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Okay, I'll bite the bullet and face the deluge of downvotes for this: I agree 100% that being able to pay for content I want directly rather than having to endure advertisements is better. But, right now I'm able to make a living because I sell banner ads on my website. If I had to switch business models and was forced to depend on people paying for my content directly, I wouldn't be able to make a living at all and would need to find other work.
That's because, and I'm sorry to say it, the percentage of people willing to contribute to the creation of content vs. the percentage that actually do the consuming of it is very small. There's a reason that PBS isn't more popular (and profitable) than CBS or NBC. And hey, don't get me wrong, I really love PBS and public broadcasting, and that model works too under the right circumstances. But it takes in a fraction of what private broadcasters can because only a small percentage of its audience contributes (or would be willing to if it were the only way to get the content).
If my website had a larger and more generous audience, I wouldn't hesitate to switch to a 100% ad-free model. You could argue that maybe if I did, and, even better, didn't put my content behind a pay-wall, the good reputation I'd build would maybe draw in more people. But I simply don't have the resources to invest in that gamble if it doesn't pay off (and I'm skeptical it would).
Many of you don't like to hear it because it conflicts with what you want (i.e. an ad-free internet), but it's true. And you can blame the ads themselves all you want, but not all digital advertising is "One weird trick to lose Ellen DeGeneres!" or whatever. I directly sell a lot of the banners on my site rather than going through a network, and the banners that I do sell to AdSense, I make sure to filter out the "You won't believe this one weird trick to" banners, because fuck those banners.
Directing contributing to content creation sounds great and I'd fully support it, but I'd argue most websites wouldn't be able to keep their heads above water if it was the only way to generate revenue. And really, when you use AdBlock on all sites, all the time, everywhere (not just the ones desperate enough to reduce themselves those aggressively stupid banner ads) you're not contributing anything, at all.
I know that a huge chunk of you won't like me saying this, but I'm willing to hear a counter-argument that's not just one thousand downvotes forever. |
The movie was a terrible terrible thing. I've never been so angry with a book-movie adaptation. They took brilliant writing and high minded humor and turned it into generic american slapstick designed for idiots. When they're walking through the field being hit by shovel like things I nearly walked out of the theater.
I don't often re read books as too much sticks with me, but I make time every year to read all 5 books in the Hitchhikers series. The books are amazing satire on the human (or rather sentient) condition and how silly our pretenses are when compared to the huge vast nonsense of the rest of the universe. Heck there's a machine in the books that destroys peoples minds by showing them how important they are in relation to the rest of creation. |
It would only evaporate if everyone thought exactly the same thing at the same time. They don't. This makes things move slower than you'd anticipate.
However, if there is an instant collective agreement on something (like in the case of bad news), the price more or less does evaporate very quickly. This is called a "gap down", and sometimes its very severe. Other times, we just have a very fast and rapidly accelerating downward spike.
A lot of what I'm talking about can be seen in the charts of practically every stock:
You can see that long term and short term momentum is very real, and it can be very dangerous. Those sharp downward spikes in the chart show collective selling, and clearly the people who bought in the middle of them were making a foolish choice. You want to avoid being that sucker who buys in a land slide.
The long term momentum can actually be much more dangerous for people holding "long term". The bottom in '13 was actually a slow downward slide that was almost in a straight line since '06. Only recently has it shown that it may have broken its decline, as show by continual buying support near its lows. |
Yes, there are weaknesses - but they are relatively minor compared to breaking SHA256 to steal someone's wallet.
A government or business controlling a majority of hashpower would only allow for a double spend attack on recent transactions.
However, simply waiting a couple hours makes this attack nearly impossible (since the difficulty of the attack doubles every 10 minutes). This is already common practice if significant amounts of money are involved. |
It would only evaporate if everyone thought exactly the same thing at the same time. They don't.
Yes, obviously... Because not everyone is following this rule.
>However, if there is an instant collective agreement on something (like in the case of bad news), the price more or less does evaporate very quickly.
If by "evaporate" you mean "changes." And yes, it does fucking change. Because people are still buying the goddamn thing. If people weren't buying, if everybody agreed that you never buy when there were more buyers than sellers, no price would ever evaporate, the whole damn thing would evaporate. For a price to evaporate in the first place, there have to be buyers in the market! And every single one of those buyers is placing a buy order in a market with more sellers than buyers. If your rule was ironclad, exchanges would freeze at the last price as soon as some seller/buyer ratio was exceeded, and the market would disappear!
> You want to avoid being that sucker who buys in a land slide.
Or, you want to be the guy that buys when it's undervalued and makes a profit. That's what those buyers are doing. If there were no buyers, then the last traded at-price wouldn't change at all - all trading would simply stop.
> |
Technologically adept end-user here.
This right here is correct. The amount of shit (SHIT. FUCKING SHIT EVERYWHERE. ON THE WALLS, ON TH- .. lick ..IT'S FUCKING SHIT , EVERYWHERE) I uninstall from friends/families computers is borderline pathetic. Your "top of the line brand new $800 laptop" runs worse than my fucking e-machine 533 because the CPU is running at 20%+ while idle . It's fucking INSANE . |
The reason iPads are great at what they do.. is because they're so focused/simplified. They aren't trying to be "everything to everyone" like the Surface is.
That what I find is the problem with Ipad, it's so limiting. It's so frustrating to use it when you really can't do anything with it. Now this is probably because I'm no app guy, I don't like to play small app games and I'm not so focused on social media. But with the surface, I don't need a laptop at all, because it can do exactly the same (even better in my case).
> They're trying to cram so much into it.. that it fails at being a tablet.. and it's also not that great of a full featured Laptop.
I don't see how it fails at being a tablet? It's not heavy, it's not thick? The aspect ratio is great and it's super fast. The only point where I can tell there's a problem is with apps, but for me it has everything I need and will ever need. As a laptop, nothing can beat it in profitability with such specs. It has a good keyboard with backlight and the trackpad is better than most (the only better I have used is on the macbook). It has decent specs and can handle everything I throw at it. One problem might be with heat if you play a lot of heavy games, but I use my desktop for that, so I can't say I've run into that problem. |
Considering what those views are, not at all.
Here's his platform:
> Income and wealth inequality: In the United States today we have the most unequal wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth -- worse than at any time since the 1920s. This is an economy that must be changed in fundamental ways.
>
> Jobs and income: In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.
>
> Campaign finance reform: As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, American democracy is being undermined by the ability of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families. These wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice. We need to overturn Citizens United and move toward public funding of elections so that all candidates can run for office without being beholden to the wealthy and powerful.
>
> Climate change: Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.
>
> College affordability: Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.
>
> Health care: Shamefully, the United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. Health care is a right, not a privilege.
>
> Poverty: The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.
>
> Tax reform: We need real tax reform which makes the rich and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands.
>
>And these are just some of the issues that we will be dealing with.
Every single one of those things has [been an issue for 35+ years or gotten worse in that time.]( So if he had changed his platform since then he would be a typical politician.
He and Elizabeth Warren (who declared support for him yesterday!) are like the only two politicians that seem to be pulling for the (relatively in some cases) poor majority.
The [wealth inequality]( in this country is astoundingly bad . But the media isn't talking about it, most politicians will at best pay it lip service, except for Bernie. He's been on it for 35 years. Because it's the right issue. It's the most important issue:
>We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Louis D. Brandeis
Former Supreme Court Justice
Given the wealth inequality in this country today, democracy is a stone cold corpse. We've become an imperialist plutocracy disguised as a constitutional republic sold to its citizens employees as a democracy.
And that's the problem Bernie is concerned about. |
Where do I begin?
First, I don't see why anyone would downvote you because they don't agree with you. Downvoting is for banal and spam comments (although a lot of new reddit users seem to think otherwise).
> I have always found Microsoft equation editor to be far easier to use.
Have you actually tried working in LaTeX for more than an hour? How about writing a document which has >100 formulas? Can you give an example where using MS equation editor beats LaTeX in ease of use and simplicity?
> I mean a gui has to count for something, otherwise we'd all be using emacs.
Wha-? How does people not using emacs imply that gui counts for something (you know, you can get a gui version of emacs, even one of vi)? I fail to see a logical connection here... Have you ever thought about why the entire academic community uses LaTeX for writing papers? Do you think that's because they're all a bunch of stuck-up snobs that like to feel better than everyone else? |
More now than previously, because fans have more access to different acts, genres, and the like. I'm not suggesting labels are superfluous yet (although several big names do fine on their own), but that the channels of exposure have widened. The |
your post seems to imply that since it is now possible to make a recording of 'decent' (not high quality, mind you: tape recording machinery and analog signal modifiers are still incredibly expensive) quality, that all bets are off when it comes to the monetization of art.
It's not that marketing is key to making 'mega' bucks...it's key to making ANY BUCKS. The quality of the marketing is the difference between a having a time- and money-draining hobby on one end and a lavish lifestyle on the other.
Also, stating that 'some of your favorite bands' started home-produced and eventually signed to small label, or that TY and TR didn't start out signed to a big label is irrelevant. Those 'favorite' bands of yours put in craploads of free, unpaid marketing time, and eventually attracted enough attention to get one of the surviving 'music promotions companies' (aka labels) to sign them and take some of the work off their hands, probably in exchange for some cut of the eventual profits, which come from (gasp!) album sales and paid downloads, which filesharing impacts . As for TR and TY, they came up during a different period of history, when labels actively scouted for artists to groom into profit-machines. This is no longer done, generally.
Brokencyde was brought up as an example of bad art, not lack of marketing. |
As one of those struggling musicians Bono is talking about I'm kind of torn on this subject. Before the advent of file sharing labels were more willing to take chances on unknown talent with more obscure/less than accessible music genres. Bloated prices for C.D.'s could buoy less popular bands and allow labels to take more risks back in the day. With the advent of file sharing though, the price of music has been driven into the ground. The net result of this is less bands being signed by the majors (and even a lot of indie labels), which mean more bands have to spend time making a living rather than making music.
That said however, new bands have never before had this much access to this many people in the world all at once. For dollars/pennies a day you have an entire distribution center accessible to the whole world. So I see this issue as a dual edged sword. In the end though I think only time can tell which side is sharper. I know my band is struggling to make ends meet, get money together to finishing our LP, and would love to be able to get by solely on the music we create. But at the same time, before file sharing there is no way we would have had fans in places like Malaysia or Taiwan. |
I work for one of these telecom companies, and it is really not that easy.
Let me first say, I too find it feels really silly to only have one to two providers you can realistically get. You can go through a reseller which most people aren't aware of, but there are a reason those smaller companies generally do not do as well. They effectively become a middle man who bills the customer, yet installation and repair work is still done by the local LEC's technicians. It becomes more work and more cost is added in.
I can certainly understand people's frustration. If a business wrongs you, or you feel you are paying too much for a service, you should have every right to speak with your money, and go to another carrier. Unfortunately, splitting up completely would be near logistically impossible in my opinion. It would be similar if we got rid of the Department of Transportation, and split that up to bidding companies, and let each maintain and regulate themselves.
The article also mentions how you see more expansions, upgrades and improvement in high competition areas. High competition areas are also realistically high population areas. Its cost effective to improve infrastructure in specific areas that will net you the most profit. There are places in our areas that will never see broadband service. It would be installed and maintained at a loss with no hope of recouping the expenses.
You will see local cities who take this isn't their own hands, and kick out the local LEC and try to provide all telephone & broadband services on their own. It certainly can work, and I'm sure works beautifully in some areas. The few cities near us who have tried it ( and this could be because they were one of the first, and its not easy to do) have failed miserably. They end up selling back to a competing LEC at a loss. |
The title in this case serves as the " |
Any idea what the public address of the router was when all of this was going on? I would assume (just guessing here) that Clear would be handing out valid public addresses to their clients rather than handing out private addresses and trying to NAT things at their gateway. This would create a real headache on their end, and I'm not sure that it's even feasible with more than a handful of clients per gateway.
To put it simply, an off the shelf router with factory settings would not route DHCP requests out of its public interface. Without an outbound packet and the corresponding entry in the NAT table of the router, Clear's DHCP response packets would simply be dropped at the router.
If you sniffed the network and confirmed that the DHCP response packets were coming from MAC of the Clear modem then this would require more digging. With the limited information provided, my guess would be that there was another DHCP server running on one of the client machines. The clients would broadcast their DHCP discovery packets, and whichever server happened to respond first would be the configuration used by the client.
Why there would be another DHCP server on the network is anyones guess. If the bad DHCP server was getting it's address from the router, it could be setting itself as the gateway for the clients, then routing all the packets out to the router. This would be essentially invisible to the user for 99% of cases.
Without a net dump or wireshark trace I really have no idea, but I would start looking for the above scenario before I would believe that Clear had suddenly figured out how to punch through to private subnets. With the MAC address of the source of the DHCP response packet, it should be trivial to find the source, then troubleshoot from there. |
Zing! Unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand the complexity involved with dealing with DDoS attacks. I've dealt with quite a few of them, at work and at home; including just recently a kid that took offense to me crushing his spot in the top 10 on a CS:S server. His idea of a "DDoS" was using a rented server to try to packet flood me on the steam port.
There are a lot of ways you can deal with attacks like that. My personal favorite is to bait and switch, since while they're DDoSing you they're usually portscanning you too. Honeypots are wonderful things, especially when the cocky cunts decide to attack that "vulnerable" service you've got and start dicking around your virtual machine going after all that juicy personal data, "FamilyPhotos" "DirtyPorn" and other folders and files you've dropped in to keep them busy while your RSB is piggybacking their line and allowing you to run your own exploits against their either A) Windows, or B) Shittily secured linux with everything running as root, systems.
This kid was smart enough to remote into a stolen/rented box from his home system... via a copy of RealVNC that was older than my grandmother. Trivial to take it over and put a stop to it.
DDoS is not that easy - the reason it's called DD instead of D is because it's /distributed/ denial across multiple systems - rented botnets, etc. Now there's no way you're going to have the time and resources to manually counter an entire botnet system by system. If it's a known botnet you can tap the SNR and find the owner or C&C channel, hop on IRC and try to trace from there (good luck!). That doesn't stop the attacks, but does give you something to do while your ISP just stops routing traffic from those addresses to you.
If you've got a beefy security appliance, that can even just drop the connections as fast as they come in - you'll experience some bandwidth hogging if you're on a single connection, but most large companies have residuals.
The entire concept of a DDoS is to channel hundreds or thousands of individual rivulets into a gigantic storm of water bigger than the drain. This is how flooding works in the real world - too much rain, not a big enough pipe to channel it all away. You can't stop the rain, and if you can't make the pipe bigger, you cut off some of the rivulets with sandbags. This usually needs to be done at the ISP level, and unless you're Google, or Facebook, or practically own your ISP, it's not easy to do - to the point of impossibility. You will go down for a while until the ISP gets on it.
So |
Thorium is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about four times more abundant than uranium, and is about as common as lead. Soil commonly contains an average of around 12 parts per million (ppm) of thorium. Thorium occurs in several minerals including thorite (ThSiO4), thorianite (ThO2 + UO2) and monazite. Thorianite is a rare mineral and may contain up to about 12% thorium oxide. Thorium-containing minerals occur on all continents.](
edit: |
this is completely untrue and should be downvoted for being pure history revisionism. the US already had more than enough warheads to nuke the Soviet Union 10 times over. not only that, but it had reactors that could produce weapon-grade plutonium at a moments notice (still does).
the real reason that Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) was stamped out was because of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). it was the successor to the Manhattan Project, and was created with good intentions, but ended up becoming nothing more than a tool for regulatory capture for special interests. they wanted to push forward Light Water Reactors (LWR) on behalf of the nuclear industry and decided to crush any project based on other types. Weinberg, who held the patent for LWR, also helped design the LFTR. he kept questioning the safety of current reactors, so eventually he was fired from Oak Ridge. then Three Mile High happened, followed by Chernobyl, and wala, the death of the nuclear industry in the US altogether.
the real |
My ISP drastically limits net usage and charges a premium for faster net. They also limit my net more every time I download a torrent, which is quite often. We got 5 computers connected to a router here, and if one person streams a flash video (youtube / stocks) nobody else can use the internet. The flash video still takes about 1.30 to load 1min of content. |
Just an anecdote, but anecdotes from my recent career experience are relevant tonight for some reason. =)
Two jobs ago, I worked for a company called Override: they did gas discounts for a grocery store chain called Shaw's, as well as for Dunkin' Donuts. They were actually a spinoff of Irving Oil, an experiment in seeing if multiple gas companies and merchants could get together and make a sustainably profitable joint venture through a gas discount program.
Anyways, things were going pretty damn well for two years before I joined, and for a year after. It looked like we were going to potentially branch out to western-dominant gas companies, and things were looking good.
Then out of nowhere a company came along that essentially had the patents to the concept of getting a gas discount at the pump. The concept seems so utterly and painfully obvious to anyone in any retail realm - let alone gas - that the thought of having a patent on it seemed absurd. But they had it, and they'd already bowled over Safeway (a west coast grocery chain that had experimented with gas discounts) with the pressure of this patent.
They bowled us over too, and overnight we went from successful and innovative to effectively dead. Companies started to shy away from doing business with us due to the threat of the patent, we lost our future prospects for partnerships and old ones started to break off. In the end, they convinced the stakeholders in our company to literally give them all of our (in at least a few ways, superior) tech, resources, and partnerships in exchange for immunity from prosecution. They basically took everything we had for nothing.
It was at that point where I ended up working with the parents of a friend of mine on an SMS messaging idea they had, but that's another WTF story for another post. =) |
I think part of the problem many people have is that theres so much distrust in the system of music right now.
how do i know buying an mp3 will contribute any decent amount of money to the artist? I know plenty of artists who sell their music in multiple venues, including digital and physical media, and I've been told dozens of times that if you want the artist to get the most money, go to a show, or buy some merch(especially if you buy merch at the show).
yeah maybe that 69 cent song on itunes will net the artist a couple cents, hell maybe its even a nickel! but in that case, i'm willing to pay a nickel; I am paying the artist for the music, i am not okay with being bullied into paying 98% to various legal teams so the can search and destroy people who didnt give them their 98% cut.
I have no problem with artists getting money, i have problem with who knows how many companies taking a large slice of evey cent i pay before the artist ever even knows the songs been sold. |
I disagree. The current ecosystem is so atrocious at providing for creators (with overhead over 90% in many fields) that direct digital sales can provide the same profit with a tenth the sales.
If I go out and spend $100 on books, the author does not get $100. They might not even get $30. You'd think the situation would be rectified with ebooks or digital music, but.. not so much. For most artists, it's even worse . Giving someone $30 over paypal is probably more revenue than they'd get from buying their entire life's work for $300.
Some industries would not be able to recoup investment in this environment - major motion picture companies have no forseeable rate of preventing piracy, and it really does take millions of dollars to create a blockbuster. That said, I don't see how current laws are going to help with that. Anyone who thinks eliminating or even heavily restricting online piracy is feasible without massive collateral damage is insane or technologically inept.
However, the worst damage from intellectual property comes from the crazy patent industry here in the US. It's interesting to watch the cold war turn into an all-out nuclear holocaust - I would like to see how people react if HTC or Kodak gets a complete injunction against Apple.
At this point, everyone is theoretically violating the numerous broken patents, and no-one can feel safe. Yes, the Australian patent on the wheel wasn't ever going to make it past the first stage of a court fight, but patents which are just as absurd to a qualified researcher or engineer are upheld and destroy companies. |
I have no idea how profitable music is. And I don't have any desire to rip anyone off.
I see this as a customer/business model. We're the "potential" customer. (Although we're already using the product, the choice thy give you is pay or quit."
So we get this letter. It's not very nice, although it's not really evil either. But basically it says "hey you owe us money.". That's fine, understandable.
We're a bunch of 20 something college kids running a swing dance. We get 20-40 people out each week. Charge 5 bucks, all our customers are poor college kids and 20 something's.
So this letter comes, and it says, fill out this form, do the math, send us the dollar amount in column A. Oh and you probably owe that amount to two other companies.
I'd you don't do this you are criminals and will be charged 6 grand for every song you play. (btw, details are fuzzy, dealt with this about 10 years ago, oh, and for the record, every event I do now does pay all the fees.)
So of course we freak out. We're a bunch of kids just trying to keep swing alive, and unbeknownst to us we're really criminals who are accruing $360,000 in fines a week.
We can't afford a lawyer that specializes in music rights (we're bringing in $2-300 a week, and all of that, and often some of our own money, is going to pay rent on the ballroom space. But the cousin of one of the guys is a lawyer in some other specialty, he says the letters legit, so we better pay up.
We do some research, find out most of the big swing artists are covered under one organization (bmi I think) talk about just using them, but we're paranoid about the fines, the lawyer friend concurs.
We were able to work it out, financially with some elbow grease and creativity, so we pay them all.
My problem ISN'T that we pay them. My problem is that the process is based on scaring people and organizations, instead of treating them like customers and fans.
If we'd got some packet with a lot of good, clear, helpful information, instead of a collection letter threatening us with death and dismemberment, it would have been different. |
I work in the industry. This post is bullshit. Engine control systems run some tiny little custom OS for integrated systems that is built by companies like Hamilton Sundstrand, Rockwell Collins, or Goodrich.
That software has to be class A. That means it is very thoroughly unit tested. Testing an OS like Solaris to satisfaction would be a fools errand. Additionally that class A engine control can not route through systems that are not class A.
My guess is that this guy saw an engine engineer using monitor software to monitor the engine or load new software during development. The computer tools they use for that might be Windows/DOS/etc based but once loaded there should be a check (CRC or something like that) that checks that is performed by the class A system which confirms proper load. |
There's a happy medium between both of your posts. The government isn't intentionally trying to shut down free speech, but because of the pressure that companies are putting on the government over copyright infringement, they think that the best solution is to shut down certain parts of the Internet, which could get to the point where the balance shifts way too far into the favor of corporations.
The real solution here is for the corporations to develop a better way to distribute media (a la Netflix), so that people are happy for paying for products, without feeling like they're taking it up the ass (commercials on DVDs, protection on MP3s, etc).
The fact is that companies realize that they can make more money by sticking to the old distribution, and will do anything to make sure that continues; ironically hurting them in the long run.
My post will be buried because yours is, but it's still important for people to understand that they should pay for media material (to credit the creators), but not doing so because of the BS way that it's currently being handled is somewhat justified. |
Again, completely agree. I am just tired of people hiding behind the age old excuses for piracy (wasn't going to buy it anyways, they have enough money, it is just copyright infringement).
On the flip side companies need to make their product at a more competitive price (lol this is why they use china, irony) and make it more accessible.
At the same time some of the "I wouldn't pirate if they did this: long ass list " are just preposterous.
Piracy will always exist, no matter the laws and enforcement, DRM hurts consumers. However piracy is wrong (most people do agree with this, yourself included), yet we act surprised and upset when governments try to stop it. No matter how you look at it TPB is making a profit off a crime. If it was a website that hosted copies of your private information people might act a little differently.
This stuff will all move to P2P, the line in the sand will most towards the users instead of websites. And hopefully in the mean time companies will actually get some of their stuff sorted. |
Old story, not even from reddit. Anyways, I too handle quite a few transactions every day, and let me tell you, PayPal is terrible. If a customer wants their money back, they WILL get it. Ive had a customer purchase a few things for around 600Usd. A month later he files an unauthorized payment on several purchases. After weeks of calls, emails, and whatnot, I was amazed PayPal sided with me. A few days later, after winning the case, I get an email saying money is on hold because the bank refunded... So, thats how i lost that money.
More recently, given I sell digital products (software), weve had a lot of issues with fraud payments, anywhere from 5-10 everyday. Instead of PayPal tracking that person down (its a small group of people doing it), they decide to limit my account and reserve a large sum of money for 90 day, as well as 15% for every new transaction. To this say, i have to manually investigate each payment, because it takes paypal up to a month to notice feaud payments (and our app is based on a monthly subacription) |
Oh boy, gotta love paypal.
I manage an antiques store and have been selling things online for quite a while. My dad also sell firearms from his personal collection. One day he sold a gun on gunbroker and the buyer paid my dad with paypal, but left a note on the payment that it was for a gun purchase.
So paypal shut down my dad's account, my moms account, my account, and one of our employees accounts. Of course, they had to hold our funds for 6 months so they could earn free interest.
Of course. you're not allowed to decline a payment, so there's no way to avoid being screwed. We tried several payment alternatives. Of course, Google Checkout is banned on eBay since they won't pay a good enough cut to ebay to accept payments. The others are too uncommon for most people to trust. We gladly accept cash or check, but people leave bad feedback because they have to wait 4 extra days to receive their item.
Our store is now going out of business due to lack of sales. My parents are divorced over financial issues. My dad is 66 and can barely walk. I'm trying to pay my own way through school, but the loans are beginning to pile up. |
Wishing death on the CEO does nothing. The CEO isn't the one to blame. It's the people making policy that think destroying items is better than spending a couple dollars to process a claim. They are trying to save money to make money. It's the bastardization of capitalism at it's finest. |
I sold my WoW account on eBay back in 2006 for $1000, which was actually a bargain compared to other accounts currently up for bid. I got the money, paid off a bit of debt, bought a Nintendo Wii, some other crap. Generally blew all of it within a few weeks because I was 21 and naive. That is beside the point.
4 months later, I get a notice from PayPal saying that the person whose credit card was used to buy my account had claimed it to be fraud. Ok, cool, that's not really realistic but anything can happen. PayPal claims to be going to court to dispute this, but won't divulge any information on it. 6 weeks or so passes and I'm trying to buy some Magic cards off eBay, only to find my PayPal account locked down. I owe them $1000, due immediately, or they take me to collections.
I call corporate, I email back and forth constantly with their legal and management teams, and I am pretty much told that they ruled in favor of the buyer, that they don't care that what I sold is now lost forever (friends in the game said they saw people on my account purging all my items for gold and such.) I defend myself saying that I can't possibly give back the money unless I get back my product, and they send me to collections.
To this day, I get letters in the mail a few times a year saying I must go into arbitration with PayPal. Fuck them. Fuck that. |
Ebay and paypal screwed me several times. The last straw was when a buyer wanted a full refund, I said I would do it if they mailed the item back. They didn't want to return the item (which they signed for) and not only did paypal refund their money out of my checking account, they let the buyer keep the item. Ebay and Paypal place no value on the sellers in their business model which has caused them to lose business (hence the reason they have to keep increasing fees and adding fees to things like shipping prices.) I took matters into my own hands and sold a bunch of rather expensive items to where my monthly seller fees bill totaled about the same amount they had screwed me out of and I closed my bank account (paypal will not allow you to remove a bank account from their system until you have verified a new account) that was on file with paypal and closed me Ebay account without ever paying my final bill... |
You're right about the fact it has nothing to do with DRM enforcement. However, you're wrong about the rest.
The browser plugin takes an argument, which is the base-64 encoded path of any executable any base 64 encoded command (path and args), which will be run by the system under the privileges of the plugin.
Many interesting exes reside on your system, one of them being ftp.exe, and the other being echo (not technically an exe) which combine with cscript can do wonders. |
Well, in July of 2011 there was a week or so where the exchange rate rapidly increased without any increase in the amount of infrastructure. This increase topped at $31 for only a very short time, then crashed back to the teens and steadily dropped to a few dollars. Since then, more businesses have been built around Bitcoin and the amount of infrastructure has increased drastically. It's now relatively easy to convert between fiat and bitcoin due to services like BitInstant. The price held at around $5 for a few months but has been slowly increasing and is now around $11. Could be this is another bubble, but it could be that this is the new real valuation of bitcoin. |
3.2 is annoying though. The prompt to change the save name/loc, and rating upon removal of .torrent file is a silly default (which, granted, can be disabled). It also has unnecessary tabbed view.
When did free client developers start associating heavy UI = better? Good designers should be looking of crap to remove or simplify, not add! |
Ok here is a redditor with the uncommon perspective.
I don't think torrenting is inherently bad, but i think it is currently being done wrong. uTorrent is providing a valuable service and revenue is definitely deserved by them, but the majority of the traffic is driven by products that they are not correctly licensing. I'm not a famous musician but my album's have been posted on many torrent sites, and torerrenting is one of the few methods where I get no part of revenue for people listening to my music.Last FM, Spotify, and Youtube (with its new "audio author detecting" software) give me a portion of the revenue. On other sources where there is no revenue generated from my music (soundcloud) I of course still make no money but soundcloud is more of a social networking site anyway and the value I get is from the feedback and networking. Anyway, what I am saying is that torrenting is one of the least fair methods for artists. Sure the days of expecting people to pay 10.00 for an album are over, but that doesn't mean that the artists revenue should be expected to disappear completely from whatever revenue their products traffic. |
I use TPB for 90% of my torrents and I'm a pretty heavy downloader. I've had one virus since 2009. I don't have any anti-virus installed. |
Read the article in the link or just despair about the patent system being in severe need of retooling... No one wants to fund this research because too much information is already in the public domain! It looks like a damn fine idea to me though! |
My thoughts completely. Apple is putting nothing new on the table and it shows that they're playing catch up. I'm also curious as to whether or not they're putting themselves at risk here with their new Maps app. Seems amazingly similar to Google's app on android.
As for new features, I had a LG Dare (dumbphone) and it did EVERYTHING this 'new iPhone' is introducing. (ok the video wasnt 1080). |
But, But, it doesn't have NFC! And it doesn't take 30 megapixel photos!
I've had the Palm Pre, The HTC 4g phone that came out on Sprint, and now a 4S on Sprint. Of all three, the Pre had the best base OS for usability. But there was no app store and the hardware was so so. It is still my favorite phone though. Too bad there are no more of them.
Next up on my list of favorites is the iPhone. Because it just works. And I don't have to tweak it or fuck around with it much. I took it out of the box and ok cool. Ready to go.
The worst smartphone I have ever had was Android on HTC. I dropped that thing literally two inches onto the floor and it shattered. It would randomly freeze up. The battery life was terrible. The app store seem flooded with shit. Finding a particular setting was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Is Android a worthy competitor? Yes, but its for a different class of people. I find that people who have more time to fuck around with all the littlest things on their phone tend to prefer Android.
As I get older, I find myself going after products that have a very sleek minimalist design and a very sleek, polished, intuitive way of using them. I no longer seek out products that are on the very very very cutting edge. Because NOT BEING A PAIN IN MY FUCKING ASS is worth losing the top cutting edge 5% of features like NFC or a huge megapixel count. |
longer Screen
Okay a slightly larger screen is fantastic, great resolution and combining the screen and touch will make less glare and more responsiveness.
>Ultra-Fast Wireless
LTE and CDMA in a single chip, less antenna switch lag.
>Processor improvement.
The 4S was already fast, and this is twice that. Could likely be the quickest out there.
>Longer Battery Life
8 hours surfing on LTE is fantastic.
>Shared Photo Streams
Integrated in OS for easier sharing. Don't need to make all your friends download instagram to share photos.
>Panorama Shots
Cool feature already in Apps, probably get more use being built right in
>1080p Recording
Always an improvement, always good
>720p front camera
Another improvement
>Facetime over Cell Networks
Good improvement, glad the carriers are now permitting it besides Sprint.
>New Connector
Nice replacement to the 30pin. Crazy fast transfer rate and likely more durable.
>Thinnest Phone Ever
It is, the Bezel on the Droid RAZR puts that phone at 11.1mm, that is larger.
The fact is, it is a wonderful phone. Its taken many features and combined it into a smoothly operating quality phone. Sure the features might not be new, but it is a complete package. In all honesty, I am satisfied with the current setup. |
I have my phone hooked up to my computer to charge when I'm home. Sometimes, I'll pick it up to see something, only to forget the cord is too short and jostle my PC.
Or I just want it to charge, then pick it up really quick to play a game on my bed, then just set it down to charge. It would be nice to have wireless charging so I don't have to worry about some cable sticking out of my computer.
Or better yet: bring your wireless charging pad to the office and let your phone sit on there all day. When I'm at my desk, I take my phone out of my pockets anyways; why not have it charge or stay charged while it's resting there? |
Please explain to me how you got any media on your iDevice without using iTunes. As I said, you can only get music on it by syncing with the desktop iTunes app, or by buying stuff in iTunes (on the desktop or on the iDevice). So to get media on iOS you either have to
use iTunes on your PC and sync media
use iCloud/iTunes Match, which requires iTunes on your PC to upload your music (edit: I don't know if itunes match has a web-based uploading/matching option. I doubt it, but even if it does: it's a paid service)
download your purchases on your iDevice. Purchases can only be done through the iDevice itself, or the iTunes app on your computer, so unless you bought 1000s of songs using iDevices, you will at some point need to install iTunes on you computer to get any form of respectable media collection on the device.
Even if you say you don't have iTunes installed, you need it to have any media on your device that aren't purchased on the iTunes store. If you point is that you can easily avoid the iTunes app by purchasing everything on your device, I think my point still stands: Android just has more, superior syncing options.
It's funny that as soon as someone brings up facts which imo show that Android is somewhat better in one area, I am "trying too hard" and "poisoning Apple's name". Even funnier is that you say you have a vast media collection on your iDevice without ever installing iTunes. While that is possible (see the third option, downloading everything on your iDevice) it is so much more inconvenient: not I but YOU are stretchign the truth to make your point. |
No need to swing into a full 'roid rage.
The die-hard iphone fans will all buy the phone on day 1, because they've all been waiting for it, but you've average joe on the street will buy the best phone available on the day he walks into the store.
I'm not sure if you think there is some flaw in that logic, or if I've just hurt your feelings by suggesting that the iphone isn't the best phone for everybody in the world.
For the last several months the Galaxy S3 has been outselling the iphone 4S because the Galaxy is newer, faster, and has more buzz. Those are FACTS .
You are also quite right, for the next few months the iphone 5 will blow everything else out of the water because there are a lot of iphone fans. But, eventually that hype trail will die out and google will release key lime pie and samsung will come out with a new flagship phone and it'll top the market. |
They are still doing this. My families restaurant has 16 reviews on yelp. 9 of them are 5 stars, 4 of them are 4 stars, and 3 of them are 1 star. One of the 1 star reviews was posted when we were still painting the restaurant, before we were even open. So it's clearly not even valid. I'd guess it's a competing restaurant in the neighborhood that wanted to give us a hard time or something as it's the only review from that registered user. Not only will yelp not remove the one that is literally impossible to be a real review, all three of the 1 star reviews are the ones that show up first.
A yelp sales representative calls us at least once a month to try to get us to advertise with them.
I've been working 4 years with my only income being the tips that I receive, then paying myself just enough to cover taxes. I don't have any money to throw at an extortion website. Luckily we're fairly well known amongst the people of the area, and the majority of our business comes from word of mouth. It's been hard enough in this economy without some bullshit like yelp going on. |
My family also has a restaurant. It shows 4 ~3 star reviews...
Filters out ~14 4 or 5 star reviews. Of course, the only way to only see those is if you enter in the captcha. |
1 - See point 3. Also, fair use is not solely limited to educational and non-profit, though this does help.
2 - Agreed
3 - Here I tend to disagree, when it comes to comics anyway. These aren't sold as one-off images, they are sold in collections / anthologies. In that respect, using ONE image of a collection is to my mind fair use.
4 - Debatable. I'd posit that seeing sample images of his work would be an incentive to buy a book or collection, and assist in enhancing his userbase. It's called free advertising. However, you will note that I previously mentioned the difference between using ONE image, and using the whole book.
Consider it the same as reading the back cover of a paperback before deciding if you want to buy. Or hearing a song on the radio before deciding if you want to buy the album.
I still feel that using one image out of a collection of 1000s of similar works by the same author is fair use. It's not like we are talking about the Mona Lisa here, his work is funny I'll grant you, but each individual image will give 5 seconds enjoyment maximum. |
But I did read it a bit o-o which is why I didn't say |
Since the birds mostly die because of the larger higher buildings, yes. However you are right that the ratio would be a little bit off.
There are [some wind farms]( in the US in total they have a capacity of around [50 GW]( A typical turbine got a capacity of 660kW which means we have about 77 thousand wind turbines in the US.
If we want to deliver the total amount of electricity with the power output ratios of current wind turbines we would need 33 times more turbines. Taking an upper bond of 60 times (because it is easy to calculate) we would get that even with a 100% electricity generation by wind turbines buildings would kill 4 to 40 times more birds than turbines. |
Wow that is very hopeful of you. KC is just now getting the GB internet is homes. This is more of a beta test. It may grow exponentially but we are still ways away from being a real force against what we have now.
I don't mean to sound condescending I'm sure I did. I live near KC and just getting it there has been a slow process. |
Make small ISP, somehow successfully gain market. Either get offered a large sum of money from large ISP and sell OR get to spend years fighting for the ability to spread infrastructure into already established telecom territorya. There are many many laws and regulations that can hold up a small company in court for years along with paying the fees and doing all the paperwork needed to install new lines everywhere. Fight local governments who many times think what they have alreadyis sufficient enough (usually run by old or misinformed people when dealing with technology) in the mean time they fizzle out with a severely limited market.
If it didn't cost so much to start up in the first place there wouldn't be so much of a problem. You pretty much need enough money for a team of lawyers you can pay for years of legal process and document filling to even expand into already connected areas if you can even get a foothold int he area in the first place. How many local governments are going to agree to allow MORE companies to tear up neighborhoods to install new lines when there shit tastic $60 a month cable already works? Or utilities companies to allow competitors to put competing lines on their already rented or owned utility poles? |
I couldn't sue McDonald's for giving me coffee that covered me in third degree burns, say.
I hope this isn't considered too off topic but I believe many people (myself included up until a year or two ago) considered this specific lawsuit as bullshit, as it is often the goto example of 'frivolous lawsuits'.
I'm thinking not many people know the actual facts of this case so I thought this would be a good avenue to enlighten some folks about the case details. (I know I appreciated knowing the specifics after I learned them) The case actually has some merit IMHO.
[Wiki link to the case](
Excerpt from the trial and verdict section:
>During the case, Liebeck's attorneys discovered that McDonald's required franchisees to serve coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C). At that temperature, the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds. Stella Liebeck's attorney argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 °F (60 °C), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald's. Liebeck's lawyers presented the jury with evidence that 180 °F (82 °C) coffee like that McDonald’s served may produce third-degree burns (where skin grafting is necessary) in about 12 to 15 seconds. Lowering the temperature to 160 °F (71 °C) would increase the time for the coffee to produce such a burn to 20 seconds. (A British court later rejected this argument as scientifically false, finding that 149 °F (65 °C) liquid could cause deep tissue damage in only two seconds.[17]) Liebeck's attorneys argued that these extra seconds could provide adequate time to remove the coffee from exposed skin, thereby preventing many burns. McDonald's claimed that the reason for serving such hot coffee in its drive-through windows was that those who purchased the coffee typically were commuters who wanted to drive a distance with the coffee; the high initial temperature would keep the coffee hot during the trip.[6] However, the company's own research showed that some customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while driving.[2]
Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.[6] McDonald's quality control manager, Christopher Appleton, testified that this number of injuries was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices. He argued that all foods hotter than 130 °F (54 °C) constituted a burn hazard, and that restaurants had more pressing dangers to warn about. The plaintiffs argued that Appleton conceded that McDonald's coffee would burn the mouth and throat if consumed when served.[18]
A twelve-person jury reached its verdict on August 18, 1994.[16] Applying the principles of comparative negligence, the jury found that McDonald's was 80% responsible for the incident and Liebeck was 20% at fault. Though there was a warning on the coffee cup, the jury decided that the warning was neither large enough nor sufficient. They awarded Liebeck US$200,000 in compensatory damages, which was then reduced by 20% to $160,000. In addition, they awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages. The jurors apparently arrived at this figure from Morgan's suggestion to penalize McDonald's for one or two days' worth of coffee revenues, which were about $1.35 million per day.[6] The judge reduced punitive damages to $480,000, three times the compensatory amount, for a total of $640,000. The decision was appealed by both McDonald's and Liebeck in December 1994, but the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount less than $600,000.[19] |
Because I predict that by the time I would need to upgrade my iPad in 2-3 years, there will be plenty of choices. Here is the deal:
iPod ---> well no real replacement, they do great with these. I love my nano, and the only reason I would buy another iPod is if I lose my current nano (had it for 4+ years and still going great)
Macbook ---> I always go PC
iPhone ---> Galaxy is better. Android <3
iPad ---> When I bought the iPad, there was no other tablets, and certainly no Surface. The only other option was the Amazon Kindle Fire, and it wasn't capable of doing what I wanted. But In 2 years? I'm sure there will be plenty of tablets that have as much power as the current iPads that are cheaper, and will have all the capability that I need from them.
Here is what I use my iPad for
Browsing the interwebs
Reading/writing/checking mail
Taking notes via Notability
Reading e-textbooks via Kindle app
Listening to music (Pandora) and watching TV via Hulu+
Organizer (calendar)
Maps (6.0 ruined this feature, don't use Apple maps nearly as much)
Read comics (via ComicFlow app)
Adobe Reader to view Sheet Music while playing the piano
Camera/photos app + Social media
Skype and Google+ Hangouts on the go with friends and family
It's capable of a lot more of this, but when I bought the iPad, there was no other tablet that can do all of this seamlessly and with the smoothness and polish of the iPad. In 2-3 years? I'm sure even a trivial tablet can do this. I love the iPad right now, but I don't love the shitty updates and the high cost. When I am in the market again for another tablet, I will review all my options and make a new choice. If there are new things that I want to do with the tablet that once again only come with the iPad, I may go with the iPad once again. But I will be taking into account the whole Apple vision for updates and restriction of freedom. This was my first Apple product and so it wasn't a factor I was aware of. |
This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said Friday (April 5), during a visit to Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid, along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."
And
>Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, [the Mars moons] Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the Keck team wrote in a feasibility study of their plan. |
An old science fiction book by Niven and Pournelle called Oath of Fealty is very on-point. The city computer was like our Internet, and people could get a minor implant that let you communicate with it in real time. "Millie, who am I looking at?" "Millie, what's the GDP of Iceland?" And when someone got used to this implant, they were really at a disadvantage when they lost contact with the city.
I don't think you really need an implant to produce that effect. When I don't have access to the internet, I feel like I've lost a part of my brain. Not only is there a lot of information I'm unable to access, but my approach to information has changed substantially. These days I mostly memorize how to find information rather than the information itself: the benefit is I can remember a lot more of that type of information. The down side is that if I no longer have access, I'm a lot more helpless than I otherwise would be. |
Let me post a couple of reasons why your emails aren't that uninteresting.
Friends. You might know people that are not uninteresting (unknowingly to you of course). If you do, you are now a data point in their social graphs of those people. Most likely you are either way. If your interesting friends are interesting enough, your emails will be further scrutinized.
Interest. You might think that you are uninteresting, but are you really? Do you never admit to anything less than 100% ethical or morally wrong in your email correspondence? Have nobody you know ever confessed to wrongdoing in your emails? Have you never even admitted something that might be considered a faux paus elsewhere? Surfing pornography, avoiding taxes, laughing at inappropriate jokes etc? Most likely not.
Connections. Do you have friends that works high places in strategically important organizations? Do you have family that do? Does your extended family? Friends of friends? Then you are a target.
Intimidation, even if you yourself are truly uninteresting and have no direct connections to power, the information gained by collecting and organizing your hobbies, interests and moral failures (including those of your family, friends and connections) can be used to extract loyality. How about I told you that I will tell your boss about the less-than-kosher pornography you and your high school friends viewed 10 years ago? How about I call your social secretary and tell her about that video you watched of a cat being tortured last week because it was linked on reddit? I will say you probably made it yourself. You better not go to that demonstration tomorrow . Or Else .
Intimidation by proxy. Hey there, some of your friends are a little to prone to vote for party X but we cant find any dirt on them. You better help us out, or we'll tell on you. Or maybe it's your dad that didnt pay his taxes. You dont want anything to happen to old daddy-o, right?
Now remember, I was only talking about emails this entire time. This is not the only data point we're being watched by. Verizons tier1 internet connection was bugged (how many do we not know about?). They have your geo positions if you carry a mobile phone. Remember some americans operators were caught trying to sneak plain spyware into the firmwares of phones? They dont even need that, that was just the icing of the cake. That means they can connect you physically to a social graph of whom you meet with regularly. They have your phone calls. Again social graph. They have your bills, your cc#, your passwords. If you suddenly become important (or one of the persons in your social graph) they can escalate the information retrieval on YOU easily. Basically, they dont need to know "everything", but trust me when I say, if they want to, they can find out. They can probably even find out things you dont know about yourself, how you define yourself [sexually]( politically, how prone you are to violence, anger, suicide just by looking at whom you are connected to. |
This is all pretty straightforward. I don't know if anyone will listen to this or read it, but I'm going to try.
Edward Snowden isn't a whistleblower; he's essentially taken a loud action and gotten a couple well-respected newspapers to publish information that is 99.99% already available to the public. The 00.01% that people didn't know was the name of the software the NSA is using to organize metadata (ie, PRISM). That's assuming he was honest about that name. I'm personally unimpressed with his actions.
However, even if it turns out that Ed Snowden wasn't being honest, that no warrants are issued for his extradition, that there are holes in his story, it doesn't change that what the NSA is doing is legal under US law.
Let me repeat that; what the NSA is doing is legal under US law. That doesn't mean I agree with it, but it's legal.
Everything, the listening, the internet intercepts, the laws that tech companies follow when issued FISA warrants, the FISC itself, all of it is legal. The information about these activities has been public for years. It just hasn't gotten attention.
Is what the NSA is doing RIGHT? We had this debate in 2001, 12 years ago, when the Patriot Act was passed. My 'side' in the debate lost; we decided as a country to give up liberty in the name of security. We have been very secure since 2001. Echelon (a system that predates 2001), Total Information Awareness (the concept that has evolved into what we're calling PRISM), these systems are on the public record. Even if PRISM didn't have a name in the public consciousness until a week ago, the capabilities that the NSA has that allow such a system to work have been public record.
Just not well publicized until now. For whatever reason, maybe because of Edward Snowden's and the Guardian's dramatization, all of it is entering the public consciousness.
Is what the NSA is doing right? If you don't think it's right, if you think the Patriot Act is wrong, that we shouldn't be giving up liberty for security, then the path is pretty clear.
You should demand that the Patriot Act be repealed. You should demand that the AUMF be repealed. If you believe what the NSA is doing is wrong, then Congress needs to act.
I marched against the Iraq War. I spoke out against the Patriot Act. I spoke out against the AUMF. My 'side' lost all of those debates.
You can revive these debates, and get Congress to act. If you don't believe that, you don't understand your own power, and are bowing to and accepting what's happening.
Congress has the power to do both. Make them act. When I was a young political activist, my generation failed 12 years ago. Maybe your generation will have better success. You'll certainly have the support of people my age.
rant over. |
The problem with this reform is that this government has already established that:
It believes this surveillance is constitutional and justified
It believes the public should not know about it
It believes it has the right to force people to not speak about it
It believes it has the right to publicly lie about it
Once it became known that the government believes it is allowed to conduct surveillance in secret and lie about it, it became impossible to believe anything the government said about it. They've already justified lying about it once. We have no choice but to believe that they will lie about it again. |
My two cents worth:
To err is human. But REALLY screwing things up requires a computer.
If the flight involves either:
1) Human passengers, human safety or takeoff/landing in populated areas, or...
2) Interacting with the chaotic system we call the Real World,
Then, for the time being, a human pilot is the best bet by far.
edit: |
You should read what Levison's lawyer, Mr. Binnal, said in the preceding hearings. It was absolutely farcical. |
8.1 specifically because their tweaks to mouse response and acceleration in 8.1 for the sake of "power conservation" have significantly hampered any PC games that don't have the ability to use raw mouse input, and the fix involves [manually whitelisting each game you want it to leave alone.](
I also quite like my MX Revo, and Windows 8 not only refuses to let me set up the additional thumbwheel and buttons how I like, but insists on requiring a "double click" of the thumb buttons. No combination of different drivers, ports, tweaking, or different system entirely solved it - so for gaming, Windows 7.
On the Surface Pro though, 8 is brilliant; because it's a touchscreen interface that works well with Metro. |
The thing about BitTorrent is all [swarm]( information is publicly shared between peers. So all a person needs to do is join the swarm. Say, for instance, someone wants to know who's downloading their latest movie or game, they download the torrent and add it to their client. Look at the peer list and check the IP's uploading to you or downloading from you.
Then all they have to do is send out some letters to the adresses that matched with the IP's. |
I haven't thought too much about this, but the first thought that came to mind to help the case was - the IP address was downloading and may not identify the person, but the IP also records the other habits (ie: I'm downloading, logged into my facebook/twitter/email, filling out a form with details, etc) that could be used to help to identify who was downloading. Does that make sense? |
I work for a small ISP and I deal with DMCA and we must pass along the DMCA notifications to our customers.
Basically, when I get a DMCA notice, it comes with a specific date and time along with the filename. I look this information up in our DHCP logs, find out who had that IP at the given date and time, and pass on the notice to them.
I have received subpoenas before but they are all of child porn. |
This thread is absolutely retarded (hey- we're using hate language right?!).
I haven't been on r/technology in a while, but I can't believe that there is a good reason to delete 19 out of the top 20 comments and most of their replies. Reddit didn't even used to have subreddits. I'm glad it does now because it allows people to find more relevant news stories, but the mods of some of the major subreddits really need to lighten up on their moderation of what is appropriate or not. Sure, delete memes and jokes on r/science, whatever. But just because there is an r/tesla with 1,000 subscribers doesn't mean you have to decimate a conversation that has already taken place. The community voted this post and the comments up in the first place. |
I find these results dubious.
Tor uses delay randomization which when analyzed along with the other traffic noise, makes timing analysis next to impossible.
The controls in this experiment do not account for noise generated from other traffic. Even if your "data burst encoding" is sufficiently sparse to be decoded on the other side (and not make the user go wtf is going on here, my traffic is experiencing strange interference) and defeat delay randomization... that very sparseness that made it decodable would also completely break it if the target was browsing other sites or sending other information.
Based on #2 the technique could be totally rendered useless with the use of a random traffic generator, which would induce sufficient traffic noise as to completely obfuscate the evil-server's signature.
The feasibility of correlating "all traffic" , encoding it to a burst data stream and then trying to pattern match it against the evil-server traffic grows exponentially complex as you add hosts. a. Who is going to be able to capture all the traffic from all these hosts and encode it into bursts? An ISP? The NSA?... ISPs are not set up to record data streams from large amounts of hosts. Arguably the NSA is in a position to do such a thing, however they are already dealing with the big data problem, which has proven to make all of their large scale analysis useless in the present tense. |
Even though this case propably is BS it still frustrates me how articles today play very heavy on emotions.
The first paragraphs is spent introducing the Nice Little Man and the Big Bad Company. He is a skilled worker, working in unfriendly and narrowminded environment enforced by his employer. We learn some of his struggels and sympathize with him.
Enter Dumb Agent (and by the way - he doesn't know what he is doing and problay hate all programmers after losing his last job because of them) and arrests our Nice Little Man. The arrest is obviously very harsh and scary and our Nice Little Man don't know what to do.
As to exactly what our Nice Little Man did and didn't do is quite unclear in the article. But in the end we are all quite convinced that the Nice Little Man was unfairly treated and all the others are uneducated morons. |
Most of the people at the top do care about what people think, however they drink the juice (of the cable companies) and do the evil deeds. It's only when they see real people shouting at the top of their lungs that they have become what they never wanted to be (unpopular/evil). Lament sets in and the right thing may just happen. |
How is it that Google hasn't given more of a push back on this, or phone producers, etc. Being grandfathered into my unlimited data plan on Verizon, my brand new HTC One is made almost useless to stream music through google music or pandora, 1/3 of the way into the month I can barely stream a youtube video in decent quality. I don't always have a wifi connection available, thats why I have a data plans. If you want me to consume your ads, force the hand of those who deliver that data. |
In order to 'hack' someones icloud you need
Their username and password or
Full access to a computer on which they auto login using icloud control panel
Next up; Gmail hacking, it really is that easy? All you need is a users username and password, or access to a computer which has them automatically log in to Gmail, and then you are free to hack their Gmail!
>
I could quite easily take a USB thumb drive from machine to machine across Mashable's offices and run the program and then get iCloud authentication tokens. It would take me less than 60 seconds to do, 30 seconds if I was super fast.
No shit you can do that. If you can go to a computer, login, and run a program on it with admin access, it is really easy to 'hack' it. That sentence is just ridiculous to begin with. Executing programs with admin access is the goal of hacking. If you can just sit at a computer with admin access, you have already won.
If the security flaw is "someone has full access to my computer where I auto login to loads of services", then that is unpatchable. It would be like an architect being told they have to make a bank more secure, but whatever they do they aren't allowed to place any kind of walls, vaults, or doors, around the piles of money. |
Only car MPG changes dramatically based on usage. Sure my car may be capable of 35mpg, but if I floor it from stoplight to stoplight, I sure as hell won't get 35mpg
However my internet speed should be the same speed regardless of how i use it. Whether that be online gaming, downloading ebooks, or using facebook. |
This video is positioned as a scientific rebuttal but in reality it's damage control. When your competitors are >50% stronger and you're still calling it a fair fight? And pointing out that 80 lbs. of force is enough to bend a tennis ball? What does that help? The iPhone is not tennis ball shaped nor is it rubber. If anything it highlights the mistaken in design.
Even by the rules of this test, but-for the inclusion of an HTC M8, iPhone would be last place.
Further, even using these numbers, the strongest iPhone 6 is still more than 30% weaker than the iPhone 5 it replaced. The host says don't worry, even though this biased test still indicates it's a weaker phone. |
That video is the most pretentious crap I think I've ever seen. It's blatantly obvious that it's not "footage of the real world", the lighting is completely static and baked in, there are no reflections or specularity, everything is completely flat and static.
They still have shown nothing to address any of the criticisms or even debunk the claims of issues the engine will face. This whole enterprise seems fueled entirely on smugness and consumer idiocy. To make things even worse they have blatantly LIED about competition have generally been smug assholes about other, similar products (which DO address the issues they haven't and are perfectly capable and actually demonstrated to work). Meanwhile he puts on his shit-eating grin in interviews and says "oh, it will work and it will blow your mind, now suck my dick in gratitude bitches", which is all he's been saying for over a decade without actually showing anything of use until last year, when they showed something not particularly original (although at least it worked decently) and that is in a completely different field from the one they were aiming at (not surprisingly, one where all the anticipated drawbacks of the technology wouldn't be an issue). |
Conspiracies exist, but this one doesn't. Sorry man, but looking at your post history, you seem to have tightened your tin foil hat a bit too much.
PayPal isn't privately owned. It's part of eBay which is publically traded. Undoubtedly them and all the other major financial corporations have ties with the NSA. The FOUNDER still has A LOT of stock, which doesn't make much sense if this story was being broken and he thought it would drive the stock price down.
The truth is that most US citizens realize at this point that the NSA knows all about us. Even the stuff we don't want to know about ourselves. But, as long as we act like it's a terrible thing, and complain about civil liberties then they won't arrest us for that dime bag we picked up after arranging it with our phones. There are many people who do care, but there are few that do this as more than joining a popular movement of moral outrage as evidenced by their undying admonishment through the internet.
The truth is that there is a duo of journalists with a very valuable cache of information that could fuel stories for years to come. On top of this they have one of the most recognized names in media because of said cache. What's more likely, that Omidyar payed $250 million to stop information that people already know, at least subconsciously, or that after looking to buy the Washington Post and being unable to, he decided to start his own competitor with two of the most valuable assets at the newspaper.
You want a conspiracy? The more likely conspiracy here would be the NSA trying to connect patterns that aren't there to discredit the leaks. Why has only 1% of Snowden's cache been released? I don't know. It could be because they're not trying to have individual stories lose significance in a flood of information. It could be that it's just taking years to go through tens or hundreds of thousands of documents. It might be that it's really hard to get tens or hundreds of thousands of documents published that this omnipotent NSA doesn't want to get out. It could be being saved to be released by the journalist's new media venture. Most likely though, Snowden is having fun on his fucking ego trip, still has the documents, and is dangling them to keep everybody worshipping the ground he walks on.
After reading this, and all the deeplinked 'sources' I see connections drawn through shady anonymous sources between vaguely related things. What I don't see is proof. |
PayPal suspended my account after I made one online purchase for an $80 box of unopened basketball cards about 5 years ago. I bought one box then threw more money in to buy another box and that was when they suspended it. When I tried to appeal it, I was basically told that there isn't much I could do to get back in or get my money back. I even verified my email and that didn't change anything.
I'm not wrong. That happened and that's literally the whole story. |
There is no PayPal Corporation. PayPal is owned by eBay Inc. Technically they plan to split within the next year or so, but today PayPal Corporation doesn't exist. Anyone who knows anything about PayPal wouldn't refer to them as PayPal Corporation.
Uh, there is a PayPal Corporation. Just because it is owned by another company doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means it's owned by another company.
Unless PayPal were to be completely subsumed into eBay and be run as a part of eBay's legal and corporate structure, or if it were to be otherwise formally dissolved, it will still exist as a corporate entity whether it's owned by another company or an individual. In fact, given that eBay seems to be intending to spin it off into a separate publicly traded company, it is 100% definitely for certain still a corporate entity. |
Not entirely true I handle a company's account and we only maintain an A+ if after receiving the complaint we contact the customer and set things right with them then they have to state to the BBB if they're issue was resolved to satisfaction. We do have to pay to be IN the BBB However.
The way I see it, it works if the customer has
A) tried fixing the issue with the company first
B) will take 3 mins to file the complaint
We take those complaints SERIOUSLY. Also helps we are a very honest company only complaint we had was done by a customer that Never contacted use to let us know there was an issue also the issue was with the prior owner not us. |
Tor is meant for anyone to use it. If Tor only had classified government documents flowing through it, it wouldn't be very anonymous. Crowd sourcing more usage helps hide what you are doing. |
Oh I read it alright! Clever man, that friend!
Seriously though, I guess it wasn't 100% clear when reading that last sentence which "he" was making the statement (your friend or the godparent), and it wasn't clear if you're a man or a woman, so if you're a woman he might be less likely to confide that his true intentions were to pick up women. |
NO RULE OR GUIDELINE HAS BEEN PASSED BY THE FTC AT THIS TIME .
What has been done is that the FTC has sent in a comment to the Michigan Senate in regards to bill 268 urging them to increase the scope of said bill from where it currently stands (which isn't bad, all things considered).
Linkies for your education:
PDF of actual comment: ( |
The stark reality is that 99% of car buyers buy the car based on things other than how it drives. Ford did a study once and found that for their female buyers, the most important factor was the cup holders. For most male buyers it's going to be curb appeal, etc.
Ask any car dealer -- I have several in my family. People will drive the car around the block, but they're so nervous that they honestly have no idea how to evaluate the experience. |
eh I'm not trying to prove you wrong, I'm trying to bring up a larger more important picture that I think your post fundamentally missed out on when you started talking about how the users are basically using reddit wrong.
you say you "like it here(reddit)"
Well why? Is it because the vast amount of people and the potential of a platform for developing communities?
reddit didn't grow this big overnight. Why do you think reddit is this big?
Proportionally the amount of moderators and content submitters here is infinitesimal when contrasted against the mass of traffic this place gets. |
A low level supervising program woke up a slightly higher level supervising program deep in the ship's semi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all it got was a hum.
The higher level supervising program asked it what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said that it couldn't remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distant satisfied sigh, wasn't it? It didn't know what this hum was. Click, hum, click, hum. That was all it was getting.
The higher level supervising program considered this and didn't like it. It asked the low level supervising program what exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said it couldn't remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to go click, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It had tried to consult its error look-up table but couldn't find it, which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to the problem .
The higher level supervising program went to consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low level supervising program was meant to be supervising.
It couldn't find the look-up table.
Odd.
It looked again. All it got was an error message. It tried to look up the error message in its error message look-up table and couldn't find that either. It allowed a couple of nanoseconds to go by while it went through all this again. Then it woke up its sector function supervisor.
The sector function supervisor hit immediate problems. It called its supervising agent which hit problems too. Within a few millionths of a second virtual circuits that had lain dormant, some for years, some for centuries, were flaring into life throughout the ship. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong, but none of the supervising programs could tell what it was. At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing.
Small modules of software — agents — surged through the logical pathways, grouping, consulting, re-grouping. They quickly established that the ship's memory, all the way back to its central mission module, was in tatters. No amount of interrogation could determine what it was that had happened. Even the central mission module itself seemed to be damaged.
This made the whole problem very simple to deal with. Replace the central mission module. There was another one, a backup, an exact duplicate of the original. It had to be physically replaced because, for safety reasons, there was no link whatsoever between the original and its backup. Once the central mission module was replaced it could itself supervise the reconstruction of the rest of the system in every detail, and all would be well.
Robots were instructed to bring the backup central mission module from the shielded strong room, where they guarded it, to the ship's logic chamber for installation.
This involved the lengthy exchange of emergency codes and protocols as the robots interrogated the agents as to the authenticity of the instructions. At last the robots were satisfied that all procedures were correct. They unpacked the backup central mission module from its storage housing, carried it out of the storage chamber, fell out of the ship and went spinning off into the void.
This provided the first major clue as to what it was that was wrong.
Further investigation quickly established what it was that had happened. A meteorite had knocked a large hole in the ship. The ship had not previously detected this because the meteorite had neatly knocked out that part of the ship's processing equipment which was supposed to detect if the ship had been hit by a meteorite.
The first thing to do was to try to seal up the hole. This turned out to be impossible, because the ship's sensors couldn't see that there was a hole, and the supervisors which should have said that the sensors weren't working properly weren't working properly and kept saying that the sensors were fine. The ship could only deduce the existence of the hole from the fact that the robots had clearly fallen out of it, taking its spare brain, which would have enabled it to see the hole, with them.
The ship tried to think intelligently about this, failed, and then blanked out completely for a bit. It didn't realise it had blanked out, of course, because it had blanked out. It was merely surprised to see the stars jump. After the third time the stars jumped the ship finally realised that it must be blanking out, and that it was time to take some serious decisions.
It relaxed.
Then it realised it hadn't actually taken the serious decisions yet and panicked. It blanked out again for a bit. When it awoke again it sealed all the bulkheads around where it knew the unseen hole must be.
It clearly hadn't got to its destination yet, it thought, fitfully, but since it no longer had the faintest idea where its destination was or how to reach it, there seemed to be little point in continuing. It consulted what tiny scraps of instructions it could reconstruct from the tatters of its central mission module.
`Your !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! year mission is to !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!, !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!, land !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! a safe distance !!!!! !!!!! ..... ..... ..... .... , land ..... ..... ..... monitor it. !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!...'
All of the rest was complete garbage.
Before it blanked out for good the ship would have to pass on those instructions, such as they were, to its more primitive subsidiary systems.
It must also revive all of its crew.
There was another problem. While the crew was in hibernation, the minds of all of its members, their memories, their identities and their understanding of what they had come to do, had all been transferred into the ship's central mission module for safe keeping. The crew would not have the faintest idea of who they were or what they were doing there. Oh well.
Just before it blanked out for the final time, the ship realised that its engines were beginning to give out too.
The ship and its revived and confused crew coasted on under the control of its subsidiary automatic systems, which simply looked to land wherever they could find to land and monitor whatever they could find to monitor.
As far as finding something to land on was concerned, they didn't do very well. The planet they found was desolately cold and lonely, so achingly far from the sun that should warm it, that it took all of the Envir-O-Form machinery and LifeSupport-O-Systems they carried with them to render it, or at least enough parts of it, habitable. There were better planets nearer in, but the ship's Strateej-O-Mat was obviously locked into Lurk mode and chose the most distant and unobtrusive planet and, furthermore, would not be gainsaid by anybody other than the ship's Chief Strategic Officer. Since everybody on the ship had lost their minds no one knew who the Chief Strategic Officer was or, even if he could have been identified, how he was supposed to go about gainsaying the ship's Strateej-O-Mat.
As far as finding something to monitor was concerned, though, they hit solid gold. |
I'm sorry, but this article just scream bullshit fear mongering to me. People love to hate large companies, and often rightly so, so making an article that says "Cable companies have been collecting money with no oversight" is an easy way to get people riled up.
Cable infrastructure is fucking expensive, and you can bitch and complain about how much you hate Comcast, or how Time Warner screwed up your initial installation, but that doesn't change the fact that there have been huge leaps in cable technology. Video on Demand, StartOver, LookBack, Switched Digital Video (which is a complete overhaul of the back end, but not so much something end-users realize has changed), RS-DVR, Widgets, Developing new front-ends for set top boxes while meeting ridiculous FCC mandates like power key and cable cards, finding ways to add new features while not isolating entire populations of cable boxes already in the field that would be prohibitively expensive to replace, fighting off content providers who want to raise their rates 1000% (I'm looking at you Fox, Disney, Viacom, ETC).
Should someone be keeping track of how these fees are spent? Sure, probably. But maintaining a cable plant costs millions upon millions of dollars, and profit margins are much thinner than people assume. So let's not go around calling this robbery. |
DSL is different from UVerse. DSL lines may terminate in old-school local telephone company offices where there might not a lot of legacy systems and backbone connectivity. In addition, AT&T is trying to get out of the DSL market as fast as possible.
UVerse involves brand new fiber runs and switches. Your connection terminates at a location that was built specifically for higher speed IP connectivity as that is how your video, voice and internet interface.
When you buy an internet package from AT&T the u-verse modem establishes a very high speed DSL connection to your local neighborhood terminal and then prioritizes video and voice and gives you whatever else is left up to the speed you purchased (you can never go above the speed you purchased but if you have mutiple HD video streams going on your internet speed will suffer so your video feed doesn't.)
Now, because these HD streams use a lot of bandwidth themselves (and can really eat into the amount of bandwidth coming down) by design UVerse needs to have a hefty backhaul to handle all the video. So they cannot make an argument that the costs of the "last mile" somehow hurts them because they have to anticipate sending huge amounts of traffic to the last mile no matter what type of traffic that is.
Now, once the traffic is back at AT&T's core datacenter things get very interesting for a couple of reasons. First off, AT&T actually has no direct downside to offering you most of the major video services like Netflix and YouTube because Netflix uses a CDN that will drop the video footage off either next to or in the AT&T datacenter closest to you and Google will drop off YouTube traffic at the peering point closest to the U-Verse customers. That's how CDNs work and means your ISP doesn't have to do much of a back haul.
... but here is where things get tricky. First off, there is almost no way to hit 250GB using Netflix and a U-Verse connection. You just don't get enough bandwidth to be able to do it and Netflix doesn't send you footage with all that high of a bitrate even if they do say it is 1080p. And even a very busy household isn't going to visit YouTube enough to hit 250GB. It's a lot of bandwidth. But what WILL get you at or above 250GB is bittorrent or other peer to peer services. When you are dealing with peer to peer all of a sudden it is the responsibility of the provider (AT&T) to get the traffic to your "peers" - and if those peers are on a European or Asian ISP then it could be the responsibility of AT&T to get your traffic to Europe or Asia. Now, the total cost per megabit to do this isn't that bad... but the cost also isn't zero.
But that rationale is flimsy. Most peer-to-peer traffic isn't going to go very far and AT&T is a Tier 1 network with a huge backbone so there really shouldn't be any technical issues in sending traffic between ISPs. Hell, some other ISPs might even be paying AT&T to be able to connect to you .
I usually try to give companies the benefit of the doubt when it comes to network management. But in the case of UVerse it makes no sense. |
I love how people think this started in Canada, when ISPs in the US have been doing it for at least 6 years. My parents have been paying $80/month for 17 GB/month of satellite internet for years . Their only alternative is dial-up. I made a post detailing this after the Canadian bandwidth-cap shitstorm, but received little traffic:
Please give it a read if you're concerned at all about bandwidth caps!
To be honest (at the expense of being a bit bitchy), it bugs me to no end to hear people get up in arms when they're limited to 150 GB/month. It's 2011 and cable providers (a local branch of Comcast, in my case) still have monopolies over entire counties , with residents slightly outside of their coverage area left to deal with dial-up, satellite internet at ridiculous prices, or no internet at all.
Oh, and the real kicker about this here 1100+ upvotes frontpage reddit article? AT&T has been offering the same ridiculous satellite internet service my parents and I currently use for quite awhile:
$299 installation (we paid close to 500 when we got ours from Wildblue), $80/month for shit speeds, high latency (no online gaming for you!), monthly bandwidth usage caps in the teens... And FYI, [Hughesnet]( and [Wildblue]( offer almost identical service and pricing. |
I have to support Reader on >1000 computers. In general I hate adobe simply because of the time I take to update Flash and Reader due to security issues. It's a pain.
For some reason we can't deploy Foxit.
And while I'm bitching, Java is a pain as well. We have to use compromised versions of Java because of critical web apps that work with Java. |
I think another angle may be a better fit - positive reinforcement.
"Wiki does good, wiki gets the treat. That's a good boy!"
I'll go and fork over 5 bucks (the perfect amount, as demonstrated by Louis CK), just cause 10 is too much, but a 100 people giving 3-5 bucks will still show them we support this decision.
Edit: yup, 5 bucks in their general direction, under the 'buy a cool guy a beer' limit. Hell, even wrote some of my thoughts in the fundraiser survey, on the off chance it may help them understand a burst in donations today (if that happens), and why their fundraiser campaign is useless on me and perhaps most of the |
it might seem cheesy that them following through on a cause I happen to be passionate about is what made me donate, rather than them just doing their job which happens to be one of the most important creations of this century and is absolutely free... but whatever, as a human monkey I am prone to this sort of behavior.
I had always read into net gossip about the wackiness of wikipedia culture and that gave me a bad vibe, along with those terrible 'personal pleas'. But seeing Jimmy on Colbert a few weeks ago was really informative, and hearing his thoughts on the legacy of the Internet to humanity was awesome.
Now that so much of the web is getting eaten up by cynical, for-profit corporate tiered bullshit, sites like Wikipedia are becoming less of the norm, and it's easy to forget that. But if sites like Wikipedia die out, so does the free web, and it's a short trip from there to 500 bullshit channels and nothing on. Can't let that happen man. |
Just to address a bunch of comments I've seen...
I am not advocating a boycott of Google . This partnership was created before GoDaddy came out in support of SOPA. What I am advocating is for Google to be pressured to not renew this partnership (if it is contractual), to get out of it, or for them to pressure GoDaddy to remove their congressional support of SOPA. If they choose the third option, I am very much in support of [Anon_is_a_meme's suggestion for GoDaddy to proactively campaign against SOPA]( which Google could also pressure them to do.
Some others have said that this GoDaddy situation detracts from SOPA, and they should be raising awareness of SOPA and boycotting a bunch of other companies. I agree, but the internet already is aware of SOPA, so other links about it aren't going to help much--we need to inform the general public about SOPA through non-internet means, such as mentioning it in conversation. Reddit links aren't going to help. Moreover, GoDaddy seems like it would be the easiest company to apply Reddit's pressure on to damage, given that they are a peddler of virtual goods. |
Downvote for shitty misleading thread subject.
Upvotes for people that went and read it and reported back with a accurate |
No, that's inaccurate. You are using "the mob" to lead to the conclusion you want. What about, say, Kinko's? I'm sure many people have violated copyright at Kinko's, and of course they are well aware it does happen. Or even photocopier and scanner sales in general. Those products have been used to violate copyright many times.
What matters is the reasonableness of the business circumstances. Photocopiers provide a fundamentally useful, legitimate function and it is unreasonable and costly to expect them to police their users somehow. Similar with Kinko's. Is it reasonable to expect them to bear the cost of policing everything that gets copied?
In the case of Megaupload, the problem isn't that they could be used for copyright infringement. The problem, if the accusations match the evidence, is that they explicitly sound out to violate copyrights and make money from it, and explicitly slowed down their efforts to address copyright complaints. |
It all really comes down to the difference between sites like youtube and sites like megavideo. The mega sites intentionally attempted to create the legal appearance of being the same as youtube (plausible deniability of copyright infringement from user-uploaded content) but operate completely differently on the inside. This [arstechnica article]( on it really explains the details of why MegaUpload was such a big target.
To simplify it - youtube has "safe harbor" because they do not control (or, other than their sponsored accounts, participate at all in) uploading of content from users. They also meet the minimum legal bar of at least being compliant with takedown requests in a timely manner. This is all a site currently has to do to maintain it's legal status; be compliant, and don't specifically encourage the uploading of copyrighted content externally (publicly) or internally (within the day to day operation of your site). The key aspect of this legal situation is that it puts the burden of proof onto whoever is prosecuting you, and gives the site operator a certain amount of plausible deniability.
The MegaUpload sites did not meet this qualification, because the internal workings of the company revealed countless instances of intentional uploading and maintaining of copyrighted content by employees, to the point that it was clear it was part of their day to day operation. When you have chats and emails between employees discussing the most popular content, and encouraging (rather than being intentionally ignorant) to the existence of copyrighted material, you can no longer say you have no control or awareness of it. They were well aware of the content that existed on their site, knew the traffic usage and most common files they hosted, and rather than taking steps to limit it, they took steps to encourage and insulate it from the effects of DMCA takedown notices. This destroys their credibility as a 'safe harbor' in the eyes of the law. They still would have been fine legally, as long as no one on the outside was able to prove this was going on. I'm not sure how the feds managed to get all this evidence, but it appears to have been a very long-term investigation, similar to how they would go after any form of organized crime.
Secondly they weren't actually complying with the DMCA takedowns, according to the allegations. To explain; lets say a given episode of Game of Thrones airs, and is immediately compressed, uploaded, and torrented all over the world. This single copy of the file is turned into thousands or millions of copies, all exactly the same. Then several dozen independent users upload this file to MegaUpload. The file is exactly the same, so a content host like MegaUpload can chose to set up their database in a way that simply maintains a single actual digital instance of the file and provides each user a unique link to it. This basic principle is incredibly common in many cloud services, and is a fundamental form of DRE (data redundancy elimination) which reduces the required storage resources. Now, if MegaUpload used this method, and received a DMCA takedown notice on a given file, then to comply with the notice would require deleting the file, not just the link. One of the primary allegations is that MegaUpload was only deleting the associations between the individual links and the primary file (thus, countless other links to the same file were maintained). If no one outside of MegaUpload knows the difference, it's impossible to prosecute them for it. But , and this is a big but, it appears the prosecutors have somehow gained access to a huge amount of MegaUpload's internal communication, and that this is one of the practices they are being called out on.
My guess would be that many of these sites engaged in varying levels of this kind of non-deniable infringement promotion, at least internally. All of them are freaking out now; temporarily shutting down their services is the only logical thing to do, at least until they've sifted through their internal communications, chatlogs, etc, to clean up their operation and make it harder to prove they are intentionally promoting infringement. Without SOPA and PIPA, the safe harbor provision exists by default, unless the feds have evidence (which they did against megavideo/megaupload). If SOPA/PIPA or something like it comes into existence, this safe harbor concept will end , and ANY site showing a pattern of copyright content hosting can be shut off, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
Edit: |
micro censoring" out of 140 character! Hopefully it is not "macro censoring" you'll have not much character left. |
I've found that when people post cool things without explanation or reference of how to do said cool things, it actually has the opposite effect. |
I've mentioned this before. Facebook never sells your information. Advertisers don't get to see your profile. That isn't how this stuff works.
Facebook sells targeted ads. Their system then handles the matching. Your data isn't being sold, it isn't going into the hands of some strange marketing firm. |
Something about you is the currency. But it may not be your personal data. It could be just your eyeballs.
For example, broadcast television is free. They don't share your personal data (or even collect it) even though your eyeballs/attention is the product. |
The fundamental difference between the bubble we had and what we are having now is: When the first bubble went off... the entire system was being pioneered. No one really knew what the heck they were doing, and that's largely why there was such a rush of innovation.
But people invested crazily into that innovation because it was so "exciting." It was new. It was the new gold rush. Let's all get in and get rich.
That's why it bubbled. That's why it burst. It was insanity.
Today, however... there are some pretty effective models at play. There are powerhouse investment strategies in intellectual property that have made many decisions to invest in these companies turn out to be great decisions (and sure, there are others that are not).
Is it all a bit seemingly-unusual right now with how much things are being valued at? Sure. But that doesn't mean what is going on now is in any way equivalent to what happened before... right now, information is king. It's the new "black gold." And companies are mining the heck out of it with sites that create good services. |
Don't be a free user" by Pinboard (an independent, paid bookmarking site) is a very relevant article today: |
I will never understand how the government makes it's actions and decisions. I will never understand it because each person in the government is an individual, who has there own story, and who was once just like everybody else, part of the majority. And if they still were just like everybody else, then we wouldn't have political parties dictating your decisions, even if it is against your beliefs, we wouldn't have unfair and unjust laws, and we certainly would not be in a country where, as a government, each person individually does what is best for themselves and protects their power, now what is best for the country.
JFK once said "Do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." It is sad that the only ones who really try to make the country better are the ones who don't have the power.
It is amazing how much power and money can corrupt and change people. |
how is it not? you claimed that IE had 18% of the market when it clearly has closer to 50% judging by that link and by the link I entered.
you imply that the marketshare is dropping violently but statcounter does not say that it is dropping in such a fashion. it is still dropping of course but nowhere near the same extent that you regard it as. |
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