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The main issue I have with the bundling of channels isn't that fact I am paying for channels I don't watch (I mean, that is A issue, but not the main one), it's that it allows content creators to get lazy.
For example, I would gladly pay 10 dollars a month for something like AMC. The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, ect. They know their shit and they do it very very well. On the opposite side there are channels that you couldn't pay ME to watch, much less have me pay them.
With a bundle package, it allows some content creators to get lazy or just produce absolute dog shit because they know people have to pay for the package to get the good stuff they actually want and they are going to get their kick back regardless.
Under an À la carte system these creators would suffer and fail. I welcome this.
Make good content, people will pay for it, you'll be ok. Make shit no one wants, you get canceled. Simple as that.
But I don't see it happening until the the bundle packaging system is losing so much money that it can't pay the kick backs to the content creators it used to. And that won't happen till more people cancel their cable subscriptions. |
I've heard tell here and there of Google buying up strategic locations for data centers in New York, Los Angeles, and maybe even Chicago; and while it may be forty or fifty years until I get better service out here in the country, I am willing to bet that Google will be trying to put something similar in major cities across the US in the next twenty years. As to the other ISP's I recall another redditor from Kansas City commenting that TWC had sent a representative to his house to ask if he was enjoying their service, and if there was any questions or suggestions he would have for them. |
The issue here is that bundling cuts costs for everyone. You pay about $5 a month for ESPN. However, only 25% of cable subscribers watch ESPN, so the thought is if you go a la carte then prices will have to drastically rise because ESPN will be losing the revenue from the 75% who don't watch it. So there's a real cost to unbundling that cable channels don't want to deal with. One thing you have to realize with Hollywood is that if they have a business model that works, they will do whatever possible not to change it even if it could benefit them. The same thing happened with home video, a product Hollywood tried to kill that became their biggest profit center. |
Stand alone channels is not the big savings that most people think it will be. Be ready to pay $5-10 per month for basic channels(maybe more for some like ESPN). It does not take many channels to get to the $60-70 price of a basic cable package. To those that complain about $120 cable bills, they have more than basic cable. That, and if it hurts the cable companies and they lose subscribers, expect their prices to go up as they operate on economies of scale. As far as competition goes, if there was competition it would likely raise the price of cable. The reason that cable companies are territorial is that they have to build and maintain an infrastructure in order to supply you with services. If you have two companies in the same area supplying the same services it would require two infrastructures and you would essentially double the fixed costs. There is no way that would lower your cable bill. Couple that with the fact that content providers are raising the cost of their content faster than cable providers are raising their prices and cable is actually a relatively low profit industry and it is being squeezed more all of the time.
And people that complain about how America is falling behind in Telecommunications infrastructure fail to take into account just how big America is. One of the reasons that we are behind is that people in urban areas are helping to subsidize the cost in order to expand the telecommunications infrastructure to people in rural areas. Google Fiber can give faster service for less because it is in a densely populated urban area.
I believe that as infrastructure gets better we will see better speeds, but do not expect prices on internet to go down too much. You will just get more bang for your buck. Television on the other hand will only become more expensive as time goes on because of the distribution model. Don't like it, cut the cord. Until it hurts content providers, there will not be a change. |
the one tier about the "basic" package in the US is too big and covers too many channels, basically. Specifically ESPN and its other channels, which demand a lot of extra $$$ for their channels. Disney owns said channel and often threatens to pull its other stations from the basic package if cable companies dont include espn. |
The bottom line is that an a la carte system cannot sustainably function within the current model of programming. The main problem is that the popular shows that most people on Reddit hate, but the rest of the world loves, sustain everything else. This is live sporting events, every reality TV show, etc. This is NOT Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, etc.
The only way this system will be disrupted is to come to some pretty harsh conclusions. These include:
Live sports (ESPN, Big Ten Network, etc) can move to a pay-access format; the demand is absolutely there. In order for a channel to move to an a la carte system will probably cost somewhere in the range of $25-50 PER MONTH from individual users (remember; you no longer have 200 million users "paying" for every channel). They are pretty much the only type of content that can do this.
The only other format that can support a large number of viewers is reality television (you can probably lump in some of the gray-area reality television here, such as gameshows). This will become the new "cable" television, which essentially has already happened (just look at TLC, History Channel, Discovery, etc. they're all reality, not to mention MTV, VH1, etc).
Now you have to start looking at the other types of content, all of which can be considered "niche" to smaller or larger extents.
Sitcoms. These would be replaced by "networks" such as College Humor, Funny or Die, etc. Sitcoms really aren't very expensive to produce, so long as you aren't paying your talent astronomical salaries. Between the lower cost of video production equipment and the ease of distribution, putting together a situational comedy type show really only takes a couple of good writers, some reasonably competent video staff, and some talent (dime a dozen, especially if you're willing to be flexible).
Science-fiction and fantasy shows. These shows are EXTREMELY popular, but with a very small niche of people. That's a recipe for disaster, especially when you start figuring in for location shots, effects, etc. The crowd that consumes this content is also very demanding of quality in general. Probably the only solution here is that this content goes back to where it really belonged in the first place: the film industry.
Drama. This one is a bit confused because these shows can run a pretty wide range, from fairly low-budget, to much higher-end production (that typically cross borders on genres at the same time). Lower-end productions can probably find an online home similar to the comedy arrangement, whereas the higher-budget productions will probably need to move back to film.
Animated/childrens. Similar to drama, it depends on the production. With technology making production cheaper and faster, it's not hard to see an online venue being able to pick this up and charge an access fee (which parents will pay, for sure). |
They started Apple in a garage because they didn't have any money, not because society shunned them for trying to invent stuff. He then made billions of dollars and achieved worldwide fame, so how was he not rewarded? |
First off, I don't mean to pick on you; so if it comes off as though I am, I apologize.
Second, the issue of inheritance tax laws came up during this christmas with the family.
Apparently my grandparents are getting on in age and they are worrying about what happens to their farm land when they die. Something along the lines of either way they try to pass on their land they'll have to pay 50% of the current worth of the land in taxes. Which i guess pisses off my grandpa becuase he's been working his ass off his whole life to get the chunk of land he owns and doesn't want to see it leave the family or cause infighting on who gets what.
Which made me think, is it actually bad to want to leave something for you family? I mean, i find the 99% happens to feel like they are being left out by those with money, but people had to make some sort of sacrifice to make that money at one point right? |
Yeah, if there's a Woz and Jobs at Apple right now, they're doing the same thing they had to do with HP: get the fuck out of Apple and into a startup. |
I don't see why Apple is considered "king of innovation". If anything Apple is always late to the game. Apples strength is its anal perfectionism.
Apple, the latecomer:
When the iphone 1 came out it had no apps and despite its very well executed base, it didn't have many expert features. Just take a look at [this article]( Though crude it has a lot of points. Granted, those things an iphone couldn't do were things consumers didn't really care about and it turns out that consumers preferred a simple to use a phone with all the basics instead of a hard to use phone which can literally do more than the iphone.
When the iphone 1 came out 3G was nowhere to be seen. The iphone 3G was late to the 3G party. But that didn't matter since it had the things that made the iphone good in the first place. In comes Facetime. Not the first video chat app, but for many much easier to use. In comes Siri. Far from the first voice assistant, but for many a more pleasant and easily accessible one. Same story with the iphone 5. It had LTE, but Apple was definitely a latecomer to LTE.
Why Apple can't innovate:
Just look at Apples business plan. They only sell 2-3 phones, 5-10 laptops, and around 4 desktops at any given time. Their business plan involves making less different devices, and focusing on those ones. Do you think that if your entire product line depends on the next product being a good one you try out some new things and experiment? FUCK NO. You stick to what's safe. You stick to what's working. You only change if you are 99% sure it is going to work.
Samsung can afford to try out crazy new things. They can afford to create twenty Galaxy phones, and see which one sticks. Apple can't do that. Look at Apple maps. For a 2 month period google maps was not on ios. (though it still had a web client which wasn't perfect, but it worked) The media/consumers screamed murder.
Why was Apple even considered the "king of innovation"?
Long story short; uninformed consumers. Apple just did things other were already doing before it. They just took ideas and built on them to make them more accessible. Consumers see these features for the first time on Apple devices and they didn't know these ideas/technologies already existed. Apple acts as the buffer between the tech world and the consumer world for the consumers. The consumers don't see the great technology that gets implemented in a poorly produced product which only gets marketed in one country in the world with a small budget. Then when Apple uses that idea/technology, the consumers just assume Apple was the first. |
I wrote a response but for some reason it wasn't saved. Basically I think you missed by point and now you're being argumentative.
Right...I missed the part where you grasped how news works.
>Anyway, I really don't think my judgement is flawed at all, I'm as skeptical of YAN as I would be of any source I've never heard of and hasn't earned any credibility. You seem to be going out of your way to defend them by claiming that all news outlets post made-up unverified stories, which is absurd to the point where I am starting to think that you might be trolling.
Going out of my way to say that your leap to judgement is based on no facts just an opinion of how an organization that hasn't even started releasing news, will release news. Gotcha.
Now because I am defending someone by saying 'give it a chance before you rush to judgement' and 'you should wait to see what gets posted and then base your judgement on if they are reporting news or making crap up', [I'm trolling now](
Your blatant propaganda:
>Crazy to think that unspeakable chaos in #Boston happens on the daily in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen at hands of US government. #BostonMarathon
Pointing out that bad things happen all over the world and the US is directly responsible is propaganda now? Typically that's called facts. Was it distasteful, sure it was but it doesn't stop it from being true.
More propaganda:
I guess all of these were false reports as well:
As you can see it was widely being reported and only after it was cleared up, many others had to fix their stories.
BTW: there was an order and more than a few people heard it, officials even stated they shut down phone service in order for more bombs to not be detonated as reported by the associated press (AP) and many others heard people over the live broadcast requesting a "SOP303". |
The sad part is it happened to me on a microcosm scale. Basically it became an inside joke within a group of people I worked with (about 60) without us knowing it was being done as a joke on 4chan. Eventually it grew on us and about 6 months later actually decided to watch the show... and ended up enjoying it.
The allure to it is quite simple. The characters are adorable and extremely easy to relate too. The animators are able to generate an extremely diverse pallet of emotions making it easy to watch. You know exactly what level of confusion or WTF each character is experiencing at any given moment. |
The opposite. Anonymous is everyone, which means no single source could be representative of Anonymous. The title suggests YAN and Anonymous are the same thing, but as you said Anonymous is everyone, not YAN. As /u/doctorspliffworth said "a lot of what they do is problematic". If people, such as in this title, see YAN and Anonymous as the same, that is not good. He is a doctor, I would listen. |
I switched from Comcast because every bill in a 12 month period had been different. Like one month some random "technology" fee would pop up. Another month the state taxes doubled for no reason.
I switched to AT&T U-Verse and signed up online, and my first 3 bills they never applied the promotional rate, so I had to call in every month and have it fixed. They did end up giving me a free month and a $200 gift card for the trouble though. |
I have a BS in Economics for what it matters. Economic theory predicts competitive markets are the most socially efficient.
Airlines being competitive, by the economic model definition, is what makes them so unprofitable. They have dug themselves into a hole, but airline customers time and again have shown all they care about is price, and I would argue that airlines are competitive and are offering the efficient market price albeit with some poor management.
On the other hand, telecommunications is not competitive via the economic definition, because you are correct in saying that the barrier to entry is too high. |
While you may be ok with the quality/connection speed you have currently, the biggest thing you have to be cognizant of is that even though you just got a potential huge upgrade, you're still getting a shitty version of what you SHOULD have for the price you pay. I had to finally eat a giant shit sandwich from Brighthouse (formerly TW) to go from 10 mbps to 60 mbps for about 160 a month. HD tv is included, but by comparison to what Google and a few other small ISPs offer I am still getting molested on cost/Mbps. I also think that ISPs should provide QoS SLAs as well like big corporate pipes have. |
Ah, yeah. Absolutely true. You also can't make a sweeping generalization of dietary needs for everyone in America.
That 2000 Calorie figure is a good example. It's an overestimate for most women and children, I seem to recall their figure being about 1800-1900 a day. Adult men are closer to 2500 or so. A better figure that dieticians at the time liked was 2200 Calories or something like that, but 2000 was chosen because they thought it had more appeal to the consumers as a nice round number. |
It must be my poor command of English that's causing the misunderstanding.
Let's take an example of how the US exports intellectual property to any country that's willing to pay for it. France for instance.
The engineers at Apple computers design a portable computer. Once they're satisfied, they send the blueprints to Foxconn in China. Foxconn buys raw materials and components from the suppliers. They also employ the workforce, do HR, quality testing, everything to ensure they meet their client's specifications.
Apple sends over a couple people to make sure everything happens according to plan, the computers that come out of the factory indeed look like they're supposed to. Once satisfied they pay a previously agreed upon sum to Foxconn and put the crates on a ship headed to France.
In France the official distributor pays wholesale price for the laptops to Apple Computers and proceeds to put the laptops where consumers can see 'em. Customer buys laptop and everyone's off to their merry ways.
The laptop, any of its components, the packaging or the workforce that's built it never touches ground on US soil. No raw materials, components or workforce ever leave the US for reasons other than to ensure the steps in the blueprint are followed closely enough.
Since no object the French customer can actually touch ever leaves the US or is manufactured in the US, the US only exports the intellectual property that is the know-how of making an Apple laptop. This intellectual property then ends up being built into the actual final product that ends up on the desk of the end consumer.
The price difference between what the end consumer pays and the cost of materials, wage of the workers, shipping and taxes put together is the net profit of Apple Computers.
California sends off blueprints to China and gets money for it via the French distributor. Voila, Intellectual Property is being exported. |
Windstream user here. I live in a place with maybe 500-600 people, right outside of a place with a couple thousand. We were signed up for 3 MBs but were getting 200 kbs if lucky, less during prime time. Ping is over 400 regularly too, so it's impossible to browse or play any online games. Windstream recently installed new fiber optic lines, and we upgraded to 12 mbs. Now the speed is considerably better at 1.4 mbs and ping is slightly better, but its still far off from what we are supposed to be getting. As I said I live in a small town so no one else will come to provide Internet here and my parents won't move. Can't even play a match of league without raging because of ping issues. |
I live in NYC and never had a single complaint about FiOS. Those guys are saints around here...
One time an enormous truck was driving down my street, clearly lost since my street can't even fit a big SUV towards the end. Well this motherfucker drives past my house and we feel the whole house shake and a loud bang. The truck swiped our telecom wires including the fiber, stopped for a second to understand what happened, and them BOOKED it to avoid any responsibility. We tried to fix what we could, but how do you put a fiber cable back together? Well two days later Verizon showed up and fixed it without any cost to us. |
Collectively, we have not, not on things that are relevant for the maintenance and survival of a society, even in relatively primitive conditions.
As for electricity, you seem to somehow think that producing it is hard - producing it is easy, once you know how, and nuclear war doesn't suddenly mean every engineer and tradesman has dropped dead. Just a very large number of them, concentrated around major military bases and cities.
As for dirty water, you act as if no one has ever heard of boiling it. As for irradiated water, it won't kill you immediately, just shave a decade or so two off your lifespan through prolonged exposure, which in this situation is worth it.
If the bombs ever do go off (they won't, for various political reasons), it is not like the world would be reduced to what you see in Fallout. Our bombs burn too clean for that - they specifically mention that the bombs are extremely low yield, and in extremely high numbers, to justify the amount of fallout in the Fallout universe.
A recommended reading for more information on this sort of thing would be the Nuclear Warfare 101 series of essays, written by Stuart Slade, an author who spent a few years working as a Nuclear Weapons Strategist during the Cold War.
I would also like to point out that my somewhat blunt understatement of what would happen in a nuclear war solely comes from how annoyed I get when people seem to not realize that it's not a "Slate Wiped Clean" button for the planet, and that I am vastly oversimplifying it the other way. It will be hell on earth for the first few weeks - maybe months, maybe even year or so. But if Humanity can endure that hell, it will bounce back, and it will bounce back fast. |
Lets be honest, has any of this been relevant?
From my original statement:
> I'll admit I don't know if there is some benefit to apple's proprietary charging cables (aside from being able to plug it in either direction)
And then you brought up faulty chargers (relevant to asking about legislation to change the type of cable/plug used?) so I responded to that and then you say:
> you do understand that Apple new connector does more than just being a dumb USB, right?
Which is what I had stated I don't know about in the first place. So I posted a link about apples fight against 3rd party cables as further evidence toward my claim of apple's main reason for not going micro usb being profit. |
It's not about the competition in a symmetrical sense. Windows isn't being beaten by lower cost options - their product is becoming obsolete. |
Politics and bullshit pledges are the key to a stable world. If there's anything candidates for this kind of shit are good at, it's pledging bullshit. Our prime minister promised before his rule that he'd work in some home defense rule (y'know, so you wont end up in prison if you accidentally kill that asshole that wants to murder you family in your own house) A month ago this woman returned the favor to two burglars who wanted to kill her while robbing. She ended up blasting the bajeezus out of them, and is now facing criminal charges. Now if this guy didn't make his bullshit pledge, none of you would have had to read this and we'd all be a little fucking happier. |
I'm really not sure why this is news considering there's not a single major promise that he made that he has followed through on. Before anyone says "What about the ACA" they should consider the vast difference between the promise and what we ended up with. The promise was to cover millions of Americans who don't have healthcare without increasing the costs to or decreasing the coverage that those who were already covered had. Anyone remember "if you like your current plan you can keep it."? Well that simply isn't true for millions of school teachers and other public employees whose health coverage falls under the tax on so called Cadillac plans. How many school districts and other public agencies are going to be willing and able to absorb a 40% increase in their healthcare costs. |
I wish more people understood the relationship of the facts in your comment with the privacy and surveillance issues tied to the internet's classification. The US government's current legal authority to deny privacy on the internet would be in conflict with its reclassification under Title II. classification as a telecom service, which is a separate but related concept from the 'common carrier' issue . If the internet was under Title II a telecom service , users would presumably have privacy rights similar to those enjoyed by users of landline telephones, e.g. expectation of privacy, subpoenas required for wiretaps, etc.
People forget that the internet was previously classified under Title II but was reclassified not classified as an information service but this was established (citation needed) early in Bush Junior's first term. Almost as if in anticipation of a surveillance state.
EDIT: I'm double-checking my details - it's been years since I commented on this and the info I recall is oddly not turning up in searches now. [This provides some info, including:](
> The statutory framework for regulating telecommunications services is found in one title of the 1996 Act[4] and for cable services in another title.[5] In addition, the 1996 Act defines a category of services, “information services,” consisting of
the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications.[6]
These information services are not subject to any of the specific regulatory regimes in the 1996 Act; FCC jurisdiction over them is limited to its ancillary authority under Title I of the 1934 Act. [7] The distinction in the 1996 Act between telecommunications services and information services was an outgrowth of a line of FCC decisions dating back to the 1970s that distinguished between “basic” services that were subject to regulation and “enhanced” services that the Commission chose not to regulate in order to foster their development and deployment.[8] Keeping with this regulatory history, the Commission has chosen to forbear from regulating information services, again seeking to foster their development and deployment.[9]
My Google Fu stinks. I REMEMBER the classification happening around 2000 but I haven't found sources - maybe I'm senile.
EDIT2: It's funny how [this AT&T editorial keeps showing up as the top search result.]( It has some good historical info, but there's also some sophistry that makes it slightly misleading - especially the core part that the title is about. Again, my recollection is that the FCC classification of the internet as an information service didn't officially happen until a few years after the 1996 Telecom Act. Prior to then, I believe its classification was in limbo.
EDIT3: GOLD! THANK YOU INTERNET STRANGER!
EDIT4: Per recommendation, I'm copypasting /u/really now 's comment here. His info helps straighten out the facts that my memory was jostling:
> In response to your second edit, this is correct.
> The telecom act basically aimed to classify the wire provider as a common carrier and any content providers as an information service. Once we shifted to broadband and a single company provided both the last mile wire and the connection to the broader internet, there was some debate about the classification of these broadband ISPs. The FCC ultimately chose to classify them as information services in 2002.
> [
Also, some relevant trivia from /u/mikeyouse :
> Michael Powell (Colin's son) classified them in 2003. Then he went to head the lobbyist organization for cable companies.
>> Yesss. [Thanks for jogging my memory.]( Powell did exactly what he was told, after being tapped for the job out of nowhere.
EDIT5: |
Yep. And the reason why Congress don't give a shit about popular policy, including net neutrality, is explained here: |
the left blamed everything on the president. Now that a Democrat is in office, I often hear "Well, the president really isn't very powerful.
If you actually take the time to study what actually was going on during Bush's term, you'd see that Bush operated 3/4th of his term with a republican supermajority which allowed him to basically do whatever he wanted. He had a congress who agreed with him . Obama never had a supermajority. The first two years of his term where he supposedly had a majority don't even count because you have to subtract independents and blue-dog democrats who are democrat in name only (they vote with the republicans more than 95% of the time). |
You sound like a small town middle aged man. That's a real rural-ly comment you made there.
All these politicians make promises that they can't keep. No one can please everyone, but everyone can vote. So you conjure up some statements to appeal to the masses.
Besides Obama is not a monarch. Power is dichotomized amongst the branches of legislature. |
Why is cognet allowed to get paid but Comcast isn't for the same service?
because comcast does not provide the same service, they do not provide transit nor do they connect to other networks.
> If Comcast performed the same service as cognet they would be getting paid for it, and part of that money would go towards increasing capacity of the network close to the last mile.
Which they do not, instead the infrastructure of the last mile is paid for in combination by taxes, and consumer subscriptions. This last mile has not seen significant improvement in a decade.
>Cognet shouldn't be allowed to dump as much data as they want onto Comcast, they're getting paid for a service by Netflix that requires upgrades by Comcast, so they would be getting paid for infrastructure they don't need to provide.
Cogent, is a teir 1 network they provide transit to nearly all other networks all over the world. They are allowed to dump as much data to Comcast as Comcast's subscribers ask for, at a rate that is agreed upon by both parties. Comcast has failed time and time again to upgrade the capacity of their interlinks with CDNs like Cogent and Lvl 3. Cogent provides significantly more infrastructure than comcast in this scenario. |
If you spent some time researching the issue, instead of just looking at Reddit comments all day, you would discover that Comcast is the FCC's biggest ally on net neutrality. They agreed, in a consent decree, to follow the FCC's (prior/old) definition through 2018. They affirmed their commitment to this original definition in statements over the past two weeks. Comcast needs the FCC to approve their Time Warner acquisition. If the FCC wants a clear legal mandate to define net neutrality (which is in question after the district court sided with Verizon), then allying with Comcast is their best bet. Comcast plus the internet lobby will have far better odds of forcing congress to legislate the matter. Comcast will almost certainly agree to extend that definition far into the future, as long as the FCC agrees to the merger. The FCC is an organization seeking power, just like a corporation. Their legal mandate is not clear in this circumstance. If you want to see their power to control net neutrality increased, then you should start viewing Comcast in a different light. Also, major internet content companies have the resources to pay for access. This new definition of net neutrality strengthens their competitive position. I'm not so sure they're actually on the side Redditors think they're on. |
No blood testing or anything like that? I realize it's a pain, but how can you really review a product like this without quantifying its effect?
Also, "Our order arrived yesterday afternoon, when USPS dropped off a 40lb. box (about 18kg) on my doorstep." Yesterday? |
Spacedawgs trolling method:
Step one, inform yourself about the topic you intend to troll people with.
Step two, make a reasoned comment based on your years of learning and practical experience that goes against conventional thinking.
Step three, wait for someone to tell you that you are wrong in a general way.
Step four, Address their points one at a time, addressing their concern and defend your ideas on the basis of your understanding of them. Give the person the benefit of the doubt and ask for a detailed explanation of the general points they are making in an effort to learn something given the chance they are not talking out of their arse. |
First of all ALL airspace is public outside of Restricted and Prohibited airspace (labeled R-### or P-### on a sectional). As a US citizen, you can use any of it. That said, there are rules for all airspace. Mainly compliance with the FAR's. [Check them out here for some bedtime reading](
In addition to the FAR's the FAA can issue rulings to allow/disallow certain things. This is where the 400ft thing comes from, they basically made a rule for RC aircraft to stay below that because the FAR's say that manned aircraft should stay above 500ft AGL.
What you were trying to refer to is how the airspace is controlled. This will give you a good primer: [Airspace in the USA](
It's hard to say that class G even goes up to x number of feet in a given area without checking the charts. Realistically most areas people are interested in even flying in at the 700ft agl threshold or worse because there'll be some sort of airport within 10 miles or so. Check [SkyVector]( for the transition shaded magnate lines to figure that out.
Not that Class G air really buys you ANYTHING for "oh, I can fly here!". It just means IFR flights don't need a clearance from ATC before they fly there, and the clearance is more or less just to keep planes from hitting each other when they cant see each other. It's not "Big brother says I cant fly here!". VFR flight don't have to talk to anyone any way! |
The wonders of machine learning! I wonder if it uses the score it gets as a datapoint on refining it's |
The wonders of machine learning! I wonder if it uses the score it gets as a datapoint on refining it's |
Actually I've had 7 do what Vista and XP and 2000 do when in their infancy:
They've all eaten their own file tables or 'lost' their N |
Meh, [crosspost..](
The main difference between stuff like this ( tech-assisted eco-coasting ), and dangerous tailgating: synchronized use of brakes. Automated 100% synchronized use of brakes will minimize manual errors when handling accidents ( bugs will still be fun) and by keeping distances optimized for efficiency and safety.
If your car plays along and communicates correctly, you're allowed into the mix. If an unsynched car follows too closely, the last car could back up to maintain a safe distance, in case of 'rogue' tailgating. In case of emergency braking, all cars will immediately notice emergency braking in the front car, and will be able to apply ideal braking force within milliseconds. Less chance of a wave of 'delayed inattention & delayed braking causing a huge pile-up.
Within such a framework you'll be pretty safe from meeting accidents, or rear-ending, as all acceleration & emergency braking will be syncronized for efficiency and safety. For bonus points, the vehicles leading the train should have enchanced machine sensing of the road ahead; millimeter radar to sense road traction, IR + doppler to spot wildlife or other obstacles at maximum distance. With enough cars, and increased possible top spead the fuel/time savings from such a train could easily pay for a leading sensor drone, to increase visibility to well beyond safe braking distance. This could make increased top speeds viable, and possibly a lot safer than regular speeding
Monetary incentive for this; Consider the value of 20% fuel savings+ risk reduction materialized in insurance bonus pr travelled mile + personal convenience pr travelled hour. This is a metric shit-ton of value, and could be split between the lead vehicle, the technology developers, and possibly some sort of taxation directly benefiting road-train infrastructure ( if this wants to scale up you could take steps to increase the maximum speed + enforcing a road-train lane, synchronized to override traffic lights from city center to city center, which would also help throughput and ease congestion in densely populated areas, this feature alone would make this technology a worthwhile).
Now for the sci-fi move: Consider the separate concepts of in-flight refueling in series and redox flow batteries.
If the lead vehicle were to be an 18-wheeler effectively towing one enormous liquid cargo of energizer juice, you'd effectively remove the maximum range limitation of a personal electric vehicle, as well as providing a cost-effective way of de-carbonizing road travel.
Best of all, the core technology behind all this; sensors and processing is directly benefiting from Moore's Law! |
Yes and no. Some of it is "slickness" as you say (brushed aluminum anyone?), but there is some substance mixed in with that slickness on occasion.
e.g., the "scroll bounce" on the iPhone/iPod Touch seems superfluous at first glance. But Android doesn't have it (I have a Droid and an iPod Touch) and when it's gone, you suddenly realize that this "little feature" is a subtle, but clear way of telling the user that they've reached the bottom (or top) of the screen. Android gives you what I used to refer to in graduate school as "negative evidence". i.e., the android scroll does nothing when you hit the bottom (or top) of the scroll and so you're left wondering if you've hit the bottom or whether the machine froze or ... |
Apple doesn’t do feature checklists. Anyone can cram a billion features into a box, but it’s much more difficult to make them accessible and usable. As Pascal once added in postscript: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” |
Yeah, that's a little bold. I'm a CS guy that's been working in an Engineering group for 5 years, and I'm the only person that doesn't have an engineering degree on my team. I'd NEVER call myself an engineer. I go out of the way to correct people when they assume I'm an engineer.
To me it's like a chiropractor calling themselves "Doctor" or a DJ with a college diploma calling themselves an "Audio Engineer". |
They aren't ridiculous - just the way they want to go about getting what they want. It is no different than any socialists or communists or capitalists. They generally want the same thing, they just have different ways to accomplish their goals.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to want the Internet to be open and free and have equal access to everything, I just disagree with some people over how to do it.
It is better to explain and show examples of the unintended consequences - rather than calling people names for not seeing them in the first place.
I suspect it might even be possible to make NN legislation in a way that actually does exactly what everyone wants without any of the negative side effects, but you have to know what they are before you start.
I think many people would be surprised how some of the services they currently use would not be allowed under full Net Neutrality rules (That is, the rules that really strong proponents want to invoke). Does your phone company offer a TV service? Does your cable company offer a phone service? Technically those are not neutral as they are using Internet protocols to deliver their service over the same wires as other IP services they provide. Your cable company is, in effect, giving their VOIP traffic higher priority than competing VOIP running over the Internet service they also provide. Since both use the same "protocols" that might count (depending on who is drafting the legislation) as non-neutral. Even if they don't throttle any IP traffic over the wire, it is still breaking the rules, according to some.
Remember, Net Neutrality isn't just about eliminating throttling of specific traffic over the wire, which everyone is the most worried about. Most people I hear from don't want AT&T to be able to block traffic from one web site, or charge another for better service, they just want all packets flowing through their tube to be considered equal. That is a reasonable request - I want the same thing.
However, does everyone here also realize that some net neutrality advocates would also prevent them from offering a competing service ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PIPE? That is, if they deliver data to your home it must ALL be ENTIRELY equal. Even if they give you 100MB/s of unrestricted Internet, they would not be allowed to provide a phone service on a different "channel" that had no impact on your Internet usage.
Now I realize that most people don't mind that either way, and some actually like having telephone competition provided by their cable company. However, I have spoken to some who argue that all electrons entering the home on a wire should be equal. |
I find it silly to appeal to labels such as "theft" when discussing issues such as this.
Apart from labelling opposing viewpoints as 'silly' not helping a debate, the view on the society you want to live in and the price you are willing to pay is shaped by your experience of the world and how you think about it. |
I think you misunderstand what I mean by "benefits to society".
Basically, I mean the setup which would result in all of society's individuals being as happy as possible. It is difficult of course to quantize happiness/suffering, but some scheme must be chosen, and then the laws are set up so that everyone's happiness/suffering is considered.
Societal "whims" are thus irrelevant, because by definition they are not something that will affect the long-range happiness/suffering of members.
Not pursuing art would result in unhappiness for a significant minority which is considered in the equation, as well as the majority's poorness in arts later. However, you really don't want to spend billions to fund some obscure hobby. |
I just want to add to this: I have called Netflix Customer Service on multiple occasions regarding a variety of non-issues and they have been stellar absolutely 100% of the time.
Last time I called I learned that their entire 24x7 support team works out of OR. Period. They're all there and being paid a living wage for work and seem completely satisfied. They have an amazing ability to turn a negative into a positive and genuinely appear to care for the customer.
Whatever the case, it's a rarity to be treated that well as a customer and I'll gladly continue sending them my money for their service. |
The issue is piracy. Jailbreaking enables piracy, and piracy is always an issue on any platform where money is charged for content. If Apple didn't try to clamp down on jailbreaking and thus pirating, developers will go "Hmm, Apple doesn't give a damn about preventing my content from being pirated. Let's not develop for iOS."
Of course, the potential profit from legitimate users on iOS is usually so much higher than the loss from piracy that the big name developers won't really care.
Nobody really wants to have their content pirated. If there aren't sufficient means to prevent this, content providers simply won't use the platform. Movie studios wouldn't have touched DVD if it didn't have encryption. Region locking was just another way to make more money.
Now, sure, you can be like "People only pirate stuff because getting it legitimately is so much damn hassle", which is fair enough because in most cases, it's true. But look at Steam. It's cheaper than retail most of the time, easy to keep updated, easy to recover purchases, and awesome sales. Of course, it still has DRM, because if it didn't, content providers wouldn't bother.
Apple is playing the game differently to Sony is. Apple has not gone after any of the people involved with iOS jailbreaking (geohot, saurik, dev team, etc), whereas Sony has already sued geohot. Apple hasn't done anything because they don't want to.
I believe that publicly, Apple has to oppose jailbreaking and patch up exploits because if they didn't, it would be detrimental to their profits since content providers would be less likely to want to publish on the platform, but they don't really mind it as it is rather beneficial to them. People can come up with ideas for features, implement them, then all Apple has to do is monitor how popular those features are, analyse its pitfalls, gauge reaction and once they're happy with it, do it better. Why spend money doing extensive UX and development for features that most people won't use?
What exactly has Microsoft been "giving" through tech history? Kinect? Hardly. From the Wikipedia page (relevant parts bolded):
> In November 2010, Adafruit Industries offered a bounty for an open-source driver for [Kinect]( Microsoft openly voiced its disapproval of the bounty , stating that it "does not condone the modification of its products" and that it had "built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering" .[67] On November 10, Adafruit announced Héctor Martín as the winner,[68][69] who had produced a Linux driver that allows the use of both the RGB camera and depth sensitivity functions of the device.[70][71] Microsoft later clarified their position, claiming that while they don't condone hacking of either the physical device or the console, the USB connection was left open by design.
What happened was Microsoft initially went for their usual stance of "making our products do something they were never meant to? BAD DOG", but then realised that since they were making profits on the Kinect itself anyway, they flip-flopped and decided to do what companies like to do: make more money.
They're welcoming WP7 jailbreaking because it's: a) good PR, b) being able to jailbreak a device has never stopped anyone from buying one. Both of these reasons all lead back to money.
EDIT: Forgot to rant about Sony, here goes.
Sony, on the other hand, has valid business reasons for suing geohot. There's not much you can do with jailbreaking on a PS3 except to play pirated games. Sure, you can cite homebrew etc, but really? The amount of people who want to jailbreak the PS3 for exclusively legal purposes are reaaaaaaaaaaally slim. And since this is a fairly significant threat to their profit margin, Sony wants to clamp this down, fast.
And again, it all leads back to money. |
NPR
No, no, no ! s/NPR/Tim Wu
Seriously, stop doing that. This is an editorial written by a guest writer.
I see this all the time on Reddit, and it's poor form. Fox News claims this, CNN said that. Using this logic, you could easily quote MSNBC as saying, "Hide your kids, hide your wife" just because some host thought it would be funny to play that clip.
I come to Reddit because I don't want to see this kind of sensationalism. Please keep the headlines honest. You're only causing more confusion and circle-jerking when you do things like this. I can see from the submission domain where the article is from. |
Well, I'll defer to your better technical knowledge, but I'm pretty sure they collected enough to record cleartext passwords etc if they happened to be "on the air" as the g-mobile went past. Of course, I doubt they were looking at the data - more the header stuff, as you point out.
i.e. if you catch enough frames, you end up with packets, or part thereof. Whether you care is another matter. |
I've installed it both at home and at work. At work it's running on a PC and a Mac. I've now had it running, on my PC, for approximately 48 hours. It's currently sitting at 130MB RAM.
Considering how long it's been out, stop your complaining about the memory leak. In fact, if you're pissed off about it, considering it's open source, why don't you try and help by assisting those who are trying to fix it instead of bitching about it. |
They do it because legally they have to protect their brand. If they let it go often & then they want to sue someone that is trying to confuse consumers with a similar logo he can actually point to others that have similar logos as a defense. So in order to legally protect their brand they do everyone. |
Coincidentally, 70% of percentages are completely fabricated. Why assume a percentage? It just weakens the point you try to make.
I'm still trying to imagine how much of youtube is original content... I've only seen [estimates of other stats from youtube]( I'd guess there are millions of "let's play" videos, fraps captures, reaction videos, vacuous reply girls showing cleavage, stupid video journals, dash cams, remixes, cut-ups, home movies, test uploads from webcams... you could even argue that so many of the results from searches of copyrighted material are original scam videos pointing you to malware and ad sites. |
The copyright infringement isn't invoked by the content owners; they're automatically suggested by Google in this case. Google has an artificially intelligent system that compares fragments of audio and videos of every clip uploaded against a database of copyrighted works. If fragments hit a similarity level above a certain threshold then the content can be said to (most of the time) be in violation of copyright laws and is flagged, etc.
This threshold and the method in which the content was scanned used to be very different -- people could evade detection it by altering the pitch of the audio or the colors of the video, however, Google now implements a computer vision algorithm that looks at interesting features in a video frame and compares its relative position to other points of interests on the same frame for comparing video streams, and waveform analysis for audio comparisons. These algorithms are incredibly greedy and will match even the remotest similarity for maximum detections. |
So the judicial system will have the power to take content offline immediately following a request from a copyright holder, under "penalty of perjury". |
There's a terrible and wonderful Steve Jobs quote from his Stanford commencement address — "Death is the very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent."
I think ultimately that's what it'll take for the government to understand the internet — new blood. I don't know that the current generation of leaders cares to make internet issues a priority, so... they're not. But the next generation of leaders will almost certainly make internet issues a priority — we will have grown up understanding the importance of the internet to our lives in a visceral, emotional way. It's already happening, right? Now imagine what happens when the people who lead the SOPA protests start running for office. |
I only want to say that I find it amusing that Nilay laughs off the slippery slope argument of government regulation, while simultaneously making a slippery slope argument about the impending corporate tyranny that he sees as endemic to any unregulated free market system.
When one sees selective reasoning like this, observers can with a great deal of confidence, assume that the person is speaking from a purely biased worldview.
The very prose by which Nilay will often say that these are "bad laws" while mitigating his point by underscoring the importance of the government solving these problems in a less "bad" way, demonstrates the inherent bias Nilay has for government playing a greater role in our lives, and how he sees government in a generally benevolent light, while simultaneously viewing private enterprise is a generally malevolent light.
I don't so much take issue with his worldview, per se. He's certainty entitled to it. I take issue with the way in which he holds his views to be self-evident and enlightened. That, the basic premises by which he advances these views are not even worthy of discussion.
For instance, that the internet maintaining the status quo from a regulatory perspective is clearly not an option going forward. For Nilay, it goes without saying. But I don't think it does go without saying. In fact, I think the position that government should get more involved in the flow of information needs a lot of saying.
He has advanced the view that letting corporations control the internet is, once again, self-evidently a bad idea because they're not working in consumer interests. Which is a ridiculously politically loaded statement. In fact, the political density of this statement would take me the next hour to unpack.
But anyways... |
In fact, I think the position that government should get more involved in the flow of information needs a lot of saying.
The government has the explicit power to regulate interstate commerce. There's really not much more "saying" to be done, unless you're going to undo the Constitution. Congress is going to use its power. We have to decide how and when it's going to do it.
And I don't think corporations controlling the internet is "self-evidently a bad idea." I just see a lack of vibrant competition in several markets and seriously misaligned incentives all over the place. Chief among them is the incentive to mess with our privacy. |
Let me first just say that I completely agree with this bit.
>It would be downright despicable if they were to convince the city to do it for them, like the content producers are trying to do with the internet.
The amount of leverage the contest industry have with the government is downright terrifying. Not just them, of course, it's a pretty widespread issue with any major industry.
However, the difference between your baseball analogy and the reality of piracy is a big one:
Sure, you can sit outside and see the game... but you do not have nearly as good of a view, you are not getting the stadium experience, the chance of catching a foul ball, etc. whereas with file sharing, you are getting the exact same product (hell, sometimes better) as the one people are paying their own money for. It would be like if the stadium let those hill-sitters inside and said "well, you weren't going to pay anyway, so why not just come on in for free and take whatever you want".
I'm going to bet that you won't see a whole lot of baseball stadiums doing that. Obviously the difference there lies in physical vs. digital, but the same argument still applies. If everyone can just download anything for free, whenever they want, at the same quality and speed as a paid version... what incentive does anyone actually have to buy? Obviously the content industry is doing just fine for now, but they're thinking big picture, and a world where piracy is ever increasing has got some really negative long-term implications for their business. |
The ads are not always skippable. Disney dvds ar the worst.
I don't pirate because it's free, I do it because it's convenient. For the reasons I already stated, and becuse it allow me to see if I like the movie/show/music before possibly buying it. Yes, even though I hate all the ads, the 23 diferent versions/packagaing of the same thing, I still buy it when I think it's worth it. You see, I don't like 90 % of what I pirate. When those companies will stop trying to shove shit down my throat (or ears/eyes), I'll start buying directly again. |
Yes and no. Most pirates will not steal an actual CD from a store because they do fear getting caught. But, also because some of the things they pirate are not available through convenient or different means, as shown with Avatar and Panasonic's business model. The reality is, people will always try to get stuff for free (pirating), but it is up to the content providers to give us a reason to use the goods through legitimate means. Pirating is a bad thing for a lot of reasons, but it is up to content providers to give consumer confidence in the products we are purchasing to avoid piracy. |
Do you need me to spell it out for you?
Morals are of course subjective, but that's not relative to the fact that piracy is, and remains in existence as people create access to media and materials that distribution is either to blind to see or to dumb to act on.
Does that mean that people should because they can ? That's up to them. Does it mean that artists should be reimbursed for their work? Yes, they should. But consumers should not have heavy hammers brought against them for sharing digital media because a company / organization is so entrenched in their ways that they refuse to listen lah blahblah you're not even going to listen to any of this anyway. |
Who cares? Let's do some math.
Typical smartphone batteries are 1500 mAh at 3.7 V nominal, which is 5.55 Wh of energy. At $0.10/kWh, each full charging is costing you $0.000555 assuming 100 % efficiency.
Let's say you charge from empty to full once per day for a whole year. That will cost you only $0.20. The rectifier in the adapter is about 80 % efficient, so bump this up to $0.24/year to charge your phone from empty to full once per day.
Wireless charging is about 50 % efficient, so the cost will be $0.30/year. |
Apple will never use USBs on their devices because USB cannot do the high definition audio/video out that they and us consumers demand. I would rather by a new cable than have choppy or resized video. USB micro is old as dirt itself, so why would Apple trade one old technology for another?
It's time to move forward. No one likes spending money on upgrades, but we all want faster speeds. |
I don't even see the point of the adapter in that case.
That's not complicated-- it's so the plugs fit. Some functionality is still supported, just not all of it.
> as I suspected, ipod out is not the same as audio out.
I don't recall saying it was. However, the line-level analog audio output is also no longer present on the connector.
Edit: This does not necessarily mean that the adapter has no analog audio output, but it does mean the adapter has to do one of two things: it either contains the equivalent of a tiny sound card to take the digital audio output and make it into line-level analog audio, or it also plugs into the headphone jack, and is smart enough to tell the phone to set the jack to line level, and then routes that output through the adapter to the pins on the 30-pin side. I think the latter is unlikely, since we can tell from pictures that neither adapter appears to reach the headphone jack. Some [pre-release renders]( did appear to do this, but that's gone in the final version. |
Because this connector and the previous 30-pin ADC transfer a lot more than pictures and power.
Micro-USB is fine for things like moving data (using your phone as a thumb-drive) and delivering a steady charge.
Where Micro-USB fails is doing HD at full motion (720/1080p @ 24+ FPS)
Also USB is generally not considered efficient for streaming audio. It works, yes, but USB makes no real-time guarantees. Meaning if they had just micro-USB, my car stereo might stutter while playing a song.
Most Android tablets side-step this issue by having a separate type D (mini) HDMI port on the phone.
Since HDMI doesn't do power or data transfer, this means you need two connectors. A design that Apple probably doesn't want to consider.
There are other solutions out there, for example MHL would milk the necessary bandwidth out of the Micro-USB form-factor; but for all I know there are licensing restrictions preventing Apple from using it [cheaply].
MHL:
Of course, as you pointed out, the downside is Apple needs to sell plenty of connectors and adapters for all this to work with existing standards.
In my opinion , a reasonable trade-off I'm willing to live with.
( |
Copyrights are property rights. There is no such thing as "normal property" (to borrow one of your idiotic phrases from that link). All forms of property are government created and government enforced. Rights (of any kind) exist because we want them to, not because we stumbled across them in the forest. Like other forms of property, intellectual property can be bought, sold, traded, leased, or inherited. There is no legal basis for the belief that property must be tangible. Stocks, bonds, and promissory notes are not tangible property, but they are property none the less. The fact that IP puts limitations on what you can do, is shrug-worthy at best.
All property limits what the collective can do. No form of property is devoid of limitations, conditions, and exceptions. None of it is sacrosanct. I can't drive 150mph on the highway, even though I have that ability. I can't modify a rifle from semi-auto to automatic or saw half the barrel off my shotgun. I can't copy my own money even though that technology exists. I can't have a pots-and-pans drum session at 3am because my property-hating neighbors would call the police. Don't they know that I own these pots and pans? If I buy land, that doesn't necessarily mean the timber/mineral/water rights are also mine. Lots of people live beside trees that they technically own but aren't allowed to cut down. My land could even have easements or 360 degrees worth of zoning restrictions, oh the humanity!
I can't rent a car for a week and then just keep it. Crazy but true. They even restrict the amount miles I'm allowed to drive. If I spend $100 for a night at a hotel, I can't then live there indefinitely. Worst of all, when I drop .99 cents at Itunes for an MP3, the copyright to the song is, shockingly, not included in that price. |
You make a good point in identifying how the distribution side for content would get more competitive. You could get your distribution from whoever can do it best instead of who happens to own the copyright (which, as we constantly see, correlates very badly with the ability do content distribution well).
What you fail to see is that if the current business model of charging for distribution broke down then other models that don't depend on copyright would become more popular. You see, healthy competition on the distribution side wouldn't mean that new content is worthless. What it means is that you have to make money from the actual creation of content instead of distribution. Makes sense right? Some business models that might be popular in such a setting include crowdfunding, patronage, grants and plain old employment. |
From the Comments section of the [linked to]( article:
So the dude covering Apple "since 1982" decide to mislead people for his own purpose. I want useful information not re-tittle general warning without substance. (btw, I own an IPhone but this article is so lame).
Here's why this article need to improve.
Don't use the FBI brand to buy credibility to your copy and pasted 'warning'. It's not the FBI - it's the IC3, a partnership of the FBI and White Collar Crime Center.
Don't mislead people. The original article was "Smartphone Malware Safety Tips" not "FBI issues warning about Android". If do any of your own research and actually read the 'warning from the FBI", you'll realize that the two malwares Loozfon and FinFisher infecting through link on email are not specific to any mobile platform, it works the same way on PC and MAC. So dude, leave it as "Smartphone Safety Tips" when it is clearly about that topic. Replace the word "Android" with "Apple" and everything else will still hold true.
Don't try to paint one brand over another from a general warning. "For owners of smartphones running on Google (GOOG) Android platform..." dude, follow your own link and see that is is a general warning to ALL smartphone. Or rather, don't change the topic heading from the IC3 and leave it the same to read "Safety tips to protect your mobile device".
In conclusion, to make this article more informative you should leave the tittle the same to read "Smartphone Safety Tips" and leave the topic heading the same "Safety tips to protect your mobile device" and .... ugh, you know what, copy and paste the whole article from IC3. Don't inject your b.s. into it. |
These guys show their fancy visual aided video of airflow as if it is true fact. I want to see at least a CFD simulation if possible in a populated room, truly this ad was horrendous. They didn't even show any velocity measurements, nor the efficiency of their "fan". The other video that they've shown only demonstrate a flow field in a closed box using water, I am hoping that they used the correct scaling to be comparable with air. It seems that they have taken PIV measurements using this set up but they don't seem to show these either. Other thing is that they keep describing the flow as laminar...which part of the flow is laminar? From the scaled model in the water tank it is bloody clear that the flow within the room isn't laminar, it has a damn vortex in the middle. So I don't have a fucking idea about what is so good about this thing. |
Here's a link to Twitter's announcement: [Keeping our users secure](
Incidents like this are always a great time to remind others to use stronger passwords. Here are a [few tips on creating strong passwords]( |
Compression could theoretically be many many times better.
There are a lot of techniques that are impractical due to memory or computation requirements. They can't be done now, but who is to say in the future.
Easy concepts are things like
keeping all previous frames around to use as a dictionary for similarity.
Identifying objects in scenes, storing textured 3d model versions, recalling the model when object is seen again from a different angle.
Have a human renderer that can reproduce the image of a human given a set of parameters to describe build, position, etc.
Ultimately you could have a simulator of an entire movie studio, people and all. and generate entire movies by simulating all of the equipment, minds, and behaviour of all of the participants. You could even change things around. With a simple input like "ok make Phantom Menace but this time make Joss Whedon the writer and director, Rating limit PG-R"
The gains that can be made though these sorts of techniques are enormous, but the difficulty in implementing them are similarly difficult. |
I dunno, if a team of developers works years on a really awesome and unique codec, I feel like they should be able to try to make money off it. It can be very good for everyone if a team of people are able to work full time on projects like this.
Just because you invest a lot of money in developing a product it does not mean that the product is worth all the money you spent.
Ultimately it is the consumer that should have the freedom to choose and collecting a "video tax" of every browser and OS that wants to be able to play "the standard" video codec is just abusive.
If the "awesome and unique codec" you are mentioning is really "awesome" then they should be able to market it to the right group of users. |
Right now there is a general paranoia about posting anything online. This is the correct response to what the US government has been doing, but the solution is not technophobia, but (unsurprisingly, hopefully) education. Anyone can be 99% confident in their data's security and their own privacy if they take some time to learn how to achieve it, and the answer (primarily) is encryption. A simple HTTPS stream is monumentally more difficult to attack/snoop than an HTTP stream, there are numerous free programs which will allow you to store sensitive data in an encrypted fashion, etc.
Online backup is a good solution for certain problems. It is not the exclusive realm of anything nor the magic bullet to solve every iteration of data integrity. Again, the main thing that you need to keep in mind is encryption. If you properly encrypt your data before uploading it to the service, you are reasonably secure. Yes, this encryption can be broken, and yes, the NSA (or Anonymous, for that matter) could probably swing it. But doing so would be expensive (in terms of manpower and processor cycles), which is the key. Unless you have gone out of your way to make yourself a target above the rest, your honeymoon vacation shots just aren't worth the time and energy it would take to bust them out of the simplest cyphers. And if you have made yourself such a target, breaking into your encrypted files is probably the least efficient way to get to you.
Remember, the same government that grants you "rights" (or as Carlin more accurately put them, privileges) can take them away. If you want privacy, if you want to control who sees your data, then it is your responsibility to secure it. |
Bing gets a lot of hate and most of it is just elitist bullshit without any actual data to back up the state of mind, ie; your post.
It's fucking amazing for video searches and image searches. All of the google searches for stock images give watermarked istock bullshit, and on bing you can find the same things without the watermarks half the time.
Not to mention porn. I have a separate browser account to be exclusively used for porn, and bing is my default search engine on it. I can also typically find movies on the video search, streaming, for free, while it's hard to find them on google these days, unless you really know where to look and scour through old stuff hosted on google video itself. Same with TV shows, if I want to watch with a friend online and don't care to wait for us to both download it.
Also, and I can show you proof if you don't believe me, I have a handful of my dump emails set up with bing so if I do searches on it, I earn points that pile up pretty quickly. It's slowed down a bit now, 15-30 points a day, but back when I first started, I got up to 90 points a day (~500 points is $5) and that's per account. Not taking any real effort to do so, I've accumulated over $100 in Amazon Giftcards which I used to buy a kindle. Hell, I have around $25 in giftcards saved up right now I can cash in. All for pretty much doing nothing. ~30 searches a day, per user (if/when I fill up my searches for the day, I just switch accounts) or there are bots out there where you can run them to do automatic searches, and you just run that when you wake up in the morning, and then you're set for the day.
Seriously, go do the bing challenge on their website. I think they give you 100 points for it (which is almost enough for 100 ms points or is 1/3 of the way to $3 amazon) you do 5 searches at random, and blindly pick which results you want. It's generally a draw, sometimes google wins, sometimes bing wins. At any rate, they pretty much stole googles data by watching how google does stuff, and then improved upon it after stealing it, which means they might not be better for most things, but they're at least on-par and now that google pretty much removed porn from searches, it's certainly a useful alternative. |
Also the reason to decentralize search entirely. [Tribler]( accomplishes this with searching across a DHT shared over the bittorrent network. No servers, and the search gets better as more people use tribler. From experience, it works pretty well, though until more people are using it, you'll probably still find yourself needing to use tracker sites sometimes. Tribler is also working on some pretty awesome stuff like anonymization, streaming video, and ads within p2p filesharing. it's also part of a delft university research project, funded by EU money I believe. in case you're wondering, i don't work for tribler but I realize i'm coming off as a groupie. |
blah
Literally nothing you said applies to casual downloaders. I also said nothing about filelockers.
Everything I said was 100% true, you aren't doing anything illegal unless you upload content, and most casual downloaders do that with any P2P software involuntarily. Most people I know that torrent don't even know what "seeding" or "leeching" is, and the only thing they look at is the progress bar. |
Same. Told my friends, they laugh at me, but all it takes is one try with Bing and they're hooked.
Also doesn't help Google that for some reason their new Chrome update seems to have really slowed down their image results. Bing runs surprisingly smooth. |
Lets face facts. 90% of us work nonsense jobs that are completely unnecessary other than to serve other nonsense jobs. Governments encourage this because bored citizens who don't feel they have a purpose are more likely to rebel or become criminals and this disrupts things. |
If applied technilogijavascript:;es eliminated the need for people to occupy themselves with work, everyone would have the ability to go out and enjoy the finer things in life.
When the entire world has access to the finer things in life, these things no longer become enjoyable. Every fine piece of land, beach, and beautiful setting would be over populated and no longer be enjoyable. In order for this world to become a reality, we would have to kill a majority of the earths population. |
Upvoted. I read this yesterday when it was posted in the "Intern Dies from Overwork" thread.
I'll agree that there are some bullshit jobs (people just showing up) and I think it is interesting that this does persist, but the author is ill-equipped to discuss this, lacking data and coming at it with a clear bias.
I think it was upvoted in part because it is an interesting question, productivity gains should have reduced manhours worked. But the bullshit meter is far too high in his analysis. |
I work second shift in an analytical chemistry lab. When my peers on first shift get in at 7:30 they eat breakfast, then dick around until the department meeting at 9 to tell them what to do for the day. lunch is anywhere from 11-1 and then leave by 4:30 or 5.
Total productive hours: 4-6.
When I get in, I get right to work. When I first started, I was getting twice the amount of testing done in a quarter of the time, and took it upon myself to work ahead and start the next day's testing. All that got me was different work the next day, and an expectation from my bosses that they can just dump a shit-ton of testing on me and I'll get it done.
Yes, I get it done, but I am furious when my peers who have been there for three years comment on how astounded they are that I can complete TWO TESTS AT ONCE.
So now, I'm in my second year at the company, thoroughly jaded. I get in, get my testing done, write up what I need to, and go home. There are some days when I start at 3 and leave by 6. And I'm still complimented on how awesome of a worker I am. |
But does the army ever really need that equipment yesterday?
Yes, regularly.
Until you're actually in a specific war, against a specific set of enemies with specific terrain etc. you're building equipment that's sort of kind of suitable for either the last war, or for some general capability that is hopefully 'good enough'. 'Good enough' by the way is trading lives of soldiers for time until you have the right gear for the problem.
The moment you get into the middle of a desert, and discover that your rifles and boots melt in the heat, that your desert camo uniforms are the same ones you sold to some previous government in the area in the 1970's. You find out that the enemy is going to use roadside bombs and all your non-armoured vehicles for driving behind the lines people around are not at all suitable.
Then you go fight in the mountains, and find out that half your shit doesn't work in high altitudes because everything was designed for hot deserts close to the ground. Now you are in the cold, with snow, and lower air density. Half your helicopters don't work, and the ones that do have a tendency to seize up and crash. None of your weapons work right, because any lubricant you have was suitable for +40, not -40. Of course the guys fighting in the mountains are based in a desert still. And this desert has scorpions and mosquitoes. Scorpions are assholes to find in your boots in the morning. And mosquitoes in the 'rest of the world' aren't like the nice small annoying mosquitoes you find in western countries, 3rd world mosquitoes are bastards that carry malaria. So you now need medicine for malaria for 100 000 people, + nets + scorpion antivenom for the specific kind of scorpion you find etc.
You know those fancy stealth airplanes that for the last 20 years have been mostly immune to radar? Great awesome. That they cost billions of dollars (sometimes each), is why the war department spends as much money as it does. Unrivaled power right? Except 5 years ago someone started selling radar for 4 million dollars that can see your 2 billion dollar stealth aircraft, and suddenly you want something new.
It's not just necessarily your own capabilities either, or even that there's something 'wrong' with existing capabilities. If you've got 500 tanks based in an allied country, and decide you need those 500 tanks for somewhere else, that ally might want 500 tanks... nowish. And you just happen to be able to make 500 tanks in 9 months.. for the right price of course. (More realistically 100 tanks in 2 or 3 months but you get the idea).
Those are all by the way real problems major armies have faced in the last 20 years. I'm not sure if the US had any serious equipment problems in the mountains, but certainly countries that buy US equipment did.
Going forward there's the question of China, North Korea, more arab uprisings or god knows what. If the US wants to involve itself in Syria it's going to need equipment for dealing with Sarin gas. Which it might have, but it might not, or it may turn out that the equipment it does have isn't actually very useful in a fight. That happens a lot. |
Worse than apathy, it's because of people's pessimism. Apathetic people just wouldn't care and you could coerce them to be involved. Pessimistic people are convinced that we can't change anything and so actively avoid trying to get involved.
I register students to vote as a large part of my job. Often people will be apathetic about voting so they'll lie and say they're registered. It's pretty easy to get those people to register by asking more questions or just saying "I'm going to spend more time trying to convince you than it would take for you to register, so you might as well do it!".
Pessimistic people are another story. They'll tell me they don't believe in voting and that they know they won't have a say. Even when I explain to them that more young people being registered means politicians care more about young people, they won't be said. They've convinced themselves they can't change anything and so try to avoid it. |
Thanks for demonstrating my point further. Everyone's concern is their next annual review, not actually working a full shift just because you are getting paid to WORK and it is the right thing to do.
People didn't have this mindset 50+ years ago... Back then you worked because they gave you a paycheck, not because you DESERVE a certain type of work and will ONLY do that type of work... Yeah it sucks sometimes, but you know where those people are today? Most are way better off then this generation is going to end up being if this entitled attitude doesn't change.
People change the "system" not corporations. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to make things better then you have no right to ever complain about it. We don't need you in our work force. |
Maybe .
For most office jobs, yea. But not for some other main fields as:
sales
health care
food services
security
traffic control
garbage processing
energy, etc
Some of these fields (if not all of them) require 24/7 support from their teams, so these may need a different strategy to promote the welfare they deserve.
But maybe , for a fraction of modern job fields (engineering, design, hr, general office work, many others, et cetera), could the government make available the proper financial & bureaucratic environment for a scenario of 4 hour shifts, companies could make those shifts profitable while allowing people to work another 4 hours if they want to, on a completely different field (or not). That's how our tomorrows work environment will look like, if you ask me.
I have no doubt that people would get happier with their careers, more job positions would be available and plus, companies would make more of their time, because the administrative/economic environment would be set for them to have their services available for 12 hours easy with 3 different teams, so best results for each sector.
It's a win-win scenario and I really think people just talk too much about it. I think we're losing big money and production power by not enabling the mechanisms for this to evolve as it should for the fields where these shifts are applicable.
I do think the thing to blame would be the administrative inefficiency of our politicians, syndicates and such (aka cartels, localized bribes and other shit like these).
We see this everyday. Companies are making mass dismissal of its workers over the last 15 years and at least for me, this translates directly to inappropriate management, poor administrative capabilities and less than sane financial management from big corps CEOS, CIOS and others directly connected to the companies needs and obligations. It's a major issue on our society, incompetent people on the wrong positions.
Everybody pays when their bosses do the wrong thing. Don't think this matter have nothing to do with you. It's the very main cog of our economical system. And if you're a shitty boss reading this, don't take it personal, if you could, I know you would get better on what you do, but how if you have a family and have to work on 8/12 hours shifts, right?
Everyone's not only wasting their times or the companies profit, but they're wasting years of welfare and a better environment for keeping themselves updated on their markets by having more time available to make sane moves on their verve talents. |
Part 3 of 3
This third part is just to proactively show that there's not some major tax difference between Australia and Canada which would make them really be getting ripped off after all.
Let's have a look at [Australian income tax]( and compare it to [Canadian income tax](
The Canadian federal tax on the first $43,561 of income is a flat 15%
The Canadian provincial rates vary but let's take Ontario's for example: 5.05% on the first $39,723 of income. (shown on the same page as the above link)
The Australian federal tax on the first $18,200 of income is 0%; the federal tax on income between $18,201 and $37,000 is 19%; combining these two rates, if you make $37,000 in a year your effective federal tax rate will be less than 10%.
The Australian state , and the city everyone thinks is the capital (Sydney) reside. To be honest I'm having a hard time figuring out what it is... I think I'm reading indicates that it's factored into the employee's wage through [payroll tax]( somehow, so making $16 means you're actually making $16, not $16 minus the NSW state tax. Just in case I'm reading this wrong, and it does get subtracted from employee pay it varies between 5.45% and 6%. Other states have similar rates.
The worst-case tax in NSW, Australia, on a personal income of up to $37,000, is a just under 16%... or it might be just under 10%... I'm not completely sure how to read this... Regardless, the worst-case tax in Ontario, Canada, on a personal income of $39,723, is 20%. There are surely lots of other factors to consider like miscellaneous credits and deductions, but I'm not going to go learn the entire tax code for the sake of a Reddit post. Based on the similarities between Ontario, Canada and New South Wales, Australia, I will assume that these credits and deductions are also reasonably similar and probably not enough to greatly affect the overall conclusion that Canadians pay between roughly 4% to 10% more income tax than Australians overall, or between 40% and 100% more in a relative sense. (10 + 100% = 20)
I'd be remiss to not mention one mitigating factor, which is that Canadian taxes don't increase as sharply as Australian taxes around the ~$40,000 mark, which combined with the 60% higher minimum wage means that people may reach higher brackets more easily. Once annual income reaches around $80,000, your federal income tax in Australia and Canada would be much closer.
Last paragraph aside, my point stands. Most young people likely won't be in that >$40,000 bracket; there's ~260 weekdays in a year, minus 10-12 public holidays off work, plus let's say 9 sick days in a year, so around paid 240 working days in a year. 8 hours a day, $16/hour, $128/day = $30,720. Well within that first tax bracket. |
It's depressing that one of my best jobs ever was being a designer for a truly student-run college paper. We were paid salary ($35/day was AWESOME), and I would often get my work done well in 3 hours, later if we had night sports games. It wasn't in my interest to slack or suck at my job, because I'd have to stay late to finish it anyways, and the paper itself went through a very thorough but efficient editing process between writers, designers, copy editors, and section editors.
My last couple months there, we had a new editor-in-chief who changed the model to hourly. More people stretched out their time to try and even match what we were making on salary, and the paper suffered in its effectiveness and quality. It exactly resembled a "real" state flagship newspaper I just recently quit, and my god, everything that could go wrong in a job, this one had it all. |
My take:
In the private sector, the money one receives for doing a job originates with the consumers (i.e. society), but, because humans need organization and leadership to get things done, this money is filtered through employers and their interests. Thus, compensation is based not on the value that job adds to society, but the value it adds to the employer and how little said employer can get away with paying and still have that job done. Whereas the work done by a farm hand adds value to society more directly than that done by a corporate lawyer, both of these people add value for, and are necessary to, the employer. The lawyer, on the basis of his education, is harder to come by (supply and demand) so this person is paid more.
Presumably, human resources and telemarketing departments exist in companies because someone decided that the company would make more money (or lose less) if it had these departments than if it didn't (though I personally can't imagine how most telemarketers generate more revenue than they get paid). If the job truly does no good to anyone, someone made an error in judgement (job looks useful on paper, but is actually pointless and no one realizes it but the employee).
Also, not all jobs are reduceable to a 15 hour workweek. If 4 hour workdays were standard, the work needed for time sensitive projects requiring a certain number of man-hours to complete would have to be divided among a vastly increased number of people, which introduces waste and inefficiency.
In the public sector, policy makers (often not very sensible ones) decide on compensation, which can virtually divorce the whole affair from anything resembling logic. I am all for paying teachers proportionally to the value they add to society, but how do we go about measuring this value and compensating them accordingly? |
Currently in a job like this myself, joined as a project admin for a data migration but due to schedule screw ups I have been without any real work for 5 months. I come in, sit at my desk, eat my breakfast and then figure out what to do for the next 8 hours. It is serious soul destroying when everyone around you in the office is working hard and making leaps towards their goals while your sitting there wondering what crappy website shall you read today.
It wouldn't be too bad if I could use this time to further my own knowledge with programming or something but being computers for work they are restricted from running most flash and java content from the web making interactive courses impossible, reading books doesn't really help when you can't even run basic programs.
I have 3 months left here and probably 2 months of no work, those 2 months are starting to feel like 2 years as each day becomes a struggle to even get out of bed. |
This quote is from "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and its really similar to the argument...
What more can they ask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science." |
Members of the public also have first amendment rights; including the right to access communications services on a non-discriminatory basis.
If Verizon doesn't want the job, then they're free to exit the business so a provider who respects the public's rights can use the utility poles, conduits, cabling vaults and other public infrastructure that limit the number of carriers that can service each community. |
and the circle jerk continues...
Definitely not surprising though, they're responsible for developing the technologies that make our world work.
I feel I should mention that university degrees for visual arts is a terrible idea. I was in a program for a couple of years. The problem seems to me that a lot of visual art majors are only in the program because they kind of like making art and didn't really know what else to go into. They don't draw or paint in their spare time, and instead only do what school asks of them, which isn't enough to develop their skills to where they should be. This sets up art departments to cater to people who haven't put in the effort to improve their skills, and the top percentage of art students aren't learning what they need to progress, because the instructors are spending too much time helping the unskilled play catch-up. They also spend a lot of time trying to teach students to communicate through art, and to incorporate "high-minded" ideas through their work, while skimming over intensive practice and technical skill. This doesn't help students get jobs in art fields (they're out there, and some do pay quite well) and with only a bachelor's degree, few people will take you seriously enough to let you have a show in a big gallery.
So, I think the main problems are that university art programs are too easy to get in to, and the instructors aren't focusing on the right things.
Most artists that want jobs attend ateliers and learn on their own online and through books, because they can develop at a faster pace than the university environment allows, and they can focus on technical skills and understanding production art processes, which will allow them to get jobs. |
Management structure is a pyramid; no company has more bosses than workers. A project management role is defined by having a minimum of 4 subordinates, per the state/provincial Professional Engineering Organization, so by definition, it can't be average. And no, the ones at the very top aren't making huge sums over and above, either, since the PEO happen to publish pay scales every year of their members. |
That is not their conclusion.
> The report points to the results of a consumer tracking study by the U.K. communications regulator Ofcom that found that file sharers in the U.K. spent more on content than those who only consumed legal content.
This shouldn't be all that surprising. The largest consumers both buy and download music. It does not demonstrate that free downloading increases legal consumption. (It may, but this isn't compelling evidence.) |
If I took a physical album, that's theft. If I copied the album electronically, it is not theft. It is copyright infringement. There's no way to get around that basic fact. It's not a criminal act, it's a civil issue (except at large-scale commercial piracy operations). Even the large lawsuits that the MPAA brings are not on "theft", they are on copyright infringement.
Purely digital versus physical makes a large difference, because it's hard to copy a physical item. It'd be like going to an art gallery, then painting your own copy. If you go to the police, you will not be able to say "he stole my painting" as the original is still very much there.
The reason this is important is because copyright is NOT about being "fair". Copyright exists to ensure the public has greater access to arts (writing, music, etc.). Full stop. (In the US anyways.) That's why the US Constitution grants that power to congress: To further the useful arts and science.
As a freedom issue, why shouldn't I be able to listen to a song, and sing it myself? Without the copyright clause, that'd be totally fine; I'm free to express myself any way, including using expression other people have done. We carve out an exception to free expression in the form of copyright, purely to ensure that the arts keep being produced (which they certainly do!). It's not to ensure a living as an artist. It's not to be fair. It's not to enforce that the song is "yours because you made it". |
True - but there was a band that posted their music for sale online and said - pay what you think its worth.
They made very little money off that album - someone with better recall can list tge specifics.
More importantly your desire to have something shouldnt overcome someone else's desire to make money with what they've made. That makes you a thief - and stealing from just about anyone is a shit thing to do. |
That's only if you signed up with your REAL name on Google+
I don't get the bitching and moaning about Google+ and Youtube
the comment section on YouTube has ALWAYS been a circlejerk, trolls everywhere. Since the creation of Youtube comments way back before YouTube got bought by Google.
You use to use a "Username" or a "Nickname"
that provided a small sense of anonymity, except for people who used their nicknames for everysite (Like me) Look me up, my username will show up for every single social network, youtube, googleplus, facebook, twitter, tumblr ect
When google said "Yo, use your real name, because fuck you we can"
I didn't care. Want to know why? Anyone who put in "ronnockoch" in google could find my facebookprofile with my real name anyways. I'm not afraid of using my real name on the internet. I'm not a child anymore.
For those of you who are going to argue there are children on the internet. Yes of course they are. But I'm pretty sure there's a minimum age a child has to be before using their name for a social network, and i'm positive that this would also apply to youtube comments. |
A potential sale (and thus money) was lost. The amount lost isn't 100% of the value of what you pirated, but it's certainly not 0%.
You bring up a very, very important point.
A potential sale was lost, and while it's not a 100% gain, it's CERTAINLY not a 100% loss. FOR THE ARTIST. Someone downloads a track is not necessarily avoiding spending money, do you know how many concerts
I've been to for artists whos music I pirated? How many festivals and shows and tshirts I've bought directly from them? Money can still be made, money is still there. There's people third world countries
who pirate music religiously, and would save up a few days meals worth of money to fucking go see their favorite artist play. Who's at a loss here? Oh right, the record labels -- the guys with the ridiculous
expendatures, NOT the people cruising around in a van on tour, or going from festival to festival. Nobody gives a shit about licencing when it comes to music.
Now that everything is digital, my suggestion for adaption and survival is: you can't beat free, but you can offer something significantly better than free. Treat people like humans, not potential customers.
(Spotify is a great example of a service offering "better than free", I love it)
Look at your demographics, we are a generation on the internet. Your industries archaic model is not flexible enough. It's build around a concept of physical medium and needing a big label to do marketing
and print records and get them in shops everywhere... now? That doesn't matter. An artist can produce, record, and sell their music directly to their audience alone. You think NIN isnt making cash? Or a different market:
How about Louis C.K.? No DRM, no licencing crap, direct download, cheap or 'pay as you want' or free, good content. No BS.
The whole music industry needs to realize this, or nobody is going to think twice about "stealing" from them.. why should you care about an industry propped up by eccentricity and money over substance? Douchebags
producing terrible fucking music are signed by record labels, cars and mansions for total shitstains all over TV. Direct ties with Hollywood. Here's a thought: maybe if the music industry spent less cash marketing and producing
undigestible products, their margins wouldn't be so tight and they'd find that flexibility to stay afloat and thrive. |
What does pizza and cars have to do with digital goods? Digital products are different than physical ones, and they require different kinds of property rights.
False. You can't apply a whole new set of rules just because one goods attributes are different than anothers. A digital good is still a good. You can't prevent people from sharing a digital good but allow them to share physical goods at the same time, that's discrimination and that's an inconsistency in the law.
> You don't own a digital product unless you own the IP, and the companies are not selling the IP to consumers, they are just selling the right to use it, this is made very clear in the license agreement.
An agreement that you are forced to accept AFTER you have already purchased the good. It's just as immoral and unethical as if I sold you a box of shoes, and upon opening them up and going to remove the plastic band holding them together, there's a little tag says "By destroying/removing this plastic strap you are agreeing to the Terms of Use as outlined within; these shoes may not be lent out to anyone". Neither that tag nor some invalid "law" change the fact that you bought those shoes just as you would any other good and are entitled to FULL ownership over them, as you did not agree to only partial ownership before purchasing them. You were conned, ripped off, swindled, engaged in an unfair and invalid trade.
> And that allows the company to invest massive fixed costs into the product, tens of millions of dollars
That's called risk. That doesn't make Copyright laws any more valid. People who make physical goods have even MORE risk. For physical goods you have to invest money in raw materials, equipment to turn those materials into a good, time to make each and every single piece of good , shipping costs, and all the costs that come with selling from a brick-and-mortar store. It would be risky and stupid for someone with little money to try and open up a vehicle manufacturing plant on a loan instead of starting off small and establishing a reputable name brand; likewise it is stupid and risky to sink in millions of dollars into game development that will cripple your company if you won't be able to make it all back or struggle to keep the company afloat. |
I disagree.
A CS major myself (and a confessed lifelong nerd). I've worked with people in dingy bars, shitty cafes, crappy retail jobs, cleaning and delivery my whole life - and honestly some people - most people even - particularly those with less formal education, are just happier away from technology. They use what they have to, but a lot of people just don't care.
And they needn't care, either. It's not a remotely complacent stance to desire ignorance of the underbelly to technology. Trying to force teachings on those who don't seek it only suits to nurture the divide between the technologically able, and those without the capacity or motivation to seek it themselves.
People will holler and criticise those whom avoid technology, labelling them lazy or stupid, though it would be an ironic oversight; It is fact that, to some people, technology just is not day-to-day concern.
Computer Science does not need to become a core study from grade-school up. I've never heard a more ridiculously sheltered proposition in my life. |
Mark Zuckerberg has accomplished so much and really has done so much more good than bad. Why do people hate him? Why?
I think that anyone who becomes absurdly rich, for whatever reason, even if they give it all to charity, will automatically be shat on for stupid reasons. It's subconsciously jealousy, but everyone else swears they've done something uncivil and unjust. EVERYONE DOES THAT SHIT, you anti-zuck guys are a bunch of fucking retards. |
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