That's cute. And you think that does ANYTHING other than block the targeted ads? If the only thing bad about this were the targeted ads, we wouldn't have a problem. I'd actually prefer more relevant ads. The problem is the collection of the data. When you go to nearly any website on the net, they track everything you do there. Every click you make, every form you fill out, everything. Even if they don't have your name, they have your IP, your browser, your OS... enough data to uniquely identify you. Then those sites share that data with marketing SAS firms that collate, and return sales leads. You didn't sign into that pornsite when you were looking at all that midget porn? That's alright, they ship your activity off to the marketing firm who also has a contract with Newegg, where you have an account with your full name, address, phone number etc.... They compare your IP and other details, figure out who you are and sell it back to the midget porn site. Now it's 6pm on a Tuesday, you're in the middle of dinner with your familly and your wife mentions that she got a call today about a great deal on a years subscription to assbangingmidgets.com do you think she should sign up?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Soon they will be able to predict much of your behavior and manipulate you at their whim, simply based on what your interests are. Relying on adblock is about as close to having your head in the sand as you can get.
Leave it to our federal government to pay for their own auction site when Ebay already exists. They wont ship any of it so that basically counts out 99.9% of buyers. I'd have paid $10 for some random piece of hardware I could say came from the space program, but I sure as hell am not flying to Florida to pick it up. Oh well.
If you have no criminal record, and you want to come into this country, you should be allowed to. After being here for 2 years without legal incident or financial failure (you're not living off welfare) you should be allowed to apply to become a citizen. After 2 more years of no run-ins with the law, you should get full citizenship. Period.
All these ridiculous visas for the rich, or if you're smart are just stupid. Illegal immigration is stupid. It should be easy to get here if you're a good person, plain and simple.
I adopted my son from Ethiopia a few years ago and had to go to a Homeland security office a few hours away from me for an entire day to fill out paperwork and get every single finger, and even my palms printed. Then they took pictures of me from every angle imaginable. I told the homeland security agent "Well I guess going off the grid won't be an option anymore" he laughed and said "Yea, you're definitely in the system now"
On the bright side, I went to buy a handgun recently and the store owner called in my background check to the FBI. He gave them my SS# and then said "Oh... really? Already?" and hung up. He said that what usually happens is they research it and call him back. He's never had them just approve it over the phone in a matter of seconds like that. So I guess when the government has already logged every cell in your body already there are at least some benefits.
Since when has the government ever needed permission to do anything? As far as their concerned we're lucking their not putting a chip in head and calling it a day.
The guy is relatively attractive for his age, is a Billionaire, is famous, has an accent, has a Jet, has a car that turns into a plane, has a car that turns into a boat, owns an island, and owns a spacecraft... I'm not going to fault him for screwing everything in sight. That's the kind of DNA you want in the Gene pool anyway.
By no means is Google a benevolent, customer happiness engine... But Apple has a long history, going back to the early 80s of suing anyone and everyone they possibly can if it stifles competition. Apple does not want 3rd parties to build anything for their products... period. You can't even make a charger for an iPod without licensing the connector from them.
Has Google done things that hurt openness and stifled innovation? Sure... But it's like the comparing a local street hoodlum with Al Capone.
Well, the removed the option to opt out. Then they came back and said you could buy out of it... I'm not getting stuck with the stupid ads. Also, thats just the screen lock ads. The rest of the devices is swarming with them. You open angry birds and it suggest other games "you might like" etc... screw that.
I litterally just bought a Nexus 7 about an hour ago. My main concerns? No expandable memory and the forced ads on the Kindle. Yes, maybe I could have waited for this root to come out so I could get rid of the adds, but do I really want to deal with that?
As far as the lack of a memory slot, that only bothers me because I'd like to take movies on vacation with me... But then I learned I could connect the Nexus 7 to an external hardrive via USB on the go and viola.
Sorry amazon, forcing me to watch ads is not a way to get me to buy your product.
You're wrong. There are large numbers of people that are not just suggesting but demanding that all pesticides be banned. And the numbers he's suggesting aren't if organics were grown via methods from 100 years ago, they are if we actually industrialized Organic farming (which we are in fact doing) The point is that modern farming techniques with GM crops and modern pesticides produce 5 to 10x the yield of Organic crops. If we were to switch to all organic, that would mean we'd have to use 5x the land, 5x the fertilizers, 5x the gas, 5x the manpower to produce the same amount of food we do today. Forcing Organic farming would kill BILLIONS of people. No joke at all. Even if GM crops do increase your risk of cancer over 50 years... starving increases your risk of death rather immediately.
"Nation wide" is a marketing term. So they can run on their own fiber from New York to Los Angeles... Can they get to your business in downtown Chicago? No... AT&T OWNS Chicago. The whole thing. No matter what service you use to get your line in that city, the people you're getting it from are leasing at least part of it from AT&T. Probably most of it. And it's the same way everywhere.
Sadly I think this will actually work out for microsoft. This is the same sort of thing happened with MMOs. The thing is, you do something like this and drive away 2/3rds of your customers... so what if the remaining 1/3 is paying 10x the price for the same product. And what's going to happen here is people will get windows for "free" with their computer. They'll put all their files and such on it and then after 6 months or so... bam... can't access any of their important documents and the only way to get them back is pay microsoft $100.
Having worked for AT&T in the past I can guarantee you that their thoughts on this issue are "We don't give a shit and there's not a god damned thing apple can do about it." AT&T is too big, too entrenched, too immovable. Imagine a company, larger than GM, that you were forced to buy your car from. You could not get a car from anyone else without moving. And then, even if you did move, you more than likely would end up in another area where you had to buy a car made by them. Even if you did end up somewhere that had a different company you could buy a car from, that company would be either selling you an ATT car with a different sticker on it, or at least large parts of the car had been made by ATT.. oh yea, and ATT gets to decide what they charge that other company for those parts and they charge a lot more to them, than they do to themselves so it costs more to buy it from someone else to.
That's what we're dealing with here. An entrenched, 100+ year old government sanctioned monopoly that has more clout in Washington you could possibly imagine. You may think "Well, these are cellphones! ATT doesn't own all the towers! I can get Sprint, or Verizon!" Oh yea? And how are those towers connected? How are the cellular regulations set? Who does congress listen to? You want to lay a new fiber trunk? Who owns the right of way? That's right, you need ATTs permission. ATT IS phone service in this country. Period. If apple wants to get away from ATT they are going to have to start communicating with gravitons or some shit... and even then its likely that ATT will complain to congress and get that form of communication rolled into a new telecom act giving them sole ownership of the relevant bosons or something.
Since there are large sections of the patriot act that are sealed, and we have no idea whats in them, I'd say "no" The US federal government feels that their goals are holy, and they will achieve them "by any means necessary"
It's rather irrelevant how long the effect would last since time would become a joke as soon as a massive object was FTL. Which is the primary reason this entire exercise is nonsense.
How much labor do you think is involved in making a tablet? Have you ever seen a printed circuit board get made? It's so god damned fast it'll blow your mind. The employees are only there to load the machine with reals of components and take away the trash. I doubt it will be too long before that's automated to.
If you don't like it, start looking for work elsewhere. Have they gone too far? It depends. If everyone stays and just gripes about it a bit, then the programs a success.
Having setup systems like these before, I have a fairly good idea why you have "Bathroom" on your phone. Management wants to track your time... you're a phone operator. They likely have a stat for you that goes something like: Employee in "Ready to take call" state > 90% You have to set your phone to a "not ready" state to do anything other than take calls. Otherwise your phone will ring while you're not there. They realize you can't be at your desk 100% of the time. They also realize you need time between calls to close up your ticket, whatever you do... as well as for bathroom. In fact, it likely came up in a meeting between management "How do they log out to use the restroom? I can't have my people peeing in bottles for christs sake!" to which someone said "Oh... um... lets just put in a code for bathroom" and that was that.
This very same thing happened where I work... and there was an uproar. "You're tracking when we pee!?!?!" finally wiser heads prevailed and they change the code to "Personal" It has the same effect, you are away from your desk... maybe in the bathroom, maybe getting a soda... whatever... but you wont get a call now, and they can calculate your stats... AND the idle code doesn't have the ridiculous name anymore.
I live in Madison (where the last big teacher protest happened) and am relatively close to Chicago. So I'm getting to hear and see all the news/adds relating to this nonsense. The teachers are getting a HUGE raise, and are only protesting because the schools want to be able to hire "Who they want" when filling positions that were previously made open by a layoff. The union wants them to be forced to hire the teacher they laid off. That's just fucking stupid. We've got charter schools here, and parents are desperate to get their kids into them, but there's not enough room. Every parent I know has their kid on a waiting list for a charter school. Even the democrats. So I'm a bit confused who these teachers think they'll get on their side.
The problem with security issues like this are not the devices or systems themselves, nor is the government that installs them for benevolent purposes like safer streets or to combat terrorism. The problem with such systems are the governments of the future that use what's left for them to oppress. To us, all of these new issues are, at most, annoying. But for our grandchildren, when the wrong person gets into office, these systems could literally become a living nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
That's cute. And you think that does ANYTHING other than block the targeted ads? If the only thing bad about this were the targeted ads, we wouldn't have a problem. I'd actually prefer more relevant ads. The problem is the collection of the data. When you go to nearly any website on the net, they track everything you do there. Every click you make, every form you fill out, everything. Even if they don't have your name, they have your IP, your browser, your OS... enough data to uniquely identify you. Then those sites share that data with marketing SAS firms that collate, and return sales leads. You didn't sign into that pornsite when you were looking at all that midget porn? That's alright, they ship your activity off to the marketing firm who also has a contract with Newegg, where you have an account with your full name, address, phone number etc.... They compare your IP and other details, figure out who you are and sell it back to the midget porn site. Now it's 6pm on a Tuesday, you're in the middle of dinner with your familly and your wife mentions that she got a call today about a great deal on a years subscription to assbangingmidgets.com do you think she should sign up?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Soon they will be able to predict much of your behavior and manipulate you at their whim, simply based on what your interests are. Relying on adblock is about as close to having your head in the sand as you can get.
Leave it to our federal government to pay for their own auction site when Ebay already exists. They wont ship any of it so that basically counts out 99.9% of buyers. I'd have paid $10 for some random piece of hardware I could say came from the space program, but I sure as hell am not flying to Florida to pick it up. Oh well.
If you have no criminal record, and you want to come into this country, you should be allowed to. After being here for 2 years without legal incident or financial failure (you're not living off welfare) you should be allowed to apply to become a citizen. After 2 more years of no run-ins with the law, you should get full citizenship. Period.
All these ridiculous visas for the rich, or if you're smart are just stupid. Illegal immigration is stupid. It should be easy to get here if you're a good person, plain and simple.
I adopted my son from Ethiopia a few years ago and had to go to a Homeland security office a few hours away from me for an entire day to fill out paperwork and get every single finger, and even my palms printed. Then they took pictures of me from every angle imaginable. I told the homeland security agent "Well I guess going off the grid won't be an option anymore" he laughed and said "Yea, you're definitely in the system now"
On the bright side, I went to buy a handgun recently and the store owner called in my background check to the FBI. He gave them my SS# and then said "Oh... really? Already?" and hung up. He said that what usually happens is they research it and call him back. He's never had them just approve it over the phone in a matter of seconds like that. So I guess when the government has already logged every cell in your body already there are at least some benefits.
Since when has the government ever needed permission to do anything? As far as their concerned we're lucking their not putting a chip in head and calling it a day.
Because there's NO other way to check this right?
I look forward to the free version of salesforce then. Last time we looked into it they were charging over $2million/year for a contract.
The guy is relatively attractive for his age, is a Billionaire, is famous, has an accent, has a Jet, has a car that turns into a plane, has a car that turns into a boat, owns an island, and owns a spacecraft... I'm not going to fault him for screwing everything in sight. That's the kind of DNA you want in the Gene pool anyway.
By no means is Google a benevolent, customer happiness engine... But Apple has a long history, going back to the early 80s of suing anyone and everyone they possibly can if it stifles competition. Apple does not want 3rd parties to build anything for their products... period. You can't even make a charger for an iPod without licensing the connector from them.
Has Google done things that hurt openness and stifled innovation? Sure... But it's like the comparing a local street hoodlum with Al Capone.
Well, the removed the option to opt out. Then they came back and said you could buy out of it... I'm not getting stuck with the stupid ads. Also, thats just the screen lock ads. The rest of the devices is swarming with them. You open angry birds and it suggest other games "you might like" etc... screw that.
I litterally just bought a Nexus 7 about an hour ago. My main concerns? No expandable memory and the forced ads on the Kindle. Yes, maybe I could have waited for this root to come out so I could get rid of the adds, but do I really want to deal with that?
As far as the lack of a memory slot, that only bothers me because I'd like to take movies on vacation with me... But then I learned I could connect the Nexus 7 to an external hardrive via USB on the go and viola.
Sorry amazon, forcing me to watch ads is not a way to get me to buy your product.
You're wrong. There are large numbers of people that are not just suggesting but demanding that all pesticides be banned.
And the numbers he's suggesting aren't if organics were grown via methods from 100 years ago, they are if we actually industrialized Organic farming (which we are in fact doing) The point is that modern farming techniques with GM crops and modern pesticides produce 5 to 10x the yield of Organic crops. If we were to switch to all organic, that would mean we'd have to use 5x the land, 5x the fertilizers, 5x the gas, 5x the manpower to produce the same amount of food we do today. Forcing Organic farming would kill BILLIONS of people. No joke at all. Even if GM crops do increase your risk of cancer over 50 years... starving increases your risk of death rather immediately.
"Nation wide" is a marketing term. So they can run on their own fiber from New York to Los Angeles... Can they get to your business in downtown Chicago? No... AT&T OWNS Chicago. The whole thing. No matter what service you use to get your line in that city, the people you're getting it from are leasing at least part of it from AT&T. Probably most of it. And it's the same way everywhere.
Me
Sadly I think this will actually work out for microsoft. This is the same sort of thing happened with MMOs. The thing is, you do something like this and drive away 2/3rds of your customers... so what if the remaining 1/3 is paying 10x the price for the same product. And what's going to happen here is people will get windows for "free" with their computer. They'll put all their files and such on it and then after 6 months or so... bam... can't access any of their important documents and the only way to get them back is pay microsoft $100.
Having worked for AT&T in the past I can guarantee you that their thoughts on this issue are "We don't give a shit and there's not a god damned thing apple can do about it."
AT&T is too big, too entrenched, too immovable. Imagine a company, larger than GM, that you were forced to buy your car from. You could not get a car from anyone else without moving. And then, even if you did move, you more than likely would end up in another area where you had to buy a car made by them. Even if you did end up somewhere that had a different company you could buy a car from, that company would be either selling you an ATT car with a different sticker on it, or at least large parts of the car had been made by ATT.. oh yea, and ATT gets to decide what they charge that other company for those parts and they charge a lot more to them, than they do to themselves so it costs more to buy it from someone else to.
That's what we're dealing with here. An entrenched, 100+ year old government sanctioned monopoly that has more clout in Washington you could possibly imagine. You may think "Well, these are cellphones! ATT doesn't own all the towers! I can get Sprint, or Verizon!" Oh yea? And how are those towers connected? How are the cellular regulations set? Who does congress listen to? You want to lay a new fiber trunk? Who owns the right of way? That's right, you need ATTs permission. ATT IS phone service in this country. Period. If apple wants to get away from ATT they are going to have to start communicating with gravitons or some shit... and even then its likely that ATT will complain to congress and get that form of communication rolled into a new telecom act giving them sole ownership of the relevant bosons or something.
Since there are large sections of the patriot act that are sealed, and we have no idea whats in them, I'd say "no"
The US federal government feels that their goals are holy, and they will achieve them "by any means necessary"
The world doesn't owe you a living. Get over it. It's almost impossible to fire a teacher in this country for cause.
It's rather irrelevant how long the effect would last since time would become a joke as soon as a massive object was FTL. Which is the primary reason this entire exercise is nonsense.
How much labor do you think is involved in making a tablet? Have you ever seen a printed circuit board get made? It's so god damned fast it'll blow your mind. The employees are only there to load the machine with reals of components and take away the trash. I doubt it will be too long before that's automated to.
And you're probably the same asshat that declassified Pluto as a planet.
If you don't like it, start looking for work elsewhere. Have they gone too far? It depends. If everyone stays and just gripes about it a bit, then the programs a success.
Having setup systems like these before, I have a fairly good idea why you have "Bathroom" on your phone. Management wants to track your time... you're a phone operator. They likely have a stat for you that goes something like:
Employee in "Ready to take call" state > 90%
You have to set your phone to a "not ready" state to do anything other than take calls. Otherwise your phone will ring while you're not there.
They realize you can't be at your desk 100% of the time. They also realize you need time between calls to close up your ticket, whatever you do... as well as for bathroom. In fact, it likely came up in a meeting between management "How do they log out to use the restroom? I can't have my people peeing in bottles for christs sake!" to which someone said "Oh... um... lets just put in a code for bathroom" and that was that.
This very same thing happened where I work... and there was an uproar. "You're tracking when we pee!?!?!" finally wiser heads prevailed and they change the code to "Personal" It has the same effect, you are away from your desk... maybe in the bathroom, maybe getting a soda... whatever... but you wont get a call now, and they can calculate your stats... AND the idle code doesn't have the ridiculous name anymore.
OR... you could just find a new job.
I live in Madison (where the last big teacher protest happened) and am relatively close to Chicago. So I'm getting to hear and see all the news/adds relating to this nonsense. The teachers are getting a HUGE raise, and are only protesting because the schools want to be able to hire "Who they want" when filling positions that were previously made open by a layoff. The union wants them to be forced to hire the teacher they laid off. That's just fucking stupid. We've got charter schools here, and parents are desperate to get their kids into them, but there's not enough room. Every parent I know has their kid on a waiting list for a charter school. Even the democrats. So I'm a bit confused who these teachers think they'll get on their side.
The problem with security issues like this are not the devices or systems themselves, nor is the government that installs them for benevolent purposes like safer streets or to combat terrorism. The problem with such systems are the governments of the future that use what's left for them to oppress. To us, all of these new issues are, at most, annoying. But for our grandchildren, when the wrong person gets into office, these systems could literally become a living nightmare.