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Only partially true. This is entirely dependant on the learning environment the student is in. It is relatively accepted that discourse between parties is more effective for information retention however not all environments operate in this way.
For example; a lecture doesn't facilitate the ability to offer peer tuition during the lecturer's speech.
A classroom environment however, can indeed be operated in such a manner that would allow discourse, and thus peer to peer talk.
I don't disagree with you, this whole thread just requires more context.
Edit: Listening alone provides a mere 5% rate of information retention whereas teaching someone offers much deeper learning as to do this you are required understand . Listening alone is almost useless, but combined with other strategies can be an effective cog in the process of learning. |
Outside of a subset of tech enthusiasts no one really care about either thing.
This post explains it well: |
there really is no way to respond specifically to any one thing you said without sounding like a total douche.
...but i guess it's a little late to be worried about that, so...
i was taught the basics of photoshop on OS 9 back in 2000 while working at photolab. i actually did custom printing (dark room), but the digital guy quit, so i had to take over. technically, though, the first time i ever used photoshop was in 95 while in HS... on a mac. in fact, my very first exposure to any graphic design/digital art related software was Apple Paint (or something, not really sure of the name now, but regardless, it was on a mac).
during the late 90s to ~01 i was pretty "anti-computer" and all my design work was done by hand (and music on 4-track tape recorders)... then, basically because of work, i was forced to embrace digital technology.
i didn't actually own a computer until 2001.. a g4 power mac, dual boot os9/x. it's weird to think about, but compared to now, thinking about using os 9 feels like my own personal 80s.
anyway.. my point is, i've never seen the computer as a "hobby", per se. it's always just been a tool. i know how to use a bunch of software really well.. well enough to support myself for the last decade in nyc. but i wouldn't really consider myself a "computer nerd" ..maybe a photoshop nerd, or in design (and quark), or protools... but the computer itself was never really my obsession. up until around 2006 i kinda figured that's what "mac users" were like... pretty much like me and everyone i knew.
all the "computer nerds" i know use machines running everything and simultaneously love and hate all of them (but there does seem to be a bias based on personality type! lol)... some of them are my IT guys. i will listen to them talk shit – because i really don't know why OS X is freezing when trying to connect to the dolev film imager (and unless i'm doing something wrong, i don't really care) – but not some random person ranting based on the narrow perspective of mainstream usage. |
Specifially:
> A unit that is full most of the time at 25 °C (77 °F) irreversibly loses approximately 20% capacity per year. Poor ventilation may increase temperatures, further shortening battery life. Loss rates vary by temperature: 6% loss at 0 °C (32 °F), 20% at 25 °C (77 °F), and 35% at 40 °C (104 °F). When stored at 40%–60% charge level, the capacity loss is reduced to 2%, 4%, and 15%, respectively.[35][citation needed] |
actually, EU said to manufacturers, if you don't make a standard, we will. They all agreed to Micro USB, so they wouldn't be regulated into it, and could move to a new standard in the future if they wanted. Apple said "we won't do it". EU said to Apple, now you must do it too. |
I thought this may have been the case until I realised I never installed drivers for the phone. This would be the only way it could negotiate for a higher than default amount of current.
Not necessarily. 2.5" USB HDDs need more than 100 mA of power, but you don't have to install a driver for them to request it.
I'm not saying that the generic charger wasn't physically capable of charging your phone just fine, but that it might not have operated in the way that the phone was expecting. With USB, it's not a simple case of "provide a voltage and make sure the power supply can handle whatever current draw the device needs" anymore. Unlike a simple voltage source such as AC-DC adapters, USB hosts can indeed restrict how much current is supplied to a device. iPods might be fine with a USB charger acting like a dumb voltage source, but your phone obviously isn't. |
The imbeciles remaining on Gawker represent the last few internet users willing to drink pure sewage after even the dumbest of their fellows were driven away by the stench of a dead, decaying site. Their arguments have no basis and are often structurally broken or reliant on fallacies. None of them are of interest to anyone who does not already share the same opinions with the same fervor, as the only evidence provided is presumed and at odds with basic facts and common sense. |
This is my issue with Apple. I do have an iPod used pretty much only for road trips with our entire digital music collection, but I rely on a Sansa for daily use. Apple just seems dead-set on selling me a lifestyle, when really I just want a gadget. The hype and hyperbole drive me away from their products.
Vaguely related: I hate the iPad because it really dumbed down the concept of tablet computers. In my mind, a tablet computer should be a full-featured computer that happens to be tablet-y, but the iPad has really hurt that. |
This is my issue with Pizza Hut. I do order pizza from them pretty much only for pizza night, but I rely on groceries for daily use. Pizza Hut just seems dead-set on selling me a pizza, when really I want a sandwich. The hype and hyperbole drives me away from their food.
Vaguely related: I hate their breadsticks because it's a really dumbed down concept of bread. In my mind, breadsticks should be all-wheat bread that happen to be a bit stick-y, but their breadsticks have really hurt that. |
ah yes. the classic "just works" argument. can i tell you something? go fuck yourself. your exact anecdote is used every time there is any criticism of Apple anywhere online. it adds absolutely nothing to the argument that Apple distorts facts when it comes to marketing. not only that, i find it completely unlikely that someone who works with PC's all day would be so frustrated that they would go out and buy a Mac for the home. why would they not upload Linux on to their current computer? the hardware is in no way superior to a PC. and the only reason Linux doesnt get mainstream adoption is because the average consumer is clueless. and i dont think someone who works with computers daily falls into that category. |
The tougher situation they're in has to do with the shrinking market share of the iPhone, and the fact that it's no longer technologically particularly differentiated from its competition. I think it's pretty likely something similar will happen with tablets.
With the original iPhone, and for some time after that, all they had to do was show what it actually did - there was no need to distort facts. They can't get away with that any more. We're seeing something similar now happening with the iPad, and that explains the rather high degree of reality distortion in this presentation.
> The handful of 'ipad killer's' haven't even hit the market yet!
Afaik the Xoom has just become available. But yes, I'm talking about the likely future, which in this case seems pretty predictable.
> From a pure, holistic experience standpoint, Apple is in a clear market lead, and this is why they will continue to prosper.
No question they'll continue to prosper. However, it's much less likely they'll continue to lead the market for much longer, unless they can take another actual leap forward, instead of just claiming they have. Again, the fact that they feel resorting to distortion is necessary is indicative of that.
> Apple sells an experience. Not 'specs.' That's how they roll.
Pfft. If that were really true, Jobs wouldn't need to do presentations like this one. Right now what he's trying to do is maintain the appearance of dominance, without the tech to clearly back it up. He knows that the experience isn't worth all that much if his product isn't actually demonstrably better than the competition in many ways.
> |
Repost this in the booming metropolis that is /r/ModelRocketry (which I seem to be the only poster in these days)!
I bought one of those cameras, and I took one video with it around the house and it died. After reading the reviews, I should have ordered about three or so to get one working device. I'm going to be sending up some mid-power rockets (G80-10 engines) to over 3000ft this weekend, I was hoping to have a cam on at least one of them. Oh well, next time.
edit: Oh, and next time you want it as far forward as you can. You mentioned that you wanted to not throw off the balance, but by putting it at the center of the rocket you were doing exactly that. Rockets have more stablity when the Center Of Pressure is behind the Center Of Mass. The Center Of Pressure moves back with bigger fins, and the Center Of Mass moves forward with weight in the nose. In general, you can put as much weight at the front of the rocket as you want (think about throwing a dart), it just won't go as high. It's a trade-off of weight and aerodynamics. |
Agree with your take on Congress and Politics and the total Corruption in America. Politically Nationally maybe even WorldViewwise I feel overwhemed and defeated. I grew up in a secular free country with a HUAC problem. Now I live in an HUAC country with a secular free problem.
Today the LA Mayor is blaming cuts on the cost of the horrific way LA captured and tortured the OWS situation. They failed to blame the abandoned refuse on their own procedures. What they are looking at is the costs of tyranny.
re your first point
Everyone knows they have some barriers or else they have barriers they don't know about. I would not attribute the balance of which barrier or how it stops "point of view" to age or youth. It's different with both.
I remember being able to pick up another pov but not understanding what it implied. Lipservice but I didnt realize. You realize you could change into another mindset and see that you resist it. It could be there are some (good?) reasons that haven't made it to the conscious mind. |
I think you'd be surprised who are using what technologies. My generation does use FB and twitter, own smart phones and use SMS, and so do a lot of those in the age bracket 15 to 20 years above mine. I know a lot of (non-techie) folks in their 70's who use computers. Quite a few old folks were using computers and networks long before the young folks were born. Remember, moms, dads, and grandparents bugging kids in facebook and sms is a meme... where did that come from?
There was tech before the Internet. There were copyright and pirating issues long before the Internet, even before computers were ubiquitous in the home. Remember the hoopla over DVD decryption? Before that were attempts to ban, regulate, tax .
The point is, the "old folks" understand what's going on far better than you think, and the issues are old but involve different technologies. Thinking they're idiots and treating them that way is not the way to raise awareness for SOPA and gain support. |
I absolutely hate the majority of movie/music studios now (if that's what they are called). Its just...meh. They continue to irritate consumers, simply to have another golden swimming pool.
I don't think they understand the need to change the way in which they do business for the better of their consumers. The reason why Netflix and Redbox are so successful is because both companies actually make attempts to satisfy their consumers, and suffer if they do not. Netflix is a great example of this; they succeeded by making it easy and legal to watch videos. When they raised their subscription prices, people were unhappy, and Netflix lost a ton of customers.
Rather than force people to search for easier and easier ways of providing copies (piracy, of course), the entertainment industry needs to provide better services to their customers. They ignored this option before, and they are ignoring it now.
Services like Redbox and Steam, are doing pretty well right now, and it isn't because they back their consumers into a corner; it's by satisfying their customers. |
There is absolutely nothing to investigate. Dodd represents interests that gave money to candidates whom they thought would protect those interests while in office. Now that those candidates have proven that they won't protect their interests, Dodd says they won't get any more campaign contributions. That's exactly equivalent to anyone who gave $100 to Obama in 2008, but won't this time because of the patriot act or guantamo or whatever. This is exactly how the campaign finance system was designed to work. |
My dad has worked at the WB as well as other companies like it and I will try to explain their logic:
The biggest reason for Warner Brothers' lack of a steam like system for movies is that the current system has been doing VERY well making money with their current system. Especially recently, which is probably why they are resisting change, and will be able to effectively do so for the foreseeable future (this is due to their massive inventory). Also Warner Brothers isn't to blame, It's the way that the U.S. economy functions: higher profits = higher stock prices. Keep in mind that I know you may not agree with their business model, but I'm just explaining how it works and the results.
The reason why Warner Brothers holds back movies is because other companies don't have the money to pay for the movies. For example take Netflix, if they could they would buy every movie Warner Brothers has to offer, but they have a budget. Also when one company "buys" a movie or TV show, it is actually only a lease for 3 to 5 years, so it becomes hard to build a complete inventory. Netflix continuously has to rebuy its old inventory as well as purchase new releases. Warner Brothers has also recently stepped up its prices (for certain buyers) which is most likely the reason for the Netflix price jump.
Now you might also be wondering why doesn't Warner Brothers make their own steam like inventory selling system? Well the bottom line is that people will only view movies X amount of times, and having movies / shows too available kills their resell value. By resale I mean that the WB sells their productions to other networks, for example AMC. This is where a lot of money is made (and is actually the primary source of revenue for TV shows, I believe). Customers in the end will pay higher prices for DVDs, and not having a massive distribution hub means the movies are less watched and therefore more desired by a network looking to buy them. Network buyers also demand exclusivity rights so that Warner Brothers wouldn't be able to sell the movies even if they wanted to. As of right now, the way the majority of people view content has it so the WB makes more money through networks than it would through the individual. |
Yeah believe me, if there's one thing I've learned through pretty much my whole life, it's to kiss the ass of anyone and everyone in authority over you, or there will be a lot of trouble you don't need. If you defy someone in authority over you, your entire life will end right then and there. Permanently.
From a kid's perspective, life is nothing but one long effort to please anyone with the ability to hurt you. Get good grades, don't make the teachers angry, don't make your parents angry, submit, submit, submit. Don't disobey anyone. Don't say anything that your parents or teachers might disagree with. It'll just come back to hurt you. Submit. Submit. Submit. Everyone is out to get you. Cover your ass even when you've done nothing wrong. Don't ever do anything even the tiniest bit out of the ordinary, people will ask too many questions and somehow jump to insane conclusions. It'll hurt you. Don't let anyone become suspicious. Just be normal.
It's a fucking nightmare.
Can't really blame her for not exercising her rights. That's simply not an option for a kid. Even in this situation, if this hadn't become such a publicized event, nothing would be done and the girl would have gotten punished if she hadn't complied. That's life. That's how the world works. At least until you graduate from college, find a house and a steady job on the opposite end of the country, and delete every motherfucker you've ever known from your Facebook.
I'm 19, and I'm still stuck in all this. I still lie to my own parents every day just so they don't throw me on the street. If I disagree with anything they say, I run the chance of losing the house I live in. Same goes for school, especially since so many of the teachers grade on a curve. Disagree with them, your grades go down, you lose scholarships, can't pay for college, life is over right then and there.
I speak from hard experience. I understand perfectly every single emotion this girl felt as she was being told to show them her Facebook, as well as everything she felt after it was done, and everything she probably feels now that she knows she could have refused. I've felt it all a thousand times. It's torture. Pure torture. It's the worst thing I've ever experienced. As far as interaction with authority figures goes, it's the only thing I've ever experienced. |
Actually, 28 years is rather too much. A single-digit figure even might be more appropriate if we consider the per-year breakdown of profits on most creative works.
If taking a more conservative approach (which, ironically, would be quite revolutionary today), I, however, am fond of Jefferson's rational idea that the length is to be limited by generation's lifetime, so that when this generation kid's mature, the culture that their parents grew upon becomes available to them for free (supposedly being paid for by the previous generation). Which is roughly ⅓ of a century.
Now, for your "movie executive point" specifically. Who actually told that copyright is about maximizing the protection of an author? It isn't. It's just a form of a social contract, where the society promises the author a certain finite period of protection for his financial interests over work that cannot be naturally limited or controlled. Thus the society makes certain that authors can live from their creative work, not abandon art in favor of occupations that bring more stable income, and so create more and more art — which then becomes the public domain and benefits all. This is it, period.
There is no idea in copyright that the author is entitled to all the profits, or that the profits should be maximized, or that the length of protection must be very long. Nope. Suffice to make it so that the length of the copyright would allow for creating art being as good source of income as any other job — because it was not unheard of in previous centuries that famous talented authors were starving from lack of income. Nobody had a goal to make all authors super-rich, just to make sure they eat fully and dress properly, like most of working folks.
Now then, if the copyright duration is 28 years, and a book is popular after even 30 years and you as an executive would rather take an old hit for free, so be it. Shakespeare's works are wildly popular centuries past his death, yet this doesn't mean his ancestors should be still entitled to profits. If a book is popular after 30 years, the author is lucky and most probably talented. Such an author would have little trouble writing another good book. Also, your movie, even if you consider it to be a sort of "author rip-off" will create publicity for him, and ultimately promote the sells of his newer books.
Realistically though, there will be ever hardly a lot of so wildly popular books of age 30+ that they would make sure a movie is a hit just per se. Most books have a shorter success period, after which people don't care much about them. |
Not enough time for story time, but |
As a PC tech/salesperson who sells Lenovo laptops, I agree. The Ideapads would be the higher end of "consumer grade." However if you want a beastly laptop to serve you many years, get a Thinkpad. The inside framing is superheavy. They don't flex. The hinges are metal. And the warranty is boss. You get to talk to an English speaking IBM tech, and the on-site techs know what they are doing.
Only downside I can think of is they can be a pain replace the CPU fans. |
Now go to Flint, and tell me capitalism has improved their lives in the past thirty years. Now go look at the things corporate raiders and abusive bankers have done in the US. Still sure capitalism and greed are a clear and unmitigated moral good in all cases?
Market forces are highly discriminatory in almost every case. They strongly bias resource allocation in favor of those who already have resources.
Notice I didn't call capitalism an evil or immoral force. It's a moral. It lacks any comprehension or understanding of morals or ethics in any sense. Acceptable behavior has to be forced on it from outside by society - often in the form of government action. This, incidentally, is what it took for kids to no longer be worked to death in coal mines in company towns in the US. The free market sure as hell didn't fix that on its own. |
I don't think the author was saying in any way that Sparrow did not do the right thing. I think he made it quite clear that he felt that Sparrow did what was right for them. I think the point he made, to my understanding and satisfaction at least, is that he fears he himself is wrong in believing that independent software makers can thrive adequately on the public's largesse alone. Yes, he said that we should do what we can to keep indie devs from being bought out, but he is doubting that we can sponsor the future that indie developers would love to have. |
Yeah, I know, there's essentially nothing you could really leave out and summarize in a |
Companies should provide |
Stories from grandpa: Almost a year ago I was installing MS office in a users office. This particular user is "concerned" about her privacy so she stays in her chair while I talk her through the install. FYI try not to do this to tech guys, they will avoid you at all costs. She asks what this text is and I chuckle saying it is the terms and conditions and she can just click "I agree" as I watch her I realize she is actually reading it! I explain to her that we as a company have already agreed to this and she has nothing to worry about. However as you can imagine she ignored this and read the entire terms and agreements WHILE ASKING QUESTIONS. |
Fair enough of a point, and that may work great for the US. IIRC though that isn't legal in the UK and a number of other countries.
Of course there is the PR aspect of it. About how many milliseconds would it take before the FBI had a press release "Microsoft unwilling to help FBI in tracking down child predators".
Good luck explaining that to the general public.
Then there is the possibility that if a major e-mail provider like MS ever implemented a scheme like you outlined (which a fair number of smaller independent email providers do provide) there is a chance congress critters may start taking a look at it and no one wants that.
On top of that implementation becomes a serious PITA. Remember most services these days are accessed from the web or from a diverse range of devices. Hell I haven't had a desktop email client installed for my personal email since 2004 or so.
Neither POP3 or IMAP support what you have outlined, so MS would need to create custom software for each and every platform, and get their users to all transition over to it. Of course you could have a pure web based system, but the trustworthiness of that is pretty damn low, are you going to inspect the source of the Javascript every time you go to your inbox to make sure your password is never sent up to the server?
So in theory yes such a system is possible, it just isn't commercially viable on a large scale. Users would just up and leave and go to a web mail provider that didn't require custom email clients for their smart phones.
And of course for the web based system, again, one JS injection from the (trusted!) server, and your PW is now known, and that would likely be just 1 warrant away. |
I was still trying to beat Donkey Kong Country when the 64 came out. So outside of Starfox & SSB - I missed that entire generation... |
I've given up on educating the stupid. The ignorant deserve all the help they can get (and I'm always willing to give!), but trying to educate the stupid just wastes your time. I mean, seriously, [read what he said after]( He thinks he understands, so any argument against him will just make him dig in his heels and resist learning.
If he actually had any desire for learning, he would have asked what I meant, and I would have happily educated him. Or someone else would have before I saw his reply. Seriously, [look at one of my explanations]( and tell me with a straight face that I'm lazy about helping people who are willing to learn. |
I'll be honest, of those, only Amazon seems like its going to be hard to give up.
Target > Wal-Mart
Linux > Win/Mac
Android for phones since I don't support Microsoft/Apple
Best Buy is easily replaceable if you don't care to see the product in person.
Hess Stations for gas because they charge the same for cash and credit, also their holiday music is great.
RIAA/MPAA don't really sell things. But I personally listen to a lot of EDM so BBC One Radio holds me down very well. If music is an issue you are going to have to figure something out. Grooveshark seems like a good legitimate alternative. I had their paid subscription for a year after donating to the Tsunami Fund (Japan) for free and it was absolutely fantastic. |
Thanks. I'll be sure and remove Apple from my blacklist, and add HP, Lenovo, and Dell to it.
Less snarky ... it wasn't my point. My point was that there is a huge list of corporations that are "evil" and who we're told not to buy from. My belief is that most of them conduct just as much evil behavior as they can legally get away with.
Meat companies are inhumane to animals and have shitty conditions in slaughterhouses ... should I stop eating meat? |
About half of that subreddit was Russian teen models and recycled Michael Hamilton pics. Shit considered art photography in other countries that only American immaturity would translate into something perverted (I am American, BTW. No one goes gaga over genitalia like we do.). Most of the other half wasn't even actually under aged girls, but baby faced ones dressed down to look as if they were younger. A few pics from that subreddit (most notably a certain shower pic involving a girl who looks 12 but is really a porn star) have been reposted to other subreddits and have made front page several times. /r/dirtysmall got a lot of leftover /r/jailbait shit. Though I'm sure a bunch got on through your route, r/jailbait had gone through the American definition of "this shit is CP" (which in itself is notoriously strict) and passed with flying colors. This was even announced on American national news programs (though why it was even noteworthy enough for American primetime news is beyond me). If it involves an underaged girl and American laws are OK with it, it's not exactly pornographic.
And there is also the number one rule of the internet; If you post a pic it becomes the property of the internet. It is public, like it or not. I would admonish the kids themselves for posting the pics on Facebook in the first place before I admonished the users for spreading them. A hunter will always hunt, but the prey can be taught to keep under cover. Such pics that end up on reddit represent the failure of the parents, they are not the responsibility of moderators.
Also, many of these kids are intentionally sexually objectify themselves. One only has to take a really close look at /r/selfshots to realize that half of the subjects taking the naked mirror pics and posting them to wherever are under legal age. They may be 16, but in America, that is CP. Chatroulet has almost as many pervy kids on it as it does pervy old men. So far that has been more boys trying to get girls to show their tits than anything else, but still, the numbers are growing.
The gist is that I'm not ok with people taking facebook pics and posting them everywhere, but I would rather worry about my own and so I bother to teach them not to. The problem is that the suggestive pics are a modern version of the perfectly normal activity of discovering ones own sexuality.
If you have an issue with the people who spread these pics, then you are barking up the wrong tree. They are only the symptom of a problem that starts with the parents of the children.
I would say that it is good that /r/jailbait was shut down. In my eyes it had become inevitable that some random underage girl would stumble across it and start posting pics of herself naked to the forum. This would look bad to all of reddit, and probably be bad for the girl herself. But if you think that /r/jailbait or any other subreddit has ever offended me in the slightest, then you are wrong. I cannot stop the predators. I refuse to waste my energy being offended by their fetishes. I do my best to ensure they get as little meat as I can. Don't worry about them. Educate your own children not to post the pics in the first place. If everyone did this, there would be a lot less suggestive pics of minors floating around Facebook to steal. |
HTML5 is wonderful for flashy (pun intended) websites built by modern companies. Not being cynical here, I genuinely believe it's a good thing.
However, most flash is being used in commercial applications. Back in Ye Olde Days (think 20th century), webinterfaces needed interactive stuff and this was most easily done by Java. Flash was a joke back then, and HTML5 was still many years away from being born. Java, however, already featured most of the stuff it can do today.
Java, back in those times WAS FUCKING AWESOMESAUCE!
The problem is, that convincing big appliance-makers (e.g. Cisco, APC) that Java is now a tad outdated, and there are better solutions out there now for either native applications (e.g. .NET) or webinterfaces (e.g. HTML5), and that it's worth remaking all their tools and the supporting infrastructure is difficult.
There are many more examples, such as custom intranet portals, industry-specific software, etc. |
A few things to consider:
Local driving regulations can for the most part all be quantified into an integer or input into a formula, or be set as a special rule given a set of peramiters (such as an emergency vehicle being stopped on the side of a highway).
An automated vehicle also has a few benefits - they can opperate at peek efficiencies for the conjestion levels more easily, do to being able to account for volume of traffic which limits maximum sustainable speed, which intern reduces the waste energy used up by stopping and starting to a minimum.
Other benefits include automated speed changes as a result of road conditions (you can easily declare heavy rain sets maximum speed to 80% of posted limit, and increase distance between vehicles by 10% to account for reduced stopping power of the breaks as a result of reduced friction).
>Google can't even ship a speaker or a phone properly.
This should really read: "[OEM, who distributes android phones,] can't even ship a speaker or a phone properly." - just saying, google doesn't generally produce their own hardware for consumer use - it's generally outsourced (see the Nexus line of products).
But on a more direct note... I didn't know Google was in the hardware business - thought they do produce hardware prototypes (google glass, their automated cars - for example), as well as hardware that they use in house (servers / networking equipment - though they probably outsource the manufacturing and simply do the in house designing).
Google is built around making money on directed advertisement, research / development of new technologies, and of course ANYTHING ELSE a large enough part of their employee base deems interesting enough to pursue, and has a large enough potential to turn a profit. They have beta's that last years - because by gosh they will get it right before they let a product go gold. |
I believe the argument is:
Space and resources to grow crops is limited on our planet
It takes a very large amount of crops to feed a baby animal in to an adult, it takes around 2 years to turn a baby calf to a cow ready for slaughter and that calf needs to eat the entire time. Imagine 2 years worth of crops needed to feed one cow
The raw food an animal will eat before slaughter is several times larger than the amount of meat you get at the end
When worldwide food shortages occur you won't be able to justify giving a ton of food to animals to produce a fraction of the same amount of food in meat
The |
No the meat is not the same. It's full of chemicals and hormones left over from the process which we don't know how they affect humans.
The real reason our current food isn't sustainable is because of 3rd world countries that have 10 kids because instinctively they believe 5 of them will die. But then we have foundations and people trying to help them. Call me cynical but by helping a 3rd world country with food is actually hurting them. They have more food so their 10 children don't die and get medicine help and have longer life expectancies, which all sounds good, but then they go and have 10 more kids by the age of 23. We can't support this. They can't support this. Let Mother Nature do its thing and thin the herd. It's only gonna help. Let the weak die so humanity strengthens as a hole. We can't have 7 billion people and increasing on this planet.
If you really want to help these people, start trading with them and help them develop their economies rather then exploiting them for their cheap raw goods. |
Nah how about we care for human beings already born and focus on access to economic opportunity and birth control to lower the birth rate. |
GMO'S have already shown to fuck up the environment
This is [generally false]( with some theoretical exceptions.
> and it is actually required in most states that if it is GMO that it be labeled as such
[This is literally false]( In fact, California had a famous referendum on the ballot last year that would have required this, and it failed.
> because they can cause problems health wise
This is dangerously false . That's why they're not required to be labeled.
> Honestly if you took out the fast food chains, our meat consumption rate would drop
Why, how.
> and if we opened up a few more cattle ranches, we could easily sustain a lifestyle.
You have no idea [how meat is produced](
> now maybe places like china where the population exceeds space they may have a problem
There's a lot of space in China, just not in the busiest cities. But as above, it's not a space issue.
> but in the u.s we have so much space and so many animals that we can basically force to give birth by artificial insemination.
...Wut? |
Hi, business guy here. It won't matter if we are ready or not, it will simply happen. The economic drivers are far too strong for any other path. I look at it like the electric typewriter and the advent and ubiquity of the PC. The advantages conferred by lab-grown / 3D-printed meat are of a similar order of magnitude. Redeployment of farm land. Significant cost reduction. Elimination of food contaminants like e-coli. Improvement/perfection of deliciousness of product. The list goes on and on and on. |
Actually, population control isn't our central, biggest issue, and it hasn't been for decades. The problem has been the distribution of resources, and the technology to make those resources cheaply available.
The global reproduction rate is between 2.45 and 2.55 per woman (or 2.45-2.55 for every two parents) and falling. The most populous countries are modernizing at such a rate as to continue this reduction. Bear in mind that equilibrium is slightly higher than 2, we'll say 2.1, because of illness and accidental death. In India, the growing affluence and a campaign to convince people to use condoms has caused a reduction from 2.7 to 2.6 in the past ten years. In China the much more drastic one-child policy has them currently sitting between 1.55 and 1.73. The US isn't even at sustainable repopulation rates, at about 2.06 and falling, which is still high by comparison with Europe, where the average is between 1.3 and 1.5, despite desperate attempts by governments to get their citizens to procreate faster ("family day" anyone?). The UN estimates that the world population will peak in 2050 at just shy of nine billion, and then fall again, and remain roughly stable at that level for the next 250 years.
The problem is not the population. The problem is the way we use resources, and that problem can in many instances be solved through technological advancement.
Over the past fifty years, we have learned to grow more food in smaller and smaller areas, using less and less of the planet's resources, with fewer and fewer effects on the environment. The problem is that we haven't developed fast enough to keep up with the pace of our population growth. But there is room for hope: our technology keeps improving, and we have less and less impact on the world because of it, and our population growth is slowing. |
If Microsoft did this you would hardly even hear about it. Anything Apple does, good or bad, gets an order of magnitude more attention than if it were from a different company.
Did you know Microsoft gets a royalty for many Android devices sold (including those sold by Samsung and HTC)? Did you know that they make more from Android than Google does? Bet you didn't, because it wasn't big news. But, just like Apple, they defended against infringement of their software innovations. |
This just in: 90% of Americans would cut off their little fingers or sell their firstborn if it meant an 80% reduction in car insurance rates. |
Nothing.
Sports cars will persevere. It's basically the same case as with, say, computers. 90% of users are perfectly okay having a moderate, low power consumption PC (read as: I don't care, as long as it gets its job done...) But this didn't kill performance gaming machines.
There are far too many people, who want a car for entertainment, not just to get its job done with the least possible effort, and it's been this way since the begginning of automobile industry. I don't see why this would change. |
This. Also, imagine the extra tax revenue the gov't would generate from people who no longer die in car accidents. And their offspring who would never have been born otherwise. The multigenerational tax benefits from this would likely pay off the national debt. Also, cops would no longer have to patrol to catch speeders and could focus on real protecting and serving. |
The crux of this article is simply that the computer exhibited an emergent behavior, rather than a hard-programmed one.
Programming computers for effect without micromanaging all the details is a very common problem solving method.
There's an autopilot program out there that uses a "neural network" type of evolving problem solving and learning technique that allows it to figure out how to fly the plane very quickly even when various parts are damaged or offline. The future of programming necessarily requires computers to figure out complex tasks on their own, because they're either too complex to manually code or too intricate to even solve manually.
A good example if this would be battle scenes in today's video games and movies. A massive clash of thousands of combatants would take forever to make with regular CGI, but if you instead take thousands of characters and program them to fight on their own, the computer will create the battle for you. Watch LOTR battles for some of the first use if this in a major film. |
The report doesn't allege any specific instances of fraud , but rather a widespread failure of accounting processes that have allowed for a staggering quantity of waste and misallocation of resources. "I don't think they're lying and cheating and stealing necessarily, but it's not the right thing to do," Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale told Reuters. |
I don't mind it, but maybe I'm too geeky. It's unhuman enough to be nonthreatening (see '[uncanny valley]( but is good enough at expressions to allow reasonable nonverbal confirmations. It would make a good assistant. Now they have the mechanicals pretty well designed, I'd like to see a neural net for learning how to properly use the expressions in context.
IOW, with this level of technology, plus things done in other areas of robotics and machine learning, we could have a reasonable solution to the problem of population reduction. As populations begin to decrease and the average age in the workforce increases, it is more and more difficult to get people to work at many low-end service jobs.
If I ran a fast food place, for instance, I'd probably be willing to pay a tax equivalent to pay 1/2 of my existing payroll, to allow me to replace that half with robotics. And that might be the right number, which would assure funding to support folks who don't have jobs, during the downward employment transition. I'd probably have lower costs even paying that equivalent of payroll.
Full disclosure: I wrote a science fiction story about a guy who built a feminine robot in his basement and fell in love with it while his wife was upstairs, completely unaware. It got into his internal conflicts about loving two 'beings'. This was back in about 1980. |
I really wish more people would give Wind a chance. Admittedly they aren't available everywhere but they are in most major cities. I'm in the GTA and for $30/mon I have unlimited data (5GB of unthrottled) and unlimited talk/text(and for an extra $15/month I can roam all I want in the US including data). I understand its only at 3G speeds, but its fast enough to watch netflix or stream the olympics when i feel like it ( i get on average between 3-6Mb/s DL speeds), and i don't have to worry about burning through all my data in a day. Hopefully, they pull through and attract more customers which should allow them to upgrade their coverage. |
Unfortunately, some places take the "if it ain't broke, don't replace it" approach to IT spending. I've come across many computers that were well past their prime with no plans to replace them.
Just recently in fact it was a set of pre-OS X iMacs that the user was allowed to keep because "I refuse to do my document publishing on anything else". This guy's tool would have helped me a lot. |
Unless that local PC is a HTPC - in which case you'll ideally want a green (runs cooler and quieter - which is a major concern in HTPC applications). Of course this is for the storage drive only - as you'll also want a smaller SSD for your OS drive (64gb is plenty).
And the above is ONLY true if you use your HTPC as a DVR (so you need local storage). If your HTPC is nothing more than a an expensive streamer box - then your HTPC should be not much more than a thin client (smaller SSD only) and you should have a NAS. |
Until recently I used to code web apps for a University (we had 3ish programmers for a college). The main goal of offices, like the one I worked in, was to take systems such as grant applications and information filing easier.
One of the issues that we always hit was that the client couldn't (or had a hard time) fully communicating the requirements of their process. In a lot of cases it was because the client couldn't really imagine doing the process digitally; thus the client would give us feature requirements that didn't quite transcend off the paper way of doing things. Being the developers we would aid them in getting the process to make sense in the digital world; but it wasn't always apparent until they looked at a test version of the application. This eats up a lot of time, which is why planning takes a long time before anything even goes into the coding phase.
The other issue is that you are often working with people that have either neglected to learn to use a computer or wouldn't be open to the idea. Now I am not sure what it's like in a government, but in a University this problem is HUGE. One of the big downs of having to automate something is that it takes a long time to train people to use it properly, which costs time and money.
The biggest issue I see in having to automate something in a large organization is that you have to remember, people have been doing the paper way for a VERY long time. The process is very well tuned and refined. It could very well be that the automated way of doing things doesn't end up being as "automated" as one would hope. Things like this require the same tune and refinement that the paper process has already gone through.
People are shocked that in 2014 we are still using a paper process system in a lot governments. In reality mass automation of systems hasn't been around for a very long time. Serious, vast and economical ways of creating systems that aid employees (anywhere) are a fairly new thing. Companies and governments don't have to invest in a super computer to do a small task anymore; but rather it is time and money spent on development of software that is intended for a PARTICULAR task, that may not be available from a vendor. |
Oh gosh, this doesn't surprise me. I'm a Veteran and I wanted to sign up for a program called My Health eVet. It's an online database of your personal health records that let's you email your doctor and look up appointment dates. Anyway, I went to the website looking for information and I saw the option to 'sign up online'. I clicked on it and typed in all of my information. After hitting 'submit' the next page that opened up was a PDF like document of the form I had just filled out informing me that I only have one more step: print the document and mail it in. |
A lot of people here are posting things like, "digitization is a lot harder than you think," and "it all needs to be manually processed." It's all bullshit. We do have the capability. Check out the image track series
Banks around the world and just about every state tax agency had 2-4 of these puppies. They scan ~300 pages per minute, millions of documents annually. They ceate an image with OCR, sort the digital file into its proper place and even the fucking physical copy into one of 30+ bins (based on the image). You know, just in case you're so inefficient you have to still QA manually rather than digitally. In fact, they're so effective at scanning material that most high-rate paper processing providerd still doesn't buy them because the company/agency can't generate enough paper flow to reach optimal utilization rates. In short these machines are so fucking good at what they do that most people don't need them. |
To everyone who thinks this type of situation is a "government" or "public sector" problem only:
I recently started working as a contract employee in the billing department of a small division of a very large and well-known U.S. company. One of their larger accounts contains about 8,000 people that this company bills for. The billing process includes typing one person's information (generated from other internal applications and put into an excel spreadsheet) into a web page and submitting it. 8,000 times, on a intranet with very low bandwidth. I was told that this process took 3-4 people almost a month to complete (they have other things to do as well.) They had attempted to automate this process in the past, but were unsuccessful. Apparently the person who had been working on it had quit, and no one else in the office knew how to do it. Instead of hiring someone to work on things like this, buying software to automate it for them (it exists), or hiring a contractor to provide a solution for them, they instead opted to continue entering it by hand for the foreseeable future. During the interview process my abilities with computers came up (the position I was filling was not related to this account) and they decided to see if there was anything I could do about it. I am not a programmer. It took me about 3 days to very nearly automate 90% of the billing for that account in one monstrous excel spreadsheet. |
Here's one section of Federal Law:
[U.S. Code: Title 26 - INTERNAL REVENUE CODE](
Here's one subtitle, A (runs A-K for just this Title)
[26 U.S. Code Subtitle A - Income Taxes](
Here's one chapter of that subtitle (runs chapter 1-6 for just that subtitle):
[26 U.S. Code Chapter 1 - NORMAL TAXES AND SURTAXES](
Here's one subchapter (runs A through Y for just that particular chapter):
[26 U.S. Code Chapter 1, Subchapter A - Determination of Tax Liability](
Here's one one part of that subchapter (runs 1-7):
[26 U.S. Code Part I - TAX ON INDIVIDUALS](
And here it is. An actual section of US law :
[ 26 U.S. Code § 1 - Tax imposed ](
That last link has the text of one section of a part of a sub chapter of a chapter of a single title of US legal code.
notice how long it takes to just scroll through
There are 51 USG Titles
Those are just Federal laws
Even the government has no idea:
>As for the United States Code, the Government Printing Office explains that ”the United States Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is divided by broad subjects into 51 titles and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives.” It is clear that the United States Code is a compilation of laws arranged by subject. However, similar to the Statutes at Large, it does not include case law or regulatory provisions. |
I am an English teacher in Japan. It wasn't until 2012 that the Japanese beaurocratic system switched from paper filing to electronic...
At least where I live anyway.
There's a huge misconception about Japan as some place that's super-futuristic, when in reality it's a country that will blindly cling to tradition and resist change when or wherever possible.
Every few months in my office when the other teachers have to update the files of all their students you hear the ZZZZZZZZZZ.... ZZZZZ. ZZZZZ sound of electronic embossers(?Is that what they're called?) while homeroom teachers update their student's scores.
I wouldn't really think much of this, except that there is a huge, cleverly concealed prejudice against foreign English teachers in Japan. Many believe we're under-worked and over-paid.
I actually had one teacher take a tone with me and give me some 'tude about how easy my job is compared to hers because she has "50 student's files to update".
I laughed and said that in my country, that would take 10 minutes tops. A few swipes of a keyboard and Bob's your uncle.
She really didn't like that.
"Well, that's not how we do it here."
"I know. And I don't understand it. But you don't see me going around telling ya'll that you're thick in the head for not modernizing, so why are you coming over here telling me I'm lazy?"
They now use e-files for most of their work here. |
In a manner of speaking, yes. There is no official youtube consumption application (the youtube Glassware is focused on uploading video). The device has a rudimentary web-browser, so you can navigate to linked youtube videos (from messages/google searches) and play them.
The quality when doing such is lackluster, and will quickly drain your battery (esp. as rendering video is one of the most battery intensive actions on the device, second only to capturing video locally). Approx 45min to an hour (varying on WiFi/Bluetooth data) of continuous video stream/capture will kill the onboard battery. |
I feel so terrible for the reps on the other end of the phone. Just think about them for a minute:
Parneet comes in for his 4th shift this week. He just finished up his training class last week which consisted mostly of listening to recorded calls and roughly learning how to navigate the computer systems. He sits down, clocks into the computer, then signs into his headset. Instantly he's connected to someone with a problem: "I'd like to know the status of the upgrade in speed, since I received an email about it doubling."
Parneet knows that some coverage areas have begun to ramp up to a higher speed, but because it's more a city-by-city change and not a large area he doesn't know if this customer is in the right area. Not wanting to give the customer the wrong information, he decides the best thing to do is transfer them to another rep.
The next representative - James - listens to the call and decides "Wow, this is really terrible, he should have these upgrades". The problem is James isn't in the tech department, he's in the internet connectivity department. So James transfers the customer over to tech support.
Etc, etc, etc, 6 calls later.
I am absolutely and unequivocally NOT defending Comcast for this type of training, their quality teams for not catching more of these problems, or their managers for not taking ownership of escalated problems.
I just can't imagine what it feels like to show up to a party and be talking in a group of people you just met, and one of your friends goes "Oh Frank! You work for Comcast? What's going on with them anyway?" Now you have the attention of the entire party, as if your bottom-rung opinion and viewpoint could possibly shed any real light on the situation. |
I couldnt even listen to this for more then 1 minute without it bringing back chills from my previous work in a call center.......
first off call centers hire and fire people as often as they wipe their ass...so when you're on the phone with someone most likely they've worked there for less than a year...when they're hired for a 'tech support' position. You would think they'd hire someone who is computer smart .... NOPE .... I've seen ALL different kinds of people hired for a tech support position... the training process goes like this... you take a pretest to get the feel for what everyone knows... a majority of the class gets about a 15% or lower ... then the rest of the 3 week training class..they teach you the answers to the test... people learn nothing...they still know nothing about computers, or how to fix them... and are told "it's okay, you learn everything once you 'hit the floor'" you take the same test you did at the beginning of the class basically given the answers to you on a paper and you can use your notes (the paper with the answers on it)... and BAM YOU'RE A CERTIFIED TECHNICIAN FOR COMPUTER TECHNICAL SUPPORT..... that is who you're speaking with... the company spends millions of dollars making computer programs that try to resolve a standard phone call issue..and the "tech support" agent just follows this program step by step not knowning how to actually handle a problem themselves...after about a year and they still know nothing... they're eventually fired...and then it all starts over again... |
Yes it is, but you will have to lower your standards by a lot. Block all scripts, embedded videos and large images. Most of the sites today rely on these so you will be limited to mostly text, if they load at all. When 56k was prevalent sites were HTML and small. If your site took too long to load, people would leave. |
I feel like I should've recorded my convos with comcast... I had issues that went on for months with multiple calls in and various tech visits... Ultimately they billed me around 300$ for service calls and visits which never resolved issues... I contested them multiple times and finally got one guy that gave me a 60$ credit... With all the stress and frustration, I bit the bullet and took that and gave up the fight for the rest... Felt like I would lose no matter what... |
I wrote my representative and had a phone conversation with their local secretary. They provided me with information concerning local dark fiber. They also expressed concern and support for the consumer.
Then I wrote the Mayor an email espousing the creation of a municipal fiberhood in our town and the benefits it would have for local businesses and general quality of life. He was very excited by the prospects, passed my mail along to his technology officer, and asked me to come to a council meeting in the future to advocate for such an endeavor.
Using information found in the recent AMA by the Chattanooga Mayor and network CEO, I will be attempting to put together a packet to garner support from the city council. [Found Here!]( |
I'm a Brighthouse customer, and somehow I ended up having to call Comcast. Apparently one of their customers wanted her old phone number back. One that she had years ago. She told Comcast that it belonged to her, so they sent an order to request it be ported over to Comcast from my account through Brighthouse. And somehow they disconnected my phone service, 3 times. Everytime the same situation happened, and the lady kept requesting the number be ported over to Comcast. So I called Comcast to tell them to stop doing that. I was on hold for an hour trying to get to a rep. Then one of them said that it's not their department, put me on hold once more. Than when I got to the right department, they were closing and would call me back in the morning. They never called back, so I called them back, and got to someone and they said they couldn't do anything about it.They tell me that they use a third party company to verify the ladies claim that the number belongs to her. And that that third party company sends the approval to Comcast and Brighthouse. They said I need to contact Brighthouse and they will resolve the issue. So I call brighthouse and they tell me that sadly the number is with Comcast now. Because they had gotten authorization to port it over as a request from this "third party" company. Not sure what the fuck was going on there. So I contact Comcast again, 2 hours, 6 reps later. I'm livid, but I keep my calm. It's not that specific persons fault. I tell them that they had illegally ported my number to their company and that that was unjustified. They were like "we didn't do anything illegal whatsoever, it's all within our rights." I didn't know enough about the law pertaining to this issue to dispute it with him, but I knew it was wrong. In the mean time Brighthouse had called me back with a Supervisor. She was super nice, super accommodating. She figured out what the problem was, got my number back both times.They cancel all of it, and then they credit me for the inconvenience etc. Also for the time that I didn't have service etc, and the time I wasted calling Comcast.
But the kicker is Comcast rep calling me back with that lady on the line asking me if I would give the number to her. I'm not even a Comcast customer, why the hell are you even talking to me. Especially on behalf of someone else on the other line. It was like a three way call, but the other person was too chicken shit to talk to me in person. He said that there would be a charge that I would have to pay for the fees to get a new number and that I could handle that with My provider.
I was like " You want me to give my number to this lady, and pay extra money and fees to my Provider just so she can have the number? Ask her if she is willing to pay the fees, and I'll give her the damn number."
She didn't want to pay for the number to be ported over, and for me to get a new number. So I just said no thank you. Went back to Brighthouse added a passcode to the account, that no changes could be made without the authorization passcode. Haven't had any issues since. Wasn't even their Customer |
Month? Just going off of the Comcast entry on wikipedia, in 2002 Comcast had 22 million subscribers. A quick google search tells me that there are currently around 313.9 million people in the United States. Now it's highly likely that Comcast has more than 22 million subscribers now but for the sake of me being too lazy to read the wiki page more, I am going to stick with the 22 million.
22 Million subscribers means that 7% of the United States population using Comcast internet. This is assuming that each subscriber is a lonely single Fedoran Neckbeard like myself.
If 22 million people called to cancel their subscriptions and averaged 3 hours per call to cancel, assuming their is only one person to answer calls, canceling all customers would take 2.75Million days to cancel. Now, I highly doubt that even as bad as Comcast is, they probably have more than one customer service rep. Let's say they have 100 people working the phones at the call center, that would mean it would take 27,500 days for every single Comcast subscriber to cancel their internet. For those too lazy to do the math, that is 81.8 years of straight phone calls to cancel all of Comcast's customers. Let's just round that down to 80 because I probably fudged some of my googled facts somewhere along the lines.
I believe that clearly the only solution to our Comcast problem is to lube up. Clearly Comcast is enjoying fucking us in the ass.
Also, yes I know my math is about 90% bullshit |
And I think I already touched on part of the reasoning.
The system tempurature rises until a new balance is established. When a breaking point is hit in greenhouse gases, or enough sea ice melts, the temperature begins to rise.
I'm guessing you did not study much in the way of chem or physics?
Edit: You should also note that any change is not always immediate. [CO2 lags]( - This is talking about the previous ice age primarily. Now to consider that we are actively adding CO2, CO, and various other green house gases means that in addition to the CO2 we are giving off, inducing a change in tempurature, the earths oceans and rain forests will also give off CO2, as the amount of greenhouse gases the ocean is able to contain reduces as a result of rising tempurature, and the rate of decay increases as to the same.
This is not a simply system. It's hugely complex. So yes, there will be oddities that you see in each data set. But it's when you take the entire picture, that it begins to take shape:
Sea ice levels
Average ocean tempurature vs ambient air tempurature
Carbon dioxide emissions
Other greenhouse gases (Carbon monoxide, Nitrous oxide and so forth)
Solar activity
Average cloud cover, impacts energy absorbtion etc. [artcle from our friends over at nasa.gov](
Rate of decay (as influenced by humidity)
Sea levels
Population
Waste product handling
Rate of deforestation and the destruction of other carbon sinks
Rate of forestation of various area's previously culled
Rate of habitat destruction, and the various side effects.
Ok, this was one heck of a long winded edit. But there you go. |
I had a similar feeling. These are the exact reasons why the mission creep of a Social Security number ended up being really bad news. By the late 80's everyone from schools to health clubs were taking SS numbers.
Later they tried to fix this by issuing ID cards that were not your actual SS number but once again, the one ID to rule them all concept is pretty flawed.
Another good point you made is that trusting someone else's code can be lethal. Doubly lethal if it is proprietary and can't be audited. I wonder how many years the NSA has worth of "0day" Windows exploits that they are sitting on and that MS can't be bothered to find themselves. Or even worse, are either intentionally put there or known about and kept secret.
Cryptography is a very sticky science. It takes an intense knowlege of not only mathematical theory but an intense knowlege of how compilers and processors interact with source code to get it right. There's a reason why Truecrypt can only be compiled on VS 2005 with special libraries for Windows... because as compilers change and chip-sets change, your code can become insecure without any change to the source.
I'd like to think that OSS is a little more reliable in the sense that GCC can be run with flags to not optimize the code, but it's likely that there are hundreds of bugs in any compiler that can lead to some kind of hidden failure. |
Corporations are selfish and don't care who they fuck over for a dollar. The government enabled this behavior while the people vote in people to get a piece of the pie. |
All the sides seem to have taken a very aggressive 'me first' approach.
The price to acquire, legally that is, music/movies is deemed to be too high by the public (also no recourse regarding bad quality) has let the public to collectively say 'If you can't guarantee the quality I'll just "test" it out first and if I do indeed like it I'll legitimately buy it (although very few who reach this conclusion do purchase the licensed material)'. So they download it, which angers the people involved in producing it.
The producing side then decides to try to limit the ways these licensed products can be illegally obtained. They've tried this by trying copy protected files (which infringes on your legally entitled ability to make a backup copy/transfer to a different media format [CD to MP3]). Also trying to install 'fast-lanes' to curb the appeal of downloading and streaming. Now they're looking to block sites entirely (hopefully only the legally offensive ones). This approach is heavy handed and excessively penalizes those who are going about acquiring the licensed products in a legally acceptable manner, which angers those doing things the right way.
Missed in the entire process is a discussion about how to accomplish a method to protect licensed property and to limit the power/length of the license to said property. This I will leave to those more knowledgeable than myself. |
People get this wrong all the time. A "republic" is not the opposite of, or a mutually exclusive concept to, a "true democracy," as they like to call it. Au contraire, a true democracy almost necessitates the existence of a republic.
A republic is a government whose power is derived from, and resides in, the people, i.e., the public, as opposed to a royal family or some dude claiming to have been appointed ruler by a god. A republic is an alternative to a monarchy, not to a democracy.
Also, not to suggest you yourself have used this term, but it's also not called "true" and "false" democracy. There are direct democracies and representative democracies. The U.S. is a representative democracy (which also happens to be a republic), while Switzerland more closely resembles a direct democracy (a rare instance, at that, even among developed nations). But Switzerland is also a republic. |
North Korea has a much higher turn out. What part of a democracy do you think can be measured in voter turn out?
Maybe people believe their choice is between a dog shit sandwich or a cat shit sandwich or maybe they believe it's between chocolate ice cream and strawberry ice cream. But if they perceive little difference in the choices (whether they view the parties as bad or good) there may be little incentive to vote.
Also the U.S. System is set up such that most people's votes count for nothing. So why bother? |
If you're unemployed you've got bigger problems than King Jeffrey dying. There's already a bunch of issues surrounding the First Amendment, go take to the streets or write to your congressman. If you really care about censoring (shutting down torrenting sites is not censoring anything or anyone) then worry about how cops or schools keep people from spreading the goings on with their organizations. |
I have a Tesla and a Leaf, and no ICE automobiles. They charge in my garage, when they're parked and not being used.
Going to a gas station is a pain in the ass, a waste of time, and a waste of money. I have a 9kW solar array, so charging at home is free in the sense that I've already paid for the array, and net-zero energy in the sense that I'm producing approximately 102% of the amount of electricity that my house and cars use in a year. (I say approximately, because the array is only 9 months old. I won't know this for sure until I have 12 months of data.)
In other words, there's no impact to the grid in general (my overall impact is actually net-positive) and this concern about the size of cables is.... silly? I'm not sure I can find the words to describe my reaction to what I'm reading.
I have a 30 amp level two charger for the Leaf and a 70 amp HPWC charger for the Tesla. The cable is about a 1/2 in diameter for the level 2 charger, and about 3/4 inch diameter for the HPWC.
They won't charge my cars in "minutes" but I don't need or want them to. It's easier just to let them charge overnight, while I'm asleep. Typically, I'll plug them in while my panels are producing, but I'm on a 100% renewable energy plan, so even if I plug them in when the panels aren't, they're still 100% renewably charged.
In no small part because of this, I've plugged into a public charging station a handful of times with the Leaf (maybe, like 10 times in two years, and usually only where they're free). Before I had the panels in the garage, I filled up up the Leaf at work for free.
So... this terrible problem you speak of, I don't really understand it. But let's say I wanted to take a road trip. I actually can't and don't want to do one in my Tesla Roadster, but I've done a road trip in a Model S, so I know what it entails.
A Tesla Supercharger charges at a rate up 120 kW , which equates to 170 miles of range in about 30 minutes . If there's several cars at the supercharging station, say 6 at an 8 bay station, the speed decreases somewhat. But it's not terrible.
As a rule of thumb, if one were to travel at constant speed of approximately 80 mph, one can expect just over 100 miles worth of a charge in 30 minutes.
While the car is supercharging, generally there is a restroom break. That takes a few minutes, maybe three or four, but it happens while the car is charging, unlike a trip to a gas station on a road trip, where you pump and then pee, or pee and then pump depending on the... urgency.
There's nobody to pay, so that's not an additional time penalty as you would encounter at a gas station on a regular road trip. In a car, you would pump gas for about 10 minutes, pee for about 4 minutes, stand in line to buy a soda and a candy bar for about 3 minutes, wait for your wife for friend who wasn't planning to go to the restroom but then decided they'd better try for another couple of minutes, and all told you're probably out about 20 minutes or there abouts at a normal break in a regular car anyway. It depends on your travel partners, the number of people in line at the station and other factors, but stops on road trips tend to take a while for most people. Sometimes more than 30 minutes.
All told, a supercharger break and a regular gasoline fill-up break, in a four hour drive is pretty comparable time wise. Perhaps not in @8 hours of driving, but in @4 hour driving trips, they're a lot closer than you'd imagine. |
I tend to agree with people saying most of it is a non-issue. I do think you're going to end up leasing your batteries in most cases. There WILL be multiple manufacturers of batteries, but like standard sizes of batteries: AA, AAA, C, D, etc there will only be a couple of "shapes". This should limit the amount of infrastructure these places need. There will two fuelling options available. Quick charges much the way Tesla already provides, where you get a 50% charge in like 20 minutes. There will also be battery exchange if you happen to be on a particularly long trip. People keep ignoring those. It's not the daily commuters that are the problem, but the long distance travellers. Live anywhere in Canada and you need to travel long distances to get anywhere.
I think with both of those situations covered it's not going to be an issue. Faster charging will come, and will likely use some type of capacitor storage to do it as well, but I don't think the drain that you're expecting to see will exist. Those quick charges might come at a premium much the way gasoline is now. I can pay some extra cash for a quick refuel or I can do it the slower way. Gas stations will enjoy this because they will still be able to charge a premium to certain people. |
I like the rechargeable [liquid battery]( technology.
Far from perfect (so far), but it would help with a number of the issues with EV batteries. |
I'm talking about phones and how "they don't have a standard" despite every phone Ive owned in the last decade being micro USB or that one slightly thicker one(trapezoid shape). For there being no standard, sure seems pretty standardized.
My point? The analogy sucks. 20 years ago? Sure. Everyone had a proprietary plug. Not anymore. Look at electronics and notices how there are actually a whole shit ton of standards for different devices. I can take the power plug from my desktop for example, and plug it into 99.9% of any computer I'd find. USB is a standard. There are plenty of standards. Saying there isn't a standard right now is pointless. Of course there isn't, its too new. It doesn't happen magically, you make it happen. The solution to "there is no standard" is not to complain about EV, its to set a standard. And don't even dare say that won't happen. Its been on reddit recently and in the past that Tesla and others keep sharing their technology and patents. |
Just to make my own estimates:
There are about 2 million people in my home county. There are about 100 gas stations. (Just from looking at Google maps.) People fill up their car every 5th day. (Semi-random number, but close enough.) For this estimate, I'm going to guess that there's about one car in service per person. Some people don't drive; some people drive more than one. Close enough.
So that means there are about 400,000 people trying to fill up their cars every day. This works out to about 4,000 per gas station per day, which strikes me as a bit high. (Maybe I should've used households, not people?)
Then 4,000 cars * 85KWH/car is 340,000 KWH, or 340MWH. This works out to an average of 14 MWH/H, or 14MW that needs to be continually provided to the station (assuming perfect storage). This works out to be about one large data center or 1,000 homes worth of electricity, per gas station.
While this would certainly be a strain on the (current) grid, I don't believe that this isn't infrastructure we could build over 20-30 years as we make a transition from fossil fuels to electric vehicles.
For reference, the county used 21 trillion watt hours of electricity in 2009, working out to 58 billion watt hours a day. One hundred gas stations using 340 million watt hours a day would represent a ~60% increase in electrical demand, which is large, but not impossible to build out. (Likely, it would be less for the current demand, as my supply numbers are ~5 years old, and electrical demand has been going up.) |
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about this issue.
Really, the FCC doesn't want to change anything. Before all of this debate began, the ISPs were not common carriers, but the FCC had Net Neutrality rules in place. Then, there was a court ruling that said that Net Neutrality was too severe regulation for their classification (not common carrier, I forget the name). So now they have the choice of 1. No Net Neutrality, or 2. reclassify. Everyone would have been perfectly happy if that court ruling hadn't taken place (with the exception of ISPs).
The other thing is that the FCC has no power to control/monitor the internet, and there is no threat of that. The FCC regulates telecom companies, not consumers. Telephone companies are common carriers, and are heavily regulated by the FCC. That doesn't mean that they monitor your telephone calls (although the NSA may); it means that they have rules that Verizon has to follow in order to have access to the airwaves.
What they're regulating is the ISPs, not the internet users. People use ISPs, and if they find out that Netflix is loading noticeably slower, they'll complain to the FCC, and the FCC will investigate, and the FCC will fine the ISP, or revoke their permission to use the public airwaves/phone lines.
That's the same as if a radio station started broadcasting the f-word: the FCC will revoke their license to broadcast. |
Welcome to the trade-off between convenience/productivity and security.
Convenience wins on the small scale every single day when something like a small business decides to stick with insecure legacy software because learning the new stuff would cost too much time, money, and effort.
Security will never, ever win on the large scale. Not because people are stupid, but because people are smart enough to realize that despite any privacy qualms they might have, it's not worth trading billions (trillions?) in production to periodically rip out every technology in existence as people poke holes in them.
"We need to start over and be really secure this time" is the technological equivalent of telling Walmart that they need to close their stores down for a year and really focus on locking everything down to prevent shoplifting. Not only is it completely unviable, but even if someone was crazy enough to do it then people would just poke holes in the new security procedures. |
You remember top kill? Note how they abruptly halted that effort. Rumor is that they fear that stopping the flow up top would cause a massive blowout below the seafloor in one of the casings. Apparently they suspect that mud was escaping the casing 1000 feet below the seafloor which was the reason for top kill failing. In other words, they have no current ability to stop it's flow from above without making the situation a hell of a lot worse. If you look at their tech briefing, they also plan to siphon off oil from the choke and kill lines. Those lines connect where there is still a lot of pressure in the BOP - some 9000 PSI. They would have no reason to do that unless there was fear of a compromised casing. They have to wait for the relief wells to kill it. |
I don't think your cost comparisons are fair. Firstly, a square inch is too small a unit to look at, because the LED cell that they're talking about covers more than 1 square inch. I'd estimate based on the video that the LED pitch is approximately 3 inches.
So, you're operating on a 3x3 inch grid. (9 square inches).
Secondly, $1 to me seems like a fair, and perhaps even high number for this 3x3 grid. Looking on ebay, you can buy 112 3x6 inch solar cells for $188. For your 3x3 grid, that's approximately 84 cents for the photo voltaics. Again using ebay (not forgetting that the actual cost of a component for a large scale project like this would be considerably less than retail), a 150mW surface mount LED costs between 5c and 10c ($5-$10/100). The video states they use 6, giving a total power output of approximately 900mW per 3x3 grid. I don't know if that's sufficient, or what LEDs they're using, but I'll go with this for now because it seems reasonable.
Heating coils are trickier because they're not really a standard component. However, I'm going to assume that one way to do it would be to place a large heating blanket under a large number of these 3x3 grids, as that would get a more distributed heat output. Don't forget that there is heat generated by the function of LEDs, which would obviously vary with operation. Heat buildup could be a problem, I suppose, but I can't really address that here.
The closest thing to what is needed is an underfloor heating system. Again on ebay (great friend!), I found an underfloor heating mat that covers 21 x 1 ft, and costs [$52.25]( Given that it's fair to say 3x3 is too small an area to calculate this for, and because I know that similar LED arrays operate a number of cells together in a unit, I think it's fair to cluster the 3x3 cells together. Back to the video again - they seem to operate their cells in 8x8 blocks.
So now we have a 24inch by 24 inch panel (4 square feet), in which there is 64 individual cells. The heating blanket I mentioned above is simply a bunch of wires held together in a plastic sheet, so I think that scaling cost down linearly is fair in this case. Perhaps it's not, but then perhaps the blanket would be laid down under a considerable number of these 2ft panels. There's a lot of variables in this unfortunately.
Scaling it down linearly, our $53 blanket of 21 square feet costs $2.50 a square foot, or for one 2'x2' panel, $10.
So far we have 64 individual cells, each consisting of 84c of solar panels, 60c of LEDs, mounted on an $10 thermal blanket. That brings each 2ft by 2ft cell up to about ($53.76 + $38.40 + $10) = $102.16.
On the cell level, there won't be much more than that. The construction they talk about using in the future consists of 2 pieces of glass, some form of garbage to divide it, and the LEDs, panels and wiring. I'd imagine any heating element would be laid down inside that as well.
There are a lot of things that would be required per panel - microprocessors for LED control, wiring between every component, and control wiring leading to a more centralised wireless receiving unit. It's hard to put a cost on that, but for the sake of this argument, I'm going to point at something that already exists. Each 2'x2' panel is essentially 2 8x8 LED displays laid on top of one another (assuming the 3 LEDs of each colour within the panel operate synchronously) and so an existing (but much smaller) board can be pointed at. This 8x8 LED display kit , the costs would be close to negligible. Perhaps $10 for a panel. Finally, each 64 LED display would need to be controlled. The 8x8 display I linked above has a PDF manual which demonstrates control of a large number of panels by a single arduino (ATMega168) microcontroller. The total number of panels controllable is limited by the memory of the microcontroller (to display an image) and physical distance. The hardware for a functional ATMega168 is considerably under $20 when its put together as part of an electronic component, and so given that a single one could address 10 or more panels, it's an insignificant cost.
Obviously as you get up the chain, you'd need more controllers. To have this system work like a power grid, you'd probably need to have a power line running along side the road, and you'd need to make use of systems for power management and voltage increase. If the system had a net gain in power, you'd need to get that out somewhere, which would require high voltage power lines.
The costs would be great, but $10/square inch is far too high. My estimations give a cost of approximately $125 for 4 square feet, or $31.25/square foot. That's approximately 21c/square inch for electronic components.
Now, I can't address the cost of glass at all. The layout they described seemed to be a sandwich structure using a layer of their special glass (which has the anti-reflection and anti-skid properties), the electronic components, some recycled plastic and some epoxy to seal it all together, and then another layer of glass. I'd imagine that the cost of the glass would dwarf the cost of the electronic components, but perhaps not. It really depends on the technology they develop, if they can develop it at all. [An estimation]( of toughened glass puts it at upwards of $150/square meter, or about 10c/square inch.
So two layers of toughened glass and the electronics give a cost of about 40c/square inch. I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect the electronics costs to halve (given that the costs used include retail profit margins) if you were mass producing integrated panels, and given that this is some years off there's probably a considerable cost reduction in technology advancements, especially in solar panels. The price of the glass is very vague, so I'll leave it as the quote above says. It could be considerably more, it could be 10 times less - it really depends on this company.
So based on your square inch quote, 1 mile of roadway would cost approximately $3 million in components. Reconstructing a road (discarding the existing surface) costs Texas seems to be labour, while the other half ($250,000/mile) is materials.
Yes, this technology is certainly not going to be installed tomorrow. The costs involved are considerably too high. However, my estimations (based on off the shelf parts and wild guesses) put it about 10x higher than current roadway costs. I can't make any suggestions about the cost of glass, but I personally believe that through integration of electronics, and advances in manufacturing techniques, the electronic components discussed in this video could be affordable for road surfaces.
I guess I didn't really say much, but it's an interesting thought. Sunlight is defined as about 1000 W/m2, which would give an average square inch (15% efficient solar panels) a power production of 0.096W (96mW). An average 2ft by 2ft panel would make 55.74W in sunlight, which at 12c/kWh (average in the US apparently) would be making about $29.30 a year assuming fictional 12 hour sunny days every day. That's about 5c/square inch/year. Obviously there'd be losses in transmission, and the system needs quite considerable power for lighting, and in the winter for heating.
It's certainly not cost effective now, but it could well be shortly. I don't think that this would make sense in the north, where snow is a problem and heating would be required. I think that this would make sense in the south, where temperature gradients are mostly in the positive and icing, snow and snow plows aren't really an issue. (and in the desert it's sunny all the time!). I think I've probably massively underestimated some costs, so please take this with a grain of salt.
(Procrastination!) |
80% of the Internet was created with a poorly-written spec and a reference implementation to clarify behavior, which other implementations strive to be compatible with. That's what the reference implementation is for (this is the reason why MS's ODF implementation stinks, by the way -- they intentionally broke compatibility with the "reference" version that everyone else was working against, OO.o). |
Just a partial list of the stuff you can do with a PDF from Wikipedia:
Interactive page elements (such as radio buttons and checkboxes); interactive, fill-in forms (AcroForm); Forms Data Format (FDF) for interactive form data that can be imported, exported, transmitted and received from the Web; mouse events; support for playing movies from external files; support for playing sounds, either embedded in the PDF file or from external files ; Unicode; advanced color features and image proxying[12]
Digital signatures; ICC and DeviceN color spaces; JavaScript actions; Embedded file streams - embedding files of any type directly within the body of the PDF file itself (e.g. used for attachments); many new annotation types; new features of the Adobe imaging model embodied in PostScript LanguageLevel 3; Masked images; Alternate representations for a single image; Smooth shading; Enhanced page numbering; Web Capture - a facility for capturing information from World Wide Web and converting it to PDF; Logical structure - a facility for representating logical structure independently of its graphical structure; additional support for CIDFonts; data structures for mapping strings and numbers to PDF objects; Prepress Support - information useful in prepress production workflows; new functions - for several types of function object that represent parameterized classes of functions[13][14]
JBIG2; transparency; RC4 encryption key lengths greater than 40bits (40-128bits); enhancements to interactive forms and Forms Data Format (FDF), support for XML form submissions, embedded FDF files, Unicode specification of field export values, support for remote collaboration and digital signatures in FDF files; support for accessibility to disabled users; metadata streams using XML - Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP); Tagged PDF ;Facilities for including printer’s marks; Support for the display and preview of production-related page boundaries; New predefined CMaps; Alternate Presentations - alternate ways in which the document may be viewed; The ability to import content from one PDF document into another; EmbeddedFiles entry in the PDF document’s name dictionary - a standard location for the embedded data[14][15]; OCR text layer[citation needed]
JPEG 2000; enhanced support for embedding and playback of multimedia; object streams; cross reference streams; XML Forms Data Format (XFDF) for interactive form submission (replaced the XML format in PDF 1.4); support for forms, rich text elements and attributes based on Adobe’s XML Forms Architecture (XFA) 2.02; public-key security handlers using PKCS#7 (introduced in PDF 1.3 but not documented in the PDF Reference until PDF 1.5), public-key encryption, permissions - usage rights (UR) signatures (does not require document encryption), PKCS#7 with SHA-1, RSA up to 4096-bits; security handler can use its own encryption and decryption algorithms; Optional Content - sections of content in a PDF document that can be selectively viewed or hidden by document authors or consumers - for items such as CAD drawings, layered artwork, maps, and multi-language documents; Alternate Presentations - the only type is slideshow - invoked by means of JavaScript actions (Adobe Reader supports only SVG 1.0)[14][16][17] Support for Windows 98 dropped. To view and print newer version PDFs, such as those at the IRS website, with older versions of Reader requires downloading in Google Docs "Quick View" simplified PDF format.
3D artwork, e.g. support for Universal 3D file format; OpenType font embedding; support for XFA 2.2 rich text elements and attributes; AES encryption; PKCS#7 with SHA256, DSA up to 4096-bits; NChannel color spaces; additional support for embedded file attachments, including cross-document linking to and from embedded files; enhancements and clarifications to digital signatures related to usage rights and modification detection and prevention signatures[14]
increased presentation of 3D artwork; support for XFA 2.4 rich text elements and attributes; presentation of multiple file attachments (portable collections); document requirements for a PDF consumer application; new string types - PDFDocEncoded string, ASCII string, byte string; PKCS#7 with SHA384, SHA512 and RIPEMD160
256-bit AES encryption; incorporation of XFA Datasets into a file conforming PDF/A-2; RichMedia annotations - attaching Flash applications, video (including Flash video with H.264), audio, and other multimedia with expanded functionality, two-way scripting bridge between Flash and a conforming application; support for the rich text conventions described in XFA 2.5 and 2.6 |
My original post had a part about why I replaced Quicksilver with Alfred, but it was way too long, so I removed it.
Quicksilver is great, but outdated. The developer stopped updating it.
Alfred doesn't have the same functionality, but it's getting there. You're only using Quicksilver to launch applications, so you could do with just Alfred, without buying the extra functions. Alfred supports the same acronym and non-complete name searching as Quicksilver (typ "FF" for F ire f ox, "maft" for m inecr aft ; spotlight is really bad at this, but sort of does it).
The only thing Alfred doesn't do is much of the plugin functions Quicksilver has. One of my most used plugins is the text plugin, which lets you append or prepend text to a .txt document. I can use Quicksilver to create a text document, rename it, append text then move it, all without closing Quicksilver. It's the only reason I still run Quicksilver beside Alfred.
The large problem with Quicksilver is that it catalogs a much smaller part of your disk by default, and you're supposed to move to deeper folders by typing "/". To add more folders, you have to be really specific with which folders to add, and how deep it should look from that folder.
Quicksilver looks only on the root of "Documents", no deeper. I have everything in folders, so I need to copy the Documents catalog, but set the depth higher. This brings another problem, because some folders are even deeper, and you should never set it to look infinity deep, so I have to add those folders manually and set their depth even higher.
Alfred (and Spotlight) catalog a large part of the disk, without much choice of depth. They search the home folder at a certain depth by default, along with the applications, developer and preference panes folders. You can add more, but it's not necessary, because in Alfred, you can type "find ..." to do a wider search for that specific file, and gives you a scrollable list of results. |
If you read the patent, it describes a computer system that would contain "instructions for modifying the standard company logo with at least one of video or audio data." What does this mean?
Reddit (and other, lesser sites) only violate the patent if their logo is changed a) by a computer that b) has been programmed to change the logo to include c) animations, audio, or video for a d) holiday, special event, or corporate event. |
Are you for real or just a troll? First of all it's only directly competing with 2 consoles above it (PS2 & wii).
Dude you provided a link, I read it. The link you provided shows it to be the ninth best selling console in the world.
>Do you understand business strategy at all?
Yes I do. It involved ROI. Return on Investment. If you have not gotten a return on investment in ten years you suck as a businessman. You should have cut your losses off way earlier than that.
>Their original goal was not to be profitable right away. It was a market penetration strategy to basically put as many fucking units as they could into homes.
The goal is profit in business. Eventually you should get back all of your investment and more (to account for lost opportunity).
>The thing is, they were prepared for those costs because they are in it for the long haul. If you asked me a decade ago whether MS would have sold 54 million of their next gen console i would have thought you were crazy.
It's clear you know nothing about business. Selling things at a loss is not a good ten year plan. Eventually you need to make your money back.
> |
Are you for real or just a troll? First of all it's only directly competing with 2 consoles above it (PS2 & wii).
Do you understand business strategy at all? Their original goal was not to be profitable right away. It was a market penetration strategy to basically put as many fucking units as they could into homes. This came at an obvious cost because they were initially losing money on each unit. The thing is, they were prepared for those costs because they are in it for the long haul. If you asked me a decade ago whether MS would have sold 54 million of their next gen console i would have thought you were crazy. |
In the enterprise IT world, if you are even a single update behind, you are completely insecure. The author of that article is super upset but he doesn't even know the name of the current version of the OS. It's not $129 dollars for an antiquated version of the OS, it was like $50 to upgrade to that OS.
Not to be an ass, but Apple only supports hardware for 3 years, check out their Applecare cycle. |
If that's how you choose to take it. I believe that if something has a 3 year product cycle and you expect 10, that's a mistake on your behalf. If you want something with a 10 year product cycle, buy something with that cycle, but don't expect Apple to be something it's not.
Apple is pretty clear about the fact they encourage cyclical consumer spending habits, they've been honest about that intention on earnings calls for years. Perhaps you should revise your expectations to more closely align with the information Apple is sending you. |
Like you read my mind.
I'm a programmer. I'm a student. I'm a power user. A normal day for me is being hooked up to one virtual machine and two remote machines with 4-5 browser windows up with 5 - 20 tabs open in each, not to mention graphical tools, documentation, and multiple dev projects... If I've been using a windows machine for more than a year the number of installed programs is huge . I get how the 'tiles' work on a phone, but what happens when you get past 5-10 applications?
It's a sexy splash screen, and I hope they will prove me wrong, but it feels like I'm going to say "wow that's neat" and then have to immediately start using it exclusively in windows 7 mode to get work done... |
Right, but they put it at the bottom of the Q&A at the bottom of the page so you'd have to read something to get there. When people just put the answer on forums like you just did, it defeats the purpose as a simple google search will tell them how to get around this inconvenience; and learn nothing about SOPA/PIPA. |
As a German, I think I can help putting this into perspective.
First of all, Youtube is obligated to block videos on copyright grounds, Youtube already does this. The videos which were part of this lawsuit were merely blocked "too late". Therefore nothing new here.
Second of all, Youtube was ordered to use filtering software to impede re-upload of the blocked videos. Obviously, this is a terrible idea, but here is why:
When suing someone in Germany over copyright violations in the Internet, you are free to choose the court where you are suing. The "Landgericht Hamburg" is well-known to rule extremely biased in favor of the copyright holders. However, a huge load of verdicts from this court have been overturned by higher instances, so we likely didn't hear the last of it. |
1) There are more channels in the states than you can shake a stick at.
2) Radio TV is usually local programming and some really crappy channels.
3) Some channels (like Discovery, History, Animal Planet, etc) are only on cable or satellite. Yes, they're starting to get REALLY crappy, but there is still the odd gem.
4) My local baseball team had their own channel which broadcast 90% of the games (sometimes the games were broadcast on the radio channels, but rarely)
5) Can I watch the same stuff on On Demand services like Hulu and Netflix? Yes, but they take a LONG time to get the newer episodes out, and you still have to watch ads in Hulu (albeit very short ads).
6) In the states, you have 42 minutes of actual programming for every hour of actual TV. If I wanted to watch a BBC version of TopGear, which is an hour long show in England, they have to cut out bits to fit it into 42 minutes. Yes, this sucks, but you only notice it occasionally.
7) Did I mention that modern cable and satellite packages in the states get A LOT of channels? Even a low tiered contract gets a lot of music channels, On demand channels, hispanic channels. |
Does this violate their contracts with the networks? I don't know, I'd have to read the contracts. But you can't simply assume it doesn't just because you like the feature.
I highly, highly, highly doubt Dish Networks legal team didn't mull these thoughts over as they were designing this new feature. It would be flat-out negligent to create this product without first verifying that it doesn't nullify their contracts. So until you prove otherwise, I'm assuming that legally they are fine.
It doesn't mean that these networks have to renew their contracts with Dish. That's their decision.
>So it would be OK to breach the contract and violate their copyrights if it would only cost them some money, rather than all of it? That's some shitty logic. It's either a breach and violation or it's not.
Your point is moot if I'm correct in my above statement, and I believe I am. Most television is watched in real-time. People are acting like all ad revenue would go away if this comes out, which is simply not true. |
For television commercials: Less reruns.
I actually like commercials, what I don't like however, is the fact that I can watch Series 1 on Station 2 and watch Series 2 on Station 1 and see the same commercial 15 times. If you people actually had any interesting twists instead of being the same block as it was before the previous one, which was the same as the last just shuffled, I'd watch them a lot more often. Just watch commercials for once and you'll see many times where they literally just replay the same commercial twice in a row. Fix that up.
For Internet ads: Less bandwidth hogging virus ridden barely anything to do about the product linked .gifs
I don't want you to be eating my bandwidth because I'm browsing a news site or summit, I might have a limited plan but nooo you want huge flash javascript monsters that could quite easily be gifs and not nearly as be as bandwidth eating.
I also care not for your adware and the fact you people have inferior security systems and get your legitimate ads to be virusified (it does happen)
A slogan like "Hmm tasty" and some chocolate tells me nothing about your product and is not all the useful, information is useful and makes me want to get your product, not slogans, now this may be my Geminiintrovertic brain, but I like information. |
As a mobile developer, I would hate this . The key reason, in my mind, that iOS apps just look/feel better than Android apps is that UI programming is overwhelmingly more pleasant for an iOS app. Every device has the exact same screen ratio, and one of two resolutions (one of which is just double the other). For Android, a universe of different screen dimensions and resolutions makes your life terrible. Every element is laid out in a relative to others. There are four different units of size when you're laying out an Android UI (px, dip, sp, pt). In placing a button in an android app, it's "This button goes to the right of that other button, with the bottom of the text aligned. It needs a gravity of 2, while the other button has a gravity of 1, and both have to have their widths set to zero." Placing that same button in an iOS app would be something more along the lines of "This button goes here. That button goes there. For every device ever." Which is so much better. |
I'm a technology blogger, I have covered Apple and the iPhone, specifically, for six to seven years. I've worked at gizmodo, techcrunch, and cnet. I know how tech companies do "leaks" like the one you're proposing. Apple is very rarely one of those companies, especially with it's iPhone line. I can tell you with absolute certainty that apple did not leak this phone to some youtuber or anyone else on purpose.
Almost anytime I or one of my colleagues has gotten ahold of any kind of ahead-of-the-curve leak about apple - which happens - apple does their best to shut it down, even of it's flattering towards them. They are secretive to the max and they take it very, very seriously. They like to send cops and their own Gestapo after people. Leaking info like you're suggesting is simply something they don't do. Especially about the iPhone. |
Oh I certainly have. But for that you need to test on Chrome, Firefox, Safari (also webkit, so maybe not), and what's current practice, back to IE 6? That's 7 browsers. Seven. You can run them all on one machine. (We had one, called the shit box, at my old office). Have you tried testing UI for an android app? How many damn devices do you need to make sure it renders well on all? And you can't just run it in the emulator, different devices render things in all sorts of terrible ways. To solidly test an enterprise Android app, you've got dozens of devices and weeks of bullshit to put up with. |
Power usage prediction is extremely important for utilities, especially if it provides the necessary minimum usage profile.
People think you can just turn on or off power plants. For coal (which represents the non-peak steady power) it can take hours even days to significantly change production rates. To top it off, there is a minimum amount these plants can burn. The power companies use contracts like this to guarentee that minimum usage. When its not used THEY have to dump that energy. The more coal based power they can use the less peaking plants (expensive) they have to spinup keeping overall rates lower.
I work in renewables and I hate a lot of what power companies do, but there is a scientific reason for charging for underusage. Someone (whether it be microsoft or the power company) will dump that energy. |
Let's put it another way.
As a consumer of electricity, you care about the cost of your power.
As a producer of electricity, you care about reliability. Reliability is created through knowing exactly how much power you will need to produce. If you know in advance, you can use cheap power (like coal) which takes hours or even days to set operating points. If you do not know in advance, you have to use natural gas (expensive) to make up for it because it can be turned on or off in a matter of minutes. No matter what, it is your job to make sure Production = Demand. If either one is higher (shortage or surplus of power) than the other you will create a power outage.
So if you are an individual house (very sporadic power profile), the power provider knows you are going to cost a lot of money since you aren't very predictable. I'm going to charge you a higher rate.
Now imagine you are a data center that has a very flat predictable power profile. The consumer can tell the provider, there is 100% chance that this will be your power profile within certain small thresholds. The provider is now willing to charge you a MUCH lower rate and state they will fine you if you do anything otherwise (up or down). This is going to be a rate on your electricity that would be unheard of if you tried buying it for a house.
So I've essentially given you a ridiculously low rate because you are offering me something I want in exchange (a predictable load profile). If you do anything other than what you agreed to, you're going to cost me a LOT of money. In fact, if I can't find a spot for that extra kWh you promised to consume to go, then I'm going to have to dump it into a resistor bank (i'm wasting it) AND I have to manage all those logistics. That single kWh of energy might cost me five times that low rate I agreed to sell it to you. |
As a consumer of electricity, you care about the cost of your power.
As a producer of electricity, you care about reliability. Reliability is created through knowing exactly how much power you will need to produce. If you know in advance, you can use cheap power (like coal) which takes hours or even days to set operating points. If you do not know in advance, you have to use natural gas (expensive) to make up for it because it can be turned on or off in a matter of minutes. No matter what, it is your job to make sure Production = Demand. If either one is higher (shortage or surplus of power) than the other you will create a power outage.
So if you are an individual house (very sporadic power profile), the power provider knows you are going to cost a lot of money since you aren't very predictable. I'm going to charge you a higher rate.
Now imagine you are a data center that has a very flat predictable power profile. The consumer can tell the provider, there is 100% chance that this will be your power profile within certain small thresholds. The provider is now willing to charge you a MUCH lower rate and state they will fine you if you do anything otherwise (up or down). This is going to be a rate on your electricity that would be unheard of if you tried buying it for a house.
So I've essentially given you a ridiculously low rate because you are offering me something I want in exchange (a predictable load profile). If you do anything other than what you agreed to, you're going to cost me a LOT of money. In fact, if I can't find a spot for that extra kWh you promised to consume to go, then I'm going to have to dump it into a resistor bank (i'm wasting it) AND I have to manage all those logistics. That single kWh of energy might cost me five times that low rate I agreed to sell it to you. |
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