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Just in case someone takes your comment seriously.
Approximately 1/2 of the U.S. might have a slight problem with electric slots running down the middle of the road due to Snow, Ice, Salt, Rain, Sand, Leaves, etc, etc, etc. |
I mentioned this elsewhere in this thread, but here we go again:
Just in case someone takes your comment seriously.
Approximately 1/2 of the U.S. might have a slight problem with electric slots/rails running down the middle of the road due to Snow, Ice, Salt, Rain, Sand, Leaves, etc, etc, etc. |
Using 1-800-COLLECT's absurdly detailed fee calculator, our reader's call should have cost him $10.63 for the "connection fee" along with $3.99 per minute—which it did. (Plus the assorted extra fees.)
Total: $42.55 ($33.93 for the 6 minutes used Plus the assorted extra fees.) |
We're in the middle of another transitional period/industrial revolution right now. Instead of people working machines manually they're all being transitioned into purely automated processes in which the only people needed are the maintenance workers and programmers. Jobs are being shipped overseas without a doubt, but we still have a large industrial sector that, while it has less jobs, is still just as if not more productive. What'll happen in the next couple decades will be one of two things: 1. We'll have a massive resurgence of productivity in the industrial sector coupled with a large exodus of oversea production facilities due to rising political tensions and the accessibility to equipment in the U.S. or 2. Some other power will obtain a massive industrial boom because the U.S. dropped the ball. |
I think you're putting more emphasis on showing how evil Deepthroat was by leaking information rather than how corrupt the Watergate scandal was.
The issue is bigger than Snowden.
Attempts to make it a 'Snowden did bad things getting this info' intentionally attempt to frame it about HIM, when instead you should be focusing on the revelations of the systemic, global reaching mass surveillance . |
I haven't worked for Comcast, but I have for another provider. It was and is pretty standard under a 2 year agreement to increase after 12 months. Usually in the details there is a stipulation about how one of the reoccurring credits will fall off after the 12th month. The issue we had was 3rd party call centers were complete shit at explaining the details and I'd end up with the call a.year into the contract having to compensate and explain. On some rare occasions it was a legit special offer, but usually no. My neighbor is going through this exact thing with Charter right now and I feel bad because I suggested them over dish since they were using dial up and I knew it would go up $15 after 12 months because I've read the terms over and over after working for another provider that I knew well enough what to look for.
I'm not saying its right or wrong, but it is annoying.
The bottom line or |
I had a similar situation happen to me. I"ve been at this location and with them for 3 years now. My bill went up $10 after the first promotion ended at 12 months. From Month 13 until Month 36, my bill was right at $50 when I hit the confirm button. I talk to the online chat guy and he says I should be able to get on a new promotion due to my concerns of going up to $60 on my latest bill (20% increase). He said he would not be able to activate the bill, but phone-in service would. I call in to phone service and ask them to look at the notes he left from my chat. They said they would adjust my fees. The lady then told me my final fees would now be $55 and not the agreed upon amount since that offfer was online only. I told her that they just pulled a freaking bait and switch on me and I was now quite angry with them. I talked to another higher level resolution agent. She tried to adjust my bill again....to $54. Hell nooooooo. So I finally get cussing angry at this crap and tell her that she either needs to give me my promised rate I got earlier in the day. I let them know that even then I'm still angry and will probably be looking for other service...even if it costs me more. TWC sucks and I don't want to work with them if they're going to tell me one thing and try to slip me another. I end up finally getting them to cave and give me a new monthly rate of 45 after fees/taxes. |
Ex Comcast worker here. I'm guessing their promotions worked like ours. They were all 2 year triple plays. The first year is a big discount. The second year it gets shittier, the third year is normal price. I always explained this to people and no one ever got up in arms about it at the time, but I'm sure most people forgot once the uptick came along, and yeah its definitely in the fine print, most of the time in the normal print. Then again my department didn't get commission (online sales, eventually outsourced over seas) so I had no reason to bull shit anyone.
I'm not saying comcast/time Warner aren't cunts, because they are totally cunts, but in my experience when you work in a business that deals with literally everyone, you find out most people don't read the information in the promo. Comcast is a bunch of cunts, so are you, everyone is cunts. |
This is completely legal if it was done correctly at sign up otherwise it was cramming and slamming the account. When I worked for Centurylink(horrible company) we regularly had promotions such as pay 19.99 for one year on a two year promotion and after year one the price would increase by X amount for year two. The price was still under the regular pricing. This was at least in my case thoroughly explained to the customer. |
I worked for century Link and honestly keep calling till you find a rep that will help you. We were all allowed to give up to $250 off your bill at any time from the first day we started. Doesn't mean we would but if you were nice to me and it sounded like you got fucked by us I would offer discounts. I had permission to make your bill 0 ever month you called but didn't over do it cause I was afraid to get fired. There were people that called and complained every month just to get money off. I would see accounts that had never actually paid for their service. |
I know I'm a bit late to this post but the same exact thing just happened to my bill. When I called customer service they simply said there was nothing they could do. It sounded like they had been receiving many similar phone calls regarding the billing increase.
Some of the charges are absurd. For example: $5.99/month for internet modem lease and $6.98/month for HD Set-Top Box. They are charing me 6 bucks a month to "lease" an outdated modem on top of the $57.99 for a 15mbps internet connection. The "HD Set-top box" charge is silly since it is not a DVR box and if I wanted additional boxes I would be forced to pay $7 for each TV. (I use a Roku I purchased for $40 as an additional cable box and its great since it runs off of my wifi and does not need to have a cable run to it.)
The total bill for standard TV and Standard Internet cost me $134.22/month currently and it has been increasing steadily for 2 years and there is nothing I can do about it. I have no other option since going through a satellite TV provider cost the same or more and the internet connection is contracted through Time Warner of course. I'm stuck overpaying for sup-par TV/internet service since there is no other provider in my area. I really hope the merger never happens because an even greater monopoly will further force the hands of customers into using TWC/Comcast and competitors will most likely not want to enter into an area with a saturated market. |
it's as much a question of poor monitoring than watertight security. 83million records don't transfer out of computer system without leaving a huge change in system behavior that should be monitored and be raising alarm bells. there should be harm mitigation procedures to be put in place.
This is a bank, security is their business. I feel what you're saying about there being no such thing as 100% security, but try telling that to a bank executive, they are so far detached from reality and middle management yes men that they actually believe that 100% security is possible. This is dangerous because if you start believing your own bullshit, you neglect planning for when security is breached, past the PR cleanup operation.
My point is that This bank doesn't care that their customers info is now out there, no company that suffers a data breach does. they are 100 times concerned with repairing public perception than actually taking costly preventative measures. |
Not sure this is titled the right way to get your point across. Republican or democrat, the current environment allows for whichever party is in power to protect the profits of those willing to donate generously to their campaigns. Look at the Clinton administration and you'll find PLENTY of examples of corporations who paid for legislation. |
It doesn't provide better outcomes. Especially when you average in the uninsured. That's one of the reasons Americans die earlier than the citizens of other rich countries. American healthcare provides the best cancer screening and treatment in the world - to those who can afford it. For other procedures, outcomes are roughly the the same. Also, the American healthcare system is by far the most expensive per capita in the western world. That being said, if you have good healthcare insurance, (as I did, when I lived there) coverage is swift and excellent. You can always find stories of long waiting times in other countries just as you can find stories of people being turned away from hospitals in the US due to a lack of insurance. These stories are mostly sensationalist bullshit. |
The encryption and forced decryption issue is far more nuanced than you are describing.
If I were to commit a crime and not make any record of it beyond my own memory, I cannot be compelled to testify against myself (5th amendment protection against self-incrimination), this is the analogy to data protected with knowledge (a passcode/word).
Let's say I have documents pertaining to a fraud I committed and I have them encrypted, I do not (and cannot be compelled) to provide or decrypt these documents just because they're encrypted. Now if I talk about these documents or during investigation it becomes obvious they exist in a location, I can be compelled to provide them (through a warrant); if I refuse to decrypt them (which I can be ordered to do because the investigators have knowledge of the documents contents) then I will be held in contempt or otherwise for refusing a subpoena duces tecum.
This is analogous to a locked container, if investigators have no reasonable suspicion that the container has evidence (that they can articulate, ie documents relating to accounts used to launder money blah blah) then you cannot be compelled to open it.
In short, encryption essentially expands what you hold in your mind and you cannot be compelled to reveal your own thoughts. Physical evidence (including electronic documents) that are known to exist in a location you can be compelled to provide with penalties for not complying. In this case you do not necessarily even need to provide the password, just decrypted copies. Again, analogous to stating 'I keep all my money laundering records in the safe in my office' then a warrant can be issued to get those documents, you either open the safe (no need to give up your combination) and give up the documents or they destroy your safe and get the documents. It is this latter case that encryption could make impossible and even then there are legal actions that will be taken against a person in this scenario. |
In the future - possibly my lifetime - humans will find their position as dominant race on this planet contested by the machines we have created. It's such a common trope in our fiction, that many of us might have become cynical about it, but the video seems to have a solid point that this state is inevitable. I can see three models for the future of relations between humans and bots:
1) The Conquistador. Bots will come and they will want to run the show. They will view us as inherently inferior and will either wipe us out (Terminator) or seclude us on what we can think of as human reservations across the world (Matrix), allowed to live but cut off from any autonomy over our world or our own lives.
2) The New Aristocracy: If humans succeed in maintaining power over bots and artificial intelligences, there will come a point where we have to consider at what point does sophisticated intelligence warrant recognition of "personhood?" How "smart" does a program have to be before it has rights? Is it morally justifiable to keep a "master-slave" relationship with automation once it reaches a certain level of self-recognition? Can this scenario, kept up for enough time, bring about the previous scenario?
3) Peaceful co-existence. Change of any kind comes with tension, strife, and violence. However, more often than not, in human history the precedent has been that difficult times will pass and people will want to live together in peace and prosperity. Is it possible for flawed humans and limitless machines to not only co-exist, but to prosper together? Can we find opportunities in the massive changes to come?
( |
I'm neither a security expert nor a gamer. However, a couple of things just seem logical to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Suppose Group X wants to attack Group Y. It seems silly for Group X to trumpet an attack plan a few weeks beforehand, giving Group Y ample preparation time, unless one of three things is true. Either Group X are just plain stupid, have demands they wish met by Group Y in order to call off an attack, or are in fact using the announcement as a diversion and are planning something entirely different from what has been announced. |
It's people who don't understand that deeply buried nuclear waste is very safe for humans and the environment. Additionally, in general people don't realize that solar panels are inefficient and made from extremely toxic chemicals which are very hard to dispose of as well. |
1) So does Musk. The greatest cost outside of satellite development was in the launch phase, which involved paying for their satellites to be launched by a seperate company eking out a profit. Not needed here.
2) SpaceX might be new, but they have sent satellites into orbit before. None of the other companies had ever done that before, and no doubt a tonne of money was simply spent on design due to a lack of understanding requirements for satellites to go into orbit (space inside a fairing, etc).
3) Maybe? Why do you say that? SpaceX hasn't had problems getting successful satellite launches in the past.
4) The talent pool leveraged by two things. Firstly, Musk is considered by many to be a visonary. This means he draws from a talent pool of people who don't want to work for a standard corporation but are very comfortable working for an idea. This means his talent pool is already far expanded from that of previous attempts. Secondly, he is in the media spotlight, unlike a majority of the previous attempts (except maybe iridium). |
Google may track your every action, but it also provides serious advantages to that. Targeted ads are not something really bad. For example if you are not using an ad blocker and you don't have targeted ads, you are very likely to get ads for women health and beauty accessories, even if you are a man. Apart from that, Google uses this information to predict better results in its search engine. If you are living in Germany and you search for "cinema". It will most likely display only results in German, and it will show cinemas that are close to you. Also, if I live in Germany, I don't really care of dinner promotions in a restaurant in Mexico. However, if I am travelling to Mexico next week, this information will be really helpful to me. How would Google know if I am travelling to Mexico next week without scanning my emails? And the terminology... "sell your data"... there are just algorithms, which use your data to generate statistics and analyse the way you use products, in order to improve the user experience. Of course with this information companies can try to increase their revenue, but we are not living in a word where food and water is free. We all pay for our essentials, we pay for clothes, technology, cars, etc.
Apart from that... the alternatives that are suggested in the article "don't track" you at the moment. But for such small companies, it is easier to break the law and their privacy terms. I mean... a system that doesn't have a lot of users and states that it doesn't track their users and encodes all your data, so that you are secure, doesn't actually mean that your information is secure. It just means that they haven't found out any security holes.
So the article suggests that I leave all advantages that Google provides, because they may at some point use my personal data and "sell it" to third party companies. And the solution to this is to use worse services, that also state they are secure and protect your privacy, the same way Google ensures you that you'll be okay. The only difference is that they still haven't realized what information they have and nobody has tried to "buy" it.
If you are a freak about privacy, just don't upload you sensitive information to any public services. Why would someone store their nudes in their iCloud if they are concerned of privacy? Why would you upload your next generation game prototype to Google Drive if you want it secure? If you don't want your birthday available on the net... just don't write it anywhere. The problem with privacy is not Google, but the Internet. |
I don't want to impose my opinion but I have a theory about great energy-efficient technologies and The Real World. See, Intel, as a major hardware supplier are trying to hit the 24-hour battery life margin (deemed the holy grail of laptops) as much as anyone else. Except, they don't want you to have it.
Instead, they want gradual increase in battery life. Something they're doing just fine right now (as others mentioned - super efficient Atom CPU bundled with a horrible chipset). Why gradual? Because that securely keeps them on top of the market. They can probably throw all the resources at their disposal and create the ultimate laptop platform (even if it's not x86) but they won't because that's too risky.
With their slow evolution and increase in battery life they're guaranteed to be viewed in a certain way (the company that keeps increasing battery life). It's not the "OMG their platform gives us 24-hours of battery life" position but it's good enough for their long-term plans and certainly commercially viable. |
My favorite analogy would be to compare both to another ubiquitous machine: cars.
Let's say that the PC is a Toyota Camry. It's the most purchased, most driven, and most traded car in America. Some people drive a Camry because they picked it off the lot, some bought it used at a great price, and some inherited it from a friend or family member. The Camry is great for road trips, commuting, and can even do a little off-roading with the right equipment (believe me: I've tried it).
But the Camry's got its share of problems. It's the most stolen car in America (more on the road = more thefts, and better market for chopped parts). The accelerator has been know to stick, and if you're unfamiliar with basic driving principles (i.e. shift to neutral and e-brake) you're liable to get hurt. The Camry doesn't say anything about you as a person. Everyone's got one, and its more likely to be overlooked than looked over. And, for all it's versatility, the Camry's not really the best at anything. It can do a little of everything, but without a little know-how and effort, all you're ever going to have is a mediocre machine.
Your mac is a scooter. Its flashy, its hip, and everyone wants one. And, really, all you need to do is get from point A to point B. You don't need to go off-road, or on any long-distance trips. Besides, you've got enough money to afford another car or two. Sure, you're screwed if it starts raining, or your friends need a ride. But you live in San Diego, and you've got no friends because you're always zipping around on your scooter, looking like hipster tool. Versatility and customization don't matter, because you bought your device to do a very specific task. It does that task, and you're happy. |
Yes, and I'm willing to bet the other 99% of Wii users will be pleased to hear about it. |
Why do people call them films when only a portion of the output medium is on a film strip? production, and some (most) distribution are digital, therefore i move that we hence forth refer to movies as digitals rather than films |
I think you're both overanalyzing it really. Movies are meant to sell tickets and make money. To do this you cater to your target audience and give em what they want. Tron was never about story or characters - it was designed to be an audio-visual feast for the eyes/ears from the start. Disaster movies are a great example of this.
Others however prefer movies with story, characters more than they care about visuals or audio (e.g movies based off true stories). These movies cater to yet another audience. |
Everything in the amazon app store for android will likely be available on the Kindle Fire. Angry Birds is available on the Android market. |
Sort of pathetic that the top comments for this incredible submission are sex jokes.
I wouldn't say it's pathetic, it's a humorous way to express a discomfort of having a completely non-sexual submission elicit such a response. By up voting it users are reinforcing their self-worth since it becomes a proof not of their sexual deviance but rather a cultural phenomena. |
I think it's interesting that a majority of our current power generation technology still involves boiling water to make steam: coal, solar thermal, nuclear, etc. Despite continued innovation, solar PV, wind, and fuel cells still can't deploy on the same scale as steam-powered turbines. |
No the problem is these companies buying and hording it for themselves. Most of the licensed spectrum is just parked waiting for a use, or for some large company to pay through the nose for it. What we need is more public spectrum like 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz or especially 900mhz (lower freqs are better for going through foliage or walls at low powers) most of the big guys were pissed about the white-space spectrum not going to auction because they can't throw their money around to get what they want. |
Haha, I find it comical how little I understand what you're saying. I know what you're trying to point at, but getting it to work in any sensible context is...difficult.
The tint we see is the tint of the sunglasses. It'd be very strange indeed if he'd secretly perfected glasses with perculiar (seemingly physics defying!) properties. A way, way more coherent response is to say: They're blue. Perhap' it has something to do with certain rays of light (UV or something - I know nothing of optiks). |
Piracy is considered much more heinous if you sell the thing you pirated for profit. If it's just for personal use, nobody really cares. It doesn't matter if you muck around with definitions, I'm using the court's definition of "profit": making actual money, not dealing with abstract concepts like unpaid sales or time lost. |
Stop and think for a moment. How large is the typical video on YouTube, in terms of file size? I'd say between 100 and 800 MB. That's if they're 5-10 minutes long and HD resolution like most new video recording devices output in, so basically you're asking if Google would cough up the money to store two version of every video that uses whichever feature they've made available (face blurring, captioning, whatever).
The logistics of that would require Google itself to control the equivalent wealth of the entire state of California (prior to GOP tax cuts bending our budget over a table and forcibly inserting the poverty shaped rod of austerity up its ass) and utilize it not to invest in their self-driving cars or in improving the Android OS's market share and longevity, but instead for the purpose of acquiring twice as many data centers as they currently have, each one having a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. |
Im glad he's getting his foot in the door of lab research that early. I did also. I have also spend nearly a decade with CNTs and immunoassay. There is a reason why 199/200 professors said no to free labor. The NSB will prevent this from being viable. The CNTs are very expensive sensor for mass production.
and as others have said, his test at the bench is cheaper than current methods, but it will have to be near $0.003 per test at this level to compete with what is commerically available. The commercial prices he compares to have mark up from RnD recovery as well as FDA testing. For comparison the insulin test strips cost about $0.20-0.50 per use, commercial, but cost the manufacturer about $0.0001 per in raw material cost.
The concept is great, but the approach will need sever revision to become commercialized and competitive. |
Have you ever seen a pregnancy test? There are like 3 steps. Take out tester, piss on tester, wait... Yet from watching commercials that claim theirs is the simplest, easiest to use, I would swear it was more complicated then building a rocket, or assembling something from Ikea. |
Even if it's already been tried in some fashion, the fact that he's doing this at 15 is amazing. He's got a passion and wants to pursue it.
The headline "US teen invents advanced cancer test using Google" is a bit misleading, though. It implies that he used Google to invent the test, not for just doing research. He definitely should be proud, and the fact that he had the initiative to send it to 200 professors should speak for itself. Most professors are insanely busy, and he got accepted by one - as a 15-year old.
Just for some context, look at [his Wikipedia article]( and his [ISEF finalist profile]( The point is, even if this method has been used in some way or another before , [according to]( officials at Intel, it is "more than 90 percent accurate in detecting the presence of mesothelin." |
While the functionality of the start menu might still be present, change just for the sake of "change" is not a good thing. The start screen offers no benefit to desktop users if the functionality is still the same. For workstation users, it feels very awkward to have to load up full screen application just to get the basic functionality of what the start button provided.
Even the metro style interface is massively awkward for desktop users. During the DOS days, applications had to run full screen and getting "Windows" was a huge upgrade because of the ability to have multiple windows open at the same time. Restricting "new" style applications to only either run side by side or full screen is a step backwards for desktop users.
There is a lot of fundamental issues being brought to desktop computing with the agenda microsoft is pushing with windows 8. Its not simply people are just ignoring the optimizations and improvements in windows 8 and dislike change. Its the fundamental paradigm change of desktop computing to dummy "app catalog" devices.
And even though the classic desktop environment is still available, application developers, will eventually only support metro applications and desktop users will be forced to switch as well. Similar of the switch from DOS to Windows, application developers eventually stopped writing command line interfaces and only supported Windows GUI interfaces. However, moving from DOS to Windows on the desktop had huge advantages. Moving from Windows to Metro is a huge disadvantage for Desktop users and only benefits tablet/phone users. |
I had to look at the tablet for a minute to see if that was the Apple circle and square button. I thought maybe this was a joke I wasn't getting, since they all basically look like Apple products. I consider myself semi knowledgable on this kind of stuff. However, I'm baked and tired, so I figure this is how uniformed people look at these things. |
How did they they detect the total amount of such images created? It seems to me their detection method is roughly the same as the sites that steal the content. I would even suspect that the stolen content sites detect far more than this study. The 88% would just represent the overlap of their finds.
There may be a hundred times as much stuff out there that they didn't detect and was not stolen by the virtue of the fact that it isn't easily findable. |
actually... I went in... I didn't buy anything but I will definitely be getting a Surface Pro as soon as it comes out! ...and btw give Microsoft a chance I see a whole lot more innovation coming out Redmond than Cupertino lately. The only complaint I'm hearing from reviews is not enough apps... yet and can't use it on lap. The thing just launched today and there are already 7K+ apps I would say that's a good start and I didn't have any issues using in my lap at all. |
I'm sorry but the space-solar thing is ridiculous. It costs a ton of energy/money to launch something that big into space, and a solar panel in space won't have an improved-enough yield to make it worth it. You get about 2x as much from it working during night and about 2x as much again from not having an atmosphere sapping some of the sunlight. But then you have to subtract all the initial cost of building and launching the thing (which makes your payback time probably on the order of decades), and more importantly you have to somehow "beam" this energy back to earth which undoes the benefit of not having an atmosphere in the way. Energy will inevitably be lost in that process due to the atmosphere and the capturing process on the ground. In the end, you'll probably get 1-2x the yield of conventional photovoltaics at 1000x the cost. Just use the energy that's already being "beamed" to earth directly from the sun. |
the law
i come from an earlier time; when the internet was going to be free.
We finally had a chance to do things right; freedom from all those idiotic laws that only apply in the real world.
> If you want to run a website, it needs to comply with the law
i believe if you come into my house, and you want to use my computers, and there's something you don't like: the limit of your recourse is to stop coming into my house and using my computers. |
Seriously. Why the fuck dont people understand that this is, quite fucking obviously, a prototype. Development phase always FUCKING ALWAYS is a little rough. Chords? yeah because who would spend the tens of thousands imbedding the electronics while you're still figuring out the tech. Why would you dick around with custom batteries when you dont know the market or have anything finalized. Why is it glossy, because it's cheep and easy. A non-glossy matte is not easy. |
The intention is that they will create the tools needed for people in the community to design and build the household items, such that new companies and industries will have barriers to entry brought down and costs/prices reduced. Once they are done you could buy their tools, and design a toaster, and build/sell it much cheaper. Or potentially make the tools available similar to a library, where anyone can then go in and build the toaster with the designs you released. |
You miss the point I am trying to make, that money would become a foreign concept as far as necessity is concerned. By "cellularized" and "self-sufficient" I mean down to the individual human being. There is no economy, and no authority, except by extremely rare moments of ad-hoc necessity. "Get paid for discovering the cure to cancer? Why would I need payment when I already have everything I could need? I just did it because it seemed like a fun challenge and was tired of it being a problem for everyone." This is the world to which we must aspire, and it begins with projects like these. Viability, feasibility, these things are irrelevant for all but the short term goals leading up to it, for it is this future or bust. Generosity as a socio-economic framework? No, generosity would be exactly as it is, unweighted and free from ulteriations, dependent entirely on the character choices of the individual. That's why I called it the ultimate test of human nature; are we really capable of such great, unconditional kindness as we so often claim to be? Or will we descend again into conflict and madness, doomed to always find a way to make existence a miserable experience for others and ourselves, spurning the opportunity and privileges of life? Only one way to find out. |
I read the summary of the pattent, and it seams to be this pattent is about really, REALLY general stuff: it's about very simple floating point algorithms, like addition, multiplication, division and powers.
First of all there is nothing new in the patent: all those operations already existed. It's not like a new mathematical appliance to for example find a perfect eHarmony match. This is simply about existing mathematical algorithms and applying them to a floating point notation.
There are a few ways to apply do that, but not that many and there is bound to be one way that is most efficient.
Which brings me to the second point: this patent, if upheld, has the theoretical ability to destroy the entire software/hardware world, because all companies use such algorithms.
I agree algorithms should be pattentable, but only when they are for a specific appplication and are genuinly new. Also, as if they are both those things but also essential for all future software development they should be FRAND-patents imo. |
My point is that the fear of drones is sensationalism. The fear has no more substance other than how afraid Americans were of "Communists" during the cold war. Cameras can in fact monitor multiple spectrums of light, how do you think night vision works? They see infrared, agreed this is less common than the average camera will have but the government can put them all over the place.
Every single cell phone has a camera, most of them can even record video. Security cameras are everywhere, and our government can track you using a combination of gps and visual/infrared cameras.
I still don't understand what makes the possible threat greater than the possible benefits of drones. There was a competition where engineering students all competed to create a drone to find a mannequin (representing a real person obviously) in the Australian Outback and drop off a waterbottle to him. Search and rescue, wildlife management, aerial firefighting, and possibly in the future transportation of goods and even people. All of this monitored by people who never need to put themselves into danger. |
I don't understand why everyone wants the Start menu back. Hear me out.
When you are using a traditional Windows Start menu what are you looking at? The little Start menu that pops up and the rest of your entire desktop or just the little Start menu? Probably the latter.
So why not make the Start menu a full-screen experience where you can interact with a better interface that's more organized and customize-able?
When you press the start key on your keyboard (better than clicking a button) you enter the Start interface where you can pick and choose what you want to use. OR you can start typing and get access to a list of apps, settings, documents, or in-app searching. It's pretty slick, IMHO.
I use Windows 8 exactly the way that I use Windows 7. I interact with the desktop on two monitors, and rarely see the start screen. If I want an app I press the Windows key and up pops the menu. If I need to get back to the desktop but am locked in another app (Rarely) i can push Windows+D.
If you don't like the full-screen metro interface then don't use the apps. It's as simple as that.
Other than that, it boots fast, has a better task manager, and a cleaner design. I like it. |
The only metro app I've actually gotten used to using is the one for Netflix.
There are some great things about windows 8. I saw it mentioned somewhere that the task manager was much better, and I very much agree with that. I also think Explorer works a lot better than in windows 7.
The metro UI is easy enough to work around, but therein lies the problem: I shouldn't have to work around it. An option to interact with the regular start menu with a button to launch the metro UI would be ideal, and I think it would solve a lot of the problems people have with windows 8. Better yet, the OS should recognize that "hey, this user has a mouse/keyboard combo, launch into the regular desktop instead of the metro ui."
The way you close apps and multitask in metro is not intuitive with a mouse. Who the hell decided it would be a good idea to have to move your mouse to the top of your screen until you see it change into a hand, then click and drag down to the bottom of your screen to close the app? If I have a keyboard/mouse, give me keyboard/mouse controls instead of touch interface controls. Doesn't seem too hard. |
I understand the point. I just dont think companies should be able to write whatever they want in TOS. There should be limits. And they should be required to insert |
The act of redeeming a code is almost NO load.
One would hope Sony designed their systems like this. After all, it's merely associating a game with a user account. There is clearly something else that's affecting this system as a side effect, as you said.
...I have no idea where I'm going with this comment. |
It was my interpretation (for humor), on what the guy above said. Thanks for the |
Goin to hop onto this badwagon late for anyone thats interested. Sorta yes, but absolutely not. There are many cool things that we can do, that we just dont because they are so impractical and or dangerous. Setting aside the fact that all of the materials listed in the paper are only theoretically capable of handling this, we are talking about a 62 THOUSAND mile cable. That is orders of magnitude longer than the intercontinental telephone cables, but in addition it has to support an extreme stress. If it fails at any point along the 62,000 miles of cable the whole aparatus goes flying off into interplanetary space, along with everyone with everyone aboard because the center of mass is beyond the geostationary altitude. Not only that but it has to be built. You cant launch stuff into orbit, because it would needs to go all the way out to geostationary orbit to be lowered back down otherwise it will be dragging along the earth. Even then you have the additional problem of having the orbital velocity changing along the way down.
Know what else seems like a could idea, and we could totally build?
Flying cars, but it's too expensive, too dangerous, and not needed. |
IIRC We know HOW to build one, we don't know of a material that is strong enough not to collapse on itself. |
Are you kidding? Do you think we completely figured out everything you could possibly know about space travel in the Apollo program or something? There's a reason just about every plan to go to mars involves using the moon as a testing ground. You don't just go out there and wing it.
We could learn all sorts of stuff via creating a moon base. Stuff that might end up saving future colonys because we were able to reach them in a matter of days instead of a matter of months. It's completely idiotic to go straight to mars without first figuring out how in the world you're going to survive on the surface for more than a couple hours. You need food, You need water, You need oxygen, You need heat, You need electricity, You need a lot more than you think you do to survive on another planet. We're not even completely sure how it should be done yet because there's SO much shit that we have to bring along for around just 5 people to last long enough to make it to the next transfer window.
Learning how to colonize space is by-far the most important thing we should be doing right now in space travel. To do anything else first is just asking for failure. We didn't willy dilly land on the moon the first time. We orbited it twice before we decided we knew enough about our systems and it's environment to touch down, Not to mention the countless unmanned missions to learn more about it before we even sent men to orbit it in the first place.
If we want a general experience we should do it somewhere where we're not going to loose the entire mission because of something we overlooked and couldn't fix because their around 225 million kilometers away, give or take depending on it's current location in comparison to us. And it's pretty obvious that if we decided to send a mission to mars and lost the crew and the vehicle, we're not just going to go out next year and give 'er another shot. It would stall development even longer, And lord knows we need to get our eggs out of this one basket if we ever plan to survive as a species.
And don't forget the fact that we can't just go to mars whenever we want. We have to wait for a transfer window. They can't just leave mars whenever they want. Their stuck there until the next transfer window which doesn't exactly come around every other week. You can't just turn around halfway there, Once you're on your way, you're on your way. There is no turning around. Once that transfer stage gives the spacecraft enough energy to escape earths well of gravity they are on their way. There is no backup abort injection stage. That's it, end of story, Their going. Now compare this to the moon, which is pretty much the same. Except if something goes wrong their only a couple of days away. This is the only reason Apollo 13 made it back to earth, They rode right on the edge of those 3 astronauts survival and they didn't even escape earths well of gravity yet.
And if you're going to talk about our limited amount of resources the dumbest possible thing you could do is start sending them to other planets before you actually know anything about what you're doing. And if your argument is about the lack of resources on the moon, I'm not exactly sure what you expect to find on mars that would be all that much different. And there is a shitload of water on the moon, more than enough to support numerous lunar bases if used intelligently.
Then when people bring up money it's just kind of pointless in my opinion. Money doesn't just appear out of thin air. We can't sit around and wait for billions of dollars to drop on us out of the sky. We create money, And we create it by doing things. Like building a wall for somebody, Or manufacturing an airbag, or a silicon chip.... Or a rocket, Or a lunar base, and all the research that goes into how to create a lunar base, the technology that would eventually be a product of the research invested into figuring out how to colonize space. The products that would be invented due to the technology that is a result of the research invested into learning how to colonize space. The schools that would take up teaching subjects related to a new and growing field. It's a domino effect, And it just keeps going.
The only reason we know how to fly from one city to another in a straight line without using landmarks is because we were figuring out how to navigate reliably in space. Before then nobody even really thought about a system that would allow this level of precision. To say a lunar base is just a waste of money is just completely wrong, and you only need to look at past space programs to see that.
Besides, I don't care whether a guy is walking on the moon or on mars or on an asteroid. It's fucking interesting. It's not like nobody's going to pay attention because we were there before. If anything it would have even more viewers than the first lunar landings. |
Here's the problem with this line of reasoning though, Comcast/Time Warner; Netflix is still paying to have their content delivered by paying for the servers/connections needed to stream their media & your customers are paying for the bandwidth to access that content over their 'broadband'. Those 'dvds' worth of video content are now being paid for twice, at both ends of the connection rather than just on, and you're already getting paid to carry that content. |
Members of congress don't get to be members of congress without raising a ton of money first. The average cost of congressional campaigns has [skyrocketed]( in recent years, which means members of congress now spend at least [half of their time]( raising money.
Companies can't give money directly to politicians (that's been illegal for a while), but they can form something called a political action committee (PAC), which allows employees of a company or business interest to pool their money together and direct it towards candidates' campaigns.
Companies can also hire lobbyists, whose one and only job is to try and convince members of congress to vote in a way that favors their client. One of the best ways to do that convincing is by [organizing fundraisers]( or offering members of congress a sweet lobbying gig after they leave office. On average, a member of congress who becomes a lobbyist gets a [1452% raise](
Then there are Leadership PACs, which are so loosely regulated that members of congress can spend contributions from lobbyists for industries they regulate on everything from [lavish winery tours to family vacations to Scotland](
That's not even touching the wacky world of SuperPACs, 501(c) "dark money" organizations, and other outside spending. |
It is OK to do that. Just because you created something doesn't mean you have absolute control over it.
The law giveth, and the law taketh away.
It is the law says that your work does not belong to you forever. After a while the work you created is not yours anymore - but belongs to society.
The law can also dictate that some people have a right to your work sooner.
And that's a fundamental concept that a lot of authors, software developers, painters, actors, movie studios, don't understand: you don't have a fundamental right to your own work. Society could decide that anything anyone creates belongs to everyone. But we'll do you one better and let you be, for a limited time the only person who is allowed to make money off the work you created. You don't get rights to anything you create; we grant you temporary use. |
You're missing the point. We grant authors some limited rights to their own works. By definition an author does not have absolute right to their own work. If we did then people would not be allowed to ignore them.
For example, let's say you create something. I then want to use your work in a commentary. You don't want me to use it at all.
Too bad.
It's your work. You created it. You don't have the basic ability to control who uses your own work. We have decided that there is a benefit to society when people can freely use something you've created. The law tries to balance exactly how much and how quickly you lose rights to your own work - but you don't have absolute rights to your own work beyond what we allow you to have.
Let's say you want your family, for hundreds of thousands of generations to be able benefit from your work. Too bad.
We have decided that you don't get absolute right to your own work. We allow fair use - because even though you created it, your do not get absolute control of your work. We grant you certain rights to your own work - after that your work does not belong to you anymore.
The law decided people can use your work without your permission. By definition you don't have an absolute right; otherwise you would have an absolute right. Instead we grated you some rights.
The law giveth, and the law taketh away.
If society decided tomorrow that everything everyone creates belongs to everyone, then that's the way it is. Right now the law grants lifetime plus 70 years. I propose we change that.
You argue that authors have the rights the law gives them, and as evidence you cite the laws. If the limit of your thinking is the current law, then you should have no problem while we change the law. Copyright law has changed before, and copyright law didn't always exist.
And as a professional software developer of 17 years,a person who depends of intellectual property for the house he lives in, the car he drives, and the phone he's typing on, as someone who knows what he's talking about: copyright law needs to be changed. Sharing intellectual property is not wrong, and the law should reflect that.
But I'll do you one better and grant the author limited rights where he is the only person allowed to make money off his work. |
or NSL
LOL.
Not that certain 3-letter-agencies might not try that, but a NSL for a torrent site would be such an abuse of the purpose for which that authority was granted… |
Hey man, if watching HD nature/space documentaries while tripping or playing quality audio for an audience at a performance makes me a douche-bag, I proudly wear the title! I'm not really into FLACs or super high end sound quality myself, but really I wouldn't want to DJ youtube rips. It's like watering down a delicious soup and serving it to esteemed guests. It's just not right. |
You missed the most important bit!
WTC also stated that he, and the entire long term moderation team and admin/staff, are in possession of a full TPB backup which will be used to relaunch under a new domain. He also plans to update and clean some of the code (something TPB has been long overdue for), which is all good news.
Basically ( |
In engineering , we specify whether we're talking about transmission speeds vs storage, and we use the relative units. What ISPs choose to do is their own thing, but ask any electrical or comp Eng and they will tell you the same thing |
you're incorrect, what isps choose to do is their own thing , but in engineering we use mbit when speaking about transmission speeds , and MByte when talking about storage. This is industry standard |
While this is great news for Internet, but it does not mean the Internet will be equal or protected. The FCC still has to write and pass the Title II proposal February 26th. It will most likely pass, but Congress could still undermine any proposal written by the FCC. So we need to keep pressure on Congress to make sure they don't limit FCC's ability to enforce the new proposal by cutting funds, limiting powers, or other methods. |
This is what worries the me the most. It's actually a bit of a parallel to the video game industry at the moment; you buy your 'game', then you are nickled-and-dimed to get the full experience. I would not be surprised if ISPs started to offer internet connectivity plans for a monthly rate, then charged the user a per-kilobyte rate for every bit of data they use...
Oh wait, some ISP's already do, and now that it will be expressively legal, others will as well. With no local competition with the last-mile clause, there is literally nothing stopping ISP's from simply charging on a per kilobyte basis. |
So? What does them having put adware on there, like so many others do, and it just happened to have a security flaw, like so many software has. To do with the fact that in germany they offer a large variety of devices without OS?
Also, they pretty much DID NOT say, hey, this adware has a major flaw, lets get paid by them to ship it. (Thats what deliberately would mean). I mean besides the ceritificate issue plenty of other PCs come bundled with similar adware.
Shouldn't you rather encourage him and Lenovo for the practice of selling their devices without OS? |
You realize that this option already exists? You can buy your own parts, buy your own copy of your desired operating system, and assemble your own computer. Some computer part stores even offer the option to pay someone to assemble the computer for you, and you can look up the parts needed for a good build online, so no technical know-how is necessary.
If you assemble a PC yourself it will usually take you 2-3 hours at most, and probably less than an hour if you are experienced. Installing the operating system and setting up will likely take you another hour.
Assembling your own laptop is slightly more complicated, but also possible - especially if you already have an existing laptop that you can swap out components. |
Companies discovered long ago that its far more profitable to put money into marketing than it is to put money into the product. Brands mean nothing now. Essentially a brand is a middleman that adds no value whatsoever to the product. Everything is manufactured by the same few companies in China. Whether Foxconn makes a computer and Apple slaps its hugely inflated brand name on it, or they make a Samsung computer and they put their somewhat less inflated brand upcharge on it, it doesn't matter. You're buying the same crap no matter where you turn. Tool companies are especially bad about this. I know because I used to be an importer. There is one factory in China that makes Craftsman tools, Milwaukee tools, etc. All the "American" brands. |
Gaming aside, a Mac is probably the best computer you can get despite the cost.
I prefer Windows myself but I'm pretty agnostic. Mac does many things that make it much easier to use than Windows. If you're used to Windows and its' idiosyncrasies then many aspects of MacOS will confuse the hell out of you, but overall it requires a lot less tinkering to get something to work on a Mac.
And while the software preference is a matter of perspective, it's really really hard to argue that Mac doesn't make the best hardware, especially when it comes to laptops. I've never seen a non-mac laptop that has build quality that even comes remotely close to the quality of a macbook. The trackpad alone blows the competition completely out of the water.
But again, if you're a gamer it's a fairly easy decision.
Also don't even get me started on the iPhone. I'm significantly less agnostic about the mobile side. The iPhone is hilariously feature-barren. Android ftw. |
The thing is that it is just as easy to reinstall your OS and overwrite your existing one than installing a new one. So the problem with your reasoning is that shipping with no OS provides literally zero benefits. If you want the preinstalled OS then great - if you don't you can install your own. In fact it is even easier to reinstall than to install since you can download it online.
And if your argument is that preinstalled windows costs you money in licensing fees, preinstalled Linux is still superior. |
Disclaimer here: I am a woman who has worked for major software companies and now owns her own firm. I've been interested in this subject for a long time.
First off, this is a terrible article. Not only is it biased, but it pretends like there haven't already been tons of studies done on this subject matter. Not really the best platform to leap from when discussing gender in the workplace.
The question of why there aren't more women in the workplace usually boils down to three factors that are investigated: Discrimination, Nature (something inherent about the female psyche), or Nurture (something we did raising our girls).
DISCRIMINATION: I will be the first to state that while I did experience some minor discrimination from immature project partners in my college CS program, the corporate software world is a fantastic meritocracy. Any initial stereotyping or discrimination somebody might experience upon meeting me is wiped clear the second I open my mouth or show them my code. If you've got the goods, programmers don't care what your gender is. Studies tend to agree.
So the issue is clearly a matter of choice. Why don't women choose to go into CS?
It comes down to nature vs. nurture. And of course, studies have found that it's a bit of both.
NURTURE: If you compare tech gender distribution stats across countries, there is a clear correlation with required math coursework. South Korea has one of the highest rates of females in geek jobs and they require high-level math much further into education than many of the countries that have lower rates. In the US, girls have recently caught up in math, but in the workforce, we are still experiencing some of the latent effects from old math divides.
For now in the US, we've pretty much beat that hurdle, but girls who like math are still choosing other sciences. So what's the problem? This is where the nature comes in.
NATURE: Here's the crux of what the studies say: Women are more social than men. Programming is inherently a more quiet, introverted job. I'm a female introvert, so this suits me, but many women simply cannot wrap their heads around sitting in front of a computer just thinking all day. This seems to be the reason fewer women go into math PhD programs as well.
Basically, it has little to do with competence, and everything to do with a career choice that makes them happy over the long term. This is also why women with interests in tech tend to be project managers, marketing people, etc. They like being involved in tech, but also wish to retain the social aspect of their jobs. |
Would you say that the Internet is fairly standardized? I would personally consider it amazingly standardized for what it is. The reason for this is because there are compatibility standards for how you talk to websites. you can basically pick up any device and use the same internet as you can on any other device.
Linux is both (arguably) more complicated and a lot less chaotic then the internet. However there is one kernal that provides your drivers and basic functionality. the rest is all based on open standards, like the internet. There are numerous different xservers (monitor managers, the make guis work) each with their own advantages and disadvantages but you can swap these completely different pieces of software without ever noticing. they all conform to interoperability standards so any software that works with an xserver will work with all of them. another neat feature of this is you can run connect the xserver to a computer over the internet and have a very low bandwidth view of whatever going on on that computer.
A good example of this is gps. In order to get a gps dongle to work with your application you need 2 things. the first is a driver so you can get the information off of the gps. the second is actually parsing the data so your program can understand it. this is much harder to actually do then it would seem because every gps formats the data in very different ways. this is an example of when these things go bad. there is a solution in linux however, they have a gps server that converts all these different gps data types into one that will appear the same to your application. now you don't have to re wright your app for every single gps receiver on the marker. This is why windows has such poor support for gps and you can't use turn by turn navigation in it except if you buy your gps with the software.
one wonderful example of these standards is wine. We are building a smiler application to the gps server that works with windows apps. I play dystopia (a windows only game on the source engine) solely under linux. How this misconception keeps happening when we have hacked together support for a number of windows applications i beyond me. |
It has taken off but it's only going to get more pervasive. Many businesses haven't quite taken the jump because the cost of cloud solutions are pretty on par with in-house. But these prices should continue to fall, allowing these ... erm ... 'hosted business solutions' to take off (apparently it's technically not cloud computing, I think the former word is a buzz term for hosted files, applications, and processing power). Also, businesses have expressed concerns about the reliability of the service and the security of their data which is slowing it a bit. Big players: obviously Google is one, along with Microsoft (online Office is on it's way), IBM with Lotus, and even Rackspace is getting into it, and I'm sure there's others. There's definitely a lot of money to be made in this space. |
Now if Google would stop sucking all the carriers dicks and enable VOIP then GV would actually be useful. My guess is since apple and ATT aren't fighting it anymore that Google has already said it will never enable it. |
That was a horribly written article! It wasn't until the second last paragraph that you know what "THE DATA" was or why on earth it was related to a camera on wheels.
This needs the Australian style PRE-article |
Why? If they are legally ordered, they take it down
Even if they took down the site the instant they were ordered to, their servers could still be seized. Classified information, irrespective of whether or not it's been "leaked" is still Classified until the DoD says otherwise. There are very, very precise rules about the handling of such information, and even its very existence on Amazon servers violates those rules. Thus, a case could be made that would allow the government to confiscate and forensically analyze everything on any number of Amazon servers that are capable of networking with the physical drive(s) on which the information was stored- which would presumably be the whole damn infrastructure. This is assuming that they don't just destroy the drives.
It would be completely unecessary, wholly inappropriate, and completely legal. Even a small risk of that happening would be enough to deter any business. |
You're referring to Layer 3 of the OSI Model but the implementation in the US is what's fucked.
I think of it as a pipe. There's a big assed pipe and everyone's trying to use part of it. To deal with this, a filter is put over the pipe that's perforated with holes the size of straws. Initially, the hole is bigger than your straw, so you always have enough to use. Over time, your needs change, and your straw gets bigger, but this hole rarely gets bigger. What's worse is that even when it does get bigger, it doesn't last as long anymore. The hole is big for a while, but the claustrophobia comes back quicker each time. |
When I opened it on my commodore 64, I got to play One on One: Dr. J vs Larry Bird . (I know what you're thinking...if you hit a 3...then you were down by one...why would you go for a low percentage shot like a 3? Basically, there were 5 seconds left after I hit the first 3...and I didn't have time to drive to the basket.) |
Ill throw my hat into the ring here:
The device isn't printing off a kidney as far as I can tell. It's printing a tissue scaffold seeded with the donor's tissues. The claim is that the scaffold is biodegradable such that as the seeded cells stimulate kidney regrowth into the scaffold the synthetic material disappears. Apparently this system works if that 10 year old spina bifida case is true, but my skeptic sense is tingling.
I have no idea how they fixed the resolution problems of the printer. Tolerance on most 3D printers is probably around 10ths of a mm, so when you're printing a scaffold thats supposed to create filtration units as small as your Loops of Henle (tbh I can't find any info on the actual size of humans' Loops of Henle, but I'm confident that they are smaller than this tolerance) I don't really understand how that is supposed to work. This guy is a tissue engineer giving a TED talk so he probably knows a bit more about this than me, but this still bewilders me. Maybe its just one of those "kidney cells are badass and know what to do as long they're in the right place" sorta thing.
For those noting that he didn't use the one he printed on stage this doesn't surprise me at all. 3D printers (at least the ones I've used) are extraordinarily slow. I would expect printing something as large as a kidney would take at least 12 hours.
The top comment makes the claim in explaining the process that there is no immune response to the scaffold. With no other information made available, I call bullshit. Maybe the seeded cells don't illicit an immune response, but I can essentially guarantee that the scaffold isn't completely biocompatible. Any tissue response could damage kidney formation, and if the scaffold doesn't completely degrade than you'd see a frustrated immune response and a decrease in immune system functionality over time.
Perhaps these work and its just that these have been going through clinical trials for 10 years trying to get approval from the FDA, but I doubt they're as functional as is let on. I'm certain they have potential, badass potential, but I doubt we're quite there yet. If these work then this would be a huge boon to hundreds of thousands of people. Kidney dialysis is one of the most expensive and obnoxious treatments to a disease, and kidneys are in such a high demand that they are literally sold on the black market. Kidney treatment resource allocation has actually been a hot topic of discussion in bioethics fields for a long time now.
Just to feed the fires of the conspiracy theorists out there: I wouldn't be surprised if companies that made dialyzers would be trying to block this tech from getting out. It wouldn't be the first time that FDA regulation bowed to industry money.
In the interest of full disclosure I'm an undergraduate in BioEngineering in the US. I have some experience with questions of biocompatibility, but I'm not a tissue engineer. I'm skeptical that this process is as good as they imply, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does work (especially being a TED talk and all).
/wall of text |
The article is pretty vague. I'm thinking he didn't actually print a kidney on stage, but printed a propagated scaffold for building a kidney, which would become a working organ over the following days/weeks... Which is still fucking incredible news.
The impressive part, which he talks about in earlier talks, is getting all of the types of seeder cells in the right place, this is a big part of his metaphor for "a layer cake", that, and the fact that it "bakes" in a human-body-temperature oven.
Edit: The Guardian . So, kinda like a cooking show I guess, you show them the recipe in the works, then bring out something you did earlier so they don't have to wait.
Edit2: In addition, as I noted elsewhere, these haven't actually been tested in people yet... The person the article claims received a kidney actually received a bladder, which happened to have cleared up his kidney problems. |
relevant]( from the exact same guy . |
Good points. Ill start at the bottom and work my way up.
>Out of curiosity, why is this?
There are no known materials which are completely biocompatible. The question of functionality boils down to whether or not the evoked immune response hampers the functionality of the device. This is why breast implants are so feasible. Their only function, essentially, is to stay inflated. Link to list of pubmed papers on reaction to silicone implants would interfere with the structure.
That being said some materials are a lot more inert than others. Usually ceramics are pretty inert, but even they elicit a response. High molecular weight polymers sometimes work too, but they're a lot more susceptible to releasing leech particles. If you're interested in this sorta stuff you could read up on the coagulation cascade , but I think you can see why shit gets real when you implant non-host materials.
>6-7 hours print time
This might be legit. I only have experience with one type of 3D printer (an ObJet for what its worth) that prints with an acrylic polymer. The time it takes to print something is directly related to the height of the model you're printing. Since it takes a few moments for each additional layer to set it has to pause between iterations to prevent too much creep from occurring. I would assume that the faster you print the looser your tolerances are, but they probably have a very advanced high tech system they use that is specifically tailored for this type of project. Still, 6 hours would be a long TED talk... I don't really see a problem with him showing off a pre-printed sample.
>I'm betting my money on the kidney/stem cells being badass boat...
Not being rude: what does this mean? |
I used to work in telecom in the late 90s and early 2000s. Back when there were a ton of telecom startups like MCleodUSA and WorldCom. I was only in my 20s that was probably the height of my career (at least at this point). Everything after 2003-2004, when the market was deregulated has been pretty much a downward spiral. We can thank Bush & Co. for deregulating the market.
Why hasn't AT&Ts DSL service changed since 2002? Because there was more competition when the market was regulated . Let me explain how that's possible with a simplistic short version of Telecom history:
Some guy out of Germany invents a basic modem or "telegraph" or something like that (no possibility for porn). People think it's sweet and Wallstreet is all like "GTFO, I can get instant stock prices from the floor with thing??".
We drop one big ass cable in the ocean to connect us with Europe.
Some guy invents a phone, people think it's even sweeter than the telegraph. Major cities scramble to put in telecommunications infrastructure, since it solves a lot communications problems and it eventually connects people to police, fire department and worldwide news.
Fast forward a little bit (still no porn) At some point the government realizes that telecommunications is super important and life saving, so they grant American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) a natural monopoly under the terms they will deliver service to all Americans in every city. This infrastructure was subsidized and largely paid for by the tax payers.
Fast forward: AT&T get's lazy, service sucks, phone sucks, and it's super expensive. The FTC decides that it's no longer in the consumers interests to keep AT&T as the only carrier around so they break them up into the "baby bells" to increase competition. Still monopolies on the local level, but the technology and prices for consumers get's a bit better.
Fast forward even more, some dude invents the internet, people think it's sweet, but AT&T (now just a long distance carrier) and the baby bells are fat and slow to introduce new technology. The Whitehouse who's been wanting access to porn since the telegraph days, pushes through legislation that states that the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECS) must open up access to "Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECS)" at a cost only slightly above the cost to manage the infrastructure.
(month late edit: The Telecom Act of 1996, referenced above was a way of introducing free-market competition into the very large current telecom infrastructure that was previously paid for by the tax payers and maintained by huge ILECS like AT&T, Verizon, and Southern Bell Company. You know that last-mile connectivity everyone talks about the that AT&T doesn't allow people to touch? Well the 1996 act required that ILECS open up their lines to private competitive carriers.)
CLECS start up everywhere, soon people realize the ILECS have been full of shit charging a $1.00 a minute to New York to Chicago, when the actual costs to the carriers is something like a fraction of a cent.
CLECS start to introduce all kinds of new technology and internet technology like DSL and dedicated lines like T1s and early VOIP products like IVADs (integrated voice and data, largely used by businesses).
CLECS drive down pricing in the market place and create all kinds of new jobs. Looks good on the surface, but some ILEC executive (which runs SBC) has to sell one of his Yachts and is unable to purchase that mansion in the Italian Rivera for his mistress, this angers him, so he starts a massive disinformation campaign through television and radio how "big goverment regulation" is keeping the market place from being competitive.
At this point Bush and Republicans, many of which are old SBC or AT&T executives push through deregulation, which means that now the old ILECS can do whatever they want, and charge whatever they want to the CLECS.
SBC decides to charge the CLECS at retail for access to the telecommunications infrastructure, which means that the CLECS now have to charge double what SBC charges it's consumers to turn a profit.
CLECS largely go out of business, only a few large ones, ones largest enough to build out their own infrastructure remain. SBC is so flush with cash, they go on a mad buying spree to buy up any remaining competition. They purchase AT&T for like $10.00 and some change, then keep the AT&T name.
It's now been 10 years and we have seen little innovation come out standard telecom, the only real innovation is only seen by the cable and wireless operators.
AT&T/SBC decides it's time to put an end to that nonsense also. |
I recently moved to an area with comcast and signed up. When they hooked up my PC to the cable modem, navigating to any site was supposed to block me and make me setup my account instead. The technician was baffled this did not happen. Hooking up to the cable modem allowed me to surf to any site. I realized what was going on, set my DNS to 'automatic', and now he could setup my account. After the technician left, I set my DNS back to 8.8.8.8, where it goddamn should be. |
Well don't use safari or QuickTime. I understand iTunes and iPhone sync you have no choice but to suffer through, but the others? Surely you know about VLC and Chrome?
I think the reason for safari to be ported to windows is so that developers can test how their site will look on safari/iPhone without getting apple device, not so that people can browse the web. |
I agree completely. However, you just went from building one big self contained executable to 10, 20, 100, 1000. Now you have to store all of those somewhere. Then when the user or windows or another automated driver installation tool you support goes to download them it has to find the right one.
Or you have a bootstrapper which downloads the appropriate one for the user, but then you have to write, maintain, and distribute that.
And then you have to worry about potential issues with people crossing over from the legacy system. And then you have to support all of this new stuff.
The end result is someone somewhere made the decision that having a 100mb download was more efficient for the company than having a 5mb + 10mb download when you have to keep track of a bunch of 10mb downloads, build and package them all individually. Most users don't download drivers frequently enough for it to be an issue. In fact most users only download drivers via windows update, which is automated and runs in the background anyway.
The |
This is not an indication of the relative value of the iPhone. I interpret this news to mean that Samsung has successfully flooded the smart phone market with dozens of varying-quality phones at various prices. Apple's laser-focus on a single product is what makes it such a powerful competitor. |
E-Parasites Bill"... What is this, Tim and Eric? I love having people in power who haven't a clue what they are talking about, and people who are easily lobbied by Hollywood. For the latter, yeah. This is how you should stop copyright infringement. Censor the shit out of the internet and remove any domains that so much sneeze in your direction. The media bitches about China being "undemocratic" on a regular basis then Congress introduces yet another bill that would cripple the internet. "A great Firewall over America"... Remember: The internet is owned by Comcast and is only a means for funny cat videos, social networking, subscription services, and XXX porn. Any creativity and original thought will be removed. Be sure to sign the petition on Whitehouse.gov like the other thousands of citizens only to get a retort from Barry's publicist being like "yeah, we know what you want, not you". LULZ. Fuck congress. |
I work for a small packaging corporation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We started making corrugated pallets about 5-6 years ago. We tried to market to companies such as Walmart. We do quite a bit of corrugated pallet business. If you'd like to read up on it our site is www.kellybox.com
...My grandfather started the company in 1955 and took off by making wooden boxes for shipping tanks and trucks for the Korean war. Now we work mostly on corrugated industrial packaging and design options such as displays. The pallets are completely recyclable and so much better for the environment than the ones we used to use. |
Three example arguments I always use for innovative ideas combating piracy are
1: Normally I pirate games without online multiplayer, most of which are actually indie games... now joining reddit I hear about this "humble bundle" "LIKE ZOMG U CAN PAY WHATEVER YOU WANT FOR ALL OF THESE GAMES???!!" I usually end up spending the average amount to get extra games which ends up being ~$5-$10.
2: I used to pirate music ALL the time, every song I get was illeagle... then I hear about spotify, which is free with ads, but u can get offline play at 320kbps bit rate, and ad free for $10 a month? SOLD haven't downloaded a song since and I'm happily paying $10 a month for this service.
3: Some material I don't know if I want, so I'll pirate movies etc... but just say all of the torrent sites get shut down... I'm not going to go buy the movie anyway. |
I liked it a lot. Louis CK is a great example, as is Radiohead and Trent Reznor.
I think a laundry list of companies who feel the same way would help.
Valve should be number one.
>
>Newell: The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.
Pirates always find a way around DRM. Why is the consumer who PAID for the product punished because other people are criminals!? Who watches unskippable anti-piracy ads before movies (something virtually EVERYONE in America has encountered and been annoyed by at least once)? Pirates or Paying Customers?
Spotify is next
>
>[Spotify] has eradicated music piracy almost on its own. Sweden was the home of Pirate Bay. They even had their own political party and made the prime minister in national television declare "Off (sic) course the youth shall be able to download music for free".
>Three years later, The Pirate Bay is not mentioned by anyone anymore. Spotify is, on the other hand, mentioned by almost everyone - including the old Pirate bay fans.
Stress the fact "people WILL pay if a product is worth paying for, easy to consume, and easier to pay for.
Mention Pandora, Netflix, Hulu, services constituents and normal citizens alike use and enjoy. Stress that innovative answers to piracy are everywhere. Stress how users are already enjoying the products piracy forced innovates to make. There is not need to justify piracy, because it is wrong.
I would stress industry has a habit and history of using hyperbole to decry innovation so as to defending obsolete business models.
>John Philip Sousa warned us of the phonograph. Edison claimed 10 movie screen was enough to kill moving pictures. Tin Pan Alley vehemently protested radio. MPAA protested Cable TV. Jack Valenti and the VCR. British Phonographic Industry of the home tape. ReplayTV was forced out of business partially with the help of Turner Broadcasting. RIAA tried to kill the Diamond Rio mp3 player. XM MP3 recorders. Youtube. Why trust an industry that constantly exhibits hyperbole so to resist change and protect their own obsolete product? I am not sure if "the mpaa and riaa are being silly" is harsh enough. |
At first, I didn't want to vote on "Definitely". But his beard convinced me otherwise. |
I know : ) Not a karma vote here for either of us, yeah reddit can be a karma whore contest; But this vote it is showing what reddit can do. Easy stop is SOPA and then look at each bestof threads. This community in the past year has challenged a senate vote and brought attention to many local issues. |
I guess anon was to blame for the clipper chip bs, Echelon, Total Information Awareness, and all the other neurotic information controlling behavior exhibited by .govs in the names of religion, politics, and the landed elite's precious egos. |
You say that as if various spectrums of EMR were created by us for specific purposes.
They were.
>but there isn't anything that says they can't be used differently than how a few people envisioned quite some time ago.
There is. The FCC has the ability to make that determination and the power to grant waivers to that effect.
The FCC divided the spectrum initially so that civilian broadcasts would not interfere with military communications. As communications evolved the FCC divided the spectrum in order to mitigate potential splash interference. |
You're really good at not reading what people say, then responding to a pointless strawman of their argument.
Mankind did not create the EMR spectrum any more than we created gravity. By definition because we didn't create it there is fundamentally no "intended" use for any given spectrum.
It was divvied up into spectrum groups so it could be utilized in an organized fashion and the ones who did that tried to do it in a way that made sense at the time, but technology changes. Therefore saying that a given spectrum was never "intended" for a particular use is not only arbitrary and pointless but contrary to technological advancement.
> There is. The FCC has the ability to make that determination and the power to grant waivers to that effect.
Yes, they have the ability to say whether it is legal to use a particular spectrum for a particular task (i.e. what the spectrum may be used for). They have exactly zero ability to determine what is physically possible to do in each spectrum range (i.e. what the spectrum can be used for). |
The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.
>Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.
>German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.
>Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.
>Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.
So these folks are paying more for their power than everyone else, and they still have to pay a fee on top of that to subsidize the solar power initiative which due to the dependance on good weather, is shaky at best.
Sounds like this is really working out well for Germany. /sarcasm |
Even after the 200000+ signatures on change.org and various other support from celebrities and various specialists the UK's Home Secretary Theresa May is still ignoring it and dismissing any meetings with Richard's mother and plans to go ahead with the extradition EVEN though 99% of Britain and I'm sure US agree he should NOT be extradited. |
I have a theory, but maybe someone else mentioned this possibility already. Anyway this will probably get buried, regardless.
So, I'm saying this for the sake pointing out that there is a slight possibility this is what is happening. By no means am I against WikiLeaks, nor do I support our rights being diminished via laws restricting free speech on the internet.
That being said. WikiLeaks is very good at uncovering information. They are also doing well at getting said information out to the public quite quickly. Has anyone thought about the possibility that perhaps this DDOS onslaught is a very sneaky and intelligent way of getting that information out there quicker, while at the same time giving the general public another reason to blame the government (as if we needed another reason).
What better way to get the public to pay attention to WikiLeaks and continue supporting this group than to blame a general "enemy" (and i put enemy in quotes because of the nature of this enemy is our own government who was put into power through the voters, which is all of us).
Now, I'm not one to pay much attention to US politics, nor do I follow WikiLeaks articles with the passion some of you have. I just wanted to point out the fact the possibility that, perhaps, WikiLeaks is DDOSing their own servers in order to increase the publicity that it brings.
Anyhow, even if this doesn't get buried, it will likely get downvotes due to having an opinion different from the Hivemind. I'm okay with that, as I believe all possibilities should be outlined before everyone jumps on a single bandwagon.
Perhaps I'm in the wrong here, and there is proof (rather than speculation) that the government is launching DDOS attacks against WikiLeaks. I haven't really checked quite yet, so obviously this is all speculation. Again, I want to address the fact that I do not support the government's poor decisions concerning our rights of free speech in the cyber world. I do endorse what WikiLeaks stands for. I simply wanted to point out this less popular explanation of what could be happening.
I welcome links / sources that will disprove this theory, as I would like this situation to be properly addressed. |
I think the torrent is busted. I sat at 99.7% like other leechers even with seeds in the swarm. And, when I downloaded the same PDF from the uspto.gov link, replaced the PDF from the torrent, and re-checked the file - the download was still at 99.7% - but the PDF was complete and readable. However, when viewing the original 99.7% file, Adobe Reader says the file is damaged. |
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