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Had the US government took a firm stance on nuclear energy and not cancelled all those plants from being developed in the late 70s and then continued to develop plants at a reasonable rate since then I think our energy and global warming problems would be easier to solve.
Even if we went with todays inflated over the top costs for a US based nuclear power plant (that can put out 12.4 billion kWh) it is under $4 billion a pop. By this day in age we would need about 347 of these monsters to power America day in and day out seeing as this country uses 4.3 trillion kWh annually). That works out to about $1.38 Trillion in total cost. Again this is assuming all the shenanigans that have gone on in the nuclear industry the past few decades will continue to go on during this whole project and drive up the costs of these plants. Right now wiki indicates that some recent plants have cost up to 8 times their initial predicted costs. Most are initially estimated at $0.5 to $1 Billion. Anyway lets say they had built those 347 plants over the course of the past 30 years, as originally planned to keep up with energy needs. At the very most it would have worked out to just about 11.5 (let's say 12) plants per year at a reasonable total cost of $48 Billion (at current value) per year every year for the past 30 years, OR just about 1.16% of the total US expenditures in 2008 ($2.979 Trillion).
Now I understand that plants way back when didn't put out as much umpf as plants do nowadays but since the 80s the progress has been pretty slow, and the plants we have today are not THAT much better. That is to say the are not as good as they would have been if the government had kept research and construction at full steam ahead.
More realistically lets say they had built 12 plants a year for 30 years but the cost of building them dropped over time because more experience was had and research completed. The plants would probably more effective and the overall cost would probably be less which is a win-win. At a pessimistic outlook lets imagine that the plants were going for their predicted costs of $1 billion instead of the $4 billion average that we look at today. So in other words all that experience and research just drives down the price to what we are told they should cost. We would be looking at only $12 Billion a year for 30 years.
Now lets consider plant degradation. If we had started back then the plants would only be expected to last about 30 years. After 30 years, one wave of plants would need to be decommissioned at a cost (today's estimates) of $300 Million per plant or a meager $3.6 Billion a year. This brings the total cost to about $16 Billion per year after the 30 year mark to decommission and replace new plants.
So why didn't they do it? Right now it costs about $74B a year to buy coal for America. Honestly, it is about making money. If America had decided to play the smart game and solve its energy woes with a huge fleet of nuclear power plants then some very large businesses and a great many powerful politicians would have not amassed amazing fortunes in the past 3 decades. The pollution in this nation would be way down because the coal being burnt up for electricity right now would not be consumed in such copious amounts. Global warming might not be as huge of a problem and the first world nations might actually be in a position to set a good example for those still wanting to use coal and oil.
Assuming the cost per year was scaled down and percentage wise it was roughly the same throughout the years then we have to ask, why didn't America decide to make 1.16% of its total expenditures in the area of developing nuclear power? It seems like a good investment when the very worst plants need to be closed after 30 years and the best only after an estimated 60. Had it not been for fear mongering about nuclear energy which still is heard even today, I doubt Americans would have had much trouble voting to spend only $48 Billion a year (current value) for building power plants if they knew it would save them in the long run.
In the past 15 years the US energy usage has gone from just about 3.25 trillion kwh to just over 4.25 trillion kwh annually. It stands to reason that 15 years is a long enough time to make a rough linear prediction of energy needs in coming years. In 15 years we should probably be at 5.25tkwh and in 30 we might need 6.25tkwh.
So lets take the next 30 year time span we've got facing us, could our nation change its mind and survive on nuclear power by 2040?
Say we didn't have any nuclear power plants at all right now (though we have quite a few) then we would need to build about 520 in the next 30 years to meet our energy needs by that time. This is 17.3 plants a year let's say 17 because we know that we already have a few plants to fall back on. That is 17 a year at $4 Billion (current inflated average price) which works out to about $68 Billion a year or $2.04 Trillion over 30 years. Just about 2.28% of the national expenditure of last year.
I don't know about you but I would have voted yes to a proposition that directed $68 billion/year away from something like war and towards building nuclear power plants.
I know my math isn't perfect. I am distracted by my E&M and have a headache and didn't double check anything. Still I think nuclear power could dig us out of this energy hole easily enough and $68 billion a year over 30 years is not that much to ask of tax payers. When we have more than enough plants on top of 20 years additional high capacity battery research it will be easy to have electric vehicles be common place and electricity itself shouldn't cost much at all. Moreover if battery technology develops well enough then the US could become an energy exporting nation. |
Blackhaze brings up my point. People have a right to not have their shit stolen, but pirating is different from that. I don't think it actually has any economic downsides, but IF it actually did drive any artists out of a job because they couldn't sell anything, and if it was somehow enforceable without intruding privacy, it might be something to consider.
So |
Well when I said that I was thinking of things like "back-alley abortions" and applying that logic to unsafe circumcisions. I just think more harm than good may come from it. I guess I should have explained myself better there. I certainly would not suggest what you thought I meant by this.
I also wouldn't suggest rape should be legal because people do it anyways. Illegal rape and legal rape will have the same result, someone is still being raped which is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone, ever. The difference between rape and circumcision in this situation is one harbors advantages in a legal status and the other one does not have any, mostly because rape is never a good thing, ever. Circumcision is just a cosmetic surgery and it is best done by a doctor. I do not like the idea of home circumcision and my assumption is there will be more.
I agree with you on not harming other people in the name of deity. I hate it when people do that shit.
Also while we are at it, maybe I could ask you how you feel about people smoking marijuana even though it is illegal? The "silent approval" argument is used very often when discussing ending the drug war. Also there are advantages to legalization of pot which is why I find it comparable. |
Some things to consider:
Netflix wants to get peering bandwidth at the lowest prices from Comcast.
Netflix represents a large percentage of Comcast's total bandwidth
Peering agreements usually mean sides share traffic; in this case, Netflix is dumping a ton of traffic on Comcast's network, and Comcast doesn't send much traffic to Netflix
This is great for Netflix
This isn't so great for Comcast
Netflix competes with Comcast for premium shows and movies
Comcast is also trying to offer similar services to Netflix (oh, guess what? they still count towards your cap!)
Comcast has 250GB monthly transfer caps, and is always trying to limit certain protocols or services over their network
In many areas, Comcast is the only true "high-speed" broadband provider available, giving them a cushy monopoly position
We live in a country that subsidizes broadband for people that live in the boonies and don't use the Internet, yet we have the worst Internet in developed areas (due to utility monopolies)
Whatever happened to CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers)?
Comcast offers misleading amounts of bandwidth throughput; the monthly cap ensures you could utilize it within 1 day on their fastest connections. The "burst" speed is not guaranteed.
If Comcast really had the network to support it, they would offer unmetered/unlimited service for the small percentage of people that apparently need it
Can Comcast really say that people don't need unlimited service, when we pass up things like online backup, since backing up a few 200GB drives would smash the cap? I'll bet they offer their own backup service that still counts towards the cap (they just don't get it)
Comcast has the upper hand here, as a monopoly. Your only hope is that Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse (the fiber version) show up in more areas. If these services were available in every area, Comcast would be forced to compete, or fail. I ran my FiOS line at 25 up and down pretty much 24x7, and they never complained, instituted caps, or threatened to throttle every service. AT&T and Verizon are Tier 1 providers, and their networks are designed with reliability in mind (I'm talking not talking about wireless here). Comcast is a cable utility monopoly that controls the last mile - that's the only reason you're stuck with them in the first place.
Prediction: unless a large GOOG type company buys Netflix, they're gone. You need money and lobbying power. Do you remember Tivo? Some people still have them, but cable and satellite companies made their own, and boxed them out. :( |
Not particularly. If you don't trust drop box then the app shouldn't have read access to unencrypted files in the first place. Besides, the security hole is pretty small.
The third party needs the file already, and they're only able to tell if DB has seen it somewhere on the network before.
Its not a security issue, seeing as the file would have to be known to the attacker. It is a privacy issue if the attacker is able to get into DB servers and see who has the file in their DB but I can't really see a worry for this unless you're not encrypting your torrented goods or have some file taken from a honeypot in there.
Its also highly questionable that a person would ever be able to subpoena DB for anything besides child porn as there is zero evidence of a wrong doing in the piracy example. Its fair use to have a copy of media you own. |
PC is short for PC Clone. Which is a clone of the IBM 8088 architecture.
People got lazy and stopped saying "clone". But PC continued to refer to clones.
After a while MACs came along and people still called MACs MACs and PCs PCs. Then Apple eventually gave up on its processor market and uses Intel chips. |
In the last decade, the USA has moved from a belief in "innocent until proven guilty" to one of "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" .
This transformation has been sold to (aka, "forced on") the public under the guise of improving security without mentioning that the potential for abuse is incredibly high since these programs are shrouded in secrecy. This doesn't look like it will end well... Hopefully other democracies are learning something from the USA's war on its own citizens. |
I'm a robotic engineer. When I see video's like this, about how the robot is "learning", I'm always very skeptical.
What I see is a pre-programmed robot picking up some stuff, and following its sequence.
Sure, it has some feedback built in. Cup's location isn't exactly the same place it was before, and it self adjusts to pick it up.
But all that feedback and self adjusting was programmed in. It didn't learn shit. Someone programmed that thing how to auto-adjust to the situation.
Example, if you placed the cup upside down in front of that robot now, it wouldn't be able to do shit, unless you programmed it to know how to react to that situation.
It didn't 'try' different routes or sequences, fail, and then try again to come to a 'pass' situation. It didn't learn shit. |
There's a difference between display ads (think banner ads that try to make you remember the brand) and these targeted social media ads.
The primary advantage of an ad that appears on Facebook (versus a generic banner ad that might appear on CNN.com or something) is that they supposedly can not only find a niche target audience, but also engage that audience. If you lose that opportunity to engage consumers, then the ad is no better than a generic display ad (or arguably worse, since the Facebook ads are very restrictive in terms of creative.) As an advertiser, you're probably better off throwing your money elsewhere then.
If the study is accurate, that number greatly undermines the power & value of social ads. They're all the rage in the advertising world right now (every advertiser is demanding a social & mobile app because they think it's 'hip'), but the medium is largely unproven. |
In all the years Facebook has been around, I have clicked on an ad exactly once, and it was last month. The ad was for a performance of Philip Glass's 9th symphony by the L.A. Philharmonic. I bought a ticket and had a great time. |
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I work in advertising, and have worked on several digital campaigns for specifically snack chips. Pringles gives a huge fuck if you click. A gigantic, grotesquely obscene hentai-style fuck.
They have several senior level marketing execs making six figures monitoring a digital team of art directors, copywriters, account managers and strategists all of whom bill at a rate of hundreds of dollars an hour, whose work is quantified by digital metrics agencies who themselves run million dollar businesses to measure exactly how many people engage by clicking on these pieces of shit.
It's insane and inane, but you will not find anyone in that long chain of money and people (except for maybe the creatives) who will say, "It doesn't matter if they click. It's all about awareness." |
There's clicks and impressions. Impressions don't require interaction, an ad need only load to qualify. Blockers don't allow load.
Think about it like a magazine or newspaper. They're riddled with inserts and false covers and garbage you are forced to deal with. An ad blocker would be analogous to some entity that ripped all that shit out before it got to the consumer. Wonderful, yes, but why would I as a potential advertiser seek to run my brand with your publication if I know that's going on? What would be the point?
I'm longwinded, sorry for that wall. |
A point that I don't think anyone here has made is that large companies frequently share desktop screens so they can work on one machine from another without actually being there.
A reason why the author thought that the company would be wasting more bandwidth with the better MBP is that all these 5.1 million pixels would need to be pushed through some local connection (or even over the internet) thus wasting more bandwidth which is and isn't true. It is because some Remote Administration Tools do allow you to push your entire native resolution over the internet (from Retina screen to Retina screen). But what is more reasonable is that the pixels would be compressed and sent over in a more manageable resolution. |
No, he's being downvoted because what he says makes no sense.
The idea behind image stabilization and a larger aperture (f/2.0 on the 920 vs 2.4 on the iPhone) is to be able to use longer shutter speeds to get a better exposure. The difference between 1/3s shutter speed and 1/15s that the iPhone used is negligible. You'd need around 1/30-1/50 to get blur free pictures of a moving person.
Because the 920 has an image stabilizing system that can use a shutter speed of 1/3s and still get a camera shake free photo they've tweaked the automation to allow for a shutter speed that low. The iphone probably only gives 1/15s as it's slowest shutter speed.
It's not a "fake" test, it's a very real test. The OIS allows the Nokia to take photos with a better exposure using a lower ISO and as a result get a better photo.
The photos engadget took are of the extreme nature, they show the very darkest conditions that the Nokia can still get a proper exposure out of, but say you're inside a dimly lit room. Now you're looking at an exposure of ISO 800, f/2.4 and 1/60s. The Nokia can instead use ISO 100, f/2.0 and 1/30s and get a much sharper image with better colours and less noise.
Source: I'm a professional photographer |
Yes and No. I think of it more of a Dummy Tax. The only difference between the Windows and Mac edition is that the Mac one comes Pre-formatted in OSX Journaled. The Windows one (the one I bought at the time it was $50 less, $179 vs $229) comes formated in Fat32/NTSF. As seen in [this photo]( I have it split to handle both. I keep my Mac based files on the smaller partition and all my movies and music on the Windows side. This makes it easy to plug it into any windows PC and transfer files if necessary without the help of third party software. Also in that photo you can see on the bottom row of my settings that I did install NTSF for Mac. This makes it easy for me to read and write to the NTSF partition. Macs will Read from NTSF but it stuggles to Write to it without the help of that software. I hope that helps explain some of it.
*Also note for other Mac users. If you run Virtual Machines's such as Parallels and want to save the VM to a NTSF partition and your mac can handle the Read/Write. Do not run the VM from it. I will run once then it will corrupt your VM. I learned this the hard way backing up my VM to my Windows based partition on this drive and Losing many files. You cannot recover them. I once spent 6 hours with customer service and there was no solution. |
As a disgruntled ex-TWC employee who serviced the NYC region I can tell you with confidence, all the damn time. The problem isn't the rep on the phone or even a TWC technician.
The issue is that TWC in NYC has contracts with about a dozen smaller companies that they pay to do smaller, simpler jobs. In this case swapping out a defective cable box. The problem is that these contracting firms request way more jobs than they could handle so they only prioritize customers that have been noted as scheduling a second visit or are irate.
The situation is made worse by the fact that a lot of the techs are paid by the number of jobs attempted to be completed. This encourages them to put in the minimal effort to attempt to contact the customer.
I remember talking with a customer that had 4 technicians scheduled to her location before she got her issue fixed. We sent a tech out to replace a modem and the tech closed the job with the reason "No Access to customer equipment." Which is a problem that happens in the city often enough, the landlord may have all the modems in a locked closet or something. Not unusual.
I call the customer back and ask if we can get access to the device, she explains that it's on her desk and there should be no trouble getting to any of the wires either. Okay, I apologize and book another technician. Three days later I look in the account and see the same thing "No access to equipment" and the same tech ID on the ticket notes. Call the customer "I was here all day, no one even called me!"
As per S.O.P. I book a third tech, same thing. "No access" call the customer "I haven't left the house" same tech ID on notes. After 3 failed techs we are allowed to escalate the issue to management. My supervisor call the contractor who puts the tech who had been sent to the site on the phone. The tech explains that the elevator in the customer's building is broken and being repaired and getting to her apartment would require using the stairs which he refuses to do.
We sent a fourth technician, who was an in-house TWC tech, who went up the 3 flights of stairs to the customer and replaced her modem. Problem solved.
The worst part is that, not only did the contracted tech not get in trouble, he got paid for the completing 3 jobs with the code "Unable to complete, customer issue." |
I also don't consider it free. Same shit router I've had for 5 years, internet always cuts out. Now I have to pay to rent the piece of shit.
Uverse was one house away from me the last couple years and I tried to request it as often as I remembered. Finally they extended it a few more houses and I am getting it next week. |
This was a notorious problem at twc when I worked there. Unfortunately as tier 1 bitches we just got to deal with the brunt of the complaining and never had any real idea why shit was happening.
Toward the end of my time there someone linked me to a page that showed all the pops, just so that I'd be forewarned if something major went down. I checked that page religiously and it was surprising to me just how often an entire area's shit goes out.
Some things that could be your issue: Bad signal strength - Have you added any of your own splitters? Someone stealing cable - Not sure how'd you check that one on your own. Faulty modem - unfortunately replacing it may end you up with a worse one.
When you say it drops out, do the lights turn off or blink in a different pattern? If so then its either a modem or signal issue. If not, then you may want to try to ping an outside ip. If that works then maybe change your dns settings to use google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Calling them is kind of a last ditch effort. First you'll have to go through the turn it off turn it on crap. If that makes it work then you're just fucked because they won't do anything else. If it is still down, then they'll send a truck. The guy in the truck will check to see if it's working when he gets there. If it is, you're fucked. They'll just roll on. Otherwise he'll probably just swap the modem and be on his way without ever checking the line strength.
Sorry for the wall of text. |
Your whole region is just kicking ass in internet speeds, I guess. I live in Eau Claire, a small Wisconsin town, and my parents live in Minneapolis. Last year I paid $30 for 3.8 mbytes/s, they pay $55+ for 400 kbytes/s from Century Link. The only quick option for them is Comcast, who has such shit customer service that my parents are almost entirely unwilling to switch providers despite the massive difference in speed. |
The problem is that there's always a group on the extreme fringe. These guys are about the worst example we can come up with. What happens if we stop them? The next worst group will take up the mantle. Then we'll feel compelled to stop them, then the next, and so on. I hate the WBC. I've been following their activities since the mid-90s, well before they achieved the fame they have now. I am also proud to live in a nation where this kind of hate speech is allowed. I hate the WBC, but will defend their right to to do it. If we can defend their rights, we can stand proud as a people who put freedom of thought, creed, and speech above all else. |
No, just no. The court 'questioned' copyright, but it saw nothing wrong with France's copyright laws. The court said freedom of expression can be an issue in copyright infringement cases. And that is all. It does not say you cannot
> be convicted just for breaking the copyright, they have to prove other criminal activities that are linked to the copyright infrigment
Nowhere in the ruling Donald v France is this put forward. Nothing has changed in the way countries prosecute their copyright infringement cases in Europe. Nothing. No matter how much people (or I myself) would like this to happen. In order for some sort of a principle to come out of this the Court will firstly have to formulate it (which it did not do here) and then will have to consistently enforce it in a series of judgments as to make clear a change of direction in its case law. The court may just as well continue to rule in the other direction in the future saying the copyright legislations in force in Europe are perfectly in accord with Article 10 and freedom of expression. At this point there is no way to know which way the court will sway, we just know they have taken it up as a matter to be considered.
The article itself is sensationalized and overreaches in its interpretation with the implications of this case. |
Here]( is a good article about it. The ruling is only in French, but it appears the ECHR did not find the EUR255,000 award overly punitive.
>the European Court does not consider the fines and the substantial award of damages as disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued...
>There is indeed no indication that the applicants were involved in a debate of general interest
This almost explicitly exempts things like file sharing from these protections, unless I'm reading it wrong. If anyone that can read French [here is a copy](
>As the Court stated, it saw no reason to disagree with the findings by the French courts
They only reinforced that speech that adds to the public discourse is protected under Article 10 (unless I'm reading this wrong). They upheld the French court's decision and from what I can tell this didn't really change anything.
It says copyright enforcement isn't absolute, but courts all over the world have been putting heavy restrictions on entities only trying to mass enforce their copyrights. Last year's Intellectual Property Law Conference was held in Chicago and I went. The trend is for courts to offer decisions like this (although it pretty much only covered Common Law jurisdictions, with a focus on the US and Canada). |
Thats.... not actually how it works.
For one, people weren't buying cars, in fact it had dropped by 37% - putting them into this position in the first place. Two, no they wouldn't be replaced, certainly not completely - and not in the US, at the very least. Much of the work would be moved elsewhere, and only a minimal set of jobs would remain here.
Not to mention that short term increases in job loss cause a significant effect on other services and economic recovery in general. A greater load is placed on support services, the reduction in spending would impact more companies, and you'd end up with these issues elsewhere. |
Picking a good target is critical I agree. However, I disagree with the method, it's a neat idea and I'm sure the execution would go pretty much as described, but in practice you're walking around with huge folded up sheet(s) of duct tape and a dowel. It's going to take ~10-20 minutes to prepare a single sheet and you'll need several if you hope to get anything of any value. On top of that, should you get stopped for any reason, you now have what could easily be considered burglary tools, which in itself is a crime many places, especially once you use them a few times and people figure out exactly what they're for. This would be a great way to get into a car if you only needed to get into one or two and stealth was critical, but for a small time thief (doing 10-20 cars every night?) it might just be easier and faster to break into the car via conventional methods (or a cool mystery box). |
Well, I made an international call using their "no worries" long distance calling plan. Instead of $0.10 per minute, they charged me $4.00. When I called, they old me not to worry, that they were "investigating it". I didn't worry, and continued calling my daughter in Germany.
Two months later, the dunning calls started, and the real fight began. By this time the bill was getting serious, close to $2,000. I literally spent more time on the phone with AT&T than I did with my daughter trying to get it sorted out with their "customer service".
Finally, fed up and not wanting to risk racking up even more charges, I called with the intent to cancel service, and suddenly I was speaking with somebody who spoke English that wasn't broken, who had the bogus charges cancelled, in about 10 minutes. I let the bill go one more month just so I'd have the piece of paper that said I didn't owe it.
Then, I cancelled, and I have no intention of ever looking back. |
So, I wrote a really long reply and realised my baconit app (WP Client since reddit hasn't made a WP app) wouldn't let me post such a long reply, so I'm gonna do the cons (and what I miss from iphone first) The lack of proper client apps is quite irritating (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Vine, Reddit are all ones that come to mind). Clones do essentially the same thing, but with shittier response times or problems like this, not being able to post this reply via my phone due to it's length. Outside of having proper client made apps, there's really not much I miss from my iphone. iMessage is probably the only thing I really miss. You can actually integrate your facebook into your windowsphone, but the messaging system is buggy sometimes and won't respond properly. The toasting (top down notification) is kind of slow when you're actually talking with someone on the microsoft facebook app (which is horrendous save for the live tile being your cover photo [more on that later]) and will continue to toast, even if you are reading the messages already. If I'm listening to music and then I go to a youtube video without pausing my music first it will freeze the level of my audio (or only let me turn it down) and I will have to reset my phone to regain control. But functionality wise, iMessage is probably the only thing I really miss. Oh and the biggest most infuriating thing is the audio, when you are in an area with low reception, will start to pop and click unless you put your phone in airplane mode because of some strange reason. I've read about it, the music player doesn't interact well with the phone trying to receive messages and will cause these god awful popping and clicking noises, but not for all of your music, just some. I think it's whenever you have tracks that have a VBR on them instead of a CBR, but I can't be quite sure. It's not all of the time either, just sometimes, and when it happens I just airplane mode my phone, reset and it's fine. I typically only listen to music at work, so technically I shouldn't be using my phone for news and texting anyways when I listen.
Now, onto the good things, such as the incredibly amazing Zeiss beta lens for a camera. It shits all over Android and iPhone cameras 100x over and I'll never leave the Nokia market specifically for the camera quality and ability to do anything and everything with it (via free apps I might add). The only thing better is an actual DSLR (or whatever the acronym is) hands down. The things you can do with the camera are amazing and while I'm not a photographer, I never really took pictures as a family growing up, so having pictures and videos that are crisp on what is essentially the computer attached at my hand is something I hold dear for memories. I don't have pictures of my youth at all, so sentimental value of a great camera attached wins me over first and foremost. While I touched on facebook integration being kind of a pain, it's also really amazing. My contacts list is mostly my facebook friends, linked with twitter integration, anyways so that took care of having to enter in a ton of numbers. You can integrate your XBL account, which I put my secondary account on like a retard, but if you want to switch Microsoft accounts you have to do a full erase of your entire phone and reintegrate everything. I'm just not willing to do that, even though everything is saved in SkyDrive. The customization of your home screen being a scrolling homescreen with no need to swipe over to other caches is pretty nice, alongside the ability to make large, big and small tiles, some interacting with you and some not. The contact list tile will scroll through randomly selecting photos of people in your contact list, making an ever changing collage and I like that because it always brings up people I don't see often and jogs my memory a lot. The battery life is pretty awesome, as is the battery saving function which shuts down non-essential apps and toasting if your battery is low. Using your music though will drain it pretty quickly, but that's to be expected imo. The graphics and crystal clear resolution outshines my iphone imo and the actual size of the Nokia Lumia feels better because I have bigger hands and bigger fingers. Most people think it's huge, but it fits my usage better. The keyboard is more responsive to me and it also has a better predict-a-text that isn't so invasive or redundantly changing the same word back as often as the iphone would do it to me. I get about the same amount of freezing/errors that an iphone gave me as well, so it's not like it's some super buggy thing. They have a lot of could-be interesting social apps, but they're typically windowsphone user based and there's just not that many people yet that are on them, so they aren't as useful as I'd like them to be.
I could go more in depth, but it's kinda late. If you leave me any general questions I will answer them in the morning. |
This is huge for the cases. Not only would it it lead to dismissals of the claims against defendants, but it is further (and damning) evidence of the fraud and unethical behavior Judge Wright wants sanctioned and investigated.
For those curious about the implied license part: if someone provides their work for another person it is implied that other person has a license to use it. A simple example: I own a chair and see you seeking a seat. I gesture to the chair but don't say anything. You sit. I can't then yell at you for using my chair as it is implied I gave you permission to do so. In fact the gesture may not even be required. This concept hasn't been that tested with file sharing but it should still hold. |
OP's title is misleading, as is the title of the Softpedia article (which is sensationalist). The key phrase quoted from MS is this:
> "We’re providing all of that data and information to our partners so they can do at least as well as we are," Stewart said. "The natural progression is that we will always be on the bottom of these tests. And honestly, if we are doing our job correctly, that’s what will happen."
It's simply like this. If you have person A and person B, and person A gives/copies all information that he has to person B, then if person B knows anything at all, besides the info he got from A, then he'll know more than A. |
The problem won't go away as long as the same companies providing cable television are also the ones providing internet access. Download caps aren't due to the cost of bandwidth (which is dirt cheap in the scheme of things), but to dissuade users from obtaining video media (some of the highest bandwidth-usage internet content) via internet instead of cable. |
Be very careful what you wish for here.
Now, you might be thinking, "But DragonPup, I'm only going to get channels X, Y and Z because I love their programming". That's cool, but if those channels may not be very popular, so now chances are if everyone picks their own channel lineups they could easily come into less than half the homes they came into before, maybe even a 75% drop or greater. Now with that sort of dramatic potential viewership drop, they can't get nearly as much in advertising revenue so you'll be paying huge amounts more per channel than before. Even beyond that, the channels budgets for new programming will be less because new stuff is risky and costly. Some more niche channels you like may even fold entirely.
Now setting aside the channel cost, you'll be paying more to the cable provider as their costs go up. Now instead of maybe a half dozen channel packages, they'll all need to reprogram their systems for thousands of possible channel maps. And retrain every single sales and customer service rep. And now that you can dramatically change your channels at will, need more agents on the phones to handle that. In short, the extra expenses will be passed on to the consumer. |
classic desktop envs.
I think I'll try LXDE first, as I prefer PCManFM to anything else these days. (I got my share of KDE 1.x, 2.x, Gnome 2.x... I ended up settling with IceWM for a while).
I'll try with Xfce (again) if that fails, thanks.
> updates, LTS
Yup, that's my plan (as I'm using it on the office for parts of my work).
> /home partitions
I knew that practice, thanks for the reminder anyway, as it may help others reading our comments.
My current problems with Mint (LMDE 2013) is that somehow it borks my Gnome settings/visuals. Only way of fixing it is wiping several dot files/folders completely (loosing most of my settings changes along the way). Last update made it noticeably slower too :-(
My main concern with Linux comes from the fragmentation of the GUI toolkits, and the lack of a "good enough file manager that almost everyone uses and develop extensions for" (that's why I still find XP's Explorer and BeOS/Haiku's Tracker more productive than the rest... despite their shortcomings). |
I now own a Mac because of windows 8. I never cared for the Mac OS, but after seeing PC laptop after PC laptop become bricks, I did not see the value in buying another one especially when I have to learn a new OS that is clunky and unfamiliar. I might as well dish out the extra money to have a reliable laptop that has a intuitive OS despite having to relearn it. |
The customer is always wrong... I hate Metro with the burning passion of a thousand Chipotle-shits, but Win8 is a much more solid OS. Better hardware utilization, better backwards compatibility with software, and better with multi-core and hyper-threaded processing.
There are more pressing issues with Windows 8; however, you are more likely to see them as a sys admin than as an average consumer.
This reminds me of the consumer fiasco with Vista. There was some huge miscommunication that went down between Microsoft and their customers. Again, the consumer's main issue was with the new look of the OS as Vista was very different stylistically from XP. There were also major issues on the Enterprise level with Vista, and when Microsoft addressed that Vista had flaws, the average consumer thought the company was validating the opinion that Vista was "harder" to use than XP.
Can you imagine how difficult the shift from text-based computing to a GUI (point and click) must have been?! In the age of YouTube there shouldn't be the same excuse of inability to adapt, especially when a giant app button was staring you in the face on every startup... |
My god most everyone in here sounds like whiny 80 year olds. Change is inevitable, folks. Just because you have to take 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with W8 doesn't mean it's bad.
I use it with and without a touchscreen and love it. Yea it's taken some time getting used to but it's not so different from 7 that I'm completely lost. |
Windows 8 is better.. with touch
I’ve tried Windows 8 on a Surface, and it is absolutely better than Windows 7, but I’m not going to purchase a new device with a touchscreen just for Windows 8.
Touch can be uncomfortable, so advantages can be lost when in a desktop environment
I know someone who loves his Surface, and Windows 8, so he bought a touchscreen for his desktop environment. The problem was that it was too un-ergonomical, as the shoulders tire out fast.
I have not seen any examples of a developer doing serious programming on a touchscreen. I’ve seen programmers that operate in a three-monitor environment, and I don't think that repeatedly reaching their arms across to touch the screens would be comfortable over time.
Touch works best with a mobile device that is close to your body.
Eye tracking
If you don’t have a touchscreen, Windows 7 + a $99 eye tracker could be better than upgrading to Windows 8 for the same price.
There are consumer-level eye trackers that are available now, and were demoed at CES.
Look at any interface widget to highlight it, and then touch the keyboard to activate and select it. It can basically turn a non-touch screen into a touchscreen.
I’m not sure if people are willing to pay for an external hardware device to do that though. Many people might be completely fine with a mouse and keyboard on Windows 7. |
A good example of this is adding a printer.
In Windows 7: you go Start, Devices and printers, add a printer, wifi or Bluetooth, searching for printer, you click the printer you want, then it searches windows update for the driver, finds it if the gods were smiling on you, downloads and installs the driver and then you are done. Probably. Printing may work but extra features? Duplex? Scanner? Auto document feeder? Fax? Maybe. Maybe not.
If not you have to search the web and install the brands driver for that functionality.
In OSX snow leopard: you click System preferences, printers & scanners, + button, select you printer then it will automatically install. If it doesn't have the driver it needs, it will immediately prompt you to click a button to start to download and install the driver. Without you touching a thing but the one "ok" button, full functionality is available (fax, scan, duplex, etc).
In OSX Mavericks it's even better: System preferences, printers & scanners, + button, select you printer then you are done. Instantly, no downloads, no prompts. The second you select your printer all features are available. Done. I have NEVER had to download a printer driver on a Mac manually. Another awesome thing about this: No driver bloat ware. For my Epson printer Windows downloaded the exact same driver you would get off support.epson.com (which is kinda a good thing because it does include full functionality), complete with annoying BUY LEGIT CERTIFIED OVERPRICED EPSON INK!!! Every time I print. I was able to disable that, but I feel like I shouldn't have to do that(although that's more of a Epson thing that Windows). |
Mate, I don't even work in IT, and yet build presentations and spreadsheets and Word templates/forms and such for basic admin functions.
I could seriously save my department hundreds of thousands a year if I could simply design things how I know people like to use them. |
Personally id love it if they made a business model around paying what you feel it was worth. Say I just watched a movie and I found it a confusing pile of shit, was I entertained? No. So it had no value to me. But if I watch a movie and loved it to bits, what better way to fish for money than to poke a donation box under my nose right after the movie? If it was a good movie id gladly plop a couple dollars in the box.
One might think this would cause some people to just stop paying for movies, but dont forget that at the same time a lot of people would START paying for the movies they liked as well.
Piracy is an odd duck. Not every movie downloaded illegally is potential money loss. A lot of people would only watch some movies if they were free. I too have seen a couple movies I would never have bothered watching if I had to pay for it. I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so no loss in me watching an illegal copy. |
Ah fuck he juked us. /u/Newni just made us read a longer |
How is he going to get evidence about every security researcher in the world's opinion? The bold claim was not made by him so he does not need to bring evidence. |
You lose any potential credibility simply by suggesting that North Korea would deny something that they did. Do you even pay attention to their antics? They torpedoed a South Korean vessel, the entire WORLD said it was them, and they still tried to deny it. Just a few months later they claimed that they have a functioning cold fusion reactor. |
I studied this case in my computer security class. Basically, the vulnerability is that they would execute some command on the filename like:
$ decrypt vote.pdf
What these researchers did was give a filename like:
$ decrypt vote.($sh)pdf (not quite sure of the syntax)
Which would give them a shell into the system. |
Fighting piracy is a double-edged sword for Microsoft, and they're aware of it.
Microsoft's revenue comes from selling software. On the other hand, their single most important strategic asset is dominance in the OS and Office suite markets. If you cannot buy a Windows or Office license, they would still strongly prefer that you use them rather than switching to free alternatives . Microsoft doesn't care much for people switching to paid OS alternatives (they even make Office for OS X).
Microsoft is far more terrified of Linux on the desktop gaining traction than about a few million unlicensed copies of Windows. Competing with free is difficult. Linux has only a 1% market share on the desktop. If this rose to ~10%, disadvantages of switching would be much smaller, and Microsoft would suddenly find itself competing on price with free . |
You know you're old when you see a post like this and realize that you have used every version of the software listed, and that you also used the pre-Windows versions too.
MS-DOS through V5. PC-DOS, IBM OS/2, DR-DOS, others that I can't remember now. Back in the day you chose your OS when you bought the machine and usually had a choice of other apps as a bundle. Most weren't very useful though some became big-time companies. My friends and I would choose a programming language. This allowed me to work in MS-BASIC, QuickBASIC, FORTRAN, and Pascal.
I got my first Mac in Jan. '85 to help me get all my notes transcribed from my college courses. Expensive box but way more cool than dealing with a dumb-old DOS-based box. Sadly enough I bought my last Mac in '90, an SE-30 and also bought an Epson PC to use side-by-side in grad school. The cost of the SE-30 was ridiculous compared to the Epson and I ended up giving it back to Apple. They had a 'use it for X days and if you don't like it give it back' deal going so it ended up not costing much.
I've used PCs since. Of course I also had to go the JES2/TSO route in my first job. Then VMS on a VAX. Various other Unices at work, and lately I run into several Linux distros with RedHat and Ubuntu the most common. Now I just use a mix of WinXP, WinVista, Win7, and Linux (Mint, Knoppix, Mandriva, SUSE are my favorites) on my personal machines. |
Read my [comment above.](
>Furthermore, the government squelches all sorts of dissenting opinion on internet boards in Korea. For example, during the Cheonan incident, there were people speculating that it wasn't North Korea, but SK's own government that had something to do with the ship's sinking. This is because before major elections, NK scares always occur. However, these internet conversations were all wiped clean from boards. It's uncanny.
>You're not getting the full story from the title, and I'm sick and tired of this sort of editorializing in the title of submissions. Seriously.
> |
Furthermore, the government squelches all sorts of dissenting opinion on internet boards in Korea. For example, during the Cheonan incident, there were people speculating that it wasn't North Korea, but SK's own government that had something to do with the ship's sinking. This is because before major elections, NK scares always occur. However, these internet conversations were all wiped clean from boards. It's uncanny.
You're not getting the full story from the title, and I'm sick and tired of this sort of editorializing in the title of submissions. Seriously. |
Taxes are not theft. You can croon about it all you want but it's not theft.
The 16th Amendment in the constitution grants said power. That power was created upon ratification. Ratification required consent of the states. State decisions were based on state legislatures. State legislatures were elected...and here's the shocker...by the people.
By living in the United States it is by consent that taxes are legal and not immoral. |
Ha, good point. I meant you cant compare two countries as a whole. For example, it's no good to compare road quality average of the US versus Japan, since the US has far more roads and many out in the middle of nowhere that are hardly used. Same with our infrastructure, we are always going to bad spots because of how spread out we are, causing some areas with very low population density, and then there is the troubling terrain that we have in some areas.
What I meant about it not being an excuse is that we have no excuse for our larger, denser, and/or more active cities and states being as far behind as we are. |
I agree with your final point to a degree, but the "logic" you use to come to that conclusion is absurd. Top that off with the fact that you are attempting to argue about nothing. Here, lets take a look...
>It is more dense than the U.S as a whole
So which is it, more dense or less dense?
>Feel free to compare Finland to any similar sized chunk of the U.S. and I'm sure you'll find these things are true for the majority of them.
Did I say otherwise? No, I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I've agreed that we are worse off. Again, attempting to argue about nothing...
>Your point, that South Korea is "smaller" and thus easier to install cable in, is 100% meaningless.
I never said anything about this, I think you may be starting to hallucinate. And apparently you are questioning that SK is smaller? Regardless, if you think that the amount of distance to be covered is meaningless, you must be simple. It may not be a leading factor, but is a contributing factor.
>Size means nothing without considering density...
And density means nothing without considering size. You tried to bring up that Finland is less dense (though now you say more) but has faster internet, but you did not take into account the sheer size difference of the two. This was the point I was arguing against.
>This is a matter of policy, not geography.
This would be far more accurate if it said "This is a matter of policy AND geography." Also, like last time, everything you posted before this line is irrelevant. You cannot compare the whole of the US to the whole of Finland or South Korea, and I never said anything to imply that the comparable parts of the US were equal or better. |
Absolutely! You are in luck, because ATI is stomping NVIDIA in the hash rates.
First of all, forget the bitcoin clients->"generate coins" thingy. That is so utterly useless nowadays that I think it is being removed from the next release.
For the quick start guide, I'll tell you my setup. There are other pools and other mining softwares, but follow this and you're set up to play around with it.
1) Download [GUIMiner](
2) Join [BTCMine](
3) Set up your BTCMine account. If you look in the settings, you need to give them your bitcoin address so that they can pay you, the minimum threshold before they pay you, and most importantly, you need to [add miners]( These are seperate usernames and passwords that should be weak, as they are transmitted in plain text. For example.
User Pass
Your BTCMine Account name secret
Your Worker Account m1 m1pass
So once you've set up 1 worker per graphics card , go to GUIMiner. Click File->New OpenCL Miner.
Server: BTCMine
Username: name@m1
Password: m1pass
Device: [Pick your Card]
Extra Flags: -w 128 -f 120 -v [You're using the same card as me, so you might as well try my settings. This is optimising the hash rate, but it'll work without]
Repeat this for each card, then click "Start". You'll hear the fans go crazy, and the hash rate is in the bottom corner.
You can mess a bit more but it's beyond the scope of this long post :D |
That's because it's not really dangerous.
Bitcoins are effectively the same as physical cash. The coins are anonymous and untraceable such that there are no records to show that you gave X amount to person Y, all the transactions are done under-the-table so to speak.
The potential added danger exists because it is a digital currency. Unlike cash which has to be physically exchanged in person, Bitcoins can be exchanged truly anonymously from the safety of your own home.
This means for example that someone could go on an anonymous forum, hire a hit-man, pay the hit-man with Bitcoins, and now there is no way to trace the transaction that took place, and neither party has revealed anything about their identity, nor have they put themselves at any real risk of being caught.
This is compared to a traditional operation where the cash would have to be physically exchanged in a scenario which would be very risky and dangerous or exchanged through traditional bank wire transfers where the transactions are recorded and may send warning-bells to law enforcement.
In another scenario, individuals could pay for illegal pornography online using Bitcoins, again this would be done securely and anonymously with no risk to either party in the transaction.
This can really be applied to all sorts of other scenarios such as illegal drug trafficking, illegal money laundering, illegal tax evasion etc. |
Okay, sorry. The post is, specifically, the one by "Raulo" on the first page. I don't see any reason why it would be specific to 10.10. He's explaining how to set up Stream SDK and the other packages you need to run poclbm. |
This is indeed a very interesting article, trying to explain bitcoin for the masses. I think it is a bit too sensationalist though, that it is the most dangerous open source project demands a bit of clarification: It is not dangerous in itself, just that it takes the power to control money from elected/existing authorities and makes it free for all suggests that in the long term states could loose their power monopoly.
So, well, yeah, I agree, if this gets bigger it will be a problem in many respects for nation states, whether that in the grand scheme is a real problem? Probably, since most states rely on money and the power to print money to exist and finance themselves.
I will look into the deeper principles of it to see whether what the article claims could really be true (e.g. that there is an always added identifiable hashcode and still the bitcoin is not traceable seems odd), and since it is a software thing I guess there will in the long term ways to crack the system (like, there are ways to fake money...).
The most interesting part about bitcoin seems to be the production by computation: There real-world money is transferred into electric energy and machines/GPUs as well as time, that then produce value. That seems a bit of a problematic procedure in the long term, and that there can only be "21 million bitcoins until the year 2140" and there are already 6 million seems very odd to me - someone must be gaming the system if it takes "five years to make a bitcoin with your laptop". |
I think you are probably wrong. The danger is not (just) that they are untraceable, the danger is that governments lose their authority to (a) make money, (b) freeze accounts and (c) track how much money you have and impose taxes etc.
The monopoly to print money is one of the most valuable assets of any country (which is why it was so difficult for European countries to decide on a Euro) and in some cases (China), also to define exchange rates etc, which determines to a large part a country's economy.
That there is a currency that is traded outside traditional markets, produced by non-traditional (and in no way accountable, overseeable or taxable) actors and traded/used without the knowledge of states could, in theory, when the amount/value of the currency becomes big enough, disempower states. That there is no way to make someone "pay up" for a service paid in bitcoins - due to the untraceable nature - makes bitcoin also dangerous for its users (like, if you are a dealer and someone steals your drugs; or if you are a prostitute in a country where prostitution is illegal and a client beats you up - you are not exactly going to go to the police...). |
but do you really need 300mph train service?
sounds like something like Accella would make more sense and that rail infrastructure would support freight as well.
my point is not that we shouldnt build infrastructure, but that we need to be rational and build infrastructure that makes sense rather than chasing some jingoistic technological hardon of bullet trains that on a whole are not often practical in daily use. |
How about this instead: Let us create the best game known to man using mods on older games. People have made GTA4 look like it was real life. Desert Combat was a necessary addition to bf1942. Mods usually make the game, so fuck them if they're gonna pull this shit, why don't we just make our own game? Let's make shit better than they did and show them what's up?? I know we have the latent talent necessary to do the job.. the only question is whether you will be man or woman enough to do it or not. |
Regardless of free speech, shes being a bitch, if stuff like this is legal, especially with small children near, then hitting her should be legal, or atleast physical action of some kind to get her the fuck out. |
I don't think that defending it is the reason why you can't 'legally' claim resources in space -- there's just little (or no) framework set up for resource claims. AFAIK, the moon is treated as we treat Antarctica: international property.
In terms of practical claims -- sure -- but since we're talking about legalities, I care more about what is ethical and agreeable rather than who can set up their moon base with enough personnel and infrastructure to 'defend their land claim'.
Laws and regulations ultimately need to be established , if at the very least some form of basic guidelines. You'll want to have the ability to legally stake some claims, because you won't want your competitors piggy-backing on your own success and mining 'your land'. At the same time, you don't want someone claiming half of planet X.
Similarly, some planets and moons (e.g., Mars, or our Moon) have strategic value, and consequently we might want to prevent people from turning any of these places into nuclear testing facilities, or "terraforming experiments" involving asteroid impacts. Also, altering asteroid orbits must be done in ways so that these objects can't come into a collision course with planets, especially the ones we really care about. |
The Declaration of Independence may claim that we have inalienable rights, but is that really true? Why do we inherently have any rights? This document, in fact, is establishing rights and freedoms, not dissimilar to the Bill of Rights. |
They have existed for the better part of 20 years and have yet to be tested in a court of law.
Wat? No.
Edit : To clarify. There are two types of contracts involved in website account control. It's either a click-wrap contract or a browse-wrap contract.
A click-wrap contract is what we are all used to with the "I accept" botton at the bottom when you register your account. This is what Facebook and most other websites use, just like software licenses, et al.
Click-wrap contracts are unquestionably legal. It has been tested, it has been upheld, there are no issues with click-wrap contracts.
That is not to say that click-wrap contracts cannot be invalid, all contracts can. They're still subject to unconscionability attacks for example.
A browse-wrap contract is similar, except it lacks the "I accept" button. We've all seen these before too, they are typically phrases in the way of " By browsing this website, you agree to the conditions listed here, here and here" .
Browse-wraps are trickier, and will generally not be upheld, because the offering party cannot prove that you have even been on notice of a contract. Although it is always impossible to prove that you have actually read a contract, an "I Accept" button at least proves that you knew about the contract being there . |
To those new to law: A website stating that a particular legal sentence/paragraph will or will not do something is just as useful as one of your high school friends telling you what a particular phrase/paragraph will or will not do. |
Well, in the common law there lays the idea that a contract can be void for public policy (i.e the idea used here in this clause is just bad for the public in general). But the Rehnquist court ruthlessly hunted down and killed this idea at every turn. The Roberts court has only improved upon their designs, allowing corporations to legally contract you out of your right to sue in any capacity (forced arbitration, anti-class action clauses, etc). Caveat Emptor rules the day in modern contract law.
The idea is, if you've got a 50,000 page contract, either read it and sign it, don't read it and sign it (and live with your choices) or, the reasonable thing to do, don't sign it, don't pay for the service, and let the market choose insurers who have appropriate contracts. Obviously this is a fairy tale, but judges can be retarded ideologues too. |
I haven't seen the damn thing in awhile, but its like someone tried to make it a "legal document" like a contract.
BE IT KNOWN, that the following matter has been brought before this Internet Court of Reddit Justice:
The matter of "Facebook Privacy Posts are Fucking Stupid", HEREIN known as " |
The problem is that if you are locked in with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, once someone goes, it isn’t a baby step, they are gone.
Wrong. I can't even begin to articulate how utterly wrong that statement is. In the history of wrong answers, this statement sits atop a golden throne, wearing a crown and wielding a scepter of wrongness. It's like saying if you have a Dell server, you can only buy Dell desktops.
> Once you start using Google Docs and the related suites, you have no need for Office. That means you, or likely your company, saves several hundred dollars a head.
Sure. Until it doesn't do something you want. Then take the cost of training, migration and interoperability into account. $400 over 5 years is practically a rounding error. Also, there was a significant period of time where you couldn't use Google Docs offline.
> No need for Office means no need for Exchange.
Since when is desktop productivity inextricably linked with an email system? Never. That's when. Whoever wrote this statement (Charlie Derpadigimon?) has little or no understanding of what Exchange does, what it's good at, and why it's good at it. For the price, it's an exceptionally good bit of software.
> No need for Exchange means no need for Windows Server.
Sure, because nobody needs Active Directory, Application serving, VDI Servers, Failover Clustering, Files Server and Storage, Group Policy (not to mention Power Shell), Hyper-V, NAC, Print Services, Remote Desktop, IIS, Windows Deployment Services, Windows Backup, WSUS, SCCM, Deduplication and God knows what else, all for a few hundred bucks. Windows Server is a BARGAIN .
>Once the snowball starts rolling, it picks up speed a frightening pace. And that is where we are. The barriers to exit are now even more potent barriers to entry.
I think Charlie has taken one too many snowballs to the head. It shows he knows nothing about why people use Windows, and why people also use Linux. They are both good, just at different things and at different price points.
Active Directory is still the best enterprise directory service.
Windows is still the best desktop OS (Windows 7 or 8, take your pick). The ease and power of management, not to mention pretty good interoperability makes other solutions look cumbersome.
Exchange is great for larger organisations who need management and control over their environment. Office365 covers the small business space.
Windows Mobile is not as good as Android or iOS still, but it's not a core market for Microsoft anyway.
Edit: Sorry, I completely ignored the Forbes commentator's input.
>Microsoft has been a stabilizing force in the market and many users are very attached to its products. For the first time, however, businesses can look to Google and to Apple and see plausible, battle-tested alternatives to the products they have used from Microsoft—for much less money.
Let's start with Microsoft's biggest asset: Windows. Does Chrome OS or OSX stand up to Windows? Nope. Not even close. Windows is the standard desktop OS for the foreseeable future. What about Windows Server vs. OSX Server? Stop laughing, I'm trying to make a comparison!
How about Xbox? Nope, no competition there either. Sony Playstation is the competition.
How about Microsoft SQL? Nope, none there either. Oracle is the competition.
How about Office? Ok, maybe Google Docs wins a few points for being in the cloud and being cheap, but it's far from industry standard, and does not have the same functionality.
>Even more damning, analysts are calling for a decline in PC and laptop sales for the holiday season (and Chinese New Year) on the heels of the release of Windows 8. That’s not what’s supposed to happen when there is pent up demand for a new product.
Keeping my own opinions out of it: Users haven't been sold on the benefits of Windows 8. 'Under the hood' it is far superior to Windows 7. But can you name one improvement? Can you name one single 'under the hood' improvement that Windows 8 offers? The majority of people can't, and that's why it's not selling well.
Where is this pent up demand? People like Windows 7! It's a perfectly functional desktop OS that works in a way that they're fairly used to. Not to mention there's an economic depression in Microsoft's core markets which is sapping their sales figures (ignoring the paradigm shift in hardware performance in recent years, upsetting the normal 3 year upgrade cycle).
>For Microsoft, the window is closing fast.
No. It's not. |
Wow. I've hated platform wars since about the time I left elementary school, but you seem so utterly unwilling to even consider an alternative viewpoint that it's scary you're the top comment.
It's clear that you're in IT, and after a decade and half or so of Microsoft domination, it's obvious that you've got a bit of fanboism going on. That's fine, to each their own. The problem is that you're clearly stuck in the past. Rome didn't fall in a day, and neither will Microsoft. That said, the writing's on the wall and while the linked article's author may have been a bit extreme, his core thesis isn't wrong. Here's where you completely miss the boat:
• You list a bunch of traditional arguments as for why the Windows/Office/Exchange lock-in is still the greatest thing ever. Fine, Exchange and Office are solid solutions and it's the reason Microsoft became a multi-bn $ company. But Gmail / Google Apps is a solid solution as well. They both have their pros and cons, but Exchange Server is a huge expense, especially below the Fortune 1000 and with small businesses.
• More importantly, you're conceding OP's point that Microsoft's only advantage is lock-in. Here's the problem with that approach: outside your ideal domain forest in the sky, enterprise is spending the money on training and migration to get out from under Redmond's thumb.
• This nugget makes it clear you have no idea what's going on in tech right now:
> Windows Mobile is not as good as Android or iOS still, but it's not a core market for Microsoft anyway.
Hahahah. Wow. That is just so mind-numbingly inane that I can't believe you can take yourself seriously. Why do you think the PC market is in absolute free-fall? Why do you think Microsoft is applying the Metro Modern UI across every single damn product? WHY DO YOU THINK WINDOWS 8 IS CLEARLY DESIGNED FOR TOUCH INPUT AND A TABLET-LIKE EXPERIENCE?
Actually, you're right. Mobile devices aren't a core market for Microsoft. That's why they're in trouble.
•
> Users haven't been sold on the benefits of Windows 8. 'Under the hood' it is far superior to Windows 7. But can you name one? Can you name one single 'under the hood' improvement that Windows 8 offers? The majority of people can't, and that's why it's not selling well.
What? Do you actually think anyone but the smallest minority of users buy Windows for under the hood improvements? No one bought Windows 7 for BitLocker just like no one buys OS X for Grand Central Dispatch.
The majority of Windows users buy Windows bundled with a new PC. Consumers are increasingly turning to Apple for desktop/laptops and to Apple/Android for mobile in lieu of Windows PCs. This is the core threat to Microsoft's business.
After this you literally just invoke a bunch of troll-bait trying to defend the Microsoft cause. XBox? MSSQL? Really? Next you'll be telling me to buy a Zune since Microsoft's about to take the media player market by storm... |
Comcast costs too much. Their CS is a joke if you actually need to call them for something. They have a monopoly in a lot of areas. I consider competition against the joke that is ATT Uverse a monopoly.
But...
The router is not your CPE termination, the modem is. If it is a combo fine, but call it a fucking modem so you don't send me into a fucking nerd rage you insolent fucking twit of a writer.
I swear to whatever god you worship, because your stupid enough to, that when the zombie apocalypse starts I will train eight zombies. I will train them to pull me around in a covered wagon. And in return I will guide them to techno illiterate people, mentally handicapped excluded. It will be a good union, they will eat and my quality of life will increase. Sure I will loose my well paying IT job. But who cares with a fleet of zombies at my disposal I no longer need it. |
When hating on Comcast, please, please do not forget to curse Time Warner as well! ...Those bastards left me on hold for 43 minutes in order to speak with a supervisor and then disconnected the call.
I have a ridiculously intermittent signal, because they have way over split the cable connections at the terminal box, which is causing power issues and resetting my modem every few minutes. I know this, because it has happened before and I went to the box and had a look for myself.
What's worse is that the soonest that they can "guarantee" a technician will come is on Saturday (4 days after this problem began). |
Shit dude, depending on how much you pay and how Amish your neighbors are you might want to give a 4g hotspot from Verizon a try. I know Verizon is one of the devils on here but I know people getting 51 mbps on an iPhone 5. [Here's]( their coverage map. I threw in 16249 as a zip code for demonstration purposes and there's a good signal there, seems to be out in the rural area from Google Maps.
You can get 20GB / month @ 4GLTE (their max offered right now) for $20 for the hotspot (one time purchase) and then $110 a month for 2 years, plus taxes and fees. 4GLTE puts my Comcast connection to shame (>$200/month with cable, and I'm 30 miles south of Boston,) as well as my nationally-recognized research University @ a standard rate of a little less than $3800 per month, but that includes everything a University offers...
For comparison:
[$3800 a month](
[~$110 a month (iPhone 5)](
[AT&T 4GLTE iPhone 5 from a friend]( |
I also think that's an extremely naive strategy on Google's part
You are assuming that Google is doing it to shake things up.
I think they are doing it so that they can get more information about how people use the rest of the internet.
Right now Google has zero insight into how people use Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc.
Granted most traffic is encrypted, but if they see you sending encrypted packets to Facebook's backend chat servers for 8 hours, it can make a pretty good guess about what, in general, you are doing in that walled garden.
Providing internet will allow Google to correlate your searches with profiles of actual internet usage (e.g. every single site you visit and how often you visit them). It will likely have a large enough sample set to then extend this to build profiles to apply to the rest of it's search data.
And more over, start getting really good guesses about where you shop, how often you order things, how often you stream media from iTunes vs Amazon vs Netflix, what devices you own to do that (Xbox 360, PS3, Tivo, etc). |
There is a reason why Comcast is terrible in the Boston area, they have contractors who do all the work for them. No unions, no organised and skilled laborers. Only contractors who are in it for the money. A workforce based on a union(at least in Boston/in ISPs) is much better equipped to fix the problem. Verizon, which is has unions, has a significantly better record than Comcast, and while it may be more expensive overall the system in place is better and definitely more advanced. A good union only lets in the skilled workers, and here in Boston we have plenty of good unions. A unionized workforce is better, albeit more expensive to maintain. |
I had to suffer Comcast while I was in Savannah, GA for 4 years and it was hands down the worst 4 years of internet, and any customer experience I have ever had (and I've been screwed over by BoA).
We started out with 3 people in our house, 2 of us high internet users, we went with the highest available plan to us to make sure we had top speed internet and little problems, though that was hardly ever the case. We'd always have to restart our router, multiple times a day at times. We'd be booted from the internet for no reason, our connections would time out, things would slow to a halt.
Living off campus this caused A LOT of problems with a couple of online classes I took, in fact a teacher called me a liar one time because on several occasions I had DC'd during a test. He thought I was trying to bug the system, little did he know I just had Comcast.
Then one time our internet went out for 1 week, what started out as a few hours was just a "Local area servicing" according to the first rep. The second rep gave us "Local area outage", third, fourth, fifth so on so forth gave us all different answers about what the issue was. We never
"really" found out what the problem was, but in the end they tried to blame it on us. They said that we had the wrong address on file and they had cut off our service because we were trying to bill it to the people behind us DESPITE us having ZERO issues billing wise (they had NO problem taking our money) for the better part of two years prior. Never got compensation, never got anything for that period.
Then I moved into an apartment with one of the roommates from the house, a low internet user, still getting the highest tier we could get, and STILL had problems which they blamed on "heavy user load, try having people spread out the times they log in!".
Now my girlfriend is stuck with them in San Francisco and the same issues that happened to me all the way across the country are happening to her. They blame the users, despite it clearly being their fault. You ask them to help, they come in, tug wires, things look okay for a few minutes after they leave and then it goes back to normal. |
Really? Because it is a great thing. The majority of the population isn't going to spent a little more on small things like soap in order to back the employees. Yes, working as a wal-mart employee is a horrible job. But then again, it's only a brief stop for anyone who works there. Anyone who works there minimum wage for an extended period of time is an exception rather than a rule. Nobody will be a cashier as more than a stop-gap in financial situations unless they truly have no marketable skills, but even then, they can rise to higher level manager positions after a long time and basic capabilities.
Reddit overreacts to the shitty wal-mart conditions. So, so many people are able to buy things they wouldn't usually be able to because of wal-mart prices and location. People argue that costco is more price efficient and shit, but a twenty year old couple doesn't need 40 eggs between the two of them that will spoil in a week. |
Wrong, wrong, wrong. When you set up a session with Google, the server you talk to at Google verifies it's identity by sending you a public key. That key is signed by a Root Signing authority (not an ISP). The ISP cannot fake being google.com, because the signature would be invalid. |
Comcast is the worst. My OnDemand doesn't work and I spent two hours "chatting with a service tech" online only to find out that all he could do was verify that I could sign in. I HAD TO SIGN IN TO GET TO THE CHAT! Also, the people on the chat aren't the same people as when you call Comcast so they really can't be of much help if you've already tried unplugging your modem/router/cable box... |
Wages are flat because those decisions (payroll) are often decided by higher-up management staff who have little to no understanding of the technical day-to-day skills of the typical IT worker.
"knowledge-worker" jobs like IT/Sysadmin cannot be easily measured like the output of a factory-line worker or other "widget-producer". Being good at a technology job often means finding efficient ways to do things ("How do we turn this 8hr task into a 2hr solution). It's hard to convince management to pay you MORE when it seems to them (management) that you're doing LESS (hours) of work.
It's also a job of intense multi-tasking. If I spend 4 clock-hours, but I'm actually working on 4 different problems simultaneously... do I get paid for 16hours total?.... Nope. (even if I did solve all of them successfully).
An auto-mechanic can't change 4 transmissions simultaneously. A surgeon can't do 4 open-heart surgeries simultaneously..
I can sit at my desk and build/monitor/troubleshoot a wide variety of problems (dual-wide screen monitors, remote-connections, lots of deskspace to setup laptops/iPads,etc) and I can be doing it all almost in near real-time juggling/multi-tasking. Yet I'm still paid like a serial/single-task employee. |
Protections against grabbing a single frame from the frame buffer and saving it as an image? Nope. Sorry. Windows screen grab implementation might be shit, but there are loads of options for doing exactly this.
Never underestimate someone with a bit of technical expertise to make a work around, and then propagate it through the internet. |
Indeed. But I'm confident my idea is cool enough that in April, when I post it, a lot of people are going to say "Hey - this is really neat, and I like it, and so I'll click this upward facing arrow".
And then you'll see it. (Because we both know you're still going to be on here in four months.)
My mentioning it was in April was more of a wink and a nod for the people that might remember this conversation to go "Ah, wow - I wonder if this really cool idea was that one guy that was talking in /r/technology waayyy back in yesteryear."
Whereas if I linked it off right now, a lot of people will say the following:
Hrmm...I really wish this had mobile apps.
Oh hey, some of the help documentation is missing.
Did you know that the CSS is broken over here?
Oh noz, we crashed the single server this was running on (as opposed to the four servers it will be on in April)
Hey, we can't register (because that task hasn't yet been offloaded to a messaging queue, and will currently get overloaded quickly).
Oh hey....
Well, you get the idea.
I have over 50 tasks in my code management system to get through, 40 of which I'd like to finish before launching. I also have about 10 more sessions of UX testing I'd like to run with my beta testers before releasing/promoting publicly. I know you might think it's a good idea to try and capitalize on the current discussion, but I'm putting my money on waiting for the product to be kick-ass, and then letting it speak for itself. |
I’m not seeing this pretty big difference.
If you are fired, people ask questions. Your next employer asks questions. Depending on your position the questions get trickier and are asked by the public, stockholders, journalists, or even criminal investigators. In this case, the person in question is an engineer that is well known and was publicly known to be working on a major initiative for Valve. This engineer has been fired (according to her) so everyone is asking questions. Everyone is speculating on what this means for the Steam Box project and does this confirm HL3?!?
What are the motives for an employer to ask for resignation instead of just firing them? You ascribe good guy motives to corporate business dealings. In my experience that is about as likely as the Pope giving birth a Poison Dart Frog live on CNN. My cynical outlook aside, if you’re doing a good job and they have work for you then you stay employed. If you are doing good work, but they don’t have work for you then you get laid off subject to recall. If however you are not doing good work, or you have a fundamental difference in opinion or outlook with senior management, then you get fired. But certain positions such as senior corporate officers, senior company managers, key military officers, or members of cabinet (just to name a few, I’m sure there are more) cannot be fired without a metric fuck-ton of speculation or investigation depending on reasons for separation.
To avoid that scrutiny by the public, stockholders, or law enforcement, the employer makes a strategic play asking the employee to resign. Usually there is a benefit such as maintaining retirement benefits or avoidance of possible criminal charges. But the end result is the same, the offending employee is no longer in the position and possible stock price damage or embarrassment is avoided. |
Electric cars are not the way to go. It's a step, yes, but without cleaner power plants, this car is just as dirty as a combustible.
This is simply not true. You can read a full report [here]( comparing the emissions cost of regular cars, hybrids and evs based on the source of the electricity.
>Also, the power it takes to operate one of these cars is the same as powering 4 homes. So, in order for this to be "in everyone's hands" we would need 4-5 times as many power plants to charge everyone's car.
You don't even need a complicated research study to show this is completely false. The energy required to operate them is spelled out right on the specs. It's 85kWh to go 265 miles (based on EPA testing). So around 0.321 kWh per mile. The 60kWh version is at around 0.288 kWh per mile. The average of 12000-15000 miles per year means between 3461.53 kWh per year for the 60kWh version at 12000 miles and 4811.32 kWh per year for the 85kWh at 15000 miles. According to this not 400-500% as you falsely claim.
So yeah, if everyone ran out and bought one immediately we would have to quickly generate about 30-42% more energy. But it'd still be cleaner than gas vehicles almost everywhere. And I don't know at what capacity most power plants run right now, but I'd be absolutely shocked to find they're already at 100%. So some of that could come from just increasing how much the existing plants produce. And either way there's nothing mutually exclusive about building new, clean power facilities and buying electric cars. |
Exactly, at some point decisions have to be made. Nitrogen fertilizers are used currently and in order to switch to organic farming for everyone, people have to starve.
Organic farming could only support around 2/3rd of the population (if we mostly used organic farming) and that would also involve a man power investment to the process that would require a much larger workforce to support it. |
I'm going to really tear into this one...It's something that has been pissing me off for a long time.
if you don't believe me after reading all this, scroll backup and check this sub
Some of these accounts are listed as "1 year old" with LITERALLY NO OTHER POSTS. I call them out all the time. Sometimes, if you ask the mods nicely, on most (major) subs, they'll remove it no questions asked and IP snipe the asshats. It's obnoxious as fuck on subs like /r/movies where it seems pervasive to say the least. I feel like anytime there is new "fan art" or just something released it's linked to an advertising campaign in some way. I tried for the last 15 minutes to find it (fucking reddit search blows we know that) to find an old '/r/bestof (pre-none-main-sub days) but couldn't. Perhaps I looked in the wrong spots. Basically, it was a viral marketer admitting just how prevalent it is in the marketing world. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of accounts set up with names like "happybutt" or literally anything that wasn't used, and put on excel spread sheets and sold for something like ten cents each, sometimes more for the less random names. These accounts have a fake posting history on like /r/funny with a picture of a cat posted the day they are created and maybe said "haha funny" on some random ass sub forum. Then they just sit..... the older they are, the more they're worth. The more post history, the more it's worth. It's absolutely ridiculous how much horse shit gets upvoted by these fake accounts. All it takes is a coordinated some what creative PR guy (like me, but I'm not part of the problem) to use proxies and up-vote his own post about 15 times in 10 minutes (maybe 1 downvote thrown in for good measure) and you've got yourself a front page submission with no questions asked. All of a sudden some shitty post about "hey look at these new set photos I just happen to take with my sister" are front and center. Most of these posts are worthless marketing campaigns, and lack actual quality submissions. Opinion reviews on other subs like /r/Android for example are astounding. The GS4 marketers for example got run out of town for being asshats. It's obnoxious. No one gives a shit about your wonderful story about {insert anything about any company} here.
Don't even get me started with the /r/gaming crap that "leaks" or "Just released!" crap. Like, thanks for using this as an advertisement, but can you please note falsely put your opinion on it in our faces. It's not leaked. You're just asshats trying to shove stuff down our throats before more information is available. The worst is when their marketing material runs dry and they start doing the same shit with stuff as basic as "look who I ran into" which thankfully has finally stopped being 'a thing'
Edit: anyone remember that dumb bitch that "stepped down" when she lied about her college degree after her ex-boyfriend called her on her bullshit for some college?) |
The key point here is that ATT has specifically stated that they EXPECT to receive the same benefits and consideration that Google is receiving. However, we all know this not to be the case. Why you ask? Here is why...
Google is giving free Gigabit internet to public infrastructure, such as public schools, libraries, and government offices. What else are they doing? They are also making sure that each and every household can pay for a 300$ installation fee, and receive basic 5mbps download and 1mbps upload rates for 7 years. $3.57 a month is what you're paying for that service.
Compare that to ATT where they are only offering 6mbps or 3mbps plans. Guess how much? Not $300 for 7 years, that's for sure. More like $3864 for 7 years of 6mbps internet. Lets not even being to talk about their max turbo 24mbps internet for $66 a month, falling $4 short of Google Fibers $70 a month for 1000mbps.
They won't get the same considerations from the city of Austin, guaranteed. They will need to go to other cities to beat Google to the punch on fiber to receive these considerations. But they won't do that. Want to know why? Because "there is no market for fiber". There is only a market for Fiber where Google is going and they might lose market. |
The simplified version from [HERE]( seems to be the equivalent of:
Generate a new private/public key pair for every connection (using a method that Quantum Computers can't crack) but DON'T STORE IT ON DISK, keep it in RAM
This is signed using the usual private key, for authentication purposes only (RSA, QC will be able to crack)
The server essentially acts as its own CA, signing its own certificate
Very clever.
This means that even when they go to look later at all the saved information, all they get is the temporary-public-key-equivalent which was signed with the (now-compromised) RSA private key, but the keys actually used for the data transfer are only stored in RAM and never communicated. |
Except you described how it 'can be' based entirely off of your own subjective opinions on a single product. |
I also bought a Samsung Transform. IDk Y I should have learned from the 1st debacle with Sam. But the phone keeps not reading my SD card and I have to reboot it take out the card and reinsert it to get it to read. Today in fact it earsed all my pictures on it, so Sam needs to test their shit out more before making so many different models and what not. I'm not mad though cuz my father bought me the phone anyways, just so he could make 1 confernece call on it with some lawyers. |
Trying to track down the source of this information has turned into a bit of a rabbit hole.
OP's extrahardware.com article .
After some digging, it appears that the original source is this [article on chinese.vr-zone.com]( There were no valid search results on the English-language vr-zone.com site. I applied [Google translate to the Chinese article]( but there appears to be even less information and fewer examples. I don't see any quotes or named sources. |
I had one horrible experience with U-haul at the same time another friend had a horrible experience with U-haul when we were moving in together. That one time was bed enough for me to never use them again. Since then I have used other providers and been very happy. I doubt U-haul will ever give me a reason to give them another chance. |
I love Tesla but American Performance Cars have been about awesome performance at great prices. For 100k you can have a last gen Corvette ZR1 that will threaten most cars twice its cost and the only in price competition is the GT-R which splits track times with the Vette depending on track layout. For enthusiasts the Tesla is awesome but they aren't the be all end all yet. Even the a Performance Pack Roadster would get beat on in performance compared to a Z06 that's a fraction of the cost. |
from wikipedia:
As of 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's $2M annual budget comes from the United States government, with the Swedish government and other organizations providing the rest,[14] including NGOs and thousands of individual sponsors.[15] |
Kinda depends on where it's used.
If it's on online multiplayer games then it's good, it'll hopefully clean up the community a bit.
If it's in singleplayer then it's bad because why should a person be penalized for swearing at a game in their own private homes with no one else to hear it? Microsoft/Xbone are not the morality police. This is not actually the case though.
What is actually happening, is that it is being used in the videos people upload to the sharing platform. Here it is kind of in the middle because while it is good that they protect younger users of the system, it kinda punishes adults who use swearing as an expletive and intend for other adults to watch the video.
This could be better handled if there was an option to flag the video with an age rating e.g. 16+ or 18+. That way those who upload vids with swearing can flag it and not be punished. |
Congress doesn't have to provide for every new technology. When necessary I think it's fine for Congress to step in but I don't consider it the US's dramatic failing that we didn't buy at the level of the federal government.
Other things to point out is that China is a net coal exporter which means they are having trouble getting enough fossil fuels into their country. This is in spite of the Three Gorges Damn and other renewable sources of energy that they are utilizing. Compare this to the US which is a net coal importer and which therefore has less of an economic need (though admittedly an environmental one, but Congress in particular is much less persuaded by that). China also much more regularly intervenes in their economy, I know the US does it all the time but China is involved in almost every facet, fixing court decisions, giving preferential loans, grants, the works basically. And, let's not forget that the US government did invest in many solar companies and give loans to them, it just ended up being poor solar companies that ended up failing.
> Because China doesn't rely on campaign financing from Big Oil to run for office it only makes sense that they would work with a green energy innovator instead of blowing them off.
Also, just another point. It sounds like you think China is less run by large companies and personal connections than the US is. This couldn't be farther from the truth, especially in areas of energy. China supported the regime in Sudan because they had gigantic oil interests there, isn't that being in bed with 'big oil'? I have a friend who does patent work in China and he's had Chinese judges tell him personally that they agree with them but they can't vote his way because they are not allowed to. So please don't set China up to be this holy grail of new technologies and development of the future, they are a very practically minded country in need of a lot of additional energy in the future, and they are looking at EVERY avenue to get that additional energy. |
You've said this multiple times now in multiple threads.
Firstly, most people don't record phone calls. This makes any and all statements regarding communication by phone hearsay and something you will not accept as evidence. Further any recording posted to youtube can be attributed as "not really yelp and just a lie in and of itself" assuming someone even recorded there phone calls.
Copy/Paste of an email looks no different than typing it out manual for a reddit post, a screen shot of an email can be easily made to look like an official yelp email assuming you've ever received one before. All of this evidence if presented would be easily argued to be false.
So any form of communication presented between yelp and a business owner can easily be argued as false. Any information revealed in such a manner is identifying the business owner and/or marketing company. Doing such a thing potentially opens the door for Yelp to sue on claims of slander themselves. Doing so with actual evidence you want to use for court will diminish its value and possibly get it dismissed.
Here is the Yelp business model explained out. They develop a reviews hub and use it as a platform for ad revenue. They seek new ads from businesses by contacting business who have received negative reviews to help improve there reviews by advertising (with money). Many people interpret this as thinly veiled extortion while it is not legally extortion. Further Yelps costumer service is night and day different between those that pay for advertising and those that don't. If you don't pay for advertising all you get from Yelp customer service as a business is "no" repeatedly and in a variety of creative ways. If you pay for advertising Yelp is much more liberal with unfiltering good reviews, filtering bad reviews and generally working with your account.
"Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman stopped by the New York Times to explain why Yelp isn't extorting people.
Specifically, he explained that when a Yelp salesperson tries to pacify an angry potential small-business client by suggesting that the small business might be able to minimize the impact of a scathing Yelp review by ponying up and highlighting a more positive review instead, it's not extortion."
Read more:
Thats straight from the CEO of Yelp explaining how they function to Business Insider for an article a few years back. Hopefully that is credible enough to meet your stringent and assholacious demands.
Is Yelps business practices technically extortion in a legal sense? No. Is Yelps business practice amoral and exploitative? In my opinion and those of many others, yes. |
In general, people take advice of random people/trolls on the internet only as a last result when no other better source of information is available, so they may be stuck using it when traveling, but locally I imagine a combination of word of mouth and experimentation rule.
We go out to eat 2 times a week for dinner/weekend meals and I got out 2-3 days a week for lunch. Every single one of those places we either randomly decided to try or was recommended by someone we knew. |
a bad experience at a business generates something like 7x the talk as a positive experience. say, for example, you eat at subway 4x a week (seriously, why are you doing this). you've been going there for 8 months, and every sandwich is, well, subway-standards good. then you notice an eyelash in one of your sandwiches, and you freak out, and subway is an awful, terrible place.
and now, with the internet allowing such easy access to spread experiences like this, some dweedledwats try using it solely to capitalize on some probably non-existent reimbursement for something they didn't actually experience. |
I'm baffled that people still use Yelp for restaurants. You can use it to find places to eat, as in, "Hey this place exists, we should try it," but it's not a reliable indicator of quality. The two major problems with Yelp are the quality of the reviewers and the practices of the site itself.
The first problem is that Yelp gets its reviews from regular people, and I strongly believe that the average person does not have the qualifications to accurately assess a restaurant, let alone be able to fairly quantify that assessment with a score out of 5.
The second problem with Yelp is that it averages the ratings of dozens, if not hundreds, of users. This would be fine if there was a definitive system for assigning points that users adhered to; however, there is not one and it shows. People deduct and add points for things that are beyond the business' control all the time meaning you have people scoring using entirely different systems of value. What this boils down to is Yelp averages non-comparable values, making the overall score meaningless.
When you throw in Yelp's questionable business practices (i.e. extorting businesses to clean up their Yelp page of bad reviews) on top of this systematic failure, you get a completely garbage review site. |
I think he is trying to say that you are more likely to get molly from a trusted vendor on SR than you are from trying to get it from the first person who says they can. Often people sell one thing as another, molly is a great example of when that happens. The customers on SR are probably more intelligent and aware drug users. In other words, they know what they want to do and how much is appropriate. With a lot of psychedelic designer drugs the doses are quite small. Like you need a special scale. A lot of these people, some of whom I have known, can test these things to determine chemical composition. Others don't have that knowledge and prefer trusted sources. Nobody prefers to have drugs mailed to them, that is asking to get busted.
% |
There's no guarantee for any of these cities. Google is asking municipal officials to do the following:
>Provide detailed, accurate maps—e.g. of existing infrastructure like utility poles, conduits, and water, gas, and electricity lines.
As a civil engineer who has seen the utilities information regarding all that stuff... ahahahahahahaha, good luck.
Seriously, everyone has their own standard, their own plans, their own format, most of them are schematics only, and a lot of them are outdated.
Trying to get a municipal agency to do this is going to be very difficult, which means unless there is a pushing force ($$) to get the agencies to pay a company to do this, it won't happen in your city. |
AT&T employee here who actually deals with "Free Microcell" requests. Please don't call in demanding a free Microcell because you heard someone on the internet say that they got a free one. It just will not happen. Back when we first launched the Microcell, there was a program that people could receive free ones to essentially trial test them, but that is long over with. Now, there are many stipulations and hoops we have to jump through in order to even consider a discount on one for our customers. I can't just hand them out like candy even though I would love to. We are more than happy to troubleshoot the issue in your home, but more likely than not, the Microcell is the actual solution. AT&T purchases them directly from Cisco (who is the manufacturer) for the just about the same price that consumer side pays.
Just don't do it. You will get much further if you go through troubleshooting for the network, and then ask if there is anything we could do for making the Microcell cost a little easier to eat. That is how you will get all of my ability to find you a discount. Threaten to cancel, be rude, obnoxious, and say at least 10 times how long you have been with AT&T? I'll quote the price and any special promotions, offer to get you right on over to cancellation, and that will be the end of that. |
What makes me a kid? And, in my situation, not having cell service in my own home was a dealbreaker for me in dealing with Sprint. Thus I called and asked them if there was anything they could do for me, and if there wasn't then when my contract was up I would switch. They responded my sending me one for free. So congratulations, your company chooses to handle it differently, and another heads up, your condecending tone makes you come off as a jackass. Which I've heard is a great trait for customer service. |
I swear this will be the cause of the second US Civil War. We're just that first world.
[ Egyptian Uprising ](
"Grievances of Egyptian protesters were focused on legal and political issues including police brutality, state of emergency laws, lack of free elections and freedom of speech, corruption, and economic issues including high unemployment, food price inflation and low wages. The primary demands from protesters were the end of the Hosni Mubarak regime, the end of emergency law, freedom, justice, a responsive non-military government and a say in the management of Egypt's resources. Strikes by labour unions added to the pressure on government officials."
[ Ukranian Protests ](
"The key issue here is President Yanukovych's decision to back away from plans that would have established free trade and furthered political cooperation between Ukraine and the EU, an agreement that was seen as a possible precursor to EU membership. Yanukovych has instead moved toward an agreement with the Russian-directed Eurasian Customs Union (ECU), which includes Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan at present.
Observers have pointed out that President Yanukovych's decision may end up defining the Ukrainian civilization, and reveals a wider move away from Europe and into Russia."
United States Revolt
"South Korea has waaay better internet than us! What. The. Fuck."
Don't take this the wrong way. I think what the ISPs are doing is shitty, there's no reason that they shouldn't be categorized as common carriers in this day and age. They provide what has become a necessity as vital as all the other common carriers. If the ISPs just up and decided to shut down one day our economy would be shitbagged. We rely too heavily on the net to let the future of it be decided by a handful of greedy monopolies. If the government came out and said "Hey, we're gonna up taxes and hand it all to Google to expedite the GoogleFiber initiative and have it completed by 2030, Gb up/down for the whole nation. They will then segment GoogleFiber as a serperate entity and operate as a common carrier and be heavily regulated." I would jump on that bandwagon in a fucking nanosecond. But when it comes down to it, they're not murdering people in the streets. |
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