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I would tend to disagree. On one hand they are both motivated solely by profit, but Netflix makes that profit by offering high quality innovative services in a competitive market, whereas Comcast's only strategy is to offer old services and bribe corrupt officials to enforce their monopoly. Fun fact, many cities already have public fiber optic networks in place, and Comcast/Time Warner has successfully lobbied to get the local governments to deny access to these services, ironically under fair competition laws that prevent the government from competing with corporations in certain markets. Also, most of those wires were paid for with public taxpayer dollars. So on one hand we have a corporation that wants to make money by offering something of value, and on the other hand a corporation that wants to make money by using political corruption to cheat, bribe, and steal. Netflix may be no angel but they are far from the monster that is Comcast, who belongs in the bottom of the scum bucket right next to patent trolls and predatory lenders. |
I have read your link, and still don't understand what you are claiming. From everything I have read, upgrading the connection at the peering sites is trivial. Cogent AND Level 3 have agreed to do this. Level 3 posted extensively about doing this. The cost is not an issue, the issue is that Comcast said No. (Lets not go into all the money Comcast got from various governments to help build its last mile network in the first place and how it got agreements to make itself a legal monopoly)
Now, Cogent and Level 3 to a large extent ARE the internet, they are some of the companies that lay the connections between continents, across the country, etc, this is not a matter of them needing to upgrade their networks, they can handle the traffic fine. Its not even a matter of Comcast needing to upgrade its internal network. Its simply a matter of adding more ports on the specialty routers that connect Comcast's network to the rest of the internet. aka Peering.
Comcast just wants money for this, because it can. New revenue stream, must mine it for all its worth. The article you linked makes it seem like this was a no brainer and Netflix is cool with it. Netflix is NOT cool with it. Level 3 and Cogent are not cool with it, but because they are the only high speed last mile access to millions of customers, Netflix will pay. As a Comcast customer, if I EVER have an alternative to Comcast with high speed internet access, that will be a happy day. |
What? Have you ever looked at your electric bill? It's divided into transmission charges and generation charges.
There might not be generation costs associated with digital data, but there are huge transmission costs associated with building and maintaining networks.
The internet needs to be billed and regulated like every other utility. Content providers should NOT be allowed to be transmitters/distributors.
Rates per GB should be based on the actual cost to provide the network/service, and should be affordable. I'm talking like cents per GB.
Right now I pay $100 a month for 20gb of data from Verizon. Fuck them. |
You may never read this because I am a bit late for the party..... but, you are completely right. As a child we flew on my grandfather's Cessna everywhere we went, and he had a smaller jet for himself personally, also a Cessna, or when he was in town we flew in a helicopter for short distances. As he got older he ended up selling both of them because he no longer travels much at 85. When he wanted to give my mother the jets and helicopter my mother decided she did not want to pay for the upkeep (captain/fuel/maintenence etc.). She decided to get herself, her children (me), and all her nieces and nephews, one of those United credit cards on trust. We have all used them so much that we always are able to fly wherever we want, first class, free of charge and have been able to since about a year after receiving the cards. The convenience of not having to manage dates around when someone else wasn't using the jets is a huge pro to not having them. My grandfather though, even at age 85, refuses to fly commercial and pays to fly private whenever he goes somewhere. He also cannot fly commercial due to medical issues where he may need to land at any moment.
EDIT/ |
Only if you don't count how they get their power (and why wouldn't you?). Central heating systems run on gas or oil directly. Space heaters use electricity from the electric grid. Efficiency is lost through the power lines between you and the power station. |
Funnily enough the Libs wanted to make nuclear weapons back in the 70's. We had the designs and theory from the Brits when we let them detonate nukes at Woomera. When it came to building Australia's first nuclear power plant a change of government came through (now Labor) and nixed the power plant since we were going to use it to breed the necessary plutonium to make a bomb. |
tl;wr , if you don't shave a lot look into dollar shave club. The didn't options 1$,6$,12$ a month. 6$ ones are decent ^^^^message-me-if-you-want-to-giveme-referals-pls-sorry
I do dollar shave club now... I always want to post a refferal link to get me a free month but...
For me it works out though. I'm not working and I do classes online. So o get a bit scruffy. I last shaved the day before thanksgiving and just shaved today. I got decemebers razors in the mail today as well. Still have one left over from November. While they aren't the best razors, I do recommend them for the younger crowd.I do the six dollar a month option.I want to say they work and feel like Gillette fusion Proglides but aren't crazy money . |
People blamed the machies for crappy coffee and not the crappy coffee.
Then people are dumb. This is why they ship most every machine with a variety pack of coffee that they have selected to showcase the system. Your first six or so cups ought to be an example of the best coffee this fucking machine can make. Then when a customer cheaps out and buys shitty store-brand coffee and suddenly it tastes like refried ass, "oh there must be something wrong with my machine"?? Is the average person this stupid? No. This "DRM" is 100% corporate greed. |
Keurig and similar machines piss me off. They create all kinds of plastic waste and the coffee is garbage. If you spend the same money on a simple pour-over setup you can afford to buy the high quality locally roasted beans from the nearby hipster coffee joint and make way better coffee. And you can use the grounds and filter as compost and have virtually no waste on your end. |
You probably wouldn't survive.
These days people are driving faster than ever.
The insane amount of safety technology in cars is what makes them so expensive.
Did you know that in newer cars, in a front-on collision the engine is designed to slide beneath the passenger compartment?
That shit costs money to develop. |
Yeah but it's actually the aggressive capitalistic American way. When you run out of ideas for profits, you have to cut into services. Privately owned companies don't have this pressure and generally keep their product awesome and have much better customer service. |
25Mbps/3Mbps isn't necessary to meet the legal definition of "high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology"
Simple fix. Have the cable providers show the bandwidth required to send HD (and/or 4K) stream to the edge. I would think a 1080p ESPN stream on the providers edge is at least 15Mbps or so. I am not sure what a 4k stream would be but that should be the minimum standard to be considered broadband. Anything less should be considered a net neutrality issue with the provider intentionally degrading service to make their streams look better.
Everyone keeps ignoring that this should be the speed for the foreseeable future not just for right now. I honestly think that no matter what was given as a speed, the industry is going to cry foul. I also honestly think we are selling ourselves way short arguing that it should be 25/3. The technology is already there to blow this out of the water. Yes, it requires the service providers to upgrade infrastructure to accommodate the new speeds but isn't that something that should have been done a long time ago and in a lot of cases has been bought and paid for time over time already? The only reason it hasn't happened is due to the lack of competition, corruption, and the money flowing into the politics. |
Exiting out of any app does not necessarily end the process (which drains battery)
My understanding is that this isn't true.
Or rather, it is true that exiting out of any app does not necessarily end the process, but not that this drains the battery. To my understanding, background activities do not drain battery, since they are not allocated any CPU time. They do take up memory, but this is automatically reaped (and the activity shut down) by the system if it needs the memory. So there's no point in killing activities manually.
Services , on the other hand, do run in the background and can drain battery. They are explicitly separated from activities, though: a service doesn't display any user interface. And since their entire purpose is to do work in the background, if you'd prefer not to have the work done (in favour of more battery life), there's usually a better way of turning off that service (e.g. you can disable background sync in settings) than killing it with a task manager. |
It's not as much "hard" to use as it is annoying.
For example, i use my iPhone for reading a lot, so the brightness matters a lot to me and I tend to want to move it slightly up and down depending on the ambient light (the auto brightness is not sensitive enough for prolonged reading)
Without jailbreak, this means I've to 1) press home once to exit the ebook apps 2) press home again to get to the first page of the spring board 3) press settings > brightness > change the settings 4) go back to home and start the app again 5) wait ~20s for the book to load
With jailbreak, this means 1) quick swipe at the status bar 2) press brightness icon, which immediately brings up a slider, change it 3) press the (x) icon. immediately back to reading.
And when I first load a book, while waiting for it to load, I can switch to a different app, do something else for a min or so, and switch back with my book ready to read. I can also go and check reddit, RSS feed, browse my music library a bit, start a download, etc anytime I want, and switch back to reading without having to wait for the book to load again. |
I tried doing this in the early 2002 when the only good standard was 802.11b (802.11a existed, but range was too short for our purposes)
The big problems we encountered were:
Sparse availability of wireless routers except in large cities -- this is no longer a barrier except in rural areas
Huge latency -- This is what ultimately killed it. From google to your desktop, there may be 6 to 10 hops already today: router,provider switch,backbone,another backbone,switch, destination. Getting a page from jumping over 802.11b can take over a hundered jumps just to get across town! that's ten seconds before google's page shows up
Unreliable nodes -- unlike your internet provider's infrastructure, which is designed to be up all the time and can handle large loads and has loads of memory, a random linksys switch is fairly unreliable.
Unreliable medium -- things like weather can impact the viability of the network
Still need wires between cities and across continents
All in all the intention is good and this can be made workable. The latency issue can be worked out if we could use HAM radio to bounce signals off the ionosphere (this has been done for decades already). There will still be a few seconds between a click and a page load, but the benefit of not having to be held hostage to government or ISPs may be worth the effort. |
Follow the link to the originator and he admits that his initial conclusion that IE is doing nothing shady is wrong.
Quotes pulled from the hacker news site :
>By returning immediately out of the loop, Chrome's time drops by a factor of 12.1, whereas IE's stays pretty much constant.
>I suspect what's happening here is that the IE engine is somehow marking that entire function as deadcode, and thus, not running it; the ~10ms accounts for the time it takes to run that for loop 250k times, but the cordicsincos() code is not being run at all. Ironically, deadcode somewhere in the function causes the engine to NOT throw it all away, and its gets run.
>What I suspect is that the IE engine is seeing "Okay, nothing is returned, and nothing outside of the scope of this function is ever altered", so once it steps into it, it just immediately returns. This is arguably correct behavior! That code is, for all practical purposes, worthless.
>If we just move one of the variable references out of function scope (or just remove the var, making it effectively a global variable), IE takes the extra time to run
>Sorry, guys. I like a good IE bash-fest (Hey, it's still slower than V8 when it actually runs the code!) as much as anyone, but I think it's legit here. The benchmark is poorly-conceived, and IE does the right thing with it, though it obviously distorts the scores in their favor. That's a problem with the benchmark, though, not IE.
Then come the edits.
>Edit (like...#14): It could well just be cheating on analysis in this particular case, which I stupidly overlooked. For example, this diff:
> "code and shit you can look at your self on the original site"
>Results in runtimes of:
> Chrome: 246.8ms
> IE: 956.5ms
>Replacing the for with a while also results in long runtimes
>So, my initial conclusions were wrong. Its dead code analysis is either incredibly narrow, or it was hand-crafted to optimize out that part of the benchmark. Either way it's rubbish.
>Edit (yet again): My initial conclusions were wrong, and it's nearly certainly cheating. Dammit. I hate being wrong in front of people smarter than me. :< |
Cool bookmarklet. Still |
This gives them a strong incentive to make sure consumers get their phone from Google.
What incentive do they have to buy the phone from Google? Software? It is likely plain Android someone desiring HTC likely wants Sense. Hardware? Any company can put out an incredibly powerful phone. i.e. HTC Evo 3D yet weres the Moto 3D? |
But the reason MS paid the for Skype, let's remember, is that they had Billions offshore(like every big corp) and since skype was a European company they could use that money without repatriating it back into the US, and thus getting taxed. Hooray global capitalism! |
I will support this, if you'll agree to let those of us with a sense of direction and a love of cars to keep ours "manual". |
Cool, you're better at finding things on the internet than Metal_Mike, please be more condescending about it next time (After Mike already posted the relevant video; considerably narrowing the search down for you).
Also, thank you for finding a higher quality video than the other one. I was sure to click your link over Mike's, because a higher quality video is always cool, but I mean, you act like Mike's was filmed from [a shaky ass camera phone held up by someone pretending it was a lighter who accidentally pressed play at a music festival.](
Basically, you sound like a kid whining about something being showed to you in regular definition instead of high definition , I mean, I heard the same jokes from Mike's post (I just had to press fn+ a couple times.... it was horrifying), I just didn't hear the tickle in Patton Oswalt's throat at the time, and it wasn't quite the end of the world.
That said, again, thank you sir for posting the video in higher quality, but you don't have to be a douche about it just to make a snarky, yet ultimately unfunny, and facetious comment. When you could have said something like "[Now in technicolor!]( Or even just, [Higher quality video!]
Fortunately, Neil Young is right (As he always is, even when he decided to do all that coke before the Last Waltz , if you'd heard AM radio ever, you'd realize that even the shittiest quality videos on the internet are still better than the radio these days. |
please read what I wrote earlier it was never interested in granting copyright protection to authors of works - what is called droit d’auteur or "writer's right" which cannot be transferred - but have instead concentrated on granting commercial monopolies or "copyrights" to performances or "fixations" of a work...
In the interests of encouraging literacy, the rest of the world adopted the French model, abolishing the exclusive license and granting each man his copy - whereas the fledgling American nation favoured a nationalistic, protectionist approach, enshrining laws to protect the wages of the nation's printers instead - so your typical British publisher wanted to protect his copyrights (which he bought from budding young authors such as Charles Dickens) to keep his business competitive with piratical, protectionist Yankee publishers, while the average British author desired to have his or her natural right in intellectual property acknowledged the world over.
Denmark, Prussia, England, France, and Belgium all had laws respecting the rights of foreign authors. By 1850, only the US, Russia and the Ottoman Empire refused to recognize international copyright.
The advantages of this policy to the US were quite significant: they had a public hungry for books, and a publishing industry happy to publish them. And a ready supply was available from England. Publishing in the US was virtually a no-risk enterprise: whatever sold well in England was likely to do well in the US.
American publishers paid agents in England to acquire popular works, which were then rushed to the US and set in type. Competition was intense, and the first to publish had an advantage of only days before they themselves were subject to copying. Intense competition leads to low prices. In 1843 Dickens's Christmas Carol sold for six cents in the US and $2.50 in England.
so... |
Found a brand-new Blackberry in a park once. Had to fiddle with it 10 times just to find how to call someone that looked like they might be the owner. Ended up finding the owner through her friend and gave it back. |
I would completely disagree with you, some of the best social criticism comes from comedians. They give us painful truths but with a spoonful of sugar. George Carlin was the master. Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, the list goes on and on. They have more relevant and accurate things to say than serious journalists and politicians. |
That's a bingo...](
>NEW YORK (MainStreet) – Today Google (Stock Quote: GOOG) released its Zeitgeist 2011 report, which tracks the hottest searches of the year. And when we say “hottest,” we don’t mean the things people searched for the most. Rather, Google likes to track the “fastest rising” search terms – those that saw the biggest leap in popularity over the previous year.
>That explains why the fastest-rising search in the U.S. in 2011 was Rebecca Black, the viral video star who was unknown until her music video, “Friday,” exploded on YouTube in spring 2011. She ranked just ahead of Google’s own Google+ service, the Facebook competitor that launched in the fall. And Osama Bin Laden was also one of the fastest-rising terms in 2011, after his death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALS suddenly made him a topic of conversation again. We’re guessing people won’t be talking about him too much going forward. |
I'm not saying that economies are complicated, move along. I'm saying that economies are complicated, and the way to understand them is not by comparing them to something like a business or a household that is at much higher risk of insolvency. It's like when that politician talked about the internet as a "series of tubes" or whatever - it's a shitty analogy that only serves to misinform people about the internet's nature. Pointing out that it's a shitty analogy isn't saying "the internet is complicated, move along," it's saying that by thinking of the internet as a series of tubes, while it sounds intuitively appealing, you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the internet. So, too, with the U.S. deficit.
If the country were going bankrupt, other countries would be dumping the dollar as their reserve currency as fast as possible, and the money loaned out by the Treasury would not be loaned out at a roughly 0% edit: negative real interest rate.
The country isn't going bankrupt. Our budget is dangerously imbalanced in the long term, but that has little (if anything) to do with the short term stimulus money spent by the Obama administration, and even less to do with the miniscule amount of money spent on scientific research by the government.
And the regressive social scheme (at least as I would define it) is the platform of one of the two major parties in the country (and is increasingly becoming an accepted part of the other party's platform as well).
edit - the true |
I really think this is a huge step to bring manufacturing back into the US. In any scenario you run, it's always more cost-effective to offshore your manufacturing labor except for one case-- when you have a process that requires a heavy tacit knowledge of the production process. This knowledge can be craftsmanship (expert tailors, other experts in hand-crafted goods), or this tacit knowledge can come from the iterative process of inventing and coming up with a production process for a new technology. People bitch and moan about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. Well, it just won't work to pay uneducated manufacturing workers 5 times the cheapest labor from another country.
The significance of this article has less relevance to society with respect to 3D printing than it does with the proper roll-out of high tech innovations. New tech needs to be manufactured near the universities that helped develop those technologies, and people who will work on the manufacturing floor need to be educated enough to work the line and give relevant feedback to the inventors. |
Ok, I keep reading and commenting on this thread. I think I know where people's heads are at. Most people are thinking:
Government spending in the manufacturing realm is unfair. Winners are being picked, and competition is no longer equal, allowing only some to flourish.
This mindset would be OK if you only think about competition within the US, and that universities and private companies are separate entities, and have little to do with each other. Well guess what. Other governments are throwing money at their manufacturing to ensure their long-term growth. Not only that, but companies are also willing to relocate to these other countries because of cheap labor. So the game of capitalism in the manufacturing realm is already stacked for other countries than the US to win.
Here's where NAMII helps: It is difficult to teach things that require experience (tacit knowledge) on the manufacturing line to people who are thousands of miles away. Production experience is needed in most high-tech productions to ensure a productive line, and usually this experience comes from university resources. Therefore it is costly for businesses to relocate their high-tech production lines.
Companies have R&D departments, but extrinsic motivations in the realm of academia/R&D tend to hinder innovation. Also, research universities have tons of IP, but not always the business sense/adjacency to know which ones are profitable. Communication between universities and companies are difficult to maintain since goals rarely align. Government funding and agencies are trying to attract companies and universities to a common innovation economy to foster this communication and increase innovation. This is most effective at a state level, since these innovation economies are reliant on geographic adjacency (think Silicon Valley). |
What the hell do you think the news in the media about people using 3d printers to print off guns
I think this is newsworthy because it interests people, and there is no hidden agenda. 3D printing is like the DYI movement, people will push the technology in all areas to see what is possible. Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for someone to suggest printing a gun.
No amount of hyping and scare tactics will stop 3D printing. It has the capability of revolutionizing almost every industry, and cannot be blocked. Once the tech is developed it's also going to be practically free to use and 3D printers themselves won't be that expensive to build. This is a recipe for ubiquity. |
Public funding can be an effective way to start the momentum behind a good technology. If R&D costs are high and initial scales of production are too low to yield a profit, private investors aren't going to invest in the technology.
Take solar panel technologies as an example. The efficiency of both photovoltaic and concentration technologies are increasing dramatically, but (arguably) the technologies are not profitable at the moment. But, thanks to forward-thinking private businesses and public funding, solar power appears to be approaching a critical point of profitability.
Private investment often is targeted to much shorter-term gains than public investment. Public funding can move industries and technologies out of one local maximum of efficiency into another local maximum of greater efficiency.
The US government, for example, is a much more powerful investor than any individual company. It's power of purchasing and the sheer size of its pocket book allows for very effective investments in industries and technologies which have too great of a risk for private investors. |
Or is the competition finall able to catch up. It's hard to measure, a large part of he smart phone market opened up because of the iPhone. A lot of people who got in on Andeoid wanted an iPhone but were carrier locked. I would say its a fairly even pissong match between Android and iPhone now in terms of quality, but people like me whose first smart phone was an iPhone have grown to like it and would rather upgrade than go to a new platform and start over. I was eager to hear about the iPhone 5 launch and have been waiting to upgrade. My first was a 3G then I got a good deal on a 4 after the 4S came out. Comparing features on 5 vs 4S, I'm going to jump on the 4S. |
i think your on the wrong site - this is reddit - expect plenty of idiots/trolls/and pictures of cute cats. |
Nuclear is more cost-efficient, with a standard plant producing around 800 MW of power, some even more than that. Nuclear plants have a lifespan of about 40 years and use relatively little fuel (about 33 tons of uranium). The best wind turbine on the market (Enercon E-126, of which there are only 35 in use) produces around 7.5 MW--about 1% the power output of nuclear plant.
Both are clean sources of power. Wind energy has no emissions at all, while nuclear plants release steam and produce toxic waste. The current reactors are very wasteful, leaving a great amount of enriched uranium unused, as well as plutonium and other byproducts (which make the waste product dangerous). Designs are in place for next-generation reactors that could use this waste as a part of its fuel, giving a useful solution to nuclear's only major environmental issue. The other argument against nuclear is the proliferation threat. Some new designs will run on materials other than enriched uranium (such as thorium) that would be unsuitable for making a bomb. Proliferation becomes less of an issue.
Generation-IV reactors will also largely due away with issues of meltdown--rather than using water as a coolant (the current ones do that, and a couple Gen-IV designs will also), some of them will use molten salt or lead, which is not only more secure than water but also gives greater power output (since the fuel can safely burn hotter).
At current energy consumption levels and reactor efficiency, we have enough uranium to provide energy for the next thousand years. Energy consumption will doubtless increase, but so will nuclear's energy capacity. Reusing extant waste and introducing new fuels will increase its longevity even further. By that point, fusion or truly efficient solar will likely have displaced all other energy sources.
We can also compare to coal. More of our electricity comes from coal than from any other source. To produce 1000MW of electricity, a coal plant takes over 2 million tons of coal, and it produces about 1 million tons of ash, 7 million tons of carbon dioxide, and about 7500 tons of particulates and noxious gases. A nuclear plant produces 33 tons of spent fuel. Given time, it's feasible to replace all our coal reactors with nuclear ones, while the same cannot be said for wind. |
In steam cycles the "Rejected Energy" is mainly due to the cooling water used. [Look at this picture](
The "circulating cooling water" condenses the steam so that it may be pumped back into the boiler or reactor. This heats the cooling water that is usually pumped back into the ocean/river or sprayed into the atmosphere in the characteristic cooling towers.
People are generally oblivious to how electricity generation actually works, and think that it's free somehow. Nothing can be further from the truth, electricity is a high quality form of energy in that it can be converted into all other types of energy, and creating it is very expensive (efficiency-wise). Only roughly 55% of the fuel we put in comes out as useful electricity (this is the electric efficiency), but this is for modern gas-fueled plants. For nuclear the efficiency is much lower, around 30%. For a modern coal-fired fossil plant it's in the 40-45% region.
Many times you will hear about considerably higher efficiencies, but this is usually the thermal efficiency, meaning the total energy converted and not just the electrical power. Around 90% or a tad more can be utilized by modern co-generation plants. That is, 90% of the energy put into the cycle can be used in a useful way, through electricity and distric heat (usually). |
television is a 1-to-many broadcast, everyone receives the same tv signal over the cable thus you only need to have one incoming signal to server thousands of households. Whether you use it or not the signal is send to your house.
For internet (and telephone) you need a dedicated 1-on-1 connection, while they can multiplex multiply connections over the same cable, there is a signal in that cable that is just for you. Since they need to serve multiple different signals to multiple households over the same cable (for cable internet, DSL is a bit different) so they have to divide the available bandwidth. The more people use internet at the same time, the slower it gets.
Part of the reason you're paying for data-limits is to prevent you from using the internet to much.
Lot of people stream netflix at the same time -> the bandwidth gets divided over a lot of people -> people's internet gets way slower then what they pay for -> people start complaining -> ISP need to spend a lot of money improving their infrastructure.
By making you pay by the GB they prevent big internet usage, and when they do need to improve their infrastructure in the end they can use the extra money you paid.
Even though internet and television goes trough the same cable, the way they go trough that cable differnent.
Not saying that that's the whole story or that they don't rediculously overprice datalimits, you just can't compare television with internet.
PS. This is also a big reason why data-limits are usually less of a problem for fiber internet, having a dedicated cable just for you (at least until it reaches the ISP) means that you don't need to share the available bandwidth with your neighbors and thus using a lot of bandwidth isn't that much of an issue.
PPS. This is becoming way to long, I need to get back to studying stupid optics :'( |
In Theory, we redditors should stop being lazy. If there is no gigabit fiber in your subburb / city (there isn't in mine comcast .015Gbps / $60) start thinking about how YOU can build it.
Would it be easy? No... But, I think, this is capitalism. There are 25,000-30,000 houses in my subberb. The only number I can find is $670 (verizon) per house to build out. 30,000 x $670 = $20 million to build.
10% of the houses paying $70 per month brings in $210,000 a month in revenue, just about enough to make your $20,000,000 loan payments. Hopefully you get more than 10% of the houses. |
For downstream, yes, they most likely could give you much better speed without changing any equipment, and the only reason they don't is that they've either overcrowded your individual node or their network backbone. In those cases they could just flip a switch and increase your download speed, but then the only time you'd be able to reach those speeds would be while all your neighbors were asleep, and then you'd complain and want your money back, etc. Yes, it's their own fault, but it's not like they could just fix it overnight 'with existing hardware'.
For upstream, again, I point out that it's a lot more complicated than just flipping a switch / adding more channels. For one thing, the amount of bandwidth available for upstream traffic is tiny, so you can't just add more upstream channels without replacing nearly every piece of equipment in the network. For another thing, the bandwidth that is there is noisy as hell just due to combining rather than splitting when you're going in the reverse direction, which forces you to use modulation schemes that work through the noise but have less bandwidth.
>Oh, and I'm not even going to mention that you can pop another 4 channels on either side if you want.
Assuming your cable modem will support that. Most of them will just do 4 down / 4 up, which is the minimum required, and I've seen some new ones that will do 8 down / 4 up. But it's not like the cable company can just 'pop another 4 channels' on either side and speed things up if nobody's cable modems will support that many. |
You're correct...to a point.
Cable companies must sign a "Franchise Agreement" with the local municipalities in order to expand into their areas. While it is technically illegal to sign an exclusive franchise agreement, it becomes de-fact-o impossible for another cable company to come into an area. Why? It's because you can't impose a different agreement on a new cable company than you imposed on the original cable company. What the cable companies do (or did) when going into a untapped market was encourage adding in a bunch of extraneous requirements in their contracts (things like free public access channels and free TV studios for the public to produce shows in. Things like free interconnection to every municipal building and school in the district. Things like guarantees that they'll serve the entire community and not just a subset). These things are not difficult to build out when putting in a brand new system. The new company (technically called an "overbuilder") has to live up to the same standards as in the original company's contract. For a new company to enter into a market already served by an existing, entrenched competitor, it's financially impossible for them to live up to the same standards. They would love to come into a new area and just offer high speed internet to a few large apartment buildings at first, and then expand beyond after that, but they're not allowed to do that by the government. They've got to do everything the original company did, serve every household, serve every school/municipal building, etc, and do it all from day 1. |
Seems like no one is taking the FCC to task for dropping the ball over the last 20 years. Didn't the FCC allow the big telecoms to add a few dollars to our monthly phone bill many, many years ago?
The purpose was for the telecoms to upgrade our service to include high speed links. Where's that nationwide high speed service they promised? They basically robbed every one of their customers, didn't provide much in the way of better service, and pocketed the money.
What did the FCC do? Not one damn thing. Then they issue this self-congratulatory report on how much they're doing to help us! Total bullshit.
Not to mention the fact that they've allowed huge media conglomerates to own so many media outlets (radio & tv) that they have an effective monopoly in many geographic areas. This is one of the root causes of the "news" we get these days being complete shit. I don't have to tell you how fucked up the news business is these days, and the effects of having fewer and fewer reliable sources of information on what the assholes in congress are up to. |
TIL fiber optic cable requires no maintenance, it doesn't require special equipment (with its own maintenance needs) to repair fiber lines, it doesn't require more skills than copper lines to lay/terminate a connection, etc.... |
10c per page, you are looking at ~100000$, however, realistically you are looking closer to 2 cents a page (you would be going for offset printing), and would be going for a small sheet (maybe 4" * 8", single sided). So cost would be ~20k, delivery cost would run you probably another 40k, costing a grand total of around 60000$
Presuming you earn 50$ from 10% per month, you are looking at $500000, netting you a gross gain of $440000, not half ass bad. |
So basically you know nothing, but the person here who actually works in this industry, works with fiber (not residential), and is very intrinsic to a small ISP (this is me, not you) knows nothing as well. So let me break this down for you since you can't seem to comprehend anything being told to you
>Fiber contractor != ISP accountant.
Fiber contractors bid for fucking contracts. If they're not charging me that much, they probably aren't doing it to anybody else either - because they'd lose the fucking bid.
> Actually, I'm not seeing ANY hard proof that they say significant growth directly from the fiber network.
Compare numbers before fiber, compare them leading up, and compare them after. I know for a fact their real estate has shot through the roof. Guess what that's indicative of? Right.
>Which ones?
All of them.
>They're unionized
Which changes what about the argument that they got paid over the industry average? If anything, that's a pretty strong indicator that they did.
>muni
Just stop right there. The whole fucking argument is that if ISPs aren't willing to do it, municipalities should. Your equation means NOTHING in the context of this argument. What the fuck are you even arguing about? I have clearly said from the beginning, there are a lot of places that fiber already exists. There's no reason for an ISP to not take the cities up on their offers and use it. If more municipalities get on the bandwagon ISPs are going to be left eating dust. People aren't going to continue to let their neighbors ursurp their contracts and business because ISPs are on the fence. Take the risk or go bankrupt. Chattanooga has cost my company a couple contracts. We are seriously considering relocating there. All we need is to find the right building at the right price and we are out. We aren't the only company doing this. |
South Korea has widely available broadband service over 200x faster than what Americans have, and it's priced lower than most Americans pay for access through a cable or telephone company. America's average Internet speeds are middling and expensive compared with the rest of the developed world, and unavailable in much of the nation. Internet service providers are limiting service and charging more for it.
While the amount of data trafficked at the average house keeps rising, the cost of moving those bits keeps falling. Sending data is now cheaper than ever. You will not see this reflected in your monthly bills.
Businesses are built to make money. But in a data environment where most people have only one or two options, the Internet-access market in America starts to look like a monopoly.
Wireless data service was once thought to be a potential solution to poor access and slow speeds. It would provide the competition the Internet access industry needed.
Instead, wireless companies charge more for data service, a model they discovered in the days of text-messaging, when they charged considerable sums for a service that cost them essentially nothing.
Source 1: [
Source 2: [ |
Sorry for a ton of text, this is more for my understanding of the system than anything.
I could be wrong, and it is much more complex than I am making it here, but I think in the long term the risk falls on the public either way.
What we are saying by giving out patents is that capitalism itself is not providing enough incentive to invest money in researching drugs (because the company spends risks money on research, and though a successful drug would be valued by society enough to cover the losses of the research process, the company is unable to capture all this value due to competition swooping in and using the fruits of this research without paying for it). Our patent system counteracts this by granting monopolies, so the company that did the research can charge very high prices to recoup its losses. This is a good thing, but how long do we grant these monopolies for? At what point are companies taking advantage of the system?
What if a company has a life saving drug, and it needed to make say, $2 billion off of it to recoup its losses on failed reasearch, as well as the successful trials and production, and to give it a high ROI relative to the risk. What if they make that $2million, but still have a monopoly, and so continue to charge an exorbitantly high price? In this case, members of the public who are affected by this disease are now being ripped off by this company. Essentially, these members of the public are not only paying for the risk of financing this drug (covered by the first $2 billion of sales), but may also be paying for shares of the pharmaceutical company to grow much faster than the rest of the market. The system of government granted monopolies makes members of society afflicted by a disease pay for the treatment, and maybe even a gross proportion on top.
I really don't have terrific knowledge of the industry, but I'm enjoying practicing these highly amateur economics so I'll continue. I don't have any idea what system is best from a practical standpoint.
Another system for researching drugs would be if all members of the public contributed to the development of drugs. They may not ever get the diseases they are researching, or they may. Everyone pays regardless. If the government uses taxpayer dollars to fund research, this is what is happening. When a cure is found, they could either:
Give out the cure for a very low price, covering simply production and overhead. This would mean that everyone in the country paid for the risk of developing a vaccine, and the people affected by the disease received an enormous benefit from society.
Charge a market rate for the drug, until all research costs have been covered, including failed trials, plus an ROI number (I would guess this would need to be low, maybe only the federal interest rate or something?) After that, you could either release the drug to the free market (probably best option) or sell it for cost + overhead as you did in option 1. This way, the successful drug recipients pay for the drug and its risks, and noone gets money on top. Of course you would need incentives and balances to ensure the government system runs efficiently, perhaps a department where the department heads are only kept on when certain financial goals are met, and which drugs are researched nor who is appointed is selected by an elected official. I guess this system wouldn't be much different from a mostly privatized system, except that it has a calculated and legally enforced limit on how much profit a drug can generate (just enough to cover the risk (this number for risk was calculated at the begginning of research, obviously)). |
Humans have always used drugs both for fun and to help with work, but in the last 100 years there has been a campaign telling us that it's wrong and we should stop. This is just another form of farmers chewing coca leaves, or ranchers drinking coffee. It may be more or less powerful/dangerous, but it's not a new idea and if done responsibly there is nothing wrong with it. |
I replaced my Adrall prescription with Modafinil last year, for treatment of sleep apnea induced narcolepsy, (not fat, just have a massive neck and a small jaw/chin. They didn't believe I had apnea until I did a sleep study) and the attention deficiency caused by the lack of good sleep.
I love it because it doesn't jack me up like Adarall did (no more teeth grinding) and I no longer feel like an addict, having to go through interrogations from my psych when going to get the required script every fucking month, since the pharmacy won't refill otherwise (some time I will tell you about when my dr. gave me 3 month scripts in advance, and when I tried to use them, 1 month at a time, Walgreens flagged my account for suspicious activity.... anyway)
It is a central nervous system stimulant, which works in a much different way than how Adarall or Ritilin work
So here is what I love about it:
It isn't euphoric: I don't take this shit to get high, I take it so I don't go into a micro-dreams when driving (any more). I take it so I don't fall asleep and start snoring in meetings, or start "tripping out" (again, micro dreaming) in situations (meetings, trainings, presentations, bored at my desk) where my mental/physical activity or engagement level drops too low.
It increases my dexterity. This is more of a happy side-effect, but being that I play saxophone and guitar, the improvement is welcome.
No Jitters. It keeps me awake, but I don't get the jitters, and it doesn't "ramp me up," so I am calmer and not as bouncy.
I am still hungry: I was pretty well anorexic on Adarall. Without further self medication, I had no appetite what so ever, and would get repulsed by the thought of meals at times. No such problems with Modafinil.
I can sleep. This is a huge problem, as I again needed to augment myself with supplements of one nature or another to sleep when I was on Addarall. I have no problems with sleeping at the end of the day with Modafinil.
So, no it isn't a "miracle" drug, and it isn't going to turn a healthy person into some kind of superhuman computer or anything. It promotes wakefulness (which can be useful for many different kinds of people) but without any of the "negative" connotations or issues related to the alternative drugs available right now. |
Doubtful as well.
The drug is original from the military for pilots on long missions (like most tech). It's not meant to replace sleep altogether, but to keep you alert and functioning as if you had had sleep. It is not an enhancement drug at all. At most think of that time of the day you feel most rested and there you are.
I have had this drug because of sleep apnea and it is quite effective. There is no "high" associated with it and when I Rx'd it I still researched it even though I was promised it was nonaddictive (yeah right, I thought!?!).
I found one commenter quite humorous and he/she said that their experience was lousy when they took the 4X maximum dosage and was "jittery" as if on too much caffeine. The person was just really uncomfortable and wanted to lie down to sleep it off but lied there fully aware of what they had done and each second ticked by in complete consciousness. (summarized of course) |
Humans have always used drugs both for fun and to help with work"
Humans have always killed other humans too, does that mean that murder is a-ok because it's natural? I can agree with your |
There is a world of harm available between outright "lethality" and "safe". The worst of it is that especially subtle damage might go completely undetected for years or decades, especially if no one is even attempting to gather data and track subjects health data. Data = observation. Hard to detect something without observing.
Sources :
[An article on 10 Vitamin Deficiencies (listverse.com) ]( presented as an example - I have no idea how generally accurate info on this site is. But the diseases mentioned are easy enough to look up elsewhere.
[List of diseases associated with poor nutrition (livestrong.com)](
[ PubMed article on Malnutrition (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) ]( - U.S. National Library of Medicine - The World's Largest Medical Library - Probably the best source on this list. |
because many of the apps serve a better function because of the ease of use/access not to mention that their simpler layout is more pleasing on the eyes.
I use apps often, some of these are background entertainment apps (Musictube is my go to here) some are social media apps that offer better functionality then the actual official websites (tweetro+ for twitter) and some are productivity applications that provide everythign I need quickly and efficiently without being to hardware or effort intensive (MS One Note, Evernote).
I would actually be using the "app" format a whole lot more if chrome worked correctly as app but because it isn't officially supported just yet while Google gets everything working I'm forced into desktop mode more often then I would like due to some plug in issues. |
personally gave up the idea of getting Windows 8 the second I tested it at Best Buy and had no idea what i was doing.
Forgive me but how exactly can yo judge an entire OS's worth on a 5 minute Point of Sale experiance.
Download the trial and drop it on a partition or any other device OR as has been the norm for most everyone with other windows releases for some time now, spend some time using a copy of a friends and actually form an educated judgement based on real world implementation. |
I keep seeing this question being asked in comment threads lately.
This is called Title Case. When writing a name or a title, it is a common convention to use capital letters to start the principal words. |
I don't get the hate on GIMP. It is all I have ever used for the past 8 years. Now I have a laptop with Adobe Master Collection CS3 and I find myself not enjoying PS after all the hype. It is definitely a different environment, I just don't understand what all this (what sounds like bullshit) FOSS and CMYK issue is. For video editing, game editing, and game creation, open source has always been great. |
If we are talking about recommending Google Chrome for reading PDFs securely
It is the insecure browser on the market today.
In 2011, Chrome had over 250 security vulnerabilities, more than all the other popular browsers COMBINED for that year... ([Source](
2012 wasn't much different for Chrome ([Source](
So far this year it's still the most vulnerable browser... ([Source](
This isn't even mentioning the part where it sends all your browsing habits to Google. |
But that last part you wrote got me curious now, what was the point you think you made?
That complaints about a lack of CMYK support are irrelevant for the majority of users who use Photoshop - namely, the majority that only uses it because they heard they can touch up photos with it, the ordinary Joes and Janes that want to remove red-eye from family photos or add effects to their selfies, the high-school kids who want to make prank images of socially-awkward peers' faces superimposed on farm animals. Add in the significant minority that's using Photoshop for web graphics design, and that doesn't leave much room for the print users, does it?
This isn't to discount the significance of printed media; rather, it is to emphasize that the individuals whining about CMYK and other fancy bells and whistles for professional print-destined use are not the target audience when folks like me recommend switching from Photoshop to GIMP. We know you don't like GIMP, and you know you don't like GIMP; we get it. It's the folks who could be served just as well with GIMP - those ordinary folk touching up photos and those less-ordinary folk making web content - that such recommendations target. Not everyone is paid the big bucks to design graphics for magazines and posters and newspapers and such; pretending that everyone designs covers for Vogue is ignorant at best. |
I'm amazed almost every company hasn't put in place data checkpoint software and gone very strict on it. For real, you see what data hits the walls of your network outgoing, and essentially can't go until someone approves it.
Do you have a solution that meets the below criteria?:
1) Doesn't slow down normal business traffic.
2) Doesn't have a high false positive rate with no chance for false negatives.
3) Is cheap enough for an executive to swallow.
If you don't have a product that can guarantee the above three, then don't complain about companies not having this fantasyware, as there are far too many methods to defeat any currently available system for scanning outgoing data (custom encryption/data obfuscation, file embedding inside documents, custom transfer protocols, (yes, ICMP type 0/8 can carry data) tunneling,).
Also, yes, I am qualified to call this fantasyware, as I'm a systems engineer with a background in security auditing.
> Secondly, why the hell would big companies leave on USB external drive support for any managed machines?
Disabling USB in the OS will only slow down anyone with physical access to the machine, it is not a hard stop. Even hard drive encryption will not stop a determined attacker, so long as the encryption key is stored on the disk or a plugged in USB thumb drive along with the machine. |
I see your point, but disagree. I would much rather the law be too strict and over-protect me in this sort of thing than too lenient. I've been crashed into twice by drivers just plain not paying enough attention. Last thing we need is people driving with Google glass popping up tweets.
Until we have a way to prove that a device was only being used for GPS or similar, the law has to stay the way it is. It's far too easy to have angry birds up then switch to a GPS as the cop is walking to your car. |
I've been using Android phones as GPS for years.
Cool story, bro.
>I've had cops see google maps running on my phone that's propped up on a car mount.
They weren't doing their jobs properly
>Why the fuck would they even make these things if using them was illegal?
For the same reason they make loud as fuck mufflers even though they're putting out sound above legal limits |
Yes, they're a small piece and it's certainly better than nothing. Every little bit helps, right?
The heat thing goes both ways. When studying CFL savings, for example, they found that in cold temperatures the CFLs actually cost more due to the loss of heating. I can't comment on waste/disposal because I don't know what's in the LED lights. I'm assuming a circuit of some type to regulate voltage and lots of plastic. Incandescents have metal and glass which are pretty easy to dispose of. That's really going beyond the scope of what's important to me, though, and I haven't looked into that deeply.
I'm of the opinion that it isn't worth regulating, however. If I had to make a guess, it's the thing which most Americans would put up the least amount of fight. They know we are lazy and stubborn. They know we would never give up our central A/C, dryers, etc. They probably couldn't even convince us to use them less or to lower temp in winter and wear an extra shirt. Even so, I think it would still have the effect they desire should they push municipalities and businesses to head towards greener pastures. Perhaps some PSAs or websites on how to save electricity (lure them with money savings) would be more helpful.
As I mentioned to someone else that responded to me, I lived in China for a few years and I gotta say that I really picked up quite a few tricks while I was there. For example, using a clothes line or drying rack instead of the dryer or not using A/C. At first, it was annoying as hell but, after I got used to it, it wasn't so bad. I'm saving 1200kWh per month with my changes, which is roughly equivalent to 30 40W lightbulbs being used 3 hours a day for the entire year (roughly 30,000 hours of light time, total). I save that per month. I'm basically enabling 25 other households to continue using shitty old fashioned light bulbs, just through a change in lifestyle. Of course, I don't do it for them. I do it because I'm fucking poor right now. |
Being from the area, I can say that it is some of the most miserable commuting I have ever experienced. When leaving for work in the morning, usually around 5am, I would use a route from Timonium, MD, north of Baltimore, (adjacent to I-83), taking I-695 on the west side of the city to MD-295, continuing on DC-295 and taking I-395 to Alexandria, VA to a location southwest of DC. That route at that time would take approximately 60-80 minutes. However, leaving Alexandria at anywhere from 3pm to 6pm and taking the same route to Timonium would take anywhere from 100 minutes to times in excess of 180 minutes. There are several alternate routes available (taking US-50 to I-97, or using I-95 instead of MD-295), but the results were generally the same regardless of the path chosen. |
Currently in Japan myself.
Sorry to say, but Japanese public transport is overpriced and shit.
Public transport being in private hands is always a shitty idea (just look at the shitfest that is the German railway network... privatized because people complained that it's shit and the government was fed up, almost immediately got even worse). However, Japan takes it to the max when it comes to how to not manage transport.
The retarded subway system in major cities is the absolute worst. At least two different businesses operating their trains and sometimes you need to switch between competing lines to get from point A to B in a reasonable time... resulting in a doubled fare! Yay! And the fare already is relatively high to begin with.
It really makes no sense.
Trains are also completely overcrowded most of the time (especially on popular routes where people get pressed into those little metal boxes like sardines even during awkward times of the day).
They also stop their public transport operations way too early, making it impossible to enjoy nightlife even in Cities with over 10 million inhabitants (calling a cab is completely out of the question due to their price). Essentially, their bad public transport leads to Japan's cities being dead at night.
You know about capsule hotels, right? Or business hotels? They exist for one very big reason: Shitty public transport. They are necessary because partying means: No way to get home. And paying for a night at a hotel is cheaper than taking a cab.
Oh, another thing: These Japanese companies want to save costs, right? What does that mean? It means their ridiculous clusterfuck of transport infrastructure is managed by people with absolutely no foreign language skills? You have a problem that is more complicated than pointing at a place on a map and shrugging your shoulders? Too fucking bad! Nobody here speaks English, nor French, nor Chinese. They know some English worda but even simple sentences in a language that isn't Japanese is too hard for them. Even in the most touristy parts of town.
Seriously, living and traveling through Asia I don't understand why these countries rank so high in education. Judging by their amount of foreign language skills and common knowledge they really don't deserve the fame... they are bad. Even the people who are supposed to be good are bad. Like 3rd year students of a famous Tokyo language institute studying English, who can't even string together basic explanations in the language they study at university and have studied for at least 6 years in school already (I studied English as my third language and shorter than they did and I'm not taking college level courses as I'm an engineer... and even I'm Soooo much better.)
But it doesn't stop with clusterfuck transport infrastructure in the cities. Even their airports suck ass. Narita (primary international airport in Japan, serves Tokyo) is fucking dead at night. It seems they don't even get cargo planes after 11pm.
Missed a flight here, spent the night in the airport. Police officers commanded everyone in the whole airport into a tiny, shitty "meeting point" where you had to sit on shitty plastic chairs for 8 hours. They then proceeded to turn off all the lights at the airport. There were only a few power outlets (most people had no access to electricity, and if you don't have an adapter for Japanese outlets you are screwed anyway).
There was no place to get food, you weren't allowed to leave the meeting places except for the yoilets or smoking room, and the best thing: There isn't even any public transport after 11pm. You are completely stuck. If you don't want to be treated like prisoners you have to options: Sleep at a shitty overpriced airport hotel. Take an overpriced cab.
As for the bullet train: The price for the Shinkansen is ridiculous. Period.
Case in point: Flying from Tokyo to Osaka is cheaper than taking the train.
Sorry, I had to get this off of my chest. Public transport is bad. Really bad. Having to deal with it for longer than the few weeks I endured it here sounds like a nightmare. |
You're still making a mistake here. Unlike in a circuit, humans don't have a fixed destination, or a fixed amount of travel they want to do. If you expand the capacity of the road, that momentarily decreases congestion, which then encourages more residents of Baltimore to decide to go to the Smithsonian for the afternoon, and more residents of Washington to decide to visit the Aquarium, and more people in both cities to consider taking a job in the other city. This then increases demand, until congestion is near the level it was at before.
True, at some level of road expansion you eventually get to a point where every single conceivable thing that someone in one city might do in the other city is already being satisfied, and there's no more room for new housing or new attractions in either city. But that point is quite far away. |
This is a terrible idea for Baltimore. I'm a Baltimore native and the idea of this DC-Balt-Phily-NYC train is nothing new. You see, about 20 years ago the city of Baltimore put a North-South light rail system in to decrease traffic, increase city revenue, ease traffic during ball games, and most importantly of all, put a feather in the hats of politicians. The system did little to alleviate traffic and they went to an "honor system" of paying. What does "honor system" in this town mean? Free. It also had the side effect of increasing crime in bordering towns. I know, I grew up in one if those towns. Yes, it helps during ball games, I'll admit, but just like the Baltimore Harbor, the politicians fudged up the light rail.... just like they will do with any other system. Let us also establish another thing, if you are middle class and above on the East Coast, you drive. Yes, even in Baltimore we have a small free bus service that is used by well-to-do people, but it only goes through the good parts of the city. The people of Baltimore do not need this, nor deserve it. It's a 3 1/2 drive to NYC. We can deal with that until politicians get their shit together, alleviate crime and actually start improving this town. |
If you want to see America, you have to drive. Most American rail was developed for freight. We developed our highway system for people, and that system reflects it.
It's why the Greyhound bus ride was more interesting. Basically, Greyhound is to America as trains are to Europe. |
Oh, it's got nothing to do with people dying on the tracks. The push-back against the CA High Speed Rail project is primarily coming from Californian farmers and other assorted rural conservatives because they, in classical fashion, don't want to pay for something that they will never personally use .
This is in addition to the train itself needing to go through land some of them either own or want. So there's that as well.
Personally I hope they go get fucked. CA needs better mass transit, and cutting the trip from San Francisco to Anaheim to just over two hours opens up Disneyland to day trips for the entire bay area, and that's just one benefit that the rail project brings to the table. The economic impact this system will have are enormous and the people pushing back will directly benefit even if they don't personally use the line. |
I agree that it was a marketing failure. When I watched the console reveals, I came out thinking - well, xbox kind of went the wrong way about marketing their ideas. PS4 added absolutely nothing to the PS3 outside of some better specs.
Xbox family, games that play and change while you're not there all seemed like steps which brought gaming into the future - killing the used games industry seemed like a good thing. Gamestop (EB games in Australia where I live) are fucking terrible companies who abuse used games. Oh whats that, you spent a thousand dollars on this collection of games? Let me calculate the depreciation value of that for you. Mmmm, yeah, I can give you $3.50. Oh what's that, you'd like to buy a used game? Yeah $60 please.
At least, in my experience in physical stores in Australia - games cost $90-110, you sell them back for about $5-10 each, and they sell used games for $40-70. It's a fucking scam, and I was really glad that microsoft was trying to implement an alternative system.
Having 9 mates of mine all chipping in for games means that we can afford a collectively much larger library. I dunno why people didn't see that, instead they saw oh no DRM and kinect the government is trying to watch me masturbate again wtf. People were sucked into stupid articles like xbox banning people for cheating and then losing their game library. No, you got banned for tampering with the xbox live system, impersonating xbox staff, hacking peoples accounts and stealing. Yeah, if you steal peoples credit cards, I agree that a valid punishment would be to lose your own library. Nope - people saw it as a violation of our basic human rights. It's absurd.
I have both consoles, I think xbox is a lot nicer to use - my PS4 has caused me a fuckton of issues with updates, people managing to hack into my account somehow, a twitch app that doesnt let you watch anything outside of other PS4 players and a slow connectivity issues. My PS4 and Xbox are located on top of each other, yet I download at about twice the speed on my xbox than my PS4. Maybe these are all things that I just lucked into, but at least xbox didn't release a software update that bricked your console.
Sorry for the wall of text |
You are buying a physical disc. You own that. Embedded in your purchase is a non-transferable licence to use the intellectual property on the disc, without which you would be entitled to use the disc as a frisbee, or as a beer mat, but you would not be entitled to use it as software. (you could hack it and use it, but that would be a breach of contract and a breach of copyright law).
Note intellectual property licences are a matter of contract and not copyright. (Copyright is mandatory law like the criminal law which applies without a contract; a contractual licence allows you to use the IP without violating copyright. Frequently licencing contracts go far further than copyright in constraining users' rights).
Before the information revolution - in the case of books or records, for example - it was practically impossible for a publisher to stop a consumer who had possession of a physical book from transferring it, and the intellectual property embedded in it: by physically passing the book to someone else.
On the other hand it was practically also very difficult for a consumer to copy the intellectual property (at least in bulk and with any great fidelity). So the licences granted in books became that a book owner could sell its physical artefact and transfer a single licence to the intellectual property at the same time. (people rarely would have analysed it this way, but that is what in fact was happening – look inside the flyleaf of a paperback book: “All rights reserved” etc. etc.)).
In any case this was a function of the practical expedients only - it was not practical for publishers to stop book owners doing otherwise, but since there was very little large scale "piracy" of the IP buried books and records, that wasn't a bad compromise. But as technology developed, this began to change. The arrival of the CD in 1984 was a watershed, and the MP3 player in the mid-nineties changed the world forever
Now IT has developed to the point where IP owners can practically control the usage of the embedded intellectual property distinctly from the physical artefact, all that has changed forever. EG: through Spotify, music publishers are paid per play of their IP by an intermediary, and consumers pay a general subscription to the intermediary (as opposed to consumers directly paying one time up-front fee to the publisher for a single irrevocable, transferrable, licence use the intellectual property for the lifetime of the physical format on which it was contained).
IP owners don’t have to give you a physical artefact anymore, and with all the piracy about, it’s hard to blame them.
There is a very good argument that the mandatory copyright laws are hopelessly outdated and need to be thoroughly revolutionised, but it has nothing to do with the terms on which intellectual property owners licence by contract the use of their property. |
pff a mistake!? the DRM controversy is gaining a momentum even before the E3 event, who ever thought that "always online" concept is great idea clearly smoking pot. Plus the NSA and Snowden happening at the time of E3, while Microsoft still stand their ground on "always online" policy clearly show that all PR at Microsoft did not have any intelligent at all. If I was appoint as a next M$ exec, I would fire everyone who is related to this incident! |
The EU is all about breaking down barriers to free trade. This regulation is just another example of the EU using regulation to force competition into a disfunctional marketplace. |
Yes it can, contracts are bound to the laws in place. For example, if a contract said something obviously illegal like "roaming calls cost 1€/minute" if you used roaming and they charged you that you'd be protected by the law that currently limits maximum prices on roaming so they'd end up paying fines and you not paying. |
That's a given. If it were up to them, there would be no such thing as general purpose computing that they aren't in explicit control of. There is a very real war against general purpose computing and this is a big part of it.
One of the reasons why companies like Apple and Microsoft have such a hard-on over mobile is because these are locked platforms which they can control explicitly. Whether or not you can "jailbreak" a device that you own, is still being fought in court. Proprietary software manufacturers like the idea of being able to lock people into their ecosystems. The content industry, is infatuated with the idea of reselling you the same product on multiple platforms, and even being able to completely eliminate the concept of actual ownership of content all together (see Amazon).
The notion that someone can own an object and not do whatever the fuck they want to it, is highly offensive. The idea that someone can own a computer, and not be in control of the software that runs on it, is so deeply flawed that it fundamentally shifts the entire concept of property ownership.
And all of this because they are fighting the nature of an information society. The nature of information is that it is intangible and abstract. Trying to treat an intangible abstract thing like a physical object is never going to work. The content distributors are trying to justify their own existence by creating artificial scarcity. In a world where information is easy to replicate at almost no cost... what is the purpose of a content distributor?
In tomorrow's world, people will pay for convenience and quality. They already realize that information has no inherent value like a physical object and only see value in the ease of obtaining it. |
The laziness of the military to upgrade legacy systems is seriously quite sad. If i was to emphasize any sort of military expenditure it would just be modernization, i can't believe how many articles i read that talk about using shit from the 60's and 70's in current infrastructure.
That said, they need to just do it themselves. Using outside contractors is a farce and pathetic. They will inflate the costs 6X, and do it twice as slow. If the government was smart, they would just bring in their own engineers and do it all themselves. If the government wants TRUE proprietary tech, build it your goddamn self. |
This is largely symbolic. While it might rein in another government agency, it bears zero pressure on the NSA.
What will Congress do if they continue this? With another agency, it'd be a big stink, people would get fired, maybe even indicted.
The NSA? Business as usual. Congress might not even learn that they continue to "spend money on" this activity. But even if they did learn, they have zero ability to change things, other than to withhold their budget entirely... and the NSA would gladly call any bluffs.
Hell, it's possible they could even continue operating to some extent if Congress shut them down, the black ops slush fund is still somewhat gargantuan, unknowable dollar amount. And they are one of the agencies that has access to it.
I'm a nobody, and if I know all of this, the NSA surely knows it. |
That's not really true, though. Look back to Ma Bell to see that - before there were regulations to prevent the situations that allowed for it, they formed large regional and nationwide monopolies at various times throughout their history. Due to these, a number of new regulations were enacted to enable competition and protect consumers:
Prior to 1913, telcos were not requred to be able to interconnect. It was not until the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913 that Ma Bell was forced to allow competitors to interconnect (which is strikingly similar to the net neutrality issue we are currently facing)
in 1956, due to pressure from an antitrust lawsuit that began in 1949, Ma Bell was issued a consent decree limiting it to 85% of the national telephone network and forcing it to release several of its international interests to become their own separate companies. This decision also prevented them from monopolizing the basically brand-new computer industry.
Finally, in 1982, after yet a third antitrust lawsuit was filed against Bell Systems/AT&T by the US Government in 1974, Ma Bell was broken up into a number of companies. The breakup led to a massive increase in competition (for a while, anyway) among long-distance providers. It also changed the way TV and radio networks distributed content to local affiliates, leading to increased competition in that area.
This was all maintained for some time, and it was not until the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that things started to turn sour again. Although the Decency parts are good sounding for trying to keep the barrier of entry low for potential new competition, the Act also gutted the regulations keeping the telcos and cable companies in check, and allowed the baby bells (and the cable companies) to start buying up their local competition, as well as each other. While there were previously a multitude of telcos (in addition to the number of companies under the umbrellas of the 9 baby bells), we now have very few - in fact, Ma Bell has very nearly reformed at this point. Where there was once 9 RBOCs plus their subsidiaries, there are now only 3 companies: Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink. |
By testing for various vulnerabilities. Basically, looking for unexpected behaviors through repetitive attack, and then figuring out how to consistently get the desired result(s).
Such example could be:
Flooding a certain port with a type of trigger
Broadcasting various network commands
Attempting to connect to various services
Testing for vulnerable open connections that can be piggy backed off of (file downloads, movie downloads, and so on).
if you are close to a wireless network, using packet sniffers to collect enough data to decrypt the data, to gain access to a server on the local network
DDoS the network to force repetitive reboots, with the desired result of getting the user to reset the device and gain access to the internal network this way (ex. If a laptop has a wireless and wired card, one could set up an addhoc network remotely that may go some time without being noticed). |
Yeah and what makes it even harder is that they are doing the correct thing by multiplying .002 x 35,893 it will display exactly what they said 71.786.......... cents. See they see 71.anything and it means 71 dollars and some change. They don't just see a number, they see a familiar format which reminds them of something they DO understand. In my opinion, albeit anecdotal, I think the way we failed in teaching math is that we teach the habits and the shortcuts, but we don't always teach WHY we do them. So, in turn they just default back to what they do understand. 71.786 x 35,893 means absolutely nothing and can be twisted and used to tell any kind of story. 71.786 Cents x 35,893 KB on the other hand has quite a bit of information and is hard to dispute. |
It may be licensing issues for older games with partnered publishers. It would be a lot of work, but people would re-buy their collection again if it meant not having to get up and change the console. Sell each game at $3-5 and have a family share plan that shares them with those on the same shared network account or something for X amount of users. They then can keep the newer games from Wii and Wii U out of the digital shop till their new console comes along. |
Well to be fair I feel like Nintendo's culture seems to stand in their way quite a bit. Whatever it is that keeps them from identifying huge flaws in their international marketing campaigns or cashing in on old IP.
A lot of that culture is what people like about Nintendo compared to the other manufacturers. You know you're going to get a generally family-friendly and lighthearted gaming experience usually revolving around well-known characters/franchises. They're hugely innovative with their hardware but hardware is a lot harder to market when you don't also have access to the AAA titles headed to Sony/Microsoft/PC because they're so busy playing by their own rules and disregarding the competition that they miss out on opportunities for extra income.
I bought a WiiU because I was completely and utterly bored to death of the new releases headed to the other consoles and rather enjoy being able to experience for the first time many older titles on my home theater setup without the hassle of emu+rom. To their credit the classic games I have played via the Nintendo Shop have played flawlessly which is more than I can say about my "EVERY NES GAME EVER!!!" rom collection. |
When Nintendo re-releases a game, they take it apart and re-construct it so it functions perfectly. For one example of a huge setback, many older games used console system clock speeds as timers for functions. If the clock speed isn't the same as the original systems, the trigger for an event might not work, breaking gameplay terminally.
These things and other qualities cannot be replicated by straight emulation (and a few games are notoriously broken for it), so there's always a ton of QA work and engineering when re-releasing games for newer platforms. Sometimes they even have to rework the original code to get an older game to work, and that's an entirely new headache because it isn't simple to figure out what someone was writing in an outdated language from 15+ years prior. This is why it's taken so long for Majora's Mask to make the leap to 3DS, for instance. |
Everything you're thinking about Nintendo is totally wrong](
Everyone has thought of that idea, and it's kind of terrible. It's a prime example of a "short term gains, fuck the future" approach. |
Yep.. people forget that Nintendo has been around a long time and has had great success for most of it.
They're in a bit of a slump recently but unlike certain other companies they will turn it around slowly and surely.. not with quick schemes to pad this quarters profits with zero regard to what impact it will have down the line.
I mean does anyone even stop to think that if Nintendo let everybody buy all their old games on THIS console, right now, that it might cause bad sales 5-10 years from now? No? Of course not. Because nobody thinks further than the last quarter. Except Nintendo.
It's a strategy common in Japanese companies - I work in IT and went to a presentation held by Brother a while back (the printer company). That company has survived two world wars and the great depression... by planning well ahead. Guy running the presentation said it could be frustrating because when you went to the executives of the company with a proposal you always had to answer the question of "and how does this fit into our 100 year plan?"
Yes, there are example of companies digging in their heels despite all reason (Hi RIM!) but for the most part the long play works out better than the quick win. |
Are you retarded? Did you not read my post?
Here, I'll help you out:
>You're also wrong about people not being able to identify a Rolex by looking at it.
I never said this. Here's what I said:
>Either than the big names (Rolex, Bretiling, etc) most people wouldn't be able to tell than a watch is high-end anyway.
Admittedly not the best grammar, but if you think this isn't true you're lying. I own a decent collection of watches and am an enthusiast but even I can't tell from <10ft away if something is a high-end watch or a decent watch that looks good. Many everyday brands copy the facade of the high-end ones.
>Not unlike a Tiffany ring or a Cartier bracelet.
I'd be willing to bet you my watch collection you couldn't tell the difference between a Cartier ring and a "no-name" one from a random jeweler. Hell I bet you couldn't tell the difference between a Cartier ring and a good piece of costume jewelery.
>There will be some people who buy it for craftsmanship, but these are the same people who would buy Beats By Dre for their audio quality.
This is where your ignorance is on display the most. The generalization of this statement is so ridiculous I almost feel as stupid as you for responding to it.
I am one of these people that appreciate the timepieces for their craftsmanship. I wouldn't own a pair of Dre headphones if you gave them to me for free (I'd sell them immediately and buy Sennheisers). I research everything before I get it and know its value and why this value was given to it.
Now, there are those that buy it for flash, and usually they will be the guys that buy the gigantic ones encrusted with gems. Those aren't the guys that will hunt down a '41 Patek Phillipe. All the guys I know have qualities that appreciate the reason behind why something was made and why it's worth what it is. These are the same guys that you will see in a Camry, but they park it next to their AR Mille Miglia. |
I disagree entirely.
The language we use in a setting governs the tone of that setting. Why do you think we dress nice or speak properly in court? Because it's not a place to play around in. Police officers under camera could respect their profession and establish a tone that permeates everything they do - Professional.
Do you think a culture of treating civilians like they are below officers or racism survives in an environment where you keep your comments to yourself? They can save their relieving jokes/rants for off the clock hours, hours inside the police station, and therapy. The reason we have as a culture rejected sexist jokes in the office is because it sets a tone and that tone needed to be changed. (Edit - If a police officer wants to make n ** r jokes while patrolling a dominantly black neighborhood - s/he needs to be relieved of his duties because that tone is the entire problem in black neighborhoods treated like crime filled communities instead of a community of poor people with individuals who are criminals living within it.)
Second, I'm under the impression most footage will be deleted and/or not stored once a certain time has gone by and it is not a part of a civil complaint, investigation, or court case. So the only crass comments that survive would be those that are held during problematic arrests/encounters with the public. If you don't want to live a life on the camera - don't be a police officer.
Edit 2 - It's not like your average citizen could just request all of tuesday's footage and review it either. Is it? |
The post I responded appears to combine local police and federal agencies into a non-existing entity called "the government." The argument that local police have to wear body cameras because the NSA can read publicly broadcast messages doesn't make any sense, and even less sense when you think about the fact that the NSA will probably have access to the recordings of those body cameras. |
I'm all for body cameras at calls. I know in many instances it would cut down on the lying and nonsense on not only us the police, but also the criminals.
My only major thing against body cams is the feeling of being constantly watched. I am not always at a call, sometimes I am eating a meal with a fellow officer or friend, having a conversation with a citizen, or just venting to a co-worker. Now imagine your job with a constant recording of everything you said and did. You'd start to get a little bit of that feeling of never being able to relax / de-stress.
Also, I'll be honest, I see a lot of arrest-able things during my shift and during calls people will tell me things that could easily turn into another investigation if I was the kind of officer that had the "Lust for the bust" when it's not necessary for public safety. How many times have I found kids smoking marijuana at the park, called their parents and explained the situation, turned the kids over to the parents, confiscated the marijuana and had it destroyed. Now, listen, many departments would say that if you see a criminal act you MUST arrest. My department, as of right now, is much more of a hey let the officers resolve the situation as they see fit. I am a very chill cop, I've had enough scraps to where I don't sweat small bullshit like smoking weed at a park but now give my supervisor or some numb nut city official who wants to show he's "Tough on crime" control of everything I do through a camera and now I can't get caught giving breaks to anyone. See what I mean?
I'll give one other example you can skip if you'd like to read my last paragraph. I've gone to a couple fights between brothers. I get there the brothers are worn out, scared mom called us. And these aren't kids I am talking like 30 year old men with jobs who got mad at each other over something and threw some hay makers. Anyways, I see signs of injury, talk to them and they say neither one of them want to aid in prosecution they were just upset and want to leave for the night. Cool all good see ya later.... whoops uh-oh you forgot that on the law books it specifically states that any domestic violence (Brothers are now included) that the officer MUST arrest even if neither party wishes to aid in prosecution. So now, if someone views my tape showing me doing some what I believe is the right thing letting these guys cool their heads rather than once again throw another person in jail, I can be held accountable for violating policy / the law. Crazy right?
I truly believe Law Enforcement has been pushed to be too rough, too over the top, too much traffic stops etc. I think a big reason for this is departments / city councils wanting to see "Results" or "Activity" or "Goals" in arrests / stops. That's crazy. We can't make crime happen, actually in my mind if we just drive around, don't have to stop or mess with anyone, and no one breaks the law aren't we doing exactly what people want us to do? Make sure the world is safe? My job is to make sure people feel safe going to dinner at night, catching a late night movie with their girlfriend without feeling like some piece of shit is going to give them trouble. We should be feared to a certain degree but not by the good people, by the fucking bad ones. This "activity" based way of doing business is killing us. It's great for people on an assembly line but law enforcement is not an assembly line job. It deals with people and their lives. We shouldn't be forced to constantly "find" something wrong with people. |
It's only a terrible analogy because you walked into the conversation an hour late (or 2-3 comments late). I'll help you and quote myself.
> |
You can't "sellout" if your intentions were clear to begin with, they wanted to make money via the entertainment industry. If you don't like them, that's fine, but calling them a sellout is a completely incorrect term.
Now on to the larger issue.
>Any information-distribution-medium that blocks free access to information is wrong to begin with.
I disagree I think There are plenty of services that should be payed for, digging up information is expensive and difficult as is curating. However this isn't what Netflix does, Netflix is simply and intermediary between the Movie industry and the consumer, I'm sure that if they could get media that people want to watch for free, they would have no problem monetizing their distribution platform with ads same as TPB does.
What I think you really meant to say was:
>All information should be freely available
This is a totally legitimate view . I agree with you, information should be readily available. But your block buster movie is no more information than the mona lisa is a technical schematic. That media does not help you become a better person, learn more or become a better individual. Preventing you from viewing the material is not advantagous to an oppressor in any way and does not prevent you from succeeding.
>Netflix uses the same methods as Microsoft/Apple/etc: offer 'userfriendly' stuff that indeed works but has complete control over the user. That's a wrong design to begin with. Users should control the machine, not the other way around.
Well first of all the features you're attacking from Netflix have nothing to do with usability at all, they have to do with legality and monetization. Second, both apple and microsoft provide a premium service. They are your servant. You give them money and you get what is promised, in this case easier to understand UI tools. You are not paying to use your computer you are paying to not have to worry about your computer's functionality (or at least not to the same extent).
Now if you want to drop the angst and treat me like a human being I would love to hear what you have to say and how you think we should as a society fund multimillion dollar pieces of entertainment. Personally I think it would work pretty well as a pay monthly for unlimited access. I think what needs to change is we say good bye to overpaid actors (which to be fair is a rather small percent of the acting population), see more lax copyright and shorter period for content to become free domain. |
I'd venture to say that most pirates wouldn't buy the stuff they're pirating if it purchasing was their only option. Some would. Those are potentially lost sales. The people who pirate it like it and talk about it, there's also the possibility that people hear good things and purchase who wouldn't have otherwise. Those are potentially gained sales. There's also the potential for increased merchandise sales to both pirates and the hypothetical added audience as well. One could make an argument for either side and would likely be at least partially correct.
I'd postulate that the main reason studios are so interested in curbing piracy is to control the distribution channels and maintain the status quo. Media companies have been distributing content in the same ways for a long time and have established the necessary infrastructure to do so. Things like online video (legal and non) lower the barriers to entry and increase the potential for some new player to come in and steal away their market share. It's much easier for me to make a movie and get it published digitally than it would be for me to have physical copies stamped and get them into retail outlets. Additionally, radical changes to the way content is distributed are likely to change the means by which media companies monetize their properties, and most would likely prefer to continue going back to the same well rather than having to get creative or try something new.
Movie studios' answer to digital distribution is a good example of this... Instead of buying a DVD for $15 they want people to pay that same price for a digital copy to own it. Instead of going to Blockbuster you can pay $6-8 for the rights to view a movie online for a day or two. The cost to distribute drops dramatically (no pressing discs, shipping them, stocking them, defective returns, etc, etc, etc) but the price to the consumer stays the same. Likewise, neither option addresses the way in which people tend to watch movies.
Netflix is a step in the right direction in this regard as it gives people a model that is friendly to the way they tend to watch movies, and people love it. Unfortunately the studios have been extremely slow to open up to the idea with new releases. If they want to stop or marginalize piracy, that's the way to do it. I've heard from a not insubstantial number of people that they used to pirate music but stopped once they got on Spotify, for example. |
Fix the computers, design better computers, research (which will lead to more research and applications that need human instructions initially), creative pursuits (arts, music, etc). Computers can only make so many projections and improvements on their own because they're limited by code. Eventually some person will figure out something else they want the computer to do that wasn't in there before or they might want to improve efficiency. I guess computers can run simulations on their own and make decisions based on available data, but they need to be prompted to even consider things outside of their programming and that's where humans can come in. |
Because I sail via VPN like most pirates do, and TPB has a decent clean UI and a great search function and works as you'd expect it to. Other sites are clunky and just don't work well. ISOHunt for example, try sorting by seeds and it doesn't work, therefore the site is useless to me. KAT while better than ISOHunt is cluttered to fuck and has all sorts of shit littering the landing page. |
Also, in states where small claims court will not collect your debt for you, you can send someone to collections for a fee if you've won your case. |
True story of shit we had with TWC a while back:
We've been with Time Warner for well over a decade, we started service with them back when it was still called Road Runner. We'd been having connectivity issues with what we believed was our router and we got on the phone with TW support, amongst the trouble shooting we did a speed test a few times.
To make sure we were getting the right speed, I went to the site to match up what my parents were paying each month to the speed that gets them. This couldn't be right though, what we were paying for should be netting us 50 down 5 up, we were only getting 5 down 1 up. The customer service rep took a look at our plan and it turns out that my parents had been paying the price equivilant of their "Ultimate - 50 down 5 up" package when they were locked into a rate of 5 down 1 up.
I can only guess that this had been going on for no less than 5 years, probably much longer. After some arguing with a customer service rep the plan was changed to match the money they were getting from us. I was asked to do a speed test and it was good, exactly what we SHOULD HAVE been getting. However, the problem we called about required an in-house visit from a technician.
This is where it gets REALLY shiesty: A few days later, the technician visits and corrects the problem. He wraps up by doing a speed test using his own equipment. Thats weird, he says it 5 down 1 up. I tell him about what happened and he goes back and checks the service logs for our account. Less than an hour after the phone call ended, the service rep CHANGED OUR SPEEDS BACK. Un-fucking-belivable. The technician was a cool guy and was weirded out about this himself and he got it once again changed to what it should be.
I can only conclude that the service rep changed our speed long enough to fool me and then switched it back, thinking I wouldn't we wouldn't be any wiser. I now check my speed every other week because I wouldn't be surprised at all if they tried to pull the same shit down the road again. |
We have some questions/reservations about GDI’s numbers. All versions of OS X are lumped together under a single “OS X” line entry. However, all major Windows versions are given their own separate line entries.
Take out that little bit of creative reporting, and Windows tops the list with 248 vulnerabilities. Even given that some of these vulnerabilities are probably common across different Windows versions, you still have double the listed vulnerabilities over OS X. Also note that Windows 7 is still running 5x as many installs as Windows 8, whereas almost half of current OS X users are on Yosemite.
> Android has always been a very popular target for hackers but it’s not specifically called out in this study.
Whereas Android truly has no equal in the [mobile malware statistics:](
Note that iOS doesn't even rate its own title, being simply lumped under "Other", even though [iOS sees more real-world usage:](
Also note that these are listed as "vulnerabilities" and not as actual known attacks. If we look at currently active malware penetrations, the numbers paint an entirely different story. |
Superior in only in its inferiority. Arguably the only reason to get a Mac over a traditional PC is because there are far fewer viruses that affect their OS, because so many fewer people use Macs, and also because it has a comparatively dumbed down user interface. There is very little a PC is not capable of in both the extremes of shit-storm stupidity and being so awesome you might fall in love with it. A Mac on the other hand takes a lot of elbow grease to do barely more than what is not standard with the OS. |
I wrote one to them and got a reply.
Me:
Hi, everytime I receive a link to your US site the address gets changed to include .AU and the link breaks. This is annoying the hell out of me. Would love it if you could not do that! Tim
Them:
Dear Tim,
Apologies for the delay in getting a response back to your comment below. However unfortunately there is no way around this issue. As we are the publishers of the Australian edition of Popular Science Magazine and www.popsci.com.au in our license agreement we are entitled to block the US website from being made accessible to Australian web users. This is our legal and business right as the licensees of the US version that we are buying the license and ownership of the Australian market which is why in order to capture the full scope of the market a redirect has been placed on the US website to the Australian one. However the majority of content which is available on the US site is also made available on the Australian site with the addition of local content being published. For links you find for the US site it is most likely using a different link to that of the Australian site because our site is served here in Australia and not out of the US and therefore we use a different URL structure than of the US site.
There are only delays in certain articles being published when the article which has been posted on the US site is directly a story which will be appearing in our next upcoming on sale issue here in Australia as we publish the magazine one month behind that of the US but apart from that all other content is made available to Australian users. If you have any other further comments, feedback or enquiries please do not hesitate to send them through.
Kind Regards,
Jennifer
Me:
Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for the reply.
I think that if the American URL would redirect to an Australian equivalent, I would probably read your website. I can't count how many times I have clicked on a link, got redirected to your URL not found page and closed the browser window with a grunt. It's very frustrating. I suspect it isn't just me that is frustrated by this issue.
Tim |
It would be a good thing if marketers and advertisers were to use this kind of technology. Good ads could be detected more effectively, emulated, and improved upon while ineffective ones are cut. New demographic areas that we are currently unable to identify may emerge. The more our voices, opinions, and actions are effectively metered, the more they matter.
When a quality show is made and hits demographic areas that can be effectively monetized to cover production costs, piss poor Nielsen ratings won't sign an unnecessary death sentence. Perhaps this will finally lead to the long overdue death of Nielsen ratings. |
Sigh.
It isn't theft. Theft has a very specific legal definition. It is a copyright infringement, which is a civil rather than a criminal infraction in this case.
If you would like, I will explain the difference to you using very small words. |
Their profit margins don't really effect who they are for, their prices do.
If Apple somehow created a way to create the MacBook Air for 1 dollar, and then sold it for 100, would you not buy it because the profit margin was higher then the current profit margin?
And honestly, in the US, if you can afford a decent laptop, you can afford a Mac. I'm not saying you should buy one, because the pros of Apple computers might not be worth it to you, but if you buy a Sony or high end Dell/HP/Samsung, you're nearing Apple's price range.
And Apple sells products for 49 dollars, if you can't afford that, you probably should consider getting off reddit and exploring new career opportunities. |
Here's the thing, that kind of verbal beating does not improve things. A much shorter explanation of what's wrong and what needs to change can sufficiently express disappointment and bring about the needed change. Once the point has been made continuing to express anger over it doesn't improve the team's ability to do better, it creates friction between you and them and makes them less likely to preform well for the company. |
He made no standard for being a good human being, he simply stated that Jobs wasn't, and if you agree, you can connect some of the terrible things he did to that, and if you disagree, you are more likely to connect the good things he did to it.
Also, while the CEOs of all of the listed companies are problematic, mz was pointing out that bill gates was known to work where he knew he could to improve situations, and he pushed others to do so. In addition:
>fuck everyone who is aware of the misery their pursuit of profit brings.
seems to me like he IS holding everyone accountable, so he has no need to shut up. |
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