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If a PC qualifies for first grade, I suspect that it's time to get replaced.
Then again, I have a second job working for my mom at her small business. It opened in '97. The nursing station computer has never been replaced. Recently, I've been tasked with transferring files from the Windows 95 PC over to a newer laptop that's arguably better because it's XP, even if the D key is missing from the keyboard and it's riddled with viruses because the dietary aide that had it beforehand was more interested in any and all online poker sites than internet security. Mom's voted me IT because I know the button for the internet, but, wow. Just wow. |
IIRC the carriers were using the term 4g before they came up with a spec that was entirely too high. 4g, as defined by carriers, is 5-10 times faster than 3g. If that isn't enough to be its own generation what the fuck is? |
This is because nobody can agree on what 4G actually is .
As far as the carriers are concerned, the term "4G" is just a marketing tool. From their perspective, they put time and money into upgrading their infrastructure, so they want to be able to call it something fancy and new to convince people to buy it. "4G" is a good candidate for this since it's vacuous, poorly defined, and people know that "bigger numbers means better". n G is also familiar to people, since it's been used extensively before (think iPhone 3G, for example).
From the regulator's (ITU-R's) perspective, 4G has a definition, but as someone pointed out below, this has been changed and rules have been bent, mainly due to industry pressure (carriers saying " we don't meet the 4G requirements, but we still want to call our sevice 4G"). Since the ITU-R's definition of 4G wasn't very good in the first place, carriers have been able to get away with this. These days, if you're basically implementing something which is a step in the right direction towards the ITU-R's original definition of 4G, then you're allowed to market it as such. |
The [Warming Glow did a piece today]( regarding the ad structure of streaming television shows. There's a lot of good points made in that article, I suggest you read it.
I would like to say something though, if there is a small chance that anyone with influence acturally reads this (yeah right). I used to watch Hulu. I used to watch Hulu a lot. Back in those days, like the article says, there were maybe three or four ad breaks that were unskippable. I didn't mind that. Why? Because the ads were all of about 15 to 30 seconds long and didn't signifigantly interrupt my viewing experience. If I'm lying in bead watching something on hulu, it's far easier to keep lying there for 15-30 seconds than get up and do something else while the ad is playing. Granted, I still pirated a lot of shows, simply because a lot of the shows I liked weren't available on hulu or netflix. When Hulu moved their best stuff over to hulu+, I stopped using them. I suspect that's true for a lot of people.
Here's what I don't get. I would have stayed with hulu and other media streamers if they STOPPED FUCKING WITH GOOD THINGS. Put all of the episodes of every show online, and I'll watch commercials all fucking day. Adding a lot more short commercials, making commercials longer, or heaven fucking forbid making them interactive, and I will absolutely pirate that shit. |
Interference in electronics can have many different modes. In general, if any input to the system causes degradation to the systems intended performance it can be considered interference. Typical interference is when frequencies in the pass band (frequency range of interest) are present when they are not supposed to be (this causes reduced performance because the system has a hard time discerning the real signal from the interfering noise). This was, in theory, okay with the LS implementation as they claimed they could meet the required FCC limits for out of band emissions and testing suggested this could be met in the field. However, GPS technology itself operates at extremely low signal levels (like... extremely). To be able to isolate this signal requires very good electronic filters and very high gain amplifiers (cutting edge kind of stuff even for today to meet demands for size and price). These filters are where LS's implementation becomes an issue. The filters help reduce signals outside of the GPS band before going into the high gain amplifiers. If this is not done, even signals at the allowed FCC limits in adjacent bands could cause the high gain amps targeted for the very low GPS signals to go into Compression (where the amp is no longer gaining other frequencies up like it is supposed to because the amp is getting very close to “clipping” or outputting its maximum signal level). This causes the GPS signal to actually become attenuated through this stage that was supposed to gain it up and in turn reduces performance (which is a form of interference). In LS's implementation the immense increase in adjacent band signal power (as compared to what is seen on Earth when using a satellite system as is done currently) cannot be filtered enough to prevent compression. This then causes a large number of legacy and modern GPS devices to experience interference from LS's terrestrial use of that spectrum. |
a little backstory:
i've been an HTC customer since the Eris. i've been in touch with HTC since the Rezound came out. I purchased it on day 1, and it was an amazing phone. However, over on XDA, a few of us noticed some issues with quality of the audio while recording videos. Many people also had the dreaded "pink capacative button" lights. So I decided to take action and message HTC to get to their tech support. I was moved up the chain, and eventually began speaking with a real nice guy named Danty over there in Washington (I believe).
So he appreciated the feedback we gave him, especially when it came to the video recording. Basically, the end of that story is that when ICS came out on the Rezound, the issue was fixed. The audio quality was much better. It was great to see HTC actually listened to it's consumer base! What was even more surprising was the fact that he actually called me the second he saw my support ticket so we could talk about it over the phone. He ended up calling about three different times for a few different problems. That was awesome in itself!
Fast forward to a year later. I work at a Verizon authorized retailer, and in the 3 years we've been open, we've never met an HTC rep. We've always had samsung, blackberry, motorola, but never HTC. We had to purchase our display models from like, eBay, because HTC didn't send us any like Samsung/Moto/BB did. So, I recently was able to sign up for HTC Elevate, and while on there one night, decided to send a message to the moderator explaining our issue. Basically, a day later I received 2 emails from 2 different people within HTC telling me that a rep would be at my store the next day. I was shocked. Low and behold, the next day, an HTC rep showed up at my store to show me the DNA and 8x, along with giving me display models and brochures. I was honestly shocked. They actually listened, yet again. The rep explained that premium retailers aren't usually on their list of stores to visit, and they didn't even know we were here. Needless to say, my boss was extremely happy, and HTC tells us that we're now on their radar and they'll be stopping in often. The next day I get a huge package from UPS of HTC goodies to give out to customers (bracelets, ice scrapers, little phone stands, sim card popper outter things, microfiber cloths, etc.)
Fast forward to a month later: I bought a DNA off contract, and I love it. A couple of issues, though, mainly with the camera picture quality (since HTC opted to make 'auto enhance' defaulted to on, which was the first thing we turned off on the Rezound to achieve great picture quality.) So I decided to dig up an old ticket and try my hardest to get into contact with Danty again. Amazingly, I was able to, and we began to chat back and forth via support again. I started an XDA thread for members to list any bugs/suggestions they had for HTC with regards to the DNA, and I showed Danty the thread. He was truly happy we were taking initiative yet again, and he assured me that HTC is listening again, and that he forwarded the thread and my personal suggestions to the teams higher than him, like he did with the Rezound. I explained to him what a help he's been in the past, and currently, and that this is why I purchase HTC products.
So last night I come home from work to a big FedEx package, and all of this is inside, along with the hand-written note from HTC Customer Support. These guys are seriously awesome, and the personal touches I've seen from them in the past 2 months alone remind me why I enjoy dealing with a company who truly values it's customers. |
One major thing everyone is overlooking about this is that this is fully produced by Google. This isn't some partnership with Samsung or Acer to use their production facilities and essentially just put their OS on someone else's game, this is Google entering the hardware business, a machine fully designed, hardware and software, by Google. That could also explain the crazy high price, simply jumping into making your own products isn't simple and whoever is contracted to produce these is getting much more out of Google than other businesses. For example because Apple has been in the business for years they get much better deals and already have the logistics set up while Google doesn't have that. But if this is really Google stepping up, this might be a sign of things to come of and along with the rumored retail stores coming out by the end of the year, perhaps Google making many different products and becoming a even more independent company that has full control over the hardware and software side of things. There's already glass for one, along with the nexus line of devices that they might decide to take full control of and they likely have other products in the works as well. |
I think that this is a clever move by google. People have this (subconscious) tendency to associate 'Cheap' with 'crappy' and 'expensive' with 'quality'. So regardless of how good their $200-$300 chromebooks are, people will always think of them as being crappy. By releasing a super expensive chromebook it helps shift peoples perspective on the platform, even if they don't actually sell any of them. Especially if these super expensive chromebooks are handed out to bloggers who can write about how good they are. They don't actually need to sell a single unit to achieve their goal of improving chromebooks image.
Also, I don't think they actually want to sell this version at all. What they want to sell is a chromebook somewhere in the $600-$800 range. BUT if they released a chromebook at that price now, nobody would buy it, because people will compare it to existing chromebooks and think it's too expensive. BUT if people compare it to a $1300 chromebook, all of a sudden it looks like a bargain.
People don't tend to evaluate products based on their own merits, they evaluate them based on other existing products. People are weird.
Also, chromebook was originally an innovative platform on standard hardware...and no one cared about it. NOW they are touting their amazing hardware and people are interested, even if they don't care about the OS. Google have finally realised that apart from techy people (like the readers of this subreddit) no one really cares about the OS, they care about how a product LOOKS and FEELS. |
Celestial body: (n) Natural objects visible in the sky.
How many space pebbles do you see every night after dark? Not to argue semantics within and argument of semantics.
Ultimately, the term World is relative to the object/idea being described and to the context of its usage. A pebble in space could be a new world to an ant. The Americas were a new world to the Pilgrims. The moon was a new world before the lunar landing and circling back to the original criticism there is nothing wrong with OP's post title. It was the first time (allegedly) human footprints had been left on the moon. whether you want to consider the moon as a world or not is irrelevant. It was the "very first time" man set foot on the moon which was "another world".
Title;ELI5: The moon(in opinion) is another world. 44 years ago we first set foot on this other world. |
absolutely zero excuse for a company such as Google to store passwords in plain text under any circumstances. At all. Ever. Period.
Google Chrome passwords are not stored in plaintext. They are encrypted .
Look at them. Seriously, go look at them for yourself. They sit in:
%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Login Data
It's an SQLite database, and you can use something like [SQLite Database Browser]( to view it.
Here's a snippet from my Login Data file:
origin_url username_value password_value
======================================== ============== ========================
pauladin 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB010000004C53DC19DFC03946A0B73C8080FCCB800000000002000000000003660000C0000000100000003D8BAED88624BC61F9093DEA173D10A70000000004800000A000000010000000E76E44054E9EB2F332A7CB856E59D36A08000000D141D3D2D180FAB8140000002CC896B586FB2E5CBBC4585D7817197D3EE6918A
josejimeniz 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB010000004C53DC19DFC03946A0B73C8080FCCB800000000002000000000003660000C000000010000000D762C27D2D3C7EBAFE70F447C31C7C140000000004800000A000000010000000447ABB95ADDBBF329F0E7DD39D1F08990800000061AC57CEDF2BD32E140000008A7E5808DF792922DA8E45943938DB9EDA796868
[email protected] 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB01000000BB0E1F4548ADC84A82EC0873552BCB460000000002000000000003660000C0000000100000006811169334524F33D880DE0C842B9BBB0000000004800000A00000001000000043C8E23979F5CC5499D73610B969A92A08000000EE07953DEC9F7CA01400000098B5F0F01E35B0DC6BBAFC53A9B1254AC999F4FA
Every time you start your computer you, you , (i'm not kidding, seriously, you Xanza (assuming you use Chrome)) personally, manually type in the key to decrypt them. If you do not enter that decryption key, Chrome is unable to use saved passwords (because they are encrypted).
How does Chrome encrypt your passwords when saving them? [It's documented]( but the simple answer is the Windows function [ CryptProtectData ]( From the MSDN:
> The CryptProtectData function performs encryption on the data in a DATA_BLOB structure.
> only a user with the same logon credential as the user who encrypted the data can decrypt the data.
The code essentially boils down to:
encryptedPassword = CryptProtectData(plaintextPassword);
And when Chrome needs to decrypt the password, it uses [ CryptUnprotectData ](
Your passwords are encrypted, essentially, with your Windows password.
Strictly speaking that's not complete accurate. When a password is encrypted:
a random session key is generated
the password is encrypted with the random key
the random key is RSA encrypted with your public key
the encrypted data is hashed, with a Message Authentication Code (HMAC)
the encrypted session key, the encrypted password, and the MAC are concatenated
Your Window's RSA private key is encrypted with your Windows password. In order to unlock a password, you must have typed in your Windows password. Otherwise the RSA private key is not accessible.
you enter your Windows account password
your RSA private key is decrypted
the original session key is decrypted using your RSA private key
the encrypted password is decrypted using the decrypted session key. |
Once a person has access to my system, they do have my passwords. You seem to think that passwords in Chrome are stored in plaintext on the hard drive. You seem to think that you can simple "bypass" the security by reading the "stored password file" .
Google Chrome passwords are not stored in plaintext. They are encrypted .
Look at them. Seriously, go look at them for yourself. They sit in:
%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Login Data
It's an SQLite database, and you can use something like [SQLite Database Browser]( to view it.
Here's a snippet from my Login Data file:
origin_url username_value password_value
======================================== ============== ========================
pauladin 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB010000004C53DC19DFC03946A0B73C8080FCCB800000000002000000000003660000C0000000100000003D8BAED88624BC61F9093DEA173D10A70000000004800000A000000010000000E76E44054E9EB2F332A7CB856E59D36A08000000D141D3D2D180FAB8140000002CC896B586FB2E5CBBC4585D7817197D3EE6918A
josejimeniz 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB010000004C53DC19DFC03946A0B73C8080FCCB800000000002000000000003660000C000000010000000D762C27D2D3C7EBAFE70F447C31C7C140000000004800000A000000010000000447ABB95ADDBBF329F0E7DD39D1F08990800000061AC57CEDF2BD32E140000008A7E5808DF792922DA8E45943938DB9EDA796868
[email protected] 01000000D08C9DDF0115D1118C7A00C04FC297EB01000000BB0E1F4548ADC84A82EC0873552BCB460000000002000000000003660000C0000000100000006811169334524F33D880DE0C842B9BBB0000000004800000A00000001000000043C8E23979F5CC5499D73610B969A92A08000000EE07953DEC9F7CA01400000098B5F0F01E35B0DC6BBAFC53A9B1254AC999F4FA
Every time you start your computer you, you , (i'm not kidding, seriously, you Alakrios (assuming you use Chrome)) personally, manually type in the key to decrypt them. If you do not enter that decryption key, Chrome is unable to use saved passwords (because they are encrypted).
How does Chrome encrypt your passwords when saving them? [It's documented]( but the simple answer is the Windows function [ CryptProtectData ]( From the MSDN:
> The CryptProtectData function performs encryption on the data in a DATA_BLOB structure.
> only a user with the same logon credential as the user who encrypted the data can decrypt the data.
The code essentially boils down to:
encryptedPassword = CryptProtectData(plaintextPassword);
And when Chrome needs to decrypt the password, it uses [ CryptUnprotectData ](
Your passwords are encrypted, essentially, with your Windows password.
Strictly speaking that's not complete accurate. When a password is encrypted:
a random session key is generated
the password is encrypted with the random key
the random key is RSA encrypted with your public key
the encrypted data is hashed, with a Message Authentication Code (HMAC)
the encrypted session key, the encrypted password, and the MAC are concatenated
Your Window's RSA private key is encrypted with your Windows password. In order to unlock a password, you must have typed in your Windows password. Otherwise the RSA private key is not accessible.
you enter your Windows account password
your RSA private key is decrypted
the original session key is decrypted using your RSA private key
the encrypted password is decrypted using the decrypted session key. |
From a programmers perspective it looks impressive, a little too impressive.
The recognition of your hands at various angles could make the system limited to only a select number of hand positions and gestures so the glasses will read them properly. It could also pick up other hands in the vicinity unless you are wearing a certain type of glove which would work better than trying to pick up hand gestures via camera.
The 3D modeling probably will probably be more difficult than using your hands to mold. Current 3D programs have dozens of options and different ways on how to model a certain object. I have used Inventor and Solidworks and parts just don't come together magically like portrayed on the video. To be realistic, you won't be designing parts for your Iron Man suit on those glasses.
The interactions like playing chess, shooting each other with virtual guns, and pulling up info on people will all probably work. Those seem a lot more feasible and more software structurally sound to work. |
A lot of people commenting are confused by how New York Times is using the term "social network." The article is not talking about Facebook, Myspace, etc . They're talking about the NSA secretly building graphs of your real-life social network without warrants: everyone you talk to, do business with, etc.
From the article:
[...Using] data from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners. |
Sigh. I hate it that I am not suprised.
As a cynnical person, I had predicted this. I see it as inevitable.
Because of this, I do not see a point in trying to make them stop. They never will, so why waste the effort?
What is worth fighting for is legal restrictions on 'Cointelpro' style dirty tricks campaigns. To gather all of the answers in the world actually may serve justice, in the end; those devices which are variously called 'cellphones' and 'trackers' in our day can be thought of as 'alibi recorders' from the standpoint of innocent persons. However, the history of our intelligence agencies undermines any sense of security that 'actual innocence' may confer.
That is why I am changing tack. My calls, from here out, will be for strict legal sanctions on uses for this data that for the fabrication of criminal cases and for other sorts of 'dirty tricks'. The 'loveint' revelations clearly demonstrate that we are far from this ideal at present with respect to rogue operators. The threat of officially sanctioned programs to fabricate evidence or disrupt lives with dirty tricks cannot be discounted, either, particularly in light of the overuse of secrecy that is currently crumbling before our eyes.
If we discover that they are ruining people with the products of their spying, we must call very loudly for reform. And given what we know from history, we may assume that their current usage of the term 'exploit' is a lot like the way they used it when framing, harassing, and otherwise disposing of people in the past. |
Basically, Dropbox is changing their terms of service to include fine print that specifies that if anyone has an issue with their service, that any legal disputes are made individually through a small claims court.
This means that if people were to try and form a class action lawsuit against Dropbox for a major data breach which cost you and many others money due to data stolen, they would not be able to.
In short, it's a sneaky move that makes more sense for covering their asses than it does from the perspective of protecting their users, and this type of legal approach has been on the rise since 2011 when AT&T changed their terms of service to prevent a class action lawsuit from being able to be formed against them. |
15 seconds googling "Netflix Comcast throttling graph."
I know Comcast isn't Verizon, but it would be safe to say that they wouldn't be above the same thing. |
Self— flying car . The Moller Skycar and the Terrafugia roadable plane from 2010 are just that— roadable planes. You need to be an experienced pilot to fly one of them.
This is what I call the Jetpack Fallacy: just because you were promised it doesn't mean it's practical. A jetpack sounds cool— but use common sense. How long could you fly it? How would you control it? What about fuel? What about the exhaust burning your back and legs?
A flying car requires more mental focus than most people can afford, and that's just the start of it. We can have flying cars today, no sweat. But then you get into the issue of "damn, just how hard is it to fly?"
Autonomous vehicles kill that issue dead. That's why flying cars are being reconsidered — the biggest flaw can be solved with the same thing that drives Google and Tesla's driverless cars— computers optimized to do 100 things at once, on a 3D plane.
Also, with ASIMO— just because it's taken 15 years for it to become useful in any way doesn't mean it'll take 15 years to become practical. The reason why domestic robots haven't taken off isn't because they aren't capable physically. It's because they couldn't adapt to unfamiliar environments or recognize objects or deeply understand orders.
Then came the Deep Learning revolution in computer science two years ago, and all that changed. We've made more progress in AI in between 2012 and 2014 than we had in the previous 70 years of computer science, combined, scores of times over. And we are only getting started.
See /r/thisisthewayitwillbe for more.
I agree with your post, but needed to give you a rundown on these things. |
First off - I can tell you it can be done (more on that in a moment). What I can't find, is proof that it is used. At least on a mass scale.
For the device to spy, it would need a subset of code that listened for a key set of words or tone change in voice, or perhaps activated if you are in a certain proximate of a location. It would trigger the mic to begin recording passively, and use the existing network infastructure to upload that with as much information as possible.
Accelerators could be used to take images - most won't be clear. But enough will that identifying individuals would be possible.
For something like android, a back door like this is likely unfeasible. Source code for the OS is available. But for apple products and windows? It's more feasible - but even here, the implementation costs etc. For 0 net benefit would be prohibitive unless subsidized, and even then, it is debatable. |
I don't post much but I posted this partially because people would find it interesting, partially to start a discussion, and also because I find it slightly misleading. I've given a tech talk or two on datacenter power consumption so I figured I would share (some of) what I know about it and let people decide on their own.
The big thing here is that yes, datacenter power is increasing, but more importantly device usage is increasing much more rapidly, has momentum that can't be stopped, and doesn't appear to be slowing either: it may even accelerate due to the 'internet of things' on the horizon. In the face of device usage increasing, datacenter power increasing is very much a good thing . This is because datacenters are much more power-efficient than just about any other form of computation: they will consume thousands or millions of times more power than your phone, but they will do millions or billions of times more work than your phone will. This is also a good thing. The cloud model (let's simplify it to dispersed but connected devices using high-bandwidth connections to centralized datacenters) is more efficient both economically and energetically because datacenters are optimized for just those two things: cost and power (which factors into cost). Your phone, tablet, and laptop are also optimized for these things, but their priority is mixed with design, build materials, weight, user interface/ease of use, etc. In other words, your phone needs to do just enough computation to work while looking very pretty; a datacenter only needs to do just enough computation.
Computers are more reliable in cool air, but they also generate a lot of heat, and 30% of datacenter power goes to cooling. There are some very cool tricks being applied to new datacenters these days, from the layout of the datacenter itself (airflow is important, battery placement, etc.) to the placement of the datacenter itself, when Apple and Google put datacenters in Denmark to take advantage of the cooler air. Colder air, less air conditioning needed! This is called 'free cooling'. The big thing here is that the big cloud companies are investing heavily into making datacenters more power-efficient, from better power supplies, power distribution units, backup batteries, down to the design of the datacenter itself.
Computers are also more efficient at maximum load than they are at idle or at mid-load (ironically they are least efficient around 30% utilization which is where a lot of DCs these days actually spend much of their time, but we're working on that). Anyway, this is where the importance of the cloud model comes in: you want good battery life on your device, so a lot of services will do a bunch of server-side processing in the datacenter and just send you the result. Imagine you have a chess game in your phone with a 'grandmaster' AI: instead of trying to calculate millions of possible moves on your phone, using your battery and making it hot, let's say the AI sends your moves to a datacenter, calculates its next move there, and then just sends you the result. It's a trivial but illustrative example of something that happens all the time all over the internet.
The last bit there is very important to why the datacenter model works. I don't mean to suggest that we should give cloud companies free reign to use as much energy as they please - forgive the diversion, but it should be pointed out they (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.) actually use a much smaller fraction (5-10% in the US) of the datacenter energy than you'd think, it's actually mostly used by mid-to-large size companies and enterprises with private datacenters who aren't as good at going 'cloud' as the big players are - but that there is more to this picture than shown here. |
I use it myself because I don't feel like paying $400 for programs I'm only using for recreation...but seriously. It's wrong...
So at what threshold of enjoyment does the recreational use of pirated software become unethical? Or is all unlicensed software use unethical and you're just openly admitting that you're a selfish fraudster? By your philosophy, you can either be unethical or a hypocrite. Take your pick.
See, here's the kicker. You said you don't feel like paying $400. That means that the company selling the software decided to charge more than you were willing to pay for it, and because you had the ability to obtain and use it for free, you did.
But what if the company sold it much cheaper? Would you buy it?
The popular excuse for downloading software is that it saves them money. But the people who download software are the same people who pay to see movies in the theatre, buy bottled water, eat out at restaurants frequently, and run the air conditioning in their houses or apartments all day long. If they were trying to save money, this frugal behaviour would be apparent in other aspects of their lives. They're not actually trying to save money - it just seems like a reasonable excuse.
The real reason why people pirate software is because they feel like they are being charged an unfair price. They don't see what kind of value they are getting for the asking price, and since the software is available elsewhere for no money they take that option instead. People are acting as a correctional force on the market.
Valve Software (creators of Half Life) did an interesting study , the results of which were presented at the 2009 DICE Summit. They found that lowering the price of its games in a linear function produced an exponential increase in revenue (not units, but revenue ). So the more reasonably the software was priced, the higher the sales revenue they received. We can conclude that a greater number of people were willing to pay for Valve's games as the price became more and more reasonable to them.
Markets behave in vast, broadly-concerted and almost unpredictable ways, because the direction that markets move is the product of the interplay of numerous influences of human origin; need, desire, confidence, aspiration, competition. But everything that markets are ultimately boils down to what we want and what we need on an individual level.
We've come to assume over the years that the ability to sell something equal the ability to decide what the price of that thing is. But that's not how markets work. The only thing you have the ability to do is sell something or NOT sell something - market forces decide what the price is. If a vast number of individual people feel like a single company is overstepping its boundaries by making a piece of software cost $1,000, they are going to respond as market force by refraining from buying it, even without direct contact with one another.
* |
Ok, I was just going to go to bed, but you've provoked a discussion I cannot turn away from.
That's your opinion, and even though I am tempted to say "stfu stop spreading fud you fucking dumbass", I will not. Because I know you're not a dumbass. You like using your computer in the way you like, much like I like using my computer in the way I like.
I use open source software because I hate, with a passion, not having the power to change something. No, I'm not a genius, and no, I have no fucking clue how the linux kernel works. But the internet has people who do... and I am slowly learning. But that's me. I love computers.
I'm sure you like computers as well. However, you don't treasure software freedom as I do. I'm not criticizing you, I'm just observing. I don't think you're wrong. I think it would be awesome if you appreciated software freedom, but I don't think you're wrong not to. The whole point of software freedom is so that you can use it in a way you see fit.
I will note that open source software will not get better unless people like you make the jump. At that point, you're not a customer, you're not a stockholder, but you are something. People care (though they do have big egos sometimes) enough to make their software not suck for you. If only techies like me use open source software, open source software will forever be geared towards techies. Techies are the only ones willing to make that sacrifice, typically (if there is one).
OKAY, moving on:
Yes, that sucks. It would be nice for companies to be able to continue to make software. Few people can make a living doing open source software. Indeed, the software industry is suffering in much the same way as the music industry.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe. I can't tell, really, since I'm using open source software, and if a good chunk of the software industry collapsed, I wouldn't notice a HUGE difference (well, actually, the army of unemployed software engineers might actually improve the quality of my software). But a lot of people would not like that. Lots of people depend on proprietary solutions. That's ok, I'm all for using the tools you see fit.
However, much like I don't think we should hold up bad copyright law to make a bunch of media companies think they're still wanted and still have a right to make money in a world in which they should not -- by virtue of business logic -- be making money, I don't believe software companies should be making money if their industry is not needed anymore. I don't believe in protecting stupid businesses. Nobody is out there speaking for the rights of the earwax-infused-chile-cracker bakers, is there? No, because that's stupid, and I do not give a shit if they can't make money. Likewise, I don't think you as a musician are more important than copyright law. If you can't make a living recording and selling music, then stfu and make money some other way.
That sounds rude, but I'll try to justify myself. Copyright was designed as a way for businesses to protect themselves and their intellectual property... from other businesses. It's not there to hinder culture (i.e. sharing a copy of a game to someone you don't know over the internet, sharing a copy of a song to someone you don't know over the internet). It's there to keep businesses that should be making money in business.
What if the consumers themselves are hurting the businesses? They win, because fuck you. They win because they are everyday people. Their lives should not be ruined because you want to make some money in a dumb business model.
They should also not be forced to enjoy culture in a way you deem fit. Copyright is there so that businesses have to pay you when they use your song to make money. That makes sense. This is positive. This is commerce. This is a Good Thing. This makes the capitalistic world go 'round. It even makes money for you! Hooray! It's meant to make it so that people have to reward each other for things that help each other make money, so that everyone can make money.
Art is meant to be free. You seem to agree with that, at least partially. But you think that musicians should be making money, because if they don't, fuck, we won't have art!
If writers can't make money writing editorials, where will the editorials be? Where will we go for our editorials?
People might do them for kicks. Or they'll go on reddit and write their editorials there. That sounds like a good idea to me. Editorials still exist.
"But editorials might suck in this new system!" yeah, maybe, but guess what? Lots of things that used to be good suck now because the world changes . There's no point fighting it. That's stupid.
> uncontrolled file-sharing puts musicians and the people that help [them]... out of business.
So? Uncontrolled healthy eating puts a lot of doctors out of business. Nobody has a right to make money. You must make it yourself, using your business skills.
Now, you can argue that filesharing is "stealing" (even though stealing implies that you're removing something from someone's possession) or "not cool" or akin to rape. But, really, you have to look at it reasonably. Is sharing bad? No? That's more important than the negative effects.
If I buy fruit from a farmer's market, plant the seeds, grow my own fruit, and give you the fruit, that's a Good Thing. The farmers should not be able to sue me (though I'll admit that this is a derivative work, not an exact copy, but fuck you I'm trying to make a point here without people getting all pedantic about genetic variances between generations of fruit). If the farmers can't make money anymore because I'm growing my own food, then they don't need to exist.
If I take a farmer's specially genetically engineered fruit, plant an orchard with them, and sell them, then I will concede that we have a problem.
Look, a filesharing metaphor that works!
> not trying to be a dick about this.
Me neither. All the "fuck you" 's are just me being goofy. Sorry.
> "Music will be better if money and greed are not involved"
Perhaps, perhaps not. Money is a strong motivator. Again, I don't think this matters.
> professional musical chops are nearly non-existent... everyone needs to hold a non-music day-job.
You know how most people in symphonies don't make much money and teach on the side? Most of the best professional musicians hardly make any money performing it. The best musicians can almost never make money from recordings, too. Not because everyones filesharing it, but because no one's there to listen.
I'm not going to argue what a good musician is. But people with professional musical chops will continue to have professional musical chops whether or not the indie band I'm downloading can make a living doing their music. If they can't, then the world will be a worse place for it.
But consumers should not be fined $100000000000000000 in order to compensate. No one's suing consumers because people like Mozart aren't around.
"File-sharing won't kill music because live touring is profitable" - if neither are profitable, then that sucks. I somehow doubt it, but if it does, it will be sad -- but it will and should happen.
Look, it breaks my heart to say some of these things, but I believe them. I'm not just a guy who makes living writing code -- I'm also a musician, though I'll admit I'm not very good.
I've played in symphonies. I've played in a rock band (a stupid one, but whatever). Hell, I've made money selling home-made CD albums. Do I think that's cool? yes.
Did I mention I also write fiction and think it would be super-sweet if I could make a living doing it?
I also intend to make a living writing code in the future. Right now I'm an intern doing web dev stuff -- which will continue to happen no matter the state of informal software sharing(1).
If my skills become useless because I can only use them in a way that I must take money from normal folks, and stop them from enjoying their tools(2)... then I guess I'll have to learn more? I'm not lazy. I can do that. Yes, it will suck, but I'm not going to sue you for enjoying yourself so I can continue to make money despite being useless.
The corporate world needs software; I'll write their software. They have an obligation to pay me if they use my stuff, so that business thrives (and in turn their business thrives). Cool beans.
What will musicians, writers, publishers, book-printers, conductors' stand makers, etc. do when the world changes? Not sure, but I'm excited, because there's going to be a LOT of good coming out of all this.
I know you're nervous. I know it's hard to make a living. But be reasonable, ok? We'll all be doing better if we live that way.
(1) I will not compare that to attacking ships, holding their crews hostage, and stealing their physical goods that can't be effortlessly recopied. EDIT: I mean, I'm not going to call it piracy.
(2) Back on that open-source thing. Given a lawnmower, I think people should be able to make their own replica, and use it to cut their grass. Do I think that John Deere should be able to copy some other lawnmower and start selling it? Well, that's patent bullshit, and I'm not sure how that works, but that's a much different scenario. Businesses respecting businesses is a good thing. Normal folk using the things around them to enrich their lives in a way they see fit is also a good thing.
One last thing, guys. I know it sounds like I'm some sort of free market hippie guy. If I do, I'm not sure what to say. I haven't thought about that stuff enough to decide where I stand. But business/economics in general is not my concern. Where culture and business cross -- that is what I'm talking about.
Ok, that was fucking long. Sorry I swore a lot. Sorry if there are typos galore and grammar mistakes aplenty.
EDIT: |
The fuck?
While I might not be a good, average or even acceptable designer, I would never take advice from someone who does.... that... that big chunk of unparseable text.. |
There's people that hate flash for the wrong reasons. Yes, it is proprietary technology but it's use is widespread and it keeps evolving and in many, many cases gets the job done. Sure it can lead to security flaws but there are fewer with each update. There are open alternatives, but none will display consistent across platforms and browsers the way that flash does. Alternatives are standards compliant, to standards brought about to do what flash does in a broken-ass way like most open source does when your tools are not up to the task.
I see a ton of demos with CSS and the Canvas tag that leave me marveling in their complexity, then when i ask why nobody else is doing these things we go back to the complexity involved in their creation.
If your new technologies, even if they are standards compliant, lack a good set of tools for the average guy to pick up and their delivery isn't consistent out of the box then we use what works for now and let the other stuff mature. This is a problem I see with these new technologies, that as far as browsers go they see complying to these standards as the Chief Justices do in trying to interpret the constitution. There are interests involved in both that are a hinderance to the progress of adoption of these new technologies. The other one just works. |
It's a Microsoft standard.
Which the overwhelming majority of the world is still using. How long has OO been out for, now?
>What percentage of the world uses HTML? Or a posix compliant OS?
Does it matter? Or more accurately, how many apps have succeeded based on their standards-compiance in these fields?
You can make anything you like a 'standard' - but if the rest of the planet is already using something else, it isn't going to make much difference. Which is also partly why IE is still around (and will never go away).
MS Exchange isn't a standards-compliant email server either - doesn't seem to have slowed down the uptake. |
That's a strange article to choose, considering its actually one of his more balanced ones, and is quite an interesting read for someone like me, who is interested in both iOS and Android (I also use both a PC running Win 7 / Ubuntu, and a Mac).
>"I’d like to stay up to date on Android, and on Android apps."
Why would he want to do that if he were a blind Apple fanboy?
I mean, I want to do that! If there was a cheap, iPod Touch-like Android device (without a phone contract), I'd buy it.
>"That’s not to say there’s nothing in Android, as a system, that appeals to iPhone owners. Built-in turn-by-turn navigation on certain models. A system-wide notification system. Widgets on the homescreen. Over-the-air system updates. Unrestricted background processing for third-party apps, battery-life be damned. But those are things that are built into the system itself, or which otherwise come from Google."
That doesn't sound like blind Android hate. In fact, that makes Android sound very appealing. A blind Apple fanboy would ignore the good things about Android, just like Android fanboys ignore the good things about iOS.
>I’m not saying Android is in trouble. The opposite, in fact: I think it’s going to continue growing — in terms of handset sales — despite this. And maybe as Android handset sales grow, this situation will change, and developers will start creating exclusive killer apps for the platform, drawn by the size of the market.
He thinks Android will continue to do well, even though, in his opinion (everyone is allowed to have one!), there aren't any "killer apps" that people flock to Android for, besides the OS itself.
>"At this point, I’m guessing, Android fans are ready to exclaim that the fact that Android supports things like home screen replacements (or other system-level tools, such as touchscreen keyboard replacements) — and that iOS does not — is precisely why they prefer Android, and/or consider iOS to be an unacceptable toy, or what have you. But, again, that’s not the argument I’m making. I’m talking about third-party developer exclusives — and the only ones Android has are ones that Apple doesn’t want."
He's not trying to say that Android sucks because it isn't iOS. In fact he's not saying "Android sucks" at all! He's just making a point that Android's exclusive apps are not exclusive by choice of the developer, because many Android devs want their apps to also be available in the iOS App Store, but can't do it because Apple won't let them ! If Apple let everything into its store, Android would have little to no exclusive apps. |
This is the biggest problem with this stupid article. Anonymous is just people from 4chan. If you read the comments in the article the OP goes on to call anonymous a movement that grew from something small and acts as if it's centralized or something. The whole thing is a load of crap.
Essentially /b/ gets outraged about something or wants to do something for the lulz and half the posts call them newfags and cancer while the other half actually goes on to raid and post pics and hide behind over 9000 proxies and all that other garbage. Assuming /b/ didn't become organized since last I went on there it's pretty clear nobody really knows what they are doing and likely caught some dumbasses who were just going along with the ddos attacks and maybe posted in the thread. |
best description i've seen so far.
the first variety only has the incentive of achieving lulz. will this get a ton of peoples panties in a bundle? will a bunch of morons who think they know whats going on (including redditfags like those within this own thread) talk about it and hilariously mangle all the facts? is it really easy for me to participate?
then many people will join in.
the second variety is obviously a bit more organized, and usually guide all the casual people joining in on the activity.
the fact of the matter is that there is never any leaders per say, just sometimes people who know whats going on more than others.
another fact is that at some point they will all get bored, if the lulz are not flowing freely enough anymore, and move on to whatever else catches their interest. at which point seeing threads like these where everyone is circlejerking over what they did and pretending like they can explain what happened, they just sit back and laugh at. |
Sounds like people are saying that its incorrect to single Apple out because this is basically the ordinary way of doing business in the whole computer manufacturing industry.
I think that the bottom line will always trump whatever moral or legal hangups people have when it comes right down to it. Its too easy to say "everyone takes advantage of that and I won't stay in business if I don't". The problem is business is like playing a computer game where everyone has their own server keeping track of how many points they each have, most people are running separate servers for their own minigames, and there is no way for the central server to directly influence the points. Its like if instead of PunkBuster, you had to submit a brief to EA Games every time you found out someone was cheating.
But its worse than that because everyone's life depends on the outcome of this game, and all of the players being taken advantage of are someone's children (or were at one point). What if the servers had a setting that couldn't be changed so that everyone in Asia playing Battlefield 3 took 4 times as long to level up as anyone in Europe or North America?
You can make all of the laws you want, when money is involved people will find a way around them. I think that we need to change the way money works so that rules can affect transactions directly. Although I also think that no single organization or government should have a monopoly on regulating transactions. There should instead be a market of social accounting institutions to choose from. That way everyone has to report what they are buying and selling and who they are and we can make rules that directly tax or credit transactions based on ethics or fairness or whatever. Because the laws on paper don't work, and we know we can't trust government monopolies to make the rules.
Before you say, "that's ridiculous I don't want the government to affect all the details of every transaction" -- first of all, I am not saying have one government organization do it, I am saying have a bunch of organizations that we can choose from. I'm saying end the government monopoly on regulation since it doesn't work. Also, we already have to submit detailed documentation of all of our transactions in the form of tax forms. The government uses taxes and credits to reward people that benefit it (giant corporations) and take from anyone else that it can (ordinary people). If you want credit for any particular thing that the rules say you are supposed to get credit for, you have to fill it out on a form as a deduction. I am saying automate that (without any single group having a monopoly on it), but go further because many of the biggest problems are directly tied to the bottom line of corporations. So you also want to be able to add taxes or credits immediately to business transactions.
Here is an example of how it might work: there is a social accounting institution called "Human Rights Accounting, Inc.". This is one of many different social accounting institutions, some of which are more generalized, others are more focused in particular areas of ethics, fairness, ecological concern, holistic monitoring, or whatever. In order to purchase a product, the consumer's bank and the retailer's bank must both be subscribed to some of the same social accounting institutions, according to rules specified by the consumer. Consumers and banks can subscribe to as many different institutions as they want. The rule though is that everyone must display or at least readily disclose the set of social accounting institutions they are subscribed to.
So if Human Rights Accounting finds out that Apple still has two factories in China using child labor (or are contracted with companies that own those factories), it can either stop doing business with them entirely (which would mean that every consumer subscribed would not be able to purchase Apple products), or it can try to alter Apple's behavior by penalizing transactions. So Human Rights Accounting would find out which products were being produced using child labor and add a tax to both ends of the transactions. That means that consumers buying those products have to pay an extra, say 20% 'Child Labor Fee' and Apple loses its own 20% 'Child Labor Fee'. These taxes occur immediately within the actual purchase transaction. If the taxes are adequate, then the bottom line for Apple will immediately require them to either unsubscribe from Human Rights Accounting, losing all of those customers, or correct the child labor issue. |
In that the same paragraph it says:
> Amazon has also administered its own app store for Android devices
Which, at first impression led me to believe that "also" meant "in addition to Google's app store". In rereading, I'm not so sure... |
the special offers aren't as terrible as it may seem. You don't see them at all when you're reading your books. When you put it to sleep an add will cover the screen. I've found some the special offers to be pretty sweet. Free $10 any video game, $40 amazon gift card just for signing up for their chase/amazon credit card, $0.99 select books which usually run $9.99+, i've used a few others i can't think of. |
Oh contraire.
Web servers have this ability to log every URL served up and the corresponding IPs. Since this was a URL "hack", they should have this traffic logged. They have the means to determine if this was perpetrated by others.
Here is how this financial firm sees this:
You have a fish tank with $5,000 worth of fish in it. You go away for the weekend and have your neighbor Dave feed the fish. Dave stops by but instead of grabbing the fish food from the cupboard, he snags the rat poison. He realizes he fed your fish rat poison. Then he proceeds to dump the rest of the rat poison in the tank at which he procalims "whoa, you could pour a whole can of rat poison in this tank."
Dave calls your sister's house. Your sister hangs up and tells you some dude poured a can of rat poison in your fish tank. You call the cops because that's felony property destruction. Get a hold of Dave and he says you shouldn't leave your rat poison next to the fish food because someone could feed your fish a whole can of rat poison, and that kills the fish.
At some point you think Dave owes you some money for the fish, but he has a point. You shouldn't leave the rat poison by the fish food. |
because people simply aren't willing to pay $60 for a game that has been out 6 months<
That is because most games aren't worth $60 to begin with.
Today developers are releasing betas for $60, then "fixing it" base on feedback through out the year. All while releasing DLC at an extra cost which are mostly( not all cases ) viewed as features that should of been there from the start. Then 1 year later they then release a bundle pack for $60 for the game and DLC. |
In the sense that they would be fair to the consumers like steam whose always got some amazing sales then it would be a great addition. However its going to be how it currently is. All the games you can buy digitally on Xbox Live are overpriced. Some of the games match the regular price on Steam, but on Steam sales come around. They won't do sales on Xbox and I think that's whats scaring everybody. TBH I don't care about Gamestop, in truth they steal money from the developers anyway. |
ARM is a microprocessor architecture that is designed to provide computer capabilities in low-power devices, playing the same role as Intel or AMD (typically called "x86" architecture) processors and supporting chipsets do in desktops and laptops, but with more electrical power efficiency at the cost of less performance.
Different companies have implemented processors based on ARM architecture, and they are used today in most tablets and smartphones, iPhone and iPad included, because it is suited to the performance and battery life constraints of those devices.
Windows 8 will have a version capable of running on ARM processors to enable low-power, long-battery life tablet implementations. These will be able to run the Windows 8 "Metro" UI and apps but will not be able to run traditional Windows desktop applications. There will be a version of MS Office on ARM which will look like the normal desktop apps but will be a version produced especially for ARM.
This should not be controversial: ARM and x86 are fundamentally incompatible and to run normal Windows apps would require either all the Win32 APIs to be ported to the ARM architecture and the applications to be recompiled (which means not all apps would be made available anyway) or some sort of emulation to be provided (which would be slow and use lots of power). Either solution is very sub-optimal. |
Kinda yeah. PC users seem a bit self-righteous to me. I'm currently on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I've learned the in's and out's of the OS. I have no troubles with it, no legacy problems at all, and I hardly ever see metro aside from searching and starting up a few programs like rStudio or Spotify, which is all neatly organized on the start menu. Even when I do see metro, it's not a bad experience, in fact I think it's as good as it was before, sometimes better, searching extends to apps and within them, as well as programs and settings, copying/pasting and deleting things is much more detailed and controllable, and the task manager is awesome. I'm running it on a SSD and it's stupid fast. I can cold start this thing in 8 seconds. |
Honestly, it's more that the upvoting system is in favor of quick sensational titles and image posts as a post sinking or floating will typically depend on the first 10 or so upvotes it gets. Unfortunately actually reading through an article or lines of text tends to take time which proceeds to cause the post to drop off the spectrum in being viewed as reddit works on such a fast pace system. The fact that it has a more biased nature toward sensationalized posts is a big problem imo, albeit one I don't blame redditors on so much as this sort of flawed system in these very quick paced make or break decision making involved. |
Oh jeez, not slander again. I know it's not technology related, but please hear me out on my personal slander story.
My dad owned a multi-million dollar skateboard company named Acme Skateboards that he built from the ground up and at one point was on a path to be competing with big names in the industry (hell, I'd say it was a big name if Skrillix gets nostalgic about his first board being one of my dad's . One of these big names was World Industries, who "kept the industry comprised of like-minded people" by giving all the attention to a select few skaters/companies and slandering others through skate magazines (coincidentally the main magazine they used was, in irony of the punk-rock image they were selling, named Big Brother). At the time, this campaign was led by a man named Steve Rocco, whose notorious acts can be summed up pretty well in just the title of the documentary made about his career: [The Man Who Souled The World]( After getting fed up with his team riders being ignored because of Rocco's invisible hand over things, my dad decided to run an ad exposing but slandering their slander. Instant lawsuit. My dad didn't want to go to court, even though he was convinced he would win, and instead settled out for millions.
From there, it was all downhill. People were very hesitant to do business with him because the "scary giant" of the industry "had a death warrant out for him" (his words). After years of declining profits, my dad went bankrupt. After a failed attempt at a partnership with another skate-industry tycoon, Brad Dorfman of Vision Street Wear (though that guy just flat out refused to give my dad any money despite bringing him lots of new customers), he now runs a small decal shop with the few machines he was able to get from Brad, which hasn't been very profitable. |
Quite frankly, taking an ipad that was left behind at the checkpoint is not the same as stealing it. Perhaps what this man did was a little sketchy and greedy, yes, but it wasn't a crime. He didn't remove an ipad from anyone's bag, he just took one that someone left behind, possibly without any obvious markings on it to help track down the owner.
What CBS news did here was no "Sting operation"; it was entrapment. Its like leaving a wallet (lets say it has no credit cards or id that are easily visible, if they are there at all) on a park bench and tracking down the guy who picks it up to drag him through the mud, tell him what a horrible person he is, and make him lose his job. Should he have made an effort to find the owner? maybe. Does he deserve being publicly defamed? maybe, if you have a harsh sense of justice. Did he steal the wallet? no.
There may or may not be a real issue here with stealing and the TSA, but this particular case is a sensationalistic stretch at best. |
If you look at the feasibility aspect of completely taking down TPB now, it just shot up drastically with their move to the cloud. Yes the cloud is stored in actual physical servers that can be raided but the amount of money, time, and overall manpower that would be needed to completely take down all possible servers that could host TPB sky-rocketed.
And before raids on the servers can even happen, the hosts need to (somehow) find out that they are in fact hosting TPB, the government or large corporations have to find the load balancer and the transit router... AND THEN on top of that there is a good chance that there are a multitude of laws and legal loopholes that can be taken if raids on the cloud servers ever occur.
So |
The level of complexity and immensity that TPD has taken to protect itself and protect its users has astounded me. It is exactly like some kind of corporate conspiracy movie. It is Minority Report-style conspiracy, just with less precogs. Yet... so what's the next step?
Remove the staff.
Remove the owners.
Remove the users.
Remove the nations.
Remove the people. |
The only reason I ever pirate is to "fight the corporations" honestly I'm quite happy buying collector additions of games or dvds, but the moment you chuck on always online drm or charge more than 5% extra on a digital distribution than another country then I'm pirating or more likely ignoring that and the next 5 things I would have payed for from that publisher/distributer/whoever was in charge of that decision. |
Things are Netflix and Spotify are great, but they aren't quite there yet. In countries other than the U.S. these services either don't exist yet, or they have a terrible selection. Also, a BIG problem at this point (at least for me) is TV. I want to be able to stream new episodes when they come out, not have to wait several years for the latest season to come out on Netflix (if the show is even on Netflix) or wait to buy the BluRay. Game of Thrones is the perfect example, because I would definitely pay for the right to watch it online, but that service is only available a) in the US and b) if you pay for cable. Part of the fight with the RIAA and the MPAA is that they are likely the ones that are holding back the possibilities for better online streaming services with better selections and etc. |
I think the morals of anyone who thinks pirate bay is fighting the good fight or that piracy isn't theft are seriously perverted. It's a case where people believe they have the right because they haven't thought through the actual implications, they think they have the right because it's easy to pirate and they can dissociate the victims from their actions. One argument is that Internet piracy does not remove the actual physical content but this is a poor argument, not only is the user still taking a product without paying, but when scaled up the action is devastating to artists and the companies that represent them. Say what you will about companies in the entertainment business, they keep artists alive and give them the chance to live their dreams and some artists release content themselves and people still steal it, they don't know the difference. Stealing does not equal freedom fighting, it means you are an immoral thief, that is all. I'm fine with you doing it, but don't act like your a fucking hero for stealing the new Coldplay album or whatever the fuck... I'm an artist I release my music for free, but if I didn't I'd hope people wouldn't steal it in the name of freedom... |
The fact that people seem to think its ok. Lets say someone here flips burgers for a living. Every burger they sell, they make a percentage of that burger. A costumer walks up and wants a burger and eats it before paying. Afterwords he says "man, that burger was pretty good, but you know, I don't really feel like paying for it. Oh yeah, everyone does this." You're stuck there with your dick in your hand, collecting your hourly wage while you could have made a bit more from that percentage. Granted that's not how burgers work, but nobody likes to make less money and to be stolen from by a society that thinks that they are entitled to free stuff in some way. |
You guys are missing the point. Once most people become a billionaire, they will no longer sympathize with the poor, as the "they should just work harder and provide for themselves just like I did" mentality will set in, especially if they worked their way to billionaire status instead of winning the lottery. There are still rich humanitarians, but a lot of them are just doing it for tax purpose or for publicity. |
It's a weird notion isn't it, that any digitally-represented IP is essentially one very large number. There are lots of ways to interpret that number, and only one of them is the copyrighted IP in question.
Can we then, say that large numbers are copyrightable?
Expanded because I'm being asked questions : My point here is that numbers and quantities may then be transposed to any other representation. A sufficiently large herd of sheep could be positioned such that their coordinates may be composed to form an x264 rip of your favourite movie.
Given then that digital representations are infinitely abstractable, infinitely composeable and have so much collision surface area, the only practical difference between the use of a large number as an encryption key and the interpretation of the same number as an MP4 file is the intent behind this instance of the publication of the number (i.e. the intended mode of reassembly at the consuming end). |
For the people that have a hard time understanding how this works.
User => TPB Transit Routers => TPB Load Balancer => Cloud Servers
All the information on the Cloud servers is encripted so only the Load Balancer can read it. The Cloud hosts themselves to not know they are hosting TPB data, as far as they know it's just another private company. Also, only the Load Balancer knows where the Cloud Servers are, so even if someone was able to find the Load Balancer they they would first have to decrypt the Load Balancer, find the Cloud Host and shut them down. All with in 8 hours. Given that the Cloud host are in a different country than TPB Load Balancer, it would be nearly impossible to have any legal action taken against the Cloud Host in 8 hours.
Transit Routers are just the routers that connect you with TPB, it's a long chain. |
content licence theft" would be technically correct, while still maintaining the use of the word "theft".
Seeing copyright infringement being equated with "theft" irks me the same way misusing "literally" does, it has nothing to do with guilt avoidance. |
I am pretty sure this kind of strategy is deterministic in its consequence. Obscuring the source of piracy doesn't alleviate the consequence of piracy.
Here's the thing guys, let's use the taxation analogy. There is a certain amount of tax that must be obtained in order for the revenues to equal expenses. Think of a business or a government. If taxes don't pay for expenses then you have debt and ultimately you have failure. This doesn't mean that taxes are in terms of dollars. You can tax things like patience, good will and whole systems too.
Now by moving the PB data into the cloud you are effectively making it harder for the revenues to be collected; in this case, revenues from IP or the ability to penalize those who download illegally (dimensions of justice, rectification). But also revenues in terms of trust, morality etc.
Whether society gets it revenue from people doing the right thing or by limiting freedoms through legislation ( forcing them to do the right thing) it still seeks to balance the ledger. This means that the we are dealing with a finite system (and the theory that goes along with it); you can move it in time and space but all debts must be paid eventually. Sounds like spiritual karma doesn't it? Same type of system.
Ultimately, in such cases, freedom itself becomes too expensive for a society to tolerate and it gets legislated out of existence, often by those who are seeking to keep society afloat. In other words, those who do right end up paying for those who do wrong.
Remember, the only person you ultimately rob is yourself. Piracy is something for kids. Let's make a society of which we can be proud. |
So what's the |
This will sound incredibly naive and maybe even stupid to some people, but as a journalism student these news make me very agitated. This is exactly the kind of situation that made me pursue journalism. If I had money or an employer I would be on my way to Syria right now, or probably I would have been there earlier, or I would be in the DRC. This bastardly, cowardly insult towards the rights of the syrian people goes to show that we still need journalists, we need people who are willing to risk their lives and dive head-first into shit and blood and shrapnel. They are necessary.
The Internet is the single most revolutionary innovation in communication, there is no doubt about that, however as it is set up so that parts of it can be isolated or shut down completely, with social media being incapacited at the same time, there needs to be traditional journalism at work. Trained professionals who don't care about their lives as much as they do about making crucial information available for the world. As much as the internet likes to shit on "mainstream" media there is still purpose and need for it. I know that the bloated media corporations which operate on a news-for-profit basis make people angry. But believe me, the men and women reporting from the DRC or Syria right now, they acknowledge and accept the risks and if need be will give up their lives if they are able to make a difference.
Dozens of brave souls have already perished in the cities-turned-battlefields, just so that they could deliver information for YOU to read. The syrian conflict has been very bloody for the journalists there, if it's just coincidence or a deliberate attack against them, I do not know. But I know this: it will not stop others from picking up their work and at times like these, when the average Joes and Jills have been deprived of their means of communicating, they are needed more than ever. They are necessary. |
I agree. I've been reading the comments on this thread for the past hour and have been in a frustrated and disgusted state after learning about this incident. I understand this may be a way of preventing some sort of attack, or even as basic of a military tactic as destroying a bridge, but the thought of families not being able to contact their relatives to make sure people are alive.. it has me completely pissed off at a situation on the complete other side of the world. But, that being said, this comment actually brought a smile to my face and relieved those tensions for just a very brief moment. |
You're right, but this flaw is secretly why the security council is pretty great precisely because everyone has to agree. If all 6 nations agree, then you can be sure it is serious. If not, you can't be sure. Is this a situation that is serious enough? Totally. That doesn't mean that inaction is the inevitable result of UNSC votes. Without this forum, problems would likely balloon out of control quickly, turning civil wars into regional conflicts more frequently (which is something the UN often does intervene in at least to some pitiful degree: see DRC for details). |
Total allowable addresses:
IPv4: 4,294,967,296
IPv6: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000
Currently the majority of networks use IPv4.
IPv4:
This is a 32-bit binary number, but we divide this into 4 octets (an octet is 8 bits) and express it as a decimal number. [Binary is not hard to learn.](
Decimal: 192.168.1.0
Binary: 11000000.10101000.00000001.00000000
^(Note: When you are accessing a website, the DNS - aka Domain Name System, is actually masking the IP address that you see above with a "word" so it's easier to remember. Who would want to type every time they wanted to go to Google? Think of DNS as a phone-book.)
IPv6:
This is a 128-bit binary number, but we divide this into 8 groups of 4 digits and use hexidecimal notation (as opposed to decimal) to express it. [Hex is easy too.](
IPv6 address: 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf |
I have problems with the way the information is organized within the text (and, thus, generally within behavioral neuroscience, as this textbook is widely used within graduate schools ). An example can be found in the way the definitions of disorders and cortical areas are grouped. (E.g. Contralateral neglect and asomatognosia are viewed separately, but in reality they symptomatically overlap. Both share spot on cognitive deficits which can be traced to the areas in which the damage occurred.)
I was not trying to sound smart. Rather, I was explaining how I would use my time if I had the time to do it. By explaining this to you, I am attempting to show that I'm not just full of shit and that this is something that I've actually given a lot of thought about.
Yes, there are a lot of people on the internet who like to act like they are smart... and this is exactly the reason why I said what I originally did. It's fucking frustrating for those of us with high IQs because we are so easily dismissed as conceited or 'wanna-be smart ppl' when, in reality, all we want to do is help. In this case, I was trying to illustrate the depression many people with high IQs suffer from due to this very issue. (Existential Depression) |
From Huffington Post:
Content delivery network CloudFlare said in a blog post that it believes Syria's mainline to the Internet, controlled by the government-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE), was deliberately severed.
"Syria has 4 physical cables that connect it to the rest of the Internet. Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously. That is unlikely to have happened. [...] While we cannot know for sure, our network team estimates that Syria likely has a small number of edge routers. All the edge routers are controlled by Syrian Telecommunications. The systematic way in which routes were withdrawn suggests that this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut." |
I have one, it doesn't do that well against good sized house flies.. tends to stun more than kill. But it does do a pretty damn good job of ruining their wings, so they're easy prey after you land the first shot. Kills bigger things too, point blank, downed a couple good sized wolf spiders and the like.
We purchased two, and the one I claimed as my own ended up having some problems after about a dozen shots. It was incredibly hard to pull the pump back and even harder to pull the trigger after disengaging the safety(I needed to use both hands to pull the trigger). I took it apart and took the circular spring off of the safety mechanism which rendered it useless, but fixed the problem I had with the stiff trigger. They also had a little piston with a spring attached to the main body of the gun that would lock into a hole in the pump slide, essentially acting as a lock for the pump. It must have settled or something after a few shots because it did it's job too well, so I took that out, as well, along with the stupid little pop up sight, because fuck that stupid thing. Now it works like a charm, and I don't have to disengage the safety after every shot, win-win. The other gun works like it did out of the box, it's probably been shot a few hundred times now, so I think I just got unlucky with the one. Anywho, I recommend this thing, it's a really fun form of pest control and the amount of salt it fires doesn't create a mess. |
I'm pretty sure most of Reddit doesn't care about TOS's at this point. Case in point: |
I don't think Qwest exists anymore. They refused to assist in the NSA wiretapping program, and several years later their CEO was convicted of insider trading. He's now serving six years in prison. |
I'm a dispute manager in Australia, and who has worked at several major telcos and I just want to point out different geographies different economy of scales.
Being cloaes to the US backbone means there are hundreds of routes, traffic doesn't have to cross the globe.
For most countries the majority of their internet usage is murica and thus the cost of transmission weighs heavily in pricing.
Look im not saying telcos aren't wealthy and don't make money. But glib statements about the industry on a global forum like reddit can easily give people the wrong idea.
In the last ten years I've spoken/resolved tens of thousands of disputes. I've managed wholesale and carrier pricing and I know what the big end of town gets. Is that end of town who pays alot compared to consumers, the reason being the real mechanism to control costs in the consumer market. It ain't data usage caps but "contention ratios"; how many customers to every mbps you how. Generally cheap providers have more customers provisioned to every mbps of transmission they have compared to premium providers who have more mbps.
In any casethe key as always is the opportunity to beware of your cap via your providers online account management service.
If its crap or u don't like it then its in your own interest to find one. Hell my ISP is so well liked customers programed their own chrome plugins so we can see from our browsers how many cats we've downloaded. |
Honestly, the dad should blame himself. If some can send that many text and you know you will pay for them then you need to watch out for that shit. Like a parent giving their kid an ipad thinking that nothing can go wrong because it's just their kid with an ipad. Maybe the parents should read shit about in-app purchases and watch what their kids do instead of not paying attention to them and letting the device occupy/parent them. Same thing with tv ratings. Oh your kid wants to watch this/that show? Watch them first yourself.
Fucking parents wanting other people to parent for them, and electronics to come with parental controls so they don't have to parent. Also, applies to sex education and a lot more stuff, but that is way off topic. |
I spend most of my time near a computer, so I've never had any desire to have a data plan on my phone.
And I'm [spoiled]( anyway. I've never been able to convince myself that the benefits of any smartphone are worth giving up superior performance in every aspect except some portability. I'm an outlier though. |
Complaining about 128MB of RAM as your first computer? Damn dude, I remember having to configure boot disks to allocate the 4MB to 8MB of RAM available so I could play Wing Commander. We ran on HDDs measured in MB and we loved it! |
I think this is going in the right direction. Learning how to program makes you better at whatever you choose to do in life, in my opinion. It gets you used to addressing problems by yourself and seeing them through to completion. You learn how to work through an entire solution process, including:
Gathering information
Planning
Breaking down the solution into manageable steps
Safely and efficiently exploring unfamiliar systems
Learning as you go
Using an iterative process
Testing
Applying that math junk that people say they never use
For me I'd say the best thing to pick up from programming, and something they should stress if this ends up going anywhere, is getting used to exploring unfamiliar systems or technology. You have to be willing to poke and prod in a logical manner, using the resources at your disposal to make educated guesses about how to accomplish steps that lead to completing your ultimate task. I have yet to meet anyone better than programmers at doing this. It's basically number one in our job description, "Will be given black boxes of random shit and will have to figure out how to do X with it without breaking the box."
Also, I think there is much to be gained from creating a program by yourself, using technology that you can access at home if you so desire. You feel the sense of accomplishment, enhanced by the fact that you learn how to be self reliant (aside from the teacher student relationship). Rather than, say, creating traditional art like writing or painting, you get the opportunity to experience building something. For me, the difference between creating in the sense of art, and building in the sense of programming, is that for art most of the beauty lies with the finished product. With programming, most of the beauty lies in the process.
But that's the nature of building something. You have a spec, you stick to it. The rest is how you reach the end goal. If high school students could become even a little accustomed to the process of building as it relates to problem solving in a general sense (can't get much more general than programming), they'll be better at addressing problems in many different areas of their life and career, and they'll be able to do it calmly and confidently.
I'm sure I'm expecting too much from a high school program, but as a programmer I really can't stress enough how much programming has enhanced my ability to confidently address any problem that may arise. It's very empowering. |
Just checked Nokia's us website (I'm assuming your American, sorry if I am wrong) and they do not have an online store. So they need to set up the online infrastructure for an online store, then they need to rent warehouse space (for arguments sake lets say in Asia just so they can pass the shipping costs to consumers and if they end up not selling they can easily add them onto a shipment to a market where they know they will sell). Once the warehouse space is rented they need to take the "limited stock" (again arguments sake lets say limited stock is 100,000 units (a rather low number for this example) now if they have a 25% profit margin on these phones that cost $20 they are paying $15 to make each one, which would put them at $1,500,000 before the cost of renting the warehouse space and paying for the website. Then they need to pay for someone to send out orders and upkeep of the site. Your looking at about $1,300,000 that they are spending upfront and not knowing if they will get a decent return. |
TL;DW
S3 can't handle the basic drop test and shatters from chest height. iPhone can sustain drops from chest high, but cracks at head, still works. Lumia 920, takes minor body scuffs from any height, but instead cracks asphalt, no screen damage. Cracked iPhone survives keys and knife test with little to no blemishes (except on sides), and hammer merely worsens existing cracks. Lumia 920 gets very minor scuffs from keys and knife (mainly on side), again, no screen damage. 920 survive hammer flawlessly, then is used (screen side) to hammer in a nail. Still only minor scuffs appear. Final destruction run; 920 can be run over, thrown and smashed, but only breaks if you hit it 50 feet with a 2x4 (still didn't shatter). 920 finally shattered after being thrown into a concrete block. iPhone cracks worse from car, but still works, and breaks after being tossed in the air about 25 ft.
As a bonus: |
I'm pretty uniformed when it comes to putting shit on the moon and transmitting HD video, that said, $20m doesn't seem like enough. Does anyone have any idea how much it would cost for a private company to accomplish something like this? |
Doesn't look like they took into effect possible seasonal changes ("do sales of X increase during Y months?") nor if the sales were all of particular movies that were big blockbusters. They also didn't correlate the continual torrent availability of the same movies that were big sellers.
Also be interesting if the study was funded in part by the MPAA or similar. |
This "SOPA' (CISPA) has provisions in it that don't protect confidentiality or civil liberties. It also allows companies to provide confidential information without your consent if the government asks for it, warrantless and even without suspicion. They have legal immunity when doing this, so there's no incentive to stand up for user rights. |
Stop freaking the fuck out for no reason, internet. Reddit looks like a goddamn Tea Party rally right now. Seriously, it's like watching a thousand clones of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly typographically blow each other.
[Read](
[all](
[of](
[these.](
He was a lobbyist for cable TV and wireless when they were the little guys. He was fostering competition by going after the big networks and telcos that ran everything. He lobbied for things like increased wireless spectrum, and against cell phones being banned from public use because some people who didn't understand how radiation works were freaking the fuck out back then. The guy doesn't sound bad at all. He actually sounds really good from what is being reported on sites that aren't just freaking the fuck out over the word 'lobbyist', or the ones that are just spinning it that way because that headline gets them more hits and advertising dollars. |
In the analogy of a computer, if the computer was the system in this case, then the operating system and all the software has all gone rogue, as though some plague has torn through making everything inoperable. You, as the computer user, know you will see the faithful BSOD pretty soon. The system is so shot now that it would be easier to start over. Wipe the slate clean and try something else, because this whole get a small group of people to represent the interests of the people is not working. |
I voted McCain in 2008 (I liked Obama's personality and the concepts behind his incredibly rough platform but I thought that McCain's specific and already written anti-corruption reforms would be more likely to change the political environment than Obama's entirely unspecified "change"), and Obama in 2012, and I'm mostly satisfied with Obama except for a few key points of contention. I'd give him a C- as president so far based on the fact that I get a good 7 or 8 things I like for every "WTF Obama" moment. I'd rather have none of those moments, but that doesn't seem to be possible these days.
In 2008 Obama seemed like a nice guy but offered few real concrete ideas while McCain had concrete reforms that would improve the country while not (at the time) being an incredibly partisan puppet. I voted for the man who had a plan, but I wasn't dissatisfied with either result. 2008 to me was a win-win election, the only one I've seen in my life. In 2012 Obama had the plan, he had the philosophy, and he had the experience while Romney ran on a shaky and undefined platform of which I liked very little and ran on a campaign of hate and lies. The choice was much clearer than 2008, Romney and Ryan should never get near the presidency. Unfortunately, Obama's platform still can't get off the ground and probably never will with congress (on both sides) having their current attitudes. |
We need to have a guy working for the government (who will now be referred to Steve). Steve's sole job will be to call bullshit on various politicians (even the president). When Steve calls bullshit, the person who is called out has 24 hours to amend his/her bullshit or to drop it all together. Steve will then review the amended bullshit (hopefully no longer bullshit. If Steve calls bullshit a second time, the bullshitter gets one more chance to correct his bullshit. If he fails to fix his bullshit a third time, he is no longer allowed to peruse the course of said bullshit.
i.e. Obama nominates this cable and wireless industries lobbyist for chairman of FCC. Steve calls bullshit. Obama then has to find someone else to fill the position. If Obama gets called out for bullshit on the next two candidates, the decision goes to the VP. So on and so forth. |
Your title is true, but it is unintentionally misleading since the term 'lobbyist' is taken by most to mean 'evil corporate shill for the fascist overlords'. The story linked to, however, is intentionally misleading. Here are a few other takes on the story that paint a much more realistic picture of the situation:
[Read](
[all](
[of](
[these.](
He was a lobbyist for cable TV and wireless when they were the little guys. He was fostering competition by going after the big networks and telcos that ran everything. He lobbied for things like increased wireless spectrum, and against cell phones being banned from public use because some people who didn't understand how radiation works were freaking the fuck out back then. The guy doesn't sound bad at all. He actually sounds really good from what is being reported on sites that aren't just freaking the fuck out over the word 'lobbyist', or the ones that are just spinning it that way because that headline gets them more hits and advertising dollars. |
I'm an extremst and I do use Gmail and skype to make people believe I live a normal internet life but everything else goes to the darknet/Tor |
This is less remarkable than it appears.
Most of what Google indexes is the text of websites. This is a tiny fraction of the data that web servers send to you. Google doesn't index most graphic elements or any videos. They index only a small percentage of pictures. They don't index any pictures at all from sites designed to store pictures like flickr or imgur.
The index people use when they Google things is mostly a text deal.
Suppose you Google "Russian dash cam video." Those keywords on a Russian dash cam video page plus the link to the page itself will be much less than 1K bytes in size. But the video itself will be tens of megabytes. The only thing searchable about the video will be the text fields that caption it, which are a tiny fraction of the data the server sends you. |
agreed. I am sure they do use these, or at least come into contact with them occasionally. Also, I just hate the "well it's pointless because the high level organizations wouldn't be stupid enough.. blah blah blah" argument. It's not about whether or not it's 100% successful, the argument is that if it's even remotely successful, and stops one thing then it's worth the invasion into your personal privacy that you may never know happened.
So, the argument back should be, no, it's not worth it. The Fourth Amendment is in place for a reason, and we can't give up our liberties even a bit, understanding that maybe, possibly, that one time the spying was successful wouldn't happen and some attack could.
Not saying which side I land on, I just want people to make better arguments. |
The NSA's programs violate statutory provisions of FISA, as well as the Fourth Amendment.
FISA permits surveillance, without court order:
within the United States for up to one year unless the "surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party", or
within the United States for up to 72 hours after surveillance begins if a United States person is involved.
If you are a United States person, it should seem clear that the NSA's effort to store every electronic communication you've made in the last decade in a data center in Utah is in clear violation of FISA, if not the Fourth Amendment, as well.
So how does the administration justify its actions? They fight the allegations on multiple fronts.
According to Barack Obama and Eric Holder, (just as Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney have also argued):
These programs are a state secret, so no court can have jurisdiction to hear a case on whether these provisions violate FISA or the Consititution -- not even the FISA courts.
Neither you, nor any other group, can be certain what these programs are doing, so you can't show "standing," in court. That is, until you can prove these programs exist and are infringing on your rights, you can't sue the government for implementing them.
By storing surveillance data electronically and automatically, no person is "directly" involved. Ergo, it's not surveillance at all.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists gives broad authority to the President to enact these programs without FISA court oversight.
A refresher on this last point: the AUMF was signed into law one week after 9/11. It authorized the President to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
The Bush Administration saw opportunity in that authorization, and asserted in legal opinions that if the President can dream up any authority that would help fight terrorism, then he is immediately granted that authority by congress through the AUMF.
I found this last argument untenable, as did a freshman senator named Barack Obama in October 2007, when he promised to filibuster any attempt to provide blanket immunity to telecommunication companies who cooperated with these programs. Unfortunately, eight months later, Senator Obama had wrapped up the Democratic party's nomination for the presidency, and felt it best not to keep his promise of a filibuster. Since taking office, President Obama has forwarded each of the arguments of the Bush Administration without any hesitation or apology. |
The bill of rights isn't exactly a "law" in the typical understanding, however. There is no penalty set out in the constitution itself for violating it. The courts simply issue orders demanding the government stop enforcing laws or taking actions which violate it.
Calling what the NSA is doing "illegal" is a misleading oversimplification. A more complete statement would be to say that the laws that allow this (as interpreted by the NSA anyway) are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the courts have not yet validated this statement, and don't seem particularly likely to do so soon. |
Sorry to disappoint, but no.
The quantum entanglement is instantaneous, but deriving information from it, is not. |
For the even even even lazier: |
If anyone is interested I've been a pilot for about 16 years and have worked in Avionics for the last 8. I currently work for a company that I'd be willing to bet almost everyone in this subreddit has used at some point. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you guys have about this kind of stuff. However here are some points:
Even if the FAA changes the rules on this (all aviation rule making is currently suspended however due to the shut down) the Airlines will have to incorporate it into their operation specifications (OpSpecs) these are allowed to be more restrictive that the FAA rules (FARs) but carry the same weight once they are approved by the FAA. My guess is that the Airlines under some pressure from their flight attendant unions will either not choose to allow PED usage below 10K' or will drag their feet in making the changes. There are multiple reasons why PEDs haven't been allowed below 10K' up to this point: Interference with critical electronic systems. When we want to certify a box for usage in an aircraft we have to do a number of tests to certify that the EMI that is generated won't have any effect on any of the critical systems. Once that is achieved a part is given a TSO or Technical Standard Order. Obviously the vast majority of consumer electronics don't have this certification so while the chances are very very small that they could have an adverse effect on any critical systems they are still there. The advisory committee has studied this and determined that this risk is so small that it isn't worth being worried about anymore.
The second and one of the biggest reasons that PEDs have been disallowed below 10K' is because those are the most critical phases of flight. The airlines and the FAA want you to be paying attention to what is going on around you in case you have to evacuate or brace for an emergency. How many people have been so absorbed in their cell phone they have walked into traffic or into a fountain? They also want to ensure that you pay attention to the safety briefing. I fly hundreds of thousands of miles a year and probably have heard the briefing more than 2000 times in my life. Regardless every time I still pull out my headphone stow my magazine and pay attention. There is a reason that every pilot even if they have 20,000 hours still uses a checklist we are human and we do forget things especially in a stressful situation.
The last and one of the smaller reasons is because in the event of a sudden change in attitude or a sudden stop an ipad can become a flying brick. I know I wouldn't want to take one to the face.
Also remember that Gogo the widest used inflight wi-fi service doesn't operate below 10K' this is partially due to the FAA rules but also since coverage isn't always available until you reach that altitude. |
While you bring up some good points, it doesn't cover all of the bases. With your argument against the use of laptops, one could easily argue against the use of books as reading material as they can be projectiles flying around in case something goes wrong (hardcover books especially). Perhaps a laptop after a certain weight can be especially hazardous, but the use of tablets and music players should still be allowed.
Your argument for listening to music is based on the idea that people will not be able to process instructions and such if they can't hear it. That brings things such as earplugs into the equation. Why should their use be allowed if their sole purpose is to block out sound? I think most people with their headphones on can tell if something is going wrong, and if not, there should be other ways to relay that something is happening through non-auditory means.
Consider the case of someone who decides to sleep right after getting onto the plane. How would this person be able to respond in the case of an emergency? What if they were a particularly deep sleeper? In the end, in cases of emergency, it really is up to the travelers to intervene and help each other understand that something is going on. |
Too long. Didn't read. |
Exactly this. I feel like a countermeasure that isn't brought up enough is to not volunteer so much data by using these services the way we do, or at all if it can be helped.
There's no one forcing us to use Facebook and "check in" at every single location we go to, plus include anyone and everyone we are with. If we were more conscientious about opening up cloud-based windows into our lives, maybe some of this would go away.
It reminds me of the saying "a fool and his money are easily parted." It is hard to claim that our data is being stolen when we recklessly donate it to the cloud. |
This is the key to a lot of problems these days. Whenever you have a big system you have to have rules in place to prevent people from abusing it. We already had a couple precedents in place for how to deal with our private info when it was outside of our care; the USPS and the POTS. There are clean clear protections against intrusion and collection built into these systems.
When 9-11 happened certain elements within the government (who had existed for a long time - see TIA,ect.) saw their chance to loosen restrictions on collection of data.
Because of how the internet developed, clear restrictions were never really put into place. Slowly as ecommerce developed, the companies saw the potential to make use of the info floating across the system and then sought to weaken restrictions on their use of this data and found other work-arounds like the current TOC traps where you basically trade the right to all content you create in interacting with their software/system (or even unrelated data on your device) away the moment you agree to use the product. It is never outwardly stated in the agreement, and the company prefers vaugeness in the wording of the contract so as not to let on what is really happening. It would seem that the vast majority of people on the internet assume that there is some system protecting them from unauthorized use of their private data, or at very least, that their data is anonymized, when in truth there is nothing. They have made their data a commodity.
So now you have two juggernauts colluding together, one wanting easy access to everything at the drop of a hat, and the other wanting the ability to monitise that info without restriction. The government has basically made collection of all data normal in the eyes of the public. In the previous systems (mail and phone) that was never the case. The They completely sidestepped the existing precedents.
So, if the government has everything, how could the people they are getting it from (ISPs) not?
Then by association, other companies could gather it as well, especially with the approval of the populace in their contract with the private company. This whole sequence of events has normalized collection of all data with no set of protections in place for the consumer. |
Well this may have plenty of good outcomes, we have to ask ourselves "do we really want a company that's in a position to take over the world?". Even if it says it's intentions are good, and even if it's owners and executives believe so, there may come a day when said company may fall into the hands of less moralistic (right word? I kind of made it up) people.
Idk... Maybe I'm just paranoid... |
I think a lot of the replies you're getting are really missing the heart of your question. Entrenched corporations will hold on to the business model that's served them in the past for dear life. Blockbuster is a very different company, but after spending a decade in/around the corporate world I think it's a reasonable comparison to make.
People in giant corporations don't want to get fired. You do a great job and are a hero, and everyone descends on you to take as much credit as possible. You stick your neck out and suggest even something obvious like, say, supporting a Netflix-like model, and every perceived failure will be on you. It doesn't even need to be a real failure - they miss their quarterly projected earnings by 6% because, as a new business model, your accountants weren't very good at estimating, and either your boss rips you a new one or your board starts talking about forcing you out.
That same model, after your company grows in experience and learns how to use it properly, starts to experience enormous growth. Everyone even peripherally involved will start to work hard to take credit. If you have Person A working hard to actually implement a good idea, and Person B working at taking credit for it (putting their names on reports for any success, getting face time with executives/the public to report good news, etc.), Person B will come out ahead because Person A doesn't have nearly enough time to do both.
The consequence of all this is that people have few reasons to actually want to "replace business" through innovation, so they fight to their last breath to keep the status quo in place. |
You're right and you listed specifics too. Google builds monopolies to integrate into and pretty much steamrolls things in it's way. People forget you are their product. They own streaming video (excluding Netflix), Internet Browsers (42%) internet ads (44%) search traffic (67%) and mobile OS (81%). Let's not forget about Gmail. They have a bigger file on you then the NSA. Well, to be fair they probably handed it over by now.
They are getting into social networking, ISP, and other ventures that now include power, hosting, and who knows what is next. They also tend, like most other big companies, to make you use their service to fully integrate with their products. Take Gmail for example. Want a full sync with mail on a device? They discontinued EAS support (don't want to pay for licensing to MS) so to get two way mail via Gmail you MUST have a Droid OS. Youtube and Google+. The list goes on and on. |
I find it funny that antigovernment folks don't seem to acknowledge the simple fact that these are private contractors.
Just because something manifests via 'private contractors' does not mean that it is a result of the free market. If those private contractors only received the money because of the government's mismanagement of the issue, this is clearly a fault of the government. How do we know this? Because in the counter factual world where there was no government making this happen, those funds would have gone elsewhere. |
i genuinely can't believe how stupid Reddit is, if taken as a whole, its like people don't even have the first idea about how anything in society works on its most basic level.
Another common one i encounter often is people saying "we should do X" where x is some sort of charity or service of increased cost.
I.e "we (the government) should double our aid to the hurricane victims"
They do this so they can feel that they are nice and decent and looking out for others, but when you point out "so where is the money coming from then, which service do we cancel to fund it? pensions for war widows? health service? emergency treatment?
then you point out that wrt to charity its entirely a true democracy, as you can support and help whatever cause or belief you wish by simply sending your own money instead of going through the process of the government collecting it and administering it and putting up taxes to pay for it etc.
so if people felt like they all needed to do something to help cause X they can spend their capital and give to that cause.
that when these people shut up because they wont part with their own money, yet they expect everyone to listen to them.
I, like you, just stop trying to explain and wash my hands of their stupidity |
lol... What? The guy got fired and took revenge by using a former colleague's password.
No, he did not have authorization (painfully obvious). Yes he hacked the cars by definition of the word hack. |
not true. If you designed it with a small chamber, and battery powered it so that it would suck in the water faster than you breathe, you could create enough water. The issue is that we don't breathe pure oxygen. This could again be resolved with a small compressed canister that contains the rest of what we need and can mix it with water. But more and more we might as well just have scuba gear. As you add things to it to make it feasible, you move further away from the goal of making a small mouth piece to breath with. So unless we can come up with some bigger on the inside technology... |
Look, I don't really disagree with any of this. Just small details really..
/u/BrotherGantry said that the article has a skewed headline, and is sensationalism, etc, because Microsoft is not killing ODF by bringing the UK government around. He has a hard time explaining people that he's not supporting microsoft or anything, just that this kind of jurnalism is bad, m'key?
I agree with some of this. Killing the ODF is something they'd might like to do, but this action will not result in the ODF beeing killed. But , he's not correct when he says that the headline says something different. All dirtboxchampion and I are trying to point out is:
Read that title again. It doesn't say:
> Microsoft asks pals to help kill Open Document Format
It does say:
> Microsoft asks pals to help kill UK gov's Open Document Format standard
And that is why
> you're arguing about different things because you didn't read shit properly the first time, and then you're downvoting the only guy with a clue..
(that last part is adressed at BrotherGantry, but especially everybody who tells him "dude, don't you know, OpenXML sucks", and everybody who downvoted dirtboxchampion because they didn't get that he was adressing BrotherGantrys missunderstanding, and just assumed.. I don't know wtf those people where thinking actually..) |
Except that OOXML isn't actually an open standard; its reference implementation isn't even correctly compliant with it (nor does said reference implementation have publicly-available and freely-usable source code, it being a closed-source Microsoft product), and the spec itself is incredibly convoluted compared to that of, say, ODF (about three times as long, IIRC).
I don't have any problem with the UK adopting multiple document format standards, but given that one of the criteria is for a standard to be open, I don't believe OOXML is sufficiently open to be worth considering, at least not currently. Perhaps Microsoft could stop trying to make "embrace/extend/extinguish" happen and actually adhere to its own standard as published. |
What the actual fuck makes you think Office is the only implementation of Open XML? Not only did you just learn that other application suites support it, not only are there APIs to create them, I've written my own implementation in a language we use at work.
It's an open standard. How stupid so you have to be? |
I've written my own implementation in a language we use at work.
You are a liar, or ignorant, or both. Using an API in the Microsoft Office suite to write an OOXML file is different from implementing a software that supports OOXML.
The specification alone is over 50 megabytes of text, that's several thosand pages, just reading cursorily the OOXML specification would take weeks. Unless you have a big team working for you, there's no way that you could have implemented the OOXML standard in anything you wrote.
Oh, sure, you could have used the tools built into Microsoft Office to write OOXML files. That's the whole purpose of that "standard", to make it relatively easy to use for a Microsoft Customer , while making it nearly impossible to implement for anyone else.
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OP links the actual research article here's a [ |
I know this is likely an unpopular opinion: but I don't support this guy in the slightest. From the article, it seems as though:
He was indeed knowingly profiting from uploaded copyrighted materials (which is a ripoff to the artists that have dedicated their lives to creating said materials)
He bribed and greased his way into New Zealand via campaign contributions (sure there are several immigrants, longing to immigrate not because they have committed crimes in their home countries but because they hail from third world countries, who are more deserving of a first world home)
AND he was at one time selling corporate access codes to the black market (likely putting the people who worked at said corporations at risk for identity theft) |
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