TFA has all the factual content of a fluff piece read by the attractive yet dimwitted weekend morning anchor on the local news. There is no information at all to back up the baseless claims in the article. Not even a link to the "data" or a summary of the "data" that Google has allegedly collected.
This story should never have made it out of the firehose.
Defective by design. There shouldn't be enough information on a device to perform a complete purchase. No amount of security updates will resolve a system that isn't design where convenience have been chosen over security.
There isn't. That information is tied to the account that the device is associated with and communicates with over the network.
I like the method my bank uses.
I'm glad to hear it. But your bank is irrelevant to a discussion about a networked e-reader and the many reasons there might be to perform security updates that have nothing to do with purchasing or banking, even if authorizing purchases by communicating with an online account is one of the things it can do that needs securing.
And, please, what securiity updates for a freking e-reader? It's a device for reading documents, nothing more, nothing less. Do you apply security updates to a paper book? Yeah, yeah, I know, you can browse the web, read mail, install apps and so on. But why should you do it? You bought it for reading books, right, else you'd have bought a tablet.
Think it through. How do those books get on the device in the first place? It's a networked device with purchasing ability, tied to your Amazon account and payment information. That's enough reason to warrant security updates, even if the device is used for nothing else but buying and reading books.
I think the OP was speaking generally. The settings you mention are simple enough. In hindsight (ie. back in the day), the advanced settings section often became a collecting point for many edge-case tweaks, so things could get complicated and messy if not unchecked. So in modern products that can of worms is often pre-emptively left closed.
Get a grip. The site where the articles were posted is dedicated to books and reading gadgets. As enthusiasts, they would be aware of many ereaders, and mentioning one in the context of an article about a shortcoming of another makes sense. Just as an article about Ubuntu might mention Fedora, mentioning the Kobo in an article about Kindle makes sense. I see no advertising here.
By not upgrading unless it adds something you need?
That can often times be difficult, since the description of upgrades are often dumbed down to the point of uselessness in the name of user friendliness or deliberately obfuscated to hide what they contain (looking at you, Microsoft). Figuring out if it contains something you need isn't as simple as your flippant comment suggests. Not to mention the fact that updates on devices like the kindle are delivered in a single monolithic update file, so there is no opportunity to selectively reject changes such as the one OP describes while accepting needed security updates.
Once you've got your severance, can't you bitch about the company online, anonymously? Even if they find out, how are they going to get the money back?
They sue you and point to the non-disparage agreement you signed before leaving in court.
Seems to me the negative publicity generated by suing former employees would be worse than what a former employee (branded with the label "disgruntled") might say.
Based on recent attempts to push telemetry via updates and the monitoring built in to Windows 10, using SwiftKey as a key logger to gather information on mobile users seems possible.
The deal just closed less than 24 hours ago, so there are no immediate plans other than to try and gauge the community and make sure what we do is inline with the original Slashdot spirit. Our company is profitable, so we have no reason to resort to desperate deceptive or underhanded methods in order to make money.
Welcome.
Our focus is making sure this community has the support it needs.
First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent. It is just my opinion, and I am not going to embarrass anyone by showing examples, but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex. It will make updates easier.
Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.
It annoys me to no end to read posts with errors like: "... it annoys me to now end", "MS Words" (it's MS Word), "Al Gore's Incontinent Truth" (it's 'An Inconvenient Truth'). Most annoying is getting the capitalization of LaTeX wrong (it's not "LaTex"). It looks ugly and unprofessional and most certainly incompetent.
Both you and bitingduck need to catch up with recent developments. Calibre does editing and is basically the successor to Sigil, since development stalled on the latter awhile back. Calibre's editor incorporates most Sigil features and is actively developed.
Yes, that falls under the "dumb ass" classification.
I admin - I've shot a gun or three for new years and fourth of july. Straight down into the ground or other safe back stop.
You must live on a sand dune, because most of the places I've lived, there are numerous large rocks in the ground than can easily redirect a bullet into an arbitrary direction, some of which include an upward vector. If you live anywhere the glaciers extended during the ice age, there's a good chance that there are just as many large rocks and boulders in the ground as there is soil. "Safe" and "dumb ass" are matters of interpretation. It may be you were less of one and more of the other than you thought. And more lucky too.
You're spot on there - your sarcasm enhancement wasn't effective at all. The sarcasm totally came across as a hastily submitted sentence fragment that required no thought at all apart from an overestimation of your own cleverness and talent at subtle humor.
They can save about 500% of my bandwidth by just letting me perma-download Family Guy, American Dad, and Buffy, which I keep watching over and over and over again.
Netflix probably aren't too keen on the idea of paying people to puzzle over what compression would best suit each and every item in their 1-Petabyte video library.
The summary says they spent four years developing the new approach. I suspect that paying people to puzzle over (in layman's terms: do research) how to improve the encoding across their Petabyte video library was exactly what they did.
Saving on bandwidth costs? Providing a better streaming experience for customers on poor or throttled connections? Storage space savings? Getting the satisfaction of doing something better because why not?
I suspect that by the time of this announcement they have already done the testing, so have a good idea of how much they can optimize. From the article, it's more about optimizing compression parameters to fit the source material rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
Here's some data for you so you don't have to rely on "I hear that..." and "... my personal experience". I picked this one because it seemed to take a measured approach, including a reasonable definition of "mass shooting" than is generally used (in other words, there are more gun-related shootings than presented here because they don't fit the definition). Glancing through this, I don't see a distinct trend upward or downward in either frequency or fatalities. Certainly nothing I'd call "substantial".
Yep. JetBrains is trying to go that direction with their new "subscription" model too, though they didn't jump in with quite both feet after the initial announcement wasn't met with universal enthusiasm. They make good products, no doubt. But there are plenty of 'good enough' alternatives to make me wonder if their dreams will come true.
Because the other 'unlimited' resource that actually isn't is the ability for everyone to pay regular subscription fees for everything all the time forever. And with the contraction of the middle class, the amount of available resource is dwindling fast.
Translation: I am biased and choosing to stick my head in the sand on this issue.
Translation: I'm unable to cogently carry on a civil discussion or respond with valid points of my own, so I'm going to make myself feel clever and witty by reposting someone else's post again in an astounding act of me-tooism.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA has all the factual content of a fluff piece read by the attractive yet dimwitted weekend morning anchor on the local news. There is no information at all to back up the baseless claims in the article. Not even a link to the "data" or a summary of the "data" that Google has allegedly collected.
This story should never have made it out of the firehose.
Defective by design. There shouldn't be enough information on a device to perform a complete purchase.
No amount of security updates will resolve a system that isn't design where convenience have been chosen over security.
There isn't. That information is tied to the account that the device is associated with and communicates with over the network.
I like the method my bank uses.
I'm glad to hear it. But your bank is irrelevant to a discussion about a networked e-reader and the many reasons there might be to perform security updates that have nothing to do with purchasing or banking, even if authorizing purchases by communicating with an online account is one of the things it can do that needs securing.
And, please, what securiity updates for a freking e-reader? It's a device for reading documents, nothing more, nothing less. Do you apply security updates to a paper book?
Yeah, yeah, I know, you can browse the web, read mail, install apps and so on. But why should you do it? You bought it for reading books, right, else you'd have bought a tablet.
Think it through. How do those books get on the device in the first place? It's a networked device with purchasing ability, tied to your Amazon account and payment information. That's enough reason to warrant security updates, even if the device is used for nothing else but buying and reading books.
I think the OP was speaking generally. The settings you mention are simple enough. In hindsight (ie. back in the day), the advanced settings section often became a collecting point for many edge-case tweaks, so things could get complicated and messy if not unchecked. So in modern products that can of worms is often pre-emptively left closed.
Get a grip. The site where the articles were posted is dedicated to books and reading gadgets. As enthusiasts, they would be aware of many ereaders, and mentioning one in the context of an article about a shortcoming of another makes sense. Just as an article about Ubuntu might mention Fedora, mentioning the Kobo in an article about Kindle makes sense. I see no advertising here.
By not upgrading unless it adds something you need?
That can often times be difficult, since the description of upgrades are often dumbed down to the point of uselessness in the name of user friendliness or deliberately obfuscated to hide what they contain (looking at you, Microsoft). Figuring out if it contains something you need isn't as simple as your flippant comment suggests. Not to mention the fact that updates on devices like the kindle are delivered in a single monolithic update file, so there is no opportunity to selectively reject changes such as the one OP describes while accepting needed security updates.
Once you've got your severance, can't you bitch about the company online, anonymously? Even if they find out, how are they going to get the money back?
They sue you and point to the non-disparage agreement you signed before leaving in court.
Seems to me the negative publicity generated by suing former employees would be worse than what a former employee (branded with the label "disgruntled") might say.
Based on recent attempts to push telemetry via updates and the monitoring built in to Windows 10, using SwiftKey as a key logger to gather information on mobile users seems possible.
Who are you? I really wanna know.
The deal just closed less than 24 hours ago, so there are no immediate plans other than to try and gauge the community and make sure what we do is inline with the original Slashdot spirit. Our company is profitable, so we have no reason to resort to desperate deceptive or underhanded methods in order to make money.
Welcome.
Our focus is making sure this community has the support it needs.
https support would be nice.
Good. Competition is healthy.
First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent. It is just my opinion, and I am not going to embarrass anyone by showing examples, but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex. It will make updates easier.
Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.
It annoys me to no end to read posts with errors like: "... it annoys me to now end", "MS Words" (it's MS Word), "Al Gore's Incontinent Truth" (it's 'An Inconvenient Truth'). Most annoying is getting the capitalization of LaTeX wrong (it's not "LaTex"). It looks ugly and unprofessional and most certainly incompetent.
Both you and bitingduck need to catch up with recent developments. Calibre does editing and is basically the successor to Sigil, since development stalled on the latter awhile back. Calibre's editor incorporates most Sigil features and is actively developed.
http://manual.calibre-ebook.co...
Yes, that falls under the "dumb ass" classification.
I admin - I've shot a gun or three for new years and fourth of july. Straight down into the ground or other safe back stop.
You must live on a sand dune, because most of the places I've lived, there are numerous large rocks in the ground than can easily redirect a bullet into an arbitrary direction, some of which include an upward vector. If you live anywhere the glaciers extended during the ice age, there's a good chance that there are just as many large rocks and boulders in the ground as there is soil. "Safe" and "dumb ass" are matters of interpretation. It may be you were less of one and more of the other than you thought. And more lucky too.
Improved sarcasm enhancement
You're spot on there - your sarcasm enhancement wasn't effective at all. The sarcasm totally came across as a hastily submitted sentence fragment that required no thought at all apart from an overestimation of your own cleverness and talent at subtle humor.
They can save about 500% of my bandwidth by just letting me perma-download Family Guy, American Dad, and Buffy, which I keep watching over and over and over again.
Look into something called "Boxed Sets".
Or find another hobby.
Netflix probably aren't too keen on the idea of paying people to puzzle over what compression would best suit each and every item in their 1-Petabyte video library.
The summary says they spent four years developing the new approach. I suspect that paying people to puzzle over (in layman's terms: do research) how to improve the encoding across their Petabyte video library was exactly what they did.
So nothing that's REALLY important then?
So what would something REALLY important be?
What problem is this trying to address?
Saving on bandwidth costs?
Providing a better streaming experience for customers on poor or throttled connections?
Storage space savings?
Getting the satisfaction of doing something better because why not?
I suspect that by the time of this announcement they have already done the testing, so have a good idea of how much they can optimize. From the article, it's more about optimizing compression parameters to fit the source material rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
Here's some data for you so you don't have to rely on "I hear that ..." and "... my personal experience". I picked this one because it seemed to take a measured approach, including a reasonable definition of "mass shooting" than is generally used (in other words, there are more gun-related shootings than presented here because they don't fit the definition). Glancing through this, I don't see a distinct trend upward or downward in either frequency or fatalities. Certainly nothing I'd call "substantial".
US Mass Shootings, 1982-2015: Data From Mother Jones' Investigation
Some context is available here: A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
The juxtaposition of 24-Hour Shopping Channel and "I don't really know that it's going to put more guns on the streets." makes my brain hurt.
Unless they plan to deal in 100% used merchandise, that' pretty much exactly what it's going to do.
Yep. JetBrains is trying to go that direction with their new "subscription" model too, though they didn't jump in with quite both feet after the initial announcement wasn't met with universal enthusiasm. They make good products, no doubt. But there are plenty of 'good enough' alternatives to make me wonder if their dreams will come true.
Because the other 'unlimited' resource that actually isn't is the ability for everyone to pay regular subscription fees for everything all the time forever. And with the contraction of the middle class, the amount of available resource is dwindling fast.
Translation: I am biased and choosing to stick my head in the sand on this issue.
Translation: I'm unable to cogently carry on a civil discussion or respond with valid points of my own, so I'm going to make myself feel clever and witty by reposting someone else's post again in an astounding act of me-tooism.