0
stringlengths 9
22.1k
|
|---|
Here's how spotify works for me:
If your album is on spotify, I will listen to it. If I like it I might buy a physical copy of it.
If your album isn't on spotify, I torrent it because this is the only way I can 'try it out' with out paying for it. If I like it it stays on my hard drive, and if I don't like it, it's removed from my hard drive. If I really really really like it I might just buy your CD, but that's highly unlikely. |
Nope. Typically songwriters own the composition rights. Publishers own the mechanical rights.
The model is old as all get-out. It came from a time when most music people heard was publicly performed and they didn't want to make it so every time someone played the music, they had to pay the songwriter. That's why now-a-days it pays to be a songwriter and a performer. If you're not involved in the mechanical rights, you are fucked, since instead of having thousands of artists all playing their own renditions of a piece of written music, we have millions of consumers purchasing copies of a single performance. |
When will artists step up for themselves and stop signing contracts with labels. Artists don't like labels, consumers don't like labels. Labels were used to front money to record an album, distribute album and promote album. These things can be done for little to no cost by the bands themselves. No band that self-promotes will instantly become as popular and famous as Lady Gaga, but then again they have the freedom to make their own decisions, and get paid directly for their own efforts. |
I’m addressing anyone who is willfully uneven in their complaints about broken intellectual property law. I see more Apple bashing than other companies. I fail to fully understand it, but when Apple does something, anything , it is somehow considered newsworthy. If another company does the very same thing, it goes by without such vindictive fanfare. Mind you this hasn’t been granted yet, it’s merely a patent application. Do you think the submitter went through the diligence of looking up any other companies which have tried to patent methods for in-app purchasing? Did they consider that this might be a [defensive move against Lodsys]( rather than an offensive one?
I admit I may be guilty of bias, after all I’m human. However, I don’t recall the last time I saw a mere patent application from a company other than Apple used to paint that company as some evil abuser of intellectual property. I don’t think Apple should be granted a monopoly on in-app purchases, but I also don’t fault them for applying for a patent for it given their awkward position with iOS developers being targeted by patent trolls.
Edit:
I guess the |
Blu-ray quality? Do they mean 1080p? That's become standard on high-end phones now, at least for the cameras. Most play back on the phone itself (not on HDMI out) is at a lower resolution though. Why? Because having a higher one is pointless. A standard screen might accomodate that 1080 pixels on, say, 4 inches. That's 0.003 inches per pixel. The limit of human vision is ~0.003-0.004 inches. The short-side of most screens is closer to ~2 inches, so trying to run blu-ray on that is entirely pointless - you physically can't distinguish that from a lower resolution anyway. |
A massive loss of money to the publishers is why.
There are over 120K libraries in the US. Right now, when a new best-seller comes out, each library more or less has to buy a copy of it.
With this idea, they only have to buy 1.
For any given best seller, the publishing company just lost at least a million bucks.
Now factor in how many people would cut to this instead of buying the book? |
Honestly this touches on a major weak point in the way most of our institutions are set up. In the past, information was synonymous with physical media. You couldn't have a transfer of information without a corresponding transfer of physical media, at least not on the order of entire books or albums. Since the Information Revolution began, information has become decoupled from physical media, allowing for much more efficient transfers and usage. Yet our laws and our institutions are organized around an outdated model of "physical information," and to defend themselves from becoming obsolete they are trying to force artificial constraints on information, running counter to humanity's advances. My instinct is to believe they will fail in this, for history is rife with examples of institutions trying to suppress knowledge and failing; however, I suppose any real successes would necessarily have to have been forgotten, so I suppose I may not be able to trust my instincts on this one. |
Not to come off as rude, but I don't think a bunch of posts every day listing the reasons to oppose ACTA is necessary on a site like reddit, where almost all popular opinion is perpetuated by the hivemind.
I think if anything, people have become ever more vigilant about these new bills surfacing, and will more likely blindly oppose them outright instead of supporting them. |
I like to think that a thesis project I did for my Aeronautical Engineering degree was pretty badass. It started as a dumb challenge from someone who I was researching with, and my stupidly headstrong nature was actually able to turn this challenge into reality. "Make a flight of stairs fly" he said. "The flight of a flight" he called it. So you know what I did? I made a fucking flying machine out of a small flight of stairs, and then I turned it into an official experiment at my university.
It took months of calculations and measurements to finally arrive at the ultimately pointless (but oh so sweet) creation of this machine, but I impressed one or two people on the way there. I guess what the experience showed me more than anything was that even some of the most ridiculous ideas can be turned to reality. I like to think I gave a new meaning to the phrase "Flight of stairs," but my variation hasn't really caught on with the general populace. Not yet at least. |
I fell terrible.
I read a comment and thought: WOW! I couldn't have put it better if I tried. I went 2 reply and write that and clicked report instead of reply; I read r u sure and just clicked yes thinking it was asking if I wanted 2 reply and now it's gone.
It said something like: FUCK YEAH ANONYMOUS R COOL 'CASUE THEY SHOWED THOSE POLICE BITCHES |
Anonymous is finally achieving what their mascot ( EDIT: THE GUY FROM V FOR VENDETTA, NOT THE REAL GUY FAWKES ) really wanted to accomplish. By achieving their mildly destructive yet ultimately pointless goals, they're bringing attention to the issues that they've taken up. No matter how determined an activist may be, they can't achieve anything in the shadows. They must let the public know. Anonymous is finally doing it, and they're doing it in a big way. There's nothing silly about it. This is the way it's always worked. Gandhi just burned some papers and MLK merely gave a few speeches, but in creating a public figure that the general populace could identify with and get behind, they accomplished nigh unimaginable goals and tangibly changed the world for the better. |
Fuck the FBI. |
I see it a little differently. There are over 1 million users on this site, granted many of them are throwaways and novelty accounts, but for the most part there is a solid group of people here. To make the front page, a post only needs about 2000 upvotes. If you account for the people downvoting you probably have 1000 people downvoting, so let us say 3k upvotes to 1k downvotes. To have a top comment, you only need about 500 upvotes. These numbers are miniscule compared to the number of active users. If you look at it mathematically, all of these opposing opinions, or what many call the "hypocrisy of Reddit", can certainly coexist among a group of a million. You have a group that is strongly against police brutality, and another part of Reddit who think that it is total BS. Most people fall in the middle of the two and upvote both posts. |
i dont understand the problem i see this is a good thing.
the fact is that netflix is not going to turn off the online streaming and force people to go back to cable. This is giving them another revenue stream that is aimed at the people who dont care, dont know, or dont want the hassle of subscribing to netflix online by making it an addon to cable. in fact im sure this will happen alot more in the future as this is a easyer way to get into peoples homes and get a bigger subscription rate and will help get better quality movies for the service.
but i think people complaining about netflix lack of content need to work out that £5.99 or $7.99 is not enough money to get the latest movies and a huge back catalog like illegal downloading has.
i know going from paying nothing for everything to $7.99 for a very limited catalog is a big difference. But people do need to start paying for this content so more content can be made and the movie industry needs to work out that they cannot charge £3.50 to rent a movie once or £15 to buy it on a format that in 5 years will change and force you to buy it again.
the way netflix works is best for all parties
This is all about delivering this content and the movie industry needs to work out that the internet is a great and cheap way to deliver this content. For along time now its been Cinema, Video/DVD/Blueray, Pay Per View, TV pay Channels and then normal TV channels along time after that and now internet needs to find its place in this market.
I hope in 2 years time (sooner hopefully but i doubt it) there will be 3 BIG company's like netflix delivering content in this way.
for about $40 per month you get access to (illegal downloading size) database of films to stream instantly in HD and films are added to this 2 months after they have been in cinemas. for biggest package ($40) you get unlimited access to the films and only see 1 30 second ads before the film starts. im guessing you would have to tier your movies tier 1 is new releases, tier 2 is 1-3 years old, and tier 3 is the back catalog. $40 is alot. but you could pay $10 for unlimited access to tier 3 with 2 30 second ads before the movie starts then unlimited access to tier 2 but 30 second adverts every 10 minutes and no access to tier 1 and movie company's get paid per view depending on what tier the movie watched is in.
im not saying that its perfect but this kinda system is alot better for everyone involved. getting 2 million people to subscribe to the $40 a month package would bring in aound $1billion in revenue. i know its not perfect and it would cut into all other markets and all revenue from other markets would take a steep slump. but i do feel there is alot of promise in something like this. |
I agree that it sucks not being able to sign up for HBO GO without having HBO on cable. However, I did some consulting for HBO back in 2010 when they were evaluating their future options for digital/mobile. Me and my team were shocked by how backwards some of their logic was. For example they focused a LOT on their library of movies, but not so much on their original series. To me and my team this seemed counterintuitive... as far as I can tell the original series are the highlight of subscribing to HBO.
Anyways, we never went on to the next round of analysis with them. The best we could piece together from what they told us and how they acted is that because of all the contracts HBO has with movie studios and cable companies in order to release a non-cable HBO subscription would involve a lot of work to produce an alternate mobile-only library of content. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if in order to make the same profit HBO had to charge MORE for online-only access to their complete library than for a cable subscription because of their contract structure. |
SO here's a thought...I have no problem staying away from cable..and if Netflix goes to Cable, this might allow them to add more films to their library on instant streaming - which will be great for all of us....to those with no self control or using cable anyways....netflix will get more customers which in turn equals a better chance at them adding more films to their instant library. |
Hulu charges approximately $25-$30 CPM for the average 30 second video ad. (Ad length varies based on content type and length). CPM stands for 1,000 impressions. That works out to 2.5-3 cents per view. However, I'm assuming that a studio would charge a premium on new release movies (vs. Hulu's television) due to the fact that they're cannibalizing their own DVD/Blu-Ray sales.
SOURCE:
Also, 60 second ads obviously cost more than the 30 second ads (about 1.8-2 times more), so assuming movies cost more than "premium primetime tv" and are longer ads, it'd work out to be $0.19 - $0.25 per impression. And even then, probably on the lower end of that range. $0.25 per 60 second video ad impression would have to be on a AAA-level movie that has a very specific target demographic.
But the real issue is, how many ads are too many?
The top rated reply to your comment mentions that :
> If its a 30 second advertisement it ain't that bad. But if it is 6 minutes it will be a problem. If it is every 30 minutes, that is.
So if 6 minutes worth of ads is "a problem" and they're only making about $0.30 per minute per impression, that's only $1.50 for what most people consider to be "too many ads" (and that doesn't even take into account the licensing deals that would need for online streaming and the bandwidth and distribution costs) |
Why do people think its cool or funny to say this? If you ACTUALLY had no idea what a DVD was, I would assume you are either from a third world country, or thick as fuck. |
While I wholeheartedly agree with the fact that an initiative to push DVDs to consumers sooner is a good idea, I have to mention the fact that in other countries, here in Russia for example, DVDs and BluRay discs Have been released simultaneously with then end of theater screening for years now!
I've always hated waiting months just to give my money to the MPAA while in the states :/ so the system over here is a breath of fresh air. As per usual, the corporation is doing its utmost to milk American consumers on its own grounds, for as much money as possible, simply because they are far less likely to pirate content.
Plus, the prices here are way cheaper too- New DVDs sell for about nine dollars, CD cost anywhere from five to 15 dollars and video games sell for around 14 bucks. |
NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
>They said that under US law, disclosure is only granted once the accused appears in a US court.
They're trying to get Kim to show up in a US court so they can start calling it a US case, not a New Zealand Case.
>He said some of it could not be copied because it has been encrypted.
Excuse me? I'm no expert, but how hard is it to insert hard drive, insert disk imaging tool, transfer data? |
its only illegal without expressed witren consent which I am sure they acquired. Are some the lawsuits ludicrous absolutely, but i'm so tired of this crap. Copying files is stealing...in plain english, your a taking property that was paid for by a company to be made and intended to be sold for a profit FOR FREE. Thats stealing, anyone who disagrees is wrong, and is probably one of those people who feel they shouldn't have to pay back their students loans either. |
Actually, the US is the currently understood dominate world power. What i mean by bolding The is to emphasize that we live in a Uni-Polar world.
Although current debate is about the rising states that may rise to contest the current status quo. It'll be interesting to see what the future has in store for global powers, whether we'll be in a uni-polar, multi-polar or a completely different environment altogether.
To Explain further my statement on bolding the is that there isn't another super power on the current map. I am not saying that the US is all powerful, I am merely saying that the current status quo is that we live in a Uni-Polar world and the US holds the most influential power globally atm. This is entirely debatable and is constantly changing, which is the current debate amongst many International Politicians.
the |
Upvote because I also wanted to smack some sense into Schwartz, but I wouldn't attribute the problem to a "lack of analysis and decision skills" either.
The problem is greed and arrogance. We're imperfect, yet we expect perfection of ourselves. We need to learn to accept that we'll make suboptimal choices on a fairly regular basis. Some decisions are worth intense scrutiny to arrive at the optimal decision, but most decisions only merit a modicum of analysis. |
If I make something that's 20% safer, but then people behave 5% more dangerously, it's still a big net winner.
No, because you're not using the same units. You can't just say "20% safer" or "5% more dangerous" because those are arbitrary numbers that, as far as I can tell, are determined by nothing. There are real tradeoffs there, and your assertion that it's not necessarily 1:1 is correct. There is a lot of evidence that it is the opposite of that you're implying.
Take these statements of fact:
Head injuries account for less than 15% of bicycle injuries:
Bicycle helmets reduce significantly, but do not fully prevent, head injuries. This goes double when the helmets are improperly fitted or improperly fastened.
~9 billion miles of bicycle transit was utilized in 2009:
There were only 73,000 head injuries from cycling in 2000 (not all of which could necessarily have been prevented with a helmet)
So there we are. The numbers are clear. Cyclists spend an awful lot more time not getting head injuries than getting head injuries. Hundreds of thousands of times as much time, in fact. So a 1% increase in accident behavior per mile due to helmet wearing would have to result in helmets saving the lives of more people than are even ever injured in the head during bicycle accidents in a year. It doesn't become an even trade until only .0000089% of miles in which a cyclist would not have an accident instead have accidents. Even then, it's not a fair trade because there are other injuries to account for, and helmets don't stop 100% of head injuries.
In conclusion, head injury is a far lesser threat than you imagine, plenty of us ride hundreds of miles a week without ever getting in an accident, and it is statistically impossible for helmets to have a net positive effect of any variety unless you're willing to assume some really, really whacked-out numbers. |
Unfortunately, where I live the only other talk stations are right-wing propaganda BS and religious rantings with heavy doses of guilt tripping. Some are a combination of both. I'm not big into music so I don't own many CD's and the music stations are just garbage, pop, and pop-hip hop-rap-crap. There's one pure rock station that has some listener driven content, but I think that's a lie, or at least picked from a small selection of stuff that was just in rotation 3 years ago. So NPR is the only thing I can listen to when I drive. |
I've gotten into a couple face-to-face discussions where people cited a TED talk as a source, and each time I was somewhere between appalled and surprised. Not because I'm so cool that I liked TED before they sold out and now I think their talks are shit (to the contrary, I still watch a few talks at least once a week and enjoy them quite a bit). Rather it's that I react to someone citing a TED talk to prove a point the same way I would to someone citing a non-fiction book review. Why would you think that having read a book review, even a positive one by someone well versed in the topic of the book, you have a full understanding of the topic the book covered?
That's pretty much how I view TED talks: 'book reviews' of a topic, done by the authors themselves, on video, and with great attention to production quality. If I'm intrigued by a particular talk, it's on me to dig deeper, and in a number of cases I've done so. Obviously, no speaker/author is going to give their own work/book a poor review, thus, it would be pretty silly to take any talk at face value. That's the downside in comparison to a 'real' review done by someone other than the author.
The upside to the TED formula is that you're less likely to encounter someone with an axe to grind (at least in regards to their own research) and, with only 5-15 minutes to spare, less likely to encounter someone who just loves to hear themselves talk. The latter plagues professional critics of books/music/movies, but Morozov IMHO is guilty of both the latter and the former. I mean, wow.
Style issues aside, I don't really find Morozov's points very compelling. I'll certainly admit that at least 50% of TED talks would still be 'lightweight' if they were extended to an hour or more, and that of the remainder, many fall into the idolatry of the 'coming singularity' and 'network effects' as a panacea for all problems. That doesn't mean that the talks that are covering purely STEM topics (or breakdancing, or kinetic sculptures, or ...) somehow suck, or that those talks are somehow difficult to find. In an age where 'The Learning Channel' features circus-y freak shows about fecundity and dwarfism, the 'Science Channel' features 'An Idiot Abroad' (which I found hilarious and entertaining, but having nothing to do with science), and National Geographic shows idiots being locked up abroad and hillbillies fishing with their hands... I find TED to be a blast of fresh air.
Morozov seems particularly upset that TED (aka Technology, Entertainment, Design) doesn't focus more on politics. Does he really think the world lacks outlets for political punditry? Does he really think that there are no problems that technology hasn't beneficially rendered politically moot? I chuckled when he complained about the TEDx talk that didn't get published, ostensibly because it was too political and too offensive to rich people. I have to wonder if he saw the talk; it wasn't just intellectually lightweight, it went like this: "Some people still believe in supply-side economics... some people still believed in geocentrism even after Copernicus and Kepler... supply-side theory is wrong, QED." While I'd agree with perhaps 98% of the speaker's political stances, this was just a really, really bad talk. |
They remind me of the recent surge of infographics. There are occasionally a few informative ones that use images to articulate a concept well (such as scale), but many are basically just glossy comic strips or posters for the |
I don't think anyone ever said it was a bad thing. I certainly didn't. But it was what their advantage was.
They had this beautiful full-size touch screen with intuitive apps when the closest competition was a half screen, keyboard BlackBerry. They had a massive app store when the competition had a fraction the apps. They had the ability to play amazing graphics games on a handheld before we began to see this new era of PS2/3 quality games on PSPs. They had this amazing retina display of over 300ppi before the competition really had anything for months.
Those were all "revolutionary" in how people would use a smartphone. It changed the environment. But the competition has caught up and now Apple nolonger has this "revolutionary" vs. "evolutionary" competitive edge. Now that everyone has caught up, they're all "evolutionary" and there's a lot more choice out there of comparable specs.
When an iPhone would first come out, there were few if any comparable alternatives. When the iPhone 5 came out, it was so underwhelming in what changed that there were a handful of Android options with the same or in some cases better specs/offerings. |
I have had my phone wiped (due to my idiot friend typoing my password ten times in a row) but was able to fully recover. Here is a quick run down:
-had a rooted thunderbolt
-connected to exchange where company had remote wipe policy as well as wipe policy based on multiple password failures
-I took weekly backups of my phone on to my SD card as well as exported the backup to a computer
-friend typos password and phone was wiped
-booted into clockwork mod and flashed the backed up rom from a few days prior and I was up and running with most of my email and all my data that was almost current |
You're really missing the point.
Something has most certainly changed. One of the checks that members of society have always had on ridiculous laws is enforcement.
Take jaywalking. Should you run across 5th Avenue in the middle of rush hour? Probably not - you'd probably get creamed, and there's a good chance a cop will see you and ticket you if you make it across intact.
Should you cross 13th street at 8pm in the middle of the block because you parked on one side and the buddy you're visiting is on the other?
Well, it's technically jaywalking. But is it really a big deal? No - no one would say it is, and anyone that says they wouldn't cross the street midblock in that situation is flat out lying.
Enforcement is fairly lax - both because many police departments don't want to expend the resources to bust people for jaywalking, and because most civilians, are capable of self regulation when it comes to safely crossing the street.
But if drones are flying overhead that can effectively result in 100% enforcement, while shitting all over your rights to get there, I and many others would have a problem with that. |
The abortion/crime reduction hypothesis has been debunked. If you look at the numbers that Levitt was using, the NY data point was an outlier. There was also evidence that Levitt made programming errors and other methodological mistakes in his research.
Sources:
Although Levitt defends himself here: |
Doubtful, friend. Consider the following:
Take a container divided down the middle. On one side, fill the container with cold water. On the other, fill it with hot water (in this thought experiment, we're assuming the two are totally isolated from each other). We know that we can extract work from this setup. For example, we can run a heat engine off of this temperature difference. However, because our heat engine requires heat transfer to work, eventually the two sides of the container will be at equal temperatures. Furthermore, if the engine is enclosed in the container and totally isolated from its surroundings, the final temperature of the water will be IDENTICALLY the average of the initial temperatures (as extracted work will eventually be converted into heat).
So what does this mean? Well, first, it means that when we extract work from any system (and actually, when any work is performed in the universe), it is done by the transport of high energy state to low energy state. At some point, the "hot water" of the universe will cool off, transferring its energy to the "cold water" and we will be left with an isothermal universe in which no work can be done because there are no temperature gradients. The same applies to chemical gradients, electrical gradients, etc. Anything that COULD have driven work no longer can because at some point it will have interacted and exchanged energies, eventually producing heat. This is not speculation, but rather a fact based on observable laws of the universe.
You say that "Some intelligence, somewhere in all of the universe and time, will figure out how to reverse entropy on a cosmic scale". Unfortunately, the universe does not pander to the hopes and dreams of hairless slightly evolved apes. I really wish it did, but it does not. There are only a finite amount of "workarounds" that exist. Nowhere is it written that there MUST be a way for faster than light travel. Nowhere does it say that we MUST be able to reverse entropy.
I'm sorry to be so blunt with you, but this is not an opinion or a speculation, but rather mathematical and physical fact. [Here is an excellent quote by Albert Einstein]( on the matter. If you want to tell me you know more about entropy than he, go right ahead, but know that you are wrong and are making a fool of yourself. |
I found the neighbors' RC helicopter on my roof once already this year. Must have flown out of range. I don't give a crap, because google already has high-quality photos of my yard on the internet-- they can find out what our shrubs look like without the helicopter if they want, and the Google chief who seems worried about drones is part of the company who makes that possible. |
It's possible for anything to become illegal; we tried it with alcohol once and are currently discussing it with both the 2nd and 14th amendments... but I doubt it'll be any time soon. Absolutely no power rating is illegal currently, but varying power outputs are classed and regulated differently. Single digit wattages are unlikely to ever be regulated harshly, though the color of the laser is just as important as the wattage.... a 5mw red can be safely (though still stupidly) shined into your eye without causing damage immediately, while a green laser of the same power is likely to cause damage before you have a chance to blink, and a blue laser is even worse. |
It's easier to build a weapon without a 3D printer. Take the AR-15 for example. "the gun" is the receiver, the piece of metal the magazine slides in. That's it. All the other parts are 100% legal to buy and without any sort of background check. As they should be because they are just simple springs and other replacement components. So the gun as far as the government is concerned is one metal part. In fact they are so specific that if you don't have the holes drilled in for mounting it's no longer a gun. You can buy complete receivers (sans holes) online. Drill them yourself with a drill press and you are good to go. |
This is a forum thread posted in the [android subforum]( of the verge by a user. This isn't an actual article by the verge.
It is obviously meant to troll with phrases such as "if you're using an iOS device I would advise you to avoid clicking links :)"
Now instead of attacking the person making the argument, lets go for the argument itself:
[Symantec Internet Security Threat Report 2013 [PDF] ](
>Today, mobile vulnerabilities
have little or no correlation to mobile malware. In fact, while
Apple’s iOS had the most documented vulnerabilities in 2012,
there was only one threat created for the platform. Compare this
to the Android OS; although only thirteen vulnerabilities were
reported, it led all mobile operating systems in the amount of
malware written for the platform.
Also from the same report:
>We have seen far more vulnerabilities for the iOS platform,
which makes up 93 percent of those published, than for Android
in 2012, but yet **[Android dominates the malware landscape, with
97 percent of new threats.](
Here is [an article]( discussing this disparity between vulnerabilities and actual malware. |
He got the results from here (links below). I would be more concerned weather the vulnerabilities in each product were more critical or not.
Just because iOS has more doesn't mean that its more vulnerable. Vulnerabilities could be DOS or information leak (still security risks I know). You can see that iOS had 64 DOS vulnerabilities in 2012, and 13 so far this year.
Apple
Android |
I always find these stories kind of funny, they remind me of the arguments I used to have with my parents about how much time I spent on the internet growing up. They couldn't get their heads around why I sent so much time 'doing nothing' on the internet but still got good grades and would find any excuse possible to 'snap me out of it' and get me outside or whatever.
One week I got sick of it and recorded how much time they spent sitting in front of the TV every night (about 4 hours an evening, we would eat dinner watching TV and they would stay there til about 10:30pm). I'm laughing because I was 14 and made a crummy excel table with all the data on it (cue nerdy laugh of derision at my past selves lack of formatting knowledge!). Anyway, combined with weekends it amounted to about 22-25 hours of TV a week each.
What is so different about what you do versus what I choose to do! I confronted them with and of course, supplied the data. Logic dictated that given the amount of time I spent on the net (similar values to their tv time) and how I rarely watched TV - there is no fundamental difference, it's just a different form of media consumption. The look on their faces was priceless, my father still tried to argue that it 'wasn't natural' to spend so much time sitting at the computer but he eventually gave up. To cut to the present day, I have a great career, make lots of money and I'm very intelligent (and also quite good looking, but hey that's just between you and me).
When people throw around the word 'addiction' when talking about Facebook, Reddit or internet browsing in general, they need to realize that most people have been 'addicted' to television since the 1960's, it's just that is a socially acceptable form of addiction. Like coffee, or whatever. |
The biggest question a lot of investors have for Apple is "Can they introduce the an iPhone into emerging markets (such as India and China)?" Over the past few years, these areas have exploded with disposable income; however, not quite as much to compensate for a $600 dollar phone. When people heard "cheap iPhone", they thought of something to compete with Samsung's plethora of low cost phones that were easy to afford in emerging markets. Since they didn't, people's expectations were crushed and the market price dropped a bit. |
MITM attacks have nothing to do with what authority a certificate is obtained from, only that the person or government performing the MITM attack has a legitimate certificate for the site you are visiting, and this type of attack only requires a compromised/compliant CA to hand over their main signing certificate (so not GoDaddy), and then the malicious entity can create their own certificate pair, then they have to actually intercept your comms without you noticing or breaking the site you are trying to use (extremely difficult to impossible depending on the site)
a stolen/compromised private key however would only require access to comms in transit (which the NSA already has), then they can decrypt any packet they choose with the private key and absolutely nobody would know |
Obtaining a certificate from any certificate authority via a certificate request does not expose the private keys used to generate the request (and the private keys is what the fed wants) |
H.264 is one of the most commonly used video compression formats. Nearly every video you've watched in the last few years has used it. However, it was encumbered by patents, meaning users might technically have been on the hook to pay royalties to its owners. For this reason, manufacturers of open-source software have been reluctant to implement it, lest someone claim that they are owed an enormous licensing fee for distributing the technology. This has led to a push for open and free video codecs like VP8 and VP9, but H.264 is so entrenched that it's been impossible to displace. Cisco's actions have resolved that fear. |
There's a difference between open source software, free software, and non-patent-encumbered. x264 is free and open source, but the codec itself is still patent-encumbered, meaning any implementation would still run the risk of being asked for patent implementation fees.
Normally this isn't an issue for the end-user, but it is for the distributors: operating systems shipping with the codec (whichever implementation), browsers shipping with the codec, media players shipping with the codec, etc. They could get potentially sued if they don't pay monies to the MPEG-LA.
(Analogy: Mr Brie has patented a way of making a soft, creamy type of blue cheese. The process could be re-implemented by other people, and those people might actually be freely publishing the recipes of how they do it in order to replicate the same type of cheese Mr Brie has patented. People could safely buy and eat these non-official implementations of the Brie cheese, but those who use these freely available, open source recipes of the Brie cheese run the risk of being sued to pay royalties to Mr Brie.)
The news here is not really that Cisco has open-sourced yet another implementation of H.264, but that Cisco is distributing compiled binaries of said codec for third-party bundling and use. |
I doubt it. CISCO is probably heavily invested in HEVC too, and it is in their interest to see HEVC become a widely accepted standard. h.264 is a competing video codec to HEVC, and CISCO might prefer getting everyone move from h.264 to HEVC. |
My opinion, its all about 4K TV. H.264 is the most reliable and efficient compression codec for video these days by far, knowing there is a slowly growing surge towards 4K means that a new format will be needed. Everyone will be looking for an H.265/MPEG5 reiterations as a reliable codec suited to be the next standard. Television broadcast has been widely adapting h.264 as well so to me it seems like a move for more controll of a market. |
It probably uses Apple location services which is built into the phone I believe if it's using iOS. Sending that information to another iPhone probably wouldn't require a 3rd party server if there's a function on the iPhone to send or broadcast that information to other phones, which i believe there is.
Should be something like ;
// Acquire geo-location from Apple location services
// Broadcast information over wifi network
// Your phones and others are set to receive the broadcast information through TCP or w/e service/protocol iOS uses.
// Phone receives info, updates software |
Or give a man a quarter stick of dynamite and he'll catch all the fish, and sell them to the highest bidder on the free market.
Having bankrupted the other, depleted fishermen, he'll leverage those early gains into a series of well-timed investments, economic construction, pressing for legislation acting as regulatory barriers to new entrants, and capture strategic market space in developing industries. Later in life he'd don a new mantle as an"angel" VC investor for new technology, keeping ahead of the now struggling herd seeking to find a new life after the fishing industry blew up.
To the end of his days he would always remember that man's generosity early in his climb over the bodies of a ravaged fish trade, but could never fully shake the conviction that it was his own will and resourcefulness that brought him to the top.
Three generations later his legacy put a descendent in the senate. two generations after, the White House. |
Just to be clear, the Fed does not currently have any Fiscal Policy currently in action. Additionally, the Fed prints money to meet the demand for currency from the public. In actuality, money is created by you depositing your money in a bank account. The banks are only required to hold a certain amount of your deposits, everything else is distributed by loan creation. [Money Creation](
For example: You deposit$100 into your bank account, and the bank is required by the Fed to hold on to $10 or 10% ( reserve requirements So now out of that $90, they only hold $9 dollars, leaving $81 dollars. This process is continuous and money is created through this process. Once again, the Fed only prints money to meet the demand that we as the public demand from our banking institution.
Therefore the Fed is not creating money by printing it, they are just transferring the classification of that money, whether it be from M2--> M0 or a different combination. To put it simply, the Fed is not creating a bubble by printing money. |
Generally, lowered prices can be seen as a good thing. However, there is a twist that can lead to future higher prices and less competition.
Say there are two businesses that instigate a price war, though there are a lot of other businesses in the market. Assuming these businesses are the largest (say the Targets and the Walmarts of an industry), they can sustain a price war longer than smaller businesses (mom and pop shops) and have more ways of keeping prices low for a while (they have economies of scale).
What often happens, as has happened with many businesses we now claim are price gouging oligopolies, is that only a few companies survived the price war. Then, these companies, all having large and entrenched markets, recover from the price war by raising prices, then keep prices raised (and raise them further) because other companies don't have what it takes to gain a strong foothold in the industry. This happens most easily in businesses where the cost of entry is high, like cellular companies.
Depending on the difficulty to gain entrance, you'll expect to see more or less companies trying to crack into the market. Two examples of this attempt in markets with a high entrance cost right now are t-mobile (that one's sort of complicated, though) and Tesla Motors.
In this case, internet hosting doesn't have near the entrance fee of the cellular or vehicular markets. And, it isn't Google's M.O. that I know of to use their fees for primary revenue. But future prices and competition could be constrained.
(Sorry this got so long, mate!) |
The moon landing was a scientific endeavor that expanded our understanding, and created many new technologies. Although that money could have been spent more efficiently it was still a good use of money.
The hyper loop is hobbling together existing technologies to make an impractical expensive transportation device, so it is in no way comparable to Apollo. Elon Musk promised there would be sub $30,000 Teslas and commercial space trips to the moon by 2014. His statements about the cost and performance of the hyperloop have been questioned by a number of experts. My confidence in the cost and end product is not high. If Musk truly believed in the hyperloop he could fund the project himself since he has a net worth of 12 billion and the hyperloop supposedly only costs 6 billion.
The billions spent on the hyper loop could be spent on improving normal public transportation systems, subsidies for high efficiency vehicles, expanding alternative energy and nuclear infrastructure. We have limited money and time to fix the energy and transportation problems we are facing ... |
Our infrastructure is crumbling and outdated, we don't utilize current technological solutions in the either transportation or energy. You think rather then do the thing that will give rapid real world improvements we should experiment with hyperloop technology.
700 mph in a vacuum tube
No way of knowing the final cost (6 billion is pulled out of his ass multiply by 10)
Cost per ticket definitely wont be $20
Cant be sure how well it will work, not even a prototype a few miles long. His estimate of 6 billion from LA to SF would mean a few mile long prototype would cost under 100 million.
I would throw musk a 100 million dollar bone to build a test hyperloop, my guess is it wouldn't work ... but if I was wrong we would get a neat hyperloop technology with known quantities. At that point hyperloop technology would get implemented about as much as high speed rail, and it would take a decade or more to implement significant hyperloop infrastructure.
If that money was spent on infrastructure and public transportation there would most likely be a significant reduction in emission and traffic congestion. This would result in a reduction in global warming, improved air quality, less noise pollution. When the hyperloop infrastructure is implemented it would reduce the number of people taking short airplane flights, which would cause a reduction in co2 emission and potentially reduce travel time and costs ... if it works. |
Some amusing suggestions below, however all miss the point. [This]( is still a good summary of the problem in the US:
>Deploying broadband infrastructure isn’t as simple as merely laying wires underground: that’s the easy part. The hard part — and the reason it often doesn’t happen — is the pre-deployment barriers, which local governments and public utilities make unnecessarily expensive and difficult.
>Before building out new networks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must negotiate with local governments for access to publicly owned “rights of way” so they can place their wires above and below both public and private property. ISPs also need “pole attachment” contracts with public utilities so they can rent space on utility poles for above-ground wires, or in ducts and conduits for wires laid underground.
>The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction.
>So the real bottleneck isn’t incumbent providers of broadband, but incumbent providers of rights-of-way. These incumbents — the real monopolists — also have the final say on whether an ISP can build a network. They determine what hoops an ISP must jump through to get approval.
>This reduces the number of potential competitors who can profitably deploy service — such as AT&T’s U-Verse, Google Fiber, and Verizon FiOS. The lack of competition makes it easier for local governments and utilities to charge more for rights of way and pole attachments.
>It’s a vicious circle. And it’s essentially a system of forced kickbacks. Other kickbacks arguably include municipal requirements for ISPs such as building out service where it isn’t demanded, donating equipment, and delivering free broadband to government buildings. |
It isn't Netflix, it is I, the consumer, the one capitalism supposedly empowers who uses Netflix, it is not the company Netflix, I have to pay for an Internet service to access whatever I want, I just happen to access a lot of Netflix because movies are amazing! |
I guess I could see this being an issue if they were clogging a pipe somewhere, but that isn't how the internet works.
That's actually a really good analogy for how the internet works. There are multiple links within an ISP's network, and between ISP's, all of which can get congested similar to a water pipe with too much water flowing through it. I'll do my best to explain how a residential ISP might deal with the challenge of a bandwidth heavy website.
Let's say ISP-A has two "Transit" providers, Cogent and Level 3, and connects to them using a routing protocol called BGP. Let's also say they have a 10G link to both providers. These transit providers have full visibility to the internet, and ISP-A can reach any location through them (and vice versa). BGP makes decisions on a variety of factors, but the main one is how far something appears to be based on the number of different Autonomous Systems it goes through (basically different ISP's/transit ISP's). BGP doesn't care about bandwidth or link utilization at all, and will happily send 100G of traffic down a 10G port if it looks like the shortest path.
If, for some reason, most, or all of the Netflix traffic destined to ISP-A comes down the level Level 3 link it could create congestion. Lets say ISP-A has 6G of non-Netflix coming down their 10G cogent link, and 6G of non-Netflix traffic coming down their 10G Level-3 link (in reality it may be nowhere near that balanced). In addition to that they also have 5G of Netflix traffic coming down the Level-3 link because Netflix, for whatever reason, has a better path to them through Level 3. At this point they will have 11G worth of traffic trying to go down a 10G link, making basically half of the internet perform poorly for their customers.
They could potentially look at upgrading only their Level 3 connection with another 10G link, but what if the next week Netflix suddenly started sending all 5G of traffic down Cogent instead? Maybe due to a fiber cut, maybe because Netflix changed their main transit provider, but either way ISP-A would need to upgrade their connections to both providers for it to really be viable. A better option might be peering with Netflix to offload that traffic from their transit connections.
A peer is a way to exchange your routes directly, so you only appear to be one "hop" away (in contrast to using transit, where it might go through several ISP's before reaching the destination). The cheapest way to peer is to go through an internet exchange like Equinix/TELX/LINX/Etc. At these exchanges providers connect to a big switch that allows them to peer with everybody else connected to the exchange. This works great to offload traffic from more expensive transit connections.
Lets say ISP-A gets a 10G connection to Equinix, where Netflix also has a presence, and peers with Netflix, Google, Amazon, and a bunch of smaller sites that are at that exchange. Now the 5G of traffic from Netflix is coming through their connection to others at Equinix, and none of their links are congested! Let's also say they have 2G of traffic from Google on this link, and the combined total of Amazon and the smaller peers totals to another Gig, bringing them to 80% utilization on their Peering link to Equinix. Over time the Netflix total traffic increases to to 7G, and since the peering exchange is the best path it all comes down that link. Again ISP-A has congestion, but this time it's only for Netflix, Google, Amazon, and a few small sites that connect through that particular peering exchange. At this point (well, hopefully well before this point) they start looking at a direct peer with Netflix.
ISP-A talks to Netflix about doing a direct peer, and they find out they both have equipment in the same building in Chicago so they split a relatively cheap cross-connect fee for the building owner to run cables between Netflix's router and ISP-A's router, and then ISP-A has a 10G link directly to Netflix. If their traffic from Netflix begins to exceed 10G Netflix will start buffering until ISP-A and Netflix work out getting another 10G link, but Google, Amazon, and everything else won't be affected.
All of the above assumes ISP-A's core network wasn't congested, and it was just problems between them and other providers/peers. It's possible their core could be overutilized and then all of their traffic may suffer. It's also possible there could be congestion between say Level 3 and Netflix, and not Level 3 and ISP-A and ISP-A's customers would be seeing degraded Netflix performance through no fault of ISP-A (peering would still solve this however, since they would get the traffic directly from Netflix and bypass Level 3). |
My understanding is that it doesn't really work like shipping items.
That's not a good analogy.
It's a two way stream and most ISP's do not have global reach, so need help.
Your ISP is the middleman, connecting your house to companies like Level 3 that have international networks they then charge for access to.
You pay your ISP to use their local network in order to gain the benefits of accessing a global network.
The ISP is charged to send your data over an international network.
The international network is charged when passing data back to the ISP towards you.
I suspect this is why upload bandwidth limits on domestic internet packages are usually much lower than your download limit. So ISP's don't end up paying out more than they charge.
To the ISP, you are simultaneously a customer and a product. You pay to access outwards, ISP's charge people to have access to you.
The ISP's are generally pretty tight, they don't spend as much on improving local infrastructure as they could. Tier 1 carriers like Level 3 offer pretty impressive speeds but that's because their job usually ends at large data centres.
ISP's have to deal with all the expensive small scale stuff coming to your house, which is expensive and more difficult to upgrade. Still, they bitch about how much it costs them, yet report huge profits. Level 3 has been working in debt to expand global networks and improve service. ISP's get lazy as there is no competition...
The shitty thing is now that some companies send a lot more data to end users (Netflix) ISP's think they should pay more. Until now, companies normally just pay set amounts to peer with each other, as you are paying for a limit rather than what is actually passing through.
Netflix is so popular and data hungry though, that ISP's believe they will struggle to meet the bandwidth requirements. Global networks have been investing heavily for years, so can cope with the demand easily and continue to charge companies like netflix as normal.
This is how I think of it. (Feel free to correct me) |
I wouldn't say that's true. Facebook does practically nothing with your real name. What they want is to be your real identity online.
They want people who meet Bill Tampa in person to be able to look up Bill Tampa on facebook so that the network effect keeps their site moving. Eventually, the defacto way to contact Bill Tampa is too look him up on facebook. This stops working as soon as you allow pseudonyms, so they don't let you have a say in the matter. |
Facebook was founded in 2004. Kids are permitted to open their own accounts at 13 years old.
In 3 years we're looking at kids who have potentially been on their parent's FB their whole lives open their own accounts, linking to their parents & continuing an uninterrupted photo and comment history of their lives. Owned by a for profit company. |
I don't know, that feels like a copout. I think even the hardest worker can carve out enough time to research their political leaders and figure out who to support, or at least oppose. It is unfortunate that the media largely drowns out actual news with shallow, hackneyed commentary but this also can't be blamed for the failures of our system. Ultimately the greatest failure of our electorate is the apathy of young voters, which they usually attribute to one of the above circumstances, or both combined. The hard truth is that to move forward, we will have to fight harder than we want to. Excuses will drown us in another generation of corruption and it will be our fault. |
This American Life and Planet Money covered health care in the US and do a great job of explaining why things cost what they do.
The |
If they want to use public property to build the lines that will deliver their for-profit goods, while denying any competitors use of those lines, they either get to foot the entire bill, share the resources, or follow some strict rules when it comes to how they treat customers.
There are exceptions, but generally, it is the case that anyone who wants to build in that area can.
In higher-density areas, it's almost always the case; the highway in front of a colo I lease space at has probably a dozen different fiber providers with routes going in and out. (which makes my butt pucker quite nicely when there's a backhoe in the area; they're usually good about coordinating, but, there's always an exception..) Alternatively, you can find out who's already there, and lease fiber from them. With 488-strand trunks, it's a buyer's market.
In lower-density areas, there won't be a dozen companies tripping over each other to trench for fiber. So you might have to guarantee someone exclusivity for a period to get anything installed. Bad deals are sometimes made (they might not be bad at the time, but fiber is usually depreciated over 10-20 years. A lot can change, especially if your city goes through a huge growth spurt, like Houston)
I do like the idea of urging companies involved in the last-mile delivery not to be involved in determining the content of what's in the wires. But it's hard to do, unless you really get restrictive about investment, finance, and management roles.
One model that I think deserves attention is how, for example, the power line that goes to my house is owned by one company. I'm not actually their customer, I buy my electricity from a broker, who buys power from generating companies, and pays other companies to actually deliver the power. A fixed part of my bill goes to that company with all the wire.
There is no set standard saying I need a 200-amp circuit going into my house, but that's the common practice; doing it the same to every house keeps the costs down.
Where I see the problem is, my power line was installed in the late '80s and has not been touched since. Generally they last 30-60 years. My communications, though, has gone from twisted pair (plain ol dial-up) to coax (first gen cable modem) back to twisted pair (ADSL) and again to coax (DOCSIS 3, how I love thee...) and at times wireless connectivity has also been employed.
One of the things that drove development of the internet from commercial users to individuals was getting around the high, inflexible, tariffed costs of Ma Bell. It wasn't that long ago that making a domestic long-distance phone call cost more per minute than the average worker made.
So, yeah - I get skittish about companies leveraging their control over one part of the delivery to disadvantage others. But I also have a lot of faith that should some twatwaffle (not that I want to specifically pick on AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, or Time Warner) try to drag their feet on innovation, others will step in and crush them. |
I worked at MickeyDs for a minute. You got your two meet patties, regular for Big Macs, cheeseburgers, etc. Then your quarters for well you guessed it, quarter pounders. In my experience McChicken patties , regular patties, and nuggets sold the most. So if you bought a cheeseburger, hamburger, Big Mac, McChiken, etc. it's fresh. The fish fillets sat the longest, I've seen some sitting for over 6 hours. Technically we were supposed to throw away patties after 15 mins, but no one did. Excess food went straight to the garbage. So again your hamburger would be more than likely fresh. |
That's a problem with the voters, not the system. If I'm sexually attracted to musical instruments or identify as an attack helicopter gunship and the people of my country think that's a potential liability, they are well within their rights to vote for somebody else.
This has the added benefit of not giving the tabloids anything to natter uselessly about. |
We are not in danger, the NSA isn't keeping us safe, we do not need the NSA.
What we need is robust and prolific system encryption and network security–everywhere.
Money should be spent advancing encryption technologies and future secure networks like a national public works program.
It would give us much better returns than the NSA will ever give us, as I'd say now it's been a net negative cost with little justifiable benefit considering the domestic and foreign spying, damage of public trust to the government, foreign relation consequences, corporate and public relations consequences, a possible cooling effect on free speech . |
Lets clear couple of things. we absolutely need the NSA and ability to perform foreign surveillance (the actual original purpose of the NSA) something every nation does and something that is vital to our security. as for internal, in house, domestic surveillance, that needs to change and that needs to be open and exposed and done in a transparent way even if it has security implications, people need their privacy.
In this day and age after the whole Snowden fiasco, I think people miss the crucial and grave point of what Snowden did and try and dismiss their sense of security and take it for granted, we all often confuse domestic ideals with foreign and our ability to stay strong in the US.
I cannot respect Snowden for how he handled his own actions; he fled to Russia and China while claiming he leaked information because of privacy concerns and human rights, while neither of those countries respect privacy or human rights in the slightest. Then, he revealed information about foreign surveillance programs, (the actual purpose of the NSA) something every nation does, and in doing so did considerable damage to both the American image abroad as well as at home and, more importantly, the American intelligence community, and by extension all aspects of American foreign policy. (Not to mention the headaches he must have caused our diplomats, with all the ammunition he's given foreign countries.) Who knows how much damage this has done? (And no, it isn't "our fault." While we may have been spying, so is everyone else, and that's just how diplomacy works; you either use the outrage generated by such a revelation to torpedo something you already opposed, are forced to do so by public outcry, or take advantage of the situation to score political points and/or get a better deal for your side.)
If I were Snowden, and I had determined this info worth leaking (I'm personally still torn on whether it was), I would have leaked the information about the domestic programs, and only the domestic programs, to various news outlets, and then, once the information had become public, turned myself in on the steps of the US Capital Building. Make a media event of it, invite a few reporters, do everything I can to bring the issue into the public discourse. I would have turned my trial into a public spectacle, and honestly? Had he done that, there's actually a pretty good chance he would have been pardoned, or at least gotten off easily; there would have been too much public attention and support, and unlike Manning no possibility of accusing him of "aiding the enemy." Plus, turning himself in and not fleeing the country would have demonstrated his loyalty to the United States, and shown that he stood firm in his convictions and was guided by his moral compass.
What did Snowden do instead? He leaked information on both foreign and domestic programs, to a foreign newspaper, and fled to China and Russia, two nations with both a deep disregard for the principles he supposedly stood for and with a vested interested in humiliating and opposing the United States. He stole flash drives and hard drives which he filled with classified information, as well as four government laptops he claimed were "decoys," and brought this classified information with him to these countries. Although he claims was never accessed by either, it would be foolish to believe that the Russian and Chinese intelligence services did not gain access to (and they certainly have access to all the information he provided which is now public knowledge) He is currently living in asylum in Russia, supported by the FSB and the Russian government, and allowing himself, willingly or not, to be used as Putin's personal propaganda piece as well as potential bargaining chip. How is that behavior befitting a patriot, someone who loves his country, if not his government?
Edward Snowden is no hero. He is no patriot, no activist for human rights, no whistleblower. The least of Snowden's crimes is theft. The greatest of his crimes is treason. He is a coward, a hypocrite, and a criminal. |
And you think you're getting those skills from India?
I have reviewed many infosys CV's for roles at my company and they are all blatantly inexperienced for a high end IT role with domain knowledge. I will often see CV's copy pasted from one candidate to the next.
We are forced to hire through infosys. but the quality of work is on par with what you would pay and get from a donkey.
Infosys charges company $800, worker gets only $380. You get $380 worth of work from said person when local market contractor would cost about $650 - $700 - of which there are many.
On top of this, the Indian workers are literally slaves because If, in the first three years, they leave infosys, they are legally obliged to pay back their pre tax earnings to infosys. This would be illegal in the host country but in India it's perfectly fine.
Yes there are some good people at infosys (about 1 in 100 are actually any good) but these will leave the company at the first opportunity - after the 3 years tenure - any investment you made in that person is lost - but there's a billion more people who will take their place.
The problem isn't infosys - it's the executives in the host country thinking they are getting cheap labor (full well knowing they are displacing the local market) when they don't realize they are getting modern day financial slaves. The lure for the execs is the prospect of those onshore workers taking the role offshore at 50% of the costs above. This never actually happens because they need to be sitting next to the business in order to be useful. |
steal from your available throughput
>slowing down my customer's speeds
Google wants to deploy its own fiber lines by hanging them from the (wooden?) utility poles in the city. These poles are owned by AT&T. Google is asking to utilize a pole in the ground. They aren't using AT&T's network, cabling, or anything else. It has nothing to do with "throughput" or "affecting AT&T customer's speeds" - it's an entirely separate network.
If you're asking "why should AT&T be forced to share their pole with someone else?" - [/u/jwyche008]( has a good idea. It's also likely that the FCC sees private companies hoarding important infrastructure, and they realize this is stifling innovation in the USA. The USA is #30 something in global internet speed rankings, and we invented the damn thing. |
Last night, I put some clothes in the wash before I went to bed. I set the alarm clock on my Storm to go off an hour before my normal wake time, so that I could put the clothes in the dryer and they would be dry by the time I got out of the shower.
So after I woke up and dealt with the clothes, I crawled back into bed and attempted to set the alarm clock back to my normal wake time of 6 am, really looking forward to the one last hour of glorious, glorious sleep. At first, the screen was totally unresponsive. After a bit, I could get certain areas of the screen to recognize my input, but not the area where the time could be changed. I rotated the phone to see if landscape orientation would work better, but that (for some insane, inexplicable reason) made the camera app launch, and the flash automatically gave off several bursts of cornea-piercing light. Then, the screen totally locked up and I had to do a battery pull and wait for the 3 fucking minutes it takes to boot the OS, just so I could set my alarm again. I am so fed up with this POS sorry excuse for a phone, I had to use massive will power just to restrain myself from smashing it against the wall. |
This is the result of a great deal of effort over a long time. All those preparations have recently allowed them to implement several speedups, leading to the current noticeable improvements. This isn't a recent focus. |
Let's not forget that information in it's purest form (text) doesn't take a whole lot of bandwidth to move. I wish we (I speak for the only society I know, the US, more specifically the Tri-State area) were still interested as a whole in information. Obtaining information, retaining information, and coming to personally founded conclusions based on information. The truth as I see it however is that the argument for net-neutrality resting on the internet being needed as a place for information to flow freely is flawed. At the end of the day the internet is a transport that has been abused and mutated into another outlet for mindless entertainment for the masses. Our bandwidth needs have increased because we all want streaming colorful video at high quality with little to no hiccups. We want flash games and pirated material instantly. We want youtube clips that cram a laugh into a 1 minute segment. We want more access to soundbites and malformed news blurbs that make us feel ... anything, as long as we can be reactionary about it. When faced with actual digestible information we run to something familiar and more importantly something that can be passively ingested.
I'm not really sure what the hell my point is. I'm never been very good at getting thoughts across on the internet and discover flaws in my thinking as I type. All of this is probably BS but I think I may have made a good point in there somewhere or maybe typed something that a more rational and collected person can pick out and run with in a coherent direction. =)
I think what is rattling around inside my brain case is the idea that I'd rather have a black and white television that gets three channels of quality programming than a flatscreen plasma blasting millions of channels of HD mind killing rot into my eyes. |
Abandoning Net Neutr. would allow to have different "products" - "YouTube packet, have lightning fast YT!" and other packets would have slower access to youtube but faster for some other sites. And the "Everything fast!" packets would cost much more than the others. |
Lets be honest here...Any geek that has been paying attention to Apple for any period of time shouldn't be at all surprised by this. Apple does a product refresh almost every year and has a very specific schedule they follow. Pretty sure it all has to do with inventory management and keeping production consistent with demand. They are brilliant at stuff like that. |
IMO UBB is a response to people cancelling cable/satellite TV services. Netflix came to Canada and everyone realized that $8/month for commercial free, streaming, HD quality tv/movies was a much better option that cable/satellite TV with commercials for a much higher price.
So now instead of paying $40/month for unlimited internet + $8/month for Netflix I am forced to upgrade my plan to pay more per month and am capped. If I were to watch Netflix as much as I watch TV, I will essentially have to pay way more per month for the bandwidth charges, making the Netflix option much more expensive and less attractive than a cable TV subscription.
I don't mind paying a reasonable fee for higher internet usage that wouldn't be throttled, but paying more so that these companies can maintain their monopoly and force out competition, as well as generate more profits, is despicable. |
I guess you can really take this either way, but I personally believe this will hurt their chances to compete with Android. Now, Android is failing miserably in the Tablet market so I wouldn't usually just assume they're going to succeed, but Microsoft is going into this battle withholding their best asset: their tools. Basically, it's much cheaper for an OEM to put Windows on a system because they've got better tools, documentation, solid driver API's, and post-deployment support. It means that Windows is a system an OEM can stick on whatever hardware, send out, and forget about it. For Android, you need to fork it and awkwardly port it to some platform, spending tons of engineering time and suffering horrible tools and undocumented behavior and then after the product is deployed, the OEM has to provide all post-deployment support. Android offers its OEM's absolutely nothing-- but for OEM's who want to either put out their own unique hardware and chipsets (like Creative Labs with their ZMS) or that want to modify the system and provide their own experience (like almost every Android device maker) this is much better than being stuck releasing a clone device where larger manufacturers can produce more of them at a lower price.
Microsoft had the advantage of a platform and culture where they could beat Android by offering a superior commodity OS with their greatest asset and succeed the same way they succeeded with PC's, but instead they're wasting their time and resources trying to ape Apple because they're frightened of the iPhone and the iPad. Most of the users out there who are running Android are not interested in that product and those that are have it, so why not just go for the weaker platform? |
You do realize that is the point of SOPA right? SOPA isn't even intended for domestic websites. Now, SOPA is badly written so domestic websites fall under its jurisdiction.
The point of SOPA is to block sites like the piratebay which quiet literally tell the US Gov't to fuck itself whenever we try to enforce laws that are already in effect.
My point has always been this, SOPA needs to be modified so that it is extremely specific in what websites can be taken down and so that the courts must take the dominate role in the process. A bill would also need to specify that websites which could already be prosecuted in the united states would not fall under this jurisdiction. That way, youtube, which is in US jurisdiction, would not fall under SOPA. If a company has a problem with Google right now, they can sue them, but they are unable to take action against the piratebay. SOPA changes that. |
Not being well versed in the subject I'm talking out my ass here, but I happen to agree with the author.
I DO mostly agree with the idea the "Consumers don't care how much it costs you to make product X, they only care about their cost." Obviously you will always find people willing to pay more than is "reasonable" for a product, and I think most people assign value to something based on similar items.
However I think that can only go so far:
If the average price for a midsize car (from all manufacturers) is around 25 Grand, and Company X somehow comes up with a manufacturing technique that lets them produce the same quality of car, and yet cost them only 300$ per unit, there is NO WAY as a consumer I would continue paying that company 20-25 Grand for their car, even if it was comparable to all the others in every way.
I'm sorry if this statement is irrelevant, but I just felt like throwing in my 2 cents. |
Glad someone else saw that.
I immediately thought "That's not a screen, that's projected"
And it also seems obvious that while it could be considered "multi-user", it's clearly not 'touch' based -the two fingers are on different hands and are resizing a windows. A standard feature in every modern OS.
I don't believe it would be even capable of distinguishing the two fingers.
I've worked on a few touch-wall/touch table projects in my career and 90% of them were projected (back or front) |
If you're going to have to micro-manage your hosts to control for unpredictable downtime, leveraging multiple "cloud" presences and trying to maintain load balancing or real-time replication with some sort of fail-over mechanism, what is the difference or advantage of this over doing the same thing with managed collocation? |
But the thing is, they are not counting the number of times that you pirate something, they are counting the number of times someone accuses you of copyright infringement, regardless of whether the claim is true or not. They are going by the rules of guilty until proven innocent, except when you do prove your innocence, it won't matter to them. |
When most hardware manufacturers sell their phones, they sell it with some of their own customizations on top of Android.
Cyanogenmod is an alternative, free and open-source OS that you can install on your device that runs Android. It runs plain Android with some tweaks here and there, and is updated very, very quickly when a new version of Android comes out. |
Had a very similar experience myself as a youngin' setup a very nice website on free webhosting, eventually someone donated a domain name and we went big, by big I mean huge, one of the largest computer hardware websites in the early 2000's.
Fast forward a couple of years, we find domain is about to expire, we are prepared to pay to renew and ask him if we can have the name transferred to us, he ceased all contact, created a new website on his own hosting but copied/pasted ALL our old content and then had the gaul to act as if it was just a "site redesign" when really he fully hijacked the entire site. |
False.
Fiber in cities IS very profitable at 70$/month. I can't find the article now, but Google mentioned what the costs were in Austin, and since they only deploy in Fiberhoods where enough people sign up (I think it was about 25% of the people that were required) they get their investment back in about 18 months. Maintenance and customer service included.
It's very obvious actually. Being an wired ISP is a fucking goldmine: the initial costs are high (setting up the network) but the operating costs are virtually zero. Google has also bought up tons of dark fiber. So the only cost they still have to make is the last mile (hence the fiberhood-stuff in, and giving the neighboorhood in which the most people sign up priority: those places earn that last mile rollout back the quickest). |
In my area they can, without fees at that.
It's just a pain in the ass to do because you have to coordinate with all the various property owners involved (land you cross, if your using power lines you have to clear it with the individual pole owners [there are 3 telecoms in my area and 1 power distribution company, oddly enough for every 4 poles going down the line there are at least 3 different owners]). They don't tend to exclude anyone that wants to run wire but you also have to handle the maintenance of your lines (in Maine that's a pretty big thing because with ice storms you are pretty much gauranteed to have a broken line at least once a year if you run a quarter mile or more of unburied cable, it's easier to just bury it for short runs [less than a mile]) and deal with the permits for digging (which are free, but require permission from property owners and about a month of going out to physically mark the sites you want to dig up, checking marks others have made when they have been notified someone wants to dig, etc). Crossing roads is another issue in itself, you can either use the poles or bury cable for free, but you have to pay a work crew to patch the road up in a reasonable amount of time so you aren't pissing everyone off with congestion. |
It's kind of crazy that with something as ubiquitous as internet, the industry is run so poorly that a company can enter an already crowded marketplace, just offer good speeds at a reasonable price and have people clamouring to sign up for them. |
Google's continued expansion into fiber services should be a no-brainer, although I feel like many people are missing the big picture. The biggest businesses, the most successful companies have always been distributers; it doesn't matter how great your product is if you can't get it to your customers. Walmart isn't the massive corporation it is because of it's products, but because it's distribution platforms allow it to operate at a scale that affords them an opportunity to offer goods at a much lower price.
The Internet is now the world's largest distribution platform, not only for media, but manufacturing, customer service, communication, literally almost everything. It has changed the way we conduct commerce throughout the world, and honestly, we're just getting started. As it stands, ISPs are the gateway to this virtually limitless distribution platform, and any company that is able to provide access to that network is going to perform extremely well. They are supplying a product that will always be in demand. For this reason, it worries me that so few companies provide fast, reliable internet access. While I'm concerned at the potential pitfalls of regulation, I wouldn't be surprised if we see control of such a powerful platform shift away from corporate control and into a government regulated utility service ,much like water, gas, and electricity. |
No. All encryption uses a key, and you can always run through all possible keys. The value of a 256-bit key is that it's (essentially) impossible to guess randomly.
From Bruce Schneier 's [Applied Cryptography](
> Longer key lengths are better, but only up to a point. AES will have 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit key lengths. This is far longer than needed for the foreseeable future. In fact, we cannot even imagine a world where 256-bit brute force searches are possible. It requires some fundamental breakthroughs in physics and our understanding of the universe.
>
> One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less than kT, where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the Boltzman constant. (Stick with me; the physics lesson is almost over.)
>
> Given that k = 1.38 × 10^−16 erg/K, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2 Kelvin, an ideal computer running at 3.2 K would consume 4.4 × 10^−16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump.
> Now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 1.21 × 10^41 ergs. This is enough to power about 2.7 × 10^56 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough state changes to put a 187-bit counter through all its values. If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2^192. Of course, it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter.
>
> But that's just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 1051 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states.
>
> These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space. |
ohmygosh, there's got to be some good resources out there already, insofar as the actual setting up of the cloud itself -- I think firstly the key is building a good box (pc) that can handle the load (cpu-wise), as I also use it for my stuff (so no, it's not dedicated).. have dependable hd units (an ssd might make a big diff on times to load services, etc), LOTS of memory (I use 16gb and will upgrade to 32 on my next rig). In light of all that's going on now, maybe I should get off my ass and do it, I just wish I knew more about VPN stuff, because some of what i'm doing might seem archaic, and frankly the older I get, the faster things fly by.
I have to build a new rig in the next couple weeks for my son, so i'll at least keep track of everything in that regard and I'll share it the best I can. It'll be that long, as my elbow was slammed in a door last week (contusion/sprain, roughed up nerves), and being my right hand it's left me somewhat crippled in thought (doc says a week or so and i'll be back to normal, more or less), as it's hard to keep a salient thought for long due to the fact that I'm not nearly as ambidextrous as I thought I was, and Mr. Flexeril doesn't help. |
Nope. All this is saying is that if the DEA has some leads on drug trafficking, drug deals, etc., they then provide the leads to local law enforcement. Because the DEA doesn't want to to tip off the dealers as to how they are gathering intel, they ask local law enforcement to find some other legitimate and legal reason to stop, question, or investigate (i.e a legitimate traffic stop) the criminals. That is to say they want the dealers to believe local law enforcement, by mere "chance", stopped to investigate them and subsequently found drugs.
Here is a scenario. Say the DEA gets a tip that Bob is dealing drugs. And let's say they got that tip through a tapped phone line or email. The DEA tells law enforcement Bob is dealing drugs and they need to investigate. They don't tell law enforcement how they know Bob is dealing, they just tell them. Local law enforcement, then waits for Bob to leave his house. As Bob is driving they stop him for speeding. During the traffic stop they find drugs. |
Not exactly. One of the algorithms I know for checking shadow consistency in images (which is quite old and probably not sophisticated), will estimate the direction from where the light is coming for different portions of the picture.
If it's a photo taken outside during the day, we can assume that the sun is the only light source. Because it is so far away the light direction should be the same throughout the picture. Therefore if the estimated light vectors in each portion of the picture are similar enough, then it's probably not fake.
However this algorithm will only be able to check (in a very coarse way) whether the shadows are wrong. It can't just create the right shadows. You could at the very most modify it to fill in black and white pixels to create the same vectors, but that photo would look unreal. |
The system really lends itself to people adding features to "scratch your own itch". Open source software has the same tendency. That can lead to wonderful work - when you're fulfilling a need you yourself have felt that can be extremely satisfying.
However, it can be very bad for improving features that the team doesn't see as important. OpenOffice had an [error with autorecovery that lasted for months]( the "workaround" was "manually save often" - this is fine for the developers who probably had a keen habit of hitting "CTRL+S", but terrible for 'Mom and Pop' users.
I think a company with good management can resolve issues like that sooner - they can force developers to look after features that are important to the end-user, even if they don't seem that way to the developer.
Combine that with the stack ranking system used at Valve - which apparently rewards developers for creating new, impressive features - and the result is that there aren't going to be many people spending time on minor feature tweaks. |
That's not actually what happened at all. They couldn't conclusively prove the rape so rather than lose at trial they offered him a deal to confess and take voluntary counselling and monitoring. When he broke the terms of the counselling he was sentenced to 15 years with all but 30 days suspended, the rest of the 15 years will be forced counselling and monitoring. |
I guess I may as well share my Sprint experience. It was quite horrendous, and I'm seriously wondering what great customer service other people are talking about. My mom and I had just switched over to Sprint on a family line a little over two years ago after coming from Verizon to try and save some money. After quickly discovering that neither of us received any type of signal at our house, we called up Sprint to see what we/they could do about it. This is where the nightmare began. I spent the first thirty minutes with the customer service representative as she tried to prove to me that I had service where I lived because we were in an area of 'good' signal on their coverage maps. I tried explaining that the maps must be wrong, or it could be the fact that I live down a dirt road surrounded by a forest on all sides, but no matter what, I am roaming on my phone and so is my mom's phone. The representative must have thought I was trying to scam them or something, because what ensued was another hour of them trying to ping or reset my phone or something. I tried waiting patiently, but even after the first pings were unsuccessful she had me do some useless stuff on my phone involving the dialer pad and some sequence of numbers that was supposed to magically grant me coverage. I played with it for the first few minutes but started getting angry and told her there must be something else we can do, or I'm going to have to cancel the service. She re-directed me to a supervisor who basically went through the same thing I just got done explaining to the previous person about not having coverage despite being on their coverage maps. After getting nowhere, I hung up out of frustration and went online to see if there's anything else I can do besides going through the hassle of cancelling and dealing with the cancellation fee. I quickly discovered that Sprint offers range extenders that you can plug into your home router to grant coverage in bad areas. I called back and asked to speak to a supervisor or someone with more authority immediately this time, and inquired about the range extender. After going through the whole explanation of how I don't have coverage again and them trying to unsuccessfully ping (or whatever they were trying to do) my phone, they said I qualified for a free range extender. Okay, great! Oh but this was just the beginning. They said it would be at our home in 3-5 business days so I patiently waited all the while having no service on my brand new phone. After about 7 business days, I gave them a call again to check on the status of the shipping. The first low-level representative seemed a little hesitate or flustered or something and wasn't really telling me the status, which I assumed would be a quick look up on their computer. They re-directed me to a supervisor who after another twenty minutes told me there was no record of having a range extender shipped to my house. I was so fucking mad. I explained how the previous supervisor assured me that it was shipped so something must be wrong. I got a brief apology and was told that they were shipping it now, wait another 3-5 business days. Okay, fine, glitches happen I guess I will wait longer. Waited another 6 business days this time before calling back, still no magic range extender box. At this point I had written down the names of the supervisors who were trying to help me earlier, although it didn't do me much good. Called back, ask to speak to supervisor, ask on the status of the shipping. They still had no record of ever shipping it. At this point I just about snapped the phone. They had blatantly lied to me twice already and I made a point of this to this current supervisor along with some harsh language. I basically told them that if I didn't receive it this time I wasn't paying for their service the next bill and they can try to sue me if they want, I'm not paying for this shitty service. Long story short, THIS time I received the range extender and now have service at my house. I've been stuck with them for the past two years or so with the worst coverage of any carrier in my area, I get little to no service everywhere I go. The 3g speeds are slower than 56K dial up at times. My contract with Sprint just ended so I'll be switching to another carrier soon, probably T-Mobile since they're pretty cheap and APPEAR to have better coverage here. |
Let's not forget, that IBM actively helped Nazi Germany before, and after they declared war, to gather information on every single person in Germany to determine (among other things) who was and wasn't Jewish.
With IBM supplying Hollerith punch card machines, Nazi Germany was able to systematically ID anyone who was 'undesirable'. IBM also set up punch card installations in countries that were due to be invaded by the Nazis in WW2, to conduct information gathering. Once the country in question was invaded, the statistics would then be used to 'cleanse' the occupied state. |
That's not criminal, even under Leahy's proposed changes; and while I'm at it, this whole article is hyperbole.
The simple version is this: The proposed change would add an offense for conspiracy or an attempt to commit the crime described in the section. We have equivalents for murder, hence conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.
Where people get confused is in a misconception of the word conspiracy-- which means something very specific that's usually gotten wrong. Your example of discussing flaws in a system with coworkers over lunch is not a crime, even with the amendment. In fact, you and I could right now, on Reddit, publicly discuss how to take down a government website, hack into bank accounts, hell, even just rob a bank. That's just talk protected by the First Amendment; but a conspiracy would occur if we AGREE to work together to do those things. Federal law and many state statues also require an "overt act in furtherance" before we're actually in conspiracy land, which means we can talk all about how we're going to rob the bank on main ave. at 11:21 am; but it's not a conspiracy until one of us buys ski masks. |
This of it this way;
A company manages to convince people to start drinking beer or vodka or whatever in a similar way, where people end up paying more for the same consumption level/enjoyment then they would in the traditional purchase sense. So far, this isn't too bad, companies make more money, you can still do whatever. Now comes the bad part, companies start to reduce production of their "classic" purchase model beverages, certain kinds of beer, rum, and wine start to become very hard to find unless you go with the new purchase model. As other companies notice that this seems to be working well, more companies start to abandon their traditional models, moving to the new ones. Now imagine that at the same time, these companies realize not only can they do this, but their new purchase model allows them to sacrifice quality, but still maintain income with some simple psychological tricks 9And the alcohol industry is no stranger to that so that isn't a stretch for them either :) )
Now what you have is a market flooded with over priced lower quality goods with a more complicated purchase model and a lack of traditional products, all due to the continuing choices and indulgence of the people who willingly enabled the change by supporting the production of the new products. |
The problem is everyone wants smaller/lighter phones. Remember the phones of the 90's? What if we doubled the thickness of the iphone or the s4 - how much more battery could we fit into that then? What if we had 2 smaller batteries that charged in tandem, would it charge twice as fast, yet still have the same length of charge? I really wouldn't mind having a slightly heavier cell for twice or 3 times the charge, hell when you pop the battery out they're not even that heavy. Put 3 s4 batteries in my s4. or one battery 3 times the size. |
I would love having a 4K screen if it could be done efficiently and not decrease the battery life and performance of my phone to the point of it being unusable. If I had a phone with a 4K screen on a phone that performed as well as my Nexus 4, I would absolutely love to see it.
I may be a little biased based on my love for 4K as a standard, though. My reasoning is that 720p and 1080p scale perfectly on a 3840x2160 display (2160=1080 2=720 3), which means you completely avoid interpolation when viewing content from any iteration of HD. At present, 720p content will look worse on a 1080p screen than it will on a 720p screen, and 4K fixes that problem completely. |
The point of researching something before buying it is so that you can make sure a device is as easy to use as possible. After a point, the amount of time and energy you put into researching a device outweighs the gain you get from it. You or I can put in 20 minutes of research into narrowing down our options, and then spend another hour at the most making sure that we have the absolute best phone. We can do this because we have spent our lives looking at technology, and learning at an intuitive level how it works, not to mention the fact that we already have an impressive grasp on what phones are available. Alot of people, if not most people, would have to spend weeks of dedicated research to come to the level of understanding that we already posess. I would argue, that for these people, extensive research is not effective, and anything more than getting recommendations from their friends, and maybe 20 minutes of googling these suggestion is counterproductive. |
Most of the US' electrical grid is not ready to handle millions of people pulling another 25amps of juice for hours at a time.
Source please. |
What's unclear?
Electricity is required to generate hydrogen. The amount of electricity extracted from the hydrogen isn't as much as you put in to generate it. You have a net loss of energy immediately.
Fuel cells are currently about 35% efficient. Electric motors are around 95% efficient. Batteries are around 90% efficient. Again, you don't get as much energy from hydrogen as you get from battery storage.
Hydrogen fuel cells can "fill up" faster than batteries can (currently -- no pun intended) charge. However, this assumes that the hydrogen is stored in cryogenic, pressurized storage tanks in liquid form. This requires -- wait for it -- electricity! If the hydrogen is not generated on-site, it requires energy (usually fossil fuels) to truck the liquid hydrogen (still cryogenically stored on the truck) to the fueling station. By the time you're done, you have almost no energy benefit over gasoline.
The machine to produce hydrogen at your home may be inexpensive, but that neglects to take into account raw materials -- natural gas, electricity -- needed to generate it. Electric chargers are over 99% efficient because they're just "smart" extension cords. |
Electric motors run every train in the country. Also, you know that fuel cells just make electricity to feed electric motors right?
Furthermore, there are lithium-ion batteries with higher energy density by volume. Hydrogen probably wins by weight, but not by as much as you think. When you look up the energy density of hydrogen you get just the gas not the tank around it and certainly not the fuel cell. So it's kinda hard to compare them without specs of a specific system. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.