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You can still buy "dumb" flip phones with multi-day battery life. I have an old Sharp flip phone that would go about 10-14 days between charges when the 1000 mAh battery was new. It even had over 3 hours of talk time on a single charge.
Now I use an Xperia Z1 with a 3000 mAh battery, capable of over 30 days on standby and 13 hours of talk time. I get through the day with about 40% battery left. The difference is that with a smart phone, you use it a LOT more than a dumb phone which is mainly just for texting and phone calls.
If you disable your mobile data, only use your phone for light texting and voice calls and have it screen off in standby the rest of the time it should blow away your old nokia. The difference is that you don't use your new phone the same way you used your old phone. |
I've tinkered with binaural audio to research steady-state evoked potentials in the brain*; it's useful as a control signal when used visually, i.e. with blinking lights, but in some situations you can get more consistent results for testing your detection algorithms with binaural audio.
So this guy can go fuck himself. |
Unfortunately, banning encryption is NOT what Cameron is talking about. I wish it were, because that would be stupid and completely unworkable and would never happen. What makes this proposal dangerous to personal privacy is that it is technically feasible.
What is being proposed is banning any encryption that the government cannot read. Most of the encryption in use today, the encryption that protects your bank transactions, your commercial VPN connections, your website passwords, etc, is readable by anyone with access to the private keys. Since most of the private keys are already available to the government via warrant/court order, these are already operating inside of the proposed rules. The proposed regulations would undoubtedly firm up the requirement for any company operating in the UK to give up the private keys on request. Annoying but not technically impractical.
What is being targeted here is private and personal encryption.
Encrypted bank transactions? That's fine. Get the private keys from the bank. Encrypted VPN traffic? That's fine. Get the private keys from the VPN provider.
Private chat encrypted with keys held only by the end users? Not so fine. Now you are breaking the law. Encrypted files stored in the cloud with the private keys kept securely on your hard drive? Not so fine. Let's take you down to the station for questioning. |
I once bought four 4Gb modules by OCZ and one of them had a stuck bit... It took me a really long time to figure out why my programs kept crashing when using more that 8 Gb of memory. |
It should. Be careful with this and play with it first. Most graphics cards by default make the display hooked up via HDMI the primary monitor and anything else secondary.
For clarification I have a Gateway 24" monitor and an Insignia 26" TV. If the TV is hooked up via HDMI but turned off and the monitor plugged in via DVI I cannot see the motherboard POST or Windows load screens, but once Windows loads it realizes the tv isn't on and kicks it over to DVI. |
The technology is nothing new, really. It's trivial to design any consumer electronic device to have a built-in remote 'kill switch' that some government or company controls. There is exactly one explanation for this patent that makes any business sense: it's a defensive patent to prevent Apple from being sued for selling camera-enabled devices that have any form of built-in kill switch (theoretically, every iOS device they've ever sold could fall in that category - they all have cameras and they can all be disabled outright by the cell carrier, which would lock the owner out of using the camera as well).
In no way does this patent make it any easier for Apple or anyone else to move forward with some nefarious system where every camera in the world could be disabled at The Man's whim. It's conceivable that Apple is securing this patent because they already plan to do this in the future and don't want to be beat to market, but there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that, it wouldn't make any business sense from a sales, branding or legal standpoint for them to move in that direction, and there is another, much more plausible explanation that does fit in with Apple's business position and prior behavior with respect to patent filing. |
The biggest problem with the US patent system is that it allows software and consumer electronics patents to be awarded that are both obvious and broad in scope and this leads to stifled innovation, which is exactly the opposite of what the patent system is supposed to accomplish (encourage innovation). In many countries this is avoided simply by not allowing software methods and algorithms to be patented.
It's getting to the point where companies like Lodsys are patenting things like in-app purchases so that any software developer that wants to offer purchases from within their computer or mobile software applications now has to pay a license fee because apparently in-app purchasing is a novel and brilliant invention and no one else could have thought of it.
We are also at the point where it is virtually impossible to design a computer Operating System that does not infringe on other companies patents because just about every type of interface component and method is patented, and to me this is just ridiculous. The patent system that is supposed to protect and foster innovation and competition is basically making it so there is only one or two Operating Systems to choose from, and any company who uses another OS like Linux, or builds their own OS is at risk of being taken to court for potentially thousands or millions of dollars in damages for infringing on patent rights.
Another example is having an obvious algorithm patented that performs a simple task efficiently such as sorting lists alphabetically. This means software developers who want to perform any similar task, in this case sorting virtually and list of objects alphabetically, must purposely use a crippled and inefficient method to get around the patent, a method that consumes more power (electricity) and system resources for no other reason than to avoid being targeted by a patent troll.
In my opinion, software patents should not be allowed, but if they are, they should be very limited in scope and be awarded only for truly novel claims that show absolute ingenuity and are completely innovative in their approach.
The second major problem with patents (especially software/technology based patents) is that they protect patented technologies for far too long. Technological growth is increasing at an amazing rate, but software patents are holding us back tremendously as developers are afraid to enter new markets for fear of being targeted by patent holders. So much will have changed in 10 or 20 years that whatever was once protected by a patent will probably be so outdated by the time the patent expires, it's effectively useless.
Another problem is that it takes years before a company can be awarded a patent. This means Apple releases something like an iPhone and then a bunch of other companies make other similar touch-screen smartphones (not infringing on patent rights) and then all of a sudden several years later down the road after Apple submitted an application for a patent, it is finally awarded. Now all those smartphone manufacturers are suddenly infringing on Apple's patent rights because they used a method or technique that was not patented during those development years, but now is suddenly protected many years later.
It is my feeling that software/technology patents (if protected at all) must be fast-tracked so they can be awarded within just weeks or months so that other companies do not have to wait around like ducks for a decade to see whether or not a technique will be patented or otherwise end up taking the risk of being liable for damages if such a patent ends up being awarded during and after the company's product development process.
I also feel that software based patents should last no more than two years. In a fast-paced ever-growing technological environment of computer software and Internet based services, any longer than two years provides way too much protection and advantage to patent holders and really prevents any other companies from entering the market and providing any source of fuel for competition and further innovation.
The third major problem I have with (particularly software) patents is that they discourage free (as in freedom) and open source software and technologies. The beauty of free and open source software is that it can be distributed and used freely by anyone for any purpose, and the people who get copies of the software can in turn distribute their own copies of the software freely. The code is essentially donated by people like you and me for the better good of society so that others can use and further build upon that code and use it to create amazing new technologies.
With software patents, open source software developers have to live in constant fear of violating other companies patents even though they are distributing their work freely to others. Additionally, people and corporations who want to use the code also end up being cautious for fear that the open source code is somehow 'tainted' with patent infringing methods and therefore risky and dangerous to use. Consumer electronics manufactures end up having to avoid free and open source software at all costs because of the risk involved with installing that software on devices and systems they sell on the market and generate revenue from (a massive target for patent holders).
I strongly believe that even if software patents are awarded by the government... individuals and groups who use, create or distribute free and open source software should not be subject to any patent licensing requirements. In other words, I should not have to be fearful that by installing Linux on a PC I intend to sell in my computer shop that I will somehow be liable for damages for patent infringement by not licensing Linux from Microsoft for example who claims to have patents that cover the operating system technology.
It's also worth mentioning that their are so many patents on software that it would be impossible for any developer to individually go through and read every one of them to make sure their work was not infringing on any protected methods or algorithms. That's what's really wrong with the system, there is just so much obvious methods and techniques that are patented that developers are virtually guaranteed to infringe on patent-protected technologies without having any intention of doing so, and there is really no way for someone to go through all of the world's patents and identify where they may be infringing to avoid problems. |
and wonder why I ever had more before.
Because you didn't manage your computer (I'm assuming this is it, unless there is some other reason as to why your crap is all over). See, here's the thing - computers are good at working, and you are good at thinking; so if you think and the computer works all is well. However if you, like most people I come across, don't go through the effort of thinking and just shove crap wherever the computer (being anything that's not you) wants it to be crap gets all over and unmanageable; see how you just dug your own grave?
Now I'm not trying to say libraries are bad or whatnot, it's just that Microsoft is trying to fix the users' problems for them and doing their usual "this is be77ar for errybodie!!11!!" and not giving me an easy option to get rid of it; because I've had a videos folder and a music folder for far longer than I've had Windows 7 installed, so when I open explorer and look at the left pane I see "favorites" and "libraries" and "Homegroup" and other crap that I don't use and doesn't do anything except take up space, and I (for some reason) like empty space better than space filled with useless crap. *inhale* |
True story:
I worked for a corporate about 2 years ago with extreme red tape, and although they handed out laptops to developers, they laid down the law XP only. I decided to break the rule and loaded on Windows 2008 Server (I needed the machine for development). One of my juniors decided to brave it with me, while everyone in my team watched in awe. Loved the idea but were too afraid to break IT policy.
Comes December and people are getting ready for the Holiday season. 1 week after the holidays, a corporate email went round stating that the entire company was infected with some virus or another. Turns out it was an XP only exploit, and was on the news too. The IT department could take up to 2 weeks to fix your laptop. For 2 WEEKS, a great deal of the staff could not work.
That is when news of my Windows server installation got around. I gloated, because it was the one time I had told everyone its a better way to develop, and yet only 2 of us had usable laptops for those 2 weeks (Me and my Junior.
& |
Serious question: Is "Gone To PLaid" making fun of a REAL saying made famous by sci-fi movies? What is the parody, just the fact that the sky instead of being streaking stars is plaid, or does "gone to plaid" sound quite like another phrase I am not making the link to? |
Why they actually exist or how they can logically be derived (yet to happen)
[Murray Rothbard]( does this quite well:
> The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the "right to self-ownership." The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to "own" his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform [p. 29] these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.
> Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (i) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.
> The second alternative, what we might call "participatory communal-ism" or "communism," holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. If there are two billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one two-billionth of every other person. In the first place, we can state that this ideal rests on an absurdity: proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else, yet is not entitled to own himself. Secondly, we can picture the viability of such a world: a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of "communist" world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero self-ownership and one hundred percent other ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the natural law of what is best for man and his life on earth.
> Finally, however, the participatory communist world cannot be put into practice. For it is physically impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and thereby to exercise his equal quotal share of partial ownership over every other man. In practice, then, the concept of universal and equal other-ownership is Utopian and impossible, and supervision and therefore control and ownership of others necessarily devolves upon a specialized group of people, who thereby become a ruling class. Hence, in practice, any attempt at communist rule will automatically become class rule, and we would be back at our first alternative.
> The libertarian therefore rejects these alternatives and concludes by adopting as his primary axiom the universal right of self-ownership |
Child pornography, the favorite bogeyman of Internet censorship protagonists everywhere. Look, as abhorrent as child pornography is, censoring the Internet is not the solution. That is as absurd as suggesting that we put federal agents on every cross-street in this country and have them check the trunk of every car that drives through, in order to make sure nobody is smuggling child pornography.
Instead of giving blanket control to the government over a means of communication, how about we just attack the source of the problem, which in this case is perverts taking pictures of children. Of course, as we all know, the goal of bills like this is not to "keep the kids safe", but really just to push our society one step closer to the Orwellian dream of fascist politicians, who want nothing less than the ability to control and monitor every aspect of our lives. |
When I was doing helpdesk at a nameless computer company (lets say it rhymes with "Bell"). We had a metric called FTR (first time resolve). So if Noob3988776 called back in within an undisclosed amount of time for any reason, your manager was notified.
This made it impossible to both take a shitload of calls and make sure the problem was fixed. |
Actually the swap problem has been solved from a technical standpoint. In a really cool bit of thinking a company basically said to themselves "What hugely heavy and dangerous thing do we regularly bounce around then want to reliably release at a precise time?" The answer of course is bombs. They designed an automated swap system based on heavy bomb hooks and are rolling it out commercially in Israel. It's tech that's been stable since WWII and is readily available.
[This article]( doesn't actually mention the bomb hook tech but it's a link to the company doing it.
With that said, it's likely that won't blow up over here until the advent of fully autonomous cars. If your car could plan it's own trip from charging station to charging station or go swap while you grab a burger it takes the hassle factor out of the longer trips. |
The quality will actually decline in lossy to lossy encoding, even if you try to "increase" the quality by encoding to a higher bitrate, since the algorithm for removing "unnecessary" audio data is applied once again.
Source .
Lossy formats are called that because they remove data in order to get a smaller filesize. The catch is that the encoders themselves have absolutely no way of determining if the file they have been given as input has had data removed in this fashion before, [so they will delete data - permanently - every single time you encode/transcode a file]( This is, unfortunately, a completely unavoidable part of how lossy compression works.
If you like fidelity, keep a FLAC copy of each album in your collection and use it as the "master" copy: if you need to copy a file to a lossy format (MP3, OGG, WMA, etc.) for a portable player or to burn it to a CD, do so from the FLAC source, and delete the lossy copy when you're done with it. |
What would probably happen is that they'd have some bot sniffing for "interesting" and "suspicious" behaviour in the data collected. For example, picking up keywords such as al-Qaeda or mein kampf in requests or URLs. So either users can
a) generate a lot of random data packets sent to random receivers, thereby increasing the set of data that has to be sniffed. This would increase CPU cycle usage for the machine(s) running the bot but would easily be either scaled by adding additional hardware or be filtered out based on IPs (which would be silly since it'd allow the activist running the packet spammer to browse anonymously). There's simply too much traffic on the internet for such a small portion of the population to significantly increase the load by a non-scalable factor.
b) generate false positives by sending a lot of intentionally "suspicious" requests. The issue here is that it could be conceivably be considered obstruction of justice (or whatever similar law exists in the UK) which is a felony as it is. Here the only safety would be in numbers, get a large enough portion of the population to run the spam generators so the government cannot possibly arrest everyone. Millions, preferably. |
Ok, before everyone gets in tizzy (a few here already have), I would like to clear up a few things. I'll try staying impartial here.
Now, first and foremost this is a knock-off phone that was announced officially by some Chinese company before the iPhone 5 and apparently is available on October 25th. This "Goophone i5" was made to impersonate the iPhone 5 based off of leaked images. It's kind of like a hardware troll, knowing it will upset or confuse people on purpose. Anyways, this phone isn't out yet nor is the iPhone 5, so all the information on comparing specs and build quality really don't mean much until people can get their hands on them.
[Information released]( about the Goophone i5 was the following:
720p (1280x720) resolution screen
4" screen
16/32GB models with expansion with microSD
Quad-Core Tegra 3 processor - ARM Cortex-A9
1GB of RAM
Android 4.0 (Ice-cream Sandwich) with an iOS 6-based theme
8MP rear camera
Wireless up to 3G and 802.11g? (unknown at this time)
[Information released]( about the iPhone 5 was the following:
1136x640 resolution screen
4" Screen
16/32/64GB models
Dual-Core Apple A6 processor - ARM Cortex-A15
1GB of RAM
Apple iOS 6
8MP "iSight" camera (believed to be the same as the iPhone 4S) and front 1.2MP camera (720p)
Wireless up to LTE and 802.11n
Specification Comparison Time:
Screen/Display = The Goophone's 720p display is higher than Apple's resolution also the pixel density would have to be higher. Contrast, color-depth, and other information isn't known about the Goophone though, so this is a toss-up at this point.
Storage Capacity = the Goophone technically could have a higher capacity if it supports larger microSD cards. This really isn't that big of an issue for many people other than deciding the price, especially the iPhone 5, which increases $100 at each model upwards.
Processor = Tegra 3 is a "generation" behind in the instruction set and other features of the ARM Cortex-A15 series, but it is a Quad-Core processor, which may or may not be a factor here. Based solely off of what is known about the Tegra 3 (not much is known about the A6 on the iPhone 5), the Tegra 3 might outperform the A6 is some scenarios, but the Tegra-line of processors isn't known for being the most supported processor in terms of apps and games.
Operating System = this is probably the deciding factor. iOS 6 isn't officially out yet, so it's difficult to say how much better it is or isn't than Android ICS. As for the Android platform, it can be hit or miss based on how well it is integrated with the hardware, especially for seemingly "unknown" manufacturers. People buy the iPhone for iOS and the "brand", so comparing the operating systems in this case doesn't make sense.
Cameras = Until both devices are released and comparisons can be made first-hand, all that can be assumed as both are equal in terms of megapixels for the rear camera.
Wireless = The Goophone seems to be a smartphone on a 3G network also it is still undetermined whether or not it has 802.11n. Now, for the iPhone 5 a big step for Apple is the wireless world of LTE and 802.11n now. Now, LTE actually may or may not be better because it isn't exactly known for it's reliability and availability for most people, also battery life might suffer.
Battery = Standby time on the Goophone apparently is higher, but talk-time is significantly lower. I'm assuming Apple put a better battery than the Chinese company, so this is one of the few things at this point that Apple clearly has the upper-hand.
In Other Words,
We really cannot argue or create accusations at this point, the devices aren't even available yet. Also, a small(er) Chinese company making a knockoff product with technology that is somewhat recent, is fairly interesting. However, Apple (one of the largest companies in the world) is making the next line of products is also fairly interesting as they brought a few new things to the table. But, comparing these two is literally like apples and oranges painted like Apples . It's obvious which one will have a larger portion of the market, availability, and impact on the tech industry. This article is only important in pointing out that a small Chinese company released a knockoff that actually competes (somewhat well in terms of hardware) with one of the largest companies in the world. Can we compare build quality or really anything at this point without making our own biased-opinions and assumptions? The answer should be no. |
When has explaining your position in more detail made somebody sound like less of a horrible person? I'm sure it's happened once or twice, but you just dig yourself a deeper hole with this whole rant. |
What constitutes abuse? Violent sexual violation in any context should be illegal, of course. Just don't tell me I can't have sex with a 16 year old chick when I'm 19, while my 18 year old sister is allowed to have sex with a 54 year old dude. People can get fucked up sexually at any age. That is not a reason to restrict EVERYONE'S freedom.
In 90% of the cases that society would be uncomfortable with, the problem would already have solved itself to the reasonable fullest extent. For instance, if someone tried to have sex with a baby, it would yell and cry. Same thing for most little kids. If this person got caught he would be punished once the jury knew the kid was intimidated or uncomfortable regardless of the kid's age.
However, many 13 year old boys would have given anything to have sex with their hot teacher. Many 13 year old girls are the same way. Just teach the kids as early as possible about sex. How early is the right age? The age they ask where babies come from. Tell them the truth. Tell them that it feels good. Tell them how to be safe. Kids are going to make mistakes and fuck up regardless of what you want them to do. That is not a reason to ever make a law restricting sex with anyone under an arbitrary age (or porn of them for that matter). In fact, doing so only increases the amount of people who are turned on by it. It's common knowledge that taboo things in general arouse a large portion of the population.
But I digress, enough about the age of consent. Child porn should be EXTRA legal because it will actually DISCOURAGE child abuse. Do you feel a greater need to have sex before or after masturbating to porn? Do you feel like you would probably try a little harder to get laid if you could never masturbate? Consumption of porn has been statistically and causally linked with decreases in rape. Look, is the War on Drugs working? Do you really think a War on Porn will be any better? |
Major Issues here.
For many countries with monopolistic telecom providers, Skype is a direct competitor to their services. Here, in the UAE, Skype/Yahoo/MSN/GTalk &tc, all voice services are blocked by the state. The applications simply do not connect to their parent server.
Since it is the label, "Skype", that is being blocked (regardless of what functions are there), anything that comes under the label is going to get blocked. As I work in this industry, I know that the deciding authorities know that simply VoIP services can be blocked while allowing text/multimedia messages through - but due to the nature of the people (too much money and no brains), their specifications are usually dictated by the service provider. If Siemens (for the UAE) says it is better to block all rather than blocking protocol-wise, the govt'll agree and ask for it to be done. Bam!
Recently, it is has evolved into a cat & mouse game with mini VoIP s/w providers releasing monthly updates to their softwares. These work until the govt. figures out how to block them. Once the service is blocked - tada! - another update on another website (since the first download website is blocked too). |
Well worth it to read. I noticed that same pattern with intelligent people who choose not to follow everyone else. A lot of the typically undesirable people who experimented with drugs that I knew of, were quite people savvy as well. This is to say that they analyzed and saw patterns in people that others did not.
Favorite |
Unfortunately the real world doesn't conform nicely to the scientific requirement to change only one variable at a time. Because of this, special interest groups often claim that different tax structures, different gun laws, different health care systems, and other things like this cause lower crime, more happiness, or etc.
Even if it can be established beyond a shadow of a doubt that place A has, say, lower crime than place B (not too hard), and if it can be established that those factors (income levels, universal healthcare, strict gun laws, CCTV, etc) are all different, you still can't claim that those "cause" lower crime.
In this case, the USA varies from the EU in a lot of ways that aren't often discussed, because they don't make the desired points. One of the big ones is total land area - the US, including Hawaii and Alaska, is pretty close to the same size as the entire European continent, including all of Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe.
Because of this geographic separation (and other things), systems that work in other places will not necessarily work in the US. That's not to say that universal health care, more education, or lower income disparity are bad, but it does mean that not all systems can be copied. |
I've been following this story, and its missing much of the crazy content that conservatives are now embarrassed of how this conspiracy all started with. So, from the beginning:
School was having security issues and losing money with kids stealing lunches and so on by using fake IDs (common).
School implements RFIDs to give students and staff an easy access tool to make sure kids and staff are staying out of places they cant be and having monetary accounts tied into their cards, like a debit account.
Then a parent claimed that RFIDs were 1) the "Mark of the Beast", 2) a tool against God, and 3) a way to spy on kids outside/inside the school on a level of a telescopic satellite tracking you taking a piss, thus letting pedos follow your kids home
The school ignored this crazy woman at first and pushed the RFIDs more by making rules and functions that were RFID only, like school prom and voting, to deter outside influence and fake ballots.
The said person in the link above is the parent's kid, I assume. She's not a victim, she's just her parent's tool to be a thorn in their side with her suicidal campaign to reverse progression of tech in a school. She was warned, suspended, and now expelled for not complying with the school rules. The school, though open to the public, is still a private entity; and the upmost security for their students was what the RFIDs were in place for.
Ah, here's a MORE in-depth report, seems I was spot on. |
But this isn't about the RFID tag at all. She just doesn't want to wear the lanyard. It's not that uncommen that teenagers are anxious about the way they look or that they rebel against silly stuff.
Also, if it's in the school rules that each student should were this tag/lanyard, the school is absolutely in its right when it decides to expel students who refuse.
RFID tags in schools are a bridge too far, but I really don't believe this student is concerned about her privacy. Let's not make martyrs of people who are obviously not. |
Security through obscurity is not a good system. Bob is not anywhere near as competent as anybody who wrote one of the standard encryption algorithms. It's far more likely for him to make a mistake.
Bob cannot beat a mathematically proven algorithm, and is unlikely to be the domain expert he needs to be in order to develop something that could stand up against people who can break our current encryption methods. Bear in mind that encryption is not a small field, our modern world essentially runs on it. Secure communications enable everything from online banking to remote systems administration. Breaking the algorithms would make somebody incredibly rich. Nobody has done it yet. Quite possibly nobody will do it. If it gets done you are fucked, and whatever you have uploaded to Mega is off approximately zero consequence in the face of the encrypted riches people could then break. |
Personally, as a creator of creative content myself, I sit in the middle and get annoyed by both camps.
Sentences such as:
> Copyright is stupid, unenforceable, and destined for failure
Irk me no end. I love it that people can watch something I've put my heart and soul into, I really do, but when I hear comments like the above a part of me says 'I created that myself - what I choose to do with it is my own business. If someone decides that they don't think it's worth the value that I attach to it then that's fine - they are free to walk away'. There seems to be an entitlement from the pro mega crowd that it is their right to consume media at whatever value they perceive is correct. These aren't pharmaceutical drugs.
But don't think I'm sticking up for the studios and distributors - you mentioned a few great examples such as banning of VHS and the ridiculous extremeness some groups have gone to in prosecuting people for filesharing. I think this is a big reason why studios have fallen out of favour with the public which leads to such resentment. |
Sorry to copy this from a previous thread, but here it is again. Variances of currency rates.
In 2001, it was AUS$2 to the US$1. [It was even reflected in lyrics by Ben Folds at the time.]( Now it's at parity. Some of the prices have adjusted, but it's a slow process.
The basic Subway footlong sandwich in America is $5. In Australia, it's $7. So a REALLY hungry Aussie that wanted to buy 600 footlong sandwiches would pay AUS$4,200 in Sydney, but only US$3,000 (which converts to AUS$2,922) in LA.
That return flight to Los Angeles costs AUS$1,147.58 on Virgin Australia {[info from this article about CS6]( so this works for Subway sandwiches too.
I bet it works for Holden / GM cars, clothes, most stuff really at the "few thousand dollar" range. |
People don't understand prices.
Here's the deal: Nobody cares how much it cost you to make something. Soda costs pennies, but you'll pay a dollar. A new video game console might cost $300 to produce, but you're only willing to pay $199.
Prices are linked to the value for the consumer, relative to all the other things they could purchase. They don't have anything to do with producer cost, except that a producer who can't make enough selling things just won't sell them.
In Australia, consumers pay inflated prices for almost everything, because producers just won't sell things without being compensated for the enormous shipping expense to a barely populated land. What this means is that Australian consumers are willing to pay more for goods.
As it happens, digital assets are the one type of good that isn't (much) more expensive to deliver in Australia, but again, producer cost isn't relevant to pricing, and there being just one type of expense that isn't inflated means that it can "come along for the ride". |
The cloud is not just remote computing, its a WHOLE new framework of data and communications. I know that the word "cloud" is being forcibly raped by marketing, but like in actual rape, its not the clouds fault(it wasn't asking for it). The cloud was not intended for the average person, but it found its way with data storage (apple's cloud etc.). There are hundreds of thousands of people working on the cloud to have it replace most of the hard data of the tech infrastructure to the cloud. Its very complex, and I dont expect any average consumer to grasp the cloud for anything other than data storage. |
Ok ok!
Forgive my grammar and spelling, I'm angry I have to re-live this situation.
-Story-
My company already owned CS4 and was offered a discount if we signed up for CS6-CC, so we did and are paying $45 a month for the entire suite of Adobe application, but one! That one program is called LiveCycle Designer ES3... Well, this product is separate from the whole creative cloud scene now, but it wasn't that way in the beginning.
Here is what happened:
Adobe Acrobat X(10) w/ LiveCycle Designer ES2 came packaged together. I used the 2 applications to revamped all my companies forms and documents, and we have hundreds of them to redesign.
A few months after owning the CS6:CC, Adobe offered Adobe Acrobat XI(11) so I figured it would be nice to freely update without worry... Was I wrong!
After reading all the features that they added and every last bit of information as required by my company before updating; I read nothing about the next issue that came to be: After updating to Adobe Acrobat XI, I went ahead and started the program then went to run what I was hoping to see, LiveCycle Designer ES3; WRONG!
It turned out that not only does LC:ES3 not come with the new Creative Cloud suite, they FUCKING uninstalled my already owned LC:ES2!!!! and Guess what, you cannot, CANNOT!!! Re-install older applications because they're no longer listed in the CS6:CC installer, so not only did I not have LC:ES3, they fucking uninstalled LC:ES2 and removed it altogether.
Needless to say I had to spend 3 days back and forth with Adobe support to try and figure out WTF was going on, which NONE of them knew anything about Creative Cloud due to it being so new at the time. I spoke to people from other countries, unfortunately I could not understand most of them (stereo types apply). I FINALLY became so fed up and after losing 3+ days of work; I managed to locate a number which bypasses all the over-seas BS support and managed to get a hold of a person who knew about this issue. YAY! But wait... They too were confused as the rest of them and I was informed that they would have to get together with some senior peoples in order to find out what was going on... So not only did the over-seas people not know, the locals didn't know either!!! At this time I downloaded LCD:ES3 trial in order to complete my work.
But there is so much more and it went on for another few days of back and forth + waiting.
In the end I managed to bitch enough to get a copy free of charge from Adobe; LCD:ES3. It took 2 months for the damn CD to arrive.
After all was said and done, if you had LC:ES2 prior to upgrade of Acrobat X, then they will NOW send you a CD of LC:ES3 for free, but you now you have a few hoops to go through to get that free CD. |
The private users who "really neeeeed" the CS would definitely be fine with Open Source alternatives. CS has traditionally been targeted toward professionals and works great on Mac and Windows, which is the majority of computers (90%+).
GIMP is a beacon in the open source world. Realistically speaking it's the only image editor/creation tool in the open source world worth using in any long term scenario. The problem is it's just that, an open sourced application developed based on community contributions. While this is awesome it leaves a gaping hole: quality assurance.
When you pay for apps (the good ones anyway) you pay for use cases, testing, more use cases, more testing, etc. You get (again, with the good ones) a solid, polished app that has been designed by people with the ultimate goal of releasing a quality product under people who are paid to make sure that a quality product is released. The CS is exactly that, a quality product capable of professional use with a track record that reflects that.
I've gotten by before with GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus on my hand-rolled Gentoo box. It got me by. But that's the thing, it just got me by. Those are supposed to be the be best open source alternatives to the CS. They are awful (IMO) in comparison to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
The CS have been out for a long long time and the open source community has had ample time to get something together. If GIMP is the best thing to come out of that, then I'm sorry but I will continue to pay for Photoshop.
You're right in saying that it won't happen tomorrow. You're also right in saying that if we don't make the first step then no one will. The problem is this: the people that are capable of bringing GIMP and other open source apps to a professional level are the same people that are being paid for their time writing the closed programs you don't feel are right. There will one day be a person or a group of people to take this task on and make something great, but that day is not anytime soon. I'm sorry. |
Honestly, I'm just laughing when reading over your post. Do you have any idea how much of a stereotype you yourself are? This is what I'm talking about! Most people can be assigned into a relatively small number of predefined archetypes. For example, I can sure as hell categorize Chinese girls at my college campus - generally they're beta-type personalities who scarcely do anything more than whisper in class and never speak unless spoken to. Similar stereotypes exist for darn near everyone that you're ever going to meet in your life, and, except if you've been living under a rock for your entire life, you're already well versed in these social stereotypes and will be surprised when you meet someone new who doesn't easily fit into them.
Remember the saying, "never make assumptions?" That saying is a load of shit! We wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning if we didn't make conscious and unconscious assumptions for every moment of our waking lives.
For example, I can assign you into a very large archetype. You're (probably) a white person so burdened by white guilt that you instantly label nearly all racism as bad. People like you find it so easy to describe other people as "racist", when in truth you don't know shit about me, and find it easy to describe me as "racist" so that you can tune out what I'm really saying - as you would do with any other monster. People like you it difficult to acknowledge real differences between various peoples, and only do so in your private moments - never in public.
(To be clear, I think that at birth people are blank slates, regardless of race - what really makes people different is their social upbringing, their culture - but explaining that all the time gets repetitive, so I'm just going to say that different races are fundamentally different, while I really mean that the cultures of various ethnic groups are fundamentally different, sometimes to the point that they can't be reconciled).
Getting back to my earlier point about you willfully tuning out what I'm actually saying, finding it more convenient to describe me as a "racist", as an Other who is very different from you....
You say that I said that Western CEOs are more competent. I never said so; you're intentionally and knowingly distorting my message. I said "Compelling", not "Competent". The implication of that is that although Western CEOs may look more competent, they really aren't. Countless case studies have been done on this topic that I don't care to repeat. |
This is probably going to get downvoted like crazy but here goes:
To add to this, there are legitimate reasons for international markup of the same product. If you are a US based company and you want to sell your product in another country, you need to engage many resources to do so - it's not as simple as people in this thread claim.
People only think about the things they see. You see digital distribution and think, well it should be one price everywhere. I personally agree with that logic, but I can understand why it doesn't prevail. Before you go on a witch hunt you should probably understand this too.
Things like legal resources, localization, international payment processing, distribution channels, marketing costs, support channels, currency exchanges, tax liability, and many other factors emerge when you take your enterprise global. The cost of business goes up so the price does as well.
It's also worth mentioning that most everything is more expensive in Australia. I'm not saying that's fair, just that it is the case. There is more at work here than just unchecked greed, though certainly every corporation exists to fulfill that need.
The CEO probably would have been better served by simply stating that he wasn't prepared to discuss the intricacies of global pricing, but for better or worse he didn't. Few executives would stray from the message they were trying to deliver because ultimately they are held accountable by their shareholders. This is the caveat of being a public company.
Finally to all those who are incensed by this and threatening piracy. No modern software company is concerned with piracy at the individual user level. Sure they all want to have paying customers, but they realize that the value is in you learning their products and their products gaining ubiquity which pushes the enterprise sale. |
The problem with this subscription, and I've had it for over 6 months now, is the fact that with every new release of Creative Cloud they remove features from the software.
Not only do they remove the features but they don't publish them in the change notes. They will add features as well but nothing you actually use, of course that's in the change notes.
I've had an open ticket with them for months that I just recently closed with absolutely no satisfaction. The ticket wasn't complaining about the missing features being taken away, it was to complain that the software was broken and missing some key elements that I had grown used to over the past TEN years.
The tech support and customer advocates had no answers, mainly due to the fact that Adobe never told them they were removing the features. I had one poor Indian fellow troubleshooting why expanded tables mode wouldn't work for almost two weeks and he was super frustrated at himself for not being able to help me, until I found out that they had purposefully removed this and other features.
Once he found out that it was done intentionally after working for two weeks straight on helping me fix my software he immediately switched to the regular Adobe customer service attitude we're all used to of "Screw you I already have your money." |
The search everywhere or search for files locally option comes up every time you try to search so in that case 100% of the users can see it. To disable using bing from the everywhere search you need to disable it through the settings. But there really is no point in doing that, currently you can search for settings and files locally without sending info to bing. The search everywhere option is now basically the same as the google desktop addon that will search your pc and the web except it presents results way nicer. |
Quick question, what caused this? Why did Microsoft refuse to heavily fund and market the e-book/tablet (even in the early 00's)? Where was their search engine?
Was it an ego thing about being the huge Software giant rather than the next Tech/hardware one? With some of the brightest minds at Microsoft, why was no one in charge listening to the people saying to them, "listen: because of lenient patent laws, companies will copy operating systems and make them friendlier and more accessible (and it's gonna be a legal shit show, a la Android and iPhone); listen to the engineers we have making e-books; take a serious look at why a previous employee left to make the most popular pc gaming distributor on the market, through communication and openness."
All I can seriously think of, with Humanitarian Gates excusably gone, is Ballmer replying to these people with, |
It was a joke. The line is actually "There can be only one." For some reason people often transpose the words and type it the way you did, even though I bet they know the actual line. |
The ribbon hate stems from the same "change aversion" that reddit can clearly see in older folks. "Why did they change this? I was perfectly happy with it the way it was!"
You are correct, the ribbon exposes far more functionality and empowers users to explore said functionality in ways that are far more intuitive than the old menu system.
A power user in the old system knew where everything was, and it could be argued was able to work faster. - Barring the additional functionality built in to the 2007+ office tools, this would be a fringe case. And it's not like MS got rid of a icon bar either... You can customize your setup to contain shortcuts at the top, allowing a "power" user now to bypass the ribbon all together for 90% of their work. |
Ok, looking back in hindsight, are we sure? I'll present a counter hypothesis...
First, definitional stuff. As far as I can recall, this is how I remember it going down. MS didn't push internet connectivity early or the means to achieve internet connectivity; IE was horrible. But then suddenly a wild Netscape appeared! MS was behind and remained behind Netscape for browsing for a long time.
Eventually IE competed and became a better product than Netscape, around v4, give or take.
But MS also became extraordinary aggressive in giving advantage to IE through the OS. IE was at different times aggressively advantaged in the OS. IE could access things that Netscape could not. Eventually MS was sued.
But it's apparent that MS probably could have/should have been in front of Netscape in terms of functionality, leading standards, developing new apps and er... 'app paradigms'. Buzzwordy. Ok, MS was extraordinarily well positioned to establish that MS could have been a leader in using the internet across all sorts of different applications.
But they didn't. Or at least lagged a bit.
Anyways, that's my vague history recall.
Here's my counter hypothesis. Gates/etc was downplaying the internet because MS wasn't ready or able to close the 'new market'. MS liked to do that at the time. Competition is for suckers, MS can wade in with huge weight and developing power and install themselves as the 90% market share holders in a market. This is good for profit and MS had the resources, the war chest, the inclination, the position, to realize a good hunk of this.
But MS wasn't ready to cannonball into the pool the way they wanted. So Bill's pshawing of the internet reflected a delaying tactic for MS to get ready to jump. Like, the internet (or whatever new connectivity paradigm was coming) was most definitely coming but MS wanted to slow down the PR awareness a bit so MS could be ready to pounce. |
Nobody was forced to upgrade.
in fact, in the interests of compatibility, both home and corporate users kept saving in .doc rather than .docx, so there was no reason to upgrade to 07 really.
Microsoft are excellent at supporting their older products. In fact [Office 2003 and Windows XP are still being offically supported TODAY.](
03->07 was a radical change because they were released four years apart. Microsoft wanted to put out a new product, if they didn't change things enough then people would be crying like they do about, for example, CoD and Pokemon never really changing.
You raise an interesting point with the lack of choice, but in the end Microsoft must have felt that the solution they delivered was sufficiently objectively better than their previous solution in order to replace it. Fault Microsoft's taste but not their intent; they are a business, and they believed that the ribbon would raise sales due to its utility. Furthermore, the provision of choice would be too non-committal. Such radical changes need to be introduced confidently. |
Anything (in theory) can be cracked
That's a dumb remark imo, as it suggests this isn't a big deal. It potentially is, as there's a huge difference between a vulnerability on purpose and an exploitable bug. If the discovered exploit is an intentional one (backdoor), it would be reason enough for many people to never buy Apple again. |
You're talking about a best case 4 year payout. . . Once you tack on installation and repairs, time you spent maintaining and cleaning your system, I don't know how you don't see this as a losing proposition? Don't you think that solar panels will improve in 4 years? Wont it suck when in 2 years there is a system that costs HALF the price and has DOUBLE the efficiency?
Then in the US at least there is the issue of getting the major electric companies and co-ops to purchase your electricity at a fair price. (you sell yours and buy theirs) In my state they have to accept your electricity but are not regulated to pay you a "fair value" so more often than not people/companies with these expensive systems get paid such a low rate for the electricty they produce that they will buy MORE equipment the store and utilize the electricity that they are producing and DUMP the unused electricity in the ground. Source: I am in the "Energy Industry" |
This will never pay back its investment to the purchasers. Just like with Tesla, these solar panels are not economically profitable to the end user.
You are purchasing the technology that has a hope to become something practical. And being an early adopter makes you have a warm fuzzy feeling. |
Ball mount trailer hitches, especially 'drop hitches' can be rather large. Over 12 inches high. Also, if this hitch has just dropped off a truck it would be bouncing on the freeway, not laying flat, which is the basis of your argument. |
you have the right idea, if it were only lithium batteries. There is a very large difference between lithium batteries (which I don't think are used at all today) and lithium- ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries are by nature ones that use lithium ions (Li^+ ) as charge shuttles through the electrolyte. They are stabilised in the form of salts when in solution. Typical ones being LiPF6, LiTFSI, and others, in organic solvents, in some integral ratio of Ethylene Carbonate(EC)/Propylene carbonate(PC)/Di-ethylene carbonate(DEC).
What actually happens when a lithium-ion battery catches fire is this:
prolonged heating of the battery, via any means, de-stabilises the chemistry inside the battery. remember how I said there's organics? There's also lithium salts, with phosphorus and flourides and whatnot. This all together with the relatively high potential that the battery operates at (>3.5V) causes side reactions (that we don't fully understand yet), that are benign in nature until said heating.
Heating destabilises the chemistry in unpredictable ways, but mainly causing side reaction products that were otherwise benign to break down and undergo their own reactions that have a high activation energy barrier (hence the heat). The decomposition (or other reactions) is rather exothermic and creates a feedback loop of heat.
When enough heat builds up and the battery reaches a certain temperature, the organics inside ignite, as per regular hydrocarbons igniting.
Now, having said that, there is actually very little hyrocarbon (in the form of electrolytes and solvents) in comparison to the actual battery weight. What heat is generated I believe sets on fire other flammables that might be surrounding the battery (paint, wiring, etc)
If one were to open up a lithium ion battery in air, you'd just see some wet black mud on some thin strips of metal, rather unimpressive. you could pour all the water you want on it. Not much would happen because
it's all covered in hydrophobic hydrocarbons
there is no lithium metal inside. The electrodes are lithium-ion hosts. They're a layered structure, the cathode typically being some lithium-metal oxide and the anode being usually graphites. once again, there is no lithium metal. all lithium ions are stabilised within each cell. either within the lattice of the electrodes, or stabilised in solution of the electrolyte with counterions and all manner of hydrocarbons.
A lithium ion battery fire is a regular fire . I'd say it's safer to douse the burning lithium-ion battery powered cars with water than it would be to on burning ICE cars. The water would not spread the fire, nor would it worsen it.
Having said all that, a lithium-metal fire is altogether another matter. In the labs we do have specialised lithium-fire-fighting extinguishers that are a combination of stabilising salts and sand and whatnot. Water is definitely a nono.
There are no commercial lithium-metal batteries that I know of. There are sodium-metal batteries for military applications however. But that's another story altogether.
I hope this clarifies things some. |
EDIT: OH YEAH DOWNVOTE THAT TRUTH LOOK AT THIS GUY TELLING THE TRUTH WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS
This article is such crap. He talks about PRISM spying, yet encourages use of outlook. Google has been putting new security measures into place to prevent NSA spying, while Microsoft communicates between data centers without encryption. Google has been fighting to lift gag orders while Microsoft has been running astroturfing campaigns and using software patents to prevent competition.
He talks over and over again about how much privacy we're giving up to google, but what evidence does he provide in the end? The fact that google "scans" emails for targeted advertising, right off of the scroogled website.
> Google wants to manage our photos, our social media, our email, our word-processing documents, our everyday tasks, even our general documents
This is more of his evidence that google wants to take our privacy away. The fact that they provide a suite of products and wants us to use them. Of course they want us to use them. Every company that makes products wants you to use them. The more google products you use, the more you use google search, thereby making them revenue.
There are no good points made in this article. Best case scenario, he's fishing for clicks by parroting popular misconceptions and spreading fear. Worst case scenario, he's getting a paycheck for participating in microsoft's scroogled campaign. |
I think the problem people are having when reading this is that
Enthalpy is a new word for some of us
Based on what context has been given, it makes no sense.
The problem I'm having is that enthalpy is being used in a few different ways. First "energy = enthalpy"
>When energy, i.e., enthalpy
[[energy, that is, enthalpy](
Then later it's
>Entropy and enthalpy are quiet literally the opposite of each other
Where entropy is the measure of chaos in a system, then enthalpy would be the measure of negative chaos (or order) in a system.
Then there's the definition of enthalpy
>Enthalpy is a measure of the total energy of a thermodynamic system.[[1](
Which would negate our previous understanding that enthalpy is energy and is the opposite of entropy. If it is the measure of energy in a system, it cannot be "energy" nor does this make it the measure of order in a system. And then we have
>Energy is never created or destoyed... You can also create energy with information.
This creates confusion. Since this is a term used outside of it's normal usage, it probably helps to explain it within the context you're trying to use it- ie. information theory. Not everyone is well versed in information theory. Even after reading the articles linked I still have no idea what you mean by this, and none of the you've provided give enough context to discern what this means. |
Wall of text explanation:
Just skip down if you want a basic security status update.
So TOR is a big P2P network, or like a maze. Your information is relayed person to person, and inside that maze it's hard to track. Not impossible but hard enough to make it figuratively impossible, especially for small fish, and worth using. Outside that maze though, there's a lot of people. They're still relaying your information, but they don't have the super secret password that everyone inside the maze had, and there's shifty people wearing sunglasses (looks cheap too) at night watching and listening to everything they relay.
Oh, it's okay, that's just Google and Apple being serenaded by some guys with fabulous facial hair. But it could have been the NSA. D: We don't trust public around here, just private.
Anyway, that's where the "darknet" comes in, when you never leave the maze. You spend all your time inside the TOR network and no-one gets to listen to you, at least we're fairly certain they can't. The super secret password is okay, it's not the greatest but it'll do for now until it's been demonstrably broken. Just hope that an academic breaks it before intelligence services do, hey.
Thing is though, you still need to connect to TOR, your information is still going through your home network and router, through your ISP. Chances are you haven't spoofed your MAC address, your source IP is the same, and probably static these days, so people can grab you before you enter the maze. It's difficult to do from inside TOR, far easier to know who you're looking for and tap their line, either virtually or physically. And it's currently easier to identify people by their typing habits. Chances are you'll use certain terms more often, certain phrases, you'll log in and out at certain times. We can link that information and use Google/Apple/Disqus/Facebook/Myspace/Open ID/etc profiles to compare and search for you, assuming access to that data which usually requires a warrant. Or money, easier with money and there's less official records.
So, when you exit the maze, never do anything that could be traced to you like sign in on a site. Sign into Facebook and they're going to know it's you for sure, Cabbage Man. If you don't sign in, then call yourself Aang and no-one will know the difference. Well, they'll be able to figure it out, but it's harder and more circumstantial so you can browse things you'd rather not get caught browsing. Exit nodes are doors to the maze where you go out into the big wide world, they can hold so many people at a time and nothing is secure past that point. Compromised exit nodes mean people know what your doing and what your browsing habits are (assuming they get you often enough for it to be statistically useful) which means the profile building can happen a lot faster. They know that Person A is definitely chatting with his crazy Jihadist buddies, they just don't know who person A is right now. Or think of it like a tunnel with cars coming you, you know that they came out of that particular tunnel, you know what they did outside of it, you're just not sure what happens in the tunnel and can't objectively state Person A is X.
Realistically though, assume you have no privacy. Your phone is tracking you, applications on that phone are storing the data and building profiles. Bots scour the web and everything you do online is known to someone, somewhere. Walk into a city and you've probably appeared on camera often enough to build up a 3D model of you for that day, your health insurance knows every claim you've made, your doctor knows when you were last in, and a future employer will know every legal infringement you've had unless it's sealed and then it's 50/50.
So you want to cheat on your S.O.? Use TOR. You want to browse Jihadi articles? Use TOR, you won't be a high enough value target to track back unless you start proselyting. You want to watch Bieber videos? It's okay, TOR will keep your secret, you toneless nutter. Want to buy a pill or two, or chat with people behind a net filter? TOR is pretty good for that too. Want to assassinate the president of the USA, check out child porn, or talk with your ultra super secret badass buddies about stealing a lot of money? Don't use TOR. Ideally go non-digital and keep your gathering's small, using TOR and being totally badass will just set off more alarm bells. Hilariously enough, like this article. Run DNT? You're being tracked with better accuracy than before. Don't run DNT, JS, Java, or Flash? Well it's getting kinda hard to narrow you down. Run that DNT, JS, Java, and Flash inside TOR? You've made a neon sign saying "HACK THIS GUYS! IT'S MUCH EASIER AND YOU CAN GET ALL THE INFORMATION A LOT QUICKER". Don't do that. |
The lack of accountability and transparency in the programs is really what invalidates them in my mind. We elected the government to represent our interests, but these recently elucidated programs in particular are so far removed from this because of this oversight gap. As voting citizens we lack individuals to hold directly responsible for the actions of the NSA because of the detached and opaque nature of the agency. Countless tax dollars are funneled into the program, we learn that the government has the potential to know virtually all of our technological habits, and we fail to see any kind of credible results from this bureaucratic overreach. Obama himself was unable to articulate a specific threat nullified by these programs. In exchange for unwarranted scrutiny and a lack of results, we have given the NSA a vast hoard of tax dollars, our 4th Amendment right, and our ability to hold this government agency accountable for its actions. It is clear the American public feels that such blanket surveillance is unjust, thus if nothing is done to promote greater transparency and accountability in these programs we have been stripped of our democratic involvement in the government. |
So sorry that you didn't check your email. I've had it since 4:26pm EST.
These stories were posted minutes after the email was sent out.
Also take into account that you can't send 50,000,000 all at once, it takes time to get through that amount of messages, plus email companies would flag it as spam if they even attempted it. |
When you hash a piece of text, you run it through a mathematical function that converts the original text into a shorter piece of text called a digest.
The idea is that hashing the same piece of text will always produce the same digest. However, the design of the hash is intended to make it impossible to reverse the process and recover any of the original text from just the digest.
As a result, this is a useful tool for storing passwords. When someone creates their password for the first time, you hash it and store only the digest. Whenever they log in, you hash the password that they send and compare the result against your stored digest. This means that you can verify the correctness of the password without ever storing the password itself - eliminating a host of security concerns.
However, there are a few more nuances.
If you have a digest and want to find out the original password, all you need to do is hash every single possible password - a, b, c, d ... aa, ab, ac ... aaa, aab etc. until you find a digest that matches the digest of the password.
Because most passwords aren't very long and most digests are quite long, it's very unlikely that you will stumble across a piece of text different from the password which happens to produce the same digest. This can happen (it's called a collision), but we avoid using hash functions where it has been observed. Anyway, you can basically guarantee that you've found the true 'encrypted' password if you use this cracking method.
It used to be that it was very, very slow to try hashing every single possible password, but this is no longer the case for numerous reasons. First, enormous 'rainbow tables' have been generated for all the common hash functions. These are vast stores of strings and their corresponding digests. To crack the password, you can just look up the digest in the table. Second, 'GPGPU' technology has become commonplace - APIs like CUDA and OpenCL now allow you to run hash functions on a graphics card, which is ludicrously, screamingly fast.
However, there are two major ways to combat this.
First is to 'salt' your passwords. When someone chooses their password, you generate a long, unique piece of text (the salt) and add it, say, onto the end of the password. You then store the digest of the password+salt and the (not hashed) original salt. Every user has a different salt. When they try to log in, you add the stored salt to the submitted password, hash and compare digests.
This means that you can no longer work on cracking many users' passwords at the same time - for example, you have to generate a rainbow table for each salt (i.e. one for each user), and you can't use other people's pre-generated results, which makes the process much, much slower. The same goes for hashing on the graphics card - you have to start trying all the combinations for each individual salt.
Second, you can use something called a 'key derivation function' - a kind of special hash function designed solely for storing passwords. These often come prepackaged with libraries that handle all aspects of password storage (salting etc) for you - e.g. bcrypt, scrypt or PBKDF2. They are also designed to be very (relatively) slow compared to normal hash functions, which means you can't crack passwords nearly as quickly.
Normal hash functions (e.g. SHA-1) are often designed to be quick, as this is useful in other applications (such as hash tables). This isn't a desirable feature for password storage.
It's generally recommended that site owners use bcrypt or scrypt to store passwords, as these are thought to be quite secure (unless your password is short - then nothing can help you). It also negates the probability of the developer cocking up the crypto implementation, which is very common. |
A while back (possibly still is) Kaiser Permanente was giving away small thumbdrives that had a limited form of your personal medical history on it (allergies and chemicals you can't break down).
Then they asked me to give a password to encrypt it with.
"But it is just my blood type, known allergies, and medication complication information?" I asked.
"Yes," said the technician.
"Why would I want that encrypted? Wouldn't I want that tattooed on my body? Or otherwise published in the public space?" (Bear in mind, I have no allergies or medications that mix for complications.) |
Ever heard of backfires.... that is where the analogy comes from. You light one fire headed in the direction of the other, destroy the fuel source for the other fire, then when the other fire gets there, it has no fuel to continue. If a Superpac is set in the opposite direction, just big enough to destroy the 'fuel source' then it could potentially work. I do not know if it will work, but it is a solution that many people are behind and could work. |
Just because you can't avoid something completely doesn't mean you shouldn't avoid it when you easily can.
There are negative consequences of never using urinals (loss of time, blocking a stall for somebody that might need it) so you have to find a compromise. You can't ban urinals without causing lines at public toilets that otherwise wouldn't be there. So you have to deal with people sometimes smelling your or accidentally getting a glimpse of your dick.
Closing a bathroom door has no negative consequences and a few positive ones, so you should still do it even if your privacy didn't matter to you.
It's the same with breastfeeding in public. It is (or should be) socially acceptable for a mother to bare her breast to feed her baby instead of finding the next shady, germ filled public toilet. Yet it's still illicit for women to run around topless for no reason. |
You only get costs back in some limited scenarios. And lawyers are generally too expensive to be used to sue for less than 10s of thousands of dollars. For cases involving small (<5000) amounts, you can represent yourself in small claims court. But you still have to take time off of work for court. And you have to prepare for court. And you have to represent yourself, which might not go well if you're not smart, logical and organized.
Really, the best course of action is to pay Comcast with a credit card so you can dispute the charges with your credit card company. Although, poor people might not have a decent credit card in good standing, which probably helps. So really, not being poor is, as always, the best course of action. |
How do you think internet gets to your house? It gets there because you basically leave a return address when you ask the internet things, and then some server sends you stuff to your return address. Comcast gets the things you want, and then sends them to your house.
Thats why I think the whole premise of "how did they know about TOR?" is a bit ridiculous. It would be like a masked man who exits your neighbours house, walks to your house, and asks you for directions. Then every evening the masked man goes to your house on the way back home, and asks you where your neighbour lives. Then you go to your neighbours house and ask them "whats up with the masked men coming from your house" and then your neighbour starts freaking out saying "how did you know that, the men were masked!", and accuses you of infringing his privacy. |
Legal action is out of question when they practically own half of our government. Another alternative is to choose other services, no-name company like $70/month @ 20mbps while Comcast offer the same rate with 70mbps and other perks.
Why other services are so expensive $70@20mbps? Again, Comcast own your mayor, so there is no fund support or investment for newly service company.
Your choice? Wait for another big company with fighting strength like Google Fiber to liberate you. |
is there any known way to be truly anonymous over the internet anymore?
Yes, but its not easy.
Start with acquiring a laptop without any association to yourself(theft, blackmarket, etc). use an open wireless connection that has no association with you, use an open source Linux live CD designed specifically for this purpose to avoid any hidden monitors on you computer and writing cache to the harddrive. change your mac address, Connect to Tor network. avoid your typical writing style. turn off Javascript. Don't use your typical username or password for any logged in services. don't transfer or move anything (money, files, drugs, etc) to a location that can be associated to yourself.
most of those identifying vectors are possible to identifying you, but infrequently used unless really worth while due to being resource intensive. but its still possible.
I also doubt this is an exhaustive list. i know there is a weakness in the tor network that involves a single player hosting the majority of nodes being able to identify information. you'd also want to read what the linux code is doing to ensure a backdoor hasn't been introduced in the code somewhere.
> are there still known methods to fetch the sought IP/packet information? (sorry I'm not super tech minded, I'm probably jumbling my terms)
Absolutely, any program running on your computer is able to reveal you if developed for that purpose, and its possible (might be true, probably not though) that a lot of big companies like Microsoft, Norton, etc. provide backdoor access to your computer to special agencies.
In the end, unless you do thorough research and know what you're doing, you're probably leaving some trace, And even the Best at this sort of thing make mistakes and that's how they get caught.
It's much better to assume you're being tracked or are traceable and act accordingly, Eg. i know my Reddit account can be pretty easily doxed, so i don't admit to doing anything Illegal. |
My understand of the situation is that when the court overturned the restrictions set in place by the FCC, the court said that the only way the FCC could prevent fast/slow lanes, access fees, discrimination, blocking, and all that jazz was if they relied upon Title II.
Title II of the Communications Act is a long list of rules for common carriers to play nicely with each other and the public. In short, regulations, like pretty much all utilities have.
Making the ISPs common carriers under Title II would allow the FCC to regulate their services and seemingly guarantee the net stays fair and neutral (at least for a while). This would make ISPs similar to telecoms (phone companies), which were similarly poised over the market way back in the day (monopolies, unfair practices, etc).
Currently the head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler (former cable company lobbyist), is proposing to use Section 706 of their rules to enforce net neutrality. The only problem here is that the FCC rules based on Section 706 have been overturned. Twice. For some reason (read: probably money), he wants to go for a third attempt despite the most recent court ruling saying that it won't work. |
This ruling is only set in stone for a single district in Florida. No circuit courts, nor the Supreme Court, have vindicated it. |
Why is this post at the front page with so many up votes I sit here and ponder? Because it's a misleading title perhaps? If it is a misleading title, then why are this subs admins not speaking up on this front page misleading title story with so many up-votes?
All these questions are eating at me right now with this post.
It just seems like the man and the people controlling them big business, are getting sneakier with this shit by the minute. How long before they slip this shit in finally? |
Interestingly, I don't know if criticizing the west is RT's main objective.
I see it more of a comparison of the similarities that exist between the government's. Honestly, it becomes difficult to draw a moral distinction between Russia's government and that of our administration.
I mean, really, selling arms, renditions, assassinations of your own people without due process, fomenting social instability, imperialism, hegemony, corruption, torture and limitless surveillance?
It's hard to figure out which government I'm describing.
It was easy to buy into the cold war. We were free and they were not. Freedom is important.
In today's climate it's more like:
Live in fear. Give up your freedom. |
To be able to do technical work in any field, you need to know something beforehand. In the case of a car, you need to be aware of how the car itself functions. You have to know how to troubleshoot it, find the issue and then know how the parts work to some degree. If you don't, you won't know how to fix it.
Now, learning how a car works isn't too daunting of a task. Things canbe clearly illustrated, because everything is a physical part. If you wanted, you could easily learn exactly how an engine works, and the other essential parts of a car.
A computer is a little different ... Software is very difficult to understand, without having a deeper knowledge of all those 1's and 0's. You'd need to be a programmer, or have the knowledge of a programmer to be able to know the functions of all the software on a computer. It takes longer than to jus google "How a car works" (Dramatized, I know it's harder than jus that).
But when it comes to doing things like these, there are several ways to gain insight. What does the error code mean? Just google it, someone will explain. How do I do this? Just google it, someone will explain.
The people who -are- tech savvy, and know how to do this things, learned it at some point. We're not just disposed to knowing them. We learned, and most of us probably learn a lot of what we do on a computer, from asking someone on the internet "How do I do this?" And it takes time - As with everything in life, it's a question of whether or not you want to spend that time on learning tech, or watching movies with friends, reading or taking a really good hit off that sweet bl-.. Cough anyway, I'm getting derailed.
You can learn, so can I; It's a question of whether you want to. If someone says you're lazy for it, then they're probably rude. But in the case of things being as easy as a google search away? Cmon, you can do that, we all can.
I'm not holy, either - My bicycle goes flat every once a month due to bad roads, and I actually hate fixing it. I'm not so knowledgable on how to take off rear tires and so, so I go to the shop, and pay someone to do the shit I don't want to spend my time on. |
TLD name space really has nothing to do with IP addressing. That's why we have DNS, to translate FQDN to IP addresses. IPv6 has no impact upon TLD proliferation. And IPv4 has no impact upon the readability of FQDN.
The root domain '.' (the invisible domain, the one thing the same in every address) used to contain about 5 TLD. (com, edu, org, gov, mil). Later they expanded to include country TLD. (us, uk, ca, de, etc.) Note that none of this is limited or empowered by IPv4. It only affects DNS, and really only the root servers have major changes, and the 'root hints' can be increased to reduce that impact. |
OK, let's break this down.
Lack of mirror and electronic viewfinder. The reason why SLR's are so desirable is precisely because they can see exactly what the sensor sees. A screen is a terrible way to look at the view. It is subject to color bias, lag, and it's not always guaranteed to show the entire frame. The naked human eye has much more depth and sensitivity than a screen or electronic viewfinder can ever hope for.
Large sensors. They say that the Samsung NX10's sensor is "same size as you’d find in a DSLR." What does that mean? Is it a Nikon 1.5 conversion? A Canon 1.6? An Olympus 2? The same size sensor as a dSLR means nothing. What kind of sensor is it? CCD or CMOS? What's more, the Micro Four Thirds sensor is terrible . Any ISO setting above 400 is noisy enough to make the image look horrible. As for lower depth of field being lower, this is just nonsense.
Changing lenses. There is a very concrete reason why Sony's Alpha series cameras are still inferior to Canon and Nikon, despite the fact that the bodies themselves are innovative and overall very nice. Canon and Nikon has vast first party and third party lens ecosystems built around them. These sorts of things don't just pop out of nowhere.
Also, the author seems to be addressing two opposite kinds of photographers at once: the one who buys the kit lens, attaches it, and would gladly jump on a camera with a smaller kit lens, and the one who actually buys multiple lenses which could be attached to the EVIL camera by an adapter.
Speed. Honestly, any improvement on the compact's speed is a welcome thing.
Not standing out. This is also sort of valid point, because walking around with a dSLR is kind of awkward. However, the comparison to the Leica M series is completely misguided. For starters, the Leica M is a rangefinder, and is a completely different animal than an SLR. Furthermore, Leica M's are excellent cameras, and even used M4's fetch upwards of a thousand dollars. The other reason war reporters used Leica's is that they have a level of indestructibility that was then, and still remains, only represent in the upper echelon of camera bodies.
Conclusion. I was going to add a disclaimer that this is all just the kind of hair splitting that only professional and experienced amateur photographers do. Then I saw the author imply that the only cameras that can outcompete the EVIL are the Canon 1D and the Nikon D3. This is silly. I predict that the 50D and 40D (and Nikon counterparts), and likely also the lower level cameras, will offer better image, build, lens, and support quality than the EVILs. |
You don't frequent photography forums very often, I take it.
There, you will find an endless number of posts from people who bought a DSLR without realizing that the camera is capable of shallow depth-of-field , which the tiny sensors on P&S cameras are not, for the most part. So, you get "MY XSi DOESN'T FOCUS RIGHT" and "I GOT CLEARER SHOTS WITH MY P&S".
Honestly, unless you need
Low-light shooting ability at higher ISOs and larger apertures
Subject isolation through limited depth-of-field
The ability to make very large prints
A very fast camera, both in terms of shutter-lag and frames-per-second
Interchangeable lenses for macro and long focal length reach
...you really don't need the cost nor weight of a DSLR. |
Here's a relatively detail description of write cycles. |
Actually most of the time people dont actually want to solve problems. Politics is a rather dirty thing where everyone does and says whatever they can to get to the highest. Its like a free for all in slow motion and with more paper work. The fact is if we had someone who actually truely cared about the future developmen ect. it would be wonderful. |
Yeah, all that and you're still wrong. You brought up "Civil Rights" in a previous post.
"Rights" is a plural and "Civil Rights" is a recognition of more than one existing. |
The screen alone in the first iPad had a production cost of $95. The total production cost was around $260. To make something with equivalent hardware and put Android on it -- and then only expect $40 profit to divide between yourself and the retailers? That's not a market anyone sane would want to enter. And that's without any of the additional features you listed, and ignoring the fact that those screens and flash drives tend to go in and out of global shortages on a fairly regular basis. Last year when the iPad was supposed to be launched in Europe, Apple had to divert most of them back to the US to fill existing orders. It definitely was not because Apple was happy with the money it had already made and didn't feel like manufacturing more of them. It was because the components are extremely expensive and there are very few places in the world capable of making and assembling them in large quantities. |
The article is one sided and it leaves out part of the story. There is some real truth to the fact that IPO shares are traded around as rewards and favors. There is also real truth to the fact that Merrill Lynch used to force their in house mutual fund managers to buy up shitty IPO stock that didn't move in order to help artificially inflate the IPO runups (honestly not sure if they still do this).
The article is written from the point of view that LinkedIn the company was scammed because they didn't grab all the cash they could have gotten, since the shares settled at $90. The problem is that the shares really have to be worth that much money for their hypothesis to be true.
If the shares remain at $90 each and grow from there, LinkedIn lost cash it could have grabbed at IPO however, they still come out ahead because their market cap would be 100% greater than what they "anticipated" at the $45 IPO price. Even if over the next 4 months the shares level off to say $60, their market cap is still 33% higher than they "anticipated" in the IPO filing, there's nothing to explain at the shareholders meeting. However if it levels off at $45/share in 4 months, investors will likely jump ship since nobody wants a stock at what it's actually valued at (this is half sarcasm, half truth).
Now hindsight is 20/20 and we've seen that the IPO market will support $90-120/share. They thought the stock was worth $10 and they wanted to issue at $45, but instead say they issued it at $90 it jumps to $120, settles at $100 and then 4 months letter rolls all the way back to $75. Now their market cap is 16% smaller than they "anticipated" rather than 100% or 33% larger, investors are pissed because the shares have no only failed to produce growth, but they are underwater.
For the greedy people involved with the deal it's safer doing it this way because 6 months from now all the cock suckers can walk around patting themselves on the back at how wonderful a job they did launching LinkedIn publicly and how they have all this "extra" equity on hand. |
There are a whole lot of limitations about what is covered written in to advice contacts when buying/selling businesses, but there are also requirements that the advising party must have certain parts of the work reviewed by an independent party. In this case, KPMG reviewed some of the work, found errors, and one error in particular was not corrected.
It can be shown that they had been advised of that error by an independent party (who they were contractually bound to listen to) and did not correct it. When it was shown over time to be very material error indeed, the legal case for suing became possible.
For the most part, parties absolve themselves of as much legal vulnerability as possible, but there are certain things which they are hired to do which they must complete.
In this case, LinkedIn hired the banks to sell shares, and the basis was that all shares will be sold for (essentially) the same price. Any market has an appetite for shares, and that appetite varies with the price. If you tried to sell LinkedIn shares to people at the IPO at $1,000 you may find some crazy buyers, at $100 you may sell 1/10 of the volume you need to shift. The banks in this case needed to shift 100% of the volume, and had to set the price to suit. This is why I favour Google's approach - nobody is ripped off. If LinkedIn had done that and I'd bought shares at $100 that's my choice, even if the last guy bought shares for $45. There's still a lot of work for the banks to do to set up the initial advice to investors, so they will still earn their money as well, but there's a reduced perverse incentive.
It would be difficult to write a penalty clause into IPO contracts for banks. The two metrics of price and volume would need to be built in, to show that there was sufficient demand for the stock at a much higher price (not just small trades), and it would be difficult to prove that it wasn't another bank trying to sully the advising banks reputation by buying/selling a lot of volume if the market reached a high price.
Part of the reason for going to the established banks is that they have contacts who can afford to put hundreds of millions of dollars into purchasing these shares. It's not like LinkedIn could just post a for sale ad on their site :) The banks with the best contacts should be able to achieve the best prices (more demand), and that's what you're paying for. If, however, the IPOs which a bank works on appear consistently under-priced, you should doubt the quality of that bank's contacts (although it's only one measure, and should be taken with caution). |
Labor is an input for production. People are a product with skills and abilities that they trade for a wage or a fee of some sort. The market for labor responds to market forces and pressures in ways that are distinct sometimes (backward bending labor supply curve) but are typically analogous to other goods or services (lots of hiring, lots of demand for employees, higher wages offered).
In a way, you are private vendor being traded on a public market. Sort of Ebay except job seekers instead of random stuff. This is always the case though, whether you use LinkedIn or not. People being an immediate good in production has been a cornerstone of our economic system.
A problem might arise if say, you create a lot of machine that could replace people as intermediate goods and thus people become obsolete so you have decreased demand for labor so you have high surplus labor (unemployment) and thus an economic slowdown because many laborers are also consumers making the need for sites like LinkedIn that much more dire but much less effective as the economy buckles under structural problems. Fortunately, we are undergoing a recovery(tm) so please feel free to direct your attention to the nearest shiny object. |
this is pretty much inevitable. Humans have refused to change their ways of governing ever since civilization has started. The game of "how much can we screw over the public before they revolt?" is so tired that something like this is going to happen eventually. I think these types of 'competitive dictatorships' would eventually give rise to a city/society where everyone is completely free (market anarchism), which, in theory, should create an societal interaction similar to that of a bose-einstein condensate (superfluid) that lacks any internal resistance. It's obvious (to me anyway) that every problem on Earth is caused by internal resistance. |
those are called T1 lines. They are 1.5Mbps up and down. But that's not why they're so expensive. You get a direct connection between you and your service provider (the internet) with no other traffic on it. You are guaranteed your full bandwidth at all times which doesn't happen with other types of connection. DSL and broadband are limited to the nearest switch's capacity. In my area, I supposedly get 15Mbps though the tech told me 500-1000 customers were all using a 42Mb switch. Needless to say I do (did) not get 15 down, ever. |
Comcast is making a lot of mistakes. This is how one should be charged for internet usage. By how much data they actually send.
You think they don't want metered internet? They'd fuckin' love that. But remember how well that went over in Canada? People were in an uproar and it never even made it out of the gate. |
I have had Comcast for a year. I have 4 people living here and we all use BW, streaming Netflix, downloading Steam games, basic surfing, etc. I just learned of the BW meter 3 months ago. The reason I did not learn of it sooner was because when I signed up, I was told by 2 sales people and 1 technician that, yes, Comcast does have BW caps but not in my area (Oakland, CA). When I looked at the BW meter the first time I had used 36GB 2 months ago, 75 1 month and 280 the next month. The month after that it was 256GB. They have not contacted me by email, phone or letter about this. So it may have been correct that they don't look at my area. But I didn't go that far over.
But this month, Netflix put all the Star Trek online (except DS9), and now it is the halfway point for the month. I am at 81% already. So this will be the big test whether they contact me or not, because this month they will probably consider me a high usage client. I cannot get anything in my area like Comcast. I kinda hope I am right about this. |
Okay, this is an absolutely terrible idea, both in thought, and in execution. First, Lamar Smith doesn't care if you aren't a constituent in his district. Nor should he. He doesn't represent you, and you don't vote for him. His staff won't log any of your complaints, if they even let you talk. Moreover, when you try to flood his lines, you are taking away from his constituents who may be calling for help with getting services.
Second, if you are going to charge into here, drop the "I'm from reddit/I'm the 99%" crap. Not only does the staff of Smith's office not know, or care, what a reddit is. If you aren't a constituent, they don't care. When you drop the 99% bomb, it will get turned against you. The savvy press person will draft up how the dangerous OWS who represent are trying to stifle capitalism. |
Okay, reddit needs to calm down right now. You guys are foaming at the mouth, and will eventually be pissing away an excellent opportunity to make an impact. That opportunity? Flood your Representative's office with the specific sections that are bad. There are 435 Reps, and getting as many of those aware as possible will be more useful that shouting at someone who has already said they won't listen to an opposition. Especially an opposition that cannot vote for him. Get other Members worried about it, not someone who doesn't care.
First things first, unless you live in Lamar's Smith district, do not call him . His staff won't care as he doesn't represent you. They won't listen, they won't log your complaints into the system. (Spare me the "I pay his salary" crap too.) The only thing that will happen is you will be wasting your breath, time, and cell phone minutes. Plus, when you do silly phone jamming techniques, you are taking away time from people who actually need constituent help. The net gain from making calls to Smith if you don't live in his district? Not a damn thing.
Second, find out who your representative is. [Go to the House website, pop in your zip code, and bam, there you go.]( Visit their Congressional page to see if they sit on the House Judiciary Committee. See if they sit on the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet. They want to keep you happy, and will at least let you finish your thoughts.
Third, write these people only if your live in their district. Explain to them why you are opposed to SOPA (HR 3261, for those who care). Don't make idle threats of "I won't vote for you" or "I will donate against you" or "We are legion, we are one, blah blah blah." Add in some text about particular wording you are concerned with. If your member happens to sit on one of the above listed committees, include the worrisome text, and a print out of that article. Ask them to please enter this information into their committee testimony. Most of all, be clear about why you are bothered by this. Don't use foul language or that Smith is an unfit dullard. Keep the attack trained on the legislation.
Fourth, repeat this process for the Senators in your state. Both of them.
Example letter:
*Dear Congressman X,
I am writing to encourage you not to support the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261). This bill will [insert specifics here]. This is detrimental to [insert specifics here].
Additionally, Lamar Smith recently argued that those against SOPA could not provide any specific language that was troublesome. After reviewing the bill, I find the wording in the following sections very troublesome. [Insert the sections here. Not the actual wording, but the sections.] Explain why they are bad.
I ask that you consider these points when making a decision on how to vote on SOPA.
Thank you for your time.*
Source: Two years Congressional staffer. |
Because you can't have any actual communication if words don't mean what they mean.
So in cases where words can hold different meanings, there HAS to be communication about the different meanings of those words, followed by diverse communication about ALL different possibilities, ideally followed by agreement on ALL those, signified by qualifiers.
IF we hold "believe the teachings" to mean, then... If it means the other thing, then xxy follows.
Which then yields sertain sets of definitions which hold no argumentative value, including all those that pose falacies, including circular logic.
For instance it holds little value to define "believe in teachings" as "including those who only believe in the existance", because the resulting grouping of "believers vs non-believers" holds little to no value in describing different interests.
The categorisation into "thinks are valuable" and "thinks are wrong" is more fruitfull, since it represents interest concerning reality. |
I've learned to see the humour in it. I started using Mac's young, and over the past 10 years or so have settled in to a nice little niche in Mac support/maintenance. This means I come in to contact with douchebag-mac-hipsters regularly and have seen the spectacle you described above a few times now.
At first I raged because they argued for the completely wrong reasons, that their lives would be instantly better if they bought a shiny box with an Apple logo on it...most of these people only use these computers as goddamn facebook machines anyway. Eventually you just laugh, when you realise these people don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
A particularly amusing situation is when I pull out my bastardised macbook pro, covered in stickers/foam pads on the bottom for better ventilation etc...they sort of turn up their nose...until they realise its just a fucked up (or personalised, you choose) version of their own computer and they just get really weirded out, they don't know how to react.
Got a bit side tracked, but |
I was at bestbuy one day checking out new phones and I swear I could not even get an answer from one of their little helpers regarding Windows phones. I wanted to look at them for XBL and PC related purposes and this guy was clueless of what I was talking about. He kept on flashing the new Android and even went on to recommend the old iPhone in some special offer bullshit. |
B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.
You are missing a huge bit of context here. The bill actually reads:
> The term `cyber threat information' means information directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to a system or network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from--
>(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or
>(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.
This means that "theft of IP" doesn't fall under the category of Cyber Threat Information. If instead there was information about a vulnerability in, lets say, Intel's private network that contained trade secrets then that information would count. Your ISP having a log of you visiting ThePirateBay wouldn't count at all since you aren't invading a network or system of a private entity.
Another important thing to note is that the exemption from accountability only affects the sharing of the information, not its collection. So if your ISP collects information it shouldn't be able to then there is still recourse. Its not perfect, but its a far cry from total immunity. |
Yes, I know what Estate Tax is. My point is that the US government (and others) doesn't release someone at the point of death because of Estate Tax.
However, I have to ask if you're fucking out of your mind that estate tax is a GOOD THING. I really think you're delusional. Say I make 100K a year and I live a very modest life, not over extending myself on credit, not spending extravagantly, etc. and, by the time I die, I have 2MM in the bank. My heirs would have to pay tax on that money (which, was already taxed as income whether salary, investment, dividend, whatever) because I lived responsibly? That's fucking crazy. Yet, on the other hand, those who spend on credit, take mortgages they can't afford (yes, very much the lender's fault as well), and die thousands in debt don't have to pay tax because they lived a life of irresponsibility? They're OK because they didn't save and just spent?
Furthermore, Estate Taxes don't punish the mega rich like Gates or Buffet, they punish the moderately rich. For example, mine is a family business which was founded by my grandfather in 1946 with funds from the GI Bill. He built it from nothing; my father did more; and I am working on improving it as well. When I die, the company could well have to be sold or liquidated to pay Estate Tax. How the fuck does that work? A fairly successful family business has to be sold after 3 generations because the government expects to be paid because of our success? Who wins then? What is my motivation to work hard and leave a legacy for my children if the government is just going to take it from them with I die? The government can't just take money from "The Rich" and just give it to the poor. That does nothing more than marginalize success.
If you wipe out family wealth at death, you're literally hitting reset after every generation. How does progress happen then if everyone "starts at zero." That's treading water.
Now, don't get me wrong; I'm no Scrooge McDuck; my family gives a lot of money to charitable causes every year; I volunteer a considerable amount of time for those causes as well. It is absolutely my responsibility as a decent human to help those who are less fortunate than I. However, I want the opportunity to do that in a manner which I find suitable and not be forced to give that money instead to the government which will just squander it. |
Still no. Why, no matter how much money I have that I've already paid taxes on should I give any more of it to the government when I die? I earned it! I saved it! It should be for my kids and their descendants.
This year in the US you can pass up to $5MM on death without tax. Anything over 5MM is taxed at 35%. Next year it's 1MM with surplus taxed at 55%. So, if I die this year with $4.5MM in the bank, I can give my kids all of it. Next year they would get ~$2.6MM. What sense does that make? Why, would the day I die determine the fate of $2MM of MY money?
Furthermore, who's to determine what the break point would be for the exemption? I'm from Chicago. The McCaskey family owns the Bears, principally Virginia, the daughter of George Halas, the founder of the Bears. Just yesterday, Forbes Magazine valued the Bears at $1.19 billion. However, you can bet the McCaskey family doesn't have hundreds of millions in cash to pay the possible estate tax (this is a simplification--who knows the actual ownership structure). Why should the McCaskey family be forced to sell the team to generate the funds to sell the Estate Tax? It's their team. It is one generation removed from its founder. How can you possibly determine what the cut-off would be?
Why should "immense, inter-generational, 'old-money' fortunes" not be allowed to be amassed. Think of people like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, the Rockefeller Brothers, or Bill Gates with their world changing charitable foundations. You let people keep their massive amounts of money and they do learn what they need to do with it. "Rich People" aren't evil.
I can give you an example from personal experience. John Kluge died in 2010 with something like $6 billion in the bank during the estate tax moratorium. I know his son personally; we went to high school together. You know what his son is doing since he has no worries about money? Spends his time working to bring potable water to sub-Saharan Africa.
I mentioned my family's charitable efforts above. Just today, a few hours after I wrote that post, I had two development officers from Northwestern Hospital sitting in front of my desk to discuss what our overall plan will be for the next five years. This is my duty : philanthropy. we were very plain with them; our plan depends very much on what happens in November. If Obama gets re-elected, my giving will be severely curtailed. My taxes are already going somewhere around 7% just because of the health-care plan. And this doesn't count the income tax increase which is currently scheduled. If the Government is just going to tax me because I'm "rich" to pay for social programs and other bloat, I don't really have any choice but to stop my own support of social programs. Who do you think can be more efficient? Me giving directly to the user of the money or having the government collect and redistribute the money? Who loses? The "poor people" because they are going to get less when the government gets involved.
I just don't get this. IT'S MY MONEY!!! Why should the government take it from me? It has already been taxed! Explain it to me why my kids can't have my hundreds millions of dollars? (note: I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars; I'm playing the devil's advocate). |
How is it unreasonable when all that consumers want is a something that can be used on all their devices(tablets, computers, etc) without any restrictions?Do you have found anything positive about DRM? something like it reduced piracy? Digital files can be copied unlimited times but putting artificial restrictions only leads to pissing off people.
The reality now is that no matter how many restrictions you put in your products, it is going to be pirated. For example take the music production software I know of, Steinberg Cubase. They have this USB flash drive that acts as a key so that you could use the software only if it is inserted in the slot. But hack groups cracked it and now pirates could conveniently use it without any of those restrictions. A perfect example of how people purchasing it now have this inconvenience whereas people getting free stuff have more efficiency. |
Dear reddit,
I must confess to a certain outrage upon reading the recent story about a Norwegian women who got all her Kindle books remotely wipes and account closed without proper explanation - a story reddit helped catapult to the attention of the global news media.
Ready access to the written word is a cornerstone of a working democracy, and Amazon should not be allowed control of your library simply because it put a clause in its terms of service that said it could do so. The internet has the power to protect our collective electronic rights; just think back to January 18th this year.
Legislation to protect your rights to use your digital content would be nice, and might even happen in some countries; however, it is important to demarcate what is not tolerable behavior from Amazon and other electronic booksellers. Wiping libraries and closing accounts refusing to say why is not ok.
Just for the record, I really like Amazon. They have provided me an excellent service, and given me access to a fantastic catalogue of global and historical books. I like the Kindle, as its ease of use undoubtedly promote reading more and thus, serves to enlighten the general populace. But as far as I can tell, the merely restored the account without explanation in response to the pressure we saw a few days ago. They should really provide an explanation, issue a statement of apology and tell the internet they will never do such a thing again - hopefully striking fear into the hearts of all other DRM content holders out there in the process.
As an individual, there is little I can do. Personally boycotting the (otherwise excellent) Kindle would not matter an iota for Amazon's budgets. I know how to remove DRM and secure my own content, but the vast majority of Kindle users probably do not.
If reddit banded together I am pretty sure we could figure out how to exert enough pressure on Amazon to change its ways. As a starter, the best I could come up with is this: I will edit my review of the Kindle in Google Play to 1/5 stars and commented that closing accounts without explanation is untolerable and they should a issue a statement never to do that again. If enough people started doing that they would at some point have to acknowledge the issue.
Will it help? I have no idea. But I have seen the reddit hive-mind do such wonderful things over the years. I am sure said hive-mind can produce much better ideas than I as an individual can do to fix Amazon's recent violation of our trust. We should all band together and take action to ensure that your collection of electronic books can not be randomly erased at your bookseller's leisure.
Help spread the word. |
Unfortunately I can't tell you about the reality in USA because I do not live in your country.
I'm not an author, but I have been doing this in Brazil for some time and the guys that actually write the books are not so happy.
An author will earn 7 to 12% from the price of the book in the store.
Paper costs about 5% of the price.
An editor (including publishing, translation, proofreading, layout and profit) will get about 25%.
The company that prints the book gets 8 to 10%.
Distributors get 15%.
And how much the bookstore gets? About 40% of the final price.
So, for a digital book, there are almost no costs on distribution, no costs to print nor on the paper.
The bookstore does not even need to exist physically, but I will let the 40%.
So, prices should be composed like this: 12% of the author, 25% of the editor and 40% of the bookstore.
So a digital version should cost 77% of the physical book, right?
Wrong. The price is the same.
But is the price reduced on the other version because the costs will be reduced? No.
A digital version should cost at least 50% less than the physical version, but the price is the same.
So I prefer independent authors, because editors and bookstores get much more than they deserve.
The work of writing a book is 95% of the work in a digital version.
So, the "big bad publisher" exists because physical books are still more than 60% of the books being sold every year.
Maybe when epub gets as popular as mp3, publishers will not be so powerful..
Piratary is helping the true authors to earn more.
Authors just depend on the publishers because they are powerful, but they don't like this dependence.
[Pirates are the biggest consumers and will pay for everything they like, if the price is fair.](
Souce: [Abril - Superinteressante](
Sorry for the broken english. |
A dangerous Monopoly must provide you the ability to abuse your existing base to force people to use your technology over the competition in a different market, pushing out competition by using your market share. AT&T selling phones directly, and insisting you must have an AT&T phone to use their phone lines. Or Microsoft insisting you must use IE as your browser when you are on Windows.
You replace your phone every few years and there isn't a ton if tie-in between phones. I know people that switch from iPhone to Android and then to Windows Phone. This low barrier to change makes monopolies more difficult to abuse.
The reason Microsoft had held the PC market hostage for so long is that there are so many applications that only work on Windows, barrier to move was very high and expensive. By contract in the smartphone market a lot of applications are available on both/all three platforms, and that is a good thing. It means they must continue to innovate and improve to get people every 2 years when they decide if they want to switch phones again.
Of course the reason they both want to push their app stores, especially with paid-for apps is that the bigger the library of sunk costs you have the more you might pause before switching. All companies want something that makes your business more 'sticky', or gives you reasons to pause before switching technologies. |
Every company does this. /r/technology just hates Apple. Apple sues someone and they're evil bullies for picking on the poor, helpless multibillion dollar international corporations, but Google sues someone and they aren't actually trying to win , they're trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the patent system and the millions of dollars are merely a byproduct of their brilliant satire.
Guess what? Samsung sued Apple just as much as Apple sued Samsung. So did Motorola and Nokia.
Plus, Apple is doing anything to the companies. They're just asking a court to consider the case. If the case is invalid under the law, it's thrown out. No harm done. That's how the system works: you file suit and the judge decides whether or not it's valid. The fact remains that Apple won several cases. I would say that shows pretty convincingly that there is some validity under the current meaning of the law. The law may be bad, but it's unreasonable to expect Apple to not exploit it while all their competitors do.
What's worse is that a lot of Apple lawsuits are fairly reasonable. See this link:
I think that's a pretty compelling case. It bears discussion. I'm not sure whether or not it's valid, but it certainly isn't an absurd patent on "rounded corners". |
This is great until you want to change some obscure setting, which will require you to drop to a command prompt, tap in long command strings which you had to google, and recompile your kernal while resolving critical compile errors and missing headers and then you'll need to install a c++ dev environment so you can tweak one line of code in a lib that wasn't written for your UART then patch the video driver which the manufacturer doesn't support so you had to use a third party driver which doesn't utilize the coolest features but you have to use it anyway and what's this now you have to apropos gibberjabber pull some hair out recompile reboot reinstall then give up and buy a different phone b/c you've now bricked the firmware. |
People are probably downvoting you because of this:
>I'm completely happy with my Samsung Note II. There's just nothing I'd want it to do that I can't make it do.
I do not care what you can do with your devices. You do not know what I want to do with mine. Your comment is probably being interpreted as "what is the big noise all about, everything is fine." Likely not what you meant, but there it is.
I am looking forward to Ubuntu on the phone because I like convergence. Your flash example is a great one. Flash provides a dynamic and rich interface on the browser. However flash does not work seamlessly on linux, and Adobe has stopped providing updates to allow flash to work on Android, and AFAIK it never worked on iOS. Therefore my view is that flash should be dumped in favor of something that works everywhere, on any device. Perhaps HTML5 will cover some of those aspects. Perhaps having the same OS on any device will spawn some mulit-interface single OS development paradigm or library that will promote convergence. Either way it is a good thing.
Consider this -- with Ubuntu on phones and tablets flash will not be officially supported on any of the major handheld device OSes. Something will have to take its place. Whatever does will be easier to port to desktops if it has to support Ubuntu, which will probably mean a device-agnostic solution. That means the next time you try to install Ubuntu on your desktop with flash or its successor it will work. You have decoupled your need for a specific vendor controlled software that you enjoy from your selection of tools. |
I would suggest not basing a shift to a whole new OS purely from the impression you got playing with something in a store. There's a bit of learning curve but once you get over that, it's just like Windows 7 with a full screen start menu. There are some idiosyncrasies, like the way menus hang out invisibly in the corners, but you get used to it really quickly and will probably come to realize that you don't need to see them all the time anyway (I've been auto-hiding my start bar for years, so for me, it's not made any difference at all).
I do not trust the opinion of any one who tries to claim it's a touch based OS with mouse support tacked on. That's not true at all. It works great with a mouse and keyboard. Most of the time you can just start typing and it finds what you're looking for. I never have to hunt through folders or menus anymore. |
This was a review of mine to a friend. It is in terms of IOS/Ipad vs the Surface so it's not a comprehensive review, but still related.
The iPad is a great tool for consuming content. I own two of them. It is a very simple device. You download an app, you load an app, and you do one thing at a time. The interface is easy to use because it is such a simple device. My problem with the iPad was I tried to bring it into my workflow at work, but a combination of things made that difficult.
1 - My IT department requires mobile iron to be installed on 'tablet' devices to access email. I refuse to open up my personal life to my IT department for absolutely no gain to the company.
2 - The iPad doesn't have any mouse support, and keyboard is bluetooth. This doesn't sound like such a big deal but when I'm at my desk I have a keyboard/mouse available to me which is faster input. The iPad doesn't let me use the mouse at all, so I can't use an app like Input Director or synergy to control it (Not that an iPad could run these apps in the first place).
3 - The iPad can only open certain file formats and it's impossible to actually create content on. So it didn't really add to meetings at all for me. I could maybe type some notes that I could use dropbox to synch to my other computers, but that was about it. Giving a presentation or sketching out things just wasn't possible.
The surface solves all of these problems for me. It is a 'laptop' and thus doesn't need mobile iron, so I just VPN in like any other system. It can run all windows apps so I use Input Director to control it while at my desk, and the keyboard/touch interface when in a meeting. It can open all file formats including visio's which I commonly use (No converting to PDF first). I can also edit visios or word/excel docs if needed. Finally the stylus and available apps allow for quick sketches while we're talking about a network topology or something like that. Additionally since it is a full windows 8 pro OS, I can use webex/adobeconnect/join.me/google hangout / any other way to share my screen with remote people or vendors helping out with a problem.
These are all benefits compared to IOS/iPads. There are some downsides though. The additional power means that it weighs more. It is still usable as a tablet / in bed, it's just not as light. Powering a full windows OS takes additional processing power, RAM, etc. That translates into less battery life. Under full load tech articles claim it is <4 hours, but in my experience it lasts much longer under normal conditions, but it still doesn't last 9+ hours like my iPads do. Standby mode does preserve the battery overnight which is good (I've had other laptops in the past that just drain overnight even in standby).
Finally the interface (Windows 8, as well as the touch gestures) take a bit to get used to. As a power user even I was slightly confused at first, but after learning the new keyboard shortcuts and touch gestures I think win8 is even more power-user friendly than win7. Navigating the system is super quick once you have learned everything. Not everything is intuitive - just like alt+tab to cycle through programs wasn't intuitive 15 years ago. You had to learn alt+tab and win+d back in the day, and there are new things like win+i and win+. to learn now.
Summary:
Pros - It can do anything you can do on a desktop and more - The touch/stylus inputs are great.
The screen is beautiful.
It's super fast/snappy.
Neutral - It's heavier than a true tablet but lighter than a true laptop.
Cons - Battery life is less than IOS / iPads. The UI can take awhile to learn how to navigate, but once you do it is more powerful than win7. It does cost more than an iPad for the increased functionality / hardware. |
Reply to edit: Not everything you read is a shill tactic. Sure, they exist, but the review is pretty well supported.
I want to draw on this bitch. It works. + I want to play games on this bitch. It works. = I like this bitch.
Did they pay him? Eh, maybe, but it doesn't sound like it. The problem with your comment is you make a statement that is modified by "probably" which means you don't know, you're just mouth-shitting all over a person's integrity based on speculation. It's not blatant marketing/shill tactics. Gabe posts on here infrequently.
Besides - the article is focused around artists/gamers. That's a pretty specific group to be targetting with shill tactics. Even if you separate the two, artists looking for a mobile platform or gamers wanting to play on the road - it's not a big market. Gamers, in general, aren't going to game seriously on a tablet. It's nice to have that option, sure, but would you trade your Xbox/PS3/WiiU and a couch for a tablet? Or your 3DS? Or your PC?
Unless you're a traveling salesperson gamer devotee, probably not.
So what's the net gain in paying him a elephant ballsac full of money that couldn't simply be achieved by giving him a device? How many do you really think they'll sell because of this article?
At best, from a marketing standpoint, you're buying his credibility with the gamer market/artist market, and using PA as a platform. Best case scenario, you're going to convert some fence sitters in two specific genres.
PA gets its fair share of views, but how many are realistically going to read it? It's posted on reddit, too, granted, but as of me posting this it has 4k readers.
That's not a large market.
It just doesn't make sense. Believe me - I hate shill marketing tactics, too, but this doesn't smell like one. If it was some crazy hot chick playing Skyrim on one and posted to /r/pics, then yeah, I'd roll my eyes, but it's Gabe from PA (not knocking your celebrity/boyish good looks, homie, just defending your integrity) posting on /r/technology. |
Objectivity doesn't come down to me disagreeing or agreeing with the premise, it has to do with "can the subject matter be considered independent of its results?" I.e. - can I assume that their conclusions are truly independent and uninfluenced by Microsoft giving them the device free of charge? The answer is no. Not even Gabe can tell you that his opinion isn't influenced by the free device, because subconsciously the effect of a negative or droll review will nag from underneath causing his judgement to be clouded, essentially without even realizing it. |
Governments don't necessarily react rationally or proportionally to perceived threats.
Imagine this: A major terrorist event happens on US soil. The FBI discovers that the organization responsible uses Bitcoins to move money from opium profits in Afghanistan to sleeper cells in the US.
Government already owns some of the fasest computers. They could easily repurpose them to shutdown "terrorist" currency. |
I've been a redditor since I was 17, I'll be 19 this year. I've nearly been on reddit for two years now. (My cakeday is quite literally two weeks before my birthday.) I started coming here because there's intelligent well thought content on this website as compared to my Facebook news-feed. The only reason I ever use facebook now is to talk to friends and plan stuff with them.
Also, to the people complaining about reddits front page. You should probably consider unsubscribing from the subreddits that produce shitty content. Some great subreddits to keep around are AMA,Technology,Science,AskScience,TodayIlearned, Politics, Worldnews, Atheism (If you're up for a laugh.), True Atheism for a more serious and realistic atheist. Some good subreddits to unsubscribe from are /r/atheism (Because, y'know, it's a meaningless circlejerk.), /r/Aww because fuck animals, /r/Adviceanimals, /r/pics, and /r/Gaming. Your reddit has now been cleansed.
The rest of reddit is yours. Just find a subreddit you like and hit subscribe. |
It will stay the same way it is now.
The site had a huge demographic change over the last 1-2 years. 4chan has been mainstream and its population has been diluted for a loooong time now.
I abandoned it years ago because it got really shit. First it was populated by seemingly immature people, however, that site constinuously contributed original content and they at least weren't literally children or complete idiots. The age of 4chans population continuously sunk, the ratio of original content to reposts and stupid memes got worse and worse, and the amount of wannabe activists grew and grew and grew.
Nowadays the only thing 4chan is good for is to get already existing memes, average porn content, and a network for DDoS attacks... however, that's difficult because people on 4chan are a pain in the ass to influence and the herd-thinking got worse over the years. While it was once a conglomeration of actual individualists with singular very capable content creators or real hacktivists who just got there for the thrills, it is now a community that wants cheap entertainment while behaving like a typical herd (while at the same time still claiming to be "individual" and "idealistic"). Essentially that site grew to be deluded.
The only thing I can think of that might still be appealing about 4chan are its gaming and its request board. /r/gaming sucks and there is no real request board on reddit (worst part being that more or less all gaming-related subreddits oppose piracy). |
faggotry
That shit , however, is 100% 4chan's influence. So... y'know... thanks for infecting us with it. :-/
It's true that there's a human centipede of memes that flows from 4chan->reddit->Facebook->mainstream media and clothing manufacturers, and that at each and every stage there's an exponentially-increasing number of people who discover the meme and assume it originated in their chosen community (and who promptly [dilute the meme into uselessness for all the preceding groups](
4chan gets a fair bit of moral superiority in this regard (and fuck me - I never thought I've ever be writing that collection of words together ;-) because it's usually at the top of the heap, but (as in the link above) I suspect that that's more a function of:
4chan's expected/default anonymity and lack of any other real way to establish a community, rather than because the people who post there are - on average - necessarily significantly cleverer, wittier or more inventive than the average on other sites, and
Its posting/content-sorting mechanism, whereby crap posts quickly disappear from sight for lack of replies, and popular posts which get lots of replies keep getting bumped to the top of the first page. There's a shitload of crap content on 4chan that - unless you spend 24 hours a day on it - you simply never see and can never find again. Reddit carefully and helpfully archives everything - including the [inevitable 90%]( of everything that's crap - so you can both find it more easily, and dedicated communities of crap-lovers and scatophiles can form, self-validate and push it into greater visibility compared to all the good content. |
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