Wait a second, so the TSA makes me take my shoes off and treats me like a criminal but people can just drive their car right up to the runway with nothing to stop them?
Well there are signs telling you not to go there. That will keep the terrorists out right? Right?
That's my view of this whole thing. OK Apple Maps is being stupid and the drivers even dumber, but I live at the end of the runway for an International airport and there are unhappy looking people with guns standing next to closed gates for any non-public access points to the grounds (which includes anything that leads to the runways). So WTF is going on up in Fairbanks?
I regularly miss the end of things because the DVR doesn't know what to stop.
That's not the DVR's fault. That's the stupid channels that start and stop things at times other than what they have have set in their guide information. These seemed to really get bad a few years ago (History channel seems to the worst that I watch).
I'm not sure who makes them, but they're ridiculously sluggish and don't perform as well as the one we had when we got the service.
I recently had to replace my old TiVO S3 and was quite disappointed to find that the new one is even slower than the S3 which I was quite irritated by to begin with.
I was actually talking about the IRS itself, not X.org's accountants.
Your claim was that there is a conspiracy against OSS organizations, but this wasn't some obscure rule or gray area that they used to revoke the status. The X.org accountant also admits that he screwed it up so unless you have evidence that he is a plant by the IRS or "the powers that be" there is no conspiracy evidenced by this case.
The IRS's job is to collect taxes according to the tax law (convoluted though it may be). Part of that job is to make sure that people and businesses are paying what they should be (loopholes aside). This is a clear case of X.org's status was reviewed and the IRS found that they weren't meeting the requirements of the non-profit status. It's really not any different than if you had consistently filed your taxes late, they decide to audit you for it, and they turn up evidence of your unreported eBay store that you are supposed to be paying taxes on. Just because you don't like taxes or don't agree with some particular tax law doesn't make what happens in cases like this wrong.
I'm not denying that there are abuses and things aren't enforced uniformly, but the fact is that they failed to follow the law and were punished for it according to the law.
People complain when a government agency isn't doing their job and you're complaining about them actually doing it. There is no conspiracy here. There is no trampling of freedoms. This is exactly what is supposed to happen in such cases.
So the "powers that be" infiltrated X.Org's finance/accounting groups and made them not follow the rules for non-profits?
This is no different than the spun up fiasco a few months ago about the IRS investigating non-profits that appeared to be fronts for political organizations (and contrary to the Fox spin, it was not just targeting the Tea Party). To be a non-profit there are some specific rules you have to follow to maintain the status. It is the IRS's job to investigate to make sure you are following those rules.
So the real news here is "IRS does their job and idiots get upset about it and make up conspiracy stories".
Then you've never heard of the CAN bus, which is in use on every car produced since 1996. You'd have to avoid anything with obvious wireless access, which means no lock/unlock/panic/remote start systems, and likely not even a car radio since many are on the bus as well.
No, ODB-II was mandated on every new car sold in the US starting in 1996. CAN didn't gain mass adoption for quite a while yet (I have a 2001 with out it and just replaced a 2004 not too long ago that didn't have it).
All of the things you listed as not being possible without CAN were also around long before CAN (and well before ODB-II (though entirely unrelated) was mandated).
Even for the cars that are built today, there are still a fair number that do not have any wireless access to the bus (e.g. cars without OnSTAR or the like). I just bought one in fact. The wireless access was his concern and he still has plenty of options to avoid that while still having all the other benefits of a CAN based car.
How anyone in his right mind can imply that such a device is qualitatively no different than, say, a baseball bat or a straight razor is simply beyond me.
What a baseball bat can do and what a gun can do are two totally different things, but then what a.22 target pistol and a.45 caliber Tommy Gun can do are also two drastically different things.
You argue that a gun is an equalizer, which it is, but bringing a baseball bat to a fist fight is also equalizing/tilting the result in your favor as well.
A gun, just like a baseball bat, is an inanimate object that is capable of doing nothing on it's own without external forces. Also like a baseball bat it is perfectly safe when being used properly.
The real problem is the person holding the weapon and the only difference a gun makes is how big of a problem that person is for those they interact with. We really need to focus on the issues that drive people to these extreme situations rather than the tool they used to act it out.
I personally would argue that there are weapons that the average person doesn't need. I would also argue that there should be stricter classing (e.g. target pistols vs semi-auto, vs full-auto, etc..), training, and licensing so that we know that those that want to have a weapon have a reasonable expectancy to know how to use. care for, and handle it properly. I won't, however, argue that the solution to the worlds ills is to try and remove guns (both because it won't be possible and that want to do harm will still find other ways).
Maybe you don't recall, but box cutters were used for the most horrific event in the US in the last few decades. No guns, just a few box cutters to take over a couple of planes...
it also makes you look like an idiot who can't form their own opinions.
So does using the "but everyone else is doing it" argument.
I've used all kinds of languages for different purposes and the only thing I can say nice about PHP is that it is nearly as ubiquitous as Perl. Otherwise it is neither as capable or well thought out as it's competitors. My personal pet peeve is the inconsistent error handling (some functions just return true/false, some use NULL and false interchangeably, some write their error messages to STDERR, some to STDOUT, most give you no way to programmatically capture the error in a reasonable manner, and a few actually use the built exception functionality (though I still saw a handful that just used a generic exception with no details about the failure). The top failure of the language that gets the majority of my venom is their poor use of the __FILE__ macro and the maintainers refusal to recognize that they are the ones doing it wrong (translates links rather than giving you the raw value like every other major language).
Really the biggest problem with PHP is not the language itself, however, it's all the bad information out there about how to use it. Many of the helpful examples (especially for form processing or database work) are so full of security holes it's not funny. Sadder still is that it's the newbies that don't understand such concepts that read this bad advice as gospel and then continue to promote it by posting it again in their turn. All languages have their holes and flaws, but PHPs are more visible because of it's ubiquity (e.g. anyone can get a cheap hosting account that supports PHP) and because it drives the majority of the UIs on the web.
I'll vote to acquit you only if you take out the bastard that thought the "triple square" was an improvement. I have Torx bits coming out of my ass, but no my new car needs a triple square to pull the seats out. You know what those extra teeth buy you? Even more stripped bolts than Torx does!
Is a good dead common hex bolt really too difficult?
A few comments above yours pointed out an interesting conundrum... The government is claiming he's lying, which means that if he's lying, he released no secret information.
Unless all you do is read headlines and 2 sentence paragraphs, there is no conundrum. They are not denying the existence of the program, that it was kept from the public, or that it keeps a record of all call metadata. They are denying the validity of some of the additional claims he has made saying that he did not have the level of access that would have been needed for some things and that others simply don't exist (and you can trust that they would never not tell you of such things...). So there is nothing preventing them from charging him for the crimes he did commit without contradicting themselves.
Actually it will be history that decides if his actions were correct or not. There is no question (and he doesn't even deny it) that he broke several laws in releasing this information. Since there is no question he broke the law, he is therefore a criminal. He just isn't convicted.
The question for history to decide is if his actions were the right thing to do and/or if the laws are correct. And really the only way he is viewed by history as anything but a criminal (if he is remembered at all) is if his "side" ultimately wins.
Our country was founded by a bunch of people that were legally criminals as they broke the laws of the ruling power. They are not remembered as such because they ultimately won their fight and broke with the Crown. Had the revolution failed (or more specifically if it never really started because the majority of the populace was too apathetic about it all) if the founding fathers were remembered at all it would be either a foot note in some legal rulings or as villains that were to be derided (think Guy Fawkes).
Personally I think laws to prevent critical information being spilled need to exists, but there also need to be protections for people that expose information in a responsible manner to enlighten people about abuses of power. Our country was founded by people that spoke out against an oppressive government and our most basic protected freedom should be to do just that.
Sadly I think we (the People) are far too accepting of them saying "trust us, it's to stop terrorists" and even if they don't like it most are too apathetic to do anything about it.
The rotation is nice in theory, but notice that the power cable port is right there as well and also rotates with the unit. So this rotation is great when nothing is plugged in. As soon as you start plugging stuff in then either it doesn't rotate or you've got so much extra cabling on your desk that it's a spaghetti nightmare.
Explain in 5 lines or less how you calculate "how much you make" for every possible scenario. If you can't do that, then any hope of simplifying the tax code to that level is pie-in-the-sky thinking.
How about: The monetary value (to close the "I was paid in goats" loophole) of assets and money that was acquired as a result of investments or services rendered. If it's something you didn't have at the beginning of the year and you didn't pay for it, then it's income.
I don't agree with the basic premise as I think there are valid cases that should be exempt, but defining "how much you make" is pretty simple.
Actually if you read the excerpt of the TOS that the post you replied to included, they would since that would require a streaming server (even if it is built into the camera itself). Basically the TOS stipulates that you can't have any incoming connections (which begs the question of why they don't just NAT or firewall it all if it's that big of a deal to them).
The reality, however, is that they don't care about the vast majority of those that violate these rules as we aren't using enough bandwidth to matter. As pointed out previously in this thread though, the equivalent of 24 days straight at 300Mbps is likely to get their attention.
Personally I run a commercial router (Juniper SRX) instead of their Actiontec, a few different internet accessible services, and WFH via a VPN to my office. Verizon knows about all this because I've talked to them multiple times (getting the MAC updated in their DHCP server so I could get an IP on my router, finding out about blocked ports, etc..) including a few weeks ago when they wanted to "upgrade" my plan to which I explained losing 20Mbps off the upstream speed is not an upgrade and doesn't work for me and paying $25/mon for the same product (as far as I'm concerned) is also not acceptable. They haven't made any complaints or suggestions to move to a business account, but then I only max out my bandwidth for the equivalent of maybe 3 or 4 days throughout the entire month and the rest of the time it's pretty typical usage patterns.
I disagree. I think contests are a perfect filtering mechanism for experienced programmers. It tells us that the company would rather waste our time on trivial crap rather than solving the real problems.
I do see value in this type of stuff for giving the people with no experience a chance to rise above the thousands of other resumes for the same entry level position.
Yes playing with CAN is a fun thing and gives you all kinds of access, but what you can do for rolling your own system is drastically different than what is worthwhile for someone like Alpine to do. Yes they have the experience to build a unit that could emulate all those functions, but they can't focus on just one car and expect to make money. Instead they would have to build a HU that supports the Volt, Leaf, Prius, Tesla, etc.. and each has very different methods of communicating very similar information (and that is just the electric/hybrid crowd). You also have some companies (VW) that are starting to encrypt messages on the CAN which makes it that much more difficult.
I said I wasn't ever going to put another computer into a car (it was fun and cool, but I never had time to do all the stuff I wanted and it caused other issues) and I didn't want to build anymore audio systems, but the system in my new car is royally irritating me. Unfortunately, however, due to the level of integration it's not a "plug it in and tweak as you go" situation like my old car was.
Are you on MP3car or have a blog somewhere? I'd be interested in checking out what you've done so far if you have it documented.
The problem is that most MFGs are moving to systems where there is no traditional headunit to replace. Go look at the Volvos that seem to have started the trend that others are following. There is no custom kit because there is nothing to actually replace. Even for the cars that still have identifiable and removable headunits, other car functions are so integrated that you either can't replace it at all or you drop a lot of functionality in the process (go look at any hybrid for extreme examples). In my latest car (in which I despise the interface and functionality of the headunit) I would lose my park assist function (not a bad thing in my opinion), my trip meters (really important), fuel economy information (it lies, but since I know by how much it's still valuable), key based preferences (e.g. seat memory, etc..), steering wheel controls, and a 1/4 of my dash would go dark (which also means I'd drop a whole other list of functions). Sadly this is the path the MFGs are taking and it's going to continue to get worse.
So instead the aftermarket market is moving towards tapping into the outputs to clean up the signal and route it off to better amplifiers and (where possible) tap into the inputs (usually bypassing the headunit altogether) to add additional functionality (HD radio, iPod, BT, etc..). Unfortunately those aren't really integrated (from the control aspect) so aren't appealing to those that want it all in one place.
Case in point, Audi's MMI is over 3K to upgrade from an already fancy screen to manage car and entertainment.
Indeed, but if you want a real shock go look at what it will cost to replace it if you have to do so out of pocket. And since the systems are so integrated anymore you are almost forced to do so as you've lost a lot more than just your radio/maps (and if they pass the laws that they are talking about to require reverse sensors then you'll have to by law or fail your inspections (in states that have them) since it would then be "safety" equipment).
That is one, but it's not a big one. I installed a standard Mac Mini in my last car (only modification was a hack to the power button so the power supply I was using could put it to sleep when the car was off) and it worked just fine on 100+ days and sub freezing days (not the extremes, but the range certainly covers what would be seen in most populated areas). It also continued to work just fine after being in a few accidents.
The real primary reason they are so far behind is how long it takes to get from the design stage to the point it is in the showroom. A big part of that time is getting the government stamps of approval. Many of the various approvals are invalidated for seemingly unrelated changes. As such there comes a point relatively early in the process where they put a freeze on any further changes (sans fault issues) even for stuff that should just be a drop in replacement.
If they tried to stay up to date with the desktop/laptop/phone world you would either never see the car produced due to constantly being changed or it would cost an obscene amount (due to the effort of constantly changing). And even then it's only going to be update for those that are buying at the initial release. Since cars usually have a 4-6 year model run the majority of tech wouldn't be changed during the mid-cycle facelift and as such is going to still be horribly out of date.
I think they could be better in some regards, but from a business/manufacturing perspective it make perfect sense that they are behind. I think they just need to stop trying and instead make use of the fact that most people have smart phones these days. Build the HUs with a standard interface and then they can have their "entertainment" teams focused on the mobile apps that they can change almost on the fly.
And this is different than say cell phone providers or cell phone software vendors? Google, RIM and MS would rather you buy a new device with the latest software than have to support some older version of the software I am sure.
Last I checked the vast majority of phones don't have their prices measured in the thousands of dollars for used models and in the tens of thousands for new models even without a contract subsidy.
I dislike the phone lock-in model as much as most people, but we are talking a slightly different scale here. Hell, most of these integrated head units alone cost more than vast majority of unsubsidized phones.
Maybe it won't. But I'm still glad that at least this event didn't give another argument to those who want to plaster our streets with security cameras.
What do you think this statement is about then? "Oh gosh, the old and inferior system we have now isn't good enough so we'll just have to be happy with it the way it is" I think not. This is clearly an early play in the "well if we had X we could have prevented/resolved this in a better/faster manner".
You don't get it, do you? It is a horribly demeaning and invasive process.
I do get it and feel exactly the same about it. I find it even more horribly demeaning to have the scanners used on me though. I, however, choose not to hide my "shame" about this process and want everyone that is around to see it so they can understand as well.
As with your experience, so far all my agents have been courteous and professional about it all. They even seem to be as put off by the whole thing as I am. I don't hassle them or make a scene about it, but I won't go through the scanners (for both philosophical and medical reasons).
I take a bit of the opposite tact, as I prefer to be treated like a criminal in private rather than in full display of the public. That and it forces them to use additional resources, as now two people have to be monitoring the pat-down.
There are two reasons I choose to do it in public. The first is that in private it's your word against a bunch of TSA screeners. There are no other possible witnesses and I don't trust them not to side with each other given that you've already irritated them by singling yourself out. I'm not saying they are going to be out to do anything wrong, but if there is an issue then you are on the wrong side.
The second is that it is shocking how many people still don't understand they have an option (or have believed the FUD that it is some horribly demeaning and invasive process). By staying in the public space you help educate those that don't know.
No. My assertion is having a gun did nothing for the two police officers that they shot while the SUV driver that did not have a gun (or at least did not choose to draw it) walked away with only some bad memories to deal with.
I never implied that a gun is never the correct course of action. Just that it's not the course of action that the vast majority of average people (e.g. not trained in law enforcement or military protocols) can appropriately execute. Even with the proper training, in a close combat situation with someone that is willing to take a life, the outcome if far from certain.
My point is that your implication that you can go spend a couple of days to get a CC permit will somehow let you survive meeting someone with a similar mindset to these two guys is just ludicrous. Spending years on a range becoming a marksman also doesn't translate to you somehow being capable with the weapon in what equates to a combat situation.
Hopefully if you do actually own a gun then your aren't remotely as childish and idiotic as your original post implies.
Won't stop a bomb, but would be pretty handy if people like these two chuckle heads decide to start shooting things up instead of blowing them up.
As evidenced at the Marathon there were lots of trained people with guns and it did nothing to stop the event. So at least we agree there.
As evidenced last night, however, the only people that were injured/killed by these two were people with guns. The guy they carjacked who presumably didn't put up much of a fight was released without physical harm. Had he had a gun and tried to resist them do you really think he'd be telling his story given the rest of the surrounding events?
I don't advocate just laying down and taking it, but this idea of "I have a gun so I can protect myself" is just stupid. Even if you have all the proper training to deal with such a situation (which by the way is mostly about how to get out of it without using the gun) there is just no guaranty of you coming out the other side OK. Furthermore it takes a special kind of mentality to actually take someone's life (rather than just talking about how you'd be able to do it) which most people just don't have and this leads to hesitation. Hesitation in situations where firing a gun is warranted leads to bad outcomes. Your 2 day CC class isn't going to do anything but give you a false sense of security that is more likely to get you or an innocent hurt or killed.
I'm all for owning guns and using them responsibly (both in the owning and using), but it's idiots like you lend validity to the anti-gun-nuts arguments.
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Wait a second, so the TSA makes me take my shoes off and treats me like a criminal but people can just drive their car right up to the runway with nothing to stop them?
Well there are signs telling you not to go there. That will keep the terrorists out right? Right?
That's my view of this whole thing. OK Apple Maps is being stupid and the drivers even dumber, but I live at the end of the runway for an International airport and there are unhappy looking people with guns standing next to closed gates for any non-public access points to the grounds (which includes anything that leads to the runways). So WTF is going on up in Fairbanks?
I regularly miss the end of things because the DVR doesn't know what to stop.
That's not the DVR's fault. That's the stupid channels that start and stop things at times other than what they have have set in their guide information. These seemed to really get bad a few years ago (History channel seems to the worst that I watch).
I'm not sure who makes them, but they're ridiculously sluggish and don't perform as well as the one we had when we got the service.
I recently had to replace my old TiVO S3 and was quite disappointed to find that the new one is even slower than the S3 which I was quite irritated by to begin with.
I was actually talking about the IRS itself, not X.org's accountants.
Your claim was that there is a conspiracy against OSS organizations, but this wasn't some obscure rule or gray area that they used to revoke the status. The X.org accountant also admits that he screwed it up so unless you have evidence that he is a plant by the IRS or "the powers that be" there is no conspiracy evidenced by this case.
The IRS's job is to collect taxes according to the tax law (convoluted though it may be). Part of that job is to make sure that people and businesses are paying what they should be (loopholes aside). This is a clear case of X.org's status was reviewed and the IRS found that they weren't meeting the requirements of the non-profit status. It's really not any different than if you had consistently filed your taxes late, they decide to audit you for it, and they turn up evidence of your unreported eBay store that you are supposed to be paying taxes on. Just because you don't like taxes or don't agree with some particular tax law doesn't make what happens in cases like this wrong.
I'm not denying that there are abuses and things aren't enforced uniformly, but the fact is that they failed to follow the law and were punished for it according to the law.
People complain when a government agency isn't doing their job and you're complaining about them actually doing it. There is no conspiracy here. There is no trampling of freedoms. This is exactly what is supposed to happen in such cases.
Filing a tax return on time is a complicated rule that's too hard to follow?
No, but the way they keep moving April 15th to a different day of the week every year sure is hard to keep up with!
So the "powers that be" infiltrated X.Org's finance/accounting groups and made them not follow the rules for non-profits?
This is no different than the spun up fiasco a few months ago about the IRS investigating non-profits that appeared to be fronts for political organizations (and contrary to the Fox spin, it was not just targeting the Tea Party). To be a non-profit there are some specific rules you have to follow to maintain the status. It is the IRS's job to investigate to make sure you are following those rules.
So the real news here is "IRS does their job and idiots get upset about it and make up conspiracy stories".
Then you've never heard of the CAN bus, which is in use on every car produced since 1996. You'd have to avoid anything with obvious wireless access, which means no lock/unlock/panic/remote start systems, and likely not even a car radio since many are on the bus as well.
No, ODB-II was mandated on every new car sold in the US starting in 1996. CAN didn't gain mass adoption for quite a while yet (I have a 2001 with out it and just replaced a 2004 not too long ago that didn't have it).
All of the things you listed as not being possible without CAN were also around long before CAN (and well before ODB-II (though entirely unrelated) was mandated).
Even for the cars that are built today, there are still a fair number that do not have any wireless access to the bus (e.g. cars without OnSTAR or the like). I just bought one in fact. The wireless access was his concern and he still has plenty of options to avoid that while still having all the other benefits of a CAN based car.
How anyone in his right mind can imply that such a device is qualitatively no different than, say, a baseball bat or a straight razor is simply beyond me.
What a baseball bat can do and what a gun can do are two totally different things, but then what a .22 target pistol and a .45 caliber Tommy Gun can do are also two drastically different things.
You argue that a gun is an equalizer, which it is, but bringing a baseball bat to a fist fight is also equalizing/tilting the result in your favor as well.
A gun, just like a baseball bat, is an inanimate object that is capable of doing nothing on it's own without external forces. Also like a baseball bat it is perfectly safe when being used properly.
The real problem is the person holding the weapon and the only difference a gun makes is how big of a problem that person is for those they interact with. We really need to focus on the issues that drive people to these extreme situations rather than the tool they used to act it out.
I personally would argue that there are weapons that the average person doesn't need. I would also argue that there should be stricter classing (e.g. target pistols vs semi-auto, vs full-auto, etc..), training, and licensing so that we know that those that want to have a weapon have a reasonable expectancy to know how to use. care for, and handle it properly. I won't, however, argue that the solution to the worlds ills is to try and remove guns (both because it won't be possible and that want to do harm will still find other ways).
Maybe you don't recall, but box cutters were used for the most horrific event in the US in the last few decades. No guns, just a few box cutters to take over a couple of planes...
it also makes you look like an idiot who can't form their own opinions.
So does using the "but everyone else is doing it" argument.
I've used all kinds of languages for different purposes and the only thing I can say nice about PHP is that it is nearly as ubiquitous as Perl. Otherwise it is neither as capable or well thought out as it's competitors. My personal pet peeve is the inconsistent error handling (some functions just return true/false, some use NULL and false interchangeably, some write their error messages to STDERR, some to STDOUT, most give you no way to programmatically capture the error in a reasonable manner, and a few actually use the built exception functionality (though I still saw a handful that just used a generic exception with no details about the failure). The top failure of the language that gets the majority of my venom is their poor use of the __FILE__ macro and the maintainers refusal to recognize that they are the ones doing it wrong (translates links rather than giving you the raw value like every other major language).
Really the biggest problem with PHP is not the language itself, however, it's all the bad information out there about how to use it. Many of the helpful examples (especially for form processing or database work) are so full of security holes it's not funny. Sadder still is that it's the newbies that don't understand such concepts that read this bad advice as gospel and then continue to promote it by posting it again in their turn. All languages have their holes and flaws, but PHPs are more visible because of it's ubiquity (e.g. anyone can get a cheap hosting account that supports PHP) and because it drives the majority of the UIs on the web.
I'll vote to acquit you only if you take out the bastard that thought the "triple square" was an improvement. I have Torx bits coming out of my ass, but no my new car needs a triple square to pull the seats out. You know what those extra teeth buy you? Even more stripped bolts than Torx does!
Is a good dead common hex bolt really too difficult?
A few comments above yours pointed out an interesting conundrum... The government is claiming he's lying, which means that if he's lying, he released no secret information.
Unless all you do is read headlines and 2 sentence paragraphs, there is no conundrum. They are not denying the existence of the program, that it was kept from the public, or that it keeps a record of all call metadata. They are denying the validity of some of the additional claims he has made saying that he did not have the level of access that would have been needed for some things and that others simply don't exist (and you can trust that they would never not tell you of such things...). So there is nothing preventing them from charging him for the crimes he did commit without contradicting themselves.
Actually it will be history that decides if his actions were correct or not. There is no question (and he doesn't even deny it) that he broke several laws in releasing this information. Since there is no question he broke the law, he is therefore a criminal. He just isn't convicted.
The question for history to decide is if his actions were the right thing to do and/or if the laws are correct. And really the only way he is viewed by history as anything but a criminal (if he is remembered at all) is if his "side" ultimately wins.
Our country was founded by a bunch of people that were legally criminals as they broke the laws of the ruling power. They are not remembered as such because they ultimately won their fight and broke with the Crown. Had the revolution failed (or more specifically if it never really started because the majority of the populace was too apathetic about it all) if the founding fathers were remembered at all it would be either a foot note in some legal rulings or as villains that were to be derided (think Guy Fawkes).
Personally I think laws to prevent critical information being spilled need to exists, but there also need to be protections for people that expose information in a responsible manner to enlighten people about abuses of power. Our country was founded by people that spoke out against an oppressive government and our most basic protected freedom should be to do just that.
Sadly I think we (the People) are far too accepting of them saying "trust us, it's to stop terrorists" and even if they don't like it most are too apathetic to do anything about it.
The rotation is nice in theory, but notice that the power cable port is right there as well and also rotates with the unit. So this rotation is great when nothing is plugged in. As soon as you start plugging stuff in then either it doesn't rotate or you've got so much extra cabling on your desk that it's a spaghetti nightmare.
Explain in 5 lines or less how you calculate "how much you make" for every possible scenario. If you can't do that, then any hope of simplifying the tax code to that level is pie-in-the-sky thinking.
How about: The monetary value (to close the "I was paid in goats" loophole) of assets and money that was acquired as a result of investments or services rendered. If it's something you didn't have at the beginning of the year and you didn't pay for it, then it's income.
I don't agree with the basic premise as I think there are valid cases that should be exempt, but defining "how much you make" is pretty simple.
Actually if you read the excerpt of the TOS that the post you replied to included, they would since that would require a streaming server (even if it is built into the camera itself). Basically the TOS stipulates that you can't have any incoming connections (which begs the question of why they don't just NAT or firewall it all if it's that big of a deal to them).
The reality, however, is that they don't care about the vast majority of those that violate these rules as we aren't using enough bandwidth to matter. As pointed out previously in this thread though, the equivalent of 24 days straight at 300Mbps is likely to get their attention.
Personally I run a commercial router (Juniper SRX) instead of their Actiontec, a few different internet accessible services, and WFH via a VPN to my office. Verizon knows about all this because I've talked to them multiple times (getting the MAC updated in their DHCP server so I could get an IP on my router, finding out about blocked ports, etc..) including a few weeks ago when they wanted to "upgrade" my plan to which I explained losing 20Mbps off the upstream speed is not an upgrade and doesn't work for me and paying $25/mon for the same product (as far as I'm concerned) is also not acceptable. They haven't made any complaints or suggestions to move to a business account, but then I only max out my bandwidth for the equivalent of maybe 3 or 4 days throughout the entire month and the rest of the time it's pretty typical usage patterns.
I disagree. I think contests are a perfect filtering mechanism for experienced programmers. It tells us that the company would rather waste our time on trivial crap rather than solving the real problems.
I do see value in this type of stuff for giving the people with no experience a chance to rise above the thousands of other resumes for the same entry level position.
Yes playing with CAN is a fun thing and gives you all kinds of access, but what you can do for rolling your own system is drastically different than what is worthwhile for someone like Alpine to do. Yes they have the experience to build a unit that could emulate all those functions, but they can't focus on just one car and expect to make money. Instead they would have to build a HU that supports the Volt, Leaf, Prius, Tesla, etc.. and each has very different methods of communicating very similar information (and that is just the electric/hybrid crowd). You also have some companies (VW) that are starting to encrypt messages on the CAN which makes it that much more difficult.
I said I wasn't ever going to put another computer into a car (it was fun and cool, but I never had time to do all the stuff I wanted and it caused other issues) and I didn't want to build anymore audio systems, but the system in my new car is royally irritating me. Unfortunately, however, due to the level of integration it's not a "plug it in and tweak as you go" situation like my old car was.
Are you on MP3car or have a blog somewhere? I'd be interested in checking out what you've done so far if you have it documented.
The problem is that most MFGs are moving to systems where there is no traditional headunit to replace. Go look at the Volvos that seem to have started the trend that others are following. There is no custom kit because there is nothing to actually replace. Even for the cars that still have identifiable and removable headunits, other car functions are so integrated that you either can't replace it at all or you drop a lot of functionality in the process (go look at any hybrid for extreme examples). In my latest car (in which I despise the interface and functionality of the headunit) I would lose my park assist function (not a bad thing in my opinion), my trip meters (really important), fuel economy information (it lies, but since I know by how much it's still valuable), key based preferences (e.g. seat memory, etc..), steering wheel controls, and a 1/4 of my dash would go dark (which also means I'd drop a whole other list of functions). Sadly this is the path the MFGs are taking and it's going to continue to get worse.
So instead the aftermarket market is moving towards tapping into the outputs to clean up the signal and route it off to better amplifiers and (where possible) tap into the inputs (usually bypassing the headunit altogether) to add additional functionality (HD radio, iPod, BT, etc..). Unfortunately those aren't really integrated (from the control aspect) so aren't appealing to those that want it all in one place.
Case in point, Audi's MMI is over 3K to upgrade from an already fancy screen to manage car and entertainment.
Indeed, but if you want a real shock go look at what it will cost to replace it if you have to do so out of pocket. And since the systems are so integrated anymore you are almost forced to do so as you've lost a lot more than just your radio/maps (and if they pass the laws that they are talking about to require reverse sensors then you'll have to by law or fail your inspections (in states that have them) since it would then be "safety" equipment).
TFA mentions at least one challenge.
That is one, but it's not a big one. I installed a standard Mac Mini in my last car (only modification was a hack to the power button so the power supply I was using could put it to sleep when the car was off) and it worked just fine on 100+ days and sub freezing days (not the extremes, but the range certainly covers what would be seen in most populated areas). It also continued to work just fine after being in a few accidents.
The real primary reason they are so far behind is how long it takes to get from the design stage to the point it is in the showroom. A big part of that time is getting the government stamps of approval. Many of the various approvals are invalidated for seemingly unrelated changes. As such there comes a point relatively early in the process where they put a freeze on any further changes (sans fault issues) even for stuff that should just be a drop in replacement.
If they tried to stay up to date with the desktop/laptop/phone world you would either never see the car produced due to constantly being changed or it would cost an obscene amount (due to the effort of constantly changing). And even then it's only going to be update for those that are buying at the initial release. Since cars usually have a 4-6 year model run the majority of tech wouldn't be changed during the mid-cycle facelift and as such is going to still be horribly out of date.
I think they could be better in some regards, but from a business/manufacturing perspective it make perfect sense that they are behind. I think they just need to stop trying and instead make use of the fact that most people have smart phones these days. Build the HUs with a standard interface and then they can have their "entertainment" teams focused on the mobile apps that they can change almost on the fly.
And this is different than say cell phone providers or cell phone software vendors? Google, RIM and MS would rather you buy a new device with the latest software than have to support some older version of the software I am sure.
Last I checked the vast majority of phones don't have their prices measured in the thousands of dollars for used models and in the tens of thousands for new models even without a contract subsidy.
I dislike the phone lock-in model as much as most people, but we are talking a slightly different scale here. Hell, most of these integrated head units alone cost more than vast majority of unsubsidized phones.
Maybe it won't. But I'm still glad that at least this event didn't give another argument to those who want to plaster our streets with security cameras.
What do you think this statement is about then? "Oh gosh, the old and inferior system we have now isn't good enough so we'll just have to be happy with it the way it is" I think not. This is clearly an early play in the "well if we had X we could have prevented/resolved this in a better/faster manner".
You don't get it, do you? It is a horribly demeaning and invasive process.
I do get it and feel exactly the same about it. I find it even more horribly demeaning to have the scanners used on me though. I, however, choose not to hide my "shame" about this process and want everyone that is around to see it so they can understand as well.
As with your experience, so far all my agents have been courteous and professional about it all. They even seem to be as put off by the whole thing as I am. I don't hassle them or make a scene about it, but I won't go through the scanners (for both philosophical and medical reasons).
I take a bit of the opposite tact, as I prefer to be treated like a criminal in private rather than in full display of the public. That and it forces them to use additional resources, as now two people have to be monitoring the pat-down.
There are two reasons I choose to do it in public. The first is that in private it's your word against a bunch of TSA screeners. There are no other possible witnesses and I don't trust them not to side with each other given that you've already irritated them by singling yourself out. I'm not saying they are going to be out to do anything wrong, but if there is an issue then you are on the wrong side.
The second is that it is shocking how many people still don't understand they have an option (or have believed the FUD that it is some horribly demeaning and invasive process). By staying in the public space you help educate those that don't know.
No. My assertion is having a gun did nothing for the two police officers that they shot while the SUV driver that did not have a gun (or at least did not choose to draw it) walked away with only some bad memories to deal with.
I never implied that a gun is never the correct course of action. Just that it's not the course of action that the vast majority of average people (e.g. not trained in law enforcement or military protocols) can appropriately execute. Even with the proper training, in a close combat situation with someone that is willing to take a life, the outcome if far from certain.
My point is that your implication that you can go spend a couple of days to get a CC permit will somehow let you survive meeting someone with a similar mindset to these two guys is just ludicrous. Spending years on a range becoming a marksman also doesn't translate to you somehow being capable with the weapon in what equates to a combat situation.
Hopefully if you do actually own a gun then your aren't remotely as childish and idiotic as your original post implies.
Won't stop a bomb, but would be pretty handy if people like these two chuckle heads decide to start shooting things up instead of blowing them up.
As evidenced at the Marathon there were lots of trained people with guns and it did nothing to stop the event. So at least we agree there.
As evidenced last night, however, the only people that were injured/killed by these two were people with guns. The guy they carjacked who presumably didn't put up much of a fight was released without physical harm. Had he had a gun and tried to resist them do you really think he'd be telling his story given the rest of the surrounding events?
I don't advocate just laying down and taking it, but this idea of "I have a gun so I can protect myself" is just stupid. Even if you have all the proper training to deal with such a situation (which by the way is mostly about how to get out of it without using the gun) there is just no guaranty of you coming out the other side OK. Furthermore it takes a special kind of mentality to actually take someone's life (rather than just talking about how you'd be able to do it) which most people just don't have and this leads to hesitation. Hesitation in situations where firing a gun is warranted leads to bad outcomes. Your 2 day CC class isn't going to do anything but give you a false sense of security that is more likely to get you or an innocent hurt or killed.
I'm all for owning guns and using them responsibly (both in the owning and using), but it's idiots like you lend validity to the anti-gun-nuts arguments.