0
stringlengths 9
22.1k
|
|---|
Just glanced over there financial statements to get an idea how well theyre actually doing, and holy shit i was surprised. They made 77 billion dollars in gross profit with almost a quarter less revenue than walmart, have 277 billion in assets and "only" 186 billion in liabilities. Most of their assets, around 110 billion, is plant and equipment. these guys are stacked.
They have no excuses with these numbers (although there are many factors to consider, just on the surface there appears to be little chance of a collapse). Granted all ive done is basic financial projects for classes with various companies, these are still the best numbers i have seen.
but i think what at&t is saying is "we have too many customers to provide the service they expect". Its not their fault, theyve shown how expensive it is and how much money theyve put into it, theyre obviously trying and yet still cant keep up.
So, if youre an at&t customer that doesnt use the internet as much, please consider switching to another isp (which would most likely be slower/cheaper, but hey, you dont use it as much anyways). This will help provide less strain on their network by getting rid of the customers who barely use it and let those that do fully enjoy the service they paid for. This will only lead to happier customers, which in turn means a happier at&t. |
AT&T Mobility is Cell Phones, which means it is going through the Cell Phone Towers that AT&T paid for. To get extra capacity to support the bandwidth needed for people to sit at their desk watching a movie on their cellphone would mean putting in more Cell Phone Towers. To do this they would need to generate funds, to generate funds they need to increase charges to the end consumer or to the content provider who in turn would charge the end consumer. This is a summary with a little ad lib of what Ralph de la Vega said himself.
If I do not watch Netflix on my phone, so why should I have to pay extra for my Cell Phone Package so that a Netflix user can?
As for actual internet providing, that would be AT&T U-Verse or just AT&T if it is DSL and through your Phone Service. There are others but this is directed at AT&T so let's keep it basic.
This also would require additional cost to build up the infrastructure. Fiber would help to fix this issue, but who should pay for it? The cables going from the Crossbox to the NID are often used by multiple companies and most of the time it is twisted pair or coaxial. Twisted pair offers a slight advantage as each home gets it's own pair from the crossbox, but in a neighborhood where RJ6 is used, it is typically split and the bandwidth down that single strand is shared amongst multiple homes.
If the denizens of these other homes do not use Netflix, should they have to pay extra so that their internet provider can increase the bandwidth so that you can watch Netflix, or should they charge Netflix and let it trickle down to the actual users? |
This is such a cowardly measure by these struggling companies. I would liken it to a hose you buy at the hardware store: you buy pretty plants from another store that everyone loves and are easy to take care of and smell nice and bloom for the longest amount of time. So you buy the seeds early and plant them, but they need water to grow so you unwrap that 50 ft, 15 year old green rubber house that always kinks and has duct tape in a couple of areas where your stupid dog chewed on it, and you start to water your seeds. Fast forward to a few years later and your seeds are beautiful flowers that everyone in the neighborhood either admires on their walks or has planted themselves from the other store, and suddenly the hardware store that sold you the old crappy hose is not making as much money on their crappy plants that no one wants anymore.
So, what is their solution?
Well, instead of making their plants better to compete, they hire thugs to stand at your tap and turn the water almost completely off every time you go to water your nice, pretty plants, and turn the water back up when you are watering the crappy azaleas you bought from the first store where you bought your crappy hose. |
You're wrong, plain wrong. You don't understand how data functions. Read my edit and respond back. AT&T only offers 2GB per cell phone. Whether I use that 2GB to browse the internet, watch porn, watch netflix or streaming music it doesn't cost AT&T any extra. So why should Netflix have to front the bill? AT&T has billions of cash sitting around that they could spend on building infrastructure instead of paying lobby fees to just make more money. |
Well it's just unfeasible.
The amount of money you would have to come up with up front to build all your infrastructure is astounding. Let's pretend you had enough to start in one town. You build everything and start charging less. You're going to see what I call the "walmart approach".
Since you only exist in this one town, but ATnT, TWC, Comcast, and all these big companies exist in many towns, they can drop prices in the area you provide service below what they actually make a profit at. They can sell at a loss just to put you out of business since they make money in their other markets. Eventually you run out of money before the bigger company and end up selling to them and you get absorbed.
This is what Walmart did to nearly every other grocery story in the country ESPECIALLY local non-chain stores. They moved into small towns and dropped prices for a year or two until the other store went out of business. Then raised prices and scalped the residents because they were the only store in town.
No one has the money to fight a 120 billion dollar company like this. Even worse... if you tried to move into another town that didn't have the same company you are fighting. You would end up fighting two companies at once. Getting demolished on both sides. Google has purposely chosen the towns that it did because their existing infrastructure was close to being ready to what they wanted to do. Many had existing fiber lines already laid down.
Even still, this is why you see they don't push into many cities where they know they stand no chance. Also they offer a product that is above and beyond anything that is currently offered... most "fiber" lines are 40 - 200 down speeds. Google is at 1000. It's incomparable.
Also google probably isn't doing this to make a profit. |
Article requires being a times subscriber. Can someone ego is write a quick |
Unless you actually have a panic button you'd be lucky to see police within a few hours around here. We'd call you a couple times, call your backup phone. Then call your secondary contacts if you had any, then call the police and wait on hold for a while before we get through on the alarm line. Then it would sit at the bottom of the dispatch queue for the police because house alarms are notorious for being set of by accident and almost always false. |
Unless the software she uses for work is super old, it should still work in 7. Trust me, I totally understand the pain of completely reinstalling software, but she needs to understand that this is going to keep happening, and likely get worse, until she upgrades. The sooner the better, but maybe an option to propose to her would be to get the new computer, set it up near the old one, and that way she can take time to get everything set correctly on the new one in spare time while still using her old one for work, but she needs to set a date when the changeover must happen by. Again, the sooner the better - the longer she waits the worse it'll get by the time she switches.
MBam is a good program, but I wouldn't say its "all" you need. There are plenty of free AV programs that are decent, certainly no need to pay for any of the "big names". Personally I've used MS Security Essentials for years on my laptop and not had problems, but a lot of that also comes from common sense when clicking links, downloading things, etc too. |
it's about growing ones personal wealth through powerful connections and influence
How else would you fucking propose we run things ape boy? This is how primates run shit.
No. Just no. Stop.
>growing ones personal wealth
You have to be wealthy already to play the game. Doing all the sleazy, immoral shit is how you keep power. If you can't get or keep power you don't get to exercise your agenda.
Got some good ideas? Great! But you have to play the game to get in and try to make those ideas happen. We call this politics.
Fuck me, people are children (not necessarily OP) who don't understand how the world works. |
Not that I'm trying to defend AT&T or talk shit about unlimited plans, but every service has some sort of fair use policy and more companies are making it more obvious (ie: asterisk next to unlimited or Skype and Verizon limiting calls to 2 hours each)
generally, you're allowed by ToS to use a service up to the point before it starts interfering with the provider's ability to operate normally or other users to use the service normally.
The unlimited plans were first offered on feature phones before smartphones in a time when people didn't use shitloads of bandwidth on a constant basis. Now that most people have access to LTE the network infrastructure doesn't keep up with handling all this bandwidth.
This is the point where everyone starts in with the T-Mobile unlimited plan except paying $80/month (or switching carriers) isn't an option for everyone.
Offering unlimited data without throttling is something that every carrier should have, especially when more and more people rely on it as both a necessity and a utility. |
They specifically told us that they were not changing the plan-it was still technically unlimited and therefore you would not receive any additional charges for it, and they didn't guarantee you would have unlimited at any specific speed, just that you would have unlimited. That was still true.
Reps at at&t honestly have very little to answer for. A rep would never be written up for quoting a policy wrong. IF they were even caught. To be caught, the customer would have to prove it and/or a manager who actually cared would have to catch wind of it and investigate. Then, that manager would have to talk to their boss and convince them to act on it. We had a great center with a bunch of great managers (a few awful ones, too), and I don't think I heard of anyone getting in trouble for anything except being late/absent too much, or giving phones for free to relatives or friends. They just don't care. It's laid back because it's a call center. They know that being the front line and spending your day getting screamed at by customers is mentally taxing, and they know that if they also spend the day bitching at the employees, the employees will just get mad that much faster. Then the employee quits (at&t pays pretty decently, and they invest a lot in training all their new employees, so it's really more beneficial for the employees to stay). If the employee doesn't quit, then you've got a disgruntled employee dealing with disgruntled customers and there's a huge opportunity for the employee to cost the company a lot of money. Any rep can give any customer up to $250 in bill credits before anyone would even think about batting an eye. For someone to actually notice and care, it would have to happen a lot. And it would take days or weeks to get caught. Maybe longer. You could do a lot of damage in that amount of time. AT&T is actually pretty smart in that area. If you give notice that you're leaving, they don't let you work your last day or two. You show up and they have you doing stuff off the phone.
Anyway. |
I agree that consumers should be able to download any content through any means online. However, besides the cost of using the internet to download said content, the consumer, through research and review, isn't directly paying the distributor or artist. See, this is where I find convenience overstepping and avoiding something that should be paid for. Don't get me wrong, I would rather torrent a movie that's out already than pay to see it, but if everyone does it, it seems kind of wrong. Idk. I've recently became indecisive regarding this issue. Playing devil's advocate here, I understand where the MPAA & the studios are coming from; concerned over losing money. There has to be a way to meet in the middle and comprise. People are always going to be against internet tax or monitoring, or whathaveyou. But people can't possibly think lobbyists don't have fairly good reasons to influence politics in order to maintain their business. Someone, anyone, please tell me I'm wrong. & if so, give me a good reason that'll help me decide, besides "our right to access a free internet".. |
Some people say that is because of the business in the area but I am almost 100 percent sure that that isn't why. It is because of the way different levels of Texas courts have jurisdiction over civil matters. Essentially it is a legal strategy so you can find a jury of people who benefit you the most.
Clearly the way this was shown first time around when Newegg first lost the case to the trolls was that Newegg was the big corporation who stole the ip and the poor computer farmer who invented it got screwed over and gained nothing. Note that this is Newegg beating them in return at a court of appeals.
These jurors were certainly people who had no clue about any of that stuff nor had even heard the names of either the plaintiff or newegg, which is good if you want to plant the idea that small business is getting screwed out of what was theirs, and there is a patent to prove it. In other words imagine all the twisting you can do as a sleazy lawyer on a civil case with a jury where the jury sees you as a bunch of rich people and the plaintiff is just a dude with a lawyer who claims just wants what is his. Naturally they said just give him a couple million dollars... Which is enough for somebody to be alright and not enough to scar a company that bad. Newegg did get scared however.
If this had happened on Austin or any tech hub, the likelihood that the patent troll had won the first place would be zero because people are more likely to know how in programming there are only so many ways to do the same thing right. Also a better educated jury would understand a little better the consequences of granting someone like him, more power to collect patent money. Because in reality his small company only profits from patent lawsuits. They don't do anything, nor employ their own intellectual property (the shopping cart). giving him the case would mean a lot of pain for online retailers and actual jobs at stake. Like Newegg had to fire people in the midst of Christmas. Had the patent troll had won he would of open gates and lawsuits would have flooded the online retail world. |
BTW a return on a motherboards do have a cost and if I was the seller I would charge a restocking fee. You have to have a system to generate the RMA. You have to track it through a nonstandard receiving system, it's not coming from your regular suppliers. If is been opened you now have to test and certify it then sell it discounted as an open box or refurbished. Even unopened boxes take it out of the normal processing chain. Try running a chain of warehouses shipping and receiving stuff all around the world and you will see how non-standard packages are MUCH more expensive than the normal flow.
Businesses like Newegg and Amazon operate on thin margins and they have to be efficient just to stay in business. Workers are busy picking, packing, whatever as long add they are on the clock. By contrast, brick and mortar stores must be staffed for peak traffic and are generally overstaffed at some point during the day. They can use this employee downtime to restock unopened items at zero cost so a return to home depot won't incur a restocking fee. |
As someone who uses both Uber and Lyft, I prefer the app based car services for a few reasons:
First and foremost, they are cheaper. In my experience, in Honolulu, an Uber/Lyft ride from my house to Waikiki will be $10-$12. That same fare, in a cab will be $17-$20. Not a huge difference, but hey, why not save a few dollars? Second, the experience. Lyft and Uber drivers are usually not some jaded asshole taxi driver; they are friendly, their cars don't smell like some weird exotic spice, and most importantly, they don't run up the fair. Third, transparency. I initiate a fare, the driver accepts, I get an estimate on their arrival, and I get to watch their progress on my app that tracks them via GPS. App says 10 mins but I just watched the driver turn down a notoriously busy street with limited left turn access? Crack another beer because its going to be 15 instead of 10. And lastly, app based car services are cashless; I don't have to deal with the cab driver pretending his machine is down, pressuring me into using cash, complaining about my tip, etc. |
Okay let's start at the beginning:
There are two types of taxis in NYC; Yellow/Green cabs that are strictly for street halls (although you do have the option to get them using Uber in NYC- UberT) and black car service (Black limo, car service from a base)- TLC calls them FHV; For Hire Vehicle. You must make an arraignment to get that car. It is illegal for fhv cars to pick up a street hail (but it still happens from time to time.)
There always has been way more FHV cars on the road than medallion cars (Yellow/green) because there is no limit on how many cars a car service base can include. Each fhv car has to be assigned to a base (base has to give a notorized letter to driver so he/she can take to the Tlc and start the application.) Other than having TLC plates, the only identity marker on a fhv car is a sticker that says the base's name on the windshield and by the back doors. They try to keep a balanced ecosystem of not too many drivers for the amount of passengers each base usually gets.
That was the old model.
When Uber started in NYC you had to assign your fhv car to their base to use the Uber system. It kept the system tight. Times were good. Once Lyft came into the market and marketed their strategy that any licensed fhv car can use their system Uber followed suit. This in my opinion cheapen the overall quality of the system (but that's my personal assessment of the situation, but I digress.)
So it's not like Uber owns the cars or anything. They just maintain a system. Instead of being an exclusive base that required a geography exam and interview to join, any Joe Shmo can go sign up to use the Uber system. Uber still makes the same commission from the ride. So at the end you could be a fhv driver, accept calls from Uber, Lyft and your old fashion "make a phone call to get a cab" base. No fhv car will only use one base anymore... Even if they are assigned to that base. |
Their fault? No, any leverage to change it? Maybe.
People cutting the cord with their cable providers is becoming more common, a la carte services, once thought of as a pipe dream, [are being tested by content providers like HBO](
These kind of changes show that the market is changing, and with open internet (plug for net neutrality goes here), the market may continue to trend towards more open access.
The businesses will do what makes them money, region locking made them money before, but as it's becoming easier to circumvent through piracy, the smart companies will make attempts to get these customers back with a lower cost service. Similar to the path followed by iTunes for combating digital music. Make it easier and convenient and you will make money. |
You are completely missing the mark of the debate.
While, in the same time as apple, Android has been updated more often, Carriers are NOT pushing those updates out to locked phones since they control them, instead of apple.
When apple says "the update is ready X day", EVERY I device is going to get that update that day.
When Android says "the update is ready X day" - often only a handful of devices will receive it that day. Most devices will never receive the update (The carrier won't spend the money to update their custom firmware) and then there are others that do get it, but months to over a year after it released --- this is intended by phone service companies to force you into buying a new phone rather than getting the update on an old device. |
On PCs we started with the abstraction of "do it how IBM did" and moved forward mainly with abstractions on top of how the hardware actually works from then on, to keep that level of compatibility. In the mobile world there is no BIOS/UEFI to bring up the hardware for you, abstract away parts of it, and boot your OS for you. There is no ACPI to abstract power management and device configuration. The OS has to know exactly what hardware it is running on, exactly how all of it works, etc. Combine this with a large number of companies each making a large number of variants of every component that get combined into devices in every possible combination and it's not even possible to make a single OS image that boots on every device, let alone works well with it.
There are efforts to improve this but they're slow going and only working on the bare essentials. The ARM linux mobile (aka android) guys want to use something called device tree to give a description of the hardware to the OS so it can at least know what drivers to load to turn everything on. The ARM linux server guys and Microsoft want to bring UEFI and ACPI to ARM to handle this. These both still rely on the device maker providing the correct data and allowing for third party upgrades of the OS kernel which aren't very likely. |
Rumors say it's NVIDIA's fault for not getting their drivers and stiff to Google on time. I don't believe that Google would update even old devices like the N4 so quickly and deliberately screw over N9 users. I know it's frustrating, I waited 6 months to get Lollipop on my OnePlus, a Cyanogen phone but the main reason is stability testing and QA issues. If it's not being released, there is probably an issue that needs to be fixed, not Google being lazy. In the OPO's case, severe wakelocks, camera stack issues, and bricked devices were the problem. |
As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.
>Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis. |
what is with the writing on that article?
there is a " ... " every 4 words
that is annoying as fuck.
someone |
Cannot agree with you more. All these people crying about Facebook stealing their "valuable" personal information probably haven't thought twice about their GMail accounts, or Twitpic, or any other connection they have to millions of people. I for one, enjoy Facebook for exactly the way I can post my thoughts and ideas to my friends. And yes, specifically my friends, as I have monitored all my privacy settings since day one, and make sure that everything is set the way I desire it. |
From 2001-2010 my average download speed has gone DOWN by about 15%. I have only 1 option (besides DSL which is slower) for my home address.
During that same time, my cable modem bill has gone UP by over 50% ($29.95/month to $54.99/month).
My torrents are throttled, I no longer get free usenet access, and I have received multiple warnings this year for going over their usage limit (unlimited my ass). |
Yes, but I believe it's because we aren't really at a point where gesture based anything will work well. We have some good carnival type games, and I can see RTS getting some play, but FPS and platformers still have a long way to go for us to see some really quality games from this type of tech.
See all of Nintendo's first party Wii games for more insight. I think Wii's failings aren't Nintendo's fault, they do the platform justice. 3rd party devs have yet to experiment fully with gesture based gameplay. Whatever you think about MSoft's E3 Kinect everything press conference, it's doing the right thing in the long run. If gesture based gaming is what you want.
Off topic, but I felt it needed to be said. |
Thank you. I commute on BART every day, and had to sit through the protest last month for several hours during my evening commute. It's very different when the only thing the protestors achieve is inconveniencing bystanders. They're only hurting commuters, and doing nothing to change BART police behavior. |
The title is misleading and so is the article. The courts are not going to overturn the first-sale doctrine.
The Copyright Act states that a copyrighted product can't be imported into the US without the permission of the copyright holder. At the same time, the act also gives you permission to sell a copyrighted product that you purchased without the permission of the copyright holder. Because the first sale doctrine is codified into the Copyright Act, the Supreme Court can't overturn it.
The problem that is before the court is that Supap Kirtsaeng realized that college textbooks were cheaper in his home country of Thailand than they were here in the US. So his family purchased textbooks and mailed them to him in the US where he resold them, making $1.2 million. John Wiley & Sons is accusing him of importing the books without their permission while Kirtsaeng is claiming the first sale doctrine.
What the lower courts stated was that Kirtsaeng imported the books without the copyright holder's permission and was therefore violating the Copyright Act. THEY DID NOT OVERTURN THE FIRST SALE DOCTRINE. What they stated was that you can't buy something overseas, bring it to the US, and then resell unless the copyright holder gives you permission. In other words, if you buy something from a store in the US, and then resell it to someone also in the US, you are fine. You can still resell your music CD's, you can still sell games to Gamestop, and you can still resell your old electronics on Amazon; assuming of course you purchased them from a seller within the US.
Furthermore, I think the article doesn't understand how the first sale doctrine works. For example, it says in the article:
> it could become an incentive for manufacturers to have everything produced overseas because they would be able to control every resale.
This is not true at all. If Toyota makes a car entirely overseas, including purchasing all of the parts for the car from non-US manufacturers, but then sells it to the end consumer at a car dealership within the US, then the first sale doctrine would protect that consumer because 1) the car was imported to the US with Toyota's permission and 2) the first sale of the car to the consumer was within the US. |
Left my Galaxy Nexus in a taxi last Saturday. I kept calling the lost and found and nobody had turned it in. On Monday, the phone suddenly gets plugged in and shows up on Google Latitude, at the taxi dispatch office.
Before remembering to check latitude, I installed plan B phone locator app remotely from the play market on my PC. It didn't email me the location even after texting locate a few times. I figured the app just didn't work. More on this in a bit.
Still, nobody calls me all day Monday or Tuesday morning. I drive over there on Tuesday (the phone hadn't moved) and the guy in the lost and found has a couple smartphones, neither of which is mine. They had a PC sitting there so I logged in and showed him the latitude timestamps and tell him that I'm sure my phone is there somewhere. Suddenly, a guy walks in and is like, "is this your phone?" and it was. He said he plugged it in so, "at least it's charged now." I was just happy to recover it so I thanked him and left.
When I got out to the car, I noticed that task killer had been installed. My Gnex has Jelly Bean and I never use a task killer, it just isn't needed. My guess is that he was task killing Plan B, but was too stupid to turn off the GPS manually, so I was lucky to have latitude on the phone. He ultimately did give it back, but it was a pretty shady situation. The phone was also set to silent mode. |
That's not the historical effect. The historical effect was monopolies by guilds and trading companies.
Ah, see, here's the conflict. You're looking at all of human history for guidance as to software. I'm just looking at software. Might I suggest you adjust your lens a bit?
> Without patents vast amounts of new ideas, methods, implements, etc all become private and secreted for fear of theft.
This simply isn't true in software historically. You can't produce software and hide everything about how you got there like you can with many varieties of physical good.
> I'm not sure how this is relevant to the idea that software companies stand more to lose from abolishing software patents. Apple and MS are simply not on equal terms with Samsung, LG, HTC, et al in this regard.
And most of them are stuck licensing a thousand flavors of bullshit from other companies who created nothing but an over-broad software patent ten or more years ago. They'd all like to be free of it.
Just the delay alone in trying to copy Apple is enough to give Apple a major edge. If they can't use that delay to their advantage, they should give up and quit now.
> I highly doubt that any reform to the system would suddenly negate all licensing contracts or invalidate previous decisions. That would be even more of a mess than what we're already dealing with vis a vis the courts.
Let me put it another way: if the penalty to breaking a patent licensing agreement is to be sued for patent infringement upon a patent that is no longer valid...
> No, it was intended to be the way it is, but they did not at the time imagine the pace of technological progress could reach the level it has, nor could they have envisioned the grey area of non-physical objects and methods. Reform is necessary, most especially regarding limits, but anything else would be destructive for innovation and knowledge in the public space.
I wasn't making a Framer's Intent argument. I was referring to patent law as it stands, in which there was an attempt to block software patents long before they ever became an issue. Unfortunately the phrase "as such" was used, and now software is patented as part of a system... the rest of which is typically a generic PC. The result is that it's not a software patent as such, it's a patent on a system that just happens to use a bunch of software.
Even looking just at the history of software, it was never intended to be patentable.
> Reform is necessary, most especially regarding limits, but anything else would be destructive for innovation and knowledge in the public space.
I fail to see how software patents help innovation of knowledge. I see a lot of evidence that software patents harm the world of software significantly. |
You're looking at all of human history for guidance as to software. I'm just looking at software. Might I suggest you adjust your lens a bit?
Ironic, given the failure to address things specifically and with context is yours.
> This simply isn't true in software historically. You can't produce software and hide everything about how you got there like you can with many varieties of physical good.
It's clear you have only a yeoman's understanding of software. There's a reason that source code is requested in legal proceedings.
> And most of them are stuck licensing a thousand flavors of bullshit from other companies who created nothing but an over-broad software patent ten or more years ago. They'd all like to be free of it.
You're both hyperbolizing and making unsupported assumption. It's pretty obvious "most of them" would also like be able to innovate without fear of a larger, more funded organization taking their IP without consequence.
> Just the delay alone in trying to copy Apple is enough to give Apple a major edge
You definitely don't understand software, or how fast tech is moving in general. You could make this same flawed argument about any technology, however, despite software patents being arguably easier to copy. Being the first mover is not enough to protect you from the bigger fish. And I find it strangely hypocritical of you to pander to the "most" when it suits your argument, but use Apple's advantage when it suits you, as well. You can't have it both ways.
> If they can't use that delay to their advantage, they should give up and quit now.
Or they could continue to provide their inventions and innovations into the public space, license them at their discretion, and take advantage of their constitutionally guaranteed protections, like thousands of companies before, now, and in the future.
> Let me put it another way: if the penalty to breaking a patent licensing agreement is to be sued for patent infringement upon a patent that is no longer valid...
You seem to be laboring under the illusion that all prior software patents would simply just disappear or suddenly become invalid. The entire point is that they would likely be grandfathered to avoid the far worse problem of untangling the legal ramifications. And even if your premise were correct, what you're describing is not an adequate portrayal of what's at stake legally.
> Even looking just at the history of software, it was never intended to be patentable.
Intent has absolutely nothing to do with it. Clearly the protection was sought , and clearly there's relevance to protecting it.
> I fail to see how software patents help innovation of knowledge
I can't tell if you're intentionally misquoting me or just didn't read my statement correctly. Regardless, if you can't see how software patents help innovation, you're exactly the sort of mindless zealot who should not be involving themselves in dragging down discussions like these. The argument is clear. The entire purpose of patents is to do so; to incentivize innovation by protecting it. You can argue they're failing at doing so for various reasons, but you can in no way "fail to see how software patents help innovation".
> I see a lot of evidence that software patents harm the world of software significantly.
Yet have provided none of it, and are speaking contrary to fact, history, and common sense. The system needs reform, most specifically on term lengths. What it does not need is the major and moneyed players absorbing all innovation, and the public disclosure of ideas to dry up in favor of secrecy.
> |
Actually, it works out pretty well. I won't even bother reading the articles posted here anymore. Because I just know people are rising hell in the comments after just reading the title, and I know someone has been upvoted to the top for correcting all these people and explaining what the article actually contains.
So everyone, please keep reading the titles and flipping shit off, so that I can remain lazy and just find the |
Well the company I'm working for pays that. I'm just an engineer - I come up with the idea, write it up and pass it on to the company-internal patent committee. They assign someone to review it, it goes back and forth a bit until it's accepted, then it goes to the company lawyer. I always try to get someone to be co-inventor so that I don't have to do all the legal stuff myself.
Other than that: I'm 45, have been working as an engineer for decades, and I'm aware that patent applications are expensive. I do as few patent applications as possible since I hate the patent system, and my share of the money is not really worth the effort. My boss insists on occasion. |
Actually this is true.
I work with magnets, for example. Rare Earth magnets. Hitachi owns all the patents for neodymium magnets, and only lets 4 plants have the right to make them, all four in China. On top of that, China doesn't care. So there are lots of factories in China that make neo. And they can sell almost anywhere in the world, but not in the US, where we actually enforce those patents. [Here is a short piece on it]( Skullcandy should not have purchased the illegal materials and now is going to pay. But really, all of use are going to pay. You use magnets in ways you didn't even know. |
It's sensationalistic in the current atmosphere of making Apple out to be the primary bad guy. But to the degree that it points out the stupid and counter-productive nature of our current out-of-control so-called "IP" system, there are good reasons to have very excited headlines. |
I love how Redditors try to defend their mindless hatred of Apple on the grounds of being against "evil software patents"; then when word gets out about a new hardware patent, they somehow twist that into a new excuse to bash them. |
Really the only arguments are that
Japan scared everyone; and
new fossil fuel options are keeping energy costs low for a little while.
Sustainable power needs to happen. Maybe it's not renewable , but conventional nuclear is a well-researched and mature technology that will last for much longer than we need to research and test better technologies like next-gen nuclear or advanced solar. It will also last long after fossil fuels become much more expensive, but we need some lead time to build. |
This will not happen for so many reasons.
Complete lack of security. You can shoot drones down, hack the software, steal the cargo, etc etc
"Drone fishing" would become a very profitable sport.
Drones are fairly loud. With thousands of them buzzing about everywhere the noise would be unbearable. They'd congregate in traffic hubs, natural points of high drone traffic concentration where you literally have thousands of these things hovering above your head all day.
If they fail for whatever reason they'll just fall. People will be injured, stuff will be damaged.
There's a reason why we don't allow RC helicopters everywhere. They can turn into potentially lethal projectiles with high RPM rotating parts. You don't want this stuff around your children.
There's more. So |
I doubt personal income tax has anything at all to do with this. Both Kansas and Missouri, where Google Fiber currently exists, have personal income taxes. Google probably cares much more about the ability to get a large enough number of subscribers to cover the cost of installing the necessary infrastructure, which is easier in small cities like Austin or Kansas City, as the cost of trenching is probably lower due to their low (relative to other urban areas) population densities. |
Just like with their cars, where they are throwing out old conventions that don't make sense, they are trying to make the user buying experience good... and by "good" I mean "not shitty". Nobody likes dealing with dealers, from what I can tell. For a single, worthless data point: my old 13 year old car has been about to die and I've been ready to buy a new car for about 3 full years. I had enough cash on hand to go out and buy one, and I even knew which car I wanted, and had even gone onto their website and picked out colors and options, but the idea of having to do a shitload of research beforehand so I know more about the car than the dealer, go into a dealership, talk to some asshole* who is going to try to hard sell me a bunch of crap or upsell me to the next model, haggle over prices, service plans, floor mats, extra hidden convenience fees, just to have him go into a back room and come out with changed paperwork and extra fees snuck in, etc., etc.. The thought of it was honestly just too much of a pain in the ass. Or I could have talked to a middleman car buying service, but then I'd have to be on the phone and describing everything I wanted, etc., etc.. So I just drove my old car into the ground, hoping that somebody would throw a car at me in exchange for money.
Then Tesla came along, the reviews came in, and 6 weeks ago, I literally sat down in front of my computer, went to their website, clicked "Model S: design your car", clicked all the options I wanted, hit the "paypal" button, and then my car was ordered. No bullshit, no fucking around or hidden fees or trying to upsell me a bunch of crap - it was like buying something from amazon. Wireless bank check, and 5 weeks later I get a free factory tour, the guy shows me all the fancy functions of the car, and then I drive it home. It was... well, I'd say it was "amazing", but honestly it's how it should always be (minus the tour and walkthrough). It was amazing mostly because the experience usually sucks so hard.
uh, |
I tried to buy things from alibaba but almost always the shipping killed the savings, when it was free shipping I found I could get the same items off eBay or Amazon for a fraction more without having to order bulk. |
We aren't talking about just 'breaking even' - its a long term investment that has a great payoff long-term. There are several factors that people generally don't think of when talking about solar: First, they generally increase your home value by ~15x the annual energy savings. That generally covers about 1/3rd of the cost of the panels. Second, energy costs rise steadily - If I recall correctly, the number is something around 6% increase per year. Buying solar now means your costs for energy doesn't go up with the market - over 25 years that's a big difference.
Now, that said, there are reasons to not put in solar. One big factor is how long you plan to be in the house - if you're not going to be there past the break-even point, someone else is getting the big payoff from your investment. Also, those numbers are based on getting 5 hours of full sun per day - if you have shade for part of the day, your break-even point goes further into the future.
Also, there are several big retailers (WalMart, for instance) who have evaluated the solar option and have put off installing solars on the roof of their stores for now. They're making the bet that while it's possible to turn a profit given current market conditions, that if they put the purchase off a few years it will become more favorable. That's a fair assessment, give the current market conditions and how the prices of solars have changed over the last few years. |
There are no vehicles that run strictly off of batteries that have 150k miles. The Priuses and hybrids that have 150k miles, I'd say less that 20% of that is actually on batteries. The engine powers it for freeway driving, not the batteries.
If you're going to estimate the cost in electricity to get the gas to the car, you have to estimate the cost of mining all of the chemicals that go into making a battery, and all of the refining of said chemicals, as well as the actual manufacturing of the battery. Which it seems you're just brushing under the rug and ignoring.
Electric motors do last a long time. That's great. A properly cared for ICE can last 300,000+ miles.
On your next point, you are again estimating that everything in a car will break, multiple times. Again, wrong. I've had a car with 210k on it, and out of all the things you listed, I had to replace... one water pump. Now, different people will have different results with different cars. But, you are talking about absolute best case scenario with your EV example, so I will talk about my actual use. One power steering pump at $150. Big money. Big impact.
Now your fluids.
210k mile car, changed oil with full synthetic oil every 10k miles. 5 quarts. Extrapolate to 300k, we'd have a total of 150 quarts of oil.
Never had to change the power steering fluid ever. Zero quarts.
Coolant I had flushed one twice. Not sure how much it took, but it was far far less than 15 gallons.
Transmission fluid flushed once. Sure didn't take 2-3 gallons to refill it.
Gas, all depends on how you drive.
14k EV? Now you just proved how dumb you actually are. A battery pack for a hybrid (that has an engine to back it up) is at least 5 grand. You think they can build the entire rest of the car for under 9 thousand dollars? God damn. Like really.
You, are just talking out your ass. You are choosing and absolutely perfect scenario for an EV, and an absolutely horrible scenario for a ICE vehicle. |
their are quite a few RAV4EV's with over 150,000 miles on the original battery. these are electric only NIMH powered sold at the turn of the century.
they have NO ENGINES in them they are not hybrids they are pure electric.
do your research. your wrong.
NO I don't have to estimate the mining and energy to get the battery and electric motor and controller because the equation cancels those in the mining electricity and materials that go into your engine transmisison and all its accessories and fluids and components.
it balances out (actually it does not it still favors the EV but I balance it to keep things simple)
I know how long ice's last if taken care of. I just sold my baby. my 88 cherokee with 497,000 miles on it. no joke.
well over a million miles is "no problem" for a decent electric motor. no problem at all. in fact I am not AWARE of any modern electric motor that has simple "worn out" like an engine does.
I said 300,000 miles not 210,000 miles.
I went through 3 water pumps in the van ZERO water pumps in the cherokee in nearly 500,000 miles.
on the other hand the van (240,000 miles) has never eaten an alternator while the cherokee has chewed thorough 6.
it balances out. in 300,000 miles it is SENSIBLE to assume those accessories will on average have to be replaced once and that is being generous.
I used 6k for oil changes not 10k. the only way your getting 10k is with synthetic and you balance that with much increased cost.
transmission should be changes at 100,000 miles and then every 50,000 miles (this is as per manufacturer reccomendation) maybe newer cars is different? I don't own any new cars and neither does well over half the nation.
coolant is usually at least 3-4 gallons per change and your SUPPOSED to change it at intervals the fact that you elected not to is irrelevant to the discussion.
no its not. it is fixed. the national average is 20mpg. that is the value we use. I personally get 65mpg in my metro and 35mpg in my tracker. I am not average by any stretch.
14k for the EV. dumb? so your a troll with no interest in doing research and using your own poor maintenance on your car as a metric? who's dumb?
not for you. fuck you. but for everyone else here is how you build a $14k EV and you can look up my numbers to verify them.
First we need a car. a glider. you can buy a BRAND SPANKING NEW bare bones nissan for $9550 (I was just at a dealer it was $9550 I versa I think it usede to be $8999 it has gone up)
Now we dont need that we need a glider. I am going to use 50% of that value for the glider.
remember the ENTIRE DRIVETRAIN is being throw away we don't need it. I have talked with some auto workers and they estimate that the chassis the glider is worth about 15% of the value of the whole car. (for example IIRC you can buy a smart glider for around $3k the car is $16k)
but to make a VERY conservative and viable estimation we will use 50% not 15%
so our glider (and all these prices are FULL RETAIL NOT COST!!) is $4775
the battery pack is $4500 (I am making this estimate using the E95 NIMH battery do your research ovonics and GM announces the full retail price of this battery at $4500 to the customer!)
now add in $2000 for the motor and $2000 for the controller and $500 for the charger (lithium charges cost a lot more)
and that is it. YOUR DONE. you can research these prices yourself they are accurate enough for this estimate. you can go down slightly and up if you want more power but we are talking cheapest possible full retail price for a 4 door mid size sedan that will go 80-100 miles on a charge since that is good enough for 95% of the country except maybe the colder climates then it drops to around 80% or so. (butt estimates but good enough)
$4775
$4500
$2000
$2000
$500
$13,775 FULL RETAIL PRICE. and it could be even cheaper. all those prices I listed for motor controller and charger are niche cottage industry prices. MASS produce them on an automotive scale and that price is likely to drop quite a bit. remember these are solid state components for the most part. they WILL drop in price just like other solid state components do (mp3 players computers etc..)
I would LIKE to push that number closer to $15k since I would like an aluminum chassis and plastic body.
but it can be done FULL RETAIL for under $14k with TODAY's PRICES no subsidies no government help at all.
if you opened your troll eyes for a few seconds and actually looked into this you would realize my values are quite accurate.
its EASY to see them eventually going for under $10k NEW. they are such a reduction in complex machines parts when going to EV its a crazy difference.
today's EV's are expensive for many reason. the primary of which is they insist on using LITHIUM batteries which are simply not ready yet. the battery in the LEAF is $10,000 !!! the battery in the teslsa is over $50,000 !!
so of course with a battery that expensive they don't wrap it in an econobox they wrap it in a more expensive chassis to go along with the more expensive battery to justify the cost.
WE ARE ALREADY ALMOST THEIR both the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi Miev are both available for UNDER $30k NO SUBSIDIES
and they use crazy expensive lithium batteries AND much more expensive chassis than are NEEDED for an economy car.
you do the math and pull your foot out if your ass and your other foot out of your mouth.
I was VERY generous on the ICE scenario. MOST ICE never ever ever make it to 300k. they are almost always in the scrap yard LONG before 300k so you now have to add the ENTIRE COST OF AN ENTIRELY ADDITIONAL VEHICLE to the equation.
I was being extremely generous to the ICE just to show just HOW MUCH BETTER the EV is over the ICE.
I KNOW they can build the entire rest of the car for $9k they ALREADY BUILD AND SELL ENTIRE CARS with intact ICE DRIVE TRAINS for $9k.
duh. |
There you go again. Anything making the EV look bad, you conveniently say doesn't matter.
Show me a link to these Rav4's. There are now Rav4s that are being sold as EV, but I checked every year from 99 to 06, and all of them are 2.0l or 2.4l 4 cylinder engines.
I work in the auto industry. Your "glider" for under 5 grand is a load of shit. Whoever you talked to didn't know shit. To start off with, because you have a 600 pound battery pack, you have to have an extremely reinforced chassis if you're planning on it carrying more than 1 person anywhere. If you tried to take that $9k car and throw in a 600 pound pack, it would fall apart in under 20k miles.
You really don't understand anything. You like to think you know what is actually happening, and what car manufacturers are capable of, but you don't. You realize that Nissan Leaf battery pack alone costs 18 THOUSAND dollars? JUST THE BATTERY PACK. And, it has a limited range of under 150 miles per charge. The Chevy Volt is estimated to cost GM over $80k to make. They sell every one at a loss.
Take of the tinfoil hat. Car companies aren't making 14k vehicles because they can't. Not because they don't want to. Google the G-Wiz. Available in the UK, £15k for that. $23k. And that is for a car that can fit 2 skinny people or one fat guy. |
I am not doing your work for you
I found a few links (that you will likely dismiss) just google these terms
rav4ev 150,000 miles
dude your talking our your ass. the reinforce the frame already to hold your HEAVIER than 600 pound engine transmission and all its "crap"
your REMOVING 600+ pounds of ice crap and replacing it with 600+ pounds of EV crap. no change as far as the car is concerned.
where do you get this crap from dude?
the chevy volt is a scam.
the lithium packs are expensive BECAUSE they are lithium. do your own research they quoted $4500 full retail price for the NIMH E95 battery.
your wrong.
150 miles is optimistic in extreme dude. I can squeeze 70mpg our of a geo metro and I don't thing EVEN I could get 150 miles out of todays ev's per charge (except the tesla)
I drive 40,000 miles a year and even I don't need more than 65 miles per charge (work is 54 miles away and I want 10 miles cushion)
open your god damned eyes and try to educate yourself.
Car companies are not making $14k cars because they don't want to. there is not ENOUGH profit in it and you CAN NOT make a $14k ev with LITHIUM power. |
It's funny, because all of your information about him comes from Reddit, making your opinion just as useless as you claim his is. |
I would love to buy directly from the manufacturer with the same model tesla uses. Have little "galleries" situated around the country, where you can check out and test drive the current model year cars. If you live outside of a reasonable distance, or if you're unable to get to a showroom for whatever reason, you could schedule time on a traveling test drive sort of deal, where an employee drives through markets similar to what I just said, and pay a fee to essentially have them bring the test drive to you. You then order online, and have the cars delivered to the gallery for you to pick up, or delivered to your door for an extra fee.
Before you start complaining about the extra fees to rural markets, what does that NOT apply to? How much is milk or gas in Hawaii? How about pineapples in Montana during the winter? Same principle.
Dealerships aren't hung out to drive, nor are mechanics in my more perfect world. USED dealerships. And those dealerships will have that "manufacturer-grade workmanship" that stupid people think is necessary enough to pay over market value for.
Used dealerships are gonna take a hit though,because not being able to bloat car prices new is going to plummet used value, but I think that's a post for /r/crymeariver. |
I get that. What I'm trying to figure out is: Why is there a sudden surge in consumer demand for a product that most of us can't afford?
I'm certainly not OPPOSED to letting them open up dealerships. If they wanna open up a Tesla Store in my neighborhood, then they're welcome as far as I'm concerned.
I'm just wondering why there are a lot of people who can't afford this product that are up in arms that the product isn't more readily available.
If they had a car in the $25,000-$45,000 price range, it would make a lot of sense why lots of people would want to buy it. But most of the people who are demanding they be allowed to open a dealership can't afford to patronize the business until their product's price is halved. There's a White House petition with around 26,000 signatures demanding this; how many of those 20,000 can actually afford one of these vehicles right now? |
The D-Wave solves one particular optimization problem approximately . It is not a general-purpose optimizer. Now, there are certain optimization problems that do map nicely onto D-Wave's problem, but this is not a universal property of optimization problems.
In order to be more specific, you have to understand the nature of reduction. The broadest practical sense is many-one reduction. Any computable problem is trivially many-one reducible to any other computable problem. When we talk about complexity in the border between tractability and intractability, we are generally concerned with polynomial-time reductions (though I once had a professor who required that our NP proofs use log-space reductions).
Trivially, there is a many-one reduction from any optimization problem to the D-Wave problem. But we are only concerned with reductions that are themselves tractable on classical machines. (If we had a universal quantum computer, which the D-Wave is not and is not intended to be, then we could use any reductions that are tractable on a quantum computer, but if we had a real quantum computer it would be a moot point anyway.)
It is not theoretically impossible that there could be a poly-time reduction from factoring to the D-Wave problem, but we do not know of one. For comparison, we also don't know for sure that there isn't an efficient classical factoring algorithm in the first place. Getting solid proofs of this sort has always been difficult. But as yet we have absolutely no evidence that such a reduction exists, and ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that it does not (viz, the failure of decades of research to bear fruit in this regard). |
Seeing that someone else has just addressed your second and third points, I'll shoot at the fourth:
There are many tasks for which a quantum computer is significantly faster than a classical computer, but there are many more in which quantum computers have no innate advantage, and the maturity of classical computers ensures that they'll be used instead for the forseeable future. |
Ok, I'll bite and actually take a look at the image provided. Even on the small screen, there are some obvious issues here. First, the search and navigation header doesn't count as "search results", but it's the header, it's usability and navigation to get round your results on Google. This definitely doesn't count as "junk or ads". How is this not obvious? Second, the map is definitely part of the search results. When I want to find an "auto mechanic", I will absolutely use the map as part of my search. The paid ads are in blue pins, clearly different from the red "organic results" (which in his picture all are red). Third, all the numbers add up to 63%, which means that 37% is white space. This is a (good) design choice for scaling windows and general readability. I would not want my results to go from edge-to-edge. It's bad for readability and bad on aesthetic. So let's redo the math:
37% white space
14% header
13% organic search results
7% map results
71% space used in Google's design for results and usability. |
Honestly it's ok, but not where it needs to be. For me the lack of apps is totally overblown since I never used that many anyway. The real problem is that WP8 is a giant beta. The most recent update has definitely improved it a lot in my mind (ie my battery doesn't drain for no reason... as much) but WP8 needs serious rounds of bug squashing and feature implementation. Live tiles are a great concept that lack functionality to be really useful. Push notifications I hear have real problems from certain apps. The music player is a joke, it literally does not have a scrub bar. This is a smartphone not a cassette player!!!!!
That being said it's getting better... Nokia did more to improve the platform than MS which was a real problem but since MS is buying their devices and services division that should be over. Example: I stream media from my microsoft windows phone to a microsoft xbox using a nokia app. Seriously boggles the mind this functionality wasn't natively provided by MS. |
I've spoken about this topic at length before, primarily concerning Windows 8 and it's bastard child, the Steam Box. This is really the tangible result of the App Store, which I will refer to as MSMP, Microsoft Marketplace. Now I won't talk about Steam much, but it's relevant.
A condensed version is basically your post. For Steam, it was a really big deal since, at the time, the details of your described App Store were true. Steam would not exist, and all games must be routed through Games for WMP, of which was ran by Jason Holtman, an ex-employee of Valve whom was laid off. His job was to promote Steam and get publishers to use it. This was a big deal to Steam, and thus birthed the Steam Box. The prospect of the MSMP also rustled the jimmies of other top publishers, such as Blizzard.
The Games for Windows Marketplace has since been scrapped, and Windows 8 does not have an oppressive MP anymore, though I still have a bitter taste in my mouth about it.
But enough about Steam. Let's get down to the nitty gritty and get some [graphs in this motherfucker.]( Keep in mind the iPhone launched in 2007, Windows 8 was announced in Sept 2011.
The Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, iPad 2, OSX Lion, IOS... more importantly, the app store for Macs went online in 2011 as well. An apple buffet, really.
Plain as day, Apple blew Microsoft out of the water back in Q3 of 2012. Why? Let's break down it's earnings and follow the money. First the app store.
It might come as a surprise, but in the grand scheme of things, Apple doesn't make squat (relatively) from the App Store. Using this site . The credit card companies make equal revenue, at around 15%, and a little bit goes toward servers. Since it's creation, Apple has made about $300million from the app store. Peanuts, really.
By why have an appstore that doesn't make jack shit? It ties all your products together into one giant super.. product. Make an iPad app? It's available on your iPhone. iPhone app? It's on your iPad. Program for OSX lion? Will work on anything running OSX Lion. "Oh they have that app for iPad? I should get one!" It's why all apple products looked exactly the same for such a long time, so anyone could pick up any other Apple product and use it natively. You honestly could refer to the iPad, iPhone, OSX, as just "Apple", and people would imagine perfectly in their mind what it looks like.
In addition to the ease of use of Apple products through censorship and screening, the walled garden of it all is easily controlled. Think about taking a tour of North Korea, you only see the pretty parts. This basically is what OSX achieved. That isn't to say if you stepped off the path you'd be horrified, but Apple Products have a predetermined route of use, and does not operate well without that route. Microsoft on the other hand provides the environment, but does not have control over what goes where and how it does it. This is truly the only thing that makes Windows the giant it is today. Free reign to the community to make applications for it.
Also, the hype Apple products brought. This cannot be understated. Just today there was a post about Apple overtaking Coke in regards of it's iconic nature. A lot of things were in favor for Apple at the time of arrival of the iPhone in 2007. The hipsters, a generation of teens raised on the Internet, and more were in their favor. And they played it well.
Apple, in the grand scheme of things, actually is not doing too well relatively. It's lost it's place in the smartphone war to more customizable and cheaper phones, it's lost it's tablet war to cheaper and more customizable tablets, and it's lost it's lead on Microsoft that it previously had. I personally feel that touch screens are only a fad, and we will move to gesture based input (not kinect style) for tables and smart phones. Things like Google Glasses will become the norm, and not a smudgy glass screen. |
The fullscreen apps are amazingly bad in a desktop environment. Video player and Picture viewer are almost unusable if you are saving videos somewhere else than \user\documents\videos.
Microsoft Store app has no obvious Search function without bringing up the Sidebar while inside the App. That is, if you even wanted anything to do with them.
Scrolling sideways is really fucking stupid on a PC in my opinion.
Extended desktop(multiple screens) makes you feel like an idiot trying to get into Metro UI/sidebar only using your mouse, and overall navigating with the fullscreen apps are awful. They could learn a lot from XBMC.
Search function giving no results when typing in "Settings" unless the Settings tab is selected. Settings tab shows nothing at all until then. (Just stupid, should be showing ALL settings and using the Search bar as a filter. Seems like common sense to me.)
My biggest issue with W8 is that having multiple monitors makes it... cumbersome to use, and randomly browsing around with one hand in your pants makes it even more so compared to its predecessor. And I'm sure I'm not alone doing this.
Overall it's not terrible, but certainly a step down from W7. And I will never recommend it to anyone unless it offers a classic mode. |
I agree, not that im qualified to. I think the real reason light water reactors rather than lftr got devolped is because:
>Startup fuel—Unlike mined uranium, mined thorium does not have a fissile isotope. Thorium reactors breed fissile uranium-233 from thorium, but require a considerable amount of U-233 for initial start up. There is very little of this material available. This raises the problem of how to start the reactors in a reasonable time frame. One option is to produce U-233 in today's solid fuelled reactors, then reprocessing the U-233 out of the solid fuel. A LFTR can also be started by other fissile isotopes, enriched uranium and plutonium from reactors or decommissioned bombs. For enriched uranium startup, high enrichment is needed. Decommissioned uranium bombs have a high enough enrichment, but not enough is available to start up many LFTRs. It is difficult to separate plutonium fluoride from lanthanide fission products. One option for a two fluid reactor is to operate with plutonium or enriched uranium in the fuel salt, breeding U-233 in the blanket, but storing it instead of returning it to the core. Instead, add plutonium or enriched uranium to continue the chain reaction, similar to today's solid fuel reactors. When enough U-233 is bred, replace the fuel with new fuel, retaining the U-233 as new startup fuel. A similar option exists for a single fluid reactor operating as a converter. Such a reactor would not reprocess fuel online, instead would startup on plutonium with thorium as the fertile, and add plutonium. After many years the plutonium burns out and U-233 is produced in situ. At the end of the reactor fuel life, the spent fuel salt can be reprocessed to recover the bred U-233 to start up new LFTRs. |
Oh that's right, I'm on /r/technology! Sorry it went over your head.
Please understand that in cryptography the weakest link is the link that gets all of your data decoded by the NSA and when the NSA monitors your facebook connection with extreme prejudice, and they don't even need to because facebook will give em the data, trying to get random numbers that are needed for thing such as key generation or signing will be utterly pointless because the entire state of your RNG will be seen at all times. |
Depends on your culture.
Here are some other examples:
- English (United States): ($12,345,678,901.00)
- English (Canada): -$12,345,678,901.00
- French (Canada): (12 345 678 901,00 $)
- Chinese (Simplified): $ 12,345,678,901.00
- Mapudungun (Chile): -$ 12.345.678.901,00
- Quechua (Equador): ($ 12.345.678.901,00)
- Spanish (Argentina): $-12.345.678.901,00
- Spanish (Columbia): ($12.345.678.901,00)
And these are just the cultures that also use dollars, with the currency symbol $ . |
No, he's right. It's not because it's a newer processor, it's because it's a different architecture entirely. Computers have been using x86(_64) architecture for a very long time, so upgrading your CPU will not break any compatibility, as they all use the same instruction set.
PS4 went from ARM (I think? Or was it proprietary?) to x86_64, so literally none of the games could run even if they tried.
Of course, if the source was recompiled targeting x86, and any bugs from that were ironed out, it'd run fine on the PS4. |
At this point, numbers really don't tell us anything about this generation's 'console war'. This is a marathon. Sony shot out of the gate with a sprint, Microsoft with a solid stride, and Nintendo fell and skinned their knees.
I don't think Nintendo is out of it with the Wii U, but they need to find some killer apps and fast. I think their strategy of reaching to casuals needs to be restructured and they need to reinvent some of their classic franchises to bring back the hardcore fans who aren't Nintendo diehard fans.
Microsoft's PR debacle from earlier this year really gave Sony momentum on a silver platter. It seems like Xbox is slowing creeping back into the favor as more positive reviews roll in about the console and it's games.
I think the most interesting story of the first 3-4 years of this generation is whether Sony can deliver the games to fulfill it's promise to be 'all about games' and whether Microsoft can live up to it's 'all in one entertainment'.
To me, launch sales are irrelevant. You have a segment of the market that will snatch up new consoles no matter what. What is more telling to me are sales figures after the first major price drops: when the average home starts to adopt the 'next gen'. At this point, the market starts to settle down and purchase consoles based on games and current features, not promises of future grandeur. |
This is my prediction. PS4 will win out of the gate. It's cheaper and more powerful. Xbox One will win in the long run though.
Xbox One will leverage the same thing that made the Wii a success without compromising its appeal to hardcore gamers. That is, being more than a traditional gaming machine.
The PS4 does games well, some would say the best, but that's all it does. The Xbox One can do everything the PS4 can and then some. The PS4 is just a specialized computer.
I'm a PC gamer but even the One has me tempted because of things like Xbox Fitness. My girlfriend and all her friends love the dancing games. These are things the PS4 simply lacks the hardware to do. |
As someone who works at GameStop, it truly worries me to see people making misinformed buying decisions and I believe its one of the main reasons PS4 is wrecking shit so hard. When I'm selling people their PS4's while trading in their old 360's I ask them what's making them switch. They say they want to be able to use their discs at their friends house and not wanting to have to be online at all times. Never have I wanted to punch people so hard. HOW CAN YOU BE THIS MISINFORMED WHEN MAKING A DECISION INVOLVING THIS MUCH MONEY?! I'll be honest I do prefer Xbox because I'll always love Halo but I still merit Sony for their dedication to a "true" gaming console if there is such a thing. I just wish people would stop being so ignorant about things like this. |
You are just forgetting the many games they released that weren't great. Look at [this]( list.
Not to mention that back then only the well selling games made it to NA because localization was far too costly and there was fear that the different cultures would lead to very different results. |
You're right about cars never moving to hovercraft, but his prediction might be applied to maglev trains as a kind of rebound.
Also, Asimov envisioned a future where nuclear fission was miniaturized and had almost no waste products. From that perspective it's easy to imagine low-output batteries. Perhaps the field was too young at the time to make any reasonable estimates.
Wall screens are a horrible idea to begin with. People want to position their viewing surface in relation to their furniture, not vice-versa. The idea of a wall screen was rather popular with futurists of the time. See Fahrenheit 451. I imagine wall panels to be more like what we saw in Star Trek TNG. |
Nothing about this makes me excited at all. If they team up with Verizon then we're going to be stuck with the same bullshit we've had for years. There's not a chance Verizon would give any sort of priority of data to Google or sell the use of their towers cheaply. Sprint is already lending out it's towers to Virgin Mobile, Republic, and Boost.
Then they talk about VOIP only, yeah that sounds great. So when I'm hiking I won't have service? There's not one thing here that excites me with the current sources of information. |
That doesn't make sense either. Google will cut into profits they already make through the play store so they can charge less for monthly services (I.e. less profit) than other resellers?
Here is what makes sense. Google will make some level of profit as a reseller. Of course they will boom and get 10s of millions of users because they carry the brand name. What google gets in return is access to all of your phone records that they currently cannot get due to laws banning app vendors / phone vendors tracking certain info. However, once they own the phone and the telecom service they legally get everything for free. They don't have to buy that info off of anyone anymore. |
They're two equally bad extremes. On one end you have approved apps only with an approval process that rejects apps for complete BS reasons and charges for the devkit. On the other you have an app store that anyone can dump shit into with pretty much no moderation, making it rare to find an app that isn't garbage.
The obvious solution is middle of the two:
Moderate the app store properly. Reject garbage apps (scams, apps that don't fucking work, obvious knockoffs) and only garbage apps. (Don't be like Apple, rejecting a camera app because it uses the volume buttons for shutter which is "confusing" even though it has to be enabled through a hidden setting, only to later add that same function to their own camera app.) This means moderating every version , too. Lots of apps start out fine and then are bought out by ScumbagCorp and turn into malware.
Let users install third-party apps from external sources and fuck with whatever they want.
Don't charge for the goddamn devkit.
But neither Google nor Apple have incentive to actually do this (nor to actually fix their shitty broken software), because they get a cut of each app sale, regardless how good the app is (and people will buy apps to fix the issues in the OS, like the shitty wallpaper pickers). They also like to brag about how many apps their stores have (because obviously quantity > quality).
Google's business is advertising and data mining. Apple's is selling overpriced electronics to people who buy them just for the looks. Neither are in the business of making quality hardware or software, providing a good user experience, or giving a shit about the user's privacy. |
I guess the Play Store is less monitored by Google which in turn allows malware to easily get put on there . Android devices also tend to be more "open" by allowing files to be accessed and modified more easily, also making malware to infect the android device.In contrast, Apple's App Store tends to be more monitored than the Play Store, and iDevices tend to be more closed, making it harder for malware to infect the device (unless you jailbreak your iDevice, than you can modify your device more but increase the risk of malware infection). |
Sigh.
The point is that websites like Facebook, youtube and netflix have you as a product. If they start charging ISP's for their content they have less product to sell to the people paying them for said product (the advertisers).
Also unlike ISP's, people have options as to what websites they use, so if those companies I mentioned start to charge ISP's which we assume won't pay would mean that other social media sites/video sites/search engines would get more visitors (and more visitors still equals more product to sell for the alternative sites). |
Similar to karma on here (for the most part); contribute something informative, useful, or amusing people appreciate it. What they are doing is based off of the greed of a failing monopoly and I feel the possible repercussions far outweigh what they stand to gain. I don’t appreciate what they are doing so this is how I down vote them in real life. Allowing a company to continue being shitty doesn't absolve shittieness either. |
I still side with the net neutrality side, but I think many times people overlook some facts and reasons why this whole shit is getting out of hand lately.
Maddox made some interesting points during one of his recent podcasts when he was talking about the resolution race and how 4K is becoming a mainstream thing. (great new podcast, check it out
As of now, netflix consumes somewhere around 1/3 of the bandwidth on the internet. And that is because many people are watching in 1080p etc.
Imagine what that will be once 4K or 8K or whatever the fuck they get up to starts to be mained.
The internet will literally run like shit everywhere because so many people are watching their ridiculous resolution movies and shows.
Like really you don't need all that high res stuff unless you watching nature docs or whatever.
In fact the only time I will settle for a cam rip movie is when I know it's more of a drama with little/no action or CGI because the visuals don't matter as much.
I grew up in the age where we still had a dial on the TV that had only 13 channel buttons and rabbit ears.
People are why to ridiuclous with the bigger and better resolutions all the time.
720p is fine, we really don't need to get any crazier than that. In fact there are many arguments and tricks they use because the quality is way higher than what we see with our own eyes that is distracting.
For example it can take you 'out' of the film because it all the sudden starts to feel like a soap opera which is clearly on a set, they have to add blurr effects in motion, they have to photoshop skin because you can see all these details, etc. etc. |
Multi step verification is best. Something you have, something you know.
Sim card + ID + Passphrase is best.
Insert Sim card
enter ID
Enter passphrase
Device initializes and unlocks the card. Should you wish, you can lock the sim card, which would lock the phone AND require the ID / passphrase to decrypt the stored data.
A normal pin could be used for day to day use. But, if you want, with the spreading of NFC technology in phones, one could set up a secure token device that sends a one time code when you want to unlock the device, and verify with the pin.
Now, you need the one time code generator, sim card, phone pin, ID, and passphrase for the ID. For the owner of the device, it's whatever. The one time generator could be a ring that is worn and be discrete (yay micro chips and powering said devices off wireless power (basically generating the power to run the device off of ambient EM radiation (radio waves etc)))
Why go to this trouble
Passwords alone are insecure. You write it down, you reuse it half a dozen times. By adding a physical device to the security, now you need to steal something physical AND know the password. Basically, it limits the number of viable attackers to a more localized area.
Then, we increase the phone lock security - now you don't just need a pin, but you need a physical token generator.
The passphrase, pin, and recovery data for the token generator can be stored securely in various ways. Like on a piece of paper in a safety deposit box. Or if that isn't safe enough, etched onto a piece of stainless steal, coated in a layer of manufactured crystal. You know, what ever makes you sleep comfortably at night.
Initial set up: 2 minutes.
Daily use: Uninterrupted
Ability to unlock and access stored data: Nearly impossible
Recovery by legitimate owner: ~time to go to safety deposit box + 10 minutes to set up new token etc.
Chance of stolen phones ending up on market: Greatly reduced.
A quick note
This might seem extreme. But consider this: Do you want other people looking through your bank records? Probably not.
By forcing a setup like this, we take a rather insecure device that can be manually brute forced within a day or two, and make it a living nightmare to break into, even with sophisticated hardware. Basically the cost of completing an attack on your device becomes so costly, that there can be no hope of recouping the costs - especially if they were wrong about any piece of information they suspected. |
To speak to the Monopoly issue that lots of people seem concerned about:
There's a [great post]( on the front page of this sub right now that addresses this concern over cementing the telecom monopolies already in place, but it's very very long so I understand why many would be disinclined to read it. I'll try to sum up the relevant part. Check out the article that post links to for more depth. Ignore its title, it's more about economics than conservatism, liberals will find the argument just as compelling.
Basically, ISPs are like water and power companies in that they occupy a different sort of market than do most companies which sell goods to the public. For most companies, the cost of doing business goes up per consumer buying their product, as each product they sell must be manufactured and shipped to the consumer, etc, and these processes cost money per good sold. For ISPs among other types of companies, the reverse is true. They "manufacture" a set amount of whatever good they sell regardless of the number of people buying it, and the cost to transport the good to the consumer is one-time and cumulative in bringing the good to new consumers. It actually becomes cheaper for these businesses to operate as they add customers. This means that once a business has a significant edge in a given local market, they can offer their service at a much lower price than their competitors can because they are already servicing more users. This drives new users towards the biggest company and incentivizes customers of competing companies to switch to the larger and less expensive company.
In short, these types of markets when completely unregulated move toward monopolies naturally because it is most efficient for one company to provide the good to the local population. Whether it's water or internet or whatever else, it will always be more efficient to distribute these types of goods through one set of piping that connects everyone than it will be to run multiple sets of piping that necessarily lie mostly in parallel but service different endpoints.
Now monopolies are never good, but in these sorts of markets regulation is the best option available because a deregulated free market will yield a monopoly anyway due to efficiency. The only difference is that when the monopoly is regulated, the company isn't able to gouge its users for the service it provides and isn't responsible for keeping its own standards. |
Studies? Well, lets see.
Boston taxis charge $2.8 per mile, but Uber [only charges $1.2](
I've been told that the rides are fantastic and comfortable on Uber, so i will assume a newish car that devalues at a rate of about $200/month. (3 year old car bought at 15k, sold at 6 years for half that)
It's hard to know how much miles this car drives but assuming the average of 15,000 miles per year is probably not far off, so this car costs the driver $.16 per mile before any maintenance etc. so let's bump that up to $.25.
Gas is $2.6/gallon in Boston right now at 22 miles per gallon that's another $.11 per mile, lets round that up to $.15.
I don't know the cost of insurance...o wait, Uber driver don't bother getting commercial insurance.
$1.2 - $.25 - $.15 = $.8 - $.24 (UberCut) = $.56. O wait, there's more! Have to pay sales tax, assuming a 10% sales tax that's another $.12 deducted and leaves us at about $.45 the driver receives after costs. per mile. before income taxes, if any.
To make minimum wage this driver will have to get paid for 16 miles per hour. The general speed limit in Boston is 30mph. So our hypothetical driver would have to travel half of all his time at the speed limit, which is impossible given that traffic lights were invented.
Now, the initial charge to just sit in the uber car will offset this a bit, but we have no way of knowing how much this will be. Certainly no more than $200 more per month. I guess it's possible to add $300ish more for surge pricing. |
omg....Australian taxis...HORRORIFIC. Sydney taxi drivers specifically need to all just drive into the ocean.
I was visiting and had the unfortunate experience of trying to get a ride with slightly oversized luggage to a not very far away destination. I had 0 experience with any taxi in Australia before this. It took us almost an hour to find someone to take us (there was a huge line of taxis outside the train station and they are refused) and the guy took every side street available, had the meter running before we left, and circled the hotel before I spotted it and demanded that he stop.
The best part is the next day when we are walking around Sydney we see a bigish protest outside the government buildings. It was the damn taxi drives protesting because they supposedly aren't treated fairly. LMAO |
Manitoban here. We have MTS, a once-subsidiary of Bell. Now, the COMCAST of Manitoba. They claim that their DSL speeds are unaffected by users, but when school gets out, I leave the computer. We can't even DREAM of 10/1. Holy Crap. We pay $65 for 6/.3, and we usually get 4/.3
We also get throttled randomly and even though can prove it, nothing happens because of it. They're the only provider that isn't satellite internet, which seems to suck on cloudy days, and it snows 8 months of the year here.
So yeah, |
Oracle's antics with Java never cease to amaze me. Crapware in the installer, more bug- and security holes than you can shake a stick at , it's slow and inefficient.
> Whenever I'm in the unfortunate situation to need Java installed for some obscure tool or package, I uninstall it afterwards. It tries to worm it's way into your browser, opening new vectors for getting hacked in a drive-by attack.
Fortunately for Mac users, Safari [blocks most Java applets by default.]( You can enable them [on a case-by-case basis.](
The argument that Java is "slow and inefficient" doesn't really hold much water anymore. Google actually tested C++, Java, Scala, and Go . The Java developer - according to the paper - refused to optimize the Java further, even though some of the C++ tricks would have worked as well. Scala runs on the JVM too, and again was in the performance ballpark of the regular, non-optimized-by-a-team-of-googlers C++. It beat the C++ in speed with DBG.
The |
I switched from an $88 a month for 1 line and "unlimited" data (slowed at 5gb) from AT&T to $100 a month for 2 lines with truly unlimited data, free rhapsody unlimited, and all streaming music doesn't count against me either (although not sure why that matters if I have unlimited anyways).
The hardest part switching was knowing
that I would pay full price for the phone instead of contract price. I did the math though and even though I pay more for my new phone payments in the long run, as long as I keep each phone more than 3 years I end up saving money. I usually upgrade once every 3-4 years anyways and my wife doesn't care about smart phones so that's easy.
I confronted AT&T with the T-Mobile plan before I switched and asked if they can compete and they said no, the best they could do was add her on and we'd have to share 10gb. Anyways.... |
I'm glad you've had good experience with Tmobile's customer service. My experience(s) have been the complete opposite and is what ultimately drives me back to Verizon.
The first time I signed up for T-Mobile I was doing the $30 prepaid 100 min, unlimited text and 5GB data. The customer service rep signed me up for some other $30 plan and refused to refund it and wanted me to pay another $30.
Recently I decided to give T-Mobile another go, not only did they lose my number in the port process, they took my credit card so they could charge me $15 for a SIM. A month later I get a $157 charge from T-Mobile linked to someone else's account on EasyPay. When I called in to see what the reoccurring charge was all the service reps refused to help because I wasn't an authorized user on their account even though it was my card.
I'm just glad for HTC's "Uh Oh" program because I'm trading my T-Mobile preorder for a Verizon variant as soon as I can. |
It says in the text that you get what it is, how long it's free, and how to opt out. Also if someone called in and forgot to cancel I personally (I can only speak for me) would credit back at most 2 months (if you had a major bill increase for more than 2 months and don't see what's going on that's on you.)
I realize big companies are about making money, and that I work for this one so I may be a tad biased, but most people don't have anything on their bill that isn't disclosed, if they do then we take it off and refund them (sometimes people's accounts do get slammed, dishonest people are everywhere.)
When the Iphone 6 was backordered indefinitely, we had supervisors call customers with an order every week giving them an update. I have personally made sure that if a customer's account had something go wrong on it that it got fixed and they credited for their time. |
If you're actually meditating, you're doing something physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy. It lowers your blood pressure and studies show that people that meditate can concentrate on tasks better. I don't think that's a waste of time at all.
If you don't feel rested/any different, chances are you aren't relaxed enough or doing it right. Here's how to do it.
Concentrate on your breathing. Breathe in and out in deep breaths. Inhale for five seconds through your nostrils, then exhale through your mouth for as long as you can with a strong exhalation. There will be an audible noise when you exhale; it should come from the pit of your stomach, not your chest. Make sure you are sitting straight up; do not slouch. Sit on your knees on a pillow or two (position is difficult to describe, if anyone needs further info just ask). Focus your energy on the area between your naval and above your genitalia. Concentrate on that area only and just think about breathing.
I've meditated for about a year now. People ask me "That's cool that you can meditate. Can you think about nothing?" I always respond "I can't think about nothing, but I can not think about anything." |
Technically yes this is possible. It has to do with how the global internet's BGP routing table works. While organizations like ARIN and APNIC are in charge of allocating IP addresses, they do not participate in how the addresses are actually assigned and advertised for the purpose of routing traffic. Not too long ago an ISP in Pakistan effectively "blackholed" Youtube for a large portion of the internet because of these design issues in BGP. Classically this problem was first discovered as the "AS 7007 incident" This is currently a big security concern in the network engineering community, because no one has come up with a good solution to fix it. |
ICANN recently was compliant with US Homeland Security requests for take-down (forcefully, without trial and also outside of US territory) because ICANN is a US business
Peter Sunde sees TPB as an potential "next move" take-down request for Homeland Security and ICANN |
So what happens in 20-30 years once AES with large keys is easily broken?
What happened when it was shown WEP was woefully inadequate? Professionals designed WAP and it was quickly adopted, including a newer version: WAP2.
AES goes down? Create a new, modern algorithm. Deploy. Be secure again.
>Will businesses even be able to afford or access quantum based systems or whatever the replacement will be?
In 20-30 years there'll be a comperable replacement, because by that time wireless communication will be unavoidable--it, practically, all ready is--and therefore the security of data transferred wirelessly be absolutely vital. |
The New York Times has some seriously great journalism and a seriously fucking terrible website.
Edit: Pasted the pages here...sue me. |
How do you think shifting to the EUR was for Europe? My parents, grandparents, .. are still converting EVERYTHING into Belgian Francs, and the shift happened 10 years ago!
I understand that it's what you're used to, but if you don't change someday, your kids will be saying the same, and their kids too, and you'll be stuck with imperial forever, much to the dismay of almost every scientist in your country. |
IE7 was the first browser with a built in sandbox. ActiveX was locked down years ago and its so horrible that Google copied it & calls it Native Script. |
Dude, when I put my 3G in my pocket it was covered in scratches within minutes.
That's what you get for having steel wool pockets. I am really not going to argue with you past this point. My original iPhone did get one minor bubble not more than a few pixels big in the screen, but my 3g screen is flawless after two years of heavy use. |
Is anyone else getting really tired of Anonymous? I just feel like their threats are very usually empty and they seem to not be able to focus on the right targets ever. somebody needs to aim them in the right direction. Please instead of targeting a portion of a company that is not even actively in support of SOPA use your "amazing online prowess" to contribute to an ongoing movement instead of arbitrarily threatening corporations who are really not going to be hurt by the one day to one to two week(s) you'll have their service down for. Hell Operation Pull Ryan I'm sure could use your "amazing online prowess" to dig up some good material against him. The strong arm bully technique is unfortunately just not going to cut it any more. people aren't afraid of you :'( |
People, this is not Anonymous, this is some Sony and Justin Bieber hating guy making a fake video. Anonymous would not act as childish as abusing some minor kid puppet like Justin Bieber. There are many fake Anonymous videos on youtube. They would also not put that cheesy background music. |
I became extremely interested in Anonymous when Operation DarkNet came in to place. Threatening to bring down the hosting service of multiple child pornography sites, FreedomNet (may have name wrong). However, I am frustrated that PSN attacks would receive more attention then helping to aide in the destruction of the preying on children. |
Not fake data, fake request for data multiplied by how many zombies you can make. the request doesn't have to necessarily come from a ps3 unit itself as long as a valid looking request reaches PSN then its going to try to send the update. it doesn't even have to successfully complete the transfer if its getting queried thousands of times per second its going to cause connectivity issues within their network trying to resolve a bunch of fake transfer requests. now if they had a guy sitting there scraping the logs they could figure it out but it would already be too late at that point. |
Anon taking down PSN could solve SOPA once and for all .
Do you remember How pissed off everyone was back when PSN was down? More importantly, how much Press the issue got... all over the world!?
PSN Users worldwide would be affected -- people of all ages, entire families! Affected users would turn to the internet to see what's wrong and BAM we get high ranking websites stating explicitly why PSN is down -- more importantly a resource explaining how fucked up SOPA is.
The issue would be popular and trending to be on the #1 on the Internet including Twitter and Facebook -- not to mention Mainstream Media coverage!
News Outlets like CNN / CBS / ABC (etc.) won't be able to suppress news about millions of users pissed off about their video games not working (in the Holiday Season of all times) -- and they WILL obviously report how the hacker group Anonymous took down the site and importantly WHY THEY TOOK IT DOWN.
This is the NUKE we need -- the Ultimate Sacrifice to change the world... a few days without entertainment PSN. |
It really doesn't matter what people think of this one particular group in the opposition, since that shouldn't affect people's views on SOPA.
Let's say you don't support vigilante justice. For one reason or another, murder in your town sharply increases. Vigilantes start taking action where the police are failing to, in an attempt to lower the murder rate. In the scenario I have just given you, you do not support the actions of the vigilantes, but that does not mean that you support the thing they're fighting against (murder). |
I perceive the legitimacy of a move as gaining the respect of a landslide majority of people regardless of political ideologies. The recent actions of those acting as "Anonymous" hinder this greatly. While I support the ultimate agenda of free speech on the Internet and holding corrupt organizations accountable, I do not support those who are choosing to act in irrational and childish manners. I do not support "Anonymous" as a whole, however, I may or may not support some individual causes and then only those who choose to act like adults. Your individual opinion reinforcing or rejecting certain actions has no effect on the final outcome and if it's one thing I've learned is you don't get what you want by being a whiny spoiled brat who curses their parents on facebook for not getting them a crappy iphone for Christmas. |
edit: Not so much; read below
That above isn't viable, but IPv6 network allocations and the elimination of NAT make this a lot tighter of an argument. In address allocation by zeroconf on IPv6, you'll pick the same IPv6 address throughout time in your netblock as long as your MAC address is unchanged. At that point, you can isolate it with good probability to a given device.
It's unclear if the courts will find this good enough over an IPv4. address. It's definitely better. In the case of mobile phone infringement (if there's any of that today), it's probably good enough. For communal computers, possibly not. For computers in a kids' room, it's probably just fine. |
Microsoft is as vulnerable to security issues based on the users intelligence.
If you're using an operating system and it gets compromised, its your own damn fault for being computer illiterate.
Source: Someone who owns machines with Linux, Microsoft and Apple operating systems. Hell, I've even been in the I.T. career for a good amount of time at the administrator level and I can get all 3 machines compromised within a couple of minutes.
(What I meant about Administrator level is, I wasn't no low level Call Support I.T. Technician. I was in charge of thousands of machines most of the Microsoft for obvious reasons such as their deals and some of our designers/other departments used some macs and linux)
So |
noooooo!
After what I just went through trying to do this on my girlfriend's brother's computer, I'm wary of blindly reinstalling the OS on any machine I'm not familiar with. The a couple of the drivers provided on their website didn't work.
The power management driver failed causing the machine to never wake up from hibernation. Furthermore, the BiOS update defaulted to setting the HDD as first in the boot order, so the install disk couldn't save me either. I had to send it in for a warranty covered repair since the machine would power on, but the screen would not power on. |
Wow. Apparently you have a reading comprehension problem. The Mac pro has a processor that retails for $1659.99 on new egg
The i7 you quoted is $1029
Ram:You are retarded if you buy a ram upgrade from Apple. A crucial ram kit saves you $575 off that price:
The display:
Apple doesn't offer shitty 27 inch 1920x1080 HDTV-like displays. The 27" Apple Cinema Display runs at a resolution of 2560x1440 and includes a built in thunderbolt hub. The cheapest comparable display I could find costs $650 and most comparable displays (even without the thunderbolt hub are $850-$900)
The case: The Mac pro has one of the nicest cases in the industry. I recently built a gaming PC and was unable to find a case that didn't leave me feeling like I was giving something up switching from my Mac Pro.
edit: I bet that if a case like the mac pro existed in the PC world it would cost $400-500 and would be worth. If anyone can find such a thing please tell me.
On to the other criticisms. Yes the Mac Pro needs better GPU options and it would be nice if Apple would offer an enthusiast tower. As it is what they do offer is a Xeon workstation intended for creative professionals and developers. If you aren't in this category you should either by an iMac or if you are a hardcore gamer build your own or buy a system from a company like ibuypower or cyberpowerpc. I happen to be both a developer/researcher and a gamer. At work I use Mac Pros and am praying they update them soon and at home I use a custom built PC. |
Even still, the extra $99 does not add up to the extra $500 or so dollars a Mac costs for the same spec of a PC.
Sorry to immediately go straight to raging at Apple, but as soon as I read "Makes you realize why more and more people are buying Apple hardware." I raged. The reason people are buying Apple wares is because they don't think, or are just really fucking rich.
Edit: I said this down in a comment below, but just in case you don't see it
[Apple](
[A wee little Toshiba](
And honestly, the only thing I'll give the Apple over the Toshiba is smaller design and the Thunderbolt. Worth $1600 more? Hell no. And if smaller design is what you're after, get a Windows 8 tablet when they release. As it will be a full blown OS on the small tablets we all love.
FUCKING HYPER EDIT
People keep saying "Well the PC falls short in this area here and here." Everything all of you said is waaaay too in depth for a "beginning user" on a computer to understand or even give two shits about. We are comparing two machines for work related activities. It's really hypocritical when you say "well a Mac is just simpler and does the job right." So WHY do you pay for something that is apparently "complicated" when you won't use it for anything other than being a Facebook machine and sitting in Starbucks? Also, the laptops BOTH have wireless on them. And you're talking about an ethernet port. Seriously, just buy a desktop and use the ethernet for it.
BTW! Those laptops don't fall apart in a couple of years. If you throw them around like a douche, then sure it will break. I've got relatives who still use Windows XP or earlier on the OEM machine.
You want an aluminum case that gets hot as fuck? Buy a damn Sony Vaio. That's what makes a PC soooooo much better. Because there's something for everyone. You're not limited to paying an arm and a leg for the same shit. Want a good quality PC and still pay more?
[Boom](
[Boom](
[Boom](
[SONICBOOM](
See where I'm going with this? Sure you're Mac can beat the Toshiba in small areas. But hey $1600 is a huge jump. However, with a PC you have SO many different options to fit your needs its ridiculous. You want to upgrade your Mac a little from the factory? Bam, $10 billion dollars extra. (Exaggeration of course) If I were to pay $2500 for a computer it'd be [this BAMF]( |
Dude, you sure you're not a lawyer? Your |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.