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Why not just post the entire fucking poll instead of making a new post for every fucking stupid question on that one poll? |
I telecommute (I live hundreds of miles away from my company office).
The sociopathic half-wits who pass as the IT department at my company insisted on setting up what was originally my primary development machine with so much monitoring crapware that it became practically unusable for me. I log into the VPN every morning, look at my email, and then remote into one or two other machines just to work. If you looked at my VPN activity, you would inevitably come to the conclusion that I was doing nothing, even though I'm coding and writing unit tests all day long. (Hell, I don't even need to VPN for email.) |
Sure. There are bad managers. This is a problem with bad managers, not a problem with telecommuting. Someone in charge (maybe the CEO, perhaps) should deal with the problem of bad managers.
If an employee does nothing for a long time, the company probably doesn't want to keep that employee. However the company probably doesn't want to keep that employee's manager either. However, companies rarely are ever willing to admit that there has been poor management. Something about investors not liking that, so they just pretend the problem is all bad workers, when bad workers is only a part of the problem. |
Wait, I don't get it. You're saying that there are plenty of ways to track the work you do. Assuming that is the case at Yahoo, why not just fire the people who are clearly not pulling their weight, rather than banning telecommuting altogether?
We developers generate a ton of data points, but you can't really distill them down into a single good or bad rating.
For example, on any given project I've worked on you can see exactly what I changed when I changed it from day 0 to present day. Theoretically you have a running daily number of amount of code I've checked in, when it was checked in.
But, what exactly can you glean from the data that tells you anything meaningful about my productivity? I could have committed 1000 lines of code a day but theyre all crap. I could have cleaned up and simplified our codebase by removing a 1000 lines, am I less or more productive that someone adding a 1000?
Often times I'm bugfixing a critical error, one that takes all day to debug and ends up only being a 2 or 3 line fix. Am I less productive than the guy who committed 1000 lines of crap?
The bulk of the code is written at the beginning of the project. I am brought on near the end of the project and my average lines of code/commits per day is much lower than the guy that setup the project by pasting in a lot of boiler plate?
> A good manager should have a handle on who's doing their work and who isn't, otherwise what the hell do you need a manager for?
This is definitely still key, even for developers with tons of data points. Every automated system is easy to exploit (this has been proven time and time again in regards to code metrics), team cohesion and managers are the only line of defense.
My team ensures I stay productive because the less productive I am, the more work they have to do. My manager makes sure I stay productive because he is ultimately responsible for the deliverables. My team and managers may use the commit logs and information like that to sniff out or confirm problems, but in the end it's up to my direct coworkers and managers to make the call about my productivity. |
As PatentAtty pointed out, this isn't new. The free rider problems are resolved usually by other companies saying "why aren't you adding more patents?" The defensive positions are based in a broad cross-license. You're less likely to violate, and with so many patents licensed to you, hopefully some of the work towards invalidating a troll's patent is done.
But it's true that the real problem is the litigation disparity. You can't really counterclaim against someone who doesn't do any thing, like an NPE. Threats of invalidating the patent are the only meaningful threat against a patent troll, and even that usually won't get you very far.
One way to limit trolls is taking a consistent, defensible and aggressive posture that the defending company will always litigate to invalidate weak patents asserted against them. If you are persuasive enough, like NewEgg, then that might work. But it is costly in the beginning. |
Exactly - these types of arrangements are very difficult to make work in practice. Moreover, I'm not sure we should want these types of arrangements to take off, as the end result is nearly identical: patents become a quasi-tax on innovative businesses. Instead of handing your money to the troll who sent you a C&D letter, now you're paying another insurance premium. Both results are harmful, and disproportionally so for startups.
I think the only real solution to this problem is to fix the patent system. The overwhelming majority of trolling is done on the back of software patents. We should not be treating every single technical domain the same, because the price, and impact, of innovation in these domains is extremely different .
Compare the cost of bringing an innovative pharmaceutical product to market to the cost of bringing an innovative software product to market. We are talking about costs in the billions for the former, while a talented programmer could potentially launch a successful and innovative software product in their spare time using nothing more than an old laptop. So why does our patent system afford a 20 monopoly to both software inventions and pharmaceutical inventions? That, to me, is the real lunacy.
I would love to see distinct patent regimes with shorter patent terms for fields like software where the cost of innovation is relatively low. A term between 5 and 10 years might be appropriate for software. This would lower the value of software patents, thereby changing the calculus for both obtaining and asserting them, and lower the risk and resulting harm of a patented concept becoming a necessary and standard industry practice. |
I think you're trying to be sarcastic, and it really doesn't work without intonation and emotion behind it. I really recommend you just come straight out and say what your point is to avoid confusion. If I'm wrong, and you sincerely mean what you wrote, please consider this agreement.
The price of a patent will go up when you establish that someone is using the technology. As a patent holder, you only have to convince the buyer that it's a valid patent with real infringement. When someone is infringing a patent, that's solid proof that it's useful and valuable. The buyer of the patent would be investing in the value of the licensing fees associated with the patent.
The fact that you need a lawsuit to enforce the patent isn't going to reduce its value very much. It just postpones the ability to collect license fees. It does not reduce the amount of those license fees.
But what about court costs for the patent's new owner? When people are infringing patents, and fight it in court, they can end up having to pay the legal fees. In this case, that serves to protect the people buying the patent from the cost of the battle to enforce it. But they will have to have the money to post a bond to cover the other side's legal cost. That's not really a problem if the patent and infringement are real and valid. |
Note ## Don't down vote me for disagreeing with popular opinion. I have a lot of experience in this area, and think that this start-up has more than just legs, it has the potential to change the game.
I would disagree with you entirely.
The biggest patent trolls in the game right now have been Apple and Oracle, both of whom have been hitting major innovation players in major consumer spaces, and they have all the skin in the world to lose. If Apple starts losing patents it has nothing to stop small Android players (like HTC) from making product much more competitive when trying to draw the consumer's eye. Oracle on the other hand lost a major battle over Java with Google and it has shown. Oracle hasn't posted a profit in years now, can't compete in the server space at all, and it's last hope was the widespread use of Java. Oracle made a last ditch attempt to retain relevancy by trying to push claims on a patent any first year CS student could have told you was invalid.
Neither of these companies have Patents that are worth anything, and with the changes to the America Invents Act, Patent trolls are going to start attempting to snipe patents out of academia, foreign patents, and publications. The idea behind this company is sound. With a major player like Google already in, places like Universities where a lot of innovation occurs but very little patenting can now team up in a formal way to siphon patents into companies that will license them under the GPL or similar licenses to prevent companies like Apple/Oracle from trying to take down every start-up that threatens their existence. |
I don't get why anyone ties their identity to a product. Im glad that Apple spurred the hand held computer market. I personally only own one Apple product, an iPod. Ive had it for about 5 years now and it works great. My other mobile products I chose for functionality, the Apple versions all seemed too fragile or lacked a feature. |
People aren't buying Samsung phones for TouchWiz. They're buying it for Android. Pretty sure most of the people have replaced TouchWiz with a custom launcher. Look at the most downloaded apps on the Play Store: Nova Launcher, Apex Launcher, Go Launcher, etc.
Yes, they could just go with any other Android phone, but no other Android phone comes close to the Galaxy line in terms of screen size, space, features, design, customization options, and so much more.
The people buying Galaxy phones are the ones sick of Apple's controlled and restricted ecosystem. Heck, Galaxy sales are going to skyrocket again as more and more people get to know about rooting phones and installing custom ROMs to fully pimp out their phones. They get more and more accessible with every version. |
I think most PC gamers (including myself) hate when Mac owners try to say that their 3000$ laptop is better than our 600$ gaming desktop. I absolutely hate when Mac users try to say that their computer is better because it looks nicer. I don't care about looks, I care about performance. I have never seen a Mac that compares to a Windows machine in terms of gaming. Sure, it plays minecraft and maybe some other 3D games, but they don't get near the FPS count that a homebuilt gaming computer gets. That extra FPS allows you to turn up the settings and have your game look nice. Which everyone wants. |
It's pretty obvious you don't know how these things work, but you can't just hide code that would allow the startup of the device anywhere.
I don't know what you have 'heard' about how programs work, but they are very logical and follow a path, you can't just say "oh, and wake up every hour and send everything to google" in the middle of a file... That would need to be clearly defined in the low-level bootstrapping code, and there would need to be a watchdog-type timer that would wake the phone to check time etc... |
I don't think you know what "source" means.
The "viable source" does not refer to the person who did the searching, nor does it refer to the search query in question. The term "source" refers to the source of the HUMINT - the actual intelligence - not what the intelligence is about. In this case, the verifiable source refers to the employer that reported the former employee.
The police were investigating based on that intelligence, which they verified was from the trustworthy employer - a verified source. |
Good for you being curious.
The explanation for this is in one of the top post. |
Ill have my masters in cyber security by may and all the spying stuff has me with conflicted feelings. When the bush administration betrayed our country it made me completely mistrust our govt, however - every country that is capable of electronic espionage, hacking etc does it -
Weve just become the best. And now everyone hates us.
We lose $500 million American dollars a year stolen out of our economy electronically, via scams and malware, mostly by China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, who are also all guilty of nonstop probing of our networks as well as fulltime attempts to steal our technology and data.
China has state sponsored warehouses full of hackers and theyre really good, at least as a large force.
So what does our Govt do? I have no problem with them hacking and spying on our enemies and allies because they ALL do it to us. However, spying on our own citizens and abusing this power by using it to bring down legitimate operations are pretty scary possibilities.
The US govt is doing the same things as everyone else, just lately its been a problem because of the domestic surveillance uproar.
The cyber war between China and the US is epic, and not one id say the US is winning.
The reality of what could happen in a cyber attack is almost limitless. Everything runs online now, and there have been widespread successful network penetrations by legitimate crackers and hackers alike: including at nuclear power plants, electrical grids for cities, the pentagon and probably all US govt networks connected to the internet, even our newest and most state-of-the-art aircraft such as drones and insanely sophisticated multibillion dollar fighters...
So what would any government do? They would protect the interests of their nation, govt and citizens. Now that the US has been funneling money into cyber ops, people are terrified - hey wasnt there supposed to be a terrorist attack? Oh it didnt happen? Hmmm....
Just thought id play a lil devils advocate, as every govt spies and hacks, and i think other nations have less to worry about than they think. Not that i trust the govt or elections (electronic voting is sketchy and definitely rigged to a degree,) i just dont know how theyre supposed to fight off all of the foreign hacking without getting their hands dirty... |
how does hiding it make it somehow better, or even acceptable? america has been engaged in international espionage longer than China has and to a much deeper and more destructive extent. other countries trust the US, or used to, which it made it easier for us to do what China has had to work hard to do. no one trusts China. it turns out they're right to not trust China. but, they were wrong to trust the US. that trust is why the US poses more of a risk than China. |
Concorde was moth balled after one incident that wasn't their fault.
Of course scientists and engineers are going to take long hard looks at projects, it's part of peer review and he said himself the plan was only in the alpha stage.
Sure, Tesla motors isn't doing very well at the moment, but from what I understand, they're getting there, and someone has to put in the long, difficult, potentially money-losing yards to start off with-if we all just stopped trying new things because they were harder than keeping what we have now, we'd stagnate. New technology is rarely, if ever perfect from the outset.
"Physical tolerances are so tight" wasn't part of the design brief that the system is low pressure, not vacuum, thus reducing the need for super high tolerances.
"No clear need for his system" I recall a Wired or Ars Technical article about the absurd amounts of traffic congestion on one of the main highways in L.A. From people commuting/travelling in a lot, Musk himself and I distinctly remember him saying "there has to be a good solution to this traffic congestion".
If a system like this is implemented, there's also follow on effects to be considered, tourism for example-how many people would go between each city (who otherwise wouldn't) because its now only ~30 mins?
As far as major infrastructure costs go, $6b is pretty cheap, and while yes, there are lots of other things that people would like to spend money on, this is always the case, but at least this way you've ~$62b and you've now got something that takes care of its own energy needs, which automatically means a reduction in pollution. Then you're free to spend that remaining money on education/etc. |
That was after 12 beers, and the police have no way of knowing if he had already driven. It's a well-known fact that if you're drunk you cannot be in the driver's seat, even if you're not planning on driving. Doesn't even matter if you don't put your keys in the ignition; the police have no way to prove that you didn't drive home from a bar drunk, remove the keys from the ignition, and take a nap. |
That is not the issue to everyone, for many the issue is the concept of ownership of intangibles in the first place. Those that do not think intangible property rights should supersede tangible property rights are very comfortable with this announcement as they see nothing wrong with the giving more people access to information. |
I disagree with you on two points.
Firstly, there is a distinct difference between components in a step as compared to single tones as perceived by human hearing. This is well documented scientifically, and I'm sure there is a redditor out there who can cite multiple sources documenting this fact.
Secondly, human hearing DOES have a sharp frequency roll-off. While basic EE filter courses you may have followed are based on second-order RC filter sections, the human hearing is more like a transmission line system (read up on telegrapher's equation). Transmission line filters, also in combination with the auditory neuron response, behave very much like high-order FIR filters. As you may know, FIR filters can easily achieve very steep roll-off relative to the filter's corner frequency. |
It takes a huge amount of batteries to store that kind of power.
I did several inverter installs this summer on houseboats. While the inverters themselves can be made capable of handing the load that a house draws (they would be large and expensive, though), the batteries aren't there yet. We would install between six and twelve 24-volt lead-acid batteries (like car batteries, a little over $100 each) and those could usually keep the refrigerator, an ice maker, and minimal lighting running for a day or so, then you need to run the generator to recharge them. The guys with 12 or 14 batteries might run a microwave or TV, too.
Now imagine trying to run the fridge, the lights, the microwave, a couple of TVs, your computer, the HVAC, the washer/dryer, the water heater, and any other combination of electrical devices in your house now. 20 or 30 of those batteries probably wouldn't last you until morning. Now think of how much solar power you will need to produce in order to not only run your appliances but charge those batteries as well. What if it's cloudy out and you only get to charge the batteries up to half, or none at all? |
CONTINUED
More vague paranoia:
> At this point, Horvath began to feel “threatened.” Having her “personal relationship” dragged into her “work life and put on show for [her] coworkers” didn’t sit well with her. The aforementioned wife began a pattern of passive aggressive behavior that included sitting close to Horvath, to, as she told TechCrunch, “make a point of intimidating” her.
Threatened? How? Personal relationship? I even doubt there was one - but she asked some partner to tell the ceo's wife to back off ... being nice to her. Intimidating? HOW? How?
Julie Ann Horvath has accused a company of having "impolite pull requests", yet insinuated bullying and intimidation, off hand, without anything to substantiate. Sounds paranoid.
> This stalemate ended
Jesus christ. You're not writing a spy novel you two stupid writers.
> This stalemate ended when the founder asked to see her. Horvath said that she “wasn’t going to put myself in a position like that, so I required HR be present if we were to meet.” The meeting did not go well.
"A position like that" - oh my god, you work for a company, the founder wants to talk with you - fuck society and their "being able to talk to each other privilege" am I right?
IT GETS WORSE
> According to Horvath, the founder accused her of “threatening his wife, who she had “not interacted with or contacted since [the wife] asked [her] out to drinks.”
BUT YOU DID 'THREATEN' HIS WIFE, YOU GOT SOME OTHER PERSON (WHITEKNIGHT NECKBEARD?) TO TELL HER TO 'BACK OFF' That's a threat. That's crazy nutjob paranoid fucked-in-the-head behaviour.
What's great is, this article, TOTALLY EXONERATES GITHUB . I really hope they bring back the meritocracy rug.
> Horvath cried during the episode, as she said the founder both “chastised” her, and called her a “liar.”
So... women can't lie? BEING CALLED A LIAR ISN'T BY ITSELF A PROBLEM, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE, YOU KNOW, LYING .
> Horvath recounts sitting there after his departure both “crying and shaking uncontrollably.”
Yeah, you sound sane. Crying and shaking because you've engineered some fucked up idea a year ago that you want to be a 'martyr' over a rug and make a company out of it - hello kickstarter!
I also imagine your March 22 2013 blog entry will be removed pretty quick.
> We are waiting for comment from GitHub about these allegations.
YOU'VE SERIOUSLY WRITTEN THIS OUT TWICE?
WHAT.
ALLEGATIONS?
That she was crying? That's not an allegation. That someone called her a liar? THAT'S NOT AN ALLEGATION OF WRONG DOING?
Oh, I know - THAT THE PULL REQUEST LANGUAGE WAS IMPOLITE AND YOU HAVE A RUG THAT CELEBRATED MERITOCRACY?
Oh... I mean allegedly had a rug...
MORE DRAMA
> given that “HR and the other founders had allowed this to happen even after being made aware of his and her behavior.” It wasn’t clear whom she could turn to.
What? What? Who do you think HR works for? It's to make sure you're working ok with the company. HR isn't the government. What the fuck - you fucked up - resign.
> While the above was going on
MORE LOADED LANGUAGE! While what was "going on"?
THE UTTER CLINCHER, THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF CRAZY
> Horvath had what she referred to as an awkward, almost aggressive encounter with another GitHub employee, who asked himself over to “talk,” and then professed his love, and “hesitated” when asked to leave. Horvath was in a committed relationship at the time, something this other employee was well aware of, according to her.
Fuck github for employing people with bad judgement, taste and emotions! Now all let's demonize this man for having feelings and ...
hesitating
CHEMICALLY CASTRATE THIS RAPIST NOW!
> The rejection of the other employee led to something of an internal battle at GitHub.
Dun dun dun! yes, I am sure the battle was because of the rejection. CEO and CEO WIFE where in their secret skull/volcano lair, with headsets and silver jumpsuits, talking into them "She's rejected him, formation omega, barrel-roll". Wow. Good way to vilify a company for the actions of one person who 'hesitated' and then use this as your imagined reason for what happens next, as if IT ONLY HAPPENED BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH HIM , right? nice little vague insinuation there:
> the engineer, “hurt from my rejection, started passive-aggressively ripping out my code from projects we had worked on together without so much as a ping or a comment. I even had to have a few of his commits reverted. I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up to find my work gone without any explanation.”
Oh, the horror. Maybe his misguided feelings for you meant he let some code pass? Who knows - but perhaps the code wasn't good - EITHER WAY it's ONCE PERSON'S ACTIONS - if he was removing good code, there's no chance it would be accepted.
Maybe he was popular because, you know, meritocracy. A lot of people who like open source really believe in that.
> His “behavior towards female employes,” according to Horvath, “especially those he sees as opportunities is disgusting.”
OK, wait wait wait, I thought you were the female employee?
Now it's all about this guy? Hang on, hang on one minute. You've already threatened the CEO's wife and have been asked to leave - and we're treated to this last act where apparently the most malevolent and manipulative neck beard guy is suddenly your nemesis? Go on.
> Seeking to create something positive out of the above complexity, Horvath decided to start Passion Projects, an initiative that she now claims “wasn’t just to fix tech,” but was also something designed to “fix GitHub and to strengthen the support network for women who might be experiencing similar things.”
OK, the timeline starts to fit... one point here, the passion projects actually looks good and interesting - so I keep an open mind to the crazy and overly dramatic representation of events - I'd like to know who worked on passion-projects.
> Yet things failed to improve internally. Horvath calls the next period “uglier,” saying that the wife of the founder continued to show up at the office, sit next to Horvath, and “glare at [her] for extended periods of time as if trying to provoke a reaction.” After a spell, “spending a lot of time in the women’s bathroom crying,” Horvath spoke to a different founder, who was “sympathetic” and promised to “address” the situation with the other founder and his wife.
OK, nutty-founder boss, who she wasn't able to talk to properly and had "some partner" have "a talk" with her to "back off" - that's going to cause tensions.
So what is this? Allegations against one woman and a man who "hesitated" (fucking rapist!)
> The wife, to be clear, was not a GitHub employee.
TO BE CLEAR!!!
Because this makes it ALL THE MORE SINISTER!!! "HALP POLICE!! I was abducted by aliens and _THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE DRIVING LICENSES!!". What the fucking hell. You know it's NORMAL for people to be involved in things and help, right? Does this person even know what contract and employment law is?
> wife was in my face at my work station verbally attacking me. She demanded to speak with me in private to which I said no.
Honestly, you pushed her buttons kicking up a fuss after she was just engaging you, BECAUSE YOU HAD SOMEONE TELL HER TO BACK OFF . Now, notice the menacing language used "attack" - gives ideas of some crazy person shouting - it's all an act, it's all a smokescreen, it's all lies.
> "Stretch goals! If I meet my goal of $120,000 I will setup a special podcast where I invite friends to talk about important issues!" — Julie Ann Horvath's Kickstarter / Indiegogo campaign Monday March 17 2014
Also, all this stuff happened A LONG TIME AGO. Seems like it was a plan to kickstarter it - who did she approach to help to the campaign (to be announced tomorrow?) and when did she approach, and what will the excuse be for the fact that it was in 2013 and this all seems rather convenient...
> This continued until her exit from the firm this past Thursday.
Which... yadda yadda yadda, we just jumped forward.... a year? in one sentence?
> But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub.
This is sick and disgusting, what are you suggesting? That if women in an office start hula-hooping men have to leave the area and not watch?
It was unsafe? Yeah of course it was - why not ask some of the WOMEN what they think instead of emphasizing that the "men said they had no problem with it, dot dot dot".
Wow. What a cluster fuck. /u/SleepyAsian [has a better |
There is a great irony in the fact that CNET is hosting this article. They used to be a reliable source for drivers and utilities. Now? Basically everything they have tries to install motherfucking Conduit by default.
Sure you can uncheck the box during the installation process, but the majority of people get wound up in the "Yes, Agree, Continue, Yes" monotony and don't even notice the malware they just unwittingly installed as part of the bundle. |
Having ads pop up when you're browsing the internet is like having panhandlers step into your path and ask for money. Even if they move when you ask them to, they're an annoyance. They're not allowed to do this. Why is it that ad companies are allowed to do exactly this, and become angry when someone creates a way to avoid them?
Ads may be necessary to generate revenue, but if the ads become too annoying, more and more people will not just avoid sites which utilize ads, they may even avoid purchasing products which they now associate with the annoyance of pop-ups and redirects. |
Well, that's what's blocking my stream. I checked the firewall on my computer and it's blocking it. I made an exception rule and it streams just fine. |
I think world is quite reflective so it would be hard to both focus on world and the starlight. If camera was adjusted accordingly to show stars we would be able to see them. |
I've been trying to understand what's going on here.
Netflix wants to deliver content faster to consumers. The further away Netflix's servers are away from customers, the more hops it takes for packets to arrive and the more packets that are dropped or the longer it takes to buffer, degrading service.
So, Netflix uses content delivery networks to cache their content closer to customers. The closer the content, the less the hops. From what I gather, they were using L3 for this purpose before.
The Internet isn't one network. It is a bunch of private networks connected together. L3 provides one network, Comcast and Verizon provide others, the last mile consumer broadband networks. The different companies interconnect their networks through "peering" agreements with each other for the right to swap information between each other. If it's an equal swap (same rate of upload and download between networks), they settle for "self-settlement". If there is an imbalance, like one network pumping more data into the other network than it is receiving, the different companies come up with settlement agreements to compensate.
From what I gather, Netflix has created its own content delivery network and has made its own peering arrangements with broadband network providers. Many seem to be okay with the rate at which Netflix is pumping information onto their networks. Apparently Verizon is not and wants Netflix to pay for the imbalance (the upload rate from Verizon to Netflix is much smaller than the download rate). Netflix also apparently settled with Comcast earlier about the same thing. So, Verizon wants Netflix to pay for the capacity they are using on the Verizon's networks through standard interconnect agreements. |
In Europe we have data protection laws. This means that companies which collect personally identifying information about people in their normal course of business have a duty of care in safeguarding that information. This runs directly opposite to the US Third Party Doctrine, where any information provided to a company in the normal course of business becomes property of that company to do what it likes with. |
Actually, I got a response from mine within a day. Unfortunately he's on the wrong side of all of this...
>Dear (MrAnderson7):
>Thank you for contacting me regarding network neutrality. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
>I have been a strong proponent of keeping the Internet free and open for consumers. Consumers should be entitled access to lawful Internet content of choice, running applications and services of their choice, connecting legal devices to networks, and to competition among network providers, service providers, and content providers. I do not believe Congress should be in the business of stifling innovation and blocking legal Internet traffic.
>Net Neutrality is a policy advocated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that bars service providers from treating various types of Internet activities differently. Verizon Communication sued the FCC claiming that it did not have the regulatory authority to enact net neutrality principles on the Internet. A federal court ruled in favor of Verizon stating that broadband carriers are different than ‘common carriers’ and the FCC overreached their statutory authority on this issue.
>It may please you to know that stakeholders on both sides of this debate do not see an immediate change to Internet practices or procedures based on this ruling. However, some have come to the conclusion that Congress must go a step further and enact regulatory reforms that would bar broadband providers from favoring Internet traffic. If this were to happen, it would mean that for the first time the government would have established price controls over certain Internet services and mandated the sharing of broadband networks with competitors.
>Consumers should be entitled access to lawful Internet content of choice, running applications and services of their choice, connecting legal devices to networks, and to competition among network providers, service providers, and content providers.
>I appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to apprise me of your opinions and hope that you will contact me again should you have any further comments or concerns. If you would like additional information on my activities in the House, please visit my website, etc (removed because facebook links).
>In closing, please know that I consider it a privilege to serve and represent you and your family in Congress.
>Sincerely,
>Mark Amodei
This was from my representative in Nevada. The |
Glitches do exist but the testing that goes into real mission critical software tends to make even the glitches cause a fail-safe condition. So the car is likely to decide to stop when there isn't anything in the way but not to plow through a crowd of pedestrians. Think about the last time that your ECU (existing computer in your car) failed in a way that caused the car to disable the brakes, lock the power steering or max out the throttle. They invariably fail into a limp mode or even just shut everything down. |
My point was that, I'm not giving up HBO. ESPN (and the other channels they are offering) is 18.50 more, so for someone like me, this plan isn't one I would cut ties for. However, I don't actually have cable. I pay for my Father's cable as a Christmas present every year so I just watch the GO channels. Which I love. The only reason I even have ESPN is because he is an avid race fan and that is why I got it for him in the first place. He has a 74" TV and was watching OTA tv, I was like what a waste. Then I moved to where cable isn't available and now we can "share".
That being said I have shitty internet. I have ATT dsl (the only thing besides satellite, which is capped, that is available to me). I get on a good day 1.5 up and .75 down. HOWEVER, I am still able to watch Netflix, Youtube, my GO channels with no buffering issues or problems at all.
The only thing that bugs me about the net speed is, I can't do multiple streaming, but I'm single and live alone so that really isn't that big of a deal unless I want to download a new game from Steam. Then that is a bit of an inconvenience, but I just set it to DL while I'm at work. I also, surprisingly so, have no problems with lag when gaming.
My (Dad's) cable package costs me 120$ a month and that includes his super high speed internet and every channel available (have to get them all for ESPN) through Charter.
Edit* If I were to cancel the ESPN (other channels offered through Sling) I would only save 18.50/mo, which for me isn't worth the hassle. I am VERY happy they are finally looking into pay for what you want to watch, but until they offer AMC, HBO, etc, for me the 1.50 just isn't worth signing up for it. On the other hand, I'm so happy they are finally rolling out a new, pay for what you want to watch, I might sign up for it just out of spite so that hopefully it succeeds. |
I think that's a weak excuse google's using.
[Clash of Clans reports $829 Million in Revenue]( --- no doubt because it has access to a lot of the phone's features.
And google gets a cut of that.
And numbers like that (remember that's just from two games from one app developer) become meaningful even to someone as big as google. |
This never occurs to many people, particularly the elderly, the young, and new users.
Most elderly have limited understanding of technological capabilities. So, even if they suspect they are being monitored, they may not comprehend the full extent of it.
Kids simply don't know, care or understand the implications of most tech or surveillance.
New users (to tech like the Internet and world-wide web) often don't consider security until they grasp the tech itself. |
Working in the phone industry I feel like the lighting connector is what helped make USB better. Mini usb always had issues with the inside connection wearing down over a short time (1-1.5yrs) and if you were less than gentle they would break even faster. When micro usb came out people were putting the connector in upside down often. Yea some people are stupid but often time it was just by accident or maybe in the dark when they plugged their phone in before they went to sleep. Micro USB still has the same issue with the inside connector becoming worn and or breaking. On top of that with all the different manufactures out there making micro they don't all make them at the same quality. Maybe cables don't secure into devices as well as OEM to OEM. I feel like lighting helped solve the issue of having to plug it in a particular way as well as removing the fragile inside connector (male portion usually inside the phone port) for some better durability. People would always tell me that apple was ripping them off for changing the ports on them so soon. I would normally agree but that 32pin connector was used since before the phone was made. I think 7+ years is a pretty good run. They could have changed it several times over. That being said, I don't like that apple doesn't open the doors for others to use the same quality connection. I also think they rip their customers off by not adding certain specs to devices when they know they can. My phone has NFC but only for apple pay (fuck you Apple, give me NFC tags). My phone is also the newest generation phone but doesn't have 1080p screen... What the fuck? My Samsung S4 had that shit. My phone has a 8mp camera... The same amount my last phone did... And the one before that... Why can't I get a 10mp camera with the new color balance and a better low light upgrade? |
Blech. My first year of college my undergrad advisor (undeclared) asked about what I might be interested in. One of my responses was Comp/Info Science. She signs me up for a 300 level Electrical Engg. class. I at the time assumed it was a general req, kind of a bottome up approach. Not so much. It's an EE class typ. taken 2nd half of freshman year or 1st half of sophomore. |
I have a MacBook at home, I have a ThinkPad (T400 if you're curious) for work (that I'm typing on right now).
There is no comparison, the MacBook (I'm talking about the unibody one, not the cheapo plastic white one) is infinitely better built.
I type on this ThinkPad, which reputedly has one of the most solid keyboards in the industry, and it feels mushy. When I hit keys I can feel the keyboard flex - whereas the MacBook keyboard feels as solid as any desktop keyboard I've ever used.
The trackpad on the Lenovo is tiny, scroll is a pain since you have to slide your finger all the way to the edge and twiddle along it - the sweet spot is so small that it's easy for your finger to slip out... and once it does you have to remove your finger, put it back int the scroll zone to scroll (it won't resume scrolling if you just slide your finger back in the zone). The tininess makes it necessary to crank up the sensitivity, which combined with the really poor texture makes the trackpad a pain to use. I go to meetings with a USB mouse because the trackpad is so terrible - but I'm a-ok with the MacBook's trackpad.
Everything on this Lenovo just screams cheapness - parts flex disturbingly when pushed even slightly, and there is a complete overload of geblinkenligten - no Lenovo, I don't need to know when you're reading my hard drive, you really don't need to leave that light blinking like a madman right in my line of sight... sure beats a Dell, or worse, Toshiba. Beating a Dell though, isn't exactly achievement of the century, and doesn't really put you in the save league as the metal MacBooks. |
My main speakers on my setup are JBL S310II's. I don't think they sell them anymore, but they were part of the 'Studio' line. They replaced some bookshelf JBLs that were downgraded to rear surround speakers. Anyway, it became very apparent very quickly that there is a dramatic difference between the studio line and the old northbridge line from JBL. The studio pair sound so much crisper and more true to the sound. It isn't worth worrying about for the rear surrounds, but the center speaker that I have will eventually get upgraded so that movies sound better. |
crosspost from, |
You would think things such as sending emails and working on documents would be indistinguishable. But the psychology behind it is another matter. Two examples:
Many fellow IT employees probably tried this once or twice in the desktop support phase of their careers. I would have users complaining of slow and frustrating PCs. I would take a PC, move the motherboard, disk drives, and all other hardware to another chassis, and bring the PC back to them. At no time did I ever change the OS or alter anything. I never even turned it on. I would check back later and be given thanks for their PC being SO MUCH FASTER! And never hear a complaint again.
A more recent example: I recently finished designing a college in Denver teaching green technologies. I wanted an IT infrastructure that reflected the "green" initiative, so I deployed a completely virtual desktop environment. There are no desktops PCs ; everyone has a PCoIP (sort of like RDP, but better) terminal that connects to a series of servers hosting the virtual desktop environments. The users’ systems are MUCH more powerful than a standard business desktop if the need arises. Not too much detail, but a single Windows "machine" could consume the maximum amount of resources the OS could handle, at a few milliseconds notice. THE COMPLAINTS ROLLED IN! It was all perception. Even though the OS was the same, the desktop persona- for lack of a better word- was different. Complaints about the time to log in were rampant. When logging in to the terminals, the virtual PCs were powering up. It only took 30 seconds, but the difference of having an active display asking them to log in was disconnected from the actual PC they were trying to log into. There was no box sitting there flashing lights and making noise, signifying the PC was working on something. So they had to wait. It is MUCH faster than physically powering on a desktop and then logging in. In addition, any issues, such as slow internet access and minor faults typical with any PC were greatly exacerbated, and attributed to the general design of the new infrastructure. Windows has just as many problems in a virtual environment as it does in an iron environment.
When I used to teach IT (just A+ certification, nothing big, helped pay for college) I always told my students that instilling confidence in the users was the biggest part of maximizing productivity from users. It doesn't matter if the system actually works; they have to BELIEVE it works. The IT equivalent of a jammed stapler can become an "I QUIT" problem for an un-confident user. Using Microsoft goes a long way in this respect, as inane and counter efficient as it is. For large groups of users, only somewhat long term training can achieve confidence in an entirely new OS. I would go so far as to say you have to go beyond that; you have to give them a “wow” factor to move to a new system. This can only be done by effective (read: expensive) training. |
You run an email server at your house. Total control of the system, barring a physical break into your personal property or a digital attack over our Internet connection. It makes it harder for people to watch what you're doing, especially if you're up to date in using the various encryption technologies that secure server-to-server or client-to-client communications. |
For things like hard drive encryption it's something that you have to go out of your way to setup, and only comes in to play if someone gets physical access to your machine. That's the point where it becomes paranoid and that's when people start to question what you're putting in effort for.
It really depends on what data you have on your computer and were you are going with it. If I was going through airport "security" or out of the country I'd have my data encrypted.
Also, I keep some of my data encrypted because it is personal stuff that I don't want anyone who sits at my computer to be able to read. |
You aren't going to see an LTE iphone for a very long time. They even said at the press conference that using an LTE chip would cause them to have to make design changes because its big. They were really coy about the revision information which leads me to believe that they will indeed release the iphone 5 this summer and that this release is to just capitalize on early adopters. |
Ah, but that's just a matter of time. Blu-Ray video quality is really the peak of 2D images in terms of resolution. Sure, you can get higher resolutions, but eventually you run into the DVD-Audio/HD-Audio problem. There were several audio formats that had higher were technically superior to the audio CD format, but they never took off. You reach a point where human ears and eyes just can't perceive the increased video and audio quality.
So, basically we have a static, max level. I don't think 2D movies are ever likely to be sold in a format with higher resolution than Blu-Ray. Any more is just a waste.
However, every year, the cost to deliver content digitally just keeps dropping and dropping. The wired (cable) providers might put on harsh caps to prevent competition to their video offerings, but they're fighting against Moore's Law. Eventually, they are going to lose. Over time, caps will inevitably rise until downloading a Blu-Ray video is like downloading an MP3 is today: cheap and lightning fast.
If the Comcast and the cable companies put in data caps and don't raise them, eventually Verizon Fios or AT&T UVerse will offer twice the data cap for half the price. Wait long enough and even the cell networks will be able to trounce you're artificially low data caps. |
I'll give you 2 versions of my answer:
Romanticized, big-picture, conceptual answer:
The reality is that this whole functioning system we have going relies on a lot of people knowingly/instinctually/blindly accepting a sort of economic faith that sometimes it is worth suspending action of a choice for the longterm vs. short-term benefits.
I mean, think about it. Imagine a world where the technology would exist so that a machine could, by some astonishing technology, replicate another object to its molecular level at a cost rate which was a fraction if of the cost to produce the original piece-by-piece. For this example, lets say it is an iPod (so you put an iPod in the box, and you duplicate it into an identical, working iPod).
We can all agree that such a technology would be a huuuuuuge advancement in technology as well as a huge advancement for society as a whole. Think of the social implications of such a device... the good ones literally border on a Christ-like act of turning a single fish into a school, or a single loaf of bread into... well, you get the point.
But the other implications of the device, in a world devoid of any Intellectual Property rights/protections, would also allow someone with the same device to take an iPod (a product that not only represents the fruit of millions of dollars in costs for Apple but--unlike many other products that also cost as much--it succeeded) and instantly duplicate it and sell it at a much lower cost.
So the question becomes... how do we artificially gimp the Copy-Cat company so that Apple is fairly allowed to recoup their costs and benefit from their investments? After all, people want technology, and the companies want to trade technology for currency. But if you take that away, you take away incentive to create the technology.
Would you dedicate your life to working on something amazing that, when released, could be legally taken by some large company like Sony because they were poised and ready like poachers to immediately manufacturer any good idea before you have time to bring it to market? Could you even survive? How would you eat? What is your standard of living?
So if you can accept the fact that such an issue is present with physical consumer goods, it isn't too crazy to apply it Intellectual Property that exists in the more-easily-copyable Second Dimension. While I do not deny the existence of some of the most amazing works of writing being complete free to the public, I don't see any issue with abiding by the terms of knowledge that is valued at a specific price. It doesn't matter how much Tony Robbins may have changed your life, or even various parts of populations -- he wants your $19.95. Doesn't matter if you consider his words to be nearly on a level of religion -- their importance is only more reason that you should pay $19.95 and God help you if you try to share the words for free (see: Scientology). Simply put: it is a catch-22.
In many ways, consciously gimping something is the only way to ensure progress. Company A gives a wink and a nod to society that it will give them technology so long as society agrees to not take advantage of that trust.
With alllll of that said, as great as libraries are and as important as they are, and as much as I will always support them -- they are a form of competition. They exist as a less convenient way (a gimp) of accessing a product (books) that are produced by invested money (Company A) in hopes of gaining a return from people who want the convenience of ownership.
With the current gimps in place of a psuedo-licensing fee of replacing used books after 26 uses, Company A can factor it into their business model in order to keep affording to make those books. Making them durable beyond 26 uses, such as digitally, heavily impacts this system and inhibits progress. |
The point of a business, especially a corporation, is to take as much money out of the hands of the customer as is possible. If your customer has $100 of discretionary funds, you want $100 of it; no matter how that happens.
As long as people forget this fact they will continue to get fucked by corporations.
The problem is that in theory the "free market" would be self correcting. People would see that a business is acting against their best interest and wouldn't buy from them. But these days there are so many parent companies and subsidiaries that it's hard to tell who not to buy from.
Then there's what I call the Wal Mart effect. People know that Wal Mart is essentially responsible not only for running local businesses out of business, but also for the relocation of many factories overseas. In the long term that's bad for just about everyone in the U.S. who isn't rich, but do you boycott the company? Sure, eventually you would like for them to not exist, for people to make more money, and for jobs to return, but in the here any now that isn't happening, so you may as well save money by shopping there. |
Because a lot of things that cops do are completely illegal if someone else did it, and without these powers we couldn't have effective law enforcement, and without some form of immunity no one would be a cop because they'd go to jail if they ever made a mistake.
Same reason a heart surgeon isn't sent to jail for cutting someone's chest open and fucking it up, whereas I would be.
Generally if someone is doing something that's part of their job, and they fuck it up, they can't be held legally responsible unless you prove malice (although you can sue their employer.) |
I only hate it. It allows for the cops to operate within a framework that absolves them of personal responsibility. In San Diego there was a case where a cop was chasing a criminal at high speeds and accidentally killed a family. They charged the criminal with murder even though the police hit the victims. The family sued the department for establishing policies that allowed the officer to drive recklessly through a red light and won a large sum of money for their loss. Unfortunately the police department offset responsibility for paying to the city which then turned around and argued in arbitration that the sum of money was unreasonable considering the budget issues of the city. Long story short the family got less than $100K of the $2 million in damages they were due, not because the award was unreasonable but because the party that was in the end responsible for paying (the city) simply could not afford it. |
Bullshit!
We live in a federalist representative constitutional republican democracy. That is a form of democracy. "Democracy" does not mean "Direct Democracy". |
It makes me sad how many Americans have no idea how a bill becomes law, but feel compelled to pass their misconceptions on to others. NDAA, as well as every single bill that every single president has signed, was absolutely veto-able. The president can veto any bill, regardless of popularity amongst the people or congress.
What you're alluding to is that this veto can be overriden by a 2/3rds vote. What I think you may be missing is that this is an entirely new vote -- meaning that congresspeople who originally voted for NDAA could have voted against overriding the veto. Vetos typically get media attention as well, meaning that there would be significant pressure from an American public who just found out what NDAA is to not override it. |
It's kind of funny to me that there's all these talk about how the article is speculative and trash, and that you can't believe any old thing you read on the internet... yet the very same people are willing to take Obama seriously when he says he might veto CISPA, after a track record of backing down from vetoes.
Yes, this article is garbage, but it's the same level of speculative garbage that the original report was.
I think the point is, don't count on the administration to do anything. If you don't want CISPA or any other law to pass you need to take action. |
The comparison to NDAA in this article is entirely illustrative of what the OMB statement actually said and meant. With the NDAA, the veto threat was against a draft that lacked language later added which declared that the sections were not expanding existing AUMF power to detain (and indeed they weren't whatever you might think, they were altering the execution of that power). Once they were in, he signed the bill with a signing statement like he said he would.
He will also sign CISPA if the draft changes so it is more protective of individual data and puts more specific handcuffs on improper sharing. The bill will still suck, and the outcome will in no way deviate from the OMB statement just made. |
While I'm sure lawyers and dumb people will try to make this a major issue, I really don't think it will end up that complicated.
California mandates auto insurance. As such, the end user will likely not see much of anything different; get in an accident, call your insurance. Further, I remember reading that black box type devices will soon be required for cars. Combine that with the info one of these vehicles acquires just to run properly, and you will likely have enough data to make a final assessment.
So basically, if the system has a clear malfunction, the insurance company will go after them. If the manufacturer screwed up the set up of the system, the insurance company will go after them. Finally, if the end user did something wrong, modified their car against warranty, or didn't follow up with maintenance, they will be at fault. Based on the findings from the insurance company (who are just looking for money of course), a civil suit can also be brought. If a individual contests the insurance company, it will be on them to pay for an investigation.
Given that most accidents will be pretty straight forward, I don't see this becoming a major problem. |
I think it's not OK to say 22 gigawatts is equivalent to 20 nuclear pp. If the largest nuclear power plant (ref Wikipedia) produces 8.3GW, we have to think about how much space and effort it would take to build two of these (producing 16.6GW) and how much to get an equivalent amount out of solar panels. THEN consider other pros/cons...
It's great that Germany is doing this, the world needs a "strong" leader in Eco-friendly policies. But the Nuclear Power Witch Hunt is going to cause more harm than good - do not believe everything fossil-fuel-funded media is telling you. There is no one way to produce "Nuclear" power, did you know Thorium-based reactors were probably rejected by the US Govt because of their fuel and waste couldn't also be used to make nuclear weapons? ( |
A couple things here:
1) Reducing the albedo of all the US roads will reflect light, causing less heat to be trapped by the atmosphere; this can help climate change in theory.
2) The connection between carbon in the atmosphere and albedo is tenuous at best. If I understand correctly, it would save on cooling costs and therefore use less carbon? Who is cooling highways in the middle of Nevada? Nobody. So that calculation is suspicious.
3) As of 2008, the US CO2 output was about 5 billion tons per year. So reducing the carbon (CO2?) in the atmosphere by 8 billion tons is less than 2 years of normal output, and I imagine a task of that magnitude would take...i don't know... a decade or so to complete? |
that's not how it works. Heat and light are all both electromagnetic waves. A black surface absorbs the light waves and heat waves and releases the energy of both back into the surrounding air by emitting more heat waves; the light's energy has been transformed into heat. This is because the material will absorb energy in big chunks (light waves) but only emit energy in a set of smaller chunks (heat waves). (and all the energy it absorbs has to get released one way or another).
A white surface will still absorb heat waves, but it will reflect a higher portion of the light waves. Of all the energy hitting the pavement, a higher portion remains stored in a light wave (rather than having been converted to heat waves). Since our atmosphere is largely transparent to light waves, the light bouncing off the pavement can escape the earth more easily, whereas a heat wave will interact more with atmospheric particles. (our atmosphere is less transparent to heat waves is another way of putting it). Sum that subtle difference up over millions of square miles and it makes a big difference.
Keeping buildings cool is just one reason to paint rooftops white; the other reason is, again, to increase the amount of light reflected back into space and therefore decrease the amount of the sun's energy that our planet absorbs. |
Straw man much with the tablet PC comment?
Have you used any of the Windows 8 betas? Or watched a demo video? Or even seen pictures of it? Nothing in your comment hints that you have.
First, all tablets are going to be pretty damn similar. Some sort of thin rectangle that is mostly a screen. It's unavoidable. You completely ignore the innovation of the cover/touch keyboard that magnetically connects to the tablet itself. As for software, Windows 8 feels very different from iOS on an iPad.
Your concern about two models is unwarranted. In fact, it's something that sets Windows 8 based tablets apart from iPads and Android tablets. Windows RT is built to run on ARM based devices. It can't run x86 applications, so it's basically just the Metro layer from Windows 8. Since the Metro layer is designed with tablets very much in mind, it'll be intuitive on a tablet. The other version runs on x86 architecture. It'll get worse battery life but will have legacy support (and future support) for traditional PC software. It'll still have the Metro layer, just like every version of Windows 8. |
I feel like the guy with "econ" in his name would appreciate seeing the law of supply and demand at work.
Just because those that had invites didn't pay for them, that doesn't mean they didn't have value. You have to put your mind back to 2004, gmail was a big deal.
Google did attempt to remedy the problem by gradually pushing out more and more invites to the public. This kind of killed the invite for cash thing on ebay and spawned the more reasonable www.gmailtrade.com . |
Nick Clegg is the leader of the Liberal Democrats - a sort of 0.5 extra in our two-party system; generally pulling a significant amount of the vote, but not enough to get a victory.
However, in 2010, Clegg managed to get them enough votes that they'd be able to enter into power through a coalition - no one had a majority, so the Lib Dems and the Conservatives had to join together to govern. Clegg, as Deputy PM, basically ignored all the promises he'd made, including a signed contract not to introduce increase tuition fees, and went along with what the Conservatives wanted. |
Giving one court that much power, just leads to companies avoiding or straight defying rulings.
Good the patent system can be scrapped and innovation can stop being prevented by bull shit littigation and we can move onto solving real problems like - Global food crysis, large scale drought, poverty, child abuse, human rights abuses around the world... you know, real problems.
Imagine of just 1/10 of the amount of money that was spent on litigation in the last year alone was put to research and development? or Solving energy problems, increasing productivity of arable land, hydroponics, improved methods of desalination of water that does not net a negative impact on the local marine life.
The reality is, the patent system has only caused problems in the last half century, rarely for the benefit of anyone except the patent owner. The purpose was to encourage innovation, it has effectively discouraged it. Or made it so expensive to prove your idea truely unique, as to be unprofitable. Sure we have new things pop up, but then we have patent trolls, like say apple patenting ROUNDED CORNERS ON A RECTANGLE im sorry, but this is a telling point to how broken the system is. |
Let the Yank try. HRH would smack him down where he stands with her shiny, shiny scepter. |
This is for embedded systems not a gaming PC. Those are standard interfaces like LCD expansion, UEXT and GPIO for the embedded market. If you're in the market to actually buy one of these, you'd actually want those interfaces.
For more of a "linux desktop on a chip" you'd probably want to use the raspberry pi or the beagleboard.
Note, this has a VGA out, which is going to be a lot more handy for embedded projects instead of HDMI for simple applications. It only outputs 1024x768 anyway. |
OP's title make it seem like in pursuit of design Apple will spare no expense.
In reality, Apple was forced to pay up after being caught pirating.
Like they say, "YOU wouldn't download a car."
EDIT: Woah woke up to a bunch of comments. I admit, my language was kinda harsh on Apple, and is in no way meant to make Apple out to be a bad guy. My main point being that the sequence of events as it appears to a neutral observer of the OP's title post would go like this: Assumption: Apple is a good design company. Upon reading the title, Apple is such a fan of good design that they are willing to shell out 21M just to have a good clock design.
I originally wanted to correct that assumption as reading of the source article would show that the sequence of events is like this: Someone at Apple may have thought that particular clock design was nice, and used it without checking if licensing is needed. However, turns out Apple did not do good enough due diligence on the design. Swiss Railways noticed, and complained to Apple. At this stage it could go both ways. Either a lengthy lawsuit / change in icon + smaller compensation / keeping the icon + licensing deal (both compensation would be insignificant to Apple). But the essence is that Apple did not voluntarily pay that 21 million. It was an act that is preceded by SSB noticing / followed by consideration of legal action, which prompted the settlement.
For those who said that the design was there for everyone to see, let me put it this way: Mickey Mouse as an icon is there for everyone to see, but til today its use is still restricted under copyright laws. Similarly, given the popularity of the clock design + Apple's huge marketing / legal team, it is a huge oversight to miss out on the licensing from the get go. |
No. They could have removed it in an update and paid a small fee. Instead, they decided to keep it for a much larger fee. Apple's a big company. Oversights will happen. Someone may have put this in as a placeholder and forgotten to remove it or something of that sort. Apple didn't pirate it.
Apple would not steal this because that would result in huge fines rather than what they paid. If they didn't "spare no expense" for good design, they would have paid a much smaller fee and removed the clock entirely. No company would steal something this obviously. |
The fact that this is the top voted comment in the thread speaks volumes about how little this board cares about facts when it comes to Apple.
No, Apple did not HAVE to pay anyone anything. There was no lawsuit of any kind against Apple here. Apple saw the issue, it took the initiative, and it decided to pay SBB out of its own free will. |
One tangential WTF story related to online poker for those who haven't heard of it:
The Dept of Justice seized a ton of money from Full Tilt Poker (one of the biggest online poker rooms) back in April 2011. At that time, Full Tilt had a shortage of cash and was unable to fulfill the player balances for all of the accounts on their site (poker players keep a cash balance with the site to play with, a pseudo-checking account). The shortage of cash was due to aggressive distributions to owners and the lack of segregation of player money vs operational money -- in other words, the owners were dipping into the player money for their own paychecks. Since then, Full Tilt was acquired by PokerStars (largest online poker room operator) in a settlement with the DOJ in Summer 2012, where PokerStars agreed to repay all of the player funds (~$350M USD).
Stars offered to facilitate repayment to all players, something that they handled very quickly and efficiently themselves in April 2011.
The DOJ decided that they would handle repayment to US players, so Stars gave them the money, and that Stars could repay the rest of the world's players (non-Americans).
Fast-forward to Dec 2012. The DOJ and one of the principal owners of FTP (former pro poker player Howard Lederer, who, by estimates, earned around $42 Million in earnings from his ownership of FTP during the fraud) settled for around $4 Million. They seized a few assets but Lederer kept the good majority of his possessions (including luxury cars, a few homes, and bank accounts).
So American poker players are now still without their money, the owners who stole literally tens of millions from players are facing minimal (if any) jail time and retained a good portion of the defrauded money, and the DOJ is in the process of taking bids for a 3rd party to facilitate repayment to players. |
I'm sure you've seen the stories where the US has seized domains of companies that they think are in violation of US law even when they do not have the legal authority to do so. This forces poker sites to operate in second- and third-world countries that are completely out of the jurisdiction of US authorities even if they actively turn away US players. This has the unfortunate side effect of allowing shady businessmen to engage in shady and corrupt business practices with near impunity, knowing that they are out of the reach of any government that would otherwise have the power to stop them.
Most banks will also have nothing to do with online gaming sites if they conduct any form of business, directly or indirectly, at all with the US. Which means that a lot of these sites are forced to rely on third party payment processors that use all sorts of fake names, shell companies, etc. to get around US restrictions. Of course, these payment processors are of questionable legality and run with absolutely no oversight, which means that there's nothing stopping them from just taking your money and running if they so choose, and customers having little to no recourse if something goes wrong.
In an effort to validate your account, you are often required to present all sorts of information including things like utility bills, scans of drivers licenses and/or passports, etc. Since there is absolutely no oversight to these poker companies or their processors, you are taking a huge risk of identity theft if the site you want to play on or one of the processors they're using isn't on the up-and-up. And if you are a victim of identity theft, you'll have absolutely no legal protection at all. |
I remain both impressed and totally unimpressed by apple iphone sales. The sheer number is very impressive but their latest iphone being a top selling model doesn't impress me at all. If I want the flagship IOS phone I can get the iphone 5 or I can opt for the... iphone 5, better yet I can get the... iphone 5.
If I want a flagship Android phone I can get the Samsung Galaxy Note II, or the Samsung Galaxy SIII, or the LG Optimus G, or the HTC Droid DNA, or the LG Nexus 4, or the HTC One X+ |
This is capitalism at its finest and companies can do whatever they like. At the end of the day, they are there to make money not for the overall good of humanity.
What I fail to understand is WHY people continue to buy new cartridges. Its costs a fraction of the price to buy a DIY refill kit (I've been using these since 2002) and it works just fine. Let the companies sell ridiculously marked up cartridges - you can fight back by refilling them at home. It is NOT incredibly messy. It takes about 3 minutes and 2 pieces of toilet paper. I've used the same cartridge for years at a time before the printing head wears out.
Even if they start making cartridges that cannot be refilled, 3rd party manufacturers will make cheaper cartridges. Law of a competitive market. Let them mark it up - what we ought to do is educate the consumer. |
Damn right. I got an MFC-8500 from a friend who'd already been using it for years. It runs like a dream and took me a little over a year of printing to run the toner out (I print a lot for my job).
Then I just bought 4 high yield refill kits for just $30.00 total. So I'm looking at $7.50 a year for toner. |
The first one is by redistributing the toner inside the printer cartridge component. It’s a method you can use to extend the life of your toner cartridges when your printer suddenly notifies you that you’re already low of toner and that you need to replace it. To redistribute the toner in your cartridge, all you have to do is to carefully pull out the toner cartridge from the printer and gently shake it from side to side to redistribute the “toner” inside the cartridge. Such method will get you 20 to 30% more prints from your laser printers. You can check out this article for its step-by-step procedure, “Extend The Life of Your Laser Toner Cartridges.”
The second one, on the other hand, may require you to pull some techie skills out of your sleeves because this concerns with changing the smart chip in your toner cartridge. The smart chip is the one responsible for reading the level of toner in the printer cartridge. This is what also notifies you and your printer that your printer is already low of toner or there is no toner left anymore. Sometimes, though, errors like this appears on your screen even though you have just installed a new toner cartridge in your laser printer unit. If you encountered such thing or you think that your toner cartridge shouldn’t be yet empty than what it says in your computer screen then resort on changing the smart chip. |
What I don't understand is that the relevant factors are known and standardised.
You can easily tell what a printer costs upfront
You can lookup what an ink cartridge costs
You can lookup how many standardised ISO pages the cartridge can print
Hence, you know the one-time cost and you know the cost-per-page
Compare printers with this information and you know exactly whether a potential printer will screw you over or not. I honestly do not understand how this can be a surprise to owners.
As an IT guy, a few simple examples of extremely economically-efficient printers are the HP Officejet Pro 8000 series and (even better) the HP Color Laserjet 3600/3800. If you can find one of those laserjets second-hand (preferably from the printer lease market) you have a very affordable business printer that is extremely cheap in terms of cost per page. |
Former HP laser printer tech here. I was with the colour group but cross-trained to monochrome. A word of advice for you....
STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HP HOST BASED PRINTERS
They are made as cheaply as possible. Basically HP makes a new printer, looks at it and goes, "This is a good product, ship it." but then the marketing assholes go, "We need a cheaper version so we can sell more units."
So they go back to the good machine and cheapen it as much as possible. They dumb down the CPU and RAM as much as they can. They replace as many parts as possible with cheaper, less durable parts. All to drop the price point as far as possible. A classic example of this was the CLJ3800/3600 duo.
The 3800 was an excellent machine when it came out and all us techs roundly praised it as a big improvement over the 3700 it replaced. Then they brought out the 3600. When the 3600 came out it jumped our call volume by about 50% because people wanted it to do everything the 3800 could do, and it couldn't.
Then about 6 months later came the saga of "The Impossible Part". But I see this reply is too long as it is. |
Sure, but this may get kind of long....
So, we are about 7-8 months after the launch of the 3600 and things are going okay. The initial craziness has ended, most salespeople are telling their customers reasonable things about the printer and now the calls we are getting are normal, average calls.
I've been on the 'Senior Line' for about 2 months at this point and I'm hearing a lot of the calls that go outside the norm. The 'Senior Line' is a group of techs who have been there for awhile, know most of the problems by heart and know how and when to escalate things to Tier 3 and 4 support. Oh, and we were the guys that took supervisor calls.
So, its a quiet day and I'm listening over my shoulder to a cube mate who is talking with an ASP (Authorized Service Provider) about a printer with alignment problems that we sent him there to fix. He's found the problem. A small plastic tab that is part of the alignment/mounting bracket for one of the cartridges has broken. This is letting the cartridge droop a bit in its slot and is causing the alignment problem.
The reason why the ASP is calling in is that he cannot find the part number in his manuals and is asking my buddy to find the part number. My buddy can't either. 10 minutes later he still can't find it and turns to ask me for help. It's quiet so I take myself out of the call queue and punch my status to 'Research'.
Together we go through all the manuals. No part number. We go through the tech database, which is a new tool that replaced our old KBR system. None of us older techs like the new one very much. Still no part number. We get the tech to take a picture of the part and fax the image to us. We then go to the tear-down 3600 we have on the floor and physically find the part ourselves. Still no part number.
By this time, half the senior group is involved. Everyone is scouring the databases, both the tech and the part database. One senior even goes into the backdoor access to the parts base we have and searches there, nada. So calls are starting to back up and management is yelling for us to get back into the queue. I volunteer to call the 'Engineering Group' in Bangalore. They are Tier 3 and 4 support and I have a good rapport with them.
I call them up and describe the problem. Another 10 minutes of "what part"? go by. I send them the image of part the ASP sent us. "What the hell?", goes the E guy, "That's impossible. That part should never fail for the life of the printer. Ask the ASP if the printer has a damaged outer casing." I know where the Engineer guy is going with this. If the outer casing is damaged he can say that the problem is due to customer misuse and he can deny free servicing. At the time all HP laserjets came with a standard one year warranty that included on-site servicing if needed. That could be denied if the problem was due to customer misuse.
So I call the very patient ASP back and relay what the Engineering guy has asked. "Nope", comes the response, "that printer is in immaculate shape otherwise. Even the paper is HP 20lb bond paper." I relay this to the Engineer guy who sighs and authorizes a complete printer replacement. Seeing as there is no part number, there is no part that can be sent. With no part to be sent the only thing that can be done within the warranty is to replace the entire unit. Which is what happens, plus the printer gets sent to a study group to try to figure out what happened. Case Closed.
Or so we thought. Turns out that case was merely the herald.
From that point on for the next several months we started getting these calls in regularly. At first the Engineer group just started authorizing replacements. But when you start getting 5 to 10 of these a day it starts getting expensive in a hurry. It was the same little part every time. This tiny component of the alignment/mounting bracket. This part that was "impossible" to fail. They started having to pull production models off the line to send in. Finally, about 3 months after the first call, out goes a service bulletin. There is a fix. HP has had to start a separate production line in order to make new alignment/mounting brackets. The new bracket has a new tab in it. Made from a heavier duty plastic. All 3600's with the problem, in and out of warranty would get free servicing for this.
We breathed a sigh of relief, followed a few days later by gales of laughter. Senior Line got sent a few of these so we could have something to eyeball if we needed them. The replacement plastic tab? It was physically identical to the one in the 3800. |
I didn't read the article, but I'm going to guess that it has something to do with the elasticity of demand for printer ink. If it doesn't then it's probably a BS article anyway. |
Explain how that's asinine? Google is run by people not angels, and even if the current people in management are of sound integrity, there is no guarantee it will stay that way for the next decade+. Google is also still in US jurisdiction and so is not safe from intervention by the very same government that has been so gung-ho about wiretaps for the last decade.
[Here is a quick overview]( of US established law that the government is currently trying to expand to more online services. Considering that this law was meant to give them capability of spying on any type of communication that was considered important at the time, it is almost certain that it will be extended to include modern forms of communications soon. There is apparently some minor legal roadblocks in the way for now when it comes to some online services. Do a search on Skype and FBI to see how that's getting changed. |
Not a fan of windows 8 but not a fan of this "infographic" er advertisement either.
see a normal infographic will make a claim followed by a link to a source that isnt their own site. Sure I know the claims are mostly correct, if not spun a bit. But how is anyone else to know?
I suppose you could learn more.. and go to [upgradefromwindows8.com]( maybe they got info and sources there
well first thing you see is that infographic..you can click on it and tell microsoft they suck.. well not really sure, kinda looks like you are signing up for the site.. maybe it gets to ms at some point. It says deer microsoft, so I am assuming. I search around the site.. cant really find any info on windows 8.. lots of stuff that would confuse normal people on linux |
I think it's bigger than just the Surface (pun not intended). Essentially people thought that they would sell more, obviously right? And they didn't so it is easy to make that case. But really it's more about Management not doing well too. No one respects Ballmer and he looks like a clown on stage. Sure you can make the argument that they are trying to be a leader in tablet design or whatever, but they do not have the corporate image that Google has, Google can fail hundreds of times and then abandon projects and people will applaud them for doing so, MSFT is so blue-chip that they are expected to maintain other things such as dividends and being a safe haven for investors.
People see it as reckless and stubbornly holding on to high margin computing vs ARM competition. Windows RT sucks, It's a shitty watered down version of something people hate to begin with.
Basically it is seen this way. Desktop PCs took a bigger hit than expected...... no matter right? Because MSFT decided to be proactive and make their own tablet etc....... but no one wants it, so even trying to transition into mobile computing (arguably the future), they can't get that right. So the real reason for the stock taking a hit is all of this combined, also the stock did well this year, the day before earnings it was up nearly 33% YTD, after the sell off it's up 17.5% so still good performance, but when a company preforms drastically well suddenly takes some negative catalyst, the effects are pretty pronounced.
Not sure if this helps, and I'll continue dialogue with you, but originally this was about Xbox not so much about surface, so my original comment was truly geared to that. I am not an expert on MSFT mind you, my main focus is telecom companies, but I follow all of Tech. |
While this is definitely true, and in point of fact, makes me uncomfortable on default subs, I believe the tinfoil hatters are pretty justified in being paranoid on this issue.
This whole Prism/xkeyscore thing is way out of line with the values of modern democracy. And the governments reaction to its reveal has done nothing to assuage these fears. |
TIL you're not allowed to be paranoid in America
Are you intentionally being dense? I said it was paranoid, not that they should not be allowed to be paranoid.
Are you suggesting that because it's allowed, it's a good thing they should do? Utter nonsense, I was saying it wasn't a really good reason for this whole waste of taxpayer dollars. That was it. Don't make strawmen arguments.
>Also, most large commercial companies have strict Internet monitoring. Because a company google searching for bombs is not something that reflect favorably on the company's reputation.
That's merely the paranoia restated. Poorly I might add. A company worried about an employee searching for bomb information is worried that someone might bomb them and they'd lose money and their lives, not that it's bad PR. And it still doesn't justify anything. |
On one hand, the $1000 (actually €1000, but whatever) figure is one of those made-up "could save up to" numbers that really don't mean anything. The water and energy savings percentages, if accurate, are much more representative.
On the other hand, even if the claim is overblown, it's still a really cool idea if it can be made cheap commercially. Grey water systems are an interesting idea (and probably useful in areas where water is really scarce), but the real savings here is the energy from all that hot water being recycled. Not only do you use less hot water, but you can then have a smaller hot water heater which uses less energy keeping the unused water hot. That's a pretty big deal. The water savings are just icing on the cake. Especially if you ran the (vastly reduced) water from the shower into a grey water system afterwards. Such savings.
On the other other hand, the article says nothing about how much it will cost to install and maintain. Replacement filters and such could start to outweigh the water and energy savings. |
I went to design a system like this in 2007 and found an Australian company had already done it. |
Guy who works with UV shower purifying systems here.
I see a few flaws in this system. Firstly, point-of-use filtration systems that are out there already have to have filter replacements every 30 days as they block up very quickly and cease to work. This could cause an inconvenience when you go for your morning shower and it doesn't allow water to flow. Replacing these filters are not cheap. You are looking around the £40-50 mark in the UK per filter per month, Although they recycle their filters I do not see them doing it for free. This then begs the question of if it is cost effective to replace the filter on a regular basis?
The next point i would like to make is more towards the bacteria side of things (which I am a bit more clued up on).
One worrying claim is the effectiveness of the bacteria reduction. It is true that filter do remove nearly 100% of bacteria, however there are no means to stop bacteria growth after the filter. Any naturally occurring bacteria on the surface of the shower-head can grow backwards into the water supply and multiply as there is no means of bacterial back-flow prevention. So you could quite possibly still get nasty diseases such as Legionnaires disease and Pseudomonas. |
No longer innovate? IBM made Watson and are working on finding where it can be applied other than game shows. IBM is also one of the most secretive companies when it comes to the things they research.
Microsoft has been burning through translation software, they demo'd their English Speech to Mandarin Speech (while simulating the users voice in the other language). They're working on research projects such as a pane of glass that can be a screen and a camera at the same time (theortically able to catch the light from something directly pressed up against the glass). They're working around finally putting their platforms under a common interface. They've added support for 3d printing to Windows 8.
Also those two companies spend the most in R&D compared to pretty much any other tech company I know if. |
It's the difference that companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, etc are huge multi-national companies, while HoverZoom is made by one guy who claims he is working in the good of the people. It is expected that Google and Microsoft will not be stealing your password or bank account information, if they did it would be extremely easy to find and sue them over. With an extension like this it is made by one person who could easily put malware to steal sensitive information under the guise of marketing research. |
It's not why it will never happen. It's why it will be hard to make it happen.
The fact that companies try to protect their financial interests by impeding progress is almost criminal, and it shouldn't be a viable excuse. The only reason it is one, is because the population doesn't outcry enough, boycott enough, or make it enough of an issue.
To say it will never happen and leave it at that is to not contribute one valuable voice to the way of progress. |
This thread has several comments along the lines of, "utilities won't invest in infrastructure because they are monopolies and don't have to." I think this line of reasoning is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how utilities make money. There are a number of ways this happens (in no order)
1) Sale of electricity
2). Licensing pole space to cable and telco
3). Energy efficiency programs (both in terms of direct shareholder payments and bidding the avoided sales into various capacity markets).
4). Owning and maintaining assets - this is where most people are confused. Utilities normally earn an agreed-upon rate of return on costs that are negotiated into their rate base. These can vary by jurisdiction but may include power plants, poles and wires, tree trimming, disaster planning and execution, etc. etc. etc.
Let's say you're given a choice between making 8% guaranteed on a dollar or a million dollars. Which would you pick ( assuming you had the $ to invest)? Most of us would invest as much as we could, right? Likewise, the utilities include as much into their rate base as they can. This means they typically WANT to build things but are limited by prudence reviews, rate cases, etc. in their jurisdiction. Because electricity is now seen as a public need, transactions in the industry are heavily scrutinized and regulated. You want this, because it controls rates.
The other limiting piece is that electricity needs to be transported over wires, and these wires need to go somewhere. People normally don't want them in their yard, so building, upgrading, or extending lines is a long, difficult, and expensive process.
What I've learned is that there's no good way to make and distribute power. The same people who shout about clean energy will fight tooth and nail to protect natural resources ( which now seems to include your view of someone else's private property). I've seen the enviro groups oppose windmills, distribution of existing hydro power, large scale solar installations, etc. Kennedy took a lot of flak for his stance on Cape Wind, but NIMBYism is absolutely everywhere, and crosses all social and economic lines.
Don't take this as a criticism of those groups - I'm a closet treehugger, and
I think overall, healthy debate on these issues is vital and helps us strike a balance between competing needs/desires. At some point, though, we'll need to decide if we truly want large-scale replacement of fossil with renewables, and make the difficult choices that go along with that decision. |
the little secret they aren't telling you is that they are probably installing 50 MW of reliable (possibly non-renewable) generation to pick up the slack when these turbines aren't generating power.
It is highly situational. I would suggest you read the Minnesota Wind Integration Study in their region was really quite reasonable. They didn't see any reason to build more backup power for their region because the worst event that could happen was the tie line from Manitoba Hydro would go down, and they already have reserves to cover that. |
It's actually not the power companies holding this back. Utilities recoup capital expenditures by factoring it into their [rate base.]( If anything, they want to spend assloads of money because it increases the rate that they can charge. That's why many power companies "gold plate" their new plants...they spend more money than necessary on the plant to increase their rate base.
No, the largest impediments to a nationwide grid are a combination of NIMBYism, powerful local governments, and the political suicide that is a rate hike. Nobody wants a high voltage power line running through their backyard. States have control over the zoning rights necessary for these power lines. For every line you need to go to the local government officials and say, "Hey bro, we want to run this line through your state. It's super high voltage, no one wants to be near it, it will only create temporary jobs in your area, oh and btw we aren't actually using it to bring power to your state....we just want to send it to the states next to you." Good luck convincing an elected official to back it.
Finally, and probably most importantly, no utility will expend that capital without the PUC guaranteeing a rate that allows them to reasonably recover the capital expenditure. A nationwide grid will easily costs billions of dollars. No politician wants to be the job killing, baby eating, middle-class destroyer that led to a rate hike. America is addicted to it's artificially-low energy prices.
Oh, and that doesn't even factor in that utilities are in a death spiral in the U.S. and the only current way they know how to stay afloat is through rate hikes. |
Thanks for addressing this honestly. The existence of any flaw prior to it's discovery is the same be it closed source or open. it is the response that is different. it is the transparency of audit that open source allows (not mandates) and that closed source explicitly prohibits that is advantageous.
I agree about interesting projects getting more attention, but think a project can be interesting not only technically, but also by the user base. A boring print driver, might not be exciting to develop, but if it is deployed on millions of users machines and critical servers, (like OpenSSL) it is extremely interesting to security researchers to audit the fuck out of it. there should also be motivation for companies and organizations that rely on these components to commission independent regular, security audits of code. as it is both in their own interest and in the common interest.
One other point I'd like to make is that closed source/internal security review, might have worked sufficiently in the past, when the adversary was a teenage hacker in his bedroom, or organized criminals trying to steal CC numbers, catching the low hanging fruit with traded old exploits. But it's been a year since that adversary changed. Computer systems now need to be resilient against foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, vulnerabilities inserted by companies legally compelled to do so by secret court orders, can and have been already discovered and exploited by short funded and resourced independent security researchers. It goes without saying that foreign resourced government sponsored agencies can also discover them. Closed source offers nothing but protection of these vulnerabilities is it completely precluded the possibility of public peer review audit common to all other forms of critical business processes and scientific/engineering best practice. Financial records, scientific papers, industrial engineering designs are all subject to publication and scrutiny in order for allowed to be operate in public. This avoids fraud, pseudoscience, and dangerous construction projects from proceeding. |
IT guy here.
I can speak to stability.
Windows 8 was less stable than 7. This is completely logical considering how much fresh, new code was in the OS overhaul.
After a few years of work, with Windows 8.1 they have approximately achieved the stability of 7.
However, since Windows 7 drivers are completely mature by now, and for 8.1, the drivers are still very new and fresh (I've been amazed by how many 8 drivers don't work on 8.1) they introduce additional instability there. |
Uh, there's actual an answer for quite a few of those... I'm not even going to try answer because it will just be confusing as hell. But seriously, you say they have no idea what they're doing.
Would you like to try and code an operating system?
I mean if they just have no idea what they're doing then obviously they just need programmers who can write operating systems right?
You are talking about something that is INCREDIBLY complex and I am willing to bet that even the worst programmer at Microsoft is far more adept than you at coding something like this.
Just be happy that you have a device that interfaces and connects you to the entire world. You sound like an ungrateful asshole to be honest. You have this magic box that can do things that 30 years ago people didn't even dream of. |
So sick of hearing people say that people who don't like 8 "just don't like learning new things."
In a business environment, big changes to the UI cause HUGE productivity losses. Average clerical users stop dead in their tracks. The IT personnel that have to deal with the issue DO NOT appreciate all the trouble it causes in their user base.
So yeah, you can work through it. There's always a work around. But you come in and "work around" 400 users and then see how big of a fan you are. The changes to the UI were an absolutely asinine move. Because Gertrude in finance can't figure it out... wash rinse and repeat that shit over and over again and it leaves in you a pretty bad mood. |
Give consideration to a business environment:
You are the "IT person".
Gertrude works in Finance. She's been there a long time. She does some really dry work with her computer. She doesn't really like her job that much but it pays the bills. A couple of weeks ago there was a class that everyone had to go to. ...Something about computers ... something, something "OS" and upgrade. Those guys in IT had a powerpoint. It was boring. Gertrude played with her phone during the class. There was an Email that came in Friday morning. It was from IT. Gertrude deletes most of those without reading them. Gertrude finishes her tasks for the day and sneaks out 15 minutes early "cuz TGIF."
It's Monday now. Gertrude sulks back into work 15 minutes late. She's unaware that you and the other geeks were at work this weekend upgrading 75 workstations. (Your desktop virtualization project proposal got cancelled because "If it ain't broke don't fix it yuk yuk..." and "how does that make money?" and "saves time spent on service tickets? What do you guys do anyway?" So you and your fellow schmucks had to touch each machine.)
Gertrude logs in to start her usual routine... check facebook, twitter and instragram for an hour or so... and HORROR OF HORRORS!!! Something is wrong! Something is so terribly wrong! Gertrude now consults with Tabitha and Shelley to see if their computer is "messed up" too. Amazingly they are all in the same state. They gaggle up and all storm Bill's office.
Bill runs finance. Bill drinks a lot. Bill still has a headache from the weekend. Bill has been there a long time too. Bill remembers when they used ledger sheets and things were "so much better then." Bill hates computers. He hires people to work on them so he doesn't have to. Bill wants everything brought to him on paper because its hard to read on a screen. Now Bill's minions are cackling at him and it hurt's Bill's head.
Phone rings. It's Bill. "The computers are messed up... I thought you said you were upgrading them" You: "It just looks different Bill, everything is still there." Bill: "Well come up here and show them how to use it." You: "That's what the class was..." click .
You walk into Finance. ( Bing - service ticket just came in on your phone)
The gaggle is scowling at you.
You: "Look Gertrude all your stuff is..."
Gertrude: "Why did you have to change it?!"
Gaggle: "Yeah!" chime in the other two in a perfect dissonant chord.
Gertrude doesn't want to learn anything new.
( BING - another ticket)
Gertrude doesn't like her job already. Neither does Tabitha or Shelley. And they have getting by on bare minimum down to an art form.
( BING ... BING ... BING )
Now you spend 20 minutes trying to prove to them that it "just looks different" ( BING ) between their outbursts of "this is so stupid", "what on earth made you think this is a good thing", "BILL!!! I have no idea how I'm going to get my work done!!! ( BING ) It's IT's fault for messing up my computer!!!"
Bill is pissed because his head hurts and this is "computers" and Bill already hates computers. Bill: "I don't need this 'IT person'" Bill storms off toward the elevator... toward the Administrations office.
Check your phone. Tickets from Security, Admin, Planning... "Computer messed up." "I think I have a virus, everything looks weird." "My computer is JACKED UP!".
Start your journey. You and your fellow Schmucks now get to travel through the departments as Pariah.
"You can create a new shortcut... yes, I realize you already had them laid out..."
"I'm sorry, you have to use "Metro" to change those settings... yes, I don't like "metro" either."
The people that judge your work don't understand what you do or why. All they know is that all departments are reporting in with "lost productivity" and "interrupted operations."
So yeah... the UI aesthetics are just that: "aesthetics." But you CHOSE to put them on your personal system. In an environment where people are using them only as a tool, efficiency matters and user "buy in" to change for sake of novelty is low, "a few days" to "figure out the changes" is a big issue. Especially when the changes offer no obvious reward to the user or operation.
So it may be minor for a gamer, college student or home user, but "simple" UI changes can be a huge pain in the ass for people in IT. Yeah there are "start menu" replacements available now. ...Shouldn't have needed them. |
Virtual Desktops sound useless. Why do I need an entire desktop for work or gaming. We have a start menu and a folder system that will both remove the clutter of most desktops. Moving a screen full of icons to an invisible area is only sweeping the dirt under the rug.
We have "Virtual Desktop" on android and I only use 3 screens. Two of them are full widgets, the Main screen has folders for games, people, todo/calendar, etc. I only swap to the other screens to use the full face widgets. |
The task bar is there to manage programs that are needed. If I have a totally separate set of programs that I don't need for a while or are a completely different task or whatever - why should they be polluting my task bar - when they can have their own completely separate task bar that I can switch to when I'm ready. |
So what you're saying is it's made of non existent materials?
50x's harder than plastic? Plastic is a 1 on the mohs scale which mean it's absolute hardness is a 1 (or less). Meaning the material should be at 50 absolute hardness.
10x's harder than aluminum? Aluminum is a 2.5-3 on the mohs scale which means at the high end it's absolute hardness is 9. Meaning this material should be at 90 absolute hardness.
3x's the hardness of steel? Steel can vary wildly depending on the steel. Low end you're looking around a 4 on the mohs scale and steel files can get up around 7. Which means the material should be at 63 (low end) or 300 (high end) absolute hardness. |
I am often led to wonder how much a company 'saves' with developing/licensing DRM
It isn't really about saving money.
To really understand the issue you have to go way back to the late 70s and early 80s; back to the birth of the yuppie.
These young upstarts started diving in to media markets and developed some realy nice growth projection algorithms and business models. And they worked, extremely well, right up until the early to mid nineties. These models and algorithms failed to take in to account the globally saturated markets and changing technology these very same businessmen created. As a result their models started failing, dramatically in some cases.
But by then these once young and idealistic go-getters had gained a lot of wealth and power, mostly gained purely from their reputation in the 80s for "knowing the market". The goal of many of thse models and the technology they created was to provide end to end control of the consumer media experience. Basically they wanted cable tv style delivery for all media with the media company controlling where, when and how the consumer used this media. If you read some of the early tech papers the ones pushing this model truly believed it was what the consumer wanted.
But look at what the consumer actually want and is willing to pay for; large self curated digital libraries of on-demand media.
All that wealth and power is now under threat by the very technology they created and the very markets they failed to understand. They could always change and update their business models to embrace the new technology and but that won't solve the problem.
Their problem is that the way their business models failed, the consumer demanding almost the exact opposite of what their models are based on, brings in to serious question their whole reputation and their knowledge and understanding of the markets. Admitting they got it wrong by changing their business models will cost them huge amount in money and power. How can they be trusted to get the new models right when they got the old models so wrong?
The solution is to find a scapegoat for the shortcomings of their business models. Enter the media pirate.
It is very easy to point the finger at these pirates and claim outrageous losses but you also need to be seen to combat the problem. That is where DRM comes in to the equation. DRM lets you appear to be doing something without actually doing something and even the cost of that can be blamed on the media pirates.
Throw in buying legislation and these now aging media moguls get to save face, appear like they still understand the markets and continue making money hand over fist. |
OpenOffice was first and OpenSource and run by Sun/Oracle. For a decade Sun said they would transfer governorship of OpOff to an independent party. They never did and the project severely lagged behind. When Oracle bought out Sun, development just about halted with many company developers mover to other projects.
So most of the non-company developers made their own organization and a fork LibreOffice. After things were setup and moving along well, they invited Oracle to join the development (and most linux distro moved from OOO to libre). Oracle agreed under the condition that those involved in starting the fork be removed from decision making and be replaced by company employees.
The response wasn't fuck you. Shortly after this Oracle fired the rest of their in-house OOO development and closed the OOO project. |
That's just because reddit search only searches posts, not comments. Anyone who comments knows there's a major difference between the people who merely upvote threads and those who actually comment/discuss them.
Every single day /r/funny gets posts that top 1500 or 2k+ upvotes where the comments are overwhelmingly negative about the post. Same happens in /r/WTF, as well as other subs, especially default subs. Claiming that the fact that most of the highest upvoted Apple threads are negative proves that there's very little pro-Apple attitudes in /r/technology is disingenuous because people who claim that there is are usually talking about the comments themselves. |
I would say it's more than a skin. At the least it is a window manager and set of common applications distributed together. More likely it's a complete desktop environment. |
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