0
stringlengths 9
22.1k
|
|---|
Ponzi scheme might be a stretch
You're kidding! "Ponzi scheme" being used carelessly?
Right now, it is fashionable to call anything which makes optimistic assumptions of future growth a Ponzi scheme. Many things labelled Ponzi schemes are an insult to true Ponzi schemes: questionable, yes, but not truly fraudulent, in that the nature of the risk is much more apparent and the assets held are public knowledge; or just plain fraudulent, without any of the other characteristics of an actual Ponzi scheme.
At this rate, mail fraud will soon be declared a Ponzi scheme; then overcharging one's credit card will be thoughtfully understood to be a Ponzi scheme somehow.
So the housing bubble and Social Security, both subject to question as to their viability, are not Ponzi schemes. |
Dude, I know! We pay something like $60bucks a month for crappy ass ROGERS internet, full b/w caps and all. I moved to HK for a year for work, and I'm set up with 1000M fiber optics line, it comes with telephone AND 150 free channels (INCLUDING MOVIES IN ENGLISH AND CHINESE) for $22.50CAD/month. The company even let me keep the sign-up bonus, which was a Galaxy S-2 smartphone and a Samsung tablet. Not even joking, this company called PCCW does shit right! (I heard it's owned by the richest asian man in the world's son). |
Long time lurker, and I usually don't enjoy posting but this post infuriates me so much.
My family started a textile factory when my grandparents fled to HK after the cultural revolution; we started with 4 injection molding machines and with that spark, we managed to pull our family out of poverty and a farming lifestyle.
The reason why wages are so low and working conditions so brutal is basically because American corporations who come to China for the cheap costs of labour are at the freedom to lowball the shit out of the factories making shit. They don't care; if a factory doesn't accept their ridiculously low ppu (price per unit) cost they can always go to another one more desperate to make money.
In China, the factory owners are not filthy rich and even losing a few months of production time with a company can mean the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of people (yes thousands, they have campuses on these factories where workers live).
Do I advocate the shitty working conditions my less fortunate countrymen work in? Hell no. But these are partially due to the fact that U.S. corporations have the backbone to be able to demand such low costs.
If anybody wants to know the actual price Apple pays per IPhone manufactured PM me. My family ran a factory in Shenzhen (Sky peace Toys) and we personally know the factory owners that produce the crap Apple grossly overprice.
Just my 2 cents; |
Speakin of the Asians, they have a folk tale applicable to this.
Something about an old grandfather that his children smack around and feed out of a dog plate because he's too old and feeble to eat properly. After some years of being derided and abused as old, unwieldy, a nuisance to have around, etc. the old man died.
As they were packing up what was left of his belongings, they went to throw away the old dog bowl, but their children stopped them and said "but won't we need that for you when you get old?" |
The low incomes is an indirect result of Chinese governments monetary policy. I hate exploitation of workers as much as the next guy but the blame here really falls on their own government.
When a currency is freely traded it will rise in value compared to other currencies if that countries GDP grows faster then the competing countries. [Well lookie here.]( China does not allow their currency value to be determined by the free market. They know that most of their booming economy is due to cheap labor exploited by first world nations. If the value of their currency goes up then the price of labor is more expensive for countries paying in foreign currency. Companies will move to exploit cheap labor in other nations and China will lose traction in its economic boom. |
You are mistaken. I'm reasonably senior & earn a decent six figure salary in a big, ugly, generally aggressive corporate. But, believe it or not, you don't have to behave like Gordon Gecko to move up in the world. Being hard-working, smart and giving a fuck about people are not mutually exclusive.
I also see exactly how my company behaves when it bitches and moans about getting Shareholder Value, by hammering shopfloor staff productivity, making sick people come in out of fear and saving $1,000 on junior posts whilst we all fuck off to California for "Meetings" that are a thinly veiled excuse for 4 days of fancy food, alcohol and self congratulatory backslapping, like we deserve it.
My decision making? I have stopped one small outsourcing episode and one branch closure attempt for 25-30 local jobs. Not world changing (unless it's your neck), but something. India basically undercut the local operation by 20-30% (the profit motive strikes again) but I knew the IP would be gone forever and I thought the quality of the local team was better. Outsourcers generally disappoint and I also wanted to keep the work locally. Best decision I made for shareholders and staff alike. I slept well and still feel proud.
That the USA is rich is an obvious truism, but there's a wider responsibility. We need balance. |
I got drunk at a party one night and a guy and his gf invited me to his place to get stoned. I agreed and on the way he told me he worked for Apple, this was about a year and a half ago.
He got insanely stoned and then confessed that part of his job is to go overseas to Apple parts factories, including Foxconn. He then told us that all the suicides we heard about were true and that some of them 'weren't exactly suicides' but that Apple overlooks it. I asked for his Apple id and proof and he showed them both to me. The guy was in his mid-20s and had gone to Stanford. Never saw him again, and only ever told my gf this story cause I didn't think anyone would believe me. |
The sadder thing is, countries like mine (the Philippines) are actually looking up to China as a model for development, and I assure you, there are a number of more impoverished countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa that want the Chinese dream too.
We had a nice thing going until the 60s, but our minimum wage was jacked up so much ($3 a day in 1965, equivalent to $21.55 in 2011, not a bad wage at all and in fact more than 2x higher than what the current minimum wage is today). Eventually, most of the companies left, and we get the current situation where we are almost last place in per capita GDP in East Asia. |
I regret I have only one upvote for you, the OP and the Alamo Drafthouse.
Sanctimonious pricks like that stupid bitch are the EXACT reason why natural selection has been subverted in today's society; because in a normal situation, she would be shamed to do what she did. Instead, in her ignorance, she thinks she's entitled to be rude to everyone else. |
There is no place for another tablet to break out as much as the iPad because of people like you. People who claim to not be sheep, yet they follow every single word of every keynote, and then proclaim, without even seeing or touching it that insert Apple product here will be the most revolutionary thing ever made, and everyone else should just give up. You applaud a price point that is more than twice as expensive as its nearest competitor, you just love paying that extra price, and it always stays the same!
You're unable to break out of the marketing hype and see the products for what they really are. The iPad and iOS are just another way for apple to lock you into their ecosystem. Everyone with an iPhone, iPad, iEverything are so locked in now that they are unable to tear themselves away and think of alternative platforms as a viable choice. It's so ingrained that every single blog or media outlet applauds these amazing technological devices without even giving a second glance at the competition and what they're doing to actually advance the market. |
Try not to get caught up in marketing speak. Here's the specifics of the term, which is just a made up marketing term.
Firstly, it's a term used to describe pixel density and viewing distance.
Secondly, for the iPhone, the reality of the math and the way the term is implied (and generally understood by those hearing about it) is incorrect. Regarding "retina display" pixel density, first we should simplify sight to a plane. The receptors in your eye effectively receive light from a cone that could be projected from it, but from a 2d perspective it forms a triangle. Distance increases the spread. Now apple has decided that from a particular distance for "standard phone viewing" that ~326ppi is indecipherable. This is sort of correct although an argument can be made that for the distance claimed the ppi would need doubling. In short, move the phone closer and it's no longer a 'retina display' if you choose to define the distance as such. Likewise, take any monitor and select an appropriate distance as the 'regular distance' and it too becomes a retina display.
Now in particular for the iPad, the ppi is only 264. I don't feel like doing the math, but once again "retina display" is not just a factor of ppi, but more importantly at these densities, distance from the eye. I don't feel like doing the math at the moment, but it should be obvious that the unlisted distance must be further than the iPhone.
So now in short, everything is a retina display. Whether you personally are unable to distinguish pixels depends on your viewing distance and your actual eye sight (these standards are 20/20 a blind bastard like myself gets retina display on a 20 year old monitor at a couple feet away) in addition to the pixel density of a screen. |
Eh, if you take the word anonymous literally. Anonymous now is used as a proper noun referring specifically to the group that does whatever hacking things they do. The problem is ambiguity since Anonymous is actually anonymous. This leads to any joe schmoe, like the one who created this anon-os, being able to say they are apart of the coordinated group Anonymous, when in actuality they are just an anonymous person using the name anonymous to get some attention. |
No. Reading the original story and all the indignant comments on Reddit irritated me. It all seemed so damn asinine. Then I saw this link pop up and couldn't resist making a smartass comment. And the reason I was looking at the newest links in the first place was so I could downvote Torrentfreak articles about Kim Dotcom. I think I need to take a break from this site. |
WHO is downvoting this? How are all of these people in /r/technology rationalizing this?!
The law is clear. Exporting most goods to Iran is illegal, but Apple needs only restrict the sale when it is expressly for export to Iran. The decision of this Apple store goes way beyond the original intentions of the embargo and beyond the language of the embargo, itself.
A recap:
Executive Order 13059:
>Sec. 2. Except to the extent provided in section 3 of this order, in section 203(b) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date of this order, the following are prohibited:
> (d) any transaction or dealing by a United States person, wherever located, including purchasing, selling, transporting, swapping, brokering, approving, financing, facilitating, or guaranteeing, in or related to:
> (ii) goods, technology, or services for exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, to Iran or the Government of Iran;
The store refused to sell an Apple product to an American citizen of Iranian descent. Even if the product is for an Iranian student on visa, that is also clearly OK . The embargo bans goods , which basically includes everything. A student here, legally, on an official visa, learning advanced knowledge at an American university, clearly is allowed to purchase goods .
If Apple was "right" in restricting the sale, what other goods should be restricted? Should we forbid the sale of shampoo to Iranians studying in America? How about food?
Here is the official [Overview of Sanctions against Iran]( from the U.S. Department of Treasury. The important passage:
> EXPORTS TO IRAN
> In general, a person may not export from the U.S. any goods, technology or services, if that person knows or has reason to know such items are intended specifically for supply, transshipment or reexportation to Iran. |
That is false. I don't use any google services, however, if I send an email to a gmail account, then the content is analyzed and stored for later use. Anyone that has my name, address, birthday, email, phone number stored and synced to google, has given MY information to them without MY consent. Isn't it funny how when you actually do subscribe to these things, all of a sudden you're bombarded with "People you may know!" "Things you'll like" etc crap that's usually spot on? It's all been harvested, in one way or another, without consent. |
I'm a student too, and I've actually found Microsoft web services to be a lot easier for a student. Sure Google's UI is a lot sleeker than Hotmail's but it seems like that's going to change in the fall when they change the layout to look more Metro-like.
Don't get me wrong, I still have a Gmail account, and I still use it, heck I was one of the first people to use Gmail, and the same goes for Google Docs. I actually did most of my Middle School work in Google docs, but as it stands Microsoft's services just work better with the software that I use.
For example, I use Facebook, and I use Office 2010. Facebook chat, and facebook contacts are all integrated into my Windows Live account which makes everything a lot more seamless. I can even use facebook chat through any of MS's services. Google Chat is nice and all, but Facebook chat is certainly more mainstream.
I also went through middle school learning the Ribbon interface, so I'm much more familiar with the Ribbon compared to the old menu style UI. That means that when I go to the Office Web apps, I'm much more familiar with the UI there, and if I'm on a computer with Office 2007 and above, I can edit straight from my Office applications.
The one area that Google Docs does win with Office Web Apps though, is that a lot more people in college have Gmail accounts, so if I wanted to use the Office web apps, it's sometimes a problem making sure that everyone has a Windows Live account. Hopefully that will change though when Windows 8 requires everyone to have a Microsoft account to download apps.
Also, for cloud storage, I have 25 GB of free storage on Skydrive and 5 GB on Google drive, it's literally a no contest in terms of which service I should use. (Although you can put your google drive folder in your skydrive and use both :p) |
Jeez. Things truly are getting out of hand. I just ran into a situation at my local grocery store (Wegmans, for those who know it). Walked through the store with my brother-in-law while he was in town. He bought beer, I bought some other stuff. We went through the checkout as two separate orders -- and the cashier insisted on seeing both of our IDs for the beer, because "we were walking through the store together."
That struck us as all kinds of wrong.
First, are they watching who walks around the store together? How many people does it take to surveil (?) a large supermarket's worth of of customers? Or do they only watch those who pick up alcohol, from that point onward?
Second, we're both visibly, obviously, 40+ years old. Do you really need to "proof" us? Perhaps we should be complimented that they thought us so youthful. But no -- we heard from another customer, on our way out of the store later, that Wegmans has been known to demand ID from a gray-haired old man with a cane, going through the checkout with his single-digit-aged grandson. I assume that's Wegmans' idea of "being fair." No profiling; God forbid someone should sue over being "singled out."
Third, I understand why they're doing this: there are laws in place that allow someone whose underage kid buys beer and gets hurt or killed through illegally-drunken idiocy to sue the store that sold the kid the beer, and win. This is lunacy. At the very least, it solves the wrong problem at the wrong end: the use, or misuse, of beer (and other substances) long after the fact is in no way the store's responsibility. It used to be each individual's responsibility to use, or refrain from using, alcohol (etc.) according to social convention and common sense; laws about it weren't required. Parents taught (and supervised) children in these matters, and all was well for hundreds of years. Children could walk to the corner store (unsupervised!) and buy beer and cigarettes to take home to their fathers who didn't feel like going out. Wholesale abdication of parental responsibility has ruined things for everyone. That abdication also does not justify involving the government to Protect Us From Ourselves; protect your own self, or die; that's the way the Universe operates, left to itself. As some famous writer once said, "Stupidity has always been a capital crime."
Fourth, when we raised a stink and a manager came to the register, she informed us of two things. One, that asking for ID is a "judgment call that isn't the cashier's responsibility, but rather [the manager's]" -- to which we pointed out that the cashier had evidently overstepped her bounds and should have called her (the manager) over before asking us for ID -- and two, that Wegmans (at least that Wegmans) can't sell cigarettes anymore -- presumably because they "got caught" selling cigarettes to minors at some prior time. *SIGH*
Fifth, having said all this, note that this entire protocol is trivially easy to bypass. Suppose I walk in with a bunch of teenagers, let them pick out what beer they want, then send them out to the car empty-handed and go through the checkout alone. Does the store prevent me from buying beer just because I was seen "earlier" with kids? The store has no grounds for presupposing that I'm going to share the beer; maybe I just wanted the kids' input based on some Internet recommendation they'd seen and I hadn't. The point is that the store can't tell and shouldn't assume. Heck, they could get sued for that . (Also, for that matter, my parents introduced us kids to alcohol at home, when we were young, so that we'd know what it was about, so it wouldn't be a big, enticing mystery when we got to our teens. Worked like a charm, we were never much interested in drinking etc. when the time came. But that sort of thing is probably illegal now. Way to go, government. Way to go.) Or, what if the teens and I all leave the store, and I come back later by myself and buy the beer? What if "later" is "the next day?" Then I take it home and give the beer to the kids? What if the teens and I drive to the store together, but then they wait in the car the whole damn time and never enter the store while I buy beer? If the store did have any responsibility whatsoever in this matter (and I maintain that it does not), where does that responsibility end? Where do we draw the line as to whether or not I should be allowed to buy beer? In any case, they're only checking my ID, and the law says I'm old enough to buy beer, period. I don't think the law says anything about who's with me, though I defer to those with more-detailed knowledge of the facts... In my opinion, doing anything further than checking my ID to see if I am allowed to buy beer, is to make unwarranted assumptions about what I'm going to do after I leave the store -- and that is where the problem really lies -- not in the purchase itself.
Sixth, and lastly, "where will it end?" If the government continues trying to Protect Us From Ourselves, shouldn't they ban, say, the sale of bananas, altogether? After all, you have to peel a banana in order to eat/use it, and you might leave the peel lying around, and anybody who's ever seen a cartoon in the last hundred years knows that banana peels left lying around are the very epitome of things-that-make-you-slip-and-fall-and-get-hurt. They're dangerous, and we can't have that , God forbid.
My Dad said in the 1970s that the damn lawyers were going to ruin this country--and he was absolutely right. |
They're not banned. The CPSC has filed a lawsuit against the company. A few retailers have voluntarily taken the products out of their catalog.
If the CPSC wins the lawsuit, they will be not only banned, but the founders/principals of Buckyballs will have to:
admit the product is defective
make public notification that it's defective
cease importation and distribution
notify all parties involved in manufacture, transport, distribution of this
notify state and public health officials
give "prompt public notice" of the defects, in multiple languages, on their website and all websites where the product was ever sold
send the notice via mail to every product distributor and retailer
send the notice via mail to every person or entity that ever purchased the product
refund the full purchase price to everyone who bought them
reimburse consumers for any "reasonable and foreseeable expenses"
Provide plan of action to CPSC outlining how all this will be done
Provide monthly updates to CPSC
maintain records on anything relating to this for 5 years
notify the CPSC of any changes in corporation, address, etc for 5 years
That's some heavy shit. |
None of that is remotely true.
That is not hearsay because its not testimony.
Opinion of non-expert? Where did you pull that one from? First, its the results of a case, not opinion. It's a fact. Second, laypersons are asked their opinions all the time. Third, why is anyone testifying the first place? It's a fact and its precedent.
I guess I need to strip out all the cases I've been citing in my briefs. |
I personally think that in the States, there's a stigma of " Prepaid?! The service must be bad/horrible if they can price it so low (flat rate providers) or have awful plans (major brands with hamstringed prepaid plans). " People in my local area seem to have this preconception that a post-paid plan is a guarantee of better service and/or low-income folks use it out of desperation which is an awful way to think.
Personally, I think France's Free Mobile providing service at 20 Euros (approx $25.17 USD) a month for unlimited minutes, messages, and internet with long distance to 40 countries is fantastic for the price. In the States, the closest to that are a few providers. I personally use Simple Mobile and for the basic unlimited minutes, messages, and 3G internet is $40 USD (approx 31.80 Euros) and $50 USD for "4G" speeds (approx 39.75 Euros). I think that if prices did go down to the point where Free Mobile of France is at that people here would be more likely to consider as $25 would be a price point that people may think " $25? That's not too bad... I can try it for a month and if it sucks, no big deal I don't have to worry about a cancellation fee or any of that mess. " |
You sound like a man who does not understand what theft is, but I'm in a good mood:
Theft is 1)An unauthorized taking 2)of the property of another 3)with the intent to permanently deprive him thereof.
Piracy fails the definition of theft for the third element. |
I will ignore your "fuck you", that's just rude, but I think people like you need to understand HOW the economic/social environment affects peoples logic for this matter.
I believe what he's trying to say is that today's companies business model is dead.
In the now past market shaper era, where technology allowed our society to diffuse consumption standards in a world wide scale, in a vigorous capitalist environment created after two wars, where companies AND the government have made a lot of money with mortgages and selling money for money on the stock market, while deciding how much to pay to everyone, the hive mind scenario was really prone to perceive laws as this unethical scenario you just described.
In this second wave for capitalism, information is just a click away from the average human, either that's a bread recipe or a movie. We like the internet because we like to learn. All humans share a philosophical need for an environment were learning is big and free. Knowledge is power after all.
So what's happening right now, is that the business model to reach this digital market needs to evolve. Companies operate in a saturated market. I mean, everyone have TVs and microwaves on their houses today, companies sale graphs won't keep scaling for selling TVs anymore, like they did for 40 years, so they need to improve their product and promote emotional drama for people to buy the new one's, you can see this happening right now with iphones, tvs, cars, the market is going horizontal, as they can no longer sell the actual product they have anymore.
Think about teledensity, it has reached more than two cellphones per person in some countries. What mobiles companies gonna do as they can no longer sell a cellphone for every person on the planet? Horizontal growth. They put this colored display on generation one, cameras on generation two, internet on generation three, maps on generation four, digital wallet on generation five...and it's no classified information that companies have horizontal features business plans for the next 10 years. And I'm just talking about phones here.
Music, movies, the entertainment industry as a whole understood a couple years ago that nobody want's to expend $9 bucks for a CD as they can buy a track for $0.99. People can play music on an usb drive EVERYWHERE, damn, I can even share this information with friends or everyone by torrents, what about that?
Well, were talking about money here, don't get me wrong. Millions of people depend directly of incomes of this industry. But market has reached it's limit for the actual business model and a change is needed.
People are not saying that it's not wrong to pay for content, everyone loves their favorite artists and such. The people is not happy on companies trying to charge insane amounts of money for products they no longer spend tons of cash with to produce, only because companies want to keep their profits with the same growth margins of the last decade in a different economic / intelectual environment. It's cheaper to produce everything today, but the market still spend big because economic scenario was vicious for like 50 years. And is still is. But this, is no people's fault, it's not a consumer's fault. It's the companies that loaned too much money, spend too much money paying for shitty production models because planned obsolescence, stupid contracts and greedy cannibalistic politics. |
That's actually where it gets worse. The money isn't even going to the musicians, it goes to the Recording Industry Association of Japan and the record labels, the musicians still don't get very much money. I recently read some articles on the matter, but don't have the links right now. If you're curious I'd be happy to find some on the matter for you. |
As someone who works in the business of proxies and knows something about security, I would warn everyone not to use this. Proxies cost money and bandwidth isn't cheap and video's take a lot of bandwidth. They are making money on you in some way and it looks like they are getting information off you with this extension. The security section of the chrome extension says it can access "Your data on all websites" even though it could list specific sites because this is only supposed to work on Hulu, Netflix and Pandora.
Also they might have found out how to steal your password. Here is an example of someone doing just that. [Source](
Also read this article about why free proxies are bad [Link]( |
Guy who teaches network hardware to different ISPs here to shed some light on why ISPs can often suck.
First - a brief 101: Your internet bandwidth suffers from bottlenecks, no matter where you are. It's not quite as simple as this analogy, but the internet is comprised of networks that would look somewhat like a spiderweb. The strands working their way in would be Tiers of ISPs that form the backbone of the internet. ISPs can work together to buy/trade bandwidth, and there are varieties of ISPs from publicly owned metro area networks, to vast private backbones (tier 1's like Comcast). The owner of the copper or fiber, and network hardware can vary greatly. Imagine if every town owned their roads and charged a small toll for every thoroughfare - how much would it cost to drive across the country, or world? This "backbone" is very, very fast compared to what you have going in and out of your modem. Most industrial nations have the capabilities on their backbones to deliver bandwidth level: Japan/Scandanavia, but that's not the issue.
The issue typically lies with what we refer to as the "last mile" - connecting your modem to this very backbone (or a fast network that can reach it). The cost of this is very expensive, when you look at the sheer amount of web a spider must spin to traverse the last few outer hierarchies of the web, compared to the inner ones. The move from copper to fiber lines is a major infrastructural change for these ISPs, and unless they can charge significantly more to offset these investment costs, it won't be a good return for them. They do this, of course, in business areas, but residential areas one can think of as the value menu... it might keep brand loyalty but not a profit margin.
It's also worth noting that in the 1990's, some of these providers took major concessions in tax breaks in the US in order to offset the cost of building a fiber information superhighway (including last mile), but didn't come through (or regulators didn't do their job). Some of these ISPs are willing to do make good on this promise, but only if they can charge a premium rate and throttle bandwidth discriminately - cue Net Neutrality lesson. I could go on about these things for a long time, but I digress. |
Nobody has a problem with you working hard and trying to deliver service. We have an issue with the iphone plan from the original iphone having unlimited internet & texts for an additional $30 a month on AT&T. That charge was on top of whatever you were paying for voice. When the 3G iphone came out, you made us pay for text messages. Unlimited text messages on AT&T now costs $20 per phone, or $30 for the family plan. |
Not 100% sure what you're asking, but here's the reason why the answer is mostly no.
Sprint is slowly building up LTE, but most of it's network is CDMA. CDMA doesn't have SIM cards at all, and because the LTE isn't ready to handle voice traffic yet, and isn't available in most places, all Sprint phones that have LTE need to be CDMA+LTE. And there is basically no such thing as an unlocked CDMA phone.
So any existing non-Sprint phone does not work on Sprint. In the future when all carriers are LTE-only, it may be possible to have unlocked LTE phones work on Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, but that depends a lot on how LTE develops (if phones become in the habit of supporting all the different frequencies necessary or not. For instance, the new Nexus 4 will get high speeds on both AT&T and T-Mobile, because it works on both their GSM frequencies, but other phones on AT&T will only get slow data on T-Mobile, and vice-versa, due to not supporting all the necessary frequencies). |
I like how Reddit's Google Defense Brigade is in full swing downvoting you for this, but if Apple had done something like this, we'd all have to endure armchair speculation about who at Apple might have committed a felony, and whether we can all sign a petition to get the SEC to investigate. |
Here's my theory: Many investors think the 'bubble' around Apple is going to pop. There's no way they can be that valuable.
Problem is that's just an irrational reaction (the market is often irrational) not backed up by the fundamentals of the company. AAPL at $700 seems like a huge number to anybody, but it's really not when the company is reporting growth that's even higher - and doing it repeatedly. |
Are they?
Yes.
>Is predicting for an identity group sufficiently right?
Yes.
>Can it be?
Yes.
> Can it be if you can't even figure out the group?
Yes. |
Replacing the mouse should be the next step in PC touch technology.
Touch pads are ubiquitous today in laptops. However I think people have a bad taste in their mouths because the small size of touch pads sacrifices a good deal of precision. Plus, being located under the space bar lets them hijack the cursor when you're typing.
Now, increase the surface area of that touch pad by 2,000% and throw in some visual feedback so you can see what you're touching. I doubt anyone would have problems using that.
"But mice are more precise" you say. Really? If the laser on your mouse etched its path in your mouse pad, I would wager the majority of the action happens in a 5 inch square. Keep in mind you are using unnatural hand positions and movements. You know, the kind that lead to carpal tunnel. It needs to be studied but I would guess dancing your fingers across a touch screen would be easier on the wrist than scurrying a mouse around all day.
This has been done. However Wacom tablets are $1000. A cheap android tablet is $75. A wireless mouse with an extra button or two is $50. |
You could move touch screens to a keyboard type orientation with the forearms supported but then you are back to square one and lacking tactile feedback.
Touch only really gains overall for the portability of the handheld factor. Some other factors like close contact horizontal orientation with a praying mantis pose wouldn't be too bad for a short while but then you are sacrificing for the sake of either portability or horizontal space reduction. |
Unfortunately, the problem here doesn't lie in technology. It lies in humanity. We're all still tribal monkeys, at heart, and we constantly have an urge to find people who are "like us" and hang out with them. Even as someone who seeks out and craves new experiences and ideas (says a guy who left the US to live in SE Asia for awhile) I'm fully aware of this phenomenon in my own life.
To get people to stop doing this, you have to find a way of convincing them that new ideas and input is a GOOD thing. And a lot of people don't, or allow their notions of religion\politics\economics[insert ideology] to get mixed up in their personal self-identification.
IE, if someone decides they ARE a Libertarian, they start seeing attacks -or even friendly critiques- of Libertarian ideas as attacks on themselves instead. That makes it hard to get folks to discuss issues rationally. (Note: not picking on the Libertarians here, insert any ideology and it can still be true.)
We should be looking for ways to get people to realize that placing ideology ahead of logic or objective reality is a destructive thing, in the end, and that we should all be looking for ways to find solutions to our challenges that match as closely to the real world - not personal identification - as possible. |
your car is made of less rigid materials
[2009 Impala vs 1959 Impala]( If this were a real crash, I doubt what the driver of the 1959 Impala would have experienced is poor seat design, and that the 2009 car was "less rigid". In fact, the driver of the older car would have definitely benefitted from an air bag, due to its "rapidly approaching steering column" |
actually...We needed seat-belts (invented about 50 years ago) Airbags are more for modern cars with crumple zones and lighter materials. Fatal accidents happened more because of poor seat design, lack of seat-belts/bad seat-belts, than lack of airbags. Airbags are used now more because your seat crumples, your car is made of less rigid materials and crumples and there by you need something to prevent you from hitting your head on a rapidly approaching steering column. Theres no doubt they would have helped in more extreme acidents, but we didnt need them like we need them today. |
What if someone has an emergency? What if I'd like to leave the phone on silent so I could still get SMS messages? What if I'd rather leave the phone on silent so it could get my push emails in a timely manner?
None of that disrupts your cinema experience. All of the above are all reasons why it's also illegal in most countries.
Marketing, selling or using a jammer of ANY kind is a felony crime in the United States. Ham radio operators often help the FCC find these things and we do not take kindly to jammers being operated. (they often jam adjacent bands as well, which knocks our licensed communications off air. We don't like this.)
These things can jam well beyond their intended range. I highly doubt a jammer operator would bother to do a field strength survey to see the extent of their mayhem. If the output isn't pure (often the case with homebrew RF gear made by idiots), you could easily jam 800MHz Public Safety band. (aka Police, Fire and EMS). On the upper bands, you could jam the 900MHz ISM band as well. If you attempt to jam the 1900MHz GSM band, you could impact DECT cordless phones (land line use) and other lower microwave services. |
The clock isn't the noise source, it's the transmitting oscillator. It is not a VCO, because the voltage applied to it doesn't control the oscillator, only powers it. A clock would be pretty useless if it's timing changed based on voltage.
Just that clock w/ a transformer would be enough to broadcast AM radio so not very good for that.
The 45hz clock is actually setting the broadcast frequency, the ADE-1ASK and the [VNA-25]( is an RF amplifier to boost the signal. |
I think it is a fairly nice period piece for SciFi, in that it bridges the changes that occurred in SciFi film between 2001's release (in the late 1960s), and the more modern films like the Alien series (starting in 1979). The crew is less naive and a little more gritty. It seemed a bit more driven and a less philosophical and subtle, but 80s SciFi is 80s SciFi after all, and some of that era rubbed off on this film.
Though I definitely like them both , I like 2001 a bit better than 2010.
Oddly, one of my biggest sticking points with 2010 is the way they portray Doctor Chandra as a short, white, Jewish guy. It seemed kind of like "black face" to me, because I'm sure they could have found an Indian actor for this. When I think of the name "Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai", I just don't imagine [Bob Balaban]( |
No, Multiplayer experience is not a premium service. Peer to Peer gaming has been around before xbox live, and even ps2 had it(it only supported like 2 games and costed alot and was not sold anywhere).
Premium service should include premium things that you cannot get elsewhere. You dont go out and pay to listen to music, which you dont go out to a restaurant and pay ; premium' price for a tuna sandwich. You can make it yourself, or worse pay standard price at the local deli for one that is equally as good. I dont claim xbox live is a better more secure and stable gaming service, we have been paying for it for years. Anything otherwise would be absurd. Unfortunately times have changed. It has been a long time, but with the next generation of consoles comes a change we have been waiting for. Live has been grossly overpriced and grossly lacking in value for that cost. Why should I pay premium for the service for the service I get everywhere else. Peer to Peer. Live doesnt offer anything else extra.... unless you pay extra, you can get things like netflicks, foxtel, etc. If you dont pay you dont get online gaming. or much else. |
Took them this long? The only reason to go with Windows is games & office, and I'm sure they're not doing much of either up there. Glad that they finally ported all their programs to work natively under Linux. |
Perl, python, java, (Scripting and programming languages) boost, matlab, octave (mathematics libraries) apache, nginix (web servers) mysql, oracle, postgres, (rdbms) lua, ROS, (AI, robotics controller frameworks) sftp, scp, (data transport protocols) gcc (native compilers) and on and on and on... There are a tons of examples.
The idea you have to get out of your head is that NASA is awesome and they make superior software then other people -- it does not work like that. Software is buggy when you first write it, it becomes stable with use as bugs are found and corrected over time. Then longer a software has been and development and the more people that use that software the more 'stable' that software is likely to be. It is far better for NASA to use a well understood and well tested piece of software that has been around for a long time then to use its own piece of software that has not been thoroughly tested. Software that is new and untested is called bleeding edge and would probably be avoided in all cases except where it is unavoidable.
So if NASA is going to build a new auto pilot system which they actually could not go buy from someone else. They are not going to build it from scratch -- they will select a communication framework from someone else, they will select a good and convenient scripting language, they will use good stable support libraries they got from somewhere else, and hopefully the only novel development they do is the pilot algorithm. This is a concept called code reuse, and it is how development works.
I guess the |
My brother works at a company that digitizes and searches all the newspapers in the US for clients who want all articles relating to them in print (both personal and business). The company is owned by friends of the family and they live next door to my parents.
That said, newspapers are in extremely dire straights. At his work they see first hand how many newspapers are going under. It's a lot. Although it isn't happening as fast as many people think. Mainly because many people 50 and up love newspapers and some don't have or don't use their computers much. |
Is it possible? Yes. Is it really worth the time? Not really. The only time you're ever going to get you stuff hacked is if someone wants to dead, but this isnt an insured death. The only thing someone would hack the vehicle for would be to listen to you talk or track you. |
FWIW: our 2001 Toyota Tundra and 2009 Toyota Prius both have pure electronic, drive-by-wire accelerator pedals. Opened both and examined them; same supplier, identical. No mechanical connection at all. Toyota accelerator modules are very well designed, solid and reliable computer input devices. |
This. I changed my gmail address several times growing up (each time into a more mature name) and I also have different YouTube accounts (the oldest few have Tokio Hotel fanvideos, then the middle-aged ones MapleStory videos, and the newest one vlogs). It's all a mess now. Even though I have my gmail accounts linked it constantly seems to forget that link and every time it switches back to my current main gmail and then to get onto my main YouTube that I use to comment (different from my email and my vlogs) I need to reconnect them again... shitty services. Worst thing is when I tried to link my way-back-then YouTube-only account to my then-current gmail, it told me it was impossible to link a YouTube account to a gmail account, resulting in yet ANOTHER account I don't even use. |
If you do get a Windows Phone, don't get a Verizon HTC 8X.
There's a software bug that makes text messaging totally unreliable, and everyone involved is too busy pointing fingers to fix the issue. I think what happened is that an upstream vendor gave HTC bad radio firmware in their board support package for the CDMA/LTE 8X, then Verizon and HTC didn't catch the issue in QA and Microsoft shipped it in Windows Phone 8 GDR2. Naturally every involved party just points at another one. There's no new radio firmware in the GDR3 public/dev beta release so nobody knows if it'll be fixed soon. |
to justify to the stakeholders/investors that they have 'researched' and proven methods to explain why they should want to continue to invest in a product they (the investors) probably have no working knowledge about. |
The key difference, I think, is that reddit has a reward system for comments that actually has some sort of effect, insignificant though it may be. People on reddit are encouraged to be polite, informative, and or humorous both indirectly (through karma) and directly (by the official reddiquette page). YouTube's voting system only serves to determine which comments show up on top, and doesn't add to any cumulative score.
On top of that, reddit has a smaller community than YouTube, and is somewhat more exclusive; anyone with a Google account can comment on YouTube, but commenting on reddit requires you to both know of its existence and care enough about its culture to create an account. Paired with the increased exclusiveness of the thousands of different subreddits, there are often far fewer people viewing front page threads than front page videos, and theme probably going to know, or at least care more about the subject at hand than YouTube commenters would. |
i don't understand why fire on a car in an accident is so surprising for some people?
There are people who claim cars don't set alight in crashes. Basically everyone on reddit took the stance that the Michael Hastings car crash was an inside job and that cars don't set alight when they hit a tree at 80mph+ |
The only item on the list that could be remotely considered evil by anybody informed on the details is #2.
> The Google+ all or nothing strategy.
This is not evil, this is a product that some people don't like.
> Google’s willingness to hand over our information to the NSA
We now know that the information was accessed by NSA fiber taps.
> Google changed Google shopping search from free to to participate to a pay to play model
Google shopping was terrible. 90% of the listings were scams. They tried to improve it, and largely failed. If their methods are evil, so is amazon.
> Tombstones are being added to the Google graveyard at an alarming rate.
I discontinued a product last week but I have yet to don an SS uniform.
> Google has for some time now acted like Microsoft acted in the 90′s. If there is a good idea out there they will try and beat the startup before it takes flight. If it can’t beat it then yeah it will ry and buy it. Once bought more Google bought startups disappear than ever make it big.
What?
No evidence, the only reference is just some rando author bitching about how tech companies have inflated bay area rent.
Even if they did have evidence, most acquisitions are for hiring purposes, patents, etc.
You're blaming google because most startups don't succeed? Really?
> Google accepts illegal ads
This happened in 2009. It was obviously the result of shitty policy and has since been corrected.
> Google is closing the doors on Android
Anybody who has worked with android knows exactly what Google is doing here. They're making android much more modular, which opens it up more. True, they are creating some closed source apps, and this is because of the problems introduced with having the system apps be open source in the past. Manufacturers would change around all of them needlessly, creating fragmentation and confusion. Actual improvements were extremely rare. Nobody is forced to use google's dialer, or their sms app, but if a manufacturer wants to use something different they have to roll their own and allow the user to swap it out instead of forcing the user to use a shitty knockoff.
> Bypassing privacy settings seems to be the default setting on anything Google these days
No. The point regarding iPhones is false. They used known and intentional safari functionality, no hacks were required. It's not unethical for them to save your wifi password if you ask them to. The German streetview wifi thing was totally misinterpreted by people with no comprehension of law of technology. Finally, they complain about how google allows it's products to share data, implying that adding a photo to an email that you grabbed from your google+ auto backup will lead to some orwellian hell.
All of the points talked about by the author are taken from various conspiracy theorists. Most are out of date, few are remotely accurate, and many are complete fabrications. |
Fuck the Fortune 500. The Fortune 500 bought Congress; they should have to suffer the consequences of Congresscritter fuckups. |
Although if they are not *NIX devices
Clearly you do not keep up with linux security issues. The problem is, like an unpatched OS, eventually the holes will be found and if you treat your product like "Ship once, never update" then they'll become vulnerable.
And thats just on the OS side of things. Think of all the software running on there written by the cheapest asian coders. So what if your smart thermostat runs BSD, its running a shit interface with lots of holes.
Reminds me of the dd-wrt hole a few years back where you could just pass command line commands via the URL. Whoops! Or all those busybox exploits. Whoops! Or the occasional priv escalation in the kernel. Whoops! Or x11 or php or whatever.
Sometimes i'll see a locked up linux box on an airplane or ATM. The kernel version is usually many YEARS of date. Not weeks or months. YEARS. and as far as I can tell isn't a version with backports.
OS's can't save you. Updating, good processing, auditing, and writing quality software can. |
You can't prove a negative. I can't prove that it isn't being used to censor political speech. The poster above Bitdude is |
Female employee quits and makes her name very publicly available?
My first gut instinct is this is a 'cashing out' on the pink-dollar
It's a trashy piece of garbage that makes tenuous links to her being fired and death-threats.
Reddit, may I present Fascwins law: When discussing an interaction with a woman the discussion will devolve into discussion of death threats.
> She's not alone in her frustration. Last fall, a community member of GitHub's code base, Ruby on Rails, blogged about being sexually harassed by her own boss while attending a Ruby conference.
Not this is a lie "GitHub's" no, a github codebase, NOT GITHUB*'**S.
First of all: This is one person, her boss is one person. The interactions between two stupid people are not the stock of the whole community. The way this is represented is that this is a 100% thing.
> onslaught of victim-blaming, rape, and death threats
Probably more so because people hate the way it was trying to make this more endemic, or that people don't to accept it because they wish it wasn't true - similar things in people's minds.
Sexual harassment is wrong, it happens to both genders and yet tying it to the lack of women in STEM roles muddies the waters.
Here is a very insightful piece, I'll paraphrase as ["negativity doesn't motivate"]( - this shows that people are vaguely wary of all the talk about women in tech, but can't pin why.
Now /u/fookhar says:
> Pretty hard to make any judgment about this, when all you have is her side of the story and one anonymous employee who disagrees.
Now we'll have fascitards jumping on this rational response as being victim blaming, then some 12 year old will find her twitter handle and write "omg i gonna killzor you" and we'll hear about there being hundreds of death threats.
You know who else gets death threats? People who play online. Do they take them seriously? No. Do I think death threats are bad? Yes. Do I think the "death threats" that people who write articles that rile people are up in ANY way different to the same kind of bullshit you hear hundreds of times a day from people playing games? No, and that's because they are not. Do I think someone will not say this is me condoning it? Yes, someone will, because they are idiots.
People shouldn't get them, but focussing on them instead of why they are complaining in the first place makes every single episode where someone eats someone else's food in a fridge a discussion about death threats.
I think taking everything down to 'death con 5' because someone tweets you for 4-5 ill-decided ways you represented something in an article doesn't help you case.
Also, making vague accusations to people who cannot defend themselves (So... what is your response, have you stopped beating your wife?) is stupid.
I'd like to know the truth because if there is sexism, I'll be the first to throw a punch as I have been in the past - if there was a disagreement between two people, and one decided to attribute this to their gender, wrongly, then this is a concern. |
The argument isn't "a woman did something bad so all women are likely to do something bad", the argument is about a specific culture of radical feminism, an over-sensitivity/confirmation bias to view insignificant actions as deeply misogynistic acts, which is self-perpetuated by people who aren't misogynists really disliking being called misogynists and thereby reacting in a hostile manner (which proves the initial accusation of misogyny)
Adria Richards was not acting independently of culture, the whole incident was embroiled in a language and culture (SJW tumblrsphere etc) that is essentially a [filter bubble]( where witch hunts, an over-emphasis on words rather than meaning, and a glorification of victimhood lead to an active desire to find things to be offended about and to progressively raise the bar as people make adjustments to be more sensitive.
In the frame of this, any other incident that happens amongst the same culture will get progressively downgraded in importance by people who exist outside of that culture, as that culture becomes more isolated and convinced at its own moral rectitude and more unrelenting and unwilling to compromise with the larger outside culture.
This culture makes almost no distinction between someone who believes in meritocracy, in equal access of opportunities, but opposes things like affirmative action, and someone who thinks all women are cunts. in this culture they're all essentially misogynists, its just the latter group is being honest about what they think. There's a zero tolerance approach to disagreement, you're either with us or you hate women. |
The Department of Labor, or your states Labor Bureau, can advise you not to say anything, lest you undermine your own case.
However short of a gag order signed by a judge they cannot require you "to keep a lid on it".
Any implication to the contrary without a supporting gag order would be a violation of your 1st amendment. You are free to undermine your case as much as you like
I rarely read/hear of gag orders being issued in Labor disputes, sometimes for sexual harassment if it is really egregious.
I highly doubt a gag order would have been sought, much less issued in this case.
I'm not defending what she is doing or how, but what you typed is not entirely accurate.
You assume she did not even go to the labor board
You base your assumption on an aspect of Labor Disputes that is incorrect.
Unless she states otherwise, assuming she never went to the Labor Bureau/Dept of Labor at all is baseless .
She very well could have, and been dismissed due to lack of evidence. Which is extremely common. |
no, no, no, no, no. Coming from an aerospace engineering student who has taken material science classes AND is in the Navy: Anybody who is related in any way to materials science will tell you that brittle failure (especially in a ship, or a plane) is BAD BAD BAD. You want to design your craft to remain in the region of elastic deformation, and NEVER enter the region of plastic deformation. The engineers of these ships do massive calculations to prove that these ships stay within the design parameters.
Even the best design, however, cannot account for massive material issues (I.E. material not meeting the specifications that it claims it has) or the craft is not maintained as well as it is designed to (rust spreads due to paint wearing off in areas, and other maintenance is differed or neglected to meet cost/ time parameters, etc.) OR the ship sails in to extremely cold waters (think arctic or antarctic region, or the huge ice-breakers) and special materials must be used in order to avoid the ductile-brittle transition temperature of steel. |
Most Americans don't want most things but most things still exist. |
I think this is an overreaction, and it would be much better to keep these meta posts incorporated within r/technology.
It's hard to know if some of the recent posts were trolls, or ignorant people making noise. I've not been of the opinion that the recent meta posts have been useful, however I think they should be allowed to stay, and have their own category.
I'd be surprised if r/technologymeta turned into a useful place to discuss r/technology, that's not to say I think it could not happen though. |
There is this constant drive towards using less petrol (gasoline). But we don't pump it from the ground on it's own. We still have a massive dependence on oil based products for just about everything in the modern world. Plastics, paints, lubricants, just to name the most obvious.
So what are we going to do with this spare petrol (gasoline). It is pretty much a by-product of the oil industry which we have harnessed for our cars. It looks like we may stop burning it in cars, and end up burning it in power stations. |
Kinda reminds me of Baraqua from Parks and Rec.
Raul: This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the protestors away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Baraqua. You shout like that they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists. You are stealing: right to jail. You are playing music too loud: right to jail, right away. Driving too fast: jail. Slow: jail. You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses: you right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don’t show up, believe it or not, jail, right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail. |
India confuses me too. Sometimes I see really good stuff happening, for instance the lgbt pride parades, people being nice to each other immaterial of what they do/are. But then there are also things that just make me feel like that there is no way we can ever prosper like the Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore rapes, the homophobic laws, and people killing each other in the name of god. It sucks so much man. Sure we have to be patriotic and all but I can't find the point in being proud of SO MUCH CRAP. |
Why would you believe that the crime rate drops to 0? No law is going to stop religiously motivated crimes. They are just going to be more severe, more sinister, if at all. You could even face all out protests and rebellion if this goes too far. Tolerance and equality are cool, but never try to kill freedom of speech. Just the wording is going to cause problems: "Material that COULD offend ..."! What is that exactly?
Imagine if tomorrow you uploaded an article to Facebook about a girl being raped by a member of religion A in your country. Just by mentioning that the guy was a member of religion A could be seen as offending by members of religion B. So, a few hours later you have the police around your place, arresting you for "hate speech", although you only wanted to raise awareness of child rape. Well, shit. Now you're facing maybe a large fine or a few years in prison, I don't know what the consequences will be, but if you can go to jail for that before you even get to see a judge? Think. This propagates fear and fear leads eventually to hate, because those that actually propagate hate speech are going to capitalize on that fear. Hate will not go away, it will simmer and boil beneath the surface and suddenly be unleashed in some heinous act or maybe even a power shift within the country.
I mean, seriously...liking, forwarding?! Imagine if it became illegal tomorrow to upload pictures of cats, because dogs might feel offended...this law is bullshit and it will likely backfire sooner rather than later. India is volatile enought as it is. |
Sales tax is (currently) only charged when the business you are purchasing from has a presence in your state. Newegg doesn't have a brick and mortar store front nor a warehouse in your state so you do not pay the sales tax. When you do have to pay sales tax, it is calculated based on the state the item is being SHIPPED to. If you are in WA and you are shipping the item to your brother CA (where Newegg's corporate office is located), you pay CA sales tax.
Digital downloads and services are taxed based on your billing address. Netflix, for example, is required to charge you at your state's tax rate. |
People need to hop in on the replies early on and declare: "This response is so [stupid, repulsive, flawed, whatever] it should be upvoted for visibility! Someone screencap it before she tries to edit it or delete it!"
In fact - it isn't too late:
You dudes might consider hopping into the AMA and upvoting the hell out of her nonsense, and upvoting the replies that sensibly pick apart her bullshit.
I'm not asking for people to "brigade" - just if you see something that she said which was important, maybe consider clicking the up arrow to get it closer to the top! Also upvote the whole AMA if you think it should be more visible. It just takes a click to do that. |
FPTP video
I am aware of the problems with FPTP voting. I would much rather have some sort of proportional representation system. However, the voting laws are written and enforced by corrupt assholes who benefit thereby. Said corrupt assholes will not change the voting laws to their own detriment just because a lot of people say so. Voting said corrupt assholes out of office will not help, because another corrupt Democrat or Republican asshole will take their place, and they won't change the laws either. The People's demands must be backed up by the threat of violence.
> gerrymandering video
I am aware of the problems with gerrymandering. Electoral districts should be drawn by a f*cking computer using Census data and an algorithm (open-source, of course) to draw the most compact lines to make equal-sized districts. However, the electoral districts are drawn by corrupt assholes who benefit thereby. Said corrupt assholes will not redraw the lines to their own detriment just because a lot of people say so. (They will instead create Voting said corrupt assholes out of office will not help, because another corrupt Democrat or Republican asshole will take their place, and they won't change the laws either. The People's demands must be backed up by the threat of violence.
> MayDay
HOOOOOO-WEE, would I like to see publicly-financed elections. However, the campaign finance laws are written and enforced by corrupt assholes who benefit thereby. Said corrupt assholes will not change the campaign finance laws to their own detriment just because a lot of people say so. Voting said corrupt assholes out of office will not help, because another corrupt Democrat or Republican asshole will take their place, and they won't change the laws either. The People's demands must be backed up by the threat of violence. Furthermore, running a PAC to raise money to get money out of politics itself puts money into politics, which legitimizes the practice.
> FFTF
The FCC regulations governing the Internet are written and enforced by corrupt, sycophantic assholes who benefit thereby, by way of implicit, lucrative job offers from industry once their terms end. Said corrupt, sycophantic assholes will not change the regulations governing the Internet to the detriment of the companies they endeavor to work for just because a lot of people say so. Said corrupt, sycophantic assholes cannot be voted out of office. Electing a new President will not help either, because the only people capable of getting themselves elected President are corrupt Democratic and Republican assholes, and they'll appoint the same kind of people. FFTF, like the rest of the Progressive Left, is all bark and no bite. Since their demands are not backed up by the threat of violence, they will be ignored. |
That question is largely dependent on whether or not you were using μTorrent.
BitCoins - and other cryptocurrencies - are essentially bits of code that a computer can "mine" by devoting electronic resources to a specific process. People have built enormous computer "farms" devoted to this, with the intention of accumulating as much money as they can.
In the case of μTorrent, it seems like the latest client - the program used to access and download torrent files - came bundled with some hidden functionality that turned users' machines into BitCoin miners. This would benefit someone who was hoping to use external computers for their own profit, but at the expense of those users themselves. The latent code would take up resources for the mining process (possibly even damaging unwitting users' machines in the process) then send the results back to a secret recipient.
In short: If you don't use μTorrent, you weren't affected (by this issue). If you do use μTorrent, and if you downloaded the update that included this malicious process, then there's a good chance that your computer has been working itself on overtime in order to send pocket change to someone else. |
This is one of my favorite futurology subjects. In general, I agree with Musk that eventually manually operated cars will become illegal on typical roads, but I suspect it will take more along the lines of 30-40 years, not 20.
Several things have to happen before it will be truly 'illegal' to manually operate a vehicle; the most important of which is the ubiquitization of automated vehicles. For economic reasons alone, it will take more than 20 years for automated cars to push out so called 'manuel' cars. The thing is, 20 year old cars are still on the road today. Who drives them? The poor. Now auto-pilot cars are BRAND NEW. They really aren't even on the roads yet, apart from a handful in a few, select places. Even when they do start to roll out for the public at large, they will likely be priced for upper-middle, upper class. It will take time for these new, pricer, automated cars to trickle down into the used market. Eventually, the tech will be cheap enough to be installed on your typical family sedan, but I suspect that's 7-10 years out.
All of this puts us at around 10 years away from the average person being able to purchase an automated car. But even then you are still 5-10 years out from automated cars becoming the norm. That is to say, I think the average person will be driving an automated car in 20 years. This is where I agree with EMusk. But, 20 years from now, if my reasoning is correct, there will still be a significant number of people, particularly the poor, who are still driving manual cars. These people would be entirely left out in the cold if such cars were made illegal at this point. I think you're looking at another 5-10 years from there before EVERY car on the road could be automated.
This is purely from an economic standpoint, to say nothing of the technological, social, and political hurdles that will have to be addressed as we drive down this road. I simply don't see how we could, realistically, reach a point where it is socially justifiable to make manual cars illegal in 20 years.
I love Elon Musk, I he is an absolute genius and one of, if not the greatest visionary of our time. But I also think he is an eternal optimist who sets himself up, not so much for failure, but for missed deadlines, because he expects things to progress faster than they do. |
The Top Gear guys had an interesting perspective on driverless cars. Will they be programmed to save the "driver's" life or save the most lives?
A tree falls in the roadway and the car can't stop in time. To the left is a 500 for cliff. To the right, an empty field but a group of school children are between the car and the field. Will the car drive straight into the tree, possibly killing the occupants and maybe putting the children at risk? Will it save the children and drive off the cliff? Will it save the occupants and kill the children? |
This website commits crazy logical fallacies that make my head hurt. I don't understand how an analyst like this could get work. CEOs at non-apple phone manufacturers should be able to see through the absurdity presented here.
Here are some of my problems with this article:
1) It lists common user complaints and "typical iphone user responses", but doesn't detail how it got those responses. At best case, it went on some random internet forum and read people's responses.
2) Why only iPhone? Why are they asking questions about "iPhone syndrome"? Why not "Hardcore-ism" syndrome? Without presenting a solid case that the iPhone user base is "more hardcore" than other userbases, you can't make statements in general drawn from the select few iPhone users.
3) It's not science, you need to actually compare iPhone hardcore users to other phone hardcore users, and show that the iPhone users are more cognitively biased somehow.
4) It's a logical fallacy to assume that because someone has stockholm syndrome, their arguments are not valid. You can be illogical and have valid opinions.
5) Why do they just list the flaws of the iphone, instead of discussing more the about the users? It seems like if this were focused on the users, they would do that, instead. In my opinion, they do this to help spread the meme amongst those who are cognitively looking for reasons to justify a non-iphone purchase (not that non-iphone purchases are bad, just that those who do not have a smart phone, or recently purchased a non-iphone one would be more persuaded by this page because it just outright lists problems with the phone.
6) Things can be completely full of flaws but really quite awesome. They are only accepting user responses to specific criticisms. If I told you that I would give you a hundred dollar bill but you have to carry a shovel to my car, and someone asked you how you cope with the "shovel carrying flaw", and your response is "well it is only 200 feet", and you say "see? He doesn't even care that it's 200 feet! Stockholm syndrome!" it is ignoring the argument that it is 200 feet and 100 dollars. In other words, iphone users are only addressing the specific concerns you present to them but not painting the full picture for you.
7) Who the fuck do these guys think they are? Tonight I am going to register a domain name called kaddarconsult, and post an article about how they are biased. Unfortunately, my attempt will fail because creating conflict around something is only successful if that thing is popular, in other-words, there is a market incentive for me to attack the iphone even if my arguments are not legitimate because the media works by trickling up stupid blog links |
Quoted from:
brought to my attn from Hubso
"My name is Jesse (online name Danny Bishop). I myself was shot--in the
chest--on November 27th, 1994, at point-blank range with a .22" magnum
revolver (single-action, convertable--to.22" LR with alternate
cylinder). The bullet was likely 40-grain; the type: .224 caliber high
velocity (WMR--Winchester Magnum Rimfire, MAxiMag), with a nominal
muzzle velocity of 1,550 fps, from a likely 6.5" handgun barrel
(applied pressure, point blank: 324 foot pounds per sq. inch). I can
tell you--not from watching it happen--but from actually experiencing
it, exactly what it was like. First of all, there was the most
incredible, shocking impact you could ever imagine--equivalent with
having an M-80 (quarter stick of dynmamite) go off in your shirt
pocket--and I can tell you, I was sent reeling. It felt like I was
thrown back good 2-to-5 feet or more, as my legs gave out on me.
There was simultaneously, a feeling like a bomb went off INSIDE of my
chest, and that of being jack-hammered through my chest wall--all of
this, all at once. Then, everything semed to go into slow motion, as
undoubtedly, a large amount of adrenaline was released from my adrenal
medulla, causing my central nervous system synaopses to fire
faster--like a high-speed camera, producing a slow motion effect. I
was later told that the bullet (not surprisingly) ricocheted around in
my chest like a pinball, first penetrating my entire chest mass,
fracture and bounce off my left scapula, hurle back through my chest
again, fracture a rib, and then bounce back through, trace a path
around another rib (and puncture the pleural lining of my left lung),
next flying straight into my spinal collumn, fracturing my T-9 and
T-10 thoracic vertebrae, and transecting my spinal cord (I am now
paraplegic). Feeling all of this, all at once, was equivalent roughly,
I suppose, was like being shot three times or more, not to mention
that waves of paresthesia (tingling) echoed and serged throughout my
body. My feeling in my legs was gone, just like that, at the same time
I was flying backward--into a chair and a desk. Oddly, at that moment,
I was hell-bent on protecting my head. Finally, laying on the ground
in that room, only a good 30 seconds or so post-impact, I felt my left
lung begin to squeeze, and my breaths were agonizingly painful and
teribly short. Every breath was a knife turning in my lung. Then, I
began to loose my vision--like white-out erasing my visual field) as I
began to go into hypo-volemic shock (low blood volume). I lost my
ability to see temporarily, and could not tell what was going on
around me. Then I passed out for what was probably thirty minutes. It
was a darn miracle that I did not die, as a doctor later told me, the
bullet almost 'curved' around my heart, within a centimeter or two of
hitting it or a major blooc vessel (it could have easily hit me right
in the inferior, or even the superior, veina cava, near the heart
muscle, in which case death would have followed in 1-2 minutes or even
fewer, and unconsciousness in thirty seconds or less. As to the
question: 'Does a person writhe in agony?'--No, I personally did not
WRITHE in agony, like I had been lit on fire, but I was instantly
thrown into the most excruciating, truly agonizing experience of pain
I have ever known--and I have had chronic spinal pain ever since,
being on prescriptions such as morphine sulfate, Dilaudid
(hydromorphone HCl) and levorphanol tartrate. The reason I was not
WRITHING in agony is I was knocked into a state of indescribable
shock, and was incapable of much, if any movement. However, after
waking up thirty minutes or so after passing out, I managed to sit up,
despite my paralysis, and I still remember--even though my pain had
deminished somewhat at that point, due... undoubtedly, to endorphin
release--the feeling of warm blood pouring down my shirt, and adding
tot he pool of blood underneath me, the veinous flow coming directly
from the now hot, burning wound on, and in, my chest. I laid there for
about four more hours before someone found me--I could barely whisper,
much less yell, due to my 16% or so lung capacity, and as it turns
out, nearly two liters... the amount of fluid in a large soda pop
bottle, on my left lung... like a refridgerator crushing the left side
of my chest--and by the time the paramedics got there, I was in utter
shock. I was also beginning to hurt so badly again that no words can
describe it. It was horrible. Hospitalization was no picnic either,
let me tell you. Even after draining off the fluid once with a chest
tube--a rubber catheter inserted through your ribs, into the pleural
lining of your lung, they gave me what is known as positive-pressure
respiratory treatment, and the inflation of my lung popped a blood
vessel and caused additional pleurasy, and another 'hemothorax'.
Originally, I also had air trapped in my chest--a pneumothorax, which
they had to releave with a cannula. That hurt too! After two
additional chest tubes and having to bear down to force the
reddish.-brown fluid out of my chest cavity and into a collector, I
finally regained around 98% lung capacity, amazingly, and then--one
month after arriving at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in the Bay
Area, California, I began Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation. I had to
learn to deal with having little control over my bowels, having to
learn how to do a 'bowel program' with suppositories, and the fact
that I had no feeling in my groin--meaning no future physical sexual
feelings, and no ability to masturbate--and still having a huge sex
drive... how do you like that?--I had almost no way to relieve
tension, escept exciesize, for endorphin release, and taking my pain
meds. What made it worse was, before I was shot, at age 16, I had
never had sex, and never had a girlfriend, eventhough I can say
honestly I am, and have long been, a very attractive man. And even
though I have had half a dozen girlfriends now, ten years later,
dating was no fun... having to explain my limitations. In October of
2003 however, I had one of the happiest days of my life, howver, when
I married my wife, Jennifer. My dad was my best man. However, even
being married, and having a willing sexual partner, I find myself
doing almost all of the pleasing, and I suppose I will never know what
it is like to be inside a woman--to actually FEEL it at all--or orgasm
therein. Any of you out there who have had there experience, count
yourselves as lucky. Unless there's sex in there Hereafter--and I hope
there is... with my wife, I'm talking, right now--I suppose I will
never know what sex is like. You have no idea how angry that makes me,
and how much pent up sexual frustratipn a guy has after a decade of no
orgasmic release. Hey, that may sound shallow, but TRY IT SOME TIME.
It's funny, though. So many people, when finding out I was shot in the
chest, ask the same question. "Did it... hurt?" Um, yeah, it was the
most agonizing thing I ever experience, and could ever imagine
experiencing, and so I can definately say, 'It wasn't like a massage.'
But hey, I understand what fascination people have with pain and
extreme injury. After all, before I was shot, watching action movies,
I wondered what it was like. Some people have imediate endorphine
releases and never have such pain symptomatology. I remember lying in
bed, in the hospital, with this bloddy patch over theupper, left
quadrant of my chest, thinking, "Wow. Was I really shot? Am I really
shot??" it's hard to believe, when it happens to you. And assuming, if
you will, that there's an Afterlife, I bet people, being delivered the
news that they are dead, think/say to themselves, "Wow. Am I really
dead? Dead?" Anyway, I won't bore you any further. I'll just leave you
with, "Being shot--does it... hurt?" Yes, sir-ee, my friend. It most
certainly... does. So now you know, like I have... for ten years. : )
Peace, Jesse ('Danny B.')"
edit: |
I think your headline is right, but your explanation isn't.
The iPad is an ergonomics nightmare -- it will be nearly impossible to do anything that involves the on-screen keyboard while, you know, looking at the device. To type, you'll have to awkwardly hunch over the thing, while simultaneously balancing it, so that you don't drop your $500 piece of glass hardware.
Honestly, it's one cool use is integration with Apple TV to create a take-anywhere wireless TV. Bit expensive for that, but it does have pretty logos.
The end of the story is that people will buy it, not because they need one, or it fills a market niche, but because they want one. |
As an iPhone user, I actually hate the flood of softcore porn apps, along with farting apps, moron tests, and other bullshit filling the top 10. I am not remotely interested in a "boob jiggle" app, and while I don't care if such an app exists, it pisses me off when I have to filter through dozens of such apps to find anything remotely useful.
Most of the apps in the top 10 at any one time are the kinds of thing I'd expect my 13 year old nephew to send me on facebook, after which I'd promptly block the app and get on with my life.
I think the solution is for Apple to open up the platform to allow people to sell apps outside the app store; This way they can avoid selling certain types of apps without preventing people from actually getting them if their Iq falls below a certain point. |
here's an old article that kinda sums things up](
> We're not investing time and energy in this direction because we're pretty sure it would be blocked by Apple, so we're better off using our time in terms of development to do things on open platforms |
In Korea, advertising for certain models of phones are very common; phones have catchy names too (e.g., Chocolate, Icecream) or they are named after the celebrity who advertises it (e.g., [Kim Yuna phone]( Samsung's first phone to use AMOLED screen was named AMOLED, and as usual, they had some girl groups to sing a theme song for its commercials. |
Huh. I see a lot of words and little content.
Here's how it works.
You create a volume, say 100GB, the whole thing gets encrypted, it all looks like 100GB of random data. At the beginning of the volume is a header, when you want to decrypt the volume, you provide a password to it, if it matches, you're in, if it doesn't match, it just doesn't do anything, it doesn't say 'nope! wrong password!' it just doesn't do anything. As if you were throwing a password at a set of random data. Which you essentially are.
So at this level you can tell that the data is either completely random data filling the drive, or more likely, is encrypted. There's no way to prove that the drive is encrypted, but it's pretty easily deduced, as who keeps a drive around filled with random data (well anyone who uses a wipe program set to overwrite a drive with random data I guess).
So now, lets go one step further. You created a hidden volume, lets say 50GB, it resides in that existing 100GB volume of random data.
If you send the first password for the 100GB volume at the header it decrypts the 100GB of data, you're in, you can write data, however, it knows nothing of the 50GB hidden volume, and can/will over write it.
So to prevent that you decrypt the 100GB volume (by throwing the first password at the header), while also telling it about the 50GB hidden volume (by also throwing the second password at the header), while telling the software you want to use the 100GB volume, and to not overwrite the 50GB volume it now knows about. Now you can write to the 100GB volume with out overwriting the 50GB hidden volume. This would be how you would use the 100GB volume regularly to make it look like this is an actively used (and thus possibly only) encrypted volume, without accidentally screwing up your hidden volume.
But say you want to use the hidden volume, well then you throw just that second password at the header, and it decrypts just the 50GB hidden volume.
So unless you have that second password correct, and throw it at the header, there is no way to know that there exists a hidden volume. Everything just looks like 100GB of random data, and if you provide only the first password, you can write that full 100GB amount.
You can beat the second password out of a person (rubber hose technique), if you could take repeated snapshots of the drive, you could see changes in the data that indicate writing is going on in an area other than where the data in the 100GB volume resides, and that would clue you in that there is a hidden volume. Or they could put a keylogger on your PC that catches you typing in your second password (at which point they don't need to ask you, they'd have it already, short of you disabling their keylogger and then changing passwords). |
There is no real decision made on this AFAIK.
On the one hand is as you say, it could be viewed similarly to providing a search warrant and requesting the owner to unlock a house, or a door, or a safe. If they don't the police will bust it open. I do not know that anyone gets charged if they cannot unlock a door or a safe due to not having the key or forgetting or 'forgetting' the combination. Usually because it's easy enough to break in. Theoretically they could hold you in contempt of court, or with some other charge like obstruction of justice or something.
On the other hand is the argument that no one can be compelled to testify against themselves. If you claim that by testifying as to what the password is you are then self incriminating by virtue of what would be found, then you should be covered under the constitution. It is similar to if a search warrant was issued to the police to search your land for a missing person. They cannot compel you to reveal where the body is buried. And if you were to document your criminal misdeeds in your own self made language, they cannot compel you to translate it for them. The data has been provided, it is not your responsibility to translate into a format they can understand. That can be argued to apply both to your unreadable chicken scratch, made up language, or the 1s and 0s on your hard drive they already have access to.
I personally go with the second. They had a search warrant, they recovered the 1s and 0s. If they don't know what they say, well, that's on them. |
The problem boils down to barriers to entry impeding a thriving market and stifling competition.
Starting and running TV station costs millions. Starting a website, or a revolutionary new program costs potentially nothing apart from your time.
If 90% of the consumers were locked into leading providers of the day, Google, Skype, Facebook or Wikipedia and such would never have emerged. Instead, people would be using:
Comcast Search. Instantly find stuff on all 200 websites you can access!
Comcast VOIP. For only $50/mo, get 1000 minutes of VOIP calls. Overage charges and extra international charges apply.
Comcast FriendConnect. Go shopping with your friends (if they're using Comcast).
Britannica Comcast Edition. Over 65.000 well-vetted articles... vs. 3.5 mil for Wikipedia.
Above is actually wildly optimistic -- most of these technologies would probably never have a chance to emerge if they could not reach some critical mass of users. |
I may have been translating a bit too much of my own experience onto this guy. Here's where I was coming from:
In high school I had the opportunity to be part of an after school work program where students did all the real actual IT support for a large high school. It was a chance to get early exposure to real IT skills like corporate antivirus implementation, TCP/IP Networking, and Workstation setup and troubleshooting. We had the keys to the kingdom when it came to messing with school computers, and we were all teenage boys. Anything that we could use our combined access and knowledge to accomplish that might be worth a laugh was fair game. We had at least weekly lan parties in the computer labs after work, unbeknownst to any of our superiors (I'm pretty sure one or two of the "cool" janitors was in on it.). I've kept in touch with the guys I worked with there, and we all grew up to be reasonable and dedicated IT professionals. Even back then we all took at least our responsibility to the "make computers work the way they need to for students to use them to learn or have fun" part of the job very seriously.
Any of the pranks we pulled could have easily gotten those involved suspended or fired, but that seems to be par for the course for high school. Another student in that program got caught for bending some password related rules, and was fired from the program. All the teachers in the high school were made aware of this and told that he was not to use school computers at any time other than for class work in a computer related class. He was unable to get a reference and land an IT related job in college. I not only landed an IT job in college, but also was hooked up with my first "real world" IT job by a co-worker from this program. Today I am a sys admin at a company full of sciencey people and I love it, and the guy who had the misfortune to get caught and get fired works at a help desk where he is drowning in red state and he's miserable. The extent to which this friend of mine got punished for a very similar level of infraction to the op has tangibly put his career what we estimate to be about 3-5 years behind that of the rest of the guys we knew from the program. |
It all depends on what is "it" that you like about computers.
Do want a career because it is the in thing? or because there is money in it? or because you enjoy it?
Currently a computer career is so wide, you have plenty of areas to chose from. When I started in the Jurassic era of computers, when DOS just came out, Windows was not even mentioned, a computer career pretty much meant you 'knew' everything about computers, from hardware to software.
Why I started? because I used to spend too much time in the coin-up game parlors, I really wanted to write my own game, and so I started to learn programming, but in the course of doing that I had to learn about hardware and circuit logic.
Ultimately the driving force was that I truly enjoy/ed what I was doing. So that is what you need to define, find what is it about computers you 'love', what would keep you awake until 5am (trying to solve a programing problem or hardware issue) in the morning and still go to school/work early full of energy.
Math is a good tool to have in your bag of knowledge, however sound basic logic and patience are also good, you also need to have an artistic/creative flair to solving problems. |
there was a sub 100 day retention policy on emails there for years.. years and years.. the it systems buckled under the pressure for massive documents and junk in peoples inboxes.. they weren't very well structured.. it wouldn't surprise me if that stuff was lost a long time ago.. why keep it in a news paper, old emails are old news.. kind of..
they outsourced to india years ago too.. so stuff could've very easily been lost then.. it didn't go well for a long time.. |
All the bickering about whether ISPs should charge for bandwidth, or metered use is missing the OP's point. If you believe that the Internet is an essential method of communication, then it is government's responsibility to ensure that there is no conflict of interest between ISP's who are providing a digital pipe to end-users, and the media content providers who influence end-user's opinions in some way.
But the US government body charged with this duty is the FCC, which has been bought and paid for by corporations as demonstrated by the revolving door for [Meredith Baker]( et al. It is hard to conceive of a larger betrayal of the public trust in this space, yet most politicians seem to accept her transition without issue.
A solution would be to declare all ISPs as [Common Carriers]( to prevent content discrimination. But corporate interests far outweigh public understanding, making this pretty unlikely to happen. |
If it were something objectively bad, like, say, placing your hand in fire, I'd agree with you, but political ideals, regardless of their alignment, are subjective by definition.
To say a viewpoint you disagree with is objectively stupid is to show arrogance unbecoming of someone who wants to gain popular support for, well, anything.
Your aside was, fairly clearly, meant as an insult. If you had meant it to dissuade anyone from the view rather than alienate anyone daring to think differently, you would have phrased it much less offensively. |
I've been thinking of this for a while. Is there any way all of us could step up and create an ISP? In Texas, where I currently live, it is incredibly easy to create a corporation. I've always just wondered if there was a way all of us could band together and create an ISP without "bandwidth caps" or "data limits" etc. How realistic is this? I would be willing to create the corporation myself if we could somehow begin to incorporate the rest of the plan. |
Why does this even receive a down vote? Every single person who complains about big business recognizes that they pay off people in government to get what they want. But when it comes to calling out the government for being an organisation that is not trust worthy for this very reason , somehow saying that is to blow the whole thing out of proportion. This is ridiculous.
For once in your lives, please recognize that as long as the government holds the power to do something that could change the market, companies will pay to make that happen at the expense of us, and people in government, who are fundamentally flawed because they are humans will always continue to accept bribes from these companies to make it happen. If the government didn't have the power to do that, it simply wouldn't happen, and you would erase lobbyists from fucking existence. A majority of the problems in America today are caused by the government accepting bribes to make terrible shit happen, or just plain good intentions with an impossible amount of information to compile to make it work which can't be done by every one size fits all policy that the government offers. |
to be fair, the OP seems to have missed his own point
the problem is really a product of a population's fearful mistrust of anything
with even the vaguest hint of "communism" that has so completely crippled its ability to
actually regulate its industries - to the point where you are now effectively ruled by private interests, answerable to no-one - a kind of regression to feudalism...
your government had to drag you along kicking and screaming, just to give you a half decent health care system - and that's your HEALTH - one of the most fundamental of basic needs! |
I'm back home on break from school and catching up on the stuff I've missed while away when a friend asks me how I'd pronounce "Lei-a" and told it's a name that troubled an instructor at the local community college on the first day of class. I guessed it was pronounced like Lia, and my friend responded by jumping straight into an impersonation of Lei-a: "The dash don't not be silent!" |
CORRECTION: I received the following comment from a Jodi Olson, part of the communications team at Twitter. Jodi wrote:
I saw your piece on our news today and wish you would have checked in with us for perspective on the story–your piece is inaccurate and misleading.
What’s new today is that we now have the ability, when we have to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, to keep that Tweet visible for the rest of the world. We hold freedom of expression in high esteem and work hard not to remove Tweets.
The key is that this reactive only. It’s on a case-by-case basis, in response to a valid request from an authorized entity. This is not a change in philosophy. Twitter does not mediate content, and we do not proactively monitor Tweets.
Also key is that we’re making a clear effort to be transparent.Our policy in these cases is to 1) promptly notify the affected users, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so; 2) withhold the content in the required countries only, rather than worldwide; 3) clearly indicate to viewers that a Tweet or Account has been withheld, and 4) make available any requests to withhold content through our partnership with Chilling Effects.
To put the news in context, see this post from the EFF’s Jillian York.
Could you please update your story to make the accurate corrections? |
This because we have all been asleep at the wheel.
Years from now when the internet is no longer free; when web sites have to have approval permits issued by a number of government agencies; when all media is controlled by the music industry; When the internet is no longer an interactive experience; we'll be able to say that "we were there when it happened"; we'll be able to say "we can remember when the internet was free"; we'll also have to admit that we had our chance to stop it form happening and did nothing.
We can still stop this.... |
I know that conventional wisdom says that using something to cover your tracks would make you stick out (for example U.S. border patrol is more likely to pursue carpet shoe footprints instead of normal footprints) but I think the system they will use will be mostly automated like the YouTube copyright system.
( |
Here's what this means. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes certain conduct that "exceeds authorized access" to computer/information systems a criminal offense. The government said that accessing data in violation of "use restrictions" imposed by the system owner would constitute "exceed[ing] authorized access." Critics argue that such a view has far-reaching consequences for information technology and the internet, because anytime someone lies about their age on a dating site or otherwise commits a violation of a website's Terms, they are exceeding a "use restriction" and would thus be potentially subject to criminal liability.
Rather, critics argue, the language should be interpreted narrowly so that it prohibits hacking -- because hacking is a situation where the access itself, not the use, is barred, and it's more likely the kind of bad action that Congress had in mind.
The Ninth Circuit agreed with the challengers / critics and held that the language must be construed narrowly. Judge Kozinski, who rendered the opinion, is a very smart and well respected judge. But that doesn't mean the decision won't get reversed. The Supreme Court might take the case because there is disagreement among the Circuits. Or they might not, because they can only take very few cases each year. |
People get addicted to this type of behavior, and that's why they eventually are caught.
I once had a customer who would shop my store every Sunday. She would stop by the pharmacy, help herself to a box of Nicorette gum, and as she continued to shop she would empty the box, put the gum in her purse, and then dispose of the box somewhere in the store. Nicorette gum isn't cheap, this box would cost roughly $40. I kept finding empty boxes on Sundays when I would do my closing store walks.
To find out the identity of my gum thief, I opened the security video from the pharmacy camera, which had a perfect view of the gum. I fast forwarded until I noticed a box had been removed. I then followed the little woman around the store, and sure enough caught her ditching the box in the paper aisle where I had found it earlier. She then proceeded to check out.
From the video I knew which cash register and exactly what time she had checked out. Using this information I logged onto electronic journal and located the name, address, and her loyalty card information. Turns out she was creature of habit, and that she always shopped in my store every Sunday in the early afternoon.
So, the following Sunday I hung out on the front end and waited for her, and like clockwork she did her same routine. I stopped her on the way out the door, and took her into my office (with another female employee). She was a sweet little old lady, said she always shopped in my store after going to church (which made me lol), and 99 times out of 100 I would have called the police. She admitted she had been doing it for months, and admitted she had just assumed no one would ever notice. But instead of calling the police I told her to shop somewhere else, and kindly banned her from my store. |
I'm a web developer who once helped build a website for a publishing company that sells its authors' original stories as e-books and on-demand publishing.
Some of the stories would regularly be cycled through a "free content" page for a while before moving to a members-only area.
There was a great deal of effort put into copy protecting the content. Users (violating the TOS, shocking!) would regularly strip content from the site, then put it up on the web elsewhere for free. We would waste a lot of time doing searches for our content elsewhere on the web and issuing DMCA requests; it chewed up a lot of man-hours (read: profit).
Ultimately there's no way to fully protect your content. The best you can do is make it so difficult and/or annoying that you cut down on the amount of content that is stolen. |
I think this is an often overlooked fact. America is HUGE compared to most countries. When you're talking about Moldova it is roughly the same size as Maryland, and roughly a 20th of the size of Texas. But more importantly it's population density is 124 people per sq km. This puts it between FL (8th) and PA (9th) as far as highest population density of US states goes. It should also be noted in placed like MD you can get fiber in many locations. You can get Verizon FIOS 300mbit down 65mbit up.
We could afford to wire up fast internet in metropolitan areas. However, once you start talking about the entire country, you're looking at only 34 people per sq km. So rolling out fiber to every door step in America gets to be a big investment that won't pay it's self back for a while. This is especially true since some people simply won't opt to buy into the service.
Another stumbling block is that it would probably take a few years to install that much infrastructure. I have no idea if there are even enough people to lay down that much fiber or not. But say it were to take 5 years to lay down fiber to the door of every house. Think about the network transfer speeds of 2002. It's been a while but as I recall 10mbit networks were still fading out and 100mbit networks pretty much the norm (and wifi was still pretty slow). Today gigabit networks are the norm even for crumby networks people run in their homes. And 10gig networks are available for a price premium. Imagine what those speeds will be in 2022. With local network speeds that high, getting 300mbits from an internet connection probably won't be that impressive in 2022, so people will want a new role out of technology. That's 5-10 years of to recoup the costs of an infrastructure investment. There is also the issue that when you upgrade the home internet speed of a large area, you will probably have to upgrade the backbone speeds.
Now here's the thing. I completely agree that the companies who provide the internet are mainly greedy bastards. In Garner NC the local telco said there wasn't enough money to be made by installing highspeed internet. So the municipality created their own highspeed network. The telco then sued the city to try and shut down their internet due to it being unfair competition or something along those lines.
I also believe telcos don't want to provide highspeed internet because many of them are also providing television service. I personally believe TV as we know it today is on the way out. Services like OnDemand that let you pick what you want to watch when you want to watch it will be the future. Except this type of service is not really controlled by your cable company. Netflix and Hulu are already internet only provides of on demand service. And I'm sure Hollywood would be willing to cut out the middle man of your cable provide (they don't want it to be any cheaper, they just want that money for themselves). Cable provides (and telcos because they're often the same service provider) know this, but they want to keep you paying for internet, TV, and preferably a land line. They know that once they make the internet connection fast enough, the TV service becomes redundant. They also keep the price of internet jacked up way beyond what it needs to be.
In the end, we either let capitalism work and we get sort of screwed because they don't want to take the risk and they're allowed to do it. Or I say it would be better to basically make internet a civil right, and have it provided by state of municipal levels. If it was state run I would want protections on it like the US Postal service where they can't just go sniffing through it for shits and giggles. |
The DMCA is retarded, and nobody uses it properly from my experience. Some people unknowingly abuse it.
I had a site that I used to repost RSS content from a site that aggregated other sites that were accepted to the site, and specifically posted that it's content was Creative Commons Attribution 2.5. By content license, as long as I attributed the aggregation site, then I was in the right, but one of the sites that was accepted to the aggregator actually sent a DMCA request to an article that got posted to my site through the RSS feed of the aggregation site, not their own site.
In the end, Google marked my site for removal from the index for a DMCA violation, and even removed the Adsense ads I had on the site until the content was removed. Not only did I have to delete the article, but I had to file a DMCA re-inclusion request. |
Google has gotten pretty bad about censorship. There's a lot of stuff gov't related that you really, really had to push your creativity to find almost 10 years ago. Now it's making it into the mainstream.
Money and what limited freedom you can get as an American corporation counts more than the original ideas.
Or, |
You're not looking for rational discussion if you're being willfully blind to the way the patent system and litigation works. Functionally a counter-suit is a new attack. If the original claim is withdrawn, dismissed or otherwise found to be without merit, the counterclaim can continue. It's a matter of judicial economy, not the principled stand that you make it out to be.
If you want to get away from circle-jerky tit for tat fanboyism, then admit when your side is doing the exact same thing you criticize others for. Google didn't buy Motorola for anything but its patent portfolio and by continuing to maintain the lawsuits it is further entrenching the current broken patent system regardless of the fluffy PR. To answer your hypothetical: Yes, I am suggesting that a company that disagrees with the current patent law should just ignore the offensive (or "counter-offensive" under your skewed logic) opportunities that ownership of a patent offers (see, generally, [what Twitter is doing](
Do you see what I did there? I kept the discourse focused and on topic based on substantive events in the patent industry itself. This is she way to maintain rational discussion. Conversely, you continue to participate in this thread only by making a bunch of HORRIBLE analogies to "history" and violence which have absolutely no relation to what we're talking about. |
This is a false statement. For almost all intents and purposes most open source software becomes the same if not better with regards to power. The developers with closed software make their software neat and organized so that it looks very modern and sleek, but are usually about the same as open source. Most people who go to the open source community and code want to do it for the good of others and so others can use the program whereas closed software providers want to make a lot of money in as little time as possible which is their right. Within this the big developing companies make good products but have been rushed and have deadlines whereas open source developers try to make their product good and have a community backing them up suggesting ideas for them to implement. |
I'm at work at the moment, so I won't be looking at this topic until I get home. For any coders out there, feel free to ask me anything about the implementation or technologies, libraries, or plugins used.
Some extra information:
I developed the website 2 years ago. It has been online since then, and I use it as part of my portfolio. I plan on keeping it online for more years to come (and will always be ad-free).
My project was chosen amongst the best 3 software projects for that year, and I was interviewed for our national news to speak about my project (was only a few seconds short though)
There are no limitations (file size, number of uploads, bandwidth, etc), and registration isn't mandatory. |
The court didn't say that Comcast didn't commit wrongdoings. The court decided the case should have been dismissed from the appellate court because the plaintiff did not properly certify the class. In a class action suit, the plaintiff must file a motion to have the class certified, often requiring discovery in order to determine if the proposed class meets the standard for certification. The problem is that appellate courts are not able to review the facts of a case. The facts are determined and laid out in the district court. If the district court's ruling is not in-line with the law, then you appeal to the appellate court and they review the facts as they've been previously laid out. No new discovery can take place. The appellate, and subsequently supreme, court can't review new facts. New facts were needed because the class was improperly certified. Case dismissed. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.