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The FBI is looking for a few beautiful minds to help solve a murder case. If you think you have what it takes to crack a code that the best cryptanalysts in the country have failed for 12 years to master, they'd like to hear from you. |
Counterculture is a pretty extreme way to describe the company that produces the second most-used OS in the US... I look at this "PC vs. Mac" war the same way as I do "Republicans vs. Democrats"; for the most part, they both aim for the same goal, the way they go about achieving this goal is how they differ. Oh and if you want to talk about leftist, I use Linux :D |
To me OSX gives me a unix environment with a polished feel that is well integrated with the hardware. All in all it much more usable than any linux I've tried. I need the unix environment for work, and stuff like cygwin just isn't an alternative. Hence mac is my system of choice, and that has absolutely nothing to do with any hype. |
Apple delivered innovation. Every single product Microsoft sold was not innovative but stolen or copied. On a technology section I thought people could see who is the innovator who is copying, instead of blabbing about left or right. |
first its spelled HIPPIE. second yo dont need to put TM in comments. apple products are for people with too much money and not enough brains. most of those people are commies because they have been brainwashed by the public school system. |
It usually falls down to needing an extension, lets say PIL, PIL needs to be compiled to work, and linked with several other libraries like libpng and libjpg. libjpg doesnt ship compiled versions for osx so you have to do it yourself. the only way to get all dependencies and stay sane is to use MacPorts or similar, but macports doest want to use the already existing python install, but its own living in /opt/usr linked to libraries in /opt. |
No; I was trying to say that it was created by the publishing houses to advance their own profits. Going by your language, I believe it could be called corporate welfare enacted under the false premise of socialism.
What do you mean by a "feasible solution"? Frankly, the environment we have now is truly terrible. Authors who should be pulling in enough revenue to make millions are barely scraping by, and for all their labor they don't own shit. Of course, given what I can tell of your ideology this is neither a new concept to you or one you believe applies only to the creative community :-)
I don't see the complete elimination of all copyright happening within our capitalist society. I think bringing its terms into congruence with the digital age is much more possible and likely, and would basically look like an extreme relaxation on non-commercial copying, reproduction and distribution combined with a rework of patent law.
I think we'd see more and better creation of works overall as compared to trying to sustain the current system (for the reasons I elaborated on), with severe regression in certain highly impacted fields. However, that's a natural result of Schumpeter's creative destruction and capitalism endures it even if individuals don't. Frankly, businesses are to a certain extent already living in this reality and some are flourishing by providing service packages others can't. If we want to try to reduce the harm endured by injured individuals, there are much better ways to do so than extreme copyright. |
Hey guys just to set things straight:
Funnyjunk users didn't have part in the letter, the guy in charge of the site did (who is known as Admin). Everyone is pretty pissed at Admin that a post supporting Oatmeal made it to FJ's front page(which Admin then removed from the front page). Even some of FJ's users have donated money ($2 from me). |
Executive summaries, PowerPoint etc. have slowly made most leaders slow and ineffective at dealing with change. I worked in a company that was adamant to continue to produce a DSL modem/Wifi Router/In-Room movie service box as their next product that would be installed per room into a Dslam on site in hotels. When I tried to explain to them people are just going to download porn online, cat-5 and a few Wifi routers are 1/10th the price and a Dlam is a pain in the troubleshoot over the phone they just ignored me. Why? Well they said they had been with the company for far longer, seniority was their excuse to drive a company into the ground. They never gave me one technical or analytical reason why their monstrosity of a project was actually worth pursuing, the actually thought they knew more about technology than their engineers, technicians and tech support because they had been sitting in rooms listening about technology at maybe a 10th grade level for 30 years.
Every one of them had business degrees, even the CTO but that is not too bad on its own. It was the fact that they had never ventured out of their academic discipline. Their book shelves, if they had any, were filled with popular management books, self-help guides and dieting books. Oh man, sorry for the long rant, I hated that place. |
The reason why this is fundamentally wrong is the foolish assumption that the Internet is American. It is not. The server hosting for a majority of websites may be in America, most website owners tend to be American, but the Internet is not part of America. It is it's own thing, a beautiful thing, and one that should never be limited by idiotic censorship laws. No single country, no matter how powerful they may be, no matter how much of a foothold they may have in media, or even in the Internet itself should ever have the tenacity to say they have control over it. I do not need to say how disgusting that act was, but it was all about power. They see an immense capacity to manipulate something that is not theirs to control us. The Internet is ours, the users, the content creators, the people who watch the YouTube videos of nutshots, the people who see adorable pictures of cats; not some old aged narrow minded fat cats who see this as the gold mine of advertising and content control. They want to control us and we will not let them. They underestimate us, they have only scraped the surface of our home, and there are darker places which they will regret they have ever faced. |
What I gathered from the article is that it was okay to support SOPA if you didn't understand the bill. This is what a majority of the house Democrats did / felt.
However, according to this nutjob of a staffer, it was not okay to oppose SOPA if you didn't understand it. This is what quite a few ppl did / felt. |
Can internet-independent applications really be written in HTML5?
Yes.
> am I missing something?
Yes.
[ Relevant link.]
> Aren't those "apps" actually internet/browser dependent "website like" things
That's all "Presentation Tier" stuff. If one builds the presentation layer right -- i.e. to Web Standards Compliant levels -- then web apps should (theoretically) display (HTML) and act (JS) properly.
The "web apps" themselves work through the Logic and Data tiers. Presentation + Logic + Data are the three basic tiers you need. Logic and Data are handled on the web end; they can each have multiple layers of their own. Presentation can grow in layers to fulfill different kinds of browsers. (Mobile browsers are the current headache in that particular geekosphere, though every web dev I know still swears buckets over IE. Myself included, on both counts of mobile and Internet Exploder.)
> Can internet-independent applications really be written in HTML5?
Windows has been tying HTML to the desktop since Win XP. So yeah, you've already seen it and just didn't realize.
N-tier using HTML is easy. Almost dictionary.
HTML5 is just the latest and greatest, amongst it's most visible achievements making video and audio easier to tag -- that lets your local browser handle it whatever way is best for it. (HTML5 lets your browser present audio and video as best it can, but CSS3 lets the designer present it even more beautifully.)
I (and web geeks of my flavor) regularly write programs (scripting/logic language of choice, e.g. PHP, ASP, Perl, CGI, &c) that we run on our local machines to do inane things.
E.g., I have a "todolist" web app I run locally (WAMP). I could drop it on my Internet web server (LAMP) and give everyone my literal Grocery and Hardware Store lists, but that would be silly.
But sometimes an app is better for the Internet instead of my refrigerator. On my Internet-facing computers I run my own custom apps, and big-name n-tier apps such as WordPress and Drupal.
Reddit itself is an n-tier app. It Presents itself to you in your browser; processes Logic both in JS and on-server; stores Data (like discussions and usernames) in databases. You could run the code for it locally, but you won't have much traffic unless you have MPD or Sock Puppet Syndrome. |
Oh I get it. You made the opposite of this
Actually there's already a website to counter that called
>Some of these points come from obviously biased sources, others are only speculation without hard evidence.
Well show me your evidence and sources then instead of just spouting your opinion.
> The numbers come from a recently released study by Syracuse University in New York. Among the other significant findings: An increasing share of deportees are immigrants who have been convicted of a crime, reflecting President Obama's desire to reorient the deportation process toward targeting criminals.
Yes.
>So I don't see that as a bad thing.
So what exactly constitutes "criminal" ?
People that have come here illegally since they have nowhere else to go?
What about the drug wars that are affecting the families in Mexico since the US is supplying weapons to the drug cartels?
>I don't understand why people are surprised about this. He was open about it from the start of his campaign that he supported parts of the Patriot Act. Infact he voted for it as a Senator.
And this is okay because?
I think you're not aware of his speeches where he's saying how he's all for civil liberties and what not when in fact he's not.
>As much as the Drug war continually upsets me. This is less about Obama and more about our political atmosphere in general.
Nice excuse.
As a state senator, Presidential candidate, and President, Barack Obama has made numerous statements in [support of marijuana policy reform]( and vowed "not to waste Justice Department resources" by going after medical marijuana dispensaries. Yet under the Obama administration, the raids continue, and there is no end in sight. Help the Marijuana Policy Project stand up to the Obama Administration.
>He has made a lot of terrible decisions and a lot of good decisions that I agree with.
So, you are okay with most of the stuff you just tried to dispute right now?
>It's pretty clear you're anti-obama judging by the fact that you linked to r/enoughobamaspam.
And? There's a subreddit to bash Romney as well called /r/romneyisajoke
>Thats my problem.
No, your problem is that you're okay with the President ignoring the rules of law and being biased in your presumptions. I'm just here to present the facts that Obama has done as President and you're annoyed by the fact that I came here with facts to inform people about his doings. |
As an IT professional who deals with security for local businesses, I can attest to the fact that our infrastructure and computer systems are vulnerable. Look at Stuxnet - the greatest virus ever written - which shut down an Iranian nuclear facility, and you will see why this is so critical. Our electrical grid is especially vulnerable, built using a hidge-podge of technologies that are mostly outdated. Various governments (including our own) run operations to identify and track vulnerabilities and exploits in the infrastructure and systems of enemy governments (you can bet your ass that China has a nice payload ready to deliver whenever it cares to on our infrastructure), and the fact that President Obama is pushing for bills like this shows that he is clearly informed on the issue. |
Recently, I went over my 3Gb data plan with AT&T, which is an automatic 10$ charge. So, I attemped to use the entire extra gig before my billing cycle ended. I used about .9 gigs in the last two days of my billing cycle. However, when it started over, not only did they charge me for the extra gig but they carried it over to my next cycle. When I checked my usage the next day it said 850MB. WTF
When I called them, they told me that even though I used the data before my billing cycle ended and this was documented, "the usage was not reported to at&t until after. I just about flipped out on the guy. It pissed me off so bad. |
Last time I was at Verizon, they told me not to worry about losing my unlimited data plan. The reason? I only use 3/4 of a gig of it. That's only because I'm on my home network most of the time. My router is now broken. My data use on my phone is back up to six gigs. I'm jumping ship to sprint soon as possible. |
I realize that this won't be a popular opinion but in a way he is right. Truly unlimited isn't possible for technical and semantic reasons. The problem is that there is no sensible definition of unlimited that forces marketers to cut the crap. I think the fcc needs to step up and start getting much more involved in wireless marketing, similar to how the fda or epa mandate marketing guidelines on food or cars. Texas has a state law that forces energy providers to give a single page of predefined facts on their service. If I use 750kwh how much is my bill. If I use 1000 how much is my bill. Can the rate change or is it static. Etc. |
Suburbs here. Works great in the city and nice in most suburbs but the way they are rolling tower upgrades is utter bullshit. I am considering dropping them until they finish deploying. They failed with 4g so smaller towns will have to wait for LTE if that ever comes. Now some of the upgrades leave you with signal but no bandwidth. So I'm sitting here with 5 bars and 12kbps download speeds. Starving children in Africa had better speeds in the 90s. Other times it gets absolutely nothing and you're stuck roaming on 1x which is sadly an upgrade over the 12kbps 3G but still not enough to do anything useful. I have been using it for 8 years and solid download speeds before this year 300kbps was about as bad as it got during peak hours. Now weeks go by where I don't see those speeds. When you call they always give you the same update profile/hands-free activation crap which I did before calling. Then they apologize profusely and tell you it will be fixed soon withot offering any compensation for not providing the services I'm paying for, until I ask to cancel my line. Even now I'm ill considering doing it anyway. |
I'm pretty upset that they're switching completely to shared data and not allowing previous customers to get grandfathered to keep their unlimited data for their next 2 year contract. The whole reason for charging more for data was because of the added amount of stress on the network from unlimited data users and so to capitalize on that they started charging more for data. Now with 4g LTE that will be much less of a problem because with faster speeds there will be less traffic on the network. |
I hope that you live in a major city because the 4g coverage for Sprint is FUCKING AWFUL. I live near one of the largest cities in the USA, and in the suberbs about ~15-20 minutes away from that city in a town of about 50k, no 4g. No 4g until I hit the area right around one of the cities largest universities. No 4g at the second most major subway (above ground), No 4g in ChinaTown. Horrid 4g in the Financial district. 4g speed never went much above 100-200kb/s download. Overall it was a crime to call it 4g. Loading a video was pretty much unthinkable if I was walking somewhere and wanted to catch up on the news. |
Yea, so I totally tried this when I was with VZW about a year and a half ago. Didn't work at all. They tried to tell me the increases were government mandated (they weren't) and after I called that out, they offered a credit to my account for the remainder of my contract that would negate the "adverse" effects of a fee increase. I told them that was a change in the contract, and it was in my right to back out of the contract when both parties did not agree to the change (written in your contract with VZW). The rep then pointed to a clause stating that these fees are subject to change. I wasn't expecting that response, and wasn't sure of the implications of that clause coupled with the right to bounce if fees are increased...all in all, 3 days of calling VZW, 14 hours on the phone...I shelled out the 350 bucks to break contract. good luck to those who try this. |
Nowhere does it mention ARM6 was developed purely as a mobile CPU, but actually as the next generation of ARM desktop CPU's that Apple shoehorned into their PDA. Apple's involvement with RISC was minimal, and was done through funding, much like with Xerox. Apple can't claim to have invented anything. |
This can't be said enough... There is a point of technological "saturation" where technologies, designs and processes have to be considered public domain because they are no longer unique. If someone patented a mechanical design a hundred years ago, chances are anyone who began offering a machine with similar function shortly after actually was ripping off the original designer, who may have made a great contribution to humanity and changed the way the modern world worked, because no one had ever seen anything like it before... But now it seems like every little tweak or style of something is patented, and there are a million different things that a person could just look at and create using common readily available resources that could be considered a violation of copyright and or patent... Maybe once all the major innovations have already been done its time to stop exalting the billion tiny new ones with the same reverence and legal protection that the "world-changing" inventions had? I mean we've gotten to a point where one could easily copy someone's patent or idea by accident simply because we're all drawing inspiration from the same shared technological environment. No one person "invented" the English language, it was cobbled together from the words and ideas of many different peoples from all over the world, so if I decide to "invent" a word, something like, say shagtastical , should I be spending my time running around eavesdropping on people to make sure that no one else says it? All someone has to do is hear it and they have the template, or maybe since they function in the same language environment that I do the same word might spontaneously form in their minds with similar meaning... Should I be surprised or outraged at this? |
Initially, the cheap bulk plastics, yes. Probably starting at the "bespoke" end of the market, with easily customised plastic items. This sort of bespoke manufacturing will eventually dominate over cheap manufacture of them overseas as transport costs increase. Bringing a lot of jobs back to the US and Europe, in the form of CAD designers and printing supervisors. |
Jeff Atwood's response to the 'everyone should learn to code' movement is pretty good: |
Honestly, a lot of the reason that children fail arithmetic and reading in America is a result of a lack in interest, not inability. Children are often not rewarded for those skills. What children need is an incentive to do so. When I was a child, I wanted to read well. But why? Was it the schools? Was it my parent's influence? No. It was, because I loved playing Banjo Kazooie on the N64, which provided witty (and perhaps corny) poetry which could be difficult to comprehend for young children. I also wanted to be able to read the text faster, because my brothers would hold down the A button to make the text show up (as well as disperse) faster than I could sometimes read. I wanted to read at the pace they could. Coding does potentially give children that incentive to learn, as it allows them to create something that they find interesting. (Especially if they want to learn how their video games work. Imagine children can change/remove one line of code that compiles immediately while playing a game they enjoy. They can then understand what the code does, and now have an incentive to see what they can make it do.)
Not everything about code is necessary for children, but to teach them syntax, logical operators, and conditionals, is to help teach them how to function in many areas of life. Imagine how much better a child could be at arguing if they were capable of understanding logical operators and conditionals. I understand there are biological constraints in the mind for such young ages, and I understand coding doesn't provide necessary knowledge for everyone in all aspects. Yet, code could potentially help teach children logic, and it provides a learning incentive which will make the child desire more knowledge.
Our [English] language is old, and much of what is said is open to interpretation. Many people today use their language ineffectively, and many use coercion and manipulation in their words to confuse listeners. Code is not open to much interpretation at all.
Teaching children to code (even basic coding knowledge) is to teach them better ways to communicate, to show them application for the knowledge they are acquiring, to show them passion and how their knowledge can influence the world, and to show them a greater appreciation for just how much work goes into the technology they use every single day. |
It should be available in high school, and maybe to older children of junior high school, but elementary school? Elementary school is meant to be just that, elementary, basic, core. On top of that, most "coding" requires at least algebra level mathematics knowledge, which most kids don't learn until 7th 8th or 9th grade. I don't believe the majority of the people posting in this thread understand what a program entails, and to those saying "they should at least learn the concepts" you are fooling yourself. Learning the concepts of programming without actually programming is about as effective as being told how to ride a bike, but then never actually trying to ride it.
Also, i'm against the idea of pushing this onto kids even in high school. In high school I was able to CHOOSE to do a vocational program which has set me two years ahead of my peers in my field. Let the kids choose to specialize in programming, or nursing, or engineering, or whatever they want not what you think they should want. My life is better because I got to choose for myself. |
I believe educators need to impress upon students the opportunities they have to explore these subjects with future education. One of the failures of my public school education was that I had no idea what classes I could take as a high school student when I transitioned, so I just took the classes everyone else was taking or what my counselors gave me. I got to college and met people that had taken programming classes, web design, video production, creative writing, etc. all in high school or went to a community college (dual-enrollment). I was completely in the dark about these opportunities because no one actually told me I could do it. It took changing majors, a lot of hard work, empty or "useless" credit hours, to find something that I enjoyed in education; all of that wasted time and resources that I could have explored as a high school student, and I might have gotten a better education in the end. When enrollment in some of these classes increases, demand for funding by the state should also increase, giving everyone more options and more opportunities. Each generation should have a more complete educational experience, where as now-a-days, it appears that options are being eliminated for the sake of budget at the cost of our future. |
Well, the other reason we don't teach engineering and programming to elementary school kids is that it doesn't really help. There's this absurd notion of "if we would only start teaching kids (whatever) earlier, they'd gain a valuable head start". Well, that's a load of crap . A few kids will be sharp enough to benefit from it, but the vast majority of kids of that age are still working with long division and memorizing multiplication tables. Programming requires an understanding of basic algebra, and those kids simply aren't there yet. It's all well and good to provide the opportunity to learn programming for those that can handle it, but forcing it on everyone wastes valuable time that should be spent on learning the underlying concepts of basic math.
For years my mother (a math teacher) had to deal with mandatory algebra lessons for 3rd graders under orders from a bunch of overpaid administrators in an office building downtown, none of whom were ever teachers. It doesn't work. They're largely just not ready for it at that age. Programming is no different.
That said, the actual linked article shows that Pixel Academy is a voluntary, additional instruction scheme. Nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is when people read that and submit a link with the title "Coding should be taught in elementary schools", which is not what the article said at all. |
Programming teaches organizational, management, strategic, and problem solving skills."
Programming teaches organizational and problem solving skills that pertain to code and little else, and that for only a small subset of individuals that bother to learn the skill. Every programmer I know (myself included) can tell stories of coders with 10+ years in industry who couldn't find their own ass with both hands and a map, and these are people that self-selected to learn programming. |
Been wrapping my head around this, and, as usual, it's not nearly as bad as the hysterical articles make it sound. The [terms of service]( is pretty clear, and by itself is pretty terrifying:
> Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.
But the new [privacy policy]( makes the intention much clearer. It says the only things they can sell are:
> We may also share certain information such as cookie data with third-party advertising partners. This information would allow third-party ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you.
> We may remove parts of data that can identify you and share anonymized data with other parties. We may also combine your information with other information in a way that it is no longer associated with you and share that aggregated information.
If you take these two things together, it seems to only give them the power to run contests and promotions. They seem to be saying "we want to run a Doritos 'Nacho Ordinary Photo' contest where you upload pictures of yourself eating Doritos in weird places. Doritos gets to use the stuff you submit any way they want, and we get barrels of cash. You might or might not get some free Doritos."
I don't see a way to interpret this as "we're going to sell your photos to anybody who needs a picture of a hot chick" or anything like that. They still say your private photos are guaranteed private. And they still say you retain all ownership rights... so the only rights other companies can get are the rights you explicitly give them... such as by checking the "I accept these terms" on a contest submission form.
Yeah, maybe there's some way for them to weasel around the wording to do whatever the hell they want, but I don't think that's what they're doing. I think they just worded their intention poorly. The key is the phrase "in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions." |
By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services."
that's the clause that enables them to use your photos in ads.
it's NOT, however, the clause that they're going to be retracting. the clause i pasted has been in the TOS for ages. all the new clause did was create a more specific example demonstrating the degrees to which instagram can practice it's rights given to them in the terms you agreed to. |
A functionality that was broken for at least 4 months earlier this year that I can attest to. The few times the download actually worked during that time, the data was severely truncated/incomplete. My account (although deactivated at the time) therefore needed to continue to exist and my data essentially held hostage until they eventually fixed it, that is, if I wanted a copy of my data before permanently deleting the account. And although Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities states (in reference to users) "You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook...", I saw no other choice than to wait it out since there is no equivalent of the EU's Data Protection Directive here in the US for me to stand on. And this was not just my account. |
I think what he was getting at is that if say instagram KEPT the change, people could easily go back to to other image sites without much fuss.
Where as quitting facebook or w.e social medium you use isn't so easy being that it would involve getting your friends, and their friends, to join you as well. |
Looks like circlejerk is here. Win8 is not that much different than Win7 with the start menu being the exception. If you actually took the time to learn some shortcuts then you would like Win8 as much as 7. You can have all the same functionality as the start menu from win7 if you actually take 5 minutes to understand the OS rather than saying "OMG WIN8 SUCKZZZ WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE WIN7". Where people have a problem with win8 is the app store that has to be approved by microsoft. Well guess what you do not have to use the app store I have managed to have an excellent experience with Win8 with no apps. There are also applications that you can download that give you a regular start menu over the metro experience. |
whoa, man...that comment was so long, we can't even see it! Thanks for the |
No it isn't.
> |
FTFY
Fixed this for you. |
My last 2 laptops were Dell, and they both have fatal issues...
The first one was medium priced, it had some crap with the BIOS randomly making extremely loud beeps, not possible to disable, I once had one of these during a lecture that scared the professor and made the other students laugh, that was the moment I decided to get a new laptop.
The next one was high priced ($2000). At first it seemed excellent. Now while it's at least safe to bring to class, soon issues would pile up. The trackpad has shitty drivers that waste up to 7%CPU, and memory leak a GB of RAM. Same thing with the turbo boost, which will always crash after a few hours and can't restart without a reboot. I disabled the trackpad program, but that means no finger gestures. Although the laptop have 8GB of RAM, more than I ever had before, it was the first time I started getting warnings that the computer lacked RAM and some program must stop. The suggestion? Always Dell Support Center. I ran the uninstaller, but it's still there. I don't have permission to delete it. When I tried updating the drivers, Dell suggested using their download manager, to make it easier. Neat, except, it doesn't actually work. And haven't for many years. (this is a huge complaint in their forums).
Then the biggest issue of all. This has also been complained about in their forums for years, yet Dell can't be bothered to fix it. My laptop came with a light sensor to automatically adjust screen brightness. Whenever this sensor does something, which is usually a couple of times pr minute, it steals the program focus. It's invisible, I had to search around forever before even knowing it was there and what it did. You can turn it off, but it will turn itself back on in a a few hours. I put a black tape over the sensor, but it's not enough to make it stop. You can completely disable it, but then you would also disable all other keyboard shortcuts like volume/screen brightness/open CD ROM. |
That headline is very misleading. They're discontinuing the downloadable TweetDeck client, but the web-based version, as well as a Chrome app version, aren't going anywhere.
[Here's the actual TweetDeck update post that this one is referring to.](
In the end this is going to be a GOOD thing for users, they'll just have to stop using the downloadable app and start using the web-based app, which has many advantages over the downloadable version. |
You don't understand bias. Since this is an article sponsored by Microsoft, and it is advocating Microsoft, there is no reason to believe anything reported in the article is even remotely accurate or honest.
Here's an example of something I see as dishonest:
When they did this test (October 2012), internet explorer wasn't available on windows 7, just Windows Server 2012. The mainstream version of IE 10 wasn't available until February 2013. ^[1](
At the time of the test, they were testing a development version of IE against a release version^[2]( of Google Chrome. In order to provide a comparison that's even valid, they should have been testing against at least Chrome 24, instead of Chrome 22. Even then, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect your tests to hold any merit once a newer version of chrome comes out; the current stable versions of IE and Chrome are 10 and 26, respectively. From their research, even if their results aren't modified, we know nothing about which is the more secure browser.
Here's another concern:
The research article lists that they tested against socially engineered malware, which since they don't define I can only assume means malware which requires a user to download and run a file. If they're making claims about which browser is more secure, and making suggestions about which browser to use, they should have tests regarding malware in general . Why are they excluding some forms of malware? The only reason I can guess that they would do that is if the browser made by their funding corporation doesn't perform well against other forms of malware. What I really want to know is which browser allows more malware to get through because of program security flaws, instead of just which browser blocks more malicious websites. |
You are just parroting the FUD spread by key-stretching algorithm proponents.
Even being able to do 63GH/s is meaningless against a per-user salt, providing the passwords have a sufficient length and complexity.
The brute search space for a random 12 character password with a depth of 95 (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters) is 5.46 * 10^23 passwords. 63GH/s works out a worst case brute force time of 8,666,666,666,666.67 seconds, or a little over 274,818 years to crack a single password. Even if you ramp that up to 100 trillion hashes per second it's around 174 years.
Despite what the key-stretchers would have you believe, their strategy is not safe in the near to mid term either. Their algorithms rely on what are called memory-hard functions in order to slow brute force attacks, which exploit the latency of a DRAM accesses over thousands of iterations. Problem is, the next generation of memory technologies is anticipated to give the ultra low latencies of SRAM, the persistence of hard drives, at the cost per unit of DRAM, and completely unify memory architecture in the process. When (not if) this occurs, bcrypt/scrypt/PKBDF2 will be as "secure" as salted SHA-1.
This is why using a manager like LastPass (full disclosure: I use the service, but have no vested interest in it) is so important because it breaks you out of the patterns of password re-use and insecure passwords. Your vault is encrypted client side, and only mirrored to the central system in that state. Even if you lose the central system altogether, you still have any cached client side copies to recover from. |
Can we stop with this whole "Made in X" bullshit with modern complex systems? Think about what it means for something to be made in a certain country. When something says "Made in China" right now, they are simply referring to the final assembly process. There are thousands of steps before that that are sourced from dozens of different countries.
A smart phone consists of a lot of components such as:
Microprocessor (typically a system on chip with integrated signal processing for cell phones protocols, graphics, etc. such as a TI OMAP or Qualcomm Snapdragon or Apple A6 or nVidia Tegra)
DRAM (made by companies like Samsung, Toshiba, Micron, Hynix, etc.)
MLC NAND Flash memory (made by pretty much the same companies that make DRAM)
Transceiver chips for cell phones, wifi, bluetooth, GPS, etc.
Lithium Ion Battery
LCD Touch Screen
Camera
Micro USB interface
Accelerometer
Speakers/microphones
Operating system kernel (e.g. Linux)
Run time environment (e.g. Java, libc, etc.)
Middleware (e.g. Android infrastructure)
User level Apps
And all of these components are complex systems in themselves.
You phone is made of materials mined from dozens of countries, designed by engineers in dozens of countries, and components manufactured in dozens of countries. For example, your microprocessor chip might be designed in the US by Qualcomm and fabricated in Taiwan by TSMC while your DRAM may be designed by Samsung in South Korea and manufactured at their fab in Austin, Texas. The flash memory may be designed by Sandisk in the US and manufactured by Toshiba in Japan. Meanwhile, all of the parts will be shipped off to Shenzen for assembly by Foxconn (a Taiwanese company that operates plants in the PRC). And then just think about the OS for a second. The Linux kernel was originally created by a Finn and is now developed by thousands of people from all over the world.
Here is an example for the Droid X...
The same thing applies to laptops, airplanes, cars, video game systems, or pretty much any other modern technological system. |
That's kinda how I feel. I know it is pessimistic but it is hard not to feel that way after a while. Quite literally everyone I know is married, divorced or soon to be married. The same goes for just about everyone they know too. It is like I've been demoted to permanent third wheel status. Hell, for one person it is about to be his third marriage but this time he's learned to stop thinking with his penis. Yet, here I am unable to even get a single date or even have someone to show a genuine interest in me. Don't get me wrong I'm happy for all of them and maybe even slightly jealous. Now, I know I'm not the most handsome or interesting person in the world but the complete lack of interest is gets to me occasionally. Everyone tells me, "You'll find someone, eventually. Just you wait." In the meantime that isn't the least bit helpful or encouraging. Then there is the fact I can see myself being the next "The 40 Year Old Virgin" all too soon. Not that that is a bad thing but I'm not looking forward to it either.
I've sent out many messages online myself. The only ones that seem to respond are women a year or two older than me wanting someone older than them. If that is the case then why am I inside your preferred age-range? The site lets you pick exact ages and keeps the correct age difference as you get older! I suppose I did have one person respond back they had given up on online dating and thanked me for reminding them to close their account. -.-
Being single had really gotten to me one day a few years ago and I rather bitterly mentioned to a few friends and family, "At what point do I resolve myself to the fact I'm going to remain single?" My friends and family were both shocked and not too happy about that saying something to the effect of I'd look back one day and regret it. To which I said, "Regret what? I have easily spent over 2/3 thirds of my life so far in search of a mate and what do I have to show for it? That really nice girl I 'dated' all those years ago my sophomore year of high school for not even two weeks before the bat-shit crazy came out and I immediately got out of Dodge? I regret having spent this much of my life in pursuit of a goal I don't even know anymore if I ever wanted it in the first place or if that is what society expects of me." To this day they haven't been able give a solid reply. I think that was when most of them realized that I had been single since the day I was born while most of them can barely remember, if at all, ever being single.
I know this whole post sounds overly negative and it wasn't meant to be but it is what it is. There are going to be plenty of people thinking about replying to me saying, "No wonder you are single if you are that negative." Let me go ahead and cut you off. Everyone has their good moments and their bad ones. This here is/was one of my bad moments. /u/AdrianisAwesome's post struck an all too familiar nerve and before I knew it I was ranting about my luck with the opposite gender. Please don't judge me as some pessimistic asshat because this single comment.
Also, this commenttook me nearly two hours to type but if I was to retype it while reading the original here it would take me maybe 5 minutes. I'm apparently super slow at converting my thoughts to a medium more easily consumed by others. Granted I took a shower and rewrote it once attempting to remove the negative over tone during the two hours. Which I think I failed to do but whatever. |
The thing that I think a lot of people overlook is that NASA isn't meant to be useful or profitable by itself. It exists to drive science and inspire innovation.
Even by the most conservative (read:religious) estimates, it took man six thousand years to fly, but only another 60 years to fly into space. 8 years after that, we were on the moon, and 40 years after that, we're dropping robots on Mars.
While that might not seem profitable, despite being pretty cool, the invention of flight and the century of aeronautic innovation that it inspired has meant countless billions or trillions of economic growth, from the passenger plane industry to global logistics.
NASA is like America's R&D department. It's hard to quantify what they do in terms of profit, but if you were to shut them down, you'd quickly fall behind technologically, and then it's only a matter of time before you suffer financially. |
You're absolutely on point, but I think that NASA's funding affects more communities than you think. I grew up in Clear Lake, Texas, and my father is an astronaut. Most of the families I knew growing up depended on NASA in one way or another for their wellbeing. In the past few years, I have watched the community I grew up in wither away and die. And its not just Clear Lake (home to Mission Control), but areas in Florida, California, and even US communities in Russia.
It gets even bigger. Forget NASA employees. There are so many other jobs dependent on the existence of these communities. |
No, no, no... Just, no. Don't take my assertion to mean I think you're a fool for not recognizing the value of capturing NEOs. Of course it indirectly benefits every human being on Earth through the development of technologies to save us from space rock oblivion. But the value of what the Republicans are going to kill to spite the president is ENTIRELY MATERIAL. Exploiting the resources of the solar system is the key to a post-scarcity paradigm of human existence. Period. We have n quantity of any particular resource here on Earth. There is at least n more of everything we need floating about in the asteroid belt, just waiting to be scooped up and exploited. Getting resources from asteroids also will allow us to eventually construct exploration equipment outside of Earth's gravity, which would be a huge cost-saver.
That the House GOP doesn't understand this is ludicrous; I don't believe these men are fools - they are either spitting the president or are actively trying to undermine humanity's road out of the scarcity dilemma. Going to the moon and Mars are good things, of course, but current technology does not allow us to appropriate resources from their gravity wells. In other words, anything we mine on the moon or Mars is too heavy to bring home. Asteroids, even huge ones, have minuscule gravities; we can exploit those resources with only a little technological advancement. You know, the kind of incremental advancement we task NASA with achieving.
This is a serious blow to science. I know we have a couple companies mulling the idea of asteroid exploitation, but IIRC they're counting on NASA to figure out how to do it first. This initiative was the one thing I thought Obama was right on when it comes to science - I don't know why it surprises me that the GOP is killing it. Maybe because they're killing it in favor of the more-expensive Mars option, which in a time of fiscal belt-tightening seems counter-GOP. |
I'd agree - the linked review doesn't do a damn thing to back up any image quality conclusion. It's a single, useless datapoint.
On the other hand dpreview has their preliminary review , and in the dark it's likewise head and shoulders above everything else (check out the back of the playing cards or the finer details of the paint brush and feathers). |
I meant to infer that with my first statement about signing it. If congress doesn't give him something to veto, he doesn't have anything to do with the laws of the country besides the enforcement at a federal level. And even then, he is limited by what the way the particular laws are written. Depending on the language of the bill, he may be able to be "softer" or "harder" on certain laws. If a law says that any unauthorized use of software is to be met with a SWAT team, and it is very clear in the law, that is what has to be done. It can be challenged constitutionally, but until declared unconstitutional it is the law.
Unfortunately, and I'm not sure when this started, the president began making appeals and promises about legislation that he has no control over. He started getting made the head of his particular party and started making grandiose statements about what he can do. Constitutionally speaking, however, he should not be as important as we make him out to be. It is sad that many people consider the president far more important than their own federal officials which means that we get a defunct congress, and then we yell at the president because he doesn't do the things he says he would. If we all voted in individuals and vetted them much the same way we do the president, we'd get much better candidates at a congressional level and would probably be able to see candidates who are willing to stand up to the monied interests instead of the candidates having to rely on sound clips and smear tactics in order to win, meaning that he with the money to run the most ads wins. Name recognition!
It should be noted that the president is even excluded from being the tie-breaking vote in the senate. This is actually reserved for his vice president (which, until the civil war was whoever came in second rather than someone picked). |
From the linked article:
>In the USA, every state with the exception Maine and Vermont prohibits felons from voting while in prison.[1] Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole. However, the severity of each state's disenfranchisement varies.
Three states, Kentucky, Virginia and Florida (Governor Rick Scott reverted to the old policy in 2010 that had been changed by Gov. Charlie Crist), continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record, in the absence of a restoration of civil rights by the Governor or, where allowed, state legislature.[1]. Florida Law is somewhat unique, in that the individual must be pardoned by the Governor and a majority of the publicly elected State Cabinet (with the Governors' vote being the tiebreaker, if necessary). |
Recommending.
He (or someone) asked someone to review it and make a suggestion. This was their suggestion. It would require action, but it is merely a suggestion at this point. Congress was given the recommendation months ago as well.
There are plenty of government agencies that make recommendations that never get to see the light of day. There was one report, recently, that came out from the NCI (part of NIH which is a federal agency) [saying that there is evidence that cannabis and cannabinoids can produce beneficial outcomes for cancer patients.](
Obviously nobody in the upper echelons of government are going to really do anything with this, and due to the laws strictly outlining how cannabis is to be regarded (it is illegal and must be prosecuted in a certain way, and there is little room for interpretation) no recommendation would matter to the office of the president because not even an executive order could modify the treatment of dispensaries. Legally speaking, the DEA is required to do what it is required to do and since an executive order cannot be illegal or unconstitutional, he cannot order the DEA to ignore the law (he could order the AG to stop defending the law in court cases however). |
The thing is if you watch a stream using the torrent system then every viewer becomes an uploader/host. |
Imagine an electrician comes into your house, and does some wiring, and one of the outlets doesn't work. What's the rational response - "Let's get the electrician back here to fix this thing he did wrong." or "Are you going to trust an electrician to fix the problem an electrician created? That's fucking nuts. Let's get a plumber to do it." |
Again you willfully missed the part where the original comment you responded to wasn't authored by me. You want /u/WhatWentWrongHere, not me, if you're upset about the quality of the original comment.
eta: |
I think you might be mad for the lesser reason -
Yes, they did send you your password in plain text. Which means anybody with access to your computer or your cell phone or the computer you were using at the library can just log in and pull up your password. Scary.
Want to know something much scarier? It shouldn't be POSSIBLE to send you your plain text password. Why? The fact that they can send it to you means that somewhere on their servers, there is a database with all million users and their plaintext passwords. Under "normal" security considerations, these passwords are padded and hashed so that the original password can't be recovered. This is especially crucial because of password reuse. Whenever a database is hacked in plaintext, those passwords are tried with the same account names on hundreds of commonly used services (facebook, paypal, amazon, most major banks) and typically work. For a million hacked passwords, that means complete control over hundreds and thousands of online lives. Millions upon millions in theft. Those same passwords, but padded and put through a one-way hash? Entirely useless assuming each company is using a different pad (very likely) and probably useless even if unpadded. Remeber: companies sometimes don't notice being hacked for weeks or months after. Do you use this password for anything else? If you use multiple passwords, can one be found or reset from another?
In fact, the very storage of your plain text password may be ILLEGAL depending on how they interact with various components of the financial system (esp credit card companies). |
Seriously, my computer boots in under 10s. It's fast.
Windows 8 has a function called "Hybrid Boot" where the system state is suspended to disk and the user state is logged off. What you think off as booting is the system resuming from a hibernate file. Use the shutdown /s /t 0 command to do a full shutdown then time your boot after. |
What you're missing is the performance factor. I run Windows 8 at home and while the Metro interface isn't my favorite, I love how fast it is. If Windows 9 has as good of a UI as Windows 7, then people will flock to it en masse. |
In other words,
" |
I think that we, as a society, don't really evaluate the role of freedom in a school setting. I would definitely say that Sudbury style schools sit on the exact opposite end of the spectrum as far as freedom -> structure. They say it works for their particular school and their particular environment and they also say that most of the schools are different depending upon the students, the location, the resources, or a combination of all of these factors.
However, I believe that public school as we know it sits on unyielding structure (even in the good schools). My parents struggled long and hard with public schools with my older brother. I honestly believe that structure honestly did not work for him and the school system failed him.
I had no problem complying with structure, but felt imprisoned as many students do. I also feel like I was taught little that was of any worth and was put through prison rather than an educational system for all of high school. It wasn't a particularly bad school I attended, but again, I believe the vast majority of schools in the public system sit at the radical structured end of the spectrum.
Do I think that Sudbury schools might work on a large scale? Maybe. It's also possible that they only work for the communities that currently have them and they couldn't be brought to scale.
But what I do think is that the structure of most modern public schools is decidedly anti-children, pro-teacher, pro-disciplinarian, and pro-structure.
Students and parents have absolutely no control over the ever-growing mess that is the curriculum other than voting between two parties that will largely run the system the exact same way (more tests, more accountability or more teachers, smaller class sizes).
There's no real attempts at reform when it's obvious that the methodology isn't working (especially for 100% of kids, but I would say it fails more often than the statistics would lead you to believe).
All we hear from teachers is stuff like "Johnny needs to focus more" (the subject of this article) rather than an actually critical evaluation of the methodologies used in the educational system.
I believe that lack of analysis is a fundamental part of the problem. |
Children get used to that, so they will be good at very short tasks.
So what's wrong with changing process to include lots of many short tasks, for example: gamification and day-to-day incremental accomplishments.
Our world is on track to ensure that our lives revolve around electronics and [near] instant communication, so why not start changing the way we think about process and procedure to take advantage of this trend? |
I study and work in an environment full of fine art and graphic design - everything from web design to painting and sculpture, i've dabbled in a very wide array of visual arts and image-making.
On the one hand, the hyper-visual culture we now live in thanks to technology means there's a greater public desire for visual stimulation, and LOTS of it. Be it an art museum or a website or the graphics in a video game, the desire for artists in a myriad of fields is now greater than ever. Graphic designers especially have a bit more job security knowing that there's always going to be somebody looking for someone to help with a website graphic or a business logo, among other things. Thanks to technology and media it's also easier for myself and other artists to show our work to an audience, sell our work if someone likes it enough, and collaborate with other artists in ways that would otherwise not be possible; for example, The [Ukiyo-e Heroes project]( between Jed Henry and David Bull would likely not have been possible without e-mail, skype, and kickstarter.
...and on the other hand while those guys are collaborating on a beautiful series of woodblock prints I spend half my days screwing around on Reddit, Tumblr, and Facebook and my sketchbooks are full of half-assed doodles which might look halfway decent if I spent more than 10 mins at a time on them. |
Honestly, though, things like that can only happen if the kids in the classroom are well-behaved. We have classes of 30+ students, many of which have ADD or some bullshit that makes them walk around and yell and not do their work and distract other students. Since I'm not allowed to strike them, all I can do is incentivize being good by allotting credit for participation, and trying to calm the class down when they inevitably all start yelling at each other.
I would argue that the modern educational system doesn't work well if all of the children aren't well behaved either.
I think setting up a micro-society in which they don't see the real effects of their own behavior for decades is only allowing them to continue to plod forward without really learning anything.
Warning: an anecdote follows.
My brother was diagnosed ADD long before it was such a popular diagnosis. The teachers (at first) always gave him a similar quotation "he seems really creative, but he's not interested in doing what the class does".
Imagine if the guy didn't have to do what the class does all of the time? He might not have become Mozart or something, but he was creative...he was somewhat intelligent...he just didn't respond well to authority. What is he now? Nothing. And that part of his life (from his perspective) probably looks like a bunch of people screaming at him.
As far as someone "not learning how to read" or something...he still doesn't know how to spell in his adult life. I very much question his ability to read well...and this is in the very school system that claims it can produce results with this type of pupil.
My parents were very active in trying to get him some help...they simply had no ability (outside of private school...and homeschooling which they did as well) to get him to fly straight according to the system. The school system was not designed to deal with him and the school system doesn't bend for anyone.
He was 18 when he took the GED test and he passed the shitty thing on the first try. He was in 9th grade and hadn't received any real high school education (homeschooled through 9th grade).
He was never taught responsibility as a child and now he continues to have almost no responsibility for himself as an adult.
The educational system fails these students just as often (if not moreso) than their smarter counterparts. It doesn't really help anyone. My brother and I were on polar opposites of the academic spectrum and yet I feel failed by the school system as well.
There are schools that don't separate based on gender, age group or reading ability. Children freely associate with each other. My brother may have been a shit "student" but he was absolutely awesome at play as a child. He was creative, focus, and driven when the activity wasn't "do 10,000 of these problems exactly like I told you". Before he went to school, my parents had very few behavioral problems with him. I have no idea what he could (or could not) have been capable of...I just know that the public school system did very little to improve his life and I can say personally that it did very little to improve mine as well. |
and translate
That's the problem right there. I'm not saying it's easy, but unless you stop translating, and start "thinking" in the foreign language, you'll be slow.
I can read English pretty well despite having learned it by myself. I write as a 12 years old. I talk as a 3 years old :-(
But when programming, I cannot use any other language than English. I get in English mode, and I even have q hard time explaining things in Castilian (my native language). |
I wonder how any scientist gets the idea that those refuges would help keep root worms from adapting.
Refuges reduce selection pressure for resistant organisms by allowing non-resistant organisms to reproduce and enrich non-resistant alleles in the general population. This keeps non-resistant alleles at a high enough frequency in the general population to prevent resistant alleles from becoming the dominant genotype in the population or even becoming fixed. What helps is that oftentimes resistance comes with a "fitness cost" of some kind - that is, in the absence of the Bt, resistant organisms actually are less fit than the general non-resistant population.
In a perfect world killing everything is the solution. But things like Bt and various antibiotics are imperfect - inevitably resistance arises in the population, and keeping a high selection pressure for Bt resistance by constantly wiping out the non-resistant population just eliminates the competition for resources from the susceptible population.
If you want to read more, here paper describing coevolution of host/parasite under "arms race" and "trench warfare" allele frequency dynamics. |
Yeah, sometimes I wonder if VR will be a good for society, especially when it gets really good. |
Maryland has a state textbook law about requiring us to give students a chance to buy the textbook at the best price possible/not screw the students over/etc.
I personally just don't fucking use textbooks anymore. This is good in some ways (cheap) but bad for people who process information differently and appreciate having it written down.
However, if my school expects me to create an open source textbook for my course, they also need to pay me to create that textbook. I do not want to create a textbook from materials already available through publishers (and honestly, since Maryland is also very tied up in NCAT, the National Center for Academic Transformation, that is likely as using publisher software/databases is part of their schtick).
Nothing in the article says whether teachers would be paid to create these materials, or whether each professor would be allowed to choose or create their own or not. That's, to put it lightly, bad. There's already a lot of pressure for us to standardize our courses (which always sounds good on the surface till you consider that that also means no individualized instruction for students or classes and no room for instructors to adjust pedagogically if students in a particular class are not engaged by the standardized material. Heck, sometimes two sections of the same class end up needing to be taught differently because of the mixture of students enrolled, time of day, whatever!)
I would love the ability to drop publisher produced textbooks entirely--so I have. But in the same vein, I don't want to be forced into a system where I pick readings that have been "approved" for use in the state system if there are other open source or creative commons licensed materials available not on the "list." I also would need to know that I would be paid (once) for the extra time it would take to create such materials, especially if I'm writing some of it on my own.
FOR EXAMPLE: I teach online, and the first time I taught online I was paid a small additional stipend to write my course materials. I wrote about one hundred pages (with graphics, so less text) of lecture materials for two courses and made a series of videos and interactive tutorials. I was paid to do that. I occasionally point to outside resources, but only when absolutely necessary. That money gave me the free time to do so. Also those courses are very highly rated by students, so I know whatever I am doing is working (and follow up studies of whether they are able to pass the next courses in the series have been positive too, so those materials are working).
I would expect the same if I'm supposed to make an open source book for my class, especially considering the time spent creating it and then assessing whether the materials chosen and written are as effective as what we had before. |
I've been through two engineering degrees, one at a prestigious Institue of Technology, and one at a larger and more mainstream state university. Outside of general education requirements, a lot of my profs did not have required texts as, in their minds, there weren't any texts suitable for what they wanted to teach. I think the magic keyword there, though, is they wanted to teach. So you'd get hundreds of pages of handouts or written notes (or pdfs) throughout the term, and you'd probably learn more because your hw and text and lectures all fit together. This whole thing sort of descends into a discussion of the pressure on young profs to publish research and the apathy of some tenured profs... |
please excuse all miss spellings
<rant>
almost this entire thread is a giant circle jerk around hating on Facebook. there is no reason to be so mad. A lot of people have been complaining about Facebook games and "spend money to get this and meet your friends" and stuff like that i and i feel this is completely ridiculous and uncalled for facebook did not implement that system they are not the ones doing that to every game it the people making the GAME TO MAKE MONEY ON THE GAME. people are trying to make money making Facebook games and to do that they need to make people buy stuff with real money to make money. second everyone takes and does stuff with your data. everyone. and think about what oculus could do with the backing of the funds and resources of Facebook. they could complete the rift faster and make it better.then they can take that technology and from gaming turn it into some many more things. this can really become the evolution of everything if you look past your blind rage.
</rant> |
Anne Frankly I did Nazi this coming. |
I'm sorry to say it but I think you all are being extremely closed minded and aren't understanding the true potential for this opportunity. If any of you actually read the real post (which you probably didn't) he says that he's going to allow the Oculus team to work independently. Meaning that the whole virtual reality gaming side of this product is going to be going ahead as scheduled and he won't change anything drastically. Actually, with all of this new invested cash, we will see this product a lot sooner than we thought. That's would be what most people I know call a 'huge upside.'
Yes he also said that he plans to use it to create a virtual reality social network as well. I don't know about you but I don't see anywhere in that message where he says that he's making a virtual Facebook. If you ask me, I think he'll create an entirely new social media platform surrounding virtual hangouts and activities. I don't know about you, but that sounds friggen mind-blowing! I think it is past time we got a new social media network that revolutionized how we communicate with one another. With the Oculus program to aid Zuckerberg, we're going to be able to witness the future. Your children will be talking about what it was like to be one of the first people to watch the football game with all of your buddies without having to physically go to the stadium or be in the same location as your friends. |
One hope I have for the future is that there will be drone services that let you fly through national parks and remote deserts with your friends. It would have the same collision avoidance technology as the driverless cars, and would have a determined roaming radius depending on the remaining battery life (so that as soon as you're low on energy depending on your distance, it would fly itself back to the charging dock.)
It would be a pretty expensive game, but considering the ad revenue from how many people would want to play, it may be pretty affordable. It's virtual reality, but based in reality. Ignoring a host of likely problems, one thing it would solve is computing energy for generating graphics. With how powerful cameras are now, you'd have unbelievable full HD graphics of the real world that would otherwise take a shit ton of computing power to sync across multiple users. The mechanics of the game play could be super imposed over the environment. And the added awareness that you're actually seeing through something in the real world would make the game incredibly fun and intense. |
This is two hours old so no one will probably see this, but this essentially means one of two things, either Facebook is going to try and create its own gaming platform, something which i would imagine we would have heard about a long time ago.
Or, what is much more likely the case, that there is a deal in the works between Microsoft and Facebook. Getting this news a couple of days after the PS4 announce their own VR headset is hardly a coincidence. Facebook may be run by a bunch of assclowns, but they are not stupid assclowns. No one at Facebook thinks Oculus has a market without games. And they know that candy crush isn't going to cut the mustard. |
Oculus had the chance to create a fantastic platform for immersive gaming, research and maybe even robot-human interfaces (imagine being able to see what a robot sees and controlling its camera with your head movements!).
Now it'll be used for ads, stupid social games and yet more ways to share the inanity of your everyday life! |
These numbers are sort of out of my ass from reading a couple articles. It looks like Oculus raised about 94 million for development etc. 3 million of that was crowd funding. The venture capital funding groups get a 20x return on their money the crowd funding people may get their money back in the form of merchandise.
I like crowdfunding and it works for somethings but I wish there was a way to get some sort of ownership for the crowd. It sometimes seems like the crowdfunding leads to a t-shirt for most everyone and a few guys getting rich (not that I have a problem with rich). It would be nice if there was some way to democratize (for lack of a better word) technological venture capital. I just see a lot of tech companies begging for cash and when they get it someone else profits. |
I can't speak for the whole technology center, but in the gaming community it's pretty much standard that whenever a studio or company is bought out, the assets are gutted and run into the ground to cash in on their market base.
Making a great product takes a lot more time and money than cranking out a shoddy one, and there's always a sizable population that doesn't know, doesn't care, or has no other option than whatever you throw out. You don't have to worry much about losses, since cutting corners saves money and the aforementioned segment of your market is basically locked in, which is very attractive for anyone looking to just make a ROI.
Some people are asking themselves what they think Facebook, a company not exactly associated with the best of faith in its business practices, would find more attractive:
A cut-down model using cheaper hardware that can be quickly produced, mass-marketed to anyone who doesn't want to try to hack whatever Sony is putting together whenever (and a big old if ) it gets around to coming out, and pushed online to anyone who likes the name Facebook or Oculus,
An expensive, lengthily developed and refined model with a lower price/profit ratio that will grab a good chunk of the niche audience that is excited enough to follow the ins and outs of VR development but not enough to break down and give a cheaper version a try.
It's easier to why some people are getting skeptical, even without getting into the possible facebook/oculus integrations or the orwellian data-mining possibilities. |
He does abuse it is the entire point of that quote. He was trying to willingly facilitate potential identity theft for thousands of people, and that's okay? Are you being serious? If so you need to gain some morals and ethics.
Edit: I value people's personal information and have worked in a heavily regulated industry where protection of customer data is of the utmost importance. Some entitled kid handing out what is essentially an identity theft package is not someone I want to handle my information. Google on the other hand, despite their legal compliance with some government programs, have protected their customer information tooth and nail comparatively. They were the only search company to refuse an FBI request for their records, they have great security, do not sell personal information, etc. Google values customer data as an asset whereas Facebook treats it like a commodity.
What's the one thing that would make me not buy Oculus? Tell me that Facebook bought it. Microsoft? Cool, definitely getting the next Xbox that's on. Sony? Awesome, I'll get that next PlayStation. Google? Why are you buying a VR company, but hey you know mobile devices really well (imagine Motorola engineers developing it further.) Facebook? Name one other thing you've made in-house that tells me you know what you're doing. |
Okay I'm gonna type this out cuz I maybe other users don't understand this as well, cuz it took me a couple of minutes:
The exact same comment thread, like copy+paste comments, were made in two separate subreddit threads about this deal. They were made under different account names so that means someone or something is using multiple accounts to spread the exact same idea. |
Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this. -Zuck from his press conference
A Piece of information I feel a lot of people didn't read thoroughly enough to comprehend. While I do not in any way condone Facebook's acquisition of Oculus, I do not think Facebook is willing to take a blow to their reputation big enough to wipe them off the charts. I Believe they will allow Oculus to continue what plans they did have, and then fuck it all up afterwards. And by that, I mean adapt Oculus into social media. I feel that Facebook will allow Oculus to, in a sense, guide them. Because in the end, wtf does facebook know about VR? Nothing, at the moment. They need to mine Oculus for all it's worth before tossing it to the side. This may include acquisition of knowledge, techniques, PR, manpower, etc. This is all speculation of course. |
I honestly believe people are overreacting to this whole situation. This won't be noticed by anyone, and when it is I expect it to be downvoted, but I might as well put my predictions out there...
The acquisition will, undoubtedly, assist Oculus in bringing CV1 to the market in an even better form than it would be without. $2 billion is not pocket change, and they now have the financial backing to dictate to hardware manufacturers that will create the products they desire.
People will see little to no effect of the Facebook acquisition until the launch of CV1 and most likely a little after where Facebook will eventually bring out a social, Second-Life-like, PlayStation Home-like, VR MMO to the market. I believe this is where Facebook sees their profit opportunity in Oculus. Facebook does not care directly about the hardware, nor do they care about people using it for gaming. What Facebook has acquired this for is so they can create a social VR MMO - something that I've seen many people ask for, albeit from a gaming company and not Facebook.
And yes, this will have advertisements on it. Not very obtrusively like some of you seem to be speculating, but imagine VR billboards as you walk down a street or watching a video in VR will have an advertisement before it (no different than YouTube). Facebook will also expand this VR MMO to include their more casual gaming line - so imagine this MMO will now have Farmville integrated.
I do not disagree that this sounds terrible, but my prediction is that this will remain its own separate entity and, guess what! If you don't want to play Facebook's shitty VR MMO, you don't have to play Facebook's shitty VR MMO!
In terms of the gaming-sphere, Facebook won't touch it. Oculus will continue to operate independently as it has before to bring good gaming VR to the market.
Moving into future versions of the Rift (CV2, CV3...), the acquisition will have minimal affect beyond providing Oculus with more resources to improve the quality of their product. You might see one or two useless features in there for the purpose of Facebook's MMO, but usage of these features will be up to developers to integrate them, so they'll likely be ignored for the hardcore gaming population. |
Imagine two timelines:
One where Occulus was not acquired by Facebook (for this hypothetical, disregard being acquired by anyone else.)
A second where they are.
Next, imagine some point down the line there is a decision to be made at Occulus. This decision could be about something like opening development up for all, or maybe simply having more open APIs. Maybe it's a decision about where to allocate resources: a feature that brings better realism or one where they research and develop APIs to allow comapines to better integrate social functionality in VR (not 'Likes', as everyone us fearing. Just APIs that allow companies to better integrate the platform).
I could think of a number of examples, but: In the first Universe, Occulus decides free from what would benefit Facebook. Facebook traditionally creates APIs that ensure they are still deeply connected to whatever usage it is involved in. They are also not very open with a lot of it. With the second example, the social development, the Facebook acquisition universe likely sees more push towards that development of social interactivity (good), but also keeps it proprietary enough that the APIs used always incorporate Facebook, scaring away/discouraging/prwventing other companies or competitors.
It works both ways, I know that. The second example of resource allocation is different under aqusition, where Occulus now simply had more resources and finding anyways and can Dev more. That's great. But if Facebook ends up trying to integrate them to their uses, their platforms, and force them that direction, that could hurt VR's future.
Many have predicted that Oculus is not just a product, but the thing on which hinges the hopes of VR being a success in the near future - to the point where if it fails to truly deliver, many see the reality of consumer VR pushed back another half decade at least.
Facebook may not be a bad owner. They may provide resources to truly help Occulus do more. They may even keep their word and simply give Occulus what it needs to be successful first and foremost on the video game front, keeping their hands off for a long while (and being open enough that Facebook functionality is simply an option, not inherent).
The problem is that Facebook has a stigma going. A pretty bad one in an industry of distrustful devs. Look at Minecraft developer Notch - He announced today, after the news, that he had now canceled the Occulus version of Mine craft, citing personal distaste for Facebook's practices etc. That's one negative already.
As I see it, Occulus had a lot of good will on it's own with the devs out there and the community. And this purchase will scare away a lot of devs who want it fully open and untainted to work with.
While the community might come around, they defintiely have destroyed a lot of good will there as well. So many people bought dev kits, and were planning on buying DK2 and/or the consumer version, but are now going to take a wait and see approach instead of actively promoting it enthusiastically through word of mouth like they've been doing. I'm an example of this - I personally was about to buy the Dev Kit 2 to play around with and code a bit for; I'm now going to wait to see how the consumer version manifests. And I'm wary to push a product with a future I'm not even sure of anymore (what that future is). |
I think you all got the wrong idea about this, hear me out.
Hundreds of years ago, The Human Being had discovered it was a better idea to digitize life for our species. Similar to the movie, The Matrix, only in concept. The Facebook Experience evolved through advanced A.I and V.R hardware to become a 24/7 Live Life Interaction Experience. (LLIEs)
LLIEs meant that those currently not participating are allowed to continue Non Obtrusive Peaceful Explorations (NOPEs) of the Universe without irreparable damage to our Species, Population, Environment and Others. Many Members of NOPEs have efficient lives maintaining the LLIEs system, though mostly automated, now. Living in close, tight-knit groups of family and friends, they continue exploring the reaches of The known Universe while risking mortality. Technology is now 100% powered by sun or gravity while all other non human life allowed to prosper by consuming resources where life doesn't exist.
The Human Beings current understanding of Natural Sciences has advanced significantly from 2014, enough to recreate the current Physics System (PS) employed in LLIEs. Mixed with sensors integrated on the brain stem, the PS replicates real life accurately down to sub quantum levels. Limits in the software include several situations not currently included in the written language of the humans in 2014. Many humans inside test the PS, and the code is often updated by AI and changes are approved by Human Moral Boards to insure realism to prevent users from walking up.
Ultimately this In/Out (I/O for short) system lead to massive increases to the carrying capacity of earth using cheap Genetically Engineered Vegetation(GMVs). By modifying the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), the code to life on earth, GMVs was the less obtrusive step to provide Human Life with the required energy to grow in size to currently, simulation population plus 100,000 (simulation population is Aprox 35 billion)
Those living in LLIEs repeat Human history from 5,000 through the invention of the I/O system to current day, but each Human only experience one life's worth. Each cycle only takes 5 seconds, so to extend the perception of time the mind may live. At the end of their life they are disconnected momentarily and are explained how the system works and any questions they may have are answered. They may continuing in LLIEs and may live in pitched situations , repeat a cycle of history ( each cycle has a different outcome based around different decisions made based off of chance) with the memory of the disconnect erased, or leave the virtual world entirely. It is currently impossible to reenter and re enter the same cycle.
What we are seeing at this point is the steps of converting to the age of LLIES, although we don't know that yet, so this post may cause some glitches. |
yeah... but heres the question... and I only look at this for the sake of seeing both sides of this argument.
Will Facebook replace the Oculus name? Will they call it the 'Facebook VR headset'? I don't think that's very likely. Let me make an example: Disney. Disney owns a ton of companies out there, but I can't remember one that had the name changed to 'Disney'. They own ESPN, and they kept that the same, they own Marvel, and only good things have come from that in my opinion, and now they own Star Wars. All three of those buy outs were excellent moves in my opinion, because say what you want about Disney, but they are one of the most consistently professional companies out there. Same for other companies like Google, who bought Motorola, and Lenovo who just did the same. They didn't change the names, they just wanted to give their innovation to something people already liked.
So who knows? I mean, I understand Facebook has received flak for some of the crap it's pulled in the passed, but at least it's not someone like EA. Maybe what we'll see is Facebook keeping the Oculus name, and only adding in some suggestions on what to do with it. Maybe they'll make some smart software decisions, and work to make the hardware less bulky?
I can see where everyone is facepalming and sighing, maybe even throwing popcorn at the screen, but let's put it this way: If Facebook WAS to turn this brilliant machine into something for browsing facebook, what would be the point? Who the hell is going to spend hundreds of dollars to slap this thing on their face just to make some face call? or surf their website? I'm no expert on the subject but based on other market failures, it would follow suit like any quirky thing that Nintendo has done with VR.
I can kind of invision a near future where Facebook realizes that software is not enough, and that wearable tech is becoming a necessity in homes, so by buying Oculus they've secured themselves some hardware to look into and borrow ideas from. Who knows? maybe the gamers will get their VR headset, and in a couple more years, Facebook becomes apple wherein they release a snazy set of glasses that puts Google Glass to shame, like Apple did to blackberry and palm with the iPhone? |
In Defense of the Acquisition
Remember when Disney bought Marvel? Everyone panicked, thinking that Disney was going to ruin Marvel by turning their backs on the fans and "kiddifying" their characters. Instead, we got The Avengers . And Disney is taking the risk on a Guardians of the Galaxy film. When Disney bought LucasFilm, we reassured ourselves with "Disney/Marvel went great, this'll be fine too."
A common theme I see in this thread is "Facebook is going to ruin Oculus with ads and social media integration!" But think about that for a second. Nobody is going to spend $350 on a Facebook advertising machine. Facebook knows this. So what's their endgame?
People aren't using Facebook as often as they used to. Sure, membership keeps going up. But we no longer spend hours writing on walls, poking people, using applications (remember those?). Young people are now more enthused with their SnapChats, Twitters, and Instagrams.
Facebook probably wants to get into the gaming market. They most likely want to build a service like Xbox Live, PSN, or Steam. They see VR as the next place people will spend their time, so they want to be there. Many Oculus games would probably get Facebook integration even without this acquisition.
And speaking of making products -- Oculus isn't "selling out" per se. If you want to make millions of these devices, you need money. For factories, machines, workers, shipping, packaging, distribution... if you want to mass-market a high-end product, you almost need to sell out to some sort of outside investor. |
That mostly confirms what everyone is afraid of. They aren't killing it to make it some kind of social network addon tomorrow, but yes that is what their future plans are for the technology.
>Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home. |
If you mean you don't quite understand what's going on in the image (as opposed to not understanding Facebook's practices), here's an explanation:
You can see on the left that user Lellux posted three different "defences" of Facebook's acquisition of Oculus. Legitimate opinions, right? Sure, until you look at the right part of the image.
On the right part, three separate users posted the exact same text Lellux posted in the other Oculus thread. The green-boxed comment is the same as the other green-boxed comment, the orange-boxed the same as its orange equivalent, and again the same for the blue one. What does this mean?
Facebook is actively trying to manipulate social media opinions by sending out commenters of their own, who are likely paid to post comments in their favour. To make the process as efficient as possible they simply have a few rote responses which they can copy across several users/accounts and several posts. Seeing as four accounts already appear to be working together on this (might just be one user, of course) from the image, it's very likely there are many more doing the exact same thing. |
Industry will argue that the Government shouldn't be allowed to interfere with how they do things on the internet. They want a free market (Which is not what Net Neutrality is), and people who like the idea of an unregulated and completely free market for everything will probably buy into that idea without thinking what it means... |
Except that's not what this is about.
The movie for canceled for one really simple reason, money. Movie exhibitors believed that the threats, legitimate or not, would drive away more customers than the movie brought in.
They're probably right, even if the movie hadn't been leaked in its entirety, it sounds pretty awful. More importantly, once the first exhibitor made the call to cancel showings the rest had to follow. If you're not going to see the interview why would you go to a theater with even a tiny risk if there's a pace without the threat. |
You have taken a position and I understand it. I actually agree with most of it. Accusing me of being a simpleton and trying to justify their decision is ridiculous. Refusing to understand why it is done just guarantees it will continue. |
You know, it's really strange.
I used to work for AT&T and I ultimately made a devil's pact with Comcast because I knew how awful U-Verse can be (lots of interruption in service, slower-than-promised speeds, and shitty support). Sometimes you could get lucky and find a good guy tech to go out of his way and fix issues off the book, but for the most part trying to get a connection problem diagnosed and fixed was like pulling teeth (I'm in rural Ohio). My mom has been trying to get AT&T to fix her bundled home phone and internet for TWO YEARS now... It's a losing battle at this point because she can't get anything else.
Anyhow, I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I haven't had many issues with Comcast. Some sales calls here and there, connection hiccups about once a year at most, and my bill is stable. My speed is as requested and I experience very little lag. Do I love Comcast? No, I certainly don't. They're a company and they should provide me with requested services, etc. Do I think they are shady? Very, but so is every other company (Comcast is in the spotlight and will be for a while, which is great for customers to have an idea of what can happen).
I guess what I'm trying to say is don't run off to another company thinking they will be Prince Charming coming to save you. Granted I've been very lucky with my service with Comcast (I live in a large complex; it helps) but I'm not naïve enough to think they are innocent. |
Long rant...3 months ago I moved to another state. I called a local comcast rep in my new area whose name was given to me by my new apartment complex. He told me that because I was moving so far away, it was a different network, and I'd have to cancel my comcast service and reinstate it instead of just transferring the account.
This man was very pleasant and did all of this for me. He told me I'd have to call corporate to have them remove the waiting period on my canceled account - apparently they don't actually cancel it for another 3 days after you tell them to, just in case you want to come back. In my case I needed immediate transfer because I work from home.
I called corporate and told the CS guy that I needed him to cancel the waiting period. This guy gave me a weird vibe and he was talking in a relaxed fashion instead of a professional manner, like it was his first job. He proceeded to tell me that the local rep I first spoke to most certainly was "playing me," and that he'd never heard of having to cancel service when moving. I pointed out that my new service had already been put into the system, so it was definitely a bonafide rep I'd been working with.
Never the less he continued to question and basically berate me for about 10 minutes for being so gullible and saying he doesn't know how they're going to fix all this. Plus, I'd given ALL my information to this person so they could set up the new account, what if they were trying to steal my identity? I had the name and the phone number of the rep I'd spoken with, but he didn't bother to look this up to see if he was actually a rep, or couldn't.
I get irritated and ask him to just please remove the holding period now, and if he'd like to look into this issue and get back to me that'd be great. He told me that he has to transfer me to account termination, he actually can't remove the waiting period. I was really upset at this point as I was in the middle of moving across country and very stressed. I did not want to have to go through this again with another person.
He transferred me over and after explaining my situation again and asking for the hold to be moved, the new account termination rep said yes, actually, I was moving networks and canceling and reinstating was the right thing to do. He removed the hold and my call was over.
If I could beat that first kid with a roller up newspaper I'd do it in a heartbeat. |
I've been a cox customer for almost 15 years. For most of it I had their highest tier internet, full cable services (minus movie channels and a few sports tiers), and I had phone service for part of the time.
They're pricey, but customer service is always acceptable. I've had one major issue that took me awhile to resolve.
I just moved into the house I live in now. I had their 80 mbps internet service, but routinely got around half of that speed via usenet and most speedtests. During peak traffic hours it was particularly bad. I bitched and moaned and groaned and switched modems twice and had techs out 4 times and got bill credits and blah blah blah... I even talked to their tier 3 support which I assume is their group of network engineers (no CS skills, very knowledgeable though). no resolution.
They couldn't fix the issue. They also never told me that the real problem was the node needing to be upgraded to handle their new higher speeds. I dropped down to 25 MB for 3 months, then went back up to the top tier and the problem was fixed.
I decided to go all torrent/netflix in June. I also decided to drop down to their mid-tier internet, which was now 50 mbps. This would cut my bill from around $260/month to $63/month.
I prepped for my battle. I had my phone recording, had my speech planned out, had all my equipment bundled up and ready to go. Then I called... It took about 10 minutes to cancel all cable and reduce my internet plan. They gave me a little hell trying to keep me, but the guy on the phone sounded like I was the 100th customer this month that was cutting the cord to go with VoD services instead. I returned my equipment, kept my receipt, and I haven't had one issue. |
This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes."
>You could interpret that as Comcast giving you permission to record the call.
I've seen people claim this in every thread about Comcast, yet I've never seen any proof that it is true.
When asked for sources to back up the claim the best I've ever seen is links to tech blogs or similar where the author claims it to be true, also with no evidence, or with case law that only applies in California. |
Verizon FIOS has been pretty rough for me.
1) They force you to use their routers , which are single band and not very powerful (most tech-savvy people can pick up a fairly decent dual-band N750 or N900 or higher router at Best Buy for fairly cheap, and it's a good investment)
2) Netflix is frequently throttled - your video quality will usually dip multiple times throughout a movie to become all pixely for 30-45 seconds, so you have to wait for it to buffer up.
3) Games are frequently throttled - when I try to play Final Fantasy XIV , there is a node that Verizon registered (found right in the 'whois' of the server IP) on the way to the Montreal datacenter of the game, and there's huge packet loss on one of the nodes, at primetime between 80%-100% packet loss. Your game will freeze for 20-60 seconds at a time if it doesn't just disconnect you. It's rough. The subreddit of FFXIV was polled and 50% of them have resorted to using a VPN that avoids Verizon's network and the issues immediately go away.
I called Verizon about the last issue multiple times and they have claimed that:
A) That node doesn't belong to them (they have no response to why it's registered under their name), so it's not their obligation to upgrade it to handle the bottlenecking going on
B) the issue lies with Square-Enix (even though the non-Verizon nodes and the datacenter are beefy and have no issues)
C) I was even told that it's a problem with the routers they give out and I could try buying a better one from them. |
They are both instances of a database being accessed.
Aaron was accused for the same thing the police are doing. They are damaging database integrity through malicious actions. The only difference you have pointed out is the fact Aaron was arrested. So all you have pointed out is the inconsistency of law.
At the base they are both actions of accessing a database for what can subjectively be interpreted as malicious actions. So sorry, you are wrong. Any person that downvotes is also a violator of ToS of reddit as they can logically be easily connected. You can create all the subjective arguments you want but in the end it is not a subjective matter, rather something that can be proven using simple logistics. |
Actually, I believe gmail was the 23rd employee's creation, for a better internal mail client because he hated what they were using. The team supporting it kept growing, and internal user adoption/love grew with it to the point where they decided to get it ready for public release. |
I don't think you realize how expensive fibre is.
averages $50,000/mile
the U.S. has more fibre than all of Europe combined
And this story gives me more material to cite costs.
Google Fiber : Spent $84M to run fiber to 149k homes[^1](
$563 per home
City of Longmont, Colorado : In 1997 spent $1.62M to run 17 miles of fiber along main roads:
$95k per mile
In 2012 residents voted 66% in favor of a $45.3M bond issue to run fiber to homes.[^2](
Population of Longmont: 88,669 (2012)
FTTH cost per person: $511
FTTH cost per household (assuming 1.9 people per household): $971
Villagers of Löwenstedt, Germany : collected $3.4M to run fiber to 620 homes in 2014 [^3](
$5,312 per home
British farmers in rural Lancashire : Raised £0.5M ($762k), and need another £1.5M ($2.3M). [^4]( They believe they can get the cost for FTTH down to
£1,000 ($1,600) per home
Sandy, Oregon : Issued 20-year bond for $7M, in order to lay 43 miles of fiber, covering 3,500 homes [^4](
$162,791/mi
$2,000/home |
you could have said the same thing about coax back in the 70's and twisted pair phone lines even before that
There's a political cartoon that I can't find, the character in it was being skeptic of public utilities. He talked against the idea of indoor plumbing, telephone lines, street lights, etc. because they were "too pricey" and "unnecessary." It outlines and supports what you're saying here, that these house-to-house utilities were indeed expensive but the implementation of it proved beneficial in many ways.
Allow me to expand a bit on some of what you commented in order to help the average Joe understand why the financial side of networking is always used as [a point of debate](
> . . . Obviously fiber has a bit more overhead associated with it, since you don't need a clean room/van and specialized technicians to install copper coax . . .
Fiber can be, and normally is, cheaper than copper for outdoor and regional network backbone (see bottom). People don't know that. Depending on [how many fiber strands, signal wavelength, singlemode vs multimode, and what kind of reinforcement you want]( it can be cheaper than copper. [Overall costs will vary]( depending on if you're [replacing cable/upgrading]( [creating]( or [extending a network](
/u/Titty_Sprinkle is right about regional costs and installation . Some smaller studies . [Termination hardware is much more expensive and requires more training]( I can terminate a jack in under a minute on a good day and an RJ-45 costs less than a quarter, if even that. Tools are much more simplistic, repairs are cheaper, and fixing mistakes is quick with little impact to connection performance.
Now, home-to-home installation/drops. Fiber-to-home is, unfortunately, expensive as said. Copper is cheaper by a long shot. On top of that, your home network is copper ethernet anyways. It makes more sense to use that in order to cut out the cost of another media converter. People who want fiber dropped right to their home don't understand how damned expensive it is: the shorter the fiber run, the more expensive it becomes. Installation costs (>$169) are justified given the materials, labor, and splicing required. |
So many of you are missing the point here. Municipalities are investing in building their own fiber networks so services like Google, Time Warner, Comcast, etc. have no other option than to lease the use of city/state owned fiber network infrastructure to provide their services. Municipalities have rights to deny outside entities from putting shovels in the ground and building proprietary corporate networks within muni boundaries, which forces an ISP to lease access to muni owned fiber infrastructure (provided the muni network exists and the ISP really wants that subscription base). This forces ISPs to pay a municipality to provide services on the existing network infrastructure or not enter the muni's market at all. Through this model of municipality owned networks, your subscription to an ISP would provide you internet service and also contribute to your muni's revenue since the ISP is paying your muni to provide its service over their fiber network. |
Got one, and loving it.
It's not quite a polished as the iPhone, but I love the fact you can open up and tinker with any aspect of the platform, and there's no arbitrary unilateral censor to get an app past before it hits the store. Half the best android apps I've downloaded are ones which replace and improve existing parts of the OS - a whole class of application that would be rejected out-of-hand by Apple's retarded app market policies.
Oh, and ignore the recent hooting and screaming from the peanut gallery over the CyanogenMod issue - along with his perfectly legal (and encourage by Google) custom Android ROMs he was also redistributing Google-owned apps, in violation of their licence agreement. All Google did was ask him to stop redistributing those specific "Google experience" apps and/or provide his own replacements, but predictably the screaming, poop-flinging segment of the community heard "CyanogenMod" and "cease and desist" and immediately started getting as much shit as possible airborne without stopping to check the facts.
Also: although I'm not exactly a seasoned mobile developer, Android is by far the sanest development environment I've seen. Most others are largely tied to one specific dev platform (iPhone), or chock-full of legacy crap and fundamentally hamstrung by missing built-in functionality (eg, the Blackberry, where you pretty much have to find your own TCP/IP/HTTP stack if you want your app to work at all for someone who has a regular third-party data connection, instead of the expensive "Blackberry branded" data account that pretty much the entire Blackberry API requires ). |
I am a molecular biologist, and have extensive experience in mammalian cell culture techniques. I have a few things to say about this:
Cell culture reagents are EXPENSIVE. A bottle of MEM/DMEM is about $10, with an academic discount. I have no idea how many bottles of MEM are required to make a steak, but from my experience it would be a lot.
The vast majority of tissue cultures must be supplemented with fetal bovine serum. Yep, it's exactly what it sounds like; some cows are slaughtered pregnant, and the serum of those fetuses is used to make the cells grow in-vitro. That seems to do away with the vegan side of this argument. Serum-free media do exist, but are drastically more expensive than FBS-supplemented media.
Copious amounts of antibiotics are added to tissue culture; otherwise the cultures WILL become contaminated and the tissue will not grow any more. I thought the veggie/vegan/natural foods people were generally against this kind of thing.
Sorry to be verbose, but I think these points need to be addressed. |
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