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Well, the most "evil" thing I can think of Google ever doing was pushing the watered-down net neutrality rules. I'm pretty annoyed with them for that, but otherwise I can't think of a single evil thing they've done.
I know someone will mention the China censorship issue: I agreed with their reasoning that some results were better than no results at all - not evil in my books; besides, they've stopped doing that now, so the point is moot.
The only other potentially evil thing was capturing open WiFi packets. Also not evil, IMHO. If it's being broadcast openly, it's fair game. |
Well you’re a lucky boy, then. But still you are confusing the machine’s technology with its facility for the user. The Mac was useful in the 1980s for advertising, book and magazine publishing because of three features:
• It offered typographic measurement by default. Most MS Word users would have been alienated or baffled but, since most users used the defaults and never explored further, it didn’t matter to them. But it mattered a lot to designers. In 1986, I worked on the ad campaign for MS Word 4.0 for the PC, which Microsoft insisted we call ‘WYSIWYG.’ WYSIWIG on the PC, apparently meant a blue background, different colours to represent bold, italic etc, and bracketed tags to tell you which font to imagine. MS Marketing were so wonderfully brainwashed that when they looked at that right next to black Caslon 540 on a white Mac screen, they immediately pointed out the ‘advantages’ to a room full of typographers. Happy daze.
• Real typefaces. From Bodoni and Baskerville to Arnold Boecklin and Zapf.
• Poscript for type and vector artwork meant absolutely reliable reproduction.
What was under the hood interested us in precisely no measure. It was a Motorola 68x? Oh, who gives a f? The bus speed? Do excuse me. What we cared about was what was in our hands. What we could use. How do we address it, how does it respond and how much can we trust what came out of the back of it. Those were the only issues. It cost a bit more than something that wouldn’t do the job? And that would be interesting why?
Now, as you say, there are few critical performance measures to distinguish PC, custom and Mac hardware technologically. But it still doesn’t matter to me. The look and feel of the UI AND the physical kit is very important to me, and the long-term reliability and stability is critical. A grand piano would likely sound exactly the same if the outside of the case were unsanded, not stained and totally unfinished, but it wouldn’t get the same performance from a sighted player. And a piano whose notes may, just once in a while, get a bit scrambled is of exactly no use for concerts, even if it has 2 Ferrari V12 engines.
As to the book aftermarket, market share was the conventional wisdom, but I knew plenty of publishers eager to hoover up a niche, and few of them had any fun with the Mac before Illustrator and Quark. Was that because Illustrator and Quark triggered a leap in popularity? Possibly, but I don’t think so, I believe it’s because they were fiendishly difficult to use. We spent a couple of years making magazines out of PageMaker, and I don’t remember anybody cracking the spine of a manual, because it looked and worked like a drawing board, and we already knew how to work those.
IMHO, the reason there is more of a book market now is because the Mac is a lot harder to use since OSX. I know that view isn’t universally held. |
The functionality of iOS and the open source nature of Droid blow it away.
The open source nature of a piece of software is completely orthogonal to its quality. Symbian was also open source if you didn't know that... and look how much good that did it.
iOS is the least functional of the smartphone platforms, it's certainly not blowing anything away by its functionality. Its user experience, quality hardware, Apple's commitment - maybe. |
As much as I like to bash US telecoms, this article is crap.
> Fearing no action from the FCC or other federal regulatory agencies, the major telecoms openly acknowledged this duplicity.
How can it be a secret scam when they openly acknowledged it? |
I don't mean he's full of shit as in the information he presents is incorrect; google has personalized searches and 100 years ago not everything made it into the encyclopedia. It is not, nor has it ever been the responsibility of anyone other than the individual to ensure their own edification. |
This is a very good point.
My wife is a photographer and tried advertising on Facebook once. It was nice that she could advertise locally, and target the specific audiences (engaged couples, people with families etc). But, then we just had to wait for little Peggy Sue who is engaged and playing Farmville to look to the side, see the ad for photographer, then process that she still needs to hire a photographer for pictures. |
This times a thousand. I think GM summarized it well when they withdrew their Facebook advertising and elected to keep their free profile pages for their vehicles. |
Return on investment. It can be really tricky to track sometimes becasue you need to be able to pair ad clicks with converted sales. There are also indirect sales from some patrons who recognize your add from FB and then make the purchase separately. The only way to capture that is from a "How did you hear about us?" questionnaire.
GMs case is probably the trickiest becasue of course ad clicks will not convert to an actual vehicle sale, or even a click at all. The value of their ads comes from brand recognition and informing people about new vehicles. How in the heck can you measure that, besides fluctuations in sales, which changes based on countless other variables. |
You laugh, but that is how insurance works.They calculate how much risk they have on a person based off of whatever information they have, then they offer you a rate. As long as there is competition their rates will lower if your risk lowers. So if they know you work out often and eat right, you are a safe bet and they will offer you a lower rate than someone they know nothing about. At the same token if they know you eat McDonalds every day, smoke, and never work out, you are a terrible bet and either won't get insurance or get an extremely high rate. I honestly don't see a problem with this.
It takes away a lot of the gamble and allows insurance companies to care more about root causes. For instance right now my insurance company co-pays for a fitness membership for me most likely because they save money in the long run if it encourages me to work out. This helps both of us and encourages a positive feedback loop.
Edit: Lets put it this way. If I am running a car insurance company and statistics show that self-driving cars are in nearly 0 accidents, knowing this information allows me to offer a significantly lower (almost $0) rate to self-driving cars. If I didn't, someone else would. |
5 pages of that nonsense.... |
Lawyer here. There absolutely is a punishment for violating the Fourth Amendment. It's called suppression. And it's vast and expansive. As soon as it can be shown that the Fourth Amendment was violated (due to lack of a warrant signed by a neutral magistrate) and that the search or seizure didn't fit into one of the eight recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, then everything seized by the government or its agents is suppressed. Furthermore, everything that was discovered and seized that stems from the initial violation (the "fruits of the poisonous tree") is also suppressed. This is the motivation behind the Amendment itself: if the government wants to prosecute (which is the entire basis of search/seizure law) then they must act reasonably or they will not have the evidence to prosecute.
Having a felony as a punishment for violation immediately changes the way the laws of suppression work. Instead of quashing valuable evidence, suddenly we create a system whereby it is an incentive for police to ignore actual crimes for fear that they will be put in prison themselves. Say the police act on a warrant that they believe is valid but the address 25 Main Street on the warrant has the numbers transposed ("52"). Now we've created another situation in which police, acting in good faith, and having a warrant signed by a neutral magistrate who has been shown probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place... will be punished for acting in conformity with the Constitution.
Concerning the vast misinformation of people out there (as jjness alludes to above), the fact is that most people tend to see a headline when a case breaks and charges are filed, and assumes (as in this case) that the court is going to come out a certain way. Very few of us actually pay attention to a story such as this one to see the actual outcome. Rather, we form an opinion as to how it will come out based upon our personal interactions and assumptions about police officers and the way judges rule.
EDIT: |
Why doesn't this have more upvotes!? The Lumia team didn't have to bother coming up with a sleek look for their new WindowsPhone device; they just took the N9's award-winning design. |
You know there are a lot of people saying why dont they just follow signs or apple maps cant actually be this bad. Well let me tell you a story that happened to me the other night and why i will never buy another apple iPhone until they fix maps.
My father went to our local ikea (Ikea in plymouth meeting/norristown for PA residents) the other night, and when he went to leave his car wouldnt start and he realized he had a dead battery and needed a jump so he called me to come help. The ikea is about 15-20 minutes away from our house, normally i google maps my directions because i honestly had no faith in apple maps to get me to my actual destination after they put the location of our shore house in the middle of the ocean. But this time i decided to give Apple maps a try, it really couldnt be that bad could it?
After asking siri to find me the directions to the nearest ikea, i was on my way. Everything was going smoothly and i seemed to be heading in the right direction on 476. i had been to this ikea before and generally knew my way but didnt remember the exact location because this particular ikea had changed locations about 3-4 years ago. So im on the highway and i start to realize there is a problem when maps tells me to continue on the highway past the last exit i knew to get off at, and onto the northeast extension (once your on the northeast extension there is no exit for 11 miles i knew this was wrong, anyone from this area of PA can vouch for this). I get off the highway and look at the directions. Apple maps want me to continue 11 miles up the northeast extension take the first exit and travel 10 miles back to the ikea. This isnt right, so i find the end location and realize that its not where the ikea was (it was telling me to go to the AMC theatre/Mall on germantown pike in plymouth meeting, no where near the old ikea's actual location). My dad calls me and asks where i am and i tell him im lost thanks to apple maps, i ask him to call me back with the address of the ikea he is at. My dad calls me back with a completely different address than what Apple Maps had given me, but its not that far away and definitely not up the northeast extension. I program the address into Apple Maps and my dad and I determine that this still isnt right. I am now lost in Plymouth Meeting thanks to Apple maps. Apple Maps had a 4 year old address listed in their application and that 4 year old address wasnt even to the right location of the old Ikea. And even when i programmed in the correct address it went to the wrong location with bizarre directions.
I ended up having to go into safari and then maps.google.com and looking up the Ikea and then had to create a custom pin in apple maps to get to the correct location. By that time (about an hour into my journey, this trip should have take 1 hour round trip) my dad called me back and said he found someone in the parking lot to give him a jump. And the real killer was my dad even beat me home i was so lost. |
yeah because i said they never do stupid shit.. i totally said that.
also did you read the fucking article? they're following the goddamn LAW which was passed by congress, and they're being lenient in doing it.
and that biofuel does exist, it can be made. they just haven't been doing it. |
Unlocking- Making it so the phone will work with different carriers, not to be confused with jail breaking. Unlocking is use of a carrier feature the phone has restricted. Some phones have disabled hardware that allows access to other phone carrier's networks. Some phones lack other carrier's hardware and can't be unlocked because the hardware needed isn't there. This comes into play mostly when different carriers use the same hardware to access their networks like CDMA but restrict you through software to only their service.
Jailbreaking- Gaining root access to the phone, usually through modifying the firmware. If you have full access to the phones hardware, you can unlock it by jailbreaking, the reason so many people are getting confused here. |
Firefox has had an on and off memory leak problem for the last few years. I'm a web developer who only opens Firefox to test out styling and/or functionality on whatever it is I'm working on - I have no plugins or add-ons, yet if I have just one Firefox tab open in the background for a couple of hours doing nothing it will be unnecessarily using a lot of memory. |
If you're putting shortcuts on your desktop, you're using Windows 8 wrong.
Perhaps the product wasn't designed to match my use case.
I'm glad Metro is working out for you - it doesn't work for me, nor countless others (including a massive quantity of corporate users).
Call me crazy, but I expect a product that I'm paying for to work for me, and I expect a company I am giving my money to to respond to my concerns. Your happiness with the product is irrelevant to that - it doesn't abrogate or diminish my concerns in any way. |
Most of the time when you hear a statement from a CEO and think "how could he be so out of touch," realize that the CEO is well aware of how "out of touch" he is. That's not the game being played. The game being played is to pretend ("broadcast with confidence") that the position you are taking is the popular one / inevitable one / "real" one as a means of encouraging a market shift in your favor. In other words, the CEO knows they are stating an unpopular (but desirable from a business perspective) position; they then pretend they are voicing a popular position to try and build support. |
I don't necessary subscribe to everything you said, but you did bring up some interesting points about the form of government in relation to its people, essentially stuff in social contract theory.
The democracy that originated from the Greeks was control by the masses. Socrates, and I think Plate by extension, thought that democracy was a less desirable form of government compared to certain others, such as aristocracies and oligarchs. I think this is what you were hinting at with the benevolent oligarch. Plato characterize that more with aristocracy and oligarchy as the corruption of that. Democracy, while a collect voice of the entire, was considered a "tyranny of the masses" in suppressing the individual's and significant minority's voice. What a majority(51%), or even a plurality of the population decided was applied to all. Therefore the freedom sought with democracy turns to slavery.
Fast-forward to the US government in combining democracy with representative republic. I heard democratic republic and representative democracy in this thread. All essentially the same, but I prefer James Madison's description as a compound republic. This structure somewhat solves the problems with democracy, as the overall government is controlled via representation of smaller governing bodies that represent their constituents. Coupling this with the separation of sovereignty between state and federal governments creates the checks and balance that prevent any one or number of government institutions from overstepping their scope of power.
I see the problem today as twofold:
The actual influence of corporations, lobbying groups, etc. is not proportional to that of a single constituent. Granted these entities are comprised of many constituents, however that collect power is not of consistent measure. The Citizens United decision reasoned that money represents each institution's voice as a constituent. The problem is this create greater influence over the government for each individual of the institution. The institution then has greater influence then the sum of its members, and therefore is not proportional to that of a regular citizen.
This is where I somewhat agree with you, in that this undermines a democracy's core functionality of accounting equally for each citizen. However, I do not think this process is inevitable or irreversible, which goes into my second point.
I don't think that this is the best system, but that is because I don't believe there is a single best system. The effectiveness and nature of government is constituted by the characteristics of the context in which it arises. Would our system of government work in feudal Europe with difficulties like disease, lack of education, and large disparities in class welfare. Maybe, but I think not. Likewise, North Korea's government would not mix well with the US population, who favor greater individual freedoms and rights.
We do have a very well crafted system of government. It was designed based on cumulative assessment of both good and bad things produced by different government structures before it. However, that creation was over 200 years old. I am not saying that it simply doesn't work anymore, but that fact that our society, both US and the world, has changed so remarkable in that time should be of heavy consideration to determine the system's effectiveness today. I think the problems we are seeing develop today indicate the systems effectiveness is waning. I am not saying scrap all of it and start with something wholly different, but adapt it to solve those problems and remain effective.
The history of the world shows that no single form of government or nation has provided the best solution for all of time, but instead for their particular time. If there are problems, either adapt or face the possibility of dissolution. Rome went from a republic to an empire to maintain and preserve its effectiveness and power. The empire worked for a time until problems in the system became more and more prevalent, ending in dissolution. If Rome had again decide to adapt, from empire to something else, it might have saved itself from total dissolution. |
came here for |
Unchecked capitalism is often bad for the consumer, this has been proven by the patent wars that have gone on and the lack of progress because of them in many cases.[Small example, obviously there are larger more overarching reasons why it's a problem for individuals.] "Capitalistic bullshit" as used above [Context is super important, you should use it!] would refer to the act of exploiting Copywrites/patents as a way to hinder the progress of others, as is done by large companies [Apple V Samsung, WB V Individuals over downloads], and in this case it's small individuals using the method these companies love to use against them, or their "Capitalistic Bullshit" This word itself was used correctly, and the implication was correct. Literally no idea what you're on about.
Capitilism
Noun
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
In this case the trade/Industry being referred to would be copywrites and patents which are owned by private owners[Corporations, Individuals, etc] |
The users of reddit don't make money for using/selling images of nyancat. It's merely to comment and create discussion (although usually not very deep or meaningful). This would fall under fair use.
WB is using nyancat as a selling point for their game by putting it on the adverts, which can be interpreted as using it to generate revenue without compensation or permission.
You're not an idiot, copyright law is stupid and arbitrary and confusing. I think the suit was brought up so that if WB wins, fair use is strengthened (and there would be more leverage against companies in court against stupid shit like removing youtube videos for 6 s of music). If the nyancat created wins, good for him. Fuck WB. |
Here's the Nyan Cat trademark.](
The trademark isn't for the image of Nyan Cat, it is for the phrase "Nyan Cat." Like, each time you say Nyan Cat you should probably be putting Nyan Cat^TM. Therefore, there is no bearing on whether it is a Pop-Tarts^TM or a toaster pastry.
The image of Nyan Cat is copyrighted instead. This uses a Pop-Tarts^TM / toaster pastry in the image but makes no claim to it being a Pop-Tarts^TM. Therefore, Pop-Tarts^TM doesn't have any claim to trademark infringment based on the image of Nyan Cat^TM.
Pop-Tarts^TM may have a claim of trademark infringement based on the fact that he is marketing Nyan Cat^TM merchandise (probably) and has used the mention of Pop-Tarts^TM. This would probably be a weak case as he was referring to it generically as a pop tart instead of trying to make a connection of "this cat is made from this specific brand of toaster pastry called Pop-Tarts^TM."
However, any trademark infringement of Pop-Tarts^TM does not nullify the copyright of the Nyan Cat^TM image nor the trademark of the phrase "Nyan Cat." |
As an Senior Avionics Technician I find it disturbing that this is being reported. I would bet my life that it is completely false. While the timing might have been coincidental. Coincidences vs. caused events . There is a difference.
There is no way someones Wifi/Bluetooth enabled device is going to interfere with the Altitude Preselector in the cockpit. The Altitude Preselector in an aircraft does not have a radio transmitter or receiver built into it and is only hooked into the closed circuit autopilot system. It is highly suspicious that someone would even claim this. I can't blame the reporter but even the pilots should have known better. If there was any truth to this. All airlines and anything that flies wouldn't be safe as they are constantly flying over whole cities full of these devices. What about megawatt radio stations. OMG. That would certainly melt the entire cockpit avionics.
I watch pilots use gadgets in the cockpits day in and day out. iPad, iPhones, Android phones. They use them for their job. Electronic flight bags now replace paper for most pilots. The only interference I have ever seen/heard is when you place your cellphone next to your headset, you get the typical induction noises and clicking like you do when you place your phone next to your PC speakers on your desk at work.
If there was any logic to this, Foreflight software for iOS wouldn't exist.
The only logic I can see to the argument of turning off cellphones/electronics is purely situational awareness (SA) for the pilots. Don't text and fly.
RIDICULOUS ! |
i babby duck syndrome"
Your opinion is highly subjective. The large amounts of design awards won show otherwise.
This is like Vista's start orb all over again.
The modern UI is highly intuitive and isable on a desktop by itself. It's the current lack of integration with legacy applications that's the issue. |
Actually, joining in with views in online discussions DOES help to get people to understand a cause and join it. It's doubly needed when strong interests are opposing your views, and even have money to pay debaters.
Why can't people understand it's a mixture of approaches, and not either-or? For this and other causes in the past, I've donated to various organizations, set up websites, created designs, translations, and yes, submitted here and heavily joined the online discussion. All of those are needed... some to counter the chilling effect, some to get people to understand then act, some to counter mainstream media bias, some to get powers to be aware of you etc. -- all of those, and more, are useful, but not everyone necessarily needs to participate in every part of it. |
Do you think NSA is evil? Is it violating your privacy? Is Snowden the good guy? This isn't some distopian novel; this is the United States of America. I think of the NSA like all the small speed bumps in my neighborhood that everyone hates, but is necessary to slow down all the assholes that disregard the posted speed limit and basic human decency of not doing 55 in a school zone. From the main gate to my driveway is 13 mother fucking speed bumps and I fantasize taking a jackhammer to them all every single day, but when I sit down and actually think about it, we all drive much slower now and the roads are safer. I know people will destroy this analogy and downvote because they disagree, but I think someone should argue the other side too. There are always two sides, but all I ever see is people bad mouthing USA and NSA. Is it the cool thing to do? Do people actually think their privacy is being violated? If you trust Obama, why would you not trust his decision on this program? |
Basically, Chrome on OSX is doing exactly the damn same thing as pretty much every other browser does on pretty much every platform. By default your stored passwords are not secured in any solid way - they may be plaintext, obfuscated, or encrypted with a key stored in protected system memory (e.g. DPAPI).
The attack proposed requires the attacker to have local access to your machine, either via malware or physically. At that point it is game over. No ifs, no buts - you are totally screwed at that point no matter where you stored stuff. It only takes a keylogger to capture the data, and the attack is certainly not limited to Chrome at that point.
The solution? It's two-fold.
First, and most importantly, DO NOT ALLOW SOMEONE ELSE TO USE YOUR MACHINE IF YOU STORE YOUR PASSWORDS ON IT. Seriously. It's that simple. Either keep the box to yourself, and lock it when you're afk, or don't store the damn passwords.
Second, set a master password in your browser, so that it requires you to enter it before using stored passwords. This encrypts the passwords on-disk, so someone that steals your machine can't read them. |
Saved browser passwords needn't be easily stolen by average Joe. Very regularly I'll lend one of my computers to someone for a 2 minute task and I don't expect them to be able to get any of my passwords that easily!
There is a reason most OSes allow you to set up a guest account. This is exactly it. If you're lending your computer to a friend to look something up, or to a tech to test something, switch it to a restricted guest account. That or don't save your passwords in the first place.
Even if your passwords are encrypted on disk, it would be trivial for a user to upload the password database somewhere that they could retrieve it, at which point they could take all the time they needed to decrypt it (or they could drop a keylogger on your system and decrypt it as soon as it picked up your password). I agree with the Google engineer on this one, what people are asking for is security theater which, in the long run, makes people complacent and less safe.
EDIT, since this is more likely to be seen than the new top level response I just posted. Google already addressed this over a year ago: |
I upvoted you because the discussion is interesting.
The problem is that his point is bullshit. Actually, it's completely ignorant of the reality we live in.
"Human agency"? It doesn't exactly matter. You having a brain and people udnerstanding that something is wrong? It doesn't exactly matter.
People have know for decades that something is wrong. Actually, the American founding fathers knew exactly what's gonna happen and warned everyone about it. Nobody listened.
He says the solution is to censor oneself and to refrain from sharing online what could be used against you. THAT IS BULLSHIT.
We shouldn't have to worry what we share online. He completely misses the point and the danger. He doesn't understand what the chilling effect is. He doesn't understand what the Overton Window is.
Actually... I don't exactly understand how you think this relates to the conversation. |
Sure, briefly. SEH is Structured Exception Handling. This is how Windows throws and catches exceptions. These are distinct from C++/whatever exceptions you may be familiar with. These are exceptions such as "accessed invalid memory" which will cause a program to crash. SEH has been around forever.
Now, these SEH exceptions can be handled by a registered handler. There can be many registered handlers, but they all point back (eventually) to the default handler which will terminate your app. So an exception will try one handler after another until reaching the default handler and terminating, unless some other handler has "handled" the exception.
Critically, these SEH handlers are registered using pointers on the stack. These can be overwritten in "buffer overflow" attacks you've probably heard of. If you, Katahund the Evil Attacker, overflow my program's buffer with your malicious code, you could overwrite the SEH handler to point to your evil code. If you then cause an exception, Windows will find that SEH handler on the stack, and run your evil code.
SEHOP protects against this by inspecting a SEH handler before it can run. SEHOP walks back the handler chain to ensure that it eventually points back to the default handler. Any properly constructed SEH handler will do so. It is difficult for an attacker to make a properly constructed SEH handler. |
Seriously. I don't own a car right now (I'm thankfully able to make do without) but I decided to do some research to see what an older middle-class guy might pay to maintain a car each year, heres' what I found:
According to an article I found from 2011 (So assume the price I list is actually higher now), a 40 year old man living in Indiana (I picked this state because it is middle of the road for cost) would pay $1,518 a year for a policy to cover him on his 12 mile commute. Today, gas in Indiana is $3.50 a gallon, and using a gas cost calculator assuming he traveled only back and forth from work (Zero other miles included for shopping and pleasure (IE vacation, movies, what have you)) with a car that gets 25 mpg, our imaginary man would spend $403 a year on gasoline. Now, sans additional gas use and car maintenance, this guy is spending $1,921 a year on a car that he uses to commute 12 miles a day for work.
Heres where it gets shitty: That guy is 40 years old, people my age (21) would be paying more because we're younger and therefor more accident prone. In addition, I picked a middle of the road state in terms of insurance costs. If our 41 year old example had lived in Michigan he would be spending $2500 instead of 1500.
The math isn't exact, and its possible the article I read is out-dated and insurance costs are lower/higher now, but its still scary how much you gotta spend just to maintain a hunk of metal. |
A google car logging in 300k miles without an accident doesn't prove anything, Ive driven over 100k miles without ever having an accident....so what? Yes robotic cars beat the average currently and maybe they do beat the safest demographic of human drivers and if so lets switch i agree. Im all for robotic cars.
My argument about if 1% of drivers beat computers we shouldnt switch is sound. Yes from a pure numbers standpoint it would be obvious we should switch, less people would die etc. However I don't think the ends always justify the means. If you are making the world safer but causing one demographic to become more likely to get in a wreck then I believe that is morally wrong. You shouldnt be able to force anyone to become less safe than they currently are regardless of what that implies for the general population. You can also argue that once cars are all robotic the type of accidents could be more fatal even though they occur less often. If we used all robotic cars we would likely scale up to cars going much faster and eliminate the need for traffic lights due to computers being able to time things right so cars dont hit eachother going through intersections etc. If a wreck does occur due to equipment failure etc it could be more likely to result in death. |
Anywhere outside of a major city actually. I live on Long Island and despite having one of the few functional and well-used suburban commuter rail systems in the country, it's still a total pain if you don't actually work in NYC, because all of the public transportation systems were optimized for moving to and from the city, and all of the actual business space was put into two densely packed towns (Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma). Even those two towns, which do have train stations, put them near the residential areas, so trying to get to work there either means an hour-long walk or using our absolutely horrendous busing systems that are consistently late and difficult to use. |
The biggest issue with those robotic cars, in my opinion, is that I can't it would be profitable to build these. Even if these robotic cars are 90% safer than real people driving... there's still a risk remaining. Where there is technology, there is room for error. I mean, stuff happens with trains from time to time, and these are working in a closed system without pedestrians, pot-holes and idiot drivers.
And when your car is in an accident and you don't have a driver to blame - guess what you'll do? You'll sue the car manufacturer. After all, unless the accident was literally caused by a giant rock falling on top of your car all of a sudden, it must be someone's fault, and the one who's at fault should have to pay for it.
The car manufacturer wouldn't have to pay in every single case - maybe you didn't bring in your car for maintenance, maybe it was an accident that no level of precaution could have avoided. But in other cases they will pay. Now of course this can happen with normal cars as well. The difference is, though, that there's much more room to argue human failure when the human actually interacts with the car in any other way than opening and closing the doors and entering destinations into the computer.
The sheer potential of multimillion dollar punitive damages lawsuits (at some point someone will die in a robotic car) will raise the price of those robotic cars by a good deal (cause, someone has to pay for it in the end, and it won't be the car manufacturers). |
No chance I'd ever be interested in a robotic car for myself, but I would love to see less distracted/idiot drivers on the road so for those people I'm all for it. I love driving, from the first time on a dirtbike at 4, then farm tractors every chance I got or driving a pickup or big truck around in fields, to now truck driving professionally for almost 16 years, the love of driving has not waned whatsoever. |
Almost all commercial aircraft use autopilot not only at cruise, but also in inclement weather for landing (autoland). The Navy has a drone that can take off from land or a carrier, execute its mission, and land back on the deck of a carrier with no human intervention ( Robotic helicopters are being deployed to replace medivac chopper pilots (the second most dangerous job;
It doesn't matter who is at fault if AI fails, because its cheaper to fix the problem and to continue to refine the machine learning wrapped around cars and aircraft. When humans fail at driving (~50K deaths a year from auto accidents alone), you can only shrug. |
Are any other governments really any better? How about France, where they petition Twitter for the identities of people who post pro-Nazi tweets? How about China, where they tell you what information you are allowed to know like Orwellian thought police?
What is America doing at this moment that restricts your Internet freedom? Let's imagine for a second that China or the EU or the UN controls the Internet. What freedoms have you gained?
I know hating America is a meme, but we have a much better track record on free speech than many nations. (As for privacy, I guess the NSA is just better than most other countries at spying. It's not like they wouldn't do it if they could.)
These companies should be pledging to keep the Internet free in spite of any government or corporate pressure.
But , it doesn't matter anyway. This article (which has a sensationalist title equally appealing to Reddit and its target audience of Britons) is about regulatory bodies like ICANN, but what about Internet companies like Google, Amazon, etc.?
We know now companies that said they wouldn't give in to national security letters did in fact hand over tons of data. Furthermore, companies like Google and others want to track you just as much as the government does. Don't trust big business any more than you trust big government. |
A Patent Troll or "PAE" (Patent Assertion Entity) is basically just a shell corporation that holds a bunch of either retardedly vague-bogus patents that shouldn't have been awarded or patents they acquired from people.
They use these patents purely for suing companies that have something similar and somewhat falls under their patent. Typically smaller companies can't afford the expensive litigation even if they are in the right and settle and give money to the patent trolls. Again, they typically actually do no research but simply just have patents within that industry. As in, the company purely consists of lawyers interested in making money. |
Has anyone read this?
Since it came out of the house it probably bans unions, takes voting rights from women and minorities, criminalizes speech about homosexuality, and mandates God and guns in the classroom.
We've got to check the fine print... |
While it is nice that the house is finally able to pass something, this bill does in no way address the true problem plaguing the world of patents and patent lawsuits. The real problem doesn't lie in how people use their patents, but in the utter incompetence present within the US Patent and Trademark office (PTO).
In the last couple decades, with the rise of large and powerful technology companies such as Google and Apple which have extremely specialized technicians working for them to develop highly advanced softwares and hardwares that require a large amount of knowledge within the field to understand. Due to the advanced nature of these technologies that companies are looking to get patented, Google or Apple can just send a representative to the PTO who understands the topic and can heavily influence how the product is presented and viewed. Now, the government workers staffing the PTO are clearly not highly specialized technicians, otherwise they would not be working at the PTO, and while might understand basic technological concepts, as a generalization will not comprehend all the inner workings and mechanics of what it is the company is attempting to patent. This advancement of what is being patented, along with the lack of knowledge of what they are patenting is what has caused the PTO to quite literally be spewing out patents, with the number issued per year rocketing up from close to 80,000/year in 1990 up to closer to 180,000/year now.
On top of that, the patent system is becoming outdated. Yes, it worked perfectly in the time of Edison and Graham Bell when the majority of patents were issued to individual inventors sitting in workshops all day figuring out how to make something. However, the system no longer works as smoothly when large companies are the major creators of new products, with hundreds of people working in giant laboratories.
So when you group all of it together, the increased amount of patents allows for companies to literally patent whatever the fuck they want. When large companies who have the power to get patents on whatever they want collide with other companies of similar power they end up amassing large numbers of patents and just attacking each other with patent infringement suits. When people see this they realize "holy shit, I can get rich off this outdated system and worthless patent office which has no idea what it's giving companies the right to" and turn into these "patent-trolls".
This problem could be easily fixed by providing more funding to the PTO, in turn allowing them to pay more attention to what they hell they are patenting. |
And if the person asking is from a country with this thing called a "Parliament"? Then perhaps you could explain exact how those work. If not, stop voting until you figure it out. |
And if the person asking is from a country with this thing called a "Parliament"? Then perhaps you could explain exact how those work. If not, stop voting until you figure it out. |
You cannot get cheap tickets on popular routes without buying 2 months ahead of time or travelling at ridiculous times on workdays (then you might get one 3 weeks before). It's still a ridiculous bait-and-switch for a public utility.
I've seen arguments that heavily discounted tickets help fill up trains, but I honestly believe that 1) they are marketing tools that are subsidized by overpriced standard tickets and 2) they actually make trains less accessible for the common folk because they make the cost unpredictable. People who need to watch their money simply can't afford going "oh it's a popular weekend, guess I'll pay three times the competitive price" |
Because when uranium fuel demand increases (which it has done, see the 18 years price development here to include more of the difficult deposits (ore grade 0,01-1 %), which increases energy and work input on several stages of the fuel chain. |
large-scale solar expert here. 1) globally in 2013, the world installed almost 37 gigawatts (37,000 megawatts) of solar photovolataics, including large-scale plants of course. 2) that means that the cumulative installed base worldwide in solar PV reached about 135 gigawatts (rough comparison: approx. 135 nuclear plants worth of nominal capacity (not output)). 3) the technology is more and more competitive, costs have come down some 50% in the last 4 years, allowing continued strong growth. 4) lifetime electricity production (the next 25 years) of the 2013 installed base will roughly amount to 3,300 TERAWATT hours. (source for most of these facts: Bloomberg New Energy Finance). |
stances like that worry me for several reasons. Things like this serve as examples of how these things work out in the long term.
First and most importantly - if governments officially start sponsoring such websites, it tends to relieve people from doing so on a private basis. Quickly private funding drops off. This leads very soon to governments being able to dictate the content of such websites, since they are the ones footing the bill. Just see any nationally sponsored tv or radio system, starting right with BBC. Multinational sites aren't immune to coming under this sort of pressure.
Second - wikipedia is important today, doesn't mean it won't get completely replaced by something better tomorrow, at which point Wikipedia becomes a leech and governments are extremely slow to remove taxes. Then you get things like the TV tax in Denmark, where people are pissed at being taxed for public TV/Radio services which few people born in last 3 decades are still using, but everyone is still getting taxed on because the tax is put on purchase of "anything with a screen". |
Forgive me for joining the circle and jerking the opposite way, but I use my W8.1 desktop all day long and "struggle" with the metro UI for minutes a day.
I leave my computer on all of the time, so I don't have to deal with it at start up. However, if I have to restart usually one of my automatic startup desktop apps kicks me to the desktop straight away. If that doesn't happen, hey, I can click that big wide tile with my wallpaper on it that says "Desktop."
Once I've gotten to the desktop though, I'm home free. The only other time I go into the metro start menu is if I need to launch a program which is as simple as pressing the Windows key, starting to type the name of the program I want, and pressing enter. Easy. In fact, I loathe 8.1 for bringing back that pointless graphical "Start" button. A hot corner was a natural step in start button placement. And hey, if you didn't like the hot corner it's not like W8 pried off the Windows key on your keyboard when it was installed.
I have three monitors and I've never had a problem with the charms panel not showing up on the very right edge or with it showing up unwontedly somewhere else. I've never had a problem accessing the app switcher on any of the three left edges.
Now to be clear, I'm not defending Metro. There are definitely things that should be done in the desktop environment. But the Metro UI is not the bringer of end times that so many make it out to be. |
As soon as I realized I had to remain in full screen mode for Skype on the app, I installed the desktop version and uninstalled the app version. I did the same for the 'photo gallery' shit as well. It makes me wonder if they thought, "Yes, as a consumer they want to simply open an app to view their photos, you know, so they can use more CPU for pointless things while being whisked away from their desktop to said app. With no instructions on how to do anything once on the app." One might have even thought this to be a cosmetic issue, with Microsoft thinking it turned the user on to the style...but it's not even that 'easy on the eyes'. |
You seem to think the desktop and laptop are dead, which Microsoft is trying to tell everyone. But you forget that not everyone is a grandma browsing Facebook. There are still lots of business users and power users and those silly on screen keyboards and touch screens simply will not do. |
The same people that complain about Windows 8 are the ones that have panic attacks every time facebook changes its layout. If Microsoft just made Windows 7 Vers. 2, there would be just as many detractors saying that Microsoft was "selling the same product with minor enhancements / why isn't this a service pack?"
I absolutely despise anyone who uses their parents as a baseline for an operating system. Someone ignorant to the workings of any system will make it look terrible, and guess what, the only reason your parents know how to work Windows 7 is because they learned .
I use Windows 8 and it is faster than its predecessor, offers more customization and metro acts as a central hub for everything I need that doesn't clutter my desktop when I use it. It's great, but because it's different and because it's not a rehashed Windows 7 luddites continue to bash it. |
I have a job where I drive to old peoples houses and set up their computers or "fix" their computer (often just their email or web browser). I like windows 8 and actually prefer it to 7, I can navigate much faster on it and the keyboard shortcuts (I know they're not new, but better IMO) are very convenient.
That being said 99% of my clients have no idea what they're doing when it comes to windows 8. They are confused and often frustrated. So this idea of people making it work isn't necessarily working. I've had clients go to Mac (if they have to learn a new OS anyway) or a custom PC shop to have a win7 PC built. So I often install classic shell on new PCs and it operates functions similarly to win7/XP and skips the metro screen.
However one thing I do fucking hate about windows 8 is the gesture control on a trackpad. If you have it on a laptop get a fucking mouse otherwise you only have access to 1/3 of the pad, the left and right side are for bringing in the charm bar and last used apps. Fuck that. |
This]( might be of use to you. I did this for all my clients that were having me get them started on Windows 8. For people without 8.1, I'd install the app from [here]( and make sure the extra junk didn't install with it. |
As a tech-savvy twentysomething, I'm not going to defend it. One of my friends (another t-s ts) told me it's not that bad and that you get used to it. Some parts of it are okay, like the fact that they finally added proper support for desktop backgrounds on multiple monitors.
But then I didn't have a nice way to shutdown with the keyboard. I couldn't search or get to a pinned folder or app on the start screen without covering up the entire screen. I never could figure out how to reliably escape metro on the keyboard... |
I'm not completely sure that they're doing it to expose people to their app stores, I think it's a lot less sinister than that.
Computers, both in the way we use them and in their prevalence in the modern world, have been becoming more and more sophisticated. You're able to do more and more things with them, and it's a lot harder than it was even ten years ago to go without having some sort of computer in your home. That being said, just because it's almost a necessity to have a computer, in no way leads to people being more consumer savvy.
For example, my parents have had to transition into using a computer more, but they have no idea what they're doing most of the time. They've had a windows machine for years, but all they know how to do is start their AOL client up. Recently they both upgraded their phones to iphones, and lo and behold they understood what they were doing. The big friendly app buttons, streamlined interfaces, and limited customization options worked perfectly for them because they could understand what was happening on their phone. This led them to purchase and ipad and now their thinking of replacing their old windows machine with a mac.
In my opinion, Microsoft is trying to do something similar: make one, simple, unified experience that anyone can figure out, that way customers that aren't computer savvy can still use any given windows product.
I myself have no problem with windows 8.1 either. The metro screen is annoying, but I set my pc up to boot to desktop automatically. It's easy to avoid opening media with apps too just by choosing a different "open with" option. I've actually preferred windows 8.1 to windows 7 as it seems to be quicker to boot and indeed more "streamlined" for everyday use. |
because their recent actions show that they want to eventually shun their server environment. They want users to go to the cloud.
SBS 2011 essentials has cloud integration, for example, sloppy, but it's there.
office 2013 puts less obn the client side and more on the server side, plus it defaults to a lot of their cloud shit by default. It's designed with office365 in mind.
They want windows server admins to slowly go away, and keep the few that do things in the enterprise, but make it as miserable as possible so eventually they go the cloud route.
They're doing a "me too" to apple. Apple discarded its server offerings and instead gave us a joke of a server stack called server.app, which runs over standard OSX. They don't want you to actually use a server for anything, they dont even care about enterprise themselves.
Microsoft cares about the cloud and wants you and everyone to use their platform so they can extract every bit of money. This also comes with the advent of UEFI, which thankfully, most sane manufacturers include a dual bios so you dont have to use a locked bootloader that microsoft has locked down. |
UEFI Secure Boot is definitely a hassle, but honestly it's worth it IMO. Remember, you only set it up once.
I don't think your drivers comment is fair. Driver support has improved tremendously . It really depends on the hardware you're running. For laptops? Linux generally works out of the box. I can imagine it being a nightmare to get it working on PC enthusiast/gamer-branded hardware though.
Do you use an external NIC? In my experience, most NICs are Intel and they're pretty good with drivers.
LibreOffice really depends. I personally hate the UI and my needs aren't very complex, so I get away with using Google Docs. |
I think your argument becomes moot with the concept of "background apps".
Apps is short for applications, which is the same as program. They're just different words to describe a specific routine that's run on a computer. |
A year or so ago my Android phone was giving me issues. I was on an Employee plan with a local carrier. I was paying a little over $68 per month. What did I get? 1500 minutes, unlimited texting and unlimited data.
I thought I was getting a good deal and compared to friends, I was! Some were paying literally $100/mo!
Then my phone started peetering out (constant reboots, factory resets didn't help, old android image, no updates as it wasn't supported anymore, etc, etc) and at the same time I'd be lucky to get ~8 hours of minor use out of it.
I started looking into getting a new phone, but I would have to pay out of pocket. Pricing them out, $200-$500 out of pocket and I get to renew the contract (carrier would only cover a small portion). Ehh....
So I started looking for alternatives. The sticking point was data. To get data, first, I need a device that can handle it (smart phone) and then I need a plan that can feed it. Phones, for a decent one that didn't have ~50% negative reviews, I was looking at $250 out of pocket. Plans, well, I could stick with the one I had.
I did the math. $250 up front, and two years of $68.20/mo. That's a total of $1886.80 in two years. And that's assuming no phone issues where I would have to buy yet another one. Needless to say, I didn't particularly like the idea of dropping ~$2000 for a phone with internet when I have internet at home. I already pay $50/mo for that but at least it's FTTH!
So, I shopped around and found a pay as you go company. I won't advertise them but they are easy to find and really aren't all that obscure. They basically resell Sprint as an MVNO. I bought a dumb phone (with chicklet keys) so I could text my wife/friends but it also has very basic internet capabilities, mainly email. So that's cool! Really that's what I found I couldn't miss the most. I liked being able to have 24/7 access to my personal email.
The phone I found was $60 (Kyocera Brio). Nothing steallar, in fact it's pretty bad tech wise. But it makes calls, has bluetooth and basic email. It fit my bill. Now, I pay as little as $16/mo but usually more like $20. This month was heavy and I paid ~$24. Doing the math again... this phone will cost me, after 24 months (typical contract) ~$540.
I'm "saving" roughly $1500 over two years. All I had to give up was internet on my phone, which I frankly hated. Staring at a tiny screen with a crappy browser, blah, no thanks. I'll wait until I'm at home.
So I had to give something up, but I'll take that $1500 and I'll spend it on myself! I can think of a million other things I'd like to play with! Say, FPV flying or something! Maybe woodworking. I haven't decided yet. |
The expense is massive for a small company. Have you seen the big telecoms operating costs? The issue with a municipal is the cost is high and it would need to be recouped or taxpayers would raise hell. In a place like Chattanooga that's not nearly as expensive. In a place like LA or New York or Dallas or Atlanta etc it's fucking expensive. Especially LA or Atlanta where the density is low.
Plus the big telecoms have built the network over decades. |
Hi artyboi37, I'm an engineer who works on Facebook Messenger. If you want know a bit more about why we're moving messages out of the main app I wrote a [more in depth post here.]( |
In PRACTICE, the Messenger App requires a lot of permissions that it really shouldn't need.
Rubbish. If you actually know what the app does and roughly how Android works, the vast majority are required for plainly obvious uses.
Fortunately for my typing fingers, Android Central already thoroughly debunked this earlier:
[Facebook Messenger permissions: Not as scary as the stories might have you believe]( |
These are all absolutely standard permissions. There's nothing remotely scary about them if you have the vaguest clue (a) roughly how Android works, and (b) what the FB Messenger app does.
Messenger integrates IM (data), voice calls (phone), SMS (messaging), recorded messages (mic), photo/video (camera), automatic contact recognition (contacts), and is authorized automatically by your login on the main FB app to prevent you having to login separately (account on the phone).
These are all things hundreds of other apps do separately or combined in various ways and apparently you've never questioned them before. Most IM apps like Whatsapp, LINE, Viber, etc. ask for a large number of exactly the same permissions, depending on the number of functions integrated into the app. But oh no, it's Facebook, so suddenly app permissions are scary!
See Android Central: [Facebook Messenger permissions: Not as scary as the stories might have you believe]( |
The only redeeming quality about the separate apps is that I can now have separate notification settings for messages. I turn off sounds for facebook notifications, because I don't need my phone to vibrate 60 times when other people say "congratulations!!!" on the latest newborn baby post I made the mistake of commenting on. But that also silences messages too. Now I can keep sounds on for messenger and keep the regular app muted. |
Holy paranoia batman. You do realize those are all standard permissions, they all make perfect sense for a messaging app and it'd be nothing short of a miracle if it didn't ask for those? It wants access to control network settings so that it can enable wifi/3g/4g/whatever if it's not on when you fire up the app so that it's possible to actually send and receive messages. Most IM apps and many that aren't do this. Call phone numbers and sms messages, again makes perfect sense. It's a fallback so that if whoever you want to talk to aren't online atm you can still send them a message. This is nothing new and already existed in the facebook app permissions for exactly the same reason. Reading contact data is again for the same reason and also is just a duplicate of the permission you already granted to the main facebook app. And lastly, the same, yet again, applies to the profile information. Facebook has the option to synch your contacts list both to and from facebook with that of your phone. Also a duplicate of existing permissions for the main facebook app. |
I'm sort of in a weird conflict with those two options. I don't really like Facebook that much because it feels weird knowing stuff about people that you don't really want to know, and when they don't tell you directly. However, a lot of my friends and family don't use Skype or they don't like to use their cell phones because it costs them money, so it's not a bad way to stay in touch with them.
Also, my MFA classmates did their own group there, and it's a good way to keep ourselves informed of any assignments and the like. I also appreciate that Facebook can be used to keep up with information about bands I like, movies I'm interested in seeing, etc. But I also feel Twitter is pretty effective in that regard, even if going through all the information is a mess.
When it comes contacting people, personally is my main option but some friends of mine and I have gotten into using WhatsApp over Facebook in order to send messages to each other. Using that for texting comes out cheaper than using actual texting. |
r/iamverysmart
If it makes you happy, point still stands:
>Yes, when you give an app permission you are implicitly trusting it to not abuse that permission. Facebook is certainly more trustworthy than Random Game Extreme PRO when it comes to those permissions...
>The permissions from that HuffPo pile of bullshit are not outlandish for a messaging app. The descriptions of what those permissions allow are wildly misleading and outright lies. No app can just dial numbers without confirmation. No app can just record video, audio, or take photos without some user action. No app can just send SMS messages without confirmation. |
honestly, this facebook messenger situation just drew my attention to the scary permissions i give them all of the time. combined with the location services and recording capabilities of a mobile device, it's a ton of creepy information in the hands of the highest bidder. |
When someone manages to break in to Facebook's servers and steal indecent piictures of people that have the images stored on there phone but never uploaded to the internet then post them online or send them to a news network nothing will change!
All companys are being intrusive and if you don't like it they tell you not to use there product's..... Even tho everything has migrated to such website's.
I use facebook for pretty much nothing but taking the piss, I have stored a few pictures on facebook (37) but nothing much else! |
It has 4 stars on the google play store. But I really don't see what the big deal is. I mean, yeah, it's a little annoying to need two apps, but this one works pretty well.
Plus, what's the chance they're doing it so they can slim down the facebook app to improve performance? Let's be honest; the facebook app itself is garbage right now.
And if they were required to be separate apps right from the beginning, would everyone be so up-in-arms about it now, or would they have been then? People are only upset because it's a slight inconvenience to them and then everyone is kind of 'hive-minding' about it. |
The whole office was shut down after multiple rounds of layoffs. Management was too stingy to sink any real money into R&D, so our product was still running on what was essentially late 1970's technology. This made sourcing replacement parts that ought to be dirt cheap (IC's, MOSFETS etc) quite difficult and quite expensive.
BackgroundL We provided a system for regulating O2, CO2, and ethylene levels in shipping containers filled with produce.
Failure rates were going up, costing us a lot of money in compensation to our clients for bad loads. A container full of avocados is worth nearly $100k, and we were self insured.
And while paying for the lost produce was what was fair, it generated a lot of tension between our clients and their clients. If you were depending on me for avocados and I couldn't deliver with absolute reliability, you might switch providers, or go halves or thirds with multiple providers. So even though our clients got paid for the occasional lost load, their clients started dropping them or reducing their orders.
So then our clients started shopping around for other companies that do the same thing as us but with better reliability.
I had to sign a no-compete agreement, so I couldn't just go and work for one of our competitors for at least 2 years.
I also don't have any sort of college degree so my resume isn't that impressive compared to those who do, and without a degree, people aren't as likely to believe what I've put down on there is true. (Personally I think what I've accomplished is more impressive given my lack of higher education)
What's more, we used really obscure CAD and database software, and I have yet to have the money to go to school for AutoCAD and Solid Works. We also used ASME standards on our drawings, but in the mean time everyone is switching to ISO.
But I also know how to make pizza. I know that business inside and out. Probably made well over 25,000 pizzas in my day. And pizza joints love people that they don't have to attempt to train from scratch since it's a lot of effort and some people never become any good at it. Each pizza has a signature style, and inconsistency between pies is terrible for business. So you have to find people who can watch someone make a pizza and then make one that is exactly the same. It doesn't sound difficult to people who've never worked in pizza, but it's actually quite rare. Dough work, sauce level, layering order, docking, topping quantities - these are all variables that you can't afford to deviate from.
Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but it's not the best job I've had, and it bugs me that I'm not being utilized to my full potential. |
From my experience working and being a part of the American tech community/industry that is heavily dominated by straight white males (As a gay black male) the issue can be broken down to a few cultural reasons, some of which the tech community can fix, most of which is a much broader societal issue.
The first reason is that we tend to form our career choices based off our main interests and influences from when we were growing up. Women and men are heavily pushed into very specific types of career roles at a very early age. It's actually kind of fucked up and is eerily close to being some /r/conspiracy shit when you take a critical look at the media and toys we give our kids.
We sort of groom children into the kind of workers we want them to be in the future. Boys are given construction toys, military figures, guns, and influences that reinforce the notion of duty and labor. Girls on the other hand are given babies, nursing paraphernalia, things that reinforce nurturing tendencies.
This divide in a persons early development creates clear cut, black and white portraits of what differentiates boys and girls. This naive divide gets us into labeling pretty much every aspect of our culture as masculine and feminine for most of our formative years which carries on as a kind of subconscious baggage into our adulthood.
Technology is targeted towards men at a very young age. Videogames are generally the first experience most children have with the idea of programs and technology. The masculine labeling is largely because of Nintendo marketing campaigns during the big videogame boom in the 80's, and the all around lack of games that feature feminine themes. This masculine labeling means the imaginary average girl is turned off to the whole idea because of a lack of peer and cultural interest/acceptance.
Because of this lack of introduction to the technology industry at an early age, the industry being contrary to the overall cultural ideals of female adult roles, and the lack of fellow peers pursuing said interest most girls don't think to themselves "When I grow up I want to be a programmer!".
Now the article points to the Berkeley/Stanford intro to computer science course figures to support the idea that tons upon tons of women are flooding into the industry, but they fail to point out that most of those women are not taking computer science as their major and are mostly doing it for non-tech career related reasons. Only about 12% of all students pursuing a CS major in US/Canada are women. So supply is a major issue with incorporating women in our industry. That supply is slowly growing as more and more women are using different less traditionally masculine technology at earlier ages like the internet and phones, but currently women are entering into our field in mostly trickles.
As for the industry itself I'm just going to be brutally honest; a lot of the men in our industry are socially inept and desperate for female attention. Men in general are bad at speaking or engaging with women, add in a large group of socially inept men with very little experience with being around women and awkward/creepy shit is going to happen. Most of the time it's unintentional, both sides are divorced from each others culture and social mores, but even the little transgressions build up over time and can be quite stressful for the average woman within the industry.
Our industry is also very strangely anti-worker as a whole. This might just be an aspect of the usual corporate America swinging its giant capitalistic hardon shenanigans, but almost every tech company I've heard of or been at values profit and efficiency over everything. I have been in software development for a year or two now and 16 hour work days during crunch were all but demanded of us by management. Leaving before 10 was considered a slap in the face not just by management, but by my fellow team.
Men are conditioned from an early age to accept this kind of thing. Success, advancement, and controlling our feelings and selves for the purpose of providing for our family is hammered in pretty hard from the very beginning. For a single guy who has been told from a young age his worth is in his career, 16 hours a day for 100k+ a year is completely worth it.
But put a woman in the same position who has been told since she was young that her worth is in her family, who has to deal with a huge gender gap and all the bullshit that comes with being a minority in any community, and who probably never was involved with said community growing up and you'll find that they're understandably hesitant to make the massive life choice of joining this industry.
Sorry for the massive rambling wall of text that probably has a bunch of spelling errors, but your question is extremely complex, I'm drunk, and I can't seem to fall asleep tonight.
For those that want a |
Dismissing people because they are - or want to be - part of a union is illegal, yes, as is discouraging them from forming one. (Not that that stops Wal-Mart's owners from doing just that; and as I understand it they're just savvy enough with their tactics to not get caught with any hard evidence of having these tactics in play.)
However, if by some miracle a union does form at a Wal-Mart? Oh wow, look at that, the shop just became "unprofitable" and "is experiencing unacceptable financial losses" so we have to close it down "for the good of the company"... |
Despite the message this article may be trying to send, all it does is encourage the idea that women are weak and unequipped to work in a demanding field. Most of the issues listed here are not exclusive to women, yet the article makes it sound as though these factors make it too difficult for women to work.
We're not getting the full story for these cases of course, so there's a lot of gray area. But if we go by what we see here we're led to only one possible conclusion: certain industries are too hard for women. This isn't something I believe, but it's interesting when pieces meant to "open our eyes" to current issues and gender/sex politics instead only reinforce the ideas they're trying to remove.
"It's not because math is hard. It's because working is hard ." That's the message here.
The culture of many of these jobs is horrible. My own field has a culture that I've grown tired of and intend to leave. But this isn't a gender issue, it's an issue of personal fit, what one wants. Trying to turn this into "poor babies!" is disingenuous, and reeks of making an issue out of nothing. |
It's not because there is this "culture of sexism" but more like this culture is expected to exist. Not once have I ever had a problem with my male peers, coworkers, friends, etc. in the field and not once has my career choice ever been questioned by a man.
However, times where I am questioned or even harassed by women outside of the field happens on a nearly weekly basis. As I do a lot of outreach work which entails a lot of public speaking and attending public events, I meet new people every day. 9/10, it's a woman who questions me being in the field, and then they get mad when I tell them that it's nothing like what these scary articles or sensationalist news headlines say. Yes, I've had women get audibly angry at me for not validating their misinformed beliefs that all men in CS/IT are sexist pigs and that it's one of the best work environments I've ever been in.
This is something I've been looking in to for the past couple weeks, as I have to do some research and present ideas to some of the outreach organizations I'm a part of. Why is it that women are the biggest perpetrators of opposition that other women face in their careers in the industry? Honestly, I think it's because of articles like this. I see these things every day and each one is more far fetched than the last. What this is doing is that women outside the industry get a far more negative view than women on the inside, where they might spread such biased information to younger women in their lives who are still exploring and thinking about what they want to do with their lives. This might also make women more likely to judge women on the inside, seeing it as a "stockholm syndrome" type situation when it really isn't. |
Basic TV doesn't include an HD cable box. However you can watch virtually all the shows in HD on-demand on their website.
Also, your plan may be $66/mo right now, but that's not permanent. $66/mo would be enough for 50/5mbit unbundled if you're in one of the states which got a speed doubling this year. But it's not enough to cover TV and internet at 50mbit. And I doubt your upstream is 10mbit, the 105mbit down plan has 10mbit up, but I don't think the 50mbit down plan does.
So $109 probably is your non-promotional rate which will kick in in a few months. Best to find out when that happens ahead of time so you don't end up with a price rise.
As to resetting your modem, they wouldn't reset your modem until after the service change. So it likely isn't related to that. Maybe they did it to disconnect the chat though. |
Similar thing is happening to me with another provider (Rogers in Canada). I was quoted a TV/Phone/Internet bundle at an ongoing rate of $180 a month. Repeatedly confirmed on the phone that it was no contract and the price was a monthly ongoing price. Never a mention of the promotional discount. Contact chat a day before installation to confirm everything and find out my bills going to be over $300 when the year is out.
Made a fuss but they refused to honour our agreement. By that time I had already refused a similar priced 2 year offer from my current providers retention department. Basically cost me $250 in paying the overlap month plus more in the long term. Top it all off they didn't give me enough HD receivers for my home when the installation was happening or whole home PVR so that was yet another hassle.
Don't have a system for recording calls on my phone but I'll make a point to find out how to do so in the future. |
Fair enough; I'm on Ubuntu, so I'm just using traceroute, but I suppose different programs/OSes will do so differently.
I end up with hop one being my LAN router, then hop 2 being the modem's address for use -- it's webserver is on a different address (traffic goes over 192.168.40.1, but the web interface is at 192.168.100.1), and then from there it becomes my ISP and wherever else.
I guess |
Taking down XBL and PSN on Xmas has upset a lot of kids, this upsetting parents..."
Whoa, let's stop. This sounds like lazy-parent drivel - I'm not trying to judge anyone, but the jist I get from that quip is "I wanted my kid's goddamn festivus gift to keep him entertained so I don't have to deal".
What I'd really like to know is why we're getting upset that LS may have "tarnished MS and Sony's reputation costing them money in the long run", when these two multi-billion dollar companies just got taken down by a run-of-the-mill DDoS. Shouldn't we expect a bit more security and infrastructure stability from companies taking our money for this shit? |
So, this may not be the popular opinion, but I think this is being rephrased to be sensational. I moved to AT&T last year, as they offered gigabit fiber in my area. It was presented as $99/mo for gigabit fiber, or $70/mo if you opt into the tracking thing. I called 5 times to their customer service to get the details of it before signing up. I took it with a grain of salt, but once I got someone on the phone who knew what they were talking about(again, it took 5 calls to get there), I was told that the data collection was purely for the purposes of serving targeted ads, and that's only on sites that have an agreement with AT&T to use that information, similar to Google's ads based on your internet history.
I'm not totally happy with it, but it's not as invasive as people are making it out to be. |
You're absolutely right, and that's the thing a lot of people are missing. Google is an information company first and foremost, they are using Google Fiber to get more information from people. And of course, people are willing to pay them to do it.
However, contrast this with the actions and behaviour of the major telecom companies, particularly the stories that have come forward in the last several months. Stories of abuse of customers, slowed connections, and a genuine and deep betrayal of the social contract means that people would prefer giving money to a company that has given information to the NSA, and who will actively log your internet activity to purchasing anything from Comcast or AT&T.
I can't say I blame them. Comcast/AT&T/Verizon have treated consumers in the United States horribly . Without adequate legal protections, it is no surprise that people are moving into a headlong rush to embrace Google. Besides which, the sheer presumption of adding $30 on your bill NOT to spy on you is both tone-deaf and aggravating. While Google will spy on you, at least their service is miles cheaper and better than the one on offer from incumbents, and anyone with the will can find ways around it. |
by simply opting out of AT&T altogether and going to Google Fiber.
Which also tracks every single thing you do and serves ads to you via chrome and their search engine... plus also facebook tracking you. |
They clearly state they don't and they aren't going to open themselves up to a lawsuit over that.
Their is a critical difference many people here are missing.
Google charges $70 for internet. Google will only serve you ads if you use their online products such as Maps, YouTube, Search, etc. You can use Bing Maps, Yahoo Search, etc. to avoid Google ads.
AT&T charges $70 for internet that legally allows them to eavesdrop on your webtraffic regardless of privacy settings and target advertisements to you that are on top of whatever you see online be it ads from Google or others. If you don't want AT&T to track your browsing history you have to pay an extra $29. |
1) The first thing they did was take away r/reddit.com.
This took away the only tool for communicating with reddit about reddit. If you had any concerns about the website as a whole, you could address them through r/reddit. Taking that away was the first step.
2) The power now resided in individual subreddits, obviously the most popular ones. There was a power grab to become moderators of these subreddits.
I remember as the upcoming election loomed, all of a sudden, r/circlejerk (one of the old default subreddits) became completely obsessed with bashing Ron Paul. I am not even a RP supporter, but that was definitely orchestrated, and NOT by some kids trying to be funny. Also, it coincided perfectly with this highly suspicious [campaign to filter him out of the election](
3) Once the default subreddits were controlled, drastic changes began to occur.
I remember when r/IAma was open to anyone and the popularity was decided by voting. Now it is nothing more than a cheap place for celebrities to whore out their products and you need to be "approved". Someone named [Victoria]( is involved and how does that makes any sense whatsoever? Celebrities have entire teams of branding/PR/social media teams that work for them. Why do they need to be at reddit HQ and/or required to have a reddit rep? Because these AMA's are extremely organized and sponsored with money.
There are plenty of subreddits that are now covertly controlled. [Check out this post which was pushed into r/undelete for identifying a list of keywords banned from r/technology.](
4) The appearance of shills soon became VERY apparent.
All of a sudden new accounts started popping up out of nowhere. Cue the birth of r/HailCorporate. "Feel good" military posts started appearing, like a soldier coming home to his dog. New users entered AMA's to lob softball questions ["Mr Burns, your campaign has the momentum of a runaway freight train, how does it feel to be so popular?"]( From brand new accounts that never posted again.
[Eglin Air Force Base = Reddit's most addicted city!]( I would hate to be the poor reddit intern who got fired that day! "Didn't you read the memo Billy. US military bases are never to be included in our yearly stats!!!"
[Anyone who tries to convince you that shills don't exist is either grossly uninformed or a liar.]( Protip: the big political subreddits can’t seem to keep the seal on the circlejerk during weekends, almost as if an entire team of manipulators is suddenly on weekend hours.
5) Now we have blatant censorship on r/news, r/worldnews etc... saying that X site is not allowed.
What ever happened to letting people vote on the content of this website? Trash tabloids constantly go viral on political subreddits due to sensationalized headlines and the fact that most Americans are unaware of different overseas publications.
Not to mention the fact that default subreddit rules are now completely refined, sophisticated and purposely worded to allow maximum mod-interpretation. Honestly, someone with a law degree with a proud.
Major politically-charged subreddits now insist on exact titles or quotes because that stops users from being able to post the important point summary of the article as the title . Using only official titles from only approved media has turned reddit into mainstream media.
6) Speaking of voting, they changed that too.
We now have an entirely new way to view upvote/downvote scores. A user used to be able to see their score. But now, everything is fuzzed. For example, if you made a semi-controversial comment before, but many people agreed, you may have a score like (47/45), leaving you with a -2 next to the comment. Now you just get a -2 and nobody knows if anyone agreed with you.
7) Hey guise, us nerds who run reddit have decided to shuffle all of the front-page subreddits, tee-hee we are so random ^‿^
No more r/circlejerk, that pesky subreddit hits too close to home. Lets add 2X to the mix, (even though they wanted to remain an anonymous sub), fuck them, we need to show our shareholders we represent the female demographic. Lets also add a bunch of subs that we can use to share propaganda like r/nottheonion.
And speaking of the female demographic and "gender discrimination" being represented, that happened around the time [this person]( took over as CEO of reddit.
8) You are posting too much, please wait...
It now doesn't matter if you have confirmed your email, or been posting on this site for years. If you anger the wrong mod/admin or your posts aren't doing "well", then you get benched.
Or you can always just have your comments deleted. You will not even know your comment is deleted. You will still see it. Only you. The only way to know is to be inherently suspicious, and sign out of your account after clicking on the permalink of the comment.
A sneaky tactic, but hey, at least it is only your comment and not your whole account. Isn’t it great that we have [shadow-banning]( on a website that claims to support free speech.
9) **[Reddit is not a meritocracy]( |
She is for CISPA, PIPA, CISPA 2.0, SOPA, has tried to ban body armor for civilians multiple times, has stated she wants to ban ALL firearms for US citizens while carrying a firearm herself(and admitting to carrying in prohibited places in the state of CA and generally saying really stupid things about how guns function/the process for getting them), has a hate boner for Snowden, is pro-NSA unless they are spying on her like they do everyone else, uses double-speak to make it sound like she is for net neutrality but has supported every anti-net neutrality measure put forward, her husband is an investment banker that owns a company with military contracts(it has won contracts when no where near the lowest bid) which has made both her and her husband tens of millions of dollars, etc.
In general she seems to think she is better than the average person, that she is smarter than us and hence she deserves to rule us. She is 81 years old and out of touch. She doesn't understand the world as it stands today. |
Moreover, this is not a technology issue. Her comment is purely political. The benefit of people questioning the knowledge of politicians, is that this gets people sidetracked with logic, whereas they do remember the politician's point of view. The point of view was the only message (rather than the logic). Now that they work for corporations, they are required to make these kinds of statements, which their supporters will like, regardless of the logic, and their detractors will not understand because of the obvious logical problem. |
It's willful ignorance. As long as you have the mindset that the world is always changing and you want to keep up with it instead of being left behind then you will grow and evolve along with the tech.
The problem is people stop learning - they figure that they're 'adults' and they know everything they need to. Then one day they realize they don't have a fucking clue how to work their TV. They closed their minds and the world passed them by. |
thank you auto |
I'm all for Tesla, but this is not a good product for the vast majority of people. Most people do not have solar, which means you're limited to saving money by charging your unit during off-peak hourly rates and using that difference in price to save money. For the sake of argument, I will assume this unit is 100% efficient. The standard $3000 unit is 7 kWh. Average annual electricity costs for U.S. consumers is 12 cents per kWh gets around 3000 charges before losing 20% capacity, or 8 years. So near the end, your 7 kWh pack has declined to around 5.6 kWh. Tesla may have overbuilt the pack to get an "average" of 7 kWh capacity through the 10 years at 80% DOD, but it should still be known that you don't continue the same rate of savings after your ROI.
And remember, this was all assuming the electric company gives away the electricity for free at night. In reality, it's just a percent discount. If we assume even half price, your ROI is now two decades not factoring in the reducing battery capacity over time. (I don't even know if that $3000 includes installation, so throw that in there if it's not included)
This product is generally good for reducing stress on our electrical grid, but unless there's some magical tax incentive I'm not aware of, I just don't see the point at this price level. |
If it's like any other large manufacturing company, most likely it's broken down like this:
You have a room/floor/building full of engineers of all kinds. (Mechanical, electrical, computer, etc)
You have a selection of different models/types broken down into smaller projects. (from large differences like sports car and 1 ton trucks to small differences like trim packages or styles... maybe even just engine sizes.)
Now you pick a group of these engineers, mixed based on the particular project, and they work as a team on their area of that project. Some work only on that one team while others work on multiple project teams.
Sometimes a team will get with another team who's working some similar area and will exchange notes. Get fresh eyes on an issue or find a better way to do it. By the end of the design and testing of the vehicle, anywhere from 2-50+ people have put in some amount of time and thought into any aspect of that vehicle.
Keep in mind this is the ideal scenario. Many times it may work like this but I'm sure there are just as many where someone makes a decision that can't be changed or worked around. Like budget or time constraints.. or material costs. maybe just someone shorting the testing time for a part because they wanted to go home early that day.
With that said, there can still be issues that don't show up until after the product has hit the market and something happens. Some small issue that was somehow overlooked that causes a much larger one. |
Unfortunately, HTML5 cannot do all the things Flash can do. Flash can access every rendered pixel generated from, say, a composite of video, bitmap, and vector shapes. What use is that? You can pass those rendered pixels through a hardware-accelerated filter, or composite them with another image. Flash can access the camera and microphone (if the user allows it to). Javascript/Canvas/HTML5 simply do not have this combination of features, and never will, for the foreseeable future.
Plus, the Flash runtime can execute generic math operations very fast -- much faster than most JavaScript implementations -- in part, because its runtime uses a statically-typed language that compiles to bytecode. (even if it is the case that video chugs, and is not hardware accelerated on a mac -- but that's [Apple's fault!]( Just because some developers write bad, slow and sluggish code for Flash, does not mean that it's the platform's fault. Believe me: you will eventually see plenty of bad, sluggish JavaScript code that uses HTML5/Canvas/SVG. |
Most office copiers actually do 100-600 dpi, with 200 as the default. So I was being a little generous. The 200kb/page is definitely generous.
You may be right about PS -- I really have no idea, other than that most scan to email or folder in PDF format by default.
Anyway, you're probably right about the article exaggerating. But they do have disk drives. And using a disk drive as RAM isn't unheard of. And it isn't common for programmers to include a secure delete/to zero the blocks. And while it may not be 'an easy to read format' -- certainly recovering deleted ps files from an ext3 filesystem and viewing them isn't rocket science. |
I'm very impressed (not creeped out at all) with the realistic externals of it, but what about the internals? In my opinion, developing the 'brain' would go a lot further. Robots could still be very useful even if they looked like cylon centurions. I would think that the externals would be a second priority. |
WARNING: The guy that invented the magnetic-fingertip trick is now warning people not to try this. Every person who's put magnets in their fingertips has eventually had to take them out, because eventually they break or the coating gets disrupted. If you're going to stick things under your skin, where they will eventually break down and cause infections, then I suggest you do it somewhere less important than your fingertips. The problem is that the magnet idea really only works well if you have it under very sensitive skin, because the vibrations aren't very strong. |
There's also a big privacy issue with Facebook. Once you sign the petition, your profile image shows up at the bottom of the page. If you grab the url, it contains your profile Id. |
rant
The lack of innovation from the "old media" business execs is astounding to me. How can they not look at the new media companies ranking in cash out there and see there is a shitload of money for the taking in coming up with a BETTER idea. Instead they circle the wagons and try to hold off the future.
I hate it when people try and justify stealing because of this bullshit, but its truly more annoying when the MPAA and RIAA hold me back from living in an awesome world where I can buy and use their products however I see fit, in the name of combating piracy. Living in a country outside the US where I used to live its even more frustrating. Want to watch Netflix or Hulu or NBC.com SORRY!!! Try again, even though you are a US citizen and still have a US address you currently live in a territory where we just aren't offering our service and have gone out of our way to prevent you from paying us for it. |
What I was initially responding to is this set of statements...
>doesn't take any loss
>they simply have a lower gain.
I know that when multimedia is pirated digitally rather than stolen from a store there is less net loss due to a lack of manufacturing costs (although there are greater costs in other areas). However, that is far from making it ok. From what I've read a long time ago, the cost of manufacturing a compact disc is ~$1-$2, so they aren't losing that money when things are pirated digitally, but every other cost is lost.
Whether or not someone provides a non-essential service the way you want it should have zero impact on whether you steal/pirate it. The proper response to a business not providing the content you want in the way you want it is simply NOT to use the product. You don't NEED computer games or a 20,000 song playlist.
While I agree there is a slight semantic difference between piracy and stealing, the result is still almost identical. You are using someone else's work without paying them for it. Whether they give you the content exactly as you want is irrelevant. (Although I agree businesses can almost always improve.) |
You could make the same argument about cars, saying "WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVER BUY ANYTHING MORE EXPENSIVE THAN A HONDA CIVIC?" Technically you'd be right, speed limits don't justify spending more money on a faster or nicer car, and often times luxury vehicles get poor gas mileage.
And you would be missing the point.
The Macbook Air is a luxury laptop for people that buy nice things . |
A luxury laptop (or car) would be one that was way over-spec'd for day-to-day tasks, following your example. If you have a Cadillac/Ferrari/Lamborghini that can go double the speed limit on the highway, you have a luxury vehicle. Having a car that has the same horsepower, torque and gas mileage as a car that is half the price wouldn't make any sense, would it? |
i see this comment often and its completely bullshit and propogating a lie. groupon is not a bad deal for businesses, and if you actually read the articles that say it is they cite people who are crying about not being able to fullfill the deal they themselves contacted groupon to offer.
its their own fault for offering a deal they couldnt fulfill in the first place. dumb business owners make dumb mistakes and then, as is typical in america, blame others for their problems. |
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