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I understand your point that technically the laws could be applied to your friend or anyone who just innocently stumbles on some flaw. But I consider it highly unlikely that it would actually happen, and I think the bigger problem here is the hackers actions afterwards.
I guess to me the "difference" that matters is the contrast in behavior between your Good Guy friend and this hacker thief who clearly thinks (or is pretending to be) some sort of pious martyr going to jail for the Cause, when he is really just some run-of-the-mill thief.
Again I understand your concern about overly broad and vaguely defined laws. But I think your fears over the scope of this law is not entirely warranted.
"law as it stands criminalizes a large range of behaviors."" . True perhaps and maybe even unreasonably so... but i could say this about a lot of laws. ....Ok can I make confess something private to you itsnotlupus? i committed several crimes today. I swear to you, I did! I drove over the speed limit (in front of a cop, no less!), I jaywalked, I parked my car a little too close to a fire hydrant, I checked out the ass on what appeared to be a cute high school aged girl on the treadmill in front of me at the gym, I accidentally stumbled into a subreddit which had videos that I'm pretty sure are illegal to have in the US, and I didn't report the book my mom sent me last year as a part of my gift/estate tax calculations! But guess what, I got away scot free! Why? Because law enforcement has discretion - across the police, judicial, and congressional levels - to take other factors into discretion. ...such as whether i took that bag full of cocaine directly to the police station (your friend in this metaphor), or tried to sell it to the Albanian mafia so they could provide hard currency to the Taliban. |
The difference comes down, theoretically, to this : you will not have a "queue". Once you are a Netflix customer, you are given access to whatever local Netflix market you are in. In the States? Get American Netflix! In Europe? Get European Netflix! In Australia? Fight the local wildlife!
Anyways, the reason I say "theoretically" is because while my S/O and many of my friends, who are all frequent travellers like I and why we have access to it, do not have a queue under their own accounts... For whatever reason on both Canadian and American Netflix I have access to an "Instant Queue" selection. So, hey, never know. |
I think its death can be generically attributed to advances in technology, much like the recording industry.
These industries were initially very, very profitable due to technological limitations. To make records you needed a factory and recording studio, to air television, you either needed a television station with an antenna, or a cable system to deliver content to consumers. Since only select people had access to these technologies, they were able to charge high prices for records and advertising time. Simple supply and demand.
Both industries were doomed to begin with. The internet and computers(in the form of actual PCs, tablets, smart phones, whatever) have made duplication and transmission of content nearly free and nearly instantaneous. This means that supply can grow nearly effortlessly to meet demand.
Content can also be created at a fraction of the cost thanks to proliferation of digital recording equipment.
Copyright law is currently being abused to try to hinder these developments and prop up these failing business models, and is holding back these industries from evolving, which they eventually MUST do if they want to survive.
Frankly, I don't think that "television" really exists anymore. Most modern TV's are more computer than they are TV. The main thing that makes them televisions is their archaic content delivery systems. |
I turned on the TV yesterday and sure enough the channel I was on was commercials, so I wait for a couple minutes.. commercials continued. So I change channels again, more commercials.. and they went on for minutes, so again change channel, more commercials. |
I also believe firmly that the 24/7 news cycle has totally killed this generations willingness to watch a puppet sit at a desk and tell us things we read hours ago online. The evening news for local regions really is not a difficult thing to produce for online content. Live, national news however will be problematic as the resources and capital needed are massive.
The quality is not better in a drastic way for the average consumer. It's not really much for justifying why I should watch the evening news...
Absolutely does not have a bandwidth problem for anything but the last mile. Even that is arguable.
This is the in place, international capacity. It doesn't represent how much of that capacity is used.
With the movement from 10GB fiber to 100gb fiber and eventually 400gb, all you have to do is change out the ends of the in place, difficult to install fiber links. The "core"/"backbone" of the internet is really not going to get saturate to the point of problems.
Also with the advent of CDNs, you have less distance to travel which will reduce strain on longer links. Less distance to travel for information means more evenly distributed needs.
Where you are correct is the last mile. With the widely popular cable modem modle you have a last mile node that uses a shared link to a regional hub. With the average comcast node having 500 households on it the math works out like this:
500 * 20mbps for basic internet package = 9.7 gbps at the node. This is technology widely used today for backhaul.
Now that comcast is offering much higher speeds you get over capacity in the last mile pretty quickly assuming the node to household ratio stays at 500. Comcast's CTO states that if a node stays about 70% capacity for 1 hour a day, 5 days in a row they work to split the node into a small household ratio. They state this occurs in 10% of their nodes a year.
If you get the 50 meg service now your node backhaul needs are 24 gbps. Again from above just swapping the ends of the fiber out from 10 to 100 will get more than enough capacity the last mile for streaming even 4k. A 4k stream will need roughly 25-35mbps.
Uck sorry this rambled a bunch but |
The U.S. has been the largest financial supporter of the U.N. since the organization’s founding in 1945. The U.S. is currently assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and more than 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget. In dollar terms, the Administration’s budget for FY 2011 requested $516.3 million for the U.N. regular budget and more than $2.182 billion for the peacekeeping budget.[2] |
I think solar is particularly interesting because it can be approached very differently from our current, centralised energy supply structure.
With appropriate kit, it's very easy to generate (and quite efficiently so with the reducing prices) electricity on a sustainable, continual basis with minimal outlay (maintenence) after installation.
This means individual house can efficiently generate some or all of their power needs themselves, without needing a) regular resupply of fuels, with the associated logistical costs or b) to follow emissions and safety guidance for both the process of electricity generation andits waste products that would otherwise be necessary.
This elimates two of the major causes for centralised power distribution: no longer does a large power generation company have the advantage in negotiating raw fuel price and logistical efficiency, and nor does the average consumer need relatively high levels of specific knowledge to operate the equipment in accordance with the law.
While I don't think we'll see a total abandonment of the grid system (it's already there, and it works well), I think we'll start to see a much more disaggregated approach to energy supply, not just with houses supplying themselves, but also augmenting the supply from dedicated power stations to their neighbours and even those halfway across the country. |
If you can't aim and hit in CS you're not competitive. So yes, the road to that milestone (hitting nearly every shot) is shorter on a gamepad. But the real ability lies in strategy and mindgames.
I don't necessarily think any console games except for fighting games (which aren't really console games) support much of that playstyle (CoD for example - got nothing on CS for competitive play).
Thing is, if you can't hit a free shot in quake, CS, CoD, et cetera, you're basically not even close to being competitive. So the argument that 'mouse proves skill' is very incorrect, since you have to reach a certain point to even be competitive, and most people aren't up to snuff in the strategy/mindgames department even when they get there.
Real skill lies in the head. The only real exception that I can think of would be SC2, but I haven't really watched it in some time. Point is, SC2 is built in a way that the physical skill ceiling is incredibly high. You can out-micro people to crazy degrees, it's just that very few go past a certain point. Most people go far, and then turn to the strategy to support their micro. |
But the real ability lies in strategy and mindgames.
This
I switched from 360 to pc at the end of august, and the whole experience is quite funny. On console, I owned all of the dlc, and was 300+ hours and like colonel 30. I was service star 2 with every vehicle (and service star 5 with mobile artillery =P) and service star 4 with every class. Now on pc, i find myself going through everthing again. I am hopeless in air vehicles and meh on ground vehicles. My muscle memory is very poor, but my map strategy is great. One linear maps and gamemodes, like rush anything and a few conquest maps, I use map knowledge, strategy, and flanking to do well (1.3kd, good wining percentage). When I get bored and switch to larger maps that are less linear and more focused on 1v1 random encounters, I suffer and go almost .5kd. I simply do not have the unlocks, reaction time, and gun reflexes to win against someone with a m16a3 or aek. |
I don't know or care about the validity of the Scandinavian thing at the end, but everything else you've said is spot on. you're 100% correct about the massive difference in the skill ceilings between a game like quake played on pc controls and a game like cod on a controller. Even the difference of a TV to a nice monitor is quite massive (sound on headphones as well). It's simply more data available to process, interpret, and act upon.
I personally don't care who wants to play on what and I've had plenty of fun on pcs and consoles alike, but it's like comparing an automatic car with traction control and electronic driving assists to a professional race car. Sure it takes real skill, but the capabilities are far greater. |
Can't be bothered looking up reading suggestions from an abrasive whiny randomer, why not give us the |
health insurance is not optional as every human being will claim it in the end. It is a certainty, it is an agreement between generations where the young say to the old "I will work hard to you can have have the best healthcare and live a dignified retirement, because when I'm old my hope is the next generation will follow example and do the same for me."
By rejecting your duty to contribute to the care of your elders you are reneging on the will of your grandparents who fought and died in WW2 (unless selfish spinelessness runs in the family ;) ) and your hard working ageing parents whose savings have been pissed away by Wall St. coke/hooker addicts (the people like you admire and aspire to be like - people like you would rather live in a world of shit than let anyone see you work a shovel). |
Some people pay $5k more for a better camera. I am still with apple after a few iphones because they have usually pretty great cameras, while still being smaller than most of the competition. I am in the fanboy camp though, and can honestly say the only thing that I absolutely hate is their airport configuration utility. I ended up setting up the time capsule as a bridge and then connecting it via ethernet to my DD-WRT enabled linksys and disabling the wifi. Crazy that I had to do that. I plan on picking up a dedicated VPN box though so I can use IPSec, ran into a weird issue with PPTP VPN due to both my VPN server (router) and the place I was logged into today giving out the same address blocks. Oh, and paying for tethering is shitty too. |
There are some people who get literally thousands of e-mails a day. Trying to go and view each of them every 180 days would be insane (1,000 180 = 180,000 e-mails.) Even if each e-mail takes you 2 seconds to open and then close that's still a long time. (180,000 e-mails 2 seconds / 60 seconds per minute / 60 minutes per hour = 100 hours.) I don't have 100 hours just to prevent someone from spying on me. |
Firmware engineer, here.
When firmware updates are released, very rarely do the updates actually extend capabilities already present in the hardware. Typically the hardware engineers will design the system to lower the PPU to the floor, and firmware guys have to scrape to get any capability back.
The only thing one might gain by patching older products, rather than just fixing a security hole in the next release of the product, is a small amount of goodwill (and it is fairly small). Gain might be had if it's a bug that's being fixed because you can reduce call center volume, but when every new product requires major changes to the codebase, it's hard to justify the expense associated with indefinite maintenance of legacy versions. |
My family used to have (5+ years ago) an all-in-one printer from HP. With the age of the internet and the ability to grab drivers from online I made a horrible mistake, I threw out the driver cd. After a new build, when I was too inexperienced to save old drivers, I went online to fetch them for the printer. HP's site said that Win7 drivers were built to be compatible with the printer & Win7 said that I needed HP's drivers. I didn't bother with tech support. I just bought a Brother printer, swallowed the price tag personally, and couldn't be happier that I left HP. |
Ok, I have made several comments in this thread, but one of the biggest things I would like to point out is the example of the Proliant Microserver used in the article (Paraphrased):
>The HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L ... was available for sale in 2012 at heavily discounted prices from online sellers, typically under $300 . But this widely used server, which contains four drive bays in a compact box that is well under 1 cubic foot, wouldn’t run Windows Server 2012 R2 (or, for that matter, Windows 8.1) for months after their release to manufacturing. Windows Server 2012 R2 was released... in October 2013. But trying to install that OS on a ProLiant MicroServer resulted in a series of errors, with the system hanging at boot. The only workaround was to disable the built-in Gigabit Ethernet controller, a serious limitation for a server.
HP released a firmware fix for the issue in mid-November, 2013
Using the car manufacturer reference below, thats like saying the British Petroleum created a fancy new fuel. BP announces this fuel, and says with some modifications, your car (which was only designed to run on normal 87 octane gas) can get 50% better fuel economy with this new fuel.
Ford decides that all future cars will support this fuel, and on a whim, decides that the fuel is so good for the environment that it will GIVE AWAY the parts to make all cars it has previously sold compatible with the new fuel.
Now there are only so many engineers to design the parts, so it prioritizes the cars that people paid the most for, and because of that, you have to wait a month and a half to get the parts for your [Ford Ka]( |
You forgot "chain of horrific dependencies that impacts all kinds of stuff outside the immediate realm of Firefox"
32-bit firefox [at my workplace] means everyone has 32-bit flash, java, etc as plugins.
32-bit java means, if you use jdbc-odbc to touch Access, that you have to have 32-bit Access ODBC. In their infinite goddamn wisdom, Microsoft have chosen to refuse to install 32-bit access ODBC drivers if you have 64-bit Office installed. [and vice verse].
So now you have mutually inviolable constraints; You need 64-bit Excel because your model that talks to it is 64-bit. You need 32-bit access because you have 32-bit java, which you only have because firefox is only available in 32-bit. 64-bit excel and 32-bit access can't exist at the same time, because Microsoft are the only people as late to the fucking party as Mozilla.
Yes, I'm aware you can simultaneously install 32 and 64-bit Java. But that's burdensome for corporate to maintain both; installation order matters, and installation isn't idempotent. We also use Symantic Altiris; everyone speaks in hushed tones of that one time it didn't fuck up java in an update. |
European in Europe here. We get between 1-7Mbps due to congestion for 100 bucks a month. |
I've said it once and I'll say it again.
T-Mobile, by virtue of allowing their preferred providers to operate cap free simply undermines any argument that networks are so congested and hampered by those evil data hogs that caps are the only solution. In terms of network utilization there is no difference between pulling data from the global internet or their preferred providers. If the network does not come to a grinding halt when people pull mad GBz yo from their preferred providers it will not from the global internet. If it does, it's time you upgrade your vastly oversold network to a standard deemed reasonable by your customer's needs. |
It does seem that their size is the root of the problem. They are essentially so big that they don't have to care about the customers any more.
Here's an issue that I'm dealing with at the moment. My parents have been Comcast customers for nearly 20 years. They recently moved about a half mile down the street from where they had lived for 30+ years and contacted Comcast to schedule having their services transferred. They were told this was no problem.
We get them moved and call to have the cable fixed and they tell us that our address is unserviceable because the previous homeowner owed them a large bill. After numerous calls they then tell us that the notes on the account list a completely different house than ours but they still refused to give them service. My dad was told a supervisor would call and no one did.
I filed a BBB complaint after they didn't call. I got a call back the next day but was in a work meeting and missed it so I called back and left a message. I tried calling the person back for a week with no answer or return calls. I finally called someone else and he told me that it was because our house was 396 feet from the junction or whatever and it'd cost us almost $2000 to have cable installed. His supervisor was supposed to call me back and finally did yesterday after a week. Of course I was in another meeting and missed her. So now I'm leaving messages with no response again.
What sucks is our only other option for Internet is DISH and their speeds are awful and the data cap sucks. |
Tox is set up to be completely distributed, like Bleep. There's nothing to "take down" aside from literally your computer.
Friend requests are done DHT-style. This was actually a security concern for a while because it meant you could get the IP of anyone on the network. Onion routing has since been implemented for friend requests and solved this issue.
After you've made a friend request, the thing is directly P2P. Alice and Bob send encrypted messages to each other. There was a bit of whining on 4chan's /g/ board that this exposed your IP to the person you were talking to, because, well... That's how p2p works. This has been partially remedied with the option to use Tox over Tor. Of course, this is far too slow for things like A/V, but the option is there. Hopefully, there'll later be an easy-to-use-GUI that notifies the user of the difference between ToT and regular Tox.
Because of the decentralized nature, the only way to friend someone on Tox for a long while was to share really long hex addresses. After a while, the decided solution to this was to use DNS. That way, anyone could set up a name on their own domain, like [email protected] or whatever, and more centralized name servers could still exist, like the popular toxme.se
Tox aims to be as configuration-less as humanly possible. Download the exe, run, and you're on the Tox network. Ideally it would have no installation, no setup, autoupdate, and "just work". Of course, this cannot be done perfectly. You can either have no username, and a really long hex key, or a username that you register somewhere. So the plan is to by default prompt for a username, and sign you up to normal Tox, with extra options to skip registration and/or use ToT.
An Android version is "planned" for Jitsi. Tox clients for iOS and Android already exist. |
Otherwise you should start filling your hard drive, because every megabyte of free space is wasted.
This is a horrible analogy. What advantage is there to putting random information on your hard drive just to use it? The hard drive is the slowest and most massive storage. It is the end of the line so to speak. Advantages begin when you move more of that storage to faster, smaller storage.
Unless your argument is for moving storage from discs to the hard drive or the internet to the hard drive, which are both things computers already do.
>Well, your computer should try to use as much RAM as it needs to operate optimally - not more.
This is exactly correct, and that's what I said. If a computer has enough RAM available to do so, everything should be stored there. For a web browser, this means putting all currently open tabs, previously visited pages, and all browser resources (like flash, silverlight, javascripts, etc) in RAM. If we had a hypothetical system with infinite RAM, everything should be stored in RAM.
All of these things will otherwise need to be pulled from the hard drive or the internet if not in RAM, both of which are much slower. If there is space available, you should store it all. It is on the OS to manage what gets expelled when there is no available RAM and some program needs to add more. Until you reach that point of no available RAM, everything should just be saved there. You aren't helping performance in any way by using anything less than 100% of your computer's RAM at all times. If more is needed, it is very easy to expel something to make room for it. |
The only one of those three that has made money is PayPal. PayPal is all about greed and the company putting itself well before its customers. |
I struggle with the term "luck"... you could be born with shitty parents and that might be viewed as bad "luck"... but really it's just that some people pushed the impact of their bad decisions off on someone else... Some would say that you'd be "unlucky" to have shitty parents... But that seems to dismiss the chain of responsibility into thin air... Oh crap I'm starting to feel philosophical about luck... |
Lol. While we're at it, let's blame Henry Ford for how bad the Ford Pinto was. |
The dogma of the 1960s-70s business model is so destructive to the flourishing of an economy and the profitability of a company. Very little pisses me off more than watching a high powered CEO support the execution of obstructionist practices like planned obsolescence, price fixing, false advertising, patent trolling, tax dodging, legalised bribery, aggressive lobbying and shareholder worship. Intentionally stifling innovation and gridlocking the natural ebb and flow of the free market (which they claim to love and defend). Then smugly turning around and spouting BS about how they are such brilliant business people and gods gift to the free market and the economy because they "create jobs". They don't love the free market, they hate it, and they don't care about the economy, thats why they are constantly exploiting loopholes to get around playing by the rules. Not to mention underpaying employees and slashing benefits even though they make more money than they could spend in their lives. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you run your company like a school yard bully, offer inferior products or services at an inflated price and give the finger to your consumer base you're not doing it right. The real tragedy here is that it would be so easy to just give a shit, its not like they don't have the money or resources to reform, even if its only a little bit. I’m sure I don't know what I am talking about but thats the pattern I see and it pisses me off. |
That statistic really doesn't show the whole picture. Actually, it deliberately avoids trying to show the whole picture.
>The F-150 is by far the best-selling pickup truck -- not because it's objectively better, but because the demographic of people who buy pickup trucks tends to value (a) brand loyalty and (b) following what your peers are doing more highly than they value objective measurements of performance or reliability. You could sit down with an entire white-paper analysis that showed a different brand as outperforming the F-150 in any and every category -- capacity, torque, hp, MTBF, MPG -- and they would seriously not care one bit, because their father and their uncle and everyone down at their workplace drives an F-150, and because they believe that what's good enough for yesterday must naturally be good enough for tomorrow. (That belief is also reflected in their politics, generally, but that's another conversation.) That whole demographic, over time, will tend to converge on a single brand or model.
>The market for every other vehicle type, on the other hand, is much more fragmented. Those same effects of loyalty and peer pressure do exist to some extent for SUVs, station wagons, sedans and coupes, but they do not dominate the behavior of those demographics in the same way. Even though pickup trucks are not the most-common vehicle type, the types that are more common are fragmented between many different offerings.
>So the F-150 is the best selling individual model, but that doesn't mean that a Ford-brand pickup truck is what most people in America want to drive. |
My main point is that I'm not looking for him to be a genius, in fact I'd be more impressed if he weren't a genius because his companies (mainly Tesla and SpaceX) are enough of an accomplishment. I personally don't care a damn about what his personal input is technically because he has built 2 great companies and then some.
Companies are much more complicated than products so that alone is why we're speaking about him versus the students that built 1 car that can travel >1000 miles on solar power or whatever.
The gifts that are coming from companies he developed are huge, and I don't really care what his IQ is and don't expect him to ever win a nobel prize. He's not a demigod, but he's damn talented, and driven with an insane determination to follow his dreams to hell and back.
I'm not disengaging in the debate, and it's upsetting that I can't admit my ignorance on specifics without being accused of that. But he is clearly more advanced than the technical knowledge I have gained through my Mechanical Engineering education.
The fact is genius is nothing without application. I don't care about his level of genius, but his application of tech and ability to take risks that few on earth have dared to tackle and none have achieved at his level is fucking impressive and that can't be denied.
I won't speak on the fact that his interviews are >50% audience Q&A with some clearly unscripted questions so his knowledge really is knowledge and not preplanned PR. |
I have a big problem with this Article, it seems to be purposely leaving out parts of the story.
>When a user who had downloaded music from a rival service tried to sync an iPod to the user’s iTunes library, Apple would display an error message and instruct the user to restore the factory settings, Coughlin said. When the user restored the settings, the music from rival services would disappear, he said.
Were those songs on the user's iTunes library? Were those songs initially imported onto the iPod using iTunes? If you loaded songs from an iTunes music store that wasn't yours and tried to sync at home would the same thing happen?
iTunes has always allowed music from other sources/competitors in your library, and that library could be imported to you iPod. However, iPod's were not able to reverse sync (move music from the iPod to your computer).
Until I see an actual court document explaining this, and not an Article with a clickbait headline, here are my assumptions.
Apple is not being sued for deleting music downloaded from competing music services. My reasoning is that iTunes has always allowed you to import music from whatever source you wanted (in an appropriate format), so why would they delete things off your iPod you could simply put back on through your iTunes library?
Apple is being sued because attempting to reverse sync music on your iPod that was not on your computer presented an error that caused the user to lose the music not on his library. The article states the error caused the iPods to be reset to factory settings, meaning they lose ALL music and had to resync with the library, if a songs not on your library it won't be on your iPod. The reason for the lawsuit is the lack of clarity/warnings that this was going to happen.
Edit: |
Nothing huge though. Obama hardly took action on gun legistration, doing nothing more then denouncing violence and congress couldn't get any type of restrictive gun bills though. IIRC, 2 bills regarding guns were passed last year or 2013. One had to due with renewing an older bill to prevent guns from going through metal dectors and the other wasn't anything crazy ethier (this was a while I ago I researched this, so I'm saying this with 70% confidence.)
New York has a gun bill that people seem to be up in arms (no pun intended) about. But nothing along the lines of taking people's guns away. Plus, the NRA is so powerful in lobbying that it would take miracle on the goverement's part to get them to stop rallying armies every time a democrat says something "maybe guns kind be kind of sorta of a little bit possibly bad sometimes depending but probably not".
Even the executive orders didn't do much. They really just appropriated funds and research faster than Congress could of into how to deal with a rampant gun spree problem and gun safety. |
For those who don't want to read it.... FCC tried to impose section 708 a few years back. Verizon sues FCC to get out of it. Judge says they need to be title II classified to apply section 708. FCC is now probably going to reclassify them as title II. Verizon has instant regret and says oh no that's a bad idea we think you should just impose section 708. |
Hi guys and gals in the US. I've been following the storie from across the Atlantic in Denmark ever since it began. From what I read in articles and comments there are a few questions I think I can answer for you guys. First off the question whether or not it's realistic to set the Mbps that "high" - Mbps or MBps - 25 Mb or 2,5 MB (this a rough number fyi) the short answer is that it's perfectly possible even with old telephone cables - 2nd with all the new ways to transfer data (docsys, vectoring, a.m) we have been able to run about 50 Mbit on the old cables. What will be the definer or barrier for this speed is the distance from your equipment (termination) to the first link (central hub) of your isp network. 3rd This is quite "easy" to fix with forwarded hubs that moves the connection closer to you. Now the ballgame changes abit with the use of better cables. Like coax or fiberoptik. But but but the same factor still applies about distance to the first hub... These cables are just better equipped to deal with longer distances so you won't need the to be right next to a hub. For the phone cables rule of thumb is 1km (under a mile) before speed start to drop for a 20 Mbps you would probably need to be within 3 km range. There are some other factors but like I said, rule of thumb. Example, Right now I'm on my own connection using the coax cables, running both TV cable signal and 90Mbit/30Mbit paying about 300Dkk or 60USD a month. I could switch to phone cables but I'm about 4,5 km from the central so 8 Mbps is the best I can get.
Why do I have coax then,... well here we never had any laws or restrictions about who is allowed to build networks and who isn't soy apartment complex build this system over 10 years ago and the isp help us in exchange for first rights to us for a few years... We never changed but we can if we want... "where the he'll are you going with this" well I've seen some of the responses from the isp's and it is false that local networks are quote "unstable" or "slowing the rest of the network" "more expensive for the consumer " and much much more whining from them.
There are of cause a bit more to all of this but feel free to ask or correct. |
Finland:
Population: 5,439 millions
Square miles: 130,596
United States:
Population: 320 millions
Square miles: 3,531,905.43
I know it's really nice to look at sweet data from Scandinavia (+ finland) but ultimately we have to realize that providing beneficial services to 5 million people in country like Finland, Denmark, Sweden or Norway compared to 320 million in a country like United States, is much cheaper and easier.
In Denmark, at $15 a month - I have 5 hours of talking and 8Gb of data. There is no such thing as a $20 unlimited 4G plan. There may be in Finland, but there is no fucking way I want to live in Finland. If I have to take my current prices of living in Denmark and comparing them to living in Finland....that's a pretty easy choice. |
What's happening to TV now, especially broadcast (over the air) TV is what happened to commercial radio 10 years ago. Cable TV will last longer but will ultimately end up niche like Sattilite radio.
Point is, newer technology replaces the old. Comcast can't stop this, nobody can. CBS itself realized this in the late 90s hence why CBSi exists.
And as TV goes the way of the dinosaur content on it will get worse and worse until it's just reruns with ads every five minutes. What will be the most intersting change is that TV news studios will have to adapt as well. Many won't and will discover that constantly focusing on clickbait-tier "true crime" stories, traffic updates and weather is a bad business model when all those things exist online. Already, the notion of waiting for the "evening news" is unknown to anyone under 30 and the idea of a 24/7 live news channel is itself already dying because CNN's current schedule is mostly "international" themed lifestyle shows now. Politcal junkies have already moved onto the internet, and the mainstream followed them. At least some of this has to do with the FCC's TV content standards (including the v-chip, championed by Bill Clinton as " a powerful voice against teen violence, teen pregnancy, teen drug use, and for both learning and entertainment" ), which don't allow for much in the way of irl gore or violence.
I only bring this up because it took a good 25ish years for the US's politcal system to orient away from newspapers to TV, so assuming that we start the "politcal internet" with Bob Dole's 1996 campaign website then we have until 2016-2026 for the politcal system to become internet-based. Already, our current President only got to where he is because he was able to cajole reddit users (and similar) to campaign for him in the 2008 primaries. The Tea Party sprung to life in 2009 based in large part to the Internet existing to spread it's message (because if anything Fox News's abhorrent treatment of Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012 forced TPers to search elsewhere). Hence why the NSA revealations were so big, because in a TV-dominated world it would have never been reported on. |
Property tax also depends on the property value. Florida is actually the state with the 29th highest property tax. Colorado is the 10th lowest. New Jersey, Illinois, and New Hampshire have the highest (Fun fact - Wisconsin is 4th). Florida also has no vehicle property tax while Colorado has the 12th highest. |
Sorry for the late reply. The majority of those subsidies are again not real subsidies and also not specific to oil and gas. The FTC is recognition of taxes paid to foreign governments that we have tax agreements with us. Any company with foreign operations will get that tax credit and it basically prevents double taxation. It is pretty unanimously applied by every country in the OECD. Second the expensing treatment of exploration work again isn't a subsidy or a reduction in tax. As long as the company keeps investing they defer the taxes paid that year, but the obligation still exists in the future. This again is not really specific to the fossil fuels industry as many other industries get accelerated depreciation on their investments. The only thing on the nonconventional production credit and that was a policy decision to spur development of domestic shale plays to reduce the trade deficit and cap increases in energy costs which has largely been successful. Also this gives us additional time to develop and transition to renewables by deferring peak oil effects. |
140 characters, that's the trick. Keeps things lean. Tweets are all the same size, so they flow smoothly, no |
Because the "secret" behind watson is the decades of Jeopardy questions that they've used to train it. They're using the same technique that helped speech recognition in the 1990's, but that technique [has limitations](
Maybe the NOVA did a bad job explaining the techniques used, but look at it this way. The computer is not good at understanding human language. If Jeopardy was described to watson's designers without the thousands of sample questions and answers, the machine would be helpless. |
I study AI at university (that is the actual title of my degree). I'm looking forward to this match and have been for a long time. But there's one thing I'm certainly not looking forward to: MASSIVELY IGNORANT OPINIONS ABOUT IT ALL OVER REDDIT. Yes, that's right, this is a pre emptive RAGE against everyone who is going to post their stupid fucking retarded opinions and are completely unaware of how amazing Watson is. |
Because USA and great British and Israel and Australia has formed a secret mega corporation. Sorry, I meant mega country. |
In the US, since about everyone is ancestrally from somewhere else, we have gone with a system of self-identification so as to not offend anyone. So in the US, if you say you're Irish (meaning of Irish decent), then you're Irish. However, if the Census taker comes around and the same "Irish" person decides at that time that he's African, well then he's African (or that he's a woman, which is an even stranger concept). |
Sodomy laws have been held unConstitutional by the Supreme Court (i.e. they are unenforceable in the US).
Swearing in public is often not enforceable, but depends on the context.
A ban against sex toys would likely also be held unConstitutional under the same reasoning as the sodomy case [Lawrence v. Texas](
Intentional infliction of emotional distress is often a specific intent crime, as in you have to intend your victim. Wantan disregard for the public at large would more likely get you a nuisance or havoc charge. Consult your local jurisdiction. |
What would happen if US citizens started getting tens of thousands of dollars in fines from foreign courts after clicking a mouse button?
This take on it. |
For the same reason that a diner in NYC where the owner insults each and every customer is successful: There enough suckers to come, buy, leave and never come back. |
Paypal is horrible and I've stopped using them and ebay after Paypal screwed me over. At one point i was bringing in some money and Paypal decided that it might be fraudulent use of my account so "ok let's clear up this misunderstanding."
Talked to multiple reps who merely told me to send in my information (personal and bank info by email, by mail, by email 3 more times) each time they used some excuse of "oh the quality is too poor" or "we can't read your name" because somehow it got messed up between my computer and theirs -.-
After months of back and forth conversations they deleted my account and the next time i called in to see what was wrong there was no record of my account. I can't sign in anymore because that email/IP is still in their system and customer service wont help me because all they say is "we dont know the exact reason but if the system wont let you create an account it's because you had one and it was flagged as fraudulent so we can't do anything about it." |
Michigan passed a mandatory seatbelt law and legislators at the time promised there would never be primary enforcement. Primary enforcement being where the police could pull you over because you were not wearing it and would require a primary stop such as speeding to write the seatbelt ticket. A few years later, they implemented primary enforcement of the seatbelt law. |
Well, not really. The trial has two major parts, a patent infringement part and a copyright infringement part. Google was found [not to infringe]( the patents oracle claimed, so that was pretty easy.
On the copyright part, oracle claimed 1) it had copyright to the API structure of java, which Google infringed, and 2) google also actually took copyrighted code in that API from java. On point 1, the ruling was that this API structure can't be copyrighted in the first place. On point 2, Oracle was only able to prove that Google copied one function, nine lines of code long, that performed a certain bound check that was pretty trivial anyway.
The issue here, then, was proving damages sustained by the copying of that nine line function. Oracle may have been able to convince a jury that some damage was done (the 150,000 figure the judge slashed it to may have been doable, especially with punitive damages included EDIT: found out Oracle was limited to statutory damages for that function). However, Oracle wants to prepare for an appeal and not deal with that shit, and 150k is peanuts to them anyway compared to the legal costs and potential winnings involved. So they asked for zero dollars in damages, which google obviously accepted, because, well, zero.
So |
It's the fact that this processor can be run in parallel with hundreds of other processors, use less power, less risk of failure, etc. As mentioned, this is all part of the 'enterprise' package, which a normal desktop (or perhaps even server) processor could not handle for extended periods of time under such circumstances. |
From now on Apple is going to take the iterative design choices, play the safe card, until they find the next big thing that they know they can do right. I personally don't look to Apple for hard found cool technology and innovation, I look to Apple when I need that said technology to work and be dependable in its vast ecosystem of apps and accessory support.
I think that I read somewhere that Apple isn't even in the top 300 companies in R&D research, where as Microsoft and Google are ranked fairly high, which makes perfect sense considering their places in the market. Since when has Apple created a brand new technology that was completely original? I certainly can't remember when that occured, but let me say this; Apple, especially with the supply chain/efficiency/business-oriented Tim Cook at the helm will never take big risks that come with throwing out new technology/UIs/HIDs etc. Only until they know that it will work and would not be gimmicky will they wrap it into their products.
I get so tired of hearing people say that Apple doesn't innovate and therefore the iPhone blows and shouldn't be chosen over its Android/WP counterparts. Is it sad that they didn't bring anything new? Yes, however like Jony Ive has iterated over and over again, with such core devices its not wise to change and throw in new technologies until they are proven to be useful and are a positive change.
Do I like Apple as a company , nope , and I haven't since the iPad was introduced. They continuously play the card that they were the sole creator and inventor that made the smartphone as it is today, and while that is true to a certain extent they prevent other companies from emulating its model of tweak, enhance, and occasionally introduce. Double standard if you ask me. However I love the products they produce , and feel that they are some of the best in the industry.
Personally I would love to see research and development be separated from the product development so that they can bring those new technologies to the table and then allow access to those technologies be open and let the market run loose. Then you would have the best of both worlds, the Apple like quality with the Google/MS/NASA levels of tech powering those devices |
If it is on par with the nexus 7, it does not beat the current generation of phones. The Nexus 7 runs a underclocked version of the Tegra 3 chip set found in the HTC One X and One X+, which is in turn slightly outperformed by Samsung's own quad core chipset. The dual core S4 performs somewhere in between the two, but it's quad core brother smokes the lot. |
Google gets accurate GPS points from way more sources than Street View cars, and if we were just patting Nokia on the back for finding an innovative source of GPS data then I'd be all aboard.
But implying Street View Cars are the main source of Google GPS Data, that FedEx data is equivalent to Street View Car data, and that Nokia has an advantage by having more FedEx miles than Google have Street View miles are all completely stupid points.
I will say again, FedEx GPS data is closer to the anonymised data I send Google from my phone than what Street View Cars deliver, and Google has a shitload more user GPS data than anyone else. It's a smart move by Nokia to use FedEx to catch up a bit, but there is no way they get more data from all sources in a year than google have in total.
If someone has a reference for total GPS data Nokia and Google have access to I'd be interested in an article about miles covered, but selecting two arbitrary sources, is meaningless chatter driven by the incessant need to lure clicks by writing bullshit articles saying "company X beats company y".
But by all means, continue downvoting me.
[b] |
Actually it isn't as black and white as that. The federal constitution does not guarantee a right to privacy, only a right to freedom from search and seizure without due process. Certain states, such as California, have the right to privacy specifically mentioned, which means some things (such as recording your phone calls without openly notifying each person you call/who calls you) are illegal in California but legal elsewhere. In order to fight this, you'd have to show that it broke some right, and as far as I'm aware, this wouldn't be covered under search and seizure freedom. Now, California probably wouldn't allow this (same with any other state that has a State Constitution expressly listing a right to privacy, but it would be a difficult fight to stop this elsewhere in the U.S. unless you could find a specific local or state law that it violates |
Another San Antonian here. They picked Jay to try this program out at before implementing at all NISD schools (one of the largest districts in the country). I personally believe they did this because Jay is one of the lower income schools, and therefore less likely to actually have someone hire a lawyer and sue.
That being said, at the risk of down votes, is this really such a horrible thing? Parents can (and do) track their teens via car gps and cell phone apps (find my friends, etc.). Many parents can't afford smartphones and probably love the security of knowing where their kid is. As someone who did a lot of stupid shit in high school, I'm not sure I'm adamantly against this. Just my opinion (of course as a tax paying NISD citizen I have a voice through my vote) |
I wonder what the pro-tracking helicopter parents and institutional educators will say if someone demonstrates just how easy it would be for some creep to track students via their RFID cards at distance. |
I also went to the magnet school there, my little brother just started his freshman year and I can't believe the shit that went downhill since I graduated in 2010. They made a building that was supposed to be SEA (the magnet portion) only into a fuckwit freshman jail.
Most of the good teachers retired or went to other schools after my class graduated because they were forcing the normal students to take AP/P-AP courses which can be challenging if you aren't on top of it (and lets be honest, most of the normal jay students were not on top of it).
End result, AP classes filled with derps that do not want to be there, and angry teachers who are used to having willing students. |
The thing is a school shooting is usually a planned thing, the person whom is about to shoot the fuck out of a school doesnt just casually carry his gun through a metal detector and get busted.
The shooter would probally have the foresight to just like, climb through a fucking window or something, none of that shit prevents school shootings what so ever, and even if the shooter was dumb enough to just walk through the front door, through the metal detectors with his gun, all that will happen is the police (might) get there a few minutes quicker, it wont stop them from gunning people down. |
You can set it up at home for next to nothing (nothing if you chose Linux) and get a comcast static IP with 16 down, 3 up with an SLA for 75 bucks a month.
if you have home internet, you can replace it with the business class line, so you could take off your internet cost, which is probably 60 bucks. |
Which quote are you referring to? The quote I originally replied to said Samsung "always uses that dubious 'shipped' which does not necessarily equate to sales [to the end-user]." The point I am trying to make is that equating a shipment to a reseller as a sale is in fact not a dubious way of recognizing sales, and is also how Apple recognizes sales, because it is GAAP. Delivery = sale, whether to an end-user or a reseller. Now of course, a big share of Apple's deliveries are directly to end-users due to Apple's retail presence whereas Samsung's are not. But a big share of Apple's deliveries are also to resellers, and those are all counted as sales whether or not they remain in inventory with the reseller.
Some people seem to be under the mistaken impression that Apple is using a more honest definition of "sale" in its filings, when it is not. They both are using the definition accepted by GAAP and the SEC, where a delivery = a sale. The difference is that Apple's numbers better reflect the number of units that end up in end-user hands, but it's not a very big difference unless one contends Samsung is stuffing the channel, which is unlikely and illegal. |
dont worry. i stop using msn because of all those shity addon for granny. like a sentence with 1 words and 25 smilley.
But now for a couple of version skype feel like shitty msn. and now it own by microsoft so.... anyone out there time to make a new messager one that i will not have all the scammer trying to fish me everyday that i have to decline invitation. |
I moved to a different state a month into my freshman year of high school. My group of friends from middle school had begun to merge with a group of girls we knew from middle school, but never really hung out with them before.
Being the typical idiot 14yo, bored, in a new town, with no friends, bitter to hear about my friends move into new things without me (I still kept in contact with them through MSN messenger), I decided to fuck with them.
On MSN messenger, a friend of mine had a '15' (because he was 15 at the time) in his account name. I created one exactly like his with a 'l' instead of a '1'. In the font MSN used, it looked practically the same. On top of that, MSN allowed you to make your own display name back then, and duplicates were not a problem. So I typed the same one my friend had. I requested all my friends and the girls. No one thought it was weird, and they didn't catch the duplicate in their offline list, and I never logged in when that friend was on. No one would suspect me since I was physically out of the picture, and I also logged in with my own account through the microsoft messenger that came with windows.
One time in a group conversation with some of my friends and girls, I started flirting with one of them as my friend I was impersonating. I asked her to become my girlfriend. People flipped their shit, I was getting private messages on the side, and everyone was peer pressuring her to accept, and she finally did. We started talking to each other in bf and gf way. Then I told everyone I'll see them tomorrow at lunch and left.
The next day I logged in. Another friend contacts me and asks me what the hell was wrong with me at lunch today. Why I hadn't say anything, hadn't paid attention to her, and acted weird. I said something about being shy and scared and having a tough day at school etc. He adds me to a group chat with the girl and the others, and I explain the same thing. I get forgiven, go back to being boyfriendy with the girl.
The next day I enter a group conversation with them. I learn that he acted again oblivious, and got confronted, and denied the whole thing. He said that it wasn't him. They are all confused but haven't caught up with me yet. I said, again, that I get really shy and scared in person, that I was sorry, and my friends and other girls start giving me advice (the girl is there in the conversation), that I should relax, sit next to her, I should just be nice, and just talk to her, and nothing more. I agree, tell them I will for sure be better tomorrow at lunch, go back to being boyfriendy, and everything is nice again.
The next day my impersonated friend doesn't show up for lunch with the group. They contact me later that day again in group conversation. Some are mad. I don't know if the girl is sad, confused, mad, or what. They ask me what the hell. I cannot fucking believe how they haven't caught up yet. Now, for what goes on next... I have to say that I'm really ashamed of. Since they are mad and a little aggressive, I get aggressive too. I say that I didn't show up because I was ashamed of being with her, actually. That I regretted asking her out, that I noticed how ugly she was. A huge flame war started that I don't care to recall, because I cringe. It was worthy of 12yo COD players.
The next day, they angrily confronted my friend I impersonated. He reacted a little aggressive too, because he really didn't know WTF was going on. He claimed to have been hacked, or something, because it wasn't him.
Later on, I logged in as myself, and I messaged with one of them who was my best friend. He told me everything that had happened. We both laughed. Since we were laughing and he was my best friend I told him everything, but not to say anything. I logged in as the impostor to show him, and I was planning on getting on another flame war. Another of my friends investigated and caught up with the fake account. I logged out. They all now realized it really wasn't that guy, but no one knew who it was. There were many suspects, specially one that laughed a little during the flame war, but no one knew for sure. At one point they vaguely asked me about it, but I denied it. |
I used gAIM (now Pidgin) for many years, and logged every chat with every contact. I would leave it open and connected 24/7 and had an auto-responder that told people to leave me a message. Now and then I fire it up just to re-read and re-live the good ol' days. |
This is actually a brilliant idea in principle. It creates a decentralized money exchange system allowing cash to move more freely. Right now, in the present, you are stuck with ATMs at fixed locations, banks, or cash-back options at check-outs. Or your buddy or some stranger willing to fork over money in the short-term hoping you'll pay it back.
Yes, there are illegitimate, fraud-like uses. Hence the review process that stays fixed with your username and account. Legitimate "bankers" will rise to the top. Yes, there are high fees.
Despite the perceived limitations, the implications of a network like this are huge. But I think in practice very few people would use it at first. And given the long-term prospects of physical cash for the next few decades, it might not even be useful for very long. But simply by creating an exchange that lets individuals move money simply and efficiently between one another, you're opening up a new era of money movements- regardless of the form. Think of it like a form of paypal but with real-time user interactivity, connectivity, and day-to-day "real life" use outside of the internet.
The transaction fees and costs are too high right now. But either apple will adjust or some competitor will figure out a way to get around the patents. |
You're entirely correct. [Source.](
Most relevant paragraph:
>All claims relating to Roundup Ready canola in Schmeiser's 1997 canola crop were dropped prior to trial and the court only considered the canola in Schmeiser's 1998 fields. Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination. The evidence showed that the level of Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1998 fields was 95-98% (See paragraph 53 of the trial ruling[4]). Evidence was presented indicating that such a level of purity could not occur by accidental means. On the basis of this the court found that Schmeiser had either known "or ought to have known" that he had planted Roundup Ready canola in 1998. Given this, the question of whether the canola in his fields in 1997 arrived there accidentally was ruled to be irrelevant. Nonetheless, at trial, Monsanto was able to present evidence sufficient to persuade the Court that Roundup Ready canola had probably not appeared in Schmeiser's 1997 field by such accidental means (paragraph 118[4]). The court said it was persuaded "on the balance of probabilities" (the standard of proof in civil cases, meaning "more probable than not" i.e. strictly greater than 50% probability) that the Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1997 field had not arrived there by any of the accidental means, such as spillage from a truck or pollen travelling on the wind, that Mr. Schmeiser had proposed. |
I'm not so sure something totally fresh was what they needed. MoH had a lot of disappointments when it came to both gameplay and sales. First, the last MoH game was released right between two major CoD release cycles, so while it would pick up sales from people who still want to play every FPS, most people will still be content with their existing "main" game. (I not sure if all or even most gamers will agree with me, but as someone who would put significant portions of their time into gaming, I would always have a "main" online game I played the cat majority of time until another came along to replace it.) Second, I bought MoH in '10, the first release in years and even longer for an Xbox version, and it was disappointing. I turned the difficulty to hard(est) on the campaign. I died once, only because I didn't know that there was a grenade indicator that was out of my contrast. I beat it a day later, not because I was that good at it, but because it had a stupid, linear AI and a far too easy cover system. You could literally shoot through the rock in such a way that enemies would never fire back. You had unlimited ammo, and you'd basically just shot and grenades your way to victory. If it had copied CoD, it could have been a halfway decent game. Third, it was because of the less than stellar campaign that I didn't even bother with the multiplayer. I literally packed it up in the box and shipped it to my friend so he wouldn't have to buy it, then went back to CoD.
BF3 for me was very different. I bought that off of the recommendation of a friend, solely for the unique multiplayer experience. ("realistic," teambased.) I didn't even touch the campaign until a month in when the net was slow. It was a joke. It's like someone had slapped on someone's beta pet project. Even the basics like the menu were buggy and confusing. I finished that in two days. More often than not, I died simply out of borek or messing around.
CoD, now that's a different story. From mw1, I've ways bought that game because I knew I was in for an epic, fun campaign. Then, I stuck around for the multiplayer, then shelled out a few extra bucks along the way for map packs. MW2 had some of my favorite maps, with so much variety of gameplay. BlOps didn't, but I had fiends who had it, so I went along. They didn't touch the campaign, and had only bought BlOps because they just got an Xbox because I had an Xbox and we all used to play mw2 and halo.
The point is, companies can't half-ass any one side. They can make haves as derivative as they want, but they can't make either suck. You won't get everyone to stick around for MP if the campaign sucked, and you can't get the $60 if you don't throw in some kind of campaign. And even if you do get a few people, these games live and die because "everyone" is playing them. Games a extremely sensitive to crowd movements or network effects. And when you screw up the last game, and your competitor makes a different one, you're going to have an impossible time playing catchup when your more successful competitor is throwing a new game out of the production cycle every year. At $60 a pop, most gamers will go with what they know. |
This is the company that once upon a time only released cool innovative games like Populace and now only makes sports games. I know a lot of you like sports games, but they seem like one very boring possibility out of billions of possible realities to represent in a game especially when you aren't a sports fan like me. |
Here's the actual shareholder letter.](
Let's round to 5000 cars sold in Q1 of 2013, at an average sticker price of $70,000. That makes $350m in revenue from selling cars.
They also mention
"We also completed various deliverables under the Mercedes Benz B-Class EV program
which contributed to total development services revenue of almost $7 million.". So there's another 7 million, bringing our total up to $357m.
They also sold $68m worth of ZEV credits, bringing our total to $425m.
If we're assuming that the bulk of the rest of their revenues are derived from powertrain sales to Toyota (electric RAV4), we'll be able to determine that they sold about $200m worth of electric powertrains in the first quarter. I have no idea off the top of my head how much a singular RAV4 powertrain sells for, but we know that the RAV4EV baselines at $50k while the base model sells for $23k. So assuming a 50% markup by Toyota, we can estimate that Tesla sells each powertrain unit for around $18k. So if we do some math ($562m - $425m = $137m) we can estimate that Tesla sold around 7,600 powertrains to Toyota.
; |
This was a pathetic thing to link to. It's some guy reporting on what some other thinks HTC should do. |
Could someone explain to me in details what happen if someone like this, a whistleblower who has gone to the medias, was assassinated? I understand that they will become a martyr of some kind, yet every government will deny their involvement and even if the US government does look guilty, would anything happen at all? Senators will still get reelected, the current president can't be reelected already, and it seems to me that all 3 branches of the US government are against him in this instance. |
As somebody who has done risk management for many years, I disagree. It is very sound.
Risk is probability * consequence, and in context is per year. Your point is that these other threats are of known probability and known consequence, and you suggest terrorism has unknown probability and/or potentially higher consequence.
That confuses a priori risk with a postiori risk. You can calculate the a postiori probability of both, and Snowden is correct. Your implication is that it is a priori probability that matters here, without justifying such, and that we can predict these other threats reliably with past information but can't predict terrorism ones using past information.
If that's the approach we are to use, then you need to justify why you think terrorist threats in the future are likely to be higher in the near future than in the past. If they are equal or lower, then Snowden is still correct. If you believe they are likely to increase, that requires justification which hasn't been presented.
The reference to chemical or nuclear threats is a misdirection, generally falling into the category of fear-mongering and not risk assessment. Risk requires probability, not possibility. What are the odds that a terrorist group can get a hold of chemical or nuclear weapons of such magnitude and have it unknown outside of NSA monitoring system? Keep in mind that countries like Iraq and Iran -- whole countries with vast wealth, resources, and technology available -- cannot build or acquire such weapons without getting noticed. How rational is it believe radical Islamists, mostly from small villiages and only loosely organized, could acquire such WMDs unnoticed through normal channels, get them to the U.S. somehow, and detonate them? Let's say we're talking about a weapon large enough to kill hundreds to thousands of people. What is the probability of that? And how many of them per year need to get through to equal the number of deaths per year from these other risks?
Is it fair to say the odds of this are essentially zero? If not zero, is it high enough that U.S. citizens should give up fundamental rights of privacy to create a surveillance state over it?
Now don't forget to add to this analysis the costs and risks of a surveillance state itself, in tax costs, in lost freedom costs, in chilling of free communication costs, and in misuse by the government or individuals or groups in the government. |
I like the way you think. It is indeed possible to disagree with people, even strongly, while still respecting them and their rights. It doesn't mean everything is relative, just that we all have different experiences in life and so we approach it differently. Sometimes it can be hard to relate to other people, but I feel like it's always worth the effort. |
Spoken like a real Ayn Randian Cynic. It seems built on an understanding of human nature that has been disproved many times before ([have a look at this for example]( -- people aren't selfish by nature, it's systemic pressure and misinformation that makes them behave selfishly. Your attitude of assumed general selfishness might be convenient but a mere signal of ignorance and intellectual cowardice. It allows you to lay back, say "it's all fucked anyway" and do all kinds of immoral things. Actually trying to make a difference is much harder.
And to project this attitude onto other people is just another (unjustified) mechanism to reinforce your own. "No sane person turns down a good job" Oh really? Check out Germany. Their equivalents to NSA, CIA etc. have been trying really hard to recruit hackers have failed big time so far! Every sane, moral and well informed person will definitely turn down an immoral job if he has a choice. (I acknowledge that that's a problem in the US, evidenced by thousands joining the army because it provides financial security, healthcare etc etc. but still that doesn't change the principle.).
The "if I don't do it there will be others who will" is another fallacious justification. It's an unjustified assumption and also a red herring. It's an economist's argument to justify ANYTHING: A soldier at a Nazi concentration camp, the producer of child porn etc. etc.
The goal must be to inform the aforementioned 10% about the ethical dimension and significance of the work they'd agree to do and deprogram their misconceptions about "national security", "terrorism threat" and all this nonsense.
Your cynicism serves no one. Not you (because you'll never be able to live with a clear conscience) and not society. Try making a difference, try contributing to society in a meaningful way rather than chasing what I suspect you think constitutes a "good" job (which is money). I assure you you'll be happier. And so will be society.
Edit for clarity. |
You can't commit yourself to a "centralized" network of information while at the same time propagating the idea of a democracy, a "decentralized" means of power. Its one choice or the other. Either you're interested in everyone having a choice, or you're not. If you work for a government that is disinterested in enabling its citizens to make choices and expand the definition of democracy, then you, your career, and your ideology are directly opposed to the statutes for which you justify them. |
Just got through reading the text, and while there's probably nothing to be worried about in here, it also doesn't accomplish much of anything.
The primary 'new' substance is a presumption of fee-shifting to whichever party loses in court - a presumption that can be overcome if the suit was 'substantially justified'. The issue with NPEs or Patent Trolls is that in general, the suits are 'substantially justified,' in the sense that they hold patents that are otherwise valid, and so judges would more than likely continue not to award fees in suits brought by NPEs.
There are also increased reporting requirements, so Trolls/NPEs would have to disclose more about who they are, presumably so that information could be made public and they would be 'shamed' out of bringing these suits. But, since these suits are the only way many of these entities make money in the first place, I fail to see how this is going to deter any of this.
The one section that seems helpful, but which I personally feel could have more negative consequences than benefits, is the new section 285(c), which states that any party that first offers to settle (offers a 'covenant not to sue') would be deemed a non-prevailing party, and would have to pay costs incurred over any negotiations. The intent of the section is well-placed: Trolls/NPEs make most of their money by scaring other entities with a patent and then offering to settle for a specified amount BEFORE trial. This new section just incentivizes Trolls/NPE to hold out as long as possible and wait for the other side to offer to settle. It also discourages settlement in general, which can be harmful for the court system. |
Lamar Smith was made into the "villain" on Reddit -- largely because he's a Republican & Reddit tends to lean to the left -- but there were many others, in both parties involved.
E.g., the Senate bill ( PIPA and co-sponsored by many senators, including Al Franken. |
I don't... but I also think that porn is not leading to better society either. I think I'd be much happier if nudity and sexuality were not taboo. if people were better at talking to one another and had more realistic expectations of what people are and will be.
As well, more gender equality. We have a big problem right now in that we expect women to be perfectly groomed--no pubic hair, or neatly shaved, certainly no full bush... and DEFINETLY no leg hair, no pit hair, no unsightly hairs.. head hair long and glamorous, with perfect tits, flexiblility, the ability to do a full face of make up in 10 minutes and to ALWAYS look glamorous.. and pencil thin with huge tits, and able to be nailed while wearing a pair of high heels. ... while, on the other hand, we expect boys to have shaved sometime in the last day or two. Trimmed public hair is... nice, but the exception, not the rule, much less, shaved. If they have a belly, no big deal, it's "cute"... and generally speaking, it comes down to "don't be hideous, try not to smell too badly, but a little musky is sexy."
We DO have unreasonable expectatiosn for men, sure, mostly related to penis size, and their ability to ... last, but then, the same is returned to women again. NOt to mention, the whole pornographic sex act gives an entirely different expectation about what women want during sex--30 minutes of pistoning mechanically in and out is not it. Yet it is appealing to men, so that's what we see--girls faking it, for 30 minutes while their partners completely ignore their erogenous zones (except maybe to slap a tit), with the only 'foreplay' being a blow job.
This is what is wrong. My first 'all the way' boyfriend had it... totally wrong. and this was back in the 90's. I would hate to be a teenage/young adult now, trying to work out "how to sex" when porn is available everywhere to everyone.
on another note, porn ADDICTION is also serious business. There's a TED talk about it and the subject's arousal levels jumped.
This is a biological thing, actually, because most animals have the biological drive to spread their genes around.. which is to say, as many mates as possible. so "HEY! You're new! I am incredibly interested in mating with you." .... so the male animal persues, eventually succeeds, and has a sensation of "fuck yeah! Spreadin' my genes around!" ... which is all well and great for sheep, and tigers and stuff, but for humans, not so much. Especially not when we're talking about porn.
So yeah, as we browse porn, we're seeing new women, constantly, a long stream of them an endless stream of them, and every time we click, we're getting that burst of satisfaction from seeing something NEW. and it's addicting.
I don't have a problem with porn addiction myself. But it's... interesting, because I was very easy to draw parralels for myself. When I'm bored. When I'm waiting for something. when I'm procrastinating on going to bed.. i go to reddit or tumblr. and I scroll down. and I click on things that catch my interest and I jsut keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and clicking on new thigns. I feel "oh, tha'ts interesting" and then keep going.
I used to do this on facebook. Sometimes I still do. I end up checking my facebook every few minutes because I cannot find anything new to expose myself to. (because "i'm bored".) ...
This is a serious problem! I was ADD before. The internet has made me more ADD... and I'm addicted to it! it's kind of scary that I generally can't manage to be in my own head for a few minutes without feeling the NEED to see and experience something new. And when I think about being like that with porn.. it's terrifying. :C
I do advice you watch the ted talk video. it's INTERESTING and pretty short. and he says it better then I can.
anyway, |
The Article of Confederation was the first attempt by the United States to develop a government. It was notoriously weak structured leaning more towards strong state governments and a weak national government. The executive branch was nonexistent and the judicial branch was left up to the states. The only thing the Articles did well was to divide up the land in the Midwest. Everything else was botched up. States started printing separate currency that became highly inflated. Pirates in the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic made trade impossible because the United States could not defend itself. Everything changed when the constitution was established and ended the "Articles of Strict Friendship." |
The Netflix being referred to as "Netflick" is extremely funny considering my grampy calls it that all the time too. Although at the same time it make me feel terrible to laugh at because he's 97% deaf in one ear and the other ear isn't far better. Therefore it sounds like it's being pronounced "Netflick" when others say it so he just copies what he hears. |
All the time, but my favorite are the ones where "Uncle Steve" already has. Normally it's a trailer home wired in #14(15a) that has had it's breakers replaced with 20a or even 30a.
The breaking point seems to be when they plug in a space heater because the insulation sucks or they ran out of propane. Most of the medium to large space heaters have a 15a circuit at or near capacity. Turn on some lights and a tv and you hopefully have a breaker tripping.
This is where they put in larger breaker. Sometimes they plug in even more space heaters, up to the point that the circuit is at nearly double it's rated capacity. At this point the best thing to happen is a receptacle burning right the hell up and stopping this trainwreck. The loosest connection in the circuit is usually what burns up first due to resistance. Receptacles are usually the loose connection if the wire is stabbed in the back instead of looped over the screws. This is usually where I get called.
If a connection doesn't fail, the wire will. I've seen 5'+ lengths of wire charred and blackened with a good portion of the insulation burnt off. Eventually the hot will fault to the ground or neutral and something trips or the wire just breaks. Normally these people luck out and it just smolders and goes out or they catch it fast and put it out. |
It is "all 1's and 0's." But it's not written as 1's and 0's, not all machines read the same 1's and 0's in the same way, and a whole host of other things I could say that would break this metaphor horribly.
I was going on a long rant but decided to cut it short; Basically, it would be like having you, who I assume to be a native English speaking individual with let's go with no real knowledge of Japanese, having to write a sonnet in the language, but also describe it in such a way that a Chinese person who only just started reading sonnets could understand what you've done in his language. |
Phonorecords" is a defined term in the copyright statutes.
>“Phonorecords” are material objects in which sounds, other than those accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “phonorecords” includes the material object in which the sounds are first fixed. |
You don't need to be a mechanic to drive a car, but an engineer should probably be consulted before enacting laws on car construction or use. Likewise, while you don't need to be an IT guy to use technology, someone who knows about IT should probably be consulted before legislation is enacted.
But that's not the real problem these days. The problem is people don't know how much they don't understand. Most people understand that cars are complex pieces of machinery that require regular maintenance, and when broken, often require expensive repairs from an expert. With many aspects of technology, the average Joe doesn't even know enough to understand things are complicated. |
This is entirely wrong. A lot of people have a massive head start against their colleagues. If you started programming at the age of 5 and kept it up until 25 then you would likely be equally if not more competitive than your 45 year old counter part who started at 20. Young people can be equally, if not more, valuable than their older counter parts, but they'll accept a lower salary due to a naive understanding of salary expectations and negotiations. Additionally, young people are almost always less expensive in the department of company benefits as well. |
This is why America, as a society and a country, will not advance until the older generation dies off. I say it all the time and get hatred and downvotes for it. But it's the truth, and it's nothing against old people (I love my grandparents). They simply at this point in their lives have no point of reference for things going on with things like the internet and data privacy. They simply go with what their particular parties agenda (9 out of ten republican) because they think their views are actually being looked out for. Things that have little meaning for them such as "Net Nutrality" are things they can over look or be OK on with their party. The political parties love this because they can push their agenda's through banking on the senior vote, because hey, what the hell else is an old retired lady going to do on her Tuesday. Voting is like going to the bar for old people. It's going to make their week. My grandmother is semi computer literate and still needs help for things like texting and emails from time to time. ITS OK for that to happen. IT'S NOT OK for a supreme court justice to be so terribly uninformed on a case as to not even properly address multi-million dollar industries. |
It's been my experience that technical concepts aren't really hard to explain. But people doing the explaining are sometimes I'll equipped to put the concept into language that someone unfamiliar with the concept understand.
P2P isn't hard to put into old people terms: It's like you and your buddies put your money together and buy a Superman comic. On day 1 you each take one page out of that comic and make a copy of that page. The next day you trade pages with someone and make a copy of that page. The next day you do the same. After a while, everyone has an exact copy of the original book. That's conceptually how p2p torrenting works, but if you insist on using specific terms like swarm, tracker, or magnet link you're going to confuse this shit out of people. |
I'm not totally convinced of that. I read the relevant portion of the transcript. Scalia's question was really about asking how HBO is different from broadcast media. You and I might think of that as a silly question.
...but have you ever asked a question you knew the answer to to see how the person responds? Supreme court justices base their decision on what is argues in court. To my eye, this could very likely have been a leading question to get someone talking. |
Story time!
I'm an IT consultant and currently work for a big international company. One day I was approached by a user who asked me if there was some way of looking through her mailing history to make sure whether she had or had not recieved an email from her ex-husband. They (Her and her ex) were currently fighting for custody of their children and she was about to move away and wanted to bring the children with her.
Here's the problem. She claims that she had brought this up with her ex and that he actually agreed that she could bring the kids with her. HOWEVER, she was recently contacted by his lawyer who claimed to have proof in writing that he never agreed to this. Some months ago he ad supposedly written an email to her and specified that he did not give his aproval for her to take the kids and move.
In the end we were actually able to check the mailserver logs and confirmed that no such mail had ever reached the mailserver. The email that he supposedly had written and then forwarded to his lawyer was falsified by forwarding an old email and modifying the text information in the email history included in the email conversation.
The user brought this to her own lawyer and explained that the evidence was fabricated. Her lawyer thought she was lying. They were under the impression that you cannot change the attatched email history. She had to open up gmail and demonstrate before they actually believed her.
I find it utterly terrifying how people who have the power to decide the future of her kids can't even understand the evidence they are presenting or trying to debunk. |
The "series of tubes" comment got too much criticism, IMHO. I'm no fan of Senator Stevens, and it's pretty clear that he was clueless about the tech, but the analogy does hold up. Tubes and valves... valves and tubes... billions and billions of them... |
I will post my current comcast nightmare, that is turning into a bit of first-world-problems Stockholm syndrome:
I have two comcast accounts, in two states. One for my family, one I pay for my in-laws. Both in "capped" markets. BTW, Comcast has been charging me for basic TV I never ordered and don't use, just magically appeared on my bill about two years ago. The price was only a few dollars different, so after a few rounds of unhelpful phone calls, I just left it.
I get an email about two and half weeks ago saying I'm at 90% of my cap. There is no account number on the email. Since my family typically uses about 150-200G/month (4 of us, more or less cord cut--sadly hanging on to Directv for sports) and my in-laws use around 15-20G/month (in their 70's, but father in law still working and remotes in), I assume it's our account.
I check the website for the "usage meter" however it says it can't load right now, and only shows a modem I haven't used for two years. Call comcast, spend hours on the phone, transfer around departments, give them proper MAC for modem, asssured all is well. BTW, they can't tell me my usage. I can't check full month on my router because there was a power outage earlier in the month and lost the data, but don't see anything unusual--about 2G/day during the week, 5-8 on weekends.
A few days later, get another email: over the cap. Now check both accounts. My meter still isn't correct, and in-laws are at 300G. Call up there. Father-in-law is traveling for business and not using it, mother in law doesn't use it. So I have them pull the plug on the router assuming someone has hacked onto the wireless (suprisingly, since it's pretty rural). Figure I'll change the password when I get up there.
Lo and behold, a few days later, check again to be sure. My meter isn't available and modem isn't corrected, and in-laws data is still rising !
Call back. Spend hours. Am assured this is impossible. Someone must be on the wireless network. It does no good to argue that there is no network . Cancel the account. Also talk to someone in a different department who gives me a ticket # for changing the MAC on my router so I can at least see what comcast says my usage is at my home.
Fast forward to today. Check again. Usage at in-laws now at 358G. Drive up. Modem and router unplugged. No obvious taps on the lines. WTF? Plus my home modem MAC still not updated. Plug modem in and plug computer in directly. Still have service. BTW, never got promised email confirmation of account cancellation. Can log in and still says active.
Call again. 3 hours. Hung up on at least once (though I was being polite--it was during one of the many transfers to random agents, none of whom were helpful). All deny that any of this is possible. They all still insist there is an intruder on the wifi. Plus, no one acknowledges the ticket # for changing the MAC on my home router. I confirm cancellation of in-laws account. Make immediate arrangements for changing to 3Mbps DSL, which is next best option. Think seriously about cancelling my home account, but think better of it for now.
Check around for my options. Was even considering 6Mpbs DSL, but on actually calling, it turns out, I'm too far from the node, and I'd get like 1.5 at best.
So now I'm thinking, maybe I'll upgrade to a business line. Better upload speed, only a little more expensive (about $20/month difference), no cap. |
Bandwidth is the new gas.
Bandwidth is the [new electricity](
> You get this much bandwidth at this price in the lower tier. Any excess bandwidth consumed in paid at the higher tier price.
Actually, electricity is worse:
Electricity
first 50 kWh: 15¢ / kWh
50-66 kWh: 19¢ / kWh
66-100 kWh: 26¢ / kWh
over 100 kWh: 32¢ / kWh
Rather than the much more reasonable Comcast pricing:
first 300 GB: 38¢ / GB
over 300 GB: 20¢ / GB |
While the idea of using Lasers to shoot down incoming projectiles isn't new, it is quite difficult.
First off, you need to acquire a target before you can shoot it down. From what I heard that Chinese ship killer missile they are so proud off is so fast that it hits before the onboard defenses (CIWS I think they are called) can detect them and shoot them down. I think it can hit Mach 10 coming into an attack run which is about 3500 meters per second. If you spot that thing coming at you from 10 kilometers away you have about 3 seconds to shoot it down.
Even if you have acquired a target, a laser isn't like a projectile, you don't just need to hit it, you need to keep hitting it. If the target has some sort of passive defense like heat shielding (as I imagine a ballistic missile would have) it would take even longer to burn through it.
Someone smarter than me could probably tell you how long you need to stay on target with a 50 kilowatt laser to take out certain materials.
The thing is that the missile can also actively counteract lasers, simply by jinking around to stop your laser from continuously hitting the same spot.
As for underwater use, of course it is possible, but a laser loses a great deal of energy traveling through water by heating it, that in order to get a kill on a torpedo you would need to keep the target locked for quite a while. I am also unsure how refraction under water would affect the laser accuracy or concentration.
All in all a cool idea, I imagine pretty soon most modern tanks will have lasers on board to shoot down incoming AT missiles. However this could never be a human operated weapon.
I find it much more interesting how this would affect aircraft in combat. A plane is a big target and a human can only stand so many Gs, limiting the movement of the plane. Similarly helicopters would be prime targets for light speed weaponry.
EDIT:
I know the German Company ThyssenKrupp built something similar a year or so ago to shoot down drones in motion. Don't recall the strength of the laser.
EDIT |
If they held the stock long enough, though there are also tax implications of getting discounted stock. |
Honestly, I don't like the idea of the government regulating anything in theory, but in practice, I think that both "people" and "companies" have proven repeatedly that, if given enough freedom, they tend towards acting in their own interests regardless of consequences.
I don't want a government that passes laws that treats us all like babies who need to be in cribs with a video monitor on us 24/7 and only allowed out under supervision... but it's also not a smart idea to just let all the kids roam free and leave out all the food and drinks so they can "just help themselves" to it all.
Analogies aside: laissez faire capitalism is a good idea in theory, just like communism is also a good idea in theory. But in practice, people are just awful at it and sometimes the government needs to step in and say "No, you can't just fuck everyone over. Stop that." The theory that "you should give a business free reign and let customers choose who to support" only works when customers have a large enough amount of people competing for their business.
Look at a flea market. That's a good example of [mostly] free market capitalism. Let people design their own shops, choose what they want to sell, price it however they want, no regulations (well, other than what the building puts in place, anyway) and customers are given enough options that prices and services favor the consumer.
But with a large corporation that has little to no competition, you cannot trust them to just police themselves, because they won't. Even the police don't police themselves, and policing things is LITERALLY their job. |
It's an unfortunate truth, but the only people who can get elected are those who raise enough money; and the only way to raise that amount of money is to take money from lobbyists and other rich campaign contributors.
There has not been a presidential candidate more progressive than Candidate Obama in probably any of our lifetimes. But candidates don't run the country, Presidents do. Unfortunately, there is a stark difference between Candidate Obama and President Obama. I honestly believe Candidate Obama is who he truly is, but once you get elected President you quickly realize you don't get to do whatever you want. There are favors to repay (to lobbyists and other campaign contributors) and Congress to work with (who have their own lobbyists/campaign contributors to repay). |
Basing an argument off a title...
The law is to try and target sites that link to streams, but can be used to shit on people watching unapproved streams in the same way they can shit on people who download the movie illegally. The potential to break almost everything is there, once a judge in the riaa pocket makes a few stupid rulings. Netflix/Hulu/other fully controlled content would be fine, everything else would be fucked. |
To [paraphrase myself](
> Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc, should not be allowed to:
>
> - Throttle Netflix streaming video traffic transiting their network, while leaving other video services unaffected
> - They should not offer Netflix the abilty to get un-throttled if Netflix pays them some money.
> - They should not be allowed to give favorable shaping to Bing search results, to the detriment of Google search results.
> - They should not be allowed to block access to Skype, so that they can sell more of their own VoiP service.
To [quote myself](
> Ahh, schill , the ago-old cry of the uneducated.
And just in case anyone else wonders [what he's referring to](
> There is an amount of horrible misunderstanding by people. They use the words:
>
> > broadband companies should treat all Internet traffic equally
>
> carelessly. If that were the wording, it would be very bad. Even The Oatmeal's comic on Net Neutrality gets it right:
>
> > all data, regardless of origin, must be treated equally
>
> For those of you who don't know, the difference between these two phrasings is huge , and can lead to bad things if lawmakers carelessly use the first phrasing.
>
> What you want to do is:
>
> - stop companies from favoring content from origins that paid them more money
> - or slowing down content from origins they don't like
> - or demanding some extra cash from an IP that saturating their network with traffic
>
> You want them to be origin neutral.
>
> ---------------
>
> What you don't want is to be traffic neutral.
>
> There is a concept that has existed in the TCP protocol since its inception, it is the idea that some packets are important, or not important:
>
> - a voip packets needs to be delivered in 10ms-150ms
> - an e-mail packet can be delivered in hundreds or thousands of milliseconds
>
> This idea of packet priority was even baked into the TCP protocol, having a priority flag. In 1998 it was redesigned as a Differentiated services | Class 2 | Class 3 | Class 4 (highest priority) |
> |----------|-------------------|---------|---------|-------------------------------|
> | Low Drop | AF11 | AF21 | AF31 | AF41 |
> Med Drop | AF12 | AF22 | AF32 | AF42 |
> High Drop | AF13 | AF23 | AF33 | AF43 |
>
> Almost no software (yet) supports declaring their Assured Forwarding priority. A typical priority ordering might be:
>
> - ICMP/IGMP
> - DNS lookups
> - VoiP (including Skype voice)
> - interactive shell session
> - real-time gaming
> - video conferencing video
> - interactive web-browsing - small packets (html, javascript, css)
> - interactive web-browsing - large packets (images)
> - interactive web-browsing - large packets (streaming video)
> - file download
> - POP3 (e-mail pickup)
> - SMTP (e-mail send)
> - background (non-interactive) downloads (e.g. Steam, Torrent, WoW content download)
> - torrent seeding
>
> You would not like it if it took 6,000 ms for a page of text to load, simply because we blindly followed the rule that all traffic must be treated equally. You want to be able to surf reddit, while seeding your torrents.
>
> Nearly every good router implements some form of [ Traffic Shaping ]( in order to make the Internet work they way you want it. They go to great lengths to try to identify traffic, and classify it into priority queues. From Cisco and Juniper Networks, down to DD-WRT, Tomato and Linksys, and OpenBSD PC based routers, they all do traffic shaping to make the web work good.
>
> And ISPs try to do a lot of this grunt work for us; so we can browse the internet, while watching a streaming Netflix video.
>
> |
I don't disagree with you but I think we are talking about two different forms of value here. Lawyers should be paid by the value provided and work done.
But if you're trying after the fact to gauge the cost of a lawyer to an individual claimant, without nuanced information on what exactly was done, you don't compare the individual recovery with the total fees awarded to the lawyer, you need to compare it to how many people were represented and how much the class as a whole received. It's a short hand.
My mistake for careless |
This will probably serve as an example of why bloatware doesn't make devices more succesful. OEMs should build compelling devices and offer a good experience with stock clean Windows. If they really want to make more money, bloatware is not the way. People want their device (be it smartphone, laptop, desktop, etc) to be fast, stable, secure, and compatible with a variety of accessories and external displays etc. Quality is better than quantity. Updates don't need an extra utility, as they can be pushed via Windows Update. Additional functionality will sit unused, so any stupid adware, limited anti-virus trials, and the BS utilities that promise performance boosts are not welcome, and can destroy the whole experience. What OEMs should do instead is put more money into R&D and make better hardware, use better materials, etc. This lawsuit may seem like an overreaction, but it's not. Especially when it compromises system security and user privacy. Microsoft has been blamed for declining PC sales, but when you look at the poor quality devices that OEMs make and the bloated OOBE they offer (supposedly to improve profit margins), you start to wonder if manufacturers really understood what they had to build in order to work well with Windows 8. Not saying that Windows was perfect, but OEMs don't seem to put a lot of effort in their products, and that (along with changing computing trends) explain why PC sales have declined. |
Class action lawyer here:
I think this is a common misconception about class actions. It is honestly one of the most frustrating parts about my job, because this mentality is an example of the corporate spin winning.
Let me get this out of the way, so there's no doubting where I stand:
The Class Action device is one of the most -- if not the most -- important protections for consumers today.
Why do I say this? Because most consumer damages are tiny. $10 overcharge here; $5 fraud there. Amounts that are too small to sue over. Without the class action device, there is little to stop companies from just adding "$5 Get Rekt" charges whenever they feel like it. Sure, the government might eventually step in -- if it's a company that hasn't paid a lot of money to lobbyists, and if the government can ever clear its backlog. But private attorneys typically act much quicker for relief. And the class action device allows the million separate $5 charges to be aggregated into a $5m suit.
This is why the recent Supreme Court decisions giving teeth to arbitration clauses and class waivers are so devastating. Good luck suing verizon for its $5 Get Rekt charge -- you'll have to go through arbitration. Alone. Who would do that?
Now I get the concern about attorneys fees and class recovery amount, and I would like to clear this up.
Let's use this Lenovo case as an example. I don't know how many affected Lenovo users there are. Let's keep it simple and say 1m.
Let's also say the lawyers negotiate a settlement with Lenovo for $50m. $50 per class member.
Finally, let's say the lawyers get $10m in fees (ignore the people saying 30% -- no one gets 30% in large class cases). This fee amount has to be approved by the judge.
It's easy to look at this and say, "wait a second. I got $50, and the lawyers got $10m?" But this loses track of a few things. First, it ignores that the lawyers weren't just yours -- they were lawyers for 1 million people. This means that if the attorneys receive $10m, each member of the class got a lawyer for $10.
But even that $10 is misleading. Why? Because in many, if not most, class actions, the attorneys fees are paid separately from the class relief. This means the class still gets its $50m, and the $10m is additional money paid by the defendant (for a total of $60m). So really, the class in this situation would have recovered $50 and paid nothing.
But let's dig a little deeper and look at the premise I started this little math exercise with: the case settles for $50m. That seems low, surely. Why settle? Why not bring it to a jury? Get all the money.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. For starters, how do you value damages? Is it the full value of the laptop (let's say $500)? Why? The laptop still has utility. Superfish can be removed. One can't reasonably say that the laptop is now worth $0, can they? Let's get some experts involved to sort this out.
These experts want to do studies. The plaintiffs experts say that had Superfish been disclosed prior to purchase, customers would have paid on average $80 less. The defense expert says that had Superfish been disclosed, as well as its removal instructions, people would have paid $20 less. So are damages $80m or $20m? Which expert has the better position? A jury will have to weigh their opinions. Juries can be unpredictable.
But even before we get there, are we sure we can get a class certified? After all, these laptops are all different models purchased from different stores at different times for different reasons. Are there enough common questions that predominate over individual questions (a requirement to certify a class seeking money damages) to warrant certification? Probably. But it's no slam dunk.
So we're left with a case with a max value of $80m and a bottom value of $20m, if the jury even finds liability. But maybe the jury will believe Lenovo that it was an innocent victim of Superfish as well. It had no idea. Unlikely, but possible. If that happens, nobody gets anything. And if plaintiffs lose class cert, they're left with a couple of people with $80 damage claims and no class.
The lawyers for both sides get into a room. The plaintiffs lawyers say "this case is worth $80m. Pay us $80m." The Lenovo lawyers say "this case is worth $20m, with the possibility of $0, so we'll give you $10m." After negotiating, and weighing all the risks to both sides, they end up at $50m -- a fair approximation (if not slightly friendlier to the plaintiffs) of the value of the case with all the risks involved. |
Difference being that noone agreed to run Superfish on their computer. Their EULA (which users don't even necessarily need to accept) does not cover any of this. Even if it did, it would be void in many countries, because users can't expect the security implications that come with the software. |
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