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US legislature has tried several times already. Governments fail to understand that these measures can easily be circumvented with a proxy server on countries that do not block them. Fighting a war against proxy servers means fighting a war against bots because that's what the pirates are going to use to create them. |
First you have to define intelligence, you don't need to make anything more intelligent than yourself, also you are implying that it will be the effort of a single individual, we only need an AI capable of learning and understanding concepts and form patterns within itself to better its capabilities (aka rebuild its own code), from that it can start by designing new hardware more capable for running the AI and that new hardware help build new code and it's turtles all the way down. |
So basically, no matter what decisions we make as individuals or as a species, the outcome in the end is pretty much the same. |
simulated one per cent of the neuronal network
And the complexity grows non-linearly. Don't even get me started on trying to understand the initial conditions for something like that. |
Guessing it's too late for a new post to get noticed, but I haven't seen a post yet that conveys precisely how far this is from "simulating a human brain".
When they "model a neuron", it's an extremely, extremely simplified notion of a neuron. I can't tell from the articles I found precisely which kind of model they're using, but from the software they say they're using and the fact that they were going for maximum scale, we can safely assume it was the simplest type, most like an "integrate and fire" model. Simulating a neuron using an integrate-and-fire model is like simulating a NASCAR race on a pinewood derby track.
In an integrate-and-fire model, each neuron is a single point in space receiving "up votes" and "down votes" from neighbors, and after enough "up votes" accumulate, it sends an "up vote" to it's neighbors.
In reality, a single neuron has a unique and complicated shape, and the "inputs" can come at (almost) any location on that shape. Inputs from different locations then electrochemically evolve in a complex manner over space and time before an output is possible. Each input can also have a different strength and shape. Furthermore, the neuron is constantly modifying the strength and shape of each input as it goes along.
The most accurate models of a single neuron simulate this dynamic phenomenon by breaking that neuron into thousands and thousands of individual compartments, where the math underlying each compartment is more complex than the entire "integrate and fire" neuron. The most accurate models right now are being done as part of the "Blue Brain" project between IBM and a huge EU consortium. Their biggest network so far includes around 1M neurons, or 1/100,000 the total number in a human brain. Even if they just scaled this up, they would need to account for additional complexity and variability of the small computing nodes they've been able to simulate. This means at least 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, so they are at best 1/10,000,000 of the way there. |
Haswell also gave a 10-50% boost in high-end emulation (Dolphin and PCSXII), compared to the 2% which was predicted based on figures, and the fact that the figures suggested Ivy would be 10-20% faster than Sandy, when it actually turned out to be the same speed. AVX2 etc. aren't applicable to a huge proportion of tasks, but will provide a nice speedup in those that it could be used for. |
Not a math major correct me if I'm wrong here.
40 minutes is 2400 seconds and that's for 1% so it's operating at 1/240,000th of the power of the human brains full potential.
So if Moore's law holds true and we double our super computer processing power every 18 months.
We're looking at roughly 18 iterations of 18 months each or approx 27 years from the singularity.
Yes my math is VERY rough, so is Moore's law and assumptions about the percentage of the brain we use for processing but to me the most important thing this says is there is a chance of seeing the Singularity in our lifetime.
As an intersting side note, I use Swype for Android as my keyboard on reddit mobile and it auto corrects singularity with dinosaur... Hmmmm |
We called Comcast, told them it was too expensive and we were leaving their service. They bumped our package to the next level up and lowered our bill by 20%.... I dunno how everyone screws up talking to reps, but it's the caller--Not the company |
I had Comcast at my old apartment where I moved out of in September 2011. Canceled my service when I moved. Went to their Flint offices to pay my final bill and return all equipment. Upon hearing all the BS going on with them lately, I found myself lucky I never had any issues with them.
Then two weeks ago. I got a phone call from a collection agency. They wanted to confirm my address. Alright, gave it to them. Nope. "Did you ever live on a N Saginaw street?" Asked them why, and what this was for. Apparently Comcast has been trying to get ahold of me since May 2011 (Remember, I moved out in September that year). I apparently owe them just under a $100 for my last bill. Called BS on it. Updated my address with this collection agency so they could send me this so called bill. Got it Friday last week. Apparently they are willing to settle for $70 instead of $100. Called the collection agency again, they told me to send them a letter with my claims against this "debt" and proof if I had any. Got my bank statement online from that month and included it in my letter. Paid my bill that month. No clue why Comcast is suddenly stating I owe them money three and a half years later. |
I had a stupid capacitor in one of the telephone jacks, repair guy removed it, speed went from around 10Mb/s to >20Mb/s, also some glitchy corrosion made the DSL reconnect when the weather was hot, repair guy fixed that too. |
Possibly, though unlikely. I had TWC for 4 years and the only issue I ever had was some field engineer physically disconnected a customer from my complex but fucked it up and disconnected me by mistake. It took 4 days to get a tech out and was a simple 10 min fix. Since it violated my SLA to be down (guaranteed 99.9 up per month) I was to be given a substantial discount, never ever got it (yes I called).
As for equipment returns there was no real issue. Be aware that your last bill will NOT be taken care of by auto pay and they MAY fuck up your cutoff date (happened to me). So, get a quote of what you'll actually owe for your last payment IF you return equipment on X date. The really odd thing is your final payment will be turned over to a 3rd party collections, it doesn't affect credit rating, to get your last payment. My suggestion is to call TWC directly to pay your final bill, that way you can actually get assistance if the bill is incorrect. |
The original plan was to launch a giant rocket called the Nova, fly it straight to the moon, land, and then fly straight back to earth. The problem was that the mass required for flinging all that fuel around in and out of the various gravity wells meant that the rocket would be too big to build. Imagine a rocket so big it could lift the entire Saturn V, the largest rocket ever built, into orbit. edit, i just checked the numbers, direct ascent required a little more than 300 tons in low orbit, much less than the mass of the Saturn V, but still more than twice as much weight as it could lift to orbit That's the kind of size we're talking about. They would land on the moon, leave the descent stage behind, and return to earth in the ascent/command module.
The next idea was to replace that single giant rocket with a few smaller rockets, and then have everything rendezvous in earth orbit before going straight to the moon and back.
That was better, but still required several successful launches in very short succession, and a huge lunar lander, something like 60 feet tall.
The final idea was lunar orbit rendezvous. 1 launch to put 130 tons into orbit, a manageable lunar lander, and none of the problems associated with the direct route. It was really a genius idea, and the following link, written by a redditor by the name of Jeff Pollard shows just how much better it was than the other plans.
I love talking about this kind of thing, so if you have any other questions, don't hesitate. |
Just one quote from the Sawan / Abdou paper cited above:
"It is clear from the above discussion that both the
required and achievable TBR values depend on many
system physics and technology parameters. Many of
these parameters are not yet well defined. In addi-
tion, the rapidly decreasing tritium resources imply
that the time window for the availability of tritium
to supply fuel for the DT physics devices is closing
rapidly. [ ... ] Conditions in ITER are different from those
in a DEMO or commercial reactor and measuring tri-
tium production in the TBM will not be adequate
to conclude whether tritium self-sufficiency can be
achieved. [ ...] There is no practical external source of tritium for
fusion energy development beyond ITER, and all sub-
sequent fusion systems have to breed their own tritium.
Tritium self-sufficiency in DT fusion systems cannot be
assured unless specific plasma and technology condi-
tions are met. " |
I second this. Granted everyone has a different mileage requirements for their vehicles. I've been tinkering with the idea of picking up a Tesla for the last year or so, and have made detailed notes of my car use for the last 6-8 months.
The |
suddenly they all upgrade by 2x, 3x, or even 6x their speeds - for free.
This happened to me a couple months ago. My area qualified for Fiber the last week of October. and literally the next monday a Time Warner rep came by our house to let us know that they were going to bump our 25 mbps internet up to 100 mbps immediately and it would go up to 300 mbps this summer, which is exactly when Fiber is scheduled to be installed .
You were wrong about it being free though, they actually dropped our rate by $10. They are doing literally everything they possibly can to keep us as customers, but we're still going to drop them as soon as we can. They would have to literally pay us while giving us those speeds before I would even consider staying with them. |
The PC component market is very competitive
PC is the genericized version of IBM's PC which includes the derived architecture that allows for generic modular components. This is why your desktop motherboard is likely an ATX motherboard as it an eXtension from IBM's AT PC.
Other computers are not inherently part of the genericized PC derivatives (by the way, personal computers existed way before the PC) as they do not have access to the parts designed for the IBM PC derivative.
They're not even inherently able to run the same software as they can have entirely different processors which becomes most obvious when people go too far on the generalization and try calling mobile devices PCs.
So in summary, PC is not a general term for all computers. Hell, what IBM original called a PC wasn't even what we would call a personal computer. They were more akin to personnel computers targeted at business staff (hence personnel) and represent the move from mainframes terminals to business computing on the desk. |
When my wife and I tented an apartment in Lawton OK, we had already moved in when we real used that the complex had an ISP contract.
When I called them to ask about service, the fastest speed they offered was 7mbps down, at $40 a month. But that's not all it cost, because in order to get internet access you had to have their cable TV service for an additional $40 a month. We didn't even own a TV, but they wouldn't budge on the price. That came out to a grand total of $84 a month.
My wife and I decided not to get internet because we could live without it until our lease expired, but that only lasted two weeks. Fast forward to us moving out, there were 11 days in the new month, but they wouldn't even pro rate the service, so I just canceled it. I'm so glad I never have to set foot in that armpit of a city again! |
THANK YOU. I stopped reading at (paraphrasing) "a lot of companies still use Outlook and Excel to get stuff done."
Sorry, but as a sys admin it drives me absolutely fucking NUTS that the old guys above me refuse to read anything that isn't in prettified-chart form. And more often than not they want the data in a form that takes an eternity to generate just so they can look at it for five minutes before saying "meh"and moving on to the net topic. Pray tell, how is this in any way "better" than the app generation the article derides?
Personally, I find Microsoft Office to be the biggest hindrance to my productivity because sometimes in order to give management what they want, I spend all day crafting awesome Google searches to find out where the fuck Microsoft put (insert the blank) that I used all the time in 2010, and just generally how to use its shitty interface to get the results I want.
I think our energy is better served figuring out how to ween companies off the Microsoft teet instead of trying to make us millennials adapt. Especially in a day and age where there are plenty, far more intuitive tools out there. I find that companies cling to MS "productivity" products because it's familiar, not necessarily because it's a superior product. |
I find that the bigger problem with being skilled with certain aspects of technology within my field is that if I say I have an advanced skill with something, e.g. MS Word, the reader thinks of what is advanced from their skill set, such as using a bulleted list instead of manually creating such a list using hyphens and tab. Same with search engines; I had to spend 10 minutes explaining to a friend how boolean searches can be more powerful, even though he knows tech and research is one of the primary aspects of his job.
This is in contrast to the person who knows that if they knew how to program, they could do something much faster; i.e. knowing that you are ignorant of something. |
Then they simple have to shut the fuck up about the privacy issues and use facebook. It's not our service, it's theirs. Maybe their goal is to drive away all customers, do we know that? No. If you don't like it, leave, and stop whining.
I'm not a fan of the lack of privacy on facebook, but nobody's forced to use it. |
This assumes 1 main thing: that the person trying to crack your password has the password hashes. This is a very serious assumption. On a linux system you typically need root to gain access to them, which means that having your password hashes is going to be the least of your worries. However even if they get the password hash tables off of a mainstream site like facebook or even reddit, most popular sites will add what's called a "salt" to your password. This salt is usually a couple of characters that are prepended to your password before it runs through the hashing algorithm. On linux, the salt is generally only two characters, although I've seen up to sixteen in production. Now the salt is universal - it's the same for every password. However until you know that salt you're dealing with the password length + the length of the salt. So on a system that's using a 2 character salt, a 8 character password suddenly has the complexity of a 10 character password the first time around. Now they don't mention the hashing algorithm here nor the character set that they're using in the article (and for that matter, they also don't mention the length of time that you're quoting in the headline), but after some computation we can find out the character set you're assuming. So most character sets are either upper/lowercase (52 characters), upper/lower with numbers (62 characters) and upper/lower with numbers and symbols (84 characters). Let's do some math.
For 52 characters, the additional 4 letters in your password will make the number of possible entries multiply by a factor of 52^4, which is 7,311,616.
For 62, 62^4 = 14,776,336
For 84, 84^4 = 49,787,136 (Sorry for the commas all you European(minus you UK folks)/south american/russian/south african/russian redditors)
Now there are 8766 hours in a year (approx), which is 4383 times as long as the 2 hours it took to crack the 8 character password. This means that even a password using only lower/upper case will take around 7311616 / 4383 = 1668 years to crack. While that certainly falls under the "but would take years to crack 12-character ones" as the guy who wrote the headline implies, so does a 11 character password (32 years). Since the upper bound here is pretty vague, we can't accurately decide on the character set being used. However here are some stats for the others:
If you're using letters and numbers, a 10 character password would take 0.88 years to crack - assuming a power draw of 200Watts (pretty conservative), the electricity needed to run a computer for that long at that load would cost you about $308 to compute (assuming 20 cents/kilowatt hour)
If you're using letters, numbers, and symbols, a 10 character password would take you about 1.6 years to crack.
So does all this mean you should use a 10 character password with numbers and symbols? No, stick with your 8 character lower/uppercase one as generally your password is going to already be salted anyway, which will bump it up to at least that level for the initial compute.
I'd go more into this such as the feasibility of getting the hash tables without being noticed, the fact that many current hashing algorithms have time-delay mechanisms built in, and that in a corporate environment it's been shown that larger passwords are more dangerous for security, but I have to go play paintball while dressed as the [berries and cream guy]( |
We should be making infrastructure investments, not investing in the next bubble du jour.
We need access to truly high speed Internet if we're going to compete in the future globalized economy (this language makes me think a run for office is immanent). Private industry has shown no initiative to get this done without tax payer funding.
We need to upgrade our ports. By 2020 most American Ports will be handling twice as much cargo as they were designed for. Without investing in ports we will not be able to adequately handle imports and exports.
We need to upgrade and maintain our surface transportation. We currently spend 40% of what we need to to adequately maintain our surface transportation.
Use of public transportation is up 25% over the last decade and we continue to slash spending for it.
All of these things plus crumbling bridges, failing dams, traffic jams backed up for miles, etc. and we spent the last decade giving away tax cuts so the wealthiest could invest in getrichquick.com, ten million houses people are never going to live in, and getrichquick2.0.com. If we are going to continue to be a superpower and maintain our way of living we are going to have to build things that people need. People like facebook but people need roads and bridges to make a living.
We need to stop with the tax cuts, in fact we need to raise taxes, end the two wars and begin to make investments that have some prospect of paying off in the future. There is no get rich quick scheme that works long term. Investing in the commons is what made America great in the first place. This myth, that's permeated every aspect of tax policy, that tax cuts benefit us all has run it's course. As you commute home in an endless sea of traffic this evening, ask yourself why we don't have an extra lane or adequate public transportation. The answer is tax cuts and two endless, pointless wars. |
No, this is tech. It's an "algorithm."
But what I think Reso was saying is that it's not a simple formula. And really, he or she is right that even with all that, you don't have a formula in the sense that variable A + variable B = valuation X or anything, even far more complex than that that we or anyone else will ever be able to understand or quantify precisely. Why? Because there are factors out there that simply cannot be measured or reliably used in a predictive manner, e.g. expectations of the future prices of other assets, expectations of future interest rates (which is technically a price of an asset or can be categorized with future prices of other assets as a potential future economic loss), personal relationships encouraging individuals to invest in a particular company, charisma or personality cult regarding individual executives or owners of a company (not to bash, but think Steve Jobs, Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates back when), meta-influences such as the stock's movement impacting the purchasing by straight-technical-trend-traders.... the list goes on. The closest you might be able to come is statistically regressing to determine correlations... but even then, it will still be incredibly hard to establish causation along with correlation because of how many factors there are, the limitation of your data (since causative effects can change over time, so you've probably got to narrow your sample size to a chronologically small sample), and so on.
Plus, the day someone figures out a perfect, precisely predictive calculable formula for stock valuation is the day that the stock market should go away - because then any deviation in price is potentially disastrous, unwarranted, and irrational speculation. |
Initially, nothing really. ISPs have some stockpiles. However, when those stockpiles run out (figure a couple of months), ISPs wanting to sign up new customers will have the following options:
require the customers to bring their own address space
use multi-layer NAT (that is, they'll assign their customers non-unique space)
find address space on the black/grey/white market (see the recent purchase by Microsoft of 666K addresses from the liquidators of the Nortel bankruptcy -- current benchmark rate is now $12/address) and pass on the cost to the customer
ISPs will also probably get much more conservative in assigning addresses to their customers, attempting to reclaim addresses as much as possible. |
Sure, they have paid musicians.. but they have kept much more. You clearly do not understand the situation, why are you making a stance? The birth of file sharing has brought the artist a whole new medium of exposure. The labels used to have the power because they were the exposure. They had the money and connections to advertise artists in any way with their buddy buddy media corps. It was very tight kept. They also control distribution, which is the only real power they can still call their own. Im not saying they dont still have that avenue of money/connections/advertisement, I am just saying now it is available to everybody... for free. It naturally balances out because it is not controlled by anyone but the listeners.
The ability to download abundant amounts of music has allowed for the listener to try any music without having to pay for a cd at a store, whose selection was picked out by big business. It then allows you to filter until you have found music you truly like. Music that you have found yourself. Music plays a MAJOR role in society.. that word feels to small.. Music is a part of the human race, and people will support artists. Things change. Everything evolves. |
This is the inevitable outcome of software patents: Decades of US law pretending that Intellectual Property benefits society as much as actual innovation. Countries which don't respect IP will pull ahead through actual software innovation, even as the US burdens itself with more lawsuits.
It's a race to see if the US can extend its IP monopolies around the world before its innovation stagnates and is eclipsed by nimble developers from the rest of the world who don't have to question whether every item in their code infringes on a piece of paper in the USPTO. |
Isn't it worse than that?
Doesn't it suffice to patent the equivalent to a description of a mathematical equation, without actually giving the exact formula, which then enables you to sue everyone's unique implementation including variations of said formula (which you never actually gave)? |
No, it really isn't.
I can reduce any sentence into a series of words and any word into a series of letters but I can only describe a chair using words. I can't reduce a chair into letters and words because a chair isn't made of words or letters but of physical materials. |
This is to prevent the trusting of compromised intermediate CAs which have been cross-signed by other root authorities. The main reasoning behind the knee-jerk distrusting of DigiNotar is the complete and total failure to provide information to the browser maintainers in a timely manner, including a list of compromised CAs and fraudulent certificates issued. Unlike the earlier Comodo compromise, which was handled gracefully by the CA company, this one has a much larger scope - early investigations indicate that DigiNotar's entire key infrastructure has been compromised, not simply a few misissued certificates. |
Based upon the article, it's the Justice Department that is actually looking for help in clarifying the definition and scope of Authorized Access, which is part of their job, so them asking the question isn't a terrible thing. It's in the media because part of that is/can be/has been construed to cover instances in social media, which is a part of what the Justice Department is looking for clarification on. The problem is that I think this is something better suited for the Supreme Court to decide on the application of existing laws.
I'd like to think that the Justice Department is making a statement to congress; "stop fucking with the definition of authorized access, you're making it unnecessarily too broad to enforce effectively" but I'm not quite sure that's the intent.
Edit: |
The OP's link description kind of takes the readers mind in one direction, which only happens to be part of what the article is talking about. It seems like the justice department is struggling with a clear definition of authorized access which to me sounds like something that should be going across the Supreme Court first, then if necessary to Congress for legislation.
For the most part we have existing laws that cover fake names and pictures, i'm quite sure there are some solid precedents on applying them in such situations. Impersonating someone else with the intent to defraud is already illegal, doing so with the intent to defame is covered under the above and slander/libel. Impersonating someone else with the intent to parody is covered as well (although it can be muddy differentiating between this and defamation). As far as creating a new false persona for the purpose of generating writings or media, as long as that persona isn't used for the above mentioned activities, wouldn't it be the same as a pen or stage name?
Ultimately I'd like to say a little discussion of such a small matter by the political machine wasn't a bad thing, unfortunately we know if they meet to discuss something for more than 10 minutes, someone will author a bill just to get their stats up and ultimately they'll create some stupid legislation that doesn't solve the problem, is relatively unenforceable and manages to create a nightmare for someone innocent. |
Certainly smells like a linkbaiting article, in addition to the fact that the last moments of a great person are usually greatly exaggerated.
However, if it is true that he worked until his death, I'm quite horrified by the fact that he chose not to spend his last moments with his family. |
Industrially useful superconductors in the liquid nitrogen temperature range (there are a few, but they're expensive, hard to make, harder to work with, and just all around suck) would be tremendously useful. LN2 is dirt cheap, you can get it anywhere at ridiculously low prices. |
If I'm on a crowded bus, I don't talk about such things!
It's intuitive to see public chat room software like IRC as a 'crowded bus'. This is not the case for one-on-one IM. Remember, most people don't understand the technical details behind computers.
> client-side logging... would be accessible by malware, other users of the computer or law enforcement after seizure
It's still client-side, it's still in my control. If someone wanted to get those logs in a legal way, they'd have to get some warrant and seize my computer from me. (Malware could be a keylogger, compromising everything on the computer, making a log file superfluous, of course.) If it's on a third party server, the group interested in the logs talk to the corporation instead, which is far more likely to just give in instead of fighting even if it is a clearly wrong call. (See: all the videos YouTube takes down to avoid trouble.)
(It's also more profitable to target the third party server, even if it's harder to get in, since you can obtain lots of people's data, potentially of high profile, whereas most people here are not notable enough to be targets.)
> Suspicions without evidence are simply speculation and thus worthless and never enough to assume anything.
Incorrect. We cannot confirm it, but we can make the case that it is reasonable to assume that the easy potential for it to be compromised makes it unsafe to use. Just like on your crowded bus, you assume that someone could overhear your conversation even if you have no evidence that someone is currently listening -- it is very easy for someone to "overhear" IMs even if no one currently chooses to!
Basically, it's trivial to have no privacy. Even if it is not true, it's so easy for it to be so and it's safe to assume that it is not private. Security and privacy need to be proactive, not reactive. You don't wait for a smoking gun proof that your conversations were not as private as you thought -- by then it's too late!
I think we have two different standards. You want evidence that could be held up in court. All I want are heuristics that are 'good enough' to follow so that people are kept safe on the Internet. If you assume good faith of a third party rather than some sort of technical feature in the software to keep it private, you're making a mistake. Even if one particular third party doesn't do the wrong thing, you use lots of services from lots of different people and you will never be able to tell by yourself what's on their servers.
(EDIT: In other words, my statements are not evidence because I do not have access to Microsoft's servers, but based on the way their technology is set up, it doesn't seem to me to be private enough to use for conversations. I don't need to convince a jury that Microsoft's guilty of something, I just need to convince random strangers on the Internet that it's not safe to assume your chats are only being read by the intended recipient.
Yes, your conversations might be private right now, but there's nothing stopping them from not being private. Of course, since so many people use Twitter and Facebook and tend not to care about privacy there, they might not care about IM, either.) |
Yes, but they can easily write a few lines of code to also log your name if you write a blacklisted word or link. Passive monitoring, but a human could still get your name since it is server-side.
EDIT: Apparently you want clarification because you do not believe me and I am being downvoted, hivemind. It is very easy to track and save a message so that a human can read it (1) if you are doing it on a central server (like what is being done) and (2) if you write a few extra lines in there to handle these cases.
So here's a simplified explanation of how a chat like Windows Live Messenger works. A does not talk directly to B. A talks to C via a centralized server B. If you send Bob a message it goes (roughly) like You -> Microsoft -> Bob.
Now, I'm going to assume that there's too much volume (and meaningless noise) to log every conversation. They're Microsoft. They could easily do it, but even they have finite storage and most of it is going to be nonsense you're not interested in. You probably want to keep track of troublemakers, though. Perhaps you don't want to get in legal trouble if people the government doesn't like use your service, so you want to show that you're proactive in stopping such stuff. You would certainly want to keep track of such names and hand such names to the authorities yourself to save yourself the legal trouble.
It's actually rather simple to add this qualification once someone violates your rules. Simply save the conversation or (if space is really constrained), just log the name of the people. So here's some quick pseudo-Python to demonstrate how easy it is to also log when you filter.
# Yes, this is not an actual program and is written for human understanding,
# and is not the best way to write it.
def send_message(sender, receiver, message, conversation):
# This is for the stuff that gets announced on your client, like piracy.
if check_blacklist(message):
record_name(sender)
keep_logs(conversation)
send_warning(sender.client)
# This is for stuff that is illegal that they probably don't want to warn
# about, like certain terrorist keywords.
elseif check_silent_filter(message):
record_name(sender)
keep_logs(conversation)
conversation.deliver(message)
# This is the normal. Note that since no warning was sent above, it seems
# like the normal happens in that case too.
else:
conversation.deliver(message)
Now, anyone who is a programmer would notice that the hardest functions there to actually write are the ones we know exist on the server (e.g. the ones to check a filter to see if the message is a "bad" message). We already know that Microsoft is checking messages by an unknown blacklist when they pass through its servers, and we do not know if they are warning us about every triggered word because we have to trust that they warn the client when something like that happens.
We do not know about the other functions, but logging is trivial to code, and they could help Microsoft avoid legal trouble (like Megaupload got into) for helping illegal activity. Even if Microsoft didn't want to, the NSA could easily bully them into doing such a thing. Even if they are not doing it today, it could easily be added at any future point without notifying the users of the software.
And yes, if it happens to third-party clients, it's being done server-side.
EDIT: And in a bit of a response to the person who thinks this is just as harmless as the code to italicize things on reddit's server . |
Becuase it's easier. I pay for spotify because it's easier than downloading music, making sure it's properly tagged, getting album art, and importing it into my library.
If I didn't have a limited data plan it would be perfect for my phone too! (get on that) |
I concur with Cragstone, your |
I don't see this happening. While it would be nice, you must take in to consideration how much money HBO makes through the cable providers. Doing so, in their eyes, puts them at risk for losing money. Don't get me wrong, I love HBO and pay for the subscription, and personally I don't mind. HBO has consistently put out some of the greatest television shows and documentaries, and the reason for this is the amount of money they make. |
Nice try, cable company person!
The argument you put forth is self-contradictory. If HBO thought they could make MORE money with commercials and shitty programming, they'd be doing it already.
In addition, they are ALREADY beholden to the month-by-month audience. If their content starts to suck, people will stop paying the premium for HBO.
The way they mitigate risks with original content is to offer lots of OTHER programming, including feature films, and a back catalog of their successful original content.
Your notions about incentivizing seem backward, kind of like the GOP notion that ["the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less."](
One could just as easily make a counter-argument that HBO lacks the incentive to produce higher-quality content as long as they get paid either way.
And it's kind of ridiculous to say they shouldn't sell a tremendously popular original show in the present, because some day they might have less-popular shows.
It's rather inane to posit that putting their original content up for sale separately will somehow tank the entire channel if one particular show tanks. People who pay for the channel are already paying for and getting the original content. Making it available separately won't hurt them if nobody wants it (no additional sales), but will help them if it IS popular, by driving additional sales.
It's only a matter of time before they are forced to switch models, as increasing numbers of people stop paying for cable. |
I was addressing jabbathematt when he said:
>When that generation is gone, I feel like things will start moving forward in general .
In the specific case of HBOGO subscriptions, then yeah, I guess baby boomers are less likely to demand ala carte digital content than the current generation. It may just be that the older generation holds most wealth in this country so Cable + HBO subscription isn't cost prohibitive to them. |
You're right. And they will still profit much more than they would if they provided a for-pay service.
I'm certainly not saying it's right , but HBO gets kick-backs from the Cable companies -- so they actually end up making more than $15 / month per user who subscribes to them. |
This article seems to me very inaccurate. Civilian GPS spoofing is possible, but certainly not trivial. However, with access to encrypted and secure military GPS, it would simply be reckless for drones to depend on civilian GPS. If some drones actually somehow DO use civilian GPS, I doubt they will for long now.
Secondly, these aircraft simply aren't going to fall out of the sky if they DO get spoofed. They have many safety checks; they also can track where they are if GPS fails based on airspeed and prior location. They also interact with the same air traffic control system that all other military aircraft do, and for large portions of flights they are subject to air traffic control interaction, not even counting operator interactions.
Thirdly, even IF you were somehow able to spoof a drone and get it to fall out of the sky, chances of it destroying a land target are fairly low, even if you could catch it above a metropolitan area. Partially because of the reasons I've cited above; they wouldn't fall from the sky unless they ran out of fuel, which would probably take a large amount of time.
In other words, the chances of using a drone in a "911"-style attack are very slim. And even the ability to successfully spoof are rather low. |
Because it failed so quickly, you have a legitimate case for a refund. The sale of goods act says that if the goods are not fit for purpose, then you're entitled to a full refund or a replacement. If they fail to comply with your request, then call the citizens advice bureau. They'll either forward you to the relevant authorities for consumer electronics, or they'll book you into the small claims court. The manufacturer will then receive a summons, informing them of the case. In most instances they will simply contact you and offer to replace the device in an attempt to settle the matter. They can't be dealing with it because it will cost them more in legal fees than the cost of a new tablet. You don't need a solicitor since you can provide the evidence yourself, so it won't cost you a penny. |
I have, and yes I agree it is. However the example in this article is unfortunate because the top answer had a high score generated by a database query of known sayings. The other answers that scored very low were a product of the more advanced language understanding frameworks which this article goes on to describe. I just thought it funny that the correct answer was a product of something else entirely. |
While I believe that content is sometimes overpriced and inaccessible to some, I have to disagree with the fact that these points will end piracy. While obviously, no matter what (unless everything is free), there will be some residual amount of piracy, I think as content prices go down, piracy rates will remain constant (after an initial drop).
While I have no source (just a theory) - my thought is that right now, people use the justification that it's "too expensive", so the content isn't worth the price. So let's use $20 as an example. Let's say people will accept $20 as "fair" for "good" content. Since all the "bad" content gets pirated, under Kim's theory, ultimately the price of all content falls - let's say to $10. (Because "good" content isn't worth double the price) After the market corrects itself, it's as if the $10 is $20. Now you have people claiming they pirate because, again, it's "too expensive". It's a never-ending cycle.
I'm certainly not pro-MPAA/RIAA/etc, but I can certainly see how eventually you have a market that dries up of anything useful because there's no more financial incentive to enter it. Not saying the amount they make now isn't absurd, but it'll eventually get to the other end of the spectrum.
I guess what I mean is, piracy is hurting the cause - not helping it. If the options were "buy it" or "don't buy it" - the market would eventually correct itself to reasonable pricing. But instead, we have a black market that causes prices to remain inflated to recoup losses. Yes, some pirates would have never paid anyway - but let's say there are 100 pirates - 50 would never pay, 45 might pay, and 5 would have paid. That's 5 fewer customers, not counting the potential in the 45 that might have paid. The "free publicity" argument, IMO, is a just another justification to pirate... you aren't helping the content creator near as much as you like to believe you are. |
Huge post to address some points from your first paragraph...
Let's consider the manufacturing process for a spatula.
The startup costs to create the spatula, things like paying people to design the spatula and tooling machines prior to production, only happen once (or close enough to once that the length of the production run is irrelevant). These costs are not influenced by the number of spatulas produced, and are called fixed costs . The cost to actually produce spatulas once the machines are ready is the manufacturer's variable cost , because the total cost varies with the number of spatulas created.
To make a profit on a product, a manufacturer has to make at least their fixed costs + their variable costs in revenue. To price an item, the manufacturer projects the number of its they will sell. Given that number n, they solve the formula "n variable cost per unit + fixed costs = n minimum sale price". Any price set above the calculated minimum will earn the manufacturer a profit (assuming they sell all n units). Typically for a mass produced item like the spatula, the highest price consumers will accept ends up being very close to the variable price, so manufacturers end up having to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of units to make up their relatively low fixed costs. Because manufacturers have to sell so many units to cover thier fixed costs, and variable cost is so high relative to sale price, this means that their total variable cost is usually much larger than their total fixed cost (this can be a little unintuitive).
Now consider the case of video games. Variable costs are printing cardboard and stamping CD's for physical distribution, and bandwidth/distribution fees for digital copies. This costs somewhere in the range of pennies to a couple dollars per unit, which is very small relative to the final sale price of ~60 dollars. Video game producers therefore have very small variable costs. Their fixed costs, however, are enormous. Game makers employ tens to hundreds of designers, programmers, asset creators, testers, marketers, etc for several years while the game is in development. Beyond labor costs, there are lots of licensing fees for various libraries and console platforms etc. When all is said and done, and all copies of a game have been created/sold, total variable cost will be irrelevant next to the huge fixed cost. This means the total variable cost of a video game is of litle importance when determining the game's sale price. Total fixed costs and required profit are what matter.
In other words, reducing total variable cost by switching more copies from physical distribution to digital distribution will not realistically change the developer's costs or their profits . Sure, profit is higher in absolute terms, but relative to the game's fixed costs the difference is irrelevant.
Also, keep in mind that today's typical price of $60 is actually cheaper than games in previous years after adjusting for inflation (I'm too lazy to cite this at the moment, but a monent's googling should provide some proof). Additionally, I think anyone who's honest will agree production values are much higher than in the past. |
And people always say they would pay for GOT but what about all the other shows they produce that are not as popular.
This is the major part that pisses me off about TV (and why I don't have TV); the dead weight content that I want nothing to do with. The viewers' voices only come in at the very end, so their effective options are an unheard "watch or don't watch;" unfortunately "couldn't watch" comes off the same as "don't want to watch."
Stepping back a bit, the old broadcast system has rigid slots, so there are only a finite amount of shows that can be shown. Since some shows cost a lot, a station will want to air them a few times, further cutting down how many shows can effectively be shown. There are coveted time slots where you can sell a show easily, and there are time slots that are effectively a kill order for a show. Not only that, it's incredibly difficult for a person who is new to a series to get into the story of a series if they are starting at the middle; i.e. difficult to get people hooked on your service!
Anyway, this whole system is just fucking antiquated; everything about it. Sure, it worked for the past; the way it works now they need ads and some kind of cost-levelling action between money-makers and money-losers. If you try to adapt that model to the internet, it's not playing to the strengths of the internet, nor is it as effective as alternatives.
So what could be done? Look at what the internet does already, and line yourself up to work with its strengths. All it would take is someone with a decent amount of money, a set of eyes, a brain, and some vision.
Let's take Game of Thrones for example, because it's relatively expensive compared to something like a shitcom. The first season apparently cost between $50 and $60 million. Say there are an average of 10 million viewers; we're talking a cost of $6 per season; $0.60 per episode. At prices like that, people with any kind of disposable income wouldn't need to pirate. Of course I also understand that this is cost and that some profit margin would need to be in there. With the internet and a "watch as much as you want when you want/can" mentality, you might be able to increase your viewer base to make notable profit. Plus you may be able to go international with it, further increasing the viewer base. One issue I can think of, is that people may watch in groups or watch some episodes at a friend's house, but at half-a-dollar per episode, no one's really going to think too hard over picking up an episode here and there. If you could drive that price down even further (by increased number of viewers), the you might even see prices like $0.25 per episode. What can you get for a quarter these days? I don't even think the payphones that still exist here are that cheap.
Another thing I want to say is that since the money is going directly to the content creators, you wouldn't even need ads. I know ads make money, but they're not necessary. That said, I'm sure someone would try to force or shoehorn them in (like hulu already is). No one likes them; they're a waste of time; they stop me from consuming content (and paying actual creators). If I want to learn about new products, let me watch a "new products" or "featured products" TV series and gain some TV credits for some featured series or something.
Also the notion of "always available and bought direct from us" means constant steady streams of revenue for the creators, even after the show has been out for a while. You could do something like prior to new seasons starting, drop the prices of old seasons. Maybe offer the first episode for free. Get people interested in the upcoming season. Hell, I bet you could create a series and give it away for free if you wanted to (wouldn't be super high cost production, but tech has lowered that bar pretty hard). Since the creators are streaming/hosting the content, they can tell the number of viewers and get real info on how many people are watching.
Of course, there's the issue of funding for new series that you've brought up. I'd suggest that the function of the industry has to change in this regard. Offer a service; funding, equipment, whatever. Maybe adopt a kickstarter-like system for those who want to use it. If you can guarantee (i.e. season preorder) a certain amount of viewers, then the show is probably a good idea. Fuck the way shows are currently pitched; reality tv garbage. Get the willing viewers involved into the process. Get them invested. They'll sell the show to their friends without any extra effort by you. Once a show is established and running, you don't need a kickstart for it anymore (move to some generalised "loan"' system). Roll the initial risk off onto viewers. At $6 per season or less (likely less in the case of a kickstart), no one's going to lose any sleep over a mediocre series. After the system becomes established, you'll have some valuable data on what kind of funding in the kickstart-like phase would transfer to a profitable tv series. Money is always the hard part, and here there is a learning curve. It's risky in some ways, but you don't go all in on something like this until you have the kinks worked out.
Lets get rid of a rigid broadcast schedule. Old people probably like it because they grew up with it. Young people grew up with "what you want, when you want" nature of the internet. The bottom line is that it's constricting compared to what is possible. This is one of the reasons why the internet generation downloads. "Oh, I missed __ . Well I'll just download it." I notice people's critique of TV when I'm around it (because I don't have one), and the biggest one I hear is "fuck, there's nothing on" while flipping endlessly through channels. It's true. What a waste of time. The internet has a channel for everyone who wants to watch. Let them watch (and pay you) for whatever they want to see, when they want to see it. Easily used, flexible, and dependable means used often. Low prices are like microtransactions for very satisfactory goods.
And yes, I understand that there are big companies out there who are making money with the current system. Maybe if we all realise what could be possible, enough people will get fed up that some of them will start to listen. Once one does, then the game here will instantly change.
Finally, entertainment is something that will never disappear. America is the go-to country for entertainment. Sell you shit on the global scale, stay on top of things. You will offer something to people that will always be in demand. |
Personally, having lived in Asia for the 1st 15 years of my life I admit, I pirated most of the games I played because there was no other way for me to access those games. Availability and cost were both way out of my reach. Hell even regular businesses and local stores sold pirated copies of games... Similarly, the only way to see movies without having to wait months after the North American release was to acquire it through these shady means.
Since then, and after moving to Canada and making a steam account I now own 188 games in my library and the number is still growing because of the convenience, price and quality the platform provides me.
Yes some people will still download movies/shows/music for a number of reasons, but I can guarantee you a similar distribution platform absolutely WILL get a large number of these people to switch to spending their money instead. Hell even services like iTunes, Netflix and spottily generate tons of revenue thanks to these very points. I personally know people who are GLAD they don't have to spend time downloading shows now that they pay for Netflix. |
are companies not allowed to have marketing strategies?
Sure they are. But a strategy that's based on a variable (i.e. having control over when something is released elsewhere in the world) that isn't in line with reality is a crackpot strategy. Fact is, there are no regional markets anymore; you release something and it's out there, everywhere, immediately.
So a good strategy isn't wishing you could have a summer blockbuster in the US and then one in Australia 6 months later; it would be more like trying to figure out how to market a movie as a "winter blockbuster" there, while selling it as a summer one here. |
Any technology with potential liberating uses will be developed (ex. If there is a colony slapped up on mars, having lag free communications between earth and mars would be useful over the long term. Especially for dealing with emergency situations)
Any technology that is deemed interesting enough, will eventually become the realm of tinkering and garage based experimentation, especially as the tools available to experiment with such technology becomes more widely accessible.
>Generate a strong McElice (or similar) key-pair and exchange public keys in person.
This does solve the security problem of the connection. But it doesn't prevent encrypted connections from being interrupted / intercepted. Depending on the encryption technique you use, there are flaws that exist in the implementation. |
I agree, asymmetry of information is a real problem. So instead of being scared that the government has this information, we need to push for more transparency and ask for us to have all that information as well.
And I will be honest with you, I already assume that someone can read every email I've ever written, can hear most of the stuff I ever said (let's say for the last 10 years, maybe the technology was AS good 10+ years ago), can know every website I've ever browsed, every video I ever watched, and A LOT MORE. Moreover, I assume that a LOT of people, in government, in corporations, AND even private citizens can already do that stuff.
I am very sorry if that's news to you, but privacy is dead, get over it about you already, without even being in the government. Keeping all the things you mentioned there private is ALREADY almost impossible, and if you think those are private now, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you're wrong. |
There's also the problem of gravity-related health issues, as a lack of gravity for such an extended period of time would cause irreversible damage to the crew's bone densities. Exercise and proper nutrition could possibly slow down or nullify this effect, but I'm pretty sure the SpaceX Dragon is way too small to fit the necessary exercise equipment. |
People on reddit hate anecdotes presented as evidence. Turn your anecdote into something you heard on NPR, or read an article about, or something like that, and nobody will downvote you anymore. Reddit doesn't care as much about uncited data. I guess it's because anecdotes are automatically invalid, but uncited data is possibly valid.
Nobody gives a shit about you frequenting restaurants because of one groupon deal, because for everyone one of you, there's 50 people who will tell the same story about only going to a restaurant once on the groupon deal and never going back. But hey, say you saw an NYT article about how groupons have given a restaurant frequent repeat visitors? You're good to go!
By the way, you won't find that article, because it's unrealistic. That's another way to make good reddit posts. Use common sense. Guess that your anecdote is an exception, not the norm, because hey, it probably is. But as long as you read it in a NYT article, you at least have the benefit of the doubt for a while, you won't be downvoted, and we'll move on before we demand a source. |
thats the point... the company loses a little money... like, the amount they would have spent on advertising by some other means, and it brings 10X as many people into the store for a day. So, advertising! Now a ton of people know exactly where you are located, what you do, and whether they like it or not. That can bring much more profit in the long run... |
Let's pause for a moment and look at a brief history of CISPA, starting with the history of the government's cyber-spying. Around 2003 it was revealed that the NSA was spying on all the internet traffic passing through a telephone relay station in San Francisco, infamously known as "Room 641a". It was soon discovered that there were numerous similar spying rooms scattered around the country and that all of the nation's digital traffic was being intercepted.
Last year we discovered that the Congress had spent $2 billion on the construction of a super-spy data center in Utah to consolidate their operations. Unfortunately, what they were doing was highly illegal, and when questioned about it, an NSA official defended his department in much the same way that Dubya defended his Gitmo operations: there was not torturing going on in Gitmo "because America doesn't torture", and similarly, the NSA wasn't spying on Americans at those spying facilities because it would be illegal to do so. The contentions turned out to be of equal veracity. Congress reacted with CISPA, SOPA, and a host of other cyber-regulations into which they could slip provisions that would legitimize these operations, the Utah super-spy facility, and their $2 billion expenditure (imagine for a moment the "campaign contributions" that were tendered for access to those doling out the $2 billion in construction contracts). CISPA, SOPA (similarly funded by Hollywood), and all the rest of the cyber-bills failed spectacularly.
At the beginning of this year, CISPA was again reintroduced without modification in hopes that the public had gotten over their outrage. It was accompanied by a massive media campaign featuring Mandiant's "Advanced Persistent Threat" report, which angered China at being the "scapegoat" in this political stunt, and because the public hadn't gotten over their anger, a cry echoed throughout the internet to defeat this bill.
A resourceful congress whispered that the $2 billion that they had already spent didn't include the cost of equipping the facility, and the taxpayers had another $2 billion to be spread among corporate America's giants. IBM immediately rose to the challenge, sending 200 lobbyi$t$ to Washington to assure their place at the front of the line when those contracts are awarded. 35 new co-sponsors immediately appeared in the bill's roster. |
That is inevitable, there is always a new flaw or vulnerability waiting to be exploited. This puts hackers one step ahead in every possible way. Even if cispa passes if we chose to protect ourselves they cant possibly investigate all of us. |
something in the comments from OP's link that explains why MS stuck this in
>Let me tell you how it works. If you offer a service. And that service questioned by anyone for legal issues, it does not matter what the eula says, you can file a class action lawsuit. But it does allow the service provider to suspend your service until after the court decides.
>Why do they need it?
>Because during the 1940-1980's, corporations what offered services where defending themselves against multi million dollar lawsuits by every person that gets an attorney. Once the apply for the class action level, it requires a ton more work. Mean while all the parties that are in the class action lawsuit can not have their services suspended.
>It created an environment where there is no skin in the game for the person suing. They file the lawsuit, if it is tossed out, they lose nothing. If it succeeds, they get money. Mean while the company has to still offer the services that they are being sued for, they still have to spend millions of dollars to defend themselves from fishing expeditions.
>All language in the EULA does is make it so Microsoft can suspend your services if you choose to sue them. It makes it unlikely for you to file random lawsuits to see if you can get something to stick. Mean while it offers you a way to get problems heard by a person in power without losing services.
>Once again, if you feel that microsoft was wronged out enough to file or join a class action lawsuit, then you can, but you will lose your ability to use their services until after the court hearing.
>There are thousands and thousands of people that have been part of a class action lawsuit with this type of language in it. If you owned a credit card, then you have taken part in a class action lawsuit even though the TOS banned such things. Courts very rarely stop a class action status because of TOS or EULA language. For the most part, courts do not veiw those documents as legally binding. Which is why the can only suspend you not remove you. |
I used to work in the Microsoft Hardware support department and they had multiple PC controllers that had design flaws that caused them to simply stop working. Basically, if you had a USB joystick device such as the Microsoft Precision 2, the Microsoft USB Gamepad pro, or a couple others (memory escapes me) and left the controller plugged in when you turned on your computer a capacitor in the controller would freak out causing the device to be completely unrecognizable by the computer. The fix was to unplug the controller for 10 hours. Needless to say, people would just assume their device had died and if it was out of warranty or they didn't have the receipt would simply throw it out. 100% of these models had this problem. If the customer called we were authorized to do whatever to make it right, including shipping them a replacement controller, but to my knowledge Microsoft never admitted the problem and likely hundreds or thousands of consumers simply threw their devices away. |
There is nothing new under the sun. I used to work for EU agency project for about 3 years. To sum up project costs around 4 million euro and has 600 users. Project website (5 sub pages , rss feed plus downloading application) costs between 30k-50k euro. After project was outsourced company that took over was founded by two layers. Unofficially I've learned that first thing they said to their project manager was to collect mails and documents in case the contract end up in court. |
I also have had dealings with the Federal Gov't as a small business. We sell and repair new/used data collection equipment and media(barcoding gear). Been in business 17 years, so we know what we're doing at this point.
One of the Dept. of Defense Logistics branches needed very specific all weather yellow thermal transfer labels to mark outdoor equipment in storage. They were told it would take 2 weeks to make the custom labels, and 3 days to ship to them. When 3 of the 4 boxes of labels arrived on time(to the day), the 4th being on the afternoon UPS truck, the entire order was rejected outright. My contact there called and SCREAMED at me because the 4th box wasn't there at the same time as the other 3(they were all the same, they really only need 1 to start labeling). SO, they sent back all 4 boxes of the labels they DESPERATELY needed and I got to eat about 5k in manufacturing and shipping costs right around Christmas last year. |
Just to note, I didn't read the article, only the title (see: Reddit journalism) so make whatever opinion you want out of that. The reason it sucks isn't because of a specific person or people, but because it doesn't work. People forget that and move straight to blaming someone, which in the case of the government, will almost always just lead to a scapegoat instead of the actual problem being fixed. Should the person/people responsible he punished for not doing their job/s competently? Absolutely. But the #1 priority should be getting things working again. I would rather bad people get away with their deeds than the current structure of petty revenge fueling everyone's actions, leading to a world where everyone loses because we can only see in "us-vs-them" vision.
You might say that this is a nonissue and taking away all of that from a headline is over thinking and paranoid. I urge you to keep the idea in the back of your mind while reading anything in media. The subtleties that countless analytical teams have worked towards to integrate what is essentially propaganda into your daily routine is an art that has spanned the entirety of human history. It is a very intricate web that has been established long before you became sentient on this world. In the end, the only way to overcome it is to consciously break away from this hive mind by acknowledging the bias in any and all information. Observe carefully and NEVER make a decision until you know not only the product of your actions but also the reasons behind those actions. This isn't a matter of fault. It is the fault of the human condition. If you really want to move forward, you must completely set aside the foolish ideal of being better than someone else simply because you're right and they're wrong. Stop arguing and do the thing. |
I do web design at a major insurance company in the US, all the designers do the research and base designs from what would work from a user experience perspective. A good chunk of designs and interactions get shot down by business because they feel it would cost to much, even though it would be an overall better user experience and bring more customers. |
I used to work in sales and we conveniently had a spec sheet that would eliminate our competitors.
"Oh you're thinking about buying a product for X? Well, let me help you out. Have you thought about A,B,C? No? Well here's a list of things we would recommend a product be able to do. "
1 month letter a RFQ would come out with those exact same specs from that company. TADA instant sale. |
This is a loose parallel, but this sounds like the same reason why CEOs hire the same 3 management consulting firms or the same 5 investment banks; if you hire these giant companies to handle an IPO or something and something gets screwed up, your board isn't going give you hell bc your hired the guys you were supposed to.
So rather than getting the best company possible to do this work for you, bc of fear of scrutiny for going out on limb, the same couple of companies get all the work based purely on history and brand prestige. (Assuming there is a better option available)
To take this point further, this is one of the main reasons CEOs hire companies like McKinsey, BCG or Bain. The CEO might know exactly what needs to be done in order to enter new market or expand product portfolio, but the CEO will bring in McKinsey to legitimize her initial strategy so she can cover her ass from Shareholders or Board. |
This happens for two main reasons.
The knowledge base regarding tech in the political environment is near to nothing. Politics have been inundated with autocrats for the last forty years. Nearly all politicians are lawyers or business professionals at the executive end of things. This means they either know how to get around laws or they know people who know how to get them around laws. These are the people that climb the political ladder.
Cronyism is a result of the insulation that occurs as the political environment becomes a place for lawyers and executives to execute their power-over dynamic. When a power-with dynamic is the focus of policy makers and administrators we see a more effective and efficient delivery of goods and services. |
I don't think many people doubt the intelligence or hard work of many consulting firms and contractors (though there are some really bad ones, especially "international" contractors and consultants). The people I've met from McKinsey, BCG, BAH, and Deloitte are mostly not only quite sharp, but also very well organized, and pull ridiculous hours to meet clients' needs. I'd probably last a year or two at most, with some of the demands they have, but many of the projects are incredibly challenging and interesting. |
You don't understand how ios works. Just because something is in the multitasking view doesn't mean it is using resources. Any app you see there can have different states of being.
They can be:
Running: extremely rare and only for specialised apps that for instance require using bluetooth/hardware, playing music, or gps directions.
Frozen: not using up any cpu, in memory, but not using the memory and it will be cleared out of the memory if another app needs it.
Dead: all that exists is a screenshot of the app.
I've seen people do this a lot, but there is are only two reasons to swipe away an app.
You don't like the music/gps the app is proving.
The app has crashed and you want it to start fresh.
Here are some things swiping away apps doesn't do.
It doesn't change the amount of work your cpu has to do, if anything your cpu will be doing more work.
It doesn't affect the amount of ram your device has available. ios will auto kill apps if it needs the ram, and the apps that havent been killed yet do nothing. This doesn't effect the amount of energy your device uses, nor does it affect the cpu. The only thing it does is reduce the load on the storage because sometimes ios can load an app from ram, which is better/faster/more efficient.
Edit: It doesn't change whether an app tracks your location or not, nor does it change the amount of battery an app uses when it tracks your location. |
You do realize that libraries provide free internet access to those who can't afford it, right? And that they also offer ebooks, in addition to a huge collection of books that may not even be in print any longer? That they also offer free access to Journals and databases of research material (in electronic format, even) that an individual would have to pay for, per article? Not to mention libraries offer programs and classes to teach the public new skills, particularly how to use a computer, make a resume or find a job. Oh, and then there's the particularly well funded libraries that develop "makerspace" areas where individuals can make use of fabrication tools (such as 3D printers) to learn new skills. |
What a terrible article. It's obviously incredibly biased given that it's on TorrentFreak and written by a Pirate Party guy. But it's just so poorly written. The author never cites any sources to back up his claims, and spews logical fallacies left and right.
>Lobbyist lie: A library can only lend its book to one person at a time, and therefore, this limit must be artificially imposed in the digital age.
How the hell is this a lobbyist lie? If this guy is really pushing for “Analog Equivalent Rights” then he should be completely in favor of a library lending out one copy of an ebook at a time.
> The purpose of the public library is not and was never to “lend books”, as is asserted in this myth. It was, and is, to “make knowledge and culture available to as many people as possible at no cost to them”. What’s possible has expanded greatly with online sharing, and it is only proper that we take advantage of this fantastic potential.
I agree, but shouldn't we at least compensate the creators for their work? I'm not an advocate for the current state of things -- there are fundamental problems in the way we consume media -- but we should compensate these people.
> The online sharing of culture and knowledge is the greatest public library ever invented, and the ability for all humankind to take part of all culture and knowledge 24/7 is arguably one of the largest steps of civilization of this century. All the technology has already been invented, all the tools have already been deployed, the ability to use it has already spread to all of humanity: nobody needs to spend a dime to make this happen. All we have to do is to lift the stupid ban on actually using it.
What ban is he talking about? If he's talking about region-locking, then yes, I completely agree, but I doubt that's the only situation he's talking about. Is someone preventing him from paying a couple dollars on iTunes to rent a movie or buy an ebook off Amazon? |
I'm glad Toyota is making improvements. But I'm skeptical since their claims are not substantiated nor is any explanation given as to how humans are improving production, only that they somehow are. This is especially confusing considering their "'Kaizen,' or continuous improvement" yet they somehow have lines operating so inefficiently that humans can outperform it. How?
And maybe this is a translation problem but: "'We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,' project lead Mitsuru Kawai told Bloomberg." Why not? That's the foundation of automation & is an overwhelmingly proven principle. (Yes, machines & lines fail--so do humans--but that's why you have contingency plans.)
He goes on to say: "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine." Yes, those designing a line &/or programming the equipment should be expert to achieve optimum results. But you don't need an entire production line with that level of expertise, & you certainly don't decommission well functioning lines just so employees can learn. Simplification of tasks is yet another proven tenant of mass production so once again I can't help but be skeptical. |
Depends on what you want to do with your "Jeep" though, doesn't it?
Jeep brand Jeeps had this nifty niche where their vehicles could actually do off-roady things. Chrysler branded Jeeps seem to have lost their heritage and are now just over-bloated comfort vehicles.
I mean, if you want to go fast and never turn, why the heck would you buy an SUV?!? |
Read about so many of these possible market ready prototypes which only need a few adjustments to production line and good to go... Been hoping for any at all to surface for mass production, yet I still got shitty lithium ion batteries. There were sugar based ones, organic based ones, many many, sick reading these, just give us damn decent battery technology compliment the advancements in silicone. |
Slight correction, the major providers are waiting until the Net Neutrality debate is 100% done before actually implementing slow lanes. They are very eager to do so, but implementing them costs money, and they don't want to spend it if they still might need to scrap it in a year.
Currently the YouTube and Netflix problems are mostly high demand clogging their bandwidth during peak hours (they are upgrading constantly though, i assure you) and peering problems with T1,T2, and T3(residential "last mile") interfacing with each other . Those peering points are becoming bottlenecks.
All the different levels in the Net are groups of different companies, with only Verizon and ATT having a significant presence in multiple levels (that i know of). They interface with peering agreements. These peering agreements vary wildly, but to my knowledge mostly operate with the understanding that traffic is roughly equal both ways (customers on both side benefit) and that both parties assist if it needs upgrading.
Netflix and YouTube, along with video streaming in general, have caused a massive upset in those agreements by making traffic largely go one way. This has caused disputes on peering and because of those upgrades are not as quick as they should be. To break it down, the Transit providers think the last mile providers should pay, since their customers are receiving the majority of traffic. With the prior agreements in place about mutual traffic usage it's in line with what the agreements were in the past. However, residential ISP's don't want to pay that out of pocket. Instead they are trying to get Net Neutrality overturned so they can charge those sending data largely one way to pay for the upgrades instead (in theory, somehow i doubt the money will go mostly to those). |
Theres nothing wrong with the 3.5 jack. The DAC should be in the device anyway. Analogue really has one 'protocol', a digital signal could have any number. A proprietary protocol means proprietary headphones. You are not free to purchase the headphones of your choosing, and use them on whichever devices you choose. The consumer would be better off if Apple just used a better DAC. |
I'm not trying to conjure up crazy schemes here. Is there any reason for a letter like this to go out to any elected official? In the case it was just a stock letter that was forwarded why even include the part of "A stronger Comcast"?
Beyond any of that the bottom line is this particular BGC has correspondence with state reps placing Comcast in a positive light which may be support enough for some of their other donors to think twice. The same logic would apply to any other company who has found themselves in a similar situation as Comcast has recently. |
This is a terrible argument.
You've said that the GUI is a failure, and because the GUI is the part of an OS an average consumer will actually use, that's pretty important. Windows Store is a pretty big feature of Win8, integrating heavily with the start menu tiles and metro UI (while other programs that could integrate well with the tile system, like Steam/Origin can't take advantage of that). The store being a failure is a big deal, because Microsoft pushed it into the OS so heavily. |
As a vendor employee that have dealt with some developer, I can asure you that their policy is very strict, but ONLY (emphazis on the ONLY) the other company make a claim of trademark/content breach of policy. Otherwise they dont care.
I've dealth with the developer that made 3 apps that were breaching some company's logo and name, it was a pain to help the developer to have his app available once again, in order for him to change it. |
Freedom of choice is a good difference. If every 'app' existed as a webpage that you could choose to save as an app, then for one thing, browser apps would start getting better optimized, and for another, we wouldn't have the problem that this thread exists about.
If every app existed on the open internet, and phones were designed like windows/apple pc's then we wouldn't have the 'windows store is full of scams' problem, because it would literally all be one big store, sure there would still be separate hosts, but suddenly the number of applications available to everyone, no matter which brand of smart phone they bought, would be equal or close to.
When you think about it the only reason this doesn't exist is because of apples original domination of the market and wanting to keep their advantage. Everyone else has to play catch up, I think android might have it right with the google play store, except if it wasn't phone based then I could access all of those apps straight on my surface pro, like how steam games work on any laptop! but I haven't had an android phone. |
I expected the actual answer to be somewhere near the top. I kept scrolling, and it kept not appearing. Then it became a task to check every comment just to be sure nobody posted it. And this will obviously be buried, bit I'm too far into it now.
Microsoft has to be very gunshy about censoring what applications agree allowed to appear on its operating system. The last time they tried to censor applications a judge ordered them broken up, and they were under judicial review for a decade.
And even then they didn't actually censor any application. They threatened to refuse to give a discount to OEMs who included the shitware. So they didn't even censor anything, or threaten to censor anything.
In the aftermath of the loss of that seven year legal battle, Microsoft's lawyers are very sensitive to even the appearance of Microsoft even hinting that they're going to censor an application. Microsoft screens applications for technical compliance. An unbiased set of metrics - so nobody can claim Microsoft is singling them out.
When the very existance of the Microsoft Store was announced, there were calls for lawsuits. Even though Apple and Google already had app stores, those companies didn't have a legal judgment, a consent decree, and ten years of judicial oversight against them.
And what could Microsoft do? Let's say they started censoring applications today. That would seem like some to be extraordinarily arbitrary Microsoft to censor certain applications. Not that they could not do it, but they would face a whole new round of legal issues as they started to reform the App Store. |
I can actually answer this. I didn't see a real answer posted to address your question.
Background, I made Windows Phone 7 applications, at the rate of about 1 every 7 minutes. I made clone RSS reader applications. They were terrible, but I got paid.
I got lazy on application submissions, and named some like "NBA Lakers News". There were other "Unofficial" application listed, and some people had apps like "Lakers Scores & News" etc... Just so you don't think I was some scummy app dev, I didn't use the NBA logo or the Lakers logo, and when you loaded it, I credited the RSS feeds I was loading the news from. The application was also free, and no ads. (I wanted to get MS to pay me for the application, I wasn't trying to get an average Joe to pay me for it or earn me money.)
Anyways, all was good for about 10 months, then Microsoft Legal sent me a form letter showing the request from the NBA that they held the trademark for both NBA and Lakers. My app was a violation of their trademark, was the claim. They had a few lies in their form, that I used their images without consent (I never used any logos). What they saw was the RSS feed loading images from content providers that had the rights to the images. I honestly believe those were legal for me to display, as I credited the source and directly linked to the article when you tried to view them. Either way though they claimed I was stealing their images as well...
The email informed me my applications would be removed from the store within 24 hours, and that I would then have to submit an appeal and show either I wasn't using their trademarked names, and/or that I owned the trademarks. Neither of which would have been true, so I dropped it, and my applications were removed from the marketplace.
On the other hand my NHL/NFL applications stayed online until my developer account expired. |
Mine just died. Shutdown my comp for the night, then that morning the dreaded "no media found" when I booted it up. The drive was a year old when it went. So I got no clue what's wrong plus I want to have the data recovered but they quoted me 6 grand to do it........ What. |
Bwahahahaha. Right?!?
Holy crap, when looking up those figures my mouth just dropped. I knew that their typical use would be lower than the perfect use of "only" 2% failure rate (which in itself is already not that reassuring) but 18%?!? |
I've been on reddit for awhile, so I know downvotes are incoming.
I participate in a lot of on-site interviews for a big tech company, and the fact is most people are useless. It's true that we can't hire enough software engineers - and it's not because we're trying to hire cheap ones, it's because most people are useless. People you wouldn't expect to be useless are useless. People with 20 years of experience for the exact role you're hiring for are often useless.
I know that for the positions I've been in at the companies I work for, we have a decent number of foreign dudes because there just aren't enough good local candidates. It's a huge myth that these companies do this to save costs. If you can't get a CS-related job in the US, it's because you're not very good. It's pretty much as simple as that. |
The private equity firm I work for specifically seeks out "High Potential Entry Level" employees. In a nutshell, they look for bright, untrained folks they can bring in at a lower salary, and train them up to do the job they were hired for. We only interview folks who score favorable on an SAT-like aptitude exam in order to determine the "high potential" part. This is their policy across all their portfolio companies.
I got in as a network analyst with no degree or certification, and 3 years later am the Sr. Network Engineer running network/security operations for a 2,000+ person organization. |
Here's several [examples]( of solar power that provides energy after the sun is gone. |
According to their 2013 annual report their net income for 2013 was 18 billion.
Sounds like good business sense to me. Spend $80 million in refunds and $20 million in fines and make a boat load more over that of money from charging customers bogus fees.
It doesn't sound like it was illegal at all, just sounds like the government taking its cut. I'm sure they are fining them because it says it's a law somewhere that they aren't supposed to do but...if all breaking the law amounts to is a "cost of doing business" then it's something all businesses should probably do to maximize profits. |
You don't want to be lectured, but you're basically wrong about most things you say.
> Redditors want low cost internet, but wave the white flag of "net neutrality"
The performance/cost of Internet in America is a joke. The monopoly of the providers demonstrates a ruthless capitalistic desire to squeeze every penny out of their Internet users.
Neutrality and competition drive prices down and that's exactly what isn't hapenning atm.
See:
Net neutrality does not mean goverment control . If you actually understood it, it means an ISP can't force websites to pay for both sending/recieving data, or abusing their role as an ISP to create monopolies in other areas. It's nothing to do with government controlling things. The same way that the government already has anti-monopoly laws.
You can't argue that prices would be cheaper if you let a company with a monopoly abuse that position for other reasons. You just can't. You can pretend it would be cheaper, theoretically, like they'd make so much money they could give you a discount, theoretically... but they won't, the never will you are in fact the very nieve person! |
Well. I'll preface by saying that this is info I have from my roomate who studied this question for her ... you'd probably call it "essay" in US, maybe.
There is no upper limit to memory because your head doesn't literally fill up with anything in particular. In order to access a memory you break it down, and then rebuild it again. So your memory of a thing is the latest memory of that thing, not the original memory. But because there is no underlying system that is auto-correcting this proccess, the memory might come out being different to the original. A lot different. So different that it might funamentally go against the original.
Your head is always full of some memory, just not all memory is recogniseable.
This is just like a summary. I don't know the chemistry behind it, and I might have missed something important. But that's what I remember. |
Look, it seems to me they're building a better Wi Max system, kind of what it shouldve been but even better. Landlines are dead in everyone's eyes but Google because well, someone has to build and own and service the backbone but no one's actually doing it. Tmobile is putting together an alternative to comcast, why can't I benefit from it now as a supporter of their company making them able to do so? |
I worked at MS as a contract (Orange Badge) employee working CSR in Product Support (MS-PSS) back from about '99-'01. I summarized my experience working with all the Blue Badges as, "the largest number of individual smart people whose collective intelligence drastically falls the more join a group." |
I use Outlook 2007 with my Google Apps email account by choice - when I'm out of the office/house, I actually connect to my main workstation via Remote Desktop for email via Outlook.
I switched a client from Eudora to Thunderbird - he ended up hating it (for a multitude of reasons, in part cause his RTC battery died, causing emails to show up with dates of 1980, thus "disappearing", and ended up switching to Outlook 2003, which he loves).
Oh, and to sync contacts and my calendar between Outlook and my Google account, I have to run 2 separate software applications. This alone has pushed me to consider Hosted Exchange (although Google Apps Premier Edition might solve this problem). |
It's worth reading the entire thing, unless you also like |
I don't get it. Even if you work for the government, you need to socialize. I'd have to believe that there are some hackers on this website or 4chan or something that would kick the crap out of NSA's hackers. And if I worked on computers all day for the government, you'd bet that i'd have to come on Reddit every few hours and see what the new 'meme' is.
There is no way the government could really control them. Because if they were hackers, they could presumably send information to anyone, and no higher ranking bureocrat is going to know enough about computers to have any idea what they are doing. |
My biggest pet peeve is single song people. I have always been an album fan. I might skip to that one 'single' I heard (metal/hardcore fan so not much airplay), but I always find that songs are so much better when they're grouped up by theme or song writing period like albums generally are by nature. Anyway, I hate it when I look at someone's IPod and there are only singles for like 3000 bands. 90% of the time they pick, what seems to me, the most horrible song on the album. |
Through that community I got contacted by a guy from a bunch of Louisville, KY bands that I liked. He turned out to be really awesome and was happy that someone was listening to all his old demos and such. Dude then started sending me new recordings whenever he got them....but it turns out that when he played a concert in my town, he looks EXACTLY like me. |
HARSH REALITY: Laser keyboards are fucking horrible and this phone will be nowhere near as cool as you think it will be.
Yes, I'm sorry. No, a phone as functional as this phone will not be seen any time soon, regardless of how much you would pay for it. This was a video made by designers with absolutely no practical understanding of current technology. |
I thought that the quote I pulled from the actual Wikipedia page was clear enough. Then... I also published the actual link so that he could go read for himself and "clarify" any misunderstanding in case he thought the quote was out of context...
I mean... if you need clarification at that point... open the link or take your time and reread the comment I made. I mean... am I doing it wrong? The only way I can be more clear is to make a imgur post and display it.
Are we at that point when you can't read 4 lines of text and need |
It's not often that I do this, but I liked the article so much that I decided to email the author to tell her.
CNET sure does make that a pain. They won't tell you her email address - they only give you a button. So I had to create an account, which requires approving them to send you their stupid newsletter. So then you have to go to your actual email anyway in order to verify your address. Then I could go back and click the button to send her an email. After several failed attempts at the stupid captcha, I finally sent the message. What a pain, CNET. |
So if you can't afford food or medicine you shouldn't try to acquire it through illegal means?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Being alive isn't a fucking lifestyle choice because the alternative lifestyle choice would be being dead you fucking goon. Getting to play video games, or watch movies or TV, or listening to music is a lifestyle choice, and you're able to make a choice whether or not you can participate in it. You're not going to fucking die if you can't have your media, and you look like an entitled little cunt trying to argue that your entertainment media is on the same level as things that literally keep you alive. Thanks for Fox News'ing my argument, which is ironic considering what a bleeding heart liberal you're making yourself out to be.
And I really get the feeling you think I'm some rich, entitled Conservative who thinks the poor are lazy and don't have jobs because they're too lazy to look for one. I consider myself to be very liberal and personally support most liberal ideals, but it really embarrasses me when I actually want to call people on my side "spoiled, lazy hippies."
Oh, and to answer your question: NO. I think it's bullshit that people can't find jobs to support their families because of the economic climate. I think it's bullshit that people are constantly being screwed over by the wealthy and large corporations, but to think you can support an economy on just getting shit for free is absolutely ludicrous. The only reason you're trying to justify that is because to you those companies are big, faceless monsters who just want all your money. Do I think it's shit that they care so little about their consumers? Hell yes, I do, but that doesn't give me the right to take what I want from them for free just because my situation isn't ideal, or even if my situation is total garbage. |
I said nothing about "blaming" anybody for poverty. You're asserting poverty = "I can't play a new game," because that's what I'm talking about. All I'm implying is that if you can't support your lifestyle you shouldn't be breaking the law to support it. It sure is unfortunate for you, but it's also unfortunate when a business isn't given compensation for something they put time and effort into, which I think is a lot more unfair than not being able to play a new game for free. |
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