That breaks as soon as your network changes the schedules. Which, in my personal experience, is quite often. The only show that I know is broadcast at the same time for ages is the evening news. Everything else is regularly moved around. And even the evening news (especially the late night broadcast) is occasionally delayed due to some sports event or so.
To watch a weekly show, that's about US$20 per episode.
You have to be a really great fan of the show to pay that much (notwithstanding the trouble to go through to get it all arranged and installed, and cancelled later).
And after a free download you can watch it when YOU think it's a good time, not when the broadcaster thinks it's a good time.
Searching on gnutella is far more common than searching on facebook.
The vast majority of searches for Facebook you don't see as they are db calls: every single item in your news feed, every single comment on those items, who liked them, etc: that are all searches. And that's going to take a hell of a long time to collect over such a network. It's not even a search for a specific item like a file name; it's a database query that has to be handled and interpreted by every single node.
And trust me: for many people it matters a lot whether it's near real time as it's now, vs. hours of delay. Look at all those "on the way for lunch, wanna join?" type of status updates: those rely on near real-time communication. Also the chat-like use of the comments on items requires these fast updates. Same for requesting the other 10 comments on an item - only the latest few (are they the latest? or are there more in the hours-long pipeline?) are shown normally.
The speed of getting info from your friends is what keeps people addicted, which is why they're interested to have it on mobile to begin with: see who just updated stuff, who just commented to their status updates, whatever. Take away that speed, and it's over and done with.
I'm one of those users using desktop computer only for accessing facebook; I don't have mobile data on my phone. Yet as soon as it would start taking hours for data to reach me, I'd be gone, and so would many if not all of my friends, to look for something that actually works.
Probably there will be something new sooner or later, but centralised systems like Facebook have advantages.
Availability of content. You're not leaving your phone on all the time, and I'm not sure how fast your upload is, nor about your data limits. And that's assuming you have a smartphone and that you have a data connection with it. Having it on a centralised server negates these issues: always available, always fast. Reliability of an organised centrailised system is better than that of a disorganised decentralised system. Especially when those centralised system spreads out over multiple locations/networks like Facebook and other big providers already do.
Sending messages: an intermediate is almost a must, when the clients are not sure to be online all the time. You can post messages, leave them on the central server, and recipient can read them sometime later.
Contact management, searching for friends, etc: we all know how well search works on a fully decentralised system like Gnutella. Without centralised index search just doesn't scale well.
I'd like to know how current Facebook can be done with a fully decentralised system. The "likes", the news feed with updates from friends who may or may not be online right then, etc.
Not sure: medical imaging uses x-rays that go through the body (for looking at the inside); those scanners use backscatter: surface(?) reflections of x-rays (for looking at the surface). Same general type of radiation; very different technology.
The problem is: how am I, an end-user, not having a degree in environmental issues or anything, to judge this?
The solution I have set for myself: if it's cheaper, it's generally more environmentally friendly overall. This goes wrong with hidden costs (pollution caused in production or as waste is usually not charged in the price) but it's the only measure that I have, unless it's known beforehand that the more expensive product is the more environmentally friendly option. And overall it's a quite reasonable measure I think, based on the idea that all economic activity causes some environmental impact, and more activity causes more impact but also asks for more money.
Save energy by switching of your lights: saves money (lower power bills). Saves the environment too.
Use rechargeable batteries instead of single use: saves money overall, and is said to be more environmentally friendly (less overall pollution).
Drive a more efficient car: ditto. Save fuel cost, save money, save the environment.
Repair or replace? Cost is again a primary consideration. But repairs are relatively expensive as they require a lot of specialised manpower, which is really expensive. Someone has to come to your home, look at the thing, figure out what's wrong, and then fix it.
But back to the old toaster: a toaster lives for say five years. If after five years something small breaks, and you can fix it to make it live another two extra years, that's 40% of environmental impact of making a new toaster saved (you have to buy your next one two years later than you otherwise would), at a cost of maybe 10% extra total impact to do the repair. But it's a bit of a gamble - how much investment in repair is worth the longer lifespan? How much are you going to get out of it? But well if repairs are cheap, why not just try that first.
In times of recession, such shops usually do better as people look for ways to save costs.
And those shops are just lovely to browse around. You never know what you're going to find. Lots of crap, but sometimes really cool stuff for really low prices.
In US I think you will easily have >95% US nationality among residents. Same in Netherlands.
What you are talking about is ethnicity. Netherlands is almost 80% ethnic Dutch, the other 20% of many different ethnicities of which at least 12% non-Caucasians. Many of whom are Dutch born and should be considered Dutch for that sake; when you talk to them you won't hear any foreign accent for example.
The US is not that radically different, Wikipedia lists it as over 72% white. Now of course there is not such a thing as "ethnic USAian" or whatever you could call that, the US is one big melting pot of immigrants mostly from Europe. So I'll have to stick to the number of "whites" there.
Now when I am in Netherlands with my Chinese wife, people will simply address her in Dutch (she doesn't speak Dutch). Even though she's obviously Chinese. And then they're often surprised to learn she's not a Dutch really!
This is a stark contrast with the situation in Hong Kong. People will always address me (caucasian) in English. Even when their English is really poor and, in fact, far worse than my Chinese. They just don't expect any westerner to speak any Chinese. Even those that live here for over a decade. Indeed many westerners don't bother to learn the language, at all, which I think is not good.
Well let me tell you: the bill for a repair of something like a toaster is usually higher than the cost of a new one.
That's simply what I, the end user, the one actually trying to get myself a working toaster, have to pay for getting a working toaster after the existing toaster breaks.
Now of course repair has less environmental impact and so; but those costs are not reflected in the amount of money that is coming out of my wallet. And, as most people, I go for the cheapest option. Having a new toaster instead of a refurbished toaster is a nice extra.
It is indeed confusing; I've even once heard a group of locals entering the "wrong" kind of coffeeshop (a group of teenagers, 16-18yo mostly, from a local church on trip to Amsterdam wanting to have a cup of coffee). Anyway, when in doubt, use your nose.
That's why DRM doesn't work, it's simply self-defeating. You see the same with the e-books: Amazon's DRM allowed them to control the market, recently publishers started to drop DRM.
The only puzzling about the last one is that the DRM e-books market was started up only by the time the music market was already dropping DRM. Yet the publishers still insisted on DRM. Though they learned much faster than the music publishers!
So for the added cost of the real thing, you get the added unskippable ads, the added work of ripping this disk, the added cost of a DVD-R, and the added work of burning the disk and writing the title on it.
While if you buy the pirated one at 1/10th the price of the official release, you're good to go immediately.
Many disks have this piracy warning, and I have also several that have "unskippable" previews of other DVDs that you have to sit through for about five minutes(!!) before you get to the main menu.
Our DVD player (Philips brand, so should be up to "standard" on DRM) allows you to press and then as a workaround to get to the menu. That hasn't failed me yet. Having to do this is irritating enough, of course.
That said, the underwear bomber and shoe bomber that got on a plane, were not screened by TSA as they did not board in USA. IIRC the father of the underwear bomber already warned US intelligence about the man having this kind of ideas - so that's an intelligence failure even.
The second underwear bomber you refer to the one just uncovered? That bomb didn't even reach an airport, much less a plane, and again wouldn't have been screened by TSA but by some Middle East airport.
Anyway since the increased security after 9/11 two people actually managed to smuggle bombs on planes (and subsequently failed to set them off), while no would-be bombers were stopped by airport security (they would have reported it big time; and I haven't heard any such news over the past decade). That's a 100% failure rate on airport security.
Now how many chest CT scans does an average person receive in their life?
Compared to xray backscatter?
And then indeed we have to assume they "work properly" which I will happily assume for the CT scanner (specialised medical grade device; highly trained operators; relatively high dose making radiation safety more of an issue) vs. the airport scanners (non-medical; used 24/7; low dose so low assumed risk; operators with limited training; too low dose will result in no image so such a malfunction is easily detected, too high dose will work just fine from the operator's pov).
[TSA]You buying an air ticket means you may very well be a terrorist bound to blow up the plane, traveling with wife and children for decoy. So that's a "really good reason" to search you extra.[/TSA]
But but but.... that would mean you're supporting a REPUBLICAN? Do I see that correctly? You must be a Republican. Or how could any Democrat in their right mind support a Republican, even when their ideas make sense for a change?
OK I'm not an American but that's my view of America's super-partisan "as long as it's one of us" politics. Switch Republican and Democrat at will. And it's also why I don't think this TSA-abolishment will happen any time soon, because if one side wants it the other side is automatically against.
What is wrong with the voting machine printing out a receipt of your vote. It could have a hash on it, so you can go online at a later date and make sure the system has the right vote.
Vote buying (either by paying cash, or by threats). That's what's wrong with it. Voting is supposed to be anonymous as in no way to link a vote to a person; this way it's not as you have proof how you voted for.
Still I'd say the machine was fundamentally flawed. I expect more from such an important task.
1) it should not overheat. Sounds like a mechanical failure somehow, which of course is always possible in a mechanical device, and should be anticipated.
2) if it does overheat, it should not start making errors.
3) Overheating itself actually should be detected by the machine and be a reason for it to shut down: overheating means there's a mechanical problem, and results can not be guaranteed. And if it overheats to such an extent that the rest of electronics can't cope reliably anymore, it should definitely raise a warning and shut itself down.
Sounds like not enough testing done by manufacturer, and/or by the counters. I may assume they will do a test run of say 100 votes with a known result, right before and after the actual count, just to make sure the machine works.
The problem with a purely electronic voting machines is that, when done "well", you would have no way to tell whether a vote is recorded correctly or not. Just make sure that the final result is not too strange (e.g. 100% for one option), and that the vote totals are correct.
With an ATM you always have a physical (paper, if you will) record, in the form of the banknotes that are handed out. The machine records the notes handed out, charges them to bank accounts (can be checked by the account holder who will complain when overcharged), and the bank knows how many notes were there and how many should be still in. Those two records must match at all times.
In case of a voting machine this is harder to do. The only option would be to have a voting machine to include a receipt printer, that prints voter-verifiable receipts who are then placed in a traditional ballot box as backup record for recounts.
If your work demands your password, and you want to comply with Facebook's TOS, you have the option of not having a Facebook.
Which is probably going to be a problem if ever you registered an account there. After all Facebook will never delete anything you put there - at most they hide it from view.
Slashdot Mirror
That breaks as soon as your network changes the schedules. Which, in my personal experience, is quite often. The only show that I know is broadcast at the same time for ages is the evening news. Everything else is regularly moved around. And even the evening news (especially the late night broadcast) is occasionally delayed due to some sports event or so.
To watch a weekly show, that's about US$20 per episode.
You have to be a really great fan of the show to pay that much (notwithstanding the trouble to go through to get it all arranged and installed, and cancelled later).
And after a free download you can watch it when YOU think it's a good time, not when the broadcaster thinks it's a good time.
Searching on gnutella is far more common than searching on facebook.
The vast majority of searches for Facebook you don't see as they are db calls: every single item in your news feed, every single comment on those items, who liked them, etc: that are all searches. And that's going to take a hell of a long time to collect over such a network. It's not even a search for a specific item like a file name; it's a database query that has to be handled and interpreted by every single node.
And trust me: for many people it matters a lot whether it's near real time as it's now, vs. hours of delay. Look at all those "on the way for lunch, wanna join?" type of status updates: those rely on near real-time communication. Also the chat-like use of the comments on items requires these fast updates. Same for requesting the other 10 comments on an item - only the latest few (are they the latest? or are there more in the hours-long pipeline?) are shown normally.
The speed of getting info from your friends is what keeps people addicted, which is why they're interested to have it on mobile to begin with: see who just updated stuff, who just commented to their status updates, whatever. Take away that speed, and it's over and done with.
I'm one of those users using desktop computer only for accessing facebook; I don't have mobile data on my phone. Yet as soon as it would start taking hours for data to reach me, I'd be gone, and so would many if not all of my friends, to look for something that actually works.
Probably there will be something new sooner or later, but centralised systems like Facebook have advantages.
Availability of content. You're not leaving your phone on all the time, and I'm not sure how fast your upload is, nor about your data limits. And that's assuming you have a smartphone and that you have a data connection with it. Having it on a centralised server negates these issues: always available, always fast. Reliability of an organised centrailised system is better than that of a disorganised decentralised system. Especially when those centralised system spreads out over multiple locations/networks like Facebook and other big providers already do.
Sending messages: an intermediate is almost a must, when the clients are not sure to be online all the time. You can post messages, leave them on the central server, and recipient can read them sometime later.
Contact management, searching for friends, etc: we all know how well search works on a fully decentralised system like Gnutella. Without centralised index search just doesn't scale well.
I'd like to know how current Facebook can be done with a fully decentralised system. The "likes", the news feed with updates from friends who may or may not be online right then, etc.
Not sure: medical imaging uses x-rays that go through the body (for looking at the inside); those scanners use backscatter: surface(?) reflections of x-rays (for looking at the surface). Same general type of radiation; very different technology.
The problem is: how am I, an end-user, not having a degree in environmental issues or anything, to judge this?
The solution I have set for myself: if it's cheaper, it's generally more environmentally friendly overall. This goes wrong with hidden costs (pollution caused in production or as waste is usually not charged in the price) but it's the only measure that I have, unless it's known beforehand that the more expensive product is the more environmentally friendly option. And overall it's a quite reasonable measure I think, based on the idea that all economic activity causes some environmental impact, and more activity causes more impact but also asks for more money.
Save energy by switching of your lights: saves money (lower power bills). Saves the environment too.
Use rechargeable batteries instead of single use: saves money overall, and is said to be more environmentally friendly (less overall pollution).
Drive a more efficient car: ditto. Save fuel cost, save money, save the environment.
Repair or replace? Cost is again a primary consideration. But repairs are relatively expensive as they require a lot of specialised manpower, which is really expensive. Someone has to come to your home, look at the thing, figure out what's wrong, and then fix it.
But back to the old toaster: a toaster lives for say five years. If after five years something small breaks, and you can fix it to make it live another two extra years, that's 40% of environmental impact of making a new toaster saved (you have to buy your next one two years later than you otherwise would), at a cost of maybe 10% extra total impact to do the repair. But it's a bit of a gamble - how much investment in repair is worth the longer lifespan? How much are you going to get out of it? But well if repairs are cheap, why not just try that first.
In times of recession, such shops usually do better as people look for ways to save costs.
And those shops are just lovely to browse around. You never know what you're going to find. Lots of crap, but sometimes really cool stuff for really low prices.
In US I think you will easily have >95% US nationality among residents. Same in Netherlands.
What you are talking about is ethnicity. Netherlands is almost 80% ethnic Dutch, the other 20% of many different ethnicities of which at least 12% non-Caucasians. Many of whom are Dutch born and should be considered Dutch for that sake; when you talk to them you won't hear any foreign accent for example.
The US is not that radically different, Wikipedia lists it as over 72% white. Now of course there is not such a thing as "ethnic USAian" or whatever you could call that, the US is one big melting pot of immigrants mostly from Europe. So I'll have to stick to the number of "whites" there.
Now when I am in Netherlands with my Chinese wife, people will simply address her in Dutch (she doesn't speak Dutch). Even though she's obviously Chinese. And then they're often surprised to learn she's not a Dutch really!
This is a stark contrast with the situation in Hong Kong. People will always address me (caucasian) in English. Even when their English is really poor and, in fact, far worse than my Chinese. They just don't expect any westerner to speak any Chinese. Even those that live here for over a decade. Indeed many westerners don't bother to learn the language, at all, which I think is not good.
Well let me tell you: the bill for a repair of something like a toaster is usually higher than the cost of a new one.
That's simply what I, the end user, the one actually trying to get myself a working toaster, have to pay for getting a working toaster after the existing toaster breaks.
Now of course repair has less environmental impact and so; but those costs are not reflected in the amount of money that is coming out of my wallet. And, as most people, I go for the cheapest option. Having a new toaster instead of a refurbished toaster is a nice extra.
It is indeed confusing; I've even once heard a group of locals entering the "wrong" kind of coffeeshop (a group of teenagers, 16-18yo mostly, from a local church on trip to Amsterdam wanting to have a cup of coffee). Anyway, when in doubt, use your nose.
Dunno about iPhone but Android lets you disable WiFi or mobile data very easily. Switch it on only when you need it. Best adblocker possible, too.
Nothing illegal!
Absolutely correct.
That's why DRM doesn't work, it's simply self-defeating. You see the same with the e-books: Amazon's DRM allowed them to control the market, recently publishers started to drop DRM.
The only puzzling about the last one is that the DRM e-books market was started up only by the time the music market was already dropping DRM. Yet the publishers still insisted on DRM. Though they learned much faster than the music publishers!
So for the added cost of the real thing, you get the added unskippable ads, the added work of ripping this disk, the added cost of a DVD-R, and the added work of burning the disk and writing the title on it.
While if you buy the pirated one at 1/10th the price of the official release, you're good to go immediately.
Less problems playing DVD-R. That's why we replaced our player a few years ago.
Many disks have this piracy warning, and I have also several that have "unskippable" previews of other DVDs that you have to sit through for about five minutes(!!) before you get to the main menu.
Our DVD player (Philips brand, so should be up to "standard" on DRM) allows you to press and then as a workaround to get to the menu. That hasn't failed me yet. Having to do this is irritating enough, of course.
You took me far more serious than intended.
That said, the underwear bomber and shoe bomber that got on a plane, were not screened by TSA as they did not board in USA. IIRC the father of the underwear bomber already warned US intelligence about the man having this kind of ideas - so that's an intelligence failure even.
The second underwear bomber you refer to the one just uncovered? That bomb didn't even reach an airport, much less a plane, and again wouldn't have been screened by TSA but by some Middle East airport.
Anyway since the increased security after 9/11 two people actually managed to smuggle bombs on planes (and subsequently failed to set them off), while no would-be bombers were stopped by airport security (they would have reported it big time; and I haven't heard any such news over the past decade). That's a 100% failure rate on airport security.
Because there is no "sad but true" mod option available.
Now how many chest CT scans does an average person receive in their life?
Compared to xray backscatter?
And then indeed we have to assume they "work properly" which I will happily assume for the CT scanner (specialised medical grade device; highly trained operators; relatively high dose making radiation safety more of an issue) vs. the airport scanners (non-medical; used 24/7; low dose so low assumed risk; operators with limited training; too low dose will result in no image so such a malfunction is easily detected, too high dose will work just fine from the operator's pov).
[TSA]You buying an air ticket means you may very well be a terrorist bound to blow up the plane, traveling with wife and children for decoy. So that's a "really good reason" to search you extra.[/TSA]
But but but.... that would mean you're supporting a REPUBLICAN? Do I see that correctly? You must be a Republican. Or how could any Democrat in their right mind support a Republican, even when their ideas make sense for a change?
OK I'm not an American but that's my view of America's super-partisan "as long as it's one of us" politics. Switch Republican and Democrat at will. And it's also why I don't think this TSA-abolishment will happen any time soon, because if one side wants it the other side is automatically against.
What is wrong with the voting machine printing out a receipt of your vote. It could have a hash on it, so you can go online at a later date and make sure the system has the right vote.
Vote buying (either by paying cash, or by threats). That's what's wrong with it. Voting is supposed to be anonymous as in no way to link a vote to a person; this way it's not as you have proof how you voted for.
Still I'd say the machine was fundamentally flawed. I expect more from such an important task.
1) it should not overheat. Sounds like a mechanical failure somehow, which of course is always possible in a mechanical device, and should be anticipated.
2) if it does overheat, it should not start making errors.
3) Overheating itself actually should be detected by the machine and be a reason for it to shut down: overheating means there's a mechanical problem, and results can not be guaranteed. And if it overheats to such an extent that the rest of electronics can't cope reliably anymore, it should definitely raise a warning and shut itself down.
Sounds like not enough testing done by manufacturer, and/or by the counters. I may assume they will do a test run of say 100 votes with a known result, right before and after the actual count, just to make sure the machine works.
The problem with a purely electronic voting machines is that, when done "well", you would have no way to tell whether a vote is recorded correctly or not. Just make sure that the final result is not too strange (e.g. 100% for one option), and that the vote totals are correct.
With an ATM you always have a physical (paper, if you will) record, in the form of the banknotes that are handed out. The machine records the notes handed out, charges them to bank accounts (can be checked by the account holder who will complain when overcharged), and the bank knows how many notes were there and how many should be still in. Those two records must match at all times.
In case of a voting machine this is harder to do. The only option would be to have a voting machine to include a receipt printer, that prints voter-verifiable receipts who are then placed in a traditional ballot box as backup record for recounts.
If your work demands your password, and you want to comply with Facebook's TOS, you have the option of not having a Facebook.
Which is probably going to be a problem if ever you registered an account there. After all Facebook will never delete anything you put there - at most they hide it from view.