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I've been on Linux for six years. I can't say I play every game out there, but I do get around.
There's two kinds of games that cannot currently be played on Linux:
The DX11-only games that don't have a DX9 fallback
The ones with some very specific classes of DRM. These tend to be older games with DRM that does seriously weird windows things; the shift to online-only DRM has made things work a much saner way and this isn't a problem in newer games. Note that a lot of them work now.
All of this works through Wine. I know, a native client would be better, but when we're talking about pure 3d products that implement their own UIs and such it really doesn't matter. We'll get there for upcoming titles; a lot of game engines have or are working on Linux support (even CryEngine is working on it!).
And yes, sometimes it requires messing around with configuration, lowering the graphics settings, disabling some specific setting but hell, I've seen that on Windows too.
In fact, I've recently been dual-booting again for Star Citizen, and I found I have a hell of a lot more problems on Windows than on Linux. Windows 7, for example, doesn't natively recognize my usb wireless headphones while Linux has no trouble with it. I also find I sometimes have to go in properties and set things to run as Administrator in order to run apps that simply don't start. Etc.
As for performance, it depends on the game. Some games have a small to medium hit, some games hit unimplemented features and take a big hit. A lot of games run better than on Windows, and that number keeps growing (a patchset to Wine is in preparation that will implement multi-threaded rendering. Some people have tested it and the results are astounding. SC2 is up to 150% of Windows performance) |
Right, because those 41 apps people have on their phone ALL happen to be in the top 100, and all happen to be in that 65 that happen to be on Windows Phone. Did it occur to you that maybe people have particular critical apps they have to be able to run? A quick example is that I run [Amion]( for work and while it's available for both iOS and Android it's definitely not available for Windows Phone. Just because the most popular apps are available doesn't mean that that's good enough. The apps that happen to be important to people have to be available and there's a pretty good chance that of those 41 apps there's a pretty important app that's not available.
And I say this as someone who's owned smartphones since the very earliest PalmOS smartphone days, I had a Kyocera 6035 that had to actually dial via it's cellular modem whenever it needed cellular data, and along the way I owned several Windows Mobile devices but MS blew it big time when the wave of modern smartphones came crashing down and scrambling into a game with two very large established players is a hell of an uphill climb. The fact that MS also did a lot of shitty things to existing Windows Mobile users along the way (i.e. shutting down Bing for 6.5 way too goddamn early) alienated a lot of the most loyal users (myself included). The way they didn't let Windows Phone 7 users upgrade to 8 was also rather silly, so I'm not sure why anybody would buy into this platform. Why would I want a platform without the apps I need for work, with 35% of the top 100 apps from iOS missing, and whose OS creator has a history of not supporting phones long term? Apple puts in a ton of effort to keep phones supported for years after release, the iPhone 4 is 4 cycles old at this point and they still ported iOS to it-it's not the most robust port because of hardware limitations but hey, at least it's an option if you want to. Which Microsoft OS'd smartphone from 3-4 years ago has support for Windows Phone 8? Or even windows 7? They wont' even update their (own friggin' FIRST PARTY APPS LIKE SKYPE for Windows Phone 7 anymore)[ so if you bought a Windows phone just 2 years ago, well it sucks to be you. That high end HTC HD2 got kicked to the curb less than a year after it was out with no update for it even though it had hardware perfectly capable of running Windows Phone 7 when it came out. What did pretty much everyone with an HD2 do? They installed CyanogenMod-aka Android, which means MS basically chased their own customers off to Android with their stupid ass policy of not giving a shit about older phones or hardware.
I don't know why the hell Windows Phone even has fanboys, MS treats it's customers like shit even though it's super late to the game, why the fuck would anybody go back to them? Nokia coming up with a sweet camera phone isn't going to get people to come back-it's an overkill camera for about 99% of consumers and anybody who's that obsessed about photo quality would be better off with an iOS or Android phone anyway because those happen to be the supported operating systems for the QX10 and QX100 which blow away any Lumia. |
I'm not somebody who uses a lot of big professional Windows (or mac)-exclusive programs such as Photoshop, and I don't play games. (A lot of these programs and games are made compatible under WINE, however!) I have a dated laptop, without much computing strength behind it.
Windows was slow and it felt limited to me. I switched to Ubuntu and it was great - for me. I spend 98% of my time using Google Chrome, GIMP, IRC, or writing. Google Chrome 64-bit support is only available on Linux, GIMP is made for Linux and is far more secure and stable on it, and xchat (my preferred IRC client) is free only on Linux.
Installing most programs is really easy. Most you can find in the Ubuntu Software Center, and it's just a click to install it. A lot of others, it involves downloading something, and then installing it. But some developers make you compile from the source code yourself.
I also like being able to change my UI super easily (it's a button you press at the log-in screen), and the multiple desktop feature is also really really good.
At the end of the day, Ubuntu is better for me. That might not be true for everybody, and that's okay! I still have to use Windows programs occasionally, but that's okay since dual-booting is really really easy. (If you're installing Windows after Ubuntu, it's a bit more complicated and you could mess your computer up if you're not careful.) If all somebody needs if a Facebook machine, with the occasional word processing, then it's definitely not worth spending $80 on a Windows license. |
Antivirus is a joke in cases like this. Those programs work by an office catching samples of known malware and telling their software to look for evidence of those sampled viruses. If a malware program isn't widely distributed, it's likely not included in the anti virus protection.
There are a few other thing antivirus programs can do, such as look for common malware behavior and protect itself from tampering, but it is by no means a magic bullet. Having mcaffe installed at Iran's nuclear reactors wasn't going to stop stuxnet. |
you can't really compare the cost of a basic cell phone that would have been offered to you at that time with a smartphone like Samsung or Apple can produce now.
You just need to stop. In 2002, I paid about $400 for a Nokia 6590 which at the time was a middle of the road device (think Moto G). The Nokia 7650 sold for about $650 in 2002, 7xxx line was Nokia's experimental line (think Google Nexus). Adjusted for inflation, those phones would have cost roughly $520, and $830 in 2013 dollars.
Remember the Matrix Phone? That was the Nokia 8110, it cost about $1300 new in 1996 which is like $2000 in 2013 dollars. |
Neither I nor any other reasonable person can or should ever blame you for that sentiment. Honestly, I've become somewhat jaded having spent way too much time fighting this battle for other people, but I sincerely wish you the best of luck as long as you're not a dick about the whole thing. Just realize that the reps you are talking to have little real say in the matter.
All of this having been said, the unlimited data thing was flawed to begin with. It was created when using more than a GB a month was unheard of for the few people that actually owned a smartphone. Where the companies screwed up was not having the foresight to realize that calling their 5GB plans "unlimited" would bite them in the ass. Really I say good for anybody who can keep their unlimited plan as they absolutely deserve it. Where I have a problem is when people threaten and berate reps as if unlimited data is their God-given right. |
All carriers, including Verizon, will handle a warranty claim on behalf of a customer. They mail out the replacement. They provide shipping materials to ship the old phone back. That way, the customer is never without a phone, and they don't have to deal with the OEM (which is stupid hard, especially with Samsung). The only difference is that T-Mobile charges $5 if they have insurance and $20 if they don't. |
So my girlfriend has this on her Samsung phone , somehow she installed it or it was installed or whatever, she likely clicked yes to a bunch of crap I dunno. Anyhow one time she was modeling shit for me and I took some pictures of her doing so with her phone. A couple days later, she drops and breaks the phone and it's out .... so whatever.
She uses my old shitty phone for a month or so while we wait for her free upgrade, I think she knew this was coming and that's why she accidentally dropped her phone and smashed it into a million pieces but moving on.
I buy a tablet a samsung s-whatever and she adds her google account to it, and lo and behold the pictures pop up, only this tablet was intended to be for house use, so my kid would use it. No problem I'll just delete the pictures, but I can't won't let me. Can't delete the god damn app either. It took me some time googling and a few stupid loops to jump through but I got rid of the pictures it wasn't easy and I wouldn't have figured it out on my own probably. I don't know if the issue is a strictly samsung thing, I have an android phone and but it's a motorola and doesn't have this on it so I dunno. Thing is the pictures still exist as to experiment we installed it on her new phone and the pictures popped right back up, I have absolutely no clue how to get rid of them.... |
Honesty, I would say I'm a troll- whether a malicious troll or just a smart ass, idk and idc- and I still care a lot for others (usually feels like I care more for others than they do for me) and especially animals. I don't have a "need" or "willingness" to hurt others, enjoy others' suffering, etc. I have remorse, a conscious, and I am 99% here mentally. I don't like to be the center of attention nor am I an egotistic douchebag. I am passionate about many things, like helping people and animals, and making people feel better. I guess I'm a loving person.
But I still like to troll people online and irl, because... its funny, lol. I don't take it too far to hurt their feelings, I don't want to be an asshole bully, I just keep it all in fun for myself and the other(s). Although, if the person(s) deserve it, I will go pretty far- deserving people would be bullies or racists, etc. |
Does anyone else think that the government shouldn't really be the ones worrying about kids? Child porn is a horrendous thing and I agree it should be stopped and removed from the internet. Its when they mentioned removing extremist videos as well I felt like a boundary was being crossed. I honestly think that parents should be more involved in taking care of their children and keeping an eye on what they do and look at. If by extremist videos they mean videos with violence then I understand censoring but if they meant extremist as different beliefs and viewpoints the water gets a little murky. Sorry this is kind of jumbled and disorganized I'm in a rush to finish this and get to class. |
Scale of attractiveness isn't the only thing to consider. Every person (not just the guys) I've seen pull above their weight have been socially awesome. Not alpha as fuck, just genuine fun to be around. They don't get worked up over little things. They don't judge people, unless in a joking way. And they don't mind being the target of a joke themselves. |
Not sure about this. I believe many states do have laws in place making it illegal to sell restricted items, such as M rated video games to children.
Edit: After looking it up, states do indeed have those laws but there is a precedence of the Supreme Court striking them down... sooo... There are/have been laws in place, but they don't seem to be legal laws. |
Same deal here, but only two providers if you don't go wireless. I had Cc for years, and was pleased with it. Then I made the mistake of taking the bundle bait, and everything went to hell. My phone would stop working while TV and Internet seemed okay. Then, the Internet would drop leaving everything else intact. Then it would all die. For days. I think I had 14 service calls over a period of two months. I lost ~$2500 not being able to complete an online school quarter.
I had AT&T reconnect me with ADSL and dial tone. The day I completed the internal rewiring, I loaded every piece of Cc equipment I had and drove to the local customer center with my checkbook. I told them I wanted to pay in full, never receive another bill because I would not pay it, never to send any junk mail to my house, and never receive another sales call on my home phone. That was 2009 and I've never once been contacted by them.
My AT&T ADSL is slow, but rock solid. I've never had an outage in five years, but that could be because I only live six blocks from the central office. I wish my total bill was less than $100 a month, but my service is stable and reliable. |
Coding teaches you logic, and trains you to break down complex problems into smaller, discrete components that can be easily processed. Programming is like philosophy in this regard, and I strongly recommend that people try to learn a bit of both.
Coding is a valuable professional skill. Even if you don't intend to earn bread by being a programmer, simply being able to code means that you can write programs to help you with almost any aspect of your professional life that deals with computers: from automating a dreaded menial job to simplifying the process of something big and complex.
Coding helps you appreciate and understand how modern computers work, and better explains the limitations of technology than almost anything else can. It stops you from being that guy who says, "why doesn't someone just do X and solve world hunger?", except that instead of "world hunger" it's something computer related.
Coding makes you more creative and keeps you constantly hungry for new knowledge. You'll often run into problems where you can't solve by brute force alone, and you'll have to learn some new method or algorithm in order to solve the problem. You'll also constantly figure out how you can apply your existing tools and knowledge in new and interesting ways.
Coding teaches you personal responsibility and discipline. You'll constantly find new and novel ways to break your own code, and then end up having to learn how to fix that shit. Discipline comes from religious adhering to good programming practices and constantly committing changes to whatever version control software you're using; mess that up, and you could easily lose hours, if not days, of work because you forgot what fxnDelegateGodzilla() was meant for and did not comment.
Coding feels good, man. Remember how you felt when you built something that wasn't a firetruck with Lego bricks from a firetruck set? Remember how fucking smart you felt, and how smug you were about it for at least a couple of hours? Solving a programming problem can feel like that. |
You're ignoring the fact that between 1918 and now, there was a huge trough in corn acreage. In the 2000s, corn acreage reached levels not seen since the 1930s in the US. So yes, we are planting the same amount as in the 40s, but we haven't planted that much corn in 60 years. You could establish a relationship between the recent spike in corn production and ethanol related subsidies.
One reason for the drop in corn acreage is crop diversification. The US grows much more: wheat, barley, soybeans, etc. These have become more popular over time, while corn has always been a standard/staple. And diversification has occurred due to both the availability of alternative crops, but also the economic benefit of having many different crops because it limits your exposure to individual crops' price fluctuations. This is the biggest reason for shifts in crop production: prices. In fact, you can trace the peak of US corn production in 1918 to a HUGE price spike in corn. But, while corn's price doubled between 1915 and 1918, it lost all of that by 1920 and was back to 1915 price levels by then. Really the level of corn production in 1918 was a freak thing and should not be a standard by which to compare US corn production now.
We've also become a significantly less agricultural nation in recent years as land has been utilized for other purposes. During WWI, the US was 25% farmers. Now, it is less than 1%. And yes, mechanization has enabled less farmers to manage larger farms, but the point remains that the US is significantly less agricultural and land in middle America which had formerly been 'just farms' is now residential developments, office parks, etc. |
This article is quite nearsighted. Ethanol biofuel was never touted as the end solution. It was just the tip of the biofuels wedge being driven into a tough to budge fuels market. Ethanol was exceedingly eat to produce via fermentation thus it was the first biofuel to go mainstream. Technologies to transform cellulose into fuels is coming online note. Several pilot plants are already running producing the much needed days for a new tech. Tech to transform woody biomass into fuels is still being developed at the fundamental level. This will be the third gen biofuels. These technologies take a significant amount of time to develop. The long view is 20 years from now we will have cellulose based fuels, 30+ years we will be significantly replacing petroleum fuels with biomass. People need to look past the immediate future and understand that scientific research is slow and expensive. |
No, Netflix isn't complaining about, or paying for, the difference between up and down bandwidth at all. They are complaining because normal web traffic (not Netflix) isn't nearly so "heavy" on the downward side. All that streaming is LOTS more data to flow, and that's what they pay for - total data. There's always an imbalance, because requests are almost always smaller than responses. That's why they package bandwidth to you the same way. But they have to pay for ALL bandwidth they need to service their customers, and the reality is Netflix-type bandwidth is FAR greater in volume than normal web traffic. So their costs go up to build bigger infrastructure and buy more total bandwidth, but the revenue they get from you the consumer doesn't change, and they don't get anything from Netflix - and Netflix gets paid from you. So they want a piece of that action, is what it boils down to, to offset their marginally increased costs. It's not a ridiculous position they are espousing, but the very concept of differentiating quality of service to the consumer means that anyone who can't pony up cash to the ISPs is going to get hosed because their traffic will get prioritized last. There goes your startups and innovation, and your next Netflix. |
Analogies are useful to draw comparisons and illustrate the ridiculousness of something for people not completely familiar with the intricacies of that something.
Some people might think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to have to remove undesirable search results... but ask those same people if Ford should come patch their potholes and they'd laugh. The analogy allows them to see the similarities of the situations and realize how absurd it is. |
I do not agree with the logic they are presenting here.
I did work for a company who freely gathers and re-publishes legal material such as opinions, orders and miscellaneous documents from courts all over the US, and we were asked on a constant basis to remove documents.
Suppose you are sued... upon being sued, a "Complaint" document is generated and promptly posted on the court site. Eventually, you are found to be innocent but the document that proves it will not necessarily be made available online. Some time later, a potential employer does a Google search of you (standard stuff nowadays) and finds out you were accused of a crime... that alone is enough for them not to hire you and make any job search a miserable endeavor. |
Tesla has already built and sold battery packs to Mercedes, Toyota and Freightliner (with the latter two being more permanent agreements,) so basing the projected sales on only Tesla's sales misses a significant part of the picture. Building the battery factory along with opening their patents hedges their bets. Even if they never make a truly low-end electric (IE: Tesla stays a luxury make,) if every manufacturer that does an electric leans on Tesla's patents to ease entry into that market, they're also likely to then lean on Tesla to supply batteries/ready-made battery packs to further reduce overhead/R&D. In fact, there is no way Tesla is building that factory for itself - it's for everyone they intend to sell to, and it seems reasonable to think they'd like to become the standard. If they succeed, that factory may not be enough if most of the EV industry buys from it. |
If you want to know what went wrong in the development of the F-35 watch the HBO movie [The Pentagon Wars](
It's a dark comedy that shows the problems with the bureaucracy in military design. While it's old and deals specifically with the Bradly Fighting Vehicle, the issues pointed out in that movie translate well to those we see with the F-35 today. |
I know people here are joking but if/when strong AI does come I have no doubt it will be at Google. Current trends in AI point to being able to do amazing things as long as you have enough data. Google have acquired vast vast quantities on data from voice search tied to clicked meanings to image search terms tied to particular images. Before we know it we'll be able to ask Google anything in anyway.
Think about it already: if we have a question we can pose it to Google in text form and pretty much get an answer. If someone from 50 years ago had seen this they would call it an artificial, all knowing brain I would guess. |
That's an excellent question, I've been pondering that today, after all, even Apple has had to kow-tow to AT&T on certain things. Then again, they are bound to 1 carrier, so their fates are tied.
It's possible that Google is taking a very well calculated risk here, on groundwork laid by the iPhone. Google's thinking must be thus: the carriers that missed out on the iPhone still feel the sting and watched their market share slip daily, all on the back of 1 piece of hardware that they had a chance at. Because of this, are going to be risk averse when it comes to missing out on groundbreaking hardware. Once bitten, twice shy.
Second, this phone pushes things in a direction the carriers certainly aren't keen on: Dumb pipes. Now, if they have any scruples at all, they will realize that this path is inevitable anyway, so do you want to be on board now, or go kicking and screaming, left only with the dregs of the customer pool?
Third, Google has taken a page from Apple's playboook, the secrecy and the hype surrounding this are without peer for a device since the iPhone launch. The consequences of being on the wrong side of this PR wise are significant, if a carrier is supported but they opt not to carry it, the damage will be lasting. The industry has had the chance to watch the relentless drubbing AT&T has taken for it's handling of the iPhone, and their anti-innovation stance, it's possible Google has measured this and have carefully hedged their bets.
The device space is fractured and fraught with peril for carriers right now, and I think Google knows precisely what they are doing. I would hate to be a carrier executive today. I'd be in a bar doing shots of Tequila and cursing Google. The stupid thing is, the carriers don't get it, innovation like this is just going to move many more consumers into higher margin services like data and will have a larger pool of people to pitch LTE for home use down the road. |
THAT is the question. I know Sprint corporate doesn't want people to keep this plan. I've had people call me from Sprint a couple times and tell me they have to ask me some questions. "Sir, are you a Sprint employee?" At which point I promptly hung up the phone. This was about two months before my 2 year contract was up and after that I stopped answering the phone when I knew it was them.
What I did to renew the plan was go into a Sprint store. You see, these people work on commiseration selling phones. I went up to a salesman and told him I was interested in the Touch Pro. This was right after it came out so it was pretty expensive even with the discounted rate since I hadn't bought a phone in the last 2 years. I told him I wanted to buy the phone but only if he could renew my current contract. He looked at me kind of funny but started typing in his computer. I saw his eyes light up in understanding then he told me he could make it work. I left the store with a new phone already activated with a new 2 years contracted on my SERO plan. |
You said "no one's scared of Msft anymore"
If I can show that some subset of people are scared of MS, then I will have disproved your initial statement. You seemed to concede that reddit is scared of MSFT. If I show that reddit is a subset of "everyone" then someone is scared of MSFT and your assertion is false. It does not matter whether the subset is a representative sample of the superset (which I never claimed). |
I don't know why you were downvoted. I have been using chrome since the early beta and am on the dev-channel build so I always have the bleeding edge version. I agree in its early days, chrome was wayy better than firefox or any other browser out there. But lately since the 3.6 release of firefox I find myself going back to firefox again and again. For one, the rendering speed, even javascript performance doesn't matter much in most cases. What matters to me is how a browser handles power users. E.g. Currently I have 3 windows of Firefox opened with a total of 46 tabs and they have been like this for more than a week. But firefox is smooth as everrr, no issues at as per task manager is currently taking around 200 MBs of memory.
Whereas chrome on the other hand is absolutely pathetic in the above scenario, after about 20 tabs it becomes a pain to handle and if you keep it open for more than a day it practically becomes unusable. I have to close it down and then restart it. Plus on the memory front, just the gmail tab is taking more than 250 MBs of memory. |
Tell me about it. I have been using Firefox for many years, and have been rather skeptical towards anything but that browser. Just yesterday I decided to introduce some change in my life by stripping my Firefox profile of extensions that might slow down startup time, but soon realized that such a task would take some time and painstaking testing on my part. I figured "Oh, what the hell" and ventured into Chrome. Ten minutes later I had everything FF had, and more.
I finally ditched Firefox for the speedy C and couldn't be more satisfied. The initial startup time of multiple seconds had become damn near unbearable. Now I'm blissfully surfing on Chrome with the equivalent of all the extensions I used in FF (though I didn't need them all, because Chrome included some of the functionality by default.) |
There are a few things that might be misconceptions from most people reading this.
The person in question is a Staff Engineer which is just about the highest level of engineer. This isn't some random mid-level engineer, if this person went the normal management route they would probably be a VP of the company. They probably have a base salary of at least a few hundred thousand dollars to begin with.
All the people in the comments are saying "LOL!!1!! If they give .1% then they would have no stock left after 1000 employees are hired!" Except for the fact that the people in question are not any of the random 20,000 Google software developers who try to make borders the same number of pixels on all browsers, they are the famous people that direct entire projects. They might be hiring away some of the lower level engineers also, but what this article is talking about is the people that Mark Zuckerberg is making personal direct pitches to. This is only a few people, and they can afford .1% stock to 5-10 people if they think that these are the people that are going to make Facebook be a sustainable success instead of just a bubble.
The other thing is the way that RSU (restricted stock units) work at all. Basically how it works is you aren't really given anything, but rather just a promise of gaining actual stock over time when the RSU become real stock by vesting. If you leave the company, you give up whatever amount of stock is left that hasn't vested yet. It's not specified over what period of time the $3.5mil would vest, but if its something like 10 years (it's probably less than that) then it you can see how its more like a $350k per year raise which is significantly lower than a $3.5 million lump sum would be. |
I can tell you right now, html5 still doesn't do what it needs to to kill flash. A simple video tag is nice but can you easily do streaming video? Can you do streaming video that adjusts quality on the fly?
Although flash isn't very good, there still isn't a proper rival. On mobile platforms, adobe is simply moving flash apps out of browsers and into their own runtime with air. It remains to be seen whether its easier to use air or simply roll your own app w/o an adobe toolset. |
It's not really PureView. The whole point of PureView is to have a huge amount of MP (41), so when you downscale to standard resolution (8) it looks amazing. Unless you plan to take 1 MP pictures, 8 MP PureView is simply not going to do anything. |
Java isn't "worthless" per say; I'm just an elitest fuckhead when it comes to coding.
The main reason Java is bad and anyone who teaches it should feel bad: It's bloated as fuck. Java is horribly unoptimized and offers very little options in regards to memory management.
Now, by itself, this isn't too bad. If you're just making a quick app for personal use, then it isn't that big of a deal. You'd be better off with C# but, again, not a big deal.
Using Java for enterprise purposes is a horrible choice for a plethora of reasons;
From an employee's perspective:
Everyone knows Java and there will always be someone better than you who will work for less.
Apps coded in a native language are objectively better. You can interact with hardware, use pointers, manage memory more efficiently, etc.
Less people proficient in the language = talent over salary. There simply aren't enough teenagers looking for their first job that know the ins and outs of C/C++
I've always told people to become proficient in reverse-engineering, and debugging. It's an essential skill and massive points with a potential employer. I cannot stress the importance of this enough - if your resume includes Assembler as a known language, you are guaranteed a job.
I was going to write another paragraph for the employer's perspective, but I'm too lazy to do it now. Maybe I'll come back and edit this later. |
Technically the phone functionality is an app, so I'm pretty sure he has at least some core apps. I actually wouldn't miss the app ecosystem if I got a WP7 or BB10 phone, as long as the basics are there (email, browser, contacts, memo, weather, maps, messaging, soundhound, music, camera, flixster, calculator, dictionary, alarm clock, file browser, google talk, calendar, and a good keyboard). That is a full list by the way. Obviously it would be nice to have a few games, but simple 2D ones are good enough for me. |
Honestly, don't listen too carefully to him. Or do if you want, but also spend a lot of time reading and listening to other people and opinions.
Learning Java is a huge asset mainly for the fact that it is still extremely relevant in the enterprise area. I can assure you that, given today's markey, you are more likely to get a job by knowing C# and Java (and SQL) than by knowing C/C++ and Assembly. Of course this depends a lot on the job (and yes, C and Assembly will probably get you a much better salary IF you can find someone who needs that skill set).
Additionally, if what you want is to develop Android apps then don't listen to anyone's bullshit and go with Android's officially supported environment, and this means Java. The C# on Android project (can't remember it's name) is not official, and it's not even complete. It'll make learning the platform a million times easier. Once you feel comfortable enough move to any other language. |
probably not as good
thats exactly what matters. in fact its exactly how iphone beat android in many ways, simply by putting the finishing touches on an idea some android fan came up with. don't be mad that nokia is beating them at their apple at their own game. |
If you can get anyone off the street to do the job, it's unskilled labor.
They can't. If that was true, nobody at Foxconn would dare to strike.
> And these companies do that by the tens of thousands drawing from a severely under-educated populace.
Mostly true. The supply of cheap labor obviously is very high in China.
> It's bullshit that fast food cooking is an unskilled job. Yes, sure, the sandwich assembly is streamlined and the routines of grilling are all set up before hand, but there are quite a few value meals you need to have in your head to ensure being efficient and not causing severe food poisoning.
McDonald's and high tech electronics manufacturing can't be compared.
> There is a cost involved with changing personnel in every industry ever.
I could rephrase what I wrote to "there's a relatively high cost involved with changing personnel" to make it more clear what I meant.
If you want a |
You got your source. Not our job to |
Thank you for this reply. I was looking through all the posts and its like nobody even read the article. All I see are posts about suicide rates and pay rate. That isn't what the article is even about. It's about the employees not being trained correctly to do their job and having very high standards of the finish product which is almost impossible to achieve. Then the managers are blaming the employees for not meeting the strict standards.
That would piss anyone off regardless of pay. |
This is probably going to get buried as it is, but I should preface it by saying, as a developer, I do feel bad for those that lost their jobs.
Now for the "mean" part.
Employees in high stakes industries like game development need to keep their skills on point. Things are a' changin? You need to make sure you're on top of it all. The goal is to never be a commodity. If you are a commodity, someone can fire you and replace you with ease and comfort.
In addition, you should always look at your company and ask yourself honestly... how can they make money? If the answer is more or less in line with what you do at your job, you're probably fine. If not, you need to find yourself another job, quickly.
I see too many people that sit and pump it at work, seemingly oblivious to how their salary gets paid. They just assume that it's a big company, a "safe" job, and the checks will keep coming. Why worry about it?
Take responsibility for yourself and hopefully you won't ever find yourself in a situation like this. Shit happens though. |
Actually, piracy does make a statement — it’s just the wrong statement. If you truly want to pressure content providers to adapt new distribution channels, and you’re not just trying to justify getting everything for free, piracy is hurting your cause.
>Most geeks try to justify piracy because the content isn’t available on our terms. We can’t get it in our country, we can’t get it as quickly as we want, it costs more than we want to pay, we can’t get it on the device we want, or we can’t get it in the format we want. Publishers have a distribution problem.
>But when publishers see widespread piracy of their content, they don’t see the distribution problem. They think they have a piracy problem.
Still looking....
My original post from 2 weeks ago was about people's justifications/reactions to downloading content vs paying for it, not from HBO's side. People were arguing that reproduction is not the same as stealing, which it isn't. However, they say that because of this it doesn't harm the industry, when it does. Piracy just tells them that their product is still demanded and that they should keep doing what they're doing because people will always pirate.
Refusing to pay/download and steal the content and letting them know WHY you aren't even bothering to steal it would create a much better impact on them then just going "Oh I guess I will steal it because who cares".
On top of this, demand is shown through piracy, which means people hold value to that product so justifying that the product is "worthless" to them and then stealing said product means that they just don't want to pay money for digital content because "fuck them for charging money". |
Let me break it down for you. The REAL ACTUAL issue is NOT that piracy is good/bad or is/isn't stealing (it isn't btw). The ISSUE is that the Internet has changed the COST of intangible goods. Art, software, whatever all had costs associated with their creation, replication, and distribution. Since the availability of the Internet. Those costs have been reduced practically zero. Unfortunately, not everybody realizes this and to those people, these items still have the same VALUE as before. Value is not the same as cost. Before the Internet, value (what a customer would pay for a given item) could be determined roughly based on the cost and they were more or less equal. Nowadays what someone is willing to pay, what something costs, and even what people think those amounts should be are and can vary dramatically.
IMHO, if you choose to make art for a living then you need to accept the fact that not everyone values your art at the same dollar amount. In fact, some people may think that you don't deserve to make any money at all because art should be about the art itself and furthering the creativity and artful expression of humanity (art for arts' sake - the highest form of art which all true artists should aspire to).
With software there are obviously costs involved in testing and making sure that programs work. However, how can someone say that one piece of software should cost $1 vs one that costs $1000? Adobe can charge $1000 because they know their stuff is mainly used by businesses who can afford it, but it's completely arbitrary. If businesses stopped buying it, they would decrease their prices.
/rant |
What I would like to see introduced would be "rent-to-own" kind of system implemented. Somewhat similar to what Adobe started doing with some of it's products.
So assume the regular cost of the high-end software is like 500-700 dollars. You would have two options: The first would be the normal situation where you pay 600 bucks for a license, and receive your product immediately and indefinitely.
The second method would allow you to pay a value (perhaps somewhat higher price) over a period of time, somewhere between 2 years to half a year, and you would gain access to the software as you continued the payments, and upon completion of the total, you would receive an indefinite licence as if you had paid all up front. If you miss a payment, you will not have further access to the software until you begin making your payments again.
This system would allow someone who has student or hobbyist levels of income to more reasonably afford to begin using the product immediately, yet still working towards their own full copy like a professional would have, not simply being tied to the system of payment.
I think that the customer would become more tied to the idea that they are going to pay for this software if they are actually working towards buying the whole thing rather than indefinite payment in return for access. In the latter method, it would be more economically viable for someone who is interested in a legal copy to temporarily pirate the product for a time while saving to get a legit copy.
note: this only applies to software, especially expensive dev. software (PS, Illustrator, After Effects, Maya, 3DSMAX, etc..) |
This is why downloading isn't really illegal in Canada - We've been paying for the ability through the added cost of writable/rewriteable media. Blank CDs, DVDs, flash memory, MP3 players, hard drives and more cost more in Canada with the idea that these extra monies will go to artists, etc to make up for anyone potentially copying their works. |
Movies, books and professional software are vastly different from each other.
Movies: should cost money, yes, but should have MUCH better service at cinemas. Online movie downloads? Film companies, distributors and streaming services can't get their acts together. If a film is out in the US, its expected worldwide these days.
Books: I can buy a second hand book on Amazon for £0.01. EBook costs £5. I'll buy the physical book and download a copy for free. Ebook sellers and publishers still haven't caught up with what people want.
Software: try to death before you buy should be the norm. 30 day limited trials are massively outdated as a business practice. Right now, Adobe seem to be the only company with any sense as they offer a monthly subscription model, as well as not really caring about pirates who are learning their software. |
I always avoided pirating of any kind, learned as much as others, in some ways maybe even more (like how to do the same in the same time with less comfortable software), and don't really regret not having pirated any of the shiny stuff. I never had any of the shiny stuff on any of my computers, and when I worked with it in any of my jobs I found out that small free specialised tools would do the same or even better things, and was actually usually disappointed at all the limitations of the big software, like having to use tools which would do too much at once.
However, one point I have to admit: It was never good in a job interview to say that you had no or not much hands-on experience with a particular software which was used in that company. While I don't know any software I wouldn't be able to get comfortable with within a few minutes or (with extremely complex software) weeks, the HR people usually disagreed and didn't give me a chance to prove my worth. They probably also considered it bragging when I said I wouldn't have difficulties learning it quickly. So my career was quite bumpy partly because I never pirated. Not to mention that the people who were already having a career and now choosing new colleagues had mostly pirated themselves and considered me probably not only foolish for not doing so. |
There are developer options and yes, this would be a brilliant addition.
Manufacturers are still stuck in their "proprietary software being right" mindset, like Sony Ericsson's godawful old Xperia Mediascape (or whatever). They don't like you fiddling, even though those interfaces offer the manufacturer zero monetary value after purchase. |
This seems like suspect moral reasoning to me. There are many skills most people will likely never learn because of financial barriers. For example, I will likely never learn how to drive a formula 1 race car or a space shuttle (or whatever we eventually roll out to replace the shuttle). The fact that these skills have a high entry cost does not make it moral to steal the required equipment to enter the field. It is not moral to steal a horse because you want to learn polo, it is not moral to steal a yacht because you want to learn to sail.
Every individual pirate's answer to the question I am about to pose will likely be slightly different, but would you still pirate if it could be demonstrated that artists and developers were harmed more than the "big corporations"? Many people claim that they pirate because it hurts the man but the artists get most of their money through other means (in the case of music, concerts). What if this weren't the case? This would have no effect on me because when I look at the costs and benefits of piracy, free things still outweigh the feelings of guilt. I think most people who read this will put on their best impression of a scandalized face and say "Of course I wouldn't hurt an artist!" Is this actually the case? Once someone gets used to getting things for free it is hard to get them to accept financial cost for the same thing. This doesn't just apply to music, revolutions usually happen after a slight improvement in the conditions in a country as opposed to when oppression is at its worst (consider the French Revolution or the fall of the U.S.S.R.). Once we are given something (rights, free music, etc.) we are extremely reluctant to give these things back.
Outdated profit models are a cause of some piracy and certainly encourage it. However, using this as a moral justification is logically suspect. It is in-arguably true that in the case of music, record companies are digging their own graves from a practical standpoint. Their refusal to evolve may be their undoing in the long run. Even so, this doesn't mitigate the moral culpability that a pirate faces. The party that owns a thing has a right to sell it however they please (either well or poorly) and no person has a moral right to steal the thing if they don't like how it is being sold.
Almost all of the arguments that try to limit the moral culpability of pirates (it hurts publishers not artists, you can learn skills you didn't have before, etc.) seem to be applied after the fact to assuage the conscience of pirates (and before people get up-in-arms I pirate too). It seems to me is that piracy comes down to game theory. The pirate and the publishers are parties that are trying to maximize gain and minimize cost. For the pirate this means accepting some costs (increased risk, generally lower quality, greater amount of time spent, potential feelings of guilt, etc.) in exchange for a payoff ("free" movies, music, games, etc.). It is the same calculus that someone runs through when they are deciding whether or not to shoplift at a brick and mortar store. The main difference is that the risk of being caught from piracy is far less than that of shoplifting. Also, the fact that it is remote helps the pirate to disassociate him/herself from feelings of guilt. Arguments like the kind made in this article are another way to reduce cost by mitigating guilt (which has a negative effect on utility). |
You act like this is some sort of unanswerable mythical paradox, whereby all inquiry should stop at the boundaries of your personal understanding of the topic; or lack thereof. |
To all the people saying 8 cores are impractical, if you read the article, it says that 8 cores will not be active at once, and the processer will switch between quad core A15 for high end tasks and quad core A7 for low end tasks but never run them simultaneously.Think Big.LITTLE tech.The battery life will not suicide but it won't lag if you browse or play high end games.Plus we do not know whether or not this will come in an android phone, for all we know this could come in a Windows RT laptop or next generation chromebooks |
The problem isn't if your email is hacked, it is if their site is hacked. Nobody gives a shit about your email. Taking time to hack one email in the hopes it is connected to a paypal account? No thanks. Taking time to hack a small website with 10000 emails and passwords? Yes please! If only 3% of those people have a paypal and use the same pw everywhere online, it is a win. Even so, those emails are enough loot already. Take into consideration that those email password combos will get you access to people their emails 50% of the time and you are golden.
The thing is, if said site knows your password it is not applying one of the most basic security procedures, hashing your password. (Making it so they don't know your real password) If they are not even using the most basic security a CS student could put off, then odds are their other security is piss poor as well.
If a site sends you your password;
Don't trust that site with any of your personal information!
Don't use the same password there as you do with any other site or service. If you did use your standard password, change it. |
Honestly though.. I like being able to see a whole season, I hate waiting a whole week for the next episode to come out. I lose interest in the show..
So far if I'm watching a show back to back it seems amazing, if I take a break from it for a couple of days and watch the next episode it seems like a below average show.
The point I'm trying to make is the continuity makes the show better. You don't have to think back too far to remember all that happened in the previous episodes. |
I mean that for free, there is tonnes of awesome content offered, outside of Netflix.
For example the latest episode of Top Gear was only first broadcasted 5 hours ago, on BBC 2. If you live in the UK, you can watch it for free, right now, online (I did about two hours ago).
My point is that we produce a lot of good television in the UK, and it all goes straight online, for free, the moment it's broadcasted. We also get a lot of non-UK content put online too, like films, again for free (although not everything).
My point is that unless you want content that isn't broadcasted live in the UK, or is not recent, then it really starts to blow Netflix out of the water. Even if the catalogue is better, which some people are saying it now is, why bother when I already have a stream of excellent shows already coming online for free? |
They have 4 main TV stations; BBC One, for main shows, BBC 2, for alternative but popular stuff, BBC Three, for trash (like shows about celebrities who believe in UFOs), and BBC Four, for mature content, like documentories on science and history, or lectures on justice.
Then they have BBC News 24, their news channel, BBC One HD, and BBC HD (which shows random stuff in HD, mostly BBC 2). They also have a few others, such as BBC Parliament which shows random parliamentary footage (but like just actual streams of footage from meetings and so on, so it's kept very factual), and BBC Alba for Gaelic.
Then they have foreign channels, like I think there is a BBC America, there is a world wide version of BBC News 24 with ads, and there is a persian version of the BBC. Most of their content is repeats from the other channels, sometimes tailored, although I think the persian one has a lot of unique content.
Then, the radio stations. The BBC World Service reaches around 200 million people a week, around the world. It's a mix of radio stations, broadcasted in mostly English, but also pretty much every other language, from Samali to French to Russian to Urdu, etc.
In the UK, they have Radio 1 through 6, each catering to specific types of content (popular music, sport, alternative music, pensioners, etc). They also have some extra radio services, such as Radio 5 Live Sports Extra.
All of it which is broadcast in the UK, is then also placed online. Some non-UK content too, like shows produced for their foreign services in foreign languages. You also need to bear in mind that they either produce most of their content themselves, or have it comissioned to be produced for them. They do show non-BBC content too, but most is bespoke, which is impressive considering how much content they put out.
This is also excluding the local and regional variations which exist across the UK, which would make much more complicated, and for which they also produce bespoke content (although pretty dull). I'm sure they do a tonne more which I've missed out.
Another factor they do which I think is interesting, is R&D, a lot of R&D. For example radio shows which pull down content around where it's being heard, so the weather in the show matches the weather in real life, or places match up. Another example is they have been doing tests broadcasting ultra high definition (7680x4320) across the world, to see if the technology is technically feasible in the future. |
The problem Netflix is trying to address is content. Currently, it has to purchase content from other providers. The problem is they purchase on a contract for a certain amount of years. Originally, the contracts were cheap, as content providers didn't consider it competition to their main delivery streams (i.e. TV and DVD).
As Netflix got larger, they started becoming competition. As a result, content providers started raising their price in an attempt to limit Netflix growth. However, the alternate happened, Netflix just got bigger and bigger. The problem was each time they renewed a contract, the price for the content went up, sometimes multiple times the previous contract price. Further, some providers just pulled their content outright. This is why you see things on Netflix that are only offered through DVD.
So, if Netflix can get you hooked on AD or HoCs instead of Mad Men or Breaking Bad, they suddenly have a bargaining chip. You go from a consumer of content producer products to a consumer of Netflix products, i.e. a "Netflix costumer." Once you become a Netflix costumer, Netflix gains the power to make demands in pricing negotiation, because saying no doesn't hurt Netflix, it hurts the content producer (in that their content doesn't get seen, and loses popularity). |
iTunes backup only restores standard features, you shouldn't have any significant problems restoring a jail broken phone.
Lets say 4 months from now you want to sell your phone, just go to iTunes and restore, and it will be mostly back to normal.
On occasion, there can be a rare instance where some 'left over' data can remain in your restore file (such as your battery will run down quicker, or apps will open slightly slower.) This has only happened to me once, and my 'leftover' was a beneficial tweak stayed on my unjailbroken phone, can't remember what it was though.
This can be fixed by doing a FULL restore, resetting all your setting, refilling in contacts... Etc. |
You have to experiment. Some apps will crash each other for sure, especially with all these updates about to come out. When this happens springboard (basically your iPhone UI) will boot in 'safe mode' which disables jail-broken extensions. You can then go into cydia and uninstall the suspect packages.
That being said, this safe-mode fail safe will catch 99% of the time. However, I do remember with the iOS4 jailbreak a few of the apps completely boinked my phone (stuck on apple logo or spinning circle of death). This was usually because I was trying to install heavy skin mods and/or font mods that hadn't been approved for the new OS. I was able to boot in DFU mode (easy to do, google it) and do a fresh restore though, so no worries, just make sure you have your phone backed up to iTunes so you dont lose your data.
I've really fucked around with my phone doing some JB'ing and installing skins/mods and I have yet to truly brick my phone to the point where it wouldn't turn on. I did have to make a trip to the apple store once to have them restore it using their computers, but the people working there never gave me any trouble.
The new JB's have come a long way though so you probably won't run into any trouble. Feel free to experiment around, diff combos of stuff will effect your battery life and performance in different ways. |
Thought experiment: If I ran a newspaper and used an anonymous (or at most pseudonymous) form to accept columns, and printed them the next day without looking at them (this is how webforum software works) I would be liable for the copyright infringement if I published copies of Robert Frost's poems, or for libel for the demonstrably untrue and harmful accusations I published. Whether I am running a newspaper or a webforum, I am not a packet router or other common carrier, I am publishing texts, photographs, etc. If I choose to publish everything everyone sends me, that's my fault for setting it up this way.
For an example of publisher requirements vis-a-vis defamation law:
Some choice bits:
> Editorial columns, letters to the editor, cartoons, and classified advertisements can all be found defamatory.
And:
> Another important point about publication is that “regardless of a source of a piece of information or an opinion, whoever publishes it is responsible for it. A radio station is responsible for everything that is aired by that station. A newspaper is responsible for everything that appears in its pages.”If a news source writes a defamatory story or a defamatory letter is written to the editor, “any newspaper that publishes the defamatory statements is responsible for it.” A plaintiff (person who has potentially been defamed) often has choices of whom to sue. If a defamatory story was published in a newspaper, the plaintiff may choose to sue the news service, the author of the letter, the newspaper itself, or a combination of the three. Regardless of who else is sued, if the newspaper published the defamatory material they can also be found liable. “The simple point is that anyone who publishes libelous material is legally responsible for it.”
(Now, that's a Canadian website talking about Canadian law, but similar analogues exist in US law.)
Primarily and also, there are other considerations, such as believability, whether the target is a public figure or not, etc. to weigh in the balance between free speech and, you know, death threats and career-ruining libel etc. (See Hustler Magazine v. Jerry Falwell for example.)
Anyway. It's complicated. Just because it is The Internet doesn't mean publishers lose any and all responsibilities as publishers. The DMCA actually removes some of these responsibilities by making websites etc. "common carriers" for purposes of copyright files (e.g. making them of the same category as packet routers, rather than newspapers or television stations) but it does not do this for libel, etc. |
Reading a text and believing it to be true by no means makes a person a blind follower. Taking the Bible as an example (since that's the holy text I am most familiar with), a holy text is a collection of stories, poetry, historical accounts, and idioms. The Quran would also include Hadiths, and I'm not sure about other texts. The width and depth of information is unparalleled and supports a wide range of beliefs which by necessity must be examined separately.
Some people use the Bible as a means of control. These are the kinds of people who cite Bible passages to "win" arguments, who guilt people into paying donations to save their soul, and who go to church every day because their parents told them to. These are the sheep you're referring to.
Other people use the Bible the same way they would use a textbook. To them, the Bible is a tool which can be used to gain insights about the world around them. Religion is not something that's taught in Sunday-school; it's an internal belief structure which is continually refined and adjusted.
I agree that many people fall in the first category, maybe even most people. To me, however, the numbers don't really matter. Other people believing something for the wrong reasons doesn't make it any less true (though I will grant you that it gives reason to suspect that belief).
The second category is what's important. Here I would place Aristotle, John Calvin, John Locke, C.S. Lewis, and my personal favorite, Thomas Aquinas. These are people who were deeply religious, no doubt. Yet they examined their faith, refined it, rationalized it. They approached religion the same way that contemporary scientists and philosophers approached their respective fields.
This is getting a bit long so I'll stop now. I think my point has been made. |
Apparently you didn't read the title or even look at the link. A ton of people with no followers and nonsense tweets won. |
By default, Model S charges to the STANDARD charge level, which provides the fastest charging time and maximizes the life of the Battery by charging it to less than its full capacity.
To drive as far as possible, change the charge level to MAX RANGE. Although this setting charges the Battery to full capacity, using it frequently reduces Battery life"
[Tesla Model S Owner's Guide page 17](
"Loss of Battery energy or power over time or due to or resulting from Battery usage, is NOT covered under this New Vehicle Limited Warranty"
[Tesla Model S Vehicle Warranty page 2](
Tesla owners are reporting that the supercharger rule of thumb is "you shouldn't supercharge more than 2% of the time. Apparently, that was the rule of thumb recommendation they were coached to tell customers about how often you should supercharge back then. He didn't say anything about the ramifications for exceeding 2%, and I'm sure that's a complex answer.
To paraphrase using current political jargon, it seems Tesla's verbal guidance on this subject has evolved."
[Tesla motor club forum](
So, while frequent supercharging on STANDARD MODE (reduced max range) won't noticeably hasten the degradation of the battery's capacity, any kind of frequent charging on MAX RANGE MODE to full capacity will cause degredation... and that's not covered by the battery's warranty. |
Skype isn't a peer-to-peer protocol, the server is already maintaining the session. Of course the server holds both sets of keys used to maintain the encryption. Each session probably uses a standard session encryption protocol (HTTPS, SRTP, whatever). It's "end to end" because all endpoints are encrypted relative to the server, not because there's a single secret between receiving parties the mediating server can't access. |
I think you are confusing PRISM with standard government user data requests. Google has never denied they did the latter.
Now because PRISM has hid the news and Google has been accused of giving the NSA direct access to their data Google suddenly starts to be "open and honest" about the data requests and is asking the government things they will never in a thousand years will allow those data requests to become public.
It's a smart move because, like you, a lot of people don't realise the difference between PRISM and standard data requests so they think Google is fixing PRISM. |
The author interchangeably using FTP and sFTP in the article really does underscore just how little she understands about the subject. This is also burying the needle on the bullshit detector since this is talking about (as has been previously noted by /u/Kalahan7) government user data requests, not PRISM.
It's like releasing a press statement talking about all the ways that you purchased beer from the grocery store right after you're caught with fifty kilos of heroin hidden in the panels of your truck and titling the release, "How I transported depressants." All you're doing is hoping people talking about the beer run because they don't understand the difference between beer and heroin. |
No, I don't doubt that the NSA (and every other intelligence agency in the world) saw the data harvesting opportunity that is Google and got an erection that nothing but unrestricted access to the servers would satiate, with the political response being "so long as you pinky swear to keep it super secret, we'll make it as legal as we can to start strip mining that data".
What I think Google is doing now is anything they can think of to protect their brand. They don't want people using DuckDuckGo , they don't want to lose revenue streams, and all of this is perfectly reasonable, since they are a company built for profit. This does, at the moment, however, seem to come at the expense of most people not properly understanding what Google has been complicit with. That is not in Google's best interest right now. |
The leaked PRISM slides never say that it is anything different from these companies giving the NSA account data for users they receive a court order for. |
Okay, let's just start by saying that this is an amazing product, it makes your TV a Smart TV, but this is not the point, the point is what Google plans to do with this device:
So, suppose this becomes a thing, and a lot of people have them. They are happy, they watch youtube videos on their TV, and Netflix also. But, what if they want to stream pictures from their PC's? Well, that wouldn't be so difficult, someone will obviously make an app for that. And what if you want to stream your local stored videos? Well, eventually someone will make an app for that too! Suddenly, you have a lot of apps IN your Google Chrome web browser, and all of them replace the Operative System. With this single device Google has atracted developers to make apps for his web browser, and by extension, Chrome OS .
Yes, I really think that is the point for this product, this will make you realise that you are using the browser for almost everything, so, why do you need any other OS?? And, without you noticing: BAM!! A lot of people are using Chrome OS for at least one laptop of their house.
I think this would be a really smart thing to do, thinking this is just a $35 gadget! |
I agree, but poor analogies never really help an explanation, and kind of piss me off, though they are good for making stupid people understand/nod their head once you break it down into something they can compare it to.
Trying on clothes before buying is like watching a preview, not watching an entire movie. You get a good idea of what you are going to get by trying on clothes but the whole experience? No. Sometimes it doesn't work out such as the lighting made it look nicer than it did at home, or it shrank in the wash etc. You don't get to wear the clothes out for a night before buying, but watching an entire movie beginning to end is like wearing the clothes the whole night... |
Ok, well first off: stealing is taking anything without the owners explicit permission, so you are stealing since you are taking copyrighted property without permission from the copyright holder.
Second, POTENTIAL REVENUE is sacrificed through piracy. Which means the time investment made by the artist and the capital investment made by the record company isn't fully compensated, so yes it does cost the entertainment industry when someone pirates a song.
Third: This is probably the stupidest fucking post I've ever read on the internet. Please copyright it, post in pdf format, depend on it for your livelihood, so that I can pirate it and be enough of a prick to say I'm actually promoting the entertainment industry by stealing shit online. |
If you are referring to Alexa.com rankings, those really aren't very accurate. They vastly over-represent the traffic of websites for tech-savvy crowds (and who is more tech-savvy than people who use torrents?), and vastly under-represent the traffic of any websites that draw a non-techy crowd. This occurs because they base their traffic stats on the website visits of users of their toolbar, which only tech-savvy people would be interested in downloading to begin with. |
That something "special" is in the software.
Specs and bigger screens don't mean jack without awesome software.
Unfortunately, Samsung is a Korean company, and Koreans aren't exactly knowledgable in the software sector. Have you seen their websites? Its like geocities had sex with yahoo.
In order to get that something "special" you gotta pull a a page from Apple. And that move is certainly not above you Samsung. - in that you need to pull in software and hardware under the same roof.
Microsoft is finally getting that. After this has been preached about by Apple for years. They are doing a complete structuring reshuffle to allow them to make such moves. |
small nutshell
](
I feel we're in agreement on a vast majority of the points being made but the conversation has strayed from the original discussion points. Perhaps this was my fault. Regardless this is what I was trying to say.
Someone provided information on how to destroy your device. The information was provided under false pretenses. I did not bring up the dropping issue in the nutshell because it's a side argument to the main point of the article. It's kind of irrelevant. I merely said adding more shock resistance to your machine is a good thing. So I agreed with you.
> Then the person telling you to do something is at fault. As might be the person who tries to do a thing that they've been vehemently told is not possible.
We're in agreement. I get it, you get it. People are stupid. See: [
> It's not Xbox's fault that this is "easy" to do.
We're in agreement. You would have had to look up how to enable developer console, or have intimate knowledge of how the system works. Now that people have figured it out. Perhaps they could do something to further protect the machine. "Warning! Changing this setting may cause your machine to fail!" I agree though. It's not their fault. It can be corrected though. Again, this is not the point.
I never once said anything about it being Xbox's fault. I've tried to imply it was the fault of the author of the tutorial. If anything I wrote came off as anything different I apologize for the misconceptions, it was not my intent. |
Shit article.
The only think this serves a commentary on, is that people are too fucking stupid to think for themselves. Just as bad, too lazy to check for a second source before acting.
/b/'s header since forever:
The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact. |
It's best to stay away from mainstream subreddits or threads like this on those subreddits/threads on 4chan since they've mostly turned into /r/circlejerk 2.0s. Even though the mainstream/default ones have somewhat good posts, the lesser, sometimes unknown ones are my favs since they seem to stick more to the point and usually are only comprised of them in their own threads. On 4chan, you kind of get this with the subs that are made for their own sections (my fav being /tv/), but it still has some annoying troll-like comments/threads. /b/ is beyond saving, and I bet if moot destroyed it, everyone would only flock to the next popular board, which I think is /a/.
I guess that's what kind of makes reddit a little better with being able to make your own subreddits/communities, plus on reddit the threads have more than 300/500 posts and get saved. Most troll comments (and other comments by people who are sadly mixed in with trolls who don't share the same opinion as everyone else in the thread/subreddit) get downvoted to hell so that no one except people who browse by controversial or new can see them. Just like on 4chan, those comments here get deleted if they're reported enough or are seen by moderators.
If you still can't find solace in a lesser sub and just can't deal with reddit or 4chan anymore, it's probably best to find some other community even though it kind of seems hard these days. Maybe reddit/4chan has me close-minded, but I haven't seen any other community on the Internet that matches either two. There are some forum boards here and there, but nothing as great.
- Facebook is dead since now it's just friends/strangers posting images that you've seen on reddit/4chan a week or so ago, sometimes a month. Sometimes the pages you liked on Facebook post similar meme-like images or news stories that you saw weeks ago. I've found that it's best to just use it for just catching up with your friends. To me,
- Twitter is only great for finding immediate news on something that you just heard on the news, even though reddit has that one commentor in a breaking news thread that keeps editing his comment as new stuff comes in. I like how most times they edit the comments in a way where it's timestamped. Other than that, I really see no other use for Twitter, unless you really want to find out what some person is doing at the exact time.
- YouTube is having its own issues with the whole Google+ integration. Personally, I don't have a problem with it since I had a YouTube account tied to some Google+ account that must have been made a year or so after I started my Gmail account. I kind of like the whole threading feature that they're trying to do, but it'll need some work. |
Let's say you have a PC at home, admin rights and all.
You're logged in, look around on the web.
>Wow, I can boost my computer performance by entering this in CMD!:
C:
cd windows
del system32
-Removes System32 and bricks windows-
I still can't see how you can blame Microsoft for entering those things in CMD, removing System32, even though you're the one who actually did it. |
Man, first they kill my mom's PC with that GTAV thing, and now the XBone that cost me three whole weeks of allowance? Whatta buncha assholes !" |
I retweeted it before I had a chance to finish reading the story." |
RSA is not officially an acronym but it is an initialism, whereby the definition of acronym is slowly evolving to include initialisms too. Therefore RSA is unofficially an acronym based on the pejorative definition of acronym. |
I work at the Rat Shack, I'll find out what's going on at my location in about 45 minutes....
Their main problem is that their Advertising sucks. We got a very breif surge after the superbowl ad, but that faded fast. We are basicly under orders to pitch "Wireless" (aka Cell Phones) to everyone in the door, and are in danger of getting fired if we are not consistent. The main problem with this is that almost NO ONE knows that we actually sell Cell Phones, and never come in to buy them.
(On a serious side note (not as a salesman) we are so fucking desperate to sell you a phone that we usually have more than 50 bucks off the carrier store price)
On a sad note, my store is one of the few where we actually know what the fuck we are doing, but our location is between about 3 carrier stores so we will probably get canned on this round. |
As a previous worker at Radio Shack I would like to say that your feedback is very valuable to us, just as valuable as our 2 year replacement plan for $19.99 on select items. This replacement plan doesn't have any hoops to jump through just a quick bit of information and a purchase and if that product ever breaks on you we will replace it in store with the same product. If that product is not in stock we will over night it to our store.
I also see that your purchase of an iPhone car charger would go perfect with our new Garmin Navigation system. While it may be nice to have all the functions of this device on your phone in a much more manageable and convenient way a Garmin provides more uptodate and reliable service if you get service that you won't get on a cell phone.
I think someone mentioned a Cell phone? Well we have a great line of 5 year old smart phones and now the iPhone 4 you can select from as well as a bunch of over priced pre-paid phones.
And of course if you get a phone you will want to look into screen protectors and cases that we have a lot of on our wall. So as long as you get an iPhone and don't mind rice plastic 5$ ones or tank metal 50$ ones we have the perfect selection for you! |
I completely agree. I actually remember the exact moment I decided I would never shop there again.
Years ago - I'd guess 1997 or so, I bought a couple of short TOSLink . Generic Radio Shack brand 5 foot cables cost me something like $6-$8.
A few years later (circa 1999-2000, not precisely sure) I returned to buy another TOSlink cable, remembering my previous experience. I show up and look around and all they have are these "premium brand" (i.e. something resembling Monster Cable) cables that cost $40.
I looked at the sales clerk, mouth agape. Literally, my jaw dropped and I just stared at the guy for a few seconds. I asked him what happened to the cheapie generic cables (which I still had and worked fine) and he said they discontinued them.
I said thanks, and turned around and left the store. I think I ended up buying the cable I needed online.
Of course it probably also didn't help that the first thing the clerk asked me when I walked in the store wasn't "can I help you?" but rather "who is your cell phone provider?". |
I hadn't really been to the local Radio Shack for years due to these typical stereotypes which were clearly present at the store the previous times I had gone. So I was cleaning the GPU on my video card and needed some Thermal Paste for the heat sink and I was totally expecting a blank stare from the girl behind the counter when I stopped in. I was pleasantly surprised she knew immediately what it was and that they carried it and got it for me without any hassle or divulging of my life story. Granted, price was still typical Radio Shack, but I don't know any other place I could find the paste locally on short notice. |
twenty minutes to buy a cell phone...
Maybe at walmart, usually there is a monster amount of time involved, there are credit checks, there are calls to the carrier for weird reasons, you have to transfer contacts from some antique pos, not to mention the sale itself. |
I worked at RadioShack for years and I have to defend some of the salespeople who work there because there are some people who still enjoy the electronics and I can tell you, it sucks for them too.
Sales for EACH employee are tracked, they have to login to use the cashier. It tracks a daily, weekly and monthly record, that shows
overall $/hr sold,
accessories sold
# of post-paid,
# of prepaid phones sold
etc.
People who achieve a certain quota (35$/hr, 5 wireless phones, etc.) they receive a bonus at the end of the month. Managers use this to compare employees to each other, and District Managers use this to compare branches. A spreadsheet shows which stores are selling great and which stores suck. Another spreadsheet shows which employees are selling great and which ones suck.
What does this mean?
It means everyone's competing against each other.
Branches would often hoard hot sellers like Iphones and Galaxy phones, making the customer come to their store instead of transferring the item to a different one. Meaning the customer has to play musical chairs.
Employees also compete against each other for more working hours. Managers are given an hour budget, to distribute throughout the week to their employees. It's common for managers to assign more working hours to better sellers. This results in a sub-culture where employees often steal or "shark" sales from each other in order to look better in the metrics.
This is why district managers pressure branch managers, who in-turn pressure the salespeople to sell the bullshit accessories that you don't need.
My personal experience is that I worked in a store that didn't get heavy traffic. It just so happens that some stores are unfortunate enough to be within a 1 mile radius of a BestBuy, Target and another RadioShack. Whenever the spreadsheet is publicized, my store was always near the bottom.
So, my manger was very much a dick, but to be fair, he was under pressure as well. He would use sales to determine who gets the most hours, one coworker of mine getting as little as 8 hours a week, while high sellers receive 30-39 hours. It was never 40 hours because that would mean full-time employment, benefits and severance. I can't speak for my coworkers, but when I didn't sell well my manager says he would "promote me to a customer," a euphemism for I'll fire you.
You might wonder why some people deal with it, well, I've had coworkers who lived paycheck-to-paycheck and some who are college students with bills to pay and unfortunately they all have to kill that virtuous part of themselves and up-sell that sweet, old lady so they can afford food, rent and gas.
Ironically, the people who give zero fucks, who aren't perky and cheerful are the ones who quit the game and don't want to up-sell anymore. |
I worked at CC 2002-2005, was only on commission for maybe 6 months while I was there. Worked at Fry's for about a year after that, who still has commissioned sales people. Both places I worked in PC sales, PDAs/cell phones, and every now and then would cover for someone in TVs/Camcorders/Cameras, so basically everywhere except home theater/car audio/home appliances.
I will say that the commissioned sales people definitely knew their stuff; but some, not all, but some would basically tell a customer all kinds of bullshit just to make a sale. Extended service plans were also a huge source of commission for them, something like 25-30% commission, so again they'd make up all kinds of things to convince a customer to buy one. There were people at the CC store I worked at making $40+/hr and those tended to be the people who would basically con customers. Managers knew about it but didn't really do anything because those guys pushed out volume for the store.
Here's an example of one of the more ridiculous pitches I saw one of the high pay sales people make. While I was in training I was basically shadowing one of the sales reps in PCs and he was helping a woman looking to buy a relatively inexpensive desktop computer for her and her elementary school aged son. She was interested in an eMachine system that was about $500 after rebates for a complete system, fairly good deal for the components at the time.
Anyways, the sales guy knows he has the sale but then goes in to pitch the 4yr extended service plan. He tells her that eMachines are manufactured in South Korea (not totally inaccurate, company was based in California but backed by a South Korean company). He tells her that if service is ever needed on the computer it'd have to be shipped to South Korea by a Jaboo freighter, and that the warranty that comes from the manufacturer goes through a service center in California that only has one Jaboo freighter making shipments to South Korea about once a month, so she'd likely have to wait 2-3 months total if she ever needed the PC serviced by them. However, Circuit City's service contracts are handled by GE who has- he looked over to me at this point, saying "You just went through the training materials, like what, over a dozen Jaboo freighters?" Making almost daily shipments so at most she'd only have to wait a week if she gets our service plan.
I just kind of stood there speechless, trying to hide the fact that this guy was just spouting total BS, I think I kind of just nodded a little.
I swear that's what he told this lady, and she bought it. She paid another $150 for the 4 year service plan based on a totally fabricated and ridiculous story about Jaboo freighters...and that put $50 in his pocket. |
You have failed to take into account the reality of the whole situation that has led to the current paradigms within gaming.
DirectX was perpetuated mostly because Microsoft Windows was the choice platform due to ease of use.
Linux and Mac are capable of being gaming platforms as well, but often lack the game choices, which makes Windows, again, the preferred platform.
Video Card manufacturers cater to their consumers' needs, and saw that a majority of their target consumers used windows, and thus, more Windows support for video cards, which again, perpetuated the continuation of DX and catering to its needs.
Now enter the mobile game market that rose as a result of Unix based architectures running OpenGL (iOS and Android), which made a killing on games. These games ranged from visually stunning to something a 5 year old would make.
This type of disruptive addition caught the eye of Valve, which started encouraging developers to cater to multiple OS types. This was obviously so much of a success that they hypothesized that something like SteamOS would be consumed by the masses.
This led to AMD and NVidia both pledging much more support and functionality for OpenGL. That means more video cards are going to be supported by all sorts of Linux flavors in the near future.
You also have Android OS making huge strides in its use by the general masses. Computer manufacturers are starting to sell computers with Dual-boot between windows and android.
Beyond that, after Snowden revealed the awesomeness of governments using Microsoft services or products to spy on their customers is not working in the favor of Windows or XBOX One.
Face that in comparison to so many wrong assumptions that Microsoft has made, and the products that resulted from those assumptions. Windows 8 is considered a flop to almost anyone I talk to, and the only people that use it do so because it "came with the computer".
In short, the market desires are changing in the favor of open platforms that are standardized and easy to modify or contribute to. I find more often than not, the people that are still saying "Microsoft success" fail to take into account trends over time and are usually people that have mainly been exposed to only Windows in the realm of OSes. Microsoft is or will be on a steady decline if they continue to misread their target consumers. Microsoft is or will be on a steady decline if they continue their current path. It isn't because they're BAD, it's because the other guys are finally becoming BETTER. |
the issue is the cost of the DMR and the inconvenience you pose to already paying customers.
some people steal that is a fact of life. anyone that tries to totally prevent anything from being stolen is going to waist a large amount of time/ money and piss off their paying customers. at some point it becomes cheaper to accept that you are going to lose X % to theft because the cost of anti-theft measures/ lost sales from anti-theft measures become greater than the value of the items being stolen.
there is also the issue on competition.
from a consumers perspective, I want the best item at the cheapest price possible, so I will go to who ever does so. be it illegal in the eyes of the law or not.
from a business point, most business go for maximizing their profit, which can mean charging more for less service/product. be it illegal in the eyes of the law or not.
having piracy puts pressure on business to keep them from raising rates or diminishing quality/service to increase profits. a business (if they can afford the cost) should be able to offer the product/service at least slightly better than the pirated content, while making the cost low enough that it is at least less than the potential dangers and cost of pirating said item. |
As a side note: I bought 10-dollar software in a used bookstore designed for windows 95/98. It runs on my windows 8 pc (although it crashes occasionally, but it is to be expected...), although I had to cheat a bit with the executable because the installer was 16 bit, and I run 64. |
Haha yah I was about to make one-but I figured I had better check every single comment first, because it would just be impossible that someone hadn't already done it. |
That having a refresh rate of 240fps isn't useful and that through other technologies (eye tracking?) you could probably lower the processing requirements and attain better video quality. |
As a guy on other side of world any |
I'm not sure google is the good guy. I love the company, and yes, they are forcing ISP's to become more competative by setting up shop with fiber optics in multiple cities. That's great! But they're buying up a lot of technology, applications, and services. What keeps them honest when they have no competition of their own? Are they actually on the side of the people, or simply serving their own best interests- which just so happens to serve the people right now. |
Well i can only assume that the rest of the world would see it as America trying to cover up all the misdeeds that they have been doing to the rest of us by killing him. Also, it reminds me heavily of how WWI started. Sure he's not a duke, like Franz Ferdinand was, but he get's just about as much attention as him, and if anyone being killed could start WWIII, i think it might be Snowden. He might be seen as a traitor by some, but the rest of us like him, because he had the balls to stand up to America in the first place, even if he ran away, which any smart person would do after what he did. I don't hate Obama, if anything he is one of the American's better choices of presidents as of late. However, one would be horribly mistaken to think that it is out of the power of the President to just order him dead because he's a trouble maker for the government. Nothing has stopped him from taking down enemies of the state that were actually innocent before with drones. What would stop him now.
Also, we are reaching a technological peak. Every time this happens we seem to have a large war follow up as well. The Industrial age was one, and we had WWI, and the same with leading into the Atomic age, with WWII. Now we are getting into what some might call our computer age, and i wouldn't be surprised to see WWIII follow up real close as well.
To put it simply, we are overdue for another World war. It may seem wrong to think that we could be overdue, as who would want one to happen. Just take a look at our population world wide, and ask yourself, what is the easiest way to reduce that population. So far it has been World War's and Pandemics.
Finally, America again, has been doing a lot to piss a lot of people off, aside from all of what was brought out in the open by Snowden. Russia has been getting ornery with the states for a while. Canada, isn't a big fan either. Our government might be a bunch of shoe lickers as of late, but the rest of us know what's really going on. Britain has been pissing off people too. IF i were to try to predict who will be fighting who, it's probably going to be America and Britain against Russia and China whoever else jumps in. France will be in there likely, India, Australia and Japan. Germany is as of right now trying to reduce their military influence in the world for more of what used to be Canada's domain in the peace keeping area's and human rights (LoL). While we also have all the smaller players in between. Russia's latest power grab says to me, and i bet a lot of others, that they are gearing up for something big. Something World War big. |
I understand the point you're trying to make being that my professional background is in network security and pretty much feel the same way too, but I'm curious as to what you'd describe the DoS as? Just a net attack?
While it isn't gaining access through a backdoor or installing some kind of script, it is utilizing the rules of networking to their advantage in order to accomplish the denial of service, which is indeed a "hack" in the truest sense of the meaning.
All these different attacks and infiltration methods usually end up getting attributed to the lone term "hacking" and it's facepalm worthy. |
I have them, and their network is super reliable in areas that have been expanded to HSPA+42 or LTE . Areas still running HSPA+21 tend to suffer from saturation issues during the day, but it's still usable as long as you aren't trying to stream Spotify on Extreme Quality. Less than HSPA (which includes UMTS (displays as 3G), EDGE (displays as E), and GPRS (displays as G)) and you may as well not even try with data. Voice and data work perfectly fine though. I have LTE most places I actually use data, and the only patch where I don't have service at all is one where I didn't even have service with Verizon. I've always been able to make calls if needed.
Also, areas that don't have LTE yet are being expanded directly to LTE (skipping HSPA in areas where it wasn't rolled out). So by mid-2015 (projected) everywhere that shows up as "3G", "E" or "G" on your device should have LTE coverage. Remaining HSPA+21 and +42 cities will bring up the rear in their LTE rollout. By the end of next year they intend to have LTE available everywhere they have coverage. |
I picked up a T-Mobile phone to test out with my end users at work since their pricing was so much better and they offer unlimited talk, text and web. We currently use AT&T and our international charges are outrageous [(check out their latest rates)]( so I picked up a T-Mobile phone to test out their international data plans.
They're pushing their "unlimited free domestic and international data" - what they don't tell you is that they allow you 1 GB of 4G data domestically, and when you hit that cap, they throttle you down to 2G data. The unlimited international data is also 2G, unless you pay extra for a 4G international data plan. I was told that the 2G data is perfect for casual data usage, like email and web browsing, but not good for streaming music, video, etc.
I gave the phone to an end user who was traveling through Europe (London, France) and then Australia. He emailed me about 4 days in and told me that the international 2G data service was atrocious, and he couldn't do a goddamn thing with it. Websites wouldn't load, emails wouldn't download. I then tacked on the 4G data plan for him, and he said it was still atrocious, and that his AT&T phone was much faster performing the same tasks. |
Woot lost all of the appeal that made it what it was. It once sold unwanted semi-obscure products at dirt cheap prices. Now it sells common items at sale prices or refurbished items at refurbished item prices. I think all successful businesses do this over time. Zappos sells fucking knives and everything else. Overstock once sold surplus goods for cheap, now sells normal goods and doesn't beat anyone on prices. |
It's a risk free way to not only test the market to see if your idea is viable, but to also infuse it with capital. It eliminates the need for a loan, which cuts out the blood sucking middle - man banks, and passes on fewer costs to the consumer. It's a win-win.
Anyone who complains about kickstarter is an idiot. It connects buyers and sellers directly. Eventually, it would be nice if a crowd - investment platform were built, so investors can be directly connected with companies, but that isn't what kickstarter is. Kickstarter is just an extremely efficient Econ 101 style supply and demand type marketplace. |
I actually dont mind too much. Of course many companies/groups have and can abuse the system and people will back things unnecessarily, but the lack of equity sometimes is a worthy sacrafice to these small time backers who in return get to have a thing they want to actually exist. For many of these projects the idea thinker will never manage to get venture capatalists, investors, loan officers lined up to back a venture because they themselves are business men. They want to back things that have the most chance of making the most money. They want mainstream products or highly profitable ones. They wont be backing niche items with minimal market and thin potential margains. For the small time people backing this, its not like they could have ever had the wealth to be a real investor in a company. You're chipping in an extra 50,100 bucks at a product. Youre not going to create many companies setting yourself up as an angel investor willing to put in a whopping 100 bucks.
So all of us little guys,if we want to think of ourselves as investors, we wouldnt back these things either. But as consumers, we are saying, I want this to exist. I will pay to prop up the company for my niche desire, and to be run at whatever thin margin is possible is required to get that product in to my hands. They arent worried about longterm longevity or board members or becoming as huge of a company as possible. They just want their doodad to exist, and are willing to pay to make it happen.
I think for many things it makes great sense. Even this one. The creator of woot sold his company, made his money, got what he wanted from it. People still want woot, or a knock off woot of the original principles that will likely not be as profitable as the one google has its hands on now is or will be. So they pay for it to exist once more. VCs probably wouldnt back it, and the inventor has done it already so why risk doing it again and making little, no, or negative money.
It works for me, if someone wants something niche to exist, and is super gung ho about it....pay for it. |
Well that's not necessarily true. It depends on the business. I have a well to do friend who started a company with his brother. They made a kickstarter and raised hella money, but he still throws in 5 figures a month because kickstarter won't cover all their costs...
(They deal in textiles though so there's actual product involved. ) |
Because it is misleading. The research talked about it as a technical "back door" (has always written it like that, too). He never said it was an NSA backdoor or anything like that. Just that Apple left a "back door/door in the back" in its system, to do certain things (like say for enterprise customers), and that it was needlessly on on 600 million devices, which he found very strange . For example, Cisco having remote access (which they claim they have removed now) to every single one of their routers is also technically a back door.
So some parts of the media did run with it as an NSA backdoor, and that part may not be completely accurate, but on the other hand, Zdnet and others who now say "Ha. It wasn't a backdoor...nothing to worry about folks! - are also very misleading and very wrong. |
Okay, that's fine. Let's look at "the system" first then.
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals and research, as a researcher at Harvard, Aaron had the rights to access JSTOR. As a guest at MIT he also was on a network which had the rights (MIT allows access to it's openCampus members).
That's pretty simple, he had the rights to access the database and was accessing it though an approved network. Let's look in to details though because that's where the devil is
Here is what Aaron did.
He hooked up his laptop (with legal credentials) to a MIT controlled-access router closet and downloaded around 70gb of that data. Aaron was a believer of information freedom and due to the fact that academic journals are (at best) in a confused copyright position he was probably willing to roll the dice on releasing this information, as he had done before with the library of congress. He was trying to exploit existing holes in the system to expose it's flaws. He was doing this as part of that system. It is very important to note that he had not released any data at the time of his arrest
The response, well that's a long timeline
He was arrested by MIT police and the Secret Service in January of 2011 and charged with 2 counts of breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony. Now to be fair to the police here, the closet was a controlled access area and Aaron should not have been in there. According to reports, the closet was left unlocked.
Aaron and JSTOR agreed that he gave them the data and they would not pursue it further and MIT agreed they would not continue to press charges if this happened. That should have been the end of it, He had legal access to the data and he had legal access to MIT (except for the closet), he did not disseminate the data and it was his laptop that was used.
In July 2011 Aaron was then indicted by a grand jury wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
In September 2011 Aaron was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny and unauthorized access to a computer network.
In December 2011 the original charges of breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony were dropped.
In March 2012 (over a year now since his arrest) the state charges were dropped, a spokesperson said that this was done to allow the federal prosecution to proceed.
In September 2012, federal prosecutors added nine more felony counts, which increased which meant that he was facing 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines.
At this point it's worth remembering that the "victims" of Aarons crimes were MIT and JSTOR and they were not willing to press charges.
Now we are off to the races though, because prosecution did what prosecution does, they tried to indict him on some shaky grounds but relied on the fact that the defendant was not willing to fight this sort of prosecution at a federal level.
I would now like to quote the wiki article
>During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected that deal, opting instead for a trial in which prosecutors would have been forced to justify their pursuit of Swartz
Ahhhh shit, the fight is on now. It is unlikely that the prosecution were going to succeed (I'm not an expert but most experts in the law think this would be the case. Here is what John Dean
By January 2013 Aaron had still not gone to trial but he had been dealing with the repercussions of his arrest for over 2 years.
Aaron took his own life 2 years and 5 days after his arrest, the fight had just been litigated out of him
America might not be a 3rd world dictatorship, however it's amazing the right to a speedy and fair trial were not afforded to Aaron. |
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