desirable, people started buying not to buy and sell things online, but so that they could SELL THEM TO PEOPLE who want to buy and sell things online later down the road when Bitcoins are more valuable . What happens if there's too many people who do this, and not enough people who want to receive those Bitcoins? Basic supply and demand, my friend. Eventually, the bubble will pop: People will realize that Bitcoins aren't really doing anything by themselves and they'll sell it all away at the same time.
Adding to the troubles is the fact that Bitcoins are deflationary. There can only be 21 million Bitcoins, which are all estimated to be mined by somewhere around the year 2140. After that, Bitcoin owners will have no incentive to sell their Bitcoins and Bitcoin miners won't be able to mine Bitcoins. |
A single BFL miner will cost you around $6,000 last I heard for a few GH/s of power, where some mining farms are getting as high as 1 TH/s, leaving those measly GH/s miners far behind in computing power. with so many miners in use right now, there is a lot of competition for a finite supply of coins at the moment. You could always just wait for the price to drop before you start buying microbits or whatever they are called since each coin is divisible up to 8 decimal places. |
It's a market, so yeah it's basically the same. But coinbase would be condamned for fraud if bitcoin was a real money because of their "four day wiat" ; they take your money, buy the coins with it and depending on what is best for them after four days, they give you the coins or give you back your money with apologies for a "technical problem" or something like that. The market on justcoin isn't huge, but I trust them more than coinbase. Anyway, that's my opinion.
Plus it's made by two guys in norway, and norway is awesome, but that's subjective. |
You might be right, however the difficulty vs price ratio is what really matters when deciding whether or not to mine. The price has more than doubled in the last month and while the difficulty has increased, it hasn't doubled. This means that it's a lot more worth it now than it was a few weeks ago. That is, until the difficulty increases or the price decreases. |
Bitcoin isn't a service like MySpace waiting to be supplanted by Facebook. It is a protocol more along the lines of http meaning that the first mover advantage is nearly insurmountable. All of the infrastructure currently in development is being built with Bitcoin as the foundation. Furthermore, as a protocol it can be modified and updated (at the consent of the network) to incorporate additional features and/or functionality. For a competitor to gain enough momentum to supplant Bitcoin it would need some significant and easily apparent advantage. Even if one should emerge however, it would probably happen gradually enough that most users would be able to divest Bitcoin and transition to the new currency without incurring devastating losses. |
Careful there, read this explanation about the current state of altcoins:
> Understand that there is huge advantage - a massive technological and societal utility - in the current world moving toward Bitcoin. There is no advantage in a Bitcoin world moving toward Litecoin. I know Litecoin fans like to say it's silver to Bitcoin's gold, and while it's a cute comparison, it doesn't really mean anything. Bitcoin's divisibility eliminates the need for a less valuable unit to partner with. In other words, the mBTC is the silver to BTC's gold. Here's my suspicion... the only reason you are suggesting to me that Coinapult (or any business) should accept Litecoin is that there's a chance the announcement of the acceptance will drive the LTC price higher. There's no significant added utility for the company, for me, or for you, beyond that speculative interest. Litecoin, and the other alts, are 99.9999% speculation. To be sure, much of Bitcoin's price is also due to speculation about future value, but at least this is based on a reasonable assessment of the potential of the system vs. its competition (fiat currency and the global banking network). Speculating on altcoins, in general, is pure greater fool theory in action, because there is no significant fundamental utility, no "improvement delta" over Bitcoin itself. People are going to get burned with them, and it's unfortunate because Bitcoin is seeing returns of 10,000% per year and apparently that's just not enough for some people =) Altcoins are the penny stocks of the Bitcoin world, and perhaps their greatest virtue is that they distract the most superficial speculators away from Bitcoin itself. Should they exist? Yes. I'm glad people experiment in every way with this technology. But don't let speculative experiments at the margin distract from the most mind-blowingly awesome monetary system mankind has ever seen - Bitcoin proper. |
You keep chugging that kool-aid, friend.
Bitcoin is not, and will never be used as a real-world currency. The real world value of all bitcoins in existence right now is probably somewhere between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude less than the book value posted on the chart sites. I'm talking about the value in terms of the quantity of other (real) currencies, goods, and services you could obtain using bitcoins. Liquidity and transparency on these markets is very low, which makes risk perpetually very high. There is no regulation of the markets in any fashion other than that the markets attempt to regulate themselves just enough to keep their pockets steadily filling with exchange fees. All this combines to make bitcoin unusable as a market currency, a reserve currency, a form of exchange for contracts or large transactions... pretty much anything other than a one-off, under the table transaction.
Even if bitcoin did become more popular as a vehicle for actual buying and selling of goods and services, governments would very quickly clamp down on exchange, ruining a lot of the utility of the bitcoin. Governments would simply have no choice, as large scale adoption of a deflationary currency would devalue and bleed volatility through into reserve currencies, and would make taxation increasingly difficult.
Bitcoin lacks many of the qualities that actually allow a currency to remain stable. The points you cite in favor of bitcoin are actually the things that make it least likely to become a commonly-used medium of exchange.
Even the "down with government, anarchy rules" die-hard types should be able to see that this shitty little computer science experiment will eventually either wreck a lot of people's lives or just explode into a burning heap of tangled wishes and rotten dreams. Go ahead and gamble, but don't swallow the bitcoin community's bullshit so much that you bet more than you can afford to set on fire. Bitcoin is often compared to stock trading for the same reason that stock trading is often compared to betting on horses. The newbies bet emotionally and lose big. The veterans do real research, don't listen to big talk and rumors, play smart and hedge their bets so they can win more than they lose.
Never buy on the uphill climb. The ideal moment to buy is right at the bottom of a crash. Listen to the rumors and take care to watch for the contrary indicators. That buddy of yours who sells at the bottom? Right when the tears are ready to fall, you offer to take everything he's got at a pittance more than the market rate. He'll sell it to you, think he's getting a good deal, and wont realize till the next day he's gotten shafted.
Same goes for the top. When you hit a 100% profit in any market, you sell 50% of your holdings, and hedge against negative returns. That way, even if you hold on too long, and the stock crashes, you can no longer lose a cent. In a really hot market, watch for a media pump. When multiple media sources start banging the drum for something, it usually means someone is pumping it, trying to push up the price. If you see that, wait until 3 pm and sell a quarter of what you've got left. The next day at 11 am sell another quarter. If a frenzy starts in the next few days, wait until it jumps a bit more and sell the rest.
At that point, you've at least doubled, and probably tripled your money. That's a thieves return. No shame in selling out a little too early, either. Never regret selling for a profit, or you'll psyche yourself out and start taking losses.
The nice thing about stocks instead of bitcoin is that after a big selloff the thing still has an empirically measurable amount of value. You can usually buy back after a big dump and be reasonably safe. Not really so with bitcoin, which makes it a total guessing game as to where the bottom is.
Full disclosure: I made several thousand dollars from bitcoin trading a few years back. I make a substantial amount of money on the stock market. This is not intended as financial advice of any kind, and i make no representations as to the quality or accuracy of the information in this post. If you do what I say and get boned it's your own fault. |
You keep seeing it as a stock, and whilst i do respect your opinion, i strongly disagree. Bitcoin is unstable and volatile, but it can reach a stable point given there is enough infrastructure and technology, as well as a massively higher market cap to go along.
As for the politics you keep pointing out. Bitcoin caught Capitol Hill's attention, and last week there was a senate hearing. It went better than expected, and over-all the senate appreciated the potential digital currency and obviously had nothing they could do at this point to harm it regardless, so they let it pass. As bitcoin grows bigger, the chances of government interfering grows smaller.
If you would only step out of your little conservative bubble and look at this from another angle, you would see the potential.
And again, Bitcoin is Open Source - and i cannot emphasize this enough. Almost any regulation, interference or flaw that is explored in the future, we can adapt to.
Edit: The biggest concern for the American government in particular is obviously the tax-evasion and illegal activities, as well as the potential decline of the dollar, if bitcoin or any other crypto were to succeed. However, what makes them extremely unlikely to regulate it, is losing national infrastructure and innovation to other countries. A world where bitcoin is a major currency, and America has the strongest regulator, is a world where America declines. If China, Germany, France and England (examples) were to have close to no regulation at this point, everyone would favour trading and economic innovation in those countries rather than in the US. This is why the senate is extremely careful, and i doubt they will find a way to stop this moving train. |
Where's the |
This will likely get buried, but I HAVE to reply to this, which is making a lot of fuss over nothing:
Using HDMI to get to true 4k is a complete pain in the ass. It's beyond the threshold of what two cables (or double bandwidth) can deliver, so the only way to do it is to use 4 units. It meant either an overhaul in the delivery system, or two plugs for everything, or scaling down the resolution. They chose the less stupid thing.
4K is not to UHD as 1080p is to 720p. UHD is 92% the resolution of 4K, where as 720p was 44%. It is insane to compare these two.
UHD is still 4 times the resolution of what we now consider to be "full" HD.
As for compression, don't even get me started. Every now and then people who don't know what they are talking about look at compression and go, "Wow! I'm not getting anywhere close to the full image!" But that's not because video engineers are stupid, it's because they are smart.
They are comparing intermediate compression to delivery compression, which is insanity. You don't want 4:4:4 compression in your living room, it's an absolute waste of data! You can't see the difference!
When someone is working on a film, you want all the data you can possibly get, because you're doing color transformations. Any missing data and you risk exposing the compression artifacts. But once it's delivered, it will just be presented as is. Basically everything you see ever on the internet, DVD, Blu-ray, everything, photos and videos is 4:2:0 DCT compression. |
It's mentioned in the article just a bit. But i have to say i love Nokia maps , sure it's not as thorough as Google or any other online based maps. But the real benefit, it is an offline maps .
There are TONS of moments when there are no internet, even a cell signal, and i'm in the middle of "not a clue where i'am". Sure it wasn't a big problem to many people, but where i came from, you will be lucky to have internet connection in suburbs area. Even in downtown the connection were shitty. |
Elementary? Give me a break!
This distribution is stripped of popular applications. Internet browser, office suite and such are replaced with lighter and not very useful (in long run) alternatives. It's the main reason for this distribution to work a bit faster than its counterparts, which is often presented like real achievement.
Everyone who wants to really switch to Linux is bound to add heavier applications pretty soon, install Firefox/chrome, add Libre/Open Office and end in place where distros like Linux Mint, Manjaro, KahelOS, Pear or Fedora start, which makes it pointless to try Elementary at all.
Its looks? Entirely [ not unique ]( No, [ really ]( An hour of work tops. Docky quicklaunch bar, catchy wallpaper, one of countless themes and pretty much every other distro can look like that. |
Thanks for the informative reply. So technically, I could reverse/confuse this database collection of my browsing patterns, by occasionally searching irrelevant information?
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, in turn, this information is sold, and then used by advertising companies? I can see this by advertisement banners splayed about when I search a particular thing. Creeped me out when I first saw it, but it really doesn't phase me. |
I won't mind competition, but I think it is even better if there is competition and net neutrality. |
Wow, thats the shortest block of text ive ever seen with a "too long; didnt read" summary |
1) The crypto lib is forge which is quite complete and well organized. The reason it is all on one line is because it's a minified version. From my experience, forge binds together many different javascript encryption libraries into one API. Forge is used a lot in NodeJS applications for it's robust cryptographic library. Some of these libraries come from Stanford and all of them that I've seen have undergone their own proofs and testing. That being said, it's hard for me personally to assure that jsbn has undergone a complete security audit and is not in any way compromised.
2) Services like this are very difficult to design without server-side identities. I assume those identities are private in that they are stored encrypted.
3) A chattier service could certainly make for a more difficult to distinguish access pattern. Sometimes this introduces latency into the communication channel depending on how it's implemented.
4) In similar services that I've designed, I've used RSA to securely share encryption keys between browser clients by relaying the ciphertext through a server. forge comes with an RSA package so it's possible this is what they're doing. edit: they also use WebRTC. Any man-in-the-middle attack would have to be able to decrypt the TLS before it was able to inject anything into the API requests/responses which seems unlikely. If you've got a MIM behind SSL then you could theoretically tamper with RSA key signatures in the message body to try and trick someone into talking to you at the application level. If you're that concerned about the security of your transport layer, you're probably best off hosting your own server and adding additional transport layer security.
5) Cross site scripting is a very real threat to applications such as this. I see that they are using Strict-Transport-Security which is good, but there are a few other headers they could add to improve XSS security:
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies: master-only
X-Xss-Protection: 1; mode=block |
DO NOT USE FOR SENSITIVE STUFF! NOT SECURE
Use (only for normal stuff) to signal you want encrypted communication. It's probably a good way to annoy the bad ones till they finally hack it. It's better than the other easy systems.
Tech stuff- I am no expert.
Critic :
-Code is complex. There are no linebreaks in one crypto file. That is bad style. Linebreaks are the most basic coding practice in existence. Crypto applications require extreme skill. One should no trust some code that doesn't even obey the most basic standards. The other files are complex, the cypto functions are split into at least 20 sub functinos, and, as far as I know, use gloal variables or injections. I won't trust such code.
-Only PW is private, might use some clever technic to increase security, could not check. There is no other private data.
-It is server based. Metadata will still signal your time of communication. ~Unless there are millions of current users~ ~(scratch that, there is a cookie with a timestamp easily identifying everybody)~ Scratch that, too, if they spy on the content on both ends (and compare the encrypted content), big bads like the NSA can easily trace your talking partner, (and both of your locaition/identities, unless you go tor... but then you would not need this)
-It is server based, and, as far as I know, there is no way to do a direct, non server, identity check with your opposing partner using JS (correct me). That is a HUGE vulneraility against impersonation/man in the middle. One could take over the server and read all communication (via impersonation). Or big players (NSA) could use packet injection ("QUANTUM") and read everything via man in the middle attack. Worse, they could impersonate your partner and get you to reveal secrets.
-The code is web based. An attacker could hijack the server and send different code that revelas the PW, or all communication (nobody would notice the different JS-Code!). Or the NSA could use packet injection via "QUANTUM" to do this without trace or taking over the server. |
Because if online based startups have to come up with massive funding to purchase a fast lane for themselves, they will have to go through investors like him who can take a piece before they get off the ground. |
That is what the quotes mean.... its something not entirely true or entirely false like if I said that: Working with another persons outdated code on a deadline is "fun".
These are called [Scare Quotes]( |
First off - while piracy may contribute to lower attendance at theaters, it is hardly the main reason people don't go. The sentiment expressed by /u/Candlejaok is spot on. And many homes in America have a big TV and decent sound that makes waiting for the DVD/BR to come out is a much more attractive proposition.
Secondly - piracy is illegal and I won't defend it. Do not take anything I say to mean that.
Finally - If the movie industry as a whole didn't have such a poor track record of first decrying new technology as it's downfall and then finally embracing that tech to make even more money I'd feel for them. See VCRs and cable for two examples of their protestations. The music industry, after a while (and with a few holdouts), adapted to the new world and now we have Spotify and iTunes and the rest. I can't remember the last time I pirated a song - it just doesn't occur to me any more. If I want it forever, I get a good quality download from iTunes at a reasonable price. If I just want to hear it once then it's off to Spotify or YouTube - and the artists make a couple of pennies from that listen.
If the movie industry would find a way to work with Netflix, Amazon, and Apple they'd probably spend way less on "enforcement" plus make some money off of people who would not buy their stuff no matter the price.
Right now the video entertainment industry has a business model problem. And they are blaming that shortcoming on technology instead of adapting to the new reality. And they are actively working against the wave of technology to further that end. Which, even though it's wrong, pushes people to illegal downloads. |
I don't think Google is intentionally being a big evil corporation because most of everything they do is pro consumer and deemed non-profitable. I think Google is being forced to play the big bad corporation because it's the only way to fight the competition that's trying to put them out of business. You'd think they could go to the law to settle things, but look at what caused the recession. Banks were spending too much, but the government had to bail them out or destroy the economy. It sucks to say it, but these super mega corporations are simply above the law because of how big and powerful they are. So it seems like a shitty thing to employ these vile business tactics, but if you were in their position then could you do better? You could publicly slander that company to try and effect their sales, but THEN the government would get involved because your company tried to have a bad effect on the American economy. |
Well, they do use their monopolies very aggressively. It's not happening with Google News yet, but publishers are very afraid that this will happen. Hear me out for a second.
Google Images was a fantastic product which helped sites generate traffic for creating and curating unique images. It drove a lot of traffic; enough to become the primary distribution method for many companies. I know because I work for one that used to do this.
In 2012 Google began rolling out a UI change to Images in the US and a few other countries which cost us 9/10ths of our Google Images traffic and 2/3rds of our traffic overall. The 9/10s haircut was pretty standard for the other companies we talked to, as well. Google's change was pretty simple: when you click on an image, instead of going to a website, you view a slideshow of full sized, hot-linked images directly in Google.
This created a bit of a stir, as you might imagine. Google gave publishers a couple of options: keep the remaining 1/10th of your traffic or remove yourself from our index.
Google's approach is a copyright violation. However, for many small companies, suing Google is too expensive and too time consuming. We believed those resources were better used investing in new distribution strategies (which we did successfully, thank god).
Many companies like ours just stayed quiet and ate the 90% haircut. And all Google had to do was plop their big dick down on the table.
The same thing could happen with Google News one day, and publishers are afraid. The days of "do no evil" are long gone, I'm afraid. |
Its much easier to make an engine more efficient, especially with modern electronics controls, and manufacturing techniques, (in stead of dumping gas into cylinders at assumed AFR, we now control the gas injected into each cylinder to microliter volume, with microsecond accuracy, and balance it to air going to cylinder to achieve most efficient burning).
Designing a better battery requires designing new materials or chemistry. Which is not simple at all, this further requires new manufacturing methods, and access to new resources that might not be available on large scale. The biggest problem is developing methods to produce new materials on large scale, as in order to make efficient batteries, the materials that participate in chemical storage have to be uniform, and well controlled with minimal immpurities.
There is also large hurdles to using batteries with out affecting performance. Batteries produce allot of heat during charging and operation, requiring temperature control methods, which can add significant weight and cost to the car. |
Couple of thoughts:
The graph entitled "dispelling the congestion myth" with "actual network data" is clearly bogus. Nobody but Verizon has the actual internal router topology and utilization data. I really doubt verizon sat there putting this anti-verizon graphic together. But the numbers are plausible, so let's choose to believe it for the purpose of this discussion.
Level 3's story is entirely plausible. Verizon probably has a peering point somewhere with free ports. In fact, the majority of their peering points likely have free, unused ports, because everyone probably bought equipment with future expansion in mind. They're not just plugging wires in freely however, because that has ALWAYS required some kind of agreement and/or money changing hands (traditionally, the side sending the data has always paid). It's like saying that the electric company has already bought the oversized transformers strung up on the poles outside your house. Therefore, they should just plug you in for free.
The problem of actually paying for things, however, is much more subtle. It's not as simple as plugging in four more wires to Level3. That certainly solves the immediate problem netflix is having today at that peering point. Level 3 would also absolutely love that, since they are collecting money from Netflix, yet paying nothing to drop that traffic off on someone else. But, it's not necessarily fair to Verizon. Now there are 0 free ports on that border router. So they need money to buy a much bigger and more expensive one when another Tier-1 provider (e.g. Cogent) comes around next month in need of another peering port to properly support increase in traffic on that "other isps 44%" green connection at the top. It also means that every piece of equipment down the line needs to be faster too. (i.e. the metro area router to aggregation router in the graph is shown at 65%, maybe that's now at a 100% after adding all that netflix Level3 traffic, and needs big money to be upgraded, etc. Same is true for everything else down the line in the graph to some extent. At the very least, equipment will have to be upgraded sooner)
The point is that money somehow has to change hands at some point. Someone has to pay for the traffic. Up until this past year, it's always been the case that the party sending the data has had to pay up. i.e. the flow of money has traditionally been, Netflix charges you (part of which goes to their hosting bills). Level3 charges netflix for transit. Level3 and Verizon then to get together and decide how much Level3 is going to pay Verizon for the new traffic dumped on their network, since the traffic at that peering point is clearly imbalanced (i.e. transmit is not equal to receive in a big way. Netflix generates > 33% of domestic prime-time traffic), and therefore likely no longer settlement-free.
Problem is that both sides are acting like five-year olds here. Verizon is clearly refusing to work with Level3 to upgrade congested ports. These ports are usually upgraded long before they reach 100% utilization and impact customers. Maybe verizon is unrealistic in their asking price? Maybe it's because they want to protect their own video on demand services? Maybe they don't want to spend money this year on network upgrades? Who knows (the agreements are secret, so nobody knows who's actually being the bigger doucehbag). Same for Netflix and Level3. Maybe they want to pay pennies on something that actually costs a dollar? Maybe they are demanding completely settlement-free peering? They are, however, definitely out there using customers as pawns. Convincing everyone that this is entirely Verizon's problem, and that paying for imbalanced peering is a totally new and totally unfair thing happening only to them (it is not, it's how the internet has worked for everyone since the very beginning). |
Uhh, the government built the basis for which the internet was created? We probably would have a very different internet today, if the DoD didn't show interests in MIT's findings on packet switching in the early 60s.
I'd dare say we might not have the internet, if it wasn't for ARPANET proving the concept could work large scale. |
This was always a joint effort by the NSA and the FBI. The FBI called it Carnivore. For awhile there was an annual tradition of sending keyword (bomb, explosive, kill the president, etc) laden email signatures to fuck with their filtering software. The NSA has been using several of their data-collection centers as TOR nodes for over a decade. When I first used TOR, I noticed that I would usually pass through a node in VA or UT. I found out later these were NSA data centers. Once your data passes through their servers, they have the right to intercept and decode it. |
Not self-driving, only self parking. Its feature wasn't installed, by accident. The driver ran over a man. |
In marketing's defense, they are dealing with the human mind. And not just one, but those of "the unwashed masses".
Marketers have to try to not only explain how some of these devices and services work to a mass audience without becoming a boring lecture, but also have to do it in a way that's entertaining/funny/creative/etc again, to a broad audience. On top of that, they have to quickly pitch the product and convince you to buy it in the span of ~30 seconds.
When you deal with something as relatively mundane as computers and especially operating systems, it's tough material to work with. Look at the "Apple vs PC" ads, for example. They had to take the entire concept of an operating system and reduce it to a caricatured person which represented Apple and one for PC in order to explain it to people.
An engineer might've said "why don't we just split the screen and show a feed of OSX on one side and Vista on the other and show the differences between tasks?" I hope I don't have to explain why this wouldn't have worked. |
As someone in a similar situation looking for funds, like the Google guys back in 98', I'm starting to get frustrated at large corporations and their approaches to funding start-ups.
For example, I'm trying to get my start up to work with General Dynamics Land Systems, not sell them an idea, and even getting a hold of anybody is an impossibility.
An acquaintance of mine suggested trying out selling to large corps instead of venture capitalists if at all possible, but at such early stages of the game it looks like there is no other options.
For me, the situation is the US gov't spending over a billion dollars in roads in Afghanistan and 3 weeks after the news of them purchasing 3000 MRAPs (at over 500k each) they find out they're useless there. And what I got to sell em is the same cost as an MRAP but ... ahhh fuck it no one cares. |
If so, then how do you propose to protect open source software, since copyright is the basis for software licenses?
I'm not sure why you get the downvote, it's a very valid and interesting question, so upvote from me. In fact I asked this exact question to the creator of the GPL and chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen. His response was that the GPL and other copyleft licenses are legal hacks of existing copyright law to simulate an environment in which copyright does not lock down software. His opinion was that the free software community would greatly benefit from removal of copyright protection of source code.
He didn't really go into details, but I think the idea is that the creators of GNU Linux wanted to allow mass revision of their work, but without any of those contributors to be able to stall further revision by refusing to allow further revision of their work. Revision of code in the law of copyright is known as a derivative work, and grants to the revisioner a copyright to the alteration. But to make a derivative work, you have to be given permission by the copyright holder of the original. Therefore, the GPL grants the world a right to make derivative works on the GNU Linux code base with the understanding that such a right is again made available to the world for the derivative work which results. It's a daisy chain of rights-to-make-derivative works.
This entire problem of preserving revision rights is created by copyright law, and the copyleft licenses (which does not include permissive licenses like BSD and Apache) are nothing but a compulsory release of copyright. The better alternative, then, is no software copyright. After all the GPL protection is rather weak. Only works which incorporate GNU/Linux code base fall into the compulsory chain, so key software products like MySQL or Apache need not use it, or may modify it to allow library linking to non-compliant software, etc... Further, f a key revision is found to be infringing on a 3rd party copyright, that would kill the entire branch stemming from that revision. The license is probably doing much more than it can actually handle. |
Downvoted for submission title slightly more sensational than the article.
And here's the devil's advocate reason for why I think this is sensational:
Not every owner of an iPhone 4 is a tech savvy nerd capable of doing useful things inside the phone
Even user-replaced parts with the proper tools, performed according to a guide written by Apple can lead to a bricked phone, or one that's noticibly not factory-assembled or serviced.
Children exist, and are curious, you don't want them able to take apart your phone.
Ever heard of PEBCAK? (Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard)
Does it keep basically everyone out? Yes. Does it do it for malicious purposes? That's not nearly so clear. |
They make the analogy that genes are like the Internet. The Internet itself is a byproduct of semiconductors. This is another fundamental scientific pursuit that will give way to a new legion of technologies - everything from the gene equivalents of microprocessors, information theory, diagnostics, and then you get the Internet and killer apps. |
I highly recommend the book Fatal System Error. It goes into great depth about why it is so hard to track down the scammers and prosecute them ( |
Lolwut?
2008 contest: Charlie Miller admitted to advanced knowledge of the flaw he used to win.
2009 contest:,.. Charlie Miller again used an exploit he had advanced knowledge of.
In many of the other contests, the attendees are attacking platforms that are outdated. |
Where does it say that in the article?
It talks about ASLR (which is pretty standard) and sandboxing (also pretty standard) but then only goes to explain that using a seperate javascript thread in safari increases protection. |
Prior knowledge" aka "Job Requirements""
That's exactly my point though,.. It's not really that surprising at all that you'd get successful results from the type of people they invite to Pwn2Own.
If you put an experienced and skillful racecar driver (or defensive driver) into a standard Toyota Corolla,.. you're going to get much different results than the average driver. Those results don't mean the car is great or awful,.. because the variable is the driver, NOT THE CAR.
Same is true for computers:... if you put someone like Charlie Miller at the keyboard,.. you're going to get very different results than the average user. The results don't mean the OS is "easy to crack". |
Um, hold on.
I actual fact the national security and/or telecommunications laws of some countries require telecommunications service providers to provide back door access to their services BY LAW, on a national security basis, in order for service providers to be granted permission to do business in those markets.
There was a huge hubbub about this not so long ago when India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, among others, were considering banning RIM's BBM and email products entirely since they were virtually i possible to monitor by virtue of their encryption and/or storing data offshore where it couldn't be accessed or monitored by government security agencies.
If I recall correctly this was actually before the Arab Spring - around the same time as the terror attack in India and the Iranian green revolution.
Ultimately, facing a ban of it's products in several markets, RIM reached a compromise agrement with foreign governments to provide back door access to BBM and other services, which set a precedent for other telecommunications service providers such as Apple, Nokia etc.
It's all about money of course. If you're RIM, Apple or Nokia (or Google) it's pretty hard to justify turning down access to potentiL markets of millions of potential customers based on principles.
It's not like manufacturers are going to enjoy having to go through all those extra hurdles in each and every country they do business in but the ends seem to justify the means.
Note that this applies in the telecoms sector only - I'm no expert on that PC Os manufacturers are up to. |
This is correct.
About every 7-10 years, via Moore's Law, you'll find that technology drops a digit off in price. A $10K monster system becomes a $1k workstation, and a $1k workstation becomes a $100 phone. The same applies for $10M to $1M to $100K server farms. Software, along with development methods, is adjusted for this via Wirth's Law.
I'm still a good distance from 40, but it was 15 years ago that I learned what a terabyte was. I imagined something the size of a refrigerator and wondered what could possibly be done with that. I also wondered why people would ever write in super-slow Java (or Perl!) and not super-fast C + ASM, outside of some really simple stuff. |
OK, everyone calm down. I do this currently.
The real prohibitive expense is... time .
I currently have all the STL model files for the NXT set and it takes literally hours to print a single, mildly complicated technic brick on a $30k Objet printer.
It's really only useful for making my own parts that do not exist at all, e.g. making up a hybrid part in Solidworks and then printing it out. |
There are some similar concerns about physical piracy similar to the music and movie industry's piracy.
While I can't say what the distant future of 3D printing holds, current 3D printing is relatively slow ("rapid prototyping" isn't what most people think of as rapid), lower quality (you can't get the smooth shiny plastic surface of a LEGO brick without post processing, due to the resolution of the printers) and far more expensive to make.
The beauty of mass production is reduction of cost. Injection molding thousands of lego bricks thousands of times a day is much cheaper than getting the powdered or strand plastic and building up each layer of the object.
In addition, because these layers are built up individually, you don't get the same polymer chain entanglement that you would if you injected molten plastic into a mold. This isn't much of an issue for something like a LEGO brick, but for something like silverware, a coat hanger or just a plastic container you would want the strength.
Also, you can only print things as large as your machine (or whoever's machine you're using), if you wanted to print a 4' sword, for example, you'd need a machine at least 4' long in one dimension, or print it in parts and attempt to weld the plastic together manually. |
This is wrong and broken for so many reasons that I thought I should read it just in case there was something fundamentally awesome that I had not thought of.
There isn't.
It starts with this piece of stupidity:
> .secure addresses would first have to agree to abide by a stringent set of requirements, including offering end-to-end encryption of most traffic and to follow a strict code of conduct
Which is answered by a big walloping "SO WHAT?". My browser tries to connect to .secure, a man in the middle intercepts me and does it for me. "End to end Nothing: solved.
Then it goes on with shit like this:
>Artemis will continually scan .secure addresses to see if they're hosting malware, phishing, or other nuisance sites, and those that are will be disconnected.
It's the equivalent of Norton Anti-virus but on an internet.
And we all know about the halting problem: write a program that detects if it is being scanned and if it is, don't present a malware. It's the god damn fucking halting problem, man. There's no solution to it.
Beneath all of this veneer though, we do see one thing: someone paid 9 million dollars to operate the .secure TLD, because they thought that the marketing clout of the TLD and the operations of that TLD would make a profit. |
The White House did not in any way try to censor something. They did try to diffuse an ugly situation and try to preserve the safety of Americans in danger abroad.
Republicans/Romney/you are seeing it as the White House stating that appeasing people that have killed Americans is more important than the freedom of speech when in fact it was simply a diplomatic move to try to ensure the safety of Americans.
Had the White House reacted aggressively to what happened, it would have resulted in more deaths, and nothing more.
That being said, the White House also made it clear it was a request and not an order, and let Google and YouTube turn them down. Which, again, was a good diplomatic move to still ensure the freedom of speech. |
Exactly. Here's the bottom line. The principle of reciprocity doesn't apply here. A big company selling me something doesn't get to say that morally I should watch its ads in return for the other content (if any) the company provides me. There's no equality between us as agents; there's no relationship beyond a capricious, potentially commercial one that can be disrupted by either of us at will. In other words, fuck the ad hosters. I don't give a shit if youtube goes bankrupt because I don't watch its ads - not that that will happen because 99% of the population does watch its ads. |
I'm surprised there hasnt been an internal push by industry against some of the more egregious offenders.
a couple of the most annoying, the 50 download buttons that try to get you to install a registry cleaner, hiding the download you actually want.
ads that move and expand over content.
noisy ads.
It is crap like this that drives people to adblock, causing sites like reddit here to lose revenue. Most sites tend to ad more ads to make up for the losses from adblockers, further annoying their customers who dont block. It becomes a cycle. Luckily reddit never really succumbed to this but I bet there were conversations about adding more ads.
I have been looking for this for ages, mentioned it on reddit before, I'd rather block the douchebag websites, and not the reddits. And hopefully the douchebag sites will learn they can make just as much or more, if they are more like reddit or google ads.
many times i have tried to break myself from adblock only to be chased right back. They really need to learn why people seek out adblocks. I didnt do it to be a dick, or to be a leach. I did it because the ads became more than annoying, they even became a security risk.
Edit |
Let me start out by saying that I downloaded Waze after giving iOS 6 Maps a fair chance to prove itself to me. I had never heard of Waze but when I came across a map app that had 5 stars with thousands of reviews , I couldn't say no. I would wager that it's one of the most useful maps out there.
Waze is amazing, probably partly because it's user-updated.. by just driving and also through editing. If you find a problem with something, report it and someone (a user) will fix it if it needs fixed. You can also fix those problems yourself if you're into that sort of thing.
You can see other "Wazers" in the area and interact with them via map chats, messages, and thanking (think "liking" on Facebook) others for reports. You can choose to remain anonymous if you want and I imagine you'd be able to make it so you don't appear on the map at all, but I don't know about that part. There are "groups", which are especially useful for reporting in specific areas or for specific routes that people tend to take.. or for specific events, like accidents or police.
The app will announce (regardless of groups you're in) if anybody has reported police (or accident or car on shoulder, etc) up ahead. If there is nothing there when you reach the report, you can click "not there", which helps it know that the report is no longer valid. Reporting is also very simple.. take a look at the choices before you decide to use it while driving so that you can get an idea of what kind of reports are where. Then all it takes is a couple presses and you've reported an accident up ahead, or a car on the shoulder, or construction, or different types of traffic (light, heavy, standstill). The list goes on. There is also a comment box where you can put more information. What displays on a screen is pretty limited but the comment box doesn't seem to have a limit.. so try to keep it short.
A bit different than reporting traffic, it updates when roads are congested by highlighting those areas with various colors (such as yellow or red) and displaying the average speed there. This isn't just on your highways.. this includes in town. Again, that isn't done by reporting traffic in the area.. it's automatic and gathers the necessary information from you and others in the area currently running the app. It may lag a little bit behind from actual current conditions, but that really only impacts the first (to come across the traffic) and last people (who see the condition reported but no actual traffic).
Really, there are many things I probably am not even thinking of, but I definitely think it's worth trying out at least. See how you like it!
Edit: Oh, and if you're into customizing your profile and all that, you can set your "mood", which makes the little dude that represents you change to reflect whatever you set your mood as. Other Wazers see this. There are leaderboards, more or less.. there are some benefits (besides feeling better about yourself) to being a "top Wazer".. but I'm not sure what those are. Nothing major, though.
You can also have a nickname.. and that can be changed at any time, meaning you can use anything you want in the name (even if someone else is using it too).. I've even done something like changing it to share that today all Papa John's pizza is 50% off. Who knows if it actually led to someone getting pizza that night, but it took no effort at all for a potential gain.. why not?
In any case, obligatory |
I never did understand the uproar over iOS maps, they've always been shit. Enough so that I've never even thought to trust them for anything. Even though they used to be backed by Google, the interface was not suitable for a functional GPS. I've always used a third party app since I switched over from Android (Motion X Drive). Actually, I understand the move. Google is never going to allow anyone to have a GPS app that rivals their own Android GPS which is one of the biggest competitive advantages they have. Even if the execution for iOS 6 maps was not perfect the first go 'round; it still breaks away from Google dependance, and sets Apple up to provide a comparable product. Apple does not have the history of data aggregation that Google has. |
According to AllThingsD, "multiple sources familiar with Apple" say that Apple's hand was forced because it wanted voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation - a feature that is already available in Google Maps for Android mobile phones. But the sources posit that Google invested tremendous resources into bringing the feature to Android and it didn't want to give a competitor its precious data.
Also, google maps was dropped by a bunch of people cause they raised their prices. then dropped then when big players decided to switch. |
Yea, that's the one, one of my friends lost his dog to it, we were just walking down a popular track in Eungella and she brushed up against one of those huge leaves (which we didn't know anything about at the time) and about half a second later collapsed wailing in pain and rolling around on the ground, not knowing what was going on and freaking out we tied her mouth shut with a sweater (she was in so much pain that she went completely insane, latched onto my wrist when I tried to get close) and then trekked back to the car park and went straight to the vet but by the time we got to the edge of town she was dead. All I have to show for it is a few old, faded teeth marks and a white patch in the back of my car where I had to bleach the carpet to clean the post-mortem seepage. |
Massively misleading title. The vision referred to in the quote is this:
>“[W]e rejected that idea because it didn’t fit with our vision. We did not focus on the “single city in isolation” that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we’re also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality. The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.”
The author of the article then goes on to attempt to paint this as "micro transactions are EA's vision" but the support for that conclusion isn't there.
Let's not forget that Maxis publicly owned up to the entire always-online design of the game having nothing to do with EA: |
Ea knows how to make money. Yes they hurt their image in the gaming community by constantly fucking us over with a saguaro cactus, but they count on the fact that the majority of their audience isn't as invested in the games as some are. The people who boycott EA games and call out all of EAs greedy tactics are a very small portion of the people who play EA games. Why would EA spend extra money pleasing this small group of people? The amount of extra money they would put into the game would not be covered by the profits of this small group. They rely on gamers being uninformed about the fact that they are being exploited. Those that know, care, and are willing to go against EA are such a small group that they pose no threat to EAs profits. |
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