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Doesn't matter.
Here's the deal - this shit has been going on since 2003. Any possible political candidate for replacing the current shit-on-us-quo will have had their communications recorded, either via phone or online.
Do you know anyone who hasn't said something on the phone or online that, if brought to complete light and thrown into the spotlight of a political campaign, couldn't be used against them? That couldn't be used to blackmail them? This is the hurdle that any reform candidate is now facing.
Take it a step further - the shit-on-us quo candidate doesn't have to worry about this, because they're not subject to the same rules. Their secrets are hidden, while their opponents can easily be leaked to the press at point.
A press, I might add, that is full subject to the same pressures our reform candidate would be.
Everyone, everywhere, has dirt on them, or dirt that, with a little rephrasing or restructuring by a multi-million dollar media machine, makes them unpalatable as a potential political candidate. This is the cost of a surveillance society. Potential change from outside the system is effectively neutered... unless...
The data is completely transparent. Aka all surveillance is in the public (and absolutely public) record. Anyone can access anyone's record. We all get to see each other's secrets, and we judge the whole person for political office and power, not just the parts they can show on TV. There is no such thing as privacy, no such thing as secrets.
This would require (and hopefully engender) a massive cultural shift. One towards more tolerance, one that accepted complete and true diversity, one where the rule of law by very definition would have to be eased away from stupid punitive sentences based on making an example of the people you can catch (because now you can catch anyone and everyone) and more towards a system of rehabilitation, mercy, and understanding.
That's my bit of sparkly utopia for this post, because I know that, at least as our cultures exist now, the hate people feel for other's differences and "secret lives" most often outweighs their fear of judgement of their own failings.
And it won't happen that way, of course, not unless an Army of Anon manage to hack the NSA and expose everything or something dramatic like that. There's no benefit for the powers that be to open the system. And honestly, no matter how good the hackers might be, unless they break the system open in such a way that it can never be closed, it will be a futile effort.
Another thing: Snowden is successful right now (and still alive) because the system is already entrenched, and really doesn't fear him. His exposure of what's going on is something we knew in our hearts already, and actually serves the status-quo. After all, if it's been going on 10+ years already, it's not like it's something we haven't lived with, and it certainly hasn't affected our lives (to our knowledge), so it won't be something anyone is really going to fight over.
Instead, it's drama. Something to watch and be entertained by, so say "tsk tsk" and then go back to work, because now we KNOW that if we do go out of our cubes and offices and fast-food counters and hit the streets and tear shit up, they know. They'll be waiting for us with cuffs when we walk back in. And it won't be war - it will be simple imprisonment, which in many ways, is much, much worse... at least when you lose in war, you had the fleeting satisfaction of actually fighting.
Snowden wasn't a whistleblower. He was a messenger. Don't fool yourself into thinking that his revelations and his story are a call to action. They're a call for surrender. |
There is a very informative video about this topic (Why could suveillance ever be bad) [available on youtube]( Unfortunately it is in german, but has very good english subtitles.
**Edit I managed to extract the english subtitles. Full credits go to [manniac]( and his Video [Überwachungsstaat - Was ist das?](
Surveillance state - what is that, anyway?
A surveillance state is defined as a state which legally surveils all actions, locations, and friends of its citizens, in order to prevent crimes or in order to solve them faster.
That sounds like a quite good idea for now: Crimes are being prevented and everyone is more secure.
Nevertheless the term has negative connotations - why is that so?
One of the most important tasks of a state is to provide security for its citizens.
At the same time, the state has to allow them liberties so that everyone can live their life individually. Security and liberty complement each other, but also put each other in their place, because liberty always goes hand in hand with risks, and security always limits liberties. That's why in democracies a compromise has been established, which unites the best of both worlds. In a surveillance state, though, liberty is over-limited by security needs. And that's already its biggest problem. Recently, this topic was in the news regarding the so called data retention, which aimed at saving all telephone and internet connection data for six months for the fight against terrorism. And although the retention and its benefit were heavily controversial, and were forbidden by the Federal Constitutional Court, today this data retention seems almost harmless compared to PRISM and Tempora, the two surveillance programmes of the British and U.S. American governments, which affect everyone in the world - including us in Germany. That's because those surveillance programmes not only save connection data, but also simply everything everyone of us does on the Internet, which goes through British or U.S. American servers. Every text and every picture - literally everything. Even that you're watching this video here right now.
Some types of surveillance have already been possible in Germany for many years, for example wire-tapping of telephone calls, chats or e-mails in order to fight terrorism and organized crime. For this, in specific cases judges can order so-called eavesdropping operations. But what would happen if from now on we surveilled simply EVERY telephone call, EVERY chat and EVERY e-mail without any suspicion? Couldn't we prevent crime and terrorism for all time then? Maybe for a short time, but it's more likely that advocates of this idea underestimate the inventiveness of criminals. Those who don't want to be brought to light will always find a way, for example by strong encryption or personal conversations at locations where the surveillance state has no access.
And now the only victims are completely normal, innocent citizens, who from now on are being watched by the state in everything they do. Anyone who ever got a friend request from their mum, teacher or employer on Facebook can maybe understand how it feels to be surveilled. Do I really want my parents seeing the tagged pictures my friends made of me smoking? And do I want to get caught by my employer online when I'm perhaps not saying nice things, when I'm actually running a temperature and should be in bed? Tumblr and 9GAG are full of examples in which careless people harshly criticise their employer, then get fired by them in the comment area. Or stoner confessions, replied to by their parents with: 'Get your ass home. We gotta talk.'
A surveillance state, which is always reading along principally is nothing else but that - except that in a surveillance state one doesn't have the choice to decline its friend request.
What results from such surveillance is self-censorship:
Everything one says or does, what could be controversial, people will keep to themselves in order to avoid possible problems - even though they will assume that what they are doing is totally legal. So, even critical discussions and statements will be limited out of fear. Advocates of surveillance argue that someone who has nothing to hide, has nothing to fear. But unfortunately that idea contains a number of mistakes. It's about balance between state and citizens. That means that the citizen has something to fear, if he has something to hide. Is that also true for secret services whose name shows that they have something to hide?
Why should someone assume that the state's secrets are always legitimate while at the same time, secrets of citizens are in principle not? That surveillance could be inconvenient for a single person is also ignored, which brings us back to the 'has nothing to fear' part. A completely innocent person has indeed to fear inconvenient 'surveillance'. And what about governmental sanctions like custody? In Great Britain, people can be detained for up to fourteen days without being charged. Should the suspicion turn out to be unfounded, there won't be any compensation for the imprisonment. Bad luck. The same holds true for Germany, where due to probable cause computer hardware and data of companies and private persons is confiscated - something that happens frequently! And even if the people concerned turn out to be innocent, they are left with the damage, because police can keep confiscated computer hardware and data for months and even years. The statement '... has nothing to hide' assumes that the only one at fault is the citizen - not the state.
And it is also possible that as laws toughen, what used to be unproblematic, now, suddenly, raises suspicion. Or that a democratic system turns into a dictatorship, what may be currently happening in Hungary. The statement '... nothing to hide' assumes, that the state always is right - even if it is
mistakening or abusing its power.
In the beginning of 2012 the Briton Leigh Van Bryan tweeted about his upcoming journey to the U.S that he wanted to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe'. by 'destroy America', of course, he meant to party and get drunk. The US immigration department which obviously scans twitter for phrases like these, couldn't take a joke, searched his luggage for spades and sent him and his female companion in handcuffs first to prison and then back to Britain. Even worse is what happened to Justin Carter, a teenager from Texas, who was called 'fucked up in the head' by a Facebook friend after a match in 'League of Legends'. His sarcastic answer, 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts. LOL. JK.', not only got him put into jail for 6 months but now, he also has to fear a jail term of ten years.
What was meant to be a harmless joke is loved to be misunderstood by sarcasm-resistant authorities, who follow them with serious consequences. In that case, is there any room left for sarcasm? And what effect will it have on your liberty and self-censorship if you fear that what was once private - every word you write and say - is being checked by authorities for possible law suits, and therefore possibly misunderstood?
Andrej Holm, a scientific academic in Berlin's Humboldt University, got attention from the police after using the words 'gentrification' and 'precarisation' in an online article. The exact same words appeared in a confession after an assault on police cars in Berlin. For that reason, Holm and his family were heavily surveilled for months before he was arrested in his apartment, wearing nothing but underpants, and finally he was taken into custody for three weeks. Holm proved to be innocent, however, the damage made was irreversible. He now has to deal with the state having deeply documented his intimate life for months, including that of his family, and that they continued to do so for some time after his release.
You don't even need to pursue the authorities' attention, if you have the wrong name, for example. Three James Robinsons from the USA had to experience what it means to be on a terror watchlist. The first is a pilot, the second a lawyer, and the third a 5 year old boy. And all three have been suspected to be terrorists and had to endure intense inspection or even not being allowed to fly.
Although all three protested against such treatment, nothing changed. Only after they 'changed' their name in bookings - like 'Jim' for 'James' - were they allowed through. What is a terror watchlist worth, if it punishes the wrong people, and what conclusions can be made on the reliability of other forms of surveillance?
A further problem is the abuse of data - and that does not only mean the sale of private addresses for advertising purposes, as is perfectly legal in Germany's registry offices, but also the usage of private information discovered through spying such as affairs, sexuality or political convictions.
Who knows about your private life has power over you, and nobody knows this better than the victims of communist East Germany's intelligence service or that of another German rogue state.
The German police enlisted known and suspected gays in the 19th century to ease prosecution under a law forbidding gay sex. On 1933, those lists came into the hands of the Nazis, who first tightened the law, and then took ten thousands of men into psychiatric custody and castrated or killed them in death camps.
Nobody thought this would happen as they started the so-called 'rose lists', so this became an important memorial against data collection. Concerning Nazis - what opportunities would the jews have had to escape from Hitler's Reich with false documents, if there had been biometric passports and networked surveillance systems on every airport and border back then? Aren't we already preparing for the future prosecution of minorities with this?
Politicians, such as the former German minister Wolfgang Schäuble, always rejected such comparisons with the message, that a fall-back into the Nazi's system in today's Germany would be unthinkable. But how can he be sure that here in twenty or thirty years' time no other rogue state
would be established like now in Hungary, or that Germany will not be taken over by some angry stranger?
A state of law must not only care about security - it has to take care that its methods will never be abused against its citizens. A surveillance state is also described by George Orwell in his novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four': A state forcing its citizens to act within the law by total surveillance, controlling language, suppressing sexuality and staging war and terror to justify surveillance. The saying of surveillance critics, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four was not supposed to be an instruction manual' is meant seriously.
Many of Orwell's fictions became reality: The programmes PRISM and TEMPORA are surveilling
everything you do on the internet. Because of GPS and smart-phones, your location can be queried at any time. Sexuality is being suppressed to prevent crimes which are often entirely unrelated. Cameras surveil public space and identify license plate numbers, faces or even 'suspicious behaviour' automatically. War reports are manipulated, and public opinion is controlled by it, like for example the alleged 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq.
The pursuit to protect people can turn out to be more damaging than any damage avoided. Permanent surveillance restricts our liberty, auses self-censorship and paranoia and costs a
lot of tax money without being shown to be useful. It's likely that surveillance will rise within the
coming years. The reason why every private conversation in the world is not yet being surveilled is not due to respecting privacy - it is simply not possible, yet. But technology will progress enough soon, and the question is how we will deal with it. Do we want to live in a world, in which security and liberty are equally valued? Or in a surveillance state, in which liberty itself is suspicious and has been suppressed in the pursuit of security? What do you think? Is surveillance good or bad for our society, or are we already on the way into the surveillance state? Drop me your opinion into the comments!
If you liked the video, I'd be happy for a 'thumbs up' - and I'd also be happy if you share it,
for more people to see what a surveillance state is. |
I have an RT and can't imagine anyone preferring an iPad. I mean, it's almost a full computer, it has desktop, you can have MS word (which as a writer I love, especially with the full keyboard. Also, I find it looks much more like the future--it's got live tiles, meaning they display today's headlines on my news app without being a widget and the shape and design of the actual thing--the glossy black front and mat black finish with the little kickstand just reminds be of the future, whereas the iPad looks just like the little iPod I bought years ago. Progression excites me and stuff when it comes to technology, but I suppose if you're afraid of change stick to your iPad. |
So when was the last time you created an android project using ADT that can also run on a linux desktop? When was the last time you created an iOS project that ran on OS X?
They actually did do it. All of Microsoft platforms are based on the .net framework. You can take your C# code, put it in a class library and share it between projects.
The reason you have platform specific targets is because different platforms have different UI requirements. Running a phone app meant for a 4.5 inch screen on a XBOX with a 60in screen is not the same experience.
[ |
Firstly;
PS4 is 9th. XB1 is 37th.
Secondly:
Goto xbox.com and you'll see the pre-order (reserve now) redirects you to microsoftstore.com. Pre-order from playstation.com presents you a list of retailers, Amazon is the first on the list. |
Yes, the DA is often an elected office, making the DA a politician who has a direct conflict of interest between:
Doing his job properly, and,
Doing things that will get him reelected (which usually translates to being "tough on crime/drugs").
The same goes for some (not all) US judges. If you wouldn't trust a Senator, Representative or President, then shouldn't trust an elected Sherriff, Judge or District Attorney.
Of course appointing your judges/govt. prosecutors carries it's own problems (nepotism, cronyism), but I would argue that it's easier to deal with nepotism and cronyism in appointed positions than it is to deal with conflicts of interest in elected positions because elected positions are only answerable to (stupid, naive and apathetic) voters whilst appointed guys can be fired by their boss or government inquiries.
However the same doesn't go for members of the country's legislature and head of state/government. Those positions should be derived directly or indirectly from the popular vote of the people.
Edit:
By indirect I mean the various kinds of proportional representation (the Senators in Australia's senate are not directly elected but rather seats are assigned depending on the percent of votes your party got, and in New Zealand and Germany they use mixed-member-proportional representation where half the house is local reps the other half of seats are allocated according to the percent of vote your party got) - and the fact that in some parliamentary systems the voters elect local representatives and then the representatives elect one of their number to be the Prime Minister/head of government, rather than the people voting directly for the head of state/government.
This is also why the Electoral College is unacceptable - because it allows someone who lost the popular vote to win the EC vote and become President. This has happened 4 times in US history, most recently with Dubya vs Gore (GWB lost the popular vote by over 500,000 votes yet still became the leader of your nation).
It's also why having hereditary lords (who inherit their position in the House by right of birth), and "lords spiritual" (Bishops in the Anglican Church) in the UK House of Lords is unacceptable.
But I digress... |
It wasn't that long ago Bill Clinton was asked to leave because he got a blowjob. A blowjob , for Christ's sake. No one was harmed, no national crisis, no resulting divorce, and the "victim" gets $4million in compensation. The economy was fine, there was no terrorism or national security... I'm not American, so I'm sure someone can come up with a list of problems in America under the Clinton admin, but I digress.
Relatively speaking, not even that long ago that Nixon was asked to leave because he knew about a major burglary cover-up. Even with Watergate, it wasn't like anyone was hurt. You could argue semantics and talk about abstracts, but if you think about the fact that politicians and governments of today literally get away with murder, it's a joke.
The reason I don't care about any of this shit anymore is because there really is no such thing as accountability, or transparency anymore. There was a time when I'd read the news and say "no way!" when I'd read our Prime Minister had just abolished environmental protection of all lakes, was privatizing our penal system, wanted to deregulate our banks and wanted to sell our oil (in bulk. Like whole aquifers of it) to China to pay our national debt. I'd think, holy shit! Ra! Ra!
Pick up a picket sign somewhere and get BUSY. I'd call my friends, we'd talk about how he's the devil.
Then it would come out, cold-hard evidence, that this prick had rigged the election. Electoral fraud! Get that jackass outta' here!
Nope. The next day he's spending $1billion dollars building a giant, indoor fake lake in some of the most beautiful cottage country in Canada next to dozens of beautiful, real lakes. He built it for him and his friends to have a meeting.
Mother gets laid off as government worker to "cut on expenses" and the next day he's renting pandas from China for $10 million to take a few photos.
But one day, I realized...
There's nothing that can be done about it.
You can be "taken care of" now with the press of a button or the flick of a switch. Someone could publish a HD, color video of Obama/Bush/Harper/Putin/Cameron/Merkel/Whoever pushing the hypothetical button themselves and laughing about it...
And there's still nothing that can be done about it.
If you think there is, you're an fool.
Whistleblowers getting sent to jail.
Banks setting up for their next big paycheck.
I just do not give a shit anymore.
This is also why I left the West.
I think when you live on the other side of the world, you have a moment of clarity where you see how much propaganda (from the left as much as the right) is being forced down your throat, getting you caught up in all of these social melodramas while big-business continues as usual.
The system of checks and balances is gone.
Make peace with it.
keep downloading torrents.
Keep smoking weed.
Keep searching for ladyboy porn.
Keep screwing with your credit company as much as you can get away it.
And ignore it. They only care about the people who care about them.
For god's sakes, stop sharing it all on FB,
And lastly,
A friend of mine who lives here with no intent to return summed this whole thing up pretty well. If you live in some countries, I don't know which ones because I've only lived in Canada and Japan, you have a police and a government that is generally reactionary rather than precautionary. That is to say, if someone robs a bank the police are dispatched and the robber is maintained vs. some countries where the police patrol the streets looking for a robbery to take place.
You have some places where police consider no arrests for the day a cause for celebration vs. some places where police officers have quotas or (and I've heard this come directly out of a police officer's mouth in Canada) you have some who have a slow day and decide to go arrest some hookers to save face, kill time, etc.
America, Canada, Parts of Europe... and I don't even know where else, have finally gotten to a safe zone where it is public knowledge they are exploiting their own people, actively searching to punish their own people and the issues you think they really cared about when you elected your leaders are so far off the radar...
They legalized weed, and gave you gay marriage.
Awesome.
That's like getting a 50 cent / hr. raise to shut you up while your boss' bonus is near what you made that year (and I'm a pothead, and I'm gay, and I said it). |
Ah now I think I understand what you want. Why "idiot talk"? Do you not like his voice or what exactly rustling your jimmies? Painfully slow? It's 6 minutes. He presents some information using analogies which are also funny. Yes, for the masses, as you so put it. Unfortunately, not everyone is as smart as you.
If you want more information as to why first-past-the-post-voting is inferior to other forms, may I suggest Google? There is a plethora of information at your fingertips, which your amazing brain can absorb in a matter of minutes and you will be more intelligent. May I suggest starting with [first-past-the-post-voting entry on Wikipedia]( to educate you on the system, then when you understand that, you can go on to read the various [reddit posts which discuss advantages and disadvantages of this type of voting system]( If that isn't sufficient, try /r/AskReddit.
P.S. I wasn't trying to insult you, but you on the other hand, are dishing out insults to someone who is trying to spread information, probably without even giving him a chance. |
Nokia ruined themselves by not being ahead of/responding to iPhone early enough.
Nokia had a touch phone prototype with a single button, similar to what iphone is...years before apple released theirs, but for some reason they didnt go for it.
Thats where it all whent wrong, since iphone was released, it's been playing catchup, and just now are starting to release models that are close or superior to other top tier phones.
Now Microsoft may (most likely) have seen this as a chance to get a big and well known hardware vendor for cheap, but for all we know, Nokia would have gone bankrupt if it wasn't for Microsoft and their financial aid in return for Windows Phone exclusivity and deep control. |
As other people mentioned, Nokia ruined itself. Elop just gathered pieces for MS. Nokia was, I guess, arrogant behemoth with leading market share and didn't adapt quickly to changing markets. GOOG acted quicker.
Nokias symbian was brilliant in its time, I had multiple Symbian phones when majority of US still sported flip phones. Then awesome N900 with awesome Maemo Linux on board. Too bad Nokia abandoned this project, and was neglecting it. Then I had high hopes for MeeGo, but I guess it was just a little too late. Nokia failed to create vast ecosystem, and without it Meego is just yet another Maemo, with just enthusiasts supporting the platform. |
There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim in this article that Mr. Elop was incentivized upon being hired to tank the share price of the company. Zero, zilch, none. There is evidence that once the Company was experiencing hardship and a suppressed share price that he was then incentivized to find strategic alternatives for the Company (a generally good business move, no?).
What it comes down to are the Performance Awards and Options that Mr. Elop received upon being hired in 2010. You can see those here . As you can see the option awards the Mr. Elop received upon being hired are still underwater despite the deal entered into with Microsoft. The exercise price for the 500,000 options he received at hire is EUR 7.59. Currently Nokia is trading at EUR 4.91. What this means is that those options he received upon being hired carry absolutely no value currently and won’t unless the stock price of the company rises above the exercise price of EUR 7.59.
Now let’s look at those performance awards. He received between 75,000 to 300,000 performance shares that would be delivered to him based on the Company’s performance between his hire date in 2010 and the end of 2012. The performance under these shares was measured as Average Annual Net Sales Growth, and EPS. If the Company wanted him to tank the share price why would they incentivize him to grow sales and EPS? And since 2012 has ended we can actually go and look up how many of those awards he was granted were actually delivered to him. The answer? None. Nokia’s performance between 2010 and 2012 was so bad that they couldn’t give him any of the performance shares that he received upon being hired. Even though the Microsoft deal is on the table he will still never see any value from those performance shares. See footnote 3 on page 172 [Link]( |
You can't really take a concept like this and apply the sentence: "Businesses aren't very interested in the long run". I've recently transferred from the private sector of business to a very large corporate setting, and there's a lot more to it than that. In a private business, hell yea, put those light bulbs in and make the changes necessary... That's just common sense. It's when you try to apply that to a large company that it gets pretty muddy. Most are contractually obligated to use those kinds of light bulbs. You make large changes in all of your stores like that and it starts becoming a new line item on your corporate budget. Then you start getting into quarter-end summaries and it's effect on stock prices since it's a publicly-traded company... Blah blah blah. |
This is not talking about the Chrome browser to my understanding, it is discussing the older 'browser' - I forget what it was actually called. But it is a seperate application from the Chrome browser (I was running both on my galaxy nexus, never opened the default browser once getting the chrome browser installed). |
Personally, I am very much in favour of young children learning what an algorithm is and how programs are created. I believe that it is important that they understand how programs work from an early age, and don't just turn into kids that can use a program.
I can see that many people may think that 5yrs old is a tad young to be getting into this, but in the early stages (5-7yrs old) they will be mainly learning what and how a basic algorithm is and how to create one.
I hear a lot of people saying these days that kids (7-16yrs old for example) are great with computers and such, which is true, but only to a very fine point. They may be able to figure out how to start using a device as it has an intuitive GUI, and are also able to do the very basics on a PC, but ask them why it works, what is inside the PC that makes it work, or how to secure/clean an infected machine and then you will find that only a small majority can actually use a computer. |
Many of the lower tier cable channels don't have crazy budgets. They rely on cheap productions and reruns for content, and likely get the majority of their revenue from advertising. Their advertising rate is very dependent on being able to say their channel potentially reaches x-millions of households, so a la cart pricing would almost assuredly mean the end of the smaller channels. But removing these channels isn't going to reduce the total cost of the industry much b/c they were never taking that big of a slice from the overall pie.
Most people won't miss the smaller channels, of course, but they're also not going to see a large reduction in their costs. |
The real question is at the end. Comments and complaints come next.
In Florida, we must suck off the teat (it is spelled "teat" but is pronounced "tit", damn American mangling of English) of Brighthouse Cable and Colon Inspection. When we tried to reduce our service to a lower tier, they fought tooth and nail to retain us.
Skipping over much phone conversation, they offered to reduce our service and give us faster internet service. 30 megabits vs 20, yeah big fucking deal. We are paying less though which is what mattered. |
Competition in the cable industry literally solves every problem we're up against. Don't even bother with putting the blame on Comcast and AT&T, blame your congressman. They're the ones that TOOK the bribes. I love how everyone gets so mad at corporations for lobbying into unfair advantages and no one bothers to blame the legislators who fuck everyone over for a stack of cash. Oh wait, nevermind, I fucking hate that. Companies will always try and buy an edge. Its the most basic duty of a legislator not to take bribes for unfair treatment and yet the idiot public votes them in again every damn term. |
Human mind + Willpower + Capability = Action
A good action is still good. A bad action is still bad.
Technology is only a quicker means to achieve the action.
There's nothing in AI that is inherently more constructive/destructive than a human doing the same thing, it's just the AI will do it quicker. |
ISP's sending through any cease and desists they receive while doing a good job of keeping the recipients unknown. (Send a cease and desist to the owner of this IP). I know of only one successful lawsuit that was against a Canadian ISP called Tek Savvy. They fought a long time in court trying to protect the users but in the end they lost and where forced to disclose the information of the users in question. |
considering i have a fake facebook with a completely random name (literally just michael phillips) that i created back in the day to play facebook games, with absolutely ZERO personal information (besides a spare email, a random birthday, and basic location information) and i have never had facebook either lock out my profile or contact me about my information, i think this is stupid and insane! |
The finding has already been fixed, that's the entire point behind responsible disclosure. You give the company ample time to fix the issue and then release your proof of concept to the public.
To issue #2 if you're going to continue finding vulnerabilities in their software and instead of disclosing the finding to the company just providing it to the public, that goes against the idea of responsible disclosure and more into the area of blackhat hacking. In that case, you are COMPLETELY open to the company pursuing legal action against you and is the opposite of the CYA approach.
Yes Starbucks handled this poorly, but so have many companies before them. We need more protections for Security Researchers so that they can continue to search for bugs in the software of big corporations. However, he should have known better than to create a fradulent purchase no matter how small it was(Back to the CYA approach). |
How about we just get rid of menu bars. The context of 'File', 'Edit', 'View', etc, no longer have any meaning. How do you open a new window? File -> New Window. File has nothing to do with a new window. I hate to say it, but Microsoft does it right with their ribbon interface. |
Can someone explain why this is important?
Sorry for my ignorance-- I just haven't been keeping track of this problem very long and don't know the specifics. I'd really appreciate a |
Instead of getting frustrated, perhaps you should try understanding what it is about the program that bothers people so much.
When the Mac first came out, the over-riding emphasis was on making the software user friendly. There were several ways to achieve the same task because different people see a task differently. If there was a way that made sense, the software probably did it that way as well as other ways that you hadn't thought of. A great Mac developer would think very hard and try to anticipate different ways of achieving a task and then support those ways. It was a huge shift from the DOS-do-it-this-way model.
You may recall Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign that encapsulated that idea.
iTunes goes exactly the other way. There are very rigid ways that you're allowed to do certain tasks like copy apps around. Those methods have no parallel to how you copy music. You're doing the same thing but now you have to do it differently depending on what you're copying.
It makes for an unpleasant experience because the differing design goals - ease of use vs security are not ever reconciled. Make iTunes flexible and you open up security holes. Tighten up security and the program becomes rigid.
iTunes works for you because you're thinking the way the lead programmer was thinking. That's not necessarily how most of us will think. iTunes took me a long time to figure out because I had to think of every possible way to implement simple tasks because the way that made sense to me wasn't a way the program supported. |
Or due to a government granted monopoly over the region.
Yes, that too.
>It is a very viable substitute. Given the option of having no Internet or dial-up, which would you choose? (The option of "no Internet" may arise if your theoretical monopolistic ISP starts charging $1,000 a month for Internet.)
A viable substitute ≠ close substitute. Dialup may be a better substitute relative to "no internet" (that's why it was named as the opportunity cost in the first place), this does not mean that the consumers value this substitute in a similar way as the original product (broadband). In simpler terms, to the consumer the savings + dialup speed < cost + broadband speed . If no dialup is available, or dialup is offered only by the same ISP, the cost and speeds of broadband would be weighed against "no internet"
>Right. So they are providing the consumer with a service they desire, at a price that they are willing to pay.
>What in world is wrong with that? o_0
Ohh.. Well a monopoly isn't necessarily bad; but monopolies tend to be anticompetitive, abusive, and
Now that we established that this is a monopoly, this monopoly can be said to abuse it's scarcity to earn abnormal profits. Let's just say in the middle of the desert a hypothetical shop charges $30 for a bottle of water. This is obviously an abnormal price where the shop is definitely earning more than zero economic profit (a la perfect & monopolistic competition); you are still more or less forced to buy it because they're the only vendor for bottled water for miles around. Your alternatives is to risk it and try to reach another store without water, or take a lesson from Bear Grylls and drink your own urine to minimize water loss (hypothetical effectiveness assumed). You, in this case, are, more likely than not, are going to cough up the $30 and complain how the prices are too high.
Now, let's just say, hypothetically, there are 10 more of you. Seven of you decide to actually pay for your water; one stands on principle, not willing to pay hoping that the vendor will go out of business; another, because he is unable to pay, drinks his own urine. The last one decides to leech off all the others. Hypothetically the 3 who are not paying for the water could've gotten the refreshments (legally), if the bottled water was priced $3 instead. But they didn't get the water because it was priced too high; their result suffering have cost the society of 10 people more suffering than the profits that the vendor has gained. This is deadweight loss; this may also be reflected in the costs of living and therefore the quality of life the society would have otherwise achieved.
Had it been a competitive environment, however, the vendors will not be able to reap anything more than zero economic profit (long run), as alternate vendors will have set up shop and take away the profit; competition is always more allocatively efficient (a la allocation of resources) than monopolies. Say, instead of being in the middle of the desert, where location is a barrier to entry, you're next to a river. It still takes $3 dollars to package the drink and sustain a shop (and assume zero economic profit). But if the vendors raise the price to $4 wanting to make a profit, other vendors will enter and sell at a lower price, say, $3.50 and take the profit away. This will start a "price war" where the price will eventually settle back at $3. (If it goes below $3, then there is economic loss, the vendor decides it's no longer worth selling water, and moves into another sector of the economy.)
So, basically, assuming you understood the above, you may understand why monopolies may be a bad thing. Here are the good things about monopolies, however: dynamic efficiency & economies of scale. Dynamic efficiency is where a firm which has abnormal profit invests such profits into long term concerns, e.g. R&D. This, however, is not always the case as the ISPs have been sometimes shown to be wasteful of their profits, and not investing on infrastructure; sometimes limiting consumer utility of their connection due to their inability in infrastructure to cope with the consumer's use of their network, e.g. throttling. Economies of scale is basically that as the scale of output is increased the average marginal cost decreases. This is a major reason why ISPs are often established as monopolies; governments want a network, but cannot afford it, so subsidizes it and sells it to one organization who spreads the costs among the consumers; this, however, also allows them to sustain the monopoly as it is a barrier to entry. Economies of scale is also abused in anticompetitive ways in that the shared burden on consumers allows the monopoly to undercut competitors in the short run to drive them out of business.
Edit: Removed |
yes it does.
what you see when you open a folder are just the headers of the files. the headers do not contain the file per se. they only contain very little information like where the first fragment is located on the hard drive.
when you want to access them, the os has to go and seek for every fragment of said file on the hard drive. if your drive is not fragmented, then every fragment will be located next to one another on the harddrive and the os will access to it faster. if your drive is fragmented and every part of that file is scattered everywhere on the harddrive then it might take a while to put it back together again.
when you want to delete a folder that contains multiple files, it has to do the same thing over and over again for every single file... so that's why it takes some time to start deleting the files...
go look up for more information about file fragmentation and you'll see that is not actually windows fault. |
I think that right there also deserves more attention. It isn't as if anyone chooses to be aroused by children. It's a PROBLEM that they have to deal with for the rest of their lives. They know that what they want is inappropriate and dangerous and so on and will likely live a life full of shame and fear.
It's the same problem with gays. Since most people aren't gay, and most people aren't pedophiles, the ignorant masses often assume that because they weren't born with those desires, those that have them must have chosen them and are immoral, evil creatures.
Ignorance is a fucking disease. |
Everyone is asking who would pay for this..
I teach in a classified facility. We used to spend over $200,000.00 a year just printing course material for each new class. We saved a bunch of (taxpayer) money by going with e-books. We bought 250 ebooks and we load them with material for the students before each class.
The ebook we bought is no longer sold. We are having trouble finding a replacement. The biggest problem is that since we are in an open storage (classified) environment the ebook cannot have any wireless or recording capapbilities at all. With the feature creep in todays ebook readers it is hard to find one that does not have wireless or recording abilities. We would like to use iPads or Android tablets but obviously we cannot. With this feature we may one day be able to use modern tablets..
I can also think of a lot of places in the military that we cannot use tablets, PDA's or carry phones because of the classification of the area we are in at the time. |
If anyone is wondering what wrong, basically the list you see is friends that I frequently talk to showing both currently online or offline friends. I cannot revert to the old chat where it shows everyone who's currently online. The chat thing on the left hand side has gone also. If I click on the options and "hide side bar", it brings the thumbnails back. |
Google has two choices: censor the content, or don't do business in that country.
They chose the option that results in the greatest amount of information being available to the greatest number of people. |
I used the exact same reasoning for building my home PC with an AMD a couple years ago.
I mostly use it for torrents, gaming and general browsing, for which my AMD II X4 620 is more than enough when combined with a Radeon 5770. Sure, some games it's not quite on max settings, but even after a couple years i'm still setting most games on high settings with a good framerate, which is all that really matters. Sure, i could have dropped signifigantly more money for an Intel based system, for a handful of extra FPS but it wouldn't have been worth it to me. |
The first thing to do is post, verbatim, the offending clauses from the legislation. I'm not willing to jump on any bandwagon just because people tell me to. I've seen a lot of people paraphrase the terrible things this legislation would do, but with no actual sources to back it up. The little research I've done, it certainly seems like it's been blown out of proportion. Reddit has a reputation of being "the boy who cried wolf," so I kinda drown out the constant outrage. |
Because especially in Canada, prepaid data sucks a big massive dick and people seem to "need" subsidized iPhones that end up costing more in the long term. |
A singing tesla coil is entirely different from a plasma arc speaker. The plasma speaker works by modulating the current passing over the arc so the arc expands and contracts in the same way a speaker would. It's on the whole time. A tesla coil sings by turning on and off very quickly, you get a "pop" each time, and you simply make however many pops per second (hz) as you want for the frequency of sound you're making. |
I don't think he was referring to the resilience of the system when he said "sound quality" lol.
But I see your point. I had built mine from components stripped from a large CRT monitor I found. Chances were actually against the hardware being defective, but it does happen. And I pushed it way beyond it's designed limits, to do something it wasn't designed to do, in an environment it wasn't designed to be exposed to. |
I hate to burst your bubble, but as much as I love PC gaming, the PC gamers do not make up a majority of the market. To put this into perspective, Diablo 3 is the fastest-selling PC game of all time and they got around 6.3 million copies sold in the first week . That means that the biggest game to hit the PC was sold to 1.2% of all Windows 7 users.
Let's compare that to Skyrim's sales back in November. ~~[Skyrim sold 7 Million units in its first week to the Xbox 360 alone]( Skyrim sold around [4.2 Million copies to the Xbox 360 in the first week](
Currently there have been around [67.2 million Xbox 360s sold]( Since Skyrim was 7 months ago, I think it would be fair to say that there were around 62 million Xbox's in November. That means that Skyrim managed to sell to 11.29% 6.7% of the Xbox 360 market.
So how is this relevant to the PC gaming market? Well since the Xbox is a gaming console, we can assume that all of the sales are for gamers. So on average, a best seller game represents 11.29% 6.7% of a gamer's market. If we take that percentage and apply it to the PC market, you can deem that the PC gaming market is roughly 55.80 93 Million PC gamers which is around 10% 17% of the Windows 7 market.
So assuming that every PC gamer switched to Linux, that would mean that the sales of Windows would decrease by 10% 17% which is not the majority in the slightest. I don't have the statistics as to how much 17% of the Windows market is because I don't have worldwide sales of all PCs, but it would correlate to less than 12-15% of the worldwide market.
Is that significant? Definitely, because even OS X only has 7.66% of the market, but it is by no means the tipping point to ending Windows popularity. The scenario I just described is also a best case scenario assuming a 100% conversion rate to Linux. I don't think everyone would switch to Linux with the release of Windows 8 though because developers are still developing in DirectX, and every computer still comes with Windows on it, there's no point in developing for Linux because everyone can dual boot to Windows. |
Exactly, windows 7 was fine so companies are in no hurry to upgrade to something else. Microsoft has a mobile OS but needs a push in apps/developers etc. to compete with Android and iOS so it uses the "freebie" cycle of windows 8 to force market share over to the metro experience.
That will help solve their mobile problem and then all they have to do is provide a stronger Windows 7 like desktop experience in Windows 9 which will enjoy huge sales and success and they don't skip a beat.
I'm using Windows 8 customer preview and hate it but this move is a smart way to push metro and mobile. |
After seeing screenshots of the new Windows Explorer, I have to say that it is really bad. The ribbon interface (which I'm personally not a fan of) is gigantic, which I see as a huge issue. I never use the menus in a file manager anyway -- just keyboard shortcuts and right-clicking, so it just gets in my way. And even for those who do use it, it's horrible when almost every laptop uses a shitty 1366x768 resolution as its maximum; you're missing out on so much vertical space. |
Keep in mind guys: If you are a DirectTV customer and you are going to call their customer support ( (or Viacom's).. DO NOT YELL AND SCREAM AT THE CUSTOMER SERVICE AGENT . They are just a normal person trying to make what small living they can at that job. They are NOT responsible for the billionaire greed bitchfest coming from DirectTV and Viacom.
Explain to them that you want whatever compensation package they can offer for this inconvenience and that you want to go on record with your displeasure. If you yell and scream and curse at the agent, your channels aren't going to come back and you are only going to accomplish one thing: ruining some other person's day. |
I agree with a post from yesterday that this is a pissing contest,but it sounds to me like Viacom really is the one to hate for this instead of directv. I mean pulling access to online episodes? Are you TRYING to drive your consumers away? (Customers? Consumers?) Either way its just dumb. Probably not the first to say this,but |
The sad thing is that DirecTV will probably cave when the terms become somewhat less draconian, say $800 M over five years vs, the billion that Viacom wants. Then other content owners will see this as a viable strategy for dealing with licensees when disputes arise. |
You sir (or madam), are part of the problem. Politicians don't care about their constituency because people don't vote. If voter turnout was around 70% they would have to listen to the people and not businesses/corporations because then they wouldn't get reelected. I also think this would increase the turn over rate, which may not be a bad thing since there are a lot politicians (not usually cause their good ones) that have been in the same office for well over a decade. |
I'm trying to find a serious reason to hate on this move but honestly I cannot.
If you want a reason to hate the move, think about it this way. In your example, there are two morally wrong activities:
Jerking off to friends' facebook photos. This is seen as morally bad because the vast majority of female facebook users will not post suggestive pictures with the intention of giving guys something to jack off to and probably would feel disgusted if they found out their photos came under such 'male attention.' However, masturbation as an individual activity is private and secretive. At the end of the day, the subject one is imagining/viewing when masturbating is not and in most cases (except for say... mutual masturbation) should not be involved.
Displaying people's past private browsing habits to another user. Especially if these browsing habits can be quite sensitive; were kept confidential in the past and by the website's default design should be information kept off-limits to a typical user.
I think if Facebook were to implement this change and in the way that they would retroactively fetch the logs of every time a user has browsed a photo and then display that log to the submitter including the time stamp and the name of the person viewing the photo and then make it visible to the person that submitted the photo then there would be a shitstorm. And I can see it playing out like this. Here's a hypothetical example:
Jenny five months ago posted pics from her vacation to her Facebook profile. Some bikini photos, including one or two of her suggestively posing are included in said album. She is quite a well-endowed woman and is thus seen as sexually attractive. In this time, three male Facebook friends of hers, including a man called Dave view said album late night several times over the space of a few weeks. |
One could make the case that actually the speed of computer technology is faster than the speed of building
I've seen pretty competent corporate IT departments both overspec (Whoops we don't need massive space for early 80's mainframes after all) or under spec (Yeah now we want to cluster all our critical servers) new datacentres. The lead time for a new Datacentre can be years - easily enough time to be caught flat footed by things like virtualisation or the cloud. |
That would be nice if this were a pure democracy, but we're a democratic constitutional republic. And over half of US citizens don't vote, so they voluntarily don't have a say in how their money's being spent, which is the same as siding with the status quo... and the status is definitely not quo...
Under 1/2 of the population votes, so just over 1/4 of the population is needed to elect a president, add to that the fact that you can game the electoral college system to win with only 20% of the popular vote, so there's a potential for a president to be elected by something like 5% of the general population. |
Just to burst people's bubbles, this is not a LFTR design but a AHWR design. It's a water based reactor using solid fuel, and does not have many of the features that reddit expects from their love affair with thorium and LFTR. That said, any attempt to diversify our fuel usage is an improvement in my opinion. |
Basically, imagine building a house with many miles of pipe in it. Not just the normal plumbing, but practically every inch of your house is filled with pipe. And in the pipes is flowing not just tap water, but high-pressure, high-temperature, sometimes radioactive fluid. You can't go in and inspect the pipes without shutting down the whole system, and even then you can't ever inspect all of them. If any of the pipes ever leak, it will result in a costly shutdown, or destruction of the whole system, or possibly rendering the whole site uninhabitable for decades.
So basically you want to be very sure before you build the reactor that your pipes can handle what you expect from them. There is a lengthy and expensive materials certification process, and only a handful of materials exist even for steam and hot water pipes. And molten salts are highly corrosive, which makes them a nightmare to deal with. So no certified materials exist to make the plumbing for this kind of molten salt reactor.
There was a recent story about a California plant that had to be shut down because they discovered higher than expected levels of corrosion in the pipes in a steam generator after only a few years. It turned out that the cause was the shape of the pipe supports. Water was flowing around them, causing them to vibrate and put stress on the pipes. This in turn caused them to corrode faster.
So I guess |
There are many types of reactors that could potentially fulfill this description. Don't get mentally locked into the LFTR or thorium as the only solution. Consider other Generation IV options like the DMSR, HTGR/GCFR, LMFR (including the IFR and TWR). Or even consider advanced versions of the CANDU, AGR, or LWR.
[ |
This isn't about image, politics, PR, or w/e Steve Jobs or Obama said, this is about lean manufacturing. It is about shortening the product supply chain, and reducing the hidden costs of manufacturing somewhere with a different language and culture, all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Read this article about GE's in-sourcing of labor. This is what Apple is doing, and this is what will be happening in the years to come. |
You should read this is a lot of money, cause they don't know any better. I actually applaud Tim Cook for his decision to try to bring some of those jobs back to the U.S., apparently Steve Jobs was never that concerned about using practically slave labor to build his machines. If people in the Western world knew nothing of the working conditions at Foxconn, Apple wouldn't even act concerned at all. Oh yeah, and what was the result of Apple putting pressure on Foxconn to create a better working environment? They made the workers sign a legal agreement they wouldn't kill themselves, cause that's enforceable! Don't get me wrong, I'm typing on a MacBookPro right now, but I know where it came from. |
No. We have engineers, the problem is, the education system is built around the idea that an engineer should be someone without "heart" without "artistic ability." More so, the current education system model pushes the best engineering students as those individuals whom lack "fundamental creativity" and thus cannot apply knowledge in a more meaningful way, as the rest of the world can. |
I hope this serves as a wakeup call. Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter. The ideology of our republic is quickly fading.
There is no easy or quick solution. Get rid of Obama? No since a Republican would do the same thing. What we need is to hold EVERY elected official accountable. How feasible is this? Not very and it takes a strong, committed coalition of people to make this happen. I rather just play my PS3 and masturbate to free porn with sandpaper (side note: I am a lumberjack).
I've seen it for a long a time (not this but the atmosphere). We are SO divided on every issue that it plays right into the government's hands of stomping on our Constitutional rights and freedoms. Why did George Washington say political parties would be the demise of our nation? Why did Thomas Jefferson fear banks much more than a large government? They saw what happens when you let freedom slip away from the people to those with money, power, and influence.
I don't know what else to say. These types of things scare me because it opens the door to an even scarier picture. One of censorship, tyranny and overpriced coffee (note to self: never buy Starbucks from Port Authority). |
sorry. I am seriously surprised this is not the first reaction for a free wireless personal device.
on the second thought, the serious publishing house would not risk it.
on the third thought, maybe they used the cheapest device with a doubtful firmware that maybe some third party can hack it and modify on the fly.
but most probably there's no GPS chip and microphone in this thing. |
I don't see a new argument that varies from what's already been said by the other pedos here. Practically a carbon copy and completely unoriginal in thought. The logic is so flawed and simplistic as to be laughable were it not also so sad and disturbing. I won't bother to explain the error of your ways. Someone who thinks this way requires far more time and crayons to break it down for them than I have available at this juncture. |
This is complete BS, and goes against the reasoning of 4 time zones.
There is reasons for the way time zones are set up.Most time zone around the world are roughly 15° wide with some exceptions. There are 24 (or 25 depending on who you ask) time zones in the world. This makes it easy to figure an approximate time based on one's longitude. Longitude divided by 15 rounded and the added or subtracted (depending on East(+GMT) or West(-GMT) longitude) to GMT. So I live in Kansas, that would be 98° W longitude. 98 / 15 = 6.5 (rounded down to 6, it seems they rounded down in most tests i did with this "equation" ) so I would be -6 UTC/GMT. Also real time zones where laid out politically so they rarely follow the true 15° rule. Of course daylight saving time messes this up a bit, but it does also server a purpose other than confusing people. Daylight Savings Time (DST) is used to take advantage of the longer day in the summer time. This makes it so that most people are getting up at or round sun rise. Of course this in this day and age, DST does not make a lot of sense unless you work outside and every minute of daylight is important.
On a personal note, I would love to see a standard world wide time like UTC/GMT become a true standard world wide. I would also like to see the 12 hour clock (AM/PM) dropped and move to a 24 hour clock. And of course DST should also go the way of the dodo. But the confusion this would cause some people would be to hard for them to overcome. |
Before whining starts about the wisdom of spending money on space research/exploration while there are other issues facing India:
1) ISRO's(Indian Space Research Organization) budget is only 0.34 per cent of Central Government expenditure currently and 0.08 per cent of the GDP(~USD 800 Million). and Subsidized/Free Food Program( FSB, etc.
2) [And Mars Orbiter Mission/Mangalyaan would cost USD ~ 27 Million only.](
3) ISRO is actually funding itself thanks to annual revenue from foreign satellite launches and sale of satellite data/imagery(that is useful for things like Google Maps for example) through its Antrix Subsidiary. Last time I checked it was INR 9 BILLION . [source](
4) Data generated by ISRO and related organizations is helping the poorest of poor in India:
>Voluminous data from the Indian remote sensing satellites has benefited millions of farmers and fishermen in achieving higher productivity and making optimal utilisation of resources, a senior space scientist said Saturday.
>"Studies by the premier economic research institute NCAER have shown that remote sensing data has accrued multiple benefits to farmers across the country with seven percent increase in productivity and helping the farm sector to contribute about Rs.50,000 crore to the national gross domestic product (GDP) over the years ," Indian Society of Remote Sensing president V.K. Dadhwal told reporters here.
>Similarly, application of remote sensing data by the fishing community contributed about Rs.24,000 crore to the GDP and saved fuel consumption by 30 percent with timely advisories on weather, sea conditions and identification of potential fishing zones for maximizing the catch. [source](
5) And it is saving lot of lives:
>India was hit hard by Cyclone Phailin, with 12 million people impacted, including millions evacuated from the Odisha coast to safety earlier this week. This was the strongest storm to hit the state in 14 years, and it devastated homes and villages in both Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states, with flooding that has closed roads and left some 100,000 people stranded.[..]
> The country's satellite imagery satellites are being credited with saving lives thanks to better forecasting, and the ability to share intensity with citizens and policymakers to urge evacuation. [..]
>There are 11 Indian remote sensing satellites in service, allowing the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad to help agencies forecast cyclones more than 72 hours in advance. [..]
>The synthetic aperture radar satellites, Risat-1 launched in April last year and Risat-2 which has been in orbit since April 2009 have the ability to look for impending cyclones even at night and through clouds . The synthetic aperture radar in the satellites enables applications in agriculture too, especially for paddy monitoring during kharif season. Saral, an Indio-French satellite launched on February 25, 2013, can study ocean circulation and sea surface elevation.
> "Those who criticise the expenditure on space science don't realise its contribution to not just saving lives but alleviating poverty," says Bhargava, who founded the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. "You can argue that the space department gets higher allocation, but it is well justified. After all, Indian space scientist makes satellites and rockets at a fraction of the cost of similar US projects." [source1]( [source2]( |
You start with:
> Before whining starts
People whom wish to post to this thread whom have an opinion of care for the extreme masses of the poor in India before spending for this project are painted as whining?
It seems this is because you see it as Winning. I feel some potential wins are possible in this mission. Sadly you spell no insight as to how.
1.) Your first link title "Winning is a matter of belief" I imagine you think Charlie Sheen acting mentally ill whilst spending his loot on whores & hard drugs is Winning. Other beliefs = whining & this is why I logically use this analogy [my use of sheen is not a hitler analogy to slander your viewpoint as a hitler or sheen supporter]. I do not do it to paint it as true. You labeling those as whining that oppose the spending is a hitler labeling analogy out of the starting gate. This tells me the rest of your words are likely self serving & not serving all equally. When someone starts with a direct hard slander [whining] of the opposition I see illness.
I personally think this project is a double edged sword. It could end up yielding results that could soon aid the poor of India & the world as science often does. It also could yield nothing & not get to the destination [I hope that does not happen]. I personally do not see any real science in the article #1 you posted. The OPed BBC article paints it as a "space race" & your #1 paints justification that others are spending & here is our spending #s in comparison. Well in comparison the USofA's poor are taken care of IMO 99% better! few if any are in the dire drastic conditions of India's poor.
Your #1 & the OPed BBC article IMO paints keeping up with the Joneses in a race while not really considering the true reality of both runners family conditions & responsibilities left to fend for them selves while they run.
The BBC article mentions a search for methane & other gases, as well as the history of the planet. I hoped the top comment here would explain how these thing shall soon benefit the poor in India scientifically?
The video in the OPed BBC link asks two well to do Indian women & the reporter gets a whiner "care for the poor" & a "pride"ful scientific accomplishment answer. I like that the reporter did not paint opposition as a whiner before she spoke while she spoke or after she spoke. If he did so before hand it would likely hamper opposition, the way you do out of the gate.
Your #2 link seems to show only plans to spend more & does not address the concerns of the whiners you start out of the gate dissing.
Your #3 claims revenue from selling the income benefits of the space program benefit the space program. AKA it pays for itself. It does not state any portion of the loot goes toward social programs for the masses & only directly reinvests in the space program. As a Public Sector Undertaking 51% is owned by "the people"/state were is the reinvestment in the poor?
Your #4 the benefit is satellite imagery that increased farming & fishing. Do you know the poorest of the poor in India & many parts of the world often eat lesser foods than they grow or catch selling the wholesome rich foods they provide in slave like conditions to purchase minimal staple foodstuffs. Imagine growing watermelons yet your family gets few or none to eat because you need to sell them all to get enough lesser staples. Staples are often corporate like in that they are large scale in production & stuff like watermelons are smaller farmers. How does this mars mission benefit the farmers & fishermen? This article is about a mission to mars & not about satellites for earth use. It seems you are off topic to the actual specific subject matter of the OPed article.
Your #5 goes down the off OPed topic of satellite benefits as well. IMO I do not see why they could rent or buy russia or americas old units cheaper? could they not? Would it be cheaper for India & all to work together. Example India teams up with the america china russia &/or others or is less national pride a factor? I ask this barrage of off topic Question only because you led me to them.
your |
It depends on where you live. In the US northeast, there are a lot of Indian and Pakistani owned gas station/motels. I think there were periods where large numbers of people moved to certain areas of the country and many just moved to where other family members or community members moved to. The generation that original moved here and bought these businesses have now had families and their kids were able to go to college here and get into different jobs, which may be why you don't see as many as there used to be. But I imagine it also may be that you live somewhere where there isn't a large Indian community.... but I could be wrong. |
This really depends on what you are used to. In Bangalore, for instance, I will agree that it is easier to find labor to iron your clothes, which is a bit more expensive in other countries. And it is much easier to find cheap food. Really, let's be honest, anything that is labor intensive is much easier to find in Bangalore. And the best part is you will likely make enough money where a single income should be adequate. On the other hand, you will need to put up with high taxes on imported goods (relative to the U.S.), the lack of widespread internet integration (try to renew your Driver's Licence in both countries and see what's easier), and the lack of proper emergency care. I could list more but any comparison is honestly based on what you value. |
No Smoking" read James as he entered the house, "Yeah, whatever." he thinks as he pulls out his lighter to quench his thirst for nicotine. A friend of his warns him not to do that and reaches towards James' hand.
"What the fuck man!" James yells as he jerks his body away and proceeds to light a cigarette up. "It'l be fine" he reassures his friend as well as himself, and so it was. A few minutes go by and James' group of friends are talking, as he is no longer smoking, and most of them had relaxed a bit (not to mention a bit more drunk). Something had gone wrong, in the process of making some ["diy" hydrogen]( for the balloons a bit of steam got caught in a few of the balloons and were causing them to sink to the floor and thus the game of keep the balloon off the ground had begun. As more and more of the balloons started sinking everyone had joined in the game, including James.
Then It happened James dove toward the balloon as it flew toward the edge of the glass table, just barley by the tips of his fingers did he keep the balloon from the edge of the table...
Then the room erupted in cheers as he just single-handedly saved the game. After the game ended and the room calmed down James and his friends went to sit back down at the table where the game winning balloon sit on the table. The rush of air as they walked by caused the balloon to roll towards the ash tray..
Then Whoosh the balloon went as is was engulfed in its own insides bursting inflame. Everyone stopped, no-one injured but many surprised by the heat and flame, but it wasn't over yet as evidenced by the loud POP of a nearby balloon and the subsequent ignition of it's hydrogen starting a chain reaction of bursts of fire accelerating till it was out of control and the entire apartment building was engulfed in flame. |
Explain how - the industry as a whole produces less than 800 million hard drives (total) annually, of which WD holds a roughly 40% share. Even if they decide to make all 3.5" drives in this way, and we say it is 50% of their sales, that's only 160 million drives. Using my figues from before, this is only 20,000m^3 - apparently a single MRI machine requires 1700L of liquid helium, which in gaseous form is about 1,290m^3, so roughly 6.5% of that required for 160 million drives. |
An anime called the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In its second season, There are eight episodes that are practically the SAME EXACT EPISODE, with slight variations. Think groundhog day, but nobody remembers the reset except for one character whose main task is to observe. Meaning she doesn't interfere or cause any changes.
These eight episodes, named "the endless eight", are some of the most widely hated episodes found in an anime, despite the rest of Haruhi actually being quite good.
My comment was about one of the excuses for the endless eight that hardcore fans give. The episodes were supposedly intended to help people recognize how hard it was for the observer character to wait through every retelling. This is complete bull, because her character is immune to boredom, and therefore would not care at all.
/rant |
A small part of me wants to believe it's because older groups started using Facebook. When I got my account, my parents forced me to friend them, which put a huge stint on what I could post. When I started questioning my religion I couldn't just post about it on Facebook, and there have been a couple of times where I posted something pretty tame about, say, Islam, and then got railed by my parents who thought my high school was going to get bombed as a result. If I used Instagram, Tumblr or Reddit to speak my mind there was no way to connect me to that account.
Additionally, I've since friended other older people and I really do not enjoy reading about how the Girl Scouts promote abortion or how Obummer is 5th favorite president. The content they promote is the fuel behind r/forwardsfromgrandma. It's awful. |
You complain about the issue of a 13 year old operating system, which was fixed in 2007. But then refuse to update because it's not worth it.
You sound like my father. He still says that the TI-99 was all any computer user needed. You had TI Extend Basic. And it was much easier to use than any computer today.
Luddite.
Edit: |
but not secure sites
Caveat:
99% of users will click on continue/proceed/whatever when they get a certificate warning stating that there was some flaw in the cert exchange. This opens them up for MITM.
Instead of:
User-->[certificate encryption]<--Desired Server
They can get:
User-->[certificate encryption]<--Attacker Server-->[certificate encryption]<--Desired Server |
Fun story: I am banned from Amtrak.
I took the autotrain from Florida to DC. When I was moving, a sick neighborhood cat I had been taking care of wandered over, so I said screw it and took him home. I gave him a sedative from the vet so he wouldn't make noise when being loaded. He was in the passenger seat under stuff in a pet carrier.
As I got my car in the morning, the guy who drove my car around said he heard a cat. I said whatever and took the keys. I waited with someone I spoke with on the train and an Amtrak police officer asked for my ID. I said no. He said I had committed a crime and demanded my ID. I asked what crime, and he said "animal cruelty." I said, yeah, what animal? He said "I'll search your car and find a cat." I told him he didn't have my permission. I saw him trying to look into my car, but the cat wasn't visible. When he went away, I drove off. He filed a report saying he did, in fact, search the car and find a cat. When I called, I was told I was banned from Amtrak for life. The only person I could contest the charge with was that police officer, who hung up when I called. |
It's interesting to note that there are 10 tones in each video. While there are more than two tones, even if you assume that each tone is one bit, with this many videos the user has stores at least ~775kb of data embedded in the sound of the videos.
There are also ten visual slides of red and blue squares in the videos. However, in the channel it says the videos are 11 seconds long, while the video that actually plays is only 9 seconds. The sounds and the visuals don't sync up in the earlier videos (the one's named aqua), so it's fair to say that these are test videos. While the ones that begin with tmp and have an ID associated with them sync up correctly. In this video .
It's also worth noting that the aqua.flv displayed in every video probably means that there's an aqua.flv file that takes data as an input, and outputs it as sound and video, which the user then exports as a youtube compatible video type, which is a bit of a shaky process as audio/video desync can easily occur if this process is not done correctly (as displayed by the earlier videos). |
Oh, we do... absolutely. But in order to fund that "free" society, we all have to pay our taxes.
And I believe if you go look at what actually happened is that none of the groups they looked into ever had anything done to them. No audits, no unnecessary returns, no lost forms, no... well... nothing. The IRS simply, and this is the best part, looked into them without actually doing anything about it. That's it, they just looked at them, which is sorta what they're supposed to do. |
Guy "liked" shit on Facebook. Anythign and everything(mostly) he could find. Facebook became dumber. Friends became concerned. Facebook sucks.
While not the best |
Ah sure - editorial, write how you want. Of course the top comments are |
I see a lot of people saying this, but it's a little naive. Unless you are a hermit, you go out and people take pictures of you. Those pictures will end up on facebook sooner or later whether you have a facebook account or not. A shadow account of you is out there that you have no control over. Now say you have an account but you manage it and you don't tag yourself in every picture and don't post personal info. Someone looking for you will find that profile and only the information you choose. Also, this way you can keep tabs on what pictures and info about you are out there, which is something you can't do without an account. |
Microsoft has to be very gun shy about censoring what applications are allowed to appear on its operating system. The last time they tried to censor applications, a judge ordered them broken up, and they were under judicial review for a decade.
And even then they didn't actually censor any application. They only threatened to refuse to give a volume discount to OEMs who included the shitware. So they didn't even censor anything, or threaten to censor anything.
In the aftermath of the loss of that seven year legal battle, Microsoft's lawyers are very sensitive to even the appearance of Microsoft even hinting that they're going to censor an application. Microsoft screens applications for technical compliance. An unbiased set of metrics - so nobody can claim Microsoft is singling them out.
When the very existance of the Microsoft Store was announced, there were calls for lawsuits. Even though Apple and Google already had app stores, those companies didn't have a legal judgment, a consent decree, and ten years of judicial oversight against them.
What could Microsoft do? Let's say they started censoring applications today. That would seem to some to be extraordinarily arbitrary Microsoft: to censor certain applications. Not that they could't do it, but they would face a whole new round of legal issues as they started to reform the App Store. |
In my opinion; what the current crop of devices have gotten wrong, the Apples and Googles, is that a watch is a passive device. It tells time even if you aren't looking at it. While that's not really practical for a mini computer the same could be said for over simplifying the interface of the same without substantial benefits. I would expect a device like the Iwatch to connect to a full monitor at some point, a dumb screen as the author phrased it, but preform all of its power and magic as passively as possible.
The killer feature that no one seems to be able to deliver on is how to surpass the experience of a $10 Casio with the complexity of features that are as simple to navigate as switching to the stopwatch feature. Not every thing needs to be front and center, and while the processing power may be a plus for something until someone establishes a need for it then its completely wasted. So yes, an IPod level of power probably would have been more apropreate. Though if apps and such features are nessicary they should add to the feature list rather than over complicate the interface.
While Google did a good job of seemlessly swiping threw feature /apps they are obstructing the basic utility of the platform. If you could configure what your watch displayed threw a simple web portal, maybe even have a data/voice radio, the device could be a hub of sorts and provide more utility to ones digital-sphere . |
Because they've shown that they have no interest in competition. They could always compete. They have instead carved out areas of coverage and -in general- do not compete with each other. I would love to see competition. It would solve all of the problems as each company has to offer better and better pricing and options. Instead, they've colluded to not overlap and stagnate. |
Got the $29 dollar 7 Voyager RCA 7 inch tablet at Walmart today. So did my sister. We have both had better tablets plus flagship android phones. For 29 dollars, this thing is not fucking bad at all. Its running 4.4.2, quad core processor, 8gb storage + sd expandable, 1gb ram. Now keep in mind, it was cheap as fuck, so the screen is alright, but bad from different angles, and no rear camera. But I don't care. Going to root it tomorrow, try and get remote play working for the ps4 on it (lots of progress has been made for doing this for phones on 4.4 or later.) |
u/Fr0gm4n mentioned below, confirmed by /u/Iggyhopper that some are already pre-rooted. As to the installation of custom roms such as CM, it depends on how accessible the device is to those who would port roms to it. If the hardware is all known and working with other Android tablets, that can help. If the manufacturer produces open source firmware or kernel headers, that can help.
In general though, no. Custom roms must be ported to every new platform, and that requires someone with the expertise and skill to own the same tablet, and desire to take the time to try to improve the experience. With black friday devices, which are often unsupported or undersupported post-launch, and certainly not available outside this month-long window. |
For my purposes, ChromeOS is great. Most of what I do on a computer is internet browsing, so there is no reason to invest heavily in hardware that I won't use. The OS is light and fast. The laptop build doesn't feel cheap either.
If you need more than ChromeOS, you can simply install a Linux distro on your Chromebook alongside ChromeOS. When I want to do work, I use Ubuntu w/ free alternatives to popular Windows software. When I want to simply surf the web, I switch to ChromeOS.
I got my refurb HP 14 w/ 4GB RAM for $180. Incredible value IMO. The only thing it can't do is gaming. I just purchased a $400 laptop ... cause I can't play League of Legends otherwise. |
We were removed from default status because of a censorship scandal where the old mod team had a large list of keywords that would be removed by automoderator. These included Snowden, NSA, Tesla, etc. The mods in power at the time didn't see a problem with this, and when it was exposed, the users revolted. More than half the mod team was forcibly removed. Since then we have rebuilt the mod team and are dedicated to transparency. |
Hey wait...didn't developers already have advertisements on the iPhone in their own apps?... Weren't they shit? They didn't do a single thing that was productive. But now if made properly they can do what they were meant to do. Sell products. Consumers consume. It's probably the definition. I am a consumer, I consume. And if an ad happens to sell me on a certain product, way to fucking go. I'd say I'm fairly hard to sell to because i usually weigh the pro's and con's of purchasing said item...now its a rant. Good thing I stopped early. |
While being confident it came from that domain is true, most mail servers don't validate that the envelope sender (and/or the From: header) match the SASL auth username. |
I'm gonna be the contrarian here, and say that is a shame. I love the glass and steel look of the iPhone 4, but when you tell people that the glass is 30x harder than plastic, people will assume that it can take 30x the impact on any surface. Yes, yes, I know that's not what harder means, but thats what people expect colloquially speaking. I was all super impressed that you can use gorilla glass to hammer a nail into a wooden board, but then super dismayed that it shatters when dropped (repeatedly) from four feet onto gravel. |
This guy has a "1 in 4 million" job. It is very statistically insignificant that both your civilian and military jobs would have this much overlap, and even less likely that both would be this high paying. I know jarheads who are also cops, and yeah, that's a decent overlap but not as high-paying (or geek-oriented, come to think of it). I know teachers who are commanders, but I also know cops who are logicians and musicians who do embark. |
Sounds like a problem I'm having with TWC. My connection drops for about 5 minutes at a time a couple times a day. I, too, can go several days w/o noticing it. Could just be that it's happening when I'm not online to notice it on those days.
TWC claims that I've had no interruption in signal strength to my cable modem. I've replaced the cable modem and router/firewall to no avail. |
There is a big difference between affordable and $100 in 5 years.
LIDARs aren't pure solid state, so they won't just magically get dirt cheap with scale; and since their performance is critical for safe vehicle operation, they can't just be built from Chinese toy-grade materials. |
If a $20 stove really saves $1 of fuel per day, then even the least educated Darfuri can do the math (<1 month payback), and even the poorest would be willing to save up and purchase it themselves.
If this is the case then donations are unnecessary; this is a viable business and will be self-funded. If the fuel savings are lower, then the entire premise of the stove is false. |
It was politically correct for a significant period of the 20th century. And then, right around the time the developing world grew comfortable with Western-style family planning practices, Reagan was elected and the United States shifted its funding as far away from family planning as possible. If you're interested in the history of international family planning, I highly recommend Michelle Goldberg's "The Means of Reproduction." It's weird that this is now a taboo topic, because it used to be shouted from the roofs of the United Nations.
The problem is that population control is only really going to happen in a humane way (i.e. no one-child policy) by empowering women - period. Population control faded as a policy not because of fears of eugenics, but because religious fundamentalists feared use of the Pill would encourage a sexual revolution as it did in the West. God forbid women have the autonomy to decide when they want to have sex! But this isn't going to happen until they have access to adequate health care, until they are educated and healthy enough to provide for the children they do have, and until they are respected enough in their own societies to stand up and refuse to submit to sex or additional children without the threat of rape and violence in return. For so long, women were systematically treated as the means to an end - they were "carriers" or "reproducers" instead of human beings in and of themselves. So the family planning movement simply exploited them further and did little to serve their interests. If women's social status derives entirely from their role as mothers then they have no incentive to remain childless or have small families. If women must depend on children's work for economic survival, they have every incentive to birth many children. Women need education, health care, and rights - every time advancements are made in these areas, family size shrinks, child mortality rates drop, and family income rises. The international aid world is finally starting to pay attention to this, and nothing makes me more optimistic about the future.
As for the idea that "this is all a part of nature and natural selection" I'll pay more attention to that when we adopt that attitude towards rich people, too. How come AIDS is natural selection but swine flu isn't? Why are the deaths of poor people by preventable disease an acceptable part of life, but the deaths of rich people by preventable disease are a tragedy? Famine isn't natural selection at all, it's long been observed that famine in the modern world is entirely a product of politics. The truth is that we perpetuate these cycles because we don't do what we say we should do. We DON'T fund family planning, we DON'T distribute aid in a way that benefits the interests of the poor, we DON'T meet any of our financial agreements - even those we agreed to in treaties . People go "well, we've done all we can, but it hasn't seemed to help." No, we haven't done all we can, we haven't even come close. We haven't even done all we said we would do.
The real long term strategy? To bring a continent or two out of deject poverty and allow them to contribute to the global economy like everybody else. Nobody ever thought China would rise out of poverty - its doing so is one of the miracles of the 20th century. Nobody ever thought India and Bangladesh would get a foothold on the economic ladder - then came the Green Revolution. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil or stupid or useless about the African continent. They have been systematically exploited for hundreds of years by colonial powers, and what we are now seeing are the horrifying remnants of that kind of oppression. |
I got a new roommate last year, in October. I knew he liked his downloading, and he mentioned Demonoid more than once around me, but I figured it would all work out alright, as I don't download too much.
I was not prepared.
We got a call from Comcast, informing us that over the previous month, we'd had something like Two terrabytes of traffic. And about half of that is upload! They threatened to cancel our service were we ever to exceed 250GB a month again. I talked with him, and he said he was going to cut his upload, but also surreptitiously applied some heavy QoS restrictions on his MAC.
The fucker blew through his allotment in a day! So, caps on bandwidth suck. |
Here's what it would cost me to actually use my connection at it's rated speed for one solid month under the new plan: $5835.71 - Almost six thousand dollars! I'm using a 18 Mbps plan here, the fastest in my area. Someone on the 24Mbps plan would pay $7844, plus the ten bucks or so difference in the standard monthly fee.
If anyone's curious, here's what I entered into wolphram alpha to get the numbers above:
(((18 Mbps * 31 days) - 250GB) * $1/GB) + $59.31
So 18 Mbps * 31 days gives 6.026 TerraBytes, minus 250 GB of allowed usage, times one dollar per remaining gigabyte. Plus my original sixty bucks I paid for the supposedly "Unlimited" connection in the first place.
Since they allow a 90 day grace period, I'm tempted to just continuously download a dozen streams of "Never Gonna Give You Up" for 3 months, because Fuck them, that's why. |
I'm Aussie too, and have posted this a couple of times - my caps seem to almost double every year.
I think what worries Americans though is the fact that their corporate ways allow companies to essentially divide up (and conquer) the consumer landscape. If you live in place X, then you go with Company A, or get no internet.
In Australia, as you know, it is very different, and most metro area residents can choose from at least 2-3 companies. Where I live, I have a choice of 8.
US citizens - correct me if I am wrong. |
When people talk about the average people who don't really think much and are largely part of "the problem", you are exactly the type of person they are referring to.
Private corporations are out to screw you as hard as they can, that isn't an opinion it's a fact. Every form of communication and entertainment is shifting from a medium extremely large corporations used to easily control to a medium that's not controlled largely in anyway. The cost of bandwidth drops EXTREMELY every single year and has ever since it has existed. The retail price and limitations on it for some odd reason is going the other way just as quickly as people drop their expensive land lines/long distance plans and 100+ a month cable bills. And wouldn't you know it, the same companies that produce the content you used to pay for on your insanely over priced cable bill or make insanely expensive phone calls on your land line are the same companies that control the majority of internet services to your home most likely.
This is not a coincidence, they are making a power grab simply for the power. They don't provide us with any service that didnt' exist before that costs more money, they don't provide and added value. They simply want your money and don't give a fuck that their operating costs go down and that you don't buy into their old business model of doing things. They think your money is really just their money in your pocket.
Not only do these companies stand in the way of technical progress but I seriously do not trust them with control of my internet connection being metered which is essentially controlling my ability or freedom to be able to communicate with the world in an effective 21st century manner.
I know you are probably sitting there thinking "Oh this sissy la la faggot tweeting from his ipad sipping a latte at starbucks is all in a tissy about shit that doesn't matter" well you are wrong, it's a cappuccino but more to the point I'm not worried about today per se, it's the future I'm worried about. Legit newspapers are dying left and right and have been doing so for a while now along side print media itself. My point here is soon enough there won't be a print media, there won't be an alternative to online media. Newspapers and print media will be gone and cable TV/sat/broadcast TV will be gone also. Then what do we do when these privately controlled companies literally control everything we see/hear?
Oh and these "private companies" who put their hardware in and can do as they please because they own it did so on the public dime from COUNTLESS corporate welfare in the form of not paying their taxes like everyone else. |
Short answer is no.
Long answer is that force feedback is not a very good guide. It seems intuitive to need it, but if you are ramming a manipulator where it is not supposed to go, by the time resistance is substantial it may already be too late. Imagine being able to be both very strong and very precise. Your tactile interaction with the environment is going to be different and not easy to map well to human experiences. |
How many things have DVD players though. They're becoming like clocks. I got 3 clocks in my kitchen and I only need one.
Pick up a bluray player or receiver, DVDs are dead in my book anyway. Can't stand subhd now, we need to get our shit together. Fuck 720p as a standard. Let's go 1080p for broadcast, cut analog simulcast out, switch to mp4 instead of mpeg2 for video.
That won't happen, instead of upgrading their network and old ass outdated equipment they rather come up with these bills. Fuck Sat and Cable because they are overpriced and use outdated shit. I got cable after 2 years of antenna. I love digital antenna but my new place makes too much hassle for antenna. So I got cable and what do they have? Mpeg 2 and 6-10 year old equipment. Subpar picture compared to antenna, but antenna was only 720p.
I wish the death of these primitive services and old copper wiring, but right now these companies determine our technological state.
Internet speeds suck in the US, 50mbps may seem nice and pretty damn high price, but other parts of the world have 100mb Internet for cheap.
Why hasn't dvdSA taken off, we are still using fucking 700mb cd's. Fuck CD's lets go Flac downloads.
I got off topic here, but in a way it's on topic. You can't keep the same model for decades and expect people to keep paying more and more money. Writing these bills is useless. I will still download movies and tv shows, I'm not paying a monthly few just so I can record my tv. Why can't I rent or buy a movie when it gets released, I don't want to go to a theater. Make your content more accessible, cheaper, convenient, and up to tech standards. Then maybe I'll consider paying for it instead of going to TPB. |
Redirect all reddit URLs to a single page describing the severity of SOPA, what we can do about it, and enable comments. For 24 hours.
This would make huge waves and raise awareness exponentially. Everyone who comes to reddit just for [lolcats]( will be contemplating SOPA. Everyone who visits reddit for daily news, lolz, or serious discussions will have SOPA on their mind that day and they'll have conversations about it. If a hugely popular site like reddit had the balls to do this, the same idea will ripple throughout the tubez to other sites. |
Then you understand neither human nature nor the socio-psychological foundations of disruptive protests.
Disruptive protests - things like street rallies, sit-ins like the Occupy protests, strikes, and the proposed site blackouts - are designed first and foremost to piss off the general populace. The idea here is to get the populace so angry at the chaos that they end up demanding the powers that be give in to the demands of the protesters just so things can get back to normal again. In the context of the proposed blackouts, the intent is to get people pissed off that their favourite sites aren't working like they should by using either a literal blackout of the sites or a faked takedown page that will direct users to somewhere where they can be 'educated' about SOPA and exhort them to call their representatives. The hope here is that pressure from the pissed off general public will cause your lawmakers to rethink SOPA and PIPA.
To most people who are supportive of the idea of disruptive protests, this sounds like a good thing because it looks as if it's a surefire way to galvanize support from the fence sitters and people apathetic to their cause. The apathetic are given a reason to support the desire of the protestors without having to actually give a rat's arse about the cause, which means Le Resistance doesn't need to waste time trying to turn them into believers. The fence sitters are given the opportunity to be 'educated' in important things - what the cause is about, what will happen if the cause fails, etc. - via slogans, placards, fake takedown pages, media coverage, and so on.
What they fail to realize, however, is that it can also backfire on them . The disruptive effect of the protest on the daily lives of the fence sitters and apathetics will make them angry, and that anger can easily be directed (either by the public or by the protester's opponents) against the protesters.. and who can blame them? After all, the protesters must have known the effect of what they're doing to the general public, and yet they do it regardless, in the name of some Greater Good or Great Justice. In the worst case, because you are actively disrupting the conduct of their lives, some fence sitters or apathetics can even end up opposing you because you are the direct cause of their troubles.
To avoid this, most real life protests will try to redirect the negative consequences of their protests on to other parties, preferably the authorities. The traffic jams New York commuters are experiencing aren't the fault of #Occupy; it's the cops trying to do crowd control at the behest of their corporate masters who are to blame. The London Austerity Plan protests didn't enable the riots and looting during the event; it was a third party who was out to create chaos anyway, and some say they may actually be police agitators at work.
With the proposed blackouts, however, you don't have the luxury of this plausible deniability. Everyone knows that SOPA isn't actually on yet, and even if they don't, your fake takedown page will tell them so to emphasize the scary Orwellian future you're trying to protect them from. There's no way for you to claim that their inability to find information from Wiki or Google that they need right the hell then isn't your fault because you are the only one who could have pressed the Go Offline switch. It's worse with a literal blackout - you don't even have the ability to tell them why you're doing it. Either way, they will know that the most direct person to blame is you, and no amount of justification will change that.
So, given all this, do you still think that it's only the 'willfully ignorant' or the ones already leaning towards supporting the SOPA who will rise up against you instead of with you? They don't need to be morons; they just need to be astute individuals who just want to get on with their lives, or intelligent people who recognize just how self-defeating the idea of the blackouts actually is. |
The targeting of ads for mobile is highly focused on geolocation as opposed to search/browsing history.
iPhone ads get geolocated just like Android ads, hence the apples:apples comparison, which actually reflects higher and more profitable usage by iPhone users despite their smaller share of the overall smartphone market.
This actually makes a decent amount of sense - many Android users get their phone for 'free' when they sign a new contract with their provider, or when they first establish service. They don't necessarily go out and consciously choose to get an Android phone, or even a smartphone, so they aren't necessarily the type of user that will use their phone for anything more than calling/texting.
iPhone users, on the other hand, generally have to consciously choose to buy an iPhone and pay money to do so, even if it's only $50. A person who consciously purchases an iPhone is much more likely to be a type of person who will use apps, browse web, etc on their smartphone. Since that is where most ads get displayed, they tend to be more profitable users than the aforementioned text/phone Android users. |
The bummer here from a consumers perspective is not whether Apple or Google have the best option for a smart phone, rather that we consumers will likely not have a robust third choice.
Face it most of you polarized brand / ecosystem loyal fanboys would benefit from vigourous competition from various OS's. Both Apple and various Android manufacturers make great products I would love to see a great third option too. |
This article shows what I have heard several times. Despite the fact that there are many more android phones, there are more page views for iphones. I agree that I know a lot of people (tend to be older users) who get their free androids from their carrier, and never use the browser. They get it because it is the best phone they can get for free. |
If the discussion has value it won't simply die off, and if there's little or nothing to add i for one welcome the puns with a smile on my face. |
My best friend got convicted four years ago, he had just turned eighteen and his girlfriend (17) of four years was cheating on him and was rubbing it in his face, drunken calls and what not etc. So being a dumb irrational teen in a prescribed Ambien stupor (in no way does that make this any better nor have I ever thought there should've been no punishment for this) he sent all of the pictures of her which she sent him of a sexual nature through email to her family... Turns out no one ever saw the pictures because she preemptively sent a message following saying it was a virus and not to open it. Regardless though he was given five years of probation in which he wasn't allowed weapons, leaving the County, Internet, and was required to attend a sex offender class where he, and violent sexual offenders usually those who committed crimes against children, and have offended on multiple occasions get to sit around and learn how not to rape people, and and talk about their offenses to each other. If you fail the class, you go to jail, if you don't pass the two of the four required polygraph tests, and you go to jail (while not admissible in court the court mandated class can require it). Oh, and and he will be on the sexual offenders registry untill he's fourty three. His house has been searched many times for child porn, he got kicked out of college for it once someone in the offices noticed he was on the list and had to fight his way back in, people knock on his door asking about it. Like I said, I this shouldn't have gone without punishment, and but it's ruined his life, and his almost every day. For the rest of his life, so don't do it kids... |
Until you are 18, the government does not believe you have the necessary capability of judgment to be able to do right by your own body.
And considering the average child, they are right.
"But I'm not average!" you claim. And perhaps you aren't, perhaps you're far more mature than the average 21-year old is, and would drink responsibly, have sex with older individuals responsibly, and so on.
But how's the government going to know that? They can't tell you apart from, say, some kid who gets scammed into child prostitution by a 'boyfriend' who claims to need quick cash.
And so long as they can't, you're going to get flagged by the same precautions that they try to use on those other kids. |
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