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The bit about removing the air from in front of you and placing it behind you was "predicted" by Russian author Vladimir Megre in a novel. If you believe the premise of the book, it was actually revealed to him by a hot Russian spirit medium who took him into the deep-woods |
Nothing can be protected from anything. The greatest and only protection from terrorists is that there are slightly greater than no terrorists. Terrorism isn't a threat. At all. To anyone except a vanishingly small statistical distribution of people. Drop it. It's a non-issue. Worry about rats gnawing on the pressure seals. That's a real problem that will really need to be dealt with> |
Initial reading:
>In this study, the initial route, preliminary design, and logistics of the
Hyperloop transportation system have been derived. The system consists of
capsules that travel between Los Angeles, California and San Francisco,
California . The total trip time is approximately half an hour , with capsules
departing as often as every 30 seconds from each terminal and carrying 28
people each. This gives a total of 7.4 million people each way that can be
transported each year on Hyperloop. The total cost of Hyperloop in this
analysis is under $6 billion USD . Amortizing this capital cost over 20 years and
adding daily operational costs gives a total of about $20 USD (in current year
dollars) plus operating costs per one-way ticket on the passenger Hyperloop. |
But i also saved over 40 mins (80 vs 70 mph). I was bored so I actually ran a rough estimate of how much those 40 mins cost me. My car is rated for 31 mpg highway, so let's say I hit that at 70. Going at 80 drops my mpg by 15% so it goes down to 26.35 mpg. The difference in fuel cost (assuming $4 gas and a 400 mile trip) is $51.61 vs $60.72. So, those 40 minute cost me about $9, which is what you'd make in an hour at a minimum wage job. I was also carpooling with one other person so the personal cost to me was ~$4.50. |
Speaking purely as a transportation planner everyone needs to recognize two things:
the first is that [haymaker453 is almost certainly right]( There are a pile of reasons an engineer is better qualified to speak to, but Musk's cost numbers are just not realistic when it comes to building the line itself.
The second is that there is a lot lost when you drop the online stations. He seriously downplays the strategic importance of serving places other than line end points, and that just isn't how you get financially viable transport service or the kind of economic impacts we want from CHSR. Yes, intercity is different from urban transit, and the core demand on this route IS end to end, but especially in the long run it's the multitude of point to point journeys that justify the cost of the project.
I also have serious concerns about the capacity of the system he's proposing. Even accepting his numbers on frequency and cost you end up with a system that might be able to cram a little under 1000 persons per hour per direction through it, and while that seems comfortable in terms of CAHSR's numbers a 30 minute trip with $20 ticket effectively merges the LA and SF metro areas for all intents and purposes. Great for people, but my gut feeling is that the demand is going to be orders of magnitude greater than he is anticipating. Of course this point should be taken with a grain of salt given that I don't believe his ticket prices will be anywhere near that low after real construction costs, and that will help solve the problem on it's own. On the other hand if he can do it profitably with those ticket prices (implying capital costs in the ballpark of his estimates) additional lines are going to be a no brainer, so, again, problem solves itself.
Frankly this thing seems to me to have all the pitfalls of the classic gadgetbahnen, particularly PRT. Not quite worth discounting, but not a serious short term option for a major project either. More power to Elon if he wants to pursue this, but if it's a matter of public funds and public projects lets not go plunging into the unknown on dubious claims that end up raising their own huge set of issues if they pan out, all to solve a problem we can already handle quite nicely in traditional ways. Frankly the sticker shock people are getting on CAHSR is less practical than ideological, between budget hawks, small government types and the general feeling against big projects (both governmental and infrastructure) that infests North America. |
Wikipedia suggests that 68% of Reddit users are in the US. -
This site estimated Reddit's monthly users at 69.9 million. -
In 2010 California made up ~12% of the total US population -
Therefore, there are an estimated 5.7 million redditors in California from those numbers. However, there are only 3.5 million subscribers to this sub. Assuming the percentages are roughly accurate on a smaller scale, you get around 286,000 Californians. |
This is the first time I've heard of the hyperloop. Can someone give me a |
No, see - if you're the only one doing something, you have a market edge when others try and get in. Microsoft (Bing, in particular) was a little late to the party. While their subgroupings have been bigger in the past (Yahoo and Bing are virtually the same thing, it's more complicated than that, but that's the jist of it).
Google just got lucky. Much like Microsoft, they found themselves with a product that users liked, on a platform users were just starting to use. Google, unlike Microsoft, has never mandated anything but standards on advertising. For the longest time you couldn't even pay to manipulate your results (It would be something to note here that Google Shopping has gone to a Pay to Play setup, your listings do not show unless you're advertising them - at least last time I was checking into this for clients).
Google's "monopoly" is a natural one. And natural monopolies are usually not attacked within the United States unless a few conditions are met. Mostly, are they engaging in anticompetitive business practices that are aimed to destroy their lesser competition directly, and is there a vested interest in dismantling them for a smaller set of companies?
Well, in MS case - they were not even dismantled. They were simply fined and told, don't do that again you jackass. Microsoft still has a ton of money and Google isn't, other than improving their services, doing anything that would decrease Bing's ability to compete. Google is constantly improving their services, they're constantly offering new services, they're constantly on the leading edge of technology as well. They're working with other providers and companies to allow themselves to get a leg up on their competition, but they're not smashing their competition intentionally.
The biggest issue I have with what the guy was saying is he's comparing apples to oranges (the guy, being Ballmer). Why do I say that? Well, if you were to apply apples to apples comparison (even though they'd be a different breed) you'd have to look at Windows versus Android. They're both operating systems that were, at the time, on emerging markets that had great potential.
To ensure that everyone stuck with MS and ditched netscape, they forced OEMs to bundle IE with their OS. Even with the rulings, it is still almost always present when you start the computer. You can remove it, but it takes a long time and several reboots. Compare that to Android. Most people can boot up android and never use a google service. While gapps is commonly bundled with OEM software, the OEMs are paying google to be able to bundle that. CyanogenMod does not come with gapps because android is the OS and gapps is the proprietary logon service. Chrome is not installed unless a user specifically seeks it out (unless the OEM has decided, of their own free will, to install one, but they usually don't).
In addition, they may set themselves as a default search in chrome, or even in other areas of computing when they have access, but this is no different than Microsoft being able to put Bing on windows update. It's a choice, it's there, and they'll remind you of it.
In all actuality, Microsoft could ditch the windows mobile platform, switch over to android (it's free, as long as they'll take the time to make it compatible with their devices) and then use the android system to integrate into their windows PC/home theater/xbox/whatever services by use of custom calls and programs, which could come pre-bundled on microsoft android phones. They could even set the default search provider to Bing and install their own IE mobile browser on their own personally manufactured devices.
is actually a pretty good explanation of things. They talk about "non-coercive monopolies". And that natural monopolies will eventually erode. I would assume that the government believes that, in time, there will be a fall in google market share. They're not engaging in any behavior that is inherently anticompetitive. |
Ive heard the hardware is very well built so Ill give you that.
I wonder how often a feature like resizable tiles are used though. I was curious and found a crapload of free apps that do exactly that.
I dont get why some people are 'loyal' to [pick one : iPhone, Android, Windows]. The hardware and software and capabilities are soooo similar. Its like saying do you prefer to communicate in French or Japanese of English, in the end either way will do the job.
I went with Android because it was innovative early on (everyone learned to trust it) and it was cheaper than iPhone (so more people bought it) and just as capable as anything else. It being open source and a 'geek toy' that you could play with 'under the hood' cemented my decision. If any other company beat those points, I would not hesitate to switch.
Just my 2c.... |
Why would you want the government going in and messing up a perfectly good company. I'm a fan of both Microsoft (I have a touchscreen, so I actually like windows 8) and Google. Google has never done anything to piss me off, and I don't want the government trying to regulate them unless they are doing something unethical.
That being said, I don't completely trust Google. I'm a little scared that they're going to wipe out the competition and then start doing things customers don't like because there's nothing to stop them. If it gets to this point, then we can bring in some extra regulation, but there's no need for that now.
I would hate for something to break Google up, because with their size, they are very powerful. Normally that might be a bad thing, but it looks like, even with all that power and money, they are still looking out for the customer. Look at Google Fiber for example. They are forcing other huge companies to actually do what the customer wants! This "monopoly" is forcing the oligopoly to move forward instead of screwing the customer for higher profits. Go Google! Save me from these terrible ISPs!
P.S. I understand that Google benefits from people having fast internet. That way people can use their free services, Chrome book will become more useful, etc. But we both have the same goal right now, and there's no reason to slow down progress with regulation. |
other image editing apps to be created which open and edit .psd file
The equivalent analogy is that Microsoft is free to create their own video upload web site and it can upload the same video formats. No cloud company is required to provide apis for people to rewrite their apps. PayPal, for example, is not required to let other developers create PayPal2 using their data.
Yes, youtube does provide some apis, and many cloud services do to, but it's not because they have to, it's because they want to make their services more useful. Youtube already supports Windows via the web site that 90% of people use to access the content. |
This always bothered me about the Windows OS, especially since more and more families are getting computers and laptops for each family member. My family has six people. Even with the ability to share with one person, that would still be three copies of Windows OS. Not to mention those pc computers are shit - my father replaced his twice, my mother three times, brother twice (and the first one that broke was given to him my the air force academy). My sisters and I each have a mac - I gave my old one to my littlest sister after five years (it's now 8 years old), it still works fine. My other sister has had hers for four, still works fine. I've had mines for three, still works fine, and the cost of updating the OS is tiny. |
But the issue is that for a lot of users, they aren't doing anything more than browsing the internet and using Microsoft Office. Maybe they have some extra non-microsoft programs installed. They don;t need the benefits .
So you pay $140 for 1 computer (or $99 a year for five computers if you want to go that route) just to type up your essay, maybe create a power point. Not to mention $200 for Windows 8 so you can use the internet, play some computer games, maybe use some other programs and play music. That's $300-$340 total for up to date software. No wonder people bootleg the software, it's not worth the price - there are free alternatives to Office that people can use who are only going to ever use it to type their essays and open up a power point.
and for that matter, most office environments don't need fancy Microsoft either. The department I work in uses Outlook, Word, Adobe Reader, Pidgin, and Firefox. The two other programs are non-miscrosot programs. We rarely use word and adobe reader. That's a lot of money the company is spending on 30 people to use programs that really don't require much to use. If there are any 'benefits' or fancy features, we don't use them - they are not needed for our work. |
I work in IT and I'm amazed at how many people actually have Bing as their default search engine. I tried using it to help troubleshoot hairy issues, even issues with Microsoft's own software, and it is simply atrocious. Every single time I have to go to google to find the answers I want.
At first I thought maybe it was because I was wording the searches wrong, but then I thought, fuck that, why should I have to word them any different? I can get exactly what I want from google about 95% of the time on a single search, then why the hell would I attempt to figure out how to best word a search for another engine that probably isn't going to have the quality results I want anyway? |
MS Word through the mid 90s was such a pain in the ass. I remember my parents bought a new computer in 97. Prior to that I had typed out all my previous school essays in 95. Had a project that I needed to reference a prior piece and even though I had it backed up I couldn't open the file due to the 95 v. 97 formats. Didn't have the internet at my house yet, and being 13 meant riding a bike to the library to do the same research again. |
It's about time. The law giveth, and the law taketh away.
It is the law says that your work does not belong to you forever. After a while the work you created is not yours anymore - but belongs to society.
The law can also dictate that some people have a right to your work sooner.
And that's a fundamental concept that a lot of authors, software developers, painters, actors, movie studios, don't understand: you don't have a fundamental right to your own work. Society could decide that anything anyone creates belongs to everyone. But we'll do you one better and let you be, for a limited time the only person who is allowed to make money off the work you created. You don't get rights to anything you create; we grant you temporary use. |
Ah, someone seems to have a bias.
Ah, someone who's too fucking serious. It was a joke.
And it's been out since November 8. Not exactly what I'd call a year. And that's IF you could get one because they were on back-order for so long. And yeah, I said it's phenomenal - big whoop, wanna fight about it? I'd STILL buy it over every phone you mentioned considering it's nearly half the price of the going rate for most "big" phones |
That is not in any way fraud, it may be unethical but there is nothing illegal about it. You try to install the application, it asks for permission to track your location and anyone who agrees to it is at fault. Agreeing to allow the application to track the location does give the owners permission to use that data, whether it's for good or bad purposes. If it didn't then any application that uses GPS without an expressly written terms of service defining how it is used would be committing fraud, which is definitely not the case. |
The big problem here is that once a program has data it can be very difficult to figure out what happens to it. There is a static verification technique for looking at the flow of "tainted" data such as external input flowing to array bounds (as in the heartbleed bug) or here, the flow of sensitive data from the device to the outside world. Certain languages implement it but checking it in an unrestricted setting is more difficult. The idea is to try to see if data can flow from a secure source to the world. For example does that speedometer app just use your GPS position to get a speed or is it sending it to a third party. Actually determining this in java is extremely difficult due to things like reflective method calls and other tricky program implementation. You could start chopping off bits of java to make it easier on the static analysis but such a thing may drive developers away from the platform and just generally annoy people. For this reason it appears unlikely to me that they could implement a local use only policy any time in the near future. |
As someone who has run custom roms including CyanogenMod, the answer is sort of yes to both.
Installing a custom ROM or rooting voids your warranty officially in most phones' cases.
You can however flash back a stock unrooted ROM at least on Samsung and Nexus devices (all I have experiemce with), though the process of doing so is very different from installing a custom ROM. I have heard that in many cases people hadn't been called out in repair after reinstalling the stock ROM, but detecting remains of the old modded ROM is still entirely possible.
My experience is based on a Samsung Galaxy S (GT-i9000), which should be relatively similar to the newer Galaxy phones: the stock ROMs are often localized, which should be noted before flashing a custom ROM. Write up the versiovn.
The custom roms and stock apps: if the app doesn't work on the ROM, the app probably has been spoofed or hacked by someone at XDA, or relies on the ROM (which means there might be a custom rom with it). Or there is an alternative. I've not really heard of the problem.
Going back to the ROM is done with a version of leaked internal PC software, linux and mac should have third party tools. |
Trouble is, the developers have had it so good for so long they don't code their app to expect permissions to be denied.
Compared to iOS, developing for Android requires developing and testing for far more devices, screen sizes and device/manufacturer-specific problems. This problem, called "fragmentation" is being attacked by Google, they decided correctly to force manufacturers to include the standard Holo theme (and other measures). Allowing every user to take permissions of every app is a nightmare for any Android developer.
In my opinion (as an app developer and as a user), many Android users are not ready for this power to abuse. Looking at the reviews of a very essential app, "Google Play Services", people rate it low (1 star) because "it transmits data to the NSA". Yep, reading Play Store reviews can be hilarious.
Here's the full text german review I'm reffering to:
> Ich hasse alle Programme, welche einen zwingen gedownloadet zu werden, weil sonst andere Goggle-NSA-Programme nicht funktionieren. Ein scheiß Überwachungssystem, welchen man sich kaum entziehen kann. Grausam.
In English:
> I hate all programs, which force people to download them, because other Google-NSA-apps don't work otherwise. A stupid controlsystem, which is hard to circumvent. Awful.
Imagine what the reviews would look like with App ops: "Man, what a dumb app! Doesn't work without XXXX permission". And if you think I exaggerate, I actually read several (?!?) reviews along "This app sucks! Make it so, that it doesn't need root!", for an app which obviously does need root privileges. |
The main reason that there isn't a large release of diesel cars in the US is because California banned their sale a decade or so back as part of the clean air initiatives. It was purely based on emissions at that time, which were based on the dirty diesel in use at the time, and so didn't forsee any improvements on the tech. California is the largest car market in the US so most companies have decided to forego the diesel market since it would also be an uphill struggle to overcome years of bad marketing in car sales. There are still truck sales but they run on different rules. |
In your [breaker box]( the connection you use to connect a [generator]( I think is the same type you use to connect a 220/230V breaker for a charging station.
From the perspective of home electrical wiring all you really have to do before using the charging breaker as a generator connection is make sure the breaker to the main grid is off so you don't feed it with the generator. |
Eh, I think there's a bigger discussion to be had here. Do we still want to be reliant on a distribution network or do we, as individuals, want to be self sufficient?
With electric cars the future is ours. They have fewer moving parts and are therefore inherently more reliable. People are already putting solar panels on their homes so they won't be dependent on the government, or some massive corporation. Going forward it will be easily possible for people to be entirely self sufficient, as long as we don't allow ourselves to become reliant on another distribution network like we currently are on gasoline.
Let's NOT replace a gasoline network with a hydrogen one. Instead let's decentralize our power distribution to take that method of control away from the few and put it in the hands of the many.
Currently battery technology is the limiting factor. So the argument can be made for fuel cells. But there are already multiple universities and companies working on that problem, IBM for instance has made tremendously promising gains in the field. I believe it to be in the best interest of man-kind to commit NOW to electric cars. Once a better battery technology is made available the choice will be easy. But if we wait until then to make the choice it may be too late. It's very difficult, and expensive, to build out a distribution network. Once they do it, we'll be tied to that network for several decades at least. |
Good rule of thumb I've heard, 10 years depending on usage. I got over 12 out of a basic APC UPS, but I think any UPS that uses Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) should last as long under the same conditions. |
EU standard is 10ppm maximum sulphur which is classed as "effectively sulphur-free", since 2009. 50% of all cars in the EU zone are diesel powered.
Here is an [article]( on the reasons you don't get so many diesel cars in the US. |
i would definitely recommend that you get this addressed either today or tomorrow.
most wiring inside a house is either in 14,12 or 10 gauge wire. 14 gauge wire is good for about 15 amps and 10 gauge wire is good for about 30 amps. when you start reaching the upper limits on what you are drawing on these wires then the wires start to heat up. a good rule is not to exceed 80% of the ampacity.
so on a 10 gauge wire when you start drawing 24 amps or more then you start to see your wires heating up a little bit.
a lot of small appliance circuits (wall receptacles) are usually run in either 14 or 12 guage wire. so what that means is that your wires will start to cook on those circuits well before your fuse will trip.
this wasn't a problem way back in the day because they didn't have refrigerators, microwaves, electric heating and personal computers. but by the 1980's they should have known better.
( |
Only if you
a) provide parking where people get on the train, and
b) provide transportation to people to get from the train's dropoff point to where they ultimately need to go.
I'm thinking specifically of the failed Vegas/California train plans. It sounds great, because this a very heavily trafficked route desperately in need of something other than a 2-lane highway.
But it would have failed miserably, because no one is going to want to leave their car in Victorville, and then get to Vegas with no way to get around (public transit in Vegas is miserable if you want to go anywhere off the Strip, and that's how the cab companies will keep it.)
Similarly, if I'm in Vegas and want to go to San Diego or LA, how the hell does a train that stops in Victorville help me? |
Apple responded to this in the opening of the event:
> Where others perceive "first" as valuable, you value the first thing that actually matters.
> While others are distracted with the "new", you focus on the significance of a whole new take.
And, in this example, iPhone 6 may not have the highest resolution display but it will have the best color accuracy and black levels of any device.
iPhone 6 wasn't the first!!1 to have NFC payments, but it will have the best implementation with the best buyer and merchant experience. Users also don't have to worry about Apple selling your information based on products that you're purchasing.
Let's talk Widgets. Apple invented the Widget in 2005 for the desktop. They could have easily ported it to iOS in the way that Android did. But they didn't because it would become a cluttered mess. Instead, they did in a more clean and simple way via Notification Center and now users get the same (continuous) experience whether on their iPhone, iPad or Mac. It was worth the wait. |
There is so much wrong with this article, and Ajit Pai's original letter, i don't know where to begin.
First of all, the title of the article:
> Netflix accused of creating fast lanes
Well that's not what the FCC commissioner said. Nor is it what the article said. If the article's author could read the first sentence of his own article:
> Netflix of “secur[ing] ‘fast lanes’
In this case securing "*.
And he is correct, Netflix did cave to Comcast, and pay what they were required to pay. There is of course nothing wrong with that. I don't like that private companies are charging money for services as they see fit; but my wishes are not law (yet).
Then we move on to Mr. Pai's letter:
> Netflix has chosen not to participate in efforts to develop open standards for streaming video.
He is referring to a Variety article [ Streaming Video Alliance Trade Group Launches, Without Netflix or YouTube ]( The reason, of course, is that YouTube and NetFlix have already invested huge sums of money in their own CDN infrastructure.
The Commissioner is implying, without actually saying, that there is something wrong with that. There is an implication that companies like Akamai should not exist. His opinion is wrong.
Furthermore, YouTube has a standard that everyone should be following. There is no need for YouTube to help invent the standard they already have. There is no value (and frankly it would be a stupid thing) for YouTube to abandon everything they have in order to adopt a yet-to-be-defined standard. It is irrational to suggest that they abandon millions in investment in the largest CDN on the planet.
The standard should be whatever YouTube or NetFlix do; not the other way around.
> Some ^^who? have suggested that Netflix has taken these actions because the company is currently installing its own proprietary caching appliances throughout ISPs' networks as part of it's Open Connect program. If ISPs were to install open caching appliances throughout their networks, all video content providers - including Netflix - could compete on a level playing field.
That's a fine idea. Go do it, Commissioner Pai.
No, seriously. Go ask Congress for the $600M to install CDN throughout North America, and provide that service for free to everyone who wants to use it. Except that's not going to happen, and he damn well knows it.
If Netflix is going to foot the bill for CDNs (which are not free), then it's their CDN. Akamai doesn't provide its services out of the goodness of their hearts. They expect to be well paid. They're in it for the money. |
To run servers, tech support, etc. Just think of a porn website. Some are free to access any videos or pictures but they have ads EVERYWHERE. Then there's that porn website you pay for with a subscription, it will have a lot less ads. Wikipedia have NO ads and wishes to keep it that way for its users, it really keeps the site cleaned up. My radio station for classical music also does these sort of fundraisers so that it's listeners can have more music and no commercials between songs. |
If oil hits 20 bucks a barrel, like the Saudis joked about yesterday, Russia will be back to the income levels of the 90s
Average U.S. income adjusted is worse that in was in the late 70's. Of course the government saw fit to remove food, housing, fuel and school loans from the consumer price index so the numbers almost appear flatlined. When the CPI is compared apples to apples wit the missing metrics we earn nearly 29% less that we did in 79 while productivity has soared by more than 80% in the same time. |
The attached article is old, but it is very relevant.
Background: I run a fat cat video channel on YouTube. Recently one of my videos that I filmed of my cats in my house was inexplicably taken down for "copyright infringement" by Youtube. There was NO explanation or reasoning and the only information I had was that the claimant had a Russian name. I searched youtube and found my video had been reuploaded by a Russian account and that the video was monetized with 500k+ views.
Essentially, Russians are filing copyright claims against popular cat videos so that they can steal the content and monetize it. YouTube does NOT care because of the ad revenue they generate. I have filed numerous complaints, counter-copyright suits and flagged the channel and user to no avail.
The end result is YouTube's copyright policy allows you to lose your content without any notice or explanation while others can steal it and monetize it with no penalties.
Here is a screenshot of the stolen video and a link to my cat channel for proof: |
This is a research paper. It has not been implemented and it is unlikely to be implemented in the intermediate future.
The Google search algorithm contains over 200 parameters and heuristics. If this were ever to be implemented, it would have a small weight when compared to many of the other parameters.
The bedrock of the Google search algorithm will remain the vector space model, Pagerank, and click through rates. All major search engines use these three factors to generate the vast bulk of their search ranking. The additional parameters only help around the margins.
The reason that a crowdsourced evaluation of truthfulness will end up with an extremely low weighting (compared to the other parameters) is because it will have a very difficult time with widely contested facts.
Google is a private company that provides a highly useful, free service to billions of people a day. They will, from time to time, make changes in their search algorithm. Most of these changes will help produce better results, but a few will end up being mistakes and produce slightly worse results. Google is constantly evaluating their search results and will eventually catch the mistakes and remove them from the algorithm. |
Ideally you'd want a mixture of both but it depends on a lot of things.
information security- obviously sensitive information is not cloud friendly
data availability - cloud as primary file storage will chew up your network bandwidth and be slower than local storage. 500 users doing light internet browsing is not analogous to 500 users using primary cloud storage.
Do you have in house IT and are they capable of managing a localized system? Help-desk personnel are not sysadmins.
Backups and deep storage are not the same as primary storage and should not be treated as such. Generally you will need local file storage and offsite backup. |
It's all about power and control. Bureaucracy generally leans towards corruption (bribery, embezzlement, etc.) and it's in their best interest to keep this corruption hidden from the public eye to avoid scandal.
Of course, there will always be whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, who try to oust corrupt individuals and organizations. These individuals are a threat to powerful people. Monitoring information channels is a way to identify and silence whistleblowers before they go public.
Mass surveillance of communications channels is the first step towards sending hired goons after dissenters. I know this sounds like a complete nutjob conspiracy, but it happens all over the world, every day. |
Even then you'd need multiple sources all verifying your code because it's entirely feasible that the government could compromise one or even multiple verification sources.
Not to mention the fact that if you use windows the government doesn't even have to break your encryption. All they have to do is inject a man in the middle attack on whatever information is entering your computer and then cause the OS to run the script they've sent, which could then read the information after your machine decrypts it and then send it back to them. Of course there are defenses against this as well too. But even then, how do you know the physical machine that you are using hasn't already been compromised by the government when it was manufactured? |
The FPtP system means that the votes of my area's populace were boiled down to 1 of 650 parliamentary seats. If the candidate I voted for didn't get elected locally, my own vote ceases to have an effect on the national election.
If 99,999 people vote for Party A and 100,001 vote for party B in a constituency of 200,000, it is now is a Party B constituency through-and-through as far as the parliamentary election is concerned (those 99,999 people's votes are not represented nationally).
Depending on geographic location, certain votes are worth less in certain areas. Party A may win another constituency by 400,000 votes, but that win is still worth a flat 650th of the overall vote.
If Party B wins more seats (regardless of the size of the area or the margin of victory), then it is likely to become the government. If I move to an area with a more mixed electorate, suddenly my vote may have an effect on one of those 650 seats.
If Party B gets into power, it now has the ability to modify the voting system further in its favour (as currently planned). |
This is not missing info, this is about completely different way of using thorium than discussed in the summary. Rest assured, BlueRock does not understand either.
What is more, this IEER "factsheet" is a product of someone as ignorant as Bluerock. Here is a point by point explanation of IEER's errors and mistakes:
The fact that IEER never fixed their errors shows what they are interested in - not truth but a propaganda, enough to have a pamphlet full of errors which idiots like BlueRock can point to.
It should be noted that BlueRock was already notified about the fact that the IEER "factsheet" is a crap, was given all the references, but he still copypastes the link again. |
The argument against this proposal is that it wouldn't fucking work, because anyone actually serious about dealing with child pornography is going to be doing so over an encrypted connection.
I don't think an encrypted connection would prevent the sort of logging we're talking about. Now, if the company wanted to log the data transmitted, not just the request, encryption would be useful.
However, that would just force the child pornographers and pirates offline. It's not actually going to solve anything. However, this won't stop non-technical people from thinking it will help.
Edit: I'm a moron. Encryption would block logging of the requested URL but not the IPs for the requests. Encrypted proxies would block even this. |
We don't have highways (You would have to do tolls)
And that's where things fall apart. For better or worse, American commerce relies on the interstate highway system; rather than forcing a small percentage of the population to carry the financial burden of this system (and, as they are often transporting good needed by all Americans, passing those costs on to consumers), it is spread across the country's entire tax base. Further, a public, federal system allows for greater economies of scale, much better than if they were administered by local or state gov'ts, or small, local companies; in other words, we are saving money.
Of course, a large corporation that administered large swathes of the nation's roadways could do the same thing, but they would not be directly accountable to the citizenry, as the federal department that administers our roadways is today. |
This isn't related to VPNs, but around a decade ago, there was a privacy concern in that IPv6 addresses would contain a globally unique, never-changing number that would uniquely identify your computer (or, rather, its network interface card). Specifically, it was originally planned that the lower 64 bits of an IPv6 address would be the [MAC address]( of the network interface using that IPv6 address.
[A solution to this problem]( was cooked up in fairly short order, which pretty much preserved the upsides of using a MAC address for the lower 64 bits of an IPv6 address while avoiding the resulting privacy concerns. There's also nothing stopping you from using random bits instead of your MAC address for the lower 64 bits of your IPv6 address. |
When I signed up for Comcast a year ago, I was very clear in what I wanted and did not want. I was told that Comcast had a BW limit of 250GB per month, but that they weren't putting that into effect in the CA Bay Area. I got this same answer from 2 sales people and the tech who came out to install the equipment.
Lo and behold, they lied to me. I DO have a limit and according to their meter I have used 104GB of my current billing cycle. My billing cycle started literally 7.75 hours ago, and I have used 104GB of my 250GB in that time. Now at the 25 down I got, that is f-ing impossible to do, not to mention I was asleep that whole time. I called and they told me that it was my router (with a 26 digit hex WPA2 key and mac filtering I don't think so), and that the reps who told me there was no limit weren't tech savvy enough to answer my questions correctly. Never mind the FACT that when I phrased my question they answered, "We do caps but in other areas, not yours" which seems to imply they did know what I was talking about, if the reps selling the stuff give erroneous info, then the customer banks on it, the customer is right and the company is in the wrong AND has incompetent employees. They transferred me to a supervisor who told me they would send me the dept who could help me the most with this, and proceeded to disconnect my call. Just great, and there is no other provider in the area who can give me the speed I get from Comcast. The first rep I talked to (the one who informed the Comcast reps, including the install tech, are not tech-savvy enough to answer a tech question) also told me that everyone in the US has to put up with caps (not true) and when I corrected him that it is only about 58%, his flippant answer was that is still more than half. Fuck everything about this. |
Your whole argument almost makes me support caps.
Everyone (even you) has always known you're not using the connection full speed constantly, but you think you're paying to be able to.
If that's how you think it should work, you need to get a T1 line, so you have the whole 1.5 Mbps dedicated just to you.
A month of continuous downloading at 2.4 mbps is a whole lot of internet - if that's not enough for you, you're asking for a completely different business model, which would have a much higher cost.
I'm against caps, but do you want grandma and grandpa, who just look at foxnews.com and their e-mail forwards, subsidizing your connection, or not? |
I had a great assholish response typed up, but got to this:
> Please just take a look through our stupid thread, and try and honestly see why I am saying you were so patronising and ridiculously rude
Fine. Yes, I am patronizing as all fuck, but don't pretend you weren't the smug, dismissive, leaving no room for argument troll that you were in the first couple of posts.
> No doubt you find it justified, but then I'm guessing you come across "trolls" all the time, right?
Yes, all the time; coming in just to call anyone who doesn't shit all over Apple a "mac faggot" and to tell us to enjoy sucking on Steve Jobs' dick, even if our position is entirely neutral or objective (as mine is in this case). There are also plenty of people like you who come in and offer very subjective and obviously biased opinions while demonstrating the inability to be swayed through discussion, evidence, or correction of fact. Maybe you don't deserve it as bad as you got it, but don't delude yourself that you didn't show your demonstrably misinformed opinions to be held sacrosanct by you.
> Maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself perhaps you are actually inspiring these reactions through your own words? Just maybe.
Only very rarely, but yes, sometimes I pick that fight, and I enjoy it altogether too much. The majority is just the natural ramp up of the idiot being called on their idiocy, though.
> I'm not going to read another word from you so I wouldn't bother writing it, but I'm sure you will.
Yes, because I'm not going to play that stupid, pseudo-patronizing game of " |
The internet is the most successful distributed system in the world and has survived animated gifs, popups and xanga. If enough people become aware of the problem then solutions will be made available. Someone will start a wireless ISP. They'll get linksys routers, flash them and rewrite distributed DNS functionallity in to them. Sell them for $50 a piece and we can all broadcast on the current internet and on the Internet 2. Then Bush will be seen as a visionary for using the plural form of internet. |
That's not to say that it couldn't be direct intentional malice; but rather that it behooves us to be skeptical of such things until we see specific evidence of said individualized malice.
This is not a case where we're anthropomorphizing anything; this is people doing this and we know exactly who they are. The posts above are mostly aimed at those peoples' motives because knowing their motives helps us fight them.
Skepticism is certainly appropriate, but it's also important to keep a useful default mindset while continuing a skeptical investigation. In this case we could default to considering that their motivation is ignorance and investigate whether there's any malice, but I'd argue that's the wrong response. Since these people are trying to take our rights away, we should default to considering it malicious and respond like we would to any purposeful attack on the people. Maybe we find out in the end it really was ignorance, and it's right to keep in mind that possibility, but I don't think we need proof of malice before we respond to this as a malicious attack.
Many politicians use folksy faux-ignorance to cloak their real malicious intent. Bush II was the master of this, but it's pretty common at all levels of politics. They're hoping that their "aw-shucks, have to protect the children" schtick will keep us from responding resolutely to what is so obviously an attack on our freedoms for their own benefit. |
At this point, world governments are extremely powerful, but slow to react and cumbersome. Like the Church in the old days, they get their power from extreme amounts of money and the perception that they have complete control.
That shadow of power breaks down when you look at situations like Egypt, the best example I can think of, of a people's response to an unjust government these days. All the tanks in the world can't protect a government/multinational that the people want out. The PR game is ridiculously hard for everyone, but critical thinking and a nimble, informed, interconnected populace is stronger than any law, or the guns behind it. |
Companies pay credit card companies for each transaction.They're called interchange fees. At 70.8 million customers, Verizon's new fee would bring in several million dollars in revenue to help compensate for that.
Your solution would instead involve a loss of several million dollars to the company. It is not an even trade-off.
I'm not an expert I'm just speculating, but I'm guessing Verizon wants the change because it saves them millions of dollars in credit card transactions. |
FTFY -- let's give credit where credit is due.
> Whoa. Verizon dropped the $2 fee it imposed just yesterday. THE POWER OF DEMOCRACY.
EDIT: I know that we are the internet, and that we should be proud when we are able to influence the policies of major corporations and -- moreover -- major government decisions. But the core value that we should focus on is democracy, which dates back (at least in its contemporary western form) to the Roman Empire.
The power here is not in one medium alone -- it is the very notion of protest, activism, and emergent power stemming from common opinion. Open Wall Street may have been organised online, but its impact would have been comparatively negligible without in-person representation internationally. Reporters can't take shoot videos of reddit comments, nor quote them with the same impact. |
I feel like companies do this kind of thing to rope people into thinking they're being heard by these companies. Imposing a new unpopular charge or condition and then retracting it because of "consumer backlash" is a tried and true method. This way the next time they have to hike their prices you'll pay because you understand and "won the last round."
Take Netflix - They torpedoed a good thing into the ground, customers complained, they listened, and now it's a whole dollar more for the same goddamn service. |
balloon up to say the Mesosphere or maybe even the Thermospher, by doing it the same way they do it with weather balloons, then fire the rockets(maybe even an ion thruster?) and you've just added a hell of alot more lift because you're above the Troposphere and Stratosphere which is alot of air to cut though.
** |
First off: no, not necessarily, you can easily rig things up so it really does take a full second per test.
Second: parallelizable, sure. Let's imagine we can build a computer that weighs a single gram, and let's convert the entire mass of the Earth into these computers. Wow! We've sped it up enormously! Instead of taking 10^69 years, we're down to a mere 10^41 years! Instead of taking more than a billion billion billion billion billion billion times the entire age of the universe we're down to a mere billion billion billion times the entire age of the universe !
Given a planet made entirely out of one-gram CPUs, of course. I'll let you figure out how to power them. |
Interesting use of the word, "force." I don't think that word means what you think it means. |
Nobody uses TrueCrypt unless they're planning to hide another volume in it. The court will assume that you have done so and demand the key to the hidden volume, even if there actually isn't one.
For that matter, since you can have many hidden volumes, they could keep asserting that you have another hidden volume containing whatever it is they want to find, again even if there actually isn't one. |
Nobody uses TrueCrypt unless they're planning to hide another volume in it. The court will assume that you have done so and demand the key to the hidden volume, even if there actually isn't one.
For that matter, since you can have many hidden volumes, they could keep asserting that you have another hidden volume containing whatever it is they want to find, again even if there actually isn't one. |
Nobody uses TrueCrypt unless they're planning to hide another volume in it. The court will assume that you have done so and demand the key to the hidden volume, even if there actually isn't one.
For that matter, since you can have many hidden volumes, they could keep asserting that you have another hidden volume containing whatever it is they want to find, again even if there actually isn't one. |
Sounds reasonable, but with a few caveats. First, I'm not a computer expert. I have no idea if it's even possible to do what you're describing, or if it's apparent to a forensic computer expert that a set of data is subject to multiple encryption keys returning different results so they could announce that you've only given one of several possible results. Second, I don't specialize in criminal law. I believe from my legal education and general understanding of criminal law that you could not be compelled to testify about how your encryption system works. Lacking an explanation from you, and if what you're describing isn't something that a forensic computer expert would already know about and be able to explain to the court without your testimony, I'm guessing you could do it this way. |
some people would eagerly testify that
That's not the issue. The issue is when someone brings forth evidence against them-self. Neither of ceestep's examples involved some random person testifying: In the first example the police already saw what was on the laptop (so stupid perp) and in the second example the lady told the police what was on her laptop (again, stupid perp). |
I'm glad the article called Governor Scott out on his shit. He's the most lobbied piece of shit Florida has ever seen. For those who don't know, we have a Polytechnic university already established, but Scott approved the allocation for another polytechnic university in the same goddamn area for what many people believe to be for his own personal gains.
He's done nothing but cut education and raise tuition for all students whilst talking shit on a majority of majors. He's also destroying our scholarship program funded by the FL lottery. |
The effect is pretty small. Where you might run into it is in high latency links (think satellite) where the MTU (maximum transfer unit) is small, which magnifies the impact of the larger overhead IPv6 requires. That's an edge case. The other area where you'll see impacts is when you're doing 6 to 4 translations in the network path, as that always takes some time. But if you had a pure v6 path to that other v6 host such latencies won't be an issue.
> In these days of TCP Offload Engines coming built in to more and more network stacks the impact is even less likely to be noticed. If any. In fact, it may even be faster in those cases.
> Why is that larger header not as much of a factor as you think? That's because the designers of v6 took some of the lessons of v4 and built things better. Most importantly for cross-internet communications the address fields are handled much more efficiently in routers than in v4, which improves speed of v6 packets through routers as compared to their v4 cousins.
> When it comes to same subnet communications where router tables aren't a concern, each packet requires less raw computation. There is one less checksum to validate (Ethernet checksum, no IP checksum for v6, but TCP/UDP checksum is still required) which saves small amounts of time. And on special networks, the ability to have VERY large packets can further save processing. |
I know nothing about baseball so I'll assume the ball has a mass of 100g and is composed entirely of carbon, giving 8.3 moles.
At 0.9c, by
Ek = (mc^2 / (1 - v^2 / c^2) ^1/2) - mc^2
it has about 1.16E16 J of kinetic energy.
The distance from the pitcher's mound to home base is about 15m, and the ball has a radius of 0.04m. So, it sweeps out a cylinder with volume, by
V = pi r^2 d
of 0.07m^3. Assuming that air is entirely ideal diatomic nitrogen (N2), at 298K and 100 kPa, there will be
n = PV/rT
2.8 moles of N2 in the way.
Now, I'm going to assume that the fusion results in the entire mass of the air and baseball fusing into iron. This is where things get very off-track, because we'd have to exchange some protons for neutrons. Nevertheless, I calculate a mass of 0.1780kg of nitrogen+carbon, and 0.1778g of iron (we can make 3.178 moles of iron from 2.8 moles of N2 and 8.3 moles of C). This 0.0002kg gives us extra energy by
E = mc^2
of 1.8E13 J, negligible compared to the kinetic energy of the ball, and about 25% of the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.
Alternatively, all of the atoms could fragment into alpha particles. This calculation is slightly more realistic, as there are even numbers of protons and neutrons present. From the nucleons present, we can assemble 44.5 moles of helium, with mass 0.1781kg. So fragmenting all of the mass would actually reduce the energy of the ball! But only by a tiny amount. |
There are a multitude of reasons for this, but it doesn't have much to do with the product itself.
Take the Zune, for example. In every way possible it was a superior product to the iPod. However, they failed for a variety of reasons included late entry to the market and poor marketing.
For wp7, I would chalk it up to poor marketing, late entry into the market, and fighting public sentiment. Apple and Google are 'cool' to different markets for different reasons, regardless of actual product merit. For google, however, the larger share of Android phones are not actually being purchased as 'Smart Phones' anyway. The android phones are the upgrade path for people upgrading from feature phones - people are not actually seeking them out. |
Pretty much, the main problem in New Zealand is that there is only one undersea cable connecting us to the rest of the world which very easily gives a monopoly over the internet supply to the owners of said cable. They're going about upgrading us all with cable all around the country to get better speeds, when what we need is to actually be able to use more than 100GB of data without having to pay out the ass for it; and I can see that happening until there is some competition with the undersea cable connection. |
In a free market you would have had competition rising up everywhere at the onset of the market being formed.
In theory, yes, but what actually happens is that power concentrates and you end up with monopolies. No one wants competition and if you want some you're going to have to break out a rulebook. |
I wish. I wish American's would stop BITCHING about their bloody internet.
Australia, first world country, 90% of people have under a 10Mb/s connection and still get charged over $60 a month for phone and internet.
We don't even have the infrastructure to support our highest connection (100Mb/s fibre) in 99% of our country. |
Cable companies exist in what's referred to as a "natural monopoly". In the cable industry startup costs are very high so it is difficult for new entrants to come into the market. Also, fixed costs are initially very high and then over time are reduced. This is known as having an economy of scale. These two effects, increasing economies of scale and high barriers to entry, are the main reasons why naturally over time a superior market competitor will start to outpace rivals and eventually be able to dominate the market and become a monopoly. Local governments know this, so they regulate these natural monopolies to control costs and reduce the power of the monopoly.
However, the big drawback to having these natural monopolies is that the local governments can only control prices. They cannot dictate to the companies technology standards. The only way to drive technology changes is through a new market entrant who can affect market equilibrium. Enter Google. |
There are two cable companies in my area, Grande Communications (small regional carrier) and Time Warner. Grande provides better, faster service at much lower costs. I paid less for 50 megabit, cable, HBO, Showtime, and DVR than I would for just 20 megabit internet with Time Warner. I'm lucky to get half the speed I pay for with TWC, while Grande seems to regularly give me better than advertised speed. When I called to have Time Warner installed, I had to wait 2 weeks, stay home from work, and they didn't arrive, making me wait 3 more days and skip work again. I missed 2 days of work and they knocked $30 off my bill. Surely providing quality service is cheaper for the giant corporation with its economy of scale, but their prices and service are outrageous.
Time Warner, however, buys exclusive rights to lots of apartment complexes in the area. If a complex has an exclusive agreement with TWC, I generally take it off the list instantly. However, other people do the same thing, so Grande complexes tend to be fully booked, and thus raise their rent, while TWC complexes have to drop their rates in order to fill up. |
Just because you know the mechanics, does not mean you have good intuition.
Now, if you're covering an industry, you're probably in a better position to make judgements on a set of stocks (in that, and related industries) than an "average joe", simply because you live and breath it...every...single...day.
Also, being aware of the different methodologies sometimes puts way to many tools at your disposal. |
Feasible? Surely this proposition is the opposite of feasible. Bleeding edge in this department consists of vague blurry images or doctors poking around in Parkinson's patients' heads (which needs human intervention in the loop: "still shaking? How about now?" Poke, poke, prod). Ok, hyperbole, but we could be centuries (excuse hand wavey time frame) away from advanced direct brain - digital interfaces that can be used in a consumer environment. Ignoring resource feasibility, and resistance from conservative minds (which surely would be an incredible obstacle considering the way it will affect everyday life and how we look at the world)*. I'm tentatively optimistic about this sort of thing in our lifetimes, but I sure wouldn't bet on it.
(Edit: |
You are deluded if you think that a single idea is so magical that it will make the difference between success and failure. If you have a number of ideas, create some kind of offering around them and provide a service that Google can't be bothered to provide. For instance, Google has horrible customer service. Getting someone on the phone at Google is practically impossible. Provide good customer service and people will choose you over Google even if Google provide a similar service. |
As a former employee in a Comcast call center, this is correct. When you call in, the initial rep you get's job is to try and prevent you from lowering your core services bill, and to avoid transferring you. There are metrics for EVERYfreakingTHING, and the supervisors stay on our asses to maintain them. So, we'll do our best to talk you down and avoid exceeding the transfer metric... or showing up on some stupid report of people that have lowered bills too often.
We're actually supposed to try to sell you more. Yes, we hate having to do this.
But, if we cant talk you down, we will transfer you to the retention department. THEY are the ones whose job it is to prevent you from canceling. They also have ridiculous metrics, however, they have the ability to give you special rates that the rest of the CAEs don't have access to.
-- When you call in, be polite. If you give me your ass to kiss for something I have nothing to do with/cannot help, I will not make much effort to help you. BUT, if you're friendly and explain your troubles like a decent adult, I will do my best for you.
My supervisors hated my stats, but I'd rather go above and beyond to help out good people than bend to call center metrics. |
As someone who used to work for Comcast, this is old news. They did this with 98% of all channels like 3 years ago.
There's actually some benefit for consumers too. They have to get a box, but everyone except basic (broadcast only) subs had one anyway. Making the channels digital and dropping the analog streams also frees up a lot of bandwidth that will allow faster internet speeds or more channels. |
they are not terrible at providing a service people want and are willing to pay for, or they would no longer be in business, it everyone got shitty service from them then dish/directtv would have a much larger customer base. just because you dont want to pay a few extra dollars a month, and have had problems with your service does not mean you are the majority.
here is a deeper explanation for the prices going up each year:
to continue to provide any amount of service to their customers, cable providers use quite a bit of (believe it or not) cable of varying sizes, one thing that all the sizes have in common is the use of copper, which has gone up in price over the years.
to be able to get the cable moved, or techs where they need to be, vehicles are necessary, as is gasoline, and maintenance on the vehicles. all of which has gone up in price over the years.
to transmit the signal, there is an insane amount of equipment and software that is necessary, and must be updated, which costs more money each year.
to keep providing channels to the subscribers, the company has to pay licensing fees to the owners of those channels, and they want more each year.
im not even going to touch on the employees, which they often pay more each year (especially higher ups).
keep in mind, that due to the fact that they have to raise prices to deal with all of this, they lose customers every year, which means less money coming in, meaning that they have to raise the prices to keep their profit margins. |
This... my gas bill is normally $5 for gas used (single male in a 1br), and $20 for "delivery" |
Much of it comes down to the hardware - I work for a cable provider in Canada, and it really depends. In the majority of cases (read: flipping between 2 same-resolution channels), think of the delay as a brief buffering, or similar to the load time on a video client on your computer. Most HD channels here are broadcast in MPEG-4, so the brief decode/buffer is what accounts for the majority of the down time.
Now regarding bandwidth requirements for digitally vs analog broadcast channels. One Analog channel represents a 6 MHz range with most cable providers able to broadcast up to from 1-1000 MHz, although we generally prefer to stay under 800 or so, as above that you are significantly more susceptible to signal issues. If we were to 'reclaim' that analog channel, we could potentially provide you up to 16 SD digital channels, or 6 HD channels (although we generally try to do no more than 2 to ensure quality). So if we were purely a cable provider, we could comfortably broadcast ~130 analog channels, over 2100 digital channels, or 266 high quality HD channels in that same space.
Then, of course, we get into the realms of internet and phone over coax.
Both services operate using a DOCSIS protocol, with our phone service using DOCSIS 2, and our internet using DOCSIS 3 (long story short, DOCSIS 3 = multiple DOCSIS 2 connections simultaneously).
Each DOCSIS channel takes up an entire Analog frequency channel, and is typically located in the 100-300 MHz range of the spectrum. In the case of higher-speed DOCSIS 3 connections, (ie. in the realm of 250Mbps), you require a binding of AT LEAST 8 channels to attain that speed, along with generally 4 upstream channels to maintain a certain QoS. Now these 12 channels are the minimum just for you to maintain service; Generally speaking, there may be as much as twice these number of channels reserved for load-balancing purposes, so potentially up to 24 channels just for internet.
Thankfully phone service is a little simpler, requiring only one up and one downstream channel, with redundancy tied up ~4 channels.
Of course there are a few channels required for administration, communication to equipment, etc, tying up another 4-6 channels.
Now there is a huge push to get Gigabit service to everyone's home - keep in mind that that would quadruple the number of channels required for internet bandwidth (not to mention the back-end hardware required).
So we are left with about 100 usable channels to deliver your day-to-day service. When you have ~80 HD channels, PPV channels, a Video on Demand service, almost 200 SD Digital channels, you can see where you are under a constant bandwidth crunch. There is a constant demand for new channels, new content, and that bandwidth has to come from somewhere. Do you cannibalize another channel and reduce quality, or slowly phase out an older product?
I cant speak for Comcast, but here we generally offer at least one complimentary piece of HD hardware to assist with the customer transition, and in the vast majority of cases, people are far happier with the increased selection and features available to them.
If anyone is interested in some specifics in how things work let me know - this is an ultra simplified version, but I hope it helps.
(I'm sure my grammar is terrible - be gentle)
Edit - |
Cut the cord for almost three years and only recently went back to Comcast for $71.99 a month including two tv's and middle of the road internet locked in for two years.
Honesty, it's a little more convenient with cable, but Netflix and Hulu served most of our needs just as well. Throw in a nice OTA antenna and now you're playing with power. |
Alright people, I agree that Comcast is money hungry. I have never paid for tv in my life. Any service that costs money and includes ads is something I will never pay for.
But having said that:
The real reason that they are forcing people to use these little boxes... called "DTAs" Digital Transport Adapter, is because having 60 channels broadcast-ed in Analog uses way more of their available spectrum than broadcasting the same 60 channels in Digital. When they did this in California a couple years ago it was called "Project Calvary" and they thought they would need the bandwidth for new and improved 3d channels.
Also they do not have to roll a truck to your address when you decide to stop paying your bill and screw a terminator on the tap outside. They can switch you off from the office.
Remember, cable is nothing more than piped radio waves and is subject to the same limitations.
Source: I have worked in Office for Comcast Biz Services, and been a Commercial Tech. |
This is not a shakedown it is an effort to start using h.264 to increase the amount of channels and quality their pipes can handle. None of this is new.
Even if they did not encrypt the h.264 streams it would be impossible for just your TV to decode them.
This is just like the docsis 1.1, 2.0 and now 3.0 rollout. It takes time and you cannot change your source signal until you are sure every home is equipped with a device capable of decoding the video.
I for one think it is about time, and cannot wait for h.265 standards to hit the industry, the end result of set top box acceptance of a codec is cheap co-processor chips to handle decoding. |
NHL Gamecenter sucks though, even with a VPN to get around the local games they won't show anything nationally televised on NBC sports. Which is mostly the good games. And it's not very useful for playoffs for the same reason. That and it buffers, drops out, doesn't work, won't sign in all at the worst times. I have 12Mbps down so it's not my cable, netflix works fine. |
Cable Guy's wife here.
ALL the cable companies are doing this. Theft is a huge problem. Cable companies pay audit crews to go from pole to pole to disconnect people who are stealing- some times with police escorts. Generally, they pay auditors upwards of $7 an address. Sometimes there are 8+ addresses on a pole. Last summer, Cable guy and I made some $20K, in just under three months, working 3-4 days a week, from 7:40 a.m. to about 1:50 p.m. Going to all digital will save these companies HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. Plus, it will make them money with the fee they'll be charging to rent one of their boxes, and from new customers who won't be able to steal cable anymore.
Plus, the entire industry is now regulated into actually maintaining their systems. If you live in Dayton, OH, the entire city has upgraded power supplies (keeps the system up and running during a power outage, in case someone has a generator). And really, even without the FCC forcing the cable companies to upgrade and maintain, with Google Fiber networks being built, cable companies would have eventually had to do all this to keep up anyways. |
Who knows, but my god, I hope you never dare criticize touchwiz in /r/android. Its downvote hell if you do.
Which is insane. TW drains batteries, is unstable, ugly, and slows down updates. Never really saw the logic of a non-Nexus phone, but some skins aren't 100% terrible, but wow, touchwiz is a nightmare. Its also styled to look like Gingerbread, so it looks incredibly out of date.
Samsung is just one of those unethical companies that have the government of Korea watching their back. Note, the only reason this is happening is because Taiwan has HTC's back and wants some level of revenge on Samsung. HTC is not without faults as well. |
Samsung is already winning the war among android manufacturers. That leaves RIM (already being dismantled without effort) MS (whose bumbling isn't a threat) and Apple to get customers from.
It's tough to pour on the hate for another android manufacturer because you risk raising bad juju for android itself. Apple as a whole different ecosystem is a much easier target. |
As someone who currently works in the automotive industry, and has actually worked with fuel cell vehicles before, I agree with your opening statement completely. But not for most of the reasons you listed.
Hydrogen manufacturing is actually really, really, easy. This is because there are a huge amount of processes out there in industry that already produce hydrogen as a byproduct. However they just burn it off since they have no use for it and it's zero emission. So if you could figure out the logistics of convincing these companies to store and sell it to you, you'd probably need very little dedicated production of hydrogen for cars. For those of you arguing for electrolysis, the losses from, electricity-->hydrogen-->then back to electricity in the fuel cell, are HUGE compared generating and using it in a standard electric vehicle (battery).
I specifically worked with the control systems of the fuel cells, so I can't speak confidently about storage mechanisms, but I do know the loss due to leaking is pretty low. The average car driver would empty their tank before they experienced unacceptable losses. There's some validity to your statements about challenges compressing or chilling hydrogen, but the bigger issue is that nobody can agree how to store it. You can do gas, liquid, or a kind of slurry. But the industry as a whole (not just automotive), can't agree on the best method, so nothing is standardized.
My real argument with fuel cells is that it's a niche technology. Most people don't realize that fuel cells have been around for almost 50 years, and the technology has advanced at a snails crawl. There are tons of reasons for this, a lot of which have to do with IP and the nature of the start-ups that pursue fuel cells. But more importantly, the technology has some unavoidable short comings in the fundamental process. Namely, the anodes and cathodes used in the stack to strip away electrons and then return them to the atoms after use, suffer from huge decay. This degradation can be limited through precise control of the loading on the fuel cell, but rapid ramping or overloading of the system will cause the deterioration to quicken. This means that for an application like a car, even with a well designed and implemented control system, you can expect to replace your stack regularly. The plates that make up the stack are super cheap, since in most cases companies use graphite. However the anode and cathode films almost always contain rare earth metals such as platinum or gold. Because of this, changing the stack out of a car is like paying to replace your whole engine, and nobody wants to do that ever 12-18 months. You can hypothesize that with increased production and advances in the technology, this price could be driven down to acceptable levels for consumers. But considering how long people have been working on fuel cells, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Just to clarify, I am not against hydrogen fuel cells as a technology. It has a lot of great niche applications, particularly in on demand power in isolated applications, such as the way it is used on the ISS. But as far as using it in automotive applications, I think battery electric has a lot more promise, particularly since the infrastructure and distribution system already exists. |
Weight: Is this really that big of a deal? The Model S weighs 4,647.3 lbs and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. A comparable ICE vehicle, the Porsche Panamera weighs 4,123 lbs and does 0-60 in 5.2 seconds. Granted, the Model S uses an aluminum body and frame to make up for the heavy battery, but the weight doesn't seem to cripple the car by any means. Plus, as battery energy density increases, weight will decrease, especially once range becomes acceptable.
Clean Energy: What difference does it make, really, as to where the power for a BEV comes from? Yes, the carbon footprint of a BEV is larger if the power source is coal, than if it is solar, but it's still better than the alternatives.
A coal powered BEV has a lower carbon footprint than a gasoline powered car.
A coal powered BEV will have a lower carbon footprint than an HFC car (regardless of whether hydrogen came from oil refining or electro-hydrolysis).
A gasoline (turbine generator) powered BEV has a lower carbon footprint than a gasoline powered hybrid.
The only scenario the coal powered BEV loses the carbon footprint war to is a gasoline powered hybrid.
So, should we all drive Priuses forever because stupid states (like my own, Ohio) think the best way to generate power is to burn crap we pull out of the ground?
If you want to be green , today (in a state like mine), then sure.
But if you live in a state like Washington, that is mostly hydro or you care about the future, then no.
It will still cost significantly more (per mile) to fuel your Prius than to charge your BEV, despite the slightly smaller carbon footprint of the Prius.
A Prius still needs gasoline in every scenario. Oil will eventually be a thing of the past. The time to move on to alternatives is now.
Renewable energies will eventually replace non-renewables. It is already very plausabile that in the next 10 years, an affordable roof full of solar panels could power most people's EV power needs, along with much of their home power needs. The solar industry is already exploding due to the plummeting costs of these roof-top systems.
There is no future in directly fuel powered cars. It is always more efficient to generate the power off of a vehicle and store the power in a battery (if the fuel is the same). If you find a more efficient means of power generation, it will always be more efficient to generate it en masse than to generate it directly on the vehicle (unless your vehicle is a rocket). |
I feel like people down vote this based on a lot of unknowns. Personally, I love this idea. I don't have too many cards myself, but favor in the fact that I can store all my loyalty/rewards/membership/gift cards and even a library card? This would be amazing!
The out of range alert would be incredible as well, not only for the card but my entire wallet. Accidentally leave my wallet at home? My phone will beep and tell me. Also I my wallet is stolen, I just have to deactivate the card and my information is safe.
I see this as being as game changing as square. Its only a matter of time before major banks use this tech. Multiple Debit/credit cards in one package? Customers would eat that up.
Obviously we're moving towards mobile payments, and I see this as being a patron saint for that technology. I say within 5-10 years and people realize having anything other than a phone is pointless. I may be wrong but a digital certificate is much cheaper and secure than crazy anti counterfeit techniques that are used in passports, drivers licenses, and bills. |
They can regulate it all they want but they can't stop its use and spread.
They can, though. If they decided bitcoin was a threat to the American monetary system and/or economy, shit would get real ... real fast.
>People prefer money with fixed supply.
You obviously just made this up.
>gold and silver ... don't make good money
Based on?
>Regulating Bitcoin would be like regulating marijuana.
The government is literally regulating marijuana as we speak. In my state we're about to have marijuana stores that are fully taxed and regulated by the state government. I know that in most reddit arguments you probably do just fine making random shit up and not having anyone notice, but it's so completely obvious that you're talking out of your ass here that I genuinely feel kind of embarrassed for you.
Anyway, |
Can I see a citation of that specific assertion please? Also, WHICH private keys? There are so many. And it can be just as easy as one hand not telling the other what they are doing, under penalty of law.
** Microsoft DID make it easier to wiretap Skype, for instance, by centralizing the decentralized p2p framework. so that they were the definite winner of the bid. So it doesn't even matter if there even are private keys, don't conflate the issue and make having private KEYS the point when they have the private DATA.
I know that NSL letters are approved by secret courts, with gag orders, explicitly preventing the thing they are asked for to NOT be told to any other party. On grounds of national security.
And furthermore, saying "I didn't give them the keys" means absolutely nothing if they are tapping the data links between servers. *[It also means absolutely nothing if they say 'This NSL says you must put this box in your data center. You don't know what it is and you won't know. End of discussion.'](
I don't give a shit what they say, *[NSL letters have gag orders. The important pieces are NOT talked about, under penalty of law.](
**[All the while accepting money from them for their cooperation.]( |
Ignoring the rest of your comment, the word "sex" implies consent. RMS has often voiced his opinion on sexual activities and it's |
disclaimer, MS employee here.
Many believe that MS can't be trusted because their source code isn't sufficiently open enough. This is a point of many open source proponents, but without knowing specifically how the NSA is gathering data, it may or may not be a fair assumption.
Let's assume that every line of code and tool that MS, Google, and Apple ever used was open sourced tomorrow, and the public verifies that no trickery and no backdoors exist. Hurray! we've obtained privacy, right? Wrong. The encryption that's used has two parts:
the source code, implementing the cryptographic algorithms.
the public and private keys used to encrypt and decrypt information. This is data that's input into the source code .
So, while you might be able to inspect the code, you won't have access to the data that's input to the code (particularly the private key). If you don't have the private key and you can't exploit a failure in the algorithm, then you won't be able to decrypt the communications. So, how does the NSA go about decrypting? I'll admit that I don't know, but I'm guessing that it's one of the following options:
they've developed sophisticated mathematical methods to determine the private keys used.
Or maybe they just call a judge, get a warrant, and demand the private key from one of the parties involved in
the decrypted communications, with threat of jail time in place for individuals that don't comply. They then use the private key to decrypt any communications needed.
In my opinion, the latter option is the most likely, and all the open source code in the world isn't going to protect you from it. |
open source isn't a silver bullet solution for privacy."
I whole heartedly agree. There are many problems to be solved in the years ahead. As you mentioned, centralised systems are also a huge problem for privacy as they can be easily compromised in their host jurisdictions. It may even take decades to develop secure distributed systems that deliver the centralised services we have taken for granted. But that is a challenge that we as engineers must rise to in order to prevent computer systems, the internet and the marvels of the information age, from being turned against humanity itself. |
when you write code, it is generally readable, what is does is pretty much laid out there, almost in plain english. when you compile that code into a form that the computer can run, it is virtually unreadable by a human.
A skilled researcher can disassemble and reverse engineer the compiled code (this is how hackers find and exploit bugs), but can never fully see the entirety of the program in the same clear way as if they had access to the source. |
Everyone was scared, but that was largely by design.
Regardless of whether or not you're a "truther", I think it's pretty clear in retrospect that the "terror alert levels" and the COMPLETE grounding of ALL air traffic for a week were inescapable and fear inducing reminders. At the time I worked right next to a pretty major airport in southern cali. Seeing the planes fly again was a sign of "normalcy" we were all happy to see after the start of the "war". There was nothing else on the news except people worrying about powder in envelopes, their local walmarts being bombed (seriously, go google it if you don't remember) and scary brown people. It was literally inescapable for the first few weeks. I can hardly believe that now, 12 years later we're still being told to wet our pants.
The scare tactics were so effective, Bush made his (in)famous "let's all get back to traveling and spending money" speech. I thought that was the most laughable and disgusting thing I'd ever see a president do (after all the fear mongering we heard from gubbmint)... Until the Mission Accomplished GI Joe routine. That was just insulting.
The Patriot act went largely unread by Congress IIRC. It had a sunset provision after all, so we could always let it lapse.... Rightio. Governments don't tend to return power to the people once they have it. Nor money (you never see 'temporary taxes' rolled back either), but that's another story.
Everyone was scared. We were constantly told to be. Everyone was told to trust the government, to show some love of country, and we did. We wanted to believe in our leaders. I was opposed to it, I remember thinking it was wrong, that the US didn't shit on the constitution like that. We didn't know how bad it was (since it was such an enormous piece of legislation and there'd been no time for thoughtful analysis. 'Cause you know. Bombs and stuff. Sign that shit.) And by the time it passed it was pretty clear we were going to war with Iraq. Those of us who were paying attention and not waiving the flag, who understood the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism... We kept asking "Why are we shooting the dog 'cause the cat made a mess"? Best case was to be laughed off as a hippy liberal. Worst case was to have people genuinely and aggressively question your loyalty .
To be honest, as ashamed as I am of that law, of the NSA snooping on us, of big media constantly trying to control the internet, I'm far more sad I don't see people actively pushing back. But then again, when you live in a country that allows hundreds to be killed in the season of giving by stampeding violent crowds, but you can't tolerate people assembling peacefully to petition the government for a redress of grievances, then maybe there's no hope left. Of course that's largely up to all of us.
Nothing is going to change with the NSA. No legislation will be passed to correct this. Not without people doing what the founding fathers wanted and taking ownership of their government. It's not a "legal" law, it was never designed to be. It was a power grab, and we handed it over. If we want it back, we have to take it back. |
I get what /u/Kussou is saying though. It's undoubtedly wrong and shouldn't have happened, but when news like this spreads people tend to believe it's a bigger scandal than it actually is.
For all we know this was the work of a small, under-appreciated department in the company that was just delegated the job of coming up with a logo. I'm willing to bet that larger companies divide the work so not everybody has to be in the know about everything everyone else is doing. |
Simple, most internet traffic goes to a very small subset of websites, probably 90% of my internet traffic is to reddit, if anyone else on my DNS has recently gone to reddit when the TTL of the DNS record on my computer has expired, I'll get a really fast new DNS lookup. DNS testing tools consider all tools equal, but for most people that just access a few of the most popular websites, even though random DNS queries might be the fastest to Google's DNS, it'll still be slower in day to day use, because the local DNS has it cached. |
ELI5 version:
A lot of retailers have an affiliate program, where if your website directs a viewer to their store the website will recieve some money (either a percentage of the sale if the person buys something or a certain amount per referral). The author noticed something fishy when checking on internet-y things and saw that his ISP was routing his traffic to those retailers through another service, who was claiming to have referred the author to that retailer. This would mean that the ISP/3rd party service would be taking that amount of reimbursement when, in fact, they had no part in the referral and should not be getting that sweet, sweet, money. |
Popular opinion aside, defrauding a business seems like a cut and dry matter to me. The TOS for affiliates prohibit means of artificially increasing the numbers of referrals, and these ISPs are in clear violation of that TOS. I don't necessarily think the matter should be criminal, but I definitely think that these retailers should be able to recoup those losses plus damages in civil court. It seems to fit the basic criteria for a civil lawsuit - a party was harmed, and that harm resulted in loss. Civil courts exist to rectify that loss and assess additional compensation if warranted, and that's exactly where these retailers should be bringing any ISP participating in this practice. |
I noticed when the new Retina Macbook Pro was harder to disassemble, and they dropped Apple temporarily withdrew from the green certification label. And I'm paying attention right now to Cook's stance on these things. And since I'm a consumer making choices, this affects their bottom line (in this case in a positive way).
Another example of something that doesn't show up as direct ROI but makes a difference is for me to know that if I'm having computer problems, service comes in the form of talking to a human being at the nearest Apple store, not padding and shipping my computer to some repair factory.
There are many people who think they can look at a business's spreadsheet and maximize profit by tweaking numbers and making savings cuts. [Also see: Apple store staff cuts]( What they don't realize is that building a good relationship/experience for your customers will pay off in the long run. Especially for a company like Apple which has the margins to do so in the present. |
A laser hits a fluorescent phosphorus substance inside the headlight"...
" ON TONIGHT'S NEWS: family of 5 dies in tragic accident involving a phosphorus fire. Only their clothes have been found, bodies are still missing" |
I couldn't find anything about the BMW laser headlights, but they are going against Audi to bring a similar concept to market. I was, however, able to find an article ([Extreme Tech]( about the Audi 'light matrix' which also has a more in-depth look at the US DoT compliance/approval aspect of things ([Extreme Tech #2](
The |
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