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Customer service? HA! I guess I'm the "1%" that despises comcast. This LITERALLY happened today. My wife was simply trying to transfer our cable from one house to the next...not so easy. The first number (which she obtained from google) left her speaking with someone who wasn't completely fluent in English who gave her a (supposedly) local phone number. When she contacted the local phone number, the lady (not English) also said she'd have to give her another number and hung up on her. After calling the same "local" number back and getting another non English speaker she asked for the manager to which he refused to transfer her to. He then, I shit you not, gave her a number to a phone sex hotline! When she finally dialed the 1-800-comcast number she finally got an English speaking person, who confirmed the "local" number was in fact affiliated with Comcast and he didn't apologize. He also stated that he was going to charge us a months cable bill just to come out and transfer the service (on top of what we usually pay). |
I think you fail to see how complicated such a network would get.
Let's say you have 10,000 movies each 1GB in size. Every user stores 100MB of a random film. To store the entire catalog you would require 100,000 users on 24/7. Obviously one copy of the entire catalog isn't enough because people go offline. So let's say you need 1,000 copies. Now you require 100,000,000 users. Netflix has under 50 million subscribes worldwide according to Wikipedia.
Let's say one user can service 10 others at any given time. If we have 1,000 copies of the entire library that means only 10,000 people can watch the same program at the same time. So to setup a system that would balance popular shows vs unpopular ones would require seriously intelligent load balancing. Your 100MB chunk would constantly be changing. Keeping track of who has what would be massively bandwidth and CPU intensive.
Not to mention that I bet the vast majority of people streaming content use a dedicated device like a Roku which probably can't easily store anything long term or run a BitTorrent like client. Anybody with caps on monthly bandwidth would be problematic. |
not sure what you mean by won't it become obvious after a while, but it would really depend on the website and what you're doing.
For instance, I live in the US but often use my VPNs Canadian portal. Amazon videos requires me to be in a US IP so it'll tell me I can't watch while connected so I can either D/C or switch to a US portal and simply refresh the page to fix their location block.
However I was logging into my bank account once and forgot that my VPN was on and I got locked out of my online banking until I could prove to them my identity. |
So?
The NSA is a spy agency, it's their mission to spy on other countries...and Afghanistan is of special interest for very obvious reasons.
Of all the things to get upset with the NSA about...this doesn't even make the list. Hell, I'm glad they're doing this...this is why the NSA exists.
I know Reddit struggles with the concept, but spy agencies spying on foreign nationals (even all foreign nationals) on foreign soil is OK...that's what spy agencies all over the globe do. It's their reason for existing. What's bad is when a government spies on it's own citizens.
Yes, my international friends...I'm OK with the NSA spying on you AND I'm ok with your spy agencies spying on me. What I'm not ok with, and what you shouldn't be ok with is my spy agency spying on me, and your spy agency spying on you.
Here's why...
Governments are sovereign. If Germany's BND is spying on me, as a US citizen, that's not a terribly big deal because Germany can't pass laws against me or send LEOs to arrest me (unless I visit Germany).
Similarly, if the NSA is spying on a German citizen, then that's not a terribly big deal because the US can't pass laws in Germany or send the FBI to arrest German citizens on german soil.
What's scary is when a government starts spying on its own citizens, because there's no sovereign buffer protecting the citizens. That's the difference, and its a huge difference.
Additionally, the motives are different. When a government is spying on a different people, they're trying to gauge the social, economic and political situation of the target country in order to make the best possible foreign policy decisions.
When a government is spying on its own citizens, they aren't trying to get the best information to make the best decisions - better information is already publicly available to native governments. What they're doing is trying to find 'criminals' or 'terrorists' or 'subversives' or 'deviants.'
A government spying on its own people is a government that's trying to identify people, track them and decide who they can eliminate or suppress. A government spying on a different people is trying to gather information to make well-informed foreign policy decisions. It's the difference between the Statsi and the MI6. |
No one would accept aid in the form of specially made weapons with expirations. Also, these militias as you're calling them are actually foreign governments. Attempts to subvert weapon effectiveness would mean the recipient entity wouldn't accept those arms from the defense contractors.
More recently, sure we're arming the opponents of isil. All these arms are in the form of aid. We say we're giving Iraq or Isreal, for instance, 500 million in aid. That 500 million is in the form of money paid to some defense contractor to deliver weapons and ammo to the region. These defense contractors aren't told to give an entity 20,000 rifles, they're told they can offer a certain class of armament and allow the defense contractors to work out the logistics, details and make the agreement. This is done as fighting forces require different elements to make them effective. Some may require transport, some small arms, etc |
I don't pirate music because i pay for Spotify.
I don't pirate games i know i'm going to like because i can pay to download them instantly.
With TV-Shows and movies i have to pay the same price as Spotify (for netflix) which is pretty cheap, but there is maybe three tv-shows that i would want to watch, and none of those three are shows i watch now.
My experience with Netflix's movie database is browsing for 30 minutes at a friends house, then choosing to watch a movie off his harddrive because we couldn't find something we wanted to see at the moment.
I don't like the fact that i'm not supporting Netflix, which is doing a good job, but i just can't make myself pay for it when i know i won't be happy with it. |
I consider myself a smart man. One who's intellectual stimulation derived from countless hours of investing time into the cosmos. The planets, stars, black holes, natural phenomena, the history of everything... the universe. Never have I met another person in life to truly share my passion and awe of these things. Of course many times I've tried, but the enthusiasm and jubilee of thoughts rarely was reciprocated. At times, it felt lonely... but never the less still enthralling. And to what it seems like an eternity ago, I stumbled across great minds like Steven Hawking, Michio Kaku, Kenneth Miller, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. People who helped quench that thirst and nurtured it to a healthy, humbling, yet self proclaimed understanding interest. It seemed at least in my personal little world, I was being fed the most prolific information of my adult life. My quest for knowledge had unknowingly evolved into a quest for my own personal spiritual fulfillment. For pretty much most of my life, the odds of me ever experiencing a spiritual awakening that is typically only heard of in religious circles seemed infinitesimally too small. When I walked into to see Interstellar yesterday, I experienced the most beautiful piece of work I've ever seen in cinema. To the average viewer, it may be just another space movie. But this masterpiece struck such a strong chord with me, I felt like it was made for me. It was as if the writers had tesseract like access to my own thoughts and memories. I'm a 29 year old man... greatly calloused emotionally. And wept from pure joy at a number of points in the film. Though my breath was taken away, I felt they gave the emptiness of space an atmosphere for where I felt I could breathe. The awe, the wonder, the absolute captivation of my soul was at play. Interstellar for me was my "Nessun Dorma" opera. The visuals, the story, and perhaps my favorite, the audiography was perfect. Not by oneself, but together in harmony. Many years ago, I suffered from a temporal lobe seizure that instilled severe panic attacks and a crippling existential crisis that paralyzed me with fear. I experience hallucinatory loops at times that feel as if I'm dying. It's been a rough road, and very tiresome and taxing. Finding relief for this has become more and more scarce. However, I've become more scarred and boarded up. The final act in this film came full circle for me like a loop. I lost my fucking mind - but this time, for in a good way. I teared up many times in the movie from just pure joy. But at this point, it started to feel like something else. It felt spiritual. Like an awakening. Like if I had a relationship with God and He/She talked back. A grown, 29 year old man, with PTSD and a calloused tortured soul, was armorless and dare I proclaim pitiful walking into this movie. At the end of it, I felt like a new person. I highly doubt I'll ever experience cinema or art the way I did yesterday morning. Nor am I quite sure it'll ever be quite necessary. Stellar is defined as of relating to the stars, or as more commonly down here on our little planet, an adjective for something marvelous, superb, or even heavenly. And of course the prefix of "inter" brings one agency to interact with another. There's no doubt about it, that on the morning of November 8, 2014, I truly experienced what it is to feel stellar. All those years of submerging myself in the awe of the cosmos finally gave me something back. Thank you Interstellar. |
thing. How many mornings are you not able to take a shower due to lack of water? If the power goes out, it's
Technically true. But I think what /u/deggit was getting at is some content has significantly more of those packets, which does indeed increase costs. For instance Netflix alone accounts for 30% of the traffic on my network, we have to buy bigger pipes to account for all that traffic. The percentage of say, browsing traffic is significantly smaller, if everybody was just surfing the internet like it was 1998 then we wouldn't need to buy bigger pipes because the ones we have are big enough. |
In F1 there's the DRS (Drag Reduction System). There's a DRS zone on the track - sometimes 2 zones if it's a big circuit - and if a driver is within one second of the car in front then he's entitled to use DRS during that zone.
Basically the rear wing on F1 cars can open and close, depending upon whether you're using DRS. With it closed (the default) it generates drag which slows the car down. By enabling DRS the wing opens up, the drag is reduced and the driver instantly gets a speed boost.
It was deemed necessary because the cars in F1 are so close to each other in terms of performance (strictly speaking the top teams are close to each other, and the bottom teams are close to each other... There is a difference between top and bottom teams however), and for years it was relatively easy for a driver to stop a competitor in a similar-spec car from overtaking by just positioning his car well on the track. This led to F1 races becoming little more than a procession of who'd won the previous day's qualifying races, and races were being won or lost by how fast a pit crew could change tyres and refuel the car, not through racing on the track. Fans became disillusioned and F1 was considered boring.
DRS has made overtaking on the track more common but it isn't ideal... I don't consider a driver overtaking using DRS as particularly skillful. It's giving the guy behind an unfair advantage. Although it also applies for any car in front so even if the leader is coming up to a back market they can get the benefit of DRS.
Most people I know have a love/hate relationship with DRS. Personally I think it's moved the action back on to the track from the pit lane, which is good, but I'm not convinced it's the best way of doing it (but I don't know what would be a better alternative).
F1 races in the rain are the best races to watch because DRS goes out of the window and it's all down to which driver is the most skillful and has the biggest balls. |
Some electrical utilities have cheaper electricity at night, so the battery charges up when electricity is cheapest, and discharges during the peak hours so you're going off the battery instead of the grid.
The reason electricity can be cheaper at night is because power companies want to encourage people to use energy during non peak hours. Power companies need to provide enough energy to consumers to match the maximum peak usage, that means the total power capacity needs to be more than the average power usage. If energy consumption could be flattened out, the max peak usage would lower, allowing power companies to be much more efficient, and save them a lot of money.
Normally, you'd have to use your appliances at very inconvenient times to take advantage of this, but with a home battery, you don't. The off peak rate policy varies from area to area, and sometimes you need to sign up for it at the expense of your peak rate going up. With a home battery you don't need to worry about it. |
You can't. If you have an idea and tell me about it, the idea is in both of our heads. Ideas are worthless on their own; it's what you do with them that creates value or effect.
What right does someone have to an idea, when anyone can think of it? Specific implementations can and should be respected, but it should not preclude the idea from being implemented by anyone else.
Nobody in favor of a free market should be in support of copyright or patent law, as they both serve to grant (almost permanent) monopolies. If ideas are out in the open and anyone can implement them, we get the so-called amazing competition that free market types claim to love. |
Here's the thing - you sent that info to someone, right? If they don't delete their copy . . . |
Go home auto |
I remember when I was around 12 in 1991/92ish and I was constantly trying to find porn on aol. Then I was in the car with one of my parents and they were listening to NPR and a story was about the "world wide web" and how pornography is becoming a big thing on it. The first second I had the chance I clicked on the "www" button on aol entered into a world of delights I had previously not yet imagined, i.e. boobs and stuff. It took a mere minute to see a low quality image from a playboy shoot. I was unto a god.
edit: Around the same time I downloaded a trailer for Jurassic Park that was something like 160x120 and it took like an hour, but god damn I still remember seeing that super pixelated trailer as if it were last week. |
I live in South Africa and this actually happened to me, I was with MWEB (one of SA's most popular ISP's) and I was using a 1MB line for $40 a month and was downloading roughly 100GB's per month at the time which I don't personally consider to be a lot but when they decided to implement a very heavy throttling plan and I was considered an extremely heavy user so they throttled my download speeds down to below dial up speeds (we're talking bytes per second not even kilobytes) I tried loading their website to download the cancelation PDF required to cancel their service but the page would constantly either time out or fail to load correctly...
Eventually after what seemed like half an hour of trying to load a simple Web page I managed to hit the download button... No dice, the PDF either always went corrupt or the download would simply fail to even begin or some other error would cause the file to be utterly useless.
Eventually I had to download the PDF on my phone then transfer the PDF to my PC with a USB cable fill it out on my PC then send it BACK again to my phone and email it to them.
After all this they then continued to try bill me for 3 months after I had cancelled whereupon I threatened to sue and they finally fucked off. |
Sure, but privacy comes at a cost. The problem is that nobody wants to pay the fee for privacy. Instead they want to hop on Facebook, share every second of their life with the world, and inadvertently share naked pictures of themselves. Then when Facebook accidentally lets some 3rd party know that you use Facebook, people want to freak the hell out. It's mind boggling. If you want some aspect of your life to be private, the only way to ensure that it stays that way is to never put it online or tell anyone.
I completely agree that parts of my life are private, and I wish them to stay that way. What I watched on Netflix isn't one of them. In fact, I think it's awesome that they shared that data, and could potentially provide me a better service as a result in the future. That's technology moving forward, and I'm pleased with it. It's so weird that a generation of file sharing addicts that believe everything should be "shared" get so uptight about their privacy being taken for granted.
Anyways, |
Very much so. I'm taking a module on E-Crime and the Law, and we were discussing the Digital Economy Bill today.
Basically, the House of Commons will throw something out for being hard to enforce or legally questionable. There's lots of parts that have huge (ie throw it out over these) issues, such as how can ISPs undertake the level of policing the bill want - it says something like "ISPs must take active measures to discourage copyright infringement". That's a huge undertaking; for a start there's no real UK framework for online piracy, so that's a huge hurdle to cross over. |
Truth be told, everyone steals everyone else's ideas all the time. There isn't really a way to regulate that kind of thing if it's done in a general enough way. Take the playstation motion sensing controllers that are just like Wii Remotes...I am sure Nintendo had a patent on their technology, but if Sony somehow can claim they also independently came up with the concept, then Nintendo would have no case. |
This]( is what I think of when I look at your UN. Incidentally, I also think about that weird guy from Star Wars with the tentacles on his head, but surely you meant your name to be taken literally. |
Holy shit, Kit Kats come in a Green Tea flavor?? Ever since someone introduced me to the magical candy world of Japanese novelty stores, I have been compulsively seeking out the best and strangest infusions I can find. Where have you seen this magical new product, and has it succeeded in bringing all your greatest fantasies to fruition? |
Here is said requested Kit Kat Thread]( It looks extrmely strange, but that's probably because I didn't grow up with green chocolate. I have no idea how it tastes, but I assume it must be pretty good since it's being mass produced. |
I wouldn't say my approval is implicit, you mistake my example of something that is blatant copying for fanboy-ism. In truth, I have seen many examples of this practice across the spectrum of consumerism, and I am sure you have as well. I am not allying myself with one side or another, I am instead just stating a pretty obvious example of how these things go - not disparaging the fact that it happens. In fact, many times the larger company will improve on the idea, as I bet Apple would do if they were capable. |
That's exactly what I am saying. They can take an idea and build it up from the ground. Everyone knows it's pretty much a ripoff and unoriginal, but that doesn't stop them from doing it and profiting from it. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple did the same thing - after all they can't be the inventors of every single new idea out there, but they sure do have the manpower to improve on those ideas. |
By that argument, a car with a problematic transmission is still perfectly good because it has a sound system, a/c, and cupholders.
True, there are uses for an iPhone beyond the "phone" part, but that does nothing to offset the fact that most iPhone users these days have that device as their sole phone (no landline). So without telephone calls, texting, or other functionality that requires cellular connectivity, the device fails at its primary function(s). |
Another Wake County resident here. The Classical Station is good. K-LOVE (if you're into that sort of thing) has spotty broadcast. The jazz stations are nice, and The River isn't too bad. A bit of channel surfing can also get you some death metal and other stuff. |
When you type a web address into your browser, it is checked against a list of addresses that are linked to other computers around the world. For example, if you type " that domain name is linked to the actual computer ip address 72.14.204.147, which is the IP Address of one of Google's web servers, and you are redirected there behind the scenes. This is a Domain Name System, or DNS.
The current DNS is maintained by a non-profit corporation in California called ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], and when the US Government siezed all of those domains recently, all they did was cut the link between the domain name and the ip address. So, in the google example, typing " would lead to a dead end instead of redirecting you to Google's web server.
The proposal in the link is a new Top Level Domain [eg .com, .net, .org] called .p2p. Instead of going through ICANN to connect to an IP, you would be running an application on your PC that would instead check the address against a list of domains on your own computer, kept updated through a network of other people using the same application. There is no one place to sever the ties between the domain and the IP, since it uses the BitTorrent protocol, which is by its nature distributed completely among its users. So, again using google as an example, you would type " The application would intercept that, check its list of domains, and send you to the proper server IP address. |
Okay, we have a [layman's explanation]( for how the distributed DNS system would work, but how do we get around the problem of DNS poisoning? I am rather inexperienced when it comes to large-scale networking so I have an idea that will probably be shot down quickly. Still; advice is appreciated.
My idea stems from a question: Why is ICANN currently trusted with managing the centralized DNS servers of the US? Why isn't THEIR system ripe for DNS poisoning?
My answer is from my basic understanding of how they operate: the US government (backed by elected and appointed officials) has designated them as a trustworthy group. Whether they are an actual US govt agency or not, the govt supports them.
Why can't the management of the distributed DNS lists be relegated to a group of mods elected through an internet voting process? The system could be accountable, transparent, the voting secure and open source. The mods who run the Dist-DNS lists, and allow domains to update their specific IPs, would be accountable for the maliciousness of any DNS names that they allowed to be added to the list.
This is more conceptual right now, but really the idea is to replace all the accountability that ICANN has right now through the US Govt with a new type of accountability. In a similar manner to how Reddit functions, enough unique users (with advanced CAPTCHA controls to prove that the vote isn't being hacked) could render the new Distributed DNS lists SOMEWHAT trustworthy and secure.
I don't have any illusions that this system will ever be secure enough to conduct financial transactions or manage any real-world matters, but I would like some feedback on how possible this is. |
This is a repeat of a comment I put in below, but I want some advice on this:
Okay, we have a [layman's explanation]( for how the distributed DNS system would work, but how do we get around the problem of DNS poisoning? I am rather inexperienced when it comes to large-scale networking so I have an idea that will probably be shot down quickly. Still; advice is appreciated.
My idea stems from a question: Why is ICANN currently trusted with managing the centralized DNS servers of the US? Why isn't THEIR system ripe for DNS poisoning?
My answer is from my basic understanding of how they operate: the US government (backed by elected and appointed officials) has designated them as a trustworthy group. Whether they are an actual US govt agency or not, the govt supports them.
Why can't the management of the distributed DNS lists be relegated to a group of mods elected through an internet voting process? The system could be accountable, transparent, the voting secure and open source. The mods who run the Dist-DNS lists, and allow domains to update their specific IPs, would be accountable for the maliciousness of any DNS names that they allowed to be added to the list.
This is more conceptual right now, but really the idea is to replace all the accountability that ICANN has right now through the US Govt with a new type of accountability. In a similar manner to how Reddit functions, enough unique users (with advanced CAPTCHA controls to prove that the vote isn't being hacked) could render the new Distributed DNS lists SOMEWHAT trustworthy and secure.
I don't have any illusions that this system will ever be secure enough to conduct financial transactions or manage any real-world matters, but I would like some feedback on how possible this is. |
From what I see, they're actually being charged per transaction made
That was the dealbreaker for me, thinking back to my days as a renter. I'd have no interest in paying $1/month for something that by and large is only for my landlord's benefit. My bank (and every bank I can think of around here) already has free online billpay and they mailed a paper check out since my landlord wasn't set up to accept electronic payments. I was never late on my rent, never needed a single stamp, and never payed a single fee. |
But you see, that's what isohunt wants. They know full well these anti-piracy companies won't go after the big guys - like Google. Why? Because Google's lawyers would eat them for breakfast and at the same time setting a precedent that makes it clear that providing a way to search for torrents isn't the same as being guilty of copy write infringement or piracy. In the end, the anti-piracy groups lose BIG time.
Just the same as if someone was speeding, but got singled out by a cop for speeding, when EVERY other person on the road is doing it. If that person can make a valid claim - it may not overturn their speeding ticket, but you can bet there will be a review of that cop, or that stretch of road. |
Here's how cost efficient it roughly is:
It's $13 for 5 Mach 3 cartridges according to walmart.com. 5 shaves from each cartridge according to Badger & Blade. So 5x5=25 shaves for $13. 365/25=14.6 five packs used a year. 14.6x$13=$190 a year for Mach 3 shaves every day.
Now suppose you done DE shaving. Lets just say you get 3 shaves from each DE blade. You can get 100ct of the best blades (Feather) for $30, or 100ct of decent (Derby) for $15. 3x100=300 shaves for $15-$30. 365/300=1.217 packs used a year. 1.217x15=$18.25 to 1.217x30=$36.51. |
I want to address your point, but because of posting constraints I will address some other issues others have taken with my original statement:
The context of the original quote is one of derision of the value facebook provides (which I personally agree with). I suggested that over-the-air TV indeed provides more value for less investment than facebook (since internet and cable each cost about the same I chose to use free TV as contrast). Work is also an extremely high value, while reddit provides a broad value exceeding facebook's, for less investment overall.
Tools exist because humans are inherently lazy. That's how we drive efficiencies and create value out of thin air (productivity). (as a sysadmin my job was basically to aim to be as professionally "lazy" on behalf of the business as possible),
But from this perspective especially, Facebook just sort of steals the value from you with little pay back- equivalent in-person activity at a moderate frequency provides better value for only slightly more investment. Barriers help create efficiencies (stronger less frequent relationships). The tool it provides can be provided by dozens of other ways but with less investment (i.e. managing privacy, volume, blocking/managing inane feeds, at times offensive/creepy advertising). It also doesn't pay off as well as real social interaction, where you still need to spend time making contacts, staying in touch, without all the creepy stuff and junk. I still remember a world where I didn't get what amounts to a text message (which is a surreptitious ad) every time an acquaintance I'd like to get to know better just got a new digital cow.
I'm not trying to be that guy who just spouts nonsense. You must see that I am being objective. Values one individual considers, don't really enter in to it since I'm really conducting a tally of a thought experiment, which makes the following assumptions: a) extreme values average out b) a value to say 1/5 of the community is a +1, an investment +1. c) value is nothing more than a measurable bonus provided to someone, investment is tallied as loss to consumer, such as time, money, intellectual, public and personal property. You could probably make a more accurate calculation by actually weighting values held by individuals based on a valid survey. In either case, a lower investment is surely optimal. |
This was me for a few years.
Had a dumphone and an iPod touch, hated carrying around two devices, but I did it.
Finally went the route of buying an Android phone on Ebay, getting a T-mobile SIM with voice-only service and used it as this person described... a phone without a data plan that I could use on wifi and make normal calls with. It was $30 a month for 500 minutes of which I used less that 100 each month.
The problem was, I didn't have texting included, and even after I blocked all messaging on T-mobile's site, some still got through and they would charge me. So with the extra fees and texting charges, I was paying closer to $40 a month.
I was glad to cancel my service with them when Virgin Mobile got some Android phones. I'm currently using a Motorola Triumph (love the phone) and paying $25 a month including data, texts and 300 minutes.
I've always refused to pay $60+ a month for a phone with a data plan, VM has been an amazing alternative. |
Assassin's Creed 2 is the exact reason I had to buy a 360 controller. Now the tricky part was buying one that WASN'T wireless. I hate having to muck around with batteries, but it seems that's all they are selling these days. I went to gamestop, bestbuy, wal-mart, and target. None of them had the wired version. I had to wait a month and got lucky there were three at wal-mart one day.
But I guess it's not all bad, for the games that allow it at least I get some force feedback. |
That would be true when android was initially released.
Looking at the state of the market today objectively however, the fact that apple is now copying features first introduced by android makes me wonder who the knock-off is now. |
That is very true and is how they got to the top indeed - but it is irrelevant these days because when comparing a samsung galaxy s2 and an iphone the UI experience is equally good and very similar with each of them having stolen little ideas from each other etc. (obviously apple are to thank for the current quality ui that we see in modern smartphones but that is not what we are talking about). |
You are missing the point again. The way Apple implements a feature is not based solely on the fact that it exists. Instead, the company seems to asks "is this useful right now?", "is this really needed right now?", "could we leave this out, implement another feature, and still be enormously succesful?" These are the kinds of questions Apple asks itself. They take features and they work them into the products in a way that will work well. One could even argue that by starting with a simpler system they adopted a larger consumer base, and by working themselves up from there they are able to tack on features, thereby upping the learning curve (from someone who starts with a 4 or 4S or what have you). But if you started from iPhone 2G the new features will be a snap to learn, given the knowledge you have from previous use. |
Reddit: Hates software patents.
Apple: Sues over hardware patents for technology it created and uses.
Reddit: Criticizes Apple for implementing Android software feature in a way that at least looks different, and brings up Apple patent lawsuits, as if to imply that Apple is suing over people copying their software and then copying other people's software. |
Why does it bother me that the infographic in general uses "mbps" while the "How to read" bit in the top left uses "MBPS"?
Because they are DIFFERENT! First of all, Mbps = Megabits per second. MBps on the other hand is Megabytes per second. 8 bit = 1 Byte, which means 1 MBps = 8 Mbps.
Secondly, mbps = millibits per second. So 1000 mbps = 1 bps. 1000 bps = 1 kbps. 1000 kbps = 1 Mbps. |
Stealing absolutely is taking something that isn't yours. Taking implies depriving someone else of property. I don't agree that corporations are people, but for the legal aspect of showing wrongdoing to another, in this case, a corporation, you have to talk about them as though they are a wronged individual. The fact is, when you take something, you have to physically take it. Pick it up with your hands and take it, or if its too heavy, use some sort of machine to assist. When that something is made up of 1's and 0's, to borrow from your point, you'd still have to remove it from the owner. Actually hack into their computer, or digital storage device and remove the file, depriving them of the original. Making a copy is not stealing. Whether it consists of a taking of property is a little more gray. Looking at a legal "taking" it is when something creates a loss to the point that it is valueless. So, in that respect, it could be a taking. But the physical act taking place, is copying and don't think that it is LEGAL, but its isn't stealing and the media industry has been trying to combat this for years. But it isn't stealing. If that were the case, it would be no different, then if you decided to hook up a DVDR player and copy, the super bowl, for instance. At the end of the super bowl there is a disclaimer that it cannot be copied with out the express written consent of the NFL. It would also be stealing, in a sense, to make a mix tape, yes tape, from the radio, yes radio. I used to do it when I was a kid, but it was copyright infringement. I did it so that I didn't have to listen to commercials and so that I could hear the songs that I wanted to hear when I wanted to hear them. Radio stations design a format that dictates when and how often songs will be played, and the commercials pay for everything; salaries, music, and any other associated costs. By making a mix tape and not listening to the station, I was subverting their plan. But I wasn't stealing. My point is. The industry always adapted to the changing technology to make things appealing enough to buy. Now they're fighting technology to force consumers to buy. And that is just backward, regressive, and idiotic. This was long and very tangential and I apologize. |
Right, I realize that, but when it comes to the security industry, you have to already expect that everyone is going to treat you as being the bad guy, which is why you watch what you say and do rather closely in that industry. Nobody likes the messenger all that much, so if you're not already acting in a rather reserved and respectful manner, you're screwed.
The problem overall is that companies usually don't tend to treat people who engage in responsible disclosure all that well. So, knowing this, and given his past relationship with Apple as well, then it would have helped immensely if he would have been a bit more reserved with his approach.
What I said in my previous comment, where he would have worked with the development team first, instead of just jumping ahead and trying to exploit the market himself, he likely wouldn't have gotten him locked out of the iOS marketplace. They probably did this because despite his name, his actions resembled those of a script kiddie more than they did a security researcher, and they probably saw it as being rather unprofessional conduct on his part.
So while I agree with him that it's rather rude, it's also fairly predictable behavior as well, and is something which he should have realized might cause that to happen. So if he didn't want to get locked out, then he likely knew that he could have handled it all a tad better. |
I would hazard a guess that it's a range of things.
I'd say the sensationalization of the media based on findings may be a part of the equation (so many say "this may lead to...")
Secondly, Patents is another. Patents protect, and if someone wants an exhorbitant amount of money for their product to be produced, it just doesn't get built.
Economies of scale don't apply with new products, which also lead to increased prices, and that makes more efficient products less appealing and competitive.
Another aspect is that some advancements have a high initial cost, but can outlive the life of the owner. In such situations, many people say "but I'm not going to be around to enjoy it" and so some people just refuse to advance. This happens especially because by the time people get the money for such an expensive investment, they're already probably in their 50's or 60's and the investments can last 20+ years. Society grows, an old saying goes, when old men plant trees they know they'll never sit under.
Another possibility is shareholder pressure to perform. The fact of the matter is, CEO's and other executives answer to the board of directors and their shareholders, and so if a move is a good one in the long run, but not very appealing in the short-term, many good and pioneering ideas fall by the wayside. Take for example Verizon. Verizon has done a very good job with their fios, but they are now slowing their expansion to other cities. Why? Is it lack of funds? No, it's because shareholders want their short-term dividends rather than grow the company. Started out a good idea, slowly became an exercise in frustration.
One final factor is the political or corporate pressure for the status quo. This is why battery innovation, i believe, has been so stunted even though we have the capability of very high quality batteries. Simply put, oil is a good money maker. It's called planned obsolecense - cars are now only designed to last a few years instead of decades, which keeps people buying new products, which keeps companies in business. Think about why the Honda insight, from 2000, could get an astonishing 3 litres per 100KM, but today's newest products only do 6/5 litres per 100km. The honda insight was a mistake, a break from the status quo, and that's why it was never sold in the US again with that efficiency. |
That is so completely wrong. Currently they are collecting $15-$20 a month from many people that subscribe only for Game of Thrones. If there was an option to purchase individual episodes, they would not subscribe. Those big monthly subscription fees, which people are very unlikely to cancel immediately after the season ends, are worth a hell of a lot more to HBO than your piddly $30 a year that doesn't automatically renew itself.
It is the same reason Apple doesn't offer a $300 computer. It is bad business to have your high margin products compete with your low margin products. |
It will be once its on DVD. I don't get how people feel that they are obligated to have access to a "premium" service immediately. HBO is comparable to Broadway in that they produce high-quality material and make it available for a select market. Once it has run its course, they make it more widely distributable.
When you make something widely available, you DEVALUE it. I hope that makes sense to some people here. I understand the philosophy of making information readily available, but there is a reason that premium products exist at higher cost and lower availability, because that is what you need to consistently produce a higher quality product, especially when it comes to art. |
I'm currently a pirate, but if they allowed me to show support and have legitimate access to Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones upon release, I wouldn't have a problem paying for it. Sure there's always going to be the cheap assholes who refuse to pay for things that cost money to make, but it's definitely the minority. By making it seem like piracy is a problem that companies can only solve through legal battle, you're hindering their progress to more enjoyable, profitable, and cheaper distribution models. |
Do you think that HBO doesn't realize that this is an option that would be attractive to a lot of people? Hint: They have heard this a million times. They know exactly what they are doing. You don't like their choice, they don't care. They have a lot of smart people working for them who know exactly how their business is set up and how everything is connected, and there is a reason why they don't allow you to subscribe to HBO Go without being a subscriber. |
So you would pay 5 dollars for hbo go. They make somewhere just over 13 off the cable subscription. Why the fuck would they offer it for 5 dollars.
Hbo go as a stand alone is a great idea, but people like you are why they won't offer it. 5 dollars? What the fuck, where did you get that number. 20 would be more accurate, they create content.
The reality is, people would still steal it because they have the same fucktarded logic as you, I'd pay five dollars. Not 20!!!!!! They're well aware of this, you're a thief, and like this article, you're misrepresenting yourself. At 5 dollars it'd eat into their sub service, killing the company. At 20, people would still steal the shit out of it, because they're assholes, like you, and the cost of marketing and running it would be pointless. So here we are.
I am almost positive you have cable and you don't pay for hbo. Huh, weird. |
This is true to an extent, it's over used though. The comments in this thread largely show the issue here.
People are willing to pay HBO some amount of money, I've seen 5 dollars tossed around a lot here. What the fuck? Would Valve survive if we paid 5 dollars HL2? It's fucking disgusting. 5 dollars for a channel like HBO that is making feature film quality stuff, on a weekly basis.
The reality is, HBO can't live off five dollars a month, and too many pricks would still steal it. A 5 dollar streaming service would eat into their cable contracts a lot and not fund their costs.
Reddit likes to act high and mighty and pretend they'd pay, and some would. But not most, HBO has done this research. They realize it sucks and they're leaving money on the table, but they also realize if they grabbed that money, the other money would vanish.
The reality is a lot more difficult than any self righteous prick on here wants to admit. Before we actually see a shift and people start paying instead of pirating, particularly my generation, the younger one, we'll probably eventually see a huge drop off in quality. Think network tv. This will happen across the board, because pirates, in tv land, are currently living off someone else's money.
This isn't the music industry. There is a lot wrong there, a lot of money going to people that have fuck all to do with music. That industry will restructure itself, probably largely based on touring, as it should.
This is the making of a film. There are thousands of people involved and they need money. The day will come that it is more microtransaction based, but that day is not today. Too many people can pirate and get quality content. Give it a couple decades when there is no more money for quality content, then we'll see people willing to pay and companies making models to meet that. |
Right, but HBO is different from other cable channels in that they have contracts with cable providers wherein they are premium channels. It's not as simple as saying "Well cut out the cable companies!" because that wouldn't work. They make their money through agreements with cable providers wherein their product is offered to cable subscribers. If they didn't have these agreements, there would be no means to fund programming such as Game of Thrones. |
Doesn't make a comparison of current revenue to non-existent revenue any more valid. |
Legitimate options? Understandably, people want stuff to be easily (and cheaply) available to them, but HBO has to make money. The first season of GOT cost HBO an estimated 50-60 million dollars, so they need people to pay them to be able to make their tv shows.
Usually, adding an HBO costs about $15/month, in addition to a cable subscription. Cable providers, like Comcast, pay a certain portion of their income to HBO for exclusivity, so HBO is probably getting about $20/month per subscribing household.
They would have to charge a lot of money to Netflix to have their shows aired on there, which could up the subscription cost of Netflix. Plus, if HBO shows on Netflix are as popular as people think they'll be, Netflix may have to shell out more money for more bandwidth, so more subscription money. |
Reddit likes to act high and mighty and pretend they'd pay...
You're not just an idiot, you're an obvious corporate flack for considering all of us who use Reddit to be the same.
Fuck you and fuck the scum that pays you to insult all of us. You are all about the death of the internet and free speech.
I speak in the name of a minority, or perhaps a majority, of Reddit. Or perhaps I'm on Reddit speaking my own personal opinion, which is something YOU assholes can't comprehend.
Once more, asshole, I want to fuck you in what you are. Fuck you. You stink and your shit is nothing but juice for corporations.
I am not Reddit. I am Mexicodoug and I do not speak for all the Redditors you hate and despise. But here I am and you are blaming every Redditor for me and my kind whom you might find insulting to your world view.
Fuck you and your juicy tight little stinky corporate-paid ass. |
Some people might assume the correction implies that the $72 trillion figure was made up. i just wanted to make sure nobody confused correction with something else.
Yes, the RIAA asked for $72 trillion
No, the RIAA is not asking for $72 trillion
They asked for it, but it was rejected by the judge. |
Its stated it in the original article "the RIAA member labels did make an extreme request on damages last year in the Limewire case, suggesting that every single download should be subject to statutory damages, which could, under some circumstances (basically willful infringement) reach up to $150,000 per download". I'm just going to assume that your question was genuine and you're not just another member of the mindless mob that plagues reddit discussions. |
And it's Facebook's fault. Right. I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but I hate those that refuse to take responsibility for their own actions even more.
Of course there's a risk in associating yourself with an organization. There always has been, and there always will be.
So instead of mindlessly "liking" something (and associating yourself with it), make damn sure that you're comfortable defending your decision, or publicly retracting your support, if they make a bad decision. |
Papers you've actually read? Doubtful.
The truth is, and you can confirm this by reading your comments, you didn't provide me with one single piece of information that gave me cause to assess my own opinions or challenge the work of Boldrin and Levine, not one yet you talk as if your opinion should. Citing those papers was a last resort and true to form, I was met with yet another dismissal.
I think you'd be surprised if you went looking for papers that showed the benefits of IP law, you'll find very few papers on the subject and of those that have asked the question very few actually support the hypothesis. That's because the belief that IP laws are beneficial is not true and as long as the same tired old arguments that all innovation will cease without them continues then we will keep heading towards stagnation in innovation. In short, your opinion is misinformed, counter factual and damaging. |
Have you tried launchy , allows for custom triggers (for example, I can type 'pir' tab complete for pirate, and then type in a search string and it opens the pirate bay, searches for my query, and presorts the results by seeder).
Between that and [everything]( I literally never use my start bar. I can launch my programs, search for files, and and alt tab between apps without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. |
I'd do it for my little girl. Not as a statement against the "deliberate under-representation of playable female leads that are more than just boobs on a gun fight the power #girlgamerzrepresent," but just because it was awesome.
Seriously- gender politics aside- the guy hacked a game to make it more fun for his daughter. That's some epic parenting, and that kid is going to grow up knowing her dad loves the shit out of her. Also, she'll grow up knowing that he's a huge nerd. |
Why do people always go with the "omg skynet end of the world" when someone creates a non-sentient machine
Because people are idiots who don't understand that Hollywood's representation of advanced technology is ultimately dependent on what will create the most drama.
A world in which there is a god-level AI which likes people isn't as easy to turn into a blockbuster as one in which the AI is super-mecha GhengisHitler. |
We watch it for the excitement of those plays even though they may only last a few seconds each. The rush is in the anticipation for a big play or a big stop and not knowing when it'll come. It's a game of mind versus mind as well as brawn versus brawn. There's a reason the NFL is the most watched sport in America. You can enjoy it just as much if you only have a basic idea of the game as if you knew all the little intricacies. You root for your team, you share the emotional highs and lows with your buddies in the room with you and with millions of fans around the globe. There's an old saying, "on any given Sunday"; this is because although there are good and bad teams, it's impossible to guarantee who will win because of all the variables. It's not uncommon to see a weaker team upset or even humiliate a top team. |
No one cares when it's something they love: NFL.
No one cares when it's going to first affect those who they do not love.
No one cared about Nazi Germany in America until Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by Germany.
No one cared about deregulation of the banks and federally backing bank assets until the Great Depression when all the banks closed and everyone starved as they pounded on the iron gates of the banks asking for their hard-earned money back--they went out of business, they aren't going to give you your money.
No one cared about labor laws and no one knew what a weekend was until they had to work that first week in the factory for 6-7 days a week for 12 hours a day inhaling all that factory smog.
No one cared about the RIAA and MPAA sueing websites for copyright violations, until they themselves got sued for millions of dollars for downloading a few pop songs.
No one cared about patent law until they tried to patent something and found out a major corporation already patented it and are keeping it in a locked cabinet and preventing anyone from even building the new technology and suing anyone who tries to build it.
No one cared about SOPA until it was clear that it was going to establish a black-list firewall like China to block any websites the government & corporations deemed as a violation of copyright, which is very arbitrary. It would have established the precedent for nations to block any website for any reason, effectively ending freedom of speech on the internet. |
AT&T charged me about $1600 to become their customer. This was the cost of the original iPhone ($600), a deposit ($500), my first bill which had to be paid up front with activation feeds and everything ($250 or so), plus tax.
When I lost my job and couldn't pay my bill, they deactivated my service and continued charging me every month. They also didn't inform me that a failure to pay would "reset" the year-long waiting period to have my deposit returned. I restored my service eventually but, sure enough (thanks, unemployment), I missed another bill payment and had my cycle reset once again.
They eventually sent me to collections where I currently owe them over $1000 and I never saw my deposit again. |
Has anyone evaluated the margins of tellcos? Not that impressive. It takes massive capex and opex to build and maintain nationwide wireless networks. Not to mention the costs of doing business in an extremely high regulated industry. Furthermore, the smartphone data explosion over the last 6 years has forced tellcos to upgrade from 3G to 4G equipment much sooner than expected requiring multibillion dollar investments in spectrum and equipment which has led to amortization problems. Considering tellcos operate around 5 to 11% margins when medicine is in the low 20s, alcohol in the low 20, many other products in the high teens; my wireless bill is not my top complaint. If you aren't happy with your plan, switch to Sprint at the end of your contract. |
Oh I wish I had that option, last month I bought 3 soccer tickets online and each of them had a "convenience fee", I could not print them online, I could not have them delivered to my home, I had to print out a freakin' purcharse confirmation document which was very inconvenient since I don't own a printer. Then had to go to a store in the center of the city to get the tickets which was also very inconvenient because of traffic and parking, faced a huge inconvenient line for about one hour and a half because everybody else was doing the same. |
Here's another thing to keep in mind folks... Mobile carriers have been doing this shit for YEARS. I sold phones for a long time, back when Verizon was still Bell Atlantic Mobile, during the migration from dual mode to all digital networks and what not. Back in those days the average plan was 29.99 to 39.99/month with somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 minutes and you were looking at about .40 a minute for overage minutes. Cell companies made a TON of $ off the overages back then. Now this was before the days of 3G, in fact EDGE was pretty much the latest and greatest so they've put a lot of money in to the growth of new network technologies, but at the time, my BAM rep told us that the final cost to process a call at the time, depending on the area it was in worked out to at the most .03 a min to fractions of a penny. That's quite the mark-up. Keeping in mind that they need capital to improve technologies and grow the networks, they ain't starving folks. |
I left AT&T, but I did it wrong. I got out of a VZW contract back when the Storm came out due to lack of data coverage at my new address at the time. Well, AT&T started throttling my data connection, rendering it useless about 6 months ago. I was grandfathered into unlimited. Not only that, but I moved to a city with no LTE, and only had two bars of service. It pissed me off to see "4G" on my screen, but a 300Kbps connection.
So, I complained and tried to get out of the contract, as I knew I could. They fought back and I didn't feel like going back and forth or suing. So, I postponed payment of my bill. I got it extended until a third bill was due. I had three lines of service, all smartphones, and owed about $975. They were going to disconnect services on a Thursday at midnight, or really late Wednesday night. So, at about 7pm on the Wednesday, I went to Verizon and ported two of those number over and got the exact same phones (Galaxy S3s) that I had with AT&T.
I got a divorce a couple of years ago, and the ex put a nice blemish on my credit, so I figured fuck it. I'll put another one on there, but with a principal behind it. I owed them a total of $2,100 with ETFs. They were calling me before I left the VZW store asking what was going on.
I told them it's pretty obvious what's going on. They told me basically, fine, pay us $2,000. And I told them ha fucking ha, I'll never pay them one damn cent.
To this day, I tell the collections people I'll never pay. I don't have them in my block list, only because it's fun to tell the story over and over.
I'm not dumb, I own everything I need, from cars to my home and pay cash for 1-2 year old vehicles when I buy. My credit took a hit, but they lost a 5 year customer and had to write off a couple thousand dollars. I have the same badass device, color and all and even better service. From where I'm sitting, I won. |
Yea.. AT&T should wise up [for their sake].
They recently sod me a Galaxy S4 for $149 (discounted for some odd reason) and WAIVED the use of my upgrade (including the 2 year contract). I called back a few days later and successfully ordered my 2nd Galaxy S4 for $199. Selling it to my co-worker who is from overseas. :) |
can i just say wow that is the shitiest costumer servis i have seen.
also this is not a breach of contract but change in contract which gives you a 30 day period (i think) where you may end the contract if you do not like the change without getting slapped by early termination fee and if you do nothing it is seen as an agreement to the new terms. just wanted to clear that out.
now normally what i have seen when it comes to people wanting to end a contract during this time is that the call guy will go "no that's not right" where by you enforce that you do know your rights in this matter and then ask him again to end it without early termination fee. normally he puts you on hold or asks you to wait while he talks to a manager. here we get a split i will mark in A and B.
A. you get sent to costumer relationship where they try to talk out of leave you stand firm for a few minutes and they revoke the contract and your done.
B. the manger picks up insted tried to tell you that they can't do that and you just explain to him what is going on he know you are right and will not fight with you over such a know thing and revokes the contract.
only once have i seen a manger refuse to wave the early termination fee and needed to go one tier higher |
I almost clicked the link, but then I had a crisis of conscience and irony, realizing that I would be precisely satisfying the desire to hear this man perform through Youtube that he laments as causing the lack of desire for his distributed performances. I wonder if he'd be more upset that I didn't hear him at all? |
This is inane. If you phrase it as a simple forced dichotomy then yes, most people would agree that getting something for free is better than paying for it.
The problem is that the "free" product is NOT same product as the "reasonably priced" product. And as soon as you realize that, you realize that most people WILL pay for a reasonably priced product because it's BETTER than the free product.
BUT! You have to make it better than a free product. For entertainment this usually means providing a product that:
1: Has high quality
2: Is easy to access
3: Is affordable to your target audience
And that's it. Those are the big three. So why is it that most people pay for those things? Because "free" really means:
1: Unknown quality (possibly as bad as embedded malware)
2: Difficult to find
3: Requires software tools (torrent client/usenet/Audio capture)
4: Small possibility of legal consequences
5: No connection to the artist
6: Takes more time |
yes you are kind of being a douche, but you are also right. I've abandoned all domestic brands for that exact reason. especially Chrysler; which has just turned into one massive joke.
american trucks ive just never understood. in North America, trucks are more or less designed to be a comfortable daily driver 1st, and a... well... truck 2nd.
everywhere else in the world its different. exactly why you cannot buy a hilux in north america and are stuck with "Americanized" versions.
also in terms of reliability, its no argument that Japanese triumph over domestic on average.
now sit and wait for the large amount of replies of people saying how they owned this ford chevy car/truck and it was the greatest most relilable thing they owned and their friend owned this honda/toyota and had absolutely nothing but problems with it.
I dont understand why people assume that is a valid argument. on that basis I might as well claim that you cannot get lung cancer from smoking because I have been smoking 2 packs a day for 20 years and am in perfect health. |
I've owned Toyotas and Hondas in the past. In fact I've still got a 2002 Highlander and 2000 Civic around here somewhere. Back when I bought those vehicles I would have agreed with you. American auto makers were producing vehicles that were far inferior to the Japanese marks you mentioned and had been doing so for decades. However, in the past half-decade or so, American makers have improved dramatically. My 2007 GMC SUV is quite nice and has been a good vehicle for us - we use it every day because its the most comfortable vehicle for my entire family to fit in. |
Didn't everyone already know facebook and ALL internet and. Email connection management software always collects information about people from what their friends said? An old email software used to do the same thing - glaxo I think it was called. No matter how careful you are you can't stop your idiot friends from telling the world about you.
But I always remember one thing. Up until around 1995 almost EVERYONES phone number and ADDRESS was listed right in the good old white pages and everyone got a free copy. It just doesn't matter.
WhileFacebook shouldn't do it( and zuckerberg is and always has been scum if your just read what he did to people in college) people also need to remember they don't get to go through life in a one way glass bubble. The people they mix with get to look back at them. If you don't want scum following you around then don't hang out at the stinky pond so much.
Facebook is a big stinking pond and you will get scum.
Then again unless you are really doing something important most people just aren't the celebrities they think they are and people don't want to stalk them nearly as much as people secretly wish they did. |
Keeps pilots on their toes, forcing them to rely on every one of their skills, therefore when a real emergency happens they have the experience required. |
I looked at the post, Iv looked at these comments I have no fucking idea what is going on, I know im IT retarded but anyone want to |
Unless it was written in form and converted over by a computer tool that didn't keep variable names.
If it was "written to be confusing" then it fails at that because it's not at all. Anyone with computer science experience could spend a couple hours tracing variable names and function expressions. If they wanted it to be confusing, they would have made all of the variables and other names to do things other than the name describes, such as a variable named "timer" being used for a hash key. But even that is child's play when it comes to writing obfuscated code. |
I'll try to explain it, but I don't use TOR and only have a vague understanding of how it works. Please correct me if I'm wrong, ye internet hackers.
1) TOR is a network composed of thousands of different terminals, which yours is a part of if you agree to use it. You're essentially anonymous while using it, because you're behind a 'smokescreen' of thousands of other terminals. It's not really this simple -- you're routed through a bunch of different people's connections, like proxies but exponentially more complicated, leading to an ever-changing IP address -- but that's how I'd explain it to someone like they were five.
2) TOR uses the 'Onion' metaphor because you're under a bunch of layers of connections, like an onion's layers, or an ogre's. An Onion Router is the server which 'decodes' all of these proxies you're stacked under, essentially, and then your TOR client re-applies these proxies, and you're sent on your way.
3) To explain this, I need you to know what a 'hidden service' is. A hidden service is a website, server, or something else which can only be accessed if you're a part of the TOR network. Freedom Hosting provided these services, and was notorious for enabling child pornographers by not policing their content, as other hosting providers often do.
4) The biggest effect of this will likely be a crash in the 'bitcoin' market, which is a form of non-governmental digital currency frequently used online. In addition, many of the services compromised by this were used to help recovering drug addicts, victims of abuse, political activists, and other law-abiding people who need anonymity. Iran's "Green Movement" back in 2010 famously used the TOR network to allow citizens of Iran to access the internet without censorship, and to communicate with people in the West. |
An incorrect analysis,
Let me explain. By "Firefox exploit", I mean the Tor Browser that ships with the Browser Bundle is a build of Firefox, and it was vulnerable. A lot of people run the Tor Browser Bundle under their main operating system, which means that the Tor Browser runs its connections through Tor, but anything outside of that - a Google Chrome browser that you started normally, for example - would just go through your normal connection.
They used an exploit in the JavaScript engine of that particular version of Firefox to run their code outside of the Tor Browser . At that point, they had access to your primary internet connection, with an IP address that they could then subpoena from an ISP. They sent a request using THIS connection - running under your user account in your main OS that had access to your main connection. They also attached a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) to this so they could likely say in a legal setting, "we can confirm the request came from this IP to this site". It's a way to de-anonymize the user by preying on two things:
1) Users running Tor Browser under an OS with a normal connection available (specifically Windows)
2) Users having JavaScript enabled
So, the solution to avoid this exploit entirely while leaving JavaScript enabled is to just have a virtual machine and then only share the Tor connection with the virtual machine. In that way, even if they broke a site and injected bad code, they'd still need to break JavaScript, even if they did that they'd still need to break your VM OS (which could be anything - BSD, Linux, OS X), and then they'd need to break the sandbox layer on your VM container. That would be ONE HELL of a fucking exploit to target the massive explosion of possibilities of what software users could be running. For this exploit, while it's clever, they really only had to deal with one possibility: Firefox 17 running on Windows. Imagine if they had to deal with 30 different possible browsers running on 5 different possible operating systems in 3 different possible VMs running on 5 different possible operating systems. That's 2250 code paths, 30 browser exploits, 3 VM exploits, 5 OS exploits. Hah! |
Isn't this entrapment"? No. For that to work, you'd have to prove to a jury that the cops sent you the package.
If the cops saw you pick up the same kind of package on a regular basis, declaring ignorance of them is going to be a pretty shaky defense. |
Landlords have very minimal requirements, prosecutors would have to prove that a landlord knowingly allowed crime to take place. Managing 5,000 apartments severely limits that ability, which reduces the ability for prosecution to prove there was a willful ignorance of illegal activity. Upon a criminal investigation of the renter/lessee, the landlord simply has to revoke the rental agreement/break contract and cooperate with search and seizure of evidence by allowing unrestricted access to the property in question.
Additionally they can show examples of how they made attempts to limit the potential for such activity to take place, including clauses in rental contracts, denial of cash payments, and any records of routine observation of the area for potential criminal activity. Surprisingly little is required on behalf of a landlord, but ultimately there isn't much they can do anyway, given tenants rights and the requirements of successfully running a rental business, but that doesn't matter as law enforcement is the domain of police and government agencies and not a landlord. |
Alright. So you've got the internet, right? You've got the .com or .net extensions and all the others.
There is an additional extension that you probably haven't heard of known as .onion. This extension links to a set of hidden servers that can be accessed anonymously. You have to use a program known as Tor, which obfuscates and encrypts information on users accessing sites in the .onion domain.
Cool right?
Except the primary thing done on the .onion network seems to be illegal activities. One of the most well known of these is the infamous Silk Road, on which one can order illegal drugs that can be shipped pretty much anywhere in the world.
The Freedom Hosting network, among other things, was involved in hosting child pornography. The FBI used an exploit in Javascript to insert malware that tracked users and allowed them to shut down the network servers and arrest those responsible.
People are flipping out about this because:
No more CP (no real loss)
The FBI took down about half of the TOR network to get at the guy, and nobody knows what else the malware could be doing.
This could be the precursor to wiping out other sites on the .onion network, which in addition to denying people their drugs, guns, and CP, would likely crash the bitcoin, as these illegal markets are some of the largest users of bitcoins. |
Yeah unfortunately since the rise of jQuery many sites require you to have JS enabled to get a normal user experience.
Even more reason to install NoScript.
The only reason our main website works without javascript is because enough people do use NoScript so we cater to them too.
If it weren't for NoScript - we'd probably only test with JavaScript enabled too, since the number of non-javascript browsers other than NoScript is just about 0 (dillo? some emacs embedded browser? lynx? anything else still out there?) --- and the number of actual users we have using all of them put together is exactly zero.
However we do have a handful of important enough and vocal enough NoScript users to still support the no-javascript crowd. |
Upvoted because you seem like you want to know, but you shouldn't be scared to google it, that's silly. It's that mentality that makes it so taboo imo. What Tor could offer everyday people all over the world is some level of privacy, which is a simple (and constitutionally protected in USA) desire most people have. I think more people will start using Tor because it could give them back at least a basic level of privacy that the US & other governments are taking away right now. I really love the idea of Tor and I won't give up on it! |
I've worked at a lot of places like that. The reason these kinds of messes happen is because a million people contribute to a common product without a reliable means of communicating or having visibility into what each-other are doing. Often the guys doing the work are well aware that the production environment is a shit show, but are also basically powerless to do anything meaningful about it without a long and political uphill battle. |
The hosting service was run by a guy who fled the united states after his first conviction for CP IIRC. |
Silk road is a true free market. A responsible one too IMO for a acknowledging the need for & enforcing SOME restrictions on content (they disallowed CP and some other thigs recently, like "suicide kits"). You can buy pretty much anything else, and it is not all illegal. With all the NSA surveillance, there are plenty of perfectly legal things an American might desire to buy incognito. Even organic seeds FFS! |
Basically, it's already been proven that there are some bacteria/virus floating around in our atmosphere. This is almost certaintly what the balloon picked up. |
Are any of us really surprised this website is "for profit?" Maybe it didn't start out that way, (or maybe it did...), but it's that way now for sure. To fix something like this may be easy on the surface, but those programmers have to pass this along to their superiors and those have to pass it along to their superiors.
Bottom line? Money. Fixing this will cause an unknown ripple across reddit and that might mean loss. |
Ya know, that isn't necessarily ridiculous. Certainly we don't have a complete model of what other algorithms would look like in practice (without actually implementing them), there could be unexpected consequences.
For instance, let's imagine that we fixed this bug and that the "New" ranking system no longer banishes posts with early downvotes. How many posts receive a downvote rather than an upvote as their first rating? Let's make a (completely baseless) guess and say 75%. That means that with this bug fixed, about 75% of the posts on the front page of the "New" ranking are likely to be posts that have already been downvoted once (dubbed uninteresting, unoriginal, offensive, spam, or whatever). In other words, the "New" rating posts are mostly crap and not a lot of fun to browse. But right now, before "fixing" this bug, if 10 people are currently rating a sub's "new" ranking, each viewer will only actually have to encounter 1/10 of the crappy posts, because the other viewers have already downvoted most of them. The result is only 7.5% of the posts in "New" are truly crappy. And while that may banish some worthy posts, If a post was really worth posting, but it got downvoted early, it will probably just be reposted anyway. |
I don't give a fuck. |
I think you've done a really nice job of pointing out a quirk in the way reddit measures "hotness". Can I offer a different interpretation of the algorithm?
I see something that places a premium on votes in terms of importance; by not switching the sign on up vote/down vote inputs, the algorithm, as you rightly point out, will bias against anything that has received early down votes and bias toward anything that has received early up votes. Time will not have this effect.
My interpretation of the design, however, is that it was created to accommodate large streams of incoming users who want to view "quality" content. We can define quality in a number of ways. In an ideal world, we would measure it by goodness of what is posted. But "goodness" isn't a static concept. It's pretty tricky to agree upon a "goodness" value for any one thing that multiple people can agree upon, and that's provided that you have an army of quality control people looking at every single post to determine its "goodness"; in other words, you'd need an editorial board to begin to implement that type of standard. Thus, the developers have settled upon up votes and down votes as a way to measure relative "goodness."
The issue, then, isn't "lonely posts" rotting in purgatory. In any system that's designed to rank content, some items will have to come last. That's the nature of ranking. Similarly, I wouldn't focus your attention on the ability of malcontents to game the system; pretty much any system can be gamed. You just go about it differently, depending on the rules.
The thing that you'd take issue with, instead, is that this algorithm presumes that any given user is representative of the population as a whole. This algorithm is extremely reactive to first up votes and down votes. This is, in theory, fine as long as the users making first contact with posts have the same ideas of "goodness" as the rest of the group. In fact, this reactiveness would end up working in the group's favor, banishing content that everyone would perceive as being poor quality, not useful, or irrelevant for view. Where you run into problems is if this is not the case.
It's an issue related to your concerns about gaming the system, but it raises a series of complicated sort of issues to fix. Who gets to determine what content is seen? Should some users' opinions be prioritized over others? My guess is that you'd say no. Placing a premium on time as opposed to on user votes renders reddit just another message board, with posts degrading in a predictable way, and removes one of the aspects of reddit that makes it great--the site's ability to dynamically respond to user activity. Don't get me wrong--I think there are problems with this algorithm. I'm just not sure that I have a better solution. |
has no idea what it really means, but it's 2am. Nobody's listinin'. I love you Reddit, figure your shit out, I'm counting on you. |
I had heard that he was a mod and just removed a bunch that weren't quickmeme. Don't really care too much about the details, but the |
The Wayback Machine - Archives websites so that you can see what they looked like back in <insert date here>
OpenLibrary.org - Like a regular library, except 100% online. You can "borrow" eBooks for free. Consists of both classic and modern texts (see google eBook ruling)
They do a lot more, too; you can read their [FAQ]( |
Many things (road, bridges, military equipment,) make it safely past their expected lifespan when it was built. Things like upgrades, regular maintenance, less wear than expected, etc. make this a safe and economical alternative to full replacement.
For example, the U2 aircraft has been flying since the mid-1950's and it's images still make it to the battlefield today. Programs have come and gone, since 1958, to replace the U2 with more modern aircraft with greater capabilities, but it has outlived all of the other programs because it is still capable of completing it's mission and still serves its purpose.
An extreme example, but these decisions happen daily all around us, including in your family, on whether it's better to buy a new car, or keep the cheaper, older one around awhile longer. The DoT is no different, nor should it be.
There are teams of people who go around inspecting bridges, and rating them for safety, longevity, wear, etc. This is used to determine it's lifespan, not a date on a piece of paper writing a few decades ago. [SEE HERE]( |
The whole system is predicated on the fact that people can't accept long term gratification and go for the path of least resistance.
The fundamental fact is that your biggest impact on the system is what you buy, and what you do for a living.
Yet for most people, there is no connection made here. Need a new towel? Walmart. Who cares if their employees are paid shit. Need to get somewhere? car. who cares if it pollutes. Need a coffee? lets take that nice paper cup. Doesn't matter if it ends up in a landfill. Do laundry? yea, lets use the dryer. Its easier even though it uses 5% of your home energy. Want a meal? ooh, look at all those nice choices that include beef and chicken. Who cares if the cows come from farms that are destroying the environment.
Its these tiny choices that we make that actually drive EVERYTHING.
Companies listen to their consumers WHEN THEY STOP BUYING, not when they protest but buy. |
Our roads and infrastructure are crumbling. Yet politician can only find money to fund wars or buy weapons. There is plenty of work to be done but our politicians would rather funnel money to themselves (the vast majority are shareholders in various companies to whom they funnel money) than do anything that benefits the people. |
The more accurate analogy for comparison to the Internet would be "a paperless society", or even better, "a telephone-less society" (there's no reason everything can't be done over IP, and there are significant advantages to doing so). Paper is still very, very widely used, as are telephones. Kraekus's wasn't disagreeing with the claim that driverless cars would be prevalent in twenty years, he was disagreeing with the claim that driven-cars wouldn't be around in 20 yrs. The Internet example similarly fails this test for paper and phones. |
It is pretty simple. Google has proven with their Google Fibre, that every major ISP can provide a 1Gbps up and down. There is no question that ISPs cant do this.
The whole thing really does just come down to money. A standard user downloads more then they upload. Netflix, games, consoles, tablets, laptops, desktops, phones, youtube, email, ect. So what do they do? They sell less of one thing to "boost" the thing most sought after. The majority of internet consumers are in the dark.
Content creators on the other hand, fall into two categories. On one hand, you have the content creators who arent big, these creators generally upload content in small doses. I for one like to stream, I am not big time so having only 3 upload works. Now, lets look at big time content creators. Streams who score 15k viewers like LoL streamers, or big time youtube creators like Total Biscuit. These creators make money, it is almost DEMANDED that they create new content consistently, both because their viewers have expected it, and because they need to make a living. As a result, they will spend more money for higher upload rates.
Why charge 70 dollars for 1Gbps up and down...When you can charge 70 for 50/5 (down/up), 130 for 75/10, 200 for 150/30 and 300 for 200/75?
((No my numbers arent correct, but they are based off real things. I know that most of the major ISPs have a 300 dollar internet service that provides less then 300/300)) |
When you think about it they can keep adding more and more to phones to make them better, hell the can add a fucking toaster for all I care, but everything they add will suck up that little bit more battery life. Batteries are, as it stands, shit so that needs to be the primary focus now, we don't need anything else adding to our phones just yet. |
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