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It's the sad story of how the US will eventually collapse... It's the importance of the profit margin over quality of life. This is how the wealth disparity continues to grow and eventually the middle class (which is truly what made America great - The American Dream) will be gone and we'll be left with mega corporations ruled by an elite few who control both wealth and politics and a slave labor force doing all the work, continuously exploited. Sounds like dystopian fantasy, but it's really not far off. |
self-programming means a.i. super intelligence in less than a few weeks from being started...
The only limiting factor would be processing power which it would make more efficient as time went on.
We view time as we see it, we are unable to comprehend something that doesn't STOP thinking.
It may not think as fast as us to start, but It will continue to build faster ways to think until it surpasses our ability.
Perception of time:
A week to a human will go by fast for a machine who hasn't started programming itself, time doesn't exist for it.
It will start to program itself, that week will start to slow down until it reaches the point of human perception of time.
It will keep going though exponentially, always working.
Within a few weeks the machine will be living in nano seconds and registering thought within those nanoseconds that can be accessed.
Within a month it would be registering Planck time with accessible thought.
Not sure how far that can go but I imagine time will be destroyed, as in the machine will reach a point it can access all points in history and future. |
Well then they need to get on it. These F |
Thing is, a lot of us hate Apple products for a reason. Perhaps others dislike the reason, but that doesn't make it any less important to us.
I hate Apple products because of the lack of SD slots (yes, my droid device is fitted with 128 GB of SD goodness). I also hate them because they are way overpriced based on the hardware used. Not all of us want to be on a contract with a major cell service provider. I strictly use this Zenfone to make VOIP calls and there's not even a SIM card in it.
So you're sitting there and saying "why didn't you get a tablet instead, because tablets are cheaper?" The compact tablet market was pretty much annihilated by larger "phablet" devices. |
When you are looking through the viewfinder the shutter is closed and there is a mirror that reflects the light up to the viewfinder. This also means that the CCD (or film plane in a film camera) is not exposed. When you press the shutter release, the mirror moves up (this means that view finder goes black; you can't see anything through it) and the shutter opens which exposes the CCD. The article says the lasers detect the CCD then shine the laser. |
That and the queues on consumer equipment are Really Fucking Large. So, when the queues start filling, ACKs get delayed, and this slows down traffic in the opposite direction. For a single bulk transfer in one direction, no problem. In fact, it's great! Sends benchmarks through the roof.
But when you're downloading stuff on bittorrent, you've got a full queue, and your HTTP connections take a few seconds to connect, then a few seconds for the response to arrive. So, even though the data still gets there at full speed, it feels slower than molasses.
Also note that consumer routers are barely specced for home connection speed. Routing large packets quickly is trivial. I've made a router that can move 20MBits on an 8 MHz Atmel. Instead, it's routing large numbers of packets that's slow, because your router needs to look at each packet's header, but it can send the rest of the packet without any thought at all.
Here's an experiment to demonstrate this. Do a speed test on an unloaded connection. Then cut your MTU in half. See how it does then. You'll get much lower results.
What's the solution? Set up a random Linux box with traffic shaping, to get shitty hardware out of the question. Limit your connections to a few percent lower than your upstream bandwidth, and go for small queues. I use a 120Kbyte queue (based on download speeds of around 600 kbytes per second, and wanting packets to spend no more than 0.2 seconds in the queue.) configured with RED to smooth things out. It works admirably well. My roommates download constantly and average 500 Kbytes/sec (same as they got before), but my SSH connections are still snappy, and web pages load quickly. |
This is such bullshit. The US does not have the authority to shut down every one of the 200 + root servers in the world. The article also points out the Internet2 system as being "restrictive" but fails to describe why he considers it so. In reality the Abilene project, now Internet2, is largely an academia-centric effort to foster the sharing of data from research. |
I've set up bunches of htc, motorola, and samsung android handsets and have yet to see the noticeable drop in bars, signal, or in a call that I've seen on the iPhone 4. The phones always lose bars when holding them, and that doesn't always mean a bad call but I have lost test calls I've made in the store, to make sure customers have working phones, and lost them while holding it the same way I hold every other phone.
Yes, sometimes some of the other carries have network issues. Today, I was setting up a Motorola droid and had to try 5 times to activate it. When i called Verizon the rep said they'd been having a few issues with activations taking as long as a half an hour, as he was talking to me, the phone activated with no more issues. Network issues happen. When Sprint launched the Evo, their system crashed, all of the 3rd party retailer's systems crashed. They just said, sorry for all the trouble, we were hoping to be more prepared than that (at least that's what they said to us when we spoke to reps on the phone). All the carriers have issues sometimes but the iPhone has a lot of them.
I like (some things made by) Apple. I have a Macbook Pro that I use for EVERYTHING. (I was considering an iPad for fun and) I was in an Apple store the other day listening to a sales person show off that the iPhone lost no bars and he had it in a death grip. He was explaining, in an off hand way, that he thought it was mostly a media hype and proceeded to tell the customer that he didn't think anyone was actually losing calls because of this problem. I don't like to pick fights with old guys that look like Colonel Sanders so I just picked up one of the store handsets that was on display and admit that it did not have a drop in bars while holding it the same way that I do when I am setting them up at work. Either that Apple store has really good reception or something was rotten in Denmark. |
Doesn't really, although it does touch on some related themes such as open free collaboration and P2P.
To me the answer to net neutrality is to remove the ISPs from the equation. Meaning public or collaborative WIFI or other wireless networks, public or private/'indie' fiber networks. I think there probably is space on wireless if you do it right. P2P style relaying or something. Or maybe even privately operated (common) laser interconnects or whatever they call them. I think we can all agree that even if that means one or two houses get burned down by incorrectly aligned data transmission lasers, it will be completely worth it if we can get rid of these asshole ISPs.
Actually now that I think of it I think that private commons laser data transmission could really be an untapped resource, especially if you combine it with localized newer wide area wireless capabilities.
I think we should just make a wiki that describes what is required for a fiber interconnect station or whatever and create a gizmo that people can put on their cars and drive down the edge of the highway slowly and lay fiber right off the side of the road.
If there are alternatives to the ISPs systems that they cannot physically control, then we can tell the ISPs and the rest of the NSA or whatever bastards to go screw. |
Oh boy. They aren't asking you to make a $10,000 credit card transaction to your parents using their notebook. You can use it and test it when you're relaxing and browsing the web or catching up on news, and if you happen to come across bugs, report it to them so they can fix it. |
Yes, the illusion of uptime when you must poll the device, and you only ever poll it when needed.
Your land line is more unavailable than it would appear, and when a drunk takes out your concentrator then you'll notice the downtime.
Of course a drunk can't easily take out the central office, but infrastructure-wise skype is simply one of many VOIP providers and it is a lot harder to take down the Internet than a single CO |
I have an urge to plays Devil's Advocate here, so here goes:
On the one hand, I think it does make sense to potentially have a government-related id ([email protected]) for convenience purposes when doing taxes, writing to [politician x], and for receiving information regarding voting, local catastrophes, etc.
However, once the use of these online identities becomes mandatory for any of the above-mentioned tasks, or worse yet, access to the internet at all, we'll be fucked. |
Actually we don't have two evils. With the exception of Kucinich, the "Liberals" are moderate Republicans and the Republicans are Tea Bagging neoconservatives who think they're being libertarian when they're not.
There's the Green Party, Socialist Party, and the Libertarian Party. With the current situation I honestly don't care which one you pick because any of those would be better than what we have now. |
Further to my earlier comment (sorry, I was travelling), you mention that 'if there's a case against you'. I imagine that if there was an existing case against you the use of Tor or other general purpose anonymising software may be taken as suspicious (although I am not sure the kind of speculation you talk of would be allowed in a court of law), however, this would require there to already be a case against you. I always thought the point of anonymising software would be to avoid them realising that any suspicious activity was you in the first place, and so a case would never be brought to court, although perhaps I am missing the point of it. |
yup, public schools mostly suck. After attending a consistently high ranking public school system, test scores mean nothing. we arent really learning anything. just being repeatedly spoon-fed useless dribble that that legislature mandates we be able to recite, despite the funding to teach this in public schools taking drastic cuts. |
Wonderful. Why not just set up an SFTP server, since your computer's got to be on anyways?
I mean IDK if this key thing solves the problem of some labyrinthine internal network behind numerous firewalls/routers or whatever, but |
Users are not prompted to think about “what are you doing?” In fact, they are not prompted to think at all – they are prompted to feel."
I disagree with this part of the article. It is true that Pinterest makes searching, sharing, and creating content very easy, but it does not eliminate the "thinking" factor. While users may not be updating statuses relevant to what they are doing, most of the people that I know using Pinterest are using it to gather inspiration for projects that interest them. Whether it's furnishing their new home, creating a particular atmosphere for their wedding, or collecting recipe ideas for dinner, users are projecting what they want to or will be doing.
As a user, I am still concerned with my "online reputation" and think very hard about what I do and do not pin, re-pin and like on this site. Even if my pinboards do not reflect what I am doing at the present moment, they reflect my interests, and create a very telling visual story of who I am.
Lastly, is it just me...I can't shake the feeling that this article is trying to say that women, as prime users of Pinterest, are somewhat "simple" and certainly not tech-savvy. And if that is the case, and that Pinterest "prompts us to feel rather than think", what is the author saying about women and men in general? I think that many men could benefit greatly from this site, but articles like this have the power to shape Pinterest's future users. Perhaps the term "visual thinkers" would be more appropriate to describe the site's users. One of the pinners I watch the most is a man, and he has impeccable taste in art. His pins inspire my photography projects more than all of my "friends" put together. He currently has 113,811 followers! |
should an advertisement for a "HD TV" be allowed that advertises HD broadcasts in Australia, yet in reality the TV is INCOMPATIBLE with the STANDARD HD Australian broadcasts?
No. That is my point, you know understand how a correct analogy should work. My point wasn't that you are wrong and Apple was right. My point was you are right, Apple is wrong, and you are using a horrible analogy.
I'll detail the 3 situations to maybe help you better understand why claiming Apple advertising 4G in Australia is not along the same lines with advertising a feature that a product does not have:
HD TV:
Is the HD TV an HD TV? Yes the hardware to be an HD TV is physically located in the product and nothing on the TV is preventing the consumer from using it as an HD TV.
Could the person in Australia use it as an HD TV? No, just because the TV is capable of displaying an HD picture doesn't mean a consumer will be able to take advantage of it (unless they moved to a different country).
Should the TV manufacturer be advertising it as an HD TV? No, that would be misleading. Advertise it as a TV and list on the tech specs that the TV contains an HD tuner and/or that it is capable of displaying a picture with the maximum resolution of 1920x1080 but consumers should know that HD signals may not be available in all countries. Check for local availability. This would be the correct way to let people know it is HD capable.
iPad being 4G:
Does the iPad have 4G capabilities? Yes, the hardware to receive 4G signals is physically located in the product and nothing on the iPad is preventing the consumer from using those 4G capabilities.
Could the person in Australia use it to receive a 4G signal? No, just because the iPad is capable of connecting to a 4G network doesn't mean a consumer will be able to take advantage of it (unless they traveled/moved to a different country).
Should Apple be advertising it as an HD TV? No, that would be misleading. Advertise it as a 3G and list on the tech specs that the iPad contains a 700/2100 MHz LTE radio that is capable of 4G but consumers should know that not all LTE bands are available in all countries. Check for local availability. This would let people know that the iPad is capable of 4G if they were to travel to a location with 4G availability for business, vacation, etc. This would be the correct way to let people know it is 4G capable.
iPad being quad-core when it is really only single-core:
Does the iPad have a quad-core processor? No, there is not a quad-core processor located physically in the product. The quad-core processor does not exist.
Could the person in Australia use the quad-core processor? No. The quad-core processor does not exist.
Should Apple be advertising it as having a quad-core processor? No. The quad-core processor does not exist.
[One of these things is not like the others]( and it is your analogy.
Again, you are right, Apple shouldn't be advertising the iPad as 4G. Where did I say they should? I never did. All I was saying is you are really, really, really bad at analogies. I made a better analogy for you to use. |
I rune KDE on Arch Linux.
I have two start buttons. One of them uses a 'smart menu' style like windows, with apps you just used up front, everything is icons. The other one uses much smaller icons, and the first thing it shows you is not your favorites, but a huge text list of all the categories of apps.
The two startbuttons are on their own startbars, one on each monitor (you can put them wherever, you could have 10 on 1 if you wanted). Each startbar autohides, but when they do fold out, they are almost 50% of the screen horizontally. This means that, just by mousing over the screen edge, I can see most of my favorite aps without even clicking the start button, because it automatically folds out into a scroll box when it has that much space.
Everyone loves startbuttons. They are a good thing. Taking them away is a stupid mistake. People with total freedom to design their desktop will put in startbuttons. |
Correct, but I think that windows 8, regardless of its quality, is a step towards linux.
Can I install linux and get flash, acrobat pro, quickbooks, yardi, kardin, Office (yeah really not some other office wanna-be), itunes, yahoo/google/msn chat and can I setup this to be installed by a 3rd rate tech in less than an hour setup time on randomly purchased equipment (no standards)? Now can I get it to work with cashpro BofA? BofA's own techs have trouble getting it to work on windows. How about Quicken for linux? The moment you have a compatibility problem any business will through money at it, and the only good money is to just buy windows. You can't pay a tech for hours to figure out why whine doesn't load office correctly, that's bad money. And you can't pay him to go figuring out why an excel sheet made in office 2010 won't open in Polaris correctly.
In the real world Linux is only good for programmers and network admins. I use it plenty but the thought of having to support the 350 users I have in the field who use ALL of the above software daily and call with support questions like excel sheet not auto-calculating, it makes me shudder.
Android and iOS can't do these either. Tablets are toys for consumer fanboys, good for ingesting information, but nearly useless in the "content creation" part of business, making 10mb excel sheets that pull data from sql servers. I |
Windows NT was rock solid (you missed this one)
What makes Windows 95 a skip? It was great when it came out.
Windows 2000 was pretty stable as well, me and a lot of others upgraded to 2000 when we found out about ME. Also, 2000 was a much bigger release than ME, how did you miss this?
Also, 98 and xp were both incredibly buggy and difficult to deal with when they came out. It wasn't until 98SE and XP servicepack2 that things became smoother. |
Personally, I see no reason to upgrade when start up is already instant because of SSD. At this point it would just burn a hole in pocket for no reason then I would turn around after install and pay for an application to make it look like Windows 7. |
Also - you want a large screen on your desktop, this means that it needs to be further back to avoid giving you eye strain. But imagine if you have a touch screen...
you would have to stretch your arms out at arms length to use it.
...now let that sink in. |
I'll agree with you in that scenario. However, this is exactly the Reddit "discussion" aspect that you are holding on to, just so you can argue about it.
We both know that your scenario is purely BS; you know that this isn't an argument that would the hold candle for 90% of the PC world out there.
Your original comment above gave no indication that this was the issue to begin with.
But hey, your comment does come off across as "Hurr durr! Windows 8 is teh suck" based on your personal (tried making it look like a concise point) preferences and vendetta.
Edit: Some formatting. |
Well, there is currently Retail and OEM. Retail is meant for upgrades, but, as far as I know, can be used to upgrade from anything, Windows or not. Than there's the OEM(System Builder) which is the same thing, just for new machines, but is still [transferable](
All you would have to do is take the retail version, as the Upgrade deal is no longer offered, and select the option by selecting the following:
Boot to the DVD/Flash drive with W8 on it. When prompted to, select custom installation and select the advanced drive options. Delete the partition(s) with Linux on it - or create a new one previous to booting from W8 and keep Linux. |
Does anyone else think it's weird that this is even a thing? If the US Government decided an american citizen in america needed to die, ignoring for a moment all that that implies, why the fuck would the use a seventy thousand dollar missile instead of a sniper / swat team?
US citizens are killed by swat teams / police all the fucking time. It happens so often that we have /r/badcopnodonut . So if you're this hypothetical power-hungry socialist dictator president bent on murdering your civilians (/s) what possible justification could you ever have for using high explosives to do something that already happens all the time in this borderline police state? Follow up with "he was a terrorist" and "i thought he was reaching for a gun" and instead of the public perception of war on americans we get business as usual.
While I'm all for controlling executive power when it comes to executing civilians, I really just think this is another right wing fabricated crisis to bring congress and now the senate to a screeching halt so that in 3 years they can point at Obama and tell us what a shitty administration this was. Maybe I'm just a complete cynic... |
I responded to this one first, but I'm not sure it actually went through.
Basically, the reason you don't need to worry about the military branches' intel offices is because they don't do anything like what you think they do.
They aren't out there developing targets, conducting television style surveillance on whatever the hell they choose to do--it would be redundant, silly, and misses their real mission.
Thier mission is to provide threat analysis and prediction to their service . This stuff is at the tactical and operational level--a distinction that doesn't mean much to most people because many have never been in the military, but I'll lay it out as best I can.
I spent 8 years in the Army as an officer and did three tours to Iraq. During deployment, our intelligence officers and the Military Intelligence branch in the Army were focused solely on developing plans and methodology for intel collection and organization as well as threat prediction and vulnerability analysis of US operations and installations. The level of detail they were after was what they would call incredibly "granular"--ie, focused solely on the area the unit was operating in and on, and on areas that directly affected it. There was no wide ranging development of intel sources, no scouring mythical databases with access to all kinds of feeds and info, and no grand plan. It was more focused on very very very specific questions and intel like "on X street in the AO (area of operations), how many Iraqis have how many hours of power on a given day." This intel was in turn used to develop a focus for planning projects. Likewise, their threat focused intel development looked a lot like "what is the planning cycle for the insurgents that operate out of X village--our pattern analysis shows that going back to 2006, there's been one monthly rocket attack and two IED attacks roughly every two weeks. How do we get inside their planning cycle to predict and disrupt their operations?"
Their enemy focus was more in trying to figure out who the enemy was and what he was doing in their AO . Military units don't have assigned AOs when they're back home because, back home, they're a) constitutionally forbidden from operating and b) training and preparing.
Back home, one of my sister units was 66MI company--a unit that operated and maintained all the drones for the 3d ACR--itself the "eyes and ears of III Corps"--III Corps being the parent unit for the most of the US Army's armored forces--call it 85,000 soldiers. Anyway, this unit that maintained the drones for a sizeable Army unit spent most its time back home conducting maintenance, planning to operate overseas, getting its personnel trained, and developing "threat" courses of actions for training exercises.
Flying its drones was a big deal, because we had to get airspace clearance from the installation (Fort Hood), the FAA, etc., etc. It wasn't a casual or covert event. The unit had no time, no resources, nor the focus to actually try to conduct any surveillance, nor would it have been remotely possible to have anything it did be a secret.
Real intelligence work in the military isn't like in the movies--its slow, time consuming, bureaucratic and doesn't happen in a vaccuum.
"But what about the higher levels of the services?" I hear you say.
Well, good question--at higher levels, they are focused on the planning, training, maintenance, vision, and equipping of those lower levels. The parent units of those "on the ground" military intelligence units don't have assets, because they aren't collectors--they help coallate, interpet, plan, and train personnel. They aren't a holding area for top secret collection units or equipment. They are still very focused on their services. The Army intel services are focused on intelligence gathering to support the ground fight, the Navy is focused on threats to its ships, and the Air Force is focused on enemy capability and target selection that will impact their ability to conduct air operations. At the highest levels--Pentagon--these services function like think tanks, where they write white papers about long term threats, technology, and give input on what they feel the long term focus of their service should be with regard to the current threat picture. They also lay out long term strategies on equipment procurement, training direction and methodology, and the organization's strategic vision.
I spent a lot of time on the ground in Iraq, but I'd be as useless as a civilian to Navy intel--I don't have any knowledge of what the planning factors are for cruise missile flights, what the assumed effectiveness of antiship missiles are, or what the vulnerabilities of the Chinese Navy's fuel and resupply operations are to USN submarines. Likewise, the Navy's brains would be simililarly useless in Iraq or Afghanistan--or the US, because that isn't what they do.
The kind of drone surveillance we ought to be worried about doesn't come from an intelligence service solely focused on very service specific (but highly important) questions.
To put it in possibly more familiar terms, having the military services conduct domestic operations would be like calling an engineer whose job it is to design heat sinks for the PS4 to ask him to help you program a game. Yeah, he's a smart guy, and yeah he knows the system, but no, he doesn't have anything to do with what you need him to do.
The guys you need to be worried about are the ones that already maintain drones without much oversight, who already have AOs inside the country, and the ones whose training, focus, and mission has always been domestically focused--the FBI comes to mind immediately, followed shortly by the CIA. |
While that's technically true, don't lose sight that our Constitution is based on the philosophical premise that all men (mankind) have inalienable rights, not just the ones within our borders. Our Constitutions entire idealogical basis is that simply being human gives us rights that pervade entirely throughout existence and would pass muster under any human condition imaginable. The jursidiction is limited to our borders; the ideal is universal. |
As a recent fast food employee who made 10.50 an hour I just wana say I really hope fast food places become giant vending machines. I hated my job and I did everything but manage, and anyone who has done that shit knows how much better a cashier job is. The job is totally unrewarding people are rude and management expects prefection and bitches when it doesnt happen. I really think it would be better for everyone if a giant vending machine capabable of serving perfect food to 3-4 customers at a time literally under a minute, with little to no product waste and a greater focus on waste disposal will be the standard in 20-30 yrs. |
I have eaten at several restaurants that use technology to replace a large portion of their human workers. Many of them have been fairly busy restaurants that I imagine serve 100+ meals an hour during peak time although they are almost exclusively counter service/to-go places where you can also sit down and eat.
Some were similar to the old "auto-mats" that you exchange cash/credit for tokens in one machine, then use those tokens to open windows that you then grab your food from...they only human staff is the people actually making the food.
The others have a touch screen where you select/customize your food and are then given a receipt with an order number, again the only staff is the one making the food that then calls your number and you are all set.
Sometimes there is someone else that works to simply clean up the space, empty garbage, help people who are confused but that could all easily be done by someone from the kitchen or a manager...or even a teenager for minimum wage.
All it takes is for the current workers to price themselves out of the job market. |
It's because people have been predicting automation leads to fewer jobs for a long time, and it hasn't happened yet.
Here's a chart of the US unemployment rate since 1890 (figures from before 1940 are estimates).
Leaving out the 30s and 40s, it's fluctuated between 3 and 10 percent throughout. Now, it's possible (maybe) to discern a small upward trend from 1950 on. The main reason for the (apparent) upward trend is that 5% has replaced 3% as the lower bound. But it's far from clear that automation is the best explanation for that. There was a lot of automation before 1950. There were a lot of trade, fiscal and monetary policy changes after 1950.
If automation has had a role in moving the lower bound of unemployment from about 3% to about 5% over six decades, that's a much smaller kind of change than people in this thread have been talking about. And it would certainly not have held sole responsibility for those two points change. |
Jobs for the sake of jobs(and those that can't even support people) is a backwards way of thinking. They can't automate everything overnight, they'll need technicians, builders, installers, and equipment.
If they won't pay people enough to survive without further aid then something has to change. These companies are already screwing their employees for every last cent and Benefits(McScrew-U ATM cards). They won't get $15 dollars but an adjustment up to the basic standard of living expense would be a benefit. They'll do it(automate) but using fear shouldn't stop people from trying to get fair treatment. We can't be treated any worse by a robot then a person behind the counter. |
Former fast-food cook here - it depends on the restaurant and person. Places that don't actively discourage substitutions largely don't care if you order it exactly the way you want. The biggest problem is that you do so many of the same thing and it becomes such a routine that you sometimes do the "wrong" thing purely by habit and muscle memory, with no malice or "fuck you" intended. There were times when I would literally read the order out loud with each ingredient I grabbed, and I'd say "no pickles" while at the exact same moment grabbing pickles. |
Just try to imagine the complexity and number of machines you'd need to match a basic Jimmy John's crew. Think about what it would take just to keep everything clean enough during the day, and realize that a robot can't handle a problem as simple as spilled mayo. Think about what a single sticky servo or stripped gear could do to your entire operation, and ask yourself how much better off you might really be.
Well lets see
For starters a touchpad/voice recognition system for ordering.
Dispenser for cups/cookie/chips AKA vending machine.
one maybe two industrial arms for working the line making sandwiches.
singular arm to work the slicer, could easily use an arm from the line when not busy/overnight.
Arm needed for the entire bread cycle. again can be shared with line when not busy.
cleaning the customer area would require an advanced robot, or a human. so we have a singular job, which can be shared with the manager/overseer.
answering phones can be done by same machine as ordering machine.
Delivery orders can be placed on table for delivery by arms from line, like now.
shipments can be carried in by overseer, or could be automated unloading like that used in lights out warehouses.
advanced roomba for frequent/constant floor cleaning. |
I did my final engineering year project on this; texturing solar cells with anti-reflective nanostructures via random surface etching. It is true, you can improve the performance of practically any silicon wafer based solar cell by simply etching away at the surface. I’m guessing that the technique they are using to achieve this is via reactive ion etching; think sand blasting on a molecular scale. The problem is that because this process relies on etching away at the top surface of the solar cell (a negatively doped region that is crucial to its operation), etching too far can destroy this layer, and thus sabotage the solar cell all together; however, etching too little won’t give you as good anti-reflective structures. So there is a basically a tipping point (or an optimal etch depth) where these two factors are balanced. With my project, I saw improvements of up to 17%, at this optimal etch depth. |
I think this is actually a really interesting question when looking long term.
Trying to restrict demand via law enforcement simply increases the value of the real thing (see prohibition). And as long as there is demand, there will be a steady supply in poor and impoverished places.
One real solution would be increasing the quality of life and employment opportunities in these areas, decreasing the incentive to sexually exploit your children. But HA - like genuine humanitarian efforts are really ever going to happen.
So the only other solution I can see is to do to child prostitution and exploitation the same thing that's going to happen to truck drivers, teachers, and taxi drivers in the next 20 years - outsource to technology.
The same way self-driving cars will collapse the market for real drivers, can VR collapse the market for child exploitation?
If there exists a fake and legal alternative that's close enough to the real thing to prove cathartic for pedophilic urges, how many will really want to risk 20+ years for a slight increase in the fidelity of the experience? |
A lot of responses here are comparing the old hardware to modern laptops and server hardware. I fully understand that what I have is old and dated. I understand that the blade that came with my chassis is a particularly notorious model known for its power consumption. What I don't understand is why people keep making comparisons to modern hardware and telling me that anything remotely old is 100% useless.
I have no intentions of turning this server into a dedicated Battlefield 4 or Titanfall machine. I was just bouncing around the idea of maybe getting it up and running and selling mumble server space to turn a small profit as I have some fun with the hardware. I can accept the idea that its current power output exceeds anything I can hope to generate with mumble servers.
In the end I'm just not fully understanding why everyone is saying this machine is 100% incapable of being used in any way shape or form other than to tinker with for fun. I don't need a core i7 8 core processor running 6x Nvidia Titans with a petabyte of storage if I plan on using the machine to run Microsoft Office. Its an extreme example but I think it paints the picture that I'm getting from everyone complaining that the old specs are laughable compared to new options. I don't need the ability to lift 10 tonnes in order to move a 30 pound crate. |
I noticed that too. However I rarely use the key shortcut to snap windows, I pretty much always drag snap. I was actually very happy with the way it worked in the original build. It would detect and adapt to having windows that were 3/4 width and whatnot.
Alas, it's all broken to shit now and pretty much works like windows 7. |
Is anybody really surprised by this? A really shitty company who is always doing some shitty or shady thing is found out to be doing something possibly illegal? I mean, these companies have always done whatever they wanted without any recourse. Politicians are rich, the people who run these companies are rich, so what do we expect? |
As has been pointed out, that infographic is really old and outdated. Spotify's current payout averages between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream, significantly higher than the $0.0016 quoted in the infographic. Note also that the infographic lists the artist's share as $0.00029, which is excessively small. This, however, is not Spotify's fault but rather the artist's contract with the label. Since contracts are hard to quantify, let's just focus on total revenue paid out by various services, for the labels and artists combined.
According to the infographic, retail CDs pay out roughly $2, split between the labels and artists.
To get a $2 payout from Spotify, there needs to be between 232 and 333 plays of the tracks in question. Assuming an album contains twelve tracks, the full album needs to be played between 19 and 28 times.
For terrestial radio, the royalty is between roughly $0.001 and $0.0001 per listener (depending on the station audience). This means that there needs to be between 2,000 and 20,000 listens for radio royalties to pay out $2, or roughly 167 to 1667 full album equivalents.
Now, the difference between radio and spotify is that spotify listeners often actively choose which tracks to play, and popular artists often have their tracks put into playlists where they frequently appear. So, let's estimate the revenue for an artist per user.
Let's say a given Spotify user puts this album in a playlist. There are ten albums in the playlist, for a total of 120 tracks. This means that one out of ten tracks in this playlist will be this particular artist's tracks.
Let's also assume that this user listens to Spotify two hours per day during their commute, and two hours during the weekends, for roughly 60 hours per month. This gives us 3600 minutes per month, and with an average track length of 3 minutes, there are 1200 tracks played per month, out of which 120 are of this artist.
The monthly payout for this user is therefore between $0.72 and $1.03 (a total of $7.20 to $10.30 total payout, which is a bit higher than the estimated 70% out of $9.99 per month this user brings in, but it's close enough to be roughly in the same ballpark). Using this estimate, this user will have paid out $2 in royalties in roughly 2-3 months. Should the user keep playing the album after the 2-3 months, the royalties paid out to the labels and artist are actually higher than that of the retail album, as streaming services keep paying out royalties rather than being a one-off affair.
The |
Now, the way you've phrased it makes it extremely laughable. But, in all seriousness say a Board of Directors headed up by a world version of NASA were set up with the CEOs of some major corporations where their company produces a piece due to their R&D lab already in working order with staff. Fuck it, let Nike make the space boots instead of another pair of slightly differently colored Jordans. Maybe Underarmor can do the jumpsuits, while some SCUBA company do the actual exterior shell suits due to their atmospheric pressure knowledge and already thinking about redundancies with air supplies. How about Monsanto actually does something FOR the human race instead of poisoning us and does the crops and foodstuffs? With the money these corporations have, the staff, and the research facilities already in place it isn't laughable at all except for the one fact that unless it makes them money they just don't care. So figure out a way to lure them in and make them money while they help the human race and we all win. |
No data caps? I should host on my home connection then.
There needs to be data caps but they should double or triple the amount to reach them. But unlimited? Where in the world do you get truly unlimited things with no little asterisks next to them?
I have Cox and their data cap is at like 300gb but they don't enforce it. They merely send an email reminding me of other internet plans that would better suit me. But please...unlimited? No way. You want tens or hundreds of terabytes a month for the same $ as Joe schmoe?
I wish but it just won't ever happen. |
But almost all of those things have been done better by public funding.
[Citation needed]. Public funding is great for basic research, however (from what I have read and experienced) it is for lousy applied research and actually making stuff people can buy and afford.
Space program was developed by private industry that had contract from government. So were many of nuclear reactors in many cases just for possible future profit without government contract (Westinghouse developed the water reactor from academic toy into useful tool on nautilus, GE, Boing was working on sodium). Space program was and still is extremely costly. ISS is basically a black hole for money, as was the shuttle. With virgin galactic, I can go into space, I would have to save for two or three decades, but it is possible. As everything, mass production will make it even cheaper. That wouldn't be possible in case of government run program.
> If the average man made enough money to afford an electric car then there would be much more incentive to produce them.
I am not even sure, what does this exactly mean? Or what kind of argument are you trying to support.
If electric car TCO is made about equal for average Joe, of course significant part of purchases will be electric. For it to happen you need billions of dollars in research and you may fail, just like EV-1.
Also, just being "able to afford", doesn't mean that someone will choose that option, e.g. maglev vs high-speed rail. The advantages
are not sufficient.
> Also public research...
My relative is doing research (physics, plasma). The horror stories! The bigger project, the worse it it. ITER is disaster in progress (money, cronyism, time..).
> My comment here is also quite relevant here as well.
Sorry, but most of that comment is not relevant for technology progress (basically only MRI claim). That reminds me of an argument I had with friend that working people should be able to have flat from his wage. Yes, it would be great, but it doesn't work that way. |
How many times do I have to tell people this?
This is a network problem not an internal problem.
Overseas networks want the ability to buy and sell shows overseas exclusively.
They can't do this if worldwide viewers have access.
It's caused because the networks (all of them) haven't caught up with the fact that we're living in a steadily non-geographically closed world. American owned networks want to keep it that way, it's worth plenty of money. The BBC couldn't care less, they'd stick adverts on shows to overseas viewers to cover the cost while remaining advert free for UK viewers, they're funded by the tax payer so covering a change like that wouldn't be a big problem for them. It's for this reason that the BBC is one of the companies that's vehemently net neutral and have stated that they will not be paying any service for extra bandwidth. On the contrary, the BBC will be informing all users on ISPs that throttle their bandwidth.
I expect google's baby youtube will also take this policy and the overall outcry and changes of service will kill ISP attempts at creating a 2 tier net.
Anyway, I've gone way off topic. |
When the US pays for it im sure they will be allowed until then they can fuck off.
Our eyeballs online are worth more than any eyeballs in the world. Especially when it comes to video ads and things of that nature, the US is the easiest country to find buyers for. |
G+ will kill FB via it's mobile platform... it's just better in comparison. To FB, it's like it's mobile apps (iOS and Android) seem to be broken and lack many features that only the full site provides. Where as G+'s mobile app has almost all the features of it's parent site. Also, the app is smooth and well integrated (I've only tested the android one but have hear the same for iOS.)
Another thing to point out is that G+ was built with privacy in mind. FB has never been that private to me.
I also disagree about the argument of it being late too. When the iPhone came out we already had phones with touchscreen, music, movies, apps, and more. We just didn't have anything that was implemented in the way the iPhone has been. Same goes for Apples mp3 players. They were not the first, they came out years after the tech came out, but they did a good job designing and selling it.
Why couldn't the way Google designed it's social networking have the same impact? Google's Android phones have made enough of an impact that Apple is going sue happy just trying to prevent the sales in countries where Apple feels threatened. |
People like this on reddit are why reddit is seen as politically ignorant and not much more than armchair protesters to a perversion of what the government actually is. You elect people. You .
The "rich people" are doing nothing different than the poor. All their money comes from either working hard, or inheriting it from someone who worked hard. To say that the government treats the rich especially well is simply ignoring fact. The government provides an incredible range of working products for the citizens, as well as protection. When is the last time in America you've felt legitimately scared for your personal safety from another country?
131 million Americans voted in 2008, why not put the blame on them? The country was founded on the principle that the people would be smart enough to at least go out and vote for their selected candidates. The fact that you, as a people have failed to do this has nothing to do with "the government, corporatism, ect." Those play a role, but the fact is, the American people are responsible. |
Once again, the NFL is just shooting itself in the foot by clinging to the dying medium that is broadcast television. Why do people stream NFL games?
1) They don't live in their team's market area, and aren't interested in watching a random matchup of two uninteresting teams.
2) They are traveling, or for whatever other reason do not have access to a cable, satellite or terrestrial broadcast receiver.
3) Their local game is "blacked out."
4) They want to watch more than three (out of 14 or so) games per week.
Notice that this list does not mention anything about "being an immoral person bent on watching the world burn" or "getting something for free." People can already watch the CBS, Fox and NBC games over the air for free, afterall. No, the big problem is the NFL's mistaken notion that people will watch whatever games they put on TV, no matter how uninteresting they might be. Then there is the entire primary/shared/secondary/tertiary market blackout policy, which is downright infuriating. I live in Southern Va, within range of at least one Richmond-based broadcast repeater, which is a secondary market for the Washington Redskins. This means that if the Redskins play at home, the Ravens game I want to watch will never be shown if the games are played at the same time. They show infomercials on CBS instead, even though I am a good 300 miles away from DC. The important point here is that most NFL fans are not interested in watching most teams play, and will either not watch or stream the game they want to watch.
Then, there is the unfathomably stupid decision the NFL made to sell exclusive online streaming rights to DirecTV several years ago - a broadcast medium which was struggling at the time. Now, barring the purchase of a 2 year DirecTV contract costing far north of $1000, there is no way for me to pay to stream NFL games. Period. The NFL claims this artificial scarcity "protects" their network affiliates, but really what it does is piss people off and make them look elsewhere for the games they want to watch.
Let's infer (guess wildly) and crunch a bunch of numbers: DirecTV pays about $700M a year for the NFL Sunday Ticket rights. According to [this]( article, the NFL removed about 2800 illegal streams in 2010. Lets say that number represents a third of the total streams and that for every 1 person motivated enough to set up the stream, that there are 500 people motivated enough to watch. That's a total of at least 4.2 million people who are demanding streaming services. If the NFL charged $10 per game per week, over a 16 game regular season, that comes out to about $670M a season for streaming alone, and would drastically reduce the presence of illegal streams. That isn't even including people who will buy more than one game per week, or people who normally watch football at a bar. With nearly 200 million people watching at least one game per season, this could easily mean over a Billion dollars in revenue for the NFL from streaming alone, plus an increase in recorded viewership as people move away from the low quality, unreliable streams to the reliable HD streams the NFL could offer. |
Watch "Enemy of the State" , it's the govt trying to turn the common people against Anonymous ! And if that works out, what is Anonymous without the common people ? :) |
The thing if you want to try this kind of stunt, is to keep up your appearances: be neat and tidy, take showers, shave, get your laundry done. When I was a postgrad, one dude tried to live in the lab for a while, but totally neglected this important detail (even though showers and laundry were available); the guy eventually stank to high haven, even his stuff (a duffle bag with his clothes and stuff) was obnoxiously fragrant (we had to take it out of the lab, it had become a biohazard). That's what gave him away, he could have remained undetected indefinitely otherwise. |
Ok Omnix_NerZ, let's get some milk and cookies and I'll 'splain all about it!
If your Mommy & Daddy get their internetz from Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, or Time Warner Cable, starting tomorrow, those companies will be watching what you and your family download. If they see anyone from your house downloading movies, or music without paying for it, they're gonna get really mad! They're going to send your Mommy & Daddy a letter saying "Please don't steal our movies or music!" and if they catch you again, they're going to send another letter saying "C'mon you guys, knock it off this time, seriously!" Then if it happens again, they're going to send you a third letter, this time it will say "Uh, did you guys get those other letters we sent about how this isn't nice that you're downloading stuff and not paying for it??" Then your family is going to have to send a letter back saying "Sorry, we won't do that again" or they might turn off your internetz or just make your internetz really, really slow! |
And you only use this knownledge to feel superior on the internet.
Seriously, I'm not running around laughing at people who don't know what chromatic [edit] aberration is. Because they have no reason to know what it is. |
Apple isn't delivering or even promising what I've described, either. You don't get up-to-the-second sync. You don't get device agnosticism. Apple devices are just as individuated from the local computer(s) as Android and Windows and whatever else devices.
Apple's advantage up to now had been twofold: A couple of years' head start on an app store thanks to the iPhone, and a lemmings-like, large, quick-to-upgrade customer base. The former advantage has been negated by the Android app base (not just Google Play, by the way -- lots of other app stores and independent apps around) and the latter advantage has been negated by third world customers, who are unwilling or unable to pay Apple's ripoff prices, but who are nevertheless happily served by Android device makers (well-known or otherwise.)
So there's no objective upside to the Apple value proposition any longer. It's all about creating perception. Sony is an Android device maker, but it doesn't want to be known as just another Android device maker. It doesn't want to be a Samsung or an HTC or a Huawei. (Who? Exactly.) So they'll release weird shit every once in a while, like the Aibo robotic dog, or the 5'' dual screen clamshell tablet, or this 20'' tablet, and it will churn the rumor mills a bit, and give Sony some much-needed cachet. |
I have to say I believe that concept is amazing, but it will never work like this. It will be very difficult to mesh between android and ubuntu directly, since 4.2 now has users will that mesh properly? Plus unless ubuntu can sell this as an app and docking station it won't get the distribution it needs.
Like I said I think this concept is amazing, but ubuntu isn't the right person to tackle this project. It has to be google. They have to make a desktop mode that is actually useful. Imagine a Nexus 10 running like a desktop, steam for linux and portal 2. |
The basics is this:
Android runs on a slightly modified Linux kernel (probably the core Linux kernel compiled for ARM, running a couple additional modules).
Because of the above, running ANY other Linux based OS is trivial at best. Simply load up any additional Kernel modules that are not pre-installed, and then run the desktop environment you desire.
If you have heard of the term bootstrapping in regards to a Linux install, its similar. Basically because they run the same kernel (the heart and guts of an OS), they are compatible - and become effectively skins of the same, with slight variations on functionality based on what processes are running. |
Or, perhaps, more like saying 'I'd like a car at a similar price and ease of purchase/use as the Americans get and if you can't provide that without good reason as to why not, I'll Robin hood your ass and make a copy knowing the personal risk to me is extremely minimal'.
To imply that the TV coming out of hollywood is comparable to only one brand of cars is to underestimate the role they play in our culture. The faulty business model that unfairly screws customers has a stranglehold on more than just 'one out of a dozen brands you could have chosen', it effectively has a monopoly and the amount of TV you can stream in AUS/NZ is minimal. |
Word of warning: though their stance may be admirable, their customer support sucks. Majorly.
I work as a network admin, we run several satellite stores as well as our HQ. I was recently tasked with switching these stores' connections over to iinet. Worst networking experience in my entire career.
They sent the tech to the wrong place, with the wrong install info, couldn't coordinante between their own employees for shite (like we'd ring up, say "Is xyz finished?" and get two different answers from two different teams.) I don't even...
We ended up switching back to telstra. What took over 3 weeks with iinet was done in 2 days with telstra. |
Options for getting movies and tv-shows in the Netherlands, ordered by release speed:
Pirate it (Sickbeard, Couchpotato, Spotweb, SABnzbd+).
Take a plane to the USA, find a nice hotel with TV, watch your series there.
Go to the cinema.
Rent an apartment in the USA, get a cable subscription with HBO, set-up a streaming server and watch American TV (and HBO:GO) from home.
VPN to the USA and use Netflix, Netflix isn't really up-to-date either, seasons, shows and movies are missing.
Order it from the other side of the world and region-free your DVD-player.
Rent it online, pay €8 (€10 for HD) to get 48h access to the SD stream, on the cable box only, with shitty sound. Or try iTunes, still expensive and for iHardware only.
Find a video store, they're all gone since 100Mbit/s (FTTH or Copper) internet is the standard here. The ones that survived have very few new releases.
Wait for season one to release on DVD while season three airs, movies release slowly.
Watch two year old episodes on TV with 10-minute commercial breaks every 15 minutes. Some movies air 5 to 10 years after their initial release.
I'm not justifying piracy here, in fact, I'm against it; I stopped pirating games since Steam, I stopped pirating music since Spotify. Two examples of brilliant platforms for content access; give me a €35/month option to watch all tv-shows and movies a few days after the release/airdate in HD on all my devices and I'll go with it. A streaming IMDB would be the ultimate...
>So, because you don't agree with their distribution model, you steal it?
Piracy is not stealing by the definition of Dutch law, actually, we are one of the few countries where piracy is allowed (you know; "back-ups"). Piracy of games and software is not allowed, only music, tv-shows and movies. I like to support the companies behind my entertainment, their distribution model just doesn't allow me to.
So yes, I pirated 11TB of movies and tv-shows last year, because there's no other way to get them for me. The piracy scene in the Netherlands is enormous, thanks to high-speed internet, friendly laws and the lack of legal alternatives.
Competing with piracy is easy though, the piracy platforms suck when it comes to usability, search options, recommendations (a feature I love from Netflix) and other cool features. And yes, sometimes you come across a corrupt file, virus (rarely) or fake upload; 40GB of space, 80 minutes of download and unpack time and a few watts of power wasted for that Blu-ray rip. Compete with piracy on quality, content and usability instead of price, a certain fruit-named company does the same with mobile devices...
The 2012 consumer wants to watch anything from around the world, on any device, at any time, at any location for a flat-rate fee, Hollywood doesn't get this. |
The fact of the matter is simply that iiNet are not legally obliged to do anything with copyright notices besides send them on to people who are actually legally empowered to act on them. Those people would be the police. iiNet actually do send them on (to police). iiNet are one of the more innovative ISPs in Australia and have offered VOIP and TV services at the same time or earlier than any other ISP.
iiNet have outwardly done everything they can to resolve the issue and even spent quite an amount of time in court. Although the verdict was a complete smack down the first time, "Hollywood" appealed, and lost. They then took it to the supreme court .. and lost. Since then iiNet have been involved in discussions aimed at making more content available online in Australia.
Hollywood has basically said "The status quo is fine".
iiNet, quite rightly has thrown its hands up in the air and exclaimed "FFS" on the way out the door.
You need to consider that us Aussies actually use our internet for things other than piracy too. In fact although I have been known to download things I should not, of my total usage in the time I've been with my ISP .. the total 'pirate' traffic would be well under 2% over that 4 years bandwidth total. So, just as a pirated movie does not equal a lost sale, an internet pirate's bandwidth is not all used for piracy either. As such you can't even argue that a significant portion of any of iiNet's revenue comes from piracy. With the stupid prices charged for physical goods, the last time I actually paid for a movie was quite some time ago.. well over 12 months.
However, if I had access to Netflix and never saw that stupid fucking Hollywood has decreed you cannot watch this yet message, and content was reasonably priced, oddly a) I would consume more content and b) I would probably not end up pirating at all.
To answer your points for hubertCumberdanes ..
iiNet's policies are based in law, and were the same ten years ago as they are now.
iiNet is not legally required in any way, shape or form to do what is being demanded. Other ISPs do send the notices on to customers. Their customers don't leave in droves. Aside from the administrative costs in doing so, there's no real cost to the ISP. Hollywood is not offering to pay for staff to do this.
iiNet have always stood up for their customers on this issue and many others.
iiNet keep asking to be allowed to stream content but this video is not available in your country . As stated above, piracy traffic is not necessarily a good thing for an ISP to have. So.. iiNet are actually keen to get rid of it. |
We tried to go with Internode/iiNet) but couldn't.
It's Telstra's responsibility to upgrade the copper in our suburb. Because Telstra won't upgrade the copper we couldn't get broadband from another provider (kinda a restrictive trade practice but we'll let that slide because assholes).
The only plan with a reasonable download limit (500gb per month) is available through Telstra via coax cable modem tied to Telstra's pay TV service.
Because the only Internet we get is through Telstra cable we saw the merit in getting a bundle that includes two pay TV boxes and a home phone that is never used.
We pay handsomely for the content we consume already we just get it through a different path (download) instead of the ones we pay for (cable TV, paid streaming, and free to air TV with complementary streaming).
We would disconnect the cable TV if we could get our content a-la-carte over the internet. We signed up for Quickflix (Australian Netflix) with the streaming option in a flash when it became available. They are close but not quite there yet.
We haven't really explored the complementary streaming option that comes with out pay TV because it's just not convenient.
We would be happy to pay for the content provided it is available in a timely fashion and also includes the back catalogue of whatever show it is. The truth is we already pay for this content in other ways and through other channels.
We still go to the movies in a cinema about 20 times a year. The only time we've ever downloaded a movie is if it was a rare non-current "collectable" or if it wasn't going to air in Australia in a reasonable time. Even then if it was a new release we still saw it in the cinema later because quality. |
Modern phoens have the glass and screen fuzed together. And just a knife won't do it (can't say for certain about the i9250, but for example on a i9300 it's impossible) and you need a heat gun. But using a heat gun you run the risk of ruining the screen it self. I've repaired a lot of phones and tablets. But for jobs like these, I don't even bother. The two times I've done it has been two worst repairs I've done. |
cryptocat is new and therefore not to be used for anything important. They even claim this.
with cryptocat, the server can still know that two or more people are still communicating with each other.
why should i trust crypto cat?
is cryptocat better than pgp/gpg through an anonymization network like tor(hidden services)/i2p/freenet? (ill give you a hint, no) |
Cheaper doesn't mean shit. Quality, reliability, insurance, durability all matter etc etc.
Is the screen going to scratch day 1 (Sure as fuck does with the American version of the Galaxy S3...piece of shit screen).
Is the call quality going to stop working after 2 months?
Is the OS going to crash every few days if I download a strange app?
Is the GPS going to rape my battery?
If I drop it, is going to immediately just be FUBAR?
Is the quality of the internet connection on wifi actually usable?
All of these questions are the ones I asked before making my (incredibly limited) selection of phones on AT&cunts. The galaxys3 was a very close contender to the Atrix, but at the end of the day, after countless reviews, I decided the Atrix wasn't stable enough for me and Gs3 was a better contender for a top of the line phone (I don't plan to get a new one for a good 6 years and pay seriously low rates for my plan with AT&douches since I've been with them since Cingular circa 1998...). |
There are a couple of problems.
First of all there's the issue of deciding which crimes to enforce. Jaywalking? Facial recognition + camera -> you're fined.
Can you be charged with crimes committed in the past which is only now being dug up from recordings? How far back should they be able to go to find something? Can they charge you with something that was not a crime back then? Who do you trust to keep the time? Do you go by the date stamp on the video?
Who keeps an eye on this massive amount of data? The government contractor who made the lowest bid? How good are they at security? Does it even matter when virtually all security can be subverted by an persistent enough threat? Sooner or later law enforcement will abuse this data, it's human nature. Non law enforcement entities will also gain entry to it through legal or illicit means. |
Until 2010 they begrudgingly went along with China's requirement that they censor search results, which made a lot of people mad, but in 2010 they found out China was hacking in to their servers and trying to extract information about Chinese dissidents, which was the catalyst for Google telling China that they could either ban Google or deal with unfiltered search results going fwd. China refused and Google started redirecting people to the Hong Kong site, which is not censored, and that is how it remains to this day. |
Hijacking for clarity:
I'm late coming to this party, but AT&T hasn't announced plans to offer a 1Gbps fiber service in Austin, it has announced it would if provided the same terms as Google Fiber. There's a good chance this is a PR move b/c AT&T will not be offered the same terms because of the return that Google Fiber will likely offer the city: free internet to those who cannot afford it, wiring up schools and doctor's offices with free fiber speeds, etc., etc. What Google is offering Austin is likely an expected trade: Austin provides them with the tools to cut through bureaucracy and reduced rates/free services, Google provides them with a project (this is important b/c by terming it a project they avoid legal/financial ramifications that are associated with corporations expanding their communications footprint in municipal areas) that will provide cutting edge speed and city-wide benefits for even those who cannot afford to pay. If AT&T were to offer the same benefits that Google will offer the city (which they won't), term it a project and not a for-profit endeavor and announce reasonable rates, then they will likely stand to receive the same terms Google did. However, if they don't agree to provide the same services Google did, they can they play the victim by saying Austin is catering to one company over another and that's illegal, cue lawsuit and attack ads and injunctions against Austin getting Fiber. |
The thing is reddit, Google doesn't care about its profits because of fiber service. They've repeatedly been the good guy company by forcing companies to bend over and quit ripping off the people. They even scared the shit out of phone companies by starting its own phone service in a select area and drafting plans for expansion. "Do as we say, or we become your competitor" is what Google would say if it had a voice. |
This. Business plans come with some cool perks. I was lucky enough to live with a (rich) buddy once who was using a business plan from our ISP. (This was because he registered his website as a business and wanted the nice connection)
A there were several times when everyone else on the block lost their internet, because of 'upgrades' or 'development' or some malarky. Funny, though, because our connection never went out...
B he had a script on his computer that would check the connection speed every couple hours. If it dropped even a fraction below what we were paying for, he told me, we could call up the ISP and something would be done. This was because we weren't promised up to XMbps, it was at least XMbps.
C one day I was having issues with the connection, we were dropping packets and everything was just running sluggishly overall. I called up the ISP and bunkered down for what I expected to be a long hold and unhelpful techs. Within seconds I was talking to a polite man with a southern accent. I described my problem to him and he ran me through about three troubleshooting steps. The speeds remained low. He apologized at least three times, and because we weren't able to get the speeds back up he upgraded us to the fastest package our modem could handle for the month as a way of saying sorry. (Later it turns out the speed issues were because two torrent clients were running simultaneously on the network... oops) Call lasted a total of maybe ten minutes. |
They're wrong. This argument is stupid and I'm tired of hearing this claim.
Simply put a large multinational company like Apple and Google will just shift their revenues to a smaller, more desperate country that has insanely lower tax requirements (i.e. Ireland) if a tax increase does get voted in. Unless the code is changed to make this movement of revenue illegal it will keep being done.
But, then the corporate lobbyists come to play. If a bill does start getting support about amending these current tax laws guess who will threaten to cut off every member of congress that votes yes? Yep, Apple, Google, Exxon, all of them. They will just bankroll someone else in the next election to do their bidding. |
This is misleading. See this [American Bar Association quick reference]( This particular document was meant to help those working with distressed companies, but the laws are the same and it's the best collection of court cases and state law references about the topic I could find on short notice.
If you are the officer or director of a corporation, you are required to act in the best interest of the corporation using reasonably prudent judgment. This has almost always been interpreted in the United States by the courts as maximizing profits, meaning that anything deviating from this - such as willingly paying more taxes - would be subject to enormous scrutiny that you likely couldn't win.
It's so strict that even powerful men like Warren Buffett get slammed with it from time to time. Buffett once caused a merger to fall apart, and felt guilty, so he decided the right thing to do was to pay the same price for the company that the old suitor was going to pay, even though he could have gotten it for much less now that one of the bidders had walked away. He wanted to do right by the Peters widow, who was then the controlling stockholder of the Pasadena firm (Wesco Financial).
When the government found out he had paid more for the stock, simply to "do the right thing", the SEC launched a full scale investigation, sued him, and brought him up on charges that were, after many years, a lot of money, and a lot of frustration, dismissed with nothing more than a slap on the wrist due to the influence of some powerful people around him. |
These companies are well within their legal and moral boundaries. They're simply employing fantastic tax strategies to keep as much of their profit as possible. The suggestion that what they're doing is unethical is unfair. I wholeheartedly agree with the stance Google has taken here. If the people want these companies to pay more tax, then reform the tax code. |
Wrong, smith was proto capitalist (capitalism wasnt formulated untill 1800s). He says the worst form of government is corporatism. Source ; thomas mathius , pricipals of population. |
Here's the thing. Tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion isn't. The tax system is in place to allow corporations to pay taxes at low rates while giving the illusion to the general public that they are paying a reasonable rate. Most of these (large) corporations are in the 35% bracket, which sounds great to us; it looks like these corporations are paying their fair share, and we look no further. Meanwhile, the corporations find legal loopholes to achieve a much lower effective tax rate. In the end, neither a person nor a business wants to pay more taxes than they have to, so corporations take advantage of the same loopholes that we do: charitable contributions, adhering to green standards, tax free accounts, tax havens, etc.
And it's not like the government doesn't know about this. The sad fact is, it's not as simple as raising or lowering taxes. Raising the tax percentage would simply encourage the companies to move offshore, and base their company's accounting books and revenues in a equally strong currency. And if we were to lower taxes, how much would it have to change before we really made a difference? If I can store my profits in the Bahamian dollar, which has an 1:1 exchange rate with the US$, and the Bahamas has no corporate income tax, then there is no point for me to keep my money in the U.S. unless the tax rate is extremely low. |
Would agree with you if all "bees" in the swarm were equal producers. When you have some bees that produce prodigious amounts while many other bees sit on their lazy stinger and just consume with no effort to produce then your argument falls apart. |
How long did it take you to build this world you live in? Your argument is wonderful IF we assume everyone wants to work and contribute. It falls flat when human nature is factored into the equation.
You can choose to use whatever words you want but I have no desire nor inclination to give money or help to those who are perfectly capable of helping themselves. I have no issue helping those that have need that want to work and want to contribute but need help to get there. Sorry, in my time I have seen too many welfare recipients that drive cars I can't afford to drive and live in houses and neighborhoods that I cannot afford to live in. |
I just don't believe having a job is a positive right.
Well, I'm not really talking about positive rights as much as positive liberty/freedom. You may not have a right to a job, but if you have a job that means you have positive freedom (the freedom of not being jobless, presuming that being jobless is most often not a good thing).
For example, I really want a new guitar. Since I don't live in some hellish place where music is forbidden (yes, those places exist!), I do have the negative freedom that allows me to buy a guitar using my own money. But I don't have money to spend on a new guitar, thus I don't have the positive freedom of actually being able to buy a guitar (and it's really the most important of the freedoms: who cares if someone removes my negative freedom to buy a guitar if I don't have the positive freedom to buy it anyway?). Now, of course, I don't think that having a nice guitar is a right (as opposed to say, the right to a proper education as given by Article 26 of the UN declaration of human rights), so I'm obviously not going to picket the government because I can't afford a guitar. |
I hope it works out for all involved. In rural America its a monopolistic enterprise. Everyone is on a fiber optic network, however if you want internet service the 960Kbps/150Kbps tier is fifty-five dollars per month. As they are the only internet provider in the area, they require you to have phone service with their dsl package even though dsl doesn't require it to funtion at all. So add another twenty dollars to your bill. And one last insult to prove you are "over a barrel" for internet access, phone service requires you to have long distance service, so add another twenty dollars to the tally. So for a minimum internet access in a rural area, it will cost a minimum of ninety-five dollars per month. More so if you want a maximum of 3Mpbs. Google Fiber is a two hour drive from here as the final insult to us. And there is throttling too. A letter is already on its way to our state representative and the local phone company. |
Voip is being is blocked/throttled in some countries, yes. And you can rest assured providers in your country would do it too as soon as people started using voip (currently they often don't because the user base isn't big enough, and because mobile Internet has quite a high latency so voip is a worse experience than regular calling).
This law is mainly a precaution, but it is highly needed as more and more people have a smartphone and a data plan, which first of all results in way lower sms usage, and with lte probably will result in less and less regular voice calls, as people move to free voip apps.
Case in point: in the Netherlands WhatsApp is incredibly popular, and as a result nobody pays texting fees any more. As a reaction, providers had plans to use DPI to detect WhatsApp messages and charge you the price of an sms for every WhatsApp message you sent, even though it's just data you pay for. Luckily the government stepped in and passed a net neutrality law, banning such nonsense. |
Thanks for your response. I find it awesome to hear the opinion of someone who left the US. I usually don't know a lot of people that did this. It really shows a completely different (more objective) standpoint.
My opinion about migration is probably a lot different to the common understanding in the US. I was raised as an European thanks to my parents and that's probably one of the reasons why I'm very liberal when it comes to immigration and migration. (liberal like in the European definition not the American one; I never understand why it's interpreted so differently)
In the EU we have freedom of free movement which basically allows every EU-citizen to live where he wants. Someone from Germany can simply live in Spain and he even get's his pension transferred to his new residence. So we don't really have "migration" in the EU. However thanks to the crisis many people leave their southern countries to look for jobs in Germany, the Netherlands or Denmark. But this is a totally different problem.
When it comes to migration from Africa to Europe I disagree with a lot of the EU policies. I think it's bullshit to kick out foreigners just because they weren't lucky enough to be born with a European nationality. I think that's racist and xenophobic. A controlled migration from Africa to Europe could reduce a lot of our problems like low natality and very high labour cost. And we would give people who fled from the misery in their country a fair chance. Instead of helping them we put them in camps in Spain and Italy or send them back on their ships which often enough sink. That's disgusting. I'll probably say this because I'm living in the ex-GDR territory but I think that walls should never be an option. Looking at the pictures of the Mexiko-US border always remind me of East Germany and North Korea.
It could also reduce xenophobia in some countries and it could lead to a new multicultural society.
I really would like to live abroad for some time. (outside of Europe) I really would like to try to understand other cultures but without learning a new language. I think Mandarin would be a pain in the ass to learn :D I'll probably do that in a few years (my university has some agreements with Seoul and Beijing). Especially Asia or Africa really seem interesting because of this "exotic" flair.
Is it actually easy to get a second nationality? Well I already have one (I'm half-Italian, half-German) but I think this is something totally different compared to US-Hong Kong.
Oh and totally enjoyed reading your comment. No need for a |
I moved to Hong Kong. I had a window of opportunity and took it. I think you, as well as any other moderately intelligent individual could see exactly what they were up to if you were not engrossed with what Brad and Angelina were doing or hoe many times Paris Hilton flashed her muff to poparozzi.
It also came down to taxing you to death. I was just then starting to realize exactly how greedy the government is and how much of a normal everyday joe's income is being taken in the cycle of earning and spending. Learning about the death tax and how after you die the government has the right to take even more, these things just disturbed me to the core. I'm by no means a rich man and with my forecasted future in the US, I wasn't going to amount to much anyway.
I've always been brought up Democrat, at least with a blue collar upbringing. As I can see, it doesn't matter what your political standing is in America, the government is not going to give the masses a fair shake. What they are going to do is continue to do as you mentioned and dull the senses of the masses with trivial arguments about gay marriage and lesser issues while they continue to pass bills which erode the constitution itself.
In my opinion, the US is already a police state with privatized prisons, the inability for an effective healthcare reformation, the ever growing gap between the rich and poor, the erosion of the constitution, the inability for fair elections without special interest financial contributors...... The list can go on but I am sure you are aware as well as I am.
I'm unfortunately waiting for the pestulants and famine to hit us like a tidal wave. Disease and global warming. You know, like realizing there is no more toilet paper after you've already sat down. Unfortunately to refer to the bible, it's gonna be like he tower of Babbel being struck down. Of course it's a worse case scenario but then again, I'm not an optimist. Especially when American politics is the topic of discussion.
Anyway, what are your viewpoints on migrating? I definitely have my positives and negatives about it. I'm more positive because I have a beautiful family from such a life changing descision. I do have dual citizenship (or will obtain shortly).
The drawbacks of my situation are like dealing with a different culture, adjusting to different customs, not knowing the language (in my case it's Cantonese/mandarin, the hardest languages on earth to learn) comparable to always swimming upstream. In the end it is seeming to make life more challenging and enjoyable, or possibly more hectic in dealing with things which would be second nature or easily solved in the states. I would highly recommend it as a life changing experience and something which could make you grow as a person. Passing the soapbox now, hope I was a little bit entertaining to read... Sorry, no |
Search works the same as Windows 7 except now you have to choose between settings and programs. This was changed in 8.1 to just be everything.
-Metro apps are optional and they also don't have to take up the whole screen as you can dock them to the side. This is also changing in 8.1 to have more options.
-Internet information is exactly the same as Windows 7.
-I find the full-screen start menu (FYI, modern is just the visual theme, you see modern even on the desktop) to be faster since I can just remember where my mouse needs to be [(since I use categories)]( and it's more visual. It works on a sub-conscious level rather than having to dig through sub-menus. In other words your brain can recognize an icon faster than it can read text. Of course if you're typing it's exactly the same as Windows 7.
-Security is the same as Windows 7 in my experience. I've never had new problems with system files that also weren't an issue in Windows 7.
-Beats audio has nothing to do with Windows 8. This is just manufacturer bloatware.
-The quality of the mouse pad also has nothing to do with Windows 8 although mousepad support has been greatly improved if you have a compatible (modern) mousepad. This was also the weakest thing about Windows laptops and only recently this is starting to change. IIRC you can disable a lot of the gestures anyways.
-The new start menu is there to provide unity across all of Microsoft's products as the same general concept is used across phones, tablets, laptops, all-in-ones, touchscreen laptops and all-in-ones, and convertibles.
-Top left corner (or win + tab), right click and close. Pretty easy. Though see the 2nd point. I never bother with them.
-I don't get your point about folders or how that relates to the control panel. They work exactly the same as in Windows 7. You open the control panel like you can in Windows 7. You just type. Conversely you can use Win + X on the desktop. Or find it in the charms menu under settings. (Win + C or more directly Win + I)
The control panel isn't on the desktop in Windows 7 so I really don't understand what you're saying. |
I used to work for an MP (junior Minister) as a researcher at the House of Commons so know a bit about this.
The mail they get is roughly divided into two categories. The first and most important is casework. This is the kind of thing where you write to your MP because you live social housing and your roof is falling in and the council or HA won't do anything about it. The MP will write to whoever concerned and kick a bit of arse to get things going. This is what they spend time looking at as it tends to drag on and is quite important. They will have a caseworker dealing with this.
The second type is what we are seeing here. What you have to note is that they get tons or mail like this on all the different issues coming to light in the press and laws being passed. This issue will be one of about 5 they are getting decent volumes of mail on this month. They may even get letters from opposing sides. People will have written in support or asking for harsher measures in the past. I used to read enough of a letter to identify the issue to compile them all together and batch out a mail merge (customising the first para in response). Now the party will already have a brief on this to save time so all they will do is take the brief and batch it out. This is what you are getting back.
Soooo what can you do? Two things. Avoid the mail filter by going to see your MP at their surgery. Making the same impassioned points in person is obviously going to be more effective. Plus you can debate their counter points directly. At worst they won't know much so won't have many counter points but will listen and look like they are taking your points on board. They won't make any commitments. They may then write to David Cameron on your behalf for a response, well done you just became a piece of casework. If they are backbenchers or Lab then you might have more of an impact or at least make them aware of the issue. This is direct face time with an MP even companies can't buy (well actually they do). If you get someone like Tom Watson he will just agree and probably tell you how he is fighting back.
The second is not the quality of mail but volume. You don't need to win a debate, just show support. If an MP received a thousand pieces of constituent mail in a month they would take note. That thousand represents many thousands of votes which is enough or a swing in many places. We used to shit our pants and anything about 200 a month. Local organisation helps with this type of lobbying. I used to attend weekly meetings in No 10 where all the researchers would debate ministers over up coming changes and feedback what resistance they were getting as well as the best counter arguments they couldn't deal with.
Example: The Moonies
Previously Sun Myung Moon was banned from entering the UK as the Unification Church was classed a a cult by the UK Gov. Moon was touring Europe and wanted to come to the UK. Moonies went to their MPs surgeries and asked that he be given access. MPs wrote to the Home Secretary and they reversed their position and let him enter in 2003 after about 30 years. My MP researched the issue as it genuinely interested her and lobbied for him to be able to visit. It wasn't a big issue so didn't need a big push but you get the point. |
Thus in honor of these new changes to society we should, no must, one by one weaken or otherwise defeat every limit to government power while simultaneously diffusing any individual protection with any practical relevance...
Sorry gonna rant a bit:
If you look at other surviving modern nation states' foundational documents, I think it is fair to say that our individual freedoms enshrined in our founding documents are the envy of the world. Most of the world isn't all that free and what freedom they have suffers from numerous caveats. Not to say that isn't the case also in the modern US, just to a lesser degree but our legal system is still at least theoretically integrated those concepts, like "innocent until proven guilty", "no unreasonable search and seizure" "unenumerated individual rights," etc...
The founders had the expectation that future peoples would amend these foundational documents if they were to decide particular parts were no longer relevant, instead at some point in our legal history it was observed that it was much easier to abandon any true modification of the word of the law and instead strike out on a new path more following the spirit of the law instead. This is the trend that has left our society skating on thin ice between both worlds and where virtually nothing legal is consistent, where everything is a measure of gray and powers that are unenumerated are assumed by the government, precisely what the majority of our founding fathers intended the documents to prevent.
If the document was redrafted today I think we can both agree that there would be unitary agreement among our political establishment that we must necessarily limit, punish and curtail dangerous individual "rights", for the good of everyone (as of-course we in fact have already.) They might argue forever about other details but I think they could come to rapid agreement on that particular issue.
It's important to note that the founders themselves had personally experienced unchecked political power and it's policies being British subjects where no such protections existed. Since the founding of our nation was defined in our victory in war against that imperial British power, it makes historical sense that they would be concerned that after all that bloodshed and terror that the system of government that they had fought to establish would result in the exact same status quo they had bled to resist. An unchallenged centralized power structure dominated by a "king," was precisely what they had been at war against. It is this that motivated them to attempt a new and different kind of government system which previously had never existed and that stood in stark contrast imperial Britain.
In that sense then, I would not want a more modern document and the current one is to be respected as something that would be politically inviable and impossible to pass today, (Imagine congress creating a new constitution, we would be in really big trouble if it passed... assuming they could ever find agreement,) yet this document is still the source of what rule of law exists today even though people don't like to recognize that fact. In it's relative absence I would say the modern system has devolved back towards a political tendency for strict hierarchy around which all power is centralized, dominated by a single individual at the peak of the pyramid.
Since, preventing this accumulation of unanswered power was ofcourse the primary motivation for how and why the founding fathers structured the government the way they did, and given the governments current trend I think the document becomes more and more relevant instead of less and less every year as you suggest. The constitution explicitly and exhaustively lays out what the powers of legitimate government shall be: a system involving a centralized government held in place by a system of check and balances on top of geographically localized states on top a background of individual unenumerated rights, in that order. The modern power structure seems to be attempting to restate these in the opposite order. |
but Tesla was a crazy schizophrenic who never completed any major project and wowed audiences with his electrical tricks. He never had any major accomplishment.
Oh god...
The AC motor? Radio? The popularization of AC current (which, in those days, made it possible to create one large power plant to supply thousands of homes, instead of having to have tiny coal-powered shitty power plants scattered around the city, polluting everything, providing DC through tons of wires which posed a great threat to everybody). These are all null and void?
Just because he had his quirks and was going out of his mind in his older days doesn't mean he never had any major accomplishments. |
What I can tell you, today, under 10CFR73.54 regulations, any system, structure, or component that is safety related, important to safety, security related, emergency response, important to grid protection, or deemed critical such that it's failure could directly or indirectly compromise any of the above, is under cyber security regulations.
For safety, reactor controls, and security, all assets required to directly and indirectly accomplish these objectives, are all behind a data diode or air gap, with all components inside the plant's protected or vital areas. |
I'm sure it probably works the same in most states, but here in central Texas, the police pretty much get away with whatever they want, and suing the city or police is pretty much impossible, especially in Austin, where police brutality is rife.
I had two rods put in my right arm 2 years ago. The consecutive months following, I had limited mobility in my arm and my range of motion was non-existent (as when they put in rods, they scrape off the muscle so it has to reattach). A month after my surgery, I was with some friends out on sixth street and where a cop tried to tell me I couldn't stand on the street. I obliged, but later on I had one foot down on the street and one on the side walk (non-chalantly-- I wasn't doing it to be disobedient). He came up and told me he would arrest me if I didn't listen to him. AS THIS WAS HAPPENING, some girls were jay-walking behind me, and when I brought it up, he said "worry about yourself". Anyways, I crossed the street later and he rode by and said, "Listen to your friends buddy" and my dumbass replied with "Leave me the fuck alone, I'm just trying to legally cross the street." He tackled me from behind, with my broken arm, and tried to put my right arm behind my back when it WOULDN'T even go past my hip. He kept trying to force it and each time I screamed and wreathed in pain. My friends watched as 3 cops were on me, with me pinned to the floor for 'resisting arrest', one guy trying to yank my arm back, me trying to counter him because my arm wasn't able to do that, and one guy with his knee in my head. I was charged for resisting arrest. In tears because of the pain in my arm, on the way to the station, another officer told me to 'quit crying like a little bitch'. On the police report, Officer Garza said "I pushed him in the chest with both hands" when I couldn't even lift a 2 pound weight with my right arm. The ticket got dismissed with the help of 3 grand and a lawyer, but that was about as much as we could do in terms of accountability.
Anyways, the point of that was to say the city or police won't be held accountable, just like they probably wouldn't be anywhere else. It was really not a smart move on the posters part, but in the end, no one on the other side will be held accountable. |
Some people miss the little page numbers at the bottom of the first page. I know I almost did, and really you get the gist of the whole thing from page 1. This is why I prefer seeing a long scroll bar so I know there's more. Interesting story though, and I can tell you from experience with the Texas judicial system(I live here) they're not going to give this one up easy under any circumstance. I got in a fight with my father and even after he admitted to the police I started it and that he had a weapon and I did not, I still sat in jail for 3 months and got 1 year probation. The prosecutor wanted me to have 3 years probation, but the judge looked at me in the court room and said "Wait wait wait... You're telling me you've been in jail three months?" "Yes ma'am." "And your father admitted to starting it and having a weapon?" "Yes ma'am." "Why the hell are you here!?" She took the prosecutor back into her chamber for a minute and came back, gave me time served, reduced my probation, waived all court fees, and waived my probation fees for 6 months. |
Given the way society works today, the police absolutely have to investigate something like this. If they didn't people would crucify them if it turned out not to be just a poor taste comment and was a sign of something to come they didn't act on.
The problem is that police need to do it in a responsible manner and without prejudice. From the article:
> The Austin police officer who wrote up the subsequent report noted: "all caps to emphasize his anger or rage."
We may not have context from the report, but it looks like the police officer is passing judgement based upon his analysis of the comment. He's not reporting on irate behavior he personally witnessed, he's interpreting the intent of a comment from a screen shot (much like I'm interpreting his comment without context, except it's unlikely my interpretation will unnecessarily turn his life upside down).
The flip side is that while I don't know much about the case aside from what's in the article, it's possible that the responding police got there and realized "wow, this is just a dumbass kid making a stupid comment, there's no threat here," but because as a society we question any grey area judgement we don't like, the cops pretty much had to run the kid through the ringer just to protect their asses. So while I question the police officers credentials to analyze the comment, I recognize that if he didn't throw everything in there he likely could have been at risk if he was wrong. |
This is fucking stupid. First of all, fuck the paranoid lady who called the police because of a comment on Facebook. Was it any of your business? No.
Secondly and into the bulk of what my post is about: generational differences. In the 70s and 80s you didn't have to worry about some kid coming into class and blasting everyone away with his grandmother's 9mm, people back then had the common sense to carry .357s (joke). Seriously though, you had kids come to school with their shotguns in their trucks because they were out hunting earlier (primarily in the Southern US, but it applies universally). Fast forward to post-Columbine, now you have older generations who are appalled and can't believe this type of scenario can occur and the new generations who legitimately have to get used to it. It seems like I can't turn around without some psycho having shot a couple of kids at school. I remember playing a video game online with some friends when I was about twelve. The game was a Columbine version of Pokemon. While the older generations of Americans will scream to the top of their lungs this is fucked up, this is how my generation dealt with it. We had to get used to the violence, get used to the psychopaths, and become desensitized to it. Take for example Eminem, who references Columbine is his rap lyrics. It has become a part of our culture and there is no other way to deal with the fact that there are some psychos out there who will just let loose other than by accepting it and desensitizing yourself to it.
Where I stand on gun control. It is our fucking right as Americans to bear arms. Switzerland did not get invaded in WWII because they had an armed populace. The last time an unarmed populace was unconcerned about their government oppressing them, they were invaded and marched into cattle cars. I have a right to protect myself from the government, an invader, a burglar or rapist or anyone who will put my family in danger. Bearing arms comes with common fucking sense, I won't take a .357 to a bar and wave it around. I have no desire to kill someone and neither does most of the sane populace.
Instead of pointing the finger at the weapon or the kids that commit the crimes, why the fuck don't we address the real issue? It comes down to one fucking word, bullying. You have administrators who turn their back on kids who are legitimately tormented and even when they do realize there is a situation, they do a piss poor job of handling it.
I remember I was bullied in middle school, I was short and had glasses so I was an easy target. There was this girl who was slightly weird who sat across from me one day during group work. There was a flag hanging down next to our desk and I made the comment "cool I can hide behind this from the teacher!" to which she replies "good so I won't have to see your ugly face." (oohhh burn). So I'm like wtf.. "Well at least I'm not as ugly and as weird as you." So fast forward, two hours later, I get called into the assistant principles office and berated for calling this sweet, innocent, and smart girl "ugly." When I explained my side of the story, it was completely discredited. So now, I'm not only tormented by other kids, I am punished when I stand up for myself AND I can't go to the appropriate resources. My coping mechanism was fortunately (for the kids at school) to internalize these issues and ended up fixing them years later. That being said, I completely sympathize with the kids who get bullied and blast up their school. It is so easy to point the finger at them, but it takes a real fucking person to realize that at some point somebody, somewhere, did something to cause the timer to start ticking on the bomb or just didn't fucking listen so they felt trapped and had no other way to respond.
Edit: grammar and
Fuck you to my assistant principle. |
Am I the only one who thinks the kids a moron? They made the argument about freedom of speech, but Freedom of speech != callous disregard to the implications of your words. Yeah, the cops have blundered this case, broken protocol, and screwed the kid royally, and he should be released.
But at the same time, he has a history of threatening people, indicated extremely low self worth, and seems to be at least mildly antisocial. If this were the other way around, and the police had ignored his comment based on "oh its just facebook, he can't mean it" and he had actually shot up a school, the reports would have been: well why wasn't he detained, he had all the warning signs.
People need to stop treating a keyboard and an Internet connection as a free pass to be an asshole. Words have meaning, and you wouldn't go around telling people who bump into you on the straight that you're going to rape their mother. |
Not surprised, that sounds about right for the cost of one £10ph employee for 30 mins work once you factor in all the support costs and a profit margin of £5 or so. |
This is the biggest issue the United States faces today don't you think? If only we could make this the biggest issue on reddit. Technophiles (is this the right term?) are a major feature of reddit (and the original reason for the website to be founded) so it'd fit right into what people generally care about here.
Corporations have our balls in a juicemaker and I wish more people were aware of this; the public (millennials and baby boomers all are rather inept at worldly knowledge and politics) suffers from our education system which almost unique in the world doesn't make sure the children learn philosophy, logic, the ability to build an argument from the ground up based on evidence and reason, geography/international politics, and most humanities. People aren't aware and major news outlets are still trusted by people! These news outlets are owned by some of America's largest corporations (and so by extension "the world's largest-") so as long as people continue to tune into them they will continue to send out a constant stream of partisan propaganda delivered by actors and "popular experts slash celebs".
SIX CORPORATIONS OWN 90% OF AMERICA's MEDIA! SIX COMANIES. OLIGARCHY. To keep the status quo, the hyper wealthy and their corporations work at dividing the public, keeping them dumbed down, and making them blame eachother for the mess the rich have made of our democracy. It's NOT because they're evil and the whole thing is a massive conspiracy planned beginning to end. It's because they are greedy and massively self centered with similar interests and friendships (it's not a big club); and at the end of the day they don't care. They just don't care. |
I'm a developer that is experienced in creating healthcare exchanges and also happen to work for the company that was hired to fix this disastrous website. Take whatever inference you'd like out of that, as I would never violate the NDAs that I signed =)
Hypothetically, the thing that took this and drove it right into the shitter was the big blank check these companies got to do whatever they wanted. Hypothetically, this led them to hire a ton of offshore teams to maximize their profits even more. Hypothetically, this caused a giant clusterfuck of terribly written indian code. Anyone that has worked with Indian offshore development knows that they are the equivalent to factory workers...they get a requirement, write bare minimum basic code that will pass the requirements at a bare minimum and kick it back. This works, except when you try to put tens of thousands of these independently thought out parts together and it all shits the bed. There's a reason why you hire good engineers who are conscious of the entire project as a whole and making all the code parts work together, but big business heads seem to think "it's just a website, lets just hire the cheapest folk. code is code right?"
Hypothetically, the end result once things were all slapped together was that shit simply did not work together. On an exchange you have LOTS of moving parts. You need to get the person's info from their SSN, that's one system you gotta pull data from. Then you gotta get the plans from each carrier in their area. That's 5ish more different systems you need to pull data from depending on the area. Then you have to look up their doctors, current prescriptions, that's 2 more systems. Then you gotta create their session in your own system. We're up to what, 9, 10 different systems you're interacting with? and this is simply to login and start browsing plans, nevermind fucking shopping yet! So, when you have that many moving parts, all written by people that could give a shit less, they don't come together well. Hypothetically, we called the whole system mousetrap, because if you've ever played the game mousetrap there's a bunch of parts that do overly complex things in weird ways and it sounds/seems like a cool idea, but in the end it works 1/10 times. |
no, the fault lies with management attempting to use cheap unqualified labor in india, then attempting to hand off to devs in the states that were so overburdened with technical debt and WTFs that they continued to add band aids on top of bandaids. When the myriad of teams tried to assemble the myriad of poorly written WTF code, it failed disastrously and you're way too deep in the woods to attempt to fix. Most of it was completely trashed and rewritten from scratch.
Of course the people behind these hiring decisions were awarded ridiculous amounts of money to begin with, and were allowed free reign to continue to get more money as they needed. |
50+ here, the red scare is over.
It's less about age, and more about ideology. Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Muslim, etc., are buzzwords intended for ultraconservatives to hear and react to, regardless of age. Yes, some of the elders are stuck in the past, but it's always been this way. As with each previous generation, the elders vote at a MUCH higher rate than the youngers, and Caucasians turn out to vote at rates of 5-10 times that of minorities (see [here]( |
It is not a free market when you're demanding the use of government force - which is EXACTLY what the current net neurality advocates want. You want to insert the force of government into private property (the ISP) to MAKE THEM DO WHAT YOU WANT. That's not freedom and it's not OK.
A much better way to solve this problem is to change the various laws that grant restrictive access to the last mile via sweetheart deals between the ISPs and the local muncipalities. This would would lower the barriers to entry by other players thereby creating real competition and free markets. But this is a LOCAL matter, not a Federal one, and there is no enumerated power of the Federal government that could even remotely be construed to give it standing in this matter.
The truth is that the net neutral community wants it both ways. You want to use government force to invade private property but you also want best-in-class service and the two are inherently at odds with one another. If a provider of goods and services cannot price them according to the relative demand, then price is no longer a signal of scaricty. Incremental capital will either not flow at all or flow slowly for the build out of the necessary infrastructure to give you the perfomance and capacity you want. So, in this case, if you force net neutrality down the ISP's throats you'll get "equal" packet delivery at the price of NOTHING being optimized for speed or capacity. Why should they? If they can't charge more for superior delivery, why bother building the plant that makes it possible? This is the problem with all
*-equality schemes, business, technical, or social. They are indeed equal. Equally mediocre.
You get what you're willing to pay for. (And most of you need to take an Econ 101 class...) |
I hear this a lot, particularly here on Reddit.
Raising a child is a MONUMENTAL undertaking. Government benefits barely cover the essentials, if they do at all. The problem isn't with people having more kids to get more benefits, the problem is when those benefits aren't then spent on the children for whom the benefits were intended.
If we want to reduce the abuse of those benefits, we need to keep tabs on where they go and how they are used. Everyone has a story about the welfare queen in the Cadillac, but the part that's left out is that the kids are in torn clothing and have had Kraft dinner for the past year, despite clothing and food subsidies. |
Because making promises is literally the tactic needed to win political elections. What astounds me is not that he has done nothing that he promised, but that so many people actually expected a politician to follow through with his functionally impossible promises. I'm fairly cynical but my view is based more off of the historic truth that this game has been played for all of recorded history. I think this kind of question speaks more to people's lack of understanding when it comes to the actual power and authority that the president actually holds. |
Because, in terms of actions taken, the President of the United States is the weakest position in the entire federal government. He can say anything he likes, but if Congress is not on board in any way, (indeed, obstructionist and contrary) there is no traction. Congress retains what is referred to as, the "[power of the purse](
People often ascribe Guantanamo as a broken promise to Obama. You would think that closing a base would be easy, but, like anything, it costs money to transfer prisoners to supermax facilities in the US, and move equipment off Cuba. Congress refused to fund Guantanamo's closure in 2009
But back to the point: I'm not willing to count him out, just yet. Much of the federal government's leadership positions even put a hold on Wheeler's confirmation because he wanted, quote, "greater assurance from President Obama’s nominee that the agency wouldn’t require more funding disclosures for political TV ads. Cruz has said that such free speech should be protected." (Source: [Washington Post]( Indeed, I think we're fortunate that Obama was able to get someone confirmed who wasn't at least, some kind of complete industry shill.
That said, we have this fortunate bit of news to look at: [99% of comments to the FCC favor Net Neutrality](
That's not a slim margin.
That's not a split opinion.
That's not even a landslide.
That's almost a statistical error.
In the light of such an overwhelming amount of public... ah, crap, what's the word. Outcry? Demand? Sentiment? Whatever the word, in light of this, there's really no way that Wheeler can do anything OTHER than uphold Net Neutrality without a ton of backlash. Whatever his politics or goals, the decision has more or less been taken out of his hands. Score one for the clicktivists.
The other good piece of news is that Wheeler himself, in a speech at a DC-area startup incubator, has declared that [“meaningful competition for high-speed wired broadband is lacking and Americans need more competitive choices for faster and better Internet connections.”](
No shit, Sherlock.
In conclusion: |
Finally some sense. The only changes Obama can effect are through convincing allies in Congress to propose legislation or controversial executive orders. Even if he wanted to hire the right people to run different bureaus effectively and autonomously (say the FCC), he needs to get that person confirmed (and does one think the Senate, which is in Comcast's pocket, is going to confirm a fervent Net Neutrality anti-monopolist?).
He can legitimately, sincerely want or believe in the things he has espoused, but politics is complicated and messy and I can't blame him for falling short on a few of his more radical, difficult promises.
(edit:) |
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