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And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
Which is exactly why Google will be better at this than you for a long while to come.
So first off before I get to the meat of this issue, Apple is a marketing company. They don't innovate so much as they work an existing product/application up to the point that it has a mass market appeal and then they market the shit out of it. You'd have to be pretty naive to think that Apple is not collecting fat stacks of data about you so that they can better market their products to you.
That said, lets get to the whole myth of Google's data collection and marketing practices being bad, because that's bull crap. Google does the same thing as Apple but they do it better, and since their product is primarily search, which is a product where you want the provider to know about you, they are much better positioned to know about you and give you what you want.
Imagine that you wanted to hire a personal assistant to help you manage your day. Would you expect your assistant to never retain any information about you and still do their job at top levels? I'm going to guess no. You want them to know how you like your coffee, what your tailoring measurements are, what sort of food you like, and probably a thousand other things. Would you not want your assistant using that information to make informed guesses about other things that you might like? Should your assistant not communicate this information to third parties so that you can have a better experience?
A lot of companies/people/institutions like to throw mud at Google for getting to know you. They all seem to miss the point for collecting that data. Google can't give you an amazing experience that knows when you Google for python, you meant the programming language and not the snake, unless they know about your predilections to program and abhor the outdoors and are thereby able to make the educated guess based on what they know about you. They're not collecting that data so that they can sell it (though seeing ads that are tailored to your interests is a byproduct which makes the whole thing viable) they're collecting that data because it makes your experience better. They're like a personal assistant, and the better they know you, the better they're able to do their job for you.
Google doesn't ever make what they know about you available to 3rd parties, and the closest that they ever come ends up being a benefit to everyone. They sell ads that are aimed at groups of people who can be reasonably certain to find the ad interesting. Which means that Google gets paid, advertisers get theirs from having their ads in front of people who are likely to want to see them, and you get to not see ads about tampons or jock straps if you're an uninterested man or woman respectively. i.e. The advertiser never knows that you personally are interested in Chinese food, they only know that their ad is being presented to people who like Chinese food in a certain geographic area. Google works very hard to make certain that the data an advertiser gets is sufficiently aggregated to ensure that a single person is not personally identifiable from said data.
Until Apple wakes up to the reality that you need to collect all of these pieces of information about your users, they're going to continue to fail against Google in the increasingly relevant to mobile field of showing you data that you want to see. They can "not market" to you all they want, but your being marketed to is what is happening all the time, everywhere you go. I'd much rather be marketed to in a way that takes my interests into consideration than not. Cortana and Google Now are eating Apple's lunch in a field that they arguably started with Siri precisely because of these failings. |
I agree with most of everything you said except for a few things.
You are missing the point. It's not that google is abusing all of the info it has on you. It's that with the right warrant, any governmental agency has access to it. This is what Cook is trying to say.
Secondly, Apple isn't just a marketing company. They are certainly a company that is incredibly good at marketing, but they are much more. I know it's easy and fun to call them that, but marketing alone will only get people in the door. It doesn't keep them interested, well not enough to make the sort of money that Apple makes. The marketing gets person X in the door. It's the products though, and their ease of use, that makes person X come back for more. The only other real thing that the marketing does is brand loyalty. It's same the same reason BMW and Mercedes advertise. They aren't advertising to get you in the door. They are advertising to remind you what a fucking awesome purchase you made when you got an i8 or an S Class. When you're driving down the highway, they want you to feel really fucking good about your purchase. And when you're driving down the highway in Chicago, and you come across that massive, super-minamilist iPad advertisement, Apple isn't trying to sell you on anything, they want to remind you that you're on your way home to your beloved iPad. The device that will connect you to everyone, to the internet, to fun. They want to remind you that you made a fantastic purchase. |
How to you determine which reviews are dishonest, and which are not?
With free speech, you have the right to be wrong, as long as you are not infringing on the rights of others.
If the review site is owned by the company, they have the right to remove the review from their website.
If the review site is third party, it is up to the third party to many these reviews.
Altogether, you need to prevent possible legal action against citizen for posting their opinion online (if it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, which a false review does not). |
Everything is a Remix]( - no seriously. Go watch it.
Also - piracy would probably not be nearly as prominent as it is (and it is far from as prominent as Hollywood makes it out to be last I checked around the internet) - if we had stuck to the original concept of the copyright and patent acts, which were a very limited exclusive right for making money followed by PUTTING IT INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Copyright / patent maximalism is pushing us into a point of stagnation through litigation. Patent lawsuits are disgusting. Period.
~~My 2 cents. |
I know this is selfish, and I feel bad for the all the people I have lied to about ad-blocking software's existence over the years, but...
Everyone should just stop talking about ad-blocking. It should be an unwritten rule of the internet to never talk about ad-blocking software. It does none of us any good. The more people blocking ads, the more aggressive the approach advertisers are going to take. Google is still kind enough to not penalize people who block youtube ads, but they easily could. If you are smart enough to reason that ad-blocking software is technically feasible, then search around and welcome to the club! Otherwise....well maybe one day you'll get curious about how the internet and browsers work, and your curiosity will be rewarded.
It's fine if you think I am a total dick for wanting to keep the majority looking at ads so I don't have too. I guess I am one in that sense. But if you are also someone who doesn't like looking at ads, it's in your best interest to stop talking about how to block them. This whole thing we have going is going to blow up badly if you don't start keeping your mouths and keyboards quiet about it. |
Oh I'm not debating that HTML5 isn't useful. But it's way more fragmented in terms of which browsers support which features, at a time when Flash just works anywhere (except of course on iOS which was an Apple instigated lockout).
Try developing a hybrid app for mobile, and you'll inevitably run into cordova, which layers javascript calls over little chunks of XCode and JAVA because HTML5 still isn't mature enough (and never will be) to access all the myriad devices features.
Web development (and now mobile app development) is just as much of a clusterfuck as it always was, and I still think for large online game development where ONE codebase works on everything, Flash is still the only choice and will be around for a long while to come.
To get anywhere the native speed of Flash we have the current trend of Firefox pushing asm.js (Firefox Only), and Chrome pushing their own "like asm.js but not codebase" - it seems we're destined for another MSIE + ActiveX debacle - surprisingly the only one staying true to the ethos of an open web is Microsoft.
It's kind of ironic that Firefox have now basically added Flash into their codebase, so you no longer need to have a separate Flash plugin. Does this seem like Flash is "dead"? Flash is still flash no matter who writes the interpreter.
All it means is yet more nightly Firefox updates - one of the common complaints is that Flash is always updating itself or patching exploits - and yet when Firefox and Chrome do exactly the same thing, people are seemingly blind to it. |
Except he wasn't killing people, but they still wanted to put him away forever.
"Hacking" has been elevated to a great crime. Why? Well, the explanation is that it can affect a lot of people -- really? Then if a banker or politician is found to be corrupt, shouldn't they be punished MORE than someone robbing a convenience store who only hurt a few people and stole a little bit of money?
To me the real reason is simple; Hacking is something that the little guy can do that hurts the people in power. Hurting the King is main offense here and heaping punishments on hackers regardless of real damages is a return to Feudal Law. If a hacker shut down a nuclear power plant THEN I see an equivalence.
The hacker could have shot the people trying to arrest him and been in no greater trouble -- because none of them are royalty. Have they addressed progress we've made since Magna Carta in this intellectual property realm?
[Here] (
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
Where does it say a secret decision or plea bargain? Court's have a piece of paper you can fill out to enter into a Plea Bargain -- and you agree to forego your rights to a fair trial in exchange for a "lesser punishment." So could they just bypass ALL LAWS and charge everyone with dismemberment and death and just have everyone plead out? We could save a lot of money and time, couldn't we? I also can "forego a trial" if I want software, or a warranty on a product by signing a waiver or EULA and agreeing to "arbitration." Another illegal concept that everyone has just accepted.
Plea Bargains are a way around due process and even the Magna Carta for god's sake. And we don't see it. We don't see where this is going. We have too many people being charged too often -- otherwise the courts could handle the amount of cases. If we had enough judges and courtrooms to process ALL the charges without plea bargains -- then it would be too expensive, and the Rich and Powerful would have to pay lots of money to maintain this status quo. |
I'm sure it's Netflix covering their arse. When Netflix makes a piece of content available in only certain regions it's because that's where they've got license to do so. No values judgement here, but circumventing the region protection is essentially pirating from a legal standpoint since you're viewing the content outside of the agreement under which it's licensed.
It's no secret that people are circumventing the region protection on Netflix using VPNs. By not at least making a cursory effort to prevent it they could be viewed as being complicit in this occurring which wouldn't be good for their ability to negotiate licenses with content owners.
Netflix actually made a statement recently that they would like to have one catalog available globally and are doing what they can to move in that direction (I briefly tried finding the link but I'm feeling lazy and my quick searches just turned up a bunch of sites providing info on circumventing the region protection). If you think about it it's obvious that this would be desirable to them... A global catalog would make their product more attractive and generate more subscribers and would come with the added benefit of cost savings from not having to build a bunch of different regional flavors of their product, not having to worry about region locking, etc.
Licensing for movies and TV content can be messy as the distribution rights for any given thing can be and often are owned by different companies in different parts of the globe. Often these distribution rights are in place before the content is even created as they're negotiated in when the financing is being put together. I'm sure this is a large part of why many things are available in one region and not another on Netflix. |
liquidate my personal assets to bailout the company.
That's not what's being suggested.
The idea is that instead of the upper levels taking say a pay cut and having to live below their luxurious standards and live more like a normal person that they would instead be more likely to fire and/or fuck over everyone below themselves before they ever dream of shouldering some of the burden. |
You may view a movie or TV show through the Netflix service primarily within the country in which you have established your account and only in geographic locations where we offer our service and have licensed such movie or TV show.
If you parse this carefully, I think they worded this as cleverly as possible to give viewers some flexibility, while not pissing off their whiny content providers:
It doesn't say you can't watch Netflix from another country - it says you may only watch it primarily in the country where you registered your account.
It says you can only watch movies and shows and geographic locations where that content is licensed - so using a VPN that connects via another country doesn't in and of itself violate the TOS; it's only if/when you then use the VPN to watch a movie/show that's not licensed in your country that you violate the TOS.
So OP's example of using a VPN to get around his ISP's throttling doesn't violate the Netflix terms of service one bit. Go for it, I imagine Netflix would wholeheartedly support it!
If you use the VPN to watch shows that aren't available in your "real" geographic location, then you've violated the TOS. But since you're allowed to watch Netflix in a foreign country, they can't prove you've violated the TOS from a single incident or two - hey, maybe you actually traveled to China to watch that new Jackie Chan movie on Netflix! - so they'd have to watch for trends to detect repeated violations. |
I started doing that about 7 years ago. End result: my consumption of media has dropped to almost nothing. Realistically I won't pay 10 GBP to see 1 episode of the current season of a series even if it is to "buy" it - so I postponed until the season was complete, then until there was more year available, then I forgot. After a while, you just don't even crave to see stuff anymore. I have no tv, so the opportunities to even be aware of new stuff a pretty slim - you see a movie ads on a bus, think oh cool, something to watch in a few years when you can spend 1 GBP on it. Even the spoiler online, the people talking online are not bothering you anymore. Each criticism of a movie/serie only help to remove the tiny seed of interest you had in that series. Like I still want to see Game of Throne, just don't care about seeing it until it is finished. If the last season final is rubbish, it is guaranteed I will not see it. Well I will probably not see it anyway. |
The whole concept of money is just a big wish-wash of stupidity. Being able to have stuff because I have the money but you don't, so you can't have the same nice things as I can have because I have money and you don't so you have to be impoverished and have to choose between food that is bad for you or nice things. I can buy food that is good for me and buy nice things because I have money and you don't, so you're poor. Haha! Too bad, the world's unfair because we who make the rules have all the money while you servants can go die because you're lower class. |
It baffles me this throttling nonsense comes up so often.
Your ISP is almost certainly not "throttling" Netflix. They just have a congested peering point that happens to be on the short route to Netflix. Using a VPN is just forcing the traffic to take a less congested route. Its not some grand conspiracy.
Think of it this way -- you live 30 miles, as the crow flies, from work. One route is 32 miles long, and is the primary commuting thoroughfare for people into where you work. Another route is 45 miles, a good bit out of the way.
You use your GPS to get a route to work, and it always takes you on the 32 mile route. Then one day you explicitly tell your GPS to not take that route. Suddenly your commute takes half as long.
Its as simple as that. Packet routing in 2015 doesn't optimize for latency or throughput, it (essentially) only optimizes by how long the route is. (Note, this isn't strictly true, but the details are complicated and its effectively true.)
Twenty years ago there were companies that had technology that would monitor the peering points' levels of congestion and issue BGP requests to effectively remap their links to the Internet, effectively routing around high congestion points like that. The problem is, that had significant security implications and largely isn't allowed anymore.
So your ISP isn't throttling the connection to Netflix, there's just too many people using it for the size of the pipe its running along. They may be avoiding upgrading that connection, but that can often be a very expensive undertaking.
(FWIW, that is why Netflix and the big ISPs wanted to put Netflix' caching servers on the other side of the congested peering points, so you didn't have to route through them. But their competitors started screaming "net neutrality" -- not for fairness to you, but because they didn't want to have to pay to compete with Netflix.) |
gets beaten by quad core i7
Beaten how? You're a single threaded obsessed game addict, then go with intel. If you're rolling out a VM host, 16 cores for cheap, that are "good enough" will be a massive advantage. Or if you want to do something that requires multi-threaded horsepower, I'd rather spend $500 with AMD for 16 cores that can do more work than $500 for an 8 core intel. |
Since constitutions and laws are regularly batted aside by judges, maybe the people and currently graduated and studying generations need to flood the political scene with our own. What if judges just didnt give a fuck about these "sue the government" cases as the corps pursued them, and judges and panels and juries just didn't convict people of these violations?
Dismissing rights and laws can go both ways.
...Can't it? |
It is effective (not the most) and any effort helps a cause is better; as opposed to apathy.
> I don't expect much from you kids
See! You used it.
He didn't generalize you useless old fuck (as opposed to kid right?), he left it open so that people could make a self judgment as to whether they are in the group under discussion. Of course you did, and being called out put your sandy panties aflutter. |
Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, it has been removed for the following reason(s):
The article is dated 2014/1/1. It is now 2015/4/22.
There is absolutely a conversation to be had around the definition and handling of electronic 'crimes' by justice systems around the globe, but if we're going to host that conversation let's get a fresh article in here. I've got standards. Albeit small ones, but standards none-the-less!
I know, I know. The article does conclude "Stay tuned. You will be hearing more about this story." Technically, this would be hearing of the story yet again, but it's not exactly hearing more about the story. Over a year later an update on outcomes would seem in order. |
Most Mac users that I've met, self included, still like using Windows XP and Linux, are excited about Windows 7, and are quick to admit that the OS game is a matter of personal taste and experience.
Then again, these aren't the ones that really talk about their computers unless they're sitting down at theirs, and someone brings it up -- not that big a deal and all that. Meanwhile, there are a vocal few who, for whatever reason, feel threatened by different tastes than their own, and start preaching their gospel just about everywhere , at length, and at every opportunity.
Same with every community, really. Hell, most of the Windows users I've met don't really care; they just are used to using Windows, or like a few features, or don't have the scratch for anything fancy -- the list goes on, and it's all good. But those aren't the ones who start breathing down my neck because I'm on my MacBook, or am using Ubuntu on my lil' netbook. |
Downvoted for several reasons:
There is no proof that any of this is going to happen. Just a rumor on gizmodo.
Sensationalist headline.
How is Apple Satan because another company wants DRM? If anything, Apple(as well as other distributors) would be key to working things to increase their sales. I'm pretty sure making sure books don't expire would be beneficial to Apple's sales, giving them incentive to make sure that doesn't happen. Look at the RIAA and the iTunes music store. They tried to increase restrictions and raise prices constantly but Apple resisted, keeping prices at 1 dollar and not strengthening DRM. Then Amazon came with no DRM at all, causing Apple to drop theirs.
The quote in the title isn't even claimed to be from Apple. It's an editorialized comment from alleged hearsay from a "VP in textbook publishing":
>A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes. There was no mention of any more detail than that, but it does link back to a private Apple intern idea competition held on campus, in their Town Hall meeting area in 2008, where the winning presentation selected by executives was one focused on textbook distribution through iTunes. The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM'd one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.) |
Software ISN'T trivial, design ISN'T trivial, there aren't hoards of companies making this level of design. Don't say bumptop.
Also, Bumptop.
IN ANY CASE, the iPad OS are good at what they do, but what they do is simply not enough . There is a whole slew of features that EVERY tablet device should have, and the iPad doesn't. Here's an epiphany for you, dunce: Part of good design is well-implemented functionality. You say "design this, design that," but I don't think you even know what you're talking about. Have you ever heard of the Bauhaus movement? It was a design and architecture philosophy in which an object's beauty was determined exclusively by how well the design allowed it to work. If the object couldn't do anything useful, no matter how sleek or frilly it was, it was considered ugly. Oh, but you didn't know about that. And I'm the idiot?
Getting an iPad is like buying a really nice house, and finding out that all the doors are locked until you pay a small 50 buck fee. Is it anything compared to the cost of the rest of the house? No. But in any other housing development, I could get it all for free once I bought the house . Maybe I have to look in the kitchen drawers for a key or two, but it's all there, in the end. What Apple is doing isn't good design, it's looking for a way to monetize and control what has been, and should remain free. |
I like the part where they start summoning Ashton Kutcher.
Otherwise it was kinda |
But if you want to have the experience where somebody is taking control and supporting your online life and giving you really compelling games and helping connect gamers, you do have to give up some of the freedom to tinker with the piece of kit."
That's for the courts to decide. |
In general, your reply is correct... in the big scheme of things. But to explain why you are being downvoted:
The definition of "conflict of interest" applies here simply because, as you said, she has the RIAA as one of her previous clients. Whether or not this conflict of interest is legitimate is another issue, as successful people will often come into contact with many various industries and what not.
But to pretend that it is not a conflict of interest is silly. Even thought its an issue with movies and not RIAA-flavored stuff, the spirit of what she lobbied for (in regards to copyright/law) is likely the same for any corporate group regardless of media type. |
Way to read the article. She ruled on copyright cases involving file sharing not on cases involving the RIAA. More specifically she ruled on one of the hundreds of lawsuits pornographers have been bringing en masse to file sharers lately.
If you've been keeping up with those lawsuits you'll know that the majority of judges have ruled that they cannot group all file sharers into one lawsuit and must file separately for each case. Which filing fees alone makes financially unfeasible.
This judge ruled that they could lump them together into one suit. This most certainly violates due process, essentially everyone is proven guilty or innocent instead of each ones circumstance being taken into account like whether one had an open Wi-Fi network and actually did infringing.
There is certainly merit behind the judges reasoning that copyright needs to be financially defensible. But, even still personally I'd be much more worried about due process than copyright infringement.
So how about before you call a lady in no uncertain terms a whore, you learn more than one thing about her that you got from a headline.
Besides IMO this could easily be a blessing in disguise. From a technical standpoint it should be extraordinarily easy for a lawyer to prove that at least some of these file sharers were not guilty, and thus get the entire case tossed. I previously mentioned open Wi-Fi networks. Beyond that there are numerous studies done on the tools these companies use to detect file sharing, and how frequently they generate false positives. I remember one in particular in which a network printer that obviously has no capacity to share files was sent a notice. |
According to these figures .
To put that into perspective, for the same year the Commodore 64 share was 39.5%, and the PC was 48.9%.
By the time Win3.1 was released (1992), Apple were already down to 12.5% - by 2005, it was 2.5%. Today, OSX has made it to 7.5%. |
Ok, I know a lot of ppl here are pushing windows, but I have to disagree. I think you should get a Mac. I've used windows machines for a long time, built my own desktops and had a few laptops over the years. I made the jump to Mac a few years ago and they really are much better. Windows machines require constant babying, you need strict antivirus programs you need to defrag etc. Macs just work and they work well! You said yourself in a post that your pc is slow and your sisters mac has kept it's speed over the years, so you've seen the proof.
Also I am a huge gamer. My MacBook pro 15" does not stop me from gaming, in fact it runs better than my custom built PC. Currently I'm playing the Diablo 3 Beta on my Mac partition. I also have Modern warfare 3 and Skyrim running on it via Windows 7 running on a boot camp partition.
Macs are also way better for music/production. They come with garage band included! |
I had a similar experience with them over Christmas. My wife ordered a new home theater receiver for me as a present. Since she doesn't know a thing about this stuff, when the Amazon box arrived, she just wrapped it and stuck it under the tree.
When I opened the gift on Christmas day, the seller has mislabeled a 200 ft spool of speaker wire as my new receiver. I wasn't too upset; I install warehouses for my company and I know how it goes. After the Christmas festivities settled and we all tucked into afternoon naps, I called Amazon. The guy who answered the phone on Christmas day was super-awesome. He refunded me the entire purchase price, plus the $3.99 next-day shipping that my wife paid, then found me a better price (by about $75) on Amazon, had me order that, and then expedited the shipping. Somehow I got it the Tuesday after Christmas. Amazing. |
It's because of the kind of processor they're looking at giving it. The general kind of processor in your computer likely hasn't changed in a long time. A similar thing in the computer world was when Apple started using Intel processors instead of PowerPC. They do their binary math differently, if I remember correctly, and so it made the cross-compatibility of software take a lot more work. This is also why there was a lot more software that didn't work on the Mac OS until a few years ago. It was too much effort to rewrite it. So, especially if it's trying to run the games directly from the disc, and not a downloaded version of the old game – that being what being "backwards compatible" implies – they will have to include an entirely separate processor from the one they'll be using for new games. |
Price point seems reasonable. I remember reading an article some time ago that they were looking at bringing the xbox 360 price point to $99 with a mandatory(and slightly more expensive) xbox live sub...exactly the way a cell phone works. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't try and do something like this with the next generation console in order to REALLY kick Sony in the balls, since Sony would probably never consider pulling a strategy like that.
I would personally hate the idea, but if you're trying to reach that volume of units, you have to make it affordable for the masses. With the sheer amount of "stuff" that will probably packed into the console, I imagine a consumer cost (w/o sub) to be around $700ish.
I also remember reading on Kotaku months back that a "major player" in the game design and testing for all studios (remained anon for obvious reasons) said that we could probably expect to see a large up-tick in "cloud gaming" as networking capabilities increase. How far out is this? Hard to say, but with current tends I can see it being a poorly implemented feature for the next 5 years (think lag of download times, no playing games if your internet is out, shit getting messed up in your library from time to time due to "server maintenance", security issues, etc.). |
I don't know this article looks kinda sketch.
On the other hand It looks like a legitimate pitch towards microsoft with reasons why a new console should be developed. the reason that the warning sirens are going off in my head is in all of the pages the information is repeated over and over again with no additional detail compared to what we read the first, or even second time. I also find it difficult to believe that it would open at a price of $299 (I'm not complaining but come on). The 360 started at $400 and this console is supposed to not only be a great gaming machine, but a blu-ray player, and all this other fun stuff while including a brand new "kinect v2" sensor. |
A similar thing in the computer world was when Apple started using Intel processors instead of PowerPC. They do their binary math differently, if I remember correctly....
sigh....
They're completely different archetechtures, where different opcodes are assigned to different instructions, which may or may not operate with slightly different methods.
Apple was actually quite brilliant with their first processor changeover from 68000 to PPC - the new PPC chips were so much faster, they wrote a low-level M68K emulator and basically just ran their old programs on it. Even the firmware in the computer contained M68K code! When they switched to x86, they had already changed their OS to something written entirely in C, so porting was done with relative ease. They did have a state-of-the-art PPC emulator that used dynamic binary translation, but it was very limited in scope (being a userland-only program) and it was an outsourced job. Backwords compatibility was removed from newer versions of the OS.
But the thing to note here is that either of those emulators were only emulating a single chip - the CPU. And there was only one processor core in computers at the time. Emulation is exponentially more difficult to achieve when there are more chips to emulate, so software emulation is unlikely. |
You're missing the whole "set up time" aspect. Part of why I play on my xbox as much as I do is that the time from "not playing" to "playing" is minimal.
When you want to play a console game, you stick the disk in, it plays. The console goes from off to in game in less than twenty seconds. OS updates are rare (something like annual), game updates aren't allowed to be large enough to take more than 10 seconds to download on my shitty home connection. The first time you play a newly purchased game, you don't have to go through an installation procedure. There are no compatibility issues to worry about (What do you mean Atom Zombie Smasher bluescreens my computer?). Online play is nice and smooth, and my friends list and conversations work between games. Features like voice chat are at the OS level, and work across the board.
PC games can be much more complex in nature, but also require more effort on the part of the user. Booting my machine (to windows) takes far longer than it takes to boot my xbox. Steam games update frequently, and the average TF2 update is several hundred megabytes, which means I have to wait quite a while to play it, and they are updated ALL THE DAMN TIME. Installing a game for the first time takes a while. Granted, this also exists for downloaded console games, but if I buy a game on disk, I have to go through the whole DVD installation process, which is never fast. There's a chance that my machine won't run the game I just bought, even on the lowest setting, which was a constant fear when buying games for my four year old laptop. And you can bet that you'll spend some time in the settings making things work "just right" for a while.
Also, when all is said and done, desktop OSs aren't meant to be viewed on a large screen from eight feet away. You're going to have to do all of these setup things either at an awkward distance from the TV, or on another monitor.
Last week, I played Portal 2, splitscreen, on my PC, which was connected to my television. Everything about it was awkward. I spent half an hour getting it to work, and it still requires console commands periodically to get it going. |
Among many other factors, addressing just the one you bring up, the answer probably is: Margin and the continuing cost of support. When dealing with massive contracts like this, or anything bulk really, the margin (or profit) on a product drops significantly. This is where you hear arguments about volume economics. These types of contracts and deals are very sensitive to even (relativity) minor costs. nVidias profit margin is ~6.5% , a lower to middle end bid may not have enough margin to cover the costs of a "fix". Also, the risk of that fix is very high as selling technology to China does not guarantee repeat business, especially when considering that they are notorious for knock-off fabrication and production.
Edit: Using my same argument, it could be said that this is an even worse move for AMD who has been on the rocks as of late, but in a financial situation as AMDs were they're in a nose-dive. This deal could constitute a 44% increase in sales for AMD vs a <9% for nVidia.
Edit2: Haha you people. |
AMD’s not perfect when it comes to Linux support for its video cards, but the consensus is that they’re definitely trying harder than Nvidia.
AMD is the scrawny kid that is 'trying his best' to be athletic and Nvidia is the naturally built kid. Aside from it being a Binary blob Nvidia's drivers have been nothing but bliss for me in my HTPC builds. VDPAU is amazing and 'just works'. Would I like to build an ARM HTPC with VDPAU? Maybe.
Compared to ATI/AMD who release a 1000 page spec that is near useless. "Hey guys. You want it open? Here have it all" but provide no support. 10% of the time I try to use hardware acceleration X11 crashes. No rhyme or reason, it just doesn't feel like working. |
I've been using it full time personal computing for at least ten. full.time. Let me repeat that, I live on the laptop... full.time.
Sure. My dad's been using Linux for about as long. He really likes tooling around with the OS and not having to deal with the crap from Microsoft.
However, what I think Linux evangelists (or *nix evangelists in general) refuse to acknowledged is that some proportion of the problems that Windows / OS X deal with are products of the mass market. No one (so far) has found a middle way that pleases the non-technical masses and the technically literate "power users." I can see a future where everyone is using "Linux" instead of "Windows", but I don't think there's any reason to believe that Linux would be a better operating system day to day . Especially now that Win7 has substantially improved the everyday experience.
Certainly, with Linux there will always be the capacity to swap-out and build a bare-bones distro, which is great. However, there is substantial customization available on Windows as well, if you look for it. Delivering a product that works "well enough" for billions of desktop PCs is a very different proposition than the one that Linux has, so far, surmounted. I'm sure you'll throw back that Linux works great for you and the people you've installed it for, but I think that metric doesn't properly appreciate the challenge. |
You guys do know that this is all based on a [RUMOR.](
"A rumor appeared from the heart of Beijing that due to the performance of its GPU architecture and its Linux drivers, NVIDIA was approached by one of the leading Chinese CPU teams to use an NV GPU in a pilot school PC project. The Linux would run on the Chinese CPU, while GeForce GPU would provide the graphics power. 'Pilot project' in this case means over 10 million PCs in one order, broken down - 100,000 schools with 100-150 PCs each. The problem was two-fold; NVIDIA never releases source code for its Linux drivers, and the binaries are only X86. Incentivized by the Chinese government, the Chinese CPU team called NVIDIA to come to China and work with them."
This rumor also included the fact that nVidia would've built the driver but asked for a steep fee.
"To cut the story short, the NV team appeared there, and in very arrogant manner told the Chinese side that they are a large US corporation, and that recompiling the Linux drivers would cost the Chinese a lot of money. The money that Chinese CPU team and the Academy of Science were supposed to fork out was to the tune of several million dollars in incentive that are typically referred to as NRE - Non-recurring Engineering."
I'm sorry, but if you can't pay me what I want to do my job and I have other customers who will, I won't work for you. I'm also not going to sell you my product for you to deploy to thousands (if not millions) of users. If you don't deploy it correctly, that ruins MY reputation and eats into MY business. |
Apple user here: it's likely an implementation of Microsoft's shadow copy technology that's been kicking around for ages. This appears to be more about sticking a user-friendly UI and some consumer focused extras in, rather than anything radical. |
Can someone post a |
Written like a true video game journalist who knows nothing about finance.
The executives of public companies have very specific restrictions about when they can sell stock for exactly the reasons this article implies -- so they can't capitalize on inside information. As such, the periods they can sell stocks are fixed, typically for a few short weeks right after the start of a quarter. |
This selling was not under the insider trading restrictions. This stock was sold as a secondary public offering. A secondary public offering where all the shares were sold by insiders, none of the shares were sold by nor did any of the proceedings go to the company.
These kind of secondary offerings are legal and have their own onerous restrictions.
Legal as they were, to say there is nothing suspicious about these sales is presumptive. These kind of secondary offerings are generally a bad sign, they have been used many times to let the insiders sell their shares without the restraints which normally make it difficult and slow for them to cash out. |
Spotify's mistake was being so very successful in raising capital. They're paying more in licensing than pretty much anyone else in the market. It's why their losses are so huge ($42 million last year). If they don't drop the free tier, the labels will bleed them to death (they might do it anyway). Only 20% of their users pay. They have to pay the labels for everyone who uses it.
Apple has enough market share (with itunes) they have a stronger position to negotiate from.
It's exceptionally hard for new music companies to get started. Many don't want to invest because it's such a litigious field. Many don't want to get involved because negotiating with the major labels is a huge PITA. Many have started small, and after receiving VC money have found themselves stuck renegotiating with the labels and paying much more. |
is the US going to be able to access this site?
Probably. The big thing that may change, is he will not use US servers to host the web site, or any part of the site.
If the case is that the US in their idiocracy decide to block the domain, then there are a number of tools capable of bypassing the restrictions - Proxies, VPN's, and so on. And with the rate at which the pirate bay wackamole seems to be going - these tools are getting more and more known. |
Everything you said in that title was absolutely revolting.
Edit: If you disagree with me, tell me why instead of just downvoting.
Edit 2: Since no one is replying to me and people keep downvoting, I'll just go ahead and explain myself. The title refers to people as "meat-bags" possessing the desirable characteristics most commonly found in submissive, complacent, and obedient women. True paragons of 1950's sexual expectations of women. Abominations like these are a way of facilitating the obsessions, proclivities and prejudices of people who are too judgmental of other people. If these things are made, the horrible culture of shame and manipulation that out media already instills within the minds and bodies of every member of our society will be amplified and intensified until only the narcissists and sociopaths are happy in their own skin.
Furthermore, healthy sexual relationships are built on communication, compromise and interaction between equal and consenting parties. The use of devices such as these would only serve to encourage a mentality of exploitation and abuse as the norm for sexual behavior as people would be unaccustomed to hearing the word 'no'...a problem that would result in the abuse and exploitation of humans should a user of this device ever coax one into bed with them. |
I didn't know any county had a blank media tax. There is not one in the states that I'm aware of.
I'm not saying that the music industry is right in what they're doing. I think the whole setup is outdated and we as consumers need to find a way to pay artists for their work without padding the pockets of people who do stuff like this.
I was simply trying to explain their probable point of view to illustrate why I thought calling them scum was overkill. It seems to me that this over- exaggeration leads to apathy towards the music industry in general, perpetuated by our desire to get free stuff. |
Depends on what you want to get and how much you can afford. Sure I can pick up a new iPhone unlocked but as far as I know, even the decicion to but an unlocked iPhone was introduced very recently. Before this (at least when I was shopping for my iPhone 4) it simply wasn't possible to by one outside a contract.
And iPhone is just one example. It took me a while to find a source where I could buy an unlocked Galaxy S3. The S3's homepage does not even have a but link!
But even if I completely ignore the possibility of buying your choice of phone unlocked, if given a chance to get a non-contract phone for about $650 and a contract phone for $200, the decision is certainly not trivial.
But say I go for the contract option as I did when I got my Nexus S and money was short. Two years pass and my contract expires. Cool I say, I can now unlock my phone and use it on another carrier cuz I just love the phone so much. Or give it to my sister who can use it on with of those dirt cheap phone-less plan because she can't afford a high end or newer phone. Awesome!
Except if the carried refuses to unlock the phone. Sure they won't do something like that right now but if it ever became economically viable enough (e.g. such a decision forces you to buy a new phone from them) they'd do it at the drop of a hat. They're shitty enough to not give a fuck about it. |
They already have ETFs for this. Expensive ones at that. Don't for one second think that carriers lose money off discounted phones when you break your contract. That kind of situation ended around the time smartphones became commonplace. The subsidy is built into everyone's bill, whether they use their discounted upgrade prices or not. On a person by person basis, it does not take the full two years of the contract to recoup the cost of the phone, not even close. Combine that with the termination fee for say a carrier like verizon, which starts at 375 and at its minimum is close to 150 I think(like if you cancelled 30 days before your contract expired), and there is no need at all for a law like this. It's anti-competitive and anti-consumer, nothing more. |
You know what, I just read the actual ruling, it's not illegal to unlock phones, it's illegal to unlock NEW phones. any phone purchased before today is still able to be unlocked normally and the exemption is still in place. To quote the ruling:
>The Register concluded after a review of the statutory factors that an exemption to the prohibition on circumvention of mobile phone computer programs to permit users to unlock “legacy” phones is both warranted and unlikely to harm the market for such programs. At the same time, in light of carriers’ current unlocking policies and the ready availability of new unlocked phones in the marketplace, the record did not support an exemption for newly purchased phones. Looking to precedents in copyright law, the Register recommended that the class designated by the Librarian include a 90-day transitional period to allow unlocking by those who may acquire phones shortly after the new exemption goes into effect. |
As a tire guy his line about the tire size affecting speed readings struck me as particularly offensive. A smaller tire either will make no difference (if smaller wheel radius is made up for by the aspect ratio of the tire) or cause the vehicle to go slower than speedometer readings (e.g. actual speed being 52 when speedometer reads 55) so him saying "herp a derp I coulda swore I wuz doin slower" is bullshit. Add to that that I cannot imagine a mechanic worth his salt ever letting a vehicle with non stock rims/tires go without adjusting settings to correct even these variances. |
Ahh, orbiter. It helped me understand the terror of missing your target orbit, and zooming past the moon at full speed. All thrusters dry, no way to slow or correct course. And before me, the yawning gulf of interstellar space and an eternity to ponder my mistake. |
Look to Japan. A significant portion of their roads are private. Alternately, look at the foreign owned companies buying up multi decade leases to taxpayer funded roads[1] here in the US. You get the tolls, the tax bill, and the monopoly. Or my favorite: force policy, which would be unconstitutional by federal statute, upon states by threatening to to deny funds for highways. Eg, how much do you support the war on drugs?[2]
All of these issues involve government interaction in some form. Real privatized road networks would refuse to inter-operate and it would devolve into a huge mess or a monopoly.
In Japan and Europe private roads are sold back to the government for maintenance. It's essentially a way for a company to make a road for themselves and let others use it for free after it's paid off and sold back. Roads are not very profitable and don't stay private for a long time afterwards. Look up the BOT model.
Roads are generally LEASED, not sold (which you would find evident if you read your own link). Which generally gives a form of quick revenue to municipalities, while giving long term revenue to companies. Higher tolls prevent wear and tear (due to less use), and the government still has to take care of the highway anyway. They're essentially selling the ability to run the toll booths, not the actual road and associated maintenance.
You have not given me any example of an actual private road (or network) that is long term and sustainable. And then you politicize the issue with highway funding. Force policy works simply because the states decided to have roads there in the first place (look at how major highways were built in the US), thus it is their job to maintain them, it's not up to the feds to give them the money, they just do because they're nice.
> Yes congress has the constitutional power to determine copyright time limits, but it does not have the power to prosecute you for changing an individually purchased work for your own use.
Yes congress does not since it is the legislative branch. The judicial branch of the US government however does because of the DMCA. You're simply wrong about this. Using and proliferating software to break rights management systems is illegal no matter the context thanks to this law.
>The problem is power consolidation and the power balance between the people + states and federal government is way out of wack.
Sure, I bet you also think the 2nd Amendment does something and isn't an antiquated hobbist movement. Sure I love guns, but damn they're fucking useless for the intended purpose of the 2nd Amendment. If the US fucking wants civil war or to oppress it's people it can have people sitting in an air conditioned room blow up your house, a AR-15 isn't going to save you from drones with AMG-111's. The 2nd Amendment was drafted during a time where all you needed to fight a war was at least 20% of the other force. Since WWII the 2nd Amendment's idea of the self-protecting American citizen has been a crapshoot considering the weaponry consistently being developed by armies. It's non-existent to anyone paying attention in the 20th century.
Also states rights are a fucking stupid thing to fight for, considering "states rights" as advocated for would allow states to oppress their own people because there are pretty much no checks on states rights except for the Supreme Court, which would move slower than state legislature. This issue was decided in 1865. |
How many times are we going to have to have this conversation. You do not own your phone when on contract, hence the reason for a contract. If you want a phone that is unlocked from the beginning, then pay full price for the phone, they can't stop you from unlocking it at that point. This is why you have a cancellation fee if you cut your service before the phone is paid off, granted, I believe the fee should decrease monthly to reflect the remaining balance on the phone. |
I think maybe Dan misunderstands the issues at hand. So let me try to elaborate from a legal point of view.
It all depends on your interpretation of the constitution.
The idea that corporations are made up of people, so corporate entities themselves are people is an interesting one to think about.
But when you're applying equality of protection of due process of the law to corporations instead of citizens, things get weird.
So Toyota gets freedom of speech. Should it get a vote? You can quickly twist logic to give foreign citizens an ability that might lead to the acquisition rights they otherwise shouldn't have.
This was part of the fear of Citizens United. That foreign corporations could donate unlimited, untraceable money to American political campaigns an thus undermine American democracy.
But this isn't even the main issue.
The main issue is about one's conception of freedom.
In the Lochner Era the Supreme Court would take a very libertarian stance and say that anti child labor laws were infringing on people's freedoms to contract.
They would take the same stance on laws creating the weekend and demanding shorter standard work weeks. They would say it infringes people's right to contract.
But whose right does it infringe? Does it infringe the salaried bakers' rights who begged for the law dropping their 100 hour week down to 80 hours maximum? Or does it infringe on the owners' right who now has to pay more money since he can't work bakers 100 hours anymore? Or both?
Some would say that clearly the "right to get paid less per hour," or the "right to work 100 hours per week with only compensation for 40," or the "right to be told you can't eat in a restaurant because of the color of your skin," are no rights at all.
Others would argue that a business owner's right to employ 8 year olds, work employees 100 hours per week, or discriminate against customers is her right. And it's the 8 year old's right (or the 8 year old's parents' right), the worker's right, or the African-American's right to either attempt to do business with this owner or not.
So, if you had to pick from number 1 or 2 below, which matches your idea of freedom best?
Is freedom defined as freedom from coercion? That is, is true freedom actually freedom from being forced to do something you don't want to, whether that force comes from individuals, private organizations, or the state? In this scenario, the state may justly pass laws that attempt to protect the weak from coercion by private actors, and in doing so, make illegal some forms of private transactions.
Or is true freedom simply the absence of state action? That is, does true freedom really exist if the state leaves everyone alone, but individuals are allowed to legally sign themselves and their children away into indentured servitude? In this scenario, the state may never justly pass laws that attempt to protect the weak from coercion by private actors. All private transactions should be legal.
Because how you answer this question gives you a very different conception on what equal protection under the law and substantive due process should mean.
The Supreme Court of the [Lochner Era]( really thought #2 was the way to go. It drove [Oliver Wendel Holmes]( up the fucking wall. It also drove Teddy Roosevelt up the wall. And finally, his distant cousin FDR would put an end to it with court packing threats that finally saw Owen Roberts become [the switch in time that saved nine.](
Really, from the FDR to the George W. Bush administrations, we had an era where scenario #1 was how the Supreme Court understood and interpreted freedom. The Rehnquist court chipped away at it a little bit. But the Roberts court has been going pretty much full bore away from conception of freedom #1 and back to conception of freedom #2.
So this is partially why you get drama today over Scalia calling the Voting Rights Act a ["racial entitlement."]( I think the other part is that he just has a natural propensity to be controversial and loud in a way the other 8 justices today don't.
These are interesting times in terms of the historical and philosophical evolution of the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court. We may very well be living in the beginning of a return to the Lochner Era, where the Supreme Court seems to agree with conception of freedom #2 above, and they seem to be willing to strike down legislation to make it happen. |
When I learn of technological advances I apply the technology to the whole planet. This is shared tech regardless of patents or the country of origin. The implications restrictions and powers of this technology will affect all people on the planet, not just the US which my first comments could have been clearer on; I apologize for any misunderstanding.
Therefore I am talking about the world society, as a whole. It is not a democracy. Every person alive should have a shot at changing the world, having his or her voice heard by the rest of his fellow human. This is simply not true.
If anyone is kicking down doors for "rocking the boat" it is clearly the state's response of a threat to current way of operation or laws. Current operations, which have been decided to be the way things transpire for the good of the people - this is rarely the actuality of the situation usually this benefits small groups); but what this implies is that the state is unwilling to continue to let the individual spread his ideas on why he thinks the operation may be faulty. [for the sake of argument i am talking about non violent protest]
>This isn't meant to be defeatist or paranoid or inspire those Good Ol' Boys to be better armed with even more weaponry. It's meant to be a realistic appraisal that in the 21st century people are on average comfortable with their modern living and technology and 70" televisions with a 24 hour feed of pacifying entertainment.
The hypothetical "drive to DC" protest was used rhetorically just to shed light on the fact that going to autopilot cars would rest yet another liberty, power, or weapon even in the hands of what could be, if it already isn't the enemy of the people, a self preserving entity that disguises its actions as "for the good of the people". And they've shown us no good reason to trust their actions..
I actually agree with your realistic sentiment that a protest like this wouldn't work in the united states. The masses are pacified, they are entertained and what are the goals? So why would they ever think to act in a manner which could carry negative consequences?? (fear state). The scope is larger though than just my country- it's the world's governing bodies that are corrupted due largely in part to that 'societal focus' we were talking about.
So I will ask again since it wasn't answered: How is change achieved if first someone doesn't yell them awake and show them why it should change aka:make a splash and some waves? |
Thing is that Google operating in the EU have to abide by the EU data protection laws, which are by and large much more stringent than in the US. Google themselves are pushing for more exposure on the requests made by FISA and the NSA and other three letter agencies, even going so far as to [publish a monthly transparency report]( on these going on, with as much information as they're legally allowed to share.
When my information goes to Google, I'm relatively sure it goes to their Dublin datacentre and as such, I would hope that it's not subject to the majority of the snooping the NSA does. GCHQ on the other hand is a different matter, but at least our government are incompetants towing the line rather than malicious malfeasants.
>migrate my phone to Firefox OS or Ubuntu Phone
It's worth noting that it's not the endpoints that are intercepted, but the transmissions of communications across affected lines. Changing your OS won't stop any of your data being sucked up. If the route to any server crosses a line or datacentre or international backbone, the chances are the NSA/GCHQ/some other agency has a copy of it. |
Psst, its a joke from a song (Team America: World Police) and in no way does it reflect my point of view. However, considering the joke reflects your view, I would have figured you agreed. Besides the price to pay for it, what exactly is freedom? Since you have to give up some of your 'freedoms' to any government in order to receive their protection and benefits. Does freedom mean that you can walk down the street without being mugged or fear of 'terrorists' attacking, then what is currently being down by the NSA is just fine and dandy. Or is your definition of freedom the right for you to do whatever the fuck you want behind closed doors as long as it doesn't hurt anyone? Well then NSA is of the debbil. And if freedom means complete autonomy to you, then the only true way for you to be free is to form an anarchist-type of society or authoritarianism. |
Batteries are not a solution. They're also a negative-return thing. Essentially you could say your Tesla is coal-powered since that's where its juice comes from, the local coal-burning power plant.
Solar cells? Same deal - they're cool and all, but it takes more energy to make and install them than you get back over their life. |
Because uranium is cheap (for now) and comfortably established. OPEX (OPerational EXperience) is a huge part of how nuclear reactors are run. If it's new and nobody has any OPEX with it, it's scary and potentially unsafe. It's also easier to enrich uranium than to reprocess plutonium and mix it into thorium.
Thorium has a fair number of physics advantages as a nuclear fuel (e.g. higher reproduction factor in U233, higher thermal conductivity of ThO2, etc.) The only advantage that really matters is that it's three times more abundant than uranium in the earth's core. This advantage is currently moot because there's plenty of cheap cheap uranium still available. There's no incentive to divest into thorium.
The "thorium advantages" that you might be familiar with (e.g. can't melt down, atmospheric pressure, etc.) are not actually advantages of thorium itself but advantages of the molten salt reactor. |
Great, except how often do folks go on vacation? Or travel for the first time on business? Or anything else that takes them out of their default country? Maybe once every 20 years on average? Sounds like a sufficiently low number. So 1 day out of 7350 (365 * 20), any given user stands to get locked out of their account.
There are...
425 MILLION active GMail users. So if my "once in 20 years" BS number above is accurate, that implies that on any given day, 50,000+ users would potentially be cut off by this. (Edit: that link says Total users, but the thing I got it from claimed active... I'd be more willing to believe total - which would make those numbers high). Maybe I'm off by an order of magnitude. That's still 5,000 false positives who are now cut off from their email, each day. |
This. I have pirated media I was curious in, and bought some of it that I enjoyed. While one could argue I don't deserve to consume the media I didn't first pay for, they gained money from me they otherwise would have had zero of, and in the case of discussion, I will likely mention a title I really enjoyed. In the event of a title I DIDN'T purchase, they lost nothing because it was a sale that never took place in the first place and it was my bandwidth in a torrent. None of their resources were consumed in my use of their digital content.
Honestly the only people that won't like piracy are the middle men making money off of sales, and publishers/developers that hype up shitty software hoping you buy it without a trial. |
Really? Let's see... Google is offering gigabit speeds on upload and download, they are offering it at reasonable prices, and they are offering it to residential. You can argue that it's limited availability but that's only because it's a new service and you cannot compare a 1 year old roll-out to one that started 28 years ago. |
I forgot about all the quality products available at my local WalMart
Consumers choose Wal-Mart products over Mom & Pop stores. You can cry about it all you want, that's what they chose.
> as well as their push to support their employees with livable wages, health benefits, and decency.
If you don't like the compensation then don't take the job. Lots of people take the job because they have some other means of support, so working at Wal-Mart is better than nothing.
This is why "living wage" is such a bunk concept. If all of your needs are taken care of by your spouse or parents, then $0/hour is a living wage. So, if a person just wants some money to spend on beer or video games, and they're willing to work at Wal-Mart for that money, then why shouldn't both parties be able to close a deal of $2/hour pay?
What if you have one person who lives in a nice neighborhood, so their "living wage" requires $10/hour, and you have a poor person who lives in a bad neighborhood, so their "living wage" is $8/hour. If the law states that you have to pay $10/hour, then why would you ever choose the poor person? Offering to work for less is the leverage that the poor have over the rich, so artificial price floors on labor costs only price them out. It's removing the bottom rungs on the economic ladder. |
Consumers choose Wal-Mart products over Mom & Pop stores. You can cry about it all you want, that's what they chose.
Your reasoning for small businesses getting pushed out all but stated that WalMart offers a superior product which, in most cases, is just wrong. Consumers chose WalMart initially due to low prices and convenience, and prices were lowered to the point that WalMart actually lost money on many sales simply to drive away the competition.
> If you don't like the compensation then don't take the job. Lots of people take the job because they have some other means of support, so working at Wal-Mart is better than nothing.
Like what? Welfare? Social Security? A second income? You're not going to find trust fund babies putting in hours corralling carts at minimum wage. Spitting on a starving child is technically better than nothing, but that doesn't solve anything.
> then why shouldn't both parties be able to close a deal of $2/hour pay?
Because your 16 year old working at $2 an hour becomes an 18 year old in short time, then suddenly needs WAY more than $80 a week at full-time pay to support himself. Then the employer can say, "We can find 100 people to work for that. You're fired." Now you have an 18 year old with no job, no income, and any other employer can suddenly drop the pay to whatever someone will accept. Why should WalMart pay anyone more than $2 an hour if they can get someone in there for that? Now you have people who need that paycheck suddenly working all their waking hours for nothing.
> Offering to work for less is the leverage that the poor have over the rich, so artificial price floors on labor costs only price them out. It's removing the bottom rungs on the economic ladder.
So let's abolish minimum wage and allow each and every position in the nation to work at $1 an hour. Suddenly, no one is unemployed. Everyone can have a job!
I'm just going to lay it out for you. Economically, in a free market economy, this is what you get. Everyone has the "chance" of earning millions, but it really becomes a 1% over 99% (not the occupy movement, but more like a serf system). A small percentage of the population controls the vast majority of the wealth, and the vast majority of the population have few choices in their pay.
A living wage isn't an economical term - it is a social term. It means actually caring that the populace as a whole is taken care of. Call it socialist or whatever you will, but the government's job is to protect it's citizens, and that includes doing what it can to keep someone from being hungry, homeless, or unhealthy.
I'm guessing you're a white guy, probably between 20 and 40 (I'm terrible at age guessing which is why I don't work at the circus), own a rifle or two, probably live in a fairly homogeneous neighborhood. Good for you. I've got nothing against any of this. But don't think that you are suddenly of a higher intellectual capacity because you have no empathy for those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Despite the "get another job" concept that flies around each and everyday, I challenge you to quit your current job and get employed full-time with no real work experience, no degree, and no connections. Survive on that $8 an hour with no benefits, no guaranteed work schedule, and no real negotiating terms for a couple of years. Now imagine doing the same at $3 an hour. A large portion of America's workforce are fixed in a minimum or near-minimum wage job, and the income they earn for 40+ hours a week is still not enough to be considered a living wage.
If the law states minimum wage is $10 an hour, the business doesn't suddenly fire a poor person to hire a "rich" person as you stated. The rich do not suddenly decide they want to work for minimum wage. The business instead will increase its pay to $10 an hour, and wages across the board will (usually) increase over a period of several years in response to this. |
Yea, it's not like you just grab a couple banana caps and twist the fiber strands together like you would with copper. They have to very, very, carefully fuse each and every fiber strand together perfectly using a several thousand dollar fusion splicer in a temperature controlled van. One spec of dust, 1nm 1µm out of alignment... no internet. [Edit for accuracy]
For an areal line like that it's at least 24 strands, up to 144. If it was cut in the middle by some yahoo (which would be fucking hilarious IMO), there's no slack on the line so that means they'd have to pull a whole new line, which could be miles [Edit probably less, I tend towards hyperbole] , and now splice it at 2 points. Cable costs could be a couple thousand dollars, labor costs a couple thousand more, then factor in any revenue lost because of a business SLA which could mean prorating hundreds to thousands of dollars. Now you know why all those big black boxes where fiber is connected have 20+ ft of extra cable on both ends... because they got to pull both ends down to the ground for splicing. |
They are regulated through state runned Public Utility Comissions. These poles space are rented at regulated prices. The pole owners have responability to make a reasonable effort to replace the pole or one of the other companies that rent space the pole can replace and charge the owning company. This is the only way cable/phone companies are regulated (in PA) and differs from say electric companies who face serious consquences if they don't fix/maintain their equipment. |
As for education, I see massive price increases especially in the online portion. I've spent more money in college for online homework than my textbooks. And online homework doesn't even have to be produced once its coded, server traffic doesn't cost much. Not $7000 for a class of 100 students. And the reason the price is going to keep rising is because its involuntary consumerism. The teachers choose to assign online homework to save them hours of grading and actual teaching, while the students are paying for it.
The worst part is that I, and many of my fellow students, could program a database for online homework within our school. Anyone could take a single course on programming and figure out how it's done. It makes me sick.
But that's where I see education going in the next five years.
In ten though? I think more people will use the resources they have at hand to learn what they want. Certification tests or projects might be more ideal for the average Joe. They can study what they want and how they want, and when they're ready they can apply for some sort of certification if they meet the requirements. We're seeing this with the tech majors already. Less employers care about schooling, and focus more on what you've done, and what you want to do.
For an internship I applied for, they didn't even ask me what my GPA was or what classes I'm taking. For all they know I could've never gone to college and sat in my room on my computer all day. Which now that I think about it, I probably should've done. Traditional colleges are becoming less special as the years go on. I hope that someday in the future, we'll have access to an equivalent or better education right in our own homes. |
Serious question. What job do mathematicians have the ability to go do or have ever had the ability to go do that no person with an education far enough into that they could be an engineer do not already have the ability to do? As far as I know, Math teacher/professor. They have jack shit of a system regardless.
Also science is such a broad spectrum filled with so many things that require a college degree just to be a beginner in the field with that general science is just the basis that leads to those curious in it having an ability.
However, computer science requires very little to understand and get the hang of so long as you also understand math and basic logic. After that you just learn different syntax for different languages. Essentially once you have the basics down, you are more than halfway to mastering the language. And computer science also has a thriving industry that could be destroyed or massively clusterfucked by a huge wave of incoming computer scientists.
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should at least understand basic logic that computer science gives and at least have an idea of how computers work but it's nothing like math or science. |
Could this come back to bite a company in the butt down the road?
Extremely unlikely. The Texas law cited in the article seems to pertain to forensic investigation. I find the requirement to be completely ridiculous. By the time someone is sufficiently trained in data forensics, they are going to have a wealth of expertise that would exceed the expertise required to be a PI.
I can only assume that the law is intended to prevent unqualified techs from offering forensic services... however nothing about being a PI would make you qualified to do data forensics.
What would have actually made sense [Texas hates logic so don't expect anything in their legal system to make sense] would be for them to create a data forensics license.
Generally the way it works is that companies have SLA 's with IT companies for their tech support... or they have an internal IT dept [or both]. The IT company/department will have people who are systems administrators, and are almost universally exposed to some level of security training. If the sysadmin finds something that is out of their league they will usually recommend getting outside help from a security consultant or law enforcement directly in the case of criminal activity. |
Well, how about you read the fucking article if you find it hard to believe ?
>new AMD survey that reveals the laptop as the most important electronic device among college students.
and
>The poll revealed that even though more than half of today's college students carry at least two devices at all times, the laptop is the most cherished piece of technology and the one that's used most often.
and
>Some 85 percent of those polled said they own a laptop, which outnumbered smartphone owners and was more than double the number of tablet owners. The poll asked students to rank their devices in order of importance, to which 41 percent ranked their laptop as number one, followed by their car, tablet, bicycle, and television. |
I think you may be overestimating the fidelity of the phone system in your endeavor to use steganography in an audio format. Your encrypted content has no error correction traveling in this error prone technology. I do not know the audio bandwidth of an average cell phone but I'll wager it is probably not much wider than the voice spectrum. This is going to either limit your available bandwidth or induce error if the encryption software/hardware does not factor this into developing the hidden message. |
I'll bet this article (and others like it) are written only to lull people into a false sense of security. They think cops can't access their data, but here's what I think. I'll bet the encryption keys are all stored on Apple servers and can still be obtained by a warrant anyway.
I don't trust encryption unless I do it myself independent of proprietary, corporate-controlled software (see also: BitLocker). |
256 bit aes encryption, results in 1.1 10^77 possible combinations to brute force your way through, presuming you only need to chew through 50% of them, you are still looking at 5.5 10^76 possibilities to hack your way through - an ugly proposition.
A 32 character long password (comprised of numbers, letters, and basic symbols) has aproximately 2.72 * 10^59 possibilities. Provided it is procedurally generated in some way to create what appears to be a random output by anyone that is not you, that is still an ugly thing to brute force.
Even a 16 character long password is ugly.
Encryption is possible to make unreasonable to break through brute force, leaving the human element, the passcode, the most vulnerable point of attack. Switch this out for a 2 step verification requiring something you know and something you have, and breaking in becomes a near impossibility.
Provide laws that prevent a person from incriminating themselves, and privacy laws, and encryption becomes a very good safeguard. |
If the NSA hadn't've decided that they could subvert the rule of law, we wouldn't've had to take technical measures to protect us regardless of the law.
If they had worked within the law, I believe apple and Google would have complied with the law. Since they defeated the law, apple and Google can no longer depend on it as providing adequate protection. |
If you aren't willing to do such an easy thing, then you have no realistic need to avoid being spied on. And if your ideology falters at "boot a separate OS", chances are your principles regarding this aren't very strong either.
Privacy is hard. Save yourself the trouble and don't waste money on "easy" solutions like this one because you are lazy. Tor isn't at all reliable for anonymity when used as a persistent communication line, so this will do absolutely jack shit for you if you intend to use it from your own house. |
I'm not a security expert, but what I know is that every security agency on the planet is running Tor exit nodes and is watching the unencrypted traffic going by them. You might be surfing anonymous, but every single bit that gets transferred unencrypted will be under surveillance, even more so than when you don't use Tor. |
Over the last few years, Huffington post has lost more and more credibility with their articles. Devices slow down as a result of updates. Not just iPhones. I have an iPhone 4S myself, I haven't updated to iOS 8, and I don't particularly plan to.
But this is the exact same thing with other things. Even most computers need better hardware or software. Windows 7, or a new processor. This will always happen. Apple just does it at a rate where they release a device every year.
And even Android devices get slow or can't even update. I have a Note I and it's crazy slow. I still use it once in a while, but because of it's updates, I can't even get it to scroll because of the lag. |
I've never used the mobile site, so I don't know what it's like.
As for reddit itself, it has changed a lot since I joined - many subreddits have become more forums indulging in popularity contests for karma, rather than places for genuine conversation and debate. I probably contribute to that problem; being something of an introvert, I tend to hang back in discussions and just use them as a means to watch what the wider community thinks (since nowadays just about every demographic can be found on Reddit). When I do comment it's usually in the form of a question or on something that has real-world importance for me.
Which brings me to another point. Many subreddits are emphatically not just karma-farms. This site is so vast that discussions about anything can be found. In the more seriously-oriented subreddits a lot of very good debate and discussion can be had.
My point is that on Reddit one has to go through a great deal of chaff to separate it from the wheat. But the wheat is there. A lot of people I know who are on Reddit tend to stick to just a few subreddits; this strikes me as a waste of a good resource. Leaving various frivolous subreddits behind, trying to find other, better ones, and concentrating on those you find worthwhile, while not making Reddit your whole life (i.e., not taking it too seriously, and not caring too much whether your karma goes up or down too much) keeps the site closer to what it was at its inception.
Sorry for the run-on sentences. I'm kinda tired. |
In essence they did fail, although some users Data may have been eavesdropped it is far below what was accepted to be a risk.
Also due to the fact that the TOR network tests the new relays before they are allowed broad access it meant that they were shut down before they could steal tons of data. |
Yes they actually are. You're reflecting your base knowledge on the matter in your various references that lead me to conclude that I don't have the time to illustrate every part that leads to how they are lying. If you missed it in my earlier message then I don't really see the point in explaining it to you. |
Spotify requires you to be a band or artist to upload your own music, and you can't upload stuff you simply would like to find at any time.
Sounds like a GOOD thing to me. Artists should be able to control what sites profit from their music, and be able to get paid for it. It's one thing if you want to upload music you bought so you can listen to it on the cloud. It's another thing to share someone else's music without their permission, or without even giving them proper credit like correct track listings. If you're going to steal music at least give the artist some recognition and proper linking to social media profiles, or store pages, etc.
>Avoid big names and you can load all sorts of music. |
I have kind of a funny related anecdote similar to this... i was hired to do some work on a house by a wealthy retired couple (no clue how much they were worth or what they even did...the guy gave me kind of a tony soprano-ish vibe though haha)... they bought a big new house in a new neighborhood development.... then the company developing the neighborhood got entangled in some scam and went bankrupt...so now there's these connected long streets though a main entrance..it even has a wooden sign with the neighborhood name... and it's all just vacant lots and they're literally the only house in the entire neighborhood..it's kind of hilarious
anyway, no utilites had been run into the neighborhood for obvious reasons... except for electricity, water and phone...and a shitload of empty conduits... they spent 3 months trying to get comcast to come run cable to their house with no results..they kept saying they'd be there that week..then nothing.
they told me how eventually they got upset, and used whatever rich-people-type connections they had to somehow speak to someone very high up in the company...i think it was the CEO's assistant...and then they finally had comcast show up to hook cable into their house the very next day. |
Think about this historically, dude. For the majority of mankind throughout our existence, we manifested this behavior simply... masses would have went to her house, clubbed/stoned her to death, burned it down, hung her, or some shit, to get across the message, if the people were upset enough about it.
Nowadays, things are absurdly improved, obviously, and the point is that one damn phone call --mere brief communication at the convenience of where you are--is a fantastic humane solution to solving the restless dissatisfied masses (upset for legitimate and pretty big problems).
As opposed to, as mentioned, one of many old fashioned ways of handling this sort of social conflict. A phone call, dude! This is the future! Do you get it!
So, that said, the way you come across seems like a hypersensitive defense. That's all. In some alien utopia each conscious being could control every single aspect of their perceptive life, yet for the present you're easily being a little bit too defensive over such a luxurious need. |
Well, keep in mind I don't work for any of the production crews, so I can't speak to how they did it on each site they went to for all the episodes, but for the one involving the company I worked for. This is all either stuff I personally witnessed, was privy to, or have pieced together after talking to some of the regional managers and executives after the fact:
They initially sent a small production crew under the auspices of filming a documentary on the hospitality industry in the city we were located in, and had already sought out approval from our corporate HQ, which had been confirmed by our corporate office earlier in the day. They had all the employees, excepting the GM, cycle through a 3-5 minute test interview they filmed, checking to see if we could avoid looking directly into the camera, what our stage presence was like (difficult to hear us, if we stuttered a lot or were otherwise very nervous, anything that would make for bad recording really). They asked us questions about who we were, if we had family and such, what our job title at the resort was, and what a sample day looked like for what we did. They also asked what we thought of the corporate management, if we'd ever met any of the executives, etc.
They told us they'd review the recorded footage and our answers to see who would be best to have a member of their documentary crew follow around for the purposes of recording what a job shadow or new employee might need to know and do. They claimed they would be filming at multiple resorts in the area for this portion of the footage, so if they only chose one employee to film, that would be why. They even interviewed the management team (excepting the GM), though they didn't choose any one of us to follow since it would obviously be incredibly boring footage of meetings, paperwork, and other Back Of House stuff that no one wants to see on film.
Originally, our location was selected to have two different employees followed around, one in housekeeping, and one in our activities department. Several weeks after that point when they returned to do the "actual" filming, they had scrapped the housekeeping side (I never learned why), and spent an entire day with the film crew following around the activities team member.
The management team had suspicions since the one producer had an Undercover Boss credit to her name, among some documentaries, on IMDB. Also, the GM was called away to another property for a meeting with some of the regionals and other members of the executive team the day the crew was supposed to do their filming.
They brought in our CEO in disguise to serve as the documentary crew member, who coincidentally ended up looking like a twin to our groundskeeper by accident, as the groundskeeper was on one of his days off when they came through the first time. It caused issues and we had to give him the day off (paid) since the film crew kept accidentally following and filming him instead of the CEO. It was close enough in appearance that I almost hauled the CEO off for disciplinary action for lounging about and watching the film crew instead of doing his job, the eyes gave it away for me, his voice for some of the others. The employee they were going to be filming was pretty new to the company at the time, though (couple months only).
They filmed the employee's entire work day, the CEO followed along and actively participated in the job duties, like you see on the show. They did some stuff throughout the day where the two of them would sit off to the side while the CEO asked questions of the employee, the CEO would try to act out against the company policy on some things to see if he would get corrected by the employee, all the same stuff you see on the show.
The footage of our location (except in the opening credits) didn't get used since nothing really happened for us. The employee fielded everything correctly, didn't mess up, and had no idea what was going on until after the film crew left and we broke the news to him of what had gone on that day. Nothing remotely interesting happened at our site, really. We didn't have an employee talk trash about the customers, we didn't have an A/C unit set on fire by the Chief Engineer while repairing it, etc.
The Activities guy still got gifts from the CEO even though the footage wasn't used (paid off his student loans and got him a car, if my memory serves correctly), but the "awards" handed out at the end aren't mandated by the show, but chosen by the CEOs and their advisers. So if it seems cheap, look to the CEO. Some of them give out some serious stuff (like the one with the 25k checks), but that's all them.
In the aftermath, for about 8 weeks following there were changes made throughout the company. An entire team in one of our call-centers was terminated due to their performance and attitudes towards the customers. Some company wide procedures were altered (including one that was created using some of the processes we had been using locally), and it was rumored one of the sites had some management changes (no one would ever confirm this rumor, and I wasn't personally in contact with anyone at that location). All stuff that wasn't shown by having "Secret Shoppers" audit, and stuff that would/could be covered up normally from the corporate inspections. There were a lot of tests our CEO put every site he visited through, and most of the sites passed his tests without issue, because we all tried to stay on top of our game. I don't know if every CEO does it the same, but ours took it as a serious opportunity to dig into some stuff while using it for the publicity. I've heard stories that some CEOs do it just for the exposure and nothing really changes, and that depends on the CEO. I know ours made changes using the information he wouldn't have necessarily been able to get due to how information gets disseminated through a corporate chain, and he had grown up in the industry and knows it rather well. I imagine that probably makes a difference. |
Adblock =/= Adblock Plus.
Adblock is run on donations.
Adblock Plus gets paid from advertising companies to show ads, you have to untick the "Allow some non intrusive ads" to make it work properly. |
This is form over function. Simple as that. You want a trendy, lightweight, beautiful machine that will be a good travel buddy, social media cruiser, and email/word processing? Perfect, but be ready to pay for it. Two opposing viewpoints in this thread: 1. Why would I pay so much for so little? 2. This would literally do everything I need to do on a computer. Both viewpoints are skewed. 1. You are paying for the form factor and the branding. Yeah, it's a well designed and well made machine that runs a decent OS, but this isn't for everyone. 2. A computer from 2005 will do everything you need to do on a computer.
Based on pure specs, this isn't an impressive machine. Based on aesthetics and engineering though it is very impressive. No one can deny this isn't a good looking machine, but no one can deny it's not overly expensive for what you get. Most tablets and phones have more pure power than this laptop while being lighter weight AND cheaper. But it's never been about that. It's about creating a unique machine that will make most users go "Whoa" when they see it. It'll do everything you need it to, sure, but it's also the from factor that will sell it. |
ITT: People who think MacBooks are for anything besides note taking, email, and Facebook. Honestly guys, MacBooks are for college students, Apple knows this, and Apple makes billions off of it. This is the best laptop for college students in the world, long battery, compact form factor, and capable of completing 99% of all non-CS course work. Also, it looks 10x better than anything else out there, which matters to a lot of people. |
A 290 won't handle Crysis 3 at 4K. My GTX 970 barely does Medium at 4K, a 290 wouldn't come close to that.
[Here]( is a build with a 290 and the iMac's other specs, with basic Hackintosh compatibility. Currently costs $2,800 with the monitor. That is $50 more than the upgraded GPU RiMac.
Seeing as a hackintosh is illegal at first, and questionably stable at best, the RiMac still is the better option there. Especially if you have to spend time to get the Hackintosh part running (which you would). |
I bought a higher end dell xps and it has given me nothing but trouble. Don't know how but it messes up saved documents (prob not dell), hardware crashes, bad mobo, bloatware, unresponsive keys. I had to send the first one back to Dell after explaining why they should honor their warranty since I owned the computer for less than 6 months. The second one I got started going bad in the same time frame. I now only use it to look at reddit and play a game. |
Owning both a mac and a PC I can try to give some answers about that.
People pay more for Apple products because of the overall experience they have, from the moment they order the product to the moment they use it, and that covers delivery, setup, hooking it up to the internet, work, media consumption and of course technical support.
And let's be honest : OSX is much more user-friendly and snappier than Windows ever will be on a similar configuration simply because the user isn't facing a bloated interface with too many choices. In a sense, we see the kind of rift you have between the GNOME and KDE desktops on Linux. One is minimalist and the other has too many features to list (which is not a bad thing, mind you. Just that some people don't like that.)
People tend to think that OSX has the same system requirements as Windows does to work the same way (as snappier / faster as the other) but that's wrong, OSX actually needs less ressources to operate the same way. MS is doing a lot of work these last few years to reduce Windows' footprint in memory, disk and CPU usage.
When you have a problem with your Apple product, you know you can go to an Apple Store nearby, and have one of the staff look into your problem personally and not let go of it until it's fixed. Compare that to the fact that when you buy a PC you have to go to the shop, who tells you you need to call the manufacturer, who then outsources its call center to people who don't understand what you're saying and vice versa, and then you have to send in your computer and not see it until 4 weeks later, if you're lucky.
I'll give you three personnal examples of the kind of good service I had with Apple and which made me feel like I didn't overpay my product for nothing :
1) One day I took my iPad out of my bag and ofund out the front glass had some heavy cracks in it. It wasn't in warranty anymore and thus I checked out the repair costs. Turns out it was quite expansive, so I mildly complained on Twitter about it (I was more blaming myself for not taking good care of it than anything else, honestly.) and a very old friend of mine I hadn't talked to in a decade DMed me and asked for my serial number. Turns out he was working at an Apple Store now. A few minutes later I received a Repair Order costing me 0 euros. He later told me Apple Store employees had some margin on giving 'presents' like that to customers. My iPad 2 was exchanged on the spot.
2) When I came back from a trip to Japan, I found out on the plane that I couldn't plug the earphones anymore on my iPad. The plug just didn't fully click inside, and couldn't go deep enough. Something was probably stuck in there. I brought it to an Apple Store, thought I was going to pay something for it, and then after explaining the problem, the guy took my iPad to the backroom for about 15 minutes and cleaned the plug there, giving it back to me with the earphone plug fully functionnal for absolutely no cost.
3) My baker has an iMac and his kitchen caught fire one night, which put a lot of ashes on the Mac in the room next to it. She called the Apple Store nearby, they told her to bring them the iMad (it was out of warranty too). They cleaned it for free and made sure it worked before giving it back to her 2 days later.
Someone told me once that they did this kind of service so they would have happy customers who would willingly tell others about such stories, which is working since this is exactly what I'm doing now.
A happy customer stays. It's as simple as that, even if you make him pay more, as long as he's happy, he'll do the advertising for you, and we all know an opinion from a person you know is much better than any ad. |
Basically they are craving more content and are willing to pay for it, but there is no proper ways to purchase it, so they get the content however they can
It is such a stupidly obvious problem/solution, but industry has no need to get with the times as they can just push laws with all their "freedom of speech" money and turn everyone into criminals, then they have no need to innovate, and also why they are salivating/tripping over themselves with the TPP that pushes the worst parts of the same loudly defeated laws like SOPA and PIPA |
You don't have to beat around the bush; it would be a whole lot faster just to come out and call me a liar (but I guess less entertaining). It wasn't lack of "gumption" that stopped me from pursuing this idea, it was more of a time/feasibility concern (school has kept me busy for the past few years). You're right in that I didn't really proceed past pure conceptual design (and completely disorganized conceptual design at that) but, believe it or not, I actually did do some quick sketches and calculations but couldn't account the problems as stated. As far as inspiration, I was intrigued by two literary examples and a personal experience put the thought into my head.
In Dan Brown's "Decepetion Point" (I'm fairly certain that's where it was, it might have been in one of the Clancy's book) there were soldiers that had self-powered snow boots that had small treads that they could charge by regenerative breaking or using them like skis. (I also looked into powered systems, but they were all too bulky to even consider)
My freshman year in college I broke my leg by simply falling off a skateboard after it got stuck on a small rock. I wasn't even moving that fast or trying to do anything fancy. I was basically just standing on a friends skateboard. But that definitely started thinking about this idea.
Then I read Snow Crash a little while after that and the skateboard in the book with wheels consisting of automatically adjusting spokes that could just adapt to the terrain was (while completely over the top) at least another interesting idea that kept me thinking about improving on this type of transportation. (Feet based transportation? lol I'm not sure what to call skates and the like)
Nothing tangible may ever come from this idea, but I am this || close to finishing my prototype for a jetpack that has a 100 mile range and only water and unicorns as exhaust byproducts! I expect favorable results soon. |
I actually seriously considered designing something similar to this. The larger wheel would allow for better control over rougher terrain than smooth cement. (think road/pebbles/broken concrete etc.) Putting the bottom of the foot below the axle would allow for more stability and, hopefully, better control while sacrificing maneuverability. They should also allow for much greater speeds as the wheels wouldn't have to rotate at nearly the RPMs that smaller wheels do on traditional skates.
But there was one major problem that I couldn't correct for and wasn't sure how much of an impact it would have. Placing the wheels on the side of the foot, as opposed to directly below, creates a torque about the ankle as long as you are standing on the wheel. This stress applied for any length of time would become unbearable, or so I thought. I'd have to see how they account for this, I thought about extending the boot up the ankle but this would lock the foot in place and put pressure on the calves/lower leg; neither of which are my idea of comfort. Putting wheels on both sides of the foot would just become cumbersome. Any way I looked at it, it would probably be uncomfortable for any extended period of time. (i.e. several minutes) |
Because I started this ridiculous thread. You are correct there would be reduced incentive to make games/movies. That incentive would not drop to 0 however. Things like product placement, product tie ins, other forms of advertising, donation based, pay before its made schemes, sales of hard copies, sales to people who still want to go to theaters(better screens and sound), and providing server/mutiplayer infrastructure would still support the industry. Remember I only want to end non commercial copyright.
On the other side though production costs would decrease. Suddenly I can make a new game using the character models of an old game. I can make a new movie using commercial songs and footage from other movies. I can remix all songs and books.
It is amazing if you look around how much non-commercial media already exists. It tends to look like a smaller amount than it really is however because it does not get advertised. It therefore does not get popular so you do not realize how much exists. There is more non-commercial music and books today than any one human could possibly consume in a life time. We are not quite there with movies and games but give it time.
You tend to get better stories with non-commercial projects as well because the creators are not held to commercial interests. Today if you want to get very popular you have to generally go commercial because you need the advertising. But by removing some of the commercial interest it becomes easier for other stuff to become popular based on merit. There is no reason that transformers should be a popular movie. |
Unbuilt "concept" designs are little better than an 8-year-old drawing "kewl rockets!" on a piece of paper.
The proof is in the pudding. |
I actually just wrote a paper on net neutrality as a national issue, here it is,
Would you let a car company sell you a car if you had to pay extra to drive on certain roads or visit certain gas stations? What if it was the only car company in town? What if your phone could only call to have pizza delivered from one store in the county? Several large internet service providers (ISP’s), including Verizon (Kang, 2010) and Comcast (Wyatt, 2010), are resisting regulation that would ensure internet equality. Net neutrality is the same equality that allows you to drive on whatever roads you want, call whomever you want, and visit whatever website you want. Giving the federal communications committee (FCC) the power to regulate providers and protect net neutrality would ensure that ISP’s allow traffic from and to all websites on the internet.
You may be thinking, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, which been the reaction of at least 74 house Democrats (The New York Times, 2010) . The problem with this thinking is that you ignore the part that is broken. The way the internet founders like Tim Berrners-Lee planned the internet is different then what service providers want to sell. Tiered service, similar to how cable currently operates, is a system with distinct quality and pay level. Imagine this scenario:
Basic Service with Comcastic including 10 GB of free bandwidth to over 20 different websites at top speeds plus 3 free months of email. $5/GB over 10. Does not include afternoon or late night browsing, peer to peer transfer, or encrypted browsing.
$39.95
Explorer package includes access to Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Wikipedia. Limited to English pages only.
+$5
Hollywood package includes access to Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and tv.com. Reserve the right to cancel your subscription at any times if you are caught recording copyrighted materials.
+$15
Tiered service will go unchecked if the FCC has no power to regulate ISP’s. In fact some of these abuses have already begun, recently Comcast actively throttled the connections of users who they felt weren’t using the internet correctly. Customers who used the bit torrent protocol were denied upload service, this means that customers who were “torrenting” or sharing files on a distribution network, in some but not all cases illegally, were prevented from redistributing what they received (Reardon, 2010). Bit torrent relies on this redistribution so that not only were customers of Comcast affected but all connected to and redistributing the file experienced what I call “information discrimination”.
This is an issue of companies fighting their government regulators. Currently the FCC has reclassified the internet from Information Service to Telecommunications Service, where it has much more control, after losing a crucial legal battle to Comcast over BitTorrent throttling (Wyatt, 2010). This can’t be a long term solution however since the FCC is affected by party politics. The majority of its commissioners are appointed by the President meaning that the internet as we know it could be gone in as little as 3 years. We should not leave the future of information up to a single non-elected person.
Net neutrality is a good idea that helps the majority of internet users. It keeps the democracy of the internet as it is. Competition is good for websites; the internet thrives on competition (Singel, 2010). Since there are almost no barriers to the internet marketplace nearly anyone can start a website and the web has become a place of innovation. It has dramatically changed how people interact, and we need to protect its ability to innovate by stopping its monopolization. Imagine a world where facebook could never have become the success it is today because users had to pay a premium for websites that weren’t owned by Newscorp we would have had to live with MySpace pages instead; my eyes and ears hurt just thinking about it.
The First amendment bars the government from controlling the newspapers and ensures that opinions are openly expressed however our electronic media which is quickly replacing its conventional paper counter-part (Chideya, 2007) relies on ISPs for distribution. The government isn’t preventing free speech but companies are trying to control, commercialize, and monopolize on it. If citizens can’t rely on the availability of varying opinions and ideas on the internet it will no longer function as a two way street for the exchange of ideas but will become a one way vessel for companies to market. Leaving you the consumer with only trivial input in the same way traditional cable television does.
America has seen amazing innovation recently on the web but none of it from ISPs, America is currently ranked 26th in the world in terms of access. Finland on the other hand just made broadband a legal right to every citizen (BBC News, 2010). What have the ISPs done to innovate? Comcast over rode basic internet protocol and returns advertisements instead of 404 error codes, Time Warner Cable tried putting in low data usage caps, AT&T tried putting in fast and slow lanes so they could tax you for service to sites like youtube, and Charter let ad agencies spy on their customers data. Google a web company on the other hand has started a project to spread fiber across America and put in a well tested reliable and much better infrastructure than the one the majority of Americans are currently relying on. (Singel, 2010)
Proponents against net neutrality saying that limiting and regulating the internet will slow its progress are mistaken. Net neutrality does not limit content; instead we are protecting it from the phone monopolies who are more concerned with trying to please share holders than technology. The future economic benefits of protecting our internet are the products that are developed using the web as a platform. Products that changed how we shop, listen to music, send letters, converse, and even how we learn. Net neutrality would force internet service providers to compete on a even grounds and push the spread of internet to everyone at the lowest cost.
Is the internet really that important? Why not let the free market decide what is best? Imagine one employee waiting 10 seconds for information to be retrieved and sent from a web server; now imagine every employee (say 200) at a company headquarters who uses the internet waiting for information, now imagine all the people in all the companies (say at least 1000) in the U.S. who are simply waiting for information added together that more than 23 days. This is a very real cost to our economy and worth investing the energy into properly regulating instead of forcing the FCC to play legal games with ISPs.
In conclusion ISPs have a public duty that they are not meeting and we need legislation that gives the FCC the power to do it’s job. We need to protect the internet because it is one of our greatest assets. For the internet as we know it to survive there must be competition between websites, and the freedom of information. The ISPs are not innovating in a way that helps the general public or the internet as an industry, regulating these large corporations will in fact spread broadband faster. We need legislation soon! Morally and economically our information is at stake!
BBC News. (2010, July 1). Finland makes broadband a 'legal right'. Retrieved July 1, 2010, from BBC News:
Chideya, F. (2007, August 22). Study: Internet Threatens Local Newspapers. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from npr:
Kang, C. (2010, June 22). Verizon CEO Seidenberg: open to some compromises, not greater FCC authority over broadband. Retrieved June 29, 2010, from The Washington Post:
Reardon, M. (2010, June 17). FCC seeks comment on broadband reclassification. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from cnet news:
Singel, R. (2010, June 24). You Don't Want ISPs to Innovate. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Wired:
The New York Times. (2010, June 30). The Price of Broadband Politics. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from The New York Times: 2010
Wyatt, E. (2010, April 6). Court Favors Comcast in F.C.C. ‘Net Neutrality’ Ruling - NYTimes.com. Retrieved June 29, 2010, from The New York Times: |
One possible solution to the charging problem: equip cars with a "jump charge" feature, so that two private individuals can transfer energy from one car to another with a special jumper cable, similar to when someone's battery dies and you give them a jump start. Ensure you have the ability to measure how much energy was transferred.
Now, in the present day, there are a lot of people who are poor enough to need extra money but rich enough to own a car. People who fall into that category can fully charge their car overnight, and then (after work, on their day off, whatever) wait at places and times where people are likely to run out of power: near freeways at rush hour, etc. The person who needs a charge pays the other person $5 or $10, and they're both on their way, having engaged in a transaction that benefits both: one person makes a few bucks, and the other gains some convenience.
For extra safety / regulation / predictability / etc., set up a middle man who provides the site and some equipment and manages the charging and discharging and so on.
It would be similar to [selling blood plasma]( only no needles and you can do it every day.
Probably creates more traffic, though, because you are creating more trips for jump chargers to make. |
Did you know it's more likely to die on the way to polls than to have your vote matter. I value my life more highly than I value the difference between a Republican and a Democrat for 1 of 500+ Congress positions. |
Sorry, people that don't vote are fucking idiots. Especially, all the ones that don't vote during the general election and then claim that they didn't because they didn't like the options. Because 90% of the time the people complaining about the candidates in the general election never caucused or went to the ballot primaries to pick a candidate that would be more acceptable to them.
Even if you don't care about the candidates on the ballot you should still go to vote for your State legislature. Do you ignorant asshats understand that this was a census year? State legislatures with a one-party majority can redraw district lines to cement demographics for their candidates. They won't get voted out until after the next census, that is how we have career politicians. There are ballot measure like Prop 19 in every fucking district of the United States. California lost their chance to legalize weed cause of fucking apathetic people like you who will whine about legalizing pot in reddit threads then won't get out to vote, leaving the decision entirely in the hands of the old people. |
ok, so I'm going to reply to this considering the following options, hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, coal. Now, I'm going to read/reply to your comments with these technologies in mind, and I'm going to try and judge what you've written in that light.
>It's very expensive...
To quote the article: "Money is not an issue, which is different from the rest of the world."
Additionally, there are 400+ nuclear reactors in the world, it will take more than a few (possibly exceptional) cases to highlight that nuclear is intrinsically more likely to run over budget than wind/sloar/hydro. Cost is the prime reason for using coal and gas, so your point raised here is not a point away from nuclear power, it's a point for coal/gas, as these are the only energy sources that are not likely to run over budget.
>I can bring up doubts about whether it would be safe or secure.
And you've provided no alternative to this. So I'll try and fill in the blanks:
hydro - A viable alternative, but is simply not available everywhere. When it's not an option, it can't be used.
wind/solar - Cannot produce the volume/consistency of current power needs
gas/coal - Waste is uncontrollable, pumped straight into the atmosphere, which causes known damaging effects. The volume of pollution is far greater than nuclear power, so it would fail your criteria of "safe and secure"
nuclear - produces far less waste than coal etc, but this waste can be stored and managed, and poses no risk once it is. There is little way nuclear waste can pose the same form of global destruction that the greenhouse gas effect is going to cause.
>There is also the commitment to centralised power that nuclear energy represents.
Again, give alternatives. You can't criticize one form of power without giving it in some kind of context. Nuclear is the only non-greenhouse power source (aside from hydro) which can at least produce some energy. Your logic here could be directly applied to Wind/Solar.
> |
Just to present the opposing view, here is why I am against the view that nuclear power is 'the' solution. It's taken from an older post where someone asked me to explain the reasons for my anti nuclear stance. (In a thread of unpopular views on reddit.)
I am not uninformed. I have read a lot of conflicting information on the pros and cons. I know that reactors are safer now. There are new safety systems, proper standards and so on. I know that there are still advances that could be made. I know that waste can largely be reprocessed and even reused. But I still think that the cons out way the pros.
It's very expensive. Now you can find sources that will say its cheaper than all the other power sources. I can find sources that claim the exact opposite. But the sources I trust are actual case studies of reactors in the past and present. Flamanville in France is already predicted 1 billion over budget and delayed indefinitely. Olkiluoto in Finland is encountering massive delays and costs. And the decommissioning costs of the older generation of plants are largely surpassing expectations. I understand that new reactors will not be the same exactly, but they still represent one of the best precedents.
Decommissions always costs more than expected. They are often not even factored for. It's almost always paid for by governments and governments usually have to offer insurance subsidies or limited liabilities. In the UK The limit for the operator's liability is £140 million this is a very small amount when considering nuclear powers scale and costs. Often the cost will be presented to the public minus these, with decommissioning often representing the bulk of actual expense.
There is then the cost of security and safety. Some of these costs could be reduced but not all of them. Also with each saving measure taken in these areas, I can bring up doubts about whether it would be safe or secure. Nuclear waste has to be moved, it has to be stored it has to be dealt with safely and securely. We would have to be able to guarantee that this would be done, no matter how expensive it becomes. At some point government reforms in less economically developed countries will happen and they won't accept money for dumping waste. I don't think it's right to dump waste like that anyway.
Next there is uranium dependency. This still has to be mined. This represents a massive use of fossil fuels. It often (at least for my country the UK) relies on countries that I would rather not have a dependant on. Uranium acquisition is often carried out in ways which could be considered unethical. Obviously the process could be changed and all sources of power require natural resources. I just think nuclear powers dependancies have greater cons.
There is also the commitment to centralised power that nuclear energy represents. In its current form small scale nuclear power is largely not viable. This means we incur the inherent inefficiencies of moving the power generated and problems of judging consumption and so forth. This is to some extent an emerging problem in France where nuclear power plants are run in load-following mode. Of course France is often brought up as a nuclear success story and to some extent it is. I would argue though that success in countries like Germany of other power sources show that the potential of these alternatives is greater. If the level of investment even began to match nuclear power, who knows.
I would not consider nuclear weapons or reactor meltdowns to be factors in my decision although at other times and in other circumstances they could be. In countries with less regulation safety, stability and security a wind farming industry is less worrying than a nuclear one.
Of course many of these problems could be overcome (perhaps even have been solved in theory) with further investment and research but I think the potential for other power sources given even a small amount of the attention nuclear power gets in terms of money and research is more than worth investigating. |
Except civilian nuclear energy has never made a profit ever, anywhere. The Russians, Japanese, French, Chinese and of course the USA couldn't do it*. What it does do well is to serve as an adjunct to a military nuclear program, and offset liabilities in other energy sources, like oil. These countries see it as vital to their national security, so they subsidize it. Look how much of the USA's DOE budget goes to nuclear, for example.
China just bought 4 of the newest of the new GE reactors, google the cost overruns and delays.
They bury this as deep in their financial statements as the smartest accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists can find ways to do. They like to tout their small operatinf cost and downplay the enormous commissioning and de-commissioning costs. They wish away the de-commissioning costs by claiming the useful life of these plants is 60 or 100 years.
That said, you save the world with the options you have, not the ones you wish you have or might have at some future date, to paraphrase D. Rumsfeld.
*Supposedly S. Korea is profitable on civ nuclear, but haven't been able to verify it. |
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