I don't even have words for how ignorant this comment is. You realize you're reading this on a 'News for Nerds' site, right? You realize the source is an article from a blog that specifically posts issues with Android phones, right?
Android users give bad Android devices just as much shit as they give bad iPhones.
Its almost like all they really care about is devices that work with the features they want, and iPhones generally don't do it for them.
I'm sorry but that sounds exactly like what you would use a scripting language for - quick hack-together solutions to immediate problems.
I know Python can be used for far more than just scripting, but it definitely feels like you supported his point more than argued against it, as seems to be your intention.
They used to have a write-up about it on their site, dunno if they still do. Basically, offering ebooks for free was especially helpful in boosting the long tale profits for the book, because people would read a book for free and then either buy it for their collection, buy sequels, or tell their friends about it.
Since something like 90% of a book's profit comes from the first 3-6 months after release, letting the books go free after that high-profit window is not a major risk. So Baen releases a large selection of their books free once their high-profit window has passed.
It just always seemed like a totally sensible way to do business to me.
Windows is pretty famous for maintaining backwards compatibility. In my office we still have to use a particular application from 1998, and it works flawlessly in Windows 7, and works fine in Windows 10 with some annoying security settings that were a bit troublesome to figure out the first time.
Given its track record, I can be reasonably confident that the application will continue to work in future versions of Windows.
Mac does not have this history of backwards compatibility, but then Mac is also based on Unix so...
It's mostly a density issue, IMO. Broadband is relatively cheap in urban centers, but even our most tightly packed cities are far more spread out than the densest European cities. This raises prices to a degree. Also, my impression is that the non-urban areas in the US are also more spread out than those of Europe (we have half the people for a similar land area, after all), so the prices skyrocket even higher than their European counterparts.
For example, I pay about $150/mo for 1gbps with a reasonable cap, and I'm in Alaska.
They are playing statistical games - or at least the headline/article is. We've hit the point where, unless the percentage of people leaving Cable skyrockets, it's basically impossible for the number of people who leave Cable in 2019 to be greater than the number who left in 2018.
For example, say there are 1,000,000 cable users 10 years ago. Every year since then, a percentage of the subscribers leave cable, and this percentage grows every year by 10%.
So year 1, 10% of 1,000,000 leave cable, for 100,000 leaving cable. Year 2, 20% of 900,000 leave cable, for 180,000. Year 3, 30% of 720,000 leave cable, for 216,000. - This is the peak number leaving cable. It will never go higher, though the percentage still grows. Year 4, 40% of 504,000 leave cable, for 201,600. Year 5, 50% of 202,400 leave cable, for 101,200. - Note how sharply the numbers drop, even though the percentage is increasing. Year 6, 60% of 101,200 leave cable, for 60,720. Year 7, 70% of 40,480 leave cable, for 28,336. Year 8, 80% of 12,144 leave cable, for 9,715. Year 9, 90% of 2,428 leave cable, for 2,186. Year 10, 100% of 242 leave cable, leaving no cable viewers left.
Basically 2018 should be like Year 3 in my example above. I have heard no news that Cable is gaining ground in any way, so the only conclusion I can draw about "peak leaving", is that we've hit the point where the number must decline because, barring an unlikely huge jump in the percentage who leave every year, the pool has gotten too small for it to increase.
More than that, we recently just hit the lowest jobless claims (i.e. new unemployment applications) since 1969.
However, the labor force participation rate is only about 63%, meaning nearly 40% of eligible Americans have no job and are not looking for a job, and so don't count towards the unemployment or jobless figures.
Finally, the highest labor force participation rate on record is only about 67%, and the lowest is 58%.
In other words, you can support any finding you want with statistics as long as you're willing to ignore enough data.
You clearly haven't thought through the economics of this, at all.
Most companies are managed at the top by a board of directors. These directors hire a CEO based on their ability to maximize profits to the shareholders.
How long do you think a CEO will last when he consistently costs his company tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially even billions of dollars, in fines due to data breaches?
I don't know any of the proposals on the table, but just imagine if the fines were something relatively simple like $1000 per individual's data compromise. That doesn't seem like a crazy number to me.
Now consider that the recent Facebook data breach was estimated to be somewhere around 200 million to 600 million users affected. That's $200 billion to $600 billion in fines. Hell, even if it's 1/10th of that, a $100 fine per incident, that's still $2 billion to $6 billion. Granted, that 200 billion won't all be in the US, but I'll bet 100 million isn't too far off for the US alone.
There isn't a company on the planet that isn't going to pay attention to a billion dollar fine. You think the CEO is getting off with a golden parachute if he lets something like that happen under his watch? You think another company will decide to choose him as their CEO after a loss like that? I highly doubt it. I highly, highly doubt it. That CEO's career is over.
Funnily enough, we've already done this as a society over the last 1000 years or so. 10-14 are potentially illegal, with the ease of prosecution going up as you approach 14. This is particularly true if there is any other evidence available of actual intent to follow through on any of these.
I see no reason why 'hate crimes' don't fall squarely on the standard scale. Why do they need separate laws? If we want to consider them more heinous than a similar crime / motive combination (which I'm totally fine with), why does that not simply happen during the normal process?
For example, a crime of passion might be second degree, but the same crime for bigoted reasons might be first degree.
Why do we need additional 'hate crime' laws at all?
A probably reasonable way to assess that data would be to take all reported hate crimes and divide it by the number of agencies reporting. Then, multiply that by the total number of agencies.
That gives you an estimate of the total number of hate crimes in the country.
Then, when 1000 new agencies report data than the previous year, your estimate for total hate crimes simply becomes more accurate, rather than jumping wildly.
Anon is an idiot, there is no run-on sentence there.
However, the subject of the first sentence is way too far removed from its verb/objects. That makes it hard to hold the whole thing in your head, because you have to suspend the first thought, then put together the second thought, before you can go back and finish the first thought. Reading that sentence is an unnecessary juggling act. It would flow much better if each complete thought were broken out into its own sentence.
Example: "FOX News didn't have to act sensationalist relative to its counterparts but instead took a route of acting relatively meek and just reacting to the left. This got them into the current state where they of all outlets are more trusted than past trusted left-leaning outlets. Instead of inviting scorn, this should push you to do some introspective activities and turn on some light bulbs."
It says the exact same thing, but you have completed each thought before moving to the next, making the whole thing easier and more enjoyable to process.
I saw a pretty hilarious parody article that purported to have audio of a meeting of the upper echelons of Facebook (Zuck and his chiefs) talking about how they have to stop censorship program X because it's been noticed and is unpopular, and what about programs Y and Z, etc.
The whole thing was crazy, but it started out so close to what Facebook was actually doing that it wasn't until a minute and a half into the audio that I realized it was fake.
That may not be completely true. Many types of corporate espionage are illegal. The timing would matter, if he was a Micron employee before he erased the files that's potentially a really big deal.
I'm not familiar enough with the law to know if this would qualify, but Intel probably isn't going to sue if they don't think they have a case.
Linux has always excelled in spaces where extreme customization is an advantage. Servers where you're doing anything more custom than business network services (e.g. email, domain authentication and management, file sharing, etc). Small device applications where embedded Windows would be too rigid and prohibitively expensive, like streaming video or music players, IoT devices in general, etc.
However, with all of this, Linux has no mind share with the general population, and that's what people who are this question want. Linux people want regular folks to start giving up their proprietary Windows or Mac boxes and switch to running Linux directly, and that's just never going to happen.
That's because, no matter how good Linux desktop UI's get, they are always far behind the proprietary UI's in polish, useability, and integration with the OS.
And the reason why is blindingly simple: Money. Not even direct profit, just money spent.
Look at all the Linux products with great UI's. They are ALL in products people purchase. People won't spend money on a device that's hard to use, so it's really, really important that they get the UI right. So these companies spend enough to make sure they get it right.
Android is the quintessential example. Thanks to Android, you can and should say Linux dominates the phone market. But look what it took to make a version of Linux that could compete with a closed source product. It took a massive company like Google spending millions of dollars to make sure that UI piece is right, and integrates seamlessly with the OS.
In the desktop arena (the arena Linux users seem to care about the most), Apple and Microsoft have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing their UI's and making sure they integrated smoothly and seamlessly with their OS. There is just no way a FOSS desktop UI can compete with that kind of highly motivated, focused attention. As good as Ubuntu and the like have made things, they are perpetually behind the industry big dogs.
Yes these companies make blunders in their quest for better UI (MS moreso than most, it seems), but generally speaking the results speak for themselves.
Linux UIs have come a long, long way over the years, but even now they are mostly 5-10 years behind the state of the art. In my experience that's where they seem to stay, and that's why they'll never dominate in the desktop arena.
So you could say 2019 is the year of highly customized proprietary Linux black boxes, just like 2018 was, and 2017 was, and 2016...
Nothing is new for Linux in 2019, it's the same story it's always been. And IMO that's not a bad thing, nor is it something to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite. Linux does what does, and does it extremely well.
gamÂbling (gÄfmâblÄng) n. 1. The activity of playing a game for stakes or betting on an uncertain outcome. 2. The business of operating facilities where such activities take place.
Is the outcome of a lootbox uncertain? As you said, it relies on RNG to determine the outcome. And not just even odds, the odds are weighted depending on the desirability of the object, just like many casino games.
Are you betting on a favorable outcome when you buy a lootbox? Absolutely, else why would you buy things you don't want?
Lootboxes are obviously gambling.
Now, this is not the legal definition of gambling. There are many kinds of gambling that are inconsequential enough to not be illegal, or be technically illegal, but are unenforced because of their triviality.
It remains to be seen whether lootboxes meet the legal definition of gambling in the US. It is worth noting, however, that several other countries have already decided that lootboxes meet their legal definition of gambling, and must therefore abide by gambling laws.
That's probably the most idiotic idea of ownership I've ever read.
Copyright law (and especially the DMCA) is a subversion of normal property rights. Arguing them (and it's the laws you're arguing, not the technology, despite what you say about the technology being what matters) as an analogy for car ownership is about the dumbest thing you can do. There is literally nothing about copyright and the DMCA that apply to car ownership. Nothing. There is no DMCA for non-copyrighted tech. Fooling a sensor to break into a building doesn't get you a DMCA take down notice. Hackers who break into secure systems and steal data aren't charged with subverting copyright protections under the DMCA. It literally has nothing to do with it (unless they, say, stole a movie and then distributed it, then the DMCA applies, but only for the distribution and any direct protections on the material).
It's like trying to explain civil contract law by talking about all of the criminal cases of theft that were overturned by police officers' failure to read a guy his Miranda rights. They just don't have anything to do with each other.
The CFAA actually would apply here, but it would apply to what the dealership did hacking into this guy's property and disabling it for the purpose of extortion.
They aren't sham operations just because they do this. It's a legitimate business practice with legitimate purposes (that also happens to be abused from time to time).
That said, it also means it's 100% legitimate to focus your ire on the face of the business (the dealership), even if it was the finance company or lease company that pulled these shenanigans, because they are probably all owned by the same people. Even if they aren't owned by the same people, they are so tightly integrated that they essentially function as one business, and hurting one hurts the other, so the intended target still gets the intended message with very little lost in translation.
That's why you file a criminal complaint first. You don't pay a dime for that, that's all pushed by the state. Once that's been handled, you'll be on significantly better footing, and you'll be more likely to get a better lawyer on the basis of the amount you can win in court.
That's all if this were done in America, though. I have no clue how the Canadian system works.
So, can the car dealer say, after you've purchased the vehicle free and clear, "Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, the fuel tank doesn't come with the car. That'll be another $2000."
Of course not, because the fuel tank is an intrinsic part of the car.
In this case, the GPS tracker was an intrinsic part of the car, since the dealer sold the car with it fully integrated into the system. At the point of sale, the GPS tracker was a necessary component to operate the vehicle. Not only is it illegal for them to disable his car for a frivolous charge that was not in any agreement, it was further illegal to hack into his own property (the GPS tracker) using their unauthorized access (again, not in any agreement) in order to disable that vehicle. Lastly, because there was never any agreement to return the GPS tracker prior to sale, this probably amounts to extortion, which is a whole other can of worms. Bad news for that dealership.
Now, lets imagine another scenario, analogous to what the dealership should have done in order to get the GPS tracker back.
The friendliest person at the dealership calls the guy up after the sale and says this: "Hey listen, we're really sorry to bother you, but one of our mechanics accidentally left his favorite wrench in your engine compartment, would you please bring your car in so we can retrieve it?"
Unless the guy's a total douche (which is well within his rights to be), he's going to go back to the dealer and let them take the wrench out. If he's smart at all he shouldn't want that rattling around inside there anyway.
But there is no way you charge him for their own fuck up, as that is just beyond the pale, and a good way to not get your wrench back.
...so I would need to stop watching for a year and then continue.
Ultimately, what's wrong with that?
Watching loads of YouTube content has really gotten me away from the "it's new, I gotta watch it now" mentality. These days, I'll watch something 3 years old, followed by something made last week, followed by something made a year and a half ago, all on the same channel. It doesn't make any difference to me. If it's a series of connected videos, someone has invariably created a playlist, and I watch that. The videos in the series often aren't even released in succession, but several series by the same guy released over the same span of time.
If a TV show is good, it'll be good in a year, and you can buy a permanent copy of the full season for less than you'd pay for the monthly subscription for several shows. Then you can watch them at your leisure. You can hit up two or three episodes at a time if you've got a block of time to waste, or you can only watch one episode every few weeks, whatever. You're never going to miss an episode, because you control the programming.
This depends highly on your viewing habits, of course. If you only watch 3 or 4 shows per "season" of television programming, it's totally worth it, but if you watch 15 or 20 then it definitely isn't worth it (e.g. you're watching a couple hours of TV shows every night of the week). The bulk pricing of the subscription model saves you money in that case.
If one of your primary reasons for watching a show is to be able to talk about it with your social circle, then that's also a case where your subscription is the only way to go.
But if you only follow a handful of shows at a time, and you watch them because you enjoy the content, then what's the difference between watching them now and watching them a year from now?
I dunno, I just hit up my cable company's website and put together a package with all the basic stuff that people are going to want these days (college sports, family, HD package, variety), and a couple of the super popular premium channels like HBO and Showtime, and it was $175/mo without even looking at set top boxes.
$200 isn't much of an exaggeration, given the premise of the article in question.
Suppose I like 1 or two shows in each of those categories, I'm kinda screwed aren't I? Can't drop college sports or I won't be able to watch my favorite team, little kid's favorite show is in the family package, I've got a 1080p TV that totally goes to waste if I don't get the HD package (and it's another $10, given the cost of everything else it's worth it), and the SO likes a couple of shows that are only in the variety package. Need HBO for the GoT addiction, etc.
You can legit need a nearly $200 subscription to watch like, 10 shows with the way cable is structured today. That's $20 a channel if that's all you're paying the cable bill for, which is insane.
To top it all off, HBO's streaming service is cheaper than the cable premium service, so wtf is the point? Hell, my cable company has started bundling streaming to all the major streaming sites in their top tier package (which is not what I used for the above, btw). They know what's up, and they're trying to find a way to get a handle on it before things get away from them.
I paid in a couple hours worth of advertisement viewing.
I didn't pay cash, no, but I paid with my time, and someone else paid cash to buy that time.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, you're paying for it somehow. Some methods are more convenient than others.
For intermittent events like high profile combat sport events fit a pay-per-view model much better than an advertising model. To make advertising work for the UFC, for example, they'd have to be wall to wall advertisements all over the stadiums, with advertising breaks between rounds instead of interesting commentary, commentators pushing products, etc. It would be super annoying, and only "free" in the most naive sense of the word.
That kind of thing is a lot less annoying for something like basketball, where you can watch upwards of a half dozen games any day of the week during the season, and the advertisers can space their advertisements out in a less obnoxious way. Advertisers get their value with repeat viewings that you just don't get with something like a boxing event.
For the world cup, which lasts for a couple weeks with several 90 minute matches a day, advertising makes sense. Especially on advertising dedicated media like broadcast and cable television. Same with the Olympics, advertising makes sense there for the same reason. You're going to get eyeballs on the screen for hours a day and days at a time. That's totally worth it for advertisers.
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I don't even have words for how ignorant this comment is. You realize you're reading this on a 'News for Nerds' site, right? You realize the source is an article from a blog that specifically posts issues with Android phones, right?
Android users give bad Android devices just as much shit as they give bad iPhones.
Its almost like all they really care about is devices that work with the features they want, and iPhones generally don't do it for them.
Crazy idea right?
I'm sorry but that sounds exactly like what you would use a scripting language for - quick hack-together solutions to immediate problems.
I know Python can be used for far more than just scripting, but it definitely feels like you supported his point more than argued against it, as seems to be your intention.
They used to have a write-up about it on their site, dunno if they still do. Basically, offering ebooks for free was especially helpful in boosting the long tale profits for the book, because people would read a book for free and then either buy it for their collection, buy sequels, or tell their friends about it.
Since something like 90% of a book's profit comes from the first 3-6 months after release, letting the books go free after that high-profit window is not a major risk. So Baen releases a large selection of their books free once their high-profit window has passed.
It just always seemed like a totally sensible way to do business to me.
Windows is pretty famous for maintaining backwards compatibility. In my office we still have to use a particular application from 1998, and it works flawlessly in Windows 7, and works fine in Windows 10 with some annoying security settings that were a bit troublesome to figure out the first time.
Given its track record, I can be reasonably confident that the application will continue to work in future versions of Windows.
Mac does not have this history of backwards compatibility, but then Mac is also based on Unix so...
I think you inadvertently made his point with this, and I'll bet you don't even know why.
It's mostly a density issue, IMO. Broadband is relatively cheap in urban centers, but even our most tightly packed cities are far more spread out than the densest European cities. This raises prices to a degree. Also, my impression is that the non-urban areas in the US are also more spread out than those of Europe (we have half the people for a similar land area, after all), so the prices skyrocket even higher than their European counterparts.
For example, I pay about $150/mo for 1gbps with a reasonable cap, and I'm in Alaska.
They are playing statistical games - or at least the headline/article is. We've hit the point where, unless the percentage of people leaving Cable skyrockets, it's basically impossible for the number of people who leave Cable in 2019 to be greater than the number who left in 2018.
For example, say there are 1,000,000 cable users 10 years ago. Every year since then, a percentage of the subscribers leave cable, and this percentage grows every year by 10%.
So year 1, 10% of 1,000,000 leave cable, for 100,000 leaving cable.
Year 2, 20% of 900,000 leave cable, for 180,000.
Year 3, 30% of 720,000 leave cable, for 216,000. - This is the peak number leaving cable. It will never go higher, though the percentage still grows.
Year 4, 40% of 504,000 leave cable, for 201,600.
Year 5, 50% of 202,400 leave cable, for 101,200. - Note how sharply the numbers drop, even though the percentage is increasing.
Year 6, 60% of 101,200 leave cable, for 60,720.
Year 7, 70% of 40,480 leave cable, for 28,336.
Year 8, 80% of 12,144 leave cable, for 9,715.
Year 9, 90% of 2,428 leave cable, for 2,186.
Year 10, 100% of 242 leave cable, leaving no cable viewers left.
Basically 2018 should be like Year 3 in my example above. I have heard no news that Cable is gaining ground in any way, so the only conclusion I can draw about "peak leaving", is that we've hit the point where the number must decline because, barring an unlikely huge jump in the percentage who leave every year, the pool has gotten too small for it to increase.
More than that, we recently just hit the lowest jobless claims (i.e. new unemployment applications) since 1969.
However, the labor force participation rate is only about 63%, meaning nearly 40% of eligible Americans have no job and are not looking for a job, and so don't count towards the unemployment or jobless figures.
Finally, the highest labor force participation rate on record is only about 67%, and the lowest is 58%.
In other words, you can support any finding you want with statistics as long as you're willing to ignore enough data.
You clearly haven't thought through the economics of this, at all.
Most companies are managed at the top by a board of directors. These directors hire a CEO based on their ability to maximize profits to the shareholders.
How long do you think a CEO will last when he consistently costs his company tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially even billions of dollars, in fines due to data breaches?
I don't know any of the proposals on the table, but just imagine if the fines were something relatively simple like $1000 per individual's data compromise. That doesn't seem like a crazy number to me.
Now consider that the recent Facebook data breach was estimated to be somewhere around 200 million to 600 million users affected. That's $200 billion to $600 billion in fines. Hell, even if it's 1/10th of that, a $100 fine per incident, that's still $2 billion to $6 billion. Granted, that 200 billion won't all be in the US, but I'll bet 100 million isn't too far off for the US alone.
There isn't a company on the planet that isn't going to pay attention to a billion dollar fine. You think the CEO is getting off with a golden parachute if he lets something like that happen under his watch? You think another company will decide to choose him as their CEO after a loss like that? I highly doubt it. I highly, highly doubt it. That CEO's career is over.
Funnily enough, we've already done this as a society over the last 1000 years or so. 10-14 are potentially illegal, with the ease of prosecution going up as you approach 14. This is particularly true if there is any other evidence available of actual intent to follow through on any of these.
That should be YouTube et al's standard.
I see no reason why 'hate crimes' don't fall squarely on the standard scale. Why do they need separate laws? If we want to consider them more heinous than a similar crime / motive combination (which I'm totally fine with), why does that not simply happen during the normal process?
For example, a crime of passion might be second degree, but the same crime for bigoted reasons might be first degree.
Why do we need additional 'hate crime' laws at all?
A probably reasonable way to assess that data would be to take all reported hate crimes and divide it by the number of agencies reporting. Then, multiply that by the total number of agencies.
That gives you an estimate of the total number of hate crimes in the country.
Then, when 1000 new agencies report data than the previous year, your estimate for total hate crimes simply becomes more accurate, rather than jumping wildly.
Anon is an idiot, there is no run-on sentence there.
However, the subject of the first sentence is way too far removed from its verb/objects. That makes it hard to hold the whole thing in your head, because you have to suspend the first thought, then put together the second thought, before you can go back and finish the first thought. Reading that sentence is an unnecessary juggling act. It would flow much better if each complete thought were broken out into its own sentence.
Example:
"FOX News didn't have to act sensationalist relative to its counterparts but instead took a route of acting relatively meek and just reacting to the left. This got them into the current state where they of all outlets are more trusted than past trusted left-leaning outlets. Instead of inviting scorn, this should push you to do some introspective activities and turn on some light bulbs."
It says the exact same thing, but you have completed each thought before moving to the next, making the whole thing easier and more enjoyable to process.
I saw a pretty hilarious parody article that purported to have audio of a meeting of the upper echelons of Facebook (Zuck and his chiefs) talking about how they have to stop censorship program X because it's been noticed and is unpopular, and what about programs Y and Z, etc.
The whole thing was crazy, but it started out so close to what Facebook was actually doing that it wasn't until a minute and a half into the audio that I realized it was fake.
I really wish I could find it again.
That may not be completely true. Many types of corporate espionage are illegal. The timing would matter, if he was a Micron employee before he erased the files that's potentially a really big deal.
I'm not familiar enough with the law to know if this would qualify, but Intel probably isn't going to sue if they don't think they have a case.
And every year the answer is the same:
No, not the way you want to be.
Linux has always excelled in spaces where extreme customization is an advantage. Servers where you're doing anything more custom than business network services (e.g. email, domain authentication and management, file sharing, etc). Small device applications where embedded Windows would be too rigid and prohibitively expensive, like streaming video or music players, IoT devices in general, etc.
However, with all of this, Linux has no mind share with the general population, and that's what people who are this question want. Linux people want regular folks to start giving up their proprietary Windows or Mac boxes and switch to running Linux directly, and that's just never going to happen.
That's because, no matter how good Linux desktop UI's get, they are always far behind the proprietary UI's in polish, useability, and integration with the OS.
And the reason why is blindingly simple:
Money. Not even direct profit, just money spent.
Look at all the Linux products with great UI's. They are ALL in products people purchase. People won't spend money on a device that's hard to use, so it's really, really important that they get the UI right. So these companies spend enough to make sure they get it right.
Android is the quintessential example. Thanks to Android, you can and should say Linux dominates the phone market. But look what it took to make a version of Linux that could compete with a closed source product. It took a massive company like Google spending millions of dollars to make sure that UI piece is right, and integrates seamlessly with the OS.
In the desktop arena (the arena Linux users seem to care about the most), Apple and Microsoft have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing their UI's and making sure they integrated smoothly and seamlessly with their OS. There is just no way a FOSS desktop UI can compete with that kind of highly motivated, focused attention. As good as Ubuntu and the like have made things, they are perpetually behind the industry big dogs.
Yes these companies make blunders in their quest for better UI (MS moreso than most, it seems), but generally speaking the results speak for themselves.
Linux UIs have come a long, long way over the years, but even now they are mostly 5-10 years behind the state of the art. In my experience that's where they seem to stay, and that's why they'll never dominate in the desktop arena.
So you could say 2019 is the year of highly customized proprietary Linux black boxes, just like 2018 was, and 2017 was, and 2016...
Nothing is new for Linux in 2019, it's the same story it's always been. And IMO that's not a bad thing, nor is it something to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite. Linux does what does, and does it extremely well.
gamÂbling (gÄfmâblÄng)
n.
1. The activity of playing a game for stakes or betting on an uncertain outcome.
2. The business of operating facilities where such activities take place.
Is the outcome of a lootbox uncertain? As you said, it relies on RNG to determine the outcome. And not just even odds, the odds are weighted depending on the desirability of the object, just like many casino games.
Are you betting on a favorable outcome when you buy a lootbox? Absolutely, else why would you buy things you don't want?
Lootboxes are obviously gambling.
Now, this is not the legal definition of gambling. There are many kinds of gambling that are inconsequential enough to not be illegal, or be technically illegal, but are unenforced because of their triviality.
It remains to be seen whether lootboxes meet the legal definition of gambling in the US. It is worth noting, however, that several other countries have already decided that lootboxes meet their legal definition of gambling, and must therefore abide by gambling laws.
This is a criminal issue, because it is extortion. Quebec follows common law for criminal issues. It's right there in the first sentence.
That's probably the most idiotic idea of ownership I've ever read.
Copyright law (and especially the DMCA) is a subversion of normal property rights. Arguing them (and it's the laws you're arguing, not the technology, despite what you say about the technology being what matters) as an analogy for car ownership is about the dumbest thing you can do. There is literally nothing about copyright and the DMCA that apply to car ownership. Nothing. There is no DMCA for non-copyrighted tech. Fooling a sensor to break into a building doesn't get you a DMCA take down notice. Hackers who break into secure systems and steal data aren't charged with subverting copyright protections under the DMCA. It literally has nothing to do with it (unless they, say, stole a movie and then distributed it, then the DMCA applies, but only for the distribution and any direct protections on the material).
It's like trying to explain civil contract law by talking about all of the criminal cases of theft that were overturned by police officers' failure to read a guy his Miranda rights. They just don't have anything to do with each other.
The CFAA actually would apply here, but it would apply to what the dealership did hacking into this guy's property and disabling it for the purpose of extortion.
They aren't sham operations just because they do this. It's a legitimate business practice with legitimate purposes (that also happens to be abused from time to time).
That said, it also means it's 100% legitimate to focus your ire on the face of the business (the dealership), even if it was the finance company or lease company that pulled these shenanigans, because they are probably all owned by the same people. Even if they aren't owned by the same people, they are so tightly integrated that they essentially function as one business, and hurting one hurts the other, so the intended target still gets the intended message with very little lost in translation.
That's why you file a criminal complaint first. You don't pay a dime for that, that's all pushed by the state. Once that's been handled, you'll be on significantly better footing, and you'll be more likely to get a better lawyer on the basis of the amount you can win in court.
That's all if this were done in America, though. I have no clue how the Canadian system works.
So, can the car dealer say, after you've purchased the vehicle free and clear, "Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, the fuel tank doesn't come with the car. That'll be another $2000."
Of course not, because the fuel tank is an intrinsic part of the car.
In this case, the GPS tracker was an intrinsic part of the car, since the dealer sold the car with it fully integrated into the system. At the point of sale, the GPS tracker was a necessary component to operate the vehicle. Not only is it illegal for them to disable his car for a frivolous charge that was not in any agreement, it was further illegal to hack into his own property (the GPS tracker) using their unauthorized access (again, not in any agreement) in order to disable that vehicle. Lastly, because there was never any agreement to return the GPS tracker prior to sale, this probably amounts to extortion, which is a whole other can of worms. Bad news for that dealership.
Now, lets imagine another scenario, analogous to what the dealership should have done in order to get the GPS tracker back.
The friendliest person at the dealership calls the guy up after the sale and says this: "Hey listen, we're really sorry to bother you, but one of our mechanics accidentally left his favorite wrench in your engine compartment, would you please bring your car in so we can retrieve it?"
Unless the guy's a total douche (which is well within his rights to be), he's going to go back to the dealer and let them take the wrench out. If he's smart at all he shouldn't want that rattling around inside there anyway.
But there is no way you charge him for their own fuck up, as that is just beyond the pale, and a good way to not get your wrench back.
...so I would need to stop watching for a year and then continue.
Ultimately, what's wrong with that?
Watching loads of YouTube content has really gotten me away from the "it's new, I gotta watch it now" mentality. These days, I'll watch something 3 years old, followed by something made last week, followed by something made a year and a half ago, all on the same channel. It doesn't make any difference to me. If it's a series of connected videos, someone has invariably created a playlist, and I watch that. The videos in the series often aren't even released in succession, but several series by the same guy released over the same span of time.
If a TV show is good, it'll be good in a year, and you can buy a permanent copy of the full season for less than you'd pay for the monthly subscription for several shows. Then you can watch them at your leisure. You can hit up two or three episodes at a time if you've got a block of time to waste, or you can only watch one episode every few weeks, whatever. You're never going to miss an episode, because you control the programming.
This depends highly on your viewing habits, of course. If you only watch 3 or 4 shows per "season" of television programming, it's totally worth it, but if you watch 15 or 20 then it definitely isn't worth it (e.g. you're watching a couple hours of TV shows every night of the week). The bulk pricing of the subscription model saves you money in that case.
If one of your primary reasons for watching a show is to be able to talk about it with your social circle, then that's also a case where your subscription is the only way to go.
But if you only follow a handful of shows at a time, and you watch them because you enjoy the content, then what's the difference between watching them now and watching them a year from now?
I dunno, I just hit up my cable company's website and put together a package with all the basic stuff that people are going to want these days (college sports, family, HD package, variety), and a couple of the super popular premium channels like HBO and Showtime, and it was $175/mo without even looking at set top boxes.
$200 isn't much of an exaggeration, given the premise of the article in question.
Suppose I like 1 or two shows in each of those categories, I'm kinda screwed aren't I? Can't drop college sports or I won't be able to watch my favorite team, little kid's favorite show is in the family package, I've got a 1080p TV that totally goes to waste if I don't get the HD package (and it's another $10, given the cost of everything else it's worth it), and the SO likes a couple of shows that are only in the variety package. Need HBO for the GoT addiction, etc.
You can legit need a nearly $200 subscription to watch like, 10 shows with the way cable is structured today. That's $20 a channel if that's all you're paying the cable bill for, which is insane.
To top it all off, HBO's streaming service is cheaper than the cable premium service, so wtf is the point? Hell, my cable company has started bundling streaming to all the major streaming sites in their top tier package (which is not what I used for the above, btw). They know what's up, and they're trying to find a way to get a handle on it before things get away from them.
I paid in a couple hours worth of advertisement viewing.
I didn't pay cash, no, but I paid with my time, and someone else paid cash to buy that time.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, you're paying for it somehow. Some methods are more convenient than others.
For intermittent events like high profile combat sport events fit a pay-per-view model much better than an advertising model. To make advertising work for the UFC, for example, they'd have to be wall to wall advertisements all over the stadiums, with advertising breaks between rounds instead of interesting commentary, commentators pushing products, etc. It would be super annoying, and only "free" in the most naive sense of the word.
That kind of thing is a lot less annoying for something like basketball, where you can watch upwards of a half dozen games any day of the week during the season, and the advertisers can space their advertisements out in a less obnoxious way. Advertisers get their value with repeat viewings that you just don't get with something like a boxing event.
For the world cup, which lasts for a couple weeks with several 90 minute matches a day, advertising makes sense. Especially on advertising dedicated media like broadcast and cable television. Same with the Olympics, advertising makes sense there for the same reason. You're going to get eyeballs on the screen for hours a day and days at a time. That's totally worth it for advertisers.