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The fact that Alexa plus is mentioned first means nothing.
From November's ICG Magazine "The Wolf of Wall Street was set for digital capture, with extensive testing done with Alexa. However during discussions with Scorsese, Prieto noticed how often film came up. 'I kept hearing Marty say he liked the way film looked. I finally said, 'Well, why are we doing digital?' He said, 'I understand it's going to be cheaper and faster.' So we did the numbers based on the production, and we realized it was not going to be cheaper, so I said, 'If you prefer film why don't we do it like that?' So we talked about it and went with film'"
Yes they used digital capture as well in certain scenes. |
It's a great concept, but the controls are really uncomfortable, which can be really annoying when you want to build something versatile.
Having the arrow keys do the rotating rather than WASD is really dumb since all of the rest of the controls are on the left side of the keyboard, so you have to take your hand off the mouse or go all the way to other side of the screen just to rotate the block.
I'm glad that you can change colors by pressing the number keys, but I really wish they wrote it somewhere first, and I really wish you could do the same with block choosing - there aren't many block and there are tons of keys in the keyboard that are unused, and the fact that you constantly have to break your flow to change the block type is really annoying and makes you just not want to use different blocks.
Last thing is the camera rotation, I really wish you could do it with holding the scrollwheel, which it does, but only when you don't hold a block, but I guess that isn't too bad.
All of these problems really shine in the tutorial that they give you, where you need to build the tower, the whole thing was so tedious that it turned off all my childish enthusiasm for this, and it's a shame really, because if the UI was just more friendly this really could have been tons of fun. |
Another anecdote..
I ordered an $8 micro SD a week or so ago from Amazon.
It shipped from the wrong place so it was 4 days late. After it was late I called them and they gave me a $5 credit. Once I got the order I used the page to return it as I already bought one local and they gave me my money back and told me to keep the microsd. |
Although it is certainly nice to think about some of this stuff, not all of it is actually applicable in that manner.
Say powerlines. We are having to talk DC (as RF has resistance in superconductors, although it is lower than in regular conductors under ~100GHz). Then you need to make sure you are a good deal below the critical current.
Computer processor power. Same issues and then even some more. If you are just making the conductive lines of the processor from the superconducting material (which is unlikely because fabricating cuprates is a huge pain in the arse) you still then have issues with the semi-conductor component of your mosfets. If you are going full superconducting computer and using josephson junctions as your transistors, well there is promise but a bunch of other issues we are still working out (which may not be applicable at ambient temperature due to the JJs). |
The government doesn't force all oil produced in the U.S. to be sold in the U.S. so prices will probably go down a little bit. |
Correct but the U.S. being a bigger oil producer doesn't lower supply. The United State's oil has already been factored into the market price. Everyone in the industry knew that the US was up and coming from studying their production trends. Now say, tomorrow the US discovered a play that would let them produce 10x the amount of oil than normal, then yes that would decrease cost but price per barrel is already adjusted as of now. |
Yes, Western PA is home to the Marcellus shale play. There are a lot of companies that have offices in Pittsburg. Also, Denver is home to a some O&G companies as well if you are looking to stay cool.
That said, Houston is absolutely wonderful for someone like you(granted I'm born and raised here) and let me explain why. First, it is the place to be if you are in the O&G business, period . Every major oil company has their headquarters here or their second headquarters here. ExxonMobile, BP, Shell, Anadarko, Devon, Hess, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, National Oilwell Varco...the list can figuratively go on forever. Second, if you think things are going stale at your current oil and gas company, there are tons of other right around the corner (sometimes literally) to apply to and be employed. As for the city of Houston itself, it is one of the fasted growing cities in the country, and the fastest growing city for young professionals like you and myself. We have just about everything that every other major city has to offer, we have some of the cheapest property in the nation, and like California, this city is fairly liberal (our mayor is a openly lesbian democrat). I graduated from my undergraduate university out near the west coast so I have an idea of why you'd be nervous to come to Texas, but don't. If this is the profession you truly wish to be in, you need to be here in Houston.
And don't think of head hunter's as being a "last resort." I have colleagues who utilized them to get the jobs they have right out of school and are making 65K and up depending on their position. An engineer like yourself should expect more than that for sure.
Edit: |
The guy certainly could've handled the situation better but I won't argue or call him spoiled for being upset at the situation. He agreed to buy a product that wasn't delivered at the time and condition that was agreed on.
Let's paint a smaller scale scenario that more people might be able to relate to. Let's say you pre-ordered a PS4 and plunk down $100 with the expectation you're getting the system at launch in November. November rolls along and they tell you you're system isn't there and they're they'll expect a shipment 6 weeks out. To make it up to you, they tell you that they'll throw in a free month of PS plus. Six weeks later they tell you that they messed up and can't give you the PS4 you order due to a shipping issue. They offer you the floor model instead.
The guy handled the situation like a jackass but I won't call him a spoiled or unreasonable for being mad. As childish as it sounds, he paid a premium price not just for the vehicle but also to have one of these thing a first. It also sucks to have about $43000 locked up for 6+ months when it could've been used on something else. |
I'm not defending his actions, but I want to point out where he is coming from (cultural perspective):
In China (Asia), it would be extremely disrespectful and socially unacceptable for him to damage someone else's property (not including riots/etc, which don't really have social rules anyways); therefore, his way of protest was to damage his own property. In essence, he was 1) demonstrating that he followed through on his terms of the contract (by purchasing the car) while 2) displaying his refusal to use their product. |
on the odd occasion I find myself inside a Best Buy, I feel like it is my duty to tell customers they are being lied to by the reps
for example, a rep telling a customer a $3000 camera is HD, while a $100 camera is not, I tell the cust hd is 1920x1080 pixels and both cameras will do 3500x2000 or so plus and "HD" is used as a marketing term
another example, would be when I witnessed best buy employees selling monster cables to an elderly couple who had already decided to purchase a $2000 tv by saying "you wont' get HD unless you get this cable" I proceded to go to my car, get a $1 hdmi cable and gift it to the customers just so they wouldn't buy a bullshit monster cable |
Customer volunteers a 'Don’t sell to me' statement" is explicitly listed under the section titled "Transition to Offer is Not Applicable in the Following Scenarios." Also free from the upsell treatment are customers who are delinquent on their bills, customers who are "irate," and customers who already own the highest tiers of service on every "LOB" (line of business) sold by Comcast.
I work in inbound customer service (cellular) where most calls are bill inquiries, payment arrangements and tier 1 tech issues. We are required to make a pitch on every single call, no matter what. Even if a caller declines the initial legal blurb that allows us to sell products from another part of the company, we have to try to sell an new line. No matter the reason for the call, including irate customers, past due customers, and people calling to cancel a deceased relative's account. I've been told in the past that I'm too customer service oriented and need to focus more on sales. My job title includes the phrase "customer service" - fuck me, right?
These tactics are used across the board in every part of the company and in most comparable positions with other companies. It's sickening.
So no, saying you don't want to be sold to just means we have to look for another way to sell you something or butter you up more. |
Where's the version number?
According to HDMI organization, version numbers reflect capabilities, but do not correspond to product features. In other words, HDMI does not require manufacturers to implement everything that HDMI can do. HDMI provides a menu of capabilities and allows the manufacturer to choose which of those features make sense for its product line.
For example, if you want the new video features called Deep Color, look for Deep Color in the feature set rather than HDMI 1.3, the version of the specification that enabled Deep Color. Why? Because the version of the specification that enables Deep Color (1.3) does not mandate that Deep Color functionality be implemented.
As a result, HDMI strongly recommends that consumers look for products with the features they want, rather than the version number of the HDMI components. |
I'm probably going to get downvoted into oblivion, but I'll share my experiences in bestbuy and gamestop.
At Best Buy I started as a sales rep in computers. There are a lot of cutthroat departments at Shit Buy, but computers is by far the worst. Their budget goals are generally the highest, and the store is always expected to perform 10% better than it did the previous fiscal year on that day. (This may have changed). And this was in every category (I'll do my best to remember them).
Accessories
Black Tie Protection
Sales Dollars
Attachment Rate
Geek Squad Services
Add-ons
These were the big 6. In computers, if you sold a laptop, you should be selling a bag with it, why not a mouse because trackpads are annoying, you already have a mouse, but this one is on sale and comes with a free copy of Microsoft Go Fuck Yourself 2012. And what happens if it all breaks? Give me the other half of your child's college fund just in case the screen goes out or you decide that you're so angry at me for pretty much fucking you blind that you piss all over the laptop thinking it's your toilet. And Geek Squad can even come over and set that laptop on your desk and plug it in to the wall. Oh that's right! You should get a surge protector too and a battery backup, for your first born child, we'll come plug those in too!
That was the selling strategy. And I was unfortunately incredibly good at it. I invented "new" ways to convince the customer that I was their friend and only there to help. I scumbagged 100's of thousands of dollars out of people, all for the sake of getting a full time position.
And then I got made supervisor, and I breeded little mini-assholes to do what I did on the sales floor. On black friday, the managers had no care for the customers, the only thing they cared about was making 1.1 million because the store had made 800k the previous year. It is a disgusting place to work, and I feel horrible for all of the people I pretty much used to advance in my job there.
I no longer work there, but the story didn't get better...it got worse.
(Due to the length of this, I won't post the gamestop portion.) |
TOR was developed by the US Gov. Its original intention was to give spies and spy assets the ability to commute anonymously with their handlers to avoid enemy identification.
I am not sure about this second part, but I believe the TOR project is open source. If so, we can know its safety (within reason) due to our own ability to audit the code and know what it's doing. However, the real risk with TOR is executing unknown code (e.g. Leaving JavaScript enabled in your browser, or running random executable code you download off TOR). The other big one is knowing who your exit node is. There is a pretty high chance that many exit nodes are ran by governments with the express intentions of monitoring the traffic that passes through them. This would only make sense as the way TOR is designed, you need to exploit the weaknesses.
To make TOR more anonymous for more people, the best solution is for more people to join the network and run exit nodes. That is problematic however, because you'd technically be hosting potentially untold amounts of illegal traffic running through your server. I'm not sure what the law would would say about that, but in todays world, who really want that liability on their shoulders. |
They don't. Which is why its layered. Client sends encrypted traffic to route A. Route A can only decrypt the first part of the traffic, and that only tells Route A to send it to route B. Route B can only decrypt the second part that tells it to go to route C. Route can finally decrypt the traffic but by then it doesn't know who route A was let alone who the client was.
Controlling all the nodes in a route is mostly unrealistic. However they CAN use correlation attacks in conjunction with plain internet traffic if they control just one node. Its effectiveness is somewhat limited by a number of factors like needing to already know who/what you are looking for. Even then TOR takes steps to reduce this. |
That's the issue, the huge NSA databank in Utah already has a ton of resources. Think about it working like this:
An NSA employee is given a list of names every day of people running for elections, or re-elections are coming up. Check up on them, make sure we don't have any inside threats. I think that's sound logic, that a few computer nerds are told to do this from time to time.
Now, is it possible not probable, or are definite, but possible for one of these guys to have a small political agenda? And maybe one with very good intent. "Through info obtained on terrorists, it looks like the U.S. may be heading into another war" May be his thought. Or any number of other possibilities. More Republicans would be a good thing, as Republicans tend to keep more money invested in the military.
Furthermore, could it be possible that they are told if there are any individuals who are suspected of anything terrorist related, to send a report to the local sheriff's or police department's staff?
Mind you, I'm not saying this is happening, but if the possibility is here, maybe we need more checks and balances.
If this individual decides to do an extra thorough job on all his/her candidates, they can dig up dirt on anyone through the NSA databanks. Put a report out to follow the Republicans that look the best politically, and the Democrats who are doing best in the polls. --It would appear that you are doing a great job, and working diligently. And even if you were suspected of having an agenda, you are still sending reports out on both Republicans and Democrats.
If this is possible, shouldn't we make certain it's impossible? And if so, how do we do that? |
Current screen technology requires small bezels to hold the wires that carry touch input data. Also buttons require routing. Typing this on the LG G2 which moved the buttons to the rear to minimise bezel size. Hopefully future improvements will reduce the size of bezels, sadly they won't be disappearing for good. |
I'm not sure it's a logical step, it's an imaginative one. It's one of those post-apocalyptic scenarios after the idea of 'government' fails and mutates into some other system of control.
We're not talking about owning countries, we're talking about getting rid of the idea of 'country'. Where the phrase "what country do you live in" is replaced with "what company do you work for"? Instead of government as state, corporation as state. Instead of saying "I'm an American" you would say "I work for __ ". Instead of your government providing security, civil services, and identity your job provides those things.
Generally speaking corps spend time and money lobbying governments and having lawyers argue things in court because they have to abide by the law of that government. They also value their wealth based in a certain government's currency. So they have incentive to influence the law and financial policy in their favor inside that government system to cut costs/increase profit. If I'm a corp and I'm tired of having to deal with governments and their laws, if I had a currency that I used that wasn't attached to a government then that would be one less tie to that system. If I didn't have to answer at all to a government system or their laws or their currency, then that would make profit easier, wouldn't it? Having a currency the world used that wasn't tied to any one single government would give me a little more breathing room as a corporation especially when it came time to bullying governments around to get my way. It would be a stepping stone to replacing government system with free market corporations that controlled land and resources. I'm not saying this WILL happen, I'm saying it's one of many possibilities. |
We have very similar problems here on earth, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Bandwidth limitations, the speed of light, and peering agreements all impose limitations on the terrestrial internet.
There are a few workarounds. Google has datacenters all over the world, and when you visit google you (generally) hit the datacenter that is closest to you. There are also CDNs which distribute content around the world so that it can be served anywhere quickly.
An adaptation of this approach could be used with interplanetary internet. Certain applications could run out of the box, but many would need adaptation. |
Two separate companies. The Branson deal is just an investment in another company, OneNet (formerly WorldVu). Musk had architectural disagreements with its founder and decided to go off on his own, leaving Virgin and Qualcomm to back his competition. |
There's an IETF task force to tackle this issue. They're working on a protocol called [DTN (Delay Tolerant Networking)]( There was a presentation at a network engineering conference a few years ago by these guys which was pretty damned interesting - I'll see if I can dig it up. That said, there are some terrestrial applications for DTN as well.
TCP just doesn't cut it due to a number of factors like slow-start, Nagle's algorithm to sliding windows just plain messing up your day. Then there's the 4-way handshake (SYN, SYN / ACK, ACK) which will cause your TCP session to take a minimum of 1.5*RTT of your network to even setup.
RFC1122 also defines a maximum of 100 seconds for a re-transmit timeout, which is a bit low. Hell, even the Linux kernel have increased the [default retransmit timeout.]( |
A few important things to remember about offshoring/H1-B replacement:
The company may use words like team or family to describe you in the context of the company. This is bullshit. You are a number in the greater context. You are a red mark on the bottom line.
Offshoring/H1-B replacement is a great way to show fiscal savings in the short term. In a world of manage by spreadsheet philosophy, it always looks awesome in short term projections because companies like Infosys and even first party company management are great at lying to themselves and each other about how awesome it is going to be once the ink is dry on the contract.
Offshoring/H1-B replacement NEVER works long term on any large scale. It is the Rick Roll of staffing strategy. And, ultimately, it is an indicator of serious financial problems in an organization.
Companies that engage in this are typically either greedy as fuck, desperate as fuck, or both. But in the 20 years I have been in this game I have NEVER seen it be even marginally successful and it is even hard to mask how huge of a failure it is for more than a couple of years.
This sort of behavior is more or less the boundary interface between disconnected executives living in the rarefied air of the 1% phenomenon and the atmospheric bubble of denial and delusion that surrounds them and the realities of the declining western middle class.
All it is doing is creating artificial middle classes in places like India that are completely dependent on what is essentially the corporate elite of the western world struggling maintain control as their bureaucracies implode under the corruption, greed, and chaos of modern business practices. |
I know I'm late to the punch here, but I'd like to comment.
I think the solution for Tesla right now is to start offering insurance on their vehicles. It's already been proven that a computer operated system with 360 degree monitoring can assess a situation and brake/take evasive action faster than at least the average human driver. So if Tesla were to offer an insurance plan with their vehicles comparable in price to the mainstream insurance providers, they could negate the negative effect of customer uncertainty on liability grounds. This would put them in a situation where they are insuring a liability that is statistically less than the typical insurance company, which covers error-prone humans. In addition to likely generating a net profit for Tesla, this would allow for a unified front from which Tesla could present their defense of the safety of automated vehicles. A primary argument of those who say the world is unready for self-driving cars is that a person, or worse, a
child be killed by an automated vehicle in error. But if Tesla were so sure, as I hope they should be, they would gladly assume that risk with the understanding that should an adverse event occur, they would have statistical evidence supporting the fact that despite that event, the introduction of their vehicle reduced the total number of injuries/fatalities in comparison with drivers utilizing other vehicles. While I am often proven wrong, I believe that the current population would understand that human or not, a decrease in the overall likelihood of an accident is an improvement. While it might take a few substantial court cases, I believe there is no corporation or individual with the ingenuity, momentum and capital as Tesla and Elon Musk to pioneer the self-driving car, at least at this point in time. By establishing insurance, Tesla could provide peace of mind and customer confidence, the ability to enjoy advanced convenience features liability free. In exchange, they would gain increased marketability of their vehicles, revenue from statistically advantageous insurance sales, and most importantly the opportunity to legally pioneer the self-driving car, further establishing Tesla as the true future of the automobile.
I hope the tech is ready, I really do. If Tesla does this with the right timing it could jump society into a safer, faster, more economical way of commuting. If not, we might get boggled up in decades of controversy if public opinion goes in the way of technophobia. |
Not to worry, I work for a power company who also owns a massive fiber optic network for the own use as well as for-profit ventures. I can't get these assholes to invest in generators at their POP's which are used to communicate with their substations, power plants, regulators, GOAB's, etc...
The fucking power company doesn't see a need for backup power so they can control critical infrastructure. for our entire network to, get this, remove the generator that was never hooked up and use it for our land mobile radio base station that sits right next to our headquarters which just had a massive generator installed to run EVERYTHING (Just let that run over you like hot giz in August). Nevermind the fact that it wasn't needed or that it was never hooked up to our backup data center which, I'm sure has equally loaded rectifiers and a battery bank to hold the place in case of a brown or black out.... FUCK NO!!!
I drop power to the BDC so the generator could be unwired and the whole place goes quiet. The rectifiers weren't even wired up correctly. The entire place was on AC power. The contractor asked me what I wanted to do. "Fuck it... just pull out the automatic transfer switch and generator as instructed." |
Even Gandhi knew you needed to mobilize personnel on the ground if you're going to change anything.
Your scenario is why non-violence is really the somewhat counter intuitive way to go. Overwhelming armed conflict against a small unorganized group is really the only thing that's in their wheelhouse. It's also why Agent Provocateurs
The key is maintaining organization, message, discipline, and thus public support through non-violence, then when the [lesser trained police eventually get bored and crack]( you then receive fresh reinforcements from the public. This has to continue until you reach a point of critical mass and concessions must be made. |
Well, everyone's different; there's not one, singular, correct answer to the question.
When I upvote someone, either a story or a comment, I do so because I enjoy reading the site, and I want to encourage certain types of posts and comments. There's not a lot of real thought put into it, because the cost to me is not monetary. Basically, if I read a comment or a linked story, and it makes me think 'hey cool!' I'll upvote it.
A similar thing occurs with downvotes -- if I see a spammy story, I want to discourage that because it's a waste of my time, and a waste of everyone else's time. Or if there's a comment that's just way off-base, I'll do the same.
And if a story doesn't make me go 'hey cool!' and doesn't trigger my 'GTFO' reaction, I don't upvote or downvote at all. For example, I haven't voted on this story -- the linked article was one paragraph long, it had a bad title, and it wasn't clear what you were on about, so I didn't upvote it -- and it honestly seemed a little spammy to me, but not enough for me to downvote it.
I don't think about the full impact of the vote every time I make the decision -- that is, I don't hover my mouse over the upvote arrow and think "if I upvote this, will the community of Reddit benefit from the increased exposure of this story?" I just think 'hey, that's neat' and click the arrow.
Remember, though, this all works because it's a social cost instead of a monetary cost. If I was paying in money instead of paying in attention (again, the book free talks about this), I wouldn't upvote or downvote nearly as much, even if it only cost me a fraction of a cent.
Introducing money into the equation makes the question completely different. I don't want to spend any money at all to proclaim my affection for cat pictures with words on them. And I certainly don't want to pay money to tell the spammers to get off my lawn.
Again, this is all just my perspective. Other people value different things and vote accordingly. Could micropatronage work? It's possible , but many people have tried and failed. The biggest issue is that many (many many ) fewer people will pay even the smallest amount of money to vote on something -- just the thought of it tends to turn people away, although they're more than willing to vote for free constantly.
It might work on a site like Reddit if you had a monthly bill and could upvote and downvote as much as you wanted, where each upvote (up to a limit) paid the submitter a certain amount, and upvotes after that still 'worked,' and you couldn't see whether you were paying the submitter of the article or not (so you don't think about the monetary aspect) and downvotes didn't cost you anything. |
Depends on how the load balancer is implemented, and how the application itself handles being in a balanced environment. |
I hate the kind of excessive, inflated damages that P2P cases typically involve, and I strongly support changes to copyright law, but this article is silly and simplistic:
> federal judge Nancy Gertner just slashed the damage award against admitted P2P user Joel Tenenbaum from $675,000 to $67,500. In her opinion, she drew a fascinating parallel between Tenenbaum's conduct and that of bars and restaurants who don't pay up for a license to play music in public. Why aren't they hit with tremendous six-figure fines?
Well, because unless bars are literally giving out high-quality audio recorders at the door and encouraging users to record the music and redistribute it themselves, they aren't doing the same thing as P2P peers.
The ridiculous, excessive damages usually awarded for P2P filesharing aren't for owning a copy of the song, or for playing it without a licence - they're for redistributing it without a licence.
It's like the difference between being found guilty of possession of drugs and being a convicted drug dealer - dealers get much more severe sentences because it's perceived that they cause a lot more harm in the long run. Ditto for copyright infringers.
Now there's another angle to the case, which is that bars pirate music for money whereas typical P2P users do it for free, but whether "professional unlicensed use" is worse than "amateur unlicensed use and distribution " is a whole other discussion. |
Even if you could build a spaceship that can travel at 10% of the speed of light (which is far out of our reach), it would take us 40 years to reach Alpha Centauri, which would be the first candidate for colonies.
Yes. I don't know specifically what beef gorn38 has with this. The only thing I can think of is that it is possible to go faster than 10% the speed of light. See [Project Valkyrie]( It's purely theoretical at this point, and has some major engineering obstacles to overcome, like where to get TONS of antimatter, but has a theoretical cruising speed of ~0.9c.
> Because any star in reach that could have habitable planets would also have to be approximately the same spectral type as our sun and be approximately the same age (part of population I).
Not necessarily. While it's still under debate, it seems quite likely that M stars could also have habitable planets, just as long as either: 1) They aren't a flare star, or 2) Flares aren't as bad as we think. The great thing about M stars is that they burn FOREVER (as in, trillions of years), so it wouldn't even have to be part of the same stellar population as the Sun. It could be much older. Brighter stars, like F stars, also have "habitable zones"--they are just farther out. While I probably wouldn't want to live on a "habitable" planet around, say, a B star, such planets are possible (at least, in theory).
> The only good reason for constructing interstellar spaceships really is curiosity.
Yes, right now . At some point though, we kinda need to. But that's pretty far off yet.
Ninja Edit: |
Nah - way back in the day Expert Sexchange (pre-hyphenation ;-) used to be just like any other Q&A site.
Then a few years ago they started cloaking - showing pages with answers on to the Google spiders, and showing regular users pages without answers on. This is against Google's rules, however - it's usually enough to get whole domains de-listed from Google.
So, soon after (as in, IIRC, weeks) they started hiding answers from non-Google users they were obviously warned by Google, and instead switched to showing the answers at the bottom of the page with fake "blurred" answers at the top. |
Coincidentally, i just worked on this same issue with my fiancee's G60 last night. The G60 and dv series are almost perfectly identical so i think my pains might help you out here a little. For one thing, they do naturally run hot (think 100F as a common long-use idle temp). Grab your compressed air can and flip the laptop over. Now pull the power plug and battery out, then pull out the hard drive and check to see how hot it is (open up the memory hatch also). Spray your compressed air through the cooling fins and then back through the fan repeatedly until no dust whatsoever comes out; give some healthy spraying to the crevasses to the mobo through the memory and HDD hatches that are open. Button it all back up and check your temps after a while. A laptop cooler is highly advisable and reloading your laptop will help with the clutter. Remember, each time that processor has to do anything, it generates more heat. I typically back up the user directories and export bookmarks then go into disk manager and mark the recovery partition active. On next reboot, it will come to the out-of-box experience (oobe) and you can lay in the OS clean as a whistle then lay your data back in. The BIOS btw, is absolute junk and you cannot do hardly anything with it besides memory/HDD diagnostics. |
So a guy who runs a facebook marketing firm thinks that charities should market more on facebook. Maybe even hire someone to help. How surprising.
I don't disagree with some of his points and my wife's career is in non-profit fund raising. I've actually asked about some of these very issues.
The answers and counter augments are right there in the info-graphic. The relatively "easy" money isn't in getting "likes" on facebook. It is in developing relationships with generous donors with shit tons of money to give. Sure you could spend twenty grand and maybe get 5x more likes on facebook and even get some donations because of it. Or you could spend twenty grand wining and dining a big donor and present your case for them to make a major donation, or match a campaign, or whatever. Building a social media presence isn't free despite what people might think and organization aren't going to put resources towards something that isn't giving the best return. |
ex-paid redditor here.
Spent a period of time doing social media for a well known entertainment company (one of the "Mini-Major" film studios in Hollywood). At the time, we were asked to make fake accounts on various message boards, forums, etc. in order to stir hype for our films. We gave reddit a try, but nothing really took off at the time. Our posts didn't read as organic, mainly because we didn't really know how things worked here. As a result, nothing ever made it near the front page.
That being said, rest assured that marketing departments everywhere are trying to find new ways to place products and manipulate the flow of ideas. Its their job. Now that Reddit is higher in profile, you can bet it will be the target of more of their resources, and we will probably start to feel the effects of those resources soon enough. |
The problem is, even if someone has 1,000 people to upvote some rubbish to the front page, the other ~850,000 subscribers will have the ability to push it back down again. And they'll lead the discussion, which will be "Why is this on the front page?" any paid comment "This is great!" could be upvoted by the 999 other paid accounts, but also can be downvoted by the rest of the hivemind.
And the worst part is, even if you skyrocket a post to the front page and it gets seen by a couple hundred thousand people, it'll be a) something looked at between memes, askreddit threads, pictures of cats, pun threads, gaming news, politics, movie trailers, music videos and so much more. and b) Even if its a success, it'll only be on the front page (amongst all that other stuff) for at most 24hrs. Some people won't be subscribed to the subreddit it was submitted to and some people will be asleep when the subject was on the front page. |
Yes! We need to keep this up because it IS working!
Yesterday, (in a different thread) I argued that the Reddit movement was actually producing results. Yet, some other Redditors went out of their way to say that Reddit wasn't able to do anything productive and that our voice was just a drop in the bucket that will be ignored. This is not true. Reddit now has enough membership and clout to to be heard and to be taken seriously. Keep voicing your opinions here and keep sending emails to your congressmen. |
Well if our senators understood sentences longer than bumper stickers, nobody would need to resort to such brevity. |
If the world was black and white without shades of gray, I would say something like eye for eye leaves everyone blind (or with 1 eye, whatever).
Here in the real world, with shades of gray and necessary evils, I really only have my gut feeling that taking their money in bad faith is wrong. It might also be illegal, but i am no lawyer.
So I have nothing but my view of morals to argue with. And debating that on reddit can be hard sometimes. |
It depends on how much effort you're willing to do and what you can do. Here:
[The Open Source Democracy Foundation](
[Revolution Reddit](
[Digital Bill of Rights](
What can you do?
Edit: If you're hoping to vote for a third party, the voting system in USA sucks with an effective duopoly. Voting to stop supporters for this would be nearly impossible since Democrats support Hollywood and Republicans support big business. The electoral system favours two likely winners where unless your preferred party is hugely popular, you make the best vote by betraying your favourite. Yes, USA has a weak democracy compared to foreign countries which is why there's mentions of Greens, Pirate Parties, etc, are getting elected in other countries. |
If you're hoping to vote for a third party, the voting system in USA sucks with an effective duopoly. Voting to stop supporters for this would be nearly impossible since Democrats support Hollywood and Republicans support big business. The electoral system favours two likely winners where unless your preferred party is hugely popular, you make the best vote by betraying your favourite. Yes, USA has a weak democracy compared to foreign countries which is why there's mentions of Greens, Pirate Parties, etc, are getting elected in other countries. |
This has NOTHING to do with SOPA. It is similar to ACTA, in that it is a trade agreement between multiple countries, with secret negotiations that could affect intellectual property laws. Here is a leaked copy of the intellectual property proposal from February.
and the |
When will the American public "wake up" to the fact their government is the one creating and forcing this ACTA/CETA crap on other countries?
I'm not blaming the American public, I just wish they would watch and rein in their own government/Administration and corporate interests. |
I know exactly what was going through your mind.
That was amusing :) When I wrote it I did in fact only consider it a joke. I did realize it might be construed as something else. So I figured I would make it clearer. Then I thought it was too harsh, even for a joke, so to illustrate I added the less degrading comparison. Oh, how the Internet can create problems :)
> We generally don't agree to things we don't like. Are European countries unable to do the same?
Yes, since after WWII when we were either strained (British Empire, French colonial power) or beaten down losers (Germany). Now, the American Era was upon us, and it has been a good run for both the US and Europe (mostly).
The thing is that I don't blame the US for using its power. The US and Russia became the greatest and most powerful when the other empires failed (see Britain, France etc). This is the way of the world and history. The Great Game is a winner-take-all game.
Western Europe became mere vassal states to the US. Fortunately the ties that bind us are strong both financially, culturally and ethnically. Without them Europe would have suffered much more. Today our economies are joined at the hip.
Now, Europe is regaining its unity, slowly and obviously in a very fragile state at the moment. We haven't been this peaceful or united since the Roman Empire. As it stand the European Union is larger financially and more populous than the US. If we spoke with one voice, the balance might be different. That's where the US shines, all your 50 states have just the one government. |
Frankly I don't think anyone will have a single remaining fuck when we get down the list to "other countries' IP laws" Sorry.
Eh, that's just it, it's not other countries'. It's yours. :) |
You do understand that this is the biggest play of power by the US Government in copyright infringement, and it needs to be addressed quickly and efficiently. This is essentially on part of SOPA, without the need to pass SOPA. The fact that people don't support this case, is a huge issue, because you have to see what the government did, EVEN if he did break the law.
Take for example, the past cases of copy right infringement. Remember when Google was sued for a billion dollars? That is how Copyright cases have always been handled. You don't call in the police and have them do your dirty work, you take it to the court system and handle it there.
They ignore this policy for megaupload. After failing in the past to stop them, they decided that it was time to corrupt our government, and use them to end this company. Despite megaupload serving over a hundred thousand takedown requests a day, the FBI decided that it was worth taxpayer money to raid them and shut them down.
With a single court order, served by a judge who does not grasp technology, they shut down a website with over a billion files on it. Yeah, thats a lot of data to just take.
But, lets move on to things even scarier then that. When asked to reveal documents regarding the investigation, and provide more evidence, they claimed they couldn't. For NATIONAL SECURITY. Yup. That is where we are now. Copyright infringement is a threat to our national security, and we must defend ourselves against that. Tomorrow, posting a negative comment against the MPAA is going to be illegal. Perhaps I will be arrested in a year for posting this comment.
But, we should continue discussing how scary this act is. Not only did they eliminate over a billion files, they then performed a full raid on a foreign country, to extradite a person who did not directly harm the US Government, and did not pose a threat to our national security. Again, anti terrorist units were used in this case.
We move on. They attempted to perform the ultimate act of punishment on anyone arrested, something that is terrifying. They froze all of his assests and funds, preventing him from paying a lawyer. Innocent until proven guilty, and as such, he should have the funds available to prevent they. Luckily, the court system isn't completely retarded, and has started giving him money.
Imagine a day when you are convicted of a crime, and put in jail, and then told to defend yourself but you can't access you money to do so. Imagine if you even had the lawyer on escrow, ready for this case, but he wouldn't be allowed to be paid? At what point is that even fair?
So here we have it. The FBI, has in a single move. Extended their right to punish copyright infringement, before proven guilty (As the court system should). Denied access to evidence because of national security concerns, frozen funds intended to pay for lawyers, and delayed lawsuits.
Now lets move on to what should scare everyone who doesn't host a website. The people that uploaded legitimate things to megaupload.
I personally hosted over 20 files on Megaupload, programs that I created, and with out a doubt did not break copyright laws (Maybe patents, given that there is a patent on displaying text. a patent on accepting user input, and a patent on network communications, but that's a different case entirely). Those files are gone, without me having any say over it. Its been over a year, and over a hundred lawsuits, and still no data is allowed. Again, they tried National Security, and they tried calling copyright infringement on the files because they might have music files on it, just to prevent the data from being returned.
Luckily for me, I am not an idiot, and I knew that cloud storage was never an answer. I kept backups of my programs, but I had to spent 5 hours to replace those links. The government (And the MPAA through the government) took that data from me, and are refusing to give it back. I did not break any laws. I did not do anything at all, except upload the files to a service.
I have a contract with that business, and the government has broken that contract, confiscated my files, and told me to fuck off because I'm criminal scum for using that service. So why exactly should you be scared? Imagine a world where the government seizes your files, because someone you talked to committed copyright fraud, and refused to return them to you. Imagine that you create a program/video/novel and have it hosted online, and the government comes in and takes that file on copyright grounds, and then refused to give it back, or verify that it is infringing. When you file a lawsuit, they simply say, "Well. Its possible that he used 30 seconds of a song in one of the videos, but we can't let the court determine that because then it would damage nation security" |
var = value" performs the assignment and returns a boolean, depending on the language.
Now that I think about it, it's probably more common that "var = value" returns "value," but weakly typed languages (eg. Python) will interpret any non-zero integer/non-empty sting, etc. as true. |
won't support WebGL
Did you just stop reading after you got offended by a simple word?
Would you rather a synonym? Dicks, Douches, Asshats, Artards.
Arguments don't really need to be made when the topic has been discussed to death. |
I'd guess the Washington Post only published because they knew that the Guardian would and didn't want to be accused of hiding the information. Based on US journalism they probably spent the entire time trying to figure out how to minimise the damage and help cover it up. |
This is at the point where individual or even group voters can't do anything. We're all pretty well fucked because everything is controlled by money. We know. We get it. Now it's time to figure out what we CAN do.
Politicians are bought. So why bother with the Politicians? Instead, we should go to the buyers. I'm sure this info is out there somewhere, but why not find who is funding the politicians that are voting the way we want, then make a show of supporting that company? Others will want a piece of that pie too. It's kinda like a reverse boycott, and might work better because convincing people to stop buying something they like is much harder than convincing people to buy/show support for something they COULD like.
Idk. It might not work, but neither is what we're doing now. We've got to come up with a better plan that is actually workable. Voting isn't going to do anything for us when our only options are shit and shit with a nice jacket. Don't even start about third parties- the cannot win with the current system. third parties do not have representation in the electoral collage, and at the higher levels that is all that matters. |
Console proponent's arguments in favor of their systems insult themselves, relying on a view of their consumers as stupid, lazy, and uncaring of the quality of what they consume.
The argument for PC gaming is that video games are a medium so rich and worthy of experience that it demands the best attention, instead of content monopolies that stagnate the industry. Enable that quality to shine and consumers will naturally convert to the master race (which is a trend already seen.)
The Oculus Rift is remarkable not just because of what it is, but how it is becoming what it is: consumers themselves have been incredibly active in its development and promotion from the start. Developers have been actively involved as well. We're seeing grass-roots movements of gamers letting people around them test-drive the Rift using the internet to arrange meetings.
The Rift is also important for what it is in itself - a new canvas for important artwork that, from reports, profoundly alters the experience of them. How does XBone or PS4 do the same?
The trend of organic crowdsourcing delivering innovation and being an active participant instead of simple consumer is what is defining this generation. I only need to mention Minecraft. Steam OS fits this trend by further liberating PCs and offering more choices, even if you want to not use it - I can guarantee you that you'll be able to order a Steambox with Windows as well if you choose, giving it absolutely no downside.
The only thing that defines a Big Three console is its limitations - what is locked in, what is exclusive about it. None of the Big Three consoles are going to define next-gen, the future is in PC if you truly believe that video games are art, and possibly the most important artform ever devised. |
Thanks for this.
I'm in NYC, looking to ditch VZW within the next couple of months and move to a GSM carrier with a monthly, no-contract option.
I was planning to go with AT&T. Their network improvements have garnered plenty of praise since I left them 2 years ago, and they always seem to have the best global partners for travel.
But this announcement from T-Mobile kinda changes everything. Most months I barely use any voice minutes; relatively little cell data; I barely touch VZW's LTE (battery drain, ugh). But I do text family abroad and particularly wanted a GSM phone for international travel. The possibility of getting a reasonable $50-$60 package, no contract, with international texts and roaming texts/data (and without having to mess around with foreign pay-as-you-go SIMs) ... that's just too ideal to turn down. My only hesitation was my daily coverage. |
This is our information."
NO IT IS NOT. If your entire argument is based on a lie then your argument is invalid.
You surrender that information to another party when you communicate it. When you communicate using a third party network, you surrender that information to those third parties.
It is now theirs .They in fact have a constitutionally guaranteed right to communicate it to any other party, such as the government, they wish to.
The concept of a "presumption of privacy" when communicating over third party networks is absolutely invalid. It is incompatible with basic reason as well as the first amendment and the principal of property rights. You have given the information over to someone else; you have no right to demand anything of them in regards to the dissemination of that information. (You may of course reach contractual agreements if both parties are amiable).
The vast majority of the "surveillance leaks" deal with telecom and infrastructure companies cooperating with surveillance agencies. In these cases, there are no constitutional issues and there is no privacy issue... the information is not private and it is not even "ours" any more... it is possessed by someone else and we have no grounds on which to dictate what they do with it.
Now, there are some specific instances of the rights of these third party networks being violated by things like the gag-order that accompanies national security letters. But the broad "surveillance situation" with the NSA and other collecting data on massive wholesale levels is NOT a violation of anyone's rights. |
We are selfish people,
This is why I have a hard time caring.
If your government spies on you, that's your own first world problem. If your government spies on me, then I will figure out ways of using the Internet that avoid as much of the spying as possible.
That's what non-Americans should be doing, we need to let you guys get burnt a bit, otherwise you will never learn.
Edit: I feel the need to make a few things crystal.
I am in no way anti-American. I am in some ways more American than European.
I've been following American Internet issues actively for almost a decade, I've SOPA-blacked-out my website(s)/blogged and more. I've even been in person to protests in the U.S.A against various spying issues. Yet, when I chat about issues in Europe or the specific country(ies) I live in, nobody seems to know, care or do much if anything.
I'm tired of having to feel concerned, asking friends in the U.S. to call their elected officials and so on. Those I know do not do it and do not care. This made me realize that perhaps "We are selfish people" is part of the problem. |
I notice that as usual, these "don't spy on me" pages are loaded with 3rd party content (including JS) that basically tell all these services what page you are visiting.
The worst part is that they ask you send over personal information.
Maybe I just don't get it, but I think the methods to combat citizen spying is not to buy t-shirts and like things on Facebook. |
odds are that S3 phone will be with some kind of 2-year agreement. You'll pay $1 down for the phone (let's say you stay on AT&T), but your monthly bill for service will be much higher than Tmobile.
Let's say you have a 2GB mobile share plan on att for just that s3. That's $95 per month. Over on Tmobile, you can get a 2.5 gb plan (it's actually unlimited data, but after 2.5 gb your data gets slowed down dramatically- main point is that you have no overages) for $60 dollars a month.
what tmobile does is separate out the service from the phone. on ATT, what you're really doing is paying for the phone with your higher monthly bill. on Tmobile, you can get the S4, not the S3 with zero money down, and you would pay $26 per month for the phone, so a monthly bill of $86. |
Factory worker and 16-month T-Mobile subscriber here. The only place where I have less than 4 out of 5 bars is when I'm next to one of our CNC machines, which throw off so much spectrum disruption that nothing, up to and including AM radio, works, and deep in the inventory stacks, where there are literally tons of steel between me and the outside world.
I was previously a Verizon subscriber (30 months) and a Virgin Mobile subscriber (24 months) and have noticed no difference in coverage quality between those three carriers. I have had No Service in exactly two places outside of work, one of which was a highway where only AT&T had service (the Verizon and Sprint phones in the car were also dead, my phone roamed onto AT&T), and the other is a weird dead zone that my friend's house is in where no one seems to get more than 1 bar. |
Yeah, the catch is a bit tricky, but it wouldn't call it unfair. Look at it this way:
T-Mobile is offering to pay a massive amount of money to get you out of your existing contract. Since they don't offer service contracts of their own, they're left with a few choices. Hope that you're not going to turn around and leave their service, thus destroying their investment in of you OR set it up so that they can make back that money somehow.
They chose the latter, and they accomplished it by calling it a phone trade-in. Well now you need a new phone. Check this out: they offer $0 down, 0% financing on all these great phones! You just make 24 monthly payments of ~$25, and you're good. They win because their short-term investment turned into a long-term customer. You win because you get a more cost-effective mobile solution.
The upshot on that at one is that even with the phone cost on top of your service plan, you'll still probably save quite a bit of cash every month. |
This may get buried in the comments but here it goes, my contract with Sprint is actually ending in the next few days and a few months prior, I did some research. Correct me if I'm wrong:
Yes there's no service contracts BUT you have to pay off your ~$700+ iPhone 5s split into your monthly payments. Multiply that by 4 lines (in a family plan) and it amounts to ~$2800 you're going to end up paying for the phones alone...
$10 monthly insurance and bi-yearly upgrades, yes you DO get to upgrade but what about that iPhone that you've been paying off, what happens to that? Well, according to the T-mobile in store staff; you trade in your old iPhone, they pay off the remaining balance of said traded in phone and you get a new hot phone. BUT you don't get credit for the ~$240 (assuming you paid $20/month for the iPhone in 1 years time) you've paid for the old phone... and the new phone, say for example the new and hot Galaxy Note 4 will require a new down payment as well as NEW monthly payments. The money you sank in, in your old phone doesn't carry over. They told me to think of it like I was "leasing" the phone.
In the end I'm going with Verizon. Why? Well I only end up paying $199 for the Note 3 and sure I'm on contract but if I like my service, I'm not going anywhere at the same time I won't have any monthly payments tied to the actual phone. Come 1 year, like most companies, I'll get another opportunity to upgrade, where I get to essentially keep the Note 3 which I've paid for, for $199 (vs. MSRP of around ~$700) and I'll also get the Note 4 for $199 and renew my contract for another 2 years.
Anyways that's my two cents since I've browses the comments and found nothing on this issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong! |
If you're in a major city, in dense suburbs, or along most interstate highways, T-Mobile has good on-network coverage. Go anywhere outside of those areas, you're going to be using free roaming on a regional carrier, if any such agreement exists. The only time I've really had any problems with my coverage is when I've been in places like rural Vermont. |
Yep; I actually traded it two $20 prepaid phones and kept my two iPhone 5(s). I did buy new phones from them as a requirement but none-the-less much better plan with unlimited services.
The manager did question why I didn't trade in my iPhones but didn't stop me from doing so. |
First check Uninstall in the Control Panel.
After that, i used [AutoRuns]( which is when i noticed that it had installed:
a Windows service
two image hijacks
i first went to Computer Management to stop, and then disable the service. Then i went back to AutoRuns and "unchecked" the two image hijacks.
i then thought to use the Uninstall, and SearchProtect had an uninstaller. i uninstalled it, and it removed the service, and the two (now disabled) image hijacks. |
I've been saying for a while that browser extensions need more rigorous sandboxing and security models for exactly this reason .
Today's browsers are practically OSes, and they hold a huge amount of personal information - saved passwords, browsing history, emails or access to them, cached pages - and are given a huge amount of trust, to not do anything naughty when we're on Amazon or Gmail or our bank website. We expect to be able to trust them with a ton of identifying information, credit card numbers, bank accounts, passwords... and extensions have access to everything . It's like Windows 95 all over again.
Browser extensions need to have a rigorous permissions model (like Android's but less shitty and able to revoke permissions). No extension should be able to do things like read our browser history or inject code into a page unless we explicitly allow it. Extensions' actions must be logged and audited - if I find malicious code in a page I should be able to open a log or status window and see which extension added it, or whether it was part of the original server-sent file. And all browsers' official extension databases must consist only of extensions that have been reviewed and found to not be malicious or otherwise harmful (e.g. no memory leaks), and every update must be reviewed. Yes, this means there'll be rather few extensions in the official databases compared to the unofficial ones that will spring up, but I'd rather have a selection of 100 trustworthy extensions than 100,000 potentially malicious/buggy ones.
This applies to operating systems too. The Linux world realized this long ago. Just about everything you install on a modern Linux distro comes from a package manager, which retrieves cryptographically signed executables/source codes from a trusted repository. Compare to early Windows, where running executables you found on random websites was the only way to install anything, or modern Android, where the official repo is riddled with malware(!). (Or iOS, where apps are rejected not just for being malicious but for a host of other reasons, and it costs $$$ to build and submit them...) |
Government program to give rural folks fiber. Those who got it while the program lasted got to tap straight into fiber mainline for practically free. |
Yeah Switzerland has an issue with telecom. The issue is that it was totally state owned (called PTT) until some time in the 90s. Seems it died in 1998 but the monopoly could have been penetrated before. I remember my parents telling me that when they got their home and their lined all hooked up and ready to call they were not allowed to come plug the phone. They had to wait for a PTT-guy to come and do the first-time plugging in.
Although died is a wrong word as basically the telecom company, Swisscom, that came out of it was still owned by the government at over 50%. Everyone "stayed" with Swisscom even though there were cheaper alternatives. People in Switzerland have money and they rather stay away from the inconvenience of changing. They don't even bother checking prices!
Anyway, some competition was there but not that much. Who owned all the copper? Swisscom. It was only in 2006 where they were forced to rent out their lines and utility spaces for putting routers/exchange servers. This helped things out a little but it's still bad. Most people are still on Swisscom. It's the same on the mobile side and people pay huge amounts per month even for their teenagers.
Swisscom hasn't changed their prices for many years now. They add speeds and lay A LOT of fiber but they just add these packages at higher prices. Even worse is that if you want above 20Mbps you need to sign for their TV package.
$77 for 20Mbps. You can get up to 100Mbps outside cities but as I said you need to pay for TV. I have 60/15 up in the mountain at 4900feet altitude. |
No worries, my wife had really good results with them when she left Rogers (after giving 30 days) and then they tried to bill her another 30 days because, and I quote "The system didn't actually process the cancellation until the day AFTER you called, so it was only 29 days notice".
You can't make this shit up. Then when we got the CCTS involved, Rogers says they already wiped the bill out which was total bullshit because we had gotten a paper bill not even 10 days prior letting us know we were now in collections. Keep in mind this was a 3-4 month battle that got a collection agency involved because obviously we refused to pay. |
Eh, that's a stretch. Publicly traded for-profit companies can try to argue that non-shareholder wealth-increasing activities are for the good of the business in the long run, but that's not a bulletproof defense against a shareholder lawsuit. There's a good article on the topic [here]( |
Not the thread parent, but I monitor my home network very closely and can provide you with some fun numbers.
I pay for a 30/5mbit/s connection from Timewarner Cable in SE Wisconsin.
Last night between 7-10 our connection was consistently above our subscrption -- we pay for 30mbit/s and were using 34mbit/s for a number of hours. (Probably a large download.)
Aside from that peak, though, you are absolutely right: we were only using ~7mbit/s.
Monthly usage figures range from our lowest 282GiB combined (~205 down, ~70 up) to our highest [this year] 764GiB (~315GiB down, 448GiB up.)
I'd say we average ~60GiB combined bandwidth per week.
I live in a house with three guys. While playing MMOs together you are absolutely right: we are rarely hitting our peak bandwidth.
However the game (SW:TOR) appears to occasionally dump a large amount of information on a scheduled basis (approx. every 10 minutes) -- these dumps will max out our upload (5Mbit/s) momentarily.
Long story short: I actually agree with everything you said. There are still some things that bug me about the broadband story in America.
I pay absurd amounts for this connection; I buy it mostly because I have no bandwidth caps, plus the latency is phenomenal. Sub-10ms roundtrip latency to datacenters in Illinois. Sub-15ms roundtrip latency to datacenters in Dallas, TX.
The fact that there is potential for bandwidth caps deeply worries me. You can see that my bandwidth usage figures are quite high. I'm sure you've already guessed that we're a torrenting/gaming household; but as somebody pointed out: modern games are huge. WildStar was a 14GiB download! Watch_Dogs was also on the order of 10GiB. Starbound consistently delivered .5GiB updates on a weekly basis.
Another thing that upsets me is the absurdly asymmetrical connections. We consistently make use of our 5mbit/s upload speed. I would gladly pay for the privilege of "adjusting" my connection to 25/10 or 15/15 or similar.
Downloading is only half the story. Every night my Android phone does a differential backup to Google Drive. Usually this isn't that large, but when I've added new videos or albums it can be a bit taxing.
Furthermore I like to trade pictures, albums, and GIFs with friends. I can't tell you how pleasant it is to upload a 2 to 5MiB GIF in the blink of an eye. I can actually upload files faster than most people I know can download them!
Companies like AT&T have the audacity to go door-to-door in my neighborhood: yet the salesman couldn't even tell me the upload speed of the package he was selling.
I've read enough about AT&T's network [in my area] to know that their upload speeds are truly a "best effort" sort of thing. When they say "Up to 2.5mbit/s upload" they really mean "you're lucky if you can hit that once a week on off-peak hours." |
600 cabinets, $2k each? You, sir, pulled those numbers right out of your ass.
I work for a small ISP based in Idaho with just over 100 employees. We have a CO in Boise with 50 10g routers in near as many cabinets. It costs me just shy of $20,000 to order one of those from Cisco. We have at least 4 facilities this size around the north west. We are tiny compared to major ISPs but we easily spend $4million a year in new facilities.
Like Dave above, I'm not trying to defend the mega-ISPs. Part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 established a mandate that telecom companies were to raise prices for the express purpose of improving infrastructure. The goal was to ensure The United States maintained leadership in telecom quality. Everyone raised their prices (you can still see the charge on your phone bill if you happen to have a land line) but most of the large companies just pocketed the money.
The upgrades necessary to provide gig ethernet to every street are prohibitively expensive, but if they had been started 10-20 years ago (like they were supposed to) we wouldn't be where we are. It's mostly an upfront capital investment and those aren't too bad if you spread them out. |
I think the CEO meant that it's the same cost to deliver 1.5/3/6/12/20 Mbps for them because they own the DSLAM(the gear that the modem connects to)/router for their Fusion product(ADSL1/2+). They do lease the copper loop from AT&T to deliver the DSL signal to the premise/modem. Their DSL are dedicated lines to the CO, meaning you don't share bandwidth with your neighbors. They don't throttle any traffic and their core/gateway links are upgraded before they get congested.
The downside is that their DSL speed depends heavily on distance. The further out, the slower the speed. Fiber doesn't have that downside and that's why it's so exciting.
Some years ago, Sonic.net gave (anonymous) bandwidth statistics to a study group to see if bandwidth caps are actually effective. Most people only consume a certain amount of data/entertainment because they still need to go to work/school. [The CEO explains it better in his blog post]( Short conclusion was that [caps don't work](
Or, at least, not for small ISPs with little market share. It makes (business) sense for the big ISPs to give out tiered service because they have most of the market share already. Tiered service is (usually?) done in order to differentiate their services (and increase profits).
I believe the CEO mentioned that the idea behind their Fusion service is that it's a "fixed-cost" service, rather than a service that maximizes profits. Iow, enough to make a profit without trying to squeeze every penny out of their customers. They kind of have to since they're a small ISP trying to compete against giants. |
So, here's a little text post from /r/Portland, where one of the redditors called the mayor of a suburb, concerned about his support of Comcast. It shows, I think, a lot of what's going on it city halls across the country: |
Nope, not even close. The attackers used an API to brute force the iCloud backups. The credit card/secure information that Apple holds is held in an entirely different system and assuming they follow the bare minimum of PCI compliance (which it's safe to say they probably go above and beyond that), lockouts are required on all platforms of attack for CC info.
Think about it this way, Apple has the largest database of CC info in the world, and there's been no major breeches there at all. |
Let's say you wrote a piece of software, or a novel, or made a movie. The imaginary stuff you are talking about is how you make your money, "Intellectual Property" isn't just about imaginary things, it's about real things that you created that exist only in a media or format that can be consumed. You aren't worried so much about people taking it and using it for their home, in all honesty you want that. You want people to take it and love it and use it because it may turn into a purchase and word of mouth may turn that one piracy into ten purchases.
I do make software for a living. It's even largely open sourced so that others can benefit from my work. The money I make isn't because I produced something once and want to live selfishly off of it in perpituity, but because I can create more, and maintain what I created. I'm the goose that lays golden eggs. Not the goose that laid one once and wants to sell you a copy that costs me nothing to produce.
>The things you worry about are people stealing it on a massive scale and profiting from it. Because they are using something you worked on to put money into their pockets without any of the creative process.
You're conflating copyright infringement with theft. The two are very different.
>This might not sound like a big deal, but it really hurts the bottom line for artists/writers/coders/moviemakers/etc.
Not really. If they're any good they can produce more art/works/software/movies. And will. I know this because I am one.
>We should reform the concepts surrounding Intellectual Property and try to get control back in the hands of the creators rather than the publishing agencies/groups but that is a story for another day.
Are you capitalizing it because you're a lawyer? The thing is the control has never really been in the hands of creators rather than other groups. They and lawyers are the only ones benefiting from the current system. To quote Elon Musk who recently gave away Tesla Motors' patents:
>When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.
He speaks specifically about patents, but patents, copyrights, and the ridiculous umbrella term lawyers use to secure their own incomes - "intellectual property" are all really the same thing. Artificial scarcity of information that benefits two groups: lawyers, and people who can afford lawyers. No one else.
>If the government uses money to buy a piece of software, but that software was pirated and had a virus or a key logger or a trojan installed that the person who pirated it didn't notice, we now have a huge national security threat. This sucks, because it both takes away profit from the person who made the software initially AND makes the government less likely to purchase from and/or do business with that group afterwards due to bad experiences. This can be true of Software, or even physical things that are knock offs, be it boots, or whatever else you may have.)
If the government buys a piece of closed source software and fails to detect viruses, trojans or other security risks, they have bigger problems than pirated software. For this reason this whole argument is a red herring. Having developed government software myself, for the DoD no less, I can tell you that they develop most of their stuff in house, or get it directly from vendors like Microsoft. The odds of them using a pirated copy with a virus in it are approximately zero. As I said, red herring.
[ |
Guys think about it a little bit.
Music labels and artists already hate the Spotify free service. They get almost no money from it. [As Radiohead member Thom Yorke described Spotify](
>[he described] the company as "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse"...
Apple has always been on the side of artists when it comes to products and services, and has always believed that art should be paid for. There is no free lunch, and if you want music to exist, you HAVE to support it.
I think Apple is trying to move the entire industry in that direction, and I think music labels and artists agree with this idea, which is the only reason Apple has any leverage at all.
I wouldn't say they're targeting Spotify, (as the article does say services like Spotify "force streaming services like Spotify to abandon their free tiers"), I would say they're targeting any free service that doesn't pay the artists some minimum amount. |
It seems to be a lot simpler than that.
>Sarandos says their wealth of data on user viewing habits proved there's a large audience for Fincher, Spacey and political thrillers. As licensing rights have gotten pricier and harder to land, and the streaming business has grown more competitive, Netflix has focused on adding exclusive programming to entice viewers.
Netflix has an incredible amount of data regarding what, when, how, where people watch TV. I'm going to go ahead and say it's an unprecedented amount of data regarding TV watching of this style.
By that I mean way more information is accessible to them beyond the simple stuff like "because you rated Down Periscope a 4 Star movie you'll probably rate Airplane 5 stars."
Netflix knows stuff like when the average viewer stops watching a TV series. They also know when people will probably stop watching if they didn't stop watching when the average viewer stops watching.
More importantly, they know when a viewer that rates "Down Periscope" as a 4 star movie, watched "Airplane" and rated it 5 stars, has most of their viewed content falling under the "comedy" category with the secondmost category being "documentary", and shares an account with another two other viewers (one of them classified as a Kid's Account) will most likely stop watching "Lost."
They also know what they'll probably rate it.
Eventually you an look at all this data and say "It seems like a huge chunk of our users would rate a David Fincher political thriller starring Kevin Spacey as 5 stars."
Luckily you can buy that one, but if it doesn't you can create it. |
I feel like most people just say "easier" instead of "user friendly," and that's where the confusion comes from. I use PC but my brother has a Mac and I must admit, the unified experience across apple products and the ease of navigation is really nice.
Why it needs to be specified that it's "user friendly" is because it caters more to folks who buy a computer because they need to type a paper. There are a lot of things that are more complicated to do on a Mac, but that's because a Mac isn't meant to complex intervention. |
As a supranational organisation, the EU has its budget set by the member states, in negotiation with the commission and EU parliament. The budget is then raised mostly through three mechanisms. Firstly, through 'own resources, like the common external [import] tariff, secondly through a VAT call (they take a set percentage of each member states sales tax), and then the difference is mostly closed through a levy from each member state, proportionate to each state's share of the EU's GDP. There are some intricacies to it, like the rebates of the UK, and Germany, but those are the broad strokes.
Outside those three major funding mechanisms, there is some smaller revenue sources. The fines raised as a result of EU law are included. In effect, the money goes in to the one big pot and it offsets (through a refund/adjustment the following year) against the contributions from the member state. |
Payola is paying a radio station or group of radio stations in money or promotional material per each time a song gets played. It is quite illegal and most radio groups are very careful about it. That being said, it's not illegal to trade promotional material (concert tix, prizes, etc) for "adds", or playing a song at least once so long as the promo material goes through an intermediary third party or "independent promoter". A station can accept promo material for adds, but the third party cannot dictate how many times it gets played.
Typically this is why you'll hear some songs on certain stations say between 1a-5a that you won't hear any other time. These are the radio stations gaming the system and getting their "adds" in for promotion but at the same time playing the new and unknown tracks at a time that hardly anyone will here them. It still works for the record labels because unless it's a core artist - like a T.Swift, Justin Timberlake, or Maroon 5 - a track gains traction on the charts by the number of "spins" or plays it gets. So if 75 stations play a song only once, programmers for other stations will look at the charts and think, "Wow, that song jumped 75 spins in one day! I better add it to my rotation" adding to those spin numbers and getting the snowball rolling.
The biggest reason this works is because when looking at your spin charts, you can't easily tell which songs have artificially inflated add numbers. There's a new Zac Brown Band track ft. Chris Cornell that was released through Big Machine Label (country label) that got pushed to rock radio about a month ago that just exploded for that very reason. Big Machine has way more money than any rock label, so when "independent promoters" approached a good chunk of rock stations with promo material for adds, they jumped all over it. On top of that, you had programmers (typically older white guys) who saw "Chris Cornell" on the bill and added it because of that. Some stations did both. Either way, rock listeners didn't really like it, but that didn't stop the snowball from rocketing a country band to the #1 spot on the rock charts where it currently sits. Here in another week or two, a few stations are going to drop it, and it'll fall just as fast as it climbed due to the "follow the chart trends" mentality that the industry has. Now this doesn't work for every song, in fact for every one track that the labels can launch with inflated spins, there are 10+ that fall flat, especially with new artists.
Anyway |
Their ad-supported projects are very useful and that earns them a lot of good PR.
Along with combatting ISPs with Google Fibre, unifying phone manufacturers under Android to combat an iOS monopoly, Google X projects like Loon and their self driving cars.
And lastly giving students good, free alternatives to office with their Google Drive suite of apps along with Gmail. |
Oh, you really don't know what the heck you're talking about!
No I don't know what I'm talking about! I was lying about carrying a 5 pound laptop around for 10 hours a day! /sarcasm
>computer you have as long as it costs less than $500
I said netbook (which the air is) should not cost $1000. Reading comprehension is a necessary skill in life, you should learn it. I also have don't care how much a computer is as long as it's a good value. I have bought $1000 laptops and desktops. Hell in the other comment I made I post about a computer that was over $600.
>I am sure there is a real estate site where you can tell everybody how they waste their money on apartments and condos when tents are so much cheaper and you can sleep every night in a different city.
Actually what i'm saying is: There are 2 apartments side by side. Both are identical in layout/size/etc. Only difference is that apartment #2 has a better paint scheme inside yet rent is double. |
What really happens is the information carried by the light is stored in the atoms, most likely in the form of coherences between two ground states of the atoms. The process involves two laser pulses, one which acts as a field to carry the information, and one which modifies the medium (the atoms). We typically call the latter the "control field". Both pulses are incident on the medium at the same time. The two pulses actually change the quantum mechanical state of the atoms. The control field will still propagate through the atoms whereas the other will be depleted and stored. Typically we think of the energy being stored in the electronic energy of the atoms (that is, we usually think of the atoms being in an "excited" state), but in this case, the atoms are actually not excited and the energy is stored in a more ambiguous (less intuitive) "coherence" of the state. The pulse can be stored in the medium for as long as the coherence of the state persists (which for BECs is a few seconds). Then if you apply a second control pulse, the stored pulse is emitted. Cool stuff. |
Most "promotional" articles like this one very similar to |
In all seriousness,
why would anyone unplug themselves nowadays?
Everything is online, we don't need encyclopedias or dictionaries to do homework anymore, and you can constantly learn from what the web has to offer. Take those skills into the real world, and the come back to the internet to learn more. Plugging yourself in is like obtaining knowledge from the dead and being in contact with everyone alive at the same time.
Not to mention it's just what our society has become. Would you say "unplugging yourself from cars" is justified? Or who need's "glasses"! To hell with technology and improving yourself right?!
No. There's no reason to ever unplug unless you aren't taking the knowledge you're learning and applying it somewhere cause then what's the point of learning something. That's just HOARDING knowledge!
I don't have kids, but when I do I imagine their lifestyle growing up will be a lot different then mine. Instead of riding bikes to meet up and talk or sharing one phone line and one computer with 56k to communicate they will be able to instantly. Is it good? Eh, it will probably make them grow up faster. It's just a different world out there for kids now and there's no reason to ever do these "unplugging" test anymore. |
I used to stand up for Anonymous before for some reason. Now I seem to dislike them for some reason. For some reason, I can't make up my mind. More facts would be great, but it's hard to get them when, well, they're all anonymous. |
It's not "a single silly sentence". It's a quote from Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which is in turn quote from J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye". "Complex" segment of the series describes a emergent group similar in (lack of) structure to anonymous, which grows around the event sparked by single hacker, who used said sentence as his motto. |
I think a lot of that has to do with Wikileaks. In the past, Anonymous' aim was just to be a leaderless force for chaos on the internet. They mostly just attacked sites for fun, although the sites they targeted usually did something that most people didn't agree with.
Then after Wikileaks became big news, some people in Anon began to see themselves as somehow equivalent to Wikileaks. A group of Anonymous 'leaders' formed, because, like Wikileaks, they needed their aims to be publicly stated.They started releasing grandiose and self-important 'manifestos'. Now, this group considers itself fully representative of Anonymous. Whenever an attacks occurs that they have prior knowledge of, they declare that it is not a 'true' Anonymous attack. |
I think perhaps you misunderstand the concept of Anonymous. The original intent has been lost as the group perpetuated itself and the idea has watered down; fueling your distaste and making reporting awkward.
The basic concept is that Anonymous is a group of individuals who remain anonymous to each other as a practiced rule. This allows for greater security in a variety of ways but more importantly makes the philosophical point that people can work together for am abstract goal without knowing a person. There is no need for a leader because when you have true anonymity, absolute democracy is almost inevitable. |
Why is Anonymous being treated as an entity?
For the same reason Sony is treated as an entity - convenience. Sony has a rooted structure where the CEO is technically responsible for declaring the company's in-group, but it's still a collective noun for people who have chosen to work together with some framework for the purposes of making money. Anonymous is an anarchic allegiance for anyone to declare based on their own motivations, but individuals and groups can still be disowned by popular consent of the hivemind. In both cases there's some mass of people working toward shared goals, and even if divisions of Sony and the operations of Anon are completely compartmentalized, we use roughly accurate group designations to roughly appropriate blame or praise. Anonymous hasn't taken credit for the hack, so whichever script kiddie or Sony employee left those files wasn't Anonymous regardless of his proclaimed or imagined loyalties. |
If Sony is going to keep hundreds of millions of users personal information on a server that can actually be hacked by an SQL injection, they deserve to be hacked. They're morons and maybe if they got people to put simple cybersecurity on their networks, people like lulzsec and Anonymous wouldn't actually be able to hack them using methods that most 10 year olds now-a-days could probably learn.
Also, when you buy a $500 piece of equipment, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think you should be allowed to do whatever the hell you want with it including putting any form of Linux you want. It doesn't hurt Sony's sales, so why are they cracking down on it? |
exactly my point.
idk what ppl think... 1gbit wont get you anywhere anything above around 20 megabyte per second and most likely on a normal website you only see a bandwidth of around 200 to max 600 kbyte per second because their server is pretty sure not connected faster than 100mbit, sharing it with a couple hundred other requests at the same time.
so with 20mbit you already get 2mbyte per second. with 200mbit you already get more than enough.
yes, i do understand that you can use the bandwidth for different connections, 10 mbyte/sec from various servers BUT sonic might have 3-5 backbone connections each 1gbit, shared over all its customers.
plus, if anyone really thinks to get a better ping for gaming.. nope, wont happen. again, its not your connection, its the server. at the same time you also wont be able to download all the porn you want in seconds (also see server speed issue again) because if they see that youre consuming all their bandwidth theyll throttle you and probably cap you pretty quickly too.
when they introduced 100mbit in germany exactly this happened and 1&1, who offered it, started paying out contracts from high volume users. the golden handshake they called it. they payed you like 500 bucks to change provider otherwise they would just turn you off for overuse of their network.
instead of hating me now for telling the truth, rather support faster and cheaper internet in a useful manner.
i want 100mbit for 50 bucks. thats what i want. in germany i could get 50mbit + cellphone and landline flat rates for together 50 bucks right now. here in the US i pay 60 bucks for 25mbit. no cable tv, not phone.
why cant that change? 10 years ago we were sitting in germany dreaming about US cable connections. these days my brother laughs about me how much i have to pay for such a weak line.
edit: also look at your network card, router, wifi, etc. wanna bet 99% of the people reading this support only 100mbit internally? you wont have much from 1gbit if your router can handle only 100mbit passing it on to your ethernet card/moboard which also supports only up to 100mbit.
edit 2: with 1gbit you also already maxed out your standard harddrive. youre sucking in data faster than your drive can write it. (normal end user pc) |
I remember reading a study or article that someone here on Reddit posted. It wasn't an issue of size IIRC. Russia has an equivalent amount of land mass and they're internet is much faster than ours. |
I would disagree. In particular, the model of "information processing" or "signal transduction" dominates not only computers and networking but also neurobiology and genetics. The genetic code itself is still a relatively new discovery. But that whole area of theory and science is developing about as rapidly as one could expect, IMO.
I don't disagree with the tone of the article, which is just trying to present two sides of an issue about which Stephenson made some provocative comments. But there's no point in decrying the lack of progress in areas that are not a part of the current technological revolution (as it were). If this is the "information age" or the "information revolution", we can expect that there will be two phases, just as there were two phases for the industrial revolution, for instance. In the first phase, numerous important discoveries made a very small impact; in the second phase, the basic principles discovered in the first phase served as the basis of a massive implementation of new technology.
People get jaded easily. Twenty years ago, the internet consisted of some universities and military bases in the U.S. People used to surf to websites in order to watch a fish tank located in someone's apartment hundreds of miles away, in real time, at a resolution of maybe 64 x 64. Today the internet is a multi-billion dollar, worldwide economic force, and the infrastructure for easy access doesn't even cover half of the earth's surface. Coincidentally, the 90s were "the decade of the brain" here in the U.S., and government funding of brain research increased every year for ten years. And, there have been important developments in miniaturization, parallel processing, quantum computing, materials science, nanotechnology, robotics, and biogenetics (e.g., Monsanto). All of that is so complicated that of course it will take decades and decades to see their full ramifications. Of course we could really use a breakthrough in energy science, because that would be tantamount to a massive increase in resources to explore every other area of science. But I guess that's not what's going on right now.
Anyway, I think it's fine to encourage young people not to be complacent when there are so many areas that could have a large impact in the imminent future. But it's not worthwhile to identify "innovation" with "impact". |
Trust: The condition necessary for betrayal" - David Gerrod.
I expect Google to "maximize shareholder economic value" but even more than that "maximize subjective value for the board-of-directors" (which can be wildly different). Same holds for Microsoft, Apple, etc.
So far Google have been more successful by catching flies - sorry, ad revenue - with honey than with vinegar. They are however noticing [this]( so it will slowly change with time. It is just "physics", so to speak.
As such, I don't think I can feel betrayed by Google (or Microsoft, or Apple, etc.). Sure I could be made angry at them, but that's something altogether different. |
This is a huge understatement. If you were an entrepreneur and not a minority (especially not black)
FTFY.
There's a quote which I believe is anonymous:
>I came to America because I heard that streets here were paved with gold. When I came I learned three things: the streets in America are not paved with gold; streets in America are not paved at all; I was expected to pave them.
Also, c.f. stuff about upwards social mobility in America being a myth etc.
America, like the Soviets, had and still has a huge propaganda machine that makes everyone think they're somehow rich. They really aren't. People just were comfortable in the US and could afford to buy a Camaro and drive it to work because gas was pennies a gallon. But richness, as defined (by me) as the ability to do and move the world around you in a way other than what is pre-determined is and has been absent in America. Many people think that they are more free simply because they're able to buy cars with bigger engines... this is the biggest illusion there is. They are free to play in the little sandbox that the system has made for them...
People don't understand this so well... but if you go to a town called Dresden in germany, there's an entire hill side of mansions and castles owned by industrial barons (e.g. the guy who invented powdered milk)...
Blah blah. It's too long to deconstruct. I will readily admit PR wins. Repeat a half truth enough times and it becomes impossible to refute.
>Resources -- yes, they are important, however Japan might object as to whether they are absolutely necessary (they can be obtained elsewhere).
If you read my second part of comment, you'd see that I said something else. I specifically witheld from giving examples, but Germany and Japan are two prime candidates of how the US is doing it wrong in terms of tech. The problem with both of these countries is that they both were razed and then subsequently rebuilt by America. So many people claim that the reason Germany is the second largest economic powerhouse of the world is somehow still related to America's magic and invisible hand. To a small extent, maybe. But to a large extent, it isn't. This point, however, I have no desire to discuss: endless amounts of entropy has been created on the internet to no avail. It's a futile endeavour. |
My mother is a teacher. She taught students in a suburb outside of a medium sized city. The students generally got C's and above in an above average curriculum. Then school board politics ensued and her contract got revoked. She moved into the bigger city to teach and those kids did worse at a below average curriculum. They fail the state's standardized tests every year. Only 18% of the students succeed in achieving at least average on their exams. The problems with education are not the educators but the environments the kids grow up in. Violence from drug prohibition, financial inequality, peer interaction, and other problems are what cause them to underachieve. If you were born into a poor family in a city plagued with crime your chances of success are low. There are also gender, sexual, and racial factors but those aren't nearly as important as the other causes for horrible education. You can spend far more money on education but the end result will only look like Washington D.C., Chicago, Detroit, or L.A. There is a reason why private schools separate students from their normal living conditions. It shelters them from their environment. This is a HUGE topic that someone can write several books on and never fully cover each topic. |
Thanks for the information. The general melting point of bullet-proof glass is 155°C, while this quartz glass can sustain temperatures of 1000°C for 2 hours or more with no damage done.
Now I just wonder how to make this quartz glass "bullet-proof", or at least more resistant to breaking. Can it withstand being ran over by a car? Hit with a bullet? I'm worried about high-velocity impacts here. And what about dropping it? I'm sure it'll hold up to minor drops, but what about if it lands on one of it's four corners and chips? Cracks?
Hmm. I do think there must be a way to make this glass more "indestructible", especially if you want it to last for thousands upon thousands of years. You just never know what these little guys will be exposed to in that time. Better safe than sorry, prepare for the wildest of variables. |
They claim to store 1 PB in a disc 13.57 cubic mm in volume, using minor modifications of CD/DVD drives. Really optimistically assuming that they can use the entire disc and ignoring coatings, the hole in the middle, and protective layers, that gets a density of 6.673E20 bits per cubic meter, which means that each bit takes up at most 1.506E-21 cubic meters.
Assuming that the bit is in the shape of a cube, that makes the cube 114.64 nanometers on a side. This is at least on the same order of magnitude compared to the pitch of present-day Blu-Ray, 320 nm.
I have no idea how they avoided having to use extreme UV / X-ray lasers in the drive. |
The fact that you are German is irreverent (no offense personally).
It shouldn't be so no offense taken. I just wanted to counter your argument that a source has to be american to be credible.
> If I didn't believe it I wouldn't have posted it.
First of all it doesn't matter what you believe to be true, what matters is what actually is true. I can believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, aliens control our brains and wearing tinfoil hats is protecting me from them. I can believe all of that but it wouldn't make it true. Truth in a non-philosophical sense is based on evidence not believe
> You don't really think Bin Laden lived until May 2011 do you ?
Personally? I do believe he was in that building and got shot but it doesn't matter what i believe in.
>That is pure propaganda. Just so Barak Obama could harumph in front of the news cameras and score poolitical points.
Would you have said the same thing if a Rrpublican President pulled the same stunt? And be honest with yourself here because no matter what the truth about this is i can feel the bias is strong in you.
> Did you not see all of the fake photos of Bin Laden ? All the fake Videos ?
I am quite skilled in Photoshop so if you want i can try make a photo of you shooting bin laden with a Handheld Railgun (or whatever you prefer). Anyone can fake Pictures/Videos these days that's not really an argument for or against anything is it really?
> DO you actually trust the US Government ?
Does it really matter? I don't trust the US Government, no. I don't trust the chinese, the russian or for that matter the German government either. But my trust in a Government isn't a viable way of measuring if they said the truth or not.
> What is so incredible about the fact that I just might be correct, despite my sources?
Because without credible Sources, it's just a wild guess. Do you belive the Holocaust was fake? Do you Believe the world will end in 2012? Do you belive that if you don't brush your teeth every morning you will be gangraped by a horde of invisible pink elephants? I thought so. The Problem is, without credible Sources or evidence what you are saying is nothing but a wild guess. It could be true, of course! But so can every conspiracy theory ever be true. The difference lies in the evidence and credibility of the sources.
But again i give you the benefit of the doubt :
Let's assume:
Osama bin Laden was killed or died some time before May 2011. Let's further assume Obama, The CIA, The Navi Seals, everyone involved in the 2011 raid KNEW that Osama was either dead or not in that compound.
Let's start just counting the people who would have to be involved in this KNOWING it is a conspiracy:
The President and everyone else in this picture
That's 15 people
All the Navy seals in the building (at least +4 people)
The CIA staff involved in the investigation (20+ People)
This is the Head of the conspiracy with almost 40+ People planning and executing this plan. How many other people had to be involved in this conspiracy with at least a little knowledge about it? Your guess is as good as mine but a conspiracy involving that many people knowing it's a conspiracy is a bad thing. Now Let's take a look at the US Government track record of keeping things secret. I remember a ceratin blow job there...
You know thats the problem with such "high-level-government conspiracys" they need a shitload of people to be involved in order to work out and one of them is going to blow the whistle no matter what at some point. I may be wrong, some day someone might come forward and tell the truth about what happened down there but just for a publicity stunt this isn't worth it. Just take a look at the actual risks involved: Invading the sovereign territory of a nuclear state that doesn't fuck with the US just because they get money from us for what? Looking nice in the press? You can say many things about the president but he's way to smart for something like that to happen.
Now to your new brought evidence: you see the headline right there? opinion . Not a good start.
> Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama's gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama's ghost alive or because they have no means of communication
Seriously thats almost better evidence against then for your theory.
> With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival? Even if he is still in the world, bin Ladenism has left for good. Mr. bin Laden was the public face of a brand of politics that committed suicide in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people in the process.
So he's dead because his ego is too big to stay silent? Hell i would keep quiet no matter what if the whole USA wants to kill me with all means necessary! The only backing you have is that some dudes in the mountain said osama is dead and the guy that might have hidden them "echoed" that information. COME ON who do you trust more the US Government or the Pakistani Government? None of both i guess but given the choice whom to believe in this particular case i guess the choice is obvious to me. |
If you opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate, all other parts of the User Agreement, including all other provisions of Section 14 (Disputes with PayPal), will continue to apply.
In order for "the provisions of Section 14" to "continue to apply," yes, you will still have a PayPal account.
Also, in opting out of the Agreement to Arbitrate, you only opting out of part of the new T&C, everything else is still legally binding, just not this particular clause. |
imstartingover said this in a comment further down:
>If you opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate, all other parts of the User Agreement, including all other provisions of Section 14 (Disputes with PayPal), will continue to apply.
In order for "the provisions of Section 14" to "continue to apply," yes, you will still have a PayPal account.
Also, in opting out of the Agreement to Arbitrate, you only opting out of part of the new T&C, everything else is still legally binding, just not this particular clause. |
Pretty sure I'll get downvoted to oblivion for supporting paypal on this, but from what I've heard I do not believe they had any intention of "stealing" money from Notch.
Consider this, an account is opened, and starts receiving money on a regular basis. Suddenly one day the business explodes and money starts coming in exponentially fast. It would be any payment processor's responsibility to ensure they know who is receiving the money, and what for, and why they are suddenly receiving so much more business. (and for that matter, whether they can support the influx of new business, I mean, if Notch was selling hand-knit sweaters instead of a game download it would be reasonable to believe he may not be able to keep up with the new business)
Also, if Notch honestly felt that paypal tried to steal from him, I doubt he'd have chosen to continue to accept it as a payment option.
I'll also note, so many scammers/criminals use paypal on a daily basis, and it would be an easy way to launder money if steps like this weren't taken. |
The entire expectation of 80 hour weeks in tech companies points to incredibly inept management that has no clue how to manage human capital for the good of a company beyond 2 quarters into the future at best.
Theres a not so fine line between pushing a team to do its best, under a deadline, and slavedriving.
Slave driving, putting out fires, and 80-hour weeks tend to make people do bad work... due to physical or mental stress. Stressing people for a long period of time leads them to be unhappy, burning them out.
Now, if I'm at the top of a chain and say "eh, just get new people and repeat that cycle" that doesn't only morally make me an ass, it virtually guarantees that I will have no one with senior level experience to help guide projects away from costly failures in the future... except maybe 2 or 3 a-types who dont play nice with others and are likely to have an early heart-attack anyway.
And these days, thats almost every company.
I'd end this with something lofty like "a new generation of managers will fix this in a few years" but the newer CEO's and managers are just as clueless. It will take a complete change of the manager meme in our culture to fix it. |
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