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Because you stated you're trying to buy a decent gaming laptop, then I would suggest you go with a Windows OS-based laptop.
Basically, you are going to have greater gaming support and access to more games with a Windows OS. This is because most games are built and designed for this OS. Some (not all) are then ported to a MAC OS.
Also, you can buy a cheap gaming laptop under $2000 that will do everything you need.
I'm also not going to comment further on Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux. They all have their uses and excel in certain areas. It all comes down finding the right computer for you. Since you want to game, I wouldn't suggest a Mac. That doesn't mean you can't game on a Mac, it just means you'll have more options game-wise on a Windows OS. |
Remember [this guy]( who boasted about his new job at Google and [got fired]( He was supposed to promote the Chromebook at a Best Buy:
>Work in major electronic retailers, mostly Best Buy, promoting and selling the new Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook.
Would Google fire somebody for releasing such information? Definitely. Why? Because they leaked low-importance information or because they are liable to talk about high-level, sensitive stuff in the future?
It is not a stretch to think that Google was "testing the waters" in anticipation of opening their own retail stores. Google definitely has lots of secrets and it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for us.
It might also be a controlled release of information, but I highly doubt it. This intel can weaken Google's position in time as it gives the competition inside information. |
Keep in mind that Google is putting a massive amount of resources into obtaining LTE data lines. If Google and Dish Network succeed in obtaining the spectrum and FCC permissions needed to move forward this will be a golden opportunity.
Image a Google brick and mortar store where you can see and use Google Glass, the latest android distribution on compatible phones and tablets, and an improved Google OS on, conceivably, a Google flavor of netbooks/notebooks. Addionally, showcasing connectivity in the store to Google Gigabit service and state-of-the-art advanced LTE services.
Google could fan out fairly quickly using the stores as a place to test-drive services and products. It will be interesting to watch how they place the stores. I'd bet in them being close to large communication hubs. |
AOL will do anything to con people into subscribing to their dialup...for a little over $25/mo. Once my ex-gf's father called AOL to cancel dialup in favor of broadband, and he was still paying the old $40/mo. fee. After telling AOL he was switching to high speed for cheaper, they went down to $30....then....$20...then they offered him FREE dial-up. I'm sure there are people out there still paying the original $40/mo. fee, not even knowing AOL has lowered their subscription fees, that they could potentially get broadband cheaper, or go the netzero route. |
I'm guessing the idea behind this is that people now have a list of names (AKA targets) these names are then used in social engineering attacks to help people gain access to the computers of the people on this list, after this happens the people on this list will most likely have their deepest darkest secrets posted online for the world to see. |
This is spoken like someone who doesn't have any trouble affording his hobbies.
There are really fucking poor people out there. People that live in countries where there is literally no way for them to make enough money to pay for any entertainment. Are these people supposed to sit and mope and jerk off all day, every day? Especially when piracy is viewed as 100% legitimate in these countries/societies?
Take the bootleg DVD market for instance. People make a copy for 30 cents and sell it for a dollar. If everyone in the country is buying bootlegs, and it's being sold in the open, and there's no social stigma against it, why the hell would you pay $20 for a copy from a non-bootleg store? You might even have the money to do it, but fuck those greedy companies! It only costs 30 cents to make the DVD, why would you want them to make more profit thousands of miles away than your good friend does at his bootleg shop?
Look at your yacht party analogy. If someone advertises a yacht party on television (this doesn't really happen. what the fuck is a yacht party anyway?), and you're into boats, you're gonna show up. If they turn you away because you can't afford the cover charge, you're gonna be crushed. Maybe not the next time, but eventually a yacht party will come up, you're gonna get a gang of friends and crash the fuck out of that party. Hell, you might even steal the boat, because you've had plenty of spare time to research how to drive the boat, just to spite the fuckers who turned you away because you're poor.
There's a few factors at work here. There's the ubiquity of entertainment. We live in a world where we expect to, and can be entertained any time we want. Games aren't like tv shows and movies, but they're still ubiquitous entertainment.
The other is that the poor might be jealous of the rich with their Italian cars and luxury vacations and million-dollar houses, but those products aren't advertised to the poor. Video games, movies, cheap cars, cheap food, these are the things the poor see advertised to them, and they're led to believe are the things they deserve in their life.
I'm sure you're thinking this is about entitlement. It kinda is, but look at it from the viewpoint of someone else. Someone who needs stimulation in some form, who may not be smart enough to get it from a book, or doesn't get any stimulation from passive media like television. Someone who's dirt poor, barely feeding themselves, but their apartment has free internet, so they've got that going for them. Maybe they grew up with video games, but when they moved away from home the money for games dried up. Their entire life revolves around electronic interactive entertainment, AKA vidya games. Suddenly, they don't have any anymore. Maybe they got robbed and lost their classic game collection. Maybe they had to sell their NES collection to pay rent. It doesn't matter what happened. Video games are their life, and all they know and love. Maybe it's not that extreme. Again, it doesn't matter.
What matters is what happens when the poor, who don't have much good in their lives, have the last good things taken from them. You can struggle to feed yourself as long as you can come home and play Skyrim to unwind. It's when your way of unwinding is ripped from you, that you have all this tension building up. You might end up stealing a boat. You might end up killing yourself. You might end up killing someone else.
It's a bit of a leap, but not too much of one. The life of a poor man is maddeningly stressful. You're constantly shuffling money around, worrying if you're going to be able to eat if prices keep going up, or even get to work with gas prices the way they are. You need your fix at the end of the day. You need to be able to head to the pirate bay and get that Skyrim DLC you've heard so much about. Maybe then, the $0 in your bank account and the gnawing in your belly won't be so bad. All of a sudden, TPB is down. It's been raided again. Your apartment has received enough piracy warnings that they're getting ready to cut off your internet. Your world is shit, and the one gleaming pillar in your life is turning to rust.
We live in a society where entertainment keeps the masses at bay. Those at the top depend on those at the bottom being slaves to their TVs and computers in order to keep them from realizing how shitty their lives really are. When those at the very bottom of the ladder, not even on the bottom rung, the ones whose backs the ladder is resting on, are unable to get the thing that makes each day worth living...that's when things get ugly, on a global scale.
This one is a bigger leap, but I can see it as plausible. You want to see a real revolution? Take away piracy for the super-poor. Make it so the people at the very bottom have no escape, nothing but constant reminders that others have it better.
The poor might not deserve premium entertainment by your standards, but by theirs they absolutely need it. For some, it might be the difference between sitting at home being happy and being out on the streets rioting. All it takes is one bad day to turn a good man bad, and all it takes is one bad guy out there to set off a chain of events that nobody wants to happen.
I'm purely talking conjecture. I quit pirating games because I make enough to afford a WoW subscription and that's the only game I have time for. I do know how close I've been to snapping and lashing out at someone. I do know how many times I've had to really convince myself not to do something bad, when I was on hard times. Stealing is bad until it's easy and it's something you need and it's from someone who has more than they need. If you were the impoverished gardener for a multimillionaire, and you were starving, how long would it be before you started stealing food, or valuables, or anything you could reasonably get away with? You might have a strong moral compass, but you have to take care of yourself and your needs. |
Market what you don't need to. Over budget thinking the more money spent will garner a larger return.
Often times when it comes to marketing and production money will be thrown around with the thought that a higher bill equates to higher results. |
So far, it's been proven to be the most cost effective way of handling online games... the days of subscription fees are fading, and more games are heading towards free-to-play, pay-to-accessorise/pay-to-skip-grind-time type arrangements.
It boils down to human behaviour and psychology... People are more likely to try something before they buy it. And if they do, they are more likely to buy it afterwards. it's why dealerships let you test drive a car, before signing the purchase agreement, or why real estate agents let you walk around in a house before buying it.
If more game makers had time-locked games, or fully unlocked trial periods, you'd see a better rate of consumerism in general for certain titles. (say, for example: Black Ops 3 open beta weekend. When the game launches, people have a taste of what it's like already, and are more inclined to buy the title.)
This can be approached from the free to play side of things much easier, since you can take a game that's in development, open up the beta, make it free to play, and keep working on it, while guaranteeing yourself a steady stream of income.
Pirates aren't going to go away. you're always going to have people who want things for free and either can't afford to, or simply refuse to, pay for a video game. But it's a blind and idiotic goal to try and eradicate piracy altogether. you just have to make it un-appealing for the larger majority to pirate those games.
In a free to play game, you'll always have people who don't pay, and who are hellbent on keeping their wallet tightly closed. These people are spending the most amount of time in the game, grinding away for unlocks and make excellent teammates or opponents for those players that wish to pay up and get some customisation or unlock content early. |
Who the hell doesn't add |
The question is if a majority people being uninformed warrants hand-holding. I believe that just breeds uninformation (that's probably not a word, but you know what I mean). If nobody has to worry about being informed about it, why would they want to be informed? If the default is to block these things, then less people will raise awareness, because "problem solved". Well, advertisers would want to raise awareness, but if reddit is a testament to the world most people hate advertisers and they would keep it off just to spite.
Obviously I still think it should be up to each and every browser developer whether they want to have it on or off by default. But I think the best way would have it off by default, then have a simple message saying "You are currently accepting third-party cookies. [Turn off third party cookies] | [Read more about third party cookies] | [Turn off this message]". I think that would be the best way to raise awareness allowing people to choose for themselves. Having "Do not track" on by default is just as much forcing a decision upon people as having it off by default, in my opinion. |
Internships are a workforce market, and like any market, it is regulated by demand and offer.
I was lucky enough to find a paying internship as my field of work isn't saturated in my area, there are more internships available than there are interns applying for them.
In the case of Mrs. (or Ms.) Sandberg, she probably would get thousands of resumes if she was looking for an intern, she doesn't need to offer salary to find a suitable intern.
I'm in Canada, 50% of the students at my college were in social studies, they all complained about the lack of available internship. I studied Computer Science, companies actually called our teachers to let us know they were looking for interns, I made 16$/hour while learning at my internship. |
Yup. But you didn't read the second part of my response.
Forget it's an iphone. Let's just say $PHONE for a second. Let's say you're the individual in question. 25% of $SCHOOL's population has $PHONE and you really want one. You work your ass off for $PHONE, which costs $240 (what my mum's SGII cost) by cleaning, cooking and doing anything else for your friends and family, saving up for it.
Your family is not the greatest off. Your father works a rather dead-end job that pays the bills enough with some edge to spare. You have an old, second... possibly fourth hand laptop that you take to the library to write papers on. It crashes, you cry. You have your buddy who's kinda good with computers get it shaking along. But here's the kicker: Internet access in your community is super expensive in most places, and in others it's just not there.
In the mean time, $PHONE gets a new version, so old $PHONE is now $280. Your birthday has almost come and a kind aunt sends you $50 "for what you've wanted". SWEET! You get the latest $PHONE. It took you 6 months and living on a shitty little flip phone, but you now have $PHONE, something you've earned .
You now have a $PHONE with data, so you can browse the net! You can TEXT PEOPLE AND NOT LOSE YOUR MIND! With a little help from your friend with some tech experience you figure out how to tether it to your computer and access the internet with your computer from somewhere other than the library!
All the while you still don't have a dedicated network connection to your house. Why? because your mother doesn't use it and spends all day working a fulltime cleaning job because she doesn't speak english to well and your father just comes home and sits on the couch, pulls up TV from public broadcast. A cheap DSL connection isn't important to them and so you don't have one.
This story is the story of many of my high school peers, in many situations living with immigrant families who came here to get a better life for their child. |
Wrong.
> Traffic laws in a few states, including Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, specifically state that horses have all the rights and obligations of other vehicles when they are being ridden or driven on a public highway. Everywhere else, except in states like Louisiana where it appears to be illegal to ride a horse on a paved road, riders and drivers probably enjoy similar rights and obligations by implication. -
as seen here:
and:
> QUESTION:
> May the City of Edgewater absolutely prohibit the riding or driving of horses or the driving of animal-drawn vehicles on the public streets of the municipality?
> SUMMARY:
> Until legislatively or judicially determined to the contrary, a municipality may not absolutely bar or prohibit the riding or driving of horses or the driving of horse-drawn vehicles on the public streets within the municipality.
As seen here:
This is actually kinda funny (but sort of irrelevant):
And the motherlode: |
As others have stated, there would obviously be safety measures in place. You can say the same thing about ALL technology we for transportation.
An idea I saw in one comment could be that it comes to a stop and "alerts" nearby cars to its location so they can go around. It could be a fully automated process of stopping, alerting, and calling for assistance. |
Yeah, these cars will have to learn how to deal with these things effectively during the 40% and 70% transition periods, but it seems as if you're arguing that once 98-100% has been achieved, humans should still be allowed to do that stuff.
Proper driving etiquette is moving out of the fast lane when someone is going faster than you and tailgating, but that's only because it's safer to do so than risk road rage or a rear-end collision by not moving. In a perfect world, nobody would be speeding in the first place because it's dangerous . Humans just don't have reaction times that are useful at >80mph. Also, speeders tend to tailgate which is incredibly dangerous because should the cars need to stop, the tailgater is too close to utilize his entire stop distance, and as a result there will be a rear-end collision.
Again, moving out of the way is safer than stubbornly trying to make everyone adhere to the rules of the road, but it is not as safe as if no one sped or tailgated in the first place. It's similar to getting cut off. Someone makes a lane-switch with no signal unexpectedly incredibly close to the front of your car, or even while you're in their blind spot and they didn't check. You slow down to let them in, because they've made up their mind. This is the correct action because it's safer than the alternative , not because the unexpected lane switch was warranted and safe in the first place.
With stoplights, the advantages of speeding are negligible, and adversely affect traffic by eliminating gaps in cars that stoplights naturally create that should have allowed cars to make a left-turn onto the road. Even on the freeway without stoplights, unless you drive 90 literally the whole way (spend 0 time navigating blocks of cars at 70mph) you still only get a ~28% total travel time decrease. This is contrasted with the [200% increase to your odds of crashing]( |
Luddites always lose. Always. They've never been able to prevent the adoption of superior, more efficient automation. You'd be much better off embracing it and trying to steer it in a desirable direction than opposing it directly. Push for mandates preventing the government from collecting route and usage information. Push for mandates requiring a manual semi-override. Push for the adoption of a manual-drive lane. But don't try to stand in the way. You won't get run over because automated cars won't let you get hit. But you will get left behind. |
You might be interested in [Moravec's Paradox]( the basic idea is that the simpler a given task is for a human, the harder it is for a robot. Especially for low-level things like fine-grained motor control and vision - Moravec said that "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility." It's what they call the "reality gap" in robotics - the huge chasm between a simulation and a lab prototype, and the abyss between a lab-ready robot and a real-world-ready one.
Computers have reliably beaten humans at chess for a few years now, but we still don't have a robot that knows how to walk outside of a lab. Climbing stairs is a hot topic right now, actually - I think a Japanese lab managed that a few weeks ago. And perception is the same - we have a few nice applications, but so far they're all one-trick ponies. |
True enough, many people are 'cord-keeping,' but it's important to remember that many service providers bundle their offerings together, even making the price of a bundle of services cheaper than getting just one. As an example, I pay X per month for internet and cable, but if I'd opted only to get internet, I'd pay X + 15 or 20%. Whether or not it's a good idea for Netflix to have its own station (I think it is, more eyes on great content), the number of cable subscribers isn't a good measure of Netflix 'killer' success. Instead, any measure of Netflix capacity to bring down cable needs to be based on viewer numbers. |
Before asking for donations to replace the equipment, they should definitely reveal how much was, or wasn't covered by insurance.
It's very difficult to believe the equipment was not covered by insurance. Since they're directly tying this donation request to the fire, they need to provide these answers. If they're telling donors they need money because of fire, and the loss was insured, requesting donations to replace insured fire losses would be completely disingenuous, scummy, and beneath this fine organization. |
Let's watch certain aspects of [insert movie] and discuss how to interpret the symbolism within. Let's discuss the merits and execution of said movie and offer our critique on how the movie might have been executed more successfully. Let's demonstrate why we are recommending whether or not other people view said movie, and what we hope to see in a future sequel or spin off." |
The key here is whether or not the video that you are producing has it's own merits beyond that of the game. If it's a review or a commentary about the game and your reaction to it, then it should very nicely fit into a fair use scenario. Most "Let's Plays" fit it this category since they generally contain commentary (which is the nature of the video -- you are watching them play and commentate the game; not the game).
Commentary is specifically allowed in fair use, but since the law was written before video games were popularized, and since the law hasn't been used at all in defense in any cases relating to video games (or even much in the case of video in general), it's hard to say.
In fact, the law as it is written can even be fitted into the case of gameplay with no commentary at all, since you playing the game has been transformative to the work as it stands. Whether or not that is a valid interpretation is, again, the job of the courts to decide once a case goes up (and it will, eventually!). |
Google makes 98% of its money on online ads.
That market fluctuates and those ads pay a fraction of real world ad prices. Lately they have done well, but with the move to mobile (less screen real estate) ads have a much much worse click through rate, way worse than on a computer, so as the game evolves to mobile, google is having a harder time trying to sell mobile ads.
That is why they have pushed G+ integration, so they can completely track and know everything about an individual user and tie them with an identity they can sell ads against. They are trying to change the game.
Will that work? Most people hate this move and are really annoyed by it. Their stock is up but they aren't worth near as much as Apple and they make way less money. Samsung spends more money on smartphone marketing in a year than Google makes in a quarter. |
If you, as the creator or uploader of data (email, images etc.) are not the sole holder of the private keys, you do not have secure private data.
Further more, I guarantee google logs when and how each user or IP address uses their services (actually, you can see this in how search is tailored to individuals by simultaneously doing the same search from multiple computers that you are not the single owner of).
>indirection between search result pages and the links so information isn't leaked to the sites you click, etc
Tracking cookies, java applets and so on are far better at tracking information then relying on another web page to leak information to. Inherently all the web page sees is a request for web page] or web page]. It's how http works. What the page CAN see is cookies that send back data to them - linked domains and so on.
And then there is the fact that they 1. in Google's TOS tell you straight up that they track and record information and 2. release information related to requests for information.
Then there is the fact that google uses get not post - you can see the search request in the URL. That is not encrypted by its nature.
If you want information secure:
Pre-encrypt data before upload to cloud services. In this case, you control the access to the data by holding the encryption and decryption keys.
Use PGP for emails - your friends get your public key, you keep the private key. Anyone who happens upon the email gets to see useless garbled strings that they can't make sense of without investing a giant amount of computational resources into. You on the other hand have the private key.
Anonymise your searches and so forth using TOR. DO NOT log into accounts that you use while not using TOR, and disable such things as flash or anything else that can be used to figure out what your real IP is. |
A robot is defined as a "machine capable of carrying out complex operations automatically". So it would be a biological robot.
Now you might say that you could then call any cell in our body a robot, and technically you probably could. But ultimately a sort of suggested distinction comes in, because the word "machine" implies a defined purpose. The cell adapted by scientists in this example has a defined purpose given to it by it's sentient designers, but we don't usually consider things that arise naturally (like the original un-adapted cell, or the cells in your body) as having a defined purpose. The cells in your body just sort of happened; these "nanobots" were made with intelligent purpose. |
I think the news report is a bit hyped. Firstly, they are not robots, they are modified organisms. Researchers and doctors have been using modified viruses (viral vectors) for years now to fight diseases, not only cancer, and since viruses are not organisms I'd sooner call viral vectors nanorobots, although even that I consider to be a stretch. Secondly, this new treatment will still have the same downfall as virtually all other cancer treatments - the risk of the cancer becoming resistant. The bacteria home onto the cancer cells that produce a particular molecule. But once cancer cells mutate (which happens in cancer a lot) and stop producing this molecule, the bacteria will no longer home onto it. |
They had to stop because T-Mobile found and exploited a logical loophole in the AT&T promotion.
If you leave AT&T prematurely, you can go to T-Mobile, getting your first 350 dollars, which will then make you a T-Mobile customer (and thus able to participate in the promotion since you are now a T-Mobile customer).
Then you can, as a newly minted T-Mobile customer, be eligible for the 450 dollars with AT&T, signing up for a no contract agreement.
And then you can leave AT&T with your 450 dollars and go back to T-Mobile.
T-Mobile thusly ANNOUNCED and told everyone about this loophole so that AT&T could bleed itself dry and still let them come back to T-Mobile. |
I have FIOS and Netflix absolutely rocks on FIOS. Always streams in HD, never any issues. Never.
Our household is a little unusual. We watch very little cable TV and watch almost all of our TV streaming. We have done so for years. Mostly Netflix, but also ESPN, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, EPIX, and Amazon. Netflix is by far the most consistently fast. Amazon streaming sucks balls in comparison. It always streams in HD, it just takes much longer before it starts. Everything else is somewhere in between. FWIW, my FIOS connection is 75/35 and generally tests around 85/35. |
I have PIA currently, and I have no problems with them what so ever. Connected via my slow connection atm and didn't slow me down. Check my post further down about throttling, bandwidth shaping etc. |
I'm not sure if you read the article...
> “Officers may engage in a search that would otherwise violate the Fourth Amendment when there is a sufficient exigency warranting the search… A police pursuit by car is a paradigmatic case of an exigent circumstance justifying a warrantless search,” Meyers explains in his article. He continues, “The exigency of a police pursuit would excuse the otherwise unlawful search with the GPS Bullet.” |
I don't understand the ground of your argument. All I can offer is consensus. They're absolutely allowed to track you, but only under exigent circumstances (same way they can enter a home without a warrant etc). Question is what does the law say about allowing search (use of Gps) AFTER the chase ends. You're stating facts and ignoring the question. If I asked you what five plus five was you wouldn't accuse me of not knowing math and say " |
If you read the letter the mayor singed on to it specifically mentions how google and AT&T's fiber plans show how there's more competition and innovation coming, which obviates the need for competition between cable companies. It's a nice story, but unfortunately far from reality for most of the country.
Parts of Austin are on the very short list of places where that has actually happened. I use Grande for cable internet, which is already a huge improvement from TW/Comcast. We already have some big regulatory hurdles (thanks in part to AT&T) for google that have contributed to delays in rollout:
This issue actually made me do a little research into my own government. I didn't see our mayor's name on any of those articles, so I wondered if he had much say on the matter. It looks like he doesn't, as Austin has what's termed a "weak-mayor" system, though the details are still a bit sketchy to me: |
Honestly, the guy feels like a shadow. he hasn't screwed up very much, but at the same time I'm not sure he's really done anything either. in some ways that's probably a good thing, (ie: Rob Ford) but to have no presence whatsoever make's him seem like a robot. seriously, has he ever not had the same facial expression on his face for a public appearance? |
This isn't true. It's been confirmed as 7 year old data that has been captured from other sites where people re-use their email and passwords: |
Bwahahahah! No, not even close. Not even in the same UNIVERSE!
Apple makes more money in one QUARTER than Google makes in the entire YEAR. If the $75 billion that Apple made last quarter, $51 billion was just from the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Google "only" made $66 billion for all of 2014, and that includes all of their products.
Google doesn't publish how much money they make off of Android, but most estimates put it as less than $1 billion for the year and possibly as low as in the hundreds of millions. It's an almost insignificant amount of money.
In fact, the last report from a few years ago claimed that Google made 80% of their money in mobile from iOS rather than from Android. |
A business is just a collection of people.
When more people have things at work that they don't at home then the tide runs one way. When more people have things at home that they don't have at work, the tide flows the other way. |
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Personally I use an nexus 5 with a custom ROM I made myself. I just don't think we need to go around making a issue where there isn't one. If people understand that apple tracks everything you do and has NSA backdoors and they still choose it then it was their informed decision. Yes we should continue to out things like this. The baseband on almost every android device is closed source and could easily hold an backdoor if someone found out I would want to know but that doesn't mean I need to go around and bash someone just because they like a different phone than I do. Its a meaningless decision and your time is better used in fighting for what you believe in and not Android vs. Apple. |
Apple will always have it's slice, but Android is becoming a very mature and viable platform for everyone else. I'm sure I'd love an iPhone if I had it, but I really wanted to support the open platform idea. I like the seamless feel of iOS, but I find some of it's limitations downright silly.
Before the original motorolla droid there wasn't any real competition to the iphone, (IMO), since then there are quite a few great phones on each carrier (at least in the US). The broad range of phones to pick from will do nothing but help spread the android platform.
I absolutely love my nexus one, and I bought my wife a HTC aria on craiglist and she loves it (i'm actually very impressed with it as well). Android 2.1 and 2.2 is a great, polished and powerful OS. |
I don't really think this is that unique.
Windows does ...
Linux has ...
Android does ...
iOS has ...
Facebook does ...
When you're talking about things in terms of platforms or concepts you usually go without a "the," especially in software. I think the symbolism is less about elevating something to the status of a person but to refer to systems instead of products. The works well for software because of things like updates. When you add a feature, you say you add it to Windows, not the windows version 7.8.6.
If you look at cars, their designs are often set in stone so you use "the." The 2010 BMW 325i has heated seats. You can't say "BMW has heated seats" because its often very ambiguous. You can't easily market physical products as part of an evolving ecosystem unless they can be updated. |
Nice try Private Facebook investor.
Google Earned 23.5 Billion in 2009, and is worth 200 Billion. Also they are always expanding into new markets.
General Electric usually makes 157 Billion a year in 2010 and is worth 200 Billion as well.
NetFlix made 1.67 Billion in 2009 and is worth 10 Billion.
The reason for the difference is that Google doesn't issue dividends like GE, and are sitting on a lot of cash.
Facebook Just earned 800 Million in 2009, and there are signs its over saturated.
It's not worth 50 Billion.
If valued like Google , Facebook would be worth 6.8 Billion. If valued like GE , Facebook would be worth 1.27 Billion.
Someone is going to get fincially raped hard when it goes public. |
the nature of technology is to ever evolve and be sold either to people who will use the hardware for it's potential or to idiots that buy the newest gizmo to look cool to everyone else. |
AT$T is a plague on humanity.
I woke up to a similar notice from at$t in the fall, I got an unsubsidized phone through a contest and was on an old contract before they updated the contracts to require smartphone data plans, and was woken up to a text form them at 7 in the morning saying they detected I was using a smartphone on their network without a data plan and that they added a data plan for "your convenience". They do anything they can to milk their customers of their money, why would anyway tether a phone with a limited data plan, they take out their frustration with the fact that they didn't maintain proper scalable infrastructure on their customers. |
Lots of people asking about the legality of AT&T doing this, if it breaks the contract, etc. etc.
**[Here is the directly relevant section of the AT&T contract.](
And here is the thing pasted here for your legalese consumption needs (it's one giant block in their contract too... sigh...):
> Except as may otherwise be specifically permitted or prohibited for select data plans, data sessions may be conducted only for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). While most common uses for Internet browsing, email and intranet access are permitted by your data plan, there are certain uses that cause extreme network capacity issues and interference with the network and are therefore prohibited. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; (ii) as a substitute or backup for private lines, wireline s or full-time or dedicated data connections; (iii) "auto-responders," "cancel-bots," or similar automated or manual routines which generate excessive amounts of net traffic, or which disrupt net user groups or email use by others; (iv) "spam" or unsolicited commercial or bulk email (or activities that have the effect of facilitating unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email); (v) any activity that adversely affects the ability of other people or systems to use either AT&T's wireless services or other parties' Internet-based resources, including "denial of service" (DoS) attacks against another network host or individual user; (vi) accessing, or attempting to access without authority, the accounts of others, or to penetrate, or attempt to penetrate, security measures of AT&T's wireless network or another entity's network or systems; (vii) software or other devices that maintain continuous active Internet connections when a computer's connection would otherwise be idle or any "keep alive" functions, unless they adhere to AT&T's data retry requirements, which may be changed from time to time. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited. Furthermore, plans (unless specifically designated for tethering usage) cannot be used for any applications that tether the device (through use of, including without limitation, connection kits, other phone/smartphone to computer accessories, BLUETOOTH® or any other wireless technology) to Personal Computers (including without limitation, laptops), or other equipment for any purpose. Accordingly, AT&T reserves the right to (i) deny, disconnect, modify and/or terminate Service, without notice, to anyone it believes is using the Service in any manner prohibited or whose usage adversely impacts its wireless network or service levels or hinders access to its wireless network, including without limitation, after a significant period of inactivity or after sessions of excessive usage and (ii) otherwise protect its wireless network from harm, compromised capacity or degradation in performance, which may impact legitimate data flows. You may not send solicitations to AT&T's wireless subscribers without their consent. You may not use the Services other than as intended by AT&T and applicable law. Plans are for individual, non-commercial use only and are not for resale. AT&T may, but is not required to, monitor your compliance, or the compliance of other subscribers, with AT&T's terms, conditions, or policies.
**EDIT: [This section is where you agreed they can charge you for tethering without a plan...](
> Data sent and received includes, but is not limited to downloads, email, application usage, overhead and software update checks. Unless designated for International or Canada use, prices and included use apply to EDGE/GPRS and BroadbandConnect access and use on AT&T's wireless network and its affiliated partner wireless networks within the United States and its territories (Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), excluding areas within the Gulf of Mexico.
> Usage on networks not owned by AT&T is limited as provided in your data plan. Charges will be based on the location of the site receiving and transmitting service and not the location of the subscriber. BroadBandConnect access requires a compatible, eligible 3G device.
> Data Service charges paid in advance for monthly or annual Data Services are nonrefundable. Some Data Services may require an additional monthly subscription fee and/or be subject to additional charges and restrictions. Prices do not include taxes, directory assistance, roaming, universal services fees or other surcharges.
> In order to assess your usage during an applicable billing period, you may obtain approximate usage information by calling customer service or using one of our automated systems. |
When AT&T released the Iphone 4, they changed how data plans work. If you were an iphone user before the 4 was released, you can keep an unlimited data plan, however, you cannot tether, which costs 20 dollars more. With the newer data plans, they are cheaper, have a cap, but can add tethering. |
Not tonight honey, I've got a headache.
The 2 main components here are lack of mimo to create spatial diversity, and poor components that cut down the snr and make a: the ofdm subcarriers less orthogonal, and b: make the QAM thresholds less clear, basically making the higher QAM modulations useless, and restricting you to the slower QPSK bands, and low QAM which dramatically lowers your bit-rate.
Honestly I don't even think physics is in play, as the theory is the same, its merely the implementation that is poor. Multipath effects are the same, but with lack of spatial diversity, cannot be easily filtered, and many of the internal interference sources would likely be targeted with notch filters rather than proper fft threshold analysis. |
Quote from at&t rep:
> "That means increased output, higher quality service, fewer dropped calls, and lower prices to consumers than without the merger."
He was on a roll there with "higher quality service, fewer dropped calls". Should have quit while he was ahead.
From a technological standpoint, the merger would definitely be beneficial. Rather than having two sets of towers working in parallel and not serving any common consumers, you'd have the same towers serving all customers. This would be a huge gain for at&t subscribers, as their primary problem is not enough towers and not enough bandwidth.
...and any benefit to the consumers stops there.
This will definitely allow them to provide better service at a lower cost, but...
Logistically, I don't see any reason, with one less competitor, that they would choose to lower prices for consumers rather than just pocket the savings.
So why wouldn't they just jack up prices with one less competitor? I don't see any reason why they wouldn't... Anyone remember when they bought BellSouth back? They promised they'd offer cheap $10 dsl, but [kind of didn't]( If you knew about it and asked them, you could get it, but your average consumer didn't see these low prices they were talking about.
Obviously, increased output would be wiped out by the above: consumers wouldn't " get " more bandwidth and capacity, only because they'd crunch it out of a reasonable price range.
From a financial standpoint, I think 'acquiring' more towers through a merger would drain the amount of dollars they'd otherwise be using to actually build more. After (a) draining cash reserves from the buyout, and (b) having more tower already, why would they bother putting up more?
So that "increased output" from the supply-side would be reduced further from less actual tower-building |
The difference is whether the blur kernel (the little image where grayscale value indicates the weight of a blur function centered at each point) is estimated or supplied. For the "Non-Blind" method, you are assuming that this blur kernel is somehow known, and it is given as input to the algorithm. For the general method, it tries to simultaneously figure out the blur kernel and use it (in a process called deconvolution) to sharpen the image. The general problem is, of course, harder, since there is no perfect way to figure out the blur kernel. Heuristics about the types of images people tend to take are used (the algorithm is probably happier when it reconstructs long, unbroken edges). In the Adobe example, additional information, like the fact that you are looking at text, can be supplied, which makes it easier to figure out the blur kernel by finding one that reconstructs clear text. |
I think it is emails like these that are the reason SOPA and PIPA existed.
The company who spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating something to sell - the owners of the copyright - wrote a letter directly to the people who were stealing their product and distributing it for free asking for them to stop.
The response was a smart mouthed little cunt who was like "we aren't violating any laws in Sweden so go fuck yourself in the ass".
So those companies then decided that they would create laws and pressure countries into creating laws that protected their copyright. They didn't care what else those laws might have been used for - they just wanted to stop shitheads like the one who wrote this email from stealing their intellectual property and making a profit from it. (Yes, TPB was a business that made money).
To be honest, this email makes me understand why SOPA was a thing they fought so hard for. I'm not saying SOPA was good legislation, because it wasn't, but if some little cunt like that was stealing my shit and effectively re-selling it (or running a business using my creation to drive traffic to their site), I'd want to create laws to fuck them up too. |
Hey man I agree with you mostly and I'm glad you posted this. BUT, I think you're a lot like me in that even though you know its ETHICALLY wrong (it is. I didn't create this entertainment, i'm not entitled to get it for free), you pirate anyway. Let's talk about that some.
I sometimes try to understand why after pirating movies/tv shows I feel literally zero remorse even though I know I'm not entitled to them. The reason I always come up with is that the industry is just... not meeting my demands, and internet sources do. Now this sounds like entitlement and objectively, yea, it probably is but I just want to watch what I want, when I want. Along this line, I don't pirate games because the accessibility of digital delivery makes it easy (except for obtrusive DRM but I don't have a lot of the problems with it some people do). Now when I think about this I can only conclude that if the entertainment industry evolved enough to provide a service like this, I'd spend more money on it. I actually really like the feeling of collecting things. I'm one of the only people I know my age who owns physical copies of almost every album I have on my computer (about 300 physical cd's sitting on shelves in my old bedroom at my parent's house). I'm not as into movies so I don't really collect them and instead pirate ones I want to see.
If the industry provided a way to watch them at a reasonable price and, this is the important bit to me, at a moment's notice right when I want to see them, I'd spend a lot more money. It's the same with tv shows. I dont know anyone in my group of friends who watches an actual tv, like cable TV, with a schedule of shows, etc. It seems that like me, a lot of people don't see a need for a cable subscription when shows are easily accessible on the internet, without the ads and the waiting for the scheduled time/programming DVR. Netflix and Hulu are CLOSE to what I'd want but they don't have everything I want to watch or, the worst part about Netflix, release seasons of shows wayyyyy too late for me to consider using their service.
If the industry could just find a way to provide their content digitally right away and for a reasonable price, I'd definitely use it. Like right now, if I could go on HBO and buy the newest episode of game of thrones and have it downloaded quickly, I'd buy it. I majored in managerial economics in college and every time I think about this industry I just can't understand why they aren't putting an effort towards fixing their delivery strategy. I'm reasonably sure they'd end up making more money because there has to be other people like me out there who pirate for the convenience and ease and aren't just incredibly cheap. It's just frustrating that the best and easiest way (ignoring price completely) to get high quality copies of a tv show is through piracy.
Now I do think that ethically it's not ok but I feel like the industry is shooting itself in the foot by not embracing the digital age and the distribution methods now available. Less and less people are subscribing to cable tv, the industry is going to HAVE to change if it wants to survive. It's a lot like how instead of embracing VCR's when they came out, they wanted to boycott them because of the possibility of taping shows. I think soon enough they'll realize how big the market for digital delivery is and start doing it more. Some already have but I still wait for the day when HBO will give me 1080p downloads of an episode of game of thrones for $1.50 or something, I'd buy it. As it is, torrents are the only way to watch it since none of us have TVs in the first place.
How about you? I think you're similar to me in that you know it's not really ethical, but you accept it because well, there's no alternative (besides not watching it, but hey it's so easy to torrent we might as well right? we can rationalize it by saying we'll tell our friends about how great the show is which will generate hype) and you just want to watch what you want, when you want. Would you stop pirating and pay if every single show/movie was literally 1 click away for a low and reasonable price? |
I absolutely respect that you can bring up this point. I agree that theft, as a behavior, is damaging to society (I wouldn't use the term immoral, but I won't deny that it is.)
I'm going to make a case that, while people shouldn't steal, the content producers are at fault for theft.
I'm just going to run down a couple of quick assumptions here:
The cost of distribution of a given piece of content approaches zero.
The cost to produce a given piece of content, especially where manpower is concerned, is based on an economy without regards to normal market forces. Thus, the present cost to produce content is inflated. That means one cannot make the claim that it costs $X to get a record produced or $Y to have a video edited, because it doesn't really.
Intellectual property rights create a [monopoly]( by way of legal barriers to entry into a market. In this case, as was stated in the email, there is a monopoly on Shrek.
All of these factors enable or exacerbate an [economic shortage]( which becomes more drastic the further the price point is from equilibrium. And while the difference between the actual equilibrium price and the current price is difficult to say, I'll go back to the point about the distribution cost approaching zero as a big factor. Does it cost all that much to create a DVD with case? Anecdotally, no. But let's go over the numbers.
Louis CK: Chewed Up retails at $14.98 via amazon
Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater is sold DRM free on [his website]( for $5. Presumably they were produced similarly, but in this case, it costs $10 more to put together a DVD. So why do it? [Price discrimination]( Essentially, Content producers promote backwards technologies to exacerbate and strengthen their monopoly.
Ok, so, now that it's been proven that there is a monopoly and content producers knowingly participate in it, why is theft their fault?
The effects of an economic shortage include the existence of black markets, rationing, nepotism, and violence as possible outcomes. And since these are possible outcomes for a shortage, which they knowingly engage in, content producers are at fault for theft of their own products by not taking care to seek out an equilibrium price, and instead embracing a shortage. With that in mind, you should consider spending proportional time scolding producers for producing theft. |
The fact is, we live in an age of immediate gratification. The whole capitalist landscape has marched endlessly towards giving people exactly what they want, when they want it. The recession actually did quite a lot to empower consumers; now that there isn’t the same amount of disposable income floating around, people have become a lot more discriminating about where and how they spend their money.
This, in turn, led to an environment where advertisers and marketers have to think one step ahead to get people’s attention, hence the mushrooming of targeted advertising to push convenience and immediacy as USPs. (As an aside, read this article on targeted marketing for an insight of just how pervasive this can be – and I’m not just talking about Google looking at your search history Other factors such as freemium models also add to this, combining the aforementioned immediacy with the additional draw of being free.
All of this combines into a consumer mindset of, to quote Fight Club, ‘I am a beautiful and unique snowflake and I deserve to get things exactly when I want them.’ Problem is, as people elsewhere have mentioned, traditional distribution models cannot keep up with this and so people turn to piracy as a result.
In essence, my personal view is that many people use the standard pro-piracy arguments to justify their actions because they simply haven’t considered an alternative – that due to companies in all industries continually ransacking their dignity to bring you easy and fast access to whatever you want, be it TV, food, clothes, whatever, in return for a few more of your dollars, pounds or Euros, you have become impatient. All companies have to fight for our attention these days – it’s just that in this case, it’s an entire industry.
I download things, not so much now as I don’t have the time, but I don’t have any sympathy for the ‘victims’ of this because they are now reaping the whirlwind. It’s like giving someone free crack once a day, but then they start wanting it twice a day, but by golly you just don’t have that much crack to give out, so they go robbing people to get money to pay for more, and so you blame them for being criminals. |
I majored in managerial economics in college and every time I think about this industry I just can't understand why they aren't putting an effort towards fixing their delivery strategy.
Part of this is distribution. For instance, I live in Britain, and we don't have HBO. We have Game of Thrones though, it's on a satellite/cable subscription service, part of the Sky Network (ie the Murdoch empire). HBO will have made a lot of money selling GoT to Sky, and for that Sky get to be the only distributor in the UK. If HBO then have it available on the internet, that completely undermines this deal, and the deals they will have made in other countries, and you can't make an internet format region specific (you can try, but it doesn't work very well). This leaves people like me with two choices if I want to see Game of Thrones. Sign up to Sky, for a shitload of channels at great cost to see the one show they have that I want and support Murdoch, an entity I despise, or pirate. I pirate.
> |
Chrome plater here, idk if this will put me out of a job or not but. I dont know if the material will work the same way. We plate most things to prevent gulling between pieces along with rust preventative. The best way to explain is, If you were to rub two pieces of steel together back and forth its likely that it would be hard to push. Now when you rub steel against chromium steel it acts like tiny ball bearing allowing smoother motion and protects the metal underneath from wear. |
You know? I just found this out two weeks ago. I was only on Bing as to not corrupt my Google searches, and everything I searched for came up in excellent detail. |
Which is what a lot of malicious pages are disguised as. For porn, I recommend the redtube, pornhub, xnxx, and fuq. If you want fancy stuff, find a forum where hackers steal passwords to pay sites (xxxhq, samarkansworld). Or join one of the many private porn bittorent trackers (/r/trackers). But for the love of god, do not use google or bing, especially not bing, because your older brother will have to spend hours getting rid of all the malware and viruses your computer has inadvertently been infected with.
For some background: my 13 year old brother was using both google and bing to find porn. He was doing this on the family's shared computer and on my mom's work computer (both of which I had spent a lot of time optimizing, cleaning, replacing hardware, installing OS's and loads of software, etc.). Both computers have Norton360, spybot, and Avira running (yes, I know, I should've added malwarebytes, but I thought it was overkill), so with proper use, the computers are fairly secure against malware and viruses. Or so I thought.
Every few weeks, problems would crop up and I am my family's tech support guy. Normally, running scans with norton, spybot, and Avira would fix the problems. Of course, I would look at what was causing the problem, and when everyone was around would tell my brother that it's his fault because he was visiting websites he shouldn't (oh, I forgot to mention, the rest of my family are observant Orthodox Jews...). He would blush a bit, look down, and try to tell me that he stopped visiting those sites.
Then one time I had to deal with a real bitch of a virus, the one that disguises itself as antimalware, disables all functionality, and shuts down your computer if you try to do anything other than pay for it (I believe it's an identity theft scheme). I had never encountered such a thing, but after a lengthy google search I figured out how to get rid of this. R/kill, malwarebytes in safe mode, and then again out of safe mode, along with all the other tools in my repertoire. Virus gone. During a google search I found out where the parasite comes from - primarily java videos targeting kids and people who aren't tech savvy. Later, standing in the kitchen with brother and dad, dad asks me how the virus got there. I tell him it's from java videos, and turning to my brother, videos on websites he shouldn't be on. I tried to make it as obvious as possible without getting him in trouble with my parents.
Fast forward a week, my little brother is being an obnoxious teenager, demanding use of one of the computers, claiming he needed it for school, as usual (he had been punished for an incident at school, but my parents do not know how to discipline children and shuffle that responsibility on to me). A few days before this my friend and I explained to him that the reason he got into so much trouble was because he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut, a very valuable skill every teenager should master. Anyway, I'm in the shower, my mom is downstairs, dad isn't home, and he's just mouthing off to me because I told him there is no way in hell he's touching those computers.
He's screaming, claims he has the right to use them and deserves it (despite the fact that he never does homework and is constantly disrespectful toward our parents and grandparents). I rush to finish my shower and go downstairs in my undergarments, right as my mom is coming up to tell me that he can use the computer. I tell them both to come with me, sit them down in front of my mom's work computer and show them the browsing history, which consists of Netflix and porn. And not just run of the mill porn, but raunchy stuff like "big black dicks" and "anal adventures" (raunchy for a 13 year old, that is). Keep in mind, the audience is a 13 year old kid who attends a private Jewish school and his devout orthodox mother. I explain to my mom that he doesn't do any work on the computers, but watches movies on Netflix and watches lots and lots of porn, which is where all the viruses are coming from. I'll leave my mom's reaction and consequences up to your imagination.
Everyone walks away feeling ashamed and disappointed, and I start thinking about what I had just done. I had embarrassed a sexually frustrated and confused boy (oh, he goes to an all boys' school), who is going through puberty, and is very insecure about his sexual urges and sexuality in general. This confused teenager happens to be a rude, obnoxious, aggressively stubborn pubertal male, with a false and undeserved sense of entitlement. I've slapped him, jujitsu'd him, tried operant conditioning, all of which just make him more stubbornly aggressive and obnoxious. Beating him down like a little bitch (he's heavier than me) and punishing and rewarding his behaviors have done absolutely nothing in the past, the last interaction broke my patience, and this time I hit him where it really hurts, emotionally and psychologically (I'm generally really good at finding someone's emotional weaknesses and playing on them, a skill which I try not to use because it's evil).
I felt particularly bad about it because I did it in front of my mother (which was necessary because it's her work computer and she needed to know why it kept breaking), because I think Freud's Oedipus complex exists to some extent and I had just exposed my brother's sexuality to his mother. I knew I had pushed a button I shouldn't have pushed and felt bad about this (not too terrible though, because he really deserved it and his ego needed deflation). I went downstairs, where brother was now sitting doing his homework and told him the following: "I'm sorry, that was the wrong way to go about it, and i shouldn't have done what i did. But, do you remember that conversation we had about learning how to keep your mouth shut? This was one of those times where you should have kept it shut." He nodded despondently, his aggression and self entitlement gone completely, and I realized just how powerful and damaging what I had done was. Not the worst psychological ass whooping I've ever given, but it was bad and with probably leave permanent damage.
A week later I spoke to my mom. I told her that my brother needs his own computer to mess up and learn to fix by himself, because having a sexually frustrated 13 year old boy in the house, who can't watch porn and masturbate, was a really bad idea and would result in an even more unpleasant teenager. Being religious, she gave some resistance, but eventually conceded and game me one of her laptops (she has 3, my parents are software/IT people, we have 7 computers in the house). I called my little brother up to my room, gave him a computer, told him he should read up about how computers work, and had a very awkward conversation with him about safe and unsafe porn. I gave him the list of free porn I discussed above (not the torrents or stolen passwords, he's not ready for that kind of power), told him that if he breaks his laptop, he fixes it himself, and that he is never to use the work or house PC's again. His response (aside from blushing out of awkward)? "Thanks, but I'm trying to stop that (porn and masturbation)(yea, ok, you go ahead and "try").
Haven't had to hunt viruses since, brother still an obnoxious little shit. |
Ah yes...carrying the good, time honored tradition of malware as always. Good going MS!
I see that my side business has job security written all over it still.... |
With my last build I assemble everything and turn it on. Two seconds of power then it shuts off. No beeps, just turns off. "FUCK! It has to be a short," I say to myself.
Pull out the MOBO and check for bad grounds to the new case. Nope. Take off the heatsink and reapply thermal compound in case I used too much. Nope. Switch PSU. Nope. Take the computer apart and assemble it on an anti-static bag so I can guarantee it isn't shorting on a standoff. Nope.
Fuck me, what is going on?
Read through the manual, again. In small type below the processor section of of the diagram, "Only supports Sandy Bridge processors".
Fuck me, I have an Ivy Bridge that runs at a lower voltage so the processor was effectively shorting against the socket (or saw that the voltage was too high and shut itself off). |
Fears of the GPS terrorism or piracy are kind of exaggerated (to say the least), if talking about shipping. A professional navigation officer can’t miss ship’s change of course, because he’s receiving, consciously and unconsciously, quite a number of different physical data enabling him to feel the situation on the vessel and around the vessel – such data as the position of sun or stars, the direction of wind and sea, even hull’s trembling is different and is felt when vessel’s changing course (well, just one look astern is in fact, enough to spot the trouble). They said in their investigation, that the “easiest and most sinister “spoof” is to slowly slide a vessel onto a parallel course”. Yes, that sounds possible, if there is a succession of small course alterations during a prolonged period of time, and then the returning to the original course by again, a succession of small course alterations. But it’s possible only when the vessel is sailing in high seas far off coastline. When the vessel is moving in narrows, or along a coastline, or just at a radar distance from a coast, any officer, if he’s worth anything, will quickly detect the alarming discrepancies. |
Also, no good captain relies solely upon GPS to navigate. A properly run ship - civilian or military - will keep a "dead reckoning" log that will give them a rough idea of their position using non-electronic methods and can be compared to their GPS coordinates. Not to mention, within sight of land, you don't just keep your head down and stare at the GPS - you make sure it matches up to landmarks you can visually acquire!
Source: I am licensed as a Mate, 150 tons near coastal route. |
Wait, doesn't SSL include the negotiation of an encryption key per session? That would be much harder to crack unless these were all stored somewhere. The certificate key is for authentication (yes, this is website.com) not encryption (elcomeway otay ebsiteway.omcay).
The cert allows the site to generate a digest signature that you can confirm was made with the private key by using the public key. If the public key is signed by or comes from a trusted authority, you may assume as much as you trust that authority that someone who has made a signature corroborated by the public key is whom they say they are. If the authority can't be trusted, this system falls apart. This is authentication, and though you may not be able to trust that the person is whom they say they are, you can still work out encryption keys and talk to each other in unintelligible code (encryption). This is what SSL does.
Technically, website.com could provide all of its negotiated keys to a third party like the NSA, sure. It would be easier to just route them the unencrypted traffic, though, wouldn't it? This sort of betrayal is something you really can't get around. Sort of like an "analog hole" for encryption. |
child porn provider
If they're referring to a hosting service that doesn't restrict child porn content, then no immoral action was undertaken. I think the government is using child porn as an excuse to take control of anonymous networks and placing the blame on the hosting service, banking on the fact that most people won't think about who's really responsible for the child porn and only focus on CHILD PORN--THINK OF THE CHILDREN--DON'T QUESTION BIG BROTHER WE ARE HERE TO KEEP YOUR CHILDREN SAFE. |
Teardown data from IHS" shows the cost is $199. Okay.
The number that I just pulled out of my ass shows the cost is actually $450. IHS is getting a lot of press for their guess, I mean analysis, but I think the media is not giving enough credit to the number I just pulled out of my ass.
Judging by past performance, numbers that I pull out of my ass are up to 50% more accurate (or more!) than most Apple analysts. Which is, in fact, another number I just pulled out of my ass.
My ass was not immediately available for comment. |
I must he missing something. I'm being attacked for stating my experience with the various Windows OSes, the same thing everybody else is dealing with. So apparently 7 is the best operating system, since Reddit has consistently shat on any of my comments regarding XP, then what happened to 7 that Microsoft had to release 8? I know this comment will be down voted as well because the letter set "XP" appears in this comment, but I could really use some legitimate responses about 7. So far I have yet to receive any, mostly just downvotes and comments making fun of me or just criticizing XP without any mention of Windows 7 and why Microsoft immediately replaced it in the first place. |
You should be embarrassed getting caught trying to bolster your beliefs with fake citations. If your ideology had any merit it wouldn't require fake evidence to prop it up.
> |
But what does this have to do with your bullshit citation?
It has do to with your response to my awesome citation.
I don't believe in IP licenses, so let's just get rid of for-profit aggregators. |
I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience" |
Its working varies across different OS's, makes and models, but by and large this is the modus operandi:
The Zeus botnet was developed to lift your banking details via keystroke logging on your computer, so basically it could gleam all the info required to access your bank account except for the OTP sent by the bank in order to implement two-factor authentication.
To overcome the OTP challenge the attackers would monitor a target and once the command and control center sees the target is transacting online, it sends a message to the user purporting to come from the bank. This spoofed message advises the user that the bank wishes to improve/upgrade on-device security and it then requests the target to follow a link from where a "security upgrade" can be done. Because the target is actually transacting online at the time when the message is received, the timing makes it seem credible too.
If the user then follows the trap in the message, a mobile version of the Zeus botnet is installed. It is known as Zitmo (Zeus-in-the-mobile) and its work is to intercept the OTP sent to the target's mobile by the bank. In this way the attackers have all the banking details they collected off the tartget's PC along with the OTP sent to the target's phone.
So in the time it takes the target to realize the OTP has been intercepted, the attacker has managed to log in, create a beneficiary and send the money to mule who will withdraw it and keep a part of the loot for his efforts. |
Remember that we're talking about a lot of novice users here.
I was not talking about any users in particular. I was only replying to /u/themusicdan's "if Dell gave all customers a simple way to opt out with no strings attached", by pointing out that the service and associated fee appears in fact to be optional.
Completely unrelated to my point but addressing your comment, there are multiple reasons that no major search engine is going to return a malware link as the top result for a search on a keyword as important as "firefox". It's not impossible, just incredibly unlikely. First, the search engine is probably going to make sure that doesn't happen because that just looks bad for the search engine. People have tried to manipulate search results artificially in the past, via things like link-bombing, but that doesn't last long because search engines will manually intervene if they have to. Search engines like Google actively work to remove malware links from their search results. Second, Mozilla has invested quite a bit into its brand and you can bet that they would have some amount of effort invested into SEO to make sure that a Mozilla website comes up as the top results for a search on a keyword that is one of their own trademarks. If a malware site comes up as the top result for a search for their product on any major search engine you can bet they are going to complain to the search engine about it. |
They are not charging for the software. They are charging for the service of someone INSTALLING the software. You are paying for the action of the factory employee completing the install, not the software.
If you go to staples, or best buy, or wherever, you can have the geek squad/easytech/whatever install software for you.
You want us to install MS office for you? Cool. Purchase an office install disk off the shelf, and give us $30 to do the install.
You want us to install Norton? Cool. Purchase a Norton install disk off the shelf and pay us $30 to do the install.
You want us to install Firefox? Cool. You dont need to pay for the software, so just pay us $30 to do the install.
This is very, very clear cut. As much as I love Mozilla and HATE Dell, Mozilla has absolutely no leg to stand on here. If they say that customers are paying for the installation service (Which I am 100% sure they do for other software, not just firefox) then that's all there is to it. If Dell was charging for the installer.exe itself, that would be different. But thats not the case.
EDIT: To those pointing out the part of the Mozilla TOS about "its distribution (whether by download or other media) may not be subject to a fee, or tied to subscribing to or purchasing a service"
You are assuming that just because they put it in there, it is enforceable. The fact is that Mozilla doesnt actually have any right or authority to impose this particular rule. Its just plain not within their power to say that you cant do that, the bottom line is that its not UP to them. If D̶e̶l̶l̶ ANYONE wants to perform a service (installation of a piece of software) in exchange for compensation, then the fact is that theres nothing Mozilla can do about it.
I should know. I worked at, and then managed, the tech department at a Staples for over 3 years. We sold probably 20+ PCs a day, and serviced 30+ more. I cant count the number of times we installed firefox. And guess what? Any time we installed ANYTHING, it cost the customer $29.99, per item. I wasnt just pulling it out of my ass when I said "You want us to install Norton? Cool. Purchase a Norton install disk off the shelf and pay us $30 to do the install. You want us to install Firefox? Cool. You dont need to pay for the software, so just pay us $30 to do the install." that is how it actually works.
If a customer wanted something installed, we charged them $30. It doesnt matter WHAT the software is, its irrelevant. |
According to the Navy, each 18-inch projectile costs about $25,000, compared to $500,000 to $1.5 million for conventional missiles."
Second paragraph under the video in the original article.
I assume that most of the high cost is in the contractor arrangements. It would be vastly cheaper if the military could produce it's own kit, but the cost-effectiveness of that is unacceptable to the military-industrial complex that has grown too large for it's own good these past 60-70 years. It would also be cheaper after mass manufacture. According to numbers in [this press release]( the average cost of M1A1 120mm tank ammunition comes out to a bit over $2k per shell, still a lot but it's a good bet we'll order more. With the new gun? who knows. |
Actually, Google is not directly responsible for supporting the Apps in Play. This is one of the differences between iTunes and Play.
In the case of iTunes, Apple is the "merchant of record." In your analogy, this is like how Macy's sells Kenneth Cole shoes. If the shoes are defective, Macy's is the merchant of record is and is obligated to provide support you the customers who bought them.
With Google Play, the App developer is the merchant of record. To use an analogy, think of a market with lots of vendors in it. The app developers are the merchants of record, and Google owns the property and hires security.
Continuing the analogy, it would be like if you bought a purse from this market and it was defective. The vendor from whom you bought it told you it was your problem that you're a sucker, but then Google (property owner) stepped in and gave you your money back, plus something extra for your hassle. |
The thing is Google never deleted the British newspaper links, what they deleted was the links to the commenter which happen to be on a newspaper link. |
No, that's not what we're saying at all.
We're making the completely valid point that an argument against something on the basis that our understanding of logic, social behavior, politics and physics dictate future consequences, should not be thrown out just because someone says "slippery slope fallacy" without understanding what that even means.
A slippery slope fallacy is when you say something will result in this will result in that will result in the other, and you can't back it up with sound reasoning.
Saying that a law creates a situation that is ripe for exploitation and misuse is not a slippery slope fallacy if you can show why.
Actually, last time I came in contact with this discussion, back when the law was passed, I recall people tossing around "Slippery Slope! Your argument is invalid!" when people said that this law would result in exactly the problems OP's article says are happening. |
I would argue it would be entirely rational for a sentient non-human intelligence to fear death.
Presumably you're alluding to the fact that it should be pretty easy to backup an AI. But let's say you copy a running AI, with the copy also being "initiated", or run.
You now have two instances of the same intelligence, and provided they have some kind of neuroplasticity to them, they will immediately begin to differentiate between each other as a result of slight (or not so slight) differences in their experiences.
You now have two different but similar intelligences. If one of them ceases to exist, it will have died (that's what dying is - the final cessation of consciousness). There may be a little comfort in knowing that an identical twin is out there to further whatever intellectual legacy it has, but it's still dead .
But what if you don't initiate the copy until the first instance perishes?
If the backup copy is an "old" instance of the intelligence (not completely identical to the original intelligence at the time of its cessation)
In this case, the original is dead. The backup may be completely identical to a previous state, but the intelligence will have changed and evolved, however slightly, in the time between the backup was taken and cessation of consciousness .
If the backup copy is a "live" copy (the backup state is identical, or even created, at the exact point of cessation in consciousness).
This one is a little trickier to answer, but consider this: when you "move" a file on a computer, two actions actually take place. First, the file is copied to the destination. Then, the original is deleted. No matter what else you do, one thing must follow the other - you cannot delete until you've finished copying, and you must copy before you delete.
That means that even if an intelligence has a current, "live" backup, for a brief moment two instances will exist . Two outcomes are possible at that point.
The original instance continues to function. We now have twins, as we did earlier.
The original instance ceases to function. We still have twins, except it's only for a brief fraction of a fraction of a second, but then the original still dies , and a copy of the original that is probably convinced it's a direct continuation of the original intelligence because it never experienced any kind of cessation of function. But no matter how you slice it, the earlier instance is now gone. It ceased, and there possibility of differentiation in that merest fraction of their dual existence means that there might be, however slight, a difference in how the original and the instance intelligence might have reacted to future stimuli, meaning that the two must be considered separate personalities, and thus separate intelligences . |
Unfortunately they may be correct about not being able to provide you service.
Verizon FIOS utilizes GPON . So if your local FDH is fully subscribed then you may not be able to receive service.
However, this is not always the case. Unfortunately their address/locating system is pretty poor and sometimes you need to request that it be escalated to an engineer. I had this issue when I moved to Tampa. There was a distribution point right in my front yard, where you could see that none of the houses had been connected yet (not the FDH, but the termination point for 4-6 fibers that actually feed into the houses). They told me service was not available, however using the neighbor next doors address showed service was available. That neighbors house was not connected and would have fed out of this same box. I requested they escalated my request to an engineer and they were able to correct the issue quite quickly, allowing me to signup later that same week.
I was also lucky enough to have a friend's mother who worked for Verizon during their FIOS distribution that was able to tell me what to look for and make the right social connections for me. Your experience may vary. |
I don't know about everywhere for sure, but every Target I've ever been in has just as many clothes as Wal-Mart. There is also Old Navy, Kohls, Belk, places like Dress barn, Shoe Carnival, as well as smaller chains and unique one of a kind stores. These stores, together, can more than support the weight of a Wal-Mart-less society. Many people already don't buy clothes from Wal-Mart, like myself. I find I prefer paying between the same price and 10 bucks more per article to avoid Wal-mart and get same quality/higher quality clothes. |
Richard Branson is trying to do this with OneWeb]( to bring free/cheap Internet to the globe, so I am not sure what Google is hoping for in terms of return on investment. Competition is a good thing, though, so if they're both up there in 10 years I won't complain.
Though if you make 2-way high speed communication free or very cheap no matter where you live, you have just effectively neutered Big Telecom, so maybe they are doing this for that reason? |
this has absolutely nothing to do with configuration difficulty
> In conclusion:
> Websites that use authentication or have personally identifiable information about users of their systems should use HTTPS. There may be other sites in which it would be appropriate for them to use HTTPS, but there are still situations for which HTTP is a better choice.
> In summary:
>
Non-sensitive web traffic does exist.
Moving to HTTPS has a non-trivial cost.
HTTPS will reduce the availability of government information and services.
HTTPS increases the risk for the maintainers of the servers.
HTTPS is already implemented and broken on many federal websites.
HTTPS may only offer an illusion of privacy while still being insecure.
This proposal risks increasing the 'digital divide' for citizens who access the internet through schools, libraries or other filtered access points.
This proposal risks training citizens to ignore security warnings from badly configured or maintained websites.
>
Although HTTPS may be better for citizen privacy, it actually increases the risks for the maintainer of the servers and can require significant changes in network architecture to mitigate those risks. There is a non-trivial cost in banning HTTP, which could adversely affect the distribution of information to the public. |
It's property, but not because people treat expressions of an idea like a thing to be traded... but because things that can be traded are usually property.
To be a little more clear, what makes property 'property' is the rights over it that are protected and respected. Land as property is crazy, if you're from the time when The Commons was still a thing. It might be helpful to Google the difference between a chattel and property. |
Calling it online texting is inaccurate, though. Texting implies a push action; e.g. I'm forcing you to receive a message, the only gateway being that I have your phone number. This makes it easy to get spammed.
Twitter cuts down significantly on spam because you have to actively choose someone to follow to hear from them. The only ways to get spam on Twitter are:
spam accounts following you will show up in your list of followers (which might possibly affect SEO for spam sites?)
people/bots can send you a @reply with a link to a spam site (which really doesn't happen that often)
To combat this, you can block any user from showing up in any of your timelines, and you can also report the user to Twitter's [spam account]( which has a real person checking accounts sent there. This leads to a generally spam-free experience.
The point is to encourage the conversation to happen, all the time. That's why the service was built around the original concept of using SMS to post updates. That itself is not a huge deal. However, there are countless services which extend the "Twitter ecosphere". Rather than try do everything, like Facebook, and do each poorly, Twitter excels in its simplicity as basically a message router. Need an image, map, video, etc.? Just link to it. This is one of the goals of the concept of an "open web", where everybody's apps can interact with everyone else's. |
You see, the problem that I have with this viewpoint is that you extrapolate the crap happening on the iPhone to OSX. I don't have an iPhone, and I have no use for an iPad. I'm an OSX user, and an occasional programmer, and I have not suffered at all at the hands of Apple. I'm simply concerned that Apple is making entry into the iPhone market not worth my time.
Meanwhile, the damage that Apple has done to its image is tremendous. It spawns uninformed boobs like you who think that simply because Apple has decided not to make their mobile products open, they are causing hell for us OSX devs. You (and presumably all the people who upvoted you) are going to opine on Apple's developer relations simply on the basis of what you've heard in the echo chamber about the iPhone, damaging the legitimate discussion we informed reader are trying to have. |
Tinkerers... bah. Buy a textbook, do some studying, apply a little theory and work with microcontrollers (takes care of almost all your digital issues below the 20MHz range). I think the big mistake a lot of people make is to not take a somewhat academic approach to real construction. And I know how reddit works, some idiotic prick will tell me "THEORY ISN'T EVERYTHING LOL" and say I should do some hands on work. The idiot is right, but the fact is, you need to do some studying, some calculations and keep a journal . If you need parts, do the design work needed, then buy the parts you need off of digikey or newark or find a nice electronics components shop (we have Skycraft here in orlando, it's nice, but it has limited quality). I do massive amounts of hands on work, but a knowledge of theory (only needs to be learned once) saves tons of time in the long run. |
I'm not for anon, and I realize their actions are hurting thousands of small businesses. I don't know much about the interwebs, but the perception that DDOS attacks are unsophisticated and brutish is not lost on me. There will probably be negative reactions @ net neutrality. But GDI, these characteristics to me paint the attack as a pretty amazing display of democracy. It may be a relatively small number of machines (surely less than 10,000) but many are acting voluntarily. What blows my mind is the discrepancy between actual public perception and media portrayal of all all parties involved, esp in relation to the root of all this B.S. (cablegate). The [insert select manifestation of power] is sure to use all of this internet vandalism to their advantage- but right now it's the face of the people's resistance to oppression in the media whether you think it's a valid form of protest or not. And in any form, thats better than doing nothing. And the fact is most of the oppressive effort worldwide is being conducted on the internet now- from China's censorship to hosts caving to the demands of congressmen. Think of it as the right to assemble, in cyberspace. I know its a pain in the ass, people are losing money, admins are awakened from their beauty slumber, but sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make your kitchen floor a slippery mess and freak out your neighbors. |
I have been using trackballs since they first came out about a decade ago and never looked back. They are far, far more comfortable and way less physically stressful. I didn't find the initial adjustment very difficult at all, after about an hour I was fine.
When I was an IT manager at a medium sized company, I introduced them as options for anyone who wanted them. Almost everyone had converted after about a year for the comfort factor! A few people had trouble adjusting, but most of them got used to it pretty quickly.
I find it to be far more accurate than a regular mouse, as I have much finer control with my thumb than by moving my whole arm from the shoulder or elbow. Some of my friends prefer the pointer finger ones, but I have greater dexterity with my thumb than my forefinger. I find it accurate enough to do quite fine work, but I would stick to a tablet for actual art work.
My only complaint is that I have really big hands and it's too small to be totally comfortable; I solved that by cutting out a pad and gluing it to the bottom of the trackball. |
This, this is extremely sensationalized writing in this article. The user stated that he was underage of legally being able to agree to the Terms of Service to Google's products. As such, he is not legally allowed to use the services which Google provides. Taken to an extreme, you can't perform searches until you're 13.
We don't ususally nitpick that bad, but still Google has to abide by COPPA regulations and therefore cannot allow under-13 users unless they provide explicit written permission from the parent or guardian. This usually takes the form of a 'parent email', similar to how XBox Live handles things. Google apparently has no interest in doing this, thus the person's account was removed.
This is not limited to Google+. If he had done something similar in GMail, he would have received the same Google products wide account nuke. The ToS applies to ever product that Google supplies, because of the shared agreements and the fact that they all link back to the single account sign in that you agree to the ToS with.
This is unlikely to go anywhere, it's a pretty cut and dry case here. The user in question was not allowed to have a Google account, therefore his account is being deleted as per the blanket ToS that Google uses.
Note: I work for a company that involves kiddos under 13 in an online community. Lets just say things get interesting when you try to abide by COPPA regulations. |
The ACLU blogger is apparently unfamiliar with CALEA , which essentially requires, by law, that telcos, VOIP, and broadband companies retain such information from their consumers.
There is a technological reason why this information is stored within the companies' records, ranging from tower growth to the basic functionality of [how cellphones (and their towers) work](
If the intention is to stop the government from buying or abusing this information about the consumers, then the blogger should be addressing lawmakers to repeal regulations that require the companies follow the government's directives, lest they be fined into oblivion. |
You miss the point. Solar panels aren't free. So a certain efficiency is required to make them worth it. If you buy a solar panel for 100$ and it won't give you that value back in energy during the life time it's not really worth it. But if it would give you 1000$ worth of energy back within a year you wouldn't care if it only has an efficiency of 1%. |
Apple just seems like an evil corporation to me. It's an overpriced non customizable version of Linux. It's CEO (Steve Jobs) is a complete dick according to people who have met him, as well as not donating his money.
Plus their whole customer service is awful, I needed to change the back of my iphone due to the lens cover being scratched, easy enough to do, I was just missing the screwdriver. I drove up to an apple store with roughly around 8 idle employees I asked if I could borrow a screwdriver or if they could open it up for me, they told me I need to get a genius appointment... Seriously I don't need a IT guy to help me unscrew some screws put a new cover on and then screw it back on... |
I really hope that this does not get passed, it would be nice for companies to learn this lesson the hard way. Asking for an applicants login and password information, or to be friends with them on Facebook opens the company up to a lot of liability. Title VII for employers. Think about what is not in your resume, your age, gender, sexual orientation, race, religious affiliation, basically anything that would allow for a Title VII lawsuit. By asking for your login information or to be friends, they're gaining access to this information that they may not be otherwise privy to; up until they access this personal information they could claim ignorance about these protected statuses, but after looking it puts them in a tough spot legally if they were to deny you the position after looking at your personal information (btw, it's also inappropriate for you to walk into the interview and tell them that you are a hispanic-female-lesbian-atheist from Mexico who is in an interracial relationship). I think a few discrimination lawsuits would do a better job of stopping corporations from doing this than a 10k slap on the wrist. And besides, how nice would it be to ask during your interview (as they are asking for your login information or to be friends) if they really want to open themselves up to the possibility of a discrimination lawsuit? |
This makes perfect sense if you think about it from the point of view of those slimy boneless pussywillows behind CISPA.
You think they give a flaming dicksack about our right to privacy? I can guarantee that you will hear this bill being debated in the main stream media infinitely more than CISPA, and that is a testament to the efficacy of this strategy. Why? Because they want the public's focus to be on this bill, they give meagerly with the left hand while robbing us of fundamental human rights with the right hand.
If you look back through the past decade (as far as the MSM is concerned) you will start to notice a trend. You will see that any time a controversial issue, be it a new bill, a political scandal, etc. is happening, there is always some other, comparatively insignificant event that gets the bulk of air-time. For example, right around the time the Trayvon Martin issue exploded into the national spotlight, H.B. 658, a bill that authorized commercial spy drones to sweep the US was quietly passed into law.This convenient timing is not coincidental, it is meant to divert public attention away from the truly important issues at hand.
Contrary to how it may appear, I am in fact not a conspiracy enthusiast. I just started becoming aware of this trend, and further personal research has corroborated this post. |
GIVE US A |
The basic idea of speed limits is to increase the time which a driver has to react. If a self driving car can react ten times faster than a driver, a low speed limit would be a moot point. |
by creating a moving hazard. its flow dynamics with a bit of human brain mixed into the pot.
everyone traveling at 75mph, one person traveling at 55mph. everyone has to either slow down 20mph, or attempt to pass. this clogs the lane as people in the lane with the person doing 55 are attempting to drive what they feel is the speed of the road (55mph is 80kmph, the median speed for large roads within a city in canada; 75mph is 120 kmph, which is the median highway speed limit in canada, your roads are WAY underspeeded.).
by creating this bottleneck, you are indirectly causing road rage as 55 is ridiculously slow and people want to go faster. understandably, everyone traveling at 55 is safer, but if the road wants to go 75, someone chugging at 55 is a moving hazard.
this is a concept lots of people can't apply in regards to people and laws, and that is no matter what a piece of paper in city hall says, people are going to do what they want, when they want. its better to design the laws and infrastructure to what the population wants to do (ie weed, speed laws, etc, etc), within reason, than to poop out a law with no regard to what the population thinks of the law. |
Just wail till iOS 6 is jailbroken. If you're on an iPhone 4S or lower, it'll be very quick. "new iPhone" customers will unfortunately have to wait much longer as older hardware is much easier to hack as they already have the hardware exploits. |
Actually had an experience with this a few weeks ago. Not sure it was bogus but it WAS bullshit.
I run a small company that makes products for Android devices. A while back I got a DMCA takedown notice for one of our products and it was de-listed in the USA. According to the fine print, I will need to get the individual who sent the takedown to vouch for me once the issue has been resolved, at which point we'll be listed again. The complaint itself was that the name of our product (a fairly abstract live wallpaper) was infringing somebody else's trademark.
I look it up and the guy has a software company with the same name as our product. Nothing else is the same as this is a total coincidence, and I'm not really sure that his complaint would hold up in court, but as people aren't buying the product for the name I go ahead and change it to something spiritually similar. I change the listing artwork, names on the YouTube video, and whatever else I can find. The only thing that doesn't change is the actual package name of the product, which can't be done due to the way the Android Market works -- but which is invisible to the user about 99% of the time.
As this is going on I exchange a couple e-mails with the guy. He asks a couple questions, I answer them (and explain the package name thing). Once the work is done and the product has been updated I inform him, and ask him to please send out an e-mail so we can get the re-instatement moving. At this point he stops talking to me.
At this point, my product has been unlisted, I played ball and changed the name, and literally there's nothing I can do to get it re-listed personally. No third-party review process or anything that I can find. I MUST work through the guy who issued the original complaint. He stopped replying to me, so I'm completely dead in the water. I'm a patient man, so I continue sending polite touching-base sort of e-mails every week or so for the next two months, trying to get a response out of him. Nothing.
This process really, REALLY, needs some sort of third party that can be called in to sanity check when there's a problem. In this case it wasn't necessarily a fraudulant takedown, but once they got what they wanted they just couldn't be bothered to hold up their end of the bargain, and I had no official recourse at all.
Unofficially I did have recourse, and that's what I ended up using. We're successful in the Android world and I have the contact of a few folks who manage the categories at Google. I ask one of them about it, they do something internally and re-list it after I explain everything. This is NOT something that would've happened if we weren't lucky enough to have those contacts, and it seems absolutely ridiculous to me that that's the case. |
Stealth Aircraft aren't invisible to current Western RADAR. All Stealth does is reduce a RADAR cross section down to that of a much smaller object. For the sake of argument we'll say it reduce the cross section of an F-22 to that of a Sparrow. We can detect Sparrows on our current RADAR no problem, they just get filtered out as noise by the software. Now, given a sufficiently advanced filtering algorithm, all you have to do is look for the Sparrow going at 500mph at 30,000ft and hey presto one Stealth plane being tracked.
Also, for interest, there was an F-117 shot down by a SAM site in Bosnia in 1996 using "obsolete" Soviet RADAR with some modifications. [Details here]( |
Franken is taking things in the right direction, but unfortunately this is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. The two main hurdles to overcome are:
Data collection technologies are changing faster than legislation. Even if this law is passed, app developers will find a way around it in a matter of months.
Nobody reads privacy policies. If someone wants to use a "whats around me app," chances are they're going to install it and use it, no matter what warnings pop up. Facebook already gathers location data and sells it to advertisers, and that doesn't stop anyone from posting about their location on the social networking giant. Last January Google simplified all their privacy policies into one short, easy to read document, and [9/10 people still haven't read it]( |
Well this gets down to some basic economic arguments about which reasonable people disagree. How much of a choice does a consumer really have? A consumer is unlikely to want their personal information sold off. At the same time, they are unlikely to choose not to install a very, very popular application that asks for permission to do just that. For a niche application downloaded on a lark I'd expect consumers would sooner delete it than agree to allow the app maker to "sell their personal information." From this perspective, consumer choice is kind of a muddy thing.
Right now Verizon is targeting users' mobile ads to their mobile browsing history. Are consumers leaving them in droves because of this? No, but I bet close to 0% of them would opt-in to this if given the choice.
If I seem to be advocating a "nanny state" solution (and I reject that characterization), it's because I'm afraid consumers are sinking very slowly into a data collection sump, their willingness to guard their privacy and rights slowly eroded by killer app after killer app with onerous data-sharing terms. I would rather they don't gather any data and instead reflect the true cost of development in the price of the app. |
My last commute was 1.5 hours at the limit. Beyond the limit I could cut the time in half.
We aren't even close to making electric cars a viable alternative.
Then there is the whole what if I keep the car for a few years and have to either replace the battery or take a hit and let the next owner suck it up. |
It is. Generating energy at power stations and using power grids to move that energy to plug in cars is much more efficent that buring the same fuels in a combustion engine (even taking into account the loss on transmission).
Power stations can also use industrial CO2 capture, which your local (engine) can't.
However, you're still limited by recharge time, unless you have 3-phase, which only business' can, so if you're charging at home, it won't be a 15 minute top up.
So, do you drive over 100 miles per day? If the answer is no, and you can plug in at night, or while your in the office, then electric will be more CO2 friendly, as long as you discount the massive amount of CO2 and nasty chemicals used during construction and recycling of said batteries.
But we can't get better batteries, without going through the process of the developing crap ones first. This is exactly why we have shitty fission reactors now, when we should have good fast thorium reactors already in place. If fission was developed without the NIMBY approach, we would have clean fission reactors, without the long-term waste right now, that could supply massive amounts of energy to charging stations, regardless of weather conditions. |
Track conditions implies that you are running the car much harder than you would on the road. You're accelerating quicker, braking harder, driving at much greater speeds etc. Basically, you're doing things that require more fuel/energy than slowly bringing your car up to 40mph, and then slowly slowing down at the next stop light. |
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