You're part of the problem with that attitude, that helpless, infantile view of not being able to do anything about it.
No, you're part of the problem trying to convince people that more of the same will somehow produce different results. Sure we can do something about it, but that process is likely to be very ugly for a long time and offers no guarantee of better results at the end. Your suggestions are pointless and you even acknowledge as much when you point out that most of America doesn't care.
Unfortunately, most of America shares that point of view...most of America is a flock of sheep. They don't know, nor care, about the issues plaguing their life because, like a poster said below, they can't be bothered, 'Dancing with the Stars' is on.
See? You have the puzzle pieces in your hand but you refuse to put them in place because you don't like the picture they make.
Voting.We got ourselves into this mess and we perpetuate it by voting for the same sort of morons over and over again. Purge the system. Vote every incumbent out. Never vote for politicians again, we don't need politicians in government, we need true leaders who understand industry.
Where are these true leaders with no political or government experience campaigning for our votes? The voting process is controlled by the Republican/Democratic party and you follow their rules or you don't get to play. Exceptions to that rule are few and far in between. Even those who are allowed to participate in the early going are weeded out well before many voters go to the polls. Did you see the results from yesterday's primary in West Virginia? The Republican nomination has already been granted to Mitt Romney although Ron Paul refuses to quit. Santorum, who is not longer running and is supporting Romney came in second on the Republican side. The only alternative to Obama was a guy in prison in Texas who registered for shit and giggles; do you think he'd be a better President than Obama?
Perhaps I have a naive point of view of it...
Indeed. I can appreciate your desire to do something instead of nothing. However, you are supporting the status quo with your arguments, regardless of what you claim to want.
1. The spear phishing emails were sent five or six months ago but the attacks using the malware didn't start until about two months ago. 2. I imagine the story broke because someone at a gas company leaked one of the several emails sent to us the last week or so. 3. All reports thus far indicate that the attackers were merely poking around and doing nothing destructive or particularly intrusive.
Because some of the targeted companies discovered the attacks and alerted the DHS. These reports have been shared with gas companies for months, including details about the phishing emails, the malware processes, and the C&C domains involved.
I've used Firefox for years but recently switched to Comodo's Chromium-based browser. While the Chrome version of AdBlock is much weaker than Firefox's, I otherwise love Comodo Dragon so far. Firefox was barely usable on my old XP machine and was only tolerable on our new netbooks. The performance difference on these types of computers is noticeable.
I've been a hardcore Firefox user for years, spreading it to family and friends every chance I get. I finally left it about a month ago. The constant versions didn't bug me nearly as much as the performance, particularly on older/slower systems. I went to Comodo Dragon, a Chromium-based browser with the Google tracking stuff removed and a bit of security protections added. I love the snappier response but I do miss AdBlock (yes, there are two for Chrome and I run one but it is nowhere as effective as the version on Firefox). However, our old XP machine at home and the kids' netbooks love me for switching.
On a somewhat related note, moving from AVG to MSE made a huge impact on system performance on these less-than-stellar machines. I couldn't believe how much better MSE runs and that it actually does a decent job now.
TechCar is the latest iteration of a large group of astroturfing accounts. There's a bunch of high UID accounts with similar style names (two random words smashed together) that shill pro-Microsoft and anti-Google positions. Unsurprisingly, he was born yesterday to post in Bonch's story claiming Google management knew about the wifi harvesting. He shows up to defend a well-established anti-Google (and pro-Apple) shill and has since posted a series of anti-Linux, anti-Google, and pro-Microsoft comments.
Assuming he follows the same pattern as the rest, mods will catch on in a week or two and his karma will plummet. The account will get put to sleep and a new one will be created.
The mere thought of cutting the CS department shows the thinking of a group of weak minds. These are the sort of people who don't save any grain for the next spring's planting.
Your post is filled with meaningless hyperbole and babble, and is way off base anyway. The university announced a restructuring of the CISE department so that computer engineering was moved in with other engineering disciplines and planned to eliminate doctorate-level and research-based CS work. The BS and MS programs were to remain as is. The post-grad and research work in computer engineering would continue in the engineering department.
But, hey, none of that matters, right? What's important is churning out at many STEM-related students as possible, even if they are but "glorified electricians".
No, that's incorrect. It would end your game and delete the saved game associated with it. You absolutely knew immediately if you had failed the copy protection check.
To my knowledge, still nobody knows how to defeat the copy-protection on the original Master of Orion properly (GoG.com just give you a copy of the protection sheet as a PDF).
Just a minor point - the GOG version of MOO prompts for the ship just like the retail game did, but it doesn't care which one you choose. They did work around it somehow.
I ran across the FLL last year while looking for some extracurriculars for our homeschoolers. My two oldest are in the range for FLL so I looked into our options for local participation. I was pleasantly surprised to find five or six teams in our small town (population 50,000) and at least a dozen within an hour's drive. The local 4H clubs work with NASA to sponsor teams, which eliminates most of the cost barriers. I am coaching a team this year and will be responsible for perhaps $200 (depending on tournament and travel costs); the 4H is covering over $700 in national registration, robot, practice field, etc. If I want to bother with soliciting, it should be simple to get the remaining costs covered by businesses or colleges.
NASA also works with colleges and other groups to bring training to you. I recently attended a free all day training at a local Montessori school - it was targeted at teachers who want to use LEGO robotics in the classroom but included several homeschool parents and even a local artist who wants to give life to some of his work. The class provided a great introduction to using the NXT software and some suggestions for projects that can be used in math and science classrooms; attending it also qualifies me to checkout their loaner lab for a week or two at a time, which includes 9 stations (laptop with NXT software, robot, and lots of extra parts).
These are expensive toys for sure, but a bit of creativity and looking for local support can get them in your hands for next to nothing.
Indeed. TFA is very misleading and inaccurate opinion piece written by a contributor who usually focuses on healthcare issues. If you read the items he references in his hack job, you'll see that CISE program is not eliminated at all. The computer engineering programs are being moved from CISE to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Graduate programs and research work will continue in computer engineering there. Most graduate programs and research work in CISE will be eliminated, but the computer science BS and MS programs will remain. The projected savings are $1.36 million out of a $4 million in cuts across the university.
For what it's worth, this article is one of several opinion pieces carried by Forbes attacking this decision and all are full of inaccuracies and outright lies. Computer science research is being cut. The computer science programs remain. Computer engineering research remains but is moved into Engineering instead of CISE.
An ad hominem attack would be if I said we can disregard his arguments because he has no formal training, which I did not. You either don't understand this or you're trolling. In case it is the former, I'll give it one more try for you.
Florian provides consistently shoddy analysis and is decidedly one-sided in his coverage of the issues. Despite no background or training in patent issues or legal proceedings, he managed to set himself up as an expert and quickly became the go-to guy for a handful of industry rags. His former career was as a marketing consultant for large software companies. Now we see that, as suggested by his work, he is indeed employed by the very companies that he claimed to oppose and for which he has written favorably.
The good news, though, is that the rates will decline again because (you can look this up) the vaccine strain does not cause the same latent infection...
Actually, I have looked it up and that information is not easy to come by. For what little it's worth, Wikipedia says you are exactly wrong:
Some persons exposed to the virus after vaccine can experience milder cases of chicken pox (and usually then harbor both the attenuated vaccine or oka strain as well as the wild type or natural chickenpox strain which are both subject to reactivation as shingles).
However, this information was pulled from a CDC web site years ago and apparently has been significantly overhauled since.
I did find a few "I play a doctor online" sites that made your claim but they offered nothing more than their statement to back it up. I likewise found others than completely disagreed with you, again with no references. I have found several papers that assumed the attenuated virus would continue to exist in the body just as the wild variants do and therefore have the same risk of shingles down the road. I found others that claimed the vaccine prevents you from getting the virus at all, so therefore it is impossible to get shingles later (which is oversimplified to the point of being inaccurate). An article in the USA Today that read like a CDC press release claimed that you can get shingles later in life whether or not you had the vaccine or "regular" chickenpox.
Studies (and several recent outbreaks) have indicated that the success rate of the vaccine is well below the original projections. It isn't uncommon for kids to acquire a mild case of chickenpox soon after the vaccine (as one of mine did). So even if the vaccine, when it works perfectly, prevents shingles (and I can find no solid support for this), you'll still have plenty of people who were vaccinated yet end up with shingles.
I wonder if anyone informed you of shingles...You son probable got it because some other ass wipe made the wrong decision and didn't have their kids vaccinated.
Wow. The level of ignorance about this topic is breathtaking. The chickenpox can cause shingles just like the wild virus. In fact, early research is bearing out fears that widespread chickenpox vaccinations will lead to increased rates of shingles later in life. Adults with shingles can transmit chickenpox to others who do not have sufficient immunity, whether due to failed vaccination, faded vaccine immunity, or just never catching it.
This isn't autism claims - take a few minutes to learn the basics about chickenpox and its vaccine before shooting off your mouth.
Where's the moderation option for WRONG when you need it?
How can you blame the tin foil heads with so many errors made by the pro crowd? First, from cpu6502's post:
Except the vaccine virus is already dead, so it's harmless.
This is false. The chicken pox vaccine is an attenuated vaccine, meaning it is weakened but very much still alive.
From the parent post:
The vaccine, unlike the wild virus, does not take up residence in nerve roots and does not have the potential to cause shingles later.
This is false. Either version can cause shingles later in life. In fact, early research is bearing out predictions that mass chicken pox vaccinations will lead to increased shingles rates.
Unlike some, I can read the medical literature on this stuff. I even talk to my doctor, believe it or not.
The hospital where I used to work routinely provided chicken pox boosters to employees. I was advised not to get the booster because I did not have chicken pox as a child. The doctors told me that I had an increased risk of contracting shingles from the vaccination and that I'd be better off taking my chances without the booster. In my research of the literature, I've found nothing to support this. In fact, the CDC recommends the vaccine specifically to adults who never had chicken pox as a child.
As an independent analyst, he is terrible. His explanations of legal proceedings are crap and his predictions are often very wrong. Yet, he'll keep beating the same drum and presenting fantasy as fact. Why? Having to reveal that he is paid by both Microsoft and Oracle explains it. His "opinions" are carefully crafted propaganda. He is a paid shill and likely has no personal attachment to the idiotic opinions he shares. Don't forget, his former career was a marketing consultant for large software companies; he may have changed his title but the work is the same.
The fact that he works for Oracle doesn't prove his arguments are wrong. Attacking the person, not the logic, is a well-known logical fallacy: argumentum ad hominem. All his employment provides us is some additional perspective on where he's coming from. We still need to listen to what he actually has to say.
I'll assume you haven't been paying attention to this for the past few years and didn't bother to catch up before posting to this article. Florian has long been accused of being a mole of sorts - a paid shill on the inside, claiming to be for OSS and presenting himself a patent expert while writing everything with a pro-Microsoft and anti-Google slant. His comments on the countless Apple v. World lawsuits have been consistently against Google and anyone using Android. Same for the Google/Oracle spat. He was able to get himself quoted as an expert for articles dealing with these topics enough times that he became the go-to guy for any tech rag or news service. This despite the fact that his analysis was shoddy on the surface and regularly proved very wrong in hindsight. However, as his influence spread from a crappy blog to being quoted by the AP in every tech patent story, his ability to hide the truth shrank. He recently had to disclose that he is paid by Microsoft (something long claimed by those who distrusted him) and now we see that he is also paid by Oracle.
He had an under-the-radar career as a marketing consultant with some bigger players in the industry, then suddenly in 2005 blew up as an OSS advocate and opponent of software patents. He won countless industry awards that year for his work and used that to launch a new career as a tech patents blogger and media expert, despite no formal training or career experience in the areas. And despite his claims to support OSS and oppose software patents, his analysis consistently failed to match up to his persona. No matter the issue, he consistently sided against Google, Linux, and OSS in general. To anyone reading his blog for any length of time, it was obvious that something was amiss.
No, this absolutely is not an ad hominem attack - it is some hard proof for the suppositions that have been made for years.
Who is the moron here? I'd put my money on the one totally oblivious to sarcasm. Really, all you and the ones who modded me Troll accomplished is prove my point...
Maybe, just maybe, your post wasn't funny and your attempt at sarcasm was just piss poor.
The thing is, there is no way for the general public to verify how accurate or reliable these meters are. Ideally these should be extremely simple, easily auditable, devices.
And the general public can verify their legacy water meter? I know mine is about 3 three feet deep in a manhole with a steel cover and small sensor that the meter reader touches with a wand each month to read my usage.
But I can imagine the specs for something like this growing until it can send e-mail...
In theory these are the same measurement technology, but instead of incrementing a physical index (or doing only that) the usage is stored electronically and communicated wirelessly. The basic technology is not really different from telemetering equipment that has been used for decades.
This is a big part of the "smart grid" push from the DoE. Some of the largest electric utilities are providing customers with boxes to mount in their house that provides the sort of stuff you want. These boxes communicate with your meter via Xbee. However, you seem to be an abnormal customer - most utilities report that customers do not want these boxes.
Many utilities also offer online access to your data and/or scheduled emails with usage reports.
1. The federal government is very strongly pushing the electric utilities to implement "smart grid" technologies, whether or not the business wants it. 2. Electric utilities do not contract out construction of their meters and development of the software. There are a few vendors in this market and you will use one of them. 3. You seem to be implying that utilities should have no recourse for customers who steal service. Surely this isn't your position. 4. I actually RTFA and I was pretty blown away by the comments at the end by the guy at Itron. He passes the buck, saying, "Utilities have to be more enterprise security-aware." Absolutely, but the utilities are using the crap you sold them. As arguably the premier player in this space, the responsibility to create secure meters falls squarely on Itron's shoulders.
How many games were blacked out due to being shown on cable or OTA?
Zero. Every single game was available live. The quality was surprisingly good.
Apart from the sort of geek demographic that reads Slashdot, most people either A. aren't aware they can use a TV as a PC monitor or B. don't have a laptop or a second small-form-factor desktop that they can spare.
I didn't claim my answer was for 100% of the population. We have two televisions from the past five years with at least one spare HDMI input and a cheap ASUS laptop that has HDMI out. This isn't is a high-tech media center design - I have nothing that isn't increasingly common in the average house. My wife has to give up some Facebook time while I'm watching the game - that seems like a much better deal than what the cable company was charging me every month.
There's really no need to have cable anymore unless you want live sports.
And even that is changing. MLB, NHL, and the NBA have various streaming packages or Roku channels available. I paid $4 this year to watch the entire NCAA basketball tournament on my laptop, which I connected to my television via HDMI and enjoyed comparable picture with fewer commercials. Since I use the local cable company for Internet service, I also get ESPN3 which I use for some college football and basketball games. The NFL is the big holdout right now but I can get enough games OTA to make up for the massive cost savings.
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You're part of the problem with that attitude, that helpless, infantile view of not being able to do anything about it.
No, you're part of the problem trying to convince people that more of the same will somehow produce different results. Sure we can do something about it, but that process is likely to be very ugly for a long time and offers no guarantee of better results at the end. Your suggestions are pointless and you even acknowledge as much when you point out that most of America doesn't care.
Unfortunately, most of America shares that point of view...most of America is a flock of sheep. They don't know, nor care, about the issues plaguing their life because, like a poster said below, they can't be bothered, 'Dancing with the Stars' is on.
See? You have the puzzle pieces in your hand but you refuse to put them in place because you don't like the picture they make.
Voting.We got ourselves into this mess and we perpetuate it by voting for the same sort of morons over and over again. Purge the system. Vote every incumbent out. Never vote for politicians again, we don't need politicians in government, we need true leaders who understand industry.
Where are these true leaders with no political or government experience campaigning for our votes? The voting process is controlled by the Republican/Democratic party and you follow their rules or you don't get to play. Exceptions to that rule are few and far in between. Even those who are allowed to participate in the early going are weeded out well before many voters go to the polls. Did you see the results from yesterday's primary in West Virginia? The Republican nomination has already been granted to Mitt Romney although Ron Paul refuses to quit. Santorum, who is not longer running and is supporting Romney came in second on the Republican side. The only alternative to Obama was a guy in prison in Texas who registered for shit and giggles; do you think he'd be a better President than Obama?
Perhaps I have a naive point of view of it...
Indeed. I can appreciate your desire to do something instead of nothing. However, you are supporting the status quo with your arguments, regardless of what you claim to want.
1. The spear phishing emails were sent five or six months ago but the attacks using the malware didn't start until about two months ago.
2. I imagine the story broke because someone at a gas company leaked one of the several emails sent to us the last week or so.
3. All reports thus far indicate that the attackers were merely poking around and doing nothing destructive or particularly intrusive.
Because some of the targeted companies discovered the attacks and alerted the DHS. These reports have been shared with gas companies for months, including details about the phishing emails, the malware processes, and the C&C domains involved.
I've used Firefox for years but recently switched to Comodo's Chromium-based browser. While the Chrome version of AdBlock is much weaker than Firefox's, I otherwise love Comodo Dragon so far. Firefox was barely usable on my old XP machine and was only tolerable on our new netbooks. The performance difference on these types of computers is noticeable.
I've been a hardcore Firefox user for years, spreading it to family and friends every chance I get. I finally left it about a month ago. The constant versions didn't bug me nearly as much as the performance, particularly on older/slower systems. I went to Comodo Dragon, a Chromium-based browser with the Google tracking stuff removed and a bit of security protections added. I love the snappier response but I do miss AdBlock (yes, there are two for Chrome and I run one but it is nowhere as effective as the version on Firefox). However, our old XP machine at home and the kids' netbooks love me for switching.
On a somewhat related note, moving from AVG to MSE made a huge impact on system performance on these less-than-stellar machines. I couldn't believe how much better MSE runs and that it actually does a decent job now.
TechCar is the latest iteration of a large group of astroturfing accounts. There's a bunch of high UID accounts with similar style names (two random words smashed together) that shill pro-Microsoft and anti-Google positions. Unsurprisingly, he was born yesterday to post in Bonch's story claiming Google management knew about the wifi harvesting. He shows up to defend a well-established anti-Google (and pro-Apple) shill and has since posted a series of anti-Linux, anti-Google, and pro-Microsoft comments.
Assuming he follows the same pattern as the rest, mods will catch on in a week or two and his karma will plummet. The account will get put to sleep and a new one will be created.
The mere thought of cutting the CS department shows the thinking of a group of weak minds. These are the sort of people who don't save any grain for the next spring's planting.
Your post is filled with meaningless hyperbole and babble, and is way off base anyway. The university announced a restructuring of the CISE department so that computer engineering was moved in with other engineering disciplines and planned to eliminate doctorate-level and research-based CS work. The BS and MS programs were to remain as is. The post-grad and research work in computer engineering would continue in the engineering department.
But, hey, none of that matters, right? What's important is churning out at many STEM-related students as possible, even if they are but "glorified electricians".
No, that's incorrect. It would end your game and delete the saved game associated with it. You absolutely knew immediately if you had failed the copy protection check.
To my knowledge, still nobody knows how to defeat the copy-protection on the original Master of Orion properly (GoG.com just give you a copy of the protection sheet as a PDF).
Just a minor point - the GOG version of MOO prompts for the ship just like the retail game did, but it doesn't care which one you choose. They did work around it somehow.
I ran across the FLL last year while looking for some extracurriculars for our homeschoolers. My two oldest are in the range for FLL so I looked into our options for local participation. I was pleasantly surprised to find five or six teams in our small town (population 50,000) and at least a dozen within an hour's drive. The local 4H clubs work with NASA to sponsor teams, which eliminates most of the cost barriers. I am coaching a team this year and will be responsible for perhaps $200 (depending on tournament and travel costs); the 4H is covering over $700 in national registration, robot, practice field, etc. If I want to bother with soliciting, it should be simple to get the remaining costs covered by businesses or colleges.
NASA also works with colleges and other groups to bring training to you. I recently attended a free all day training at a local Montessori school - it was targeted at teachers who want to use LEGO robotics in the classroom but included several homeschool parents and even a local artist who wants to give life to some of his work. The class provided a great introduction to using the NXT software and some suggestions for projects that can be used in math and science classrooms; attending it also qualifies me to checkout their loaner lab for a week or two at a time, which includes 9 stations (laptop with NXT software, robot, and lots of extra parts).
These are expensive toys for sure, but a bit of creativity and looking for local support can get them in your hands for next to nothing.
Indeed. TFA is very misleading and inaccurate opinion piece written by a contributor who usually focuses on healthcare issues. If you read the items he references in his hack job, you'll see that CISE program is not eliminated at all. The computer engineering programs are being moved from CISE to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Graduate programs and research work will continue in computer engineering there. Most graduate programs and research work in CISE will be eliminated, but the computer science BS and MS programs will remain. The projected savings are $1.36 million out of a $4 million in cuts across the university.
For what it's worth, this article is one of several opinion pieces carried by Forbes attacking this decision and all are full of inaccuracies and outright lies. Computer science research is being cut. The computer science programs remain. Computer engineering research remains but is moved into Engineering instead of CISE.
An ad hominem attack would be if I said we can disregard his arguments because he has no formal training, which I did not. You either don't understand this or you're trolling. In case it is the former, I'll give it one more try for you.
Florian provides consistently shoddy analysis and is decidedly one-sided in his coverage of the issues. Despite no background or training in patent issues or legal proceedings, he managed to set himself up as an expert and quickly became the go-to guy for a handful of industry rags. His former career was as a marketing consultant for large software companies. Now we see that, as suggested by his work, he is indeed employed by the very companies that he claimed to oppose and for which he has written favorably.
The good news, though, is that the rates will decline again because (you can look this up) the vaccine strain does not cause the same latent infection...
Actually, I have looked it up and that information is not easy to come by. For what little it's worth, Wikipedia says you are exactly wrong:
Some persons exposed to the virus after vaccine can experience milder cases of chicken pox (and usually then harbor both the attenuated vaccine or oka strain as well as the wild type or natural chickenpox strain which are both subject to reactivation as shingles).
However, this information was pulled from a CDC web site years ago and apparently has been significantly overhauled since.
I did find a few "I play a doctor online" sites that made your claim but they offered nothing more than their statement to back it up. I likewise found others than completely disagreed with you, again with no references. I have found several papers that assumed the attenuated virus would continue to exist in the body just as the wild variants do and therefore have the same risk of shingles down the road. I found others that claimed the vaccine prevents you from getting the virus at all, so therefore it is impossible to get shingles later (which is oversimplified to the point of being inaccurate). An article in the USA Today that read like a CDC press release claimed that you can get shingles later in life whether or not you had the vaccine or "regular" chickenpox.
Studies (and several recent outbreaks) have indicated that the success rate of the vaccine is well below the original projections. It isn't uncommon for kids to acquire a mild case of chickenpox soon after the vaccine (as one of mine did). So even if the vaccine, when it works perfectly, prevents shingles (and I can find no solid support for this), you'll still have plenty of people who were vaccinated yet end up with shingles.
I wonder if anyone informed you of shingles...You son probable got it because some other ass wipe made the wrong decision and didn't have their kids vaccinated.
Wow. The level of ignorance about this topic is breathtaking. The chickenpox can cause shingles just like the wild virus. In fact, early research is bearing out fears that widespread chickenpox vaccinations will lead to increased rates of shingles later in life. Adults with shingles can transmit chickenpox to others who do not have sufficient immunity, whether due to failed vaccination, faded vaccine immunity, or just never catching it.
This isn't autism claims - take a few minutes to learn the basics about chickenpox and its vaccine before shooting off your mouth.
Where's the moderation option for WRONG when you need it?
How can you blame the tin foil heads with so many errors made by the pro crowd? First, from cpu6502's post:
Except the vaccine virus is already dead, so it's harmless.
This is false. The chicken pox vaccine is an attenuated vaccine, meaning it is weakened but very much still alive.
From the parent post:
The vaccine, unlike the wild virus, does not take up residence in nerve roots and does not have the potential to cause shingles later.
This is false. Either version can cause shingles later in life. In fact, early research is bearing out predictions that mass chicken pox vaccinations will lead to increased shingles rates.
Unlike some, I can read the medical literature on this stuff. I even talk to my doctor, believe it or not.
The hospital where I used to work routinely provided chicken pox boosters to employees. I was advised not to get the booster because I did not have chicken pox as a child. The doctors told me that I had an increased risk of contracting shingles from the vaccination and that I'd be better off taking my chances without the booster. In my research of the literature, I've found nothing to support this. In fact, the CDC recommends the vaccine specifically to adults who never had chicken pox as a child.
As an independent analyst, he is terrible. His explanations of legal proceedings are crap and his predictions are often very wrong. Yet, he'll keep beating the same drum and presenting fantasy as fact. Why? Having to reveal that he is paid by both Microsoft and Oracle explains it. His "opinions" are carefully crafted propaganda. He is a paid shill and likely has no personal attachment to the idiotic opinions he shares. Don't forget, his former career was a marketing consultant for large software companies; he may have changed his title but the work is the same.
The fact that he works for Oracle doesn't prove his arguments are wrong. Attacking the person, not the logic, is a well-known logical fallacy: argumentum ad hominem. All his employment provides us is some additional perspective on where he's coming from. We still need to listen to what he actually has to say.
I'll assume you haven't been paying attention to this for the past few years and didn't bother to catch up before posting to this article. Florian has long been accused of being a mole of sorts - a paid shill on the inside, claiming to be for OSS and presenting himself a patent expert while writing everything with a pro-Microsoft and anti-Google slant. His comments on the countless Apple v. World lawsuits have been consistently against Google and anyone using Android. Same for the Google/Oracle spat. He was able to get himself quoted as an expert for articles dealing with these topics enough times that he became the go-to guy for any tech rag or news service. This despite the fact that his analysis was shoddy on the surface and regularly proved very wrong in hindsight. However, as his influence spread from a crappy blog to being quoted by the AP in every tech patent story, his ability to hide the truth shrank. He recently had to disclose that he is paid by Microsoft (something long claimed by those who distrusted him) and now we see that he is also paid by Oracle.
He had an under-the-radar career as a marketing consultant with some bigger players in the industry, then suddenly in 2005 blew up as an OSS advocate and opponent of software patents. He won countless industry awards that year for his work and used that to launch a new career as a tech patents blogger and media expert, despite no formal training or career experience in the areas. And despite his claims to support OSS and oppose software patents, his analysis consistently failed to match up to his persona. No matter the issue, he consistently sided against Google, Linux, and OSS in general. To anyone reading his blog for any length of time, it was obvious that something was amiss.
No, this absolutely is not an ad hominem attack - it is some hard proof for the suppositions that have been made for years.
Who is the moron here? I'd put my money on the one totally oblivious to sarcasm. Really, all you and the ones who modded me Troll accomplished is prove my point...
Maybe, just maybe, your post wasn't funny and your attempt at sarcasm was just piss poor.
The thing is, there is no way for the general public to verify how accurate or reliable these meters are. Ideally these should be extremely simple, easily auditable, devices.
And the general public can verify their legacy water meter? I know mine is about 3 three feet deep in a manhole with a steel cover and small sensor that the meter reader touches with a wand each month to read my usage.
But I can imagine the specs for something like this growing until it can send e-mail...
In theory these are the same measurement technology, but instead of incrementing a physical index (or doing only that) the usage is stored electronically and communicated wirelessly. The basic technology is not really different from telemetering equipment that has been used for decades.
This is a big part of the "smart grid" push from the DoE. Some of the largest electric utilities are providing customers with boxes to mount in their house that provides the sort of stuff you want. These boxes communicate with your meter via Xbee. However, you seem to be an abnormal customer - most utilities report that customers do not want these boxes.
Many utilities also offer online access to your data and/or scheduled emails with usage reports.
A few important points:
1. The federal government is very strongly pushing the electric utilities to implement "smart grid" technologies, whether or not the business wants it.
2. Electric utilities do not contract out construction of their meters and development of the software. There are a few vendors in this market and you will use one of them.
3. You seem to be implying that utilities should have no recourse for customers who steal service. Surely this isn't your position.
4. I actually RTFA and I was pretty blown away by the comments at the end by the guy at Itron. He passes the buck, saying, "Utilities have to be more enterprise security-aware." Absolutely, but the utilities are using the crap you sold them. As arguably the premier player in this space, the responsibility to create secure meters falls squarely on Itron's shoulders.
How many games were blacked out due to being shown on cable or OTA?
Zero. Every single game was available live. The quality was surprisingly good.
Apart from the sort of geek demographic that reads Slashdot, most people either A. aren't aware they can use a TV as a PC monitor or B. don't have a laptop or a second small-form-factor desktop that they can spare.
I didn't claim my answer was for 100% of the population. We have two televisions from the past five years with at least one spare HDMI input and a cheap ASUS laptop that has HDMI out. This isn't is a high-tech media center design - I have nothing that isn't increasingly common in the average house. My wife has to give up some Facebook time while I'm watching the game - that seems like a much better deal than what the cable company was charging me every month.
There's really no need to have cable anymore unless you want live sports.
And even that is changing. MLB, NHL, and the NBA have various streaming packages or Roku channels available. I paid $4 this year to watch the entire NCAA basketball tournament on my laptop, which I connected to my television via HDMI and enjoyed comparable picture with fewer commercials. Since I use the local cable company for Internet service, I also get ESPN3 which I use for some college football and basketball games. The NFL is the big holdout right now but I can get enough games OTA to make up for the massive cost savings.
Crap, stupid instant mod system. That Overrated was supposed to be Funny.
Did you not even bother to read my response before hitting reply?