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While I am especially against SOPA, Nintendo has the most reasons to be pro-SOPA. Their consoles (well, Wii, GBA and DS) are among the most easily pirated and the most frequently pirated. They lose thousands of dollars a day because of piracy.
What I assume is happening with Nintendo is that they don't realize how much SOPA will fuck up the internet, and basically got the ' |
This whole contest was reminiscent of a childhood asshole. You know, that one kid that thought he was better than everyone else at video games, and rubbed it your face endlessly when he won. And then when he's about to lose, he shuts off the console or unplugs the controller and says "you cheated" or "this game is stupid". |
From an economic standpoint, any rational human being will act in their own self interest. Nobody does good things for people and does not expect anything in return. In this case, they simply believe that to them the marginal benefit of doing something nice for someone and getting a warm fuzzy feeling outweighs the marginal cost of them receiving nothing in return. Gates has donated a very large portion of money to charities across the world and has helped to shape the way our society functions. |
This is such bullshit. Apple arguably made the personal computer into the mass-media it is today, they basically invented the modern mp3-player and the modern Smartphone, they were the first to use a GUI (yes, it was invented at Xerox PARC, but the morons at Xerox passed on it and Apple bought the rights), they were the first to use a Desktop (as in the software environment), they invented the modern laptop (with palmrest and integrated pointing device), they invented Unibody manufacturing for Laptops (a technology every other brand is frantically trying to copy), they are the first to use a transflective LCD-display in a consumer laptop, they were the first to use a capacitive touchscreen in a Smartphone, they were the first to introduce multitouch trackpads (and are still the only ones to do it right), they invented the Mini-DisplayPort, they helped Intel develop the Thunderbolt interface, etc.
So yeah, they're aaaaall advertising, and they really get too much credit... I mean, can they do no wrong? FUCK no! But they do deserve quite some credit, because they have had a bigger role in shaping what our digital lives look like today than any other company I can think of.
And to all this "Microsoft was founded by a truly great guy" - BULL. SHIT. Gates was at least as big an asshole as Jobs was, he stole shitloads of ideas from Apple in the early ideas of MS, while playing nice with them. What he did was basically industrial espionage. And under his leadership, Microsoft destroyed more companies than you could possibly imagine, through hostile takeovers and tons of other downright evil (and likely not always entirely legal) business-strategies. Plus their monopolizing, anti-competitive and anti-innovative bullshit when it came to the web - if it hadn't been for Microsoft, the internet could be several years further in development.
Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, if I'd been in his shoes, and even nearly as smart as him, I would have tried to do it all exactly the same way. He was (and still is) incredibly intelligent, but he was at least as ruthless, if not more, and that is why he's rich. And I love what he's doing philanthropically, but everyone on reddit loves to forget what he did before he fucking quit Microsoft, and just circlejerk around how he's better than Mother Theresa. |
Nothing is "wrong", "right" is relative to one's frame of reference.
Your frame of reference seems to be highly slanted against Microsoft (typical), whereas mine seems to be biased towards Microsoft (atypical). |
no, but if you're regularly accessing a server in say Pakistan, or a proxy known to be used for criminal activity, that might be interesting.
as 0x0D0A pointed out above, apparently, services like google / twitter etc will also be expected to keep logs but I haven't seen that mentioned in any of the "official" reports?. I'm not sure how this could be enforced for obscure off-shore services. |
Yet another reason my long term plan is to move abroad. This island is a practical joke in so many ways now.
I wager this news could give new weight for the Scottish independence movement if they make a big deal over it, now I can see why some folks want out from the union. |
I really hope this is a badly written piece, a joke or something.
Otherwise they really have gone mad.
Presupposing GCHQ isn't doing this already (yeah sure they aren't) I sure as hell don't want this to become the done thing, making it legal is beggars belief.
The sheer cost of operating such a system will be huge, the storage required would be a data centre of epic proportions.
The complete invasion of privacy is a joke.
What if someone manages to compromise their databases? Even Google has had issues with people abusing their databases.
Are you telling me government employees aren't going to take a quick peek on their partners to check for infidelity etc...
Once a system is in place, it WILL be abused. So don't make the system.
Once again, a short sighted policy. They don't care about long term or privacy, just results... which will be awful.
Not to mention the people pushing this policy know nothing about what they are doing. It unstable from a technical and moral point of view. |
My mom says this is a good idea because she heard somewhere that the government needs to see just how savvy competitor governments are at stealing our good ideas. Then we can react to this knowledge by again increasing security... |
Sigh . OK I'll explain.
Currently an ISP buys say 1gbps of upstream capacity at a cost of say 10 000 dollars and sells this to 200 customers as a 100mbps service (i.e. 20:1 contention). Meaning each customer pays 50 dollars (ignoring profit). Since these are well behaved customers they don't download non-stop, so the 1gbps is enough to allow everyone 100mbps speeds for those short periods when they need it. Great stuff.
Now lets look at what happens when all these customers (except 1) follow your logic and insist that they deserve 100mbps all the time. 199 customers x 100mbps = 19.9gbps. But we've only got 1gbps of upstream capacity. Oops. So now this 1 remaining well-behaved customer's internet crawls through no fault of his own (this is the part where others are affected). In fact he just wants to check his email...but instead of 100mbps he gets ~5mbps. Damn.
Now parlov decided thats bullshit. If it says 100mbps on the box then they must make a plan and deliver. ISPs gladly comply with his request: They throw out the whole evil contention model and run on a pure 1:1 model. Everybody happy. Except parlov...when the 1 000 dollar bill arrives. Fuck. (10 000 USD * 100 mbps / 1gbps). |
This article annoyed me. I don't know if there was an editor involved in this process, though I sure hope there wasn't.
I think the number one question that people will ask when reading the article is: "How are they doing this?" Followed by: "Are they tracking our internet conversations actively? Or monitoring our calls and texts?"
RT's answer, second paragraph:
> Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence.
Um... okay. Again, how?
7th paragraph down:
> According to a press release dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports . . . [which are] analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”
Alright, what constitutes a "suspicious activity report"? Like when someone calls in suspicious activity on that hotline? It's looking like the most dangerous aspect of this is reporting that your foreign neighbor looks suspicious, effectively putting their name on a watch list. But RT's journalist didn't mention possible outcomes. He didn't connect the dots. Ambiguity is arduous.
And so is these burning questions that should have been answered clearly in the first or second paragraph: How is this more effective than facial recognition software, or conversely, how is facial recognition software better than this? Is it using facial recognition software? If so, how do suspicious activity reports tie in with this? Public cameras?
If they couldn't say anything more specific, due to the mystery surrounding the network. Which is fine , because it admits it. However, they said it was more effective than facial recognition software, so they must have something. I guess I'll have to keep reading this article to find what I want to know.
10th paragraph:
>“Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”
Another reiteration of what it does, not how it does it. sigh
11th paragraph:
>In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.”
Son of a... that's why you said it's more effective than facial recognition? Why didn't you mention that sooner?
12th paragraph:
> An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.”
Oh, so they appear to be actually using facial recognition software. We seem to be getting somewhere! Finally!
13th paragraph:
>Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the "See Something, Say Something" program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.
Alright! Some answers at last. It's actually using cameras, and something called iWatch. What's iWatch? Oh, a link that will explain it to me... in another article. I have to read another article to understand the context? Really? You couldn't have added a few more words to that sentence?
After checking it out, I found iWatch is a system in which citizens can report suspicious activity. This is much like the "See Something, Say Something" campaign used in NYC. All it would have taken was to put iWatch second, saying "which is essentially the same thing as 'See Something, Say Something'."
Okay, so, what I get from this article is that it uses some facial recognition on a few cameras, though primarily relies on citizen reports. I think this might be bad news for Muhammed Islam next door, but no one bothered following up on that question, so I can only speculate. |
I find this to be a little farfetched. Although my comment will probably get buried, I can give a sort of legitimate reason as to why older areas (and especially in the US and Canada, compared to other locales worldwide) is that a good majority of the copper cables are buried in older, built up areas.
Why?
Simple answer: it was easier to do it, the cables take less damage in extreme climate conditions such as winters and storms.
Why not dig up all the cables and replace them, you ask?
It would cost a BUTTLOAD of money. Not only that, you will be disrupting sections of work all over the place. This will lead to further unrest of their customers, as if they aren't already ticked off because of it.
The only places that are getting true fiber speeds are new developments, and certain areas that decided to have all service cables on poles, like Montreal for instance.
Also, the vast distances that it would have to cover would also be very expensive to service everything, which is why there is more of a push for wireless cellular services in North America over other countries. Comparing the size of France to the size of the continental United States or even Canada, and you can see why this is a bit of an issue.
I work for a big telco that is upgrading their existing copper cables to get 'similar' to fiber speeds for a new product they are rolling out. And I can tell you, about 85% of the cables are all buried.
The only way that you can essentially get these services is to move into a newly built house, or live in areas that have all their cables above ground.
It would cost way more in terms of dollars and time to change out all the equipment (not only to change the copper to fiber optics, but they also have to change out all the terminals that service homes and businesses).
Still, I do agree that the telco's are doing a bit of a bait and switch at times. |
The problem is not entirely the cable companies. The root problem goes back to the government, and the fact that they have such deep ties with the businesses. The second issue is the people. In europe everyone has more knowledge on technology (14-30 years of age), especially when it comes to the PC market. Young people control those markets because the old cannot adopt. However, in the US the majority of subscribers is often older people who have absolutely no idea what the difference between a 10mbps connection, and 20mbps connection, and think it will actually make their internet faster (whereas it's simply wider bandwidth and has nothing to do with delay).
I've been to a few places in Europe as well, and I've seen internet prices as ridiculous as 9 euros a month for 100/20 mbit (Romania, via RCS & RDS). The company now provides internet for practically the whole country, however, few know that it actually started only a few years ago in an average sized city where it was so popular everyone instantly switched simply by word of mouth. This can't happen in the US. To even connect to a local backbone you have to pay ridiculous fees. Then comes all the agreements, lawyers, and everything which just gets too expensive for any small business startup. |
In my opinion the problem is primarily these god damn lengthy contracts. They stifle competition. Also the complexity of the plans often makes apple to apple comparisons difficult if impossible. If you eliminate contracts and make switching easier the companies will be forced to compete or lose customers to the better company. For example prepaid plans are starting to become reasonably competitive. |
What "donotswallow" said also applies, but the article doesn't take a couple of very important things into account:
A little over a year ago, there was a massive strike involving the union the Verizon FiOs technicians belong to. Fiber optics are very expensive to install compared to your normal copper wires, which most of America already has over their heads. The higher cost of installing fiber makes it more expensive per month for the customer, but to try and bring the price down to a level playing field with their cheaper competitors, FiOs offered things like free installation, activation, installation, modems, remotes, DVRs, and other promotional deals to entice more customers to make the switch from copper to fiber. When the technicians' union went on strike, that CBA had to be re-written, and during that time many of those promotional deals were lost.
Once those deals were lost, FiOs was suddenly much more expensive for new customers, making more of them reluctant to switch. Coupled with the fact that RCN, a price-slashing machine, got their hands on their own fiber network, Verizon was stuck in a really bad position. They had to start working with smaller local cable providers to package their services together. |
Believe it or not, where I live the town has it's own (aggressive) local electric company. The electric company actually provides ISP service over the coax. They fought for permission from the town politicians. They hold town hall meetings about it and myself and neighbors organized to show our support for it. The town council actually thought that giving exclusive access to TWC for cable ISP and Verizon for fiber ISP was saving money.
Long story short, the electric company said they would be able to provide 20d/2u if the town gave them permission to use the cables my town laid and the other companies just used for 40 a month. This was better than the 50+ a month both Verizon and Time Warner would offer for a quarter or half of the service.
It's been a success. I suppose we pay for it in local property taxes sure. Cable subscriptions have dropped in the area. The only reason I can tell is because Time Warner sends out actual sales people door-to-door.
There is talks about what to do concerning phone service, but it isn't a big deal because a lot of people are moving towards cell phones which our town can't help with. |
lol plz. You know nothing about my views and beliefs. But ill bite for the shits and giggles.
>100 years later and we're still under the thumb of the same people who brought us the "Federal" Reserve regime, the Bolshevik Revolution, WW1, WW2 and the Cold War. The only difference now is they are stronger and more embedded than ever.
The Federal reserve is federal in name only and I find its actions and the people running it abhorent. Its stated purpose is fundamentally flawed in my opinion, but a nice idea that could possibly be somewhat more effective under different leadership and if nationalized.
The Bolshevik Revolution was brought about by Lenin and his compatriots, its a bastardization of Marxist aims and ideals and utterly depressing. In his seminal essay "What is to be done?", Lenin claims that a vanguard party must impose socialism forcefully, through propaganda and violence, on the wider Russian population before essentially fading into pure communism. Its deranged and its reliance on propaganda, coupled with its insistence that other ideologies be suppressed set the stage for later Stalinist purges and totalitarianism.
Moving on: WWI was caused by a clusterfuck of international crises and long standing international tensions, culminating of course in the famous assassination of Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand. From there, Serbia went balls to the walls and told Austria-Hungary it could fuck off; Russia attempting to improve its repuation and casting itself as a (false) protector of Slavs everywhere said "Yo, I got your back". Germany hops in with the AH empire, etc, shit hits the fan. Im not gonna bother going into detail of the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance and the trade agreements which led to it.
WWII - |
How is it stealing?
I have downloaded plenty of music only get tired of it quickly and delete it.
But the stuff I really like, I try to buy.
Today I use Spotify, but there is still plenty of stuff I can't find on there.
The truth is, most of the artists would never see my money if piracy wasn't a thing. They are lucky to get the exposure. |
The idea of governments controlling or putting restrictions on something that was built by the masses is beyond ridiculous. As John Perry Barlow explains in "The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," the internet does not operate according to the same laws that govern life in the so-called Real World. Not only is the ITU without jurisdiction on the internet - but, more fundamentally, it does not understand the how the internet works in the first place. Link, for those interested in reading more (This was written in 1996, by the way. Talk about prophetic.) ====> |
I always find it funny to add the word "Protection" to extremely controversial issues that involve human rights and privacy. It sickens me people aren't more aware of issues like this. For the past year and a half, people's digital freedoms have come under fire and frankly I am sick of it! I just want some independent thinkers who aren't skewed. |
I both agree and disagree with this.
The argument for it will always be that it's your body and you deserve to know anything about it that anyone else does, your doctor included. If you are an adult capable of making informed decisions, e.g. medical ones, then you should have all information that could be relevant. This is a fantastically good argument for it.
The problem is that most of us aren't capable of making informed decisions on highly technical topics. We aren't willing to put in the hours of studying it takes to process disparate pieces of information and come up with an informed and likely diagnoses. And while the internet does help the leanings towards the sensational and worst case compounds the issue. So when your doctor writes a list of possible complications based on your genetic test and you see it will you use your experience in interpreting genetic tests to reasonably judge which you should watch out for and which you shouldn't or will you freak and order that every time you see the doctor he test you for each adverse outcome you have increased risk for based on what you found online? Some will fall in one category some the other and most in between but doctors bear the brunt of increased unnecessary testing (and lawsuits because they should have known that person X had a 0.001% increased risk of outcome Y based on an inconclusive test they performed), our healthcare system is the worse off for it due to added unnecessary costs, and some patients are worse off because they will unnecessarily worry about inconclusive tests and risks that while possibly elevated are still vanishingly small. In the worst case a patient may demand (or independently seek) treatment based on a misinterpretation of what they read and thus harm themselves further. While this can happen even as things are now complete unfettered access to records may increase its incidence. |
And I respectfully disagree, although I may be biased as I am speaking from a physician standpoint. At the end of the day, it is our job to try and be your friend and advocate, and to help you with your health, because if we don't, who will? A computer could easily take your list of symptoms, analyze them, and spit out an orderly differential diagnosis. Hell, the internet already does that. However, it is that rapport you build with patients that often lets them open up to you, that lets them listen to you for things that might not be treatable with a simple 5-day course of antibiotics. And writing that Mrs. B's account "might be over-exaggerated" (although we'd pad that in subtext) is a great way to lose that trust.
Now, would I be opposed to people having full access to what we have written for past medical/surgical history and some of the more objective stuff? Not really. However, I'd be concerned if my personal notes showed up as well. It would promote intentional omissions (or at least, make us a lot more hesitant to write some stuff down). |
It's not condescending if its true. It takes doctors years of study to adequately use those tests to diagnose medical conditions. These tests require intuition and knowledge to understand and that knowledge is not available to the general public except in these Internet sources that take complex medical ideas, generalize and oversimplify them, and then "explain" them in a few paragraphs. |
As someone involved in the medical field, I'm against full electronic access, but limited access seems reasonable. The following is a breakdown of what the standard patient records may look like and what in my opinion should be allowed access to.
Patient history - This is basically a transcript of the patient's signs and symptoms and relevant medical information as told by the patient but written in medical terms and arranged in a cohesive manner.
Patient access to this can help in correcting any clerical errors.
Examination findings - Findings on physical examination of the patient is usually written here. Some of these findings are insignificant but when described in medical terminology may be frightening to the patient.
Undecided about whether or not patient access to this would have more benefit than harm*
Assessment - Based on patient's history and examination findings a diagnosis of what the most likely cause is, also usually listed any other highly likely causes
This is usually discussed with the patient in any case. No reason to withold. N.B. Possible point for litigation in event a particular diagnosis was not considered.
Plan - Investigations you'd want to do to confirm your diagnosis and rule out other highly likely causes. Notes of any treatment you'd like to begin, also any plans for referral or consultation. Again usually a brief explanation should be given to the patient about what tests you'd like to do and why, and what medication you are starting them on and why etc. There shouldn't be any problem with patient access to these notes.
Test results - Usually all results are recorded, significant results are discussed with patient.
Patient access to these are controversial due to possible misinterpretation of results and questions about insignificant values that would end up wasting physician time.
For these I'd recommend only allowing access to relevant results.
-Further notes - Other notes are usually just documentation for legal reasons. e.g. Notation of consent for a procedure, notation of a procedure that was done, notation of consultation recommendations.
These notes are more related to the doctor than to the patient, no reason for the patient to have access to these unless they thought there was malpractice in which the usual process of courts and lawyers etc would come in to play. |
What you're saying is a nice sentiment, but I think it may be too kind to the medical profession.
Anybody who has ever had anything obscure medically runs into this with MOST doctors and very, very quickly gets jaded. It's a problem with how American doctors are trained in med school -- they are not rewarded or trained to really connect with and have real conversations with their patients, and med students and students are ACTIVELY discouraged from admitting ignorance/fallibility. (For example, my friend in med school who avers that if it were known to her colleagues that she has depression, her career would be sunk.) In fact, they are selected (through testing and grades) to be best at rote memorization of medical facts, not at all for intuition or interpersonal skills with patients. Any people who graduate from medical skill with actual skill with patients do so by near happenstance.
I suffer from two chronic medical mysteries (that are now looking more and more to part of the same overarching never-before-defined pain disorder), my boss has a weirdo autonomic nervous system disorder (also very rare and not well-understood, but at least it has a name), and my brother-in-law had an unusually-presenting brain tumor, and collectively, we've been dismissed by dozens of doctors and hindered by so, so many others. Either they say we're just making it up, that's it's psychological, or we're just mentally labeled as annoying, needy problem patients and just kind of ignored/stonewalled until we take our difficult problems and their assault to these doctors' egos elsewhere.
I'm sure my medical records are littered with inaccuracies and statements that I'd find downright insulting, but, fortunately, my records are so bloated now that I bet few, if any, doctors actually read them. Also, I am the poster child for being my own advocate, so it doesn't matter so much in my case. But I often think how freaking lucky I am to be educated, to be strong-willed, to be freakishly self-assured, to have the time, and to have the physical capability to fight for myself. Thank GOODNESS my medical problems do not incapacitate my ability to get them treated. I shudder to think how many people out there are suffering because they are not this lucky. Because they, sadly, truly believe doctors over themselves, even if it doesn't make sense. Because they would never change doctors for fear of giving offense. Because they have kids to take care of and can't spend 7 hours researching online. Because they can't go to 3+ doctors appointments per week without losing their jobs. |
And... Nobody in this thread has any idea how to figure out what their time is worth. OK, let's start with a basic premise: there's no constant worth of your time. Generally, your first hour of work (or last hour of leisure) is worth very little, because if you didn't put that in, you'd probably be on food stamps, which is why people work (exceptions: very rich people, people who wouldn't make any money working, people who really like their leisure and don't want to work). So, let's say you work n hours a day, and thus have (24-n) hours of leisure. What's the marginal hour's worth i.e. the worth of your (24-n)th hour of leisure? It's worth whatever amount of money you'd exchange it for. For people who can work any number of hours, it's worth at least your pay rate, because if it weren't, you would work. If you can't work however many hours you like, then there's no way for an outsider to determine what the time is worth to you, but you can ask yourself the question "how much would someone have to pay me for me to be willing to give up this hour of leisure?" and that would give you the answer. This second method is available to everyone.
You don't need to be able to work more hours.
You don't need to have an hourly job.
You don't need to be willing to work more at your hourly job.
Somebody doesn't need to be willing to pay you anything.
You don't need to look at your salary.
You just need to ask yourself what the xth hour of leisure is worth to you. End of story. |
If EA doesn't want to be thought of as the "worst company" management at EA need to:
Treat their customers with respect.
Don't treat your customers like thieves, Don't nickle and dime your customers, Admit to failure & make changes to improve, Don't make excuses for failure
Treat their employees with respect.
Don't take advantage of the fact that you can get programmers for cheap, work them to the bone, then throw them away.
Don't take advantage of the fact that you can pay QA $9 hour to test your games. Spend more money on QA to get entry level programmers who have a better understanding of software to help find bugs. Fewer bugs mean happy customers, especially if you insist on always on DRM.
Don't buy out your competition, only to destroy the company and aquire IP. Cause that's fucking bullshit! |
I honestly don't think he could have crafted a better response, regardless of how shitty EA is to consumers and how insincere it seems to those burned by EA.
I read it not only from the perspective of a consumer, but also try to see it from the point of view of investors and (most importantly) employees.
Investors need to be reassured that although EA clearly needs go shape up, they are still virile and worth the investment necessary to provide a better consumer experience.
Employees need to know that they're not cogs in a horrible corporate machine somehow on par with the egregiously immoral and corrupt banking and carbon energy industries. They also need to know that their creative efforts are appreciated by many, even if not by the loudest.
You already knew before you clicked the link that nothing the CEO of origin could say would change your mind about how awful of an experience you've had as a consumer. This man knew that crafting his response. It would have been a waste to try to tailor the whole thing for you.
In perspective, I just appreciate that there was any desire to introspect and improve at all. Especially in such a specific, non-generalized manner. |
You're going to end up in a senseless argument with the above poster. Who the fuck can actually make a valid debate about whether EU countries are still countries? |
As someone who's fed up with taking political sides (all politicians are fucking ass holes, actually) I'm tired of seeing posts like this.
It's essentially saying "Only democrats think for themselves". This isn't so. I hate CISPA, and moreover I hate this ass hole. But people do genuinely think this is a good idea, and it's not because they're "blindly following him", it's because they don't understand what it entails because they often choose not to use the internet, or use the internet in different ways than most people. |
I'll try to answer as objectively and well as I can. It's a result a few main factors;
A practice called "[Gerrymandering]( where the body of representatives is allowed to determine the borders of their districts. As a result, lines are drawn to include certain demographics, essentially to help ensure that the district will almost always vote for a particular party. This doesn't always happen, usually in smaller districts, or states that are fairly uniform in opinion.
[US political parties]( While there are several parties in the US, at this point the Republican and Democratic hold a duopoly. The Republicans are the conservative side, or "right", and Democrats are the liberal, or "left". Campaigns in the past decade or two have become polarizing, so while maybe 80% of people on the spectrum have mixed views, there's a vocal 10% on the respective ends that push for the party. Also, candidates need to be all the way at one end or the other to win the majority on your side. While other options exist, they're given no respect because it's automatically assumed they'll lose do to being at a large disadvantage, so few vote for them anymore, because people want a winner. As a result, the two parties can put up whomever they want and the one who hate the least or somewhat expresses your views get the vote.
People actually support them. As a result of gerrymandering and political parties, a Congressmen can stay in office because they "support" the same things as their constituents. They are from the same areas, so they are able to build a base of voters and simply maintain if the district leans enough to their side.
Change in Americans, Apathy. I was told college is a great time of actual discussion and activism, however most of my fellow students care for little beyond themselves. They might show cosmetic support of popular causes. I know it dwindles out after graduation and over adulthood, but most of those in my dorms seem already there. I help what I care for, going to rallies, waking up early to help set up events, but it's always the same people that are there. Apathy, in that no one wants a challenge anymore. The excuse is always it's too hard or it will take too much time. We don't aspire to what we want or what's right, only to what makes easy money.
Change in Americans, Anti-intellectualism. There is a large and growing portion of Americans that are proud of not needing school. It's edgy and cool, if you're attractive then you don't need to be smart. If you go to college just take easy courses, don't be challenged, major in business, or accounting, or English. Oh, and all those hard science and engineering majors need to agree with us, and if they can't vent about their workload once because they chose that program. There still exists groups that are passionate about their major or knowledge, but they seem to dwindle, and are constantly mocked. It's part of a growing pressure to not be smart, to not stand out. The country that figured out and literally wrote the book on how to put humans on the Moon hates education, for reasons I want go into. Sure, pop songs and TV stars tell you to, but it's superficial anymore.
It's essentially a sum of these, plus the politicians having a shit tonne of money that allows this to happen. Sorry if it's too long, I hope I answered your question. |
Probably a massive internet outage forcing the reluctant and socially inept to force change. Sounds stupid but really - it needs to be something we ALL have in common. These days, that's pretty much our internet. Anything else and you'll just get groups of people who will get told by other groups of people they're being insensitive of other's views, and it'll get buried under the next wave of Kardashian fads, Harlem Shakes, American Idol water cooler chatter, and the insatiable Blue vs Red bullshit we all tell ourselves were sick of every 4 years anyways. |
This is an incredibly misleading article. When I read this headline I get the impression that special interests groups gave the House $84 million dollars specifically to support CISPA. However, if you actually read the article and click on the linked sources you will find that these special interests groups have given $84 mil to current House members period. There's absolutely no conditionality implied here (i.e. bribery). If Im a House member from Texas that happened to get a 20,000 dollar donation from an interest group in 2009 that happens to support CISPA now (despite CISPA not being a thing in 2009) that money is included in this $84 million number.
While I dont think CISPA should be passed, I don't think these tech websites that oppose it should manipulate the truth in order to lie to Americans and create a fervor that otherwise wouldn't exist (this is no better than the trash you see on FOX News) and this link should definitely NOT have 3,000 upvotes. Reddit tends to act like this enlightened community that's abovethe mainstream media and their backhanded ways however they constantly and I mean CONSTANTLY fall for shit like this.
Reddit needs to understand that when an article's entire thesis (i.e. 84 mil to House for CISPA yes vote) is a link to another website or article they need to click it and try to understand what is actually going on before embarking on the classic "OMG our gvernment is fuked - money is killing my voice i n politiks!!!!!!11" circlejerk that is so prominent on this website. Just read the article before making assumptions just please for the love of god. |
I think there's a difference between indoctrination and culture. For instance, you could say that people in Germany are indoctrinated into believing that a socialist state is the best thing for the people, because that is what they have grown up with. Thus they look at economic conservatives in the U.S. as lunatics. Not saying they are wrong, just that there is a difference between what a subset of a population believes and stating that they are being indoctrinated. This isn't 1984- people can choose to think what they want. I was raised by militant conservatives, and I've swung from far left to libertarian to moderate all on my own. Furthermore, the reason that Americans look down on China is not merely because China has a communist system, but because it has an oppressive authoritarian government. You may dislike Capitalism and think it is oppressive, but you can't argue that Americans will be thrown in jail for arguing with their government. |
Well you are clearly sympathetic to Communism and authoritarianism
You are the one sympathetic to authoritarianism here.
>, which I happen to believe fundamentally will never work because both are antithetical to human behavior.
Your beliefs don't really matter, do they? If you want to disagree you need arguments.
>So we are trying to have a discussion from across a vast gulf of ethical beliefs.
Obviously. However, don't dare to equate my behaviour with yours. You are self-righteous and delusional, unwilling to have a rational conversation. I'm here to discuss reality and provide arguments for my position to find out what is right.
>Agree to disagree.
There is no such thing. Either you are right or you are wrong.
The only thing I agree with is that you are delusional bigot not willing to admit that you have no arguments but still wanting to retain your beliefs. You are dangerous.
If you are not willing to discuss things in an intellectually honest fashion and change your beliefs after eventually being proven wrong then you must be exposed. |
I pronounce it that way because EVERYONE else does. Most people I know say gif with a hard g because I'm lucky like that.
> |
There is no literary rule that says the guy who first wrote an acronym decides how it is pronounced.
The is also no rule that says a letter in an acronym must be pronounced the way it sounds as its own word (e.g. JPEG is not pronounced Jay-pheg) |
Acronyms don't work that way though. Take "NASA". Both the 'a's are pronounced like the 'a' in "add". But the first one stands for "Aeronautics", so it should really be pronounced like the 'a' in "ate". But no one says it like "Naisa".
The pronunciation of an acronym is just something people make up that they feel fits the letters, to make it easier to say. Usually, there is one obvious, easy pronunciation, but "GIF" is one of the rare cases where there are two conflicting yet significantly popular forms. |
Surprisingly I never once said his word out loud until the last year or so when I corrected someone that said "giff". Then everyone yelled at me. And I still call it "jif." |
I remember reading the text file that came with CSHOW.EXE (CompuShow, a program to display CompuServe's GIF format) and it said it's pronounced like "jif". That was some time between 1987 and 1990. Back then you would pick a file you wanted to download from a BBS, wait for it to download, quit or shell to DOS from your modem program (like Telix) run CSHOW, pick the file and show it. There were animated GIFs too. They usually only had a few frames. It wouldn't be the whole picture (it wasn't a video format like we kind of use it now) but small parts of the picture. After CSHOW finished showing the picture it would make two tones in a kind "blip" sound effect. |
As a hippie linguist, I love and accept all pronunciations. I prefer "jif" myself, but am dating a "gif"-er, so I'm even more neutral. |
All you people talking about the way "graphics" is pronounced and crap. Listen, don't think, just look at the word:
gif
Read it as if you've never seen it before. There is no way in hell you would say that as jiff when you read it. Instead of constructing crazy reasons of why to pronounce it in the good way, lets just look at it and speak what we see. |
I think you are operating under some faulty assumptions.
You keep insisting this is some sort of "I'm right! No, I'm right!" playground type dispute revolving around literary rules and pedantic arguments.
While I can not speak for you, and will refrain from commented observation, I can speak for myself: I am making the point that the entire playground dispute taking place in parts of this sub is just silly. These are quibbles over literary rules. Rules, mind you, that change to reflect how languages are used, not the other way around. Words, of any and all type, change over time, and "gif" vs "jif" will be no different and, thus-far, has been no different. |
For starters, it's because our country is following Keyne's economic policies.
> The human being can consume so much and no more," Huxley said in 1930. "When we reach the point when the world produces all the goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably will, we must curtail our production of goods and turn our attention to the great problem of what to do with our new leisure.
That simply doesn't account for human nature. Human's simply aren't complacent. No matter how much money you have, you'll always want the next best/bigger/better X.
Also, those predictions all rely on an economy getting more and more productive, which ours HASNT. It's been in decline for a long time now. Just because the government can fabricate GDP numbers by fooling with a meaningless algorithm doesn't mean you should overlook common sense. To be more productive, you have to PRODUCE MORE STUFF. If we produce everything in China, and then burrow the money to purchase said products, and then turn around and count that towards our GDP, who's economy do you think is growing?
Another example, who is more productive, and who makes more money?
A Chinese man digging a hole with his chopsticks
A Mexican digging a hole with a shovel
An American digging with a tractor
why are they more productive? They have more capital behind them... |
Graphene is a super-conductor, it's not currently able to, nor will it in the near future be able to contain digital data.
The cost of creating something such as this, as a prototype would be prohibitive.
The markup for a product such as this would redefine the industry and would cause a huge outrage. After many years of streamlining and production these would become very cheap to make and would still be very expensive. I don't see this as becoming a viable option even within the next 10 years. |
The problem with the higher resolution is that there are no consumer formats (ex. HDTV or Bluray) that are in that resolution, you would still be watching your content in 1080 until a new format comes out. |
Damn. I want to hear the story. I really do.
Just not |
I appreciate your diplomacy, but ratemyprofessor.com is shit, and everyone in academia knows it. If your teacher does a good job, you pass the class and go on to the next one. But if you're a shitty student, you make a shitty grade, and then you go bitch about it because you feel that you are entitled to a good grade for all this money you are spending. In my anecdotal experience, easily 90% of the reports to the review board at my college were from students fitting this description. The remaining were ones with actual grievances that generally came down to an instructor applying strict rules to pretty harrowing circumstances (people losing pets, family members, or being in wrecks, whathaveyou, and having to miss major deadlines where the instructor wouldn't let them make the work up, that kind of thing).
The shout negativity from the rooftops mentality is a well known and understood principle that companies like Yelp and the BBB make a lot of money off of exploiting. We know that when people have a good experience, they are likely to tell their friends, but when they have a bad experience, they will tell anyone they can get to listen.
Universities (that are worth two shits) have an extremely refined and stringent code of conduct that all professors must adhere to, and excellent review boards that will examine conduct complaints. If there are serious ethical or personality issues, whole investigations happen to make sure the professors cut the shit or get fired. There are always a few people who feel that they got screwed, and a few of them probably did, but the vast, vast majority of students are protected and served by this process. All that ratemyprofessor.com is is a sounding board for those students who want to do as much harm to the teacher as possible, outside of the academic conduct restrictions.
/rant |
I'm not surprised even in the slightest. The University of Waterloo had students make a bunch of similar stuff (in particular an awesome app called "Course Qualifier" which showed you all the possible schedule combinations of a given set of courses for a given year and presented the list with all kinds of useful information, like earliest start time, latest end time, time between classes,etc).
I was on a new student team called on by the university to make recommendations concerning how the school should update its various tools (including the massive system that it uses for course enrollment, marks and student finances). One of our first suggestions was to contact the students that had made these tools and determine how to integrate them into our existing systems.
Everything we suggested was shot down as requiring too much work (then why did you ask us what we would change?). They then proceeded to change the way the students sign up for their classes in such a way as to make Course Qualifier completely useless and remove any semblance of control over how our school schedule looks from students (which is hell for any of us who need to work part time).
My experience is that universities have no respect for their students and want nothing but complete control over everything we do, regardless of how miserable that might make us.
...Yes, I have had some bad experiences with my school :P |
As someone who manages IT in a university: this happens every semester. The students focus on usability and connectivity, lately as it relates to mobiles. They end up making a product that is extremely useful and that students love. But then, here is a list off the top of my head that students don't tend to focus on:
security
compliance with state/federal and local regulation
documentation
support
maintenance
integration
scalability
uptime
Frankly, it pains me to have to shoot down some of these projects. At my uni we try to be supportive of such initiatives and we work with students who want to work with us on projects like this. But because they don't pay attention to that list (and other things that escape me now), if we kept these resources up we would be liable when they get abused/hacked, we would be guilty of negligence when the sites fail to implement law and regulatory requirements. When students graduate and move on, we would inherit systems that have no documentation and are impossible to maintain. When the systems that those sites draw information from change, the site would break and someone would have to rewrite it. When the community starts depending on something like this, we find out that what works well for 1000 students in the CS dept crumbles to dust when you allow 25000 people to access it .
The list goes on. Believe me, I do think that unis have the duty and the opportunity of using students to maintain our resources, as it is real world experience that they can use. But it is very hard to make that work in a professional, accountable manner. In short: if I fuck up, I get fired. If a student fucks up, it was just a learning experience. |
My job is actually to manage and update a course catalog at an institution. Switching platforms isn't as easy as 1-2-3. It has to go through various stages of approval and the staff has to be on board.
We recently switched to a new course management system. Doing so took over a year, and we're still transitioning in. And boy, are people unhappy about it. |
Solution:
1
Survey to see if 5$ rental of imaged YBB+ drive, to benefit charity has traction, if so:
2
Obtain permission to rent usb drives in an event for charity on or close to campus for 2 weeks. Mention a computer and 250 drives, will be donated in less than 30 days.
3
Buy 250 flash drives and laptop computer from Amazon, price ~ 1600$
4
Image drive with YBB+ using laptop.
5
Spread the word, imaged drive can be rented for 5$ and a 5$ security deposit. Mention 250 drives, or new replacements and a computer will be donated to charity, also 5$ is less than cost of drive.
6
Rent drives for class 'shopping' period, security deposit if returned within 24 hours.
7
Rent Drives
8
Replace drives not returned with daily order to Amazon & image
9
Donate the computer & 250 drives to charity.
10
Profit ! |
You don't even have to do that. My mom was on city council in a smallish area of KS that incorporated local farming areas. The city of about 5,000 people got 2 representatives on the council as did the 2 incorporated agricultural areas. The problem is that the other areas only had about 500 and 200 people yet got the same amount of votes as the 5,000.
My mom recognized how fucking absurd it was that 700 people get twice the representation of 5,000 so she put on the ballot a proposition that would make it 7 seats that go to the 7 highest voted within all areas.
Now you would think that people in the city would want better representation, but they overwhelmingly voted against it just because they don't like change. About a decade later the state took notice and forced them to change voting boundaries. |
That's overstating it. San Francisco was a great city before computers were invented, before the Internet was invented etc. It's economy has been decent and diverse for a very long time. And it's governance has been crap for almost as long.
San Francisco is turning into a tech version of Manhattan. I find that a bit pathetic.
Manhattan is an almost exclusive home to billionaires, who lobby governments all over the world hard. And thus have insane levels of power, both financial and political.
San Francisco is becoming an almost exclusive home for techies. And they do make significantly more money that the median family income in the US. So they too can price out almost everyone out from apartments and houses. But they are NOT billionaires, or even millionaires.
Except for the very few founders and CEOs, who also have apartments in Manhattan, the techies are working stiffs. They work for someone else. They have little to no political power. |
there is really only two ways to drop overages for voice and text.
we add on a plan that would cover the overages(say any unlimited plan) and then back date the change to the start of your billing cycle, that way the system thinks that you never went over any minutes and would remove said charges immediatly.
we credit the overage charges and start you on a plan that would cover you in the future |
Yes.
I'm a tmobile customer. They're not all roses and blowjobs. Their throttling is punishing, they add a 1 year contract if you add a phone that you paid for yourself, the throttled international data thing I'm sure is great but requires a move to the most expensive plan, etc.
A lot of these headlines don't tell you that you need to buy the $80+ unlimited plan to get any of these perks. I have two lines. So $160 plus taxes turns out to be a $200 bill for us. Now are you subsidizing two phones at $40 x 2 a month? So almost a $300 bill? Err, sorry, I'm okay with the cheaper plan and buying two google nexus's. You really need to work it to get the deals. On the higher tier they're no different than verizon or AT&T and VERY MISLEADING. |
I despise the nothing to hide argument as justification for the invasion of my privacy. A few months ago I wrote a piece to try and summarize why it is both a silly and dangerous argument and I paste herein below for your consideration:
The recent revelation that the National Security Agency in America has deployed technology to monitor and record the digital activities of citizens in that country has made headlines around the world. Americans seem to feel hard done by, since the NSA is not mandated to spy on Americans – they are only authorised to monitor non-citizens.
There have been all sorts of responses from the left and the right. Those who buy the fear factor presented by terrorism are saying that if you have nothing to hide, then you should appreciate this type of surveillance. For others it sets a dangerous precedent which they feel could lead to a fasistic state like Nazi Germany. Both these groups are understandably emotional about the issue.
The “nothing to hide” argument is a difficult one. It makes sense, but only if you do not take time to consider the implications. Why do we then bother to wear clothes? And what about Nazi Germany? How would this argument have supported the facistic cause? Could history be repeating itself again?
In his book IBM and the Holocaust the investigative journalist Edwin Black details the business dealing of the American-based multination corporation International Business Machines and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler during the 1930’s and the years of World War II. In the book, Black outlines the way in which IBM’s technology helped to facilitate Nazi genocide through he generation and tabulation of punch cards based upon national census data.
Hitler came to power in January 1933 and repression against political opponents and the country's substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned. On April 12, 1933, the German government announced the plans to immediately conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies and other ethics groups deemed undesirable by the regime.
IBM owned 90% of its German subsidiary which was know as Dehomag and through it offered to actively assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating first on the 41 million citizens of Prussia. In October 1933 IBM’s chairman Thomas Watson travelled to Germany and immediate ramped up IBM’s investment in its German subsidiary from 400 000 to 7 000 000 reichsmark (about $1 million). This enabled Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin and construct IBM’s first factory in Germany thereby tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime.
From the aforesaid it is clear that the “nothing to hide argument” is dangerous in its own right. A government, under the auspices of a census, asks its citizens to indicate their religious affiliation and surely that is nothing to hide, right? Then later that same government uses the American advances in technology to identify and persecute those with the “wrong” religious affiliation.
It is admittedly a bit extreme to compare America with Nazi Germany, but I am sure you get the point – what is innocent and acceptable today, may not be so tomorrow and how do you then retract or hide your affiliations? Many people tend to forget just how permanent their digital tracks are and that is where this surveillance is of concern. Your digital life can not be undone – it is for keeps because computers do not forget.
Over and above the violation of the human right to privacy, surveillance can also lead to the intimidation of certain societal checks and balances such as the relationship between a government and the media.
In the past if a government wanted to know the source of a journalist, it would have had to subpoena the jounalist and then actually get the journalist to say who the source was. Today they can secretly subpoena the journalist’s service provider, obtain a log of all calls made and received and then from there the source can then be identified. This means that news organizations would never know when its records are being obtained, news sources would become less willing to speak and "the public will only know what the government wants them to know."
It is important to put the premise under which mass surveillance is being done into perspective. After the second world war the military-industrial complex used communism as a theme to drive the arms race and create what was known as the Cold War. Today western governments are using terrorism to justify the wholesale surveillance of their subjects. The war on terror is seemingly perpetual and there is no end in sight.
Just how many people are killed in the west as a result of terrorists? Quite frankly every death is a tragedy, but it is simply ingenious to create such an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt around terrorism. To put it into context:
(1) More people die in the USA every year as a result of falling in their bath, than from terrorism.
(2) More people are shot and killed by the police in the USA every year, than from terrorism.
In the light of the revelations of mass surveillance Barack Obama tried to justify it with the following statement: “ We can’t have 100% security, with 100% privacy and 0% inconvenience.” This statement fails to highlight the fact that noboby can ever really have 100% security – not event the president of the USA. Regardless of how many of our civil liberties we sacrifice, we will alsways be vulnerable on one level or another.
Of course all of this is just about the NSA’s surveillance of US citizens and the American public is understandably and visably upset with being monitored. As for the rest of the world, we are expected to just accept this invation of our privacy. The NSA in America currently collects 2 peta bytes of data outside America every hour. That is 2 MILLION GIGABYTES per hour.
Benjamin Franklin said that those who are prepared to sacrifice their civil liberties for temporary safety deserve neither lberty, nor safety and I agree with him. There is a reason why your human rights exist and if your elected representative says anything else, I urge you to reconsider your vote. Stand up for your rights, or we will all be trampled. |
Why do we want people to drive electric cars anyway? Norway is practically self supplied with electricity (99%) trough mostly eco friendly wave power. If everyone or even a large portion of the population starts using electric cars we wont be anymore, and we'll have to import power trough EU. This means in all probability from Germany, most of that electricity will have been produced trough coal plants, all you do is move the exhaust pipe from your car to a plant in Germany, which doesn't create a more green enviorment.
Other points is that the batteries you have on an electric car is not degradeable, even over longer time periods, which hurt the enviorment if not properly disposed (I.E. in lead barrels or mountain storage.) This is not cost efficient nor is it eco friendly. Only way this would work is if we (Norway) invested in Thorium power plants. Now that's where the future is, problem is people hear "power plants" and freak out, without even knowing how a Thorium reactor works. |
I'd be really happy with my (old) Samsung phone if I could upgrade my Android version, get rid of apps that I don't want but have no way of uninstalling, and have years-old Android bugs fixed such as the one that is causing it to run out of internal memory even though I delete messages etc. attempting to free up space. |
If we assume terrorism kills 52 people per year (Assuming we have a July 7th style bombing each year - [Details]( In reality it's not even close to that, it's around 5 [LINK](
Anyway lets go with that figure. And lets say a UK life is worth $1.7 million [Source]( That's a cost of $88m or £58m per year. Being very generous, I'll round that up to £100m per year to include injuries and similar. I increased the number of lifes lost by an order of magnitude, so this is probably too generous, but lets see how that compares to the internet.
Well, it seems that our economy based on the internet is £118b during 2011 and the was expected to nearly double by 2016 [Source]( It seems the UK economy is roughly twice as dependent on the internet as other G20 countries...so if we mess with it too much and companies leave, we could perhaps lose as much as half that value. |
First things first: This does absolutely fuck-all for connecting devices to the internet. It also doesn't do shit for almost anything else. That said...
Can this make a difference on audiophile-level gear, when connected to, say, a DAC? The answer is yes. The caveat: we're talking about the ultra-high-end. The way traditional audio sources work is everything is built out internally--the result is PCM audio leaving, for instance, a CD player. When you get to the crazy high-end, PCM audio does not leave the transport. It's sent over I2S, for which there is no standard protocol or re-requesting. That's where this gets a little wacky. The I2S transmission is all handled internally on 99% of devices you see. If you buy a $25,000 audio transport, a $50,000 DAC, and $10,000 re-clocking piece, that's all getting transmitted over I2S, not PCM, which is where you'd actually give a shit about ethernet cable quality.
The difference doesn't exist if your signal is buffered enough, but audiophiles hate that, as it has the chance of introducing more factors to the end result than they want, as they're aiming for the absolute minimum latency. When this transmission gets fucked up (and it does, always, to some degree), you get jitter. Which, again, 99.9% of people won't hear, but audiophiles will. It's a curse, and a very expensive hobby, but they're not crazy people, and cables like this do, in fact, produce an actual difference in those instances. Just don't expect it to a single bit of anything on your AppleTV.
If people claim they hear a difference for their streaming audio, they're loopy or it's just the placebo effect. This is aimed at a VERY niche market (maybe a couple thousand people in the country own stuff where this would matter), so yes, you can mock almost anyone who buys it, but that doesn't mean it's not a legitimate product. It's just not for...well, almost anyone. |
As for AI - well, if we create an artificial life form in such a way to let it run amok and enslave humankind, we're idiots and deserve what we get.
If that came to pass, it were a sad day for our race, but at the same time our greatest triumph, and (if you believe in such a thing) the true fulfilment of a destiny that started when one of our ancestors first evolved the stick to the spear, and the spear to the bow.
It has always been our greatest distinguishing feature that we achieved domination not by physical aptness, but by shaping tools to control our environments- in effect becoming a new, "super"-being, man coupled with technology. The only weakness with that system lies with the biological part, which is still given to illness, death and irrational drives (such as our competitiveness, which has no place in a world of plenty).
What a chance, what a triumph to be the figurative fathers of something greater than ourselves- a true new lifeform, unburdened by the toxic mammamilan ancestry, a lifeform with the power to understand and redesign itself at will. Technology unshackled by human constraints and sensibilities- a spear that no longer has to rely on the spearman not to mess up.
So what if that lifeform decides to snuff biological life (although I see very little reason why it would- do we go out of our way to obliterate flowers, or beetles? We might step on them once in a while, but since they do not inconvenience us, why would we seek to eradicate them?)? We will still be remembered forever by our children, and (in difference to us), our robotic children are much, much, much more likely then we will ever have been to pool their energy to leave the stifling confines of earth, and eventually the solar system, and given enough progress perhaps even the galaxy itself.
In trillions of years, when humanity would have blown itself up, or bred itself to extinction, or fallen prey to some other organic life-specific fuckup, our children might bask among the stars, colonize distant worlds, see things we never dreamt of, and carry our legacy to the farthest reaches of the universe.
Our death (if it should come to that, which again I doubt) will be absolutely insignificant in the face of such achievement. We will have been literal gods. |
To me, this is obviously just a public show of face for these firms to quell angry consumers, while behind the scenes they are still 100% complicit with intelligence agencies in allowing backdoors to be built into their products. After everything that's come to light in the last few years I have zero faith in this industry with regards to protecting our data -- and that being said, I think its up to us (the individual) to be proactive about taking all necessary steps to at least afford ourselves a thin veil of protection eg. open-source encryption etc. etc. |
Me too. I figured this to be a FTFY or |
Soviets used a few systems back in the day, this was to rule out chances of having "false positive" readings.
First one was the "over the horizon" radar system, made most famous by the giant rusting detection screens in the radiated zone near Chernobyl. Basically, it would scan the direction it was pointed in for large amounts of heat produced by the ICBM.
Naturally this system by itself posed problems, there was a case where they did manage to get a "false positive" reading that one ICBM was being launched due to a solar flare / glare off of a cloud. They later implemented satellite detection systems much like the US used at the time to rule out false positive launches and implemented better software for there computer systems for both systems.
But don't think they are the only ones to have had "false positives" before with ICBM launches. One of the most famous incidents in the US's case was when someone accidentally left a "training tape" used by the shift before hand, that was left in the computer. Next shift arrived for work, and shortly after they began working when they detected that the Soviets just "blew their wad" and started launching nuclear weapons on masse, luckily someone checked the computer before they started launching...
No system is perfect and quickly became evident to the top generals in both the US and Soviet Russia that they needed the "human touch". When the Soviet perimeter (the so called "dead hand" everyone mentions) nuclear defense system was put into work it was originally 100% autonomous. Shortly there after, they (the Soviets) realized this was foolish and could be prone to errors which is why every system on has relied on multiple sources of confirmation and the guidance of human beings to activate and launch the system once confirmed that they are under nuclear attack.
edit:
For got to sum up the post. |
I flew to UK last year. On the way back, I was singled out three times. Once in Manchester, and twice in Newark, NJ. Customs and then going back through security to get to my home airport.
I had my vacation cut a day short from a delay going there. I had issues with my ex-girlfriend when I was there. I had to sit 6 hours beside extremely obese English citizens on the transatlantic flight. I saw their passports so I had a chuckle but was in pain being my torso was against the window armrest that did not fold up.
I forgot to shave was too lazy to take off my jacket since it was cold and raining in Manc, go figure. It was as well in Newark. So they assumed I must been a terrorist. Oh no.
I was made to stand in one of those plexiglass boxes the third time. Patted down and felt up pretty good. Have my laptop swabbed for explosives.
I told the guy it had been the third time and he couldn't believe it. I laughed at him when he asked how I was doing. |
As I comment every time this thing makes the front page (about once every 6-8 months for the past 5 years) this thing is not really all that useful. The odds of injuring yourself in home use are so small that it's not worth it for private owners . . . and businesses don't like it because of the false trips--the thing is likely to engage if it hits a nail in the wood or even occasionally because the wood is damp. Because the bolts used to stop the saw blade are explosive (only way to get enough force quickly enough) they're a huge pain and expense to replace, and you of course can't use the saw until you do. They would rather deal with paying out workman's comp than have hours of unnecessary downtime on one of their saws |
A "living document" model doesn't make sense for a standard. Versions have meaning . When you say that a browser supports HTML4 or CSS2, that should guarantee that those standards are all followed. In a living document model, what do those standards mean? If you can change the standard, how do you define what level of support a browser has?
WHATWG has forgotten, that the support model they intend to adopt, still has versions, and those versions are meaningful. |
Thank god someone has brought this to life. I'm been struggling with iqmsd hogging up 100% of my AT&T Xperia play cpu. iqmsd is a service related to Carrier IQ. At random times during the day the thing freaks out and runs 100% until I restart the phone.
I had no idea it was happening until I noticed my battery life dropped to just 8 hours IDLE. Yes, idle and unused. My battery should last a couple days. This is not at all normal. The phones interface was also annoyingly slow and would lock up.
I was Curious why so I downloaded this app "SystemPanel" which gives you a little bit more information on battery life, and even logs history of battery and cpu times of all applications and services on the phone. I found when the battery charge would just dropped and found this Iqmsd service causing 100% usage during that time. There is no way to disable iqmsd, carrierIQ, without rooting the phone. You can only merely restart your device.
It seems random but I believe it's related to switching towers since the logs show that it mostly begins on my drive to and from work.
At this point my only option is rooting and following some moderately complicated guides on scripting out this "spyware."
By the way, just checked my phone again. Stupid thing is 100% again. Happens about twice a day. |
They monitor the keystroke events, however I've yet to see confirmed proof that they #1, store this data, #2 transmit this data. What is demonstrated in the video is only that they are monitoring keystrokes. There's sometimes reasons to tie into those events for purposes besides recording keystrokes. I think that's a flimsy reason, but there is a chance they are not lying and they are only monitoring those keystrokes because of a lazy programmer. From the video I'm guessing they are using this for aggregating data on use of home, menu, back button, and search button.
I don't agree with what they're doing, but their described purpose of the app, to collect anonymous usage statistics for use by the carriers, can only be done with a very wide set of permissions and by receiving events with much more data available than required by their app. My understanding is there there is no simpler API for them to only get the subset of data they need/want. It'd be better if this app was disclosed and participation was optional, but the current outcry seems overkill without proof they are recording and transmitting specific keystroke data. |
Driving back from my university some elementary kids were walking home and I guess they were just play fighting, but one kid like 7 years old fell over and started laying on the side walk in the fetal position for around 15 seconds without moving. As I got closer, I stopped, rolled down the window and asked if he was ok. He sat upright immediately, looked at me with horror said yeah, then started to run as fast as he could. |
Your #2 is absolutely correct from the browser software's point of view, but "corrected" in the datastream view.
Safari's URL bar is what was being logged, otherwise what you would be seeing in the log is "GET /search?q=hello+world" - that would definitely be "decrypted", unless it has a trap in the SSL encoding library, logging the input stream. |
I think this is a common misconception in that fraud <=> lie. Fraud is a legal term, related to telling a lie that a court can debate and have difficulty proving, due to the "intent" portion. How can one prove intent unless the defendant admits under oath it was done with intent? One can always plead the 4th.. A lie, is much simpler in that it doesn't necessarily involve intent. |
How long has this been going on for?
Well I rooted my android about a year ago and at that time there were specific methods for disabling carrier IQ. It's always been pretty clear what the app was for, nobody was really hiding it. The funny thing is, we knew it had to be a pretty extensive system just because of the battery drain! The main reason android hackers remove it is for battery life; it constantly (think every 10 seconds) sends sms messages and can run the processor over 25% when the phone isn't even in use. With all that going on in the background, it must be collecting a ton of info. |
I love that nobody ever reads these articles.. the [single page version]( would be better.
>The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day.
...
>It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
>But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.
...
>“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.” |
My question is, what do you think we can do NOW, considering most of us don't have the funding or resources to do so?
As for individuals, I think we need to take advantage of the incredible opportunities and resources we have at our disposal to really develop our skillsets. One of the biggest problems I see with Canada and the US right now is that students have to take on a huge amount of debt to get an education. This pressures recent graduates to focus on just getting employment to pay off debt, rather than ensure that they are getting a job that will develop their skillset. There's also a huge opportunity cost in going to school, which incentivizes people to do all their schooling right away, rather than perhaps wait until they've achieved enough life experience to really know where their passions and abilities lie.
I also think there's way too much emphasis on educating for employment. It basically forces students to decide on their path way too early in the process. That's part of the reason that the US has a huge glut of law students right now. Being a lawyer is a very visible, famously lucrative profession. Since its so visible, students are more likely to pick it over other educational paths, and you end up with an inefficiently large number of law graduates.
Part of that is also an informational problem. There's not enough info on what kinds of jobs are in high demand, and what training is necessary to get there. In the US especially, where many educational institutions are effectively for-profit, you have the additional problem with schools educating based on student demand, rather than market demand.
Investing in education is also important because it's where a lot of the innovation comes from. Some extremely important research comes out of universities, funded by government grants, which has huge rammifications to the economy down the road. Relying on firms for all your innovation isn't enough, as firms are only compelled to research things that will be profitable in the short to medium term. Universities produce research that has general ramifications, that are a benefit to everyone.
So |
My main issue is while "willful copyright infringement for commercial purposes" is illegal and hard to justify, I don't get how the entire site has to go down because of it. I don't see it to be any different than say a finance company who had rouge employees following illegal practices - by all means give the individuals a court trial to determine guilt, but would you shut down the entire company at the same time?
The RIAA and MPAA would rather go after the most obvious services than take on individuals, because copyright infringement is practically a commonplace event. Half the problem is that they have pushed the government so hard that "fair use" has been marginalised and what should be legal use of purchased material is often treated as illegal - ie. if I buy a movie on Bluray, I feel that I am not committing any crime in downloading it off the Pirate Bay so I can put it on my iPad and watch it later. Like many I'm too lazy to learn how to get a high quality rip from the hard media I purchased, so I take the easy route. In my own mind this is fair use - I have purchased the item and am using it for my own personal use. Also I will often download pirate PC games and play them to determine if they are worth purchasing - often a demo version is not available at release (or even at all!) and I'm not willing to pay $70 for something that may be total crap, but more than willing to pay if it is actually good - my Steam/Battle.Net accounts are proof of this. |
I feel like looking at this from an evolutionary standpoint. Every website that does this is effectively dead. Their revenue will drop through the floor. The ones that are still left over will make more money than before due to a lack of competition.
The question becomes: can the government take these websites down faster than the files can be copied to other similar services. Factor in that it took them months of monitoring megaupload to get enough evidence to bring them to court and you get a clear answer: no fucking way. All that this means is that there will be a quicker turnaround in which websites you use to watch things on, not that there will be no websites to watch things on. |
The judge mis-signed this ruling (that someone else had typed up for him) thinking it was something different. |
Its not really all that complex.
take an existing LCD and open it up. there you will find in behind/beneath of the pixel panel, for our case will be a panel of white LEDs which with this tech that looks like nothing more than a tinted screen protector but is sandwiched in between the pixel panel and the backlight (LEDs). Those LEDs will no longer be white but blue what ever nm wavelength they deem optimal. the qdots will either be red or green. so you have pure blue that passes through and essentially pure green/red (even distro unlike OLED as testified by the pixel arrangement in some smaller screens). So instead of having only white light which is filled with the noise of the other colors illuminating the pixels now you have a blue backlight for a blue pixel, and red and green QDOTS. so depending on the number and groups of LEDs backlighting the LCD you can get more color saturation in each pixel per color, extending the gamut ~50%. Think of it as a prepixel filter. |
It's also somewhat hard to know the actual value of the internet to the economy.
To the extent that people want IT, and cell phones and all of these internet connected devices... well... we wanted them before. Not quite the same devices to be sure. But it's not like there weren't computers and cell phones before the internet was popular.
The internet as a macroeconomic benefit in isolation is really hard to pin down, and for all of the benefit it has, my internet and internet related spending are still maybe 100-150 dollars a month (internet + internet only things). I still bought games before internet access, I still watched movies etc. But my mortgage and car vastly exceed the value of internet.
If you have a look at which is, admittedly, not the economy as a whole, but a sample of some of the really big players in the global economy, the first 17 are all basically oil/gas/retail/cars. All stuff that was still around before the internet and still huge back then. Even the big telecoms companies were huge before the internet.
As big as computers are in the world, computers are not solely about the internet. And economically we still spend the vast majority of our money in the world on housing, cars, food, and other related goods. The internet is definitely a huge social phenomena, but in terms of the net economic benefit of the internet itself (as separate from computers), it's not on the scale of things, that huge. It's important because even if you grow the economy by 3 or 4% that's 3 or 4% that didn't exist before. But 97% of of spending in the world would be mostly unchanged. We still need aircraft, and healthcare and cars and houses and oil and gas and TV's and toasters and dishwashers and beds and computers and telephones and nuclear power plants and all of those things that people spend all of their money on. The internet may be a different distribution mechanism, but a lot of times it's still selling you a product that people were buying before.
As much as the internet can drive economic growth it can also sap productivity (see reddit), and only be a faster way of doing something you could do before.
is a nifty chart, I suspect it applies roughly comparably well to Europe, Japan the US, Canada australia and other 'developed' countries. The economy, give or take an economic downturn and outsourcing to china, is not radically different from 1997 to 2007, and probably you could say the same out through 2012. |
I agree wholeheartedly that Obama has done many despicable things. I also agree that he has not been held accountable by his supporters for any of the things he has done to hurt the cause of human and civil rights during the course of his presidency. I think he has knowingly committed war crimes. I still think McCain would have been worse. Sorry. I also think that Obama's bullshit is not his program exclusively, but the new standard of American presidency heralded in part by George W. Bush. They do whatever the fuck they want, they go to war without congress, they piss on the constitution every morning. It's the standard of American politics, and we allowed it to happen somehow. |
I looked through the comments and didn't see anything to this point so I figured I would contribute. Turns out I started working for a commercial satellite company in 1999. I had to deal with DITRA due to export control and it was never really a problem. Our foreign customers were annoyed but happy they were getting the best money could buy. As a private company investing in any satellite service a significant portion of your cost goes into paying insurance. Look at it this way. You have a $500,000 satellite on top of a $500,000 rocket with a 15% chance of failure and that's just launch failure what is something happens in orbit? You can't just send up a repair team.
Long story short, insurance is a significant portion of the customers cost. So, sketchy launch vehicles (i.e. Chinese Long March at the time) are out of the question. You're left with U.S. and E.U based companies. The U.S. companies should be cheaper except the EU heavily subsidizes their aerospace industry. You could argue the same happens here in the US. The major defense contractors had companies that developed commercial sats but the required those business units to be profitable independent of the money received on the military side (for satellite development). Other commercial entities were spun off by defense contractors into their own orgs. My guess is this was done to attract buyers is the segment ever overheated; it never happened. I haven't talked to anyone in the field in several years but my guess is the commercial and gov't satellite unit are all but one and the same again. Point being the US could never really compete on cost, only on reliability. Once DITRA/export control was in place and the EU started launching reliably there was no reason to do business with the U.S; they cost more and were a pain to deal with. |
Allowing relatively unfettered access to space is a VERY BAD IDEA .
Sure, when it's just sub-orbital pop-shots, even weekend getaways to LEO, it's no problem. We want to encourage private enterprises to do that. But we absolutely cannot allow it to be unregulated. We have to have very strict control over who goes into space and what they do.
Imagine the damage that could be done if you allowed private, unregulated bodies to fill the heavens with craft technically capable of going out and grabbing a small-medium sized asteroid and tugging it into a collision course with Earth. How long do you think it would be before that became the biggest target of opportunity for nutjobs and terrorists? |
Is this what killed PrimeStar?
Oh wait, they probably died because the customer serviced sucked great hairy blue balls. Sweaty ones. Sweaty nasty diseased ones.
The service itself was rather rock solid for its day. If you could live with the interruptions, which we kind of took for granted back in the stone ages. Not as big a deal back then. It was fucking cutting edge. Shit happens on the edge. You deal.
But those bitches. From the freaks that installed looking like they were casing the joint to the whiny ass whore who was the ONLY ONE EVER "answering" the phone they just conducted themselves like Nigerian Princes the entire three years I dealt with them. It felt like just a shady dodgy deal the whole time.
Like I didn't matter at all. Like my 95 bucks a month meant nothing to them. (This is early nineties money people. Those were real-ish dollars back then.)
Primestar was how I experienced Space Ghost coast to coast, so I can't have all hate in my heart. But business schools should really do a chapter on how to have a solid product and STILL fuck it up using this business as a model.
When I had a choice? I chose.
And to this very day? Fuck those bitches.
And that big ass hole you drilled in the floor that was five time the size it needed to be? You still owe me for that. |
This isn't really feasible the way that the internet infrastructure has been engineered. Because the internet has grown out of [ARPANET]( that means that the major hubs are still mostly located in the US. That means that, regardless of where you are located, and regardless of where the server you're trying to access is located - as some point, it's probable that your request will be routed through american servers between you and the end point.
This wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't that for the US sticking their fingers in other people's traffic. Imagine it like this - if only one house in your neighbourhood had indoor plumbing, and that slowly branched out from that property to thei neighbours - what's to stop that first original land-owner from tapping or redirecting the pipes that go through their backyard (even if they shouldn't)? They have the physical access to the network that other countries don't have. |
I believe the playing of video games can be considered a sport, because of the competition and physical skill played for the entertainment of others.
The creation of video games is considered an art, due to the storytelling, graphic design, etc. |
Sorry but "herp derp buy this unsupported chinese phone via a shady ebay salesguy who skirts import duties" is the new worldwide cheap phone is asinine and its the same thing people have been saying for ages, especially in regards to cheap android tablets (how did those 99 dollar tablets reddit raves about but never used work out?). Every so often there's a russian or chinese phone or tablet that reddit goes "see how cheap it is? stupid americans cant make cheap phone" and its just ignorant of the realities here.
I think its important to remember practical aspects here: focused markets, support, warranties, carrier support, play store support, localization, marketing, etc.
My point is that the MotoG is a truly a worldwide cheap smartphone. Its groundbreaking. Your phone is just another cheap local market junk toy that will never have real international penetration and will be completely forgotten in three weeks. |
If you are doing it after normal work at home and not paying taxes, maybe. If it is a legitimate business, then you also have overhead to cover. You will also be spending a lot of time on things you aren't directly getting paid for, which would quickly put you far under minimum wage overall. If you want to cover all your bases, you have income tax (state and fed), self employment tax, sales tax (potentially city, county, and state), unemployment insurance, worker's comp, health insurance, rent, utilities, equipment, and the list goes on. Also, no time off unless you want to keep paying all the bills without making any money. |
I'm currently dealing with a similar consumer abuse at the hands of Bank of America.
Long story short, I opened a free checking and savings account under an offer made back in 2009. I knew at the time that this could very well be one of those things that a company might try to conveniently forget about at a later date, so I made sure to keep thorough documentation of the transaction from end-end. I took screenshots of the promotional text, kept copies of all 122 pages of contractual terms, and logged complete conversations with multiple representatives who readily reassured me that the account would always be free.
A little more than two years later, surprise! Mint notified me that an account maintenance fee had been processed in my account. I called the customer service department and there was no mercy. They eventually said that all I could do was visit a local branch in order to get it corrected. So I did.
The local banker sat down with me and prepared to politely explain that I was mistaken in that free accounts were only a temporary promotion. I challenged that assertion quickly and he continued to defend the position by earnestly explaining how an elderly gentleman that had come to him just recently was under the same mistaken assumption and had to be let down. So, I offered to produce the documentation. He seemed to be a little amused -- as though he assumed I was just ignorant and stubborn -- but agreed that I could email him a copy. And so I did.
After receiving the documentation, his mood dropped significantly. I believe he must have felt some remorse over what he had been made to do to that old man. He said that he would apply the lengthiest waiver available to him and instructed me to keep my records for subsequent renewals.
I am now pursuing that renewal. There has been a general attitude of combativeness expressed by most of the representatives I've spoke with so far, and the impression I get is that customers are typically viewed as, at best, powerless. They have each been unprepared for any scenario in which someone can actually fight back. |
Oh man, my 5 year old computer was BSODing repeatedly for about 6 months. No time when it would do it. Checked the RAM in another computer, no problems, voltmeter on PSU, fine. Onboard graphics, fine. Reseated the processor would oddly make it work for a day then it would do the same (BSOD 3-4 times per day over a 10 hour period - I even checked right after to see if the paste was FUBAR, but no, it was fine). Formatted, no change. Reset CMOS, no change. I decided it was an MBO problem, but I was still stumped as I thought, ''If I replace the MBO, I might as well replace the CPU and ram...but then it would have an old gfx card so I might as well replace that...but then I will need a new PSU...'' - It was either fix it or get a new computer. My dad convinced me to take it to the computer repair shop with him, and reluctantly, I agreed (I figured that while I know a good deal about computers, I don't know everything so I might as well get an expert to look at it).
I explained the situation, told them what I had done, they said they would take a look at it. Next day, I go in and they said that it was fixed. The problem? The CPU needed reseating. $150 please. I argued and said that was ridiculous considering that I told them that I did it twice, and that it takes 10 minutes. They smirked and simply told me that I hadn't done it properly and that they used special thermal paste with silver which works better (rage boiled up as I knew that this was the kind of shit they tell people to justify their prices, and that I knew I had reseated it properly) and I told them that in trials there is only usually a difference of 2-3C between pastes, and since my computer under load never even got anywhere near thermal limits, there was no problem. My dad intervened, paid and we left (I thanked my dad and apologised). Next day...BSOD. Took it back in and they said I would need to pay for them to look at it again. I argued that they hadn't fixed the problem, didn't listen when I told them that I had gone through all of the steps and not found a problem and that I would like the money back...Naturally they refused.
That day, I bought a whole new system (aside from case, HDD e.t.c.) for $600, built it myself and it runs like a dream. While I didn't fix the old computer and believe it to be an MBO or processor problem, I never got to the root of the issue. |
Alright redfit, what are the cons to this, and why will it never see the light of day? |
The French did it](
And before anyone says that it was horrible, read this please:
>THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. |
OK Guys (and I assume most of you, like me, are guys...)
There are two ways to look at this data, and the imbalance of gender among engineers.
One way is, as most of the current comments reflect, to say "Well, these companies are pretty good companies, we don't see much evidence of sexism. You can't force women into STEM. So really, what is all this saying?"
And I don't think that's a terrible reaction. I used to have that same reaction, and I still do when it comes to specific companies that I have worked with (18 years in SV companies).
But there is another way to look at it, which is to ask "WHY is this the case? Why are so many more men in STEM and tech roles than women?"
The most obvious and simple answer is "Well, biologically or socially women aren't inclined to do these jobs as much as men are. So this is a biological/societal issue, and though things aren't perfect yet, they are pretty close to fine in Silicon Valley, and hopefully the rest of the world moves this way. Discussion pretty much over."
And if you truly feel that this is a biological cause, then I guess the discussion is over for you. I won't be able to convince you otherwise here. (And for the record, I think that biology is part of the equation).
But here't the thing guys... what if it really is a societal issue? What if all these numbers point to women staying out of STEM because they have been groomed to stay out of STEM?
A lot of you are going to have daughters at some point (I have two, both under 10yo).
Is it enough to tell your girls "Don't worry, there's very little sexism left in these companies! We've solved these problems! Now, go watch your Disney movies and hang out with friends at school who will tell you that girls suck at math and don't like science. On top of that, one day, you will have kids, and there's just about a ZERO chance that your husband will want to stay home with those kids. So it's going to be your decision to be a Stay At Home Mom, if that's what's best for them. And if you do that, it will most definitely impact your career, right or wrong as that may be."
(Not to disparage guys for being/not being Stay-At-Home-Dads. It's not for me either, but let's be honest. The number of men you know who would even consider that is a pittance compared to the number of women you know. And remember, we're talking about societal pressures here. And most of the men I know would stay at home if it was imperative that they do so for the good of their kids, so I don't think it's entirely biological.)
I think what we should be doing is not to get defensive about this data, not to assume that it points to blatant sexism and active misogyny, but that as that shit recedes, we are starting to see the effects of subtle societal pressures.
And again, I ask you, is this what you would want for your daughters? If you had a daughter who was inclined to stargaze and build robots, would you want her to be subtly turned off to that world because other people's kids weren't supporting them? It's not obvious. We see "Girls In Science" posters and propaganda all the time. But the very fact that we still have those things kinda points to the fact that out society has a stigma against them. It's not necessarily active, and even if all our practices going forward were perfect, we still have several generations of people out there giving advice that isn't all that pro-equality. All the posters in the world aren't going to change your daughter's mind if her friends (of both sexes), teachers, grandparents and pop culture cause them to subconsciously think that STEM is not for women. |
I don't understand why everyone rides the F the utility train".
Quite simply, they overcharge in many places and are most often at fault for perpetuating an industry that on one hand, is extremely reliable in terms of electric production but has no care whatsoever for the environmental impact.
You may work for one utility company that is investing somewhere in solar or wind options and you may believe that the company is providing utilities at fees affordable by the consumer but it's not true.
The coal and natural gas industries are fighting HARD to stay relevant and to exist because of their abundance and reliability despite their impact on the environment.
And about trying to value the consumer?
wasn't there just a bunch of shit happening in the news for the southern states trying to block consumers for getting rebates and refunds from the utility companies for putting power back into the grid from their own solar panels? |
What is going to happen to the grid between the time one company fails and the next takes over? The grid is being constantly monitored, because that is what it takes. It's mostly automated, but it's automated by the company that just failed. They're not doing it anymore.
Whose FUD are you spewing?
Honest question, do you get any money whatsoever from energy companies (directly or indirectly)? Are you receiving any compensation whatsoever to post these comments?
These companies' revenues aren't going to disappear overnight.
Projections will reveal, well in advance, that it's time to divest themselves of a certain business (say, running the grid). They'll then sell that segment of their business in a deal which includes full hand-over of resources and management.
This is incredibly common.
But wait!. What if it's a sudden collapse?!
Well, we've got a good example of that. Enron. [After its scandal, Enron went into a tailspin that quickly resulted in one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in US history.](
What happened to the grid? What happened to people's electricity?
Nothing.
There was still revenue coming in. There was still money to pay people to keep doing their job. Even if there wouldn't, there would be emergency funding from state/federal sources to make sure a corporate bankruptcy (even the largest in US history) wouldn't disrupt essential services (like electricity). |
The problem with this rationale is that it's based on a false dilemma.
The 'death spiral' of utility companies is not a question of these companies folding up and then the grid being destroyed.
That's what they want you to believe. That's part of the FUD that invested parties use to maintain their positions of power.
So, what really happens if a bunch of people install solar?
Let's say that the 'death spiral' of the utility companies occurs. This doesn't mean that all utility companies will die out. Well actually it might mean the current ones all go belly-up. But that's the thing with the natural world and the business world. There will be plenty of scavengers there to pick the bones clean.
The utility companies 'dying' doesn't mean the grid dies. It just means these galumphing companies cannot get absurdly fat off of energy production/distribution.
When it's no longer possible for these elephantine energy companies to get fat grazing off every household's energy needs, they'll die, but in their place, new companies (or even smaller versions of the same companies) will compete for that same, now lower yield, grazing ground.
The grid is an infrastructure that won't die. It will be necessary for the near future, and it will cost money to maintain, but whoever owns that grid (whether the current elephants or the new scavengers) will make profit by maintaining and selling use on that grid.
It won't be the obscene profits the energy elephants are used to. Many of them will starve and die off, but there will always be profit in a service that's needed.
Rest assured, we don't need Big Energy to survive for the electric grid to survive. Plenty of companies would love to take over grid management and have a piece of the (much, much smaller) transmission pie, even without getting any of the (much, much bigger) generation pie.
This also means that solar users won't be able to sell their energy for as much profit. But that's okay. Everybody knows that the massive introduction of free solar energy is going to drive the price of energy way down. |
I work in a company that helps solar companies sell to more clients. The general reason why people add solar power to their homes is because they want to reduce their monthly bill and we only sell to customers if their energy bill is $100 or higher over here in California. So on average, the person that signs up for solar power around here are generally high users and want to keep their bill down.
The cost of maintaining the grid is grouped into the kwh rate but since they are only using the grid when solar can't cover it, the energy companies maintaining the grid do not get as much from a customer who uses the grid versus someone who is only using power from the grid and thus, is putting in more money into the maintenance since their kwh from the utility company is higher. |
Okay, first of all, utilities don't make obscene profits.
Riiiiight.
> Secondly, if utility companies fall, the grid is in fact fucked. The damn thing is so old that the only thing holding it together is constant maintenance and some prayers. There is no easy way to hand off control here. I'm not even sure how to put this into words in a reasonable amount of space, but lets just say that if a brand new company had to take over part of the grid, things would be fucked up for quite some time.
You're talking out of your hat. You're assuming that a "brand new company" would have no experience in the field, or even in that exact infrastructure.
Look at oil fields or mining for similar examples. When an oil field or a mine hits a certain threshold of yield, it is generally sold to a "brand new company", yet these companies don't just pack up every single employee, every single shred of procedure, and all conceivable expertise when they leave.
There is no vacuum left behind (almost always as a condition of the deal !).
No, when a new company takes over an oil field or a mine or an electrical grid. Many, many, many of the exact same people stay in their exact same jobs.
Hell, there have been a number of nuclear power plants sold and subsequently operated just fine. You want to talk about complexity of handover?
The thing is, if you're SuperMegaEnergyCorp, getting 3% profit off a region's electrical grid, may be a losing investment for you, as you might be able to get more return for your dollar elsewhere. So, you sell that company/asset/infrastructure to PrettyBigEnergyCorp, who is over the moon to take that 3% profit. Part of the deal is retaining the employees. Some of those move on after a period, but the transition is often very, very workable.
This sort of thing happens all the time, in industry, in business, everywhere. |
Yes, and losing a good 20% to 5% of energy every time you force water uphill and then losing a good 20% to 5% again when it runs down is a big problem.
I have big issues with "payback" scenarios that are being pushed by photovoltaic companies. They should not consider the amount of dollars you get back for "selling" electricity to the grid.
The grid can chose not to purchase back your electricity and they very well might at some point.
Idealy grid companies should be non for profit managed by the government, but not become a heavy un-oiled machine that has alot of inefficiencies. (I.E. an utopia) |
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