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That's ELI5 for something that happened weeks ago.
The mods involved were removed and the auto-moderation was fixed. The sub is still in chaos, but this post is calling for removal of CURRENT mods, not the mods that were the problem.
That warrants proof, and so far the only proof provided is actually supporting the mods' side. |
as a casual browser of technology, this all looks like high schooler bullshit. |
There are two groups of mods that gravitate to each other. The anu/max/q group is not the largest one. The larger one is the MWM/Agentlame/DR666/KarmicViolence/theredditpope one. This group is considerably more heavy handed in their moderation philosophy than Anu/Max/q.
> The reason why these groups gravitate towards each other and drama is caused when they mod together is a massive difference in moderation philosophy. A much larger segment of the mod community believes more moderation is better. And some of them get rather militant about it attempting to rid all of reddit of content they don't like by banning it from larger subreddits and fragmenting it into smaller and smaller subs to wilt and die.
Exactly this, and very well said. Your comment is the most succinct |
cont from part 1)
and most importantly, have processes and a personal knowledgebase on how to deal with problems.
it is absolutely out of scope for the it dept. to start running around and support every device people can and will bring from home. even if indeed there would be no viruses...
I know BYOD is "in" and will only get "worse"
that does not make it right. it just makes it cheaper for management because less hardware needs to be bought. the user is stupid enough to do that for the boss
in the end, he will pay more because I will ahve to lose my mind by setting up all those exchange accounts on 20 different mobile phones.
while the users are surfing the web on their 2 year old, company owned, i5 laptop with 4gb ram and windows 7...
same btw goes with web services. there is a reason facebook or reddit might be blocked at work. its not because it is a bunch of vindictive bastards. okay, they might be. but they do not get to chose what to block for the whole company. management does. maybe its head of it.
but in all honesty, unless you are a social media marketing specialist, you do not need those sites to work.
if you can not open your gmail account, maybe that is to make sure no one can email stuff from the corporation away? maybe it is even outside the corporations control (I myself support a lot of small, lets call them corporations, with very private data that buys it-security from a 3rd party. the 3rd party blocks ALL other email possibilites except their own solution.)
i am losing my thread here so lets come to an end.
if we are the gatekeepers of tech, we do not do it to annoy you or because it makes us feel good or superior or whatever. it is usually for budgeting reasons and we only can afford to replace broken equipment. all other ressources will be spent on keeping the background infrastructure running or upgrading it.
if we had unlimited funds, everyone would have as many top notch huge ass monitors on their table and a new high end pc under their desk every year. the network would run like hell, servers and services would be as fast as tech can make them go and downtime do to hardware defects would be history thanks to redundant setups...
alas, this is fiction.
6) It means saying no to people. it does. ask the right questions and you shall hear "yey"
in a way we are a roadblock. it is our job to keep the company running as smooth as possible. it is not our job to keep you happy.
and even if we say yes when we mean no, you would not be happy for long...
the it department is wrong when they think the company will not work without them. of course they will. just not for long.
unfortunately, the better the it department is at doing its job, the more management forgets about the "not so long" part.
maybe the it depatement is a neccesary evil. i regard hr as a neccesary evil. Still I dont get my panties in a bunch when HR tells me "no" just because I asked them if I cant stay at home for 6 months with full pay...
those bastards diddnt even explain...
I agree with the last sentence on the grey field. everybody needs to work together to make the company succesful.
It tries to just do that. like every company and departement, there will be black sheep and inept people.
But trust me when I say, so much crap and stress and demands have been thrown down ITs throat the last 15-20 years. No sane person will stay EMPLOYED (not saying becoming an indep. contractor or consultent) in that field if they would not love the job and the people they have to deal with (=customers). Even if they can not express it and have to, just like you, fight against the windmills that we call management and consulting interference... |
All the articles that have been published in the last few years. ;)
If you read any paper (at least ones not from ones with shoddy study designs with an ax to grind), they'll usually spell out that there is no single cause of CCD. When reading papers, you need to be especially careful when authors are talking about general honey bee decline and CCD specifically. CCD has a very specific set of symptoms . Some very poor papers out there that have gotten some press have basically said, "Hey we found the cause of CCD and it was a pesticide." when in reality they didn't document symptoms of CCD at all, but just dead bees.
When it comes to CCD, pesticides obviously get the first look, but there has never been a smoking gun for pesticides being the leading cause of it. When it comes to looking at potential interactions involving pesticides (really hard studies to do), they still don't come out as a leading cause in combination either. Nothing really has that strong of evidence yet for interactions yet.
So |
I think I would like a service like Netflix that releases episodes one at a time, but not "airing" them in any time slot, just putting one new episode up for streaming every week.
A weekly model lets the audience mostly stay on the same page. A day after it first goes up, we can gather around the water cooler and gush about the new episode, and how it changes things and how Larry decided to rewatch the first and fourth episodes as well to get a better grasp on that one plot thread.
The current model allows you to binge about 10 solid hours of television at once, or however long it takes you, but since it takes longer for different people, no one is on the same page anymore. I have only watched the first 5 hours of Daredevil because I have other hobbies and interests, so I have to avoid discussion of the show, not only for fear of spoilers, but because there will always be people who area ahead of me in the discussion, so my input would be moot. Imagine trying to gush about the revelations and inside jokes of the fourth episode of Arrested Development S4, when anyone who had seen the whole season already would find your discussion a waste of time. |
The cruising viewing pattern doesn't really hold up today for Netflix business model . "Channel cruising" is good for the advertisers but not really for the viewer. Netflix' model is to provide great content at the users convenience. Great content is of course subjective and that's why they rely heavily on recommender systems for content discovery. It is definitely not "putting things in a random list".
It's in Netflix best interest to change this users viewing pattern. I agree that they probably could get a small boost in subscribers on the short term with the feature you suggested, but it would hurt their brand and their long term growth. They don't want to be the old "I wonder what's on TV tonight"-service and have the users watch something he or she only watches because it's "on". They want the user to launch the service to enjoy great engaging content. There shouldn't be a reason for the user to watch something they don't want to watch. |
I think its fair to say a lot of people owe Wheeler an apology for doubting him, even if they had just cause to.
He seems to have done what was best for the country, and not the easy thing.
I mean at the time before they verified the FCC Decision, The Public was calling him a [lobbyist shill]( not willing to do what was right, as long as he helped out his friends from his old days.
He must have been under tremendous pressure from these giant organizations, and past associates and clients who were not so subtly telling him what his decision should be remained silent until the last moment on what decision he would support.
And once Obama came out in [Favor]( of the ultimate FCC decision, Wheeler still had to play neutral, and got called out as if Obama was forcing his hand, when more than likely he was helping lay out support for the future plan, once Public Opinion was properly in support of it anyway.
MAybe thats not the way things went down. But if nothing else, FCC under Tom Wheeler has done good so far, despite over whelming hate trains we've had for him. |
Its a disaster because it was supposedly designed for a tablet, but it actually wasn't. For example, there is no global pinch-to-zoom that works everywhere. This is necessary when using a tablet with a small screen in desktop mode.
Another glaring flaw is that the keyboard does not automatically pop up if you are in desktop mode (again on a tablet) and you tap in a text window to start typing. You actually need to manually bring up (and then close!) the keyboard when in desktop mode on a tablet. Its just sloppy.
Then there's the whole predatory pricing model; Windows 8 is free for certain manufacturers, but they still try to screw end users like me by charging us a hundred bucks to upgrade a single PC.
I'm still kicking myself for getting a Windows tablet instead of an Android tablet with a modern OS. The reason I chose the Windows tablet was that it will get security updates, but I wrongfully believed that MS would take time to actually build a good tablet OS instead of just bolting on a new UI, the way so many Linux flavors are accused of doing.
Meanwhile in desktop land, it costs the same as earlier versions, but got features cut. DVD playback was taken out. The user gets tossed into a UI that isn't even designed for a mouse/keyboard because of (again) tablets. If the user doesn't like it, he can either go through the trouble of installing extra software to fix this, or simply deal with it. Windows 8 is more pushy than ever about getting you to sign up (and in( with an online profile, which is concerning in terms of privacy. If the above criticisms are not addressed with Windows 10, I will finally ditch the platform entirely. The argument that I'm not supposed to use desktop mode on a tablet is not valid. Desktop mode is a feature of the OS for one thing, and the majority of programs are designed to run in desktop mode. |
I was in the radio business for 10 years and I saw this everyday. the only reason they've hung on as long as hey have is because the ones who play ball with radio stations (payola) and don't use the internet are conglomerate controlled corporate bullshit. Trent Reznor said it, Thom Yorke has now said it. A lot of people on the inside have said it a LOT. this ship is sinking and a lot of jobs are going to be lost. But if you've ever met an A&R guy for a major label these people will not be missed. Radio reps are some of the sleaziest scumbags on the planet. They will literally do anything to make stations play their record. Bribery, Dinners, Hookers, Strip clubs, vacations. WHATEVER IT TAKES.
in the Capitol records office in Atlanta once when I was there with a record rep there was a sign huge banner sized that said just that (artist name ommitted) 100 spins a week WHATEVER IT TAKES. |
Your expectations change the longer you do it. When you're young and/or new at it, you don't care about losing money, or playing to 5 people a night, or having a place to sleep other than your van. You probably get along really well with your bandmates and you're all excited to be on the road which makes even the worst experience seem awesome just because it's new. I used to love nothing more than touring.
For me, things changed after a few years. I was no longer getting along with my bandmates and I decided it was silly to leave people who cared about me for weeks at a time to spend every waking moment with guys who didn't like me and with whom I had nothing in common besides our music (and even that was fading). I don't drink or smoke weed and that seemed to be more important to some of them than finding a place to eat or sleep.
Also, there's a lot of politics between the bands, venues, labels, and booking agents that I just got tired of. Bands wouldn't do a tour together just because they liked each other, they had all this business stuff they had to consider, which basically meant that since none of you were actually making money, you couldn't do anything for each other. You had to try to get on tours with bands that would help your career, rather than bands you liked, and those bands that could help didn't want you because you wouldn't do anything for them. The old Catch-22. It sucked having to also turn down tours with guys we loved for those exact same reasons: we weren't making any money and to take them with us would lose us even more.
The kids were another big factor. When you're still in love with touring for touring's sake, you don't care if 5 people show up. When you are trying to make a living out of it, nothing makes you madder than having 100 people at your show and watching 95 of them leave after the first band because they're all friends from highschool who don't care about anyone else. It's also a little bitter twist to constantly hear from kids "wow, you guys are one of my favorite bands, I can't believe more people didn't come see you." It's meant as a compliment, but when you hear it every other night, it starts to hurt.
My decision to quit, though, was about 50% not seeing eye to eye with my bandmates (about music, lifestyle, and mutual respect) and 50% the realization that while I used to dream about playing shows on the road, now I was dreaming of someday having a nice place to live that I could call my own. 28 and living with your parents is no fun.
I have very few regrets about those 8 years, and none of them directly related to the band. I still love the music we made and find joy in giving people free handouts since I still have boxes of our CD. But 3 years later I'm a married homeowner with a fun career in computers and my first son on the way; let me tell you, I am WAY happier than ever before. =) |
Cisco is a JOKE. They seem to have certain markets cornered so they keep on selling their products, but it's complete amateur hour working with them. Recently they just advised my company to downgrade close to 100 computers to Firefox 2.0.0.20 or IE7 (our choice) so that they could interact with a system we purchased from them in 2010. The software they sell in 2010 is only compatible with operating systems from 4 years ago.
Our company is currently paying for an expensive suite from Cisco and not using it, because when we did downgrade the browsers the employees on those computers were getting viruses every 3 days because the security was so out of date. It was a nightmare for IT. |
This is an FM reciever, not a transmitter.
If FM becomes popular again, people will create their own, free radio stations. The NPR model will become commonplace (hopefully).
People might even create radio stations by just connecting the radios to Pandora, or other Internet music streams. I have no idea if this tech exists, but we're talking about the Internet, here.
Even if FM transmitters do become commonplace, the RIAA's plan could easily backfire (assuming net neutrality keeps on it's merry way). Radio bittorrent, anyone? |
SoCal driver here, and aside from being able to read/sleep/relax/web browse, the number one reason I would love to see the freeway turned into an automated Minority Report system is stress .
I'm a good driver. I understand the correct way to drive my vehicle on public roads. I enjoy controlling a fast, strong toy and I love having the freedom to go where I want. I know how to drive my car with confidence and not fear. I know how to not ride my breaks every time the freeway does something other than go flat and straight. I grew out of driving like a 16 year hold dumb shit weaving traffic and cutting off soccer moms and speeding in neighborhoods.
However, apparently 90% of the rest of you fucking morons do not know the correct way to drive a car or participate in traffic flow. I had to stop listening to music and switch to audiobooks just to distract my poor road raging brain from you incompetent-disasters-waiting-to-happen.
I would like to be able to get from my house in Suburbia to downtown LA without having to step on my breaks for the asshole driving 70 in the passing lane every 5 miles or so down a completely empty highway.
I would like to be able to pass you assholes doing 70 without it turning into a fucking pissing match. I can't count the number of times someone is going slower than the flow of traffic while in the passing lane, I or someone else attempts to pass, and the prick lays on the gas and goes up to 95 just to prevent anyone from passing, then slows down for anyone behind. I just want to get home, dude, seriously.
I would not like to drive my big metal death machine next to your big metal death machine for longer than a moment . WTF is with you people driving right fucking next to each other on the freeway? You aren't the blue angels. You aren't geese. If anything, drive in one lane in a big long chain, you will benefit from drafting and people who can actually safely control their cars at greater speeds than 65 can be on their way.
If you want in my lane, use a goddamn blinker and THINK about it before you decide. I'll be going down the 101 at about 80, no one in the passing lanes, clear as can be, when one of you morons decides that the right time to slowly . crawl. into. the. passing. lane. is when I am 100 feet from speeding by you. You had like 5 minutes of empty road to use the passing lane, why the FUCK ARE YOU WAITING TILL THE LAST MINUTE? And please, don't speed up, just go one mile per hour faster than the guy you intend to pass. I'll just slam on the breaks and let the people pissed off behind me weave in and out of traffic to get past your slow ass.
The same goes for you assholes merging on or off the freeway. Aside from the rare case of being complete new to and unaware of traffic procedure in a given city, you should know where the fuck you are going. If you need to get into the right hand lane to exit the freeway, don't wait until last 10 fucking feet of lane. Think ahead, wtf!
Do you know how many people you guys kill every day because you don't care to know the right way to drive in public? If you get into the passing lane and go SLOWER than traffic behind you, you are going to cause a jam behind you and whether it's someone not paying attention or it's some asshole weaving around the jam, if they crash YOU helped cause it.
Sorry, I forgot what we were talking about. Oh yea, STRESS. I would love to go to work and come home without having to battle my way through you fucking broken drivers each and every night. |
The computer driven car is looking 360 around you all the time, you have a limited field of vision, you might be checking your blind spot or otherwise distracted. Even if you're looking right at the guy, the computer driven car is going to be scanning at least 30fps of video, so after 33ms and a few more micro seconds of compute time it's reacting, the average human driver has a reaction time of 0.5+ seconds. There is no way you can react faster. It also knows already where around you all the other cars are, so it can move without having to check its blind spots. |
One day too late, yesterday my university made some on-road test drives our their autonomous car.
(german)
a video: (but still in german) |
I'm actually not worried about internet strangers. You know what scares the fuck out of me? The idea that people I once knew in real life could possibly find out anything about me. I'm worried about the people who, in middle and high school, shoved me into lockers, stole everything I brought to school and couldn't secrete on my person, threatened to rape me to "correct" me, and spent over 6 years on a perpetual harassment campaign that nearly succeeded in driving me to suicide. It took me 3 years of not being in my hometown anymore to come to terms with being gay because of the constant perpetual harassment of those people. And my teachers, my school officials, they did nothing. I had never liked my legal first name before, but now I can't stand to hear it, and no one has used it in 6 years except my parents and even they try to respect my wishes. As soon as I have the money, if I can ever get out of the cycle of poverty, I'll change my name so I never have to hear it again. Until then, no one uses that name, and the idea that I would have to show it anywhere, the idea that anyone could find out even a link to a totally locked down profile, that scares the piss out of me. |
I've been a Windows desktop support/sysadmin type guy for roughly 20+ years,.. and I can assure you there are just as many (if not more) "clueless users" in the Windows world (or well, any world for that matter) as their are clueless Mac users. Stereotyping Mac users as "especially clueless" would be like stereotyping BMW drivers as "especially speedy" (when in reality, a person who tends to speed could do so in ANY car). |
The company can't choose the arbitrator for instance.
This may be true in certain cases, but it doesn't negate the fact that arbitration is extremely biased in favor of the corporations (who are after all the arbitrator's true customers, not joe schmoe). I can't think of a single instance in which binding arbitration is favorable for the small guy, its so one-sided its absurd.
>There are people who can't pay hospital bills after they were hit by a drunk driver and you want to gum up the court system so you can play video games online?
I think consumer's who have been wronged deserve they're day in court just as much as someones whose been ran over by a drunk. Imagine if instead we didn't waste so much court time, money and other resources fighting the "drug war". |
Especially once sites like Wikipedia start getting attacked with the Regulate Obscure and Pointless Education act. So many articles the government deem pointless will simply be obliterated. |
Here here. I concur 100%, and I sent them what amounts to a sternly worded letter on it. A lot of people joke about that, but you'd be shocked to learn how often it works when a few thousand people do it at once . Honestly, I would even consider notifying other services I appreciate to move to indiegogo too, citing that 'kickstarter has rejected projects highly relevant to your best interest for very poor reasons lately'.
As the statistics normally swing, my opinion happens to align with reddit at least 60% of the time, and there are millions of us. That represents quite a considerable potential right there. I informed them of this. And now that I know other redditors have written in, too, I feel quite reassured--so thank you. |
Except it actually was being used for its intended purpose by many people, including members of the US government and armed forces.
If I stab myself with a fork, does that make forks illegal?
Our problem is the technology is still too new and our judiciary system is too old. They are like trying to run Arma II on an Apple II. Their should be a worldwide authority that governs what is and is not acceptable in the form of our current courtrooms, but with more knowledge at hand of what's actually going on. |
I prefer to just believe. FIRE UP THE F |
I don't think you're stupid for not adoring Windows. I think you're stupid because you seem like an arrogant, opinionated douche!
Also, you said if people want to game why not use consoles, while I simply stated consoles aren't as powerful, hence why a lot use PC's (Windows just happens to be the best OS for PC gaming at the moment).
> It says you are too poor to get a mac and too stupid to use linux.
I disagree. I could easily afford to purchase quite a lot of Apple products right now if I wanted. I have also stated that I am a regular user of Linux. I simply don't think Apple products can provide me with the computing experience I'm looking for (hardware and software wise). Again though, it's my choice and really shouldn't annoy you as much as it seems to be. |
I've yet to have any problems.
In fact, so far windows 8 seems to have a better compatibility mode for older software (Dungeon Keeper 2 was notoriously very buggy on win 7, works fine on my win 8 machines) .
It's basically all the same code under the hood, so I'd be very surprised at windows 7 software not working on win 8. |
I fear that with these "certifications" Win 8 is walking the fine path of J2ME and its now non-existent app platform base.
I think at some point J2ME was going to be a great platform, but then "security-minded" people swooped in and required certificates in order to be able to access the platform system features (namely disk I/O and accessing phone features). It is now $300 for a 2 year certificate, which is only good for that very instance of that app. Someone finds a bug that requires an update? Fork over another $300 for a new certificate to push that update.
No small wonder the J2ME App platform is full of counterfeits, malware, and generally worthless apps. The only apps I found worth keeping were uncertified. Sideralis (a night sky map astronomy app), SOS Flash (flashes S.O.S. in morse), and Doom RPG , and a first aid reference. The rest of them didn't work or were worthless.
It sure was a lot of "fun" browsing the top (and only) 2 J2ME app databases. They either required registration (Thanks bugmenot!) or a mobile/web connection to download the app (Thanks Opera Mini Demo and USB Cord!). [then]( [browsing]( [through]( [such]( [gems]( [as]( [this](
UMNet is sadly the better of the two j2me app DB's. Getjar has better categorization, but limits its visible DB to 500 and forces me through hoops to download the app because I don't have a data plan. |
This is how it starts. One day we will end up with needing to "unlock" or root our PCs to install non market programs or programs deemed "exploitable" by entertainment industry on our PCs after the monopoly will be established. Don't be fooled this will only be bad for users and developers in the long run. |
How am i cherry-picking your words?
The first half is used talking about your own personal uses of a computer, highlighting the opposites of mainstream Microsoft products, while finishing it of by saying you only use Windows for VS (i.e. Which means you a by far technical competent and would probably have no problem using gnome or any of the many Linux distributions).
Second half you say that the average consumer should have no trouble using a Linux OS on a daily basis based on your own personal experience.
To sum it up.
First half your clearly demonstrate you are not an average consumer
Second half you state average consumers should be able to use a Linux OS on a daily basis based on personal experiences.
First half and second half are obviously connected, otherwise why write the first half?
There is nothing in your entire comment that gives any indications or is remotely close to describe why average consumers should be able to use a Linux OS.
If the two parts aren't connected, the first part becomes irrelevant and was written to feel good about how you have escaped the evilness that is Microsoft? If that is the case, then your second half becomes more 'trustworthy' in the regard that there is no basis for what you consider an average consumer. Though it is still highly flawed since you give no indications as to why, except of course "personal experience" where you give no further information what that actually is. |
For one hes made over 100 million dollars on minecraft by promising "early adopters" a finished product. 5 years on and its still not polished, or complete. The mod community has been carrying the game for over a year, and the development cycle is abysmally slow. |
It's not exactly the Windows 8 experience itself that is coming under fire as far as open platform concerns. Windows 8 itself is just another Windows version, this time with an interface designed for tablets that throws desktop users under the bus a bit.
But that isn't the issue. The whole "open platform" concerns comes from the new WindowsRT version of Windows 8, which runs on ARM processors and thus has different requirements for programs that run on it. Not every Windows program will be able to run on WindowsRT, so they decided to regulate what gets allowed into the Microsoft "app store" for it, to make sure only things that are certified get through.
Now, that would be a nice system if certifying things that meet the requirements was the only thing they were doing. Instead they seem to be [blocking off competing products through their certification process]( to the point where the [EU is investigating if it breaks their recent agreement for mandated browser competition.](
In short, the average user won't have an issue with Windows 8 as far as regulation goes. The people who will be mad about this are the open market advocates, who don't believe that Microsoft should be allowed to regulate the apps on any version of Windows. (As it seems to be leading towards a similar solution for Windows overall.) |
Because Secure Boot is the only way to block an OS from running? Please.
If an OEM wants to, they can tweak the boot code to prevent anything but N |
Approximately 165,000 tonnes of gold has been mined thus far - assuming the ridiculous notion of making actual gold coins as part of a gold standard (as opposed to the natural slow inflation rate inherent with the gold standard) - an average coin starts at 2.5g, that equates to: 165,000 tonnes == 165,000,000,000g == 66,000,000,000 coins - a few orders of magnitude higher than bitcoins, though all off this is academic because bitcoins are so lacking in the ability to scale that that if divided equally - every single bank on earth could only have 21 BTC. To put this in terms of US currency as it stands right now: 1 cent == 0.5859g of gold - you can actually have 0.5859g of gold, that is an actual quantity of gold capable of existing, the equivalent quantity of BTC would be 0.000074569 BTC - a quantity that cannot exist without a central banking system holding actual BTC - as in some or all of the 21BTC that would keep the bank in existence - it is a central banking based system, only instead of a physical element that can be acquired the rate of inflation, if one exists, is determined entirely on the banking system in place - it doesn't matter how expensive it gets to mine gold, or make it through nuclear reactions for that matter, because it will be possible to get more gold so long as we exist . |
I find it disturbing that you people think that you're actually fighting for your rights still.
This has bill has already passed; it's called "Stingray" and "Tapwire". All they're doing now is providing the public with the illusion that they have to fight against this bill they are pushing through whilst they go behind the scenes with (Fill in the Blank) secret government agency and fuck us over with something else. Why would they go through all the trouble to make this illusion? For the very reason you all feel tired of fighting all of this bullshit. It creates an effect in psychology known as ["Learned Helplessness".](
99% of the world's money is owned by 1% of the population and visa versa. This means that we have exactly ZERO power in a system defined by monetary gain. Additionally, [it has been shown]( that the monetary system leads to corporate psychopathy. Let's just put one and one together and say that corporate psychopath -> political psychopath. This means that this 1% of people are most likely psychopaths. Good luck seeking their empathy; they don't have it. |
Makes me think of the American Revolution. It's harder in our day, though. The colonists were both geographically concentrated and isolated from their enemy. Most wars have been such.
America, though, is vast . All these large countries have like minded individuals, but they are so dispersed that though there are many opposed, they will never be able to have a prominent voice in modern politics. The powers-that-be have too much to lose. |
Google is still just getting a footing in this new venture.
Austin is the first "major" modern city. The others were smaller and easier test cases. That is a big jump.
I would guess that a year or so after Austin proves successful (installation and subscriber base), we'll see massive acceleration of expansion into these "major/mid-size" cities.
And if anyone thinks the step after that, which would be large cities, will be difficult, just remember that most large metropolitan areas are composed of smaller cities and individual neighborhoods or suburbs.
They can easily expand into a significant suburb of a major metro in the same way that they went into Austin. |
I think you underestimate how much faster a computer would react.
Peak human reaction time is about .15 seconds. If you are even remotely distracted, is probably more like .5 seconds. Then factor in the additional time it takes you to actually move your arms to turn the wheel, or take your foot off the gas and push the break, and then the additional time it takes for the car to actually react to that.
A computer, on the other hand, is probably processing in the gigahertz range, meaning that complex decisions based on live-processed data probably happen every few hundred microseconds, and the amount of time it takes to get the vehicle to begin acting on that data is trivial, assuming your hardware is configured intelligently. |
What's the alternative? Support the opposing candidate who publicly supports the shitty policies that we're pissed off about?
If all viable candidates agree on some things you don't like, the only thing you can do is zero those out and base your decision on what's left. |
As a member of a debate team for a long time, you are still excited when you win, but learn to accept when you've lost and come to appreciate the learning experience. That's the moral of this story. It's not about me feeling superior and being right. It's about taking a "loss" or being wrong as gracefully and respectfully as you can, which in my opinion, is to learn from it (which i state at the bottom of my previous comment). I'm the first to admit that I've been wrong about politics before and probably will be many, many more times in the future, and I'm willing and able to reevaluate and restructure my positions if I am wrong.
The problem is a lot of politicians and academics are a) pressured into maintaining failing policies/views to keep their party base voting for them/their academic institution from firing them, or b) so ingrained with their particular way of thinking that they become personally offended by challenging views. Personal offense leads to the downward spiral of personal and character attacks, everyone gets impulsive and in the heat of the moment, stupid things get done/said. That never goes anywhere worthwhile.
I don't see myself as superior to the man; never have i brought it up to him to rub it in his face. It just rubbed me the wrong way that he'd rather remove himself from the debate instead of just letting it go and once again engage with us in the learning process that is open debate. |
auto claims adjuster here - this sort of data has been around for a while. lets say you mistakenly damage your car -- no fault to anyone else, just you and a quick lapse in judgement, but you cause damage to your vehicle. a lightbulb goes off over your head, with the perfect excuse..."i'll tell them i was parked, and when i came back to my car i noticed the damage!!" brilliant!!
wrong. if your damage looks weird, we'll send out a 2nd appraiser - a forensics specialist who will go into great detail to figure out what happened. but they'll also pull the codes from your on board computer - did an airbag deployment event occur? if your car is running and you hit something, the computer will be sent an 'alert' noting everything your vehicle is doing -- are your wheels turned, going above a certain speed, brakes applied...etc -- if the computer hits on all the requirements to deploy the airbags, they will deploy. now this is where my job becomes fun - because if the computer does not hit enough requirements to deploy the airbags, they wont. but an event will be imbedded in the computer. so, you continue to lie to your insurance company (so illegal, so so so illegal) and we catch this event was triggered a few ignition cycles that coincide with when this happened...we'll deny your claim (this is one of many reasons, but its the most concrete). on top of that, we are bound to report you to the state... who then can review the claim and see if it warrants a fraud investigation. which could mean a great deal of legal problems for you. |
The industry is making a change over from tape recorded to digitally recorded CVR and FDR units (digital ones are called DCVR and DFDR.) These units have to withstand tremendous amounts of stress, heat and pressure. The testing standards are quite high and the FAA doesn't like handing out approval letters to units that haven't been proven.
Think of it this way, you have to prove to the FAA that your digital memory stick can survive a 400 mph (credit to [/u/chubbysumo]( crash into the ocean. In which your memory stick will be submerged in salt water for days. Then upon finding the DFDR/DCVR you have to be able to extract the data. This very same unit also needs to be able to crash into a runway, be in a fire very hot fire with internal temps reaching 500 degrees. Again, thanks to [/u/chubbysumo]( for clarifications on testing standards.
>The boxes main priority is that they need to withstand 2000 degree heat for 1 hour or more. Its not the water and other things that the FAA is worried about. Those boxes can withstand a 400mph impact into a concrete wall, its a matter of if the components can, and if the components inside can withstand large amounts of heat for an extended period. The boxes internal temp can hit 500 degrees. anything plastic would melt, as would most tin based solder.
So it takes a while for our new technology to make it into airplanes when you consider the gauntlet the FAA makes you run through.
Source: I'm an avionics broker. |
These black boxes only store information for like 20 minutes or so, and are really only used in the event of a crash to find out what happened. This isn't some crazy spying tool or whatnot, the only way this could be used to track someone is if they had some wireless connection to it. This headline is somewhat misleading. |
Auto manufacturers don't report failures, police and safety studies like mine do. Auto manufacturers sell cars that claim safety, and if they don't provide that safety, there's no amount of data that will save them from lawsuits.
Additionally, the EDR readings I've collected have never been used outside of our research (we select certain variables to publish with the rest of the PII sanitized report), but anyone with access to the right equipment and the vehicle interior could obtain their own reading. Access to the vehicle requires either cooperation with the police on scene or cooperation with the owner (the insurance company) when the vehicle has gone to the salvage yard. It's hard enough for me with a government ID and signed memos from insurance CEOs to get access to the vehicles, I'd be surprised if the manufacturer had an easy time of it.
With that said, the information contained in the EDRs I've imaged has never been incorrect. As far as I know, the information has never been incorrect for anyone in the nation-wide system. In an instance that it was incorrect (reporting an air bag deploying when it didn't, etc.) we would consider it a malfunction and issue a Field Safety Notification that would jumpstart a dedicated investigation.
Safety systems can be casually considered fail-proof. Within the set of parameters they're expected to work within, they produce a very reliable set of results. The problem is choosing what results you want from them. For instance, my study, NASS, found that offset frontal crashes were generating far more serious injuries than you'd expect, even though the air bags functioned as expected. The problem was that with an offset frontal, the occupant is thrown forward and to the side, often hitting the steering wheel hub air bag and glancing off, hitting their head on the A-pillar and occasionally having the roof rail air bag deploy and trap their head near the corner of the instrumentation panel. The air bags functioned exactly as they were meant to, but the designers of the vehicle didn't consider this unusual crash configuration. |
I think I can safely say that it takes more than just a game to turn someone into a forever alone neckbeard. Perhaps there are other contributing factors? For example I don't go looking for dates because I'm embarassed that I still live with my parents( |
Did Call of Duty Kill Chivalry?"
No, you hoes did when you had it made and decided that it was demeaning to have everything purchased for you, to have doors opened for you, to be treated with immense respect and always in a mans consideration. Working sucks and everyone knows it, why you pushed so hard to enter our hell hole that we shielded you from is beyond me. |
Considering the recent advancements in quantum computing I wouldn't doubt the NSA has a quantum computer capable of instantly cracking any encryption.
No. Cryptography is based on the principle that there is a "hard" underlying problem to solve, such that it is only "easy" if someone has a critical piece of information ("trap-door")-- you'd want this because you wouldn't want the intend recipient of an encrypted message to need an army of super computers to decrypt your message (and he wouldn't, because he has a secret key, etc, seeing as he's the intended recipient), but you'd want an outside attacker to be unable (or be completely, utterly infeasible) to decipher your message regardless of the tools (supercomputers, quantum computers, etc) he has at his disposable.
That said, as technology advances, so too does our assumptions on a theoretical attacker. For example, if you were to encrypt a message using a cryptosystem that relies on integer factorization (this is an example of a "hard problem") you could use significantly smaller numbers if you knew your attacker didn't have a computer-- it would be quite time-consuming to factor a number like, say, 8,551,817 by hand, but a computer could probably do this in seconds. Most cryptosystems use numbers that are impractical (e.g. would take many, many years) to crack using the best known attack at the time (although not too much bigger, because doing so then becomes more computationally intensive for your intended recipient to solve/decipher).
What I'm trying to see here, is that the development (or possible development) of quantum computers is nothing new, and cryptographers have been aware of their potential for years. Off the top of my head, [Shor's Algorithm]( was discovered in 1994. |
you know, they started out OK. Back when I got my first iphone (~2009?), they had an app called scramble. it was amazing. it was pretty much boggle, on a phone. two to four people could play on the same phone, a feature called "pass and play". This was THE ENTIRE POINT of why I (and many others) liked the game. It was the reason my former roommate Zach introduced me to the game the minute he saw that I had a new iphone. My girlfriend and i played this constantly, passing between us. it was great.
then they killed it. they pulled the app, and replaced it with "zynga word scramble", which did NOT have pass and play, and had a bunch of microtransaction bullshit. and you had to sign in to facebook just to play! what the hell. my phone died and i had to restore it, and when i did, the stupid app store said "hey your app is gone sucks to be you". fuck you apple, i paid for that software and you can't just take it away from me. so i jailbroke my phone and found it on installous. then i got a new phone, pirated scramble original non-clusterfuck edition, and was happy for a while. until i had to restore my phone yet again, and lo and behold, installous was gone forever. if only i had backed up the .ipa. |
Let me tell you, when you appear in front of a building where you're having a meeting with Chevrloet Aveo or Toyota Echo your clients will not think very high of you.
If you appear in un upscale car it´s a completely different story.
I can´t remember how many times my colleague and I went to a meeting, where our clients saw our cars and it ended with me going on motorbike rides with CEO´s and getting more opportunities and perks than my friend that no one really wanted to interact with.
Were they right to think I am better at business than my then colleague?
Yes they were.
There is also a thing of safety. I don´t want to ride in a death trap, specially when I ride with my new born. |
how many redditors vote? how many voters are in amerikkka? where do the rest of the voters get their news from? the media congolomerates which produce the news? |
Alright guys, coming in here with a bit more perspective than that article implies. I'm a student at OSU where I saw this speech Monday night. I thought it seemed interesting to see what the new FCC chairman and successful OSU grad Tom Wheeler had to say. In his speech, and in the following Q&A session, he stated that he is a supporter of net neutrality, and that the only things the government should regulate is getting internet access to schools and rural homes, keeping child pornography offline, making sure 911 calls and emergency systems work flawlessly, and stated that he only believes in regulation to promote competition in the marketplace.
On a more specific note, in the article they quote him as saying
> "I am a firm believer in the market," he said. “I think we’re also going to see a two-sided market where Netflix might say, ‘well, I’ll pay in order to make sure that you might receive, my subscriber receives, the best possible transmission of this movie.’"
The problem is, they fail to quote what he says right before that, or the question he was asked. The interviewer had just asked him if ISPs should be able to charge based off of how much data people use individually the way Canadian ISPs do, rather than the standard unlimited broadband plans in the US today.
His response was that he would not regulate to prevent this from happening because people who play Netflix or play games online all day do use more bandwidth at a greater cost to ISPS. He suggests that rather than see individuals have to cover those costs, it would be more likely for companies like Netflix to step in willingly and essentially subsidize their users by covering those increased costs. What he did not say was that the ISPs should or can force a company like Netflix to pay for those costs.
Regardless, these statements DO NOT imply that he is against the open internet, in fact he made it clear multiple times in his speech that he is a supporter of Net Neutrality, and is firm in his belief that the FCC is making the right decision to continue to fight Verizon in court in defense of Net Neutrality.
Also don't get me wrong, the guy is as slimy of a politician/lobbyist/capitalist as they come, but at least he isn't some right-wing nutjob saying lets track everything you do online and let corporations control the internet. He actually even hinted at his own disapproval of the NSA. Similarly he also isn't a far-left nutjob spewing some idealist nonsense that isn't going to actually happen and saying regulation is the answer to all our problems. He was unanimously confirmed by the senate in a time that anything bipartisan is pretty shocking, so he can't be all bad. |
Fuck these assholes, I work for Comcast and have personally heard some of the conversations from senior VP's during the time when they released the Xbox 360 app and the issue of net neutrality came up since they announced that their app would not go against a data cap. But everything else would, these guys know EXACTLY what they are doing and try to play dumb when they were told that it wasn't allowed. The bottom line is that these government agencies are not strong enough or funded enough to support the never ending onslaught of lobbying and special interest interference. I hope that Verizon's case fighting net neutrality will lose in court because it will be doom for the internet as we know it now. Comcast and every single other ISP is steadily losing video subs quarter to quarter and their way to respond? Better service? NOPE. New types of channel bundles/unbundling? NOPE. Instead they will put a data cap on you and force you to not watch anything if you cannot watch traditional TV. This past year we upgraded our CMTS's for Docsis 3.0 rollout and the millions of dollars of key equipment was FREE and they STILL artificially make sure the upgrades to speed are so stupidly small even though the capacity and channels are freed up to support upgrading everyone's speeds by at least 4 times with no issue. And with more channel bonding and Docsis 3.1 the speeds can reach into gigabit territories. But they want to shaft everyone and they want everyone paying $100 a month in services. |
Not really... You can't use USPS / UPS / FedEx as an example because it's the same company from sender to receiver.
Instead, imagine if you have regions where UPS and FedEx and USPS operate, but none of them cover the entire country. For purpose of example, let's say UPS operates on the east coast, FedEx on the West Coast, and USPS doesn't operate on either coast but will agree to send packages between UPS and FedEx.
So, someone in New York City sending a package [p] to Los Angeles, if the parcel services worked exactly like the internet, would work like this:
Person in NYC -- $$$ + [p] ---> UPS
UPS --- $ + [p] ---> USPS
USPS --- [p] ---> Fedex
FedEx --- $ ---> USPS
FedEx --- [p] ---> Person in L.A.
Person in L.A. --- $$ ---> FedEx
.
So when all is said and done, here's what happened:
Person in NYC: -$$$, -[p]
UPS: +$$
USPS: +$$
FedEx: +$
Person in L.A.: -$$, +[p]
.
That's how things work now. So if you put Amazon's theoretical infinite central warehouse in New York, a LOT more shipping happens. Everyone still gets their money.
The tricky bit is when people want more shipping to happen than can be done. Amazon uses a TON of shipping, so what happens when the system can't handle Amazon's needs and everyone else's needs?
As things stand, customers complain to their ISP that their Amazon deliveries are going slow and getting held up. ISP responds by trying to satisfy customers, and tries to reprogram their shipping system so that all of Amazon's packages can get through on time. This has a negative effect on other services, but those are smaller, less popular operations. People either don't notice, or aren't surprised. Amazon is still paying per package, so they're getting tons of money from Amazon, and they are finding they need to expand their technology and infrastructure to handle doing more business.
The ISPs see that priority treatment as valuable, and would like to add another dollar to the NYC person's payment when they want the system to bend to guarantee service like that. We (mostly) see that as a bad idea, as the ISPs lose incentive to upgrade infrastructure.
The real problem comes when UPS starts a side business selling products that need to be shipped. They are then paying themselves for shipping, and paying themselves for priority, whereas Amazon has to pay UPS for shipping and priority. You can bet the packages from UPS's side business are going to get through no matter what, even if it squeezes out packages from Amazon that paid for priority.
And this is why I, personally, would like to see legislation preventing ISPs from engaging in any kind of content delivery business. For an ISP to be both in competition with its customers AND in charge of whether its customers can get their content through, is a massive conflict of interest. The only thing you will ever see coming from that system is an economy where the ISP also owns all of the content delivery. In our market, it will start with the heavy content - so Netflix will lose and Redbox will win. Next will be streaming radio, knocking down Pandora and Spotify and replacing them with ISP-brand services.
Funny thing that happens along the way, is gradually you're dividing the pipes into two factions. ISP-native traffic (obviously the most essential), and outsider traffic. As the ISP-native traffic grows by launching and co-opting heavy streaming services, the amount left in the pipe shrinks. So they can still make an argument that outside traffic needs to pay for prioritization, after all, there isn't enough room for the ISP's traffic and everyone else.
At least, as the portion of a company's expenses that are devoted to bandwidth costs shrinks, so does the ISP's ability to outcompete them by giving themselves free bandwidth. Online shopping will probably be unaffected, as the costs are more about the product and shipping and less about the website. |
No no. No. This is bad. Fuck off FCC shill. We the consumers already pay for bandwidth. Why don't you ask the ISPs to bring their speeds up and quit bitching about netflix and YouTube. Tell them to live with net neutrality because otherwise I'll just get a VPN to use all the services I want without my ISP being an asshole over my usage of a service I already pay ridiculous amounts for. |
Uh, no, it also gives the government power to enforce the laws regarding the right. |
The cellphone situation there is so fucked because of the insane amounts of competition. You know how 'plan buyouts' are just becoming a thing in the US with T-mobile? Every single Korean carrier does it and has been for years, every month costs like $80/line, but you'll get a counteroffer the moment you sign up for a service from another company saying they'll give you the latest phone and buyout your plan and give you three months free if you switch. And so on and so forth. |
I currently live in seoul and have never had faster or cheaper internet.
Moving back to Ireland soon where i live 30min from the city center of Dublin where my family is stuck on less than half a MB of speed... and thats a god dam land line! |
I buy 97% biodegradable packaging kcups for $30 for 80 shipped... And compost them myself. Where's the waste? |
I think you, like most Cxx's these days, are missing the point. The phrase "cut off your nose to spite your face" is appropriate.
There's nothing wrong with profit as a goal. There IS something wrong with profit as the only goal. As a business your goal should be to balance all of the other things with profit. But when you decrease things like customer satisfaction in the name of profit... you're sacrificing future, long term profit, for the immediate, short term benefits. |
Most people are ignorant of the existence of such repercussions, due to marketing, market saturation, and lack of knowledge.
In the case of buying headphones most people know 3 different headphone types, genuine Apple buds, shitty $10 generics, and Beats.
If you buy Beats you think you're buying top of the line, so you don't know about the repercussion of overpaying at least in terms of resource derived values, not self-assessed value because that tends to be hugely susceptible to marketing.
So if I buy beats and I've never heard what Dennon 880's or Sennheiser HD600/650/800's sound like of course I think that Beats are good choice given my lack of knowledge and price comparison.
Looking at how most humans buy their tech it's not a surprise given that marketing plays in to how the tech is displayed in stores, and how knowledge of it is propagated through the internet. Senn and Dennon don't advertise their headphones, they don't have deals with BestBuy on how to display them, hell BestBuy doesn't even stock their non-mass market models.
Most people when buying a product without heavy market research are more often than not making a choice that can have negative economic repercussions that they won't know about, it's built into how companies make a profit.
Next such repercussions can be seen as negligible because they're still a working pair of headphones, and it's arguable you're buying them as a fashion accessory.
However since the arrival of Skull Candy and Beats on the scene the headphone market has been transformed from headphones being a technical tool to being a statement meaning that most of the popular items that keep the lights on in places like BestBuy and Amazon and NewEgg are the ones that receive more attention than items showing superior quality.
This is called selling a lifestyle, it happens with most if not all popular products today. |
I sell these things, the people that buy them are some of the most technologically UN-savvy people in the population, there's no way they're going to be hooked to the internet, the people using them are the 50 - 70 age range and most of them have aol email addresses. The tassimo uses a barcode system, so I'm doubting keurig will go to RFIDs, but it would be interesting if they did.
Keurig is already shooting themselves in the foot by not offering the refillable pods for the vue. Many of the potential buyers DON'T buy them because they dont take the K-cups which they still have at home. I've seen this scenario go down in half of all potential sales. Most don't want more bells and whistles, they are overwhelmed by such intricacies.
They even pulled the espresso flavor k-cup and instead put out an entirely separate machine that only does espresso. People don't have money or space for a second system. That model by the way, the rivo, is failing miserably.
If they just learned to give people the option to NOT feel trapped (by giving them the refillable pod) the customer base will eventually become complacent and buy the pods anyway.
But NO, they're just being greedy.
So by not giving them the option of refillable pods the manufacturer triggers the fight or flight mechanism, and the potential customers just say "to hell with it" and walk away from the whole dam system of pods.
About a year ago they pulled the kona, very popular flavor, then finally released it as a fancier k-cup that retails for $30 a box instead of the normal $11. Somewhere a greedy corporate angel got his/her wings.
When working at a coffee roastery, the roast master there said a french press was THE best way to have a cup of coffee. Personally, I just drip about 5 cups and refrigerate the rest for iced coffee. |
Best accessory for the Keurig is the K-Cup. A silver cup that has a cleanable mesh "basket" that you can put your own ground coffee into (or tea). It replaces the black one meant for puncturing the bottom of the personal ones.
It's $20 and it's easy to change/load for quick coffee.
It comes with the Keurig packs you can buy at costco, so I've always assumed that it's one of their products but after reading this article I'm not too sure. |
My truck already sort-of has this. I am a hobbyist mechanic and threw my truck up on a buddy's lift to take a peek. The car detects that it's been lifted and requires a authorization code from the manufacturer before you can re-start it. It's allegedly a theft protection mechanism but they make you pay exorbitant amounts of money for the one time use codes. Another friend has a dealership and they buy a yearly license or something so he was able to help me out. |
I too also like apple built quality, but the price is just to high, and for that price, i could and even more powerful computer that suites my needs (gaming)
Also, sometimes repairing an apple product isn't really easy. But it could be done. But like macbook air and the all new macbook pro retina display, repairing, changing ram, changing harddisk is even harder because they're using proprietary hardware, ram are soldered (iirc). Making the repair very costly. |
Apparently Voltaire would shoot Eich, then.
Because Eich is the one who wanted to pass a law that strips the right of gay couples to say "I do."
No one wants to strip Eich of any rights. No one is asking for laws banning anti-gay thought. What they're asking for is for decent people to not patronize a company helmed by a man who would point the gun of government at his neighbors, so that they conform to his religious morality.
We all have the right to freedom of thought and expression. We most emphatically do not have the right to demand that our thoughts and expression be respected by others, and that we be absolved of their consequences.
Since you are having trouble grasping this, I'll |
I'm pretty busy, but almost everything he complains about is mitigable with minor amounts of experience. Like almost everything in software development. Indeed I would go so far as to say this is a monologue exposing his own incompetence rather than anything else.
> Our decision to build on top of SMS/MMS involved huge, unanticipated technical hurdles.
For a start no it didn't, the APIs are fine. If they were never ever going to be able to do that cross platform then what was the point? There was none. MMS is and always has been broken and a nightmare. This is bad management. Why would you choose to make a cross platform product that functioned completely differently on two platforms.
> Even when you don’t support older Android versions, fragmentation is a huge drain on resources.
You can choose which phones you want to run on. Focus on 80% of the market and then get the job done. Maybe later when you have the job done focus on specific issues. Nothing to do with dev team size. Just bad management.
> Google’s tools and documentation are less advanced, and less stable, than Apple’s.
What does this do with having to get the job done, if even true? Show how this hindered you. Complaining about APIs when you are clearly, at best, hiring mediocre talents in the field is pointless. It is just bad management.
> Fragmentation worsens the MMS problem.
Supoorting MMS as mentioned is utterly fucking stupid.
> Google has two JSON libraries; the one that doesn’t ship with Android performed much better.
Then use the jackson json library (i assume) and fucking get on with it. Also why are they experiencing performance issues reading json? How much network IO are they doing? Bad management.
> Android apps also take much longer to compile than iOS
Is this a fucking joke?
> Android’s equivalent is slow
No one uses the simulator. Especially on OSX, which i assume his preciousness is doing. |
Its interesting that you said this, because its actually directly contradictory to what Adam Smith envisioned, and one of the main reasons why he wrote "Wealth of Nations" in the first place.
For all of the talk of Comcast as a monopoly, you could make a convincing argument that the behavior of Comcast and other incumbent companies in this market kind of mirror the actions used to justify mercantilism, which Adam Smith makes it clear that he's responding to.
At this point, its important to note that mercantilism up to this point was mainly a collection of pamphlets and treatises on specific industries, and the idea of "mercantilism" was a straw man of sorts that Smith invented. Mercantilism, and mercantilist thought, displayed certain underlying doctrinal threads, but didn't actually have the coherence of an economic system that we would envision today.
So, as a quick review, Smith was mainly synthesising larger economic conclusions from industry-specific misconceptions and failures. Are these failures as ubiquitous, i.e. across as many markets, as they were in Smith's time? Well, no, although certain valid arguments could be made about perfect competition/information, but that's a different issue.
The point is, Smith had identified certain thoughts, specifically protectionist tariffs, that many thought served economic interests overall, and proceeded to prove logically that they don't. These 'protectionist tariffs' could (I believe) be viewed as analogous to other barriers of entry, such as the barriers to entry currently enjoyed by cable and internet companies. Economists have written about this, but the real rub is always applying theory such as Smith (or Keynes or Arrow or whoever you want) to real world issues while simultaneously needing to simplify certain real-world complications in the name of theoretical coherence. Economics widely recognizes that this sort of business practice is terrible from the perspective of the agent (or consumer). The problem is that we as a country currently seem to be focusing, with respect to beneficial policy changes, on the perspective of the firm and efficient production, at the expense of the consumer and the ability to efficiently consume (have options, apply preferences, max utility, etc.). Our biggest challenge will be somehow bringing focus back onto the demand side of the equation, because issues such as those shown by Comcast exhibit (in my opinion) too great of a focus on firms and the supply side of the equation. |
No one has posted the correct answer yet.
They are considered a natural monopoly:
The costs of creating something like Comcast is so expensive, for example installing thousands and thousands of miles of cable, that it's not profitable for competitors to enter in the market. Sometimes governments will grant protection to natural monopolies so they can make up the large upfront costs, but this isn't the case with Comcast. |
It's not a monopoly, although it certainly has that effect. Maybe it would be if they both merged, but even then probably not because you are free to get your internet and television from other sources. As it is, I've never lived anywhere that gave me the option to choose between Comcast and TWC, although I was able to choose WOW cable/internet over Comcast where I am now. In most parts of the country, as far as I know, cable companies are given exclusive rights over geographical territories, and that's not going to change regardless of whether there is one or a hundred different providers. |
Technically they're an oligopoly, which is just a legal version of a monopoly that takes advantage of the sheer sizes of the main ISP/Cable companies to keep out competition. The sad thing is that due to the sheer size and power of these few companies it'll be a long time before things change. The sad reality is that they have deep enough pockets to keep legislation tied up and minimize damage to their control over the market. I do think there is hope however, especially as people become more and more aware of these bad practices. For real change to happen I think a grand majority of the voting populace needs to be aware of and against the practices of these companies.
Politicians by and large look out after themselves. If it's in their favor to oppose the companies because it'll get them reelected then that's what they'll do. If it's in their favor to support the companies because they'll fund their campaigns then that's what they'll do. We need to reach the point where it becomes more valuable to oppose the companies then to support them, in the eyes of politicians that is. Once we reach this point is when I think we'll begin to see real change in the political theatre and start to see real attempts to promote competition and dissolve these companies' total control over the market.
Lastly I'd just like to say this: Politicians don't look to solve issues, if they did they wouldn't have anything to run on in their next campaign. They'll do enough to be able to show their constituents that they are working in their favor and leave enough unsolved to be able to take a stand on those issues come the next campaign. |
My parents have Comcast as their sole option for anything >1.5 Mbps, and for months had connection dropouts like clockwork every 4 hours. Comcast did nothing to fix it, even after repeated tech support and customer service calls, until they filed with the state attorney general and sent a copy to Comcast. That got things fixed real quick. |
It would be cool if VPN like thing was kind of 'built-in' to the internet.
For example, say we have a network like so:
A E
\ /
B------D
/ \
C F
And B was an ISP that is being payed by E for the fast lane.
So to get around this everyone encrypts their traffic and points it at D.
B doesn't get to find out what type of traffic it is so the only thing they can do is slow it down, competition takes over and they are the ones that loose out.
D however, can slow the traffic down for F but that is completely reasonable as they can swap their own ISP.
This has the effect of B only knowing who out of A and C is causing the traffic, they don't know if the target is E or F all they know is it is coming from D making very hard to filter traffic. |
You can have both, but it is more important to prioritize competition over "net neutrality" (a term which actually nobody is able to define precisely). Even if the FCC's current definition is adopted, it does not cover paid-peering which is at the center of the Netflix-ISP fights. When Netflix has to pay ISPs, ultimately Netflix customers are paying.
Contrast what's happening here with the approach that OfCom (the UK equivalent of FCC) has taken:
The |
Okay. So we need to start researching politicians. I'm sure there's a good site out there breaking down state and federal elections EVEN for the |
This isn't something that needs a |
The purpose of persistent storage is to be:
Available - respond when I request
Persistent - store my data
Responsive - complete the request as quickly as possible
How responsive a storage medium is dictates it's performance, that characteristic is latency. IOPs and bandwidth are merely products of the request queue and the latency of the device. Queuing theory or "Littles law"
helps to explain this.
Take an application which has a queue of 20. If my HDD has a latency of 5 milliseconds, but my SSD is 1 millisecond, my IOPs go up by a factor of 5x because each request takes 1/5 the time. The app doesn't changes it's requests, the time to complete each request is reduced. All kinds of fun stuff then happens, for example CPU usage increases as it spends less time waiting on storage. |
Or, they could offer the movie to be viewed in any way (home, theatre, mobile) on any platform with a comprehensive library of on demand media at a price that reflects the convenience of distribution in the modern day.
People are simply demanding media to be delivered in a different way, a way that reflects modern advancements and conveniences. There are many examples of new and old companies who have adapted to this, and benefitted hugely. I will absolutely not pay $30 to buy a blue ray literally half a year after it comes out. I will gladly rent it for one time use at 3 to 5 dollars. But, I'm also not going to wait 4 months to rent and watch the movie I want to see now. I also don't happen to have much time to get to the theatre. So if the only option I'm left with is to download it from a torrent site, that is what I'll do because it is currently the path of least resistance.
Successful companies cater to consumer demands and become and stay successful because of this. |
ITT a bunch of useless palaver about torrent clients.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH INSTALLING THIS ADDON (ublock)
OK, so I installed it today after seeing this thread yesterday. Wanted to think it over.
First problem: I tried to search through FF for ublock - not listed. There's an issue with using a special character as part of your name - people (the masses) can't find you! So I came back here to reddit, luckily the post was still in my recently viewed, so I didn't have to do any extensive searching.
Installed without issue. I'm on a windows 8.1 system x64. I have AdBlock Plus with element hiding helper currently. I have several filters that I've specifically created. One is for the Facebook popup to confirm that I agree with their policy of making it easier to find me. I do not agree with that, so I will not accept it. I digress....
Immediately, ublock is not as user-friendly. ABP has an arrow pulldown menu for options. ublock options (other than off or on for that page) have to be accessed through FF addons menu. OK, that's fine, I should be able to set and forget. So my mistake is probably that I tried to do it the easy way by creating a backup file from ABP and then just importing that into ublock. So I go into the settings to see and notice that no filters are shown in the "my filters" tab. Or whichever tab shows the specific filters you can add manually. So I go into ABP and copy paste them into ublock.
I disabled ABP and EHH and go to my first site.... ads. AND, ublock is off and unable to be turned back on. Well darnit. I know I'd created an exception filter for a particular part of this page, so that must be the error, I think. So there is nothing in the "whitelist" tab, so I decide to just "reset to defaults" and omit the "import" step. I can just re-add the copypasta filters and that should work, right?
WRONG.
After doing the "reset to default," everything is blank. No radio boxes are checked and the auto filters list won't even load, just goes to a winding wheel of death. I waited about a solid minute to see if anything would come up, and it never did. I also couldn't tick any boxes and have them be saved when I went back.
OK, end of experiment! I don't have the patience for this. I've never had any problems I couldn't solve with ABP with EHH, I was just hoping to get a faster experience. Oh well. |
I think you really have to have an understanding of what the technology world was like in the late 90s to understand why the rulings made a lot of sense at the time and why many people (myself included) felt they didn't go nearly far enough.
In the mid-to-late 90s, Windows was personal computing.
Apple was in serious existential jeopardy and in no way an actual competitive threat. Macintoshes were running an operating system that was far behind Windows and that Apple had made several false starts at replacing with something more modern before giving up, acquiring NeXT, and bringing Steve Jobs back in 1996. It'd still be years before OS X became publicly available or even the announcement of the iPod -- let alone the iPhone -- and eventually iOS.
Linux had some presence in the server market, but had even less desktop presence than it does today. Even Linux for embedded applications that are nearly ubiquitous today barely even existed at the time.
If you were going to use a personal computing device for almost anything back then, it was running Windows with very few exceptions. This gave Microsoft incredible power over the industry and anything that was a threat to Windows was treated as something to be attacked with the full weight of the company.
Microsoft viewed Netscape and as a threat because it had the potential to make the operating system not matter. If you could run applications on anything that ran Netscape, suddenly people might not need Windows anymore.
So Microsoft responded by doing anything they could to stop that from happening. They'd use their licensing agreements with hardware OEMs to freeze Netscape out (and the OEMs didn't have much choice because to sell a computer, they had to have Windows). They baked IE very deep into the OS itself. IE wasn't just another application in Windows 98, it was embedded into the OS so there was no avoiding it. Feed Windows Explorer HTML and it'd open it up like a webpage because Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer were intentionally built around the same core. That may not sound like a big deal, but thing about all the applications you've seen that embed IE as a result. Even Steam did so up until a few years ago. Then start tacking on proprietary extensions, encourage their adoption, and break compatibility with your competitor.
There was a phrase coined to describe this strategy: [Embrace, extend, and extinguish]( |
I'm running Xubuntu right now. I just checked, and it takes 4 clicks to get to the custom DPI settings page. The only times I've messed with the x config file is to do things that a normal user would never have to do.
Xubuntu is a user friendly experience. I can't speak for all flavors, but I've tried most of them, and they are far simpler than Windows. They're just different, which means there is a learning curve. |
I will tell you exactly how I like to handle my typical clients and why.
Every server has shadow copies (file versioning) enabled and Raid 1 for all volumes, period (two drives mirrored). This IS NOT a backup, but it helps a lot if one drive fails in such a way that you could just fall back on the other one. Side note: if you have Raid 5 ANYWHERE, get rid of it. It is a false sense of security and with the size of drives these days, it should never be used.
Image backups of the server, updated daily, as well as incremental file system backups, and full backups every week. If the server was to fail, I want to have it back up and running as quickly as possible. This can be accomplished with lots of different software. My favorite for businesses that don't use exchange or databases is actually the built in Windows Server Backup followed by Veeam for businesses that want to take advantage of virtualization.
The on-site backup drive is swapped every week for a month, a total of four drives. Daily is more preferable, but I have found NO-ONE DOES IT! I even catch people not swapping the weekly drives for months at a time. I could just smack them. Some take it home, others move it to the other side of the building in a fire proof safe. Yes, taking data physically off site while unencrypted opens you up to data theft, it all depends on how confidential your data is. You could always go the fireproof safe route or use backup software that offers encryption. But man do I hate the idea of encrypting a physical copy of a backup. Side note: I swap backup drives YEARLY and retire the old ones if the client permits it.
Cloud data backup. You actually have two options here. Local companies, and remote companies. If you have a quality local company with servers in a nice datacenter, that doesn't charge a bunch, go for it. They will be far easier to deal with when you need fast access to your data. I have yet to have a client go for this option, because it is more money. What I use is Carbonite. It keeps constant backups all day long and uploads them to their cloud. YES, restore would be SLOW if you had to do an entire server. But here's the deal, you have a local backup, remember? THAT is what you will be restoring from. THAT will be your saving grace, but, shit happens. If you are so unlucky that all of your drives fail or are damaged and your on-site backup drives die or your backup said it was working, but it wasn't, you now have Carbonite to fall back on. It SHOULD NOT be your first go to, it should be dead last. It should be there if shit hits the fan and every other backup method has failed. It's an insurance policy. @$50 a month for 500GB, It's CHEAP as well. Worst case, they can expedite a physical hard-drive with all your data on it to an address of your choice.
Finally, not so typically, I have a company that has servers on each side of the building. I have one set as the main, and another set as a backup. The main duplicates their critical shares MINUTE BY MINUTE. If the main was to crash, I would just jump into group policy, tell the computers where to find the backup server, everyone restarts, and off to the races again. To top that off, the backup server is backed up daily as well.
Final Note: Dependent on the size of your company, having two servers is a VERY good idea. Active directory (User stores and auth info for your entire network) can be a BITCH to restore from backup. It's always preferred to have a second active directory controller on your network with all of the information replicated on the fly. |
At the risk of being "that guy" there's a bit of contention about the benevolence and efficacy of having a Federal Highway System.
Militarily speaking, it's a great concept because it enables you to move troops a great distance with great ease. Of course, this being America, we're already pretty difficult to invade. This point is essentially moot, but worth mentioning.
The reason there's contention over the highways has to do a little with the tolls and how those projects don't tend to 'end' per se, and a LOT to do with how it made the US dependent on individual transportation, thus oil, and a lot of other things required for the auto industry. |
Man, I dunno what is going on with your browser but Firefox was pretty much the first to implement html5 videos in back in 2011 or somesuch. Granted, some html5 extensions such as MSE which Youtube uses for 1080p and 60fps versions (they wouldn't need to but they choose to do it anyway) don't work correctly just yet.
Youtube also serves you different things depending on your browser. I don't know if they still do, but for long time they sent Firefox users the Flash version rather than html5 even if the browser would support the html5 video tag. This could also be the source of your crashes; it very well could be that Flash is crashy as ever. You could go to addon manager and disable Flash plugin so that YT doesn't try to serve the Flash version. |
Carmack works mostly in the mobile division of Oculus. This article is assuming that because he considers it to be the future i.e. untethered mobile VR, the company Oculus will just abandon years of work and over a hundred employees of work put into a tethered VR HMD to switch to mobile. Nobody has announced that. |
If you have a day in hand then a bump key is easy to manufacture. Identify the make and model of the lock, buy a similar one and using a triangular file cut your key down into a bump key. A bit of practice using the lock you've just bought, a quick spray of WD40 into the target lock and you're past the lock in ten seconds. |
It's funny (not really...but) that everyone screaming about Net Neutrality forgets that the only reason we're even having this discussion is because a corrupt FCC and idiotic SCOTUS fucked up in the first place and killed real Net Neutrality in the Brand-X case.
Long story short: we already had Net Neutrality in the form of Common Carrier law, which the FCC and SCOTUS basically exempted cablecos (who were just getting into the internet game) from in the Brand-X case. |
Ah, back in the day fascism was all the rage. Why, those fascists in America forced telephone and electricity companies to supply phone and power to rural areas even when they'd make a loss providing the service! Can you imagine? Hitler himself would have blushed! Now, of course, people who live in rural areas don't get electricity; after all, the free market has to be allowed to decide who freezes and who doesn't! |
Truthfully, you may not like adventuring into a new operating system, but there is one package that makes checking out Linux really easy. People talk a lot of smack on Ubuntu, but it's definitely attractive and easy to use. If you go to their site, you can download and burn an install CD in minutes. Reboot your computer and run off of the disc alone. This way nothing gets changed on your computer and you can take a look around. I highly recommend checking out r/Ubuntu for any help.
Empathy IM/E-mail will replace Pidgin/Adium/iChat
Open Office will replace Microsoft Office
Firefox will replace Safari/Chrome, but you can still use Chrome
Music and Video programs are less attractive, but there are some great software you can check out. In fact, there's a kind of software store for A LOT of different software you can install easily. |
They have added some social network functionality into iTunes. You can "follow" friends or artists (or anyone) and see what music they have decided to "like" and comment on it. I don't know if it's "important" really, but it will probably be successful just from the shear weight of Apple's marketing, and the leverage that comes from having 160 million people using the application (who knows how many will actually enable Ping of course). There is nothing new compared to other social networks, but maybe people will like the customized top 10s that will be created from the music popular with your network of people. The major downside is it feels super commercial because you have to "like" things from within the store, and you also have to have iTunes open rather than a website. |
Honestly, I will never buy a dell again. Last year my hard drive crashed. I went through many diagnostic reports, keeping track of every error. It was all under warranty. I would phone them up every couple of days to get them to send a new one. Eventually they told me it wasn't their fault, though it was under warranty.
That wasn't what was so frustrating. What really got me was the two hours on the phone each time, telling them, yes, I have indeed tried turning the fucking computer off and then on again, that is not the problem. Yes I can see the screen. It drove me absolutely bonkers.
Eventually I did end up getting the new hard drive, but it took almost six months and by that time my finals were long over and the things I needed on my computer had been long useless. |
I have the exact opposite experience with Dell technical support. I'm a small business customer (Vostro series laptops usually) and whenever I contact them (in some cases, I was a year out of warranty) they are always extra helpful.
One time, I spilled an entire bottle of water on a laptop, destroying the motherboard. I was 6 months out of warranty, they went ahead and replaced the entire motherboard, sending a guy to my office to do it. |
Lenovo ThinkPad T series are some of the best laptops out there, although some argue they were still better during the IBM days. Dell has some comparable Latitude models.
Lenovo consumer laptops are crap - much like Dell Inspirons. There are mixed feelings on some of the other ThinkPad series -- particularly the L, SL, and Edge lines - kind of like there are on the Dell Vostro line. |
When in doubt, escalate. I had a Gateway laptop that had a fundamental design flaw (the same part broke 3 separate times), on the third one, after they repaired my laptop (for the third time), I wrote to the CEO explaining my problem and explaining that I couldn't recommend their product due to the fact that eventually they wouldn't repair this part (after the warranty expired). I got a call from someone (they sounding like a manager type person, but I don't know that for a fact) explaining that they were going to replace my computer free of charge, but that they wouldn't be able to give me a secondary battery (basically apologizing for the fact that they would have to "downgrade" me to one onboard battery, due to design reasons, the newer laptops didn't have a second slot)...note: they upgraded my computer through the roof (more ram, better CPU, bigger HD, etc.) because they wanted to replace my computer with at least minimum specs from my old machine. |
I get the joke, but in their defense, I had a good experience recently. I got disconnected for non-payment and was broker than a reddit server at prime time. I called in and told them when my next paycheck was coming and requested their mercy. The dude I talked to said no problem and re-activated me, contingent on my promise to pay them by a certain date we had discussed.
I didn't realize this was a thing that could happen, I was just desperate for internets. So Comcast is currently on my nice list, and nobody is more surprised than I. |
If I get time to write a less tailored letter I might.
But I think this in general is kind of the wrong thought process. Unless you're famous, the fact that the letter be terribly convincing is probably null. Politicians work to maximize influence and power, and if they get the impression that a large majority of constituents are unhappy with their attention or performance on the matter is lacking and that they might put their vote elsewhere, they're more likely to change their stance on the matter. |
Interesting that the article you link to is titled:
>"Windows 8 secure boot could complicate Linux installs"
but your title reads,
>"Windows 8 secure boot will complicate Linux installs"
Do you know something the author doesn't? |
The whole "ban email" is like saying we should ban cars because many people are poor drivers. The main problem I encounter with email at work comes down to three issues-
Copying means inclusiveness. Including a large distribution list in your discussion with one or two other persons is not good communication. It means either that you don't know who to talk to or you're trying to get support by including other people. It doesn't mean that you're fostering open communication; you're just including people in a conversation that they don't need to hear.
Replying based on the first sentence. At least once a week, I answer an email by copying the second paragraph of a prior email in the thread. And by second paragraph, I mean the 4-6th sentence of a 6 sentence email. Want fewer emails? Actually read the ones you get.
A reply is always required. My pet peeve is the "Thank you" email. Yes, it's nice to acknowledge people, but when 1/4 emails are a manager just thanking someone in front of 20-30 other people for doing their job, it's unnecessary.
The combination of these creates huge volumes of emails. For example, we have a process where our lead developer forwards build requests to our QA team who forwards them to our infrastructure. So twice a day, there is an email chain that looks like this:
DevLead to QA (CC: nearly everyone) Please run the afternoon build
QA to Infrastructure (CC: nearly everyone) Please run the afternoon build (per DevLead)
DevLead (CC: nearly everyone): Thanks
Infrastructure (CC: nearly everyone) Build run
QA (CC: nearly everyone): Thanks
DevLead (CC: nearly everyone): Thanks
So, it's 6 messages sent to about 20 people twice a day. Part of it is using the wrong system to manage an automatable process, but part of it is the issues above.
I've become more aware of it now that I try to work with an empty inbox; once I started deleting everything that doesn't a.) require my personal action b.) have useful information in the future, it became apparent to me that 80% of the email I receive each day at work is unnecessary. |
Automotive engineer here; after reading through the comments here, it is great to see the optimism about the coming of modern electric cars.
Here are some trends:
A device that can run at peak efficiency without a variable load is going to be the future of personal transportation. What HFC and Electric cars have revolutionized is the concept of motors as opposed to engines, simple breakdown, have motors power the wheels powered by either HFC/battery/generator(conventional fuel), instead of a ICE(internal combustion engine) working as an air pump to move a crankshaft to go through gearing then to differentials then to the drive wheels.
Having quick charge times is extremely important for people who want to buy a pure electric. This concept of a universal fit could help with furthering the availability of electric cars. Having solar panels on the roof is a fine idea but it will not produce as much power as the Porsche hybrid system that runs a giant flywheel. Turbines powered by wind are not viable, due to shock losses in the blade design, and the fact that they are pulling energy directly away from what the car is trying to do.
Aerodynamics are important but people will have to start liking ugly cars, the [Kammback design]( has been generally accepted by the public ranging in cars from the Ford GT to the Toyota Prius, however this is not nearly as efficient as the [boat tail]( design, which as someone who appreciates the ascetics of cars I have to say is hideous. Boat tails add about 15% more efficiency.
Here is some opinion:
Cars are not the problem with fuel consumption and pollution. It is extremely easy for people to see a H2 driving down the street and think of how inefficient that SUV is (I pay 4$ at the pump a gallon and can go 2x as far as that car with the same amount of fuel). People do not tend to realize that most of the pollution is from power generation in coal plants/gas plants/manufacturing/etc, they do not have a direct involvement with these things so leaving a phone charger plugged in for a day is a concept that they do not understand the repercussions of. That being said, a Volt is much friendlier to the environment than a Leaf. Charging cars especially in the USA from the national grid is a terrible idea without first changing how we make the power. |
No, I think it's more like the people who try to, say, replace the master cylinder for the brakes' hydraulic system, screw up, and end up having to have the car towed to a repair shop to fix it and whatever other problems they created in their attempt.
It happens enough I've heard of a shop that has a sign indicating that there will be an extra charge if you tried to fix it yourself before bringing it in. Obviously, the sign was a joke (I hope), but the sentiment I can understand.
Same thing with computers. If you go about trying to fix a problem and don't know what you're doing, you can possibly get things so messed up it's easier to just wipe everything and reinstall the OS from scratch. |
You are correct that a model of cable will be tested for hdmi electrical compliance (assuming the cable doesn't fake the certification). But what differentiates a super cheap cable from a decent cable is whether the cable you buy would actually pass the compliance test. The cheap cable manufacturer will usually use a 'golden' sample for the compliance test, then produce absolute crap by saving every penny possible (including using whatever cheap plastic/copper/connectors they can buy). The cable you will get could be absolute shit. |
I have to dispute you a little here, as an installer who goes through HDMI cables like most people go through gas.
Over a short run, I'd have to agree with you to a point. We sell $5 cables as well that are the workhorse of our equipment installs (racking, local media players, etc), but we have found through extensive testing and retesting and trial and error that the same manufacturer failed miserably over long distances. The cables could indeed usually carry a lower resolution signal, but 1080p with 5.1 audio embedded on it caused nothing but problems.
I'd also partially agree about the signal quality. Indeed the signal is either all there, or it isn't, but cheaper cables can cause some "sparkly" artefacting where you get random white pixels flashing around the screen, usually when the signal is just barely reaching.
Manufacturers like Monster Cable are indeed overpriced, and I would not recommend their short cables to anyone over the cheaper alternatives, but when you start getting into the 10+m range, you'll just have to accept that the more expensive cables just outperform the cheapo ones. When you get into long runs with lots of bandwidth flowing down the cable, you just need the thicker gauge and better materials to make sure it gets there, since digital either works or doesn't work.
/rant.
P.S I'm not saying I endorse brands like monster cable specifically, nor am I saying that you shouldn't buy the cheap cables. Only that, based on personal experience as an installer, there is merit to spending $400 to a 15m cable. When you lose enough money having to reinstall cables because the cheap ones didn't work, you learn these things.
And as a final note, probably irrelevant to the whole debate, I've noticed over time that a lot of the cheaper cables have a single small solder holding the metal connector to the plastic/rubber boot that covers the end. It is ridiculously easy to snap them off when you go to turn equipment around after hooking it up. |
This reminds me of when my mom bought a TV while I was away at college. I come home to find a new entertainment system complete with HDMI cables for my consoles and PC. When I got the cables out, the receipt fell out to show she had bought 4 HDMI cables that were $100 each. |
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