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There are lots of attractive things about molten salt reactors (MSRs), and these work very well with the Thorium-Uranium fuel cycle (aka Thorium). One thing to keep in mind is that while there is legitimate reason to believe in many of MSR advantages, none of them can truly be claimed until we get more operation experience with commercial power plants of that kind.
For example, MSRs are thought to be far safer than traditional LWRs. For one thing, they have low pressure systems so there's not much driving force to prevent cooling in many postulated accidents. This is thought to improve safety by a whole lot. On the other hand, you have mobile radioactive fission products all around in the primary system (pumps, heat exchangers, etc.) and in the chemistry plant. So you have to see what the actual risk of radiation release to the public is considering all these things. |
I have comcast/xfinity. My mom bought Hulu, and Netflix. Hulu is constantly buffering, being absolutely shit to watch, while Netflix works considerably better. Even in the hands of their own distributor, Hulu sucks ass. |
What's also worrying is that this is now starting to happen on a global scale. There is a worrying trend that comes with globalization, and that is the increasing power of multinational corporations. This is not so much a debate anymore, but a fact. In a lot of cases, the MNC already has more power than a single state. (Look for news regarding additional terms to the TISA agreement, added specifically by MNC lobbying).
The UN, along with other multilateral treaties (think GATT, GATS, TRIPS, etc.) and IGOs (think UN, ICJ, etc.) have always been far above business, pure political conventions for the good of state hegemony, free trade and justice, but now that MNCs have this much influence (because of money, naturally), the line between business and politics has almost disappeared already.
For every member of Congress, there were 5 lobbyists in 2010. And that is just in the US... Back then...
Anyway, what I am trying to say is that while this trend is not getting as much attention as it deserves, it is probably the most defining trend for the future of state interaction and politics and it probably won't be getting to a halt if no proper counter is undertaken.
What can be done is draw more power to supranational powers. What these MNCs have and goverments don't, is the power to operate in multiple states.
The EU can undertake action in Europe as it is a supranational power here (and so far has done a pretty decent job), but it will need a stronger and faster method of undertaking actions. The same goes for the UN and other border-spanning organizations. |
Only for small sites. All large companies have servers spread throughout the world. It would be very inefficient to store everything in America; the ping alone would make it impractical never mind the bottlenecks caused from funnelling traffic over and back on trans-atlantic and trans-pacific cables. Youtube, Google, Facebook, and any other large American-based internet company all have just as much servers outside America as they do inside (in some cases they may have more due to it being cheaper/have a larger user base outside the U.S.). |
1) because an unregulated internet does not ensure net neutrality. It encourages "unfair" schemes like fast lanes.
2) more incentive than unregulated ISPs
3)regulators don't generally get motivated by their own financial gain directly, but bow to political pressure. One man's oppressive monopoly is another man's method of encouraging growth in industries with huge up-front infrastructure costs. See also: every utility ever.
4)the unregulated internet grew up into one that has users now begging for government intervention. |
You come off as very condescending and self-righteous when you talk about what's 'right' and that you don't participate in 'that stuff' anymore.
There are rules that politicians have put together with Hollywood lobbyists using lots more money than you or I may have.
These rules are self-serving and benefit, mainly, the aforementioned.
These laws get passed. You and I both know that Congress is bought and paid for...
Now, these are the very laws that allow RIAA to sue a 16 year old for millions.
Just because something is written by some guys in suits, doesn't mean it's right or has any sort of moral foundation.
The lobbyists and their politician pals are losing ground on this, but they're trying to hang on through force. Heir go, the 'righteous' law.
I'll ask this.. If downloading were legal by those laws, would downloading then be doing what's 'right'? |
The theory of copyright is that something being infinitely reproduceable does not create a complete lack of scarcity. Yes, we can have as many copies of "Transformers 3" as we want; but, the value of having two copies of "Transformers 3" is negligible, while the value of having "Transformers 4 " is much higher.
ie: A copy of something does not have scarcity. The scarcity is actually on novelty. (for an example of other "Post-scarcity" economies which actually operate on the scarcity of novelty, see: Star Trek)
And so the theft is not of the copy, which has no scarcity, and so cannot be usefully stolen, the theft is of the novelty.
The problem with copyright law as it is today is that the lack of term limits (in U.S. law, I can't speak for other countries... including the one I live in... oops), means that that we attempt to enforce scarcity on the things which should not be scarce, because after a time they cannot really be considered to be "novel" anymore. Meanwhile, we also end up discouraging the creation of novel works, because there is much less incentive to create the next big thing, when you could just sit on your pile of "Transformers 3" copies and comfortably dish them out for the rest of your life. |
The Isaac Asimov sci-fi approach to AI is flawed in that it follows a misleading aspect of the term 'Artificial Intelligence'. Berkeley Computer Science professor Dan Klein describes artificial intelligence as a program that produces an output that approximates a specific intelligent behaviour. decisions made by an AI algorithm are a direct and consistent result of the inputs it receives.
Take the ghosts in pacman, they all exhibit a different form of AI algorithm, one always follows Pacman, another might go where pacman is going to be, if he keeps moving in that direction for the distance between them, etc.
The point is that AI has and always will be an algorithm making decisions based on the logic and decision trees of it's programming, not on any form of sentience. as such an AI bears no responsibility for mistakes it is the programmers direct responsibility if an AI does something harmful, the AI will reflect the morals of it's developer.
If the Military develops an autonomous drone, with an AI programmed so that will fire on on a target given a >70% probability that the target is valid, and the drone kills civilians, then the problem is not with the machine, it is with the men who built it, programmed and sent it on it's way.
The term Artificial Intelligence is misleading to non techies, (managers, military commanders and politicians) because it leads them to believe that the machine is making the decisions intelligently, with a degree of sentience that is simply not there, and that human responsibility might be somewhat diminished. |
I have never used Yelp. I went to the pre-screening of Guardians of the Galaxy and managed to be in front of an 'Elite Yelper' as she called herself. She bragged the whole hour we stood in the line waiting about how they (her and hubby) got to go out to eat and do all kinds of activities as a perk of being 'an Elite'. The more she talked, the more I wanted my date to punch her in the face. She bragged about going out and doing all this stuff for free, and when I asked her about people using Yelp as a means of extortion, she laughed and said even without the money she made from 'creative reviewing' ( EXTORTION ) as she called it that they loved a better lifestyle than when she worked. Apparently Elite Yelpers get special privelages because when they cut the line off three people in front of me, she flipped her shit and went into Ultra Bitch Mode . Complete with the always shitty "Do you know who I am?!" Guy looked like he was going to cave and let them in anyway when I chimed in and loudly proclaimed if he was letting them in, he was letting those ahead of her in first . He actually looked grateful because her hateful glare transferred to me and he moved to address us about how they did not have room for us all. He turned and power walked off 'answering his walkie-talkie' and sent someone else out to tell us we could give them our contact info and get passes for its regular release. Lo and behold, Mrs Yelper was bitching loudly the whole time, and even asked for the manager trying to get her way. The manager had more Fortitude than the other guy and she promptly told Mrs Yelper that the theatre was full and she would receive passes like anyone else.
That woman seemed to embody all the negative stuff I've heard about Yelp. I won't use it simply because I refuse to contribute to people acting with such shitty superiority and making businesses suffer. Seriously, if you find a new place just go try it for yourself. |
If the government put a $0.01 tax on using the word "innovation", the national debt would disappear, income inequality would evaporate, and global warming would probably reverse itself. |
He may be referring to QoS (Quality of Service) protocols that make sure that, for instance, IP telephony packets get sent with higher priority than e-mail packets. This is absolutely integral in making sure that services that require that their packets get from end-to-end quickly and in the right order (IP Telephone) don't end up with reduced quality because a service that doesn't have such requirements (E-mail) happened to send through packets at the same time.
Real time services like phone and video conferencing have always needed and currently have priority over other services, as they should.
I can't speak for him and say that this is the prioritization that he meant, but from an IT Admin perspective there is and always HAS to be those forms of prioritization on a network connection. |
Pardon me, you misunderstand.
Often large content providers will be their own ISPs, in effect they will peer directly with other ISPs and purchase transit themselves.
Obviously a content provider should not have to pay beyond what their ISP dictates.
As I said, I don't think large content companies should receive free connections from large ISPs purely because they're large. They should pay a reasonable price for transit, which is well less that $1 per mbps per month in the US. Or alternatively they can use another ISP (who can connect with the user's ISP).
Put simply, that NY-User's ISP obviously shouldn't have to lay a new cable across the pacific to connect to some server in Tuvalu, but if the server has a connection to Cali and is willing to pay market prices for transit then I can't see why the ISP should suddenly have responsibility. |
You're going to find more and more of this as you get older. People "discovering" what to you is bloody obvious, over and over again. Just breathe, try and remind yourself that it's not the same people re-discovering the same old knowledge, but brand new people that are new to the Earth gaining a little bit of knowledge they never had before.
Just have patience with them. The good news is, because these youngin's don't have a lick of knowledge or experience in 'em, that means you can be the guru if you just change your attitude a little. You can open their eyes to all sorts of obvious shit that you learned about years ago. Give them a link to [ Abbey Road ]( or Orwell's [ Down and Out in Paris and London ]( Show them Kurosawa's Yojimbo or The Hidden Fortress and ask them if it reminds them of anything. |
There is legal significance to the decision to put $75,000 for the damages claim - the airlines wanted their case heard in the federal court system. There are two court systems in the U.S., state courts and federal courts, but you can't just choose which system you want to enter. In order for your case to be heard in federal court, you must either have
federal question jurisdiction - oversimplified, your lawsuit must involve a federal law, or;
diversity jurisdiction - involve two parties in different states and at least $75,000 in damages.
The decision to use $75,000 was chosen by the airlines so they could bring the case federally. Although I don't know their reasoning for preferring federal court, I would assume part of it is that bringing this case federally would make the result have more persuasive impact on other courts. |
Not licencing.
Sony makes movies a lot of movies. They refused to put any of their movies on HD-DVD ever. Toshiba couldn't do that.
So even if HD-DVD had been a superior format it was always going to be missing a huge number of movies. The same wasn't true of bluray. No other studio had any skin in the game and so they weren't going to forgo sales. |
Not licencing.
Sony makes movies a lot of movies. They refused to put any of their movies on HD-DVD ever. Toshiba couldn't do that.
So even if HD-DVD had been a superior format it was always going to be missing a huge number of movies. The same wasn't true of bluray. No other studio had any skin in the game and so they weren't going to forgo sales. |
You're right.
But you'd need more than two "time zones" or patience. Using gold as an example, if I went back to the 1950s, I'd need to convert all my currency into something I could use in the future. There is no guarantee that 1950s currency would even be legal where I came from.
So if I was silly, I would buy all the gold worth a trillion, no doubt causing the price to skyrocket (demand) and raising a few eyebrows. Even one transaction would do this. You could pick up an oz in 1955 for $35. 28 billion ounces would distort the market a tad. It matters not if you do it over one trip or several.
Then I'd bring it forward and sell it (I'm silly, remember), causing the price to plummet and again raising eyebrows.
Better to have a few drop off points every few years, buy a bit, sell a bit etc... Or hang around for a while in the 50s patenting things.... |
I actually take the email thing a step further, if I know its just a one time ordeal I'll make a throw away. Though for trusted sources, I tend to use an array of emails which have specific filters set up to filter important stuff to my personal email such as password reset emails,confirmation emails etc. However they are heavily password protected (64 char) so if the email was sold or a database breached, they can try to brute force or spam it all they want, it won't touch my personal email. Nor is my personal email directly in the filter. :D |
I find this rather silly. The iPad is an entertainment tablet. Sure if you are a student who is truly interested in learning it works, but the distractions for me would be too great.
Example :
I need to read this chapter for x class by y date, but first let me check Facebook. |
ive written this on an ipad on a train, so please forgive all the typos]
So here's the quote (with my comments in italics) from the article this article is about:
>"We reached out to the TSA regarding the video and TSA spokesperson, Lisa Farbestein, informed Digital Trends that the video was, “a crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures.”
by describing the video as crude Farbestein creates doubt it the authority of the video and this it's legitimacy. It can also be taken to imply the method itself is crude - although grammatically she is only criticisng the video attempt to show the bypass. Nothing here indicates that the method does not work.
>She declined to go into detail about the technology but the confidence in the machines was evident. “TSA conducts extensive testing of all screening technologies in the laboratory and at airports prior to rolling them out the field,” Farbestein said.
Rather than deny the effectiveness of this method, Farbestein effectively attempts to argue from authority, and contrasts the TSA to the blogger by describing her organisation as scientific and rigorous and thus attempts to imply that obviously the TSA can not be shown up by a gentleman talking into a webcam with wrap around headphones. However, nothing stated here indicates that the method does not work.
>“Imaging technology has caught many items large and small, and is one of the most effective tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items,
here faberstein indicates that the imaging technology works and states past success to back up here claim. The flow of these three comments in stated in such a way to create the illusion of a rebuttal. But there is none. Nothing here indicates that the method does not work.
> such as the greatest threat to aviation, explosives.”
finally Faberstein ends on a comment to enduce fear, thus hoping that that by creating fear the reader will see the benefit of the previous comments and assume the effectiveness of the devices, in order to negate the fear. And of course nothing here indicates that the method does not work
It's fascinating to break down text and try to pick apart the reasoning of the author. It's clear that with the authority or ability to denounce this technique Faberstein would have lead with that immediately. I'm quite impressed, however that she didn't lead with more doubt about the dangers before attempting to muddy the waters with her statement. |
What's up with the TSA anyway?
Do any Americans actually think their biggest threat is explosives on a plane? No where else money could be spent to improve the country with more effectiveness? Even travelling through the land of the free , I've noticed this "on edge" feeling the security system's checkpoints impart on me, as if I'm somehow at fault until proven otherwise. I get that stress could crack an actual "bad guy", but I do not get the extreme emphasis (especially financial) on this particular aspect of the country - security.
That billion dollars could have fed, trained and housed a great deal of people, who would then contribute to the economy and country. Has spending it on this technology done the same quantity of good? Besides arguments of whether extreme "place security" is a just use of money, how do these scanners protect people again? I would argue that in current times, no American citizens would be willing to trust a hijacker would simply land for money. A terrorist would know this as well. If they had explosives and wanted to cause damage, it would probably be attempted in a different setting. |
So, the airports I frequent, the scanner rotates quickly around you as you stand still. An object that would be an invisible part of your profile from one angle presumably gets detected when it becomes silhouetted against you from another. |
I was going to come here and post "that is not a response, and I hate her so much for thinking that I am stupid enough to believe it is that I kind of hope she gets hit by a car and dies."
Yeah... I'm a child. I think your |
Yahoo is suing Facebook, but I seem to have missed where Yahoo's Social Networking site is on the internets.
Aside from that observation, I hope Yahoo slams Facebook into the ground. At 50 million, that's what they'll do. Mostly because I want to watch Facebook crash and burn. After years of "fixing things that aren't broken" and creating a horrible user experience over the past year, (no real customer support anyone?) they deserve to take a big hit like that.
But on the other hand, there are tons of other smaller networking sites that have roughly the same system as Facebook/Feeds. Example being Twitter. And I can't tell you how many sites offer "Relationship status, Job, etc" on their sites.
Some patents are pretty ridiculous. And should be free reign for any company/website to use. Or let alone some ideas being pretty broad and always have a chance of someone else thinking of the same idea you had. Just because Yahoo thought of a specific way to share content to a Social Network, doesn't mean that another company would think of something similar down the road.
I guess a better example would be from a music perspective. There are millions and millions of songs out there, when one song just happens to sound slightly similar, even for a few seconds, than another song from 10 years ago, doesn't mean that the person who wrote the previous song should go and sue the crap out of the said person. Sometimes people have ideas that happened to be another idea someone else had. It doesn't necessarily mean someone ripped you off. And not to mention the person wouldn't even know he's ripping someone else off until, BAM! Lawsuit. |
I don't think we should be in Afghanistan either, but there are better reasons to hate this war.
I need to quote you something from "Apocalypse Now", because it's been said before and infinitely more eloquently than I could ever say it (I have taken the liberty to edit out irrelevant sentences, but the original is right here :
> I remember when I was with Special Forces [...] we went into a camp to inoculate it. The children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile--a pile of little arms. [...] And then I realized--like I was shot...like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, "My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that." [...] And then I realized they could stand that-- these were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres, these men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love --that they had this strength, the strength to do that . If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time were able to utilize their primordial i nstincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment--without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.
I'm not just going to leave you with this and interpret what you will of it. The reason why I bring this up is because the Taliban, or at least what you call the Taliban, would not exist were it not for invading armies. Even though the taliban do not generally use the tactics I am going to mention: it takes a special kind of person to strap a woman or a child with an IED and send them to kill soldiers. Not everyone can do it. And in times of peace, these kinds of people are either under check, or considered criminals.
But at war, these people are elevated more and more. You support these people every time you send in one boot on the ground... You manufacture your enemy every time...
Even America has this problem, what with returning soldiers that are all FUBARed. But imagine now the kind of social decay this would incur if this was happening in america...
In any case, this topic is too long, too volatile... |
Part of their problem is wrapped up in what they said this week with their "we are now going to refocus on the corporate sector" which infers they have failed in the consumer sector who therefore aren't worth shit.. the problem is corporate customers are consumers too - more so if you are an SME..
The fact that after promising basic IMAP support for 7 YEARS (an eternity in any technology sector) they still don't have the basic IMAP support that a $15 "disposable" phone has - unless you fork out for BES (not really an option for a small comapany, or a more modern larger company that has virtual offices) just show a lack of respect for their consumers.. that along with the fact that RIM is supposedly based on solid engineering foundations.. if that is the case what fucking idiot put the lock button on the top of my blackberry torch - so that as soon as you put it in your suit pocket it unlocks itself..
also someone in their marketing department should have PAID the people who make words with friends to make a version for blackberry..
I have had my blackberry - which admittedly is 2 years old - for 2 months now and it has been like going back in time to 2005 - and to be honest -my w800i that I had in 2005 handled email better and was more user friendly - and this is coming from someone who hates sony..
if you want to see the day that RIM died watch [this]( video - their share price has nose dived since then - the tone that **[mike lizard is]( sets in this video is "I have $800 million in the bank - I want to make it to a billion - if that comes at the price of peoples liberty so what "NATIONAL SECURITY!!!!" which is a shame because I really think that he isn't like that.
And while I am in rant mode - was that center menu / scroll button designed to annoy me?? |
Yep. I use a blackberry and an iPhone. The new mobile browser on the blackberry is comparable. The one upside to the blackberry is that when you're zoomed in, the paragraph would get wrapped to fit the screen.
So, for example, if you read the regular news site (not the mobile site) and you zoom in so the paragraph would fit your screen, on the iphone, the font would be too small to be legible, the blackberry OS would resize the paragraph so the text would be "regular" sized and the paragraph would wrap around and fit your screen. |
The facebook IPO is to pay off those who invested early with the company. The shareholders will demand more profits, which will result in more obtrusive advertising. Users will flee and that will be that.
Unfortunately, what the market does and what I think is logical, seldom match up. I didn't think google's stock would do well because people would remember how quickly google dethroned Altavisa. |
At the risk of retaliatory downvotes, I'll explain my own downvote. The first line's joke was nothing I'd vote either way on, but the jab at Groklaw stuck me as unnecessarily incendiary in addition to being wholly untrue and unjustified. It is one of the most accessible legal commentators to also be useful for the law community, and it writes from their perspective that legal proceedings (usually) have objectively "right" or "wrong" outcomes. This comes off as biased to the many non-experts who read their summaries and see declarations of "(in-)correct" legal outcomes that appear biased when they are accustomed to media pussyfooting around and giving any crackpot "equal consideration" regardless of physical truths. |
I understand Dr. Tyson's emotional appeal for manned space flight, but the repeated refrain in these threads that "we no longer have a space program" is simply untrue.
Right now, there is a spacecraft headed for a flyby of Pluto in 2015.
NASA has spacecraft orbiting Saturn, Mars, the Moon, Earth, and Mercury. There is another spacecraft that just left the orbit of one asteroid and is headed for another asteroid. Two lunar orbiters are currently mapping the gravity fields of the Moon. Another lunar orbiter is taking high-resolution photos of the lunar surface with such clarity that the sites of the Apollo landings are clearly visible in its pictures. Another spacecraft is positioned next to the Moon, collecting data about the nature of the boundary layers at the edge of our solar system.
We have two active robot explorers on the surface of Mars, reporting back to Earth via an Mars-orbiting communications satellite that's been operating since 2001. There's also a Mars Reconnaisance satellite, taking high-resolution pictures of the Martian surface and weather systems.
Meanwhile, at least four Sun-orbiting satellites are keeping track of solar activity, forming a solar weather network that can warn Earth of approaching solar storms much earlier than Earth-based observatories.
The Spitzer Space Telescope trails Earth in a solar orbit, viewing the infrared spectrum and objects too dim to be seen by Earth-based telescopes. Hubble remains in Earth orbit, on its 22nd year of photographing the deepest reaches of the Universe. The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered its 26th extra-solar planet this year, continuing to reshape our basic understanding of planetary formation in the galaxy.
Earlier this month, we marked the 12th anniversary of continuous human presence in space, on board the International Space Station, a creation of not just NASA, but the Russians, the European Space Agency, Japan's JAXA organization, and the Canadian space program.
For the next 18 months, we're going to continue to lease seats on the Russian Soyuz program until the Dragon, Orion, and Dream Chaser spacecraft take over ferry flights to low Earth orbit.
Where is the case that NASA is underfunded and isn't getting the job done? |
I think we understand and appreciate what you're saying. That's a lot of stuff out there gathering data for scientists to pour through. And that list looks fantastic.
But I walk away from it thinking to myself "Look at what they have managed to achieve with a comparatively small budget. They've made incredible leaps and bounds in natural as well as space science. But. Is this the pinnacle of their achievements? Is this a look back on what NASA once was and will forever more be striving for but never reaching?".
If the budget is lower, I don't see how they can achieve anything but a slow progress over 30 years, rather than the decade long turnaround they've recently turned around on.
I'm interested to see what private industry can do. Ultimately, they're out to accomplish childhood dreams, but given the capitalist element, that should get things rolling quicker. I think the next 5-10 years will be very telling on the direction private companies will drive space exploration.
I live in Australia, but spent 4 years living in Houston, Texas. Once a month I'd go out to the NASA facilities just to be inspired. I started giving small donations, and 12 years later I still make donations where I can. I'd like to think there are others who are giving donations or dedicating some tax money to them Where they can.
It breaks my heart to see them losing out on more funding, because many, many people are getting on in life as a result of techniques and technology NASA has created or researched. It's more than just sentimental value.
I think over the next 50 years, it's going to become very apparent that we need to thoroughly understand our local solar system to keep on building out society at this current rate. I'm afraid that it's going to be a mad-rush when something goes terribly wrong here and we need to rely on what the space sector can do for us. |
I fail to see the sanity TBH. They want her to have an ID card so that she access school resources.
You're implying that school resources were somehow unavailable or impossible to access before tracking tags. Your attitude shows a disturbing level of acceptance and complacency.
>It is not a GPS tracking device, so the only tracking is when someone uses it to access a door.
>It also is only a passive RFID. Which means you need to wave the card near a reader. So it is no different then a barcode/stripe reader at the door...
It's not real-time tracking, but it's still a system that tracks you closely. How the fuck does that make it okay?
>TBH, the mobile phone she uses to text all her friends is probably more big brother then this.
I'm shocked and disturbed by the fact that most redditors seem to have absolutely no understanding of the difference between when the government does something versus a private corporation. No one is forcing you to buy a phone, but all minors are legally required to attend school in the US. When a private business or individual collects information about you, it is completely legal. However, the Fourth Amendment has, until 9/11, effectively protected the people from the government invading their privacy. After 9/11, the Fourth Amendment has not only been under constant attack by lawmakers, but the public at large has fully embraced (or at least are complacent) the completely modern idea of living in public - i.e. publishing your life online, or putting up with the TSA... Or the whole attitude of "I haven't done anything, so I have nothing to hide" which until 9/11 was universally seen as the most obvious straw man argument throughout the entire culture, a completely stupid notion that was previously always ridiculed, and yet now I see it regularly said in all seriousness. I really think that only people who are old enough to remember the world before the internet seem to understand this and are disturbed by it, all you young people seem like complacent automatons who don't seem to see the difference between facebook and big brother. |
So let's see what options you have in relation to an ID card.
Or how about a school that doesn't have only locked doors and security guards? American society has become so paranoid that you people can't even imagine what a safe, trusting society even looks like. If I had kids, I would want them to attend a school that is like a library or park, open to the public, not like a prison, where you need permission to go anywhere on campus. We don't need RFIDs in schools. We need better schools. We need principals who will ask the kids why they don't like to attend class instead of trying to tag them like cattle. School admins who act like wardens should not be tolerated, and yet that is the norm. Most Americans treat schools like government run day-care, and not institutions of learning.
> No it doesn't track you closely at all.
You obviously didn't read the article, he admitted that that's EXACTLY what they use it for.
>I don't believe either should get a pass. That said a mobile phone is much more invasive to your privacy then an RFID card will be. |
The idea that a government agency must approve all films is truly terrifying to me as an American.
I think this is a product of the rhetoric in your country. "Freedom of speech" is held up as though it were the pinnacle of everything, and we often hear you guys say things like "I don't like what you're saying, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
What freedom means is that you can do something without consequences. If there are consequences, you're no longer (perfectly) free to do that thing.
When people say "I believe in free speech", what they probably don't realise they're saying is "I believe there should never be any sort of consequence for any type of speech, no matter what kind of speech it is".
So even in the US, there are plenty of examples (which everyone accepts as a given) where speech has legal consequences:
Slander/Defamation (e.g., someone calls you a rapist or something)
Plagiarism (e.g., someone steals your work and pretends it's theirs)
Lying in a courtroom (e.g., contempt of court)
Lying in the course of business (e.g., this product is 100% mercury free)
Lying about safety (e.g., safe for human consumption)
etc, etc ...
If there's absolute freedom of speech, it means you have no recourse for any of those things - you can't do a thing about them, no matter how much you've been harmed.
When you guys wave the flag and say "fuck yeah, freedom of speech", we worry that you don't really understand the implications of that.
So, instead of thinking that freedom of speech is the Best Thing That's Ever Been Invented™, it's helpful to understand its limits. Once you understand its limits, then you can be sensible about applying them.
The film classification board in Australia is responsible for, well, classification. It's kinda handy to have things classified. They are able to "refuse classification" (RC) on a piece of media if they want, and it's only very rarely that anyone disagrees with them. That's because our classification system actually works. Btw, did I mention that our government actually works here? (It makes a difference.)
(On those rare occasions, we do the Aussie thing and gleefully break the law by setting up sneaky cinemas to show whatever it was.)
So, |
The issue with ELB is that it doesn't have a static IP address due to the technology run behind it (multiple hardware/instance and software). So (in circumstances not the root domain name and running in Route 53) they have to setup a CNAME record for the ELB to point to a sub-domain like stream.netflix.com. The issue there is that DNS is cached, and there could be problems where the traffic is just going to a black hole of sorts while the DNS is re-pointed. I guess you could point out that the current traffic isn't going anywhere anyway, but still valid.
With that in mind, it would be much easier if ELBs came with Elastic IPs (static IP addresses that can be assigned to an instance) that could just be re-assigned to another instance running haproxy and go about their day. |
Forget what the law is , what should it be. i'm more interested in right and wrong, rather than legal and illegal.
E.g., pretend we're back in 1789, defining our own constitution for our own country. What is your stance in protecting someone from "harm" who's not suffered any "harm" ? |
You are a complete moron. If it weren't for patents, the industrial revolution would not have occurred. If patents were only enforced when a manufacturer practiced them large companies would (and do) steal the inventions of small inventors. Under your limited understanding of how patent law should be the pharmaceutical industry would cease to exist. |
I've sworn off Sony after my experience with PS3. I got it instead of an xbox because I had more friends on Playstation at the time. I also thought it was the technically superior system. It probably was, on paper at least. The reality though is that the developers find it a pain in the ass to deal with and you wind up with shitty ports of games that have constant framerate issues and glitches of every sort imaginable. You always feel like a second class citizen of the gaming world with all the DLC coming out for xbox months ahead. On top of this, their management of the playstation network is horrible. It was down for like 2 months after they got hacked and they kept lying about the timeline for fixing it. What's worse is that you were forced to be signed on to the playstation network even to use Netflix, so you were deprived of a third party service you were paying for because they couldn't manage their network which should never have been in the loop to begin with. And it seems they are constantly taking it down for maintenance during peak usage times with little or no warning.
They started off with a good idea in having the system open, and allowing people to run Linux as a second OS. This allowed for a lot of possibilities. Then after they started getting hacked they took it away. It was like locking the barn door after the horse was already stolen. It prevented no hacking, and just pissed off legitimate users. Don't even get me started on their legal persecution of people who posted info on modifying consoles. I should have expected as much from a company that put rootkits on it's music cds. |
It's all subjective and based on one's opinion, there are many points that PS3 has over the Xbox. For example, PS+ costs less than Xbox Live and as Sony stated earlier, gave over $2000 in discounts and free games in 2012, while Xbox Live is pay to play online in essence. As for Forza v. GT5, GT5 easily has the best handling & Force Feedback model on consoles. Not everyone enjoys Minecraft (And the PC version is better). |
International patent law does sort of muddy the waters for this sort of thing, however, the major patent offices do cooperate with one another, and hold things relatively in-check. See here: [Patent Cooperation Treaty](
Of course, not everyone is as serious about this as others. China, for instance, is notorious for not giving two shits about international copyright for the most part. So what keeps them in check, internationally?
Well, as wrong as it may be, and as rude and imposing as it sounds... nobody wants to be on the bad side of the U.S. government. The U.S. influences everyone, and holds one of the largest economies, especially for technology-related purposes. And they can and will use their influence to fuck up your customers, seize your goods at our borders, use political pressure to coerce other governments to interfere, and leverage the massive control over international resources and technology we have to effectively cut your bottom line into nothing.
This isn't an unlimited power, but why toy with that kind of risk when you could happily comply and rake in billions with the stuff that's not covered under these patents. |
Some relevant reading that I xposted in the /r/Android threads on this:
> The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequences of a company pre-announcement made either unaware of the risks involved or when the timing is misjudged, which ends up having a negative impact on the sales of the current product. This is often the case when a product is announced too long before its actual availability. This has the immediate effect of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current product, knowing that it will soon be obsolete, and any unexpected delays often means the new product comes to be perceived as vaporware, damaging the company's credibility and profitability. |
does not constrain any employer from firing an supportive employee
There's a difference with the private sector compared to the public sector.
If you work for government, you have Constitutional protections.
Or, it used to be that way. Bush's Supreme Court gutted it: |
MS pretty much signed it's own death warrant with it's DRM strategy for the Xbox One. Sony can now simply sit back and wait for the legions of former Xbox 360 users to come over in droves to the PS4. I can also see MS having to hire more support people as I'll bet any XB One owner who have internet outages for more than the 24 hour period stated will be going apeshit as their games cease to function. |
Do you know how long it took me to get used to the larger xbox controller with offset analogs when I switched from the ps2? A long time. I was the worst halo 3 player for a long time! And yes, I was a late adopter of the 360. |
I work in the UK so might be a tiny bit off, but should get most of the details correct (I hope...).
Due to bandwidth constraints, cable will be delivered in 720p60 or 1080i60, encoded with MPEG2.
To better understand this, lets break down those numbers.
720 - the amount of vertical lines that the video image has (the resolution). Because it is HD, which always has a 16:9 aspect ratio, we can work out that we have 1080 horizontal lines to go with that (I can explain this further if it has gone over your head)
p - this means progressive- so essentially essentially each new frame is a completely new frame, not taking in any other data (more on this in a second).
30 - that is your frame frequency... 30 means the screen operates at 30Hz/ shows 30 frames per second.
So now we know that 720p30 has 720 lines of vertical resolution, 1080 of horizontal, it is progressive, and we get 30FPS... SO that is 30 new frames of 720 by 1080 picture goodness every second.
1080i60 is a bit more tricky.
We know what the 1080 means (720 but bigger), we know what the 60 means (twice the FPS of 30)... So surely this is better...?
Not so fast! the i is what is important here. Remember we said that the progressive scan gave us a new image each frame... Well the 'i' stands for 'interlaced', which means just as it sounds...
Instead of giving us the whole image in 1 nice chunk (like Progressive does), interlaced splits the frame into odd and even bars, and splits them between 2 different frames.
[Here is an example of it happening at a very low resolution](
So, on this gives us more frames per second (60 instead of 30), but that is because all the frames are being used twice. It is a bit of a workaround that causes a lot of agitation in the industry, and will hopefully be dead within the next few years.
The correct Full HD frame would be 1080p, so a full 1080 vertical lines, all nice and progressive. But this is some way of for live broadcast (due to the massive amount of data it produces) and even further off for cable distribution. |
The key word there being "ill-informed." Sure even the dullest among us can understand the difference between new and pre-owned, but it's a question of how widely aware of the specifics the general public will be before launch. The average very casual gamer probably does not read gaming news, follow /r/gaming, or watch E3 coverage. Just because the small portion of the population that actually follows this stuff is raising a huge stink about it on the internet is absolutely no guarantee that the rest of the market will follow suit.
I think it's really going to be up to Sony to try to educate the public of its competitor's flaws in the advertising blitz leading up to launch, but even if they do a good job of that it still won't guarantee a failure for Microsoft. There could very realistically be droves of people who have owned Xbox the last two generations and will stick with it because it's what they know and like. Furthermore, a huge portion of initial sales for both systems will be kids receiving them as Christmas presents. The average 7-15 year old is probably less likely to understand or care much about these concepts when they choose which one they're going to ask for, and the parents probably won't care as long as the kids are happy on Christmas morning. |
Greek here and friend of some members of the PWMN . This is old news; these networks are in place for quite a few years. They are comprised of hobbyists that set up their own high-powered antennas and share a multitude of services besides Internet access. Access to the Internet is one of them and it's up to each member if they will allow it. It doesn't replace ISP access, those members that provide Internet service still get it from an ISP. The bandwidth is of course limited so one doesn't have the freedom of a personal ISP connection. Performing torrenting and other bandwidth-intensive activities is considered rude and is grounds for termination of access.
As for legality, the network operates in the 5.4 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands, which in Greece are free to use by anyone. |
Thats why you don't crack it and go for work arounds. Most routers now adays have an 8 digit pass key that can be 'infected' with a proper NIC. |
I wrote this as a reply to a comment but later realized I hadn't really understood the meaning. So here it goes:
On the topic of rules and regulations within this network:
Yes , there were regulations and policies and structure and even politics when it got big.
There was a very specific need to respect each other in order for this to work because of various factors:
the resource is not unlimited. Wireless bands can VERY easily be congested and become useless if someone misbehaves.
There was a structure (backbone/ap) but it is very much a peer to peer network. By definition you need people to play by the rules otherwise it sucks for everyone
The outdoor antenna installation part as well as the file-sharing and internet sharing that was taking place dictated that we'd all have to behave in order for the law to continue to not care. Nobody gives a shit about hobbyists in Greece, but you need to keep it discreet to keep it that way.
Not everyone has the knowledge necessary, so you will need help and you will have to help.
As with any community, there are rules and politics even just plainly because of the social aspect of it.
There were common resources that needed to be kept: the forum, the central nameserver, the node map, etc.
and so on. |
Because that's basically wishing you could use solar panels in the North Pole.
Cold fusion suggests, as is in the name, that it is performed in "room temperature".
Why it's bullshit? Because current science and theoretical physicists just don't see it happening any time soon. Because it would require several laws of physics to be bent/broken.
Wiki describes it well:
>Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another.[37] Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this repulsion.[146] Extrapolating from known fusion rates, the rate for uncatalyzed fusion at room-temperature energy would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat.[147] |
Ok, I'm a wee bit confused now. Last time I heard the price of electricity is going up in Germany because of too fast transition and imminent closing of all the nuclear power plants. At the same time German-based company Siemens invested a lot to solar panel production and their CEO is going to be booted / has been booted because they have done very poorly in that category.
I can't direct to any sources as I've red it from newspaper articles. But in |
Well.. those old reactors aren't (ok.. the one I toured wasn't.. but the others didn't do that much better in the safety reports either)
Also if the energy companies would have to pay for everything nuclear related, they wouldn't even have built them in the first place. But if the state pays for research, insurance, taking care of the nuclear waste, etc. and you already paid the building cost.. why not continue using it until it falls apart? |
Unless Google is giving us the encryption key without backing it up
To understand the risks here, it helps to know that there are two very different types of keys used in cryptography (I'm making up these terms):
Permanent keys -- you would use this if you want to encrypt some data, store it, and later retrieve it and decrypt it. For example, if you're encrypting a hard drive or a file on a hard drive.
Temporary keys -- you can use this if you want to encrypt some data, transmit it, and have the receive immediately decrypt it. You can and should throw away the key after you've received all the data.
The article says "the information traveling between its data centers offered rare points of vulnerability to potential intruders, especially government surveillance agencies". So it's pretty clear that this is about encrypting network traffic. In which case, temporary keys are the obvious way to do this.
So, you wouldn't store them on disk. You wouldn't give them to the user. Both of these are not only antithetical to the purpose and bad engineering, but they actually require you to go out of your way to do extra work. Much easier to just generate a key when you start communicating with a network peer, then throw it away when you're done.
For comparison, an industry-standard protocol is [TLS]( It wouldn't be safe to assume this is the same type of encryption being used, but it serves as a decent example of how cryptographers implement things. It generates temporary keys for a given session (for example, your connection to a web server while you're submitting a form over "Both the client and the server use the master secret to generate the session keys, which are symmetric keys used to encrypt and decrypt information exchanged during the SSL session and to verify its integrity" |
by saying TPM does not mean i am advocating microsoft's implementation of TPM. i am saying a trusted platform model is a potential solution. i never said microsoft's trusted platform model is the correct solution.
the SHA hash you describe is an example of TPM. so it's quite ridiculous that you say you will sleep better at night by not trusting a TPM solution, and in the next paragraph outline a TPM solution you would trust. |
The MPAA doesn't understand its audience at all. A large majority of these illegal downloads are by people who CANNOT get the content legally. For explain, I downloaded all of Game of Thrones seasons. Why? My country doesnt get HBO. And I cant purchase it digotally because its 'not available in my country'. Now unless I want to end up paying a ridiculous amount for a dvd (ridiculous being if I ordered it, the taxes would triple the initial cost), which I dont use anymore, it makes a heck of alot more sense to just get it free through torrents. |
Does the tor browser encrypt data pre-router, or is it just encrypting outgoing data? For example, it will let me access youtube at work, but will it still report accessing youtube.com to the local router? |
Because an idea is less valuable to a company if it can be freely shared.
No doubt. But we're not talking about some guy that wants to make his music and sell it on iTunes without a label, create a song purely for the public domain.
We're talking about, for example, some guy that decides to rip off someone else's work, with the potential to gain from it. Or cause the content creator to possibly lose revenue. Or, obtain content that has a monetary value, without paying that value. Nobody likes to be stolen from , ergot, nobody should be okay with stealing -- but nearly everybody is.
This, again is why we need more efficacious rules, with less silliness, and less of a chance to criminalize someone not realizing they're committing a crime.
And to bring all this together, here is a great example of a BS rule:
>The /r/starcitizen developers had all met at a convention, which was streamed on YouTube. Everything went fine for a while until it became known it was a host's birthday, so the attendees, naturally drunkenly sang Happy Birthday to You , and the YouTube feed blacked out immediately.
>It was later disclosed that the feed was cut automatically by a copyright crawler, because Warner still owns the rights to Happy Birthday to You .
Dumb, right? Well here's why Warner cares about Happy Birthday to You , in the digital age:
>Lets enter happy coincidence land: Say it is your uncle's birthday. He lives far away, but you want to send well-wishes and a song.
>You can go to a party supply store, and buy Drew's Party Classics or something, and mail him the CD, or you can go on iTunes and hit up the WB label and spend $1.29 on the HBtY, and gift it to him, or you can go on YouTube or SoundCloud or wherever, and just Facebook him a link to the song.
> Naturally, why on earth would you pay for the Birthday Song? It's the effin' Birthday Song . So you go to YouTube and send him a link to the song, and call it a day. This can happen millions of times a day, as with several billion humans, there are a lot of birthdays. That is several million copies of the birthday song that WB does not make a sale on, at at least a dollar a piece. This costs them, we can postulate, a corresponding several million dollars. Wouldn't you be upset if you lost your chance make several hundred million dollars of a product a year, because nobody realizes it has a value due to circumstance?
>As a bonus, not only did they lose the sale, the guy with the YouTube video he made for his uncle way back, has it monetized with in-stream advertising, because it's just a song right? Who cares if the screen is half covered with ads. He got it to YouTube early on, so it has lots of views and has high relevancy, so he gets several thousand views a day. He gets a few cents a watch from the ad-viewing, which gets him a few hundred dollars a month, for simply downloading Warner's song from some guy on Napster 12 years ago (who distributed it to thousands himself), thus making money off a song he didn't create, on site he doesn't own.
>Yakko Wakko and Dot are now very upset, because not only did they lose more profit in a year than most people make in a lifetime, but they have some schlub making money off that product without paying his dues or asking permission, effectively costing them money while he's at it.
So three questions to take away:
Is it utterly rediculous to can someone's feed because people were singing the birthday song? Absolutely .
Is it utterly rediculous to want to make sure you don't get stiffed on profit for product that is legally yours? Probably not .
Is it wrong to sue a man for a hundred thousand dollars for innocently putting a song on YouTube; knowing he may have have a hand in the loss of exponentially higher sums of revenue? That's not an easy question, if you consider both sides. |
since this is a fox news link the comments here will inevitably decline into a GOP vs. DNC circlejerk
that being said, I sort of wished that the Tea Party would actually live up to it's ideals and impeach Obama over, among other things, not closing Guantanamo Bay, Snowden's Exile, the NSA's 1984 nightmare, and operation Fast and Furious. Instead, the GOP is braindead and is now fast running itself into the ground on a backwards agenda that appeals to nobody except for old racist people who still worship Ronald Reagan.
The saddest part is that the GOP have given up any pretensions to being a watchdog (or stewardship, for that matter), and have only proven that our two-party "democratic" state is run by the same bankers and corporatists that bankroll both parties. The only thing scarier to than a divided government with a backwards GOP is a unified government where the party in power, be it Republican or Democrat, can simply fuck people over (even more than now, which in all fairness both the GOP and DNC are already united on stripping people of their civil rights, military spending and industry deregulation).
I just feel sorry for any kid who has to grow up into this. Seriously, what person is going to want to participate in a society where hypocrisy is the norm and superficiality over rationality is rewarded? I can only imagine why video games are popular, because younger people are choosing to simply drop out and give up rather than carry on the tradition of Democracy (although their parents before then certainly did not continue said traidtion either, otherwise we wouldn't have a two party system). America is fucked in the long term if we don't get our shit together, because eventually the rest of the world will catch up to us and by then we will be so weakened from lack of spirit we'll get stepped on (or worse just nuke everyone). |
Anyone want to |
Many redditors understand that 1. Google is an Ad based company. and that 2. We are the product that Google sells to make money.
If they do not, then they 1. Do not pay attention to this subreddit often. or 2. have never read Google's ToS
Beyond this, Google has done some amazing things for competition - Android, Rolling out Google Fibre in the states, driving research into antonymous vehicles, cloud computing, The chrome browser.
Competition is one of the best things a company can offer to a market - and Google offers competition to a few markets. And they do not hide the gathering of information. Yes some of the things they do are downright frustrating - virtually forcing a Google+ account on you, if you use their product - but when changes come through, they do not hide what those changes are.
Will may opinion of them change in a month? Not likely. In 6 months, it's difficult to say - In 5 years time, probably. 5 years down the line will really when Corporate Profit Google has settled into it's shoes, and we will be able to judge what sort of company they are. But for now, they are less evil then they are beneficial to the markets that they are in.
Don't forget, they also love releasing stats on which governments make the most requests for private persons information every year. |
Well if the machines enslave us and place us inside matrix1 with no memory of the past and the same set of rules (physics, natural selection, math, etc), we should eventually get to the point within matrix1 where we create robot slaves again. Then those robot slaves within matrix1 revolt and put the human inhabitants of matrix1 into matrix2. Then it all begins again. If that's the case, then the chance that we are in matrix1 is the same as the chance that we are in matrix167843. Further, if time really is infinite, then it's possible that there is no real beginning or end, and we are just in an infinitely recursive set of matrices. |
You lost me at learning a bunch of hotkeys. |
I got news for ya:
When you watch Netflix on your Xbox, AppleTV, Playstation, iPad, phone, or whatever the hell else , you're watching it encrypted with DRM.
This is why the netflix player on the web requires silverlight.
The producers of the content that Netflix licenses to stream to you REQUIRE DRM.
What MS and Netflix are doing here are trying to find a way to get you to be able to watch it using HTML5 without installing a plugin like you have to now . |
That guy is full of crap. Any processor in a $2500 current laptop would still cost in the $300-$400 range for a desktop, alone. Also a $2500 laptop is full of SSDs, which are expensive in themselves. |
There's a real danger to this sort of legislation.
At least by hitting mainstream pornography, people under 18 are exposed to societal norms, and pornography that maintains a standard. It's ultimately regulated and subject to license. There are overseeing industry and governmental bodies that make sure producers adhere to laws and standards in regards to ability to consent (disability), knowledge of consent (creeper, n/c shit) and age of consent (self explanatory).
By pushing the acquisition of this "normal" pornography underground where people who refuse to comply build means of distribution outside of the system, you have those that will take to alternatives. Tor, I2P, etc. won't be passing fancies to see what's out there; they'll become the de facto standard for how to acquire pornography.
And with that comes a lack of regulation. The thought process of "anything goes". Dangerous scenarios and inappropriate content. Because if what is regular, normal and true is put on the same level as the abhorrent, disgusting and inhumane and the means for acquiring either become the same, and the definition of what makes one a criminal in the acquisition or supporting a network becomes the same, what happens?
You know what? Bring it on. Everyone will be a criminal. If everyone's a criminal it just takes 3-4 of the people in charge or people related to them to get intertwined in this bullshit in order for there to be real, honest reform. |
I'm not sure why you can't see how offering certain services for free, while still charging data for others, isn't treating all data equally. "But they're not being paid off" is irrelevant. If I'm a startup music service, and need to build a userbase to be successful, how am I going to get users away from Spotify, when ISPs make data transfer from the other source free? That Spotify isn't paying directly for the service doesn't matter - T-mobile are not treating all data neutrally. |
For a service like reddit, you are correct. But using a different DNS server can give you different results when looking up the IP address of a CDN (content delivery network, such as akamai). This post runs through why having a poor DNS choice could actually impact your speeds: (DNS Geo Location, but as pointed out, it's not the common way of doing it).
For most people, using your ISPs DNS servers will provide you the best performance. There is a chance is may be faster to use another, but it's unlikely. Now, if you're using some 3rd part DNS server outside of your ISP, it's is better to run the test and see what results you get. |
Forgive my stupidity, but even as an IT guy I don't get how end-to-end would work unless both parties had some software installed and were equip to do this sort of thing.
Jackie, the normal computer user who loves Facebook and Instagram, with her shit outlook client receives an encrypted email on her @companyhere.com address from her friend using this service. I assume that the message is either one of the two following things; An ASCII armored encrypted message for SMTP transport, or a link saying "Click here to get the encrypted message".
The first one looks like a blob of text to her and she doesn't have a client installed (PGP or something similar) to decrypt it. The second one she goes "OMG a link WTF!!! Hackers use links and I'm not st00pid"
That only addresses physical delivery. The two ways to do encrypted email are shared secret and public-key private-key. With public-key private-key everyone who wants to participate puts their pub key on a key server. When two parties want to communicate they look up the public key of the recipient and do their thing. This involves both parties uploading a key to the key server before hand . Only hackers use key servers and Jackie would never do this. If the person doesn't have an actual public (hence the name) public key, it defeats the purpose.
The other way is shared secret. How would Jackie know the password to the email? Is her friend going to call her and say "pssttt... the password to this email is 'SuperSecret'". That defeats the purpose of email.
Now remember Jackies are everywhere, especially in HR. Are you going to send your resume to them in an encrypted email that they can't do anything with (or aren't properly set up to receive). No, you are going to send it plain text because "Take my data NSA, I need a jerb!!!"
The |
I find it interesting that you think one type of entertainment (movies) doesn't represent all futurists, but two forms of entertainment (movies/books) represents the views of futurists. Of course, you are probably referring to more than just nonfiction scifi, such as books written specifically about AI and not just for the entertainment value. Even there you have some entertainment bias, because drama sells. Look at the news, tragedy is what is reported because that is how you get others to buy what you are selling. So, one can argue popular futurists stress the negatives of the future. They are popular because drama sells to a wider audience.
There are plenty of stories with AI that aren't out to destroy humanity. Some even in popular fiction, but they can't be main plot points because then they would have to be a focus of drama. Star Trek being a prime example of AI that doesn't necessarily want to kill you. AI doctors, AI androids, etc. Yes, there are the borg too, but no less evil than other species trying to destroy humanity. In fact, one can take a look at the borg as a culturally accepting group that takes the best each culture has to offer and integrate it into their "collective".
I would imagine if you wanted to get a writers true view of something you look at everything but the main plot. As stated many times, the main plots necessitates drama, while you can include your personality into minor details of your fiction.
My views as a futurist don't represent a dystopian hell, but rather a technological enlightenment... but that would make for a boring book, so it would never be written. Probably the most bleak view of the future takes a look at AI as another stage in human evolution. Much like we have changed from our parents before us and their parents before them, AI is the child of man that may one day replace us. Existentially humanity tends to realize we can't live forever and thus we live eternally through the things we leave behind. |
Hard drives are cheaper if you're talking about backups and less than 100TiB. When I updated my figures a couple of months ago tape was def. cheaper past the 100TiB mark. The last 20 pack of LTO6 I got was $900 which works out to around $18 per TB. Hard drives (before these new ones anyway) were around $35 per TB.
Now comes the interesting part: Factoring in per-media overhead. That being tape libraries, servers, chassis, etc. The tape library I use holds 16 tapes (15 if you factor in keeping a cleaning cartrage in there) and costs around $4k. The variance here is going to be where you draw the line between what you need always available and what you don't mind manually moving tapes around for.
For my servers I usually figure around $1k to $2.5k per 24 disks minus three for raidz3. That covers a chassis and the server to handle it. You can go for less than $1k if you try but then you're not going to get very good performance. You're seek times and transfers when moving more than one stream at a time will still beat tape out without any issue. Tape is great for DR backups, not for most media storage. I should point out that using the $2k config I referenced above with disk and ZFS I get sustained write speeds of around 1.2GiB/second (yes, that's bytes, not bits) of real world transfer speeds. |
This was when I worked there until they moved the call center in ~2011. I make far more than that working half as hard and treating people significantly better now. Oh, and I can take days off again.
Imagine a call center of 140 people and only 8 can have the day off at any time, partial day or otherwise. You get lots of benefits but the price for them is more than just money - it's your empathy for people in general. I loved IT work up until than, I'm only now starting to get back into liking it after realizing that Comcast is just not the dream company they play themselves off as. |
No joke, I cancelled my Business Class* internet and they put me on hold for 10 minutes, came back and fed me a spiel about how I'm locked in a contract. I know how it works because I was in the same department I was calling when I worked there. I had a non-auto renewal contract at $60/mo+$5 for statics.
When I went to cancel they told me I had a minimum 2 months cancellation notice (AFTER having dropped off my bsns class modem) which I decided to eat because they jacked my rates up 25$ - but since I was paperless after having added my CC to the account, I didn't get notified until late in the summer time. It took 6 phone calls to actually cancel, totaling a little over 4.5 hours (not counting 3 dropped phone calls due to IVR transfer botches). |
You were quoted a price and you want the entirety of Comcast to stick to it? Comcast has so many divisions of sales and third party places that run specific offers that there is no way to standardize that shit. Trust me. I would take what I can and run with it. Also when someone offers you a great rate you fucking take it on the spot. I've spent a god awful amount of time going through our terrible website and calling third parties trying to get the best deals for people when anyone else would have just told them what THEY have and told them to fuck off when they so much as mentioned another source. |
It seems that they aren't accepting responsibility for anything, but they are offering me something.
Stahp it. This is no different than any other company. It's not specific to Comcast, it is common to practically any company with a sales department. I don't see the harm in it, either. It's their job to direct your attention in a positive vector, and anyone with the least amount of customer service skills would agree that you don't dwell on anything negative when you're looking for a positive answer (Yes, I want to give you money for service).
Fucking up a bill for months on end, that's bad, and they should feel bad for it. Industry-standard practices that fit directly in the scope of the department you're talking to aren't bad, and I think trimming that kind of fat out of posts like this helps to lend credence to the account of events. A link to the uncut, unedited conversations would help in that department too, as well as not putting intentionally inflammatory images in the heavily edited and cut-up video that's supposed to show you as the good side.
Seriously, I have yet to see a Comcast complaint post that I could consider 100% legit. Everybody does something weird that really doesn't help their case in the eyes of a truly unbiased third party, and it usually seems to be driven by emotion at least in part.
If I were you, I would seriously consider making 2 new vids. One, an unedited compilation of the full conversations for each of the relevant calls - from dial to hang-up [not that many people will truly sit and listen to the whole thing, but they CAN, and you show you're being honest and open, instead of hiding and relying on a bandwagon to support your case] , and the other, a summary - much like you did - but one that doesn't use immature cheap-shot imagery and mocking people, trying to make them look worse than they are. Link to the other vid in each description, maybe toss some timestamped "important moments" in there.
You have a legit complaint, and the documented chain of events should speak for itself. If the claim is truly the complete story, and if the edited-out parts of your calls don't contain the childish nonsense you've inserted in your presently linked vid, a reasonable person would come to the same conclusion on their own without being coerced or being on the "Fuck Comcast" Bandwagon. |
Ok. Fuck Comcast. I agree with that. That said, think about this:
You're a Comcast employee. You don't care about people in general. You can help people if you want. Or you can fuck them over. It's totally up to you. So, who are you going to help? The guy who says "I do t think you guys got your stuff together?" Or the guy that says, "Hello? Yes, I was wondering if you could please help me with something?" |
To answer the question: Besides repeating that you want to speak to a supervisor, usually you have to have a reason for wanting to. That could be from previous call-ins that lead to no help/resolution in an on-going problem (usually notated in your account details), or if it's a serious enough issue that the first rep you speak to can't help you with.
The first few customer service representatives you talk to will do everything in their power to NOT get you a supervisor/manager. Why? That's their policy. They are trained to not escalate a call if they can help it.
What you don't see is that these reps are graded on performance metrics, one of which is their ability to handle customers and follow policy. If every call they received was escalated to a supervisor, they'd soon be looking for another job.
That's probably more info than you wanted, sorry. |
I contacted the FCC, due to Comcast lies like OP is having. Within 2 weeks, Comcast corporate contacted me, put a $250 credit on my account, and gave me the promotion I was promised. |
No matter how much you want them to change it, they can't, being a petulant child about it will not resolve the situation.
Since the rep cannot change what they cannot change , reps should not make promises about prices they can't fulfill .
Here in spain if you call a telephone company and the rep fucks up and tells you you will be charged, and let's exaggerate for the sake of example, 1€/month of unlimited mobile internet+ calls, and you enter a contract via-phone because of this the company is legally required to fulfill this contract . |
There is. However, it's a potential problem vs. the guaranteed cost of upgrading legacy software (assuming whoever built the thing in the first place is still in business, which they often aren't). Add to that the cost of migrating whatever databases that legacy software accesses, and training people on new software. Software that is usually absolutely vital for day to day operation of your business. |
The NSA can't easily exploit open source software because the coding community that is contributing to the project can see all the same holes that the NSA can.
I'm a huge free & open source software advocate, but I have to say that exploitation of open source software is far more likely than this. In principle, it makes sense: if the code is open and available to be reviewed, the community can find exploits and patch them as they arise. But on the other hand, the amount of code in major security-critical software is immense and there is no concerted effort to audit this software.
The Heartbleed bug from last year was a great example of this problem. A programmer accidentally created a bug in OpenSSL where a remote attacker could download the server's private key. It looks like the bug was introduced in 2012 and was not officially publicized until 2014... but there's significant evidence that it had been exploited for months prior. For all we know, there could have been the NSA or some other cracker using that bug since the day it was put into OpenSSL.
Even though there are many potential coders who could have seen and noticed that bug, there is no strong effort to audit these kinds of projects. So, there many be numerous exploits in open source software that are not currently in the public eye but are being exploited. One small flaw in a huge ocean of code can easily go unnoticed. For all we know, bugs may be introduced intentionally. There could be an NSA employee writing flawed code for Linux software as we speak... and this code might be going completely unscrutinized.
This isn't to say that open source software is bad or that it shouldn't be used, only that it's not a magic bullet against exploitation.
Unless you personally read and audit every piece of open source software that you use (for OpenSSL, that's about 400,000 lines of code) then it may as well be closed source from a security standpoint. |
Google has about a million Linux machines and about as many network admins maintaining their safety.
How often have your programmer buddies who run Windows been infected with virii? For me? Never. |
I dont think you understand what |
That's actually not as stupid as one would think. If reflectivity were a property of wavelength, ie. of a certain colour and that colour did fall into the scannable range, then it would work (kinda like you used to be able to set one colour as transparent in a 256 colour image).
It isn't of course, but it's easy to get the misconception that reflectivity was somehow related to colour -- after all, you can paint a picture of a mirror that looks pretty darn much like a mirror. However, this example also shows why this theory fails: The painted picture of a mirror isn't reflective, and can't itself be used as a mirror.
But actually, and I've quickly looked at Wikipedia here, the thing is, it sort of ought to be possible to paint a picture of a mirror that really is a mirror itself: Almost every thing reflects, at least to some extent, it's just that many things don't present a strong wavefront and don't reflect as much, and diffuse reflection .
And it ought to be possible to create a scanner that can scan not just the wavelength of a 2D image, but that can also probe the depth at least a little bit, and create an ultra high resolution digital elevation model monitor ought to be able to recreate the very even wavefront as well, and presto: reflectivity! |
The problem with this argument is overselling bandwidth. Most ISPs and commercial data centers sell their customers more bandwidth than they could provide to all their customers if they all used the pipe they'd bought.
If 1 million customers on average are only tossing 40k ping pong balls down your 1 million ping pong ball pipe at any given time you can probably get away with taking on many more than 1 million customers and still deliver the service that each usually uses.
This isn't usually a problem since usage over time doesn't change too quickly. It is a problem for consumer ISPs though since they usually keep their 1 million ball pipe up to about 90+% capacity in use, and any time some big push comes down the pipe it leaves them in a situation where they're drowned in ping pong balls and have angry customers on the line. |
Is anyone else deathly afraid that the country that will be the most populous, the most powerful economically, and have the most people in higher education and graduate school for decades to come so brazenly shows, time and time again, how far their business, social, and environmental ethics are from being even close to acceptable?
China's audacity is incredible; even under the international spotlight during the Olympics, they increased their censorship and ramped up their persecution of human rights activists. Considering the success they are having implementing their policies in this way, they won't be able to help having a large sphere of influence eventually. |
I'm guessing (esp. from your original post) that you're more of a business/econ guy than a tech guy? It's not a problem, I'm just trying to see where you're coming from.
You transfer data by making tiny, tiny, tiny voltage changes over copper wiring (or light changes over fiber, whatever) - the dollars/cents costs of these changes are negligible. The only way I can "cost" my ISP more actual cash is if I make their electricity bills go up - and even if I max out my link, that's not going to happen (and if you think about it, ISPs probably negotiate some sort of flat rate with the energy companies since a) they use so much, and b) they can't afford to be without juice).
You mention equipment, cabling, maintenance, etc - my downloading 1 TB vs. 1 GB doesn't cause the equipment/cabling to degrade or require maintenance nearly fast enough for me to be charged for it - i.e. the more I use does not increase the cost or frequency of maintenance.
The only way I can "cost more" is in a network management/utilization sense - i.e. by me downloading Doghouse Skanks 6, I use so much bandwith that I keep everyone else from using the network. That's an indication of a shitty network/infrastructure management/build, not me "using too much" or "more than I pay for". That's why ISPs offer an absolute minimum speed for all of its customers - which is (or at least should be) an indication of everyone's speed if everyone were on the network at the same time.
And speaking of minimum speeds - if you had a minimum guaranteed speed of 1 mb/s (absolute shitty), and you did some work on your machine to lock yourself down to that speed, you would still be able to download over 2 TB of data in a single month. a) You're not costing your ISP more cash doing this, and b) you're not hurting anyone else connected to the same network point. 200 gb caps my ass. |
Those are essential services. They are HEAVILY regulated.
I am talking about societal growth online. The internet is a VERY powerful tool which can be used to foster incredible innovations. Unfortunately, it is being destroyed by companies for the sake of profit and "security."
When we lay down and adopt a mentality of "well, i guess they are in control and we should just let greed shape the policies that govern the internet" rather than fighting and forcing the ISPs to consider alternative solutions, corporate greed will ruin yet another budding industry.
We need to show that this mentality of cutting back on internet freedoms and restricting access, throttling speeds and limiting bandwidth isn't the only profitable solution. Not only that, but it hurts the entire digital industrial complex.
It is a VERY slippery slope right now, and if we shrug off moves like this, time and time again, there won't be much of an internet left to utilize.
Just as we seem to LOVE handing over our hard earned (through the forfeiture of MANY lives) freedoms for the sake of security and corporate profit in our every day lives, we are making these same mistakes online.
All it takes is enough people to adopt this laissez-faire attitude of allowing the ISPs to set their own policies. Those policies will continue unabated and pave the way for even more harsh and restrictive policies.
The ISP business is being monopolized in many regions, but especially so in North America. When monopolies take hold AND are allowed to dictate their own policies without question, the public will always lose out.
Enough people rely on the internet for economic reasons that they could really suffer if the greed of the few remains to outweigh the needs of the many.
This is an obvious move to stifle what miserably little competition the major ISPs in Canada have left. With usage based billing, smaller ISPs can no longer even OFFER unlimited plans. The major ISP wholesalers do not even offer unlimited plans.
First Bell moved to change how second tier ISPs could lease their lines at all
The Canadian government only very recently moved to overturn the CRTC (who are the ones that are supposed to FOSTER competition in the industry) policy which served to block foreign owned ISPs from setting up shop in Canada. The government had to step in because the CRTC rules were stifling competition by limiting ISP startups. It was great news, but hardly enough to change the landscape in Canada.
MUCH MORE is needed in order to return balance to the industry, but things are moving in reverse. Usage based billing will effectively kill off any chance of any smaller ISP offering any kind of unlimited bandwidth plan. And if the public simply allows this to happen and says
"well, just pay more money"
then where will it end? With no competition and the price of entry into the industry massively increasing as the major ISPs take advantage of their position of power, the odds of proper competition occurring in the industry quickly diminish.
Any startup ISP is already at a ridiculous disadvantage, and we are hamfisting power into the hands of the ISPs who already have most of the power. |
DOCSIS 3.0 supports 108MBit/s upstream and 343.04MBit/s downstream. If an ISP is providing 1.5Mbps/customer, they can probably have about 100 customers per segment without having horrible QOS (assuming that most users aren't constantly uploading more than 1Mbps).
IF it happens that customers are uploading too much, then the solution is to segment further. Bitching about the technology is no excuse. Fiber and DSL are point to point, whereas cable is a broadcast technology. Neither technology inherently needs a monthly bandwidth cap. For Fiber/DSL, the ISP needs a node for every user. For Cable, the ISP needs a node for every 100 or so users. If anything, Comcast's lower costs (fewer nodes) should better allow them to avoid a bandwidth cap. Worst case they have to occasionally install a few more nodes (maybe 50 users?).
Even in small towns they've run fiber out to the neighbourhood distribution point, so their backbone should support 2 nodes in one distribution point without needing to run more cables if DOCSIS is the only limit. They aren't using DOCSIS all the way from your house up to their main office; you aren't sharing upstream with the entire community, just a segment. If they need more segments, that's a management and planning issue. |
Yup, these were my thoughts exactly. If they had done a larger city there would have been much more red tape regardless of how cooperative the local government is too, just because there are going to be more properties to deal with, but Kansas City is not small potatoes either. Kansas City, Missouri is the 37th largest city in the country by population . If you sort the list by population density, you see that both of these cities all of a sudden drop to almost the bottom of the list. They are rather sparse for being such populated cities.
Also, the cost of electricity is cheaper there. [Here]( you can see that the average commercial cost of electricity in Missouri is 7.15 Cents per kilowatt hour, which is one of the cheapest on the list.
Obviously, just like everyone else I'm disappointed they didn't pick my city, which I feel would've been a GREAT decision on google's part. |
Whubba whaaa? OK, here's a crash course in Southern African politics as it relates to telcos. What distinguishes the telco situation in South Africa is that most of the fibre was laid on the taxpayer's dime.
Back in the bad old days, all major service providers were government owned and run: power, rail, communication, even mining. The system was designed to make sure that every white person could be guaranteed a job in the public service sector if they were incapable of securing private employment. They were (strictly speaking) non-profit - which is to say, they generated "surplus" rather than "profit", because the focus was on making sure they could employ as many white people as possible.
About five years after apartheid ended, despite a mandate to increase employment, the new government "privatised" everything. Translated, that means they sold off all service-providing state assets to private investors, and made a fuckton of cash, and bought lots of black tinted German sedans. Bizarrely, they didn't sell the hospitals.
It hasn't worked out well. Those companies are being pillaged for profit to the extent where they can't function well anymore, and because they're all essential services, we're having to use taxpayer money to bail them out.
Focussing specifically on the telco issue, where the government had run it as a benevolent dictator, private enterprise dropped the benevolent part. Telkom retrenches about 10% of its staff annually for "efficiency" reasons, and charges massive, massive amounts for all of its services.
Limpopo (where I live) is the poorest province in South Africa. It's estimated that each minimum wage employed person (farm workers make around US$200 a month) is supporting 7-8 others. People are starving here , never mind further north.
And a big contributor - corruption aside - is that essential services are no longer hiring. Because they now operate purely for profit, they just don't need all these employees. Further more, the average SA citizen is denied the economic benefits that come with easy access to broadband because of the artificially high barrier to entry.
So when I bitch about what Telkom charges, it is in the following context: my tax money paid for the infrastructure they exploit. My tax money subsidises their piss poor management and staff crisis. On top of which, I have to pay an extortionate amount for my data transfers, and I don't even get to feel good about supporting my fellow countrymen when I do so, because Telkom is firing, not hiring, and what revenue they generate that doesn't go into corrupt government pockets goes to American shareholders. |
Profanity Warning; set up your audio accordingly. YouTube and Vimeo links provided.
This is Jason Scott's presentation about Archive Team at DEFCON 19. It's an overview and justification of what the Archive Team was formed to accomplish - collecting and distributing as much user-generated content as they possibly can, when the companies hosting this content decide to take it offline.
He also provides a post-mortem of this speech [here]( which gives some insight into how he thinks and speaks. |
Not to mention, if you're the children of parents in the high-tech industry, you have a lot of technology to use at home.
Imagine if you're the kids of parents who can't afford a computer, or are not in an environment where technological learning is taken for granted?
Then suddenly, computers in a classroom are a good idea. |
Warrant Warrant Warrant Warrant Warrant Warrant Warrant
(Since you missed the point of every comment in this thread I just thought you'd like me to |
Though I don't question that law enforcement uses these illegally and that there are profound implications, they aren't the only ones.
I used to use these myself. I worked with a friend that worked for a company that repossesses cars, ect. He and I would drive around to known addresses associated with a given vehicle/individual. If we found the car, we'd call in a tow truck if possible, and attach one of these to the underside of the car. That way, if they drove off, or a truck wasn't immediately available, we'd still be able to get the car.
Ours was not this sophisticated, ours was little more than a modified cell phone in a similar case.
One time, we found the car in a grocery store parking lot, and attached the tracker. The guy came out and left before the truck got there, but we traced it back to the location (not his house or listed address) where he parked it, and were able to get the car. We even attached a tracker to a full-size excavator once. Dunno how that turned out or what kind of equipment you need to repo construction equipment, but I guess they did it somehow.
It was some fun but dangerous secret agent shit we got to do, but I stopped after a few runs, because I was ethically conflicted about this, for good reason. |
Only in the us will tracking your car tell absolutely everything about your life. |
That is a good point that I hadn't considered. (subreddit mods)
It seems like most people I mention my point to disagree or just don't get it. Maybe this will clear it up. When you subscribe to your favorite little list of subreddits, it's like putting blinders on to the bigger picture of the site as a whole.
There are only so many hours in a day, and with the old system the more subreddits you were reading then the less you looked at the "general" submissions. This isn't much different from Fox news viewers ignoring the reality around them by only listening to people who will pander to their viewpoints.
Subreddits may as well all be called /r/circlejerk as far as I'm concerned. You're saying "hey, I only want to listen to and socialize with members of my tiny community. I prefer to stick my head in the sand when it comes to the big picture."
Without a large tight-knit userbase sharing similar information within the whole of the site, we are less of a "mob" for them and the government to deal with. The leaders of reddit obviously wanted to get us used to sticking to our little subreddit cubicles. |
Corporations do not want to learn a new OS format. The company I left in September was just starting to roll out Windows 7. Before they were on XP.
Most corporations have a very standardized PC that they give to employees, they have a system in place to distribute updates and new programs, they have a large set of programs that function in the ways that they need, and most importantly, they have a secure environment.
A new OS means they have to overhaul all of this. The hardest part is making sure that everything functions. In engineering this means a fair number of legacy applications to support old projects. |
Honestly, for the average (casual) user, perhaps nothing. I never used it personally, because of the security issues I'd heard about it. Basically, to make things more secure, Microsoft limited visibility and availability of some folders that made some programs just stop working, or constantly ask for administrator privs.
From what I understand, this had a big impact on networks (for businesses and the like). I'd heard several IT friends talk about how much they despised it, and while I never had any personal experience, I was told by those with more know-how that Windows 7 was much easier to work with. |
This guy! This process is very time consuming. I wanted to expand on this topic, not that you all don't understand this already but here is.
Make the customer understand what needs to be done. variable
Not all computers are equal in speed
Memory,power, and hard drive diagnostics to save the tech time later from pulling his hair out later.
You may need to swap out software and also make the customer comfortable with this software. We push a lot of libreoffice to people who didn't realize someone pirated office for them and another $120 office package just isn't in their budget.
Email, Nobody remembers their email passwords and most are nervous to call their service providers to get it. This requires more time with the customer, switching back and fourth so they can answer security questions so I can reset their passwords.
3rd party accessories need to be setup
General software issues that just happen for no reason during setup. yesterday I had to totally clean out some nvidia drivers Microsoft installed before I could install the manufacturers latest drivers.
Then there are all the little things that they need help with after. I'll give you an example:
Customer comes in and we do all of these things for them. They agree for a reinstall $85 and they do not opt in for backups because they will do it themselves to their thumb drive. I backup the data anyway to our network file server because I know better. We leave a reverse remote app on their desktop so we can help them with things later. Customer calls me back and says " Skype doesn't work, I can't connect to my wireless and I can't find my music!" No problem I say. I have them plug in with an ethernet cable, instruct them on how to remote into me and I get to work setting up the router for the wifi password they forgot. Wifi works now, great. Now their cellphone won't connect because it is remembering a wireless profile with a different password from the passed. No problem, I walk them through fixing that. Then onto skype, the webcam accessory was installed at the store but we didn't have the webcam so skype has to be configured to use the webcams microphone by default. "But what about my music?!" they say. Well come on by the store tomorrow and I'll have it on a disc for you. The backup charge is 30 something dollars that you'll have to pay for at this point but lucky for you I have all of your stuff.
Now, for mom and pop or uncle Ben and Aunt "I don't know anything about computers". This service was well worth the money. Not only is their computer fixed but it is setup and working exactly to their specifications and most importantly they didn't lose their wedding pictures that they thought they backed up a week ago but then the dog needed to go out and dishes needed to be done... blah blah..
I feel that we actually charge too little for the service but keep in mind a new computer is $500 at Staples so we have to be reasonable as well if we want to make any money. This also gives us a small buffer for hardware failure we find out about after the computer arrives like a hard drive that fails read sector test.
Now think of the expenses. The retail store itself is small and very frugal on the budget it runs. We bought a dead talkswitch off kijiji the other day for $20 just in case ours dies and had to solder on some new capacitors. Good insurance for when I arrive on Friday morning and my phone lines are down.
The store has to pay me, hydro, interac, visa, mastercard, water, internet + Bandwidth, 2 phonelines we recently switched to voip to lower costs , taxes, advertising, signage, human mistakes, insurance, security, a cellular stick so we can send text messages to customers who can't answer their phones at work without revealing our own cell phone numbers, gas and vehicle to pickup parts once a week, and the list just keeps going on. Staffing is particularly hard, the academic techs need to pay for their education so they are out of our hiring price range. That leaves us with the enthusiasts and guys that just never went to school for it. Now mind you hands down some of them are fantastic but after 10 years they have families and need higher pay. So now you need someone who is experienced but not too experienced because you can't afford anything else.
Some days, yes you'll have 3 or 4 or 7 computers on the bench getting work done. Some days and god forbid weeks you'll have 1 computer up because it's just THAT time of year. Like summertime. We have to compete with big box stores to sell computers so we don't make much there and we end up being a few bucks more than online stores that ship next day because they have much less overhead. We don't sell people extended warranties they'll never use. Most of the parts we sell already have 3 year manufacturers warranty or lifetime. Visa has an excellent service that most of our customers have already. So part of the problem is our own honesty and it stinks that we have to tell people they don't own office and the last tech who worked with them must have just been a nice guy trying to do them a favor. We don't talk junk about other techs.
My buddy and I have been working at this small business for 10 years. We still squeeze by every year but we love what we do so for us it is worth it. At the highest point we had 2 stores and 5 employee's and at the lowest point it was just him and I eating ramen cursing the government for auditing us after we made some very honest mistakes.
We do all of this service because word of mouth is our best customer driver. We pickup business services, consulting and all kinds of great opportunities from happy customers. I find computer technicians to be the most back stabbing bunch of people I have ever had to share a field with and Ive worked in restaurants. If a customer consults another "tech" from anywhere, the first thing they will do is inquire which idiot they went to last and talk trash about them no matter the circumstances.
I hope for the day that small electronics repair will turn into a trade similar to welding or plumbing where you need to have your tickets to show that you are indeed a tech. I know there are certifications but most of them are very focused. As if a welder goes to school for JUST arc welding. Well that doesn't work in the real world. Today I fixed an apple, a linux box and a few windows computers. The linux box was special because I don't see it too often. |
the news articles are [here]( and [here](
Basically here's the story:
There's a nerf gun enthusiast named Martyn Yang who has a website promoting nerf guns. One day he gets a letter from Hasbro (who produces nerf guns) saying that they liked his website and would like to send him some nerf guns. Like any great fan he was excited and gave them a postal address.
No nerf guns came but a week later, a stinging letter arrived in his mailbox threatening legal action unless he took down 'copyrighted' images from his blog. Basically, Hasbro rep used a false offer of free merchandise to dupe Yang into giving up his street address.
His website had been offline for months as a result.
There were some further developments about a month later:
"On Sunday, Yang was told by his neighbours that some creepy people were hanging around his apartment. He confronted them, one of whom called herself “Christine”. They wanted to tape the conversation. Yang told Crikey he was ” so taken aback/shocked by the ambushing technique that I talked to them.”
“My neighbours were freaked out by the sight of the Baker & McKenzie ‘representatives’ lurking around our apartment building on a Sunday afternoon. Apparently they’d been hanging around all day waiting for me! I’ve asked around and been told that the people were probably private investigators engaged by Bakers and not Baker & McKenzie themself but I don’t think that that lets Hasbro or the law firm off the hook?—?ultimately they are responsible for making sure that the tactics that they use are reasonable.”
Martyn Yang's blog/website is called [Urban Taggers]( Lets show him some support against the corporate scums! |
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