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What a lot of people don't understand is the internet is already taxed.
A lot of localities view internet service as a utility, and since its often bought with other "defined" services such as Cable TV or phone service, they often collect a tax on it and you probably don't even realize it.
I don't pay anything here (neither does the small business I partially own, who technically provides it to me) but in the city a mile to the east, there is a 1% Utility tex that is levied on all "Utility services" such as internet and cellphones, which are included in their definition.
I know because when my small business moved out of the city limits to where it is now, the ISP continued to charge us for it because our mailing address (a PO BOX) is in city limits, but the connection is used in the county. It took a few months and a few phone calls by my boss to get it removed.
1% isn't much, but still. Depending on your locality, you could be getting taxed for it already. I know the city near me as well as well as a few others in this county have it and the money goes towards funding police and fire (at least, thats how it was passed about 5 years ago).
What brought it to our attention is when we had to renew business licenses and similar, as the county rates are slightly lower but all of that was also being charged at city rates. My boss decided to look a little further into everything when we noticed everything was being charged at the higher rate.
We had the same issue with the cellphones. The main problem was the mailing address (the POB) remained the same-but the physical location is what counts, and what also counts if you're "taxable" or not. We had to prove that we had "physically" moved the business out of city limits before they would remove it/change the rate to "county".
Also, depending on how your local cable or phone company does billing, they could very well be lumping your internet charges into phone charges and taxing you that way as well, even though they aren't supposed to be, of course.... |
Pirating music and abusing (current) copyright does not harm the musicians, or the music itself. I think one can attribute the rise in EDM in the states to the surge of piracy, and piracy has made not only music more accessible but it's made creating music more accessible which led to an over-saturation of good music on the market which is awesome.
However, pirating music harms the record labels. This is good and bad because while yes record labels are terrible, they do benefit the artists. While you can point to artists like Macklemore or Skrillex who made it big thanks to the internet, what keeps their careers going, gigs booked and food on the table are the hardworking managers and label employees who get the backstage work done so you can enjoy the music. Labels are dying, and while that empowers musicians it harms the people who help the musicians. Labels helped fund and book studios, but now the big studios are dying. While that's good for small project studios and engineers, it's detrimental to making large studio recordings that certain people like me love.
I can't wait for the industry to find a balance between the classic pop-music business model and P2P sharing/viral marketing to get more and better music out there. |
You're missing the entire point! My point is that there's no sale to lose. the people in the other examples were never going to make the sale. So, how can that sale be lost if it was never going to exist?
And I don't know if I am reading it wrong, but in your example, do you mean the same album 15 times? Because you were never going to buy it 15 times. They have lost out on 1 sale. If it was a different album then yes. 15 sales have been lost, if you were going to buy them if piracy wasn't an option.
Do you see my point now? |
I'm glad that Facebook is finally starting to lose some of its user base. However, I have mixed feelings on the influx of teenagers. Don't get me wrong I think that their opinions and views are valid. It's just that I already went through that part of my life. So hearing there voice just sounds like one big repost to me.
That said some of the most insightful comments I've read and upvoted have been from people who are teenagers. Also one of the greatest design features of reddit is the fact that you can always unsub.
Really the most worriesome part of the article is that we're getting another infux of people and with that will lead and influx of reposts. because they havent reddit before. |
i really don't understand why SnapChat didn't create a better algorithm.
generate random symmetric session key
encrypt file with session key
encrypt symmetric key with recipient's public key
send file and encrypted session key to recipient
file at rest is encrypted
decrypt file in memory
wipe session key
display image
delete encrypted file at your leisure
It doesn't stop you from being able to save images; but at least it's more security through defense-in-depth.
An expert will tell you that using encryption, and wiping files, won't make things more secure. Which, at some level, answers my original pondering: there's no point in doing things more secure: it doesn't actually make things more secure. |
on android phones
/data/data/com.snapchat.android/cache/received_image_snaps/
the images actually go away if you view them, they only stay there if you don't click them |
Ctrl-F - "Texas"
1 result: Credit card debt program is now available for Texas. Apply before deadline. |
You can't be serious...
Your first link:
>This year's BSA Global Software Piracy Study marks the first time a large sample of computer users around the world have been asked directly, "How often do you acquire pirated software or software that is not fully licensed?" The answers people have given to that and other questions reveal sharp divides between the habits and outlooks of computer users in emerging and developed markets. Those differences help explain why the global piracy rate hovered at 42 percent in 2011 while a steadily expanding marketplace in the developing world drove the commercial value of software theft to $63.4 billion.
So where people have no money, they aren't paying for things...this does not even take into account the abysmal state of global software distribution. When the software isn't even legally distributed in some of these regions, where do you think the people will go to get it? And that is assuming the prices are even remotely competitive.
Guess which countries get shafted routinely by the big players like Adobe? Those same developing nations the article accuses of excessive piracy :)
But it doesn't stop there! They even price gouge for no reason in countries like Australia, and the people are getting wise.
Your second link:
>For the four oft-cited studies that have shown that piracy doesn’t hurt digital content sales, there are 25 that say that it does, for instance, said Smith.
None of these are even mentioned by the author other than saying the presenter had noted them. There are no sources.
>In another example, Smith cited an anonymous publisher that selectively windowed its ebook and print book titles to see if releasing the digital version after the print version would result in increased sales for the print version. Sales of print copies increased by 0.4% — but ebook sales decreased by 52% and overall sales dropped by 22%, presumably because of piracy.
So they tried to artificially limit supply in the digital world, and found that people just went and got the book anyway.... sounds a lot like the same distribution problem that we saw happening in those third world. If you don't make it easy for people to get your product, did you think sales would INCREASE? Is this what passes for a logical test to determine lost sales from piracy? Really?
Your third link:
Basically consists of lamenting the fact that pirated software exists. If a version of software is available to the masses for free, the people who will grab that version regardless of whether they will use it, enjoy it, or think that it is worth paying for will ALWAYS outnumber those who DO pay for it.
If there are two adjacent tshirt stands and one is giving the shirts away for free, they will have more visitors. No exceptions.
An interesting excerpt from the article:
>Part of Hackulo.us, AppTrackr had basically offered up a free version of the app GAMEzine was trying to sell for $0.99. How does a developer compete with that?
Many developers offer their apps for free with ad-supported revenue streams or in game purchases. The market has adapted with the birth of the free-to-play (f2p) model. But the article still misses the point, crying
>why, dear pirates, must you see the need to rip off a $0.99 app? Really, if that $0.99 is too much for you to pay for someone’s hard work, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your buying of smartphones, tablets and the like that cost hundreds of dollars.
They really don't seem to understand that people are seeing things offered (illegitimately) for free and taking them. There are a LOT of people in this world, and most of those pirates could be 8-16 years of age, we have no metrics on this kind of data. So when we have regions where pirated versions of PHYSICAL goods are more commonplace than the authentic versions, how could we reasonably expect that those people would choose to pay full price for games they see for free? The devs in this case (low end game, minimal exposure, sales barely breaking 100) are INSANE to offer their unknown game for 99c.
So you know what I did? I went on the appstore and looked it up. Finger Kicks (the game mentioned in that third horribly written article) does not have any kind of free demo; so people have no idea what they might be paying 99c for. Beyond that, they aren't even the first listing when you search for "Finger Kicks" on the app store. Additionally, there is a game called "Finger Kick" (singular) listed right beside it, so even if people are looking for the game mentioned in the article, they might not find the right one. But the low sales for this game are because of piracy? Maybe it is because their game was actually advertised more readily on AppTrackr than on the real appstore (as the article stated). So OF COURSE it is going to be more heavily downloaded in a place where it is advertised... how the hell would people buy it on the appstore if they don't even know it exists? The devs REALLY need to look into advertising their own product. |
That's not androids fault. Stock android has no bloat. Like any of the nexus devices. Its HTC sense, Samsung touch wiz, and Motorola's motoblur that come with the bloatware. And even still its not so much that as much as its the carriers installing it on the phones. |
Now you're being silly, for two reasons. Firstly, you imply Google picked up Webkit out of the goodness of their hearts instead of because Apple making it a bloody good rendering engine. And, secondly, saying Webkit got "nowhere on the non-mobile market" is like saying that the internal combustion engine got nowhere if you ignore the automobile. Mobile massively outnumbers traditional PCs and tablets by themselves are due to outsell PCs sometime this year. Why on Earth would you dismiss that market out of hand as if it doesn't count for some reason?
Oh, so I can't dismiss the mobile market, which started to exist only after 2008, much much later than the downfall of IE's monopoly, but I also cannot use Chrome in teh discission because you think this should be only about 2003-2004? |
There's no way they could black out entire bands like that. There are way too many frequencies, and way too much atmosphere; specific channels in specific areas/locations possibly. However, hams have huge frequency blocks throughout the entire spectrum; 160M all the way to w/e GHz you want to go. They would have to generate noise for every channel on every single band; injuring their own frequencies. Towers would have to be literally everywhere. The legal limit on Ham wattage is 1500W in most bands. We can legally put out GWs also. The job of a good operator is to find a method to get through the noise; even if it's just a different pattern of noise on top of the current noise. You can't really break CW.
As far as banning RF emissions, you would still have a communication device that physically operates without requiring any infrastructure. They might be able to ban RF communications, but they wouldn't be able to enforce it; not by a long shot. I don't think the entire rest of the world would like having their lower RF bands disrupted either. Russia would probably get pissed in about 20 seconds.
Besides, If it came down to that level, they would have to find you first. Use a modulator, only communicate mobile, and stop using your callsign. I would consider it all out world war if they tried to black out all communications to that extent. We would have good reason to not worry about what they said and risk it.
Thankfully, what you say can't happen anyway. The crew on the Enterprise may be able to use full spectrum EM radiation to energize a planet's entire atmosphere, but we can't yet; not even our big scary government. They could tell us not to use RF, but we wouldn't have to listen. Unlike cell phones and the internet, the radios would still technically work. |
Ill give you an example.
Back in mid 2000's my mother purchased a Toyota Prius because she is a real estate appraiser in SoCal. She wanted the Prius for the gas mileage AND the stickers for the carpool. There was only one problem though, the state only let 10-20k people have those stickers. The rest were screwed.
She was one of the lucky ones and managed to apply early and get the stickers. Fast forward a year later, she is leaving a house after doing measurements and sees the stickers on her car scratched to hell, but luckily were not removed.
She later goes to get her car detailed because the people had scratched the shit out of her bumpers. While her car is being detailed she learned merely having those stickers on the car increases the value by over a grand, and her car was not the only one they had to fix.
I'm not sure if there will be a cap or if there even is a cap on these stickers, but I guarantee if they become popular there will be one. |
Google Maps is going to begin self correcting shortly. They recently purchased Waze, an app using Social Community mapping. Basically it tracks you movements and corrects the digital map version. I'd it doesn't catch something, you can map it manually with some in app tools or simply by recording it. Further, there are leader boards and chat features to make it like a game. |
Assuming he's from a country like China, where I've lived:
Reddit is primarily an English-language website. Most web users in non-English speaking countries will be generally unfamiliar with reddit, which sort of neuters its ability to serve as a platform for social change or foment revolution. Twitter, youtube and facebook are available in most languages and have worldwide brand recognition, so they're useful tools for organizing political dissent in all of its forms. The CCP in China smartly (in terms of self-preservation) blocked access to all three early on into their market penetration into the country while simultaneously promoting homegrown alternatives like Weibo, Baidu and Youku, which also happen to be incredibly easy to censor. |
Yep. The Rubicon that ended my contributions was a simple little piece on color psychology. These are pretty common, well-known things, but I liked to consult that article now and then for design purposes: it was useful to know the little edge-case associations that I might be overlooking in a given context.
Somebody went ape-shit deleting it "because of a lack of citations", and it was like, do you really need a citation to know that green is associated with nature, among other things?
So I re-wrote the damn thing with exhaustive citations. Put hours into it, and it was easily 10X the length when I was done. And the asshole deleted it again, "because of 3RR", and then threatened to take it to ArbCom, waving his higher-status over my head. Another admini-bot came in to back him up, presumably summoned on the semi-secret IRC rooms they maintain, in violation of their own goddamn policies .
At no point was the actual merit of my re-composition actually placed under discussion; it was strictly about the policy and procedure.
Muy comical. Best part was, the same guy later ragequit WP himself because his authoritah wasn't being properly respected.
So I stopped contributing, and wrote a brief rundown of the inanity on my profile. Checked back a few years later, and somebody had deleted that , because WP:SOAPBOX.
If some people put half the effort into the site as they do maintaining the byzantine scaffolding of contradictory policies and procedures, WP would really be something special. Instead, it will fall to entropy, sooner or later.
So what if the author of the linked article was technically wrong....participate on WP for any length of time, and you'll see it's pretty damn obvious that he'll ultimately be proven right with time. I know there's been thousands of times since that I could've made a positive impact to an article, but I don't like wasting my time like that. |
Wikipedia has a problem with its mathematics articles. And that problem is sort of a "split personality" with respect to its expected user base.
For the simpler math, say high school level and below, it's generally pretty good.
For the more advanced topics, say graduate school level, it can safely make the assumption that any readers will have a reasonable undergraduate mathematical grounding, since otherwise it might be nearly impossible to describe something at the top of a tower of an edifice built on so many other topics.
However, in the middle ground, say undergrad mathematics, it's very uneven. Someone approaching from the bottom may have difficulty deciphering articles which should be within their grasp, because they have been edited by grad students who want to bring the full generality of their specialty back to these definitions. Thus, as a reference, these articles can be nice. But you often see situations where the article is trying to explain a mid-level concept using terminology from either a more advanced level, or from a different mid-level topic which may not be essential to conveying the initial understanding.
Now, having said that, I'm having trouble finding a perfect example of what I'm talking about. But here are two that kind of give the idea of what I'm trying to convey:
[Meromorphic function](
From an algebraic point of view, if D is connected, then the set of meromorphic functions is the field of fractions of the integral domain of the set of holomorphic functions
This implies that you need a reasonable backing in the subject of abstract algebra before you can learn the very basics of complex analysis covered by this article -- which is not true! But I'm being a little unfair here, because a simpler definition is given a few sentences earlier.
How about this one?
[Quaternions](
In modern mathematical language, quaternions form a four-dimensional associative normed division algebra over the real numbers, and thus also form a domain.
Again, this use of abstract algebra terminology might be a little off-putting to someone who came here wanting to know how quaternions are used to rotate things in his video games. But again, I'm being slightly unfair. This article is intended for multiple levels of audience. And, besides, [they have another entire article showing how to use them in practice](
But this gives the flavor of my objections to Wikipedia mathematics articles. |
In theory, Samsung could write a 64bit optimized version of the Dalvik vm. Android apps would run on top of that without any hassle.
There's also the NDK. Developers can compile to 64 bit native binaries.
Neither of those things require Google and could happen on the next Samsung phone.
But even still. "64 bit" is almost a buzz word. The proof of the pudding is in the benchmarks. |
You pithy son of a gun. I feel so smote by your sarcasm, just worthless as a human being. |
One Today charity Android app by Google
Reputation and points systems
You could probably get more people to donate if you register this with Google One Today. The app has Google+ profile declarations of charity.
>"Your One Today profile also includes information based on your usage of One Today, such as which projects you've donated to."
Reputation and points systems can affect motivation, and may be the only source of motivation for some people to do something charitable.
Combine competition with cooperation
People by nature can be mostly status-conscious, self-interested, and competitive. Either you have a system that allows people to satisfy their ego by spending money on the purchasing of charity points, or you let people continue to flaunt their wealth through expensive cloths, cars, jewelry, etc.. Vanity isn’t going away. |
They shot down AT&T buying tmobile not because they wanted 4, but because AT&T was already the second largest and with tmobile they would have been the largest. At that point between them and Verizon they could have squeezed sprint out leaving just 2 carriers. |
NEWS FLASH! BUSINESS IS ABOUT MAKING MONEY!
I've said this before and sounded very miserable, but it really is true. Sony/MS/Nintendo/LG/Moto/Apple/etc do not care about what you want. You will eat up whatever the current market allows you because you know no different. These companies are only interested in giving us the bare minimum for the highest price while protecting their future products.
This means that X Co. (imaginary company) will create a device that is only up to scratch with the current market for a similar price. Notice the current gen of flagships are all the fuuucking same?! You think better screens, CPUs, build qualities, etc don't exist? Each device has to cost as least as possible to achieve the highest profit margin possible. |
Something seems off here: how would the fab unit generate a $851million loss, compaared to $197million profit last year by no longer having the Apple contract?
It's not like they would still produce all those chips and have lost costs, so unless they meant to say that Samsung is facing a change of $1B, rather than -$851M loss, then they are implying that there is a much bigger swing in revenue than $1B.
Let's say they had a 20% margin, if they had ~$200M profit with the contract, then that meant they had $1B in sales with $800M in costs.
If it was 10% margin (unlikely, but possible), then they had even greater sales and costs, of $2B revenue and $1.8B costs
So taking the 20% model, then if they lost the contract for Apple sales at $1B revenue...they simply wouldn't make the chips, so while they wouldn't have any profit, they wouldn't have the cost, either. |
I got a late fee because they did not bill me through their automatic payment system. I called customer service to get the late fee removed and they said it was a billable item and could not be removed...wtf I have to pay a fee for their mistake, hell no! I asked the rep to speak with their supervisor who told me the same BS. I then asked to speak with his supervisor and he told me that his boss would call me in 2 days to resolve the issue. After 2 days no phone call. Being extremely frustrated at this point I decided to use the chat system instead of calling them this time, I explained the situation and they immediately gave me a refund. |
Unfortunately we aren't getting that from mobs or congress.
Or the Internet. The vast majority of the people who are waving the net neutrality flag are doing it at the behest of organizations and companies online that are giving them just as biased of a view of it.
Net neutrality has never been the people versus corporations. Its always been one group of corporations against another. One group that has the resources to pay for services that another group can't or won't. A few very limited examples -- like if, say, Comcast was throttling traffic to VoIP providers for their own benefit -- is absolutely an issue. But the people complaining when Comcast sells bandwidth to Netflix (which is NOT the same as throttling Netflix or anyone else) is Netflix's competitors, not the "people". But when you equate one with the other, the outrage of places like Reddit is a useful tool for those competitors. |
So all we can fall back on is shaming those who appoint members of the FCC? |
Baah, I hate the founding father arguments. Its thought halting bull shit. Modern Idol warship.
The "founders" were not in agreement about these things, they fought about it passionately.
Some founders were in favor of a more direct democracy. Jefferson wanted a rolling revolution every 20 years or so. Paine was a commie before there even was such a thing.
The founders lived in a different time. Slavery was in vogue and education was a luxury. |
This is an appeal to moderation fallacy
I'm not really sure how you could say that direct democracy would possibly misrepresent people if all it does is record everyone's opinions. Especially how it would any moreso than representative democracy. By nature of having representatives, people are forced to compromise on issues because there is no single candidate that will ever match their views 100%. If I want policies A, B, C and D. Why should I have to vote for someone who only wants A, B and C? And yet that happens all the time.
It might shock you to know that protections for minorities tend only be brought about long after popular support. The political establishment tends to be the last holdouts. This is because representatives themselves are chosen by popularity. Very rarely, if ever are protections brought about for minorities against popular support. On the contrary, oppression of minorities tends to continue in spite of popular opposition. Meanwhile having representatives allows us to be stuck in hugely unpopular wars and economic policies |
Pretty much.
Or we have been gerrymandered out of relevance by the Republican party and aggressive tactics at the state and local level. My vote has not counted for a damn thing since the year 2000. Thanks Tom!
To top that, some of our own legislators had to flee the state just to avoid being hauled in by the rangers to force a vote on aggressive partisan redistricting in an off-cycle. |
The average consumer buys primarily on price, so all of the OEMs sell on price. The store salesdroid tells the customer the scanner'll do whatever they need it to (and to be fair, it probably will). Then the consumer buys the cheapest scanner in their price range. As far as I can tell, the manufacturers of consumer electronics simply repackage, reprogram, and resell one or two products at several pricepoints for various levels of snobbery... nobody notices because nobody really knows what they're buying anyway. There's some weird market forces going on, I'll admit; for instance, if you only use a printer to print letters, it's often cheaper to buy a new printer instead of a new cartridge when your current printer runs out of ink.
Professional users and geeks buy based on features and perceived quality. We know the generally poor price-driven quality and durability of regular consumer gear. Pro and prosumer gear is specifically designed to solve issues of feature completeness, interoperability, and durability that pros and geeks run into with consumer gear. It's the real thing, and it sells far fewer units, so it winds up costing more per unit. It used to be, all computer electronics were pro and hobbiest grade gear.
The enormous influx in computer users over the last fifteen years has lead to the production of a new, commoditized consumer pricepoint. In 1995, a nearly universally-compatible color scanner was not a thing you could buy for $44.99 at the drug store. A horrifically complicated, single OS, black-and-white scanner something you ordered from Tiger or bought at CompUSA for $500. The prices have come down, but mainly by dropping any pretense of the device being "crafted". |
Quantity is not size. Smaller pixels are great if you have a good lens setup and proper processing. More/smaller pixels with a crap lens and crap processing gives you crap pictures. He went too far with his argument. Smaller/more pixels don't mean higher quality if the rest of your hardware doesn't support it. They all need to be matched, and you should consider this when you buy a camera. If you find a 'great deal' on a 10MP camera that is priced in the 6MP range, chances are the 6MP takes better photos because it has a better lens and processing vs a more expensive sensor, that is completely under-utilized. |
With algorhitms like bicubic resize, you would use fractions of pixels not discrete pixels. I realize this may sound weird and theoretic, but it has practical applications. Just like Shannon theorem and like with Huffman-encoding data, you typically end up with data and capacities measured in fractions of bits, something which intuitively doesn't really make sense, but it is still perfectly valid and practically applicable.
You basically use a properly weighted transformation matrix to map a N*N pixel-grid to a M*M pixel-grid and mathematically nothing dictates that N has to be a factorial of M or the other way around.
This works fine for video-processing and I see no reason why it shouldn't work on still pictures. |
No, you're right that it's a retarded way to represent anything. If you want to show numbers between integers, you use EITHER a fraction or a decimal.
Anyway, it looks like the numbers tell you the diameter of the circular wafer on which the CCD is fabricated. Plausibledeniability's link sensor is roughly 2/3 of the diameter, which doesn't even make any sense because it's comparing an area to a length.
Good thing it doesn't make any sense, because it's also wrong. If you calculate out some of the measurements in the charts on that page, you get that the actual image-sensing rectangle occupies about 1/4 the area of a circle with the diameter stated. |
I haggle quite often- generally anywhere except grocery stores. I Recently bought a Samsung TV also and managed to get it for about $500 off the sale price, even though it was already on sale for quite a crazy price.
In my case I generally start by going to absolutely every store and asking what the best price they can do me is. I then counter with a lower offer, and see how far I can push them.
I'll then take the lowest offer I was given and go to every other store again and ask them to beat it. Rinse wash repeat until nobody will go any lower.
When negotiating with any individual salesperson, you want to keep them engaged for as long as possible. Have them demo the product, and keep them talking. (They've just put all that effort in, haven't they?). Never buy anything the first time you speak to a salesperson, always take their offer and see who will beat it.
It also helps to know specifically what you want. If you walk in and say "I want a Samsung Series 6 40" LED TV and a BDP-400 player" they are going to assume you've researched the product and have a good idea how much it's worth, and offer you better prices.
Your best bet is to try for bundles. i.e. They will often make larger discounts if you throw in a TV and Blu-Ray player together. Essentially they want to get $x profit per sale, but don't care how many items are in that sale. This is a good time to ask them to throw in a few HDMI cables. Those fuckers are way overpriced, but the wholesale price is quite low so stores will give them away like candy to seal the deal.
Stocktake sales are generally the best time to buy, as the staff are essentially instructed to clear as much stock as possible. |
Apple have, historically, overcharged for RAM. However...
If you look at the difference between 4GB DDR3 and 8GB DDR3 from Apple, it's an additional $200.
Go to crucial.com:
A 2GB x 2 kit costs $119.99... so $239.99 (to make a total of 4GB x 4, as in the Apple choice offerred)
*edited: additional detail to clearly show equal comparison, formatting |
That site looks sketchy as fuck. You can build a standalone DNS server in pretty much any OS of your choice right now anyway... this looks like a thinly-veiled social engineering attempt to backdoor your grandparents' PC.
Edit:
So he built a hosts file and then renamed it hosts.exe? I'm a network admin and I'm absolutely fucking baffled at the reasoning for this. You can't backdoor a PC directly with a hosts file, but you can redirect all sorts of traffic to IPs of your choice and spoof the target.
Oh, and extesive hosts files will slow down your PC. Windows boxes will attempt to process every entry in that list before going out to a true DNS server, be it local LAN or on the Internet somewhere. Once you get somewhere in the neighborhood of a few thousand entries (which is a semi-respectable DNS list) you're going to see a lot of sluggishness surfing around. |
My aunt and uncle used to have this big dirty dog that hung around their farm. It would come up to you and be really nice and cuddly. It was obviously hurting for the attention; understandable, considering it was so filthy. It had a sad look in its eyes that told you he had seen his share of emotional abuse. Once affection was received, however, his demeanor changed instantly to that of a seasoned rapist. Brushing up against your leg in the hopes that the petting would never end. The moment you pulled your hand away or began to walk towards the house it would growl a slow rumbling growl you would expect from such a hulking, mangy beast. |
It's easier for web developers to write some code that redirects you when you go outside the norm while filling out a multi-page form by clicking the Back button or by opening a duplicate window . But they don't just do it because it's easier.
A client may not be willing to pay the web developer for an elegant solution which handles these cases and requires more server-side resources to properly maintain the state of the session.
As a user of such web sites (government, banking) I try to conform to their procedures while navigating and filling out forms. |
See, the way I see it - ebooks (and a consequent smaller publisher role) especially make sense when you have a smaller target audience (2k-3k). Especially in fantasy-scifi, where most of the fans are, at first glance, tech savvy. You wouldn't risk having your series being dropped after the first edition (aka Daniel Abraham). Also, people who wait for cheaper versions (ie; paperback) would count in your immediate sales - still no paperback for Way Of the Kings in India, grrr. People who want a physical copy can get the initial hardcopy or use somekind of exclusive printing agencies like the Subterranean press to get their fix.
As for publicity - two points. Firstly, isn't most of the marketing already being done online ? Most of the authors have blogs, and a strong blogosphere exists, working as a publicity machine. In that sense, fantasy/SF is already pretty much publisher independent, as far as the online publicity goes. Who goes to Tor or other pub. sites directly anyway ? Secondly, marketing outside the US/UK is pretty much zip for genre novels - atleast in Asia. I have no idea how much international sales contribute, so this might be a non issue - but I have a feeling it isn't so. |
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple shipped a cheap iPhone.
I do not see this happening in the near future(At least while Steve Jobs is CEO). Apple doesn't play in the low end area, they only market devices seen as "high end". The cheapest laptop you can get from Apple is more than double the price of the cheapest Windows laptop you can get. And I remember at some keynote presentation months/years ago, Steve said he couldn't make a [low priced] laptop without it being [straight crap]. |
i'd like to point out that the bottom of the barrel cfl's you see in your average store (ie: grocery stores/walmart/etc.) are complete crap. they have low light output, take forever to reach full brightness and sometimes make noise. I went through probably about 10 models of bulbs before I found one I liked, and it was vastly better and completely changed my opinion on cfl bulbs. |
The (correlated) color temperature is one parameter. You also have to look at Ra (general color rendering index), because there's also a world of difference between a 3000K light source at Ra = 80% and a 3000K light source at Ra = 100%. [This]( is a helpful image.
A lot of the time, Ra is not even marked on the box and people don't understand why their fancy LEDs and CFLs look like shit, even though they got "warm white". This bit me in the ass and so I did some research.
Like you said:
>they don't quite look as good as clear halogen
- that's because their Ra is a lot lower than 100%, i.e. they are different from the spectrum of a black body radiator, having peaks in the green and low power in the reds and yellows, making for an unappealing light. |
I've tried a few of these and have yet to find one that works really well with cheap dimmer switches (e.g. dims the full range and doesn't flicker.) I had high hopes for LEDs, but hit the same flickering issue.
I'm assuming that in both cases this is due to a lousy TRIAC implementation in the dimmer that doesn't line things up very well with the line frequency, so sometimes you get a big gap of lower power instead of consistently trimming off the leading edge. If I wasn't in an apartment, I would replace the dimmers and probably solve my problem. |
Let me explain it to you again. I find it remarkable that you are ok with keeping someone in jail without any formal criminal charge for 14 months on what legally should have been a civil matter - and also don't see anything wrong with the legal process being hijacked by an old boy network. The drug abuse and suicide were his own decisions but if you think justice was served here then you are either being willfully ignorant - or you have a very simple minded view on legal matters.
And yes - if something is not illegal by the law of the land (editorialising about it being a "loophole" is a bit more subjective than you would like to admit in this case) then you cannot be charged for it - neither can you be charged retroactively for something that is newly illegal. Google "ex facto law" for how common a concept this is and why. Its in the US consitution and its also illegal in Canada. Nor should punishment be enacted retroactively. Nor should public servants bend or break the law as favours for friends - especailly on worse than dubious "moral" grounds. I don't see drug analog laws (or their failings) being a good analogy - except for if you are using it to make an entirely rhetorical and emotional argument.
You keep coming back to language like "loop-hole" or "he deserved" or "he is not innocent" which suggests you think that things you believe are immoral should be de facto illegal - despite the actual law on the subject. That's just simple minded moralising authoritarianism. To you "guilt" or "innocence" is hanging on something other than the law, precedent or process and you are fine with people stepping outside of these long established boundaries in order to "punish" the "guilty". |
OK, few questions:
Why would anyone care about Youtube? It's mainly clips, not feature films and TV episodes.
How is anyone trying to fuck up Grooveshark?
How is it wrong for Hulu to charge for old episodes? They let you watch 4 or 5 episodes for free. It's not your right to see every episode of every show for free. Explain how it's fucked up.
I agree on overseas streaming. I'm totally cool with fur'ners buying up proxies and getting access to American TV. I wish they'd just get the stupid country rights deals going so regions effectively don't exist anymore. I'm even OK with people downloading movies if they have no legal means to get them and don't ever anticipate having a legal means.
But honestly, I don't have access to spotify, and I'd love it, but I'm not stealing music because it's so damned unfair that America doesn't have spotify yet.
I pay my Netflix subscription and for Pandora One, and for some other on-demand streaming radio service. Altogether it's something like $25/month for unlimited music and a gigantic stream of really good movies. Can you appreciate how much better this is than just a few years ago? Used to be that I had to buy a CD if I wanted to listen to some band right now. Those were $10-15 each. Movie rentals were like $5/night, right? And there were late fees!
We're totally winning this thing. |
Oh wow. I haven't been following this too much, but I saw the name th3j3st3r and it reminded me of this video game I played about 7 years ago called MapleStory in it's beta stages, and there was a guy on there who would use brute force programs and would steal accounts from people, and then they created cheat engines to hack the game, and I remember meeting him in the game because he was trying to scam me and I called him out on it, and he emailed me from [email protected] (I can't remember exactly), and a few other people had heard about him so I just backed off, but I was pretty scared afterwards cause I didn't want to deal with him trying to send me a virus or something, but I feel like it could definitely be the same person, in his youth. |
Yes, and as someone that's been out of middle/high school for some time I can't help but wonder how the social warfare so characteristic of that stage in development is carried on nowadays. Back then the weapons used were rumors, false attributions and at the very best some MSN logs obtained by creating a fake persona.
But now with social networks shit just got real (almost literally): they can assemble a body of traits, preferences and attributes, give it consistence across several social platforms, then bundle it all together and slowly move it to an optimal position within their social cluster. If they succeed (which I imagine is quite difficult) they basically occupy two (or really any number, since once you've managed to get the first one you can use it to introduce and validate other fake personas) positions within their social structure. Proxy socialization, the politics involved in managing several identities and the fact that the consequences of the actions of a puppet are mostly restricted to the virtual world (at least for the puppeteer) endow the social network landscape with with a set of values and relations independent from the interactions carried on IRL, turning it into a parallel (but still relevant) reality. |
Actually it is more fucked up than you expect.
Instead comcast ships new (additional) boxes that are energy star certified, making the required percentage of the total population of their STBs energy star compliant. |
We're all aware that they're accused of terrible crimes, but it is more important to let a bad man go free than for you to go to jail for a crime you didn't commit, right? The liberty of the whole population is also more important than +10% ability to catch certain rare criminals. If you'd like a values system to anchor these kinds of decisions, just look at the US Constitution. The first and fourth amendments really leave no doubt as to the position our legal system is to take on trades between liberty and security in matters of privacy and freedom of speech, both of which have long been unequivocally understood to require anonymity as desired.
It sucks that the law has a harder time catching people without access to every detail of our personal lives. The government could catch more criminals with access to 24/7 surveillance tapes of every citizen, but we live in a free society which requires that we accept the inefficiencies in law enforcement that come from our freedom to live like adults with some sense of self determination and personal dignity. To argue that because X crime is scary, our government should get an additional Y% of access to the total pot of information describing our daily comings and goings is so short sighted it's laughable.
> They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin |
It's a nice idea, but first RGB is for production of color using light (Red, Green, and Blue). To reproduce color on a surface you would need CMYK inks (that's Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK, as in your printer). RGB and CMYK produce limited ranges of color within the space of all visible colors, so it wouldn't be able to produce every visible color exactly. Additionally, CMYK and RGB color spaces each have colors that can be produced in one but not the other. This would introduce further inconsistencies between what is read by the scanner and what is produced at the printing end. |
It really doesn't matter what the root of the word is. What matters is what the laws say and how they are interpreted. Copyright includes restricting performances and is the basis for contracts that specify the maximum number of readers/listeners/viewers.
In this case it sounds like the American company held Chinese and US copyrights and gave permission for a Chinese manufacturer to make and sell (locally) the books. Despite what the US government tells you, US copyright is not the standard worldwide and is not enforceable in China except partially through reciprocal copyright treaties (which do exist). When the purchaser brings them into the US the question becomes does the US law recognize the Chinese copyright grant and apply first sale doctrine to it even if the Chinese copyright law does not have first sale in it and if the US copyright holder never gave permission for creation of the item under US copyright law. |
Devil's advocate: He purchased a textbook for say $10 overseas when the price states side is $100 then sold it. Great, he pocketed $90 minus shipping fees. However, the publishing company isn't selling it for $10 just to see this guy pocket $90 that could be theirs. So what is the logical move for the company? Easy: Either raise the price in Thailand from $10 to something closer to $100, or stop offering the textbook there. This argument applies to other contexts such as pharmaceuticals where drug companies make their products available for highly discounted prices to third world countries that end up selling it back to US companies for a huge profit. In short, the publishing companies are using the US $100 price point to subsidize the $10 price point overseas. If they can't effectively keep the $10 price point from coming here, they won't offer their products for $10 in Thailand anymore and kids won't have as much access to education. |
Apple had do address this, but I don't think they realize how much potential this has to hurt their brand.
The thing that makes Apple products so attractive is that they work. They just ... work. The iPhone's intuitive, seamless interface is in stark contrast to Android which rewards users who want to tweak and customize their stuff and fiddle around with the settings. A lot of users don't want to monkey around and tweak their thing. They just want something simple and usable that they don't have to think about. That's why they buy an Apple product, and that's why they're willing to pay a premium for it.
The thing is, if Apple doesn't roll out painstakingly polished products and services, it hurts that "they just work" brand. This is doubly true on something like the Maps function, which in the last few years has become a core function of any smartphone. After SMS and Twitter, I use the Maps function on my phone more than just about anything else. If it doesn't work, that's glaring flaw with the phone. |
That's odd. MKV arose because the problem with other container formats, such as AVI, was that they weren't extensible enough. AVI can't support multiple audio streams (like English + Spanish where you toggle between them), nor embedded subtitle streams (AVIs used SRT files), or even support for chapters. Basically all the stuff that a DVD can do.
One of the other big problems was that AVI required a complete file to track time and sync the streams properly. If you had an incomplete AVI file, seeking wouldn't work. There are some tools to rebuild the index (one is built in to VLC for example) but that requires analyzing all of the data to get it right. No small task for the average system or a purpose built CPU in a media player. MKV doesn't have that limitation. Technically, I think you could stream it, but there are other containers more suited to that purpose I believe.
As far as quality goes, container format (MKV vs AVI) doesn't have anything to do with the codec (x264 vs MPEG vs xvid) used to encode the video. You take encoded video (called a "stream" in this context, I think) and encoded audio and encoded subtitles and wrap them all together into a single file. That file is called a container, and that's what MKV and AVI are.
If the codec used to make an MKV's video stream is a shitty one, or if it's done at a really low bit rate, then it'll look like crap because of it. Same deal for AVI.
>I love VLC on Windows, but on the Mac I prefer to use QuickTime where possible.
QuickTime... Quite possibly the only media player worse than VLC. I only say this because it doesn't use DirectShow filters, opting only for built in decoders. This upsets me for I'm-a-huge-fucking-nerd^TM reasons, but coupled with its terrible interface (space bar wouldn't pause playback, mouse wheel couldn't change volume) ugly GUI made me grow to hate it. It's a lot better these days, and it still Plays Everything^TM, but it doesn't hold a candle to MPC-HC on Windows. Ironically though, VLC's rise to popularity was rooted in it's non-use of DirectShow. Because it used only built in decoders, shitty codec packs were incapable of fucking it up. It's that attribute that caused MPC-HC (when it forked from Media Player Classic) to adopt a hybrid approach. It overrides DirectShow priority settings in favor of built in priority settings, giving the best of both worlds.
On OS X, I highly recommend you download MPlayer OS X Extended. Slick UI, more Mac-like, same codec support as VLC, and it's a little faster too. Also better options for multiple monitors, if you're into that sort of thing. |
July 16 press conference when Apple actually apologized and promised to give out free cases, not the July 2 press release.
Here's one article on it:
>To our customers who are affected by the issue, we are deeply sorry
Sounds like an apology to me. |
After someone else finding out I thought paper was "bright" and that words jumped around the page I was given some tests, then it became blatantly obvious. A lot of reading and maths frustrations that I'd assumed other people just found easier to overcome, it turned out that other people don't experience at all!
I hold a petty resentment against certain teachers who pointed out the exact symptoms of dyslexia to me and my parents, but assured them that I was just "being stubborn", and I was just choosing not to apply myself because I was lazy. |
I can not speak for anyone else but I know for a fact I wouldn't have spent near the amount of money I have on music if it wasn't for torrenting. I am active on a very large private torrent site and have found countless artist there that I may have never found otherwise aren't available elsewhere. It's because of my large intake of "free music" that I am able to find what I enjoy listening to and weed out what I don't. This saves me money that in turn I am able spend on going to concerts, buying merchandise, and buying vinyl of my favorite albums/artists. |
I don't pirate anything, not that it's difficult, or unjustifiable (I mean, it's digital, everything here is just a series of bits, how do you steal a pattern? I mean photoshop is at it's very essence just a mathematical equation) but it's a moral point for me. Yes it would be possible to recreate that series of open and closed bits, but most likely very difficult, and the creation of that product I desire is someone else's labor & fruit. I don't pirate because I don't want all that's left of me on this planet is a computer with files telling people all I am is a thief.
That being said, my friends don't share the same convictions, and because of their expansion of music due to their endeavors in the past, I have been exposed to music I otherwise would not have been. I purchased CDs of all of the bands I found enjoyment in. If it were not for pirating there would have been hundreds of less CD purchases from myself alone. People who fighting pirating don't understand their problem isn't from peer to peer networking, their problem is technology. In the 1990s technology wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as it is today. People in the 2010 decade understand they have choices, not only do they have choices people are battling for their eyes ears and minds at all times. For your song to take up space on their playlist is has to be catchy or pithy or topically relevant to that person. You have to make a connection, and if you do anything to make that more difficult the user will just move on to a different song. If you make them all difficult then the user will move on to a different medium like youtube, or pandora, or a local radio station, or a digital broadcast of a radio station, hell even in the 90s people shared mixed tapes. This is the age of the internet, music is an entertainment product. Entertainment products aren't consumed and don't deplete. Stopping pirating of entertainment products is like telling people they aren't allowed to watch your performance of 'Cats', unless they go to the theater and do so. You know what happens then? People stop getting exposed to Cats and it hits live ticket sales, it is no longer as popular and doesn't have as much viral push, people who would have paid to see it, won't even think about it because it's not in their face. To be honest pirating music may be the only thing that keeps many labels afloat in today's market, and they should be thankful for it.
WAY |
They can, you're right. But to do so would target every user at once, and would destroy consumer confidence.
Kindle books, for example, can expire at varying times due to different publishers wishes. There are more publishers than there are studios. Since it began as a digital file, there is a defined "start" and "end" date. That's so much harder to define with disc because 1) how long did they sit on shelves before each copy was bought? and 2) discs are usually swapped between players, making that harder (not impossible) to track.
How soon they would be disabled would be noticed faster on video versus books. Some people go years without rereading certain books. Video is frequently used even for background noise or babysitting. I have to pay attention to a book, so I won't open one until I'm ready to sit down, but I'll fire up LOTR or something while I clean or putter around the house.
Plus, with physical vs digital, there's more of an inherent "ownership". I did not click any kind of agreement when I bought a movie at Target. I did not agree to a limited time ownership. The potential for a lawsuit goes up exponentially when you are locked out of your physical media vs a digital download you likely clicked on an agreement somewhere (even if it were through the player app or when you created a user account, it might not pop up with every purchase!) |
Something a lot of people miss is the budget and gross income numbers you see aren't exactly accurate. Usually when they report numbers for ticket sales, that's the total amount of money spent on tickets. They don't take out the movie theaters cut. Another thing they don't mention is the true budget of the film. The budget we see is usually the production budget. This figure rarely if ever includes the marketing budget, which in some cases might even exceed the production budget of the film. So when X movie costed $30m to make and pulled in $35m opening weekend, it probably hasn't actually made back its money yet. |
now that is dirt cheap.
I paid $23 to watch "Life of Pi" in 3D at the local theatre. Parking was another $10, candy + drinks was probably $20 more.
Double that, and you have a cheap and nice few hours with your SO (which was what I did)
However, I can guarantee you that this offer is US-only, and I still have to pay premium for my BluRay's (which probably contains less extras than the ones you get in the US)
Oh, and we just got Netflix here. Price? $13.50 per month. Ofcourse, we have a much lower selection of series and movies than the US version. |
Yes, it should be the standard quality, even on small screens there is a noticeable difference between SD and HD and they need to get rid of SD altogether.
But you understand where they make the decision from, since people are willing to pay extra for HD why not? It's like tablets to get double the storage memory they charge $100 extra even though its not worth it but to some people it is. |
I'm surprised (well, not really) at the response here. Let's start with a disclaimer... I pirate movies. I go see them in the theaters, but rarely buy ones for at home anymore. I don't try justifying this like some people because frankly, it's an economic decision for me. I do think that content creators deserve to be paid for their work, and will buy merchandise for movies that we really love (especially kids movies).
Anyway, this is a great first step by Disney. It's not a complete solution, but there are a lot of people that will benefit from this. It will also help them combat the initial wave of casual piracy. That's people that rarely pirate stuff. That's also why there will be DRM. Yes, all DRM can be bypassed, but that doesn't matter. They just want to prevent a casual buyer from throwing it on a flash drive and giving it to all their friends. They know that this won't combat the larger scale piracy of torrents, usenet, and bootleg copies.
I think this is also a good step towards movies that release for download immediately when they premier in theaters (or within a month). The price would be higher, but it's something that many home viewers have been wanting for a very long time. This will likely provide stats for Disney that shows that download is a legitimate delivery method for movies, and the next logical step is to move the release date forward to combat piracy.
The movie industry, especially Disney, making any effort to modernize delivery is a good sign. |
yes because thats completely an equal comparison. There are always bulk shipping rates that massive companies can ship items at almost no cost. Do you think dell pays the same as you in shipping costs? No they get a major discount. How much do you think dell would charge you to drive your new pc to your house? Also there are many many variables in shipping.ie: distance, international, etc. |
You still need a lot of time for things like creating menus, interviewing people for various special features, combing through to get bloopers/deleted scenes (less likely on an animated movie but still). All this stuff takes time, and, while people are working on it a lot, others are also doing interviews and other things for the time leading up to the movie's release. |
He said he pirated a game because it was no longer DRM-free. Then says he loves steam because it doesn't have DRM. He had his chance to clear up his statement, but his next argument went on to say how SecuROM was evil and Steam wasn't. Which validates my point. I simply pointed out that his issue was not with DRM, but the manner that DRM was applied. |
You bring up some good points. The pain of creating multiple accounts for everything and linking them is annoying, but it only has to be done once, so in my opinion it's not that bad. But I can see how it would annoy you.
I'm not that familiar with the Flixster app either (though it seems like the problems/annoyances you've experienced are with the apps themselves, not the system). I've used Flixster a couple times, but now Vudu and CinemaNow have Android apps, so I'll be using those. And I tend not to watch things on my phone/tablet. Usually I'm on my TV (via PS3) and computer most of the time.
I haven't had to click through ads (depending how you define them) to get to my stuff, but I do sometimes have to tab over to my stuff. I don't mind though, because I like seeing what's on sale. |
Well, it varies. For example, [here's a pirated version]( running at about 14 Mbps. According to a Google search, Looper's blu ray is about 29 Mbps. That seems like a big difference, but the formats aren't the same.
Consider this as an example: this . But anyway, my point is simply that higher bitrate (and relatedly, file size) doesn't necessarily mean higher quality.
Furthermore, video bitrate has a point of diminishing returns, which depends on the resolution, format, and codec used. Basically, past a certain bitrate, increases make less and less of an improvement, eventually to a point where most people no longer notice an improvement (also bear in mind that most people are sitting far away from the TV). This is why most 1080p video torrents are around the 2-6 GB range, as that's where we tend to get the most "bang for our buck".
In fact, to demonstrate this diminishing returns, I put together a little example:
This screenshot . [This screenshot]( is the exact same source video encoded at 30,000 Mbps. This uses the MPEG-2 format. Could do a bit better, but lacked a better high definition encoder. At any rate, open them up full screen and switch between them. If we look closely, we can see some very minor changes. Personally, I don't think either image looks "better". There's a slight difference, but they're very similar.
But let's zoom in 5x and take a closer look at the impact. Here's . We're not going to be watching this at the small examples, we're going to be seeing this sitting back, relaxing on the sofa (popcorn with extra butter). |
Don't be surprised if Mikey decides to just up and fire your entire team one day. He really likes doing that. Then he loves outsourcing your job to some shitty call center in Florida and sends your former L3 NOS team to go train the replacements. |
i used to go to starbucks often and get a coffee and sit down and do my homework. I tipped 50 percent of the time everytime. One day I was down on my luck with no money and depressed, sat down and started studying and the manager made me leave. :l |
Well, it is worth mentioning. It's not just a sales pitch for High End PCs.
If you look back to the time when the XBox 360 was released, it was extremely powerful and comparable to high end PCs. The 3 CPU cores fared pretty well to the still pretty new dual core CPUs, and the GPU was about as powerful as the Ati X1800XT on paper, and even faster with the optimizations and features that would come much later to the Desktop market. With the common low Framerate and resolution that was deemed acceptable for console games, it featured graphics that were on par or even better than what could be achieved with the fastest gaming rigs available. So the relatively cheap XBOX was as powerful, or even better, then a 1300USD gaming rig.
Fast forward to today: Video cards that outrun the next gen consoles in any situation don't cost 500USD any more, and Processors that are so fast that they can run any game out there while unpacking a large archive can be found for less then 150 USD. A HTPC with comparable specs to a next gen console can be built for less then 500 USD. With some modifications, Win8 can be comfortably controlled with an XBOX controller and a 30$ wireless keyboard can be used for anything else. |
I built my rig over a year ago for $1,100 and won't have to upgrade anything for at least 3 to 4 years. That additional cost of $600 is made up for with Steam sales, not paying for Xbox Live, and the numerous PC game mods that can double or triple the play-ability of my games. Not to mention the numerous free to play games (such as Planetside 2, TF2, etc). Also the convenience of downloading all of my games and not going to a store.
When it does come time for an upgrade it will be purely for graphical reasons because I demand I run everything on ultra (a video card) and not because I need the next generation of PC to play CoD 17 or something. Or perhaps another hard drive because I ran out of room due to getting 40 games during steam sales for about 65 bucks. |
So what? Even if labor was 1000% more (it's not), that doesn't actually drive the cost of the product up by much.
Herein, I repeat the same point I've made for a year:
Take your iPhone. Costs around $250 at the high-high end to manufacture. It takes 1.5 hours of labor at Foxconn Chengdu to shoot the case parts and assemble. Most of the sub-component costs are already built at US labor cost levels. The processor by Samsung in Korea, the glass in Kentucky, the memory in Singapore or US. The PCB and stuffing is already so automated, that it just doesn't matter.
Labor in Chengdu currently gets paid about $2/US an hour. Loaded cost to Foxconn is obviously more, but we will pretend that's all that Foxconn pays. Side note: It will go up to about $3.20 in the next 3 years. Say you are right, and it would cost 1000% more in labor. OK. Remember: 1.5 hours?
1000% of $3 dollars is? $30.
All things being equal, The cost to make that iPhone just went up $27. Probably not as much as you though.
Now the reality is that the cost goes up by about $0-$10 depending on costing methodologies, because labor isn't 1000% more, there are significant savings in US productivity, and significant inventory savings since you don't tie shit up in shipping for 3 months. Also, US manufacturing tends to see a much better CpK for a variety of reasons. This results in lower warranty costs. |
I used to make sailing trips on a wooden sailboat without an engine or large battery, so we had to rely on light from flashlights and petroleum lights when we didn't have access to power. Once you get used to it, even the weakest light sources are enough to get around on the boat without tripping, eating and recognizing faces. Sometimes we had to use everything we had - from cellphone screens to flashlights - to prepare the boat for the night when the wind was too weak to make the trip during the daylight. We are simply spoiled with our reliable elictricity and powerful lightbulbs, and judging this product by our personal everyday experience like this blogger did is simply the wrong thing to do.
As a mathematical example the blogger did not even bother with looking for a comparable light and simply testing it, he compared the theoretical light output (10 lux) to a reference number for optimum comfort (500 lux) without at theoretically or practically comparing the difference. His judgement, "The 10 lux supplied by this lamp is therefore far short of even enough lighting for basic tasks." is extremely ignorant and reminds me of the way the ancient greek philosophers analyzed the world - theories based on what they thought is right, written down without ever bothering with checking if they are actually possible.
The theoretical error he made is that both our eyes and our brains do not work linear, the eyes increase their sensitivity depending on the incoming light and the brain adjusts the perceived image based on what's coming from the eyes. Although we are pretty much nightblind compared to most animals our dynamic range is simply incredible, and those 500 lux are simply a value where reading is the most comfortable. That doesn't mean we cannot read at 10 lux, 1/50th of the optimum value is still far above the amount of light needed to recognize the letters. American paperbacks might slowly get really hard to read at that amount of light though.
Even whithout knowing this, he didn't bother to check the viability of his theory with a practical example, like the top commenter of the article did. He just said something like "1/50th gotta be less then what's needed"
The second part of that statement, "enough lighting for basic tasks" is really what got me though. It's so far from reality it is borderline stupid in my opinion - as long as the most basic tasks he does are not trying to distinguish the colors of his favorite painting above the bed because he is paralyzed. I don't know how often I have found the way to the bathroom just with the light of the streetlamp illuminating the street ten meters below and 50 meters away from my window, shining through the blinds. And I think that pissing is one of the most basic tasks I do every day. |
Any word on if it'll come to Windows devices? I just got a Surface Pro last week, I love it to death, but I find myself using it in desktop mode far more often than Metro mode (or whatever they want to call it), because the Windows store selection sucks big time. The included Microsoft touch apps are nice, but I installed BlueStacks the day after I got it so I could get some Android apps on there. Google has a Metro app for search, but it'd be kinda cool to see them release more official apps for Metro, like Now, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Voice, YouTube, Drive, Play Music, etc. |
Not the Op, but it's because language is based in people and, therefore, inherently subjective. Language is a social agreement. We call an apple an apple because that's what we agreed the word apple means and represents . It isn't this is an apple, so that's why we call it an apple.
Additionally, if you have very specific laws, that means anything that doesn't match it perfectly means the person is free to go. Let's use murder as an example because it has a specific legal definition. If I do something slightly different, then I'm not guilty of murder and should be free to go. So what happens is we create these other categories that cover killing people like different degrees of murder or manslaughter. What happens when you get to a case that isn't covered by any of those laws? Then the person is not guilty and free to go even if they killed someone, so he vagueness and broad language can help in that regard.
Additionally, the way we use language changes. This is why the Constitution is such a problematic document. It's part of the reason Jefferson, iirc, advocated rewriting it every 20 or so years. We already have old outdated laws on the books because they are too specific. For example, you can't fish in this area on this day because of x reason. Well, what if this law was concerning a lake. Move forward 50 years. There is still a lake there but a Bass Pro Shop too. The law indicated a body of water because wtf is a lake actually unless we first make a law defining the legal definition of Lake or go out of our way to define lake. But if you do that, then now there is a precedent for Lake. What about those things slightly different? Well, we would have to keep coming up with categories for them. Repeat ad nauseum. For example a mountain is exactly 1000 feet. If I go up to the top of a mountain that is exactly 1000 feet and shave off 1/100th of an inch, it is no longer a mountain, which flies in the face of common sense.
Back to fishing in the body of water. It would be illegal for me to test out my fishing rod in the Bass Pro Shop's interior, man-made lake pond because it is a body of water.
These laws are a nightmare to deal with and would be very costly to continually update and purge, so we do things like have broad language or discuss the spirit of the law.
If you're interested in the topic, you can read about Kenneth Burke's ideas of terministic screens, substance, and consubstantiality; Derrida's ideas about deconstruction, speech acts, and slippage; Barthes' "Death of the Author"; or Nietzsche's "Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense." Those are all humanities based writers. Many others cover it too.
It's actually one of the oldest issues in the field of philosophy /rhetoric. Plato explores it, among other things, in "Gorgias" and "Phaedrus."
If you're more scientifically inclined, one of the most important modern texts to understanding how science (and language) works socially is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
I typed this all out on my phone , so there might be typos. |
The points mean nothing, but as you've seen from your post, it's hidden. I had to click the + on the "hidden" bar. I do this because I like both sides of the opinions. Yours however, deserves to be downvoted and hidden, because it both adds nothing to the discussion and is misinformed. That being said, it's not anything to do with bullshit points (downvote me, I really don't care) it's about redirecting web traffic for profiting by MASS RIGGING the voting system with bots. Anything that wasn't directly linking to quikmeme was downvoted, thus removing any chance of exposure to anything but. Basically, if you only have one place to get your memes, they're making money. This assfuck figured out how to manipulate that traffic in a pretty obvious way (others do it, we have a whole sub dedicated to similar shit like /r/Hailcorporate etc) and got busted. |
Also, it's worth noting this story shows up every now and then. Not necessarily related to Chrome, but to similar applications that make the same choice. A few weeks ago there was a story on top of reddit of a "serious flaw" found Mac OS that allows anyone to see your wifi passwords. Which is exactly the same thing as this Chrome story. They made the design decision to let you see your passwords because you need access to the machine to see it anyway. |
You are essentially correct, but missing one small piece - that the TPM is also a specialized crypto processing chip. The TPM does more than just store the keys (more than one by the way, and not just asymmetric).
It can take input data, hash it, and mix it with hashes of other data. This is useful to make sure that a virus/rootkit etc did not touch your files or boot configuration. In this case your computer will prompt you that 'something changed' and ask if you would still like to boot, the idea being you will know if you purposefully changed your boot configurations or binaries.
It can do crypto computations with keys stored inside it without releasing them . So for example you can hand it a blob and say "please encrypt this" without ever owning the private key yourself. Later you need to ask that specific TPM "please decrypt this". You can combine the first bullet point with this one to get pretty nice disk encryption - make sure nothing has been changed, and if so decrypt the disk.
The TPM itself is hardware and presumably not exploitable from software. Also it has secure hardware specifications so that it's neigh impossible to physically crack open and examine.
It should be noted that while I did say earlier that there isn't remote anything with regards to the TPM, this is not true of "Secure Boot" . Suppose that a hacker gets access to a cert, or RSA gets broken, or a cert is going to expire, or any number of other legitimate reasons to revoke or add a cert. Microsoft has the ability to update, add and remove certs in the keystore with Microsoft Update. This is one of the things that skeevs people out - we'll get to that later.
BIOS/EFI and OS changes need to be present in order to interact with the TPM hardware. A non-boot and non-disk-encryption use case of the TPM is that Microsoft implements a "software smartcard" driver that interacts with the memory protected region of the TPM and it's crypto suite to provide two factor auth from the machine itself. (If you aren't familiar with two factor auth, or smartcards: the basic premise is that security should be built around something you know and something you have. Think credit cards + PIN, WoW password + nonce dongle, mail password + text messaging your phone).
Okay, so it seems pretty cool right? Maybe we're more secure with the TPM than less? There are certain scenarios in which the TPM and related technology absolutely make us more secure. (Against hackers)
So why is there all of this suspicion? It is not that TPMs come preloaded with certs from the DoD, NSA etc. I mean, I do think that's one of the things that people fear (with closed source software and closed source hardware you can never be sure), it just isn't warranted. That fear doesn't make sense, since without a TPM the DoD/NSA could pop in a different primary hard drive, bootable thumb drive, live CD or do a network boot, or compromise your computer and run a virus, use DMA through firewire to modify memory, etc. The DoD/NSA can do these things without a TPM. Adding a TPM doesn't give them that ability. So is there legitimate cause for worry? What's all of this about? It's more about removing your ability to do things than it is about giving the NSA/DoD new abilities.
Let me explain what the worry is:
The worry is that the same technologies that enable the software smartcard, disk encryption and secure boot can be used to support things like rights managed email or business documents (email/docs that can only be deciphered inside the TPM). That would have made it more difficult for Snowden or Manning to copy large numbers of documents. Instead they would have needed to open every one with their TPM and take pictures of their screens. Another possibility might be rights managed music/video, media companies' dreams and another hurtle (though not insurmountable) for pirates. Finally, there's the biggest worry about rights managed software. What if the Operating System starts using the TPM and Secure Boot trusted boot path to only allow certain software to run (much like Apple controls what apps are in their app store and can run on their device)? You'd have a desktop experience that is mostly free from viruses and malware - all but the very most sophisticated and ingenius would be foiled and would fail to run on your computer. But it's also the case that Microsoft or other providers would have a sort of central authority over the code that gets run on your computer. Every Spotify startup would need 'permission' from Microsoft to gain access to a Windows audience, just like startups today need 'permission' from Apple to get on iOS. What's more is that the update technology could presumably be used to remove someone's rights to read corporate email/etc if they wanted to go to the authorities over something. None of this is actually in place - it's a theoretical worry about what the technology, useful because it's powerful - could be used for, and that if you are dependent on Windows as an individual or as a business that you'd be stuck with it. After Microsoft and other US companies played ball with spying programs in the cloud, it makes some sense that other countries are frightened to use Windows as a backbone of their government.
The TPM does not allow spying from the DoD/NSA . The TPM is not a DRM chip . It has the potential to be one in the future. But we've lost a lot of public and foreign trust, so you're seeing the panic and frightened responses along with the doomsday proclamations today. |
This problem has been plaguing me since I bought my new laptop about a year ago. It has the 6235 adapter. It's weird because it seems almost completely random as to when it happens. It'll show as connected to the router still, but nothing will happen until I disable/re-enable the adapter. Sometimes this won't help, though. I recently had the adapter get stuck "in-between" power states, and when I tried to restart, I got a blue-screen instead. (power state failure) With as many driver updates as there have been, it could well be a problem in the chip design that's causing this. |
This is partly in the way that appropriations and budgets are made, there is authorization for the "critical" expenditures. It is illegal for a government to make expenditures which have not been authorized in some way. The continued operations of these sites would be an unauthorized act since the funding has specifically been non-renewed. However shutting down the site can be treated as a critical expenditure which has been authorized through other means.
No one has ever accused the government of making good decisions on budgets and appropriations, but once made they are the word of law. |
The UAC dialog is shown on a separate virtual desktop (by default) so the only way a program could programatically click on the button is if it was already running with full rights, which it could gain by being run with full rights at least once (when it is installed.)
Unfortunately, the only way this could be fixed is to either:
Never allow system services to interact outside the services desktop. (Not realistic - there's legitimate reasons to want to do this.)
Display a special UAC dialog when a program wants the rights to add a system service ( Which can run as SYSTEM Unfortunately most people would just click through the special dialog, or get confused by it. Although that being said, I think OS X does this. (I feel like my Mac has asked me if I want an app to be able to do admin stuff without asking me.) |
Over the past 5 years I have installed this software on about 20 computers, I had 1 fucking week to switch. 17 machines didn't make it, but they will be getting ImPCremote asap they aren't far away. Most of those machines never used Logmein once, since their owners weren't stupid enough to catch a virus.
Logmein will never make a penny off of me, because they are a bait and switch company. 7 days to switch, when just a month prior it was switched from unlimited computers to 10 per account... fucking assholes. |
In fairness, if you get in quick sometimes Apple are actually, well, not dicks. I paid about £5 for an app yonks ago which a few days later was pulled from the store/the t&c's changed and it wanted a monthly charge. Just like this situation. I emailed support, explained that there was no indication of this happening and i was out of pocket/facing a 12 month subscription to get use out of an app i had already paid for, service included. Later that day i had my refund. I understand it was £5, no $30 or $130 dollars, but it's the same principle. |
I know this has 500+ comments already but I thought I'd give my vote to teamviewer as well. I just spent the last hour installing teamviewer on all the computers I need it on, to me it looks like it has every single feature that logmein has. The biggest thing that I loved about logmein is the fact you can sign in and log on to a PC via your browser, you can do this in teamviewer as we. |
According to the article the bill says:
>Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly:
>(1) Offer to provide to one or more subscribers [...] broadband service; or
>(2) purchase, [...], any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer [...] broadband service to one or more subscribers.
From that wording this bill would have no effect on new ISPs entering in to an area. It is just saying that a municipality (a.k.a. city) may not start it's own broadband service (1) and it may not maintain or provide a facility for a private ISP to use (2). The only way this related to Google Fiber is that Kansas city did provide Google incentives to offer service there. |
You realize you're equally hypocritical right? Advocating that others may push their religious beliefs onto employees?
FYI, birth control is prescribed for other uses besides contraception. |
I had T-Mobile for 8 years on my moms account and an additional 4 on my own. In the houses I lived in previously I had fine reception, but in the house I live in currently we didn't get any reception and had a house phone anyway. When I called to tell them I wouldn't be renewing my contract the employee offered me $59.99 for two lines ($70ish) less than my contract was) and an extra $30 for both lines to have internet. I had her clarify 5 times that it would be $30 total for both lines, not each. I ended up renewing my contract and when I got my bill I realized I was being charged $30 for each line. I called and spoke to an employee and they said there was no way that was possible and when I requested a manager they put me on hold for over an hour. Not only that but they disconnected my call and I had to call back and wait on hold for an additional thirty minutes before finally getting a manager who refused to work with me and basically told me tough shit. All they could do was offer me $10 off and slower internet speeds.
The funny thing is now my husband and I use Family Mobile and it's significantly cheaper, we actually get reception in our house and they use T-Mobiles towers. If only we got service when we actually used that POS company. |
Now you know. Always record phone calls when you call a company. They record you, you should do the same.
If in the future you need help figuring out an easy way to record them, just let me know, gmail calling makes it extremely easy on the desktop. But you can also do it on most android phones. |
There are a ton more MVNO choices than just tracfone, I'm sure you know. I'm going to expand on your post if you don't mind.. I wish more people would do their research. Most people can get big network plans for less than $55.
verizon towers through [selectel]( or [pageplus](
att towers through [straighttalk]( [airvoice]( [h2owireless]( or[ aio wireless](
tmobile towers through simplemobile or [Lycamobile](
I personally use lycamobile's prepaid 2 cents a minute for calling since I'm on wifi so much and use talkatone. I've had cell service when I've needed it and I've spent less than $2 a month for it.
There are tons of other mvnos I didn't list. They just have slightly higher plans and need to update their pricing to state competitive.
Whether you need full blown unlimited talk/text/ and a lot of data or you can work with pay as you go like me. |
As someone who has had their service for almost the better part of my life, due to sheer lack of options for other providers, my experince ranges from tolerable to completely unacceptable. Pricing for basic cable used to be alright, but grew exponentially over the years, then got dailed back in. Internet is over priced unless you call every few months and tell them to cancel your service, then they have "specials" to keep you there. Their customer service is a joke, I don't mind someone who has an accent, but when I use the simplest English I can without being condescending, and they can't understand what I'm telling them, it's ridiculous. I'm finally in an area that has another provider that provides slower internet but it's worth not having to deal with them any more. |
we give them way too much of our money for absolutely nothing in return.
this is utter bs. Israel receives a $ 3bln credit to buy weapons from the united states.
So apart from the fact that this money comes back to the states directly,
the deal includes israel sharing a lot of military intelligence and technology to the united states.
Contrary to what you might think, a lot of technology is invented in israel and makes its way to the states after years of research in israel, the Iron Dome system is a perfect example of such a technology, but there are far more than you might expect.
And the US makes far more than $3 bln on technologies that israel has provided thim under this agreement. Ergo, not only does the US not get nothing in return, they make a lot of money on that investment as well.
In addition to all of this, egypt, jordania, saudi arabia and many more countries get a similar deal without the benefits that israel gives.
So if the states were to decide that these credit-lines were too costly, i assume a large list of countries other than israel would first lose their income.
As for respect for your nation, a lot of israelis DO respect the united states. If you want to selectively pick out specific groups of people who do not respect the US and make them representative. Israel could do the same with groups of rednecks, neo-nazis or other types of anti-semites who live in the US and do not respect Israel.
Regarding the topic, the mossad is one of the most efficient intelligence agencies in the world, it is to be expected that they are seen as a danger, even by the US. But if for one moment you think that every country in the world does not view the US as nation who poses the greatest threat (NSA, CIA, etc. etc.) then you are delusional. All countries spy and all countries are wary of this. |
I would add a few minor notes to this:
*Google's aim in advertising is mostly to get people to use the internet more, as internet use correlates pretty directly to use of Google services.
*At&t has no equivalent to this. Their main revenue streams are fees from sale of internet, and possibly selling customer data. Ergo, At&t should need to charge more for the same service.
*At&t is also not rolling out fiber ahead of Google -- they're only rolling it out at the price they are in areas where Google already is. Google, OTOH is rolling out fiber in places where At&t isn't. Also, its stated reason for rolling out fiber to begin with was that it was trying to show the other ISPs that there was a demand for high speed, as the speeds that other ISPs were offering had largely stagnated, and were expensive for the speeds being offered, to boot. |
So is this a legitimate claim to a suit that protects the interests of competitors or in reality the lack-thereof (really just Bing)? I might be a self-proclaimed technologist like every other redditor but seriously who uses anything else? I've used Google since conception along with millions of others but does that mean I wholly condone everything that Google does in parsing the world's internet to find that specific cat gif or that michelin-star restuarant entree recipe? Yes I'm fully aware that NSA has infiltrated into the backdoors of Google and pretty much every backbone telecom out there and I rightly so abhor how our personal privacy is crumbling through inadequate understanding of the depth in progressive technologies. But in all practicality there's nothing better than Google, there may be more secure solutions like DuckDuckGo, but is the EU suing Google on behalf of these minority alternatives or because they just want a cut of the pie for themselves? |
Not sure if serious, but here's the justification for $20/hr. First, nationwide minimum wage will be $15/hr for many jobs, in most industries. Just as gay marriage and recreational marijuana will. Where it has already happened, like Seatac, all evidence points to a the minimum wage reducing government services that augment low wages out of the taxpayer's pocket, increasing quality of life, and encouraging spending, which bolsters the region, raising all boats. Trickle down is a stupid talking point, and a disproven political theory.
The fact is, the more money poor people have, the more they will spend. The more they spend, the more cash goes into the economy. |
Ok forgive me if this comes off as mean but what you described sounds like kindergarten. The world ain't kindergarten, you gotta grow up. Plus, why the heck should my country care more about other countries than it's own citizens. This may be an Amero-centric viewpoint but I believe that the government is of the people, by the people, for the people. Not some other country's people. Why should my government care more about the well being of Kenya's population more than the well being of it's own people? Also what if what's best for one country is not good for another. For example what if China is having trouble with its economy and wants to expand its fishing sector so it starts fishing in Japanese, and Vietnamese waters. Now China also has little regard for environmental concerns and regulations so the fishermen are overfishing and horribly polluting the waters. It is in Japan and Vietnam's best interest to stop Chinese fishing. But wait, this will really hurt China's economy and millions (including food processors and salesmen and fishermen, yea it's unrealistic but bear with me) will be unemployed. However if China keeps fishing is will be horrible for the environment by not only horribly polluting it but also by overfishing many species to extinction and this is also hurting Japan and Vietnam's fishing sectors and driving their fishermen out of work. Pray tell, why should the governments of Japan and Vietnam care more about what's good for China and why should China care more for Japan and Vietnam? It I'm harping on a Strawman about who a government should care about more then can you at least think of a solution to the problem that's been presented. Oh and for the sake of the scenario Japan has ramped up it's military and is paranoid of China and is very protective of it's fishing rights. Also Japan and Vietnam both have long ugly paths with China and none of these countries are friends. Also the past has proven that Chinese fishermen will flat out refuse to follow environmental guidelines and the government will not enforce these guidelines. |
DISCLAIMER: this is kinda long (at least for me on mobile) and not entirely sourced yet
First the fish thing, Japan does not want China in their waters yet China refuses to leave. The Japanese are fearful of a Chinese invasion, and they really don't want their coasts being ruined by pollution and their economy being hurt by Chinese fisherman. But you tell Japan to just power through it? Would that not piss off a lot of Japanese? What about ancient ethnic rivalries that still exist today? Why are you not forcing China to fix it instead of harming her neighbors? Remember Japan is a relatively conservative nation, very xenophobic, and they really dislike the Chinese. But "for the greater good" they're supposed to allow their beaches and coasts to be polluted, their ecosystems devastated by overfishing and their national security threatened? Now I'm going to run through like 3 different real world events that aren't tricky to say the least.
You also assume everyone thinks of their fellow man as a friend. I hate to break it to you buddy but that's not true. Every single society is racist or prejudiced in some way (I know citation needed but I'm on mobile, plus a quick google search can show you rampant racism in every society). The West is probably the least racist, or at least the most open about its racism and look at things now (Baltimore race riots). What you propose is completely unrealistic and even from an idealist perspective it's extremely far reaching. Pray tell how do we solve ISIS? Because here's how they treat their fellow man. If they're gay they're thrown of a building, if they're Muslim, but not the right type of Muslim they're killed. If they're Yazidi and male they're killed, if they're Yazidi and female they're forced into sex slavery. Usually they're like 12, but trust me younger girls get forced into the rape game too. Now these people are fanatics who think that this is Allah's will (there is a thuggish anti-west criminal feel to it, but many are fanatics). Tell me what is a possible solution for ISIS.
For our next topic Ggogle the South Sudan and Sudanese conflict. To say it's a clusterfuck is oversimplifying it. Basically there was a brutal civil war between the north and south and eventually South Sudan, the newest country was formed. Now I'm going to kinda paint a broad brush here because this is shaping up to be über long as it is but in Sudan you have mainly Arab (more like Berbers really) Muslims as the largest ethnic group who want force the Christian Sub-Saharan (black) ethnic minorities living in Sudan into Sharia law. Then there's all the oil in South Sudan but the only pipeline leads into Sudan (they tried to promote partnership between the two nations) where the South Sudanese extract the oil and sell it to the Sudanese for a profit and the Sudanese refine and sell it to foreign countries. But human nature kicked in and things are going less than stellar. The Sudanese think it's really good if they rip off the South Sudanese and they're at a stalemate with either no oil flowing or extreme controversy over the oil flowing (again on mobile I know the lack of sources is bad) so the South Sudanese want a pipeline running through South Sudan
to cut Sudan out of the picture. BUT Sudan's economy is doing awful and without the oil they'd completely fall apart (again sources but if I have time I'll put them in via edits). BUT they're making sure the South Sudanese make as little money as possible off it so they're nigh impossible to work with. Also Sudanese government implements Sharia law so you know rights are few and far between; women are second class citizens, and being a corrupt African country there's atrocities our the wazoo. Oh and during the Civil War that eventually created South Sudan the Sudanese committed numerous war crimes, used rape as a weapon, and probably committed genocide( but after this whole Armenian genocide debacle I don't know). Tell me how can you convince these two countries who hate, no despise, no loathe each other into working together for the common good. Because the common good to each of them spells disaster for the other. And that's not even bringing in the various rebel groups and government corruption.
Ideals are nice on paper, and I think you should try and to ideals as much as you can in international relations, but it isn't as simple as working towards the "greater good." Also who decided this "greater good?" Ans you say want to promote freedom, which I don't think is a bad thing I think freedom is the shit. But, and I'm sorry to tell you this buddy, not everyone thinks like you and not everyone likes freedom. The Russians don't. Look up some decent Russian propaganda videos (it's told from the perspective of a Russian settler in Ukraine) about the the Ukrainian crisis. They mock the US's freedom and democracy. They don't like it. Neither does the Islamic world or China. (Admittedly parts of the youth in many of these countries like freedom but the government and many conservatives don't like it)
Lastly you can look at Egypt after the Arab Spring. They overthrew their oppressive, secular, pro-Israel dictator (which I was glad about don't get me wrong) and in their first election they promptly elect the muslim brotherhood (admittedly it's a parliamentary system so they just had the most votes total). Those guys wanted Sharia law to be the law of the land, hated Israel (admittedly this can easily be justified in the Middle East but if tensions flared and relations soured it would really destabilize the Middle East and the U.S. has done enough of that), and they wanted to curb women's rights and freedom in general (whole Sharia thing again). Admittedly many young people wanted a secular democracy but, as seen in there election, most didn't. Most felt gays were an abomination and should be persecuted (at least they elected the party that supported that remember I'm painting broad strokes). So what happened? General Sisi said "no you ain't Muslim Brotherhood, I won't let you turn this into a shit show" (I'm paraphrasing for the general) and promptly kicked out the democratically elected guys and took over in a military coup. Now here's where it gets funny, and this is a bit of a tangent but bear with me. General Sisi overthrew the democratically elected guys, which is bad. But he supports a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine and tensions have cooled between the two, which is good. But he outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and has been killing and jailing former members and supporters, which is bad. But he's against sharia law and has called for Islamic reform, which is good, and he's concerned about violence against women and is working towards a pluralistic society and even attended Coptic Mass on Christmas as a show of good faith, that's all really good. But, here's where it gets funny, because when he overthrew the democratically elected government US-Egyptian relations have worsened while Russo-Egyptian relations have improved, which from an American perspective is bad. But is also kinda ironic. So the US sticks to its democratic ideals and supports the democratically elected government even it is oppressive and theocratic, whereas we live in a county that is secular and pluralistic. Then General Sisi throws a coup and overthrows the democratically elected; albeit theocratic and oppressive regime that wasn't too friendly to religious minorities. Now there's a military dictatorship that is a lot friendlier towards minorities, is secular, and working towards pluralism. Also since it is secular the Egyptians actually have more rights and liberties than under their democratically elected government, yet because we chose to stick to our democratic ideals we can't be friends even though we would probably get along much better with Egypt under General Sisi. Now tell me, what's more important, democracy or liberty? Tolerance and secularism or intolerance and oppression? How can we cling to our ideals with choices like this.
This has gone on long enough but basically you just can't function in international relations like, or a democracy because a politician who acted like that wouldn't get re-elected. In the the world of international relations and diplomacy there are no right answers, but there's plenty of wrong ones. Also if anyone who lives in the regions i discussed or is knowledge would like to correct or applaud me please do! |
1) premiums would go down 2) Americans would be able to keep their plan 3) keep their doctor None of these were true and he knew it the entire time. Premiums and deductibles went up across-the-board.
I don't even know where to begin on correcting you here. I'll just hit the high notes.
> Newsflash: The ACA has not insured the uninsured as intended or in the numbers projected . I'd be happy to post a link for you here, but it seems like you're the one that needs to do research.
So if you want to play semantics, I'm not wrong you're just pedantic. I also know about states refusing to expand medicaid, in which the states refusing are the ones who would be most benefited from the expansion. However, I'm sure you're just skipping over that part.
>It's only nuanced when you're trying to defend his lies. He said: 1) premiums would go down 2) Americans would be able to keep their plan 3) keep their doctor None of these were true and he knew it the entire time. Premiums and deductibles went up across-the-board.
Simple, for the lower end people had policies that didn't really offer much if any coverage but were really cheap. With the new rules, they couldn't legally offer those bullshit policies.
>Oh really? I bet you can't even tell me when the final bill was released to Congress for review before the vote...
This retort at face value sounds fancy, but it doesn't mean anything.
>You don't have to call it a death panel, but cost determination is made by bureaucrats will directly affect access to care. Even Obama said we might have to give you the pain pill instead of the pacemaker
So literally the same that insurance companies have been doing already, except for pre-existing conditions can't fuck you over as much now. Besides on the pain pill vs pacemaker, you have to understand the model for healthcare. To make money, doctors will order more expensive/extraneous tests just to rack up the bill. It's not unheard of for a doctor to order a more expensive/more invasive procedure where there is a viable alternative for the patient. But that wasn't even the context of Obama's statement which you're misconstruing.[ In fact, your death panel interpretation is one of those aforementioned Republican talking points.]( |
I don't understand - how is it possible that a bill needs to be 11000 pages long? How can anyone be expected to read and understand and vote on something that big? Do they get a |
No, I think their actions were probably uncalled-for and reactionary. I say "probably" because I haven't seen the picture(s) in question. Was the baby just used as an "accessory" in order to slip boob pics onto the site? That would certainly violate the ToS in spirit. Or it could have been more along the lines of "Hey, I've got a baby! Look at this cute photo of me feeding it."
Either way, I don't support Facebook banning these photos, or even banning nudity. I support a woman's right to breastfeed in public.
However, Facebook is not "public". I'm pretty sure that the entire Internet qualifies as something between "private property" and "commercial property". Additionally, there is a tremendous difference between breastfeeding —an activity that that nature demands take place, and at unforeseen times—and posting pictures of breastfeeding , which is completely optional and unnecessary in most contexts.
I get the feeling that the people who are complaining have an overdeveloped sense of privacy, security, and ownership of their interactions with the site. Facebook is answerable (to the extent they choose) to advertisers, sponsors, and partners, so this is not a completely arbitrary restriction.
If people want to shout about this as a way of warning others about the site, fine. If they're trying to say it violates their rights, however, they've got some learning to do. |
If we had giant ones of these we could air lift referees above a field or stadium to follow whatever corresponding projectile without getting in the way of the players.
I bet it would make a great fruit dryer for after you wash them.
If you put someone in a giant clear ball it could be a ride at an amusement park where it moves you all over the place really fast randomly which would be unique in that there is nothing visible holding you up.
Some interesting art pieces
If you had some kind of launcher you could be like: "I want to view my dvd collection" and it would launch them all in the air and rotate them around in a nice circle. You want to read the back of the case, just ask it to "flip it."
If you had 2 teams with say 2 of these each, you could have a game where the first person to knock the other persons balls off wins. You would have a joystick for each blower that moves the balls. People would develop crazy techniques and combine both balls in awesome moves beyond what you can imagine.
A hover clock that shifts balls around to form the right time.
If you shrunk this down and had a grid of say 16-32 of these things you could throw a bunch of objects like tacks or paper clips into it, and you just hold your hand out and the sensor will pick that up and blow one to you.
Sort Change
Throw a summer sausage on one while 4 others control knifes and perfectly slice and place the meat on sandwiches the machine previously laid on plates that machine previously put on the table that the AI controlled version with wheels moved out of the furniture store delivery van that the ceiling mounted version pushed keys, moved the mouse and pressed mouse buttons to order online that a networked portable version of these machines loaded the ordered table onto the furniture truck that was assembled by these machines in a plant built by these machines that were themselves built by older models of these machines. |
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