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Let's think logically before dismissing everything as crazy for a second
1) Private government contractors take care of a lot of things, in-fact almost everything.
3) The company that oversees govt. cameras and cameras for the "rinky-dink" companies have access to everything, you'd be a fool to think businesses like these follow your precious ethical guidelines and 'rules'
4) Bull shit, why are you so desperately trying to downplay this thing?
5) TARGET, the retail superstore chain has a superior security system that's often used by the FBI (it flags you if you loiter in one area for over a few seconds and aggressively tracks you -- checks you with Wanted records ect.), now if Target has had this for the past 8+ years you'd best believe there's some super shit that a private security company developed that can be scaled to analyze a ton of incoming feeds.... but my main concern is, [why do you trust your government so much, as if they're on your side?](
6) There's a [ton of internets]( dedicated to private companies/govts etc... how do you think these big corporations and govt. agencies keep in touch with each other. |
the existence of a massive, world-wide, integrated surveillance system that is working in at least 5 countries (the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand), and possibly many more. Virtually any camera in public areas (and possibly cameras in private areas) could be connected to the system.
Yes, but it probably isn't. If you actually read the technical description of what Trapwire is [here](
>The installation of the TrapWire system begins with the identification of a facility's critical vulnerabilities as viewed through the eyes of a terrorist attacker. To attack these vulnerabilities, terrorists will need to conduct surveillance operations and will seek specific locations that offer both line-of-sight to the vulnerability and effective cover for surveillance activity. Once our experts have identified the facility's vulnerabilities, they will survey the surrounding areas to identify the zones and locations where terrorist surveillance is most likely to occur. We then work with facility security personnel to ensure that all available collection resources are properly sited to cover the critical surveillance zones.
You can't just instantly gain access to any system, anywhere with Trapwire. The government (or whoever) hires Trapwire to tap specific "areas of interest". Since the tap process involves lots of time-consuming setup (talking to facility security personnel, etc), there are probably very few "Trapwired" facilities on Earth. |
It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace."
Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 1676 |
Oh, like I know everything that happens on the Internet.
They didn't actually publicize the existence of the website did they.
Then again, it's not something they could really push via social networks. |
I highly doubt this is real-time monitoring either. The amount of data that has to be processed would be immense, not to mention the amount of processing power itself. More than likely, this is used after suspects have been identified to establish where they have been. Even then, I'd imagine the agencies would follow up at potential locations to look for further evidence that the person was there. |
A website tracks your IP address? Who knew?
FTFY
All websites track IPs. Even if you don't create a user account. Most big websites will associate IPs with your account, as well. Pretty much any php-based BB system, any wordpress system, any... anything, really. Your IP isn't private. It's broadcast (and saved, by default, in IIS and Apache - 99% of all webservers) every time you connect to anything on the web. |
IMO, iOS became what it is because of Scott leadership. And no one can deny it, Android became what it is because of iOS. He might sound like a bad guy, but he knows his job very well, he sounds like a copy of Steve Jobs.
Apple Maps is a major fail and he might said we shouldn't apologize, but it's not clear if he is the one responsible for allowing Maps to be shipped in first place.
I cannot think about bigger winners here more than Google and Microsoft. |
Disclaimer: I have an iPhone.
Another nail in the coffin. The iPhone has been stagnating since 2009 with the introduction of the 3GS. I have no idea when Jobs' (or his vision team's) focus left the product, but the 3GS is when Apple really stopped innovating in this sphere, and just issued incremental updates. Meanwhile Android manufacturers and Google were gaining momentum in hardware and software. Since 2009 (at least), most of the big feature advances in smartphones have come from the Android camp.
multitasking
copy/paste
A-GPS
flash on a camera
rear-facing camera
HD video
facial recognition
near-field communications
"cloud"-based synchronization
notification bar
wireless updates
high resolution screens (ok, this was pre-2009)
social network integration behavior - sync with contacts, unified "share" functionality etc.
HSPDA, higher-than-3g speeds in general
Meanwhile, Apple has not significantly improved their own application suite. Remember, you can't get listed in the Apple App store if you duplicate functionality already provided by iOS out of the box, so Apple Mail is the only mail app available. Same with iCal, iNote, and iPhoto. There are WAY better options out there depending on your use case, but they are only available on Android... and Apple doesn't even bother imitating the feature sets.
Apple defined this market with the introduction of the first iPhone, and blew the market away with the 3G. The 3GS, 4, 4GS, and 5 have been incremental updates to keep up with the pack, but nothing on the scale of the first two models... and nothing on the scale of the innovation we see in the Android smartphone field.
Now we see the company cutting ties with technology partners who were providing solid parts of their product. We see them using aggressive litigation to try and slow down competitors. Those aren't the behaviors of a company on the cutting edge. They're not the behaviors of a company that has big product ideas around the corner that will blow away expectations. These behaviors indicate that they're trying to protect an existing product from growing competition. Indeed, last year Android phones outsold iPhones for the first time. Apple is losing market share, and they don't have a vision around which to build a strategy. So they're on the defensive.
So now we find out that a significant internal, someone with a history of vision on the scale of Steve Jobs, has been saying "We're in trouble because there's no 'decider' now that Mr. Jobs is gone." He's been telling the iOS team that they aren't working on enough 'big ideas'. In other words, he's saying what all of the iPhone fans are saying: give us something so the Android guys can be jealous of US again. And that pisses off senior management, who are focused on pretending that their product is the best thing out there.
Maps is a great excuse to get rid of an internal resource with too much vision. The post-Jobs Apple isn't about redefining the market. It isn't about new ideas or innovation. It's about consolidating the product base that they do have, and riding that as long as they can. It's not a winning strategy, in the long term. |
is no more sensible than complaining that other people are speaking their native language instead of yours.
This is the root of the issue for me. I honestly believe we will all be better off with a universal language and set of measurements. My ideal world would be Europe actually adopting English and America actually adopting metric. (yes I know there are many other countries, but you get the point)
While I agree it is silly to assume all countries will adopt English (even though most people in Europe at least have it as a second language these days). The only thing holding metric back from being the only set of measurements in the world is the United States holding back. We have been in a 'transitional period' for decades.
When I say for my job I need to use two sets of measurements its not because of the people I work with, its because the products I work on need to be sent to different parts of the world. Just like requiring a product have words be translated into the 8 major base languages, they all need to have default settings for F and C, and they all need to have settings for comma's and periods (some countries do a comma for a decimal separator and others use a period). These may seem like simple things to fix, but you have to account for all of them all the time when making a product, and its something that wouldn't even need to be considered if we would all just choose one set. Sooo much money and time is wasted on these conversions. |
Bruce isn't saying we can fix it. He's saying we're done. And if Bruce says we're done, we're probably done. So now the time comes where we transition into something beyond human. Things will have to change and we'll have to leave the old ways behind. Certainly some old things like living alone in the wilderness will have to go by the wayside or at least look suspicious, but think about all the old bad stuff we're getting rid of--ancient religions that are the tools of the power elite, people not knowing enough truth so they are taken advantage of, police beating people because no one can see. All of this is not possible anymore because even the power elite are not immune from information. That's where your paranoia is going wrong. You think there's some body or committee or panel or secret society somewhere that's controlling this digital hand and eyes. But it's you and me. We're more free now than ever before because everyone is finally accountable for everything. It really is the truth that if you don't want anyone to know what you're doing, maybe you shouldn't be doing it. But guess what, all this data will mean anything that is truly victimless can finally be exposed as right, just as stuff that seems innocent and normal can finally be exposed as bullshit (e.g. brainwashing children that a mythical creature will send them to hell if they're bad, but a good mythical man in the sky is watching out for them).
It's a two-sided coin and with great power comes great responsibility. But we have the power, the masses always have the power. So, if you want to make sure you're not going to be negatively affected, now is the time to teach and speak about how technology can make you freer (like you already do) and less about using it to further your personal agendas. If everyone does this, humanity will be replaced with a new sort of post-humanity. That doesn't mean everything will be ginger beer, but you can't stop progress. |
This dives into security practices - and in reality, the Internet is no more easy to monitor then a phone line - and infact is more difficult if the correct precautions are taken.
If you don't need it, don't keep it. IP's, ok - I get it, tracking unique visits is cool. Outside this, their user name (stored plane text or hashed, either way works), and password (stored as a hash, preferably salted). If you have a mailing list? Ya, I suppose keep that. Name, address and so on? unless you plan on shipping items, you don't need it.
Use strong passwords (Alpha-numerical phrases, with a few standard replaced characters is a good idea, if it's on a word list - it's probably a bad choice).
End to End encryption - if you are the client or server, you need to read the data. Otherwise, get a warrant - oh, and see #1 for why that may not be as useful as you think unless you have given me reason to log the data (see #3 - get a warrant. Ya, you give me cause to track the data. I will track the data, otherwise - nope, no need).
Store your passwords securely. On a piece of paper under your keyboard is a bad place if it's publically accessible. On your phone is a VERY bad idea. A good place though? On a flash drive in an encrypted folder. Combo that with a password that you can recover in some way easily (first letter of each word in on the first page of a book that you have hanging around. Maybe it's "Cooking for Dummies")
Use anonymity services - VPN's, TOR, etc. When you use these, and don't do something like let java spew out your real IP to the world, then all they see is "System useing Person X's connection connected to VPN service. VPN service has traffic going to many different places" - it's inconclusive to what you were doing.
Only problem? You can't verify that #1 is being followed. And you can't force services to enforce #3 (SSL) But 2,4, and 5 are absolutely in your control. And you can use services that run SSL. |
Twice now I've read the title of this link incorrectly. First my ears perked up because I thought it said "When parents attack!" and again when I scrolled down and thought it was an /r/askreddit for "What patients attack." |
I apologize for my earlier rant (being an asshole), and thank you for sharing your view as an insider. If you try to do your job correctly which seems like you try, it must be from very hard to impossible. And this is my real problem, I just simply cannot imagine a way to form a system that can work well here. I believe that the whole patent system does in general more harm than good even if there are many people out there like you might be who try their best to do the right thing. But I just made this up, there is no research behind it or anything, just feeling this way, and have very little thrust in the court... Maybe just the media featuring the faults of the system a lot better than the good that patenting delivers to us. |
NO NO NO NO
IP laws have never been about the author, they've always been about society. This is true of every law, whenever someone tells you a law is to protect individuals watch out: laws are designed, and only work, for social good. When a single individual is protected, he's given power he can (and will) abuse, today's victim might be tomorrow's bully.
Patents, specifically, were made because a lot of knowledge was lost. Inventors would create extremely useful creations, but in order to maintain business they would keep the knowledge to recreate it secret. When the inventor died, so did all his inventions. To this day we still are unable to fully recreate Damascus blades or certain glass tints.
So we strike a deal with the inventors: if they give us the documentation to create their inventions (a patent) we grant them a temporary monopoly, enforced by law.
The time given is not about how much time is reasonable for business: it's how much time so most inventors will patent their creations. |
That's not why it went to shit. The system fell apart when the changed it so that people submitting patents have to pay for patent acceptance and that's the revenue for the agency clerks.
What does that all mean? It means that the patent clerk doesn't get paid if a patent is submitted and it is refused. Refusing a patent is a lengthy process for the clerk of citing all the reasons and other patents why it is being refused. As opposed to accepting the patent with a rubber stamp, doing a fraction of the work and it's the only way to get paid. |
I only have so much time, and I don't like spending much of it arguing with those who come into the argument with biased beliefs.
Strong opinions (like yours, which incited my first post) which gather some attention need to be kept in check, especially when they come from someone who is an outsider to a whole field of knowledge. I assumed you were because you stated that being a drug dealer or a prostitute would be better than working in patents.
I know that it sounds condescending, but you honestly cannot have objective opinions on the patent system until you know a lot about it by working in it on a near daily basis. Would I ever represent a "patent troll?" No, but that doesn't mean the client can't go and find someone who will. I can only make suggestions to a client who wants to aggressively pursue their rights (where speculative, of course). I can't control how someone wants to use their own property. Those types of clients will always find a scumbag attorneys willing to sue speculatively.
Would I write an application that could be used as ammo for a "troll?" Hard to say, because I am not obligated to search against my client's interests, and I can only know so much about so many technology areas. I could write a patent tomorrow for a GUI that may have been done 100x over in the past 20 years, and I wouldn't have a clue that I did it unless I spent my own time (meaning no pay) researching. It is the patent office's job to search, not mine (unless requested by the client, but takes $$$).
The client could even know about the prior art and lie to me when I request all of the information he is aware of that may be relevant to the application (which has to be disclosed by law). This happens all the time, whether intentional or not. I cannot read minds and I may get used as a hired gun to make other's possibly nefarious business plans come to fruition. To make the problem worse, patent examiners do not get nearly enough time to do their jobs properly, and generally are only pretty good at searching for patents and applications, not every publication in a technology field. This is to keep patent fees down and to make the examination process not take the 3+ years is sometimes does. |
In simpliest terms, a manufacturer creates a product, puts a mark up on their cost and then sells it to resellers/dealers who in turn mark it up again to cover their costs and profit. The end user is paying the dealer profit on the profit the manufacturer included in the product.
But Manufacturer-dealer relationships are typically more complex. Commonly, vehicles have a "holdback" incentive built into the invoice (wholesale) price the dealer is supposed to pay the manufacturer for the vehicle. From what I understand the holdback rate can vary from month to month and even product to product based upon quantities of vehicles sold or other factors. This is how those "end of the month" sales started, because it was possible for a dealer to make more money on sales from earlier in the month if they meet quotas that increase their holdback incentives. It's worth noting that some luxury brands may have no holdback or very small hold backs.
I am not an expert but as I understand it, there are certain other financial mechanisms that dealerships rely on. I believe dealers typically don't pay for their inventory upfront in full. I believe they offer the manufacturer some sort of security against the inventory. I don't know how accurate this is, but it was once explained to me that a dealer may actually be paid to store their own inventory on behalf of the manufacturer as there is some sort of tax benefit to this (I think it has to do with the way the lot used to store the vehicles is classified and taxed). I can't remember some of the other maneuvers but there are more.
Over time the whole dynamic of buying a car has changed because of this. Today depending on customer incentives and dealer holdbacks you can buy some cars substantially below "invoice" price. In the end it's all bull because the manufacturer and dealer are still making money they just make it harder for consumers to compare pricing/deals. |
You know what's fun about that line in the Odyssey? There's a wordplay that you totally miss when you read it in translation. The name Odysseus gives Polyphemos is "μήτις" ( may -tiss), meaning "nobody," but "μῆτις" (pronounced virtually the same way) means something like "craftiness," which of course Odysseus was known for. I also believe one of his epithets was "polymetis," i.e. the prefix "poly" (much, many) + metis.
So on one level Odysseus is tricking the cyclops into telling the other cyclopes that "nobody" was attacking him. On a deeper level, Odysseus is simultaneously reasserting his claim as a clever trickster, yet also in a way actually telling Polyphemos his "truest" name, insofar as he as a character is marked by his cleverness. |
I don't believe that our government officials want to harm the American public. I think that people that believe this are the same kinds of people that think Obama is a muslim, anti-christ, terrorist, socialist that wants to destroy America. That's simply just not true. They do have their own agendas usually, but they're not all morally inept and have their own moral lines they won't cross. I think that the government officials as a whole right now believe that this surveillance is beneficial to our nation's security. Whether this is true or not is unknown to me at this time. Obviously the news can't report when a secret program has stopped a terror plot in the US because it's secret. We only get to know what slips past the secret program itself.
Here's what you should do if you're with me and don't yet think the government is here to destroy all your rights and do voodoo mind control on you (I still think you're crazy if you think that they want that, sorry ;))
Write to your elected officials. Tell them why you are angry and that they will not be receiving your vote if they continue to endorse such a program because it violates your constitutional rights.
Encourage others to do the same if they feel this way.
Wait, and then proceed as necessary. If the time comes to fix our government in a bigger way, so be it. Now is not that time.
Reddit as a whole is so quick to jump to the worst case scenario in this whole ordeal. Until such a time when it is plausible that there is a widespread issue with disregard to public desires in our federal government, I will not become a tinfoil hat wearer. Check sources on both sides of the issue (don't just read the circle-jerky stuff that Reddit has been promoting) and try to find something closer to non-biased. Try to find factual information and not opinions. Make sure all quotes are in context. Make sure the content is logical and doesn't have gaps in information when making conclusions. Do not let the media make a conclusion for you, including articles like this cnet one. Read a bunch, and make your own.
Let them know you're mad. If they're the kind of government I still have faith in, they will listen. Mistakes do occur, and it's better to show the government that we trust them to fix it than go full anarchist and give them an excuse to actually oppress the public. |
I'm gonna put it out there that this problem is simple.
Port Forwarding.
Hear me out.
The fact that it is (even slightly) prohibitive for individuals to host their own material or send direct messages to one another GUARANTEES centralised structure. It guarantees that we end up in the situation we're in.
We should have realised this the VERY FIRST time someone said "just log in to the router and port forward, it's easy". If it was EASY, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's not easy. It should be easy.
If we solve this problem and allow everyone to host their own content and address each other by specific alphanumerical address, we have the infrastructure for a decentralised network. If we don't, we GUARANTEE the centralised structures that are, throughout history, abused and exploited. |
I swear, you people have got conspiracy on the brain here. Yeah people get assassinated, it happens. Lincoln had assassination attempts more than three or four times if I recall correctly. I never said president btw, and guess what? You don't need to be rich to win an election. All I hear is excuses and frankly I am sick of people bitching but not getting a coalition together to be elected and pushing them on an already strained public mentality to get in and do things right. Yes when you get in things change, and that is why most simply "go along" with what is already in place. Why? Because they are scared and have no confidence; because they know nothing except what they want to do and have to be briefed on everything else, by someone else (including their opinion). However, if you get in and make ALL the decisions read ALL of the material you can count yourself different. Fuck being elected next year, that is what causes them to slack on their duties by not angering people. If you get shit done and prove your worth in hot topics the public will adore you. Yes it would be hard, that is why you get the group going in and hope you all make it. If not try again in the next four. Speaking about Kennedy, yeah he used a lot of avenues to directly step on toes (while having cancer no less) to get shit done; and that attempt on life can be avoided in today's current society. I don't want to keep going on and on so I'll end this wall here. |
Not answering can't be used as evidence. This is a civil right. The problem with staying silent however is that you can't offer a defense. You can't say "I didn't do it" or "it's not mine" when the police allege that you did do it or that it isn't yours.
I remember a case I was reading some time ago of a kid who was charged with break/enter/steal because they found his finger prints on the security door. The judge explicitly said that all the kid had to say was SOMETHING explaining why his prints were there. He even gave an example of that the kid was drunk and was confused which house it was or that he intended to break in but couldn't. Either of those would have been acceptable, however because he didn't offer any defense the magistrate was forced to accept the police facts. |
Our govt needs to shape up and start using |
the thing about SOD in the DEA is - they operate internationally in environments like Afghanistan. The information they're requesting is most likely about targets abroad in places the NSA has relevant information on. The NSA is the foremost agency in SIGINT collection and analysis - and the DEA's SOD could very well make use of such information in combatting the drug trade internationally. SOD isn't involved in ordinary investigations - unlike what the EFF is trying to say. Does it bypass certain oversight and bring up constitutionality in their practices through information collection? Yes, but this information doesn't relate to American citizens (that information is housed by the FBI). The only foreseeable instances in which the DEA would need FISA related information would be in the investigation and pursuit of narco-terrorism in places like South America and especially Afghanistan. The Taliban and cartels abroad use revenue from drugs or poppy fields to fund their operations domestically or abroad. |
This is abuse of power plain and simple. First they shout from the roof tops "terrorist!" At every chance they get to make the generally apathetic public go, "Well if it's for our safety then that's alright I guess."
The truth is this "terrorist" bullshit has never been about the safety of the American people. It's always been about protecting the interests of corporations and international trade. Whenever the government gets wind of some other country not wanting to engage in trade relations, they send the tanks and guns. Foreign countries normally don't like engaging in trade relations with the US because we always fuck them over so hard the only way they can be heard is to turn themselves into the enemy.
So the government makes up this whole "terrorists hate freedom" schtick to get us thinking well they just hate the US in general. The NSA was supposed to be looking for "terrorists" and if you are out there doing something that the feds don't agree with, they have now essentially lumped you into the same category.
All this has to do with revenue and trade, the DEA has access to this information to quell high profit drug trade because "drugs are bad" and they aren't seeing any of the profit.
Ultimately we must assume that every federal agency has this information, DEA, FBI, CIA and this information is going to trickle down at the will of these bastards to target select groups of people they view to be a threat or danger. Those dangerous people are well informed, angry and want their freedoms back. I don't know if I'm just paranoid but I'm so scared that I started covering the webcam on my computer, removing the battery from my cell phone when it's not on and I rarely leave my house and and I sure as hell know my rights when it comes to the police searches and seizures.
I don't see the American people coming out of this easily or gracefully as we become more informed they are going to do more to keep us in the dark. I know my ramblings seem crazy but I've followed this stuff closely since I first learned about the 9/11 conspiracy.
Not saying all the 9/11 conspiracy stuff is true, but here's a little thing that scares me, there is always a grain of truth in every lie. We fell down the surveillance state rabbit hole so fucking fast we're still looking around wondering where we are. We are looking for the remnants of the rights we once had and our pursuit of them is just the US leading us around wonderland like the Cheshire cat. Deeper and deeper we go.
I am not an expert on the technological specifics of the issues, but I read all the articles and information I can to educate myself. I am concerned, we cannot riot what do you think is going to happen if we do? They have all those tanks that they take taxes out for, all the guns and drones freak the fuck out of me. |
Funny you should mention that.
There used to be a Department of War, which then split into the army, navy and airforce, as part of the joint National Military Establishment, which in 1949 was renamed the Department of Defense. |
I see a lot of "this will encourage DRM" and "xbone was attacked for this" comments...
First, this is just my interpretation, but to me it seems that Steam is trying to encourage publishers to NOT put more DRM on their games... The way PC gaming generally works now, is that if your game is on steam, there's no better way to sell it to gamers. If Steam implements a service-wide feature allowing people to share games and the publisher makes it so you can't use this feature: they potentially sell less copies, Steam possibly requests they allow every game on their service to allow this feature, or(this seems on likely, but the thought crossed my mind) Steam pulls their game from the store. Basically, Steam sort of makes the rules and hopefully people who want to sell their game through their service follows the rules.
Second, the xbox one was not attacked for suggesting a family/console sharing feature. This is probably geared towards a family setting where many people use the same computer, on different profiles or something of the sort. If you're in a situation where you have siblings and you share your console with them, it's the same thing. If you buy a game through the xbox marketplace, it is tied to your account, now matter what console you are on. Realistically, if you take care of your xbox, how many different xboxes are you probably going to play on? In an ever-growing community based around online play, you'll probably only play on your own home console. Microsoft wanted to make it so you could share games, but they also wanted you have a(perceived as) constant internet connection. Which would sort of make sense, if the game wasn't already installed on the xbox system. That is why people attacked Microsoft for essentially the same idea. But you're saying to yourself, "Steam does require an internet connection though!" Which you are right, but it always has. You can't play any of your games without an internet connection on Steam. Which kinda sucks regardless if you don't have a very good internet connection. But to me it's understandable that people who own an xbox 360, who can play a game they have on their system, no matter their internet connection would get angry over now being forced to have internet to play any of their games. P.S. I don't want to sound like a Sony fanboy, but the PS3 allows anybody on the console to use any downloaded games, but you can only download the games on so many consoles. Essentially, same argument about using probably one console for all of your titles on that system. |
It looks like this was a way of getting multiple users of the same computer to get separate steam accounts, not a way to get people to share games. As you say, it's something that already happens. They just want to make sure if someone is logged in it's actually them.
People invest huge amounts of money in steam because all their friends use it. If you're sharing an account with say two brothers, you're unlikely to properly utilise the friends options, then you're not as deeply invested in the service |
Then he posted on StackOverflow for tech support, of all things.
"Guys, how do I do this?
>$my.totallyillegalsite.bustme
Thanks, Ross William Ulbricht frosty" |
I wish UEFI had just been a portable version of the Bios interfaces. It could still have used the COM like way (you call QueryInterace with a GUID and get back a vtable pointer) of getting to them but the actual interfaces would have allowed sector IO instead of file IO. So you'd have a sector IO routine to replace int 13h and a character IO and mode setting routine to replace int 10h. Call it Portable Bios.
You'd have GPT partitions except they'd have a boot loader in sector zero that was able to display a menu and then load the chosen partition boot sector.
On x86 or x64 all this would work with the old Bios interfaces. Incidentally int 13h has used 64 bit LBAs for ages - it's pretty damn future proof. On Arm or Itanium you'd use the portable versions of those Bios interfaces. Once again the sector IO interface would let use 64 bit LBAs.
It would also mean that you'd be able to use GPT partitions with a Bios mother board.
You might need a new partition type for the boot loader menu. Still that boot loader would be pretty damn portable. On x86 it would switch to protected mode and use v86 mode to access the Bios. On ARM for example the Bios functions would be replaced with the new Portable Bios interfaces - the init code would query the interfaces it needed and use those COM like interfaces to do actual sector IO.
Actually N |
So spitting vitriol at defenders is better? Or the people that bought something off the shelf and got what it came with?
I bought it for $25. I've spent more on humble bundles that I've never installed.
Wasted time on the UI? Isn't that like the 20 seconds of boot time? It's negligible.
No, I don't use any of the metro apps. Yes I could have gotten all the features in 7 for free. I actually use the skydive integration, when I could use box or Dropbox or amazon or practically anything else. |
No, it is not double dipping. You didn't order dedicated bandwidth from your ISP. But you are more than welcome to place an order for dedicated bandwidth.
What the ISP has actually done, is taken 100 Meg circuit for instance, calculated appx usage, based on peak time of day, and sold that 100 Meg circuit to you and 100 other people, as a 5 Meg service.
This might seem as though, the ISP is making a killing, selling 500 Megs of service for the price of 100 Megs, but really they are doing this to offer home residents an affordable connection.
Netflix has created a service, a very bandwidth intensive service. Now your ISP has to decide, increase your personal cost to support the necessary connection rates, or go back to Netflix, and ask them to pay for the upgrade. So who would you rather pay more money to? Your ISP, or Netflix, either way, the ISP needs more infrastructure, and neither one of them can print more money to do it.
Imagine you are a good neighbor, and you allow your neighbor to play in your yard, he doesn't have his own yard, and you enjoy playing with your neighbor out there in the yard too, and he brings over a few friends. Eventually your neighbor gets new toys to play with, and next thing you know he's riding a 4 wheeler and tearing up your lawn! It's great that he has an awesome 4 wheeler, but now your lawn is getting destroyed, and more people are coming over to ride the new 4 wheeler on your grass, your lawn budget is going through the roof trying to keep up with his demand on your yard. You don't want to block him from your yard, those are your friends out there riding his 4 wheeler too, but you can't keep paying to upgrade your yard to support their good time. So, do you ask the guy who owns the 4 wheeler (Netflix) to upkeep your lawn? Do you ask your friends (Customers) to pay to keep your lawn nice, or do you just fork out the money on behalf of everyone else?
If you want dedicated bandwidth, and not shared bandwidth, call your ISP and get a quote for dedicated bandwidth, and all your Netflix woes will go away. |
Yes and No. The issue arises with public companies, share prices, and bonus structures. Having a huge spike in expenses to upgrade infrastructure is going to reduce profits. For many companies, this means that
A) all bonus-eligible employees from the lowly AR clerk to the CEO are going to get less money and
B) share price is going to plummet (because share price tends to be short-term focused) which means that your employees that own stock (which is, in many businesses, a large percentage of employees from the lowly AR clerk to the CEO) are all going to have less money than before and
C) Your business, which usually owns a large % of stock that they can choose to sell to gain cash (often times for major projects/improvements) is now worth substantially less which means your businesses purchasing power has decreased, often times dramatically.
What it comes down to is that businesses are extremely complicated. On top of that, ISP's are functioning essentially in a oligopoly where they don't actively compete with each other in most areas. This means there is zero incentive to upgrade because upgrading would not only cost a ton of money in straight cash, it would also cost a ton of money in share price. It would also make your employees angry that they aren't getting paid their bonus and make it more difficult to obtain new employees as they will only hear about how your company didn't pay out a bonus in the previous year.
So Yes, they could technically afford it based on straight cash, but the overall impact on their business would be substantially more than simply paying $X for improvements. Business is way more complicated than simply Cash in - Cash out = profits. |
It's kind of like buying a bus pass. The city doesn't expect every single person with a bus pass to want to use the bus at the exact same time.
That has been the mindset of ISP's until this point. Unfortunately everybody has gotten fatter, and even though there aren't more people on the bus, more buses are required to accommodate everybody. |
Well, most residential ISPs are also cable providers. They don't want Netflix being better than their cable TV or VOD offerings. Verizon, in particular, is very publicly in bed with RedBox as well and wants to see that service improve. |
It's not about you paying for your bandwidth, its about netflix paying for theirs.
Basically its the connection between peers, such as Verizon and Cogent (netflix's ISP). The way peering works is that Verizon would be sending content to Cogent, and Cogent would be sending content to Verizon. Since they both basically send the same amount of data, instead of Verizon billing Cogent $10k / month and Cogent billing Verizon $10k / month, they just trade bandwidth for free.
Due in large part to Netflix traffic, that peering arrangement isn't even though. What is happening is that Cogent is sending a great deal more content to Verizon's than Verizon is sending back to Cogent. Verizon thinks that the free peering model doesn't work due to this (and they are kind of right in the most basic sense). Now it's more like Verizon wants to bill Cogent $20k / month and Cogent Bills Verizon $10K / month, so just call it $10k to Verizon and call it a day. Cogent of course would pass that cost straight to Netflix.
Ok, so that means Verizon is in the right and Netflix is in the wrong, correct? Nope. Netflix is well aware of how much bandwidth they are sending out and have come up with a solution. They are allowing ISPs to host Caching servers within the ISP at no cost to the ISP. This would reduce a lot of traffic through those peers, and greatly improve quality to the ISPs customers. |
Because networking isn't some super easy task. The Internet is packet switched to make it cheaper and, for millions of users, significantly better. So they put in neighborhood boxes that you connect to, and when someone in your neighborhood decides to use all the bandwidth possible, it screws over everyone else. The ISP has no control over your neighbors not knowing how to torrent/whatever responsibly and you pay the price.
EDIT: There should be some lower limit on monthly average speeds, but to guarantee that, the ISP will probably put extra software on modems to ensure you aren't screwing people over, which people will bitch about as well. |
I think you misunderstand what a government subsidy is. It doesn't mean the company is now obligated to the government or the public. Government subsidies, at a high level, are for things that simply wouldn't happen without government intervention.
Think of it like this, the government subsidized the Interstate Highway system through the state governments. Your state is responsible for maintained your portion of the Interstate Highway. This is how it should work.
Unfortunately, this is not what the government did with ISP's. They did not, to my knowledge, specifically require anything beyond connecting people. They didn't require certain speeds or uptime or any sort of price guarantee. They basically cut the ISP's a check to lay a bunch of fiber and then took the conservative approach of "the free-market and competition will work to provide the consumer with what they need". Turns out this is what the free market looks like. It almost inevitably results in less competition. |
You are not paying $100/month for 100 mbps connection. You're paying $100/month for up to 100 mpbs connection.
You have have to understand how cable works. Your cable line is shared with your neighbors. If you were the only one on your line, then you'd get 100 mpbs aways, but if your neighbors are using the internet at the same time then they'll be taking away some of that bandwidth. That's how it works. If you wanted your own line, then you'd have to pay a lot more (That's what we call "T1", "T2", and "T3" and you pay big for it).
Phone lines are different for a lot of reasons... Not the least of which is that phones use a lot less data than a cable internet does, but there are actually other significant reasons as well. This whole subject is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be. Phone and cable is not really comparable.
Source: I work for a telecommunications company. I'm not saying that cable companies are in the right here, but please at least be informed when you criticize them. Bring up the "I should be getting the X mbps internet that I was advertised!" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. They clearly advertise up to X mbps, which is a super important difference. |
It's more or less American tradition to think of the present and neglect the future anyways |
Yeah with 2.4ghz wireless speeds typically cap out at a max of 130-144mbit (depending on the router), and can often be significantly lower depending on many factors, such as distance from the router, connection going through walls etc... Some routers can 'technically' do 300mbit over 2.4ghz by using 40mhz channel width (most 2.4ghz wireless n routers use 20hz by default and may or may not have an option to use 40mhz over 2.4ghz), but that won't work well unless there's almost no other sources wireless interference around, because doing so basically uses up more than half 11 channels in the 2.4ghz band.
If you get a dual band router that can do 5ghz wireless N, then you can get significantly faster wireless speeds (because the 5ghz has a LOT more channels available, and uses 40hz channel width allowing for ~300mbit speeds over wireless N, and with the newer wireless 'AC' routers you can theoretically get speeds around a gigabit if your hardware supports wireless AC, but again this is all subject to lower speeds depending on distance, interference, walls etc... and the 5ghz band actually does not penetrate walls as well as 2.4ghz wifi, so even though the bandwidth is higher, it may not perform as well at significant distances) |
It is stunning how flawed peoples understanding of network resources and how those allocations are planned for and utilized is. Every body on the planet seems to claim to understand the very complex job of planning and implementing, and maintaining an IP network.
These are important topics and they are being hijacked and demolished by short sighted people positing themselves as experts that obviously lack a real understanding of how this all works.
Let's take a road analogy. I'm seeing a lot of people saying that they paid for their bandwidth so they should be able to use it however much and whenever they want.
Their are lots of frankly stupid examples that people are laying out but they are missing the most blatantly obvious and accurate parallels. This is natural. We don't really gravitate to the intelligent and thoughtful answer. Our initial reaction is to go with the easy answer that fits with what we WANT to believe. Let's be honest we all WANT to believe that paying our internet bill is all we need to worry about and they should work to provide the fastest and best service for that dollar imaginable. This just isn't realistic. Let's have a real example laid out and start having a real discussion where there is some increase in understanding rather than the circle jerk that comes up every time ISP's come up. The dialogue is quite frankly toxic and counter-productive as it exists today.
IT'S OK EVERYONE THE PROVIDERS ARE WRONG TOO SO PUT DOWN THE DAMN PITCHFORK AND TORCH.
In order for a real example to be laid out we must first agree on the basis for communications infrastructure. Let's look at a physical example of infrastructure. Better yet let's look at the prototypical example, roads.
You buy a car. Your cost isn't over yet! You have to put gas in your car. You have to pay taxes on your car. Perhaps you rent and lease your vehicle so there may be limitations on your ability to use that vehicle without additional expense. You may have to travel on a toll road that is maintained privately and pay extra cost there. Now what about insuring your vehicle? What about the unintended costs around sharing your vehicle with children and the possible liabilities you incur?
Ok, so now we've outlined your car and some of the possible additional costs from ownership let's talk about the physical act of driving your vehicle.
Ok you have your vehicle right? Is your vehicle occupying the road at all times? When your vehicle is on the road does it occupy all the places it will be on that road at all times? You pay taxes for the maintenance of these roads, if the supposition is that you should be able to access and utilize these roads whenever, for whatever purpose, at any time should we not have 6 billion lane highways where your travel should never be impeded? Why do we not have this? Why is my essential liberty being impinged?
Let's further suppose that Amazon deliveries end up making 5% of the traffic on the highways but that through tricky legal tax maneuvers they do not pay any taxes to municipalities in which they operate so they never pay anything for road maintenance, neither do the delivery companies they contract (or at least not all of them). Do we make them deliver their packages using only off road vehicles capable of blazing their own paths?
We now have a good basis of questions with which we can begin to increase our understanding. The point of all the costs associated with the every day running and maintenance of your vehicle illustrate exactly the landscape we see online. Your purchase of a car is your computer. You pay for your internet connection (gas), you choose to travel on toll roads (special services i.e. netflix, etc.) you incur liability for sharing your connection (piracy, abuse, cyberstalkering, etc) Perhaps you rent/lease your connection (library internet, net cafe, data plans via cellualr) and with that come certain limitations both technical and legal. These points are to illustrate that these are complex questions and cannot be answered with the false correlation that you simply "pay for your internet connection" so "GTFO".
Let's look at the second set of examples about your cars presence on the roads and associated highways, bridges, tunnels, etc. We have illustrated that this is a shared network with shared costs that are not shared equally yet we all know that this network is essential and we all pay into because we agree it is important to all of us. We all share this system and no one claims exclusive access to roads because they understand it as a physical commodity and people frankly aren't that stupid in selfish in the real world. To get to those levels of idiocy we have to come online. Everyone wave a big hello to the morons in the crowd tonight! What we have in Netflix is a not a clear goog guy in this fight. They are a massive company and they are making much of their profits by using the infrastructure available in ways it was not intended to benefit just one company. They have a market cap of over 25 billion and some estimates place it's actual value north of 75 billion dollars.
If you went out and hopped in your car tomorrow and were stuck in an endless traffic jam and you looked around you and saw that 50% of the cars on the road had the names Netflix and YouTube emblazoned on the side, you'd be a bit irked right? Well that is what is going on, on the highways of the internet right now. Instead of sharing this roadway in a reasonable way they have implemented technologies that are clogging your internet, continuing to erode american jobs and industry, devaluing entertainment, and removing a clearer understanding of what a free internet really looks like. It seems many people here feel that a free internet is giving their money to Netflix, Hulu, or Google fiber. This is a false dialogue and does not serve the public in any way shape or form. If you want to just choose another fat cat and we can have a hilarious dialogue about new company X 30 years from now and how they are taking on that entertainment tyrant Netflix, well that sounds like a rollicking good time to me, but this conversation has already made me cynical beyond reason.
Internet speeds to costs are further clouded and we are seeing spikes in bandwidth that are finally catching up but in order to maintain these speeds we need to make sure that greedy fat kid isn't stuffing all the cake in his mouth. If he does keep stuffing all the cake down his greed hole we're going to have to buy more cake. Cake costs money. Somebody is going to need to pay for the cake. Do you want the greedy fat fuck to pay for the cake or do you want to pay for his cake so he gets to sit there getting fatter while you shovel sugary goodness into his gullet? Is that what freedom looks like to you? The freedom to stuff more of the bandwidth we all fund together down some billionaires greedy filthy cake hole?
I certainly hope not. |
We paid for our lines, Netflix has paid for their lines so suck it up and give us what paltry crap you sold us and stop your whining.
The problem here is that everyone simplifies it in those terms but that is far from the entire story. Sure you pay for internet access, as does Netflix... However, have you ever wondered how your data magically gets from verizon to netflix (or anywhere else for that matter)? What happens in between? You are missing the entire middle part where backbone providers, peering agreements and content delivery networks (CDNS) etc. come into play. Part of the money you pay Verizon (and netflix pays Cogent) is supposed to go towards negotiating favorable peering agreements for their respective customers, which actually get your data from one network to the other. It's sort of like international postage. If you mail something from the US to Australia, part of the rate goes to the USPS, part goes towards paying for the plane service, part of it goes towards the Autralian postal service for the hazard pay towards the dude that has to fight off all the deadly animals while delivering your letter, etc. At some point all parties have to agree on who pays who what. The conversation usually goes something like this
Verizon : Hey Cogent, nice network, can we send our customers data over it?
Cogent : Sure, it'll cost you $5 a jiggy/s at 95th percentile, and we want to also send our customers data (e.g. netflix) to your network at $4 per jiggy/s (note : jiggies are not real units)
Verizon : Nuh uh, our network is bigger and we have 30jillion end users your customers also want to get to, so you need us more than we need you. How about a deal? We do $4.75 and you pay $5.25
Cogent : umm ok, sounds fair for now, but it looks like we're sending about the same amount of data both ways, so how about we just call it even and we're on board... BUT if the difference in traffic is ever more than 5%, you owe us overage, and vice versa (<- this is usually how it works out)
There's a few decades worth of precedent about how this economy plays out behind the scenes and both Cogent and Netflix are currently trying to buck that trend by (quite successfully) generating public outrage among end users (i.e. getting you upset at verizon for "double dipping", or not accepting a netflix CDN for "free", blaming the cogent peering dispute on throttling, etc.).
If you don't believe this, notice how netflix put out and hyped an "ISP RATING" page when they started offering their open connect CDN?
How about the "verizon is throttling netflix traffic rumors". Do they happen to coincide with netflix superHD streams and the [cogent peering dispute]( If you go to the [internet health report]( during peak hours, look carefully at the two cogent/verizon boxes. They are pretty much always critical. That's no accident, that's entirely because netflix data quadrupled over the past few months and neither cogent nor netflix are interested in paying up on existing agreements to fix it. I have FiOS at home. At peak hours, I can assure you that all cogent-bound traffic has been completely borked for the past few weeks. It's not just the netflix traffic. |
Meanwhile, I listen to the radio daily, and can't tell you the last music video I watched. I think it might have been the lyric video for Cee Lo's "Fuck You" back when that first came out. Everyone on facebook was posting it. |
PC's replaced mainframes because they were better user experiences. People cut their phone land line off because it became superfluous. A tablet is in no conceivable way a better experience than a desktop and never will be. Sure tablets are fun little browsing devices and you might type of a short email or two on them but serious work get's done on PC's.
A few simple, basic reasons:
Most desktop computers have between 5-10 times the amount of screen real estate a tablet has. I seriously doubt 30" tablets are going to become the norm any time soon.
Touch input is much less accurate than a mouse. Any serious work on a spreadsheet is fucking terrible using touch.
Even after passing a learning curve touch screen keyboards are significantly slower than physical keyboards.
I don't see PC's going away until we reach a point where monitors are replaced with some type of google glass (or contact lense) display. Keyboards are replaced with (flawless) voice recognition and mice are replaced with (flawless) optical tracking. |
But remember, some people want a PC for gaming and work. That would be cheaper than a pre-built PC for work and an xbox one. Not everyone is going for the graphics. I got into PC for the games and controls, the graphics were like the last nail on the coffin of my console gamer self. |
I am doubtful that is a big factor. Building your own machine is easier indeed as that increasingly there is less and less need to have plug in beyond putting a motherboard in a case, the CPU/memory on the board and the HDD into the case. Pretty much everything is increasingly integrated. NICs have been built into motherboards for years, ditto with sound cards and increasingly even secondary video cards are becoming less common as integrated video improves, but honestly I see less allure to building your own PC these days as the savings just are nowhere near as compelling as they were 10 years ago to say 20 years ago.
When a typical desktop was >$1000 back in the 90s and your time was easily half as valuable (minimum wage has nearly doubled in the last 20 years) the value in building your own machine has dropped dramatically. I might add as games haven't pressed hardware upgrades like they used to a high end machine isn't as valuable as it used to be in my opinion. Back in the day I remember trying to play Doom on a 386 and it was utterly painful. Hardware upgrades were far more expensive back in the day and most people's time was worth a lot less so spending a couple hours assembling your machine might save $300 now if I am lucky I might save $50. I can make $50 in a single hour of contracting work. Back in 1994 the $300 you might have saved might have been a week of work for some people. The financial motivations have just dropped dramatically. For $500-600 I can buy a machine that will run most modern games without issue. At worst case scenario you spend $50-100 on a video card and drop into the machine. |
This is complex.
So, Linux is a name, like 'Hinduism', that really covers a very wide range of things that share a lot of core bits in common, but even the very core bits can occasionally be swapped out for similar bits.
Let us take an example.
OS X went through a huge leap as it was gently coaxed into being iOS. Much of the same core is there, it's just that it's mainly just fundamental bits and pieces. The environment you interact with (on iOS) is a thing called Springboard - that's the icons and the little dock and the clock and stuff. Springboard also provides the kind of 'groundrules' for how objects act when you touch them etc.
Those rules are very different when you use a machine running OSX. It still has a lot of the same 'guts', but the way windows appear, how you click them, what happens when you close them - all that is different.
Linux is even more complex than this. There are lots of 'desktop environments', each of which is variably tweakable. You probably see lots of people who have Windows (XP/7/8) that have not just a cool background, but have changed the colours of their windows, made the fonts a bit cooler, etc. Linux DEs (generally) very strongly favour customisation, so fonts and window borders are small beans to them, but this is the kind of thing you see.
The DEs themselves are kind of interchangeable. Let's take Ubuntu, a famed Linux distribution. Ubuntu takes most of its guts from one of the Big Boys of Linux, Debian. It adds a few things, packages them together and provides a whole bunch of stuff. One of those things is its frontend, [Unity]( But you can change the front end. This creates different 'flavours' of Ubuntu - [Xubuntu]( running XFCE instead of Unity, [Kubuntu]( running KDE instead of Unity etc.
However.
There are other distros than Ubuntu. Some of them can run XFCE, for example: [Linux Mint]( can run XFCE in this example, but it [can also be KDE]( Or [Cinnamon!](
There is a conflating problem here - some DEs are 'heavy' or 'light', and so they tend to associate themselves with particular groups or types of applications. XFCE and Openbox, for example, are 'light', so they tend not to come with flashier applications. KDE is very integrated with itself, so there's a whole suite of stuff that all starts with K to match it.
Add to this that Linux Mint and Ubuntu are closely related (and are really both derivations of Debian), but there are fairly unrelated chunks - Fedora, for example, or Android! |
sadly, people will still go to big box stores (Wal-Mart, BestBuy, and the sort) and get one "off the shelf" because they are completely computer illiterate.
I bought my Asus G73 in Feb 2011 not knowing what I really wanted (other than a 17.3" screen, 8gb RAM). Knowing what I do now, I would have gotten something easier for school, and dumped the money into a sick desktop.
Desktop PC's aren't disappearing, or dying anytime soon. Tablets are nice, but just cant quite cut it. I don't think they can handle the requirements that a full desktop meets.
iRacing can't be done from a tablet (well it can, but seems ridiculous, and a waste). I would rather spend the 1200$ for a bitchin desktop that can handle 99% of what I throw at it. |
I hear this argument often and used to think it was a valid argument, but I can't help but think about the actual distribution of PC setups in the gaming environment.
The first thing to consider is that consoles are really just computers. When they're released they have decent power, but we all know they age quickly as tech advances and the next generation doesn't come out for 7 or whatever years resulting in a lot of games towards the end of that period not really aiming too high.
Now is it fair to say that consoles are holding gaming back (in terms of raw performance)? I think that it's likely, but the effect is pretty severely exaggerated. If we look at the distribution of PCs in terms of gaming performance, the super high-end gaming PCs make up a relatively small % of all the PCs out there. You said it yourself, that the "PC Enthusiast" industry is getting fucked. Enthusiast being the key words here, because the vast majority of PC users probably don't qualify as enthusiasts.
How many PC Enthusiasts do you think there really are, compared to the number of PCs out there overall?
What I'm getting at is that devs understand that high end gaming computers are really a relatively tiny portion of the market. Wouldn't it be fair to say that devs themselves want to reach as much as the market as possible rather than focusing on the top end?
Even when we look at PC-only games (Blizzard games such as SC, Diablo not anymore but I think it's fair to say it was pretty heavily PC-focused in development) we see that they never really push the boundaries of gaming despite having a distinct focus on the PC market.
The average PC user isn't running dual Titans, y'know what I mean? Hell, they're not even running relatively high end cards. The majority of computers out there have a lot of mid-level cards, and it seems like integrated chips are seeing a lot of popularity nowadays too (crazy battery efficiency in laptops). Then we have to consider the fact that though PC gamers interested in running games on Ultra can be seen upgrading their video card every 2-ish years or even more frequently, this is again a pretty tiny minority of PC users overall. I think a fairer look at average PC upgrade numbers would be in the 4-6 year range (estimate here, no research, but it sounds about right haha).
Devs can always choose to aim high (Crysis style) and spend time optimizing for scalability. That's true whether the gaming industry considers consoles or not. The fact is though that most devs don't. The money is in reaching as many potential gamers as possible, and focusing on the high end alone would alienate a huge portion of the market.
Now I don't think consoles necessarily help in this regard, considering the sheer volume sold I'm sure it skews that distribution towards the mid and low areas especially later on in the console's life. Look at multiplats coming out today though that still cater to the PS3/360 though. The PC versions perform significantly better and the games are essentially running at "low" on the consoles. Isn't this just devs handling the scalability of their games? Basically, how much of this can we blame on consoles rather than the devs themselves? And even then, I don't blame devs for wanting to reach as much of the market as they can.
I just don't buy the argument where if it weren't for consoles, devs would forget the low and mid levels of the PC market as well and start focusing on just the high end machines. I think it'd look pretty similar to what we've got today, with a bit more emphasis on the high end. |
I bought my PC in June 2007 and it has lived in 7 houses across 2 countries. I have shipped it with regular post and while the entire case got bashed and broken, it still works fine today. Apart from a new GPU, it still has all it's original hardware. The GPU upgrade was €240 which was free to me as my old one was still under warranty (it was 23 months old and it came with 2 years warranty) so I actually got €400 back for it making a €160 profit. Both DVD writers have broken...they still read some stuff but definitely wont make any more copies but I stopped using them anyway as everything I get is streamed/downloaded/USB..I just don't have any films or games on disc anymore.
It has an intel Core 2 DUO 6600 not overclocked or anything and it runs all my games, apart from battlefield 3 and gta, just fine. I currently have 73 games installed amongst which loads of 2013 releases and I'm happy with it.
I don't see a need to replace it and I'm shipping it via airmail to another country soon where I'll be living. Fingers crossed it will make it across.
It is my most valuable possession, the first thing I unpack when I move and it is being used on a daily basis since I have it without replacing the PSU or anything. The only problem is that the LED of my Logitech speaker console has stopped working. Hope I can replace that sometime although it's only a problem at night.
I don't own a tablet and don't see any reason to get one. I have a laptop and a smartphone which are just fine. I just don't see the appeal in a tablet at all. Why would I need to carry a thousand or even 5 books with me when you can only read 1 at a time anyway? I read a lot.
Also smartphone - I have a samsung S2 which is my first smartphone and unless it breaks, it will hopefully be my last. Why would I want to replace it? It works, the screensize is fine, it plays my music, I can use it as a GPS and it has the internets. |
Not denying that there aren't auto repair companies that rip you off but a majority are more expensive because
A) they don't have the business yet to get discounts on parts or not have to charge as much to reach a profit margin like bigger places do
B) many times they are doing a job they have pride about and don't want to put cheap parts on your vehicle that will not last. If it breaks easily or acts up, that reflects on them.
My father was a collision repair guy but mostly did paint. He could never quite get across to people that the reason the guy in the city is cheaper is because he uses cheaper paint and that his will look better and last longer. I mean, yeah he worked at a small business, but he was the highest certified painter in the state. I think he knew what he was talking about. |
It is impressive how little understanding of the future we have and this article (with resultant Reddit-thread) proves it.
Assuming self-driving cars becomes an add-on feature that costs less than $1000 in a couple years (it is a bunch of cams and a computer, right?), these things will then be able to talk to one another. They will also map out grids predicting events. Statistics will graph out 'danger zones' where people have died and why, possibly into real-time. The remaining 10% of accidents will drop another 90% as humans lose control (literally and figuratively) of their vehicles.
Vast numbers of jobs just change or vanish:
in taxi driving, logistics (truck drivers), moving companies (to a lesser extent), car rental agencies (now anyone can rent their car!), insurance for cars, insurance for trucks, auto sales will be weirdly hit, airplanes that are within 4-8 hours drive of their destination might (or might not) simply vanish. We do not know.
We do know that everything you do now revolves on some human being driving. How will offices exist when ANYONE can commute? Will inner cities become trendy again? Will there be office buildings next to farms where the air is exponentially better?
We do not know. The next Edison-Jobs will rise up out of these ashes and nothing will look the same, yet some things will never change. Radios - contrary to TV / movie house / internet / Netflix - they still work! Will driverless cars and a bit of robotics resurrect the postal industry? No clue.
You all have no idea what will happen in five years. A thread better written than this one should be up near the top of this thread with a thousand up votes. Oh noes! Insurance companies will vanish! Ha. That is like standing at an office tower fire and realizing you forgot the marshmallows. |
My immediate thought here is how insurance companies now will be doing everything in their power to keep driverless cars from being a mainstream reality. This type of thing has happened when Ford and General Motors successfuly created the American automobile dependence. All they had to do was pay off local departments of transportation to rip out public transit infrastructure in the early 50's.
Next they persuaded the public that owning an automobile is essential. Look at public transit in Portland Oregon, that is what our whole country could be but instead we have Los Angeles gridlock.
There was so much collective interest in keeping America reliant on driving (companies of oil, tires, car parts, auto manufacturers) that the corporate state had its way. |
Shit happens. I'm paying a fortune each year for just collision because apparently if you don't hit the deer and swerve and hit a tree it's your fault. |
This guy ripped off the concept of bejeweled.
I don't see how he makes the correlation between all the icons except the "Sweet!" |
So little known fact, real Nokias were not invented. In the beginning Nokias were not actually created, we just found them here. No one knows where they came from. So... yeah, I know Nokia has created the pretense out of "manufacturing" these phones but really they are mined, dug from the crust of the earth. The Real Nokias are at least.
No one really knows where they came from originally. It is assumed they were the creation of an all powerful ancient race that once inhabited mars and used earth as a landfill and dumped their old Nokias here. Others think that this is not humanity's first go, around the cosmic loop, and that ancient humans created and left them behind. That could explain why they work so perfectly with our existing mobile networks...
This may surprise you but it is actually a pretty open but unacknowledged secret within the Nokia ranks. (I know a guy who used to work at Nokia who told me all this) But it all changed in the early 2000s when the Nokias got harder and harder to find underground. By the mid decade the number of Nokias in the world began to flatline. The last real Nokia (the ancient kind) was found in 2006... I think it was an e61.
Because of this Nokia had to start doing things it never had to do before: design and manufacture phones. They started a few years earlier when they realised the supply of real Nokias was running out. Their first attempt was the N-Gage in 2003 which was a sad attempt at improving upon the Nokia 3300s that they were finding deep in the fjords of Norway. Some think the Nokia 3300 may have been the communicators of a great ancient warrior class who carried them into battle. The N-Gage however was only used by a pathetic teenager class who carried them into the malls.
Slowly, Nokia started selling less and less real Nokias and more and more truly awful device abominations like the Nokia N93, the Nokia 7260, and the Nokia Sirocco.
Nokia is now a shell of what they once were, being forced to create mediocre devices for an evil creature known as Microsoft. Oh, you didn't know that Microsoft was really the physical extension of a hyper-intelligent, artificially sustained life form that directs the executives from within? Its a little known fact. I know a guy who used to work at Microsoft, told me all about it. |
I've also experienced the global perspective and seeing that yes we are privileged to live in a time where we are better off than the rest of the world. But I still don't think you understand the problem. Yes in comparison to places like China Africa and very poor countries we're doing quite well. And we were lucky to be born here. But the fact of the matter is the US guarantees certain freedoms that are now being taken away. Our government thrives on a voice of the people democracy system. And a lot of people feel like it's failing us because half of our country is still living below the poverty line. Although I'm sure there's going to be poor people everywhere. The problem is just as you stated America has great privileges in the sense that we don't have to live in third world conditions. But our government from the publics eyes are no longer serving the people but serving the corporations.
This is problematic for many people because they still can't access those great privileges that comes with being in a first world country like secondary education and healthcare. Also we have a country that sends people to die over democracy implementation but can't uphold basic government structure within our own country.
So yes we may be lucky or better off. But to say that just because we're better off it's cool to ignore the problems in our own country is the easy way out. This easy way out is how our government goes rampad and will lead to destruction. |
I agree with japan, I think robotic olympic should be the next big thing. With the olympics, all that is being shown and developed is physical prowess and training. With robotic olympics we would be testing the engineering quality (and software development) of these countries, which would not only spur greater development of robotic engineering and increase global interest in engineering fields, but winning the robotic olympics would be something for a country to REALLY cheer for. Who feels patriotic just because a single individual could run fastest? But when your country's robot runs fastest, that feat would take dozens if not hundreds of engineers to accomplish, when your team wins that means your country has some of the best minds/engineers in the world, which unlike athletics is a field that legitimately matters in the modern world and has actual ramifications to that victory. |
Well this is just wrong.
The FCC is an agency tasked with enforcing the laws that are applicable to that agency. Constitutionally, the executive branch is tasked with enforcing the laws passed by the Congress and one of the ways that is done is through agencies like the FCC. |
I understand your concerns with it, as there's already a site-wide problem of people not reading the article. But personally, I upvote if the bot does a good |
You might disagree, and that's fine. But I think that no information is better than misinformation.
This of course assumes the |
This is the equivalent of getting chain-mail of "Gas is at an all time high. On April 20, we will avoid the gas pump for 1 full day! Please forward this to 10 people or you will be cursed!"
If they didn't care to cease & desist when the info was made public, it certainly isn't going to matter having people say, "Stop doing this" through online forms. |
A few comments to assist (though mostly it ought to be common sense) -
1) Call the DC office. If you call the local office, you'll talk to people who are great at getting you your missing Social Security check, but know nothing about anything policy related.
2) You're not going to talk to the member. In some ways it's even counterproductive to ask for them; it's certainly counterproductive to be obstinate and insist on talking to the member and not staff.
3) Be specific. Saying, "I don't like PATRIOT Act" is kind of worthless. Saying, "I'd like Congressman X to vote against reauthorization of PATRIOT Act Sec. 215 when it comes up for a vote in the next few weeks" is not worthless.
4) The person you talk to in DC is almost certainly not going to be the person actually advising on these issues; if you want to talk to that person, you want to talk to the "Homeland Security L.A." They probably won't be available for a cold call (and it's doubtful you'd be given their direct extension), but in most offices they should be willing to call you back, and you should be able to get their name and email address. |
I realize you're just quoting the author, but seriously, how does that make any sense? How are TV ads a medium based on potential results and internet ads aren't? They're exactly the same. Each one uses ads that they think they're target audience will be interested in. This is why you see hot wheels commercials during spongebob and beer commercials during the football game. But at the same time they have no idea if Little Johnny likes sponge bob, or if he has Dad is going to be watching the game.
It's the exact same with web ads. You can have ads for crazy delicious cheesecakes on some food website or for the latest and greatest video game on a game trailer website but there is still no guarantee that anyone will ever see it. |
I think there are two separate issues here. One is using Flash. The other is using Flash to create specially nasty ads, like those which float over text, expand and obscure content, etc.
Many people are reducing this to a single issue, basically saying "all Flash is bad".
There is a problem with this. I will agree with you 100% that Flash is nasty. But the problem is that a vast majority of the ad content these days is made in Flash, and asking a site to simply stop using Flash ads is basically the same as telling them to go out of business. This is specially true for sites owned vertically (such as Ars, which is owned by Conde Nast, a large publisher). They have people developing ads for a very large audience, and if one site (which caters to 5% of the their audience) says "sorry, no Flash", they will simply say "well, fuck you then" and move on to some other site that does allow Flash.
You have to remember that most sites are NOT like Ars. They don't have such a techie audience, and so their problem with Ad Blockers is much smaller. So if you push your anti-Flash stance very forcefully by blocking Flash everywhere, you are simply hurting the techie sites and not changing a damn thing elsewhere. In other words, sites such as Ars Technica will suffer. Meanwhile, sites which appeal to a much larger (and less technical audience) such as CNET and ZDNET and PC Magazine will flourish, because their users don't care so much about Flash, and won't make an issue over it. And they use Ad Blockers much less frequently than the users of more techie sites like Ars.
So while I support you 100% in that Flash is nasty and needs to go, I don't want to selectively punish Ars Technica and other sites I enjoy by Ad Blocking them. This is basically what it comes down to, selective punishment. I haven't seen numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of the Ars audience uses an Ad Blocker, while only 5% of the audience of more generic sites does.
I think the better stance is that you protest intrusive ads. If an ad covers the screen, if an ad obscures text, if ads take up more than 40-50% of screen space, THEN you should complain. I have never seen this happen on Ars, but if it did, I would send them a nasty email. And if they didn't fix the problem, I would re-enable Ad Block on their site.
As for Flash, I don't think the problem will go away from the ad perspective. HTML5 has many rich media elements, and while I don't know much about how ads are made, I am pretty sure that a dedicated ad maker could make a pretty damn intrusive ad with HTML5 alone. So this problem won't go away simply if people stopped using Flash.
What you can and should ask for is that Flash content should not be intrusive, that it should be secure. I have not seen intrusive ads on Ars yet, Flash or not. And they say that all their Flash content is vetted through Conde Nast and is guaranteed to contain no exploits. If someone proves them wrong about this, then there is case to avoid it. But so far no one has. |
UEFI will also cut your balls off.
Example:
I had a Compaq Presario C762NR a couple years ago. The on-board mini-PCI-E wifi card went bad, and I had a spare in another laptop I knew worked just fine. I plugged it in, and to my surprise, it refused to boot -- Popping up a plain text on black screen saying the wifi card isn't supported. WTF?
I do a little digging, and find out that Compaq has a device "whitelist" stored in the EFI which only allows wifi devices THEY approve to be used. So, in essence, they have locked you into buying Compaq-supplied replacement parts, even though other devices, even from the same manufacturer, even of the same chipset, even though it uses the SAME DRIVER, and devices you know WILL work, will not work. |
Good for you. My BIOS takes about 20 seconds to POST including AHCI bootrom (which Im running a faster version of, it WAS 25 seconds alone) and thats literally more then half my boot time as I have an SSD.
On servers, I see upto 10 minutes in POST/bootroms. |
At the time of writing the game has 4,880,757 registered users of which 1,469,513 (30.1%) ... Minecraft has a 70% piracy
I don't think this author knows how minecraft accounts work. Anyone can make an account (for free) and use it to play minecraft classic. It's like a demo. Paying for the game gives you the most recent version, and all of the new updates. |
According to Australian privacy laws (where I live),
> Organisations must take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information if it is no longer needed for the reason it was collected.
But they kept databases from '07
> Organisations also have to take "reasonable steps to protect the personal information it holds from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure".
Storing all details (incl. CC Numbers + Passwords) in plain text is not what I call "Reasonable"
So if Ive got it straight, they are in direct violation of the privacy laws here which is a lot larger than plain "negligence" and they need to answer for it.
The kicker is when Sony Australia was questioned around these points, they refused to confirm if they comply with the Privacy Act when handling customers' personal information. |
In the overall existence of the universe, it wasn't even yesterday. The universe is somewhere around 10 billion years old; a year or hundred is nothing . It's the blink of an eye. |
This is just a reminder to myself to come back here in 12 months and say "Really? Really?!"
Edit: Come to think of it, the thread will be locked in 12 months, so I won't be able to.
So I'll just say it now.
Microsofts history in regards to open source, standards and cross-platform compatibility is so completely despicable I can't fathom why anyone would believe them this time . Over and over again, they shit on everything that isn't windows, and yet people trust them? Even when they pretend to create a standard for interoperability it has nothing to with what the rest of the world would call a standard, and just shows to what lengths they will actually go to ensure market shares by making everyone else incompatible.
To believe that they would actually support non-windows the same way they support windows is just dishonest to yourself. It's their business to make money from windows. OS X, Linux and Adnroid puts no money in their pockets, therefore it's silly to assume they'd make a product that would work as well in a "competing" system. |
Same agreement with everyone else in this sub-thread. When I got Vista, it wasn't anything as difficult to deal with as XP was when I first got XP. I think today's consumers expect a better launch than they did years ago, so even though Vista's launch was better, there was some expectation that it should've been "perfect". The Techies of today especially tend to have expectations far higher than those years ago.
My Vista installation was flawless, I only had to install two or three drivers manually (sound, video, Logitech crap), but everything else was plug-and-play. None of the software I ran had issues, except for a few really old games, which I pulled my hair out over until I found out you can run something in compatibility mode.
There were three major issues I had with Vista: The inability to customize UAC settings, the slowness of the GUI (loading graphical items was horrible on launch, got much faster later but is still an issue on my netbook), and less ability to control updates. Windows 7 fixed all these issues, so I immediately switched.
Vista was a test-bed for 7 from the very beginning. It wasn't meant to be successful, and you can kind of see that by looking at their marketing campaigns for both platforms. Even though Vista was a modified XP, 7 was built from the ground up to work on its efficiency and ensure it wasn't the bloated monstrosity that Vista became.
Many developers did not develop Vista drivers by launch, because a great number of the largest companies were aware of 7 before consumers and decided to wait, since 7's kernel is a completely different monster. |
In short;
the heatsink didn't do it's job AND wasn't attached properly (however was attached cleverly and cheaply)
Which is what I alluded to in my comment
In long; The fact the poor cooling created an environment hot enough (from all those long gaming session yo!) for the solder to melt and the GPU to become detached is secondary-but is what gives the error and alerts the keen gamer to an imminent call with Microsoft. I've also done the x-clamp fix on 2 xboxs, successfully too, and have just written a 40 page report on heatsinks (why is that a Mechanical engineering topic I hear you ask?!?! I DON'T KNOW!) so kind of have an idea of what's going on.
You're right it was a design flaw, they didn't give it an overall sufficient cooling system, but the choice would have been made somewhere along the line of what level of cooling they need, they created a scenario, for which they solved for within the limitations of the case and price BUT didn't account for mamoth gaming sessions on "next gen" games that tend to be quite demanding on a GPU and CPU-drawing LOTS of power and creating LOTS of heat.
What Microsoft ended up doing to fix this, as I'm lead to believe is change the fans and added a new heat sink attacted the GPU heatsink via a neat little heatpipe (I've not had the guts to open up my Elite or my house mates Slim yet to actually see what they changed first hand) and it fixes the problem, WHOO!
What Microsoft didn't do was tell us to stop playing games for 8 hours a day, what Microsoft didn't do was let the problem go on with no action taken and leave it's users high and dry. They learnt their lesson, and we're better off for it. |
I don't agree with all 1017 pages of this legislation (hell, I haven't even had the time to read all of it, I've been going for the highlights and what looks to be the worst of it). There hasn't been any legislation put out by this utter mess of a political system than could be called 100% agreeable. It hasn't been about picking the correct or "right" thing to do for a long time, its become a matter of picking what looks less shitty than the alternative.
This section of the text begs to differ on there only being the choice of purchasing insurance from a private company (which is more than you can say about states which require car insurance).
Regarding your 'fact 1', I found this pretty quick:
>Subtitle B—Public Health Insurance Option
>Sec. 221. Establishment and administration of a public health insurance option
as an Exchange-qualified health benefits plan.
>Sec. 222. Premiums and financing.
>Sec. 223. Payment rates for items and services.
>Sec. 224. Modernized payment initiatives and delivery system reform.
>Sec. 225. Provider participation.
>Sec. 226. Application of fraud and abuse provisions.
I get it, you're very very very very angry but you need cite some sources if you are going to be claiming anything you say as fact. Unless you have some relevant source to cite, like some article which pulls up sections of the legislation and provides an interpretation of their consequences, or some dialogue which provides a logical argument against the unsavory parts of this; then let it out. Given that so far you can't even do that I'm going to have to assume you are throwing out supposition rather than fact until then.
If this bill is not the way to accomplish security in health, then let it die. But we need a way to keep citizens from dying because of bullshit like lack of access to affordable health insurance or denial of coverage just because private companies can decide they don't want to provide it.
People choosing not to have health insurance when you damn well can afford it and have no obstacles? When its to late they can by all means reap what they sow.
If anything proper regulation of the companies which are supposed to provide us peace of mind when it comes to the healthcare is needed somewhere and somehow. Bullshit like previously existing conditions or family history should not prevent someone from getting health insurance. Access to proper healthcare should not be conditional. It should be guaranteed in a reasonable fashion. The fact that at least this isn't obvious is ridiculous. |
In 2011, I think desktop users now fall in the following categories.
(Home Users:)
Power users : Typically these guys know what they want, and know where to get good prices. The places they can buy from can assemble too. These users are also capable of assembling a PC too. Acquiring these users as customers is going to be tough.
Those who have a desktop because they can't afford a new PC or don't place much emphasis on technology. These are typically kids of older people. Like your 50 year old neighbor or your friends kid. These people usually either don't have money to spend on computers, or they simply do not value computers too much, and don't need it for much anyways. Having these people as your customers equates to one thing - freebies. Expect to provide tons of free after sale support. These type of people usually know some or other "expert" who will know better than you.
(Business Users):
Just forget about it right now.
& |
how come everytime this guy opens his mouth he makes the front page? also, anyone notice that the line of connections that this guy draws between the various participants is about as sketchy as the one Bachman draws between Hilary's top aide at the State Department and the Muslim Brotherhood? Yes, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden served in the senate together. Does this mean they have a connection to megauploads shutdown? Perhaps. Dodd is doubtlessly a powerful lobbyist with his wealth of connections. But, to hypothesize a master conspiracy through a web of friendship (hint: everyone with a law degree in the beltway has worked together at some point) is arrogant. I doubt Joe Biden even knows what megaupload is, has anyone ever seen a card carrying AARP member of the senate deftly handle a computer?
I don't know the status of the legal case against him. Perhaps it is fundamentally flawed, but this guy needs to read a legal brief. They are full of adjectival use like that he criticizes the Justice Department for using. It could be over reaching, but it certainly isn't a master conspiracy. |
You missed my entire point.
The legal system decides who goes to jail and is criminally guilty. I do not need the legal system to mediate my entire experience with reality and tell me what is true and what is not, in fact, this type of thinking is exactly what 1984 warned about.
Someone can be guilty in a non-legal sense (I specifically avoided using the word guilty to avoid this confusion, and used the word wrong instead), and even more so if I have first hand experience of what happened. I watched content that should not have been available on a site provided by Kim Dotcom. I know for a fact he did something wrong and should be punished. I do not know for a fact if what he did amounts to a criminal act in the US and I did not say it necessarily did (at the end I noted my belief/opinion that he will be found guilty if he is ever tried, and this is informed by the indictment which is pretty damning, but this is not really the same as out right stating legal guilt prior to adjudication), that is what a court case is for, but I know what he did is wrong, should not be allowed and that is what johnny clueless and I am stating.
There is a difference between guilty until proven innocent, and knowing enough facts, having enough direct experience to know that something is true. That you think your analogy asking me to prove I didn't rape and murder a girl in 1990 is relevant or applicable, is a fucking joke. I used Megavideo, I saw the fucking records which listed him as owner and I've seen him admit to ownership of it. From that I draw my conclusion and I state it. You can agree with me or not, but I'm going to laugh in your fucking face if you're going to tell me there wasn't obviously fucked up shit going on on that site. What cintila of evidence do you possess that would lead you, or any reasonable man to think your allegation might be true? And be thankful you live in our modern society, in another time I would be fully within my rights to put you down for such a slanderous implication. |
While there are certainly millions using facebook and it's a pretty good strategy for both exposure as well as convenience it does alienate the few that don't want to use that route. You can always sign up with a dummy e-mail service like GuerrillaMail and vote, whatever. What gets me is that we are expected to just go along with it.
I'm not complaining about downvotes because of the facebook users, I was irritated at the lack of reddiquette which is blatantly ignored throughout the bigger reddits. Facebook's repeated practice of weak privacy ethics is what gets my goat here. Companies such as Lego that are usually seen as benign that then go and utilize information and ad support from companies like Facebook really damages their rep, at least for the mildly cautious. If Facebook already has your ad profile and a ton of user information, then hands it over to another company - all for profit and ignoring the modicum of expected privacy - that would generate a good deal of distrust for most reasonable people.
Although, no one really thinks that far into it, do they? If they do, they don't care and deem it acceptable - but it isn't. The net is only going to get bigger and people need to be concerned at how much information they put out and who gets to see it. Once it's online it can never be taken off.
I didn't really mean to turn this into some kind of privacy advocacy speech here but it kind of lead that way. Companies can't be allowed to share and utilize information of their customers willy nilly without regard for their privacy. Information that gets shared between companies from ad deals and customer profiles happens daily, everywhere, and it needs to be culled. It's just not cool. |
i would be perfectly willing to [ignore any instructions from any judge in order to decide]( that nobody has every violated anyone's software or look and feel patent ever again.
If you think the patent system is broken: then you have to make that decision that says it's broken. |
No. Lets get this straight.
If you watch the whole clip you'll see that he was talking about one of Samsung's patents ([patent '460]( which was part of their counter claim against Apple.
The part of the '460 patent, specific to Samsung's claim, outlined the use of scroll keys (physical buttons) on [THIS PHONE]( to scroll through images in an email. Samsung tried to argue that this was prior art to a function on the iPhone where you can scroll through images in an email by using a swipe gesture. Samsung tried to argue that a physical button on a phone is the same as a swipe gesture.
The jury foreman, with his layman's terminology, is quite right. Samsung's phone in this patent wasn't a touch screen device and so couldn't perform any swipe gestures, and the iPhone doesn't have any physical buttons to use to scroll through items. Neither phone could run each others "software", neither could perform each other's function. |
Well if we're to believe the rumors flying around, Apple certainly have something in the works in terms of a cable box solution. I totally agree with you though. How much more innovative could they make the iPhone or iPad without throwing away the entire current foundation. You know that the second they (or Google, or MS, or any major player in the tech market) did this, then people would be acting outraged and saying they want a more incremental move into the future. |
Unfortunately it seems to me we are getting the worst of all possible worlds, large billboards with video on them are cropping up all over the city where I live and sitting in traffic while the inane shit they peddle repeats over and over again is depressing as all hell.
I worked for one of the top three advertising firms in the country as a system administrator and all I saw was a waste of incredibly bright, creative artists, making toilet paper and underwear ads.
I would love to confine advertising to an opt in service where I don't see it at all, it's completely ineffective and repugnant to me. I honestly have never bought something due to an ad. If I need something I do research and try to obey the following criteria,
Is this something I want to spend real money on or should I just get the second cheapest one knowing I will throw it away?
can I Buy it locally?
Is it american made?
Is it high quality and likely to last for a long time?
The BBC seems to get by with very little in the way of advertising though from what I hear channel four is on par with the worst we have to offer reality television wise.
I would love to see what could be on television if it wasn't beholden to advertising. I know advertising is one of the most profitable industries out there, but I despise it, I see it as one of the great downfalls of our society. We no longer make goods that speak for themselves via their quality, slick advertising can make a bad or useless product sell just as well and it's a lot cheaper, the same advertising pushes unrealistic body image on both men and women, as well as a false expectation for what success is. We are inundated with these manufactured ideals 24/7 you literally can't go anywhere in an urban area without seeing it and it shapes who we all are. It's our culture and it's shit.
Even the t.v. shows I enjoy have carefully placed brands and products.
I agree to a certain extent some of my attention a.k.a. [whuffie]( is an equitable trade for quality shows, but we don't have that we have terrible reality t.v. that is dirt cheap to produce and lowers the national I.Q. and we gobble it up because some very smart people realized deep down we have a lot of primitive impulses and tapping into the lowest common denominator is what works.
Your last paragraph almost seems to imply they have a right to force this drek down peoples throats and if they don't do it the easy way and offer something in return they will manage it somehow. I don't think things have to be that way but to be honest I don't care enough to fight it. I really enjoyed the stance Sao Palo (spelling?) took on this, you may find it interesting too, they banned billboards.
To balance this, I don't blindly hate all advertisting. I love googles model, and wish it could be adopted elsewhere, heavily targeted, unobtrusive ads.
Sorry for the novel. |
I don't want to sound like a neigh sayer, but there are online non-profit universities that you can get federal funding for already. The reason they cost anything at all is to be able to afford the equipment/staff/certification costs. So, this would have to be funded some how, either through a huge grant, or through ad revenue. Certain things just cost money (i.e. lab time).
If you are truly interested in pursuing a degree online, for cheap, please, try [WGU]( I am almost done completing my first bachelors at a late age, and I have been able to afford it through pell grants, state grants, and federal loans. If you need information or your admission fee waived, contact me, I have some referrals to give out.
** |
I thought companies advertising under the guise of a post was frowned on. Fellow redditors don't be fooled. This sounds like a for-profit...ahem..."college". Like Facebook, if you're not actually paying for the service then in actuality you are the service being sold. IE, said company is selling your contact and biodemo data to other companies. Sounds like this is the same thing.
A few years back the for profit education industry poured millions into lobbying. They succeeded in getting their own accreditation board approved. Again don't be fooled fellow redditors. When a for profit college talks about being accredited that almost always means they essentially gave themselves their own accreditation. And it means that any credits you receive will very likely NOT be transferable to a traditional university. Read more about [accreditation] ( here.
For profit colleges are frequently scams. Yes, tuition is charged and if you are in the roughly one third of suckers who start at a for profit and actually finish, you will be given a piece of paper called a degree or certificate. Graduation rates are notoriously low at many for profit colleges. A few years back the federal government finally started scrutinizing their practices and forced all of them to be more open about their graduation rates. The news isn't good.
Also, a scam only works if someone looses money. These for profit colleges also use predatory recruiting practices they make grand promises about how financial aid is available. That usually means they're going to talk you in to racking up loans. They get paid no matter what and then you're left paying a big loan. And the 2/3 who started but didn't finish their "degree" are still responsible for the loan. Worse yet, these for profit diploma mills get their customers to take out federal loans to pay the tuition. So tax payers supply the money that gets paid to these businesses but then the "student" is the one who is supposed to pay back the loan. They're even worse in scamming veterans because vets get money for higher ed (again, rightfully provided by tax payers) so these businesses look at vets as walking moneybags. Meanwhile the businesses are laughing all the way to the bank. |
Once you reach the level that going with a volume agreement makes financial sense (there's a 100 seat minimum IIRC), that's fine. However the majority of small to medium business cannot go that route due to the costs, even if they come with less restrictive terms. |
All hail /u/ |
You forgot, how you hit print 50 times and the printer just stares blankly at you, light blinking in the corner mockingly and then - surprise motherfucker! Starts printing 50 times, and good luck stopping that process in windows. |
The problem is Bean counters.
Take virgin mobile Canada. They were a great innovative little outfit that basically vertically interf rated its management, marketing and customer service in Downtown toronto. It dominated in customer service saving thousands in marketing and because its marketing was creative and bold on a consumer level...like showing gay people kissing in advertisment generating news buzz it maximized a lot of its branding projects.
When Bell was on a rampage buying things up it scooped up virgin which was affected during the recession.
Then Nancy Tichibon, the very same person upheld Richard Branson values was assimilated like she was dealing with the Borg.
For a whole year her job consisted of firing the redundant marketing department, quality assurance which ironically was the reason why Virgin was purchased by Bell and then implented a metric system that is easily manipulated by lifers and exhausting for new comers who don't know how to manipulate the stats. This freed up the team leaders like shaan gamage to become the yes men who promised everything was going to be fine to the peons and accepted from Bells marketing that "it was time for virgin to shed the discerning accounts they had on file. This killed moral in Solutions (retention) billing and they disolved the retail support department and made those saps into tier i CSRs. This further eroded moral. People began taking sick leave, the over educated got the kick in the ass to find something better and now Virgin is inherently Bell. When it was found they were losing more money with the new measures they put some people with Bell Mamagers and over time bell would remove the virgin managers. When it was clear that your job was in jeopardy if you were partnered with a BELL lifer more medical leave amd vacations came forcing BELL to use a shell company called SPDATA to handle the staffing issue. Here the employees were minimum wage workers with 12 hours of training who alienated customers by doing exactly What BELL was known for. Hanging up in Virgin MoBiLe customers was now the expected thing and people would even ask "are you owned by BeLl". Since then most of Virgin mobiles calls are handled by philipino workers earning 1/3 of what a Canadian worker made and simce their english is not familiar with cultural application and they aren't allowed to fix the issues cause the beam counters doesn't trust them to help out a customee who's been incorrectly billed you get a lot of "I'm sorry sir but we can not do that."
"What the fuck do you mean you can't fix this account, my bill says $300 000. Are you gojng to send someone to take my house sarcasm " |
We weren't finance, and it's not likely that either:
a) The auditing firms would come up with anything
b) It would be worth the cost of an auditing firm for checking us
Essentially, in our case, we were a test team (of 10 people, including me) that was turning in 20 defects a week with a 90% accuracy rate. (For every 10 bugs reported 9 were accepted to be fixed.)
The customer's testing team got the product after us and they were finding 50-100 bugs a week but with a less than 10% accuracy rate. (And that's not even removing the ones that either were either duplicated by us or by their own teams.)
An example of an invalid defect: "if I owe a client $100 and the tax is 10% the system should pay them $110 but it pays them $109.75 instead."
Well, in the old system it couldn't do fractional percentages but the new one reflects the actual tax rate of 9.75%. The system is right. The requirement is right. The tester is wrong. And it takes about 15 minutes (in a meeting) to explain that to the 20 attendees.
But the bottom line came down to "they find more defects than you: what are we paying you for?" Nevermind that those 100's of invalid defects from the customer's test team were costing us hours of meetings, double-checking, and work just to sort through.
So, we had to start inventing impressive metrics from existing data (hence: the accuracy rate) and just plain finding more defects. Some of them the most nitnoy things. Ex: "the kerning on this component is wrong" or "if you use javascript you can submit the form 2000000 times before the system catches up" and a hundred other things.
Basically things that we really weren't (as a functional/usability test team) paid to find. We really were wasting money at that point but our defect counts went up and the, now flooded, backlog made a lot of people grumpy. |
Yeah. Good luck getting that to happen. If this were even remotely possible, we would have most of congress fired, have representatives that actually represent us, and give a shit about the environment. |
As someone who DOES have content available online (for free) let me clarify something for you. Piracy in no way takes money away from the people who create art, instead it takes money away from the parasitic entertainment industry that only exists to profit from the artist.
A former colleague of mine started an experiment a few years ago in the form of a donation based record "label". He basically releases music (both his own and other's) as a free download from his website and gives the listener the option to donate money to the artist via the site. This has not only been a huge success thus far, but the profits (save for the cost of hosting the site) go right into the artist's pockets. It also helps grow an artist's fan base which in turn drives revenue in the form of live concerts, t-shirt sales etc.
You see, under the old world ways of the music industry, an artist couldn't get very far on their own. They needed corporate sponsorship to pay for a recording studio, a producer, CD pressing, distribution, advertising etc. But through advances in technology and internet distribution, the industry has been rendered obsolete. Artists can make a professional recording in pro tools, advertise and distribute online, even book performances all from their home computer.
The same goes for all mediums of art. An author no longer needs a publisher to print paper copies of a book, they can distribute ebooks online themselves. A movie maker no longer needs a studio backing them to make their movie. Quality equipment is becoming increasingly affordable, and editing and special effects can be done digitally. The studios and publishers know this, and this is why we are seeing groups like the MPAA and RIAA dishing out DMCA takedowns by the millions. They are an unneeded entity desperately trying to scrape out whatever profits they can to try and justify their antiquated business model. |
Not really considering you just made a statement for every file sharer out there. A big reasons really IS the convenience. And that's why pirating music is at an all time low, because the recording industry now has to do business with companies that give consumers what they want, conveniently, for a price (Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, etc.). That model is extremely successful and is the same exact model that Netflix employs. Which is why so many people ask for a more convenient solution, because most people don't mind paying as long is it's fair and they're getting what they want. Your opinion is just as bias as those who you're talking about. |
Not saying the numbers are not exaggerated, but yeah, digital goods are simply duplicated from a processor churning out data that didn't exist before. But this begs the questions: Should copying and sharing digital goods be the same as stealing physical goods? Or should there be laws that consider the grey area?
I personally think if a company doesn't want to have something copied, have a better strategy for selling it other than charging $20 for it on iTunes and that be it. Companies like game studios and publishers are inherently more adapted to the technology. They are able to have demos and sometimes interact with audiences through contests and other forms of communication. I know when I pirate a game, a lot of times I will buy it next check, because I think it is worth the money. |
More than anything, I think Windows' biggest mistake was and is Windows 8. The shift from 7 to 8 is massive, and so is the attempted jump to start multi-platform unification. I have nothing against multi-platform unification, apple understands just fine with their integration, the only problem is with how Windows decided to go about it. Their designs remind me more of a tablet than a computer, not to mention that their laptops are advertised to be used as "Tablet Computers". Not to mention while making this jump, to make the the Windows 8 more user friendly towards the "Tablet" buyers/users they made many unintuitive decisions, and made the OS overall more confusing and less user friendly. It's far too "Hand-holding" and in a way controlling. Before Windows 8.1 there wasn't even a start button, which was an absolutely terrible decision. I've installed Windows 7 on my native Windows 8 computer, and thank god I made that decision. No regrets. |
Agreed. Its not just the management tools, its the other stuff. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, all the custom apps and code that exists specific for companies... This stuff is entrenched and is not going away anytime soon.
Another driving reason is mitigation of risk. Middle managers are typically not going to put their necks on the line by suggesting some freebie Linux option. Unless they are 100% certain the Linux option has a TON of better features and can save them money, most people won't even consider suggesting it. |
I was an early adopter of Windows 8. I put the 8.1 preview on my machine when it came out. For the last month, I was trying to move to the released final 8.1 via the Windows Store. Even with the warnings of having to reinstall apps and programs, I kept trying. It would always fail at setting up new devices no matter what I did. I uninstalled peripherals and drivers and updated this and that per instructions and forum posts of people with the same problem. Weeks of this bullshit counting down to the January 15 evaluation deadline where my PC would restart itself even though I am a legit and early adopter.
I finally tried removing the Windows apps themselves and the update went through after I removed Netflix. All the other stuff was still on my PC: 100's of GB's of Steam games and regular Windows programs that I use for work. The. Fucking. Netflix. App. And I still had to reinstall programs, although I kept Steam on a separate HD so after the initial reinstall of Steam, it found all my games. |
I like what you are saying but more to the comparison of apples to apples.
Because a Power user and grandma need the same thing.
I may need a $3000+ computer to edit video (or what have you). And grandma only needs to check her facebook/email. Let's get her a $3000 editing rig.
Or even
You have a music app on your computer...? Why do you need a portable music player?
And I feel the post above your's is trying to state that Chrome OS is try to be (as power-full as) Windows. It's not at all. It's try to get to the point where, most thing can be done in a browser for the basic user. And be used on any computer. |
A graphics card is outdated in 6 months and costs 200$+. I only know one person with a desktop PC and even he does not buy parts anymore. Most other people I know only buy notebooks anyway.
Da fuck you talkin' 'bout? A $200 graphics card will last you at least 2 years these days. And that's while running graphic intensive games at max settings (save for a few designed specifically to push graphical boundaries). You can extend it longer by lowering game settings in the future. I on average get 5 years milage out of a video card, and it's been this way for at least my last three builds (that's 15 years if you couldn't do the math). |
Yup. Some users will freak the fuck out if you change their IE start page from the default MSN page to Google. Don't EVER install any linux distro to anyone still using an XP machine as their home computer. If they were able to use any linux distribution, they would most likely be able to install it themselves. Yes, I'm sure some of these people may be able to get by with linux but chances are it's just going to be a nightmare. Modern linux distro installations will work properly, out of the box, 2 out of 3 times. And even then, you can have all sorts of weird ass problems like issues with the flash player or you name it. |
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