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CNG is a much better alternative to gasoline than Hydrogen and I'd even argue that it's better than battery powered for vehicles that are actually used for work. Once affordable battery powered personal vehicles with good range become a thing, then it'll definitely be better than CNG, but you can't beat the price of a conversion (-state and federal tax credits) and paying $1 a gallon. Hydrogen is useless. To say you can power a car using water is nothing more than a gimmick. To get hydrogen you must get electricity from a power plant (most in US are coal) use it to put water through electrolysis (this separates the water into hydrogen and oxygen), and then you can use the hydrogen to power the car. The problem is that electrolysis uses extra energy that going straight from electricity to batter doesn't use, so you're better off just making a battery powered plug in electric car. Hydrogen is a convoluted, inefficient process. |
What evidence do you have? How does it work?
How can you show this is a deliberate tactic of Google's, when it seems pretty obvious that directly opposing search terms would share similar kewords (ie both pro-life and pro-choice searches would feature "abortion" as a prominent keyword). Also, whenever you see an argument on a forum or whatever, you see both sides of the argument and therefore when Google indexes the page it will pick up both sides and attribute them to similar things. |
Sure you can. If you understand a bit about networking that is.
Ok - so TLD (top level domain) such as .de, .com, .net and so on are controlled by some entity that is dictated by ICANN - so say screw ICANN, set up your own TLD registry within your country, and apply a new suffix to the address .exit - so you have www.google.com.exit which indicates that the traffic should be routed outside of the country.
What does this actually do?
Well, any address not appended with .exit is routed internally. That means IT NEVER leaves the country. Period. And yes, you can do this.
What it does do though, is allow for consumers to know if a server is internal or external to the country, and they can make decisions based on privacy and so on.
Or hell, just pull the plug and don't communicate with the rest of the world. Nothing is stopping them from doing this, well, save that it might make a lot of people... angry. |
There is law in the USA that considers links to infringing material to be the same as publishing the infringing material.... however since it is Twitter's users posting the links not Twitter, then Twitter can't be held liable..... unless it can be shown they are aware of the links and refuse to take them down. |
Strontium is a divalent atom which means the two electrons in its valence shell can have spins which align parallel or anti-parallel. This results in what is known as a singlet or triplet. The triplet series in all divalent atoms gives rise to very narrow (i.e. long lived) transitions which means they can be probed for seconds using simple continuous wave laser systems. If you're interested you can look into intercombination lines of alkaline-earth atoms and dipole selection rules of how light interacts with matter. |
I think it's " |
Here is how we can get out from under the data cap problem: No data cap over any time period shall be set lower than the user's advertised connection speed in bytes per second multiplied by the number of seconds in that time period. |
Comcast/Time Warner/etc would have to allow other companies to "rent" their infrastructure.
Correct. In theory, the benefits would be enormous to Google Fiber (which is basically trying to be MVNO-like). That key infrastructure includes all the fiber Comcast, etc. buried to the node, that Google can then use to set up their own nodes and fiber arials from those.
But Google would never, ever, do that. There's a good reason the FCC isn't pursuing last mile unbundling, it removes all incentives whatsoever for operators to upgrade their networks.
Think about it: Google Fiber runs all those fiber aerials from the nodes they built and the second they do that XYZ ISP can start selling service on the infrastructure they built, with no infrastructure costs and no fees they have vastly lower overhead, so they can easily undercut their prices and would steal ALL of Google's customers. See California utility deregulation.
The only way to avoid this is more regulation that fixes prices (relatively high) so they can't be undercut. |
Do you have Uverse? I currently have ATT for DSL, same reason, no data caps. It isn't nearly as fast as I would like it to be (1.5 up, .75 down according to speednet, it is supposed to be double). I can still watch Netflix, etc no problem, BUT I can only download/stream one thing at a time. I also have to say I have no problems with lag when playing MMOs.
I'm 150ft away from where Charter ends (no data caps, in my area at least). Charter gave me the option to pay for the extra laying of line, which they estimated to be $200. I kind of wish I would've went that route now, after buying my modem and installation I paid close to $150 to get set up.
ANYHOW, Uverse is finally available in my area, with a data cap I know I would surpass in no time. |
Your argument absolutely should be "I want to torrent." The changes that could occur with fiber infrastructure + P2P technology would completely revolutionize the way we think about the Internet. Again.
Take a look at [BitTorrent Sync]( Thanks to the P2P technology, company software updates which normally take hours can be completed in minutes. Imagine if Microsoft didn't need to run servers hosting a Windows Service Pack. The servers wouldn't go down in flames on release day and no need for complex load balancing from network admins. A service pack could propagate across the internet in minutes instead of days. But not with these data caps.
It puts the brakes on the whole damn thing. |
I've never looked at a document like this before - no wonder it's 400 pages. About 75% of each page is filled with citing sources from the 2 small paragraphs on that page.
I read about 20 pages and thought it looked good, but I can't do 400. Hopefully the EFF or someone here can give us a great |
After reading some other comments, I'm not really sure. I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the free time to research this as much as my interest would like me to. But it does seem interesting that all the rules in the top-voted |
Nope, it is literally all about stopping ISP's from using practices like throttling. If you look up the thread there is lots of |
The regulations are only 7 pages. Lots of great |
Comcast did that to me a month ago and then insisted that I pay for a technician to come out. While I was on the phone they kept cutting out my internet and calling me a liar since I was calling them out on their bullshit. I refused the technicians, they signed me up for three appointments without my authorization and I kept cancelling them.
2 hours later I dropped my bill by 20 dollars though because I absolutely raised hell. |
DISSENTING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER MICHAELO’RIELLY:
> Even after enduring three weeks of spin, it is hard for me to believe that the Commission is establishing an entire Title II/net neutrality regime to protect against hypothetical harms.
> 5
> There is not a shred of evidence that any aspect of this structure is necessary. |
To answer you cynically but truthfully, ISPs who stand to lose by having their business more heavily regulated and who thus oppose net neutrality as a guaranteed right, have been very heavily lobbying Washington and contributing to the campaign funds of a number of - primarily Republican - lawmakers.
One of these, who had a significant amount of donations to her re-election fund from (I think) Comcast and/or Verizion, introduced a bill designed to dismantle the above, ostensibly to please the people who had given her those campaign contributions. I can only assume her hope is that by giving them what they want, they will continue to finance her re-election, and assist her in keeping a comfortable government job that comes with great benefits, long vacation time, and a respectable salary for comparatively little actual work (compared to, say, working a 9-6 office job where you don't recess for months out of every year). |
Thank you for this explanation, however it clearly wasn't the cause in my case as it went on for months, the IP changed a few times, and it was a low usage address that wasn't used for gaming/forums etc (unlikely someone was targeting my elderly in-laws).
I think the MAC of the cable modem must have been captured and spoofed by someone else on the network.
The real problem was that Comcast flatly denied that it was possible that I was not generating the traffic, and did no investigation or work to resolve it. I had to eventually cancel the account, and leave them with wireless only as there is no other provider in that area. |
From all the fuss in the article one would think they don't have nighttime in Germany. |
IE6 was released in 2001.
Gecko 1.0.1 was the first version (with Nav 7.0) to support CSS 2.0 released in 2004.
Why is pre IE7 -- a browser from 3 years before even Navigator 7 -- so important to you? |
I have a ford 2002 F-150, and my accelerator got stuck twice while I've been driving it. It's really not that hard stopping it. Regular brakes are shit when the accelerator is going. For automatic cars you can still downshift into lower gears and that's what you're supposed to do. so i shifted into second and it slowed it down to about 30 then shifted to first and it slowed it down to maybe 10. I had a foot E-brake so i applied that some to slow it down a little more and then i just turned it off. By the time we stopped my friend had no idea what was happening. the first time was pretty scary but the second time i was just like, "shit. . . " and did the same thing. I looked under my hood and the accelerator chord was just caught on some loose casing and i took that off and it hasn't happened since.
{edit} - just making note cause I've seen comments on here, your foot brakes won't slow the car down one bit at all when the throttle is on. |
Many cars do not have brakes powerful enough to stop the car while the engine is going full throttle. If you do not suddenly slam on the brakes, which most people will not, they will heat up and become less effective.
When the brake pads are hot it doesn't matter how you pull the brake. Foot, hand, it doesn't matter -- you're not going to stop very fast if at all.
Putting the car in neutral or killing the engine before applying the brake is the correct option, but a lot of people don't have the presence of mind to do so. Critical thinking under pressure is a weak point for many people -- and there's a selection bias going as well. You're not hearing tapes from all the people who safely brought their car to a halt. |
I've had a stuck throttle cable before in a different make/model automatic-transmission car and had a similar situation. My car had just been serviced at a Jiffy Lube (that I will never, ever go to again) and about 1/4 mile out of the gate the car took off. I was on a four-lane in-city road with a turning lane, so I immediately shifted into neutral, drove into the turning lane, turned the car off and waited about 10 seconds.
Much to my dismay, when I started the car, it was still redlining for no apparent reason. I turned the car back off, stomped the living crap out of the gas pedal and started it one more time. Problem solved. I went on a 600-mile road trip the next day and had the car for 3 more years without a problem. |
Last year, my (non-toyota) pedal stuck, on the freeway. No idea why, but it just diddnt stick, it pulled itself to the floor. Carb? Transmission throttle? No idea.
It took me about 10-15 looong seconds to realize I would burn my brakes quick. Was worried about blowing the engine,or leaving my tranny on the road, but I had no choice but to throw it in neutral.
Scary shit.
Threw it in neutral, it revved like hell, and somehow that unstuck the pedal.
Stopped, worked the pedal a few times, cautiously drove home... Lubed every linkage I could find the next morning. |
Jiffy Lube is the worst. Two friends' cars have been ruined by them. One didn't tighten the drain plug, a mile down the road, no more oil. The other put engine oil in the transmission. |
thats when regulators step in.
... or when said monopoly is held in a market for necessities, such as water or electricity and said monopoly raises prices beyond the average customer's ability to pay.
Yes, this does happen. We expect companies to follow simple market-based rules (like "don't charge more than your customers can afford") but often the people running those companies are either myopically greedy or fundamentally ignorant, so you cannot expect said companies to act in a way that is compatible with the rules of the market (which are, themselves, not rules for companies to follow, but rules to use in the analysis of said markets). |
I suspect that woot checks for same shipping address, which is trivial to do in software, even if they let it slide a bit if someone doesn't do much volume (which they might well do, given their general attitude, but that's just a guess).
And if you go to the trouble of having 100 different shipping addresses to fool them, then it's clearly not worth the extra trouble. |
This does not support the argument.
There is no legal force, so there's no 'legal loophole'. And there is no tie between this class action lawsuit and unlimited plans.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee AT&T will not block you from switching back to a plan you already abused. |
I don't even care if anyone reads this or if I get downvoted to hell, it needs to be said.
As an employee of Best Buy, (computer department, nonetheless) I'd like to personally tell everyone who assumes we're all like this to fuck off.
I'm generally very well informed on the products I sell, including the ones in other departments that I don't even work in. In fact, I'm often the only source of knowledge most of my customers' have. Threads like this really irk me because I get to see the hate for people like me, employees at a retail store which seems to have wronged every neckbeard and his grandma in some unforgivable way. It drives me crazy when I read comments proclaiming all employees of Best Buy to be unintelligent apes who rob the old and rape the uninformed of their hard earned money. I'm here to do my job, not to be mocked by every stupid fuck on a soapbox demanding retail employees enter some sort of Gestapo reeducation camp or be denied the right to a job. Imagine if whenever your given occupation was brought up everyone assumed you were a retarded thief whose only interest is the contents of your customer's wallet. Kind of depressing, no? |
So I must chime in as well. I work for Geek Squad as a general grunt in repairs and customer service. I find it rather insulting when very computer literate people start bashing Best Buy.
First off, if you don't like their products and salesmanship, then don't go there. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything from Best Buy, mainly because I can figure it out and buy it online. However, on a day to day basis, I see normal people come in, absolutely clueless about anything related to computers. My job is to translate what I know into a format they can understand, and to provide help to them. I would not expect a gamer to come in and want me to "dumb down" computing to them, mainly because I assume they can figure it out themselves.
Something newegg cant do is actually talk to someone to sell a computer. My mom goes to places like BBY to have someone think for her. If I showed her newegg, she would not even know where to start. (of course, I would help her instead of sending her to BBY)
These normal people don't have any idea of how to do things. Seeing a tech person try to explain HDDs and mobos to them is not pretty. Usually tech people can be quite condescending and rude. I see people who go to small local businesses and drop $250 for literally NOTHING to be done to their computers. Then they come into BBY and drop $200 (Tech Support Service) and get the results they wanted. The beauty of a corporation is the fact that there should be consistency in everything, including repairs and service. However, BBY employs humans, who make mistakes and destroy that beauty. I really don't see BBY screwing over sheeple as much as these local repair businesses do.
Here is my example I like to give. I know jack about cars. I take my car to a mechanic to get it fixed, and I pay tons of money for it. I pay someone to do what I cant do. If I could work on my car and repair it, I would. Same goes with computers. These people know jack about computers. So they take it to GS and expect it to be fixed, by paying a large amount of money. If they knew how, they would fix it. I'm very sure there are mechanics out there that screw people over all the time.
I understand this ad was more based on the sales people. But at least the sales people know something, compared to say, Wal-Mart sales people. And generally, the sales people are not very pushy. They simply try to help.
And don't even get me started on dealing with customers. Anyone complaining about poor customer service, who has not worked in retail, can go fuck themselves. It is mentally taxing, having to deal with fat welfare fucks who want free stuff. |
You are indeed correct. There is very likely little "consumer confusion" in this case, and so trademark law isn't very applicable. While trademark is pretty uniform throughout the US, most states also have an "unfair competition" cause of action that is closely related to trademark law. Whenever someone files a lawsuit claiming trademark infringement they throw in "unfair competition" for good measure.
This varies considerably from state to state, but I imagine the claim here would be something like: "Your commercial depicted us as a bunch of idiots, we are not a bunch of idiots, your advertising disparaged us unfairly and illegally." The fun part is when newegg argues that they are, in fact, a bunch of idiots, which would be a legitimate defense. |
As a former 17 year old salesman of Best Buy's computer department, I can attest to this commercial's accuracy.
For the record, I was one of the few people in computers who actually knew what I was talking about. After about a year my schedule was reduced to 1 hour per week (since I couldn't be fired) because I refused to push "premium cables" over regular cables to grandmothers and clueless parents. The reason why they were so upset was because they made upwards of 80% profit on premium cables that cost $40+. When I stated that I was being honest with the customers, I was told "your job is to sell, not to inform." |
Not to mention that JSTOR posts the non-pdf version as fucking jpegs. That $8500, while it may seem steep for yearly access does mean that every article accessed probably costs somewhere between 1 and 10 cents (obviously will depend on the size of the uni). I do find the price per article for those outside the uni to be absurdly high and this certainly stifles innovation and communication.
I wonder how much it would cost to serve (or generate from text) PDFs of every academic article published in the last 400 years. Other sites already have DOI databases of articles (eg Mendeley). How hard would it be to just have a service that would spit back text and figures based on a DOI, the system is already set up to do it, its just that right now there are paywalls everywhere. |
You have it exactly right. We always lose money publishing.
Why do we do it then? (1) The practical reason: We have to publish, and have to do it in well-regarded established journals, or else we can't get grants, can't get jobs, and can't get tenure (= we get fired). In some cases it's also written into the grant that we will produce "at least one peer-reviewed publication" in X amount of time and so we're contractually obligated to do so.
But there's also (2), the idealistic reason: We love science and really want to tell our colleagues what we did and what we found. There's an old ideal in the way science works, which is, spreading the word about your results should not be for profit - it should for love of learning. (this is why it especially bugs me that publishers profit off our papers.) We review for free, we publish for free, we mentor grad students more or less for free, we don't get paid much, we never get to pocket any of our grant money, and we also share our methods and lab protocols (some of which took decades of work to develop) for free with anyone who asks. It's weird but also cool. I don't know any other field that has such a persistent underlying ideal of sharing ideas freely. And then think about the kind of people who are drawn to such a field. Scientists in general are people who are bright enough to have gone into finance or law or medicine, where they could have made ten times more money than in science, and yet for some reason they chose science anyway . Why? You could argue that we made a stupid decision... :) But fundamentally it's because scientists (speaking in huge generalities here) are people who are motivated not by love of money, but by love of learning and by sheer raw burning curiosity. We just LOVE SCIENCE.
So at the end of the day, getting a paper published feels awesome. I (+ my colleagues) just got a paper accepted in a major journal this week and we are so excited about it. Looking back on my publication record... I don't think "I wish I'd got royalties." What I think is, I'm so lucky to have been able to make a contribution to human knowledge. I think I did something good. I think I did something worthwhile with my life. I think/hope I helped illuminate some of the mysteries of life. I know this probably sounds incredibly hokey and idealistic and naive, but, it's what motivates me to keep doing it. |
And with a clear dig to Google Docs’ ribs, Shaw refers to Office 365 as the “award-winning online collaboration solution for businesses who don’t want their documents and mail used to benefit advertisers.”
and from their privacy statement....
We use the information we collect to provide the services you request. Our services may include the display of personalized content and advertising.
We use your information to inform you of other products or services offered by Microsoft and its affiliates, and to send you relevant survey invitations related to Microsoft services.
The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies.
We collect additional information about your interaction with Microsoft sites and services without identifying you as an individual. For example, we receive certain standard information that your browser sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, browser type and language, access times and referring Web site addresses. We also use Web site analytics tools on our sites to retrieve information from your browser, including the site you came from, the search engine(s) and the keywords you used to find our site, the pages you view within our site, your browser add-ons, and your browser's width and height. |
I wouldn't trust anything that decryptedtech.com has to say the first half of their blog post showed that they are morons. If you want an accurate post about the issue you can look here [(Source)](/
It is a very grey area.
What Apple and many of the publishing houses are fighting is to make it so that books have a set price they have to be worth so that companies like Amazon can't sell the book for less then they have to pay the publishing house, ie Amazon paying the extra amount out of pocket and loosing money. The reason they want to fight against this is because this will help Amazon grow their own market share of selling ebooks by pushing out small companies (not apple other ebook retailers) that can't afford to match the price and loose money on the book. This is a move towards Amazon having a monopoly or at least being close to having a monopoly on the ebook market where only other large companies can go against them if they decide to loose money doing so. So creating a minimum (e)store front price for the book actually helps the smaller ebook distributors and in the long run probably the consumer because Amazon doesn't plan to loose money on ebooks forever at some point they will want to make money doing it.
note: Amazon already sells a ereaders and that might be the way they make their money back but that cannot make back enough money to break even so I think that they may plan on removing support for all ereaders that they don't own once they have their target market share on ebook distribution. |
ಠ_ಠThis is exactly what happened in the game Homefront, except they were Korean chips, the backdoor allows the chips to be targeted by a directed EMP thus wiping out communications making it impossible to repel the invading armies, |
Is this a surprise to anyone? They've been doing that for years. It's okay to do that too. Apple has been known to hire people who release code in cydia. To stay competitive both iPhones and android phones need to steal the best features from each other. It's not as if apple has stopped trying to innovate their phones though. I doubt their gameplan is to just copy all their ideas. They usually copy a bunch of ideas but innovate one to a point that they make it their own. Think of the multitask function. Apple needed to implement that feature to their phones but android and cydia beat them to it, but it's not like they wouldnt implement it. |
Amtrack sold their right of way status in the late 70s. The deal was this: Cargo companies would pay to maintain the rails and Amtrack trains could ride the rails for free, but they would be a second class citizen to any and all freight trains. |
What a fucking complete waste of money.
I live in Sonoma County, where the voters approved the "Smart Train". It's the biggest boondogle waste of cash excuse to fork over tax dollars to the 1% that I've seen since moving here.
The train will (in effect) have 1 rail. It will run to someplace totally ineffective in getting people to San Francisco or the East Bay. I did the math, and for the same amount of money as the initial proposal SoCo/Marin could have ended up with about 500 CNG buses.
Now before you laugh at the idea of buses consider that:
1) 500 buses with a capacity of 50 people is 25,000 people off the road. That's 1/2 the population of the town I live in.
2) The Western US made the choice to invest in roads and highways. What are we gonna do, lay track everywhere?
3) I lived in Israel where everyone uses buses to move around. It's quite an effective system if you have enough buses
4) American progressives have this love affair with trains. "Look how well it works in Europe", but in Europe they made the choice to invest in rail, and have 150 years of track laid. That is why rail works in Europe. Additionally, European towns have a distinct "center" whereas towns in CA can be a bit more spread out. Anyone who's been to LA or the Bay Area knows what I mean.
So, what's so great about the high speed train? It's going to end up costing us 10X what they said it would, and in the end no one will use it because it won't service enough locations or arrive in locations people actually want to get to. Yay? |
I live 35 miles from LAX. It takes 2 hours to drive 35 miles. It then takes about an hour to sit around LAX for my flight. Then when I finally get to San Fran, I have to pray to God Almighty that my luggage doesn't go missing for what would be the eighth time. I have to keep my fingers permanently crossed for my flight home because of the fucking bag stealing gnomes. And then I get to sit in traffic for another 2 mind-numbing hours.
Now, I simply think that it would be more productive for me to work on a train instead of waste time watching the bumper of a beat-down Toyota pickup that has a burnt catalytic converter from too many trips to Mexico. If I were the kind of Joe that had to write dozens of emails, read charts, review cases, etc., I would probably be able to use the time on a train very wisely.
Perhaps I would still have to wake up at 5:30 to get to San Fran for a 9AM meeting, but I would have been able to catch some shut-eye on the train, or review a presentation. And perhaps then I would be able to get home a little bit earlier than normal, have a decent meal with my loved ones, and spend some time doing something other than the work that I wasn't able to touch because I spent four hours driving to and fro.
I don't think (or know) if building a limited high-speed rail network would eliminate even ten percent of the congestion around Los Angeles, but precious hours of my day could be spent more effectively. And perhaps problem solvers would be able to network more effective short-rail transport from hub to hub, and that would eventually cut down on congestion and environmental impact. |
Prop 13 was perhaps one of the worst things that ever happened to California.
California used to have plenty of funds, which came from property taxes. In the mid 1970's there was a minor budget surplus in California. This incident mobilized the right into a "taxpayer revolt" and a series of anti-tax initiatives. Among them was prop 13, which effectively made taxing residential and business properties ineffective. 2 years later, Reagan became president. Federal social programs were eliminated. The legislature struggled to find ways to replace them.
Then Prop 98 made school funding the job of the state, not districts. Taxes had to go up. This shifted the burden from big businesses and wealthy landowners to all Californians. This was complicated by the Serrano v. Priest case, in which the court found that school funding must be equal. This, in conjunction with 98, resulted in substandard crappy schools state-wide. And those who could afford it just sent their kids to private schools anyways, which was hardly 'equal.'
Ever wonder why California is covered with an excess of car dealerships and disgusting strip malls? The only businesses local governments have any incentive to allow are businesses that generate lots of sales taxes. There's no real reason for them to encourage manufacturing, the arts or small business.
And then there's the CA justice system. It was once a shining model of progress and rehabilitation. But it was an extremely racist system. A series of well-intentioned reforms resulted in very high mandatory sentencing for violators of all races. Then prop 184 (the California version of the 3-strikes law) happened. These two resulted in ever-expanding prison costs. Everyone wanted more prisoners, but no one wanted to pay for them.
Jesus, this turned into a rant. |
Trains in the USA are not as popular for transportation for several reasons, and just building high speed rail without addressing other issues is simply stupid.
As I see it, the biggest problem for rail travel in the US is the "Last Mile" problem.
You may be able to get to a particular city by train, but how do you get from the train station to your final destination? We need better local transportation systems, especially in California, before we need better intercity transportation.
The way it works currently, if the distance is too long to drive, people suck it up, fly, and take a cab. On my last business trip, I paid a $75 cab fare (one way!) to get from LAX to downtown LA. I should have been able to pay $2.50 and take a subway ride. Nobody taking a train will want to pay that kind of money to get from the station to their final destination - it's probably cheaper to drive yourself.
Unlike European cities or certain select US cities with decent rail systems like New York or Chicago, California is too sprawling, and their local public transit systems suck too much to make HSR worthwhile. |
Two/three things : the 50 bucks ticket is a marketing gimmick, it won't last; plus, it doesn't fly you from SF to LA, it flies you from KSFO to KLAX; see the difference? these airports are not downtown or anywhere near where you want to go; so add additional $$$ to your travel budget if you want to be accurate and take into account door to door travel costs; and finally, if you take into account the time wasted (you have to arrive early, go through TSA security theater, not to mention inexplicable delays that plague airline travels...) and time does cost money; may be your time is not worth much to you or anyone else, but for many people it matters a great deal... |
German here. "I has rail". Let me give you some perspective.
California is a little larger than Germany, but has less than half the population. It is somewhat rural by comparison. The same goes for almost all of the US, except maybe the Northeast/New England. What does that mean for transit?
It means more highways. Why? Rail is dependent on the trains making stops. That means everyone in the train stops, not just the ones actually using the stop. If you run a train through a rural area, you are going to have a lot of stops in small towns and villages - many people stop, but few use it. That's why long-distance trains will be painfully slow there. The only alternative is to run an express train which does not stop in every tiny village. That will disconnect the villages, and probably not pay the maintenance either, because of the lower overall number of people who have access to the system. The logical choice would be to run both, but that will mainly split up the few passengers between more trains. It's just not viable to do.
Now build a highway. Every little village between New York and Los Angeles is directly connected to both cities. People can just get on the transit system and move towards their destination at a relatively high speed without unnecessary stops. It is important to note that connecting the villages in between the two big cities to the system does not affect the travellers between the two cities.
Now we're in a high-density area. Things change here. Why? Because cars produce unnecessary overhead. You want to move 150 lbs of human, but you move one gazillion lbs of car with it. That takes energy. And space. Lots of space. There is no space in a high density area. You can't build the kinds of roads you would need here. The ones you can build will be crippled with jams.
Rail is gonna be a charm here. The human-to-car ratio is much better, and the centralized maintenance and vehicle operation is also going to help prevent breakdowns.
What do we do about the periphery, though? In the suburbs, you can probably build highways, but you don't want all the cars to be in downtown, which is where they will go. The population density gets smaller and smaller, so extending your rail systems becomes less and less viable. This question is largely unanswered - you have to decide it case-by-case, and the eventual decision strongly depends on the local favorite system. In the US, this will probably be highways. The commuter rail systems you have are few (NY and Chicago) and usually not as extensive.
Another problem: How do you handle the transportation in between the big cities? Airports are already there, as a connection to the global transit system. So, why not build a larger one and use it for shorter ranges as well? Because they also suck. Lots of energy is used, because you need lift in addition to propulsion. It's also a huge noise issue. And it still kind of sucks, because the planes are fast, but the airports cannot possibly be right next to downtown again.
That leaves us with cars and rail. Rail can be efficient, but you run into the issues with rail tracks in low-density areas between the cities again. The trains can, however, be fast within the city area, and have their station right there in downtown, without the interchanges that airplanes require. Cars are good in rural areas, but bad in cities.
If you have more rural areas and less cities, you're gonna have a bad time with rail. The US situation is made worse by the fact that you have too many independent rail systems and operators. If freight, commuter and long distance trains can actually share the same tracks, rail can become much more efficient. This is exspecially true for the rural areas. |
I was born and raised in Fresno and while I hate this place for many reasons. Everything you just stated are things that you've read. Real life experience is much different. Oh and way to stereotype everything in that statement. There's a reason people despise stereotypes. Also, you know that stretch is kind of a necessary piece of the puzzle when you want to connect two places on either end of that stretch. Oh also, if you know how to drive at all its only an hour drive from between LA and Bakersfield. |
Those short hoppers are definitely subsidized for extremely rural or small towns to link them to major cities. Other than that, airline companies rarely get anything. The airports charge airlines exorbitant fees for landing, taking off, taxiing, a different fee at the hard stand and another altogether for being at the gate. It's constantly pay, pay, pay. This is not to mention the rent charged then for hangars and terminals which the airlines pay to build. When the leases are up, the building belongs to the airport and the same airline has to pay much more or risk being evicted and replaced by another airline. These port authorities also collect various maintenance fees for airport use and charge the airlines to investigate and issue ids to its employees. The airlines are also responsible for maintaining the buildings leased from the ports. For an example of a horrible and unsupervised port entity, just check out the port authority of new york and new jersey. When the flights after 9/11 were roughly less than half of pre 9/11, they just doubled their fees and kept up their flower beds and other bullshit. The average port cop earned around 200,000 dollars a year. This same port authority also ran several other airports including Newark, La Guardia, JFK, upstate and long island and new jersey airports. All of new york and new jersey seaports, several bridges and tunnels and the trains and buses. The bridge and tunnel tolls were among the highest in the nation. Trucks pay by the axle. They also receive subsidies by both states and the federal government. Not to mention the 50 cents a gallon tax on gasoline that subsidizes the buses and trains. They still cried that they were losing money, and refuse to open their books up for review. They even told president Bush no, when he asked to have them turn their books over. There are instances when certain cities give airlines sweetheart deals to lure over jobs and better transportation networks over, but this is not the rule. |
Just because one part of your headline is true doesn't mean the whole thing is. The new TOS states that you cannot participate in a Class Action Lawsuit , but you are still able to sue on an individual basis.
Also, "If you seek $10,000 or less, Valve agrees to reimburse your filing fee and your share of the arbitration costs, including your share of arbitrator compensation, at the conclusion of the proceeding, unless the arbitrator determines your claims are frivolous or costs are unreasonable as determined by the arbitrator." |
Not sure how it works in other IT departments, but where I work, we don't act on anything unless it's illegal or management tells us to. We just put a note on your file, attach some logs and stats, and continue to watch. 99% of the time nothing happens, but if an employee does something that might get the company in hot water, we bring the full weight of the hammer down as fast as we can.
It's like speeding past a cop; if you're just speeding, they probably don't care, but if you start weaving in and out of lanes or tailgating, the camel's back has been broken and they're probably gonna write you a ticket. |
I buy alot of stuff on steam. Because it's cheap. A game for 2.50$? I'll buy it. A game for 5$? I might well buy it. A game for 20$? I will likely NOT buy it. I am not ever going to drop 50$ on some AAA title that's gonna suck anyway. |
the Windows 8 user interface changes to an XP user would be harder to familiarize with than, say: Gnome, KDE.
You've done UAT's to show that this is the case? And even ignoring that, the desktop is a minor issue compared to, say, desktop search/ DFS/ etc. not working on a connected network drive because the server the share is on is running Linux with UFS.
>Also, Linux has bundled support for NTFS for years and supports VASTLY more file systems than Windows ever did.
Sure, NTFS support which is for use 'at your own risk'; at this point, Corps stop reading. But let's not forget the tech who insists on a linux-based SAN running UFS because it's his favourite, and so only too late does everyone realise how many things like DFS will break, meaning that ultimately you have to get out of the mindset of 'everything has to work around linux' - those days ended decades ago.
>ZFS anyone? Apple's got it covered.
This is in Windows 8/ Server 2012. But nobody uses ZFS anyway because the write speed is so slow - but I'm sure you knew this already too. Good job apple have it covered though, since they don't sell servers any more anyway, eh?
>Windows? Windows ...? are you there?
Go look at the IT contractor job market. Oh look, most of the jobs are still Windows. And the linux ones generally want you to know Windows anyway...how could that be? Maybe they just haven't talked to you .
>Which file specification incompatibilities are you worried about?
Lots of them. Considering you're even asking, I'd suggest that you need to work in the industry a bit more.
>You're worse than a fanboy, you're like one of Microsoft's own paid propaganda people:
Oh dear, spout ignorant fanboyisms that display little knowledge of how corp IT works, then hurl abuse because someone that appears to have more experience than you disagrees - how very unlike a fanboy...
>completely full of it on all of these points.
...and then congratulate yourself in advance, because you couldn't possibly be wrong. Another sure sign of many years of experience in the business.
>Microsoft would gladly pay you good money to maintain a reddit account repeating these misconceptions because they are very much threatened by by the truth of the matter:
Sure, that must be it. It's arrogance like this that has helped to keep your apparently favourite desktop OS off of the corporate menu in any sizable degree for decades. But do carry on :-)
>free software will kill them the same way they killed Netscape with IE ... because it's FREE.
Oh dear , now we're back to 'next year will be the year of linux'. You really need to look at this from a Corp point of view; clue - it's not the same as running it in your bedroom.
>Retraining workers is a one-time expense.
So now your company will have the same workers forever? I can see you've done this as a corporate project with UAT testing and really thought it through.
>Being stuck in IE6-land because you lacked the foresight to go with an open platform is costing us all.
Another pearl of wisdom - it's so simple, but that simplicity isn't suspicious to you in any way at all? It's becoming obvious that you've never actually asked anyone who actually does this for a living for more information. Probably because you're too busy telling them what's what.
>They can't afford to buy new computers just because anything better than XP wont even run on them.
Average Win7 machine cost for a Corp: £250 per box. Average Win7 embedded WIDS box - £100. All the answers are available - if you actually look instead of stopping as soon as you've confirmed what you want to be the case.
>Linux on the other hand ...
Has had twenty years, and failed. Get over it. Oooo, it runs on old crap hardware that's end-of-life and wouldn't be hardware-supported anyway, making the excercise pointless...but of course, you've thought of this already, right?
>Microsoft isn't stupid ... but they are liars.
Whereas your self-deception trumps both. |
learn a new system when the existing one is both fine and familiar.
And there is no reason to do that. The well-trained mono-vendor office is a myth. Most people already cope with multiple vendor solutions and incompatible formats that require arcane massaging and manual adjustments.
FOSS, if we could get over the stigma, presents the opportunity to reduce the obscene interchanges people already perform. It's worth learning to use a new tool if it prevents you from having to work with 3 tools. Yes, in the very, very first instance of investment, there is overhead associated with having two workflows (because of legacy proprietary solutions.)
But you know where that already happens? Enterprise software versioning. The point is that there are a lot of times when people choose awkward, constrained solutions, because they overestimate the value of paid support (which they probably will end up duplicating internally, in substantial portions, anyways, because no one realizes how to do IT properly), and they underestimate the incompatibility between their goals and the software they are buying.
There are a lot of opportunities to choose open formats and open software, to reduce the adoption of new tools, to consolidate (rather than duplicate) the plethora of document formats, etc.
You don't have to uninstall Microsoft Office. But if you have regulated internal documents that don't require complex features, why not require them to be ODTs? Office has broken ODT support, and ODT has its own problems, but just specifying that text-only documents should not have needless accessory features (and even still keeping them as docx files) would reduce the complexity of dealing with them.
In that scenario, old documents would not need to be reformatted, and no new software would be required. Government can use policies in the shorterm to create advantage in the long term, by repeatedly lowering the barrier to more open solutions.
What are those benefits? Fewer formats. In the longer-run, fewer programs. Free software. In terms of support, there are paid support options for various software, and there will only be more as FOSS software becomes more popular.
One of the biggest advantages to increasing the use of FOSS (where it is the better solution, ie, where you are making changes anyways) is that you don't need to lock your people's future skill sets into a specific vendor, and you know that many projects (like LiberOffice, Firefox, Gimp, etc) are focused on maintaining interfaces and use principles that reflect the most common skillset. |
I'm a massive Linux person and I agree with you. Linux isn't ready for the average computer user and likely never will be. That doesn't mean it's a bad OS in general or that it doesn't serve its purpose well, but it doesn't serve the purpose of an easy to install OS that requires minimal management to continue being operational and is very simple. I've used the later versions of Ubuntu and they're DEFINITELY a step in the right direction, but when almost every solution you find to a problem through Google involves the command line, that's a problem.
Of course the command line isn't an issue for enthusiasts or tinkerers, but it IS an issue for those that don't want to learn how to use their computer, which is the vast majority of users. Honestly in my opinion, major distributions need to get their priorities straight - they need to decide whether they want to actually FINISH what they've started, or whether they're willing to let it remain unpolished and continue to be a hobbyist system. The former is boring to work on but will result in more of those "average users" migrating over. But is that really what the Linux community wants?
I see people get flamed all the time on Linux forums (not EVERY time obviously) if they're not a hobbyist or a tinkerer and they're having an issue with their system. The average user can rarely describe a problem better than "it's just broken". Does the Linux community REALLY want the average computer user to use their system? If so, it's not just the priorities of the distributions that need changing, there needs to be a shift in the attitude of the Linux community. |
getting a bit off topic here maybe, but it's worth noting that SandVine - the company presenting this report - is the same company used to shunt internet connectivity to Egyptians during the protests. They also focus heavily on deep packet inspection technology on an extremely large scale for the purpose of restricting access to people in situations just like Egypt's recent rebellions. |
I work in program development. Not even development of goods rather similar to what already exists works that way. |
I work in development, specifically cutting edge military development and actually, dropping piles of money on something does pretty much equal advances. You seem to be thinking that people working at the height of their field are the only people involved. What actually happens is the genius says "What happens if..?" Then a bunch of people like me go find out. We give him the data and he says, "Hmmm, well let's try this and make this tweak." The cycles of learning can be enormously sped up with enough money. We can try things in parallel, we can gather enough data for better models faster, we can try low probability paths just to wring out the last bit of performance and so on. When we realize that we need a tool that doesn't exist we can get the guys who build tools to give us full attention while they create the needed capability. There may be a point of diminishing returns but it's so far out there that it might as well not exist for practical purposes.
Not to mention that a brilliant physicist is a rare thing but a potential brilliant physicist that became a brilliant computer scientist is much more common. Enough money can pull in huge amounts of talent to a field with a 5-10 year lead time. |
Only produces power during the day, and uses batteries that it has saved up the excess day light to fly at night. It is only the weight of a mid sized sedan and uses 4-10 hours power engines. (most mid sized sedans have a 160-200 hp engine). The solar cells are not anything different than the type that people put on their roofs, but they are used in the most efficient way possible and they are 200 square meters of solar panels on this. To put the energy use in perspective the cells get 50 kW (kilowatts) per day. I live alone with a good amount of electronics but I am pretty energy conscious and I used 129 kWh (kilowatt hours) last month. Divide that out by 24 hours in a day and 30 days in a month I use about .179 kWs a day. 50kW divided by .179 is 279.3. |
The reason scientists generally suck so much at the political arena is that they are accustomed to making arguments based on facts, evidence, and logic. Politicians on the other hand are highly skilled at using fallacies and even outright lies to warp the voters' opinions to their side; Sure they may lose the votes of the few vigilant voters who see through their sham, but far to many voters, even intelligent people, find themselves swept up in the fallacies and letting them skew their view. |
I really have no idea what would happen if I publicly admitted to this.
>I live with a beautiful girl. Blonde, model material, with legs, breasts and ass to die for and the face of an angel. She looks so innocent, I fell for her the moment I saw her. She looks so virginal and is so prudish even talking about sex, that I don't even know if she's had any guys in the past. We're both young professionals in our early 20s and met through a mutual friend who I knew through university and she knew through school. Recently she moved to the city, and needed a place to stay. I needed a housemate, so our friend set us up.
>I tried asking her out when she first moved in but unfortunately she made it pretty clear that she wasn't interested in anything but friendship. I figured that if she wasn't going to taste my baby batter voluntarily, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't tasted anyone else’s before, I could feed it to her without her knowledge.
>When she was out, I went around the house jacking off into her personal items - shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, moisturiser, panties from her panty drawer, etc. I also started taking cookery lessons and offered to cook for her in order to practice my skills. What she doesn't know is that every meal I've cooked for her so far has had a healthy dose of my secret special sauce.
>Before people start whining, she seems to love it. She's commented on how her hair's been really soft recently and remarked on how her skin has been firmer, with a healthy glow to it. She even wondered if maybe the shampoo/conditioner manufacturers had changed the formulation. She used to get quite moody and hormonal over the month as her cycle progressed. Since I started feeding her my spooge, she's chilled out a lot and been really flirtatious with me. She's been more receptive to joking around with me, and finding ways to lightly touch my arms and chest, or accidentally brush up against me. Pheromones maybe? I've been sniffing her soiled panties while she's been out, and I know that personal scents can have a powerful effect – I’ve often ended up spontaneously ejaculating merely from the scent of her personal secretions.
>She’s told me she loves my cooking. It may just be a coincidence, but our bedrooms share a wall, and on the evenings I cook for her, I'm fairly sure I can hear her rubbing herself off. On the mornings when she leaves for work early and I'm in the flat alone, I sneak into her room and sniff and lick her still warm used panties from her laundry basket. The aroma is exquisite. On the mornings after I've cooked for her the previous night, they're definitely muskier and damper, and often have a heavy dried sugar crystal like crust on the gusset, which I love to chew on.
>In addition, I get the added bonus of sitting opposite her while she's eating and see her swallow my jizz, savouring every mouthful before it slides smoothly down her throat. Knowing that I'm corrupting her beautiful innocent face with my unique glaze and coating those gorgeous lips and tongue; the thought that at this very moment she might be wearing a pair of the panties from her drawer that I jerked off into, and that flakes of my dried man milk might at this very moment be nestled against her hot gooey moist cunt; mingling with her own juices and being rehydrated by them, is an amazing turn on for me.
>I also see it as a way of marking my territory. While the scent of my cream hangs on her, it might drive other guys away. I'm not sure if that has any scientific basis, but it seems to work. I understand there is some scientific research that shows cum to contain chemicals that aid in partner bonding and fight depression in women, as well as changing their hormonal balance and significantly reducing their risk of breast cancer.
>All I know, from my unscientific little experiment is that feeding cock custard to girls definitely has its advantages, for both sexes. I'd go so far as to say doctors ought to be prescribing it.
> |
If this had all been done right, that guy would have been offered a job with Skytech with the option to finish school first.
You are right about the first part, but for the wrong reason. As anyone in the security field can tell you, this student was extremely lucky that the company paid /any/ attention to him. The fact that they took time to sit down and discuss with him is already amazing. It should have ended there. He abused the respect this company gave him by running a vulnerability scanner. Legally, he was in no position to do such a thing.
If the company wanted, they could have attempted to sue this student for the fact that he even found the original vulnerability. Instead, they congratulated him. The student made the mistake of assuming this meant he could do whatever he wanted. |
So now we all know that essentially, if you find a flaw use a few proxies when reporting it. Because coincidentally, the people who control these school systems probably have no idea how they work, and just want to get paid. If there was a flaw, it's the company that wrote such sloppy coding to blame. I don't think he was being very smart to run something like that without permission when it's explicitly against school policy, but he had every right to know whether or not his information was secure, and that the problem was fixed. By the very fact that he deemed it a moral obligation to warn them, he shouldn't be considered someone liable for exploiting the flaw. He would've done so already. |
I went to a computer camp in 2005, and one friend hacked the website and posted something to it telling the admins that he found a security flaw. He was able to stay anonymous by using a PC in one of the labs, but the second time he went to re-iterate his message on the website, he used a laptop in his dorm room, and the admins found him based on IP. He was expelled a few days later, which was absurd because it was nerd camp in the first place. His last name is Bostwick, and everyone went around with signs saying FREE BOZ. |
I think the guy in your example did the right thing. He's finding vulnerabilities, and getting shit fixed. The guy in the article didn't wait 3 months, though. He didn't give an average IT guy enough time to fix the flaw before he started trying to exploit it.
Do I think he's done anything wrong? No. Do I think he should give them more time before he goes public? Yes. Do I think the IT department or whoever should give him the benefit of the doubt? Yes.
I've known webmasters for colleges and other sites. They have a lot of shit to do. If there's only one person in the world who can hack their shit, they're probably doing okay. |
Every CS prof. I've had in my 2.5 years at RPI (I'm majoring in CS) has coded, live, right in front of us via a projector (or, in one course, a whiteboard), usually on multiple occasions throughout the year, except for my Introduction to Algorithms and Theory of Computation professors, and that's just because they're theory classes (i.e. coding was not relevant to the material: the former was abstract, and he did write pseudocode frequently, while the latter was about turing machines . |
After reading the full text of the article, I am not impressed. In the paper linked there is only one line that mentions this magical number of 19.
"A second important organizing principle is the small world property, which says that two nodes are likely to be connected, even in such a very large and sparse scale-free network as the Web, by a relatively short path of nodes—in the case of the Web, the path length is about 19[2]"
So I checked the reference, it is an article by the same author Albert-László Barabási (not uncommon in Academia) written in 1999! Let me give you the first sentence of this beauty.
"The extent of the challenge in obtaining a complete topological map of the web is illustrated by the limitations of the commercial search engines: Northern Light, the search engine with the largest coverage, is estimated to index only 38% of the web"
Now I will admit, I stopped reading after that sentence and it is possible that the math put forth still holds true, but since this is reddit, I am going to make sweeping generalizations based on one sentence and call Bullshit. |
Why would you even need that? In all the years ive used firefox ive never had an annoyingly noisy site come up... |
I really wish there was a concerted effort by the good guys to attack and encourage the bad to change ways.(and it can be done using market solutions, like not working with ad companies that produce annoying ads even if they themselves dont put the annoying ones on their sites.)
The bad guys screw the good guys and tend to turn them into no so good guys, and even sometimes into bad guys.
Every time an ad expands to block content, every time you have a noisy ad in middle of work, or the night. Every time a add is seriously annoying, a new ad block user is born.
and that just removed him(most of them ad block lets you be a bit more ad friendly) from the internet ad ecosystem, completely. Not just the annoying site.. .but EVERY SITE
now every site has a small 'paying' user base to pay their bills.
So what do a lot of sites chooose to do in this situation? Thats right, MORE ADS. The screw over the people who decide or cant figure out how to block ads. Rather than attacking the problem, they attack their customer base. You get stories put on 10 pages, so they could feed more ads. Some of this is pure greed but a lot of it has to do with users using ad block due to annoying sites, reducing the number of 'paying' users. |
Right, I agree with it being an overstatement. I doubt Win8, by itself, drove people to switch. Not only do people need to upgrade less and less often, as time goes on, but people are increasingly less inclined to even buy a computer at all. If you think about it, smart phones, tablets, xbox, Playstations, etc have all but provided many their computing needs. Most do not really need a computer anymore, and if they do, it is likely that they have one that works fine. Otherwise, they have one at their job; going home to use a tablet, etc.
Students, IMO, are more inclined to purchase new laptops & tablets (for some, just tablets) before going to college; even then, most of their computing needs can be provided by their school's library or certain departments. The students that buy new laptops are buying new ones in the hope that it will last their entire college career... and their parents are probably the ones paying for them. This is where I believe Apple comes into play. They have some of the highest retention rates of customers and crazy loyalty. This leads to Apple computers having high reviews in customer satisfaction/service. What parent about to drop 800-1500$ on a laptop doesn't do their research? Well, probably only the rich ones but they were probably going to get a mac anyways...
I know that students are not they only group buying new laptops but they are likely the most consistent group every new school year. Apple offers 100-200$ discounts to students and most times throw in a free ipod touch to buyers. |
I find your argument interesting, but I query what about the example of the articles of confederation where when the power was as you spoke within the states. The "country" was able to do nothing as a country because the states that comprised it were never able to agree. How would you get over this hump?
I agree mostly w/points 2/3.
As a second part, how would you propose address the problems that a state would face if it did secede? Most of our states are interdependent. We get produce from X state, Beef from Y state w/out having to pay tariffs etc. A state that seceded (assuming peacefully) would have to negotiate from a very poor standpoint simply to feed itself.
As a point, I pretty much agree that our system right now sucks the harshest kind of balls, I would just like to spark some debate/thinking about how to go about solve some of the problems that could arise, and/or what you would want to replace.
Cheers all |
Prediction - The NSA released this info themselves in an elaborate coverup of what they really have.
Here you go public, get all crazy about our 20 year old tech. Meanwhile, they've got working droids, f |
While the traffic going to the servers may be encrypted, if what is happening the the traffic is being split into two places (both the destination and their own servers), they also have the key exchange traffic that created the keys to encrypt it. So they would be able to decypt that traffic to see everything, including the password exchange your pc made to the server. So they could see your inbox, assuming the traffic is being split (I am not really informed to know that is the case or not). |
I think you've made an awesome point and I'm giving you an upvote. But I can understand why people might quibble, too.
There are a couple problems with this question: 1) It takes a black and white approach. In real life no one's arguing for a complete destruction freedom of speech and privacy. 2) Worse, it fails to take into account the fact that giving up all rights would not result in a lack of war, crime and terrorism. We might be giving up something for nothing.
The thing with my objections is that they are valid parts of that discussion you're trying to generate and they were stimulated by that question. Figuring out a reasonable way to make that trade-off is important and it'd be great if we as a nation, could have that discussion. In that context, your phrasing of the question is a suitable starting point. |
I find it very hard to believe that 1 man controls 300+ million people and every law that governs them.
You would be correct in your skepticism.
Congress and the Senate control funding for government programs and establish the laws they operate by. The President suggests a budget but that has to be approved by the legislative branch and they do whatever the hell they want and fund whatever they want. The duty of the President is to then follow the budget and laws set forth by the legislative branch.
Executive orders actually don't carry any legal weight and are glorified memos. They are also very limited and ineffective even when respected since they cannot expand any government programs (executive orders cannot increase funding) or limit them (President by law has to follow the budget). This is why even though Obama wanted the DEA to stop going after legal medical marijuana dispensaries, he has no real power to tell them to stop. The legislative branch gave X dollars to the DEA to do just that and Obama legally has no authority to interfere or inhibit them.
People try to make the argument that he's the President and has clout but if you're looking at advancing your career at the federal level, Senators and a select few Congressmen have far more influence than the President since they don't have term limits and will be there for many years. For example, if there is a pissing contest between Senator Ted Cruz and Obama, who do you think the DEA is going to listen to? Senator Ted Cruz since he'll still be in office long after Obama. I don't know Senator Ted Cruz's stance on marijuana or the DEA's involvement, I was just using him as an example since he is a prominent Republican Senator.
When it comes to being in control of the military, it gets even more complicated. President Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of the US Military, meaning he is the ultimate boss since our Constitution always places a civilian in charge of the Military. The problem is due to funding, intelligence committees, etc that are all controlled by whom? US Senators and Congressmen/Congresswomen. So while the President is the ultimate authority in the Military, he has to work with support of the legislative branch since the War Powers Act can only go so far and even then, he could be neutered by the legislative branch at any point in time.
This is also ignoring the influence of your alphabet soup agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, etc), the Pentagon, and the various state governments - they all have influence and various levels of self-governance. |
Thanks for the link. It's interesting to read since it's somewhat different from the original article. Though, the last of the bullet points still lists one problem which essentially will result in what the article states. At least in probably a lot of cases:
>It doesn't get recognized well for performance reviews. Technically, if you're doing 20% time, when peer reviews come around, people are supposed to take this into account. In practice, a co-worker who spends 100% of their time cranking away on their main project will look like they're doing better, get promotions faster, etc.
Those reviews are, in my opinion, a pretty stupid way to acurately measure how well someone performs. My employer has a simliar review system and comparing what the people I'm working with are actually doing in relation to what these statistics say and the result of the whole work ... it's pretty stupid. Yet if those reviews are what each employee is measured by (at Google that is) then I am sure many will not take the risk to go after a project that might very well fail. |
I honestly believe that publicly traded companies are the very source of the corporate woe the world is being forced through. The idea itself may not be evil but what it creates comes damn close. It creates a system where the only goal is immediate ROI. It also creates a system where nobody ever has to deal with the consequences of their actions, ever, no matter what.
Shareholders want their return as fast and high as possible. That's their goal. I doubt most people know much about the company they invest in as its done by other people for them while they go about their lives. This means that you can financially support a corrupt company so long as it makes money in the short term without ever having to acknowledge the actions of said company.
CEO's and management are in a position now where the only thing anyone will gauge them on is how fast the company makes money. Screw sustainable, if things get bad everyone can just jump ship. In fact sustainable could get you fired because you left that extra 5 million on the table instead of gouging and cheating to squeeze every penny out of customers.
We have literally created a system where the only goal is money, and not stable money but, MONEY RIGHT THE FUCK NOW OR GTFO. Those people demanding this are insulated against having to know what actions were required in order to get that money, or having to understand how acting like that makes money now but tends to kill any long term returns. Or how many lives it destroys as companies turn employees into cogs to be ground down and replaced. "Who cares, I see my quarterly number go up that's all I need to know".
On the other side CEO's become more and more sociopathic because it turns out if you treat people like shit and make them feel scared all the time you can make a quick buck off their labor. It also turns out you can make more money lieing, stealing and cheating your way to the top in the short term. We've absolved them of all responsibility other than make money and make it fast. They don't even have to deal with the illusion of guilt because "its my job to make money otherwise they replace me".
Take one good look at Steam/Valve who refuse to go public and a company like EA which is and you can see it plain as the nose on your face (my apologies to the noseless).
EA - most evil hated company in North america, constantly ripping people off and trying to destroy consumer rights.
Valve - millions of loyal customers who get treated with respect and will defend them to the death, provides good deals and works to empower the customer. |
I always have location off, I don't use Google now anymore.....Google maps could see what I looked up but I usually look up where I'm going and memorize the directions and that's mixed in with me being curious how long it would take to drive from Miami to anchorage. I use tor in a vm when I can, etc. Honestly they probably could hack my device switch on location and find out where I am, but taking precautions against that would make my life horribly inconvenient.... The only way I could think to do that is actually disassemble the phone and remove all internet enabled antennas.
As for the Canada bit I'd rather be watched more and out of the jurisdiction of the NSA than the other way around. I'd have to do something a little bit worse for them to actually be able to extradite me.
I'm not making the argument its OK what the NSA is doing because I don't do anything wrong, I'm just making the argument, "well this fucking sucks, I really need to figure out how to make the best of this situation until I can do something about it or someone with more power than me can do something" I would love for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Rackspace, go daddy, and every ISP to just shut down their web technologies and refuse to turn them back on until the system is reformed.....I'd laugh really hard and stay glued to the TV to watch the development. But there is just no way, and that's the reason I trust corporations as much as the government, they don't give a fuck about morals or rights, corporations want money and governments want power and I'm stuck in the middle getting ass raped and double teamed because I don't have either. |
I literally JUST made this exact point in response to your objectively false assertion that having a reporting system automatically grants safe harbor, you even quoted me making that point and now you're saying the same thing back to me as if it's somehow a retort to anything I said.
At no point did I say that just because you have a reporting system for DMCA notices you're automatically covered by save harbors, that's an assumption on your part. The only comment that resembles that argument was in me referring to Hotfile "They had a reporting system which means they were eligible for safe harbors." It does not mean that they followed all of the appropriate steps to warrant a safe harbors. Though, if you've read about the steps that they went though to implement [their reporting system]( I would argue that they did enough to qualify.
You've been too focused on "OMG YOU"RE DUMB" responses to my statements that you've missed many of my points.
Judging by the MPAA's response to the judge's rulings (which you have correctly pointed out - are not out yet and it will likely be a long time since they've been " restricted/sealed until further notice also guilty is equilly troubling. Hopefully it was his own violations and not directly related to user submitted content hosted by Hotfile. |
Sounds a bit exaggerated. Even with the faster (stock) bikes avialable which are pre-limited Busas which can go 200 mph stock.....you couldn't reach quite that fast with 2 passengers. And it was a stretch to the them to 200 to begin with. |
Perhaps Britain is the exception to rail quality in Europe.
Our rail system is largely dependent on archaic Victorian infrastructure.
The service is expensive, unreliable and privately-run.
Permission to operate on the dilapidated lines is monopoly-franchised, allowing no competition and promoting massive complacency on the part of the franchisee. Ultimately, the franchisee is guaranteed handsome profits for the duration of its contract as a taxpayer-funded limited company is responsible for the ailing infrastructure.
Only now are we preparing to build a high speed rail line at a cost of at least £42 billion (that's $65.5 billion). If it actually happens - we're several years beyond approval and nowhere close to a shovel hitting the ground - it will take more than two decades to complete. Almost every village it passes through is, quite inevitably, lobbying against the proposals and there's likely to be years of delays and overspending prompted by judicial reviews.
Basically, we might as well wave the white flag on trains in the UK.
Train systems in the rest of Europe are fast, comfortable and reliable. It's 30 times safer to travel by train in Europe than it is by car. But many of them (ala Spain) are state-owned and were EU-funded from scratch, rather than covered in sticking plasters by successive generations of government which each failed to recognise the need to make expensive short-term decisions for the greater long-term good. |
43 years after landing a man on the moon, we landed our 4th rover on mars.
So what
As a country, we have completely given up on space exploration for over 30 years. [The money speaks for itself](
NASA has only enough to do something cool in Earth Orbit or send a probe or a rover once every few years. To do merely that after the goddamn Apollo Project, the greatest accomplishment in human history, is just simply bullshit.
Whatever NASA accomplishes, they could be doing so much more so much faster, but instead America needs to buy 500k tanks and launch $50M missiles into caves in some shithole country and blow Trillions on a fighter jet that will never see combat. |
I didn't delete my comments. You were previously talking to a different person who deleted his comments. I offered clarity because it looked like neither of you understood this issue as it relates to economics. If you want to measure the wealth of individual households, then median household income is a much more accurate (but not perfect) measurement of this concept. But with that being said, I take issue with the belief that the Chinese government has "done a good job" for their economy. I explained this issue to another redditer a couple days ago.
>Much of China's problems are the result of administrative mistakes carried out by their government. State controlled agriculture led to massive famines. Subsidies for births led to a need for the one child policy. The one child policy is now leading to a massive gender and age imbalance. And on top of that you have a one party system which monopolizes the decision making process by prosecuting individuals for even suggesting that there might be a better way. I guess you could say the Chinese government is responsible for their nation's prosperity, in much the same way that I would be responsible for saving a house from a fire that I started in the first place.
At best, it looks as if the Chinese government has made partial restitution by mostly fixing a problem that was of their own doing. But don't declare mission accomplished just yet. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman describes the problem with China's economic model in [this article]( The |
I believe this article has a point, while at the same time, it is relevant this is posted on Reddit.
The article talks about a search algorithm based on "Likes given to websites by people", as opposed to "likes given to websites by websites".
This means google+ has/will have a way of gathering information on what your preferences are, and when someone with similar interests to yours searches the web, they will be served up results based on which websites you preferred over others.
What it comes down to is a way of making people with google+ accounts rank links, probably counted in 'time spent on site', 'number of further links followed' as opposed to an actual relevant/irrelevant button.
There is already a website for upvoting and downvoting links; and it is hugely successful, it makes perfect sense that Google is trying to muscle in on that action. If that is really what they want to achieve, then it surprises me that Google would not just buy Reddit. They get shit tons of data on how people ranked links. Subreddits and subscriptions serve as a way of grouping users by their interests and expertise, giving certain votes more weight than others. The data mined from subreddits like funny and memes, would not be that useful, but data mining from news, technology or even trees would provide useful page ranking data, for those particular subjects.
Even if all that Reddit data is useless to how their actual search datamining will be implemented, it would provide a wealth of real life results to test their people based page ranking algorithm. |
Very good article.
I always find it funny when people hear about a new device(Google Glass, Kinect, fitness trackersMotoX) and freak the fuck out because of privacy while being oblivious to the fact that 100 other things are tracking them already.
In a way privacy is a new invention for us. It's non existent in small communities where everyone knows why others are up too and strangers can't just show up and integrate. This is only possible in big cities.
1984 is already here, it has become normality for most of us.
They already have excellent prediction algorithms based on data collection so they can accurately guess your next move. You are just not interesting enough to warrant any action.
I'm very interested on how this generation's politicians will be in the future since we have all the pile of crappy instagram photos and stupid tweets to dig up on them as a smear campaign. |
The "type O is just as good as all the others" science will prevail at first. Once production is up and costs are down, niche "premium" blood companies will arise, serving your particular variety for extra cash and dropping strong hints that it's better to match your own type. Some people will believe them. Soon we'll have "organic" blood, and "energy-boosted" blood, eventually leading to novelty blood for halloween and parties. Not long after the novelty blood hits shelves, it will be used in porn, leading to the release of flavored blood, and blood lube. |
Ohh no yelp isn't a scam. They even posted about it and provided third party research and their employees on reddit were nice enough to inform me that I was totally wrong about the harassing phone calls and sales pitches yelp harassed me with at my last job. Also when I told them to Fuck off after several months of telling them to not call us and them not listening all our positive reviews were moved to " hidden" but that was just a coincidence. |
Ooh, this happened to me, it was a bitch. The apartment I lived at with a Bro ended up sending us a final bill of like $1000 and when we tried to dispute some of the claims on there they shrugged off any questions.
They had none of the paperwork because the complex was acquired by a different company, but they sent this on to collections and it almost kept me from getting an apartment. His mom Finally paid it, but those fuckers sat on a letter of dispute threatening legal action for a year and never responded or so much and answered the phone.
So yeah... Credit fraud and predatory debt companies... This one is called "Hunter-Warfield" apt name huh? |
From what I hear of Google's strategy, they don't want to offer internet service, this fiber thing is just a cool little hobby of theirs. The point is to embarrass the existing cable companies to upgrade their services, therefore making more people more capable of using more of Google's products. Google doesn't want to put fiber in every city and town, they don't want to have to install fiber in a single town. But they've already done a couple and the cable companies are slowly reacting by doubling bandwidth at no cost etc. This makes Google hopeful that they will change their ways, but if not enough people have high speed bandwidth by some secret date, they will expand. Google is trying to ignore the babble of consumers squabbling for attention and they're instead staring straight at Comcast and others through a precisely aimed telescope to see what they do. |
Actually we've had a large number of demonstrations against tho sort of behavior. Most markets in the US are reasonably free with healthy competition. Our data providers are the exception. While good people do lobby against their abuses these companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars lobbying and providing campaign contributions as well as spread misinformation to trick the less tech savvy citizens and politicians to actually further their agenda rather. At this point if you go anywhere in the US and find more than two data providers (not counting providers that are actually based off another) you've discovered an anomaly.
Effectively it's pay the mob, or no internet. There is decent pushback going now, but it's isolated with individual cities realizing they were pawns redacted stupid laws that Comcast and ATT convinced them they needed and either running their own fiber or getting tech companies outside the triopoly to run fiber for them. |
In a very broad sense, that's also true in the US. But it still costs money to do anything about it.
If I had to guess, there's probably a good bit of this story that hasn't been told. Comcast as an organization may be a crooked bunch of fucktards, but they have lots of employees and most of them aren't. I've had a lot of problems in the past with them doing things like this -- although not to this extreme -- and usually showing up in person at an office and not being a dick to the CSR, things get cleared right up.
I suspect the "mistakes" are institutionalized and deliberate, and they're definitely screwing everyone who doesn't pay close attention, but the inability to get it taken care of, IMO, is often a direct result of how the person involved approaches the people best empowered to help straighten it out. |
Comcast gives everyone's names to that contractor after you cut service. They don't actually work for Comcast and can't even see if you returned equipment or your account info. Even after I confirmed with Comcast customer service that I had no outstanding equipment I was still receiving these telemarketer calls from the contractor stating overdue equipment once a week for 3 months. Comcast told me to ignore them... |
Agreed. I still use Comcast for Internet and yes, a landline phone which is connected to my modem. I use this because I have horrible cell service in my house. With two small children, this was a must for my family. Anyway, I cut the chord to cable TV over a year ago, we save almost $80 a month. The key to an easy dealing with this company IS TO GO AND TALK TO SOMEONE FACE TO FACE. Old school, no phones, no internet, no assholes putting you on hold. The ladies, almost always nice older ladies, are phenomenal at my local represenation of Comcast and I have heard the same about other locations. Just suck it up, take the time, and go see a human being that will confirm, sign, and give you the necessary paperwork and receipts right then and there. Our world has become depedendant on things that are useless when we still have mouths that work when talking to someone face to face.
The stories of people being on hold forever, getting hung up on etc...they make me laugh and it is always some young idiot that forgets that they can walk, ride, or fly to a comcast office....get a grip and take care of business!! Don't depend on others to do the job they are supposed to do, do it yourself!
Finally, I am against Comcast for all they are doing, trying to do, and what they have done with their TV options...but I have no choice in using them as an ISP..hoping that will change in the near future. |
In Scotland twice that much gets you "up to 20mbps" which ends up being 500kbps 99.9 percent of the time. for 0.099 percent of the time it drops down to literally 1 Bps and for the final 0.001 percent it goes up to 18mbps so they can say that they are honoring their contract. |
I actually had two routers rented from them, and had for a while. When I moved, I went to return one, thinking the other was actually one I owned (they were different models). When the woman explained to me that I actually possessed two of Comcast routers when I only had one. So I asked if I could return it later that afternoon without penalty and she said, "of course."
Ultimately I never turned it in that afternoon, but next week. When I did, the teller explained that according to the system, I had returned all necessary equipment, and that I could have actually kept the second one. However, by this time, the second router was behind that [necessary] 3-inch-thick plastic window, and the woman stated because the barcodes were that of Comcast's she was keeping it. |
I have never once had a bad experience with comcast. Every call I've ever made, every issue or complaint, every service tech has always been able to help me resolve my problem within a few short minutes. I've never even been placed on hold for more than 10 minutes. And never been over billed by them.
Yet I see what they are doing. I hear the horror stories and even though I have never had an issue with them I still do Not Like Comcast. But until I have a comparable alternative in speed I'm still using for a cheaper or similar rate. |
Time Warner here in Austin... But Comcast is in the process of buying them so I'll be SOL soon.
We had Comcast in Maryland and it was a disaster. Cable worked about 70% of the time, Internet speeds about half as advertised and multiple tech visits couldn't fix it. Once FiOS came into our neighborhood, we switched immediately and really had great service from them.
Sadly, FiOS isn't available here. Google Fiber is starting to lay lines in Austin but it won't be in our neighborhood for some time. |
non existent customer service, the inability to ever get a technician to fix an issue, and difficulties in cancellation of services.
Comes from them downsizing, outsourcing, and reforming their customer service offices into glorified sales departments.
I've made posts on this before regarding my spouse's 7 years working there. There is zero incentive to actually help you, the turnover rate is ridiculously high, the wages are shit, and they actually gain to lie/cheat for bonuses. |
Their contract for service precludes class actions specifically and the Civil Justice system generally. You've agreed to submit claims to binding arbitration. |
True but there is a catch. If an opponent makes a specific type of offer and you reject it and the award you receive after verdict is equal to or less than that offer (or more if Plaintiff made the offer) you may be liable for the costs of litigation after the offer, in some states you are liable for all your opponents attorney fees accumulated after the offer. This is Rule 68 under the Federal Rules. There is also case law that suggest that the rejecting party may be required to pay attorney fees under the federal rule as well. In a State such as California, rule 998 of the CCP, all attorney fees and costs after the offer may be awarded. So rejecting an offer to make a point is sometimes a dangerous game. |
Oh trust me, I know. I've dealt with TWC far to much. I used to work in tech support for an ISP, and understand entirely.
With TWC I've spoken with 2 executive relations employees on numerous occasions for issues and each time I spent between 10 and 30 hours trying to get something fixed that they screwed up. |
I just like people who work towards human advancement. In this sense I'm referring to Comcast like companies as the dickish kinds of people who try to make a profit by stopping all advancement. Elon Musk as an entrepreneur on the other hand, makes his profit without grinding the living shit out of people's wallets and giving them only the minimal amount of feedback. |
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