Trump chooses to believe what and who he wants to believe. In this case, it was Kimberly Guilfoyle of "The Five" on Fox News. This is no joke. When it comes to big decisions, Boss-T, the President of the United States, is picking up the phone to TV celebrities on deliberately-biased cable news shows, rather than the leading tech executives in the country, international diplomats, and god knows who else, including, apparently, MIT Scientists.
If Putin invades Poland, I wonder who he'll call to ask whether he should push the button on Russia?
Sure, but not "agreeing to it" is not the same as dis-owning it and walking away. Trump and Co. aren't "re-negotiating" like they say they will do with NAFTA; they're dis-owning years of negotiations carried out by the U.S., and offering nothing to replace it, leaving all the other parties wondering a big-fat what-the-fuck??? (some deal-maker this Trump is turning out to be). This leads to a perception, all-important in international trade-deals or anything where real money is transacted, that the U.S. is unreliable. And indeed, all indications from Trump's campaign promises is to play hard-ball tariffs, whereas so far the only action carried out by the T-administration is some kind words to China's leaders at a golf course.
That leaves a bunch of Pacific countries, appetites whetted for a lucrative Pacific trade deal, sitting around wondering what we do now. China, itching to get American power out of the China Sea, South Korea, and Taiwan, itching for more trade and influence in South America, itching to show off its new aircraft carriers (with with more to come), would be happy to fill that empty seat at the table with everything that its hard-working, highly-educated, smart-phone-making, super-productive but no freedom-of-speech or freedom-to-unionize workforce has to offer.
Like any clubhouse, once you're out, you're out - it's never easy to get back in. If this keeps up, you're witnessing the decline of the United States as a world power. Thanks, big T, and thanks to all the cock-sure he'll-never-win people who slacked off and let him squeak to victory.
By keeping a coal plant open two days, you are a murderer!
And you wonder why there's an anti-environmental, anti-science backlash? How about we stop with the hyperbole and present the facts as is, without embellishment or absurd scare tactics? How many ridiculous now-provably-false doomsday scenarios were proclaimed over the past 40 years? Did you not think this would undermine public opinion at some point? Well, congratulations. People no longer trust scientists!
And somehow you got modded up to +5, even thought you did nothing to counter the argument other than emotional claims about "hyperbole". Did you even bother to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations?
But poster's got a point. Being right doesn't mean anyone will listen. The only fact that matters is that Trump won the election, and people who care about the environment lost. So, its not about the science. It's about persuading people. By now it should be clear that calling a person a murderer because of a coal plant somewhere does not persuade anyone to vote "no" for Trump or his climate-denying cronies. It may be infuriating, but all you do is generate yuk-yuks on Fox and Friends.
The real "inconvenient truth" is that most people zone-out and read their Twitter feeds while you perform your back-of-the-envelope calculations. If you want results, as opposed to snarky ridicule from Trump sycophants seeking to ride his gravy train, you need to take a breath and adopt a new approach, something that works. It may be a pain-in-the-ass at first, but politics and persuasion is just another application of science: experiment, observe the data, throw out what doesn't work, try again. Scare tactics, doomsday scenarios, and "you are a murderer!" may be good to preach to the choir, and may vent your frustrations a bit, but in the end, it fails to get 51% of the electoral college, or even defeat politicians who assault reporters in public. Climate facts, political facts, they're all facts. Accept them and work with them or we're fucked.
That said, there's an opportunity here. With Trump pulling the Federal Government out of the business of climate, there's a gap that may be filled by folks who really care, like the states. There's an opportunity to show that that Trump and climate-deniers are idiots, wasting an opportunity. But it's not going to be done by scare tactics. It's gonna be done by persuasion, like showing how west Texans are cashing in on wind power, or how great it would be to live in an electric-friendly city where rush-hour doesn't pump the air full of smog. Gosh, if only we had a different president, federal grants might be available so that more cities could get in on that.
That's one future. Another is the autodoc from Ringworld, Elysium and Passengers. Just climb your sick self in, shut the lid, and the machine fixes you right up.
What leaving DOES do is give up the opportunity for the U.S. to have a leadership role, or any role, in international discussions on climate change. The rest of the world will move on, without us. That means uncountable opportunities missed, picked up by, I don't know, China?
This is the same reason scrapping the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement was stupid. You don't like it, you change it. You don't just walk away, because if you do, some other power will gladly take over. Like China.
Giving up American power and influence around the world, with 1,251 days to go.
I'm about ready to stop visiting Slashdot after coming here since this site started.
Huh? I've been on Slashdot for 15 years, and they've had trolls like that as long as I've been here. Not defending them, but they're hardly new.
The GNAA thing must be at least ten years old by now, and "penis bird" is even older than that IIRC.
This is the reason for mod points. The idea is that posts like this will be modded down beneath your threshold so you don't see them. A few things: * First, don't feed trolls. Mod them down (if you have mod points) and let them lie - forget them, let the system do its work. * Second, if you don't know what mod points are, you aren't logging in with an account, you aren't reading or posting often enough, or you aren't paying attention. * Third, it's a thing that troll posts don't actually go to oblivion... I've been fooled a few times by that "1 hidden comment" thing only to click it and find something stupid, off-topic, offensive, child-headed and a damn waste of time. Does it make any sense for a score of, like, -5 to cause a comment to permanently, irretrievably disappear?
Me neither. The Stick is much more like your own personal pocket-carried PC, as at least it comes with an HDMI plug and a power supply. This thing doesn't appear to be able even to power up without help from a dock or some new wave of appliance, which appers to be what Intel's after.
Seems like insane overkill to slap in whole PC's just for kiosks, window signage, grocery-store displays, door-openers and soap-dispensers, but if Intel keeps making PC's smaller then I guess that's where we're headed. It's just sick to think this might mean a complete copy of copy of Windows 10 on damn near everything because... it can. Perhaps Red Hat can package and market a Linux for tiny business PC's, packaged with signage or kiosk application software, and break this potential Microsoft stranglehold, please?
Unlike this Windows 10s thingy where Edge is the default browser, Bing is the default search engine - end of story.
You're talking about Windows 10 S, the special locked-down version of Windows.
We'll see how much penetration this "walled-garden" variant of Windows really gets. And people can allegedly upgrade out of it. I'm not worried that Windows S is going to force its way onto people's desktops any time soon (unless OEM's start pre-installing S on new PC's in place of Home, charging a premium for Windows Home as an option, and Pro becomes a super-premium).
On the other hand, if Windows S is directed to schools and other specialized environments that could really benefit from a locked-down system, those same schools and specialized environments might exert some pressure on Microsoft to ease up on one thing or another. If a state-wide school system, for example, is hot for Windows S but absolutely requires a legacy Firefox-only plug-in written by some teacher years ago, Microsoft can probably be persuaded to let Firefox through.
Same for the default search engine. If Bing is gonna return pr0n or Alt-Hate results, I wouldn't want that in my computer labs for 8th graders. So get Microsoft to bend a bit and set the default search engine to Wikipedia or PBS? That might sell some Windows 10 S.
If Microsoft's not willing to bend, the only people I see running Windows 10 S are beta-testers for Edge and the Windows Store. There's a locked-down system out there already that's cheaper and more mature, if anyone wants it... it's called a Chromebook.
You're right, math is hard. But way too many people who call themselves conservatives round-off whatever errors they get by claiming the economy will magically, dramatically, improve and wipe out their mistakes. According to TFA:
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for Trump's tax cuts to pay for themselves, the economy would have to grow at 4.5 percent over the next 10 years. That's two and a half times the growth rate projected by the Congressional Budget Office.
That's always what these idiots do. Release the mythical tax strangle-hold on America's super-rich, and all the cuts to the safety net and spending for the military will magically be paid off, because the newly freed super-rich will invest their wealth and the whole country will soar like a pig full of hot air.
Conservatives who don't think very hard fall for this sucker-play because, to them, it's never been done, and it's waiting to happen, just begging to happen, and when it happens, it'll just totally work, and it'll be so great. Of course, nobody's holding a gun to the heads of rich people to do right with their tax relief and create jobs jobs jobs in America... they could spend it all overseas (a little more bang for the buck, there), spend it on yachts, spend it on cocaine... there's a lot of ways money can get spent... or not spent at all. Sunny-days, trickle-down budgets work just as well as Daddy's plan to move you into a nice house as soon as he wins his money back at the racetrack.
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
That remains to be seen. There's this thing in the Constitution called the Emoluments clause that restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress. Trump maintains, through at least his family members and a paper-thin revocable trust, a LOT of property interests (hotels, resorts, golf courses, vacation homes) that rich foreigners can dump money into in return for a little kind attention from Herr Donald.
He still hasn't released his tax returns either (is he still being audited, not that that means anything), which might show substantial financial obligations to foreign stake-holders (there's a lot of borrowing that goes on in the real-estate business).
If Comcast were to selectively throttle traffic from Youtube, Amazon, Pandora, etc., to their customers, there would be actual contractual issue that could be settled in court - either between the website and Comcast (if they buy transit from Comcast), OR ISP that the website buys transit from and Comcast
And Youtube, Amazon, Pandora etc. would lose. Peering is between network providers; content providers aren't part of any such agreement (unless a network provider like Comcast just happens to also be a content provider).
Let's say Amazon hooks up through Level 3, and Comcast is throttling Amazon traffic to all its customers at the last mile. Comcast, OTOH, has it's own shopping site and video streaming service, that don't need to come through the Level 3 bottleneck and goes straight to all its customers with great quality. To Comcast customers, Amazon appears lousy, may not be worth the subscription fee.
Amazon can complain, but they have no contractual relationship with Comcast, so no standing to sue. So, that's that.
They can complain to Level 3, but if Comcast has any evidence to show they're receiving boatloads more traffic from Level 3 than they're sending, then they have reason to squelch Level 3's traffic within the limits of the peer agreement. Level 3 says sorry, Amazon, nothing we can do. Amazon can sue Level 3, for not suing Comcast more effectively, or for not renegotiating the peering contract. And everybody can spend years and years and years in litigation, while Amazon's subscribers on Comcast's network get frustrated and quit. Wall St. gets wind of this, Amazon's stock starts to fall, billions of dollars vanish.
Or.... Comcast can offer a little side deal with Amazon to favor their packets as they arrive from Level 3, for a fee. Because, again, good Mr. Ajit Pai and his FCC would permit Comcast to discriminate packets by content, or by any way they choose. As they say, it's their pipes, their wires, and they have a God-given right to monetize them any and every way they feel fit, such as by offering different levels or tiers of service. You got your base tier, good enough for e-mail maybe, but if you want to be sure all your subscribers receive 4K streaming on Comcast's network, better cough up for the "premium" service. As far as Comcast is concerned, Amazon and Google can afford it, and it's about time they started paying up.
Rather than burn money on contract litigation, Amazon will give in and pay this extortion fee to Comcast rather than risk losing subscribers on Comcast's very big network. Verizon, Cablevision, Cox, AT&T, anyone with that monopoly on the last mile has every reason to get in on this racket and hit Google, Hulu, Netflix, ESPN, Amazon, and every other mass-consumer of last-mile bandwidth for a piece of their action, because, as they say, they're our pipes, their territory, and the FCC is throwing out any obligation for last-mile carriers to "give it away" to the likes of Google, Amazon, and everyone else with a business model based on a content-neutral Internet. That adds up to a lot of extortion fees, passed on as a lot of ads and fees for you and me.
That unnamed executive was almost certainly Gene Roddenberry.
Got anything that sheds light on that theory? Anything to cite? Ms. Whitney was scarred for life by that incident. Not saying you're wrong, per se, 'cause the truth has likely gone to the grave. But that's a hell of a thing to accuse a man of without something to back it.
If sites like Pandora or Youtube need to pay premiums for adequate performance over your Comcast or Verizon or whatever line, expect them to make you watch more ads to make up for it.
The long-running excuse is that the "people" don't even know what net-neutrality is, much less what it's valuable. Now they'll learn... free stuff on the Internet will get scarce, or will be delivered at crap speeds while your provider pushes their own affiliated entertainment package (with a fee), the only content that's reliably watchable.
Fees for other services you do over the net may also appear or increase. Hell, if I were Comcast, I'd hit Amazon, E-Bay, and other online merchants up hard, 'cause I know they can pass those fees onto their customers. Bye-bye, cheap Internet shopping.
Thanks, ignorant American voters, who shrug it off with lame-ass both-parties-are-just-as-bad excuses. Bullshit. I didn't like Hillary much, no I didn't, but if she HAD been elected, Ajit Pai would NOT be in charge of the FCC for fucking the Internet. Now, we all get to pay.
and this big shit sandwich is just getting started... 1,265 more days to go.
Was disappointed many, many times before JJ put the nail in the coffin. The magic is gone, long long gone and ain't coming back. Yet Paramount (or whoever owns them this time) keeps trying to press more life out of a series that the suits thought to kill back almost 40 years ago. Fuck. Nearly everyone who had anything to do with TOS that inspired such unprecedented fandom in syndicated re-runs are now, quite literally, dead - and yet studio execs slap a Trademark on a pilot and stick a few Trekkie easter-eggs in the script, and it's gotta get the green-light.
I've learned my lesson. If they have to slap "Star Trek(R)" and related paraphernalia on it to make you give it a second look, it's junk designed to take your money. There's better stuff out there like The Expanse or Oasis that don't need to name-drop to a 40-year old three-season TV show in order to get people to wanna watch it.
Trek Is Dead. Let it rest for fuck's sake. But you can't stop studio suits from squeezing "value" out of a Copyright and a Trademark property. Shit, Netflix is working on doing a remake of *cough* Lost In Space for fuck's sake. You could have a stroke thinking what sludge could spill out of that, but they're gonna produce it, probably at the expense of something original and good.
Where the show was designed by the actor's race and sex instead of a plot and a casting call. Because blatant sexism and racism is good so long as it isn't favouring white males!
Why is this a thing? picked up from a two-minute trailer? It's like the people who trolled Force Awakens because the leads were a girl and a black guy. What is the fucking problem? Should humans boycott Pixar movies because the lead characters are fish???
Nobody complained 30 years ago when Alien and Aliens had a strong woman in the lead role. Why do white males have their balls bunched in their briefs now, over a fucking TV show that hasn't even aired yet?
I don't think this new Trek is gonna be any better than any of the others, but "designed by the actor's race and sex" isn't the reason. Been-there, done-that, endless dialog and forgettable go-nowhere stories, littered with cynical easter-eggs to TOS that tease but never satisfy, that will sink the series. But a couple of women appear in a teaser-trailer, and a fella gets all pissy and won't eat his veggies anymore?
Try this experiment: bottle of Tequila and Mad Max: Fury Road. If you find yourself bored because it's Charlize Theron at the wheel and not Steven Seagal, check your pulse cause you're probably dead.
decided that they would have the child-like Yeoman Rand, and then got rid of her to make way for a love-interest-of-the-week (which is how Kirk got his reputation)
Uhh, kinda no. Been reviewing TOS, like actually watching them, and the whole Kirk-boinks-a-green-chick-each-episode thing really doesn't hold up; even when Kirk does get some action, it almost always ends badly. This regrettable myth that Kirk was a jack-ass cowboy instead of a hard officer has overshadowed much of what made TOS so successful in the first place, so much so that studio idiots are still trying to beat life out of this dead horse.
As for "child-like" Yeoman Rand, it's a toss-up whether actress Grace Lee Whitney was written out because of some creative decision or because she was sexually assaulted on the studio lot by an still-not-identified executive associated with the series.
The continued need for legacy ports is the excuse that was used to pillory Apple for going with USB-A. I wonder how that turned out...
Yes, but no. Apple products never had "legacy ports" like RS-232 serial ports, parallel ports, PS/2 ports, any of that "legacy" stuff PC's carried around. All their stuff was proprietary round DIN sockets for serial/Appletalk, or round 4-pin Apple-exclusive Apple Desktop Bus. The only "legacy" Apple was breaking from was its own, and they chose a standard being pushed by Intel, one that was prime to be adopted by PC's as well because their ports were just as weird, old, and inflexible.
Here, the need to rush to USB-C isn't that great. USB-A is almost just as capable. The only thing standardizing on USB-C does for Apple's laptops is shave a little more space, but there are plenty of PC laptops comparably thin and light that, at the cost of a few grams, offer HDMI and USB-A in addition to thunderbolt so the user can get straight to work. Again, PC laptops don't all stink anymore, and this is just one more reason not to pay the Apple tax. Sometimes, a little market research is worthwhile.
Stanford University economist Tony Seba forecasts in his new report that petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will no longer be sold anywhere in the world within the next eight years.
...and I thought Stanford was, like, where smart people go? I mean, I'm all for EV's and all, but nothing short of an invasion of space aliens or global thermonuclear war is gonna sink fossil fuels in 8 years. Did he stick that in a footnote somewhere? Hell, I'd like to see what other fascinating reports Mr. Seba has published, like when when the giraffe's are going to eat our brains, or that all people will walk around around without pants by 2021, devastating the Levi Strauss Company. I would also like to experience the "inspiration" for this fascinating report. I expect it's green and sticky and comes from a "dispensary" in return for a "prescription" you get from a "doctor" for your "anxiety". I love California, I really do.
True. I went for a refurb of last-year's Pro, just for the ports. A photographer friend of mind is suffering with his Touchbar model because he HAS to have USB Type-A style ports for his cameras and other equipment, so he's got this cheesy-looking third-party multi-port dongle that keeps falling out when he moves the machine from place to place because Type-C is so damn small and doesn't grip that hard.
Apple should take notice that PC laptops don't all stink anymore... and they all feature a full variety of ports. USB Type-A, in particular, is not going away soon, nor is it likely that the thumb-drive your co-worker just handed you has a Type-C connector. Maybe for the tiny Macbook a single Type-C with Thunderbolt is ok, but for the bucks you throw down on a Pro model, it's just irritating that you have to shell out yet more bucks (and space in your bag) for at least a Type-A dongle, which makes comparably equipped PC's that much more attractive.
and so-what that the Type-C can be used for power... stop showing off and bring back the MagSafe connector.
Screens? In the 60's early 70's? Would have loved to have screens! We had teletype machines, line-printers with keyboards attached! You're "screen" was a roll of paper. Files edited one line at a time. You think they call 'em "carriage-return" and "line-feed" for nothing? Gett^H off my lawn^H^H^H^HLAWN!
Back in the 1970s, you either paid for a movie ticket to see a movie, or waited
Back in the 1970s, the normal news cycle didn't carry news of how much money a movie made on its opening weekend. Now, news of the top-5 money-making movies is all-important, both for studios to brag about and to persuade gullible people that the movie is worth watching. Drop the price of tickets and that number goes down, and guys in suits get twitchy. It's weird, but true, because you can't objectively measure whether a movie is good or bad, certainly not when it's released, but you can measure how much money it brings in. Jacking up ticket prices helps to inflate those numbers, and may also help a stinker break even.
and by doing it this once, Microsoft may have just screwed itself into supporting XP again... like when the next killer worm start going around. Microsoft truly wants XP to go away, but if WCry tells us anything, it's how many crucial systems still rely on XP. We're talking banks, hospitals, factories, power-plants and stuff, all around the globe. Two things are obvious: Microsoft had or could produce a fix, but withheld it until WCry became an international catastrophe.
What's Microsoft to do? Sit back and blame it on the user and risk a massive class-action lawsuit? or save the day and risk supporting XP into perpetuity, making judgment call after judgment call whether the latest thing affecting XP is serious enough.
It is human nature to abuse privilege once it is attained. There is simply no good reason not to.
Morality is for chumps.
Mod parent up. and I'll add that if Spotify's CEO had dominant market share, he'd be abusing a little too.
..and if he didn't, the Board would fire him for, essentially, leaving free earnings on the table - costing them money. Unless there's some pesky government regulation that'll fine you or throw you in jail, you're a fool NOT to take full advantage.. 'cause someone else will.
Gonna happen eventually. Trusting your online identity to Google or Yahoo or some outfit that may go bankrupt someday is becoming more and more stupid, in a world where having a persistent, secure, accountable and trustworthy e-mail account unique to you is becoming essential to pay your bills, do your taxes, get your Medicare, and other plain life stuff. People are afraid of government, sure, but Google or Microsoft or AOL/Verizon do not owe you an e-mail account, and can probably shut it down any time they want (you ain't paying for it, for example, and if they go bankrupt, who ya gonna sue to pull it back from backups?) Smart guys can roll their own servers, of course, or work for a university their whole life. But that's still no guarantee that their e-mails are coming from then - the server gets hacked and someone uses it to steal your tax return, there's nobody to turn to.
I see a national e-mail account as an inevitability, like getting a passport, run by the Post Office for example, as soon as government don't wanna pay for letting people do business any other way (like paper). Just a matter of when. Maybe not soon, but someday.
Wrong. Corporations run the country. Comedians just work for them.
This comedian was simply suggesting people exercise their right to comment before rules go into force. You know, democracy, rulemaking. Look it up.
It's actually quite good, just nobody knows about it, except lawyers and lobbyists, I suppose because either people sleep through their high-school civics class, or your state doesn't bother even having a civics class in the curriculum because, you know, wasteful government spending teaching kids their rights as citizens and how to participate in their government. How do most kids even know they have a right to an attorney if arrested? Saw it on TV somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Trump chooses to believe what and who he wants to believe. In this case, it was Kimberly Guilfoyle of "The Five" on Fox News. This is no joke. When it comes to big decisions, Boss-T, the President of the United States, is picking up the phone to TV celebrities on deliberately-biased cable news shows, rather than the leading tech executives in the country, international diplomats, and god knows who else, including, apparently, MIT Scientists.
If Putin invades Poland, I wonder who he'll call to ask whether he should push the button on Russia?
Big win for Kimberly, though... she's got her eye on replacing Sean Spicer in his thankless job as Trump's mouthpiece, this making her the ONLY winner from this announcement.
Sure, but not "agreeing to it" is not the same as dis-owning it and walking away. Trump and Co. aren't "re-negotiating" like they say they will do with NAFTA; they're dis-owning years of negotiations carried out by the U.S., and offering nothing to replace it, leaving all the other parties wondering a big-fat what-the-fuck??? (some deal-maker this Trump is turning out to be). This leads to a perception, all-important in international trade-deals or anything where real money is transacted, that the U.S. is unreliable. And indeed, all indications from Trump's campaign promises is to play hard-ball tariffs, whereas so far the only action carried out by the T-administration is some kind words to China's leaders at a golf course.
That leaves a bunch of Pacific countries, appetites whetted for a lucrative Pacific trade deal, sitting around wondering what we do now. China, itching to get American power out of the China Sea, South Korea, and Taiwan, itching for more trade and influence in South America, itching to show off its new aircraft carriers (with with more to come), would be happy to fill that empty seat at the table with everything that its hard-working, highly-educated, smart-phone-making, super-productive but no freedom-of-speech or freedom-to-unionize workforce has to offer.
Like any clubhouse, once you're out, you're out - it's never easy to get back in. If this keeps up, you're witnessing the decline of the United States as a world power. Thanks, big T, and thanks to all the cock-sure he'll-never-win people who slacked off and let him squeak to victory.
By keeping a coal plant open two days, you are a murderer!
And you wonder why there's an anti-environmental, anti-science backlash? How about we stop with the hyperbole and present the facts as is, without embellishment or absurd scare tactics? How many ridiculous now-provably-false doomsday scenarios were proclaimed over the past 40 years? Did you not think this would undermine public opinion at some point? Well, congratulations. People no longer trust scientists!
And somehow you got modded up to +5, even thought you did nothing to counter the argument other than emotional claims about "hyperbole". Did you even bother to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations?
But poster's got a point. Being right doesn't mean anyone will listen. The only fact that matters is that Trump won the election, and people who care about the environment lost. So, its not about the science. It's about persuading people. By now it should be clear that calling a person a murderer because of a coal plant somewhere does not persuade anyone to vote "no" for Trump or his climate-denying cronies. It may be infuriating, but all you do is generate yuk-yuks on Fox and Friends.
The real "inconvenient truth" is that most people zone-out and read their Twitter feeds while you perform your back-of-the-envelope calculations. If you want results, as opposed to snarky ridicule from Trump sycophants seeking to ride his gravy train, you need to take a breath and adopt a new approach, something that works. It may be a pain-in-the-ass at first, but politics and persuasion is just another application of science: experiment, observe the data, throw out what doesn't work, try again. Scare tactics, doomsday scenarios, and "you are a murderer!" may be good to preach to the choir, and may vent your frustrations a bit, but in the end, it fails to get 51% of the electoral college, or even defeat politicians who assault reporters in public. Climate facts, political facts, they're all facts. Accept them and work with them or we're fucked.
That said, there's an opportunity here. With Trump pulling the Federal Government out of the business of climate, there's a gap that may be filled by folks who really care, like the states. There's an opportunity to show that that Trump and climate-deniers are idiots, wasting an opportunity. But it's not going to be done by scare tactics. It's gonna be done by persuasion, like showing how west Texans are cashing in on wind power, or how great it would be to live in an electric-friendly city where rush-hour doesn't pump the air full of smog. Gosh, if only we had a different president, federal grants might be available so that more cities could get in on that.
That's one future. Another is the autodoc from Ringworld, Elysium and Passengers. Just climb your sick self in, shut the lid, and the machine fixes you right up.
What leaving DOES do is give up the opportunity for the U.S. to have a leadership role, or any role, in international discussions on climate change. The rest of the world will move on, without us. That means uncountable opportunities missed, picked up by, I don't know, China?
This is the same reason scrapping the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement was stupid. You don't like it, you change it. You don't just walk away, because if you do, some other power will gladly take over. Like China.
Giving up American power and influence around the world, with 1,251 days to go.
I'm about ready to stop visiting Slashdot after coming here since this site started.
Huh? I've been on Slashdot for 15 years, and they've had trolls like that as long as I've been here. Not defending them, but they're hardly new.
The GNAA thing must be at least ten years old by now, and "penis bird" is even older than that IIRC.
This is the reason for mod points. The idea is that posts like this will be modded down beneath your threshold so you don't see them.
A few things:
* First, don't feed trolls. Mod them down (if you have mod points) and let them lie - forget them, let the system do its work.
* Second, if you don't know what mod points are, you aren't logging in with an account, you aren't reading or posting often enough, or you aren't paying attention.
* Third, it's a thing that troll posts don't actually go to oblivion... I've been fooled a few times by that "1 hidden comment" thing only to click it and find something stupid, off-topic, offensive, child-headed and a damn waste of time. Does it make any sense for a score of, like, -5 to cause a comment to permanently, irretrievably disappear?
I am personally not excited.
Me neither. The Stick is much more like your own personal pocket-carried PC, as at least it comes with an HDMI plug and a power supply. This thing doesn't appear to be able even to power up without help from a dock or some new wave of appliance, which appers to be what Intel's after.
Seems like insane overkill to slap in whole PC's just for kiosks, window signage, grocery-store displays, door-openers and soap-dispensers, but if Intel keeps making PC's smaller then I guess that's where we're headed. It's just sick to think this might mean a complete copy of copy of Windows 10 on damn near everything because... it can. Perhaps Red Hat can package and market a Linux for tiny business PC's, packaged with signage or kiosk application software, and break this potential Microsoft stranglehold, please?
Unlike this Windows 10s thingy where Edge is the default browser, Bing is the default search engine - end of story.
You're talking about Windows 10 S, the special locked-down version of Windows.
We'll see how much penetration this "walled-garden" variant of Windows really gets. And people can allegedly upgrade out of it. I'm not worried that Windows S is going to force its way onto people's desktops any time soon (unless OEM's start pre-installing S on new PC's in place of Home, charging a premium for Windows Home as an option, and Pro becomes a super-premium).
On the other hand, if Windows S is directed to schools and other specialized environments that could really benefit from a locked-down system, those same schools and specialized environments might exert some pressure on Microsoft to ease up on one thing or another. If a state-wide school system, for example, is hot for Windows S but absolutely requires a legacy Firefox-only plug-in written by some teacher years ago, Microsoft can probably be persuaded to let Firefox through.
Same for the default search engine. If Bing is gonna return pr0n or Alt-Hate results, I wouldn't want that in my computer labs for 8th graders. So get Microsoft to bend a bit and set the default search engine to Wikipedia or PBS? That might sell some Windows 10 S.
If Microsoft's not willing to bend, the only people I see running Windows 10 S are beta-testers for Edge and the Windows Store. There's a locked-down system out there already that's cheaper and more mature, if anyone wants it... it's called a Chromebook.
You're right, math is hard. But way too many people who call themselves conservatives round-off whatever errors they get by claiming the economy will magically, dramatically, improve and wipe out their mistakes. According to TFA:
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for Trump's tax cuts to pay for themselves, the economy would have to grow at 4.5 percent over the next 10 years. That's two and a half times the growth rate projected by the Congressional Budget Office.
That's always what these idiots do. Release the mythical tax strangle-hold on America's super-rich, and all the cuts to the safety net and spending for the military will magically be paid off, because the newly freed super-rich will invest their wealth and the whole country will soar like a pig full of hot air.
Conservatives who don't think very hard fall for this sucker-play because, to them, it's never been done, and it's waiting to happen, just begging to happen, and when it happens, it'll just totally work, and it'll be so great. Of course, nobody's holding a gun to the heads of rich people to do right with their tax relief and create jobs jobs jobs in America... they could spend it all overseas (a little more bang for the buck, there), spend it on yachts, spend it on cocaine... there's a lot of ways money can get spent... or not spent at all. Sunny-days, trickle-down budgets work just as well as Daddy's plan to move you into a nice house as soon as he wins his money back at the racetrack.
It's not a math error. It's a scam.
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
That remains to be seen. There's this thing in the Constitution called the Emoluments clause that restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress. Trump maintains, through at least his family members and a paper-thin revocable trust, a LOT of property interests (hotels, resorts, golf courses, vacation homes) that rich foreigners can dump money into in return for a little kind attention from Herr Donald.
He still hasn't released his tax returns either (is he still being audited, not that that means anything), which might show substantial financial obligations to foreign stake-holders (there's a lot of borrowing that goes on in the real-estate business).
Then there's this little matter of involvement of a foreign power in the matter of an election, and obstruction of justice for trying to cover up any link to that foreign power.
If Comcast were to selectively throttle traffic from Youtube, Amazon, Pandora, etc., to their customers, there would be actual contractual issue that could be settled in court - either between the website and Comcast (if they buy transit from Comcast), OR ISP that the website buys transit from and Comcast
And Youtube, Amazon, Pandora etc. would lose. Peering is between network providers; content providers aren't part of any such agreement (unless a network provider like Comcast just happens to also be a content provider).
Let's say Amazon hooks up through Level 3, and Comcast is throttling Amazon traffic to all its customers at the last mile. Comcast, OTOH, has it's own shopping site and video streaming service, that don't need to come through the Level 3 bottleneck and goes straight to all its customers with great quality. To Comcast customers, Amazon appears lousy, may not be worth the subscription fee.
Amazon can complain, but they have no contractual relationship with Comcast, so no standing to sue. So, that's that.
They can complain to Level 3, but if Comcast has any evidence to show they're receiving boatloads more traffic from Level 3 than they're sending, then they have reason to squelch Level 3's traffic within the limits of the peer agreement. Level 3 says sorry, Amazon, nothing we can do. Amazon can sue Level 3, for not suing Comcast more effectively, or for not renegotiating the peering contract. And everybody can spend years and years and years in litigation, while Amazon's subscribers on Comcast's network get frustrated and quit. Wall St. gets wind of this, Amazon's stock starts to fall, billions of dollars vanish.
Or.... Comcast can offer a little side deal with Amazon to favor their packets as they arrive from Level 3, for a fee. Because, again, good Mr. Ajit Pai and his FCC would permit Comcast to discriminate packets by content, or by any way they choose. As they say, it's their pipes, their wires, and they have a God-given right to monetize them any and every way they feel fit, such as by offering different levels or tiers of service. You got your base tier, good enough for e-mail maybe, but if you want to be sure all your subscribers receive 4K streaming on Comcast's network, better cough up for the "premium" service. As far as Comcast is concerned, Amazon and Google can afford it, and it's about time they started paying up.
Rather than burn money on contract litigation, Amazon will give in and pay this extortion fee to Comcast rather than risk losing subscribers on Comcast's very big network. Verizon, Cablevision, Cox, AT&T, anyone with that monopoly on the last mile has every reason to get in on this racket and hit Google, Hulu, Netflix, ESPN, Amazon, and every other mass-consumer of last-mile bandwidth for a piece of their action, because, as they say, they're our pipes, their territory, and the FCC is throwing out any obligation for last-mile carriers to "give it away" to the likes of Google, Amazon, and everyone else with a business model based on a content-neutral Internet. That adds up to a lot of extortion fees, passed on as a lot of ads and fees for you and me.
That unnamed executive was almost certainly Gene Roddenberry.
Got anything that sheds light on that theory? Anything to cite? Ms. Whitney was scarred for life by that incident.
Not saying you're wrong, per se, 'cause the truth has likely gone to the grave. But that's a hell of a thing to accuse a man of without something to back it.
If sites like Pandora or Youtube need to pay premiums for adequate performance over your Comcast or Verizon or whatever line, expect them to make you watch more ads to make up for it.
The long-running excuse is that the "people" don't even know what net-neutrality is, much less what it's valuable. Now they'll learn... free stuff on the Internet will get scarce, or will be delivered at crap speeds while your provider pushes their own affiliated entertainment package (with a fee), the only content that's reliably watchable.
Fees for other services you do over the net may also appear or increase. Hell, if I were Comcast, I'd hit Amazon, E-Bay, and other online merchants up hard, 'cause I know they can pass those fees onto their customers. Bye-bye, cheap Internet shopping.
Thanks, ignorant American voters, who shrug it off with lame-ass both-parties-are-just-as-bad excuses. Bullshit. I didn't like Hillary much, no I didn't, but if she HAD been elected, Ajit Pai would NOT be in charge of the FCC for fucking the Internet. Now, we all get to pay.
and this big shit sandwich is just getting started... 1,265 more days to go.
Was disappointed many, many times before JJ put the nail in the coffin. The magic is gone, long long gone and ain't coming back. Yet Paramount (or whoever owns them this time) keeps trying to press more life out of a series that the suits thought to kill back almost 40 years ago. Fuck. Nearly everyone who had anything to do with TOS that inspired such unprecedented fandom in syndicated re-runs are now, quite literally, dead - and yet studio execs slap a Trademark on a pilot and stick a few Trekkie easter-eggs in the script, and it's gotta get the green-light.
I've learned my lesson. If they have to slap "Star Trek(R)" and related paraphernalia on it to make you give it a second look, it's junk designed to take your money. There's better stuff out there like The Expanse or Oasis that don't need to name-drop to a 40-year old three-season TV show in order to get people to wanna watch it.
Trek Is Dead. Let it rest for fuck's sake. But you can't stop studio suits from squeezing "value" out of a Copyright and a Trademark property. Shit, Netflix is working on doing a remake of *cough* Lost In Space for fuck's sake. You could have a stroke thinking what sludge could spill out of that, but they're gonna produce it, probably at the expense of something original and good.
Where the show was designed by the actor's race and sex instead of a plot and a casting call. Because blatant sexism and racism is good so long as it isn't favouring white males!
Why is this a thing? picked up from a two-minute trailer? It's like the people who trolled Force Awakens because the leads were a girl and a black guy. What is the fucking problem? Should humans boycott Pixar movies because the lead characters are fish???
Nobody complained 30 years ago when Alien and Aliens had a strong woman in the lead role. Why do white males have their balls bunched in their briefs now, over a fucking TV show that hasn't even aired yet?
I don't think this new Trek is gonna be any better than any of the others, but "designed by the actor's race and sex" isn't the reason. Been-there, done-that, endless dialog and forgettable go-nowhere stories, littered with cynical easter-eggs to TOS that tease but never satisfy, that will sink the series. But a couple of women appear in a teaser-trailer, and a fella gets all pissy and won't eat his veggies anymore?
Try this experiment: bottle of Tequila and Mad Max: Fury Road. If you find yourself bored because it's Charlize Theron at the wheel and not Steven Seagal, check your pulse cause you're probably dead.
decided that they would have the child-like Yeoman Rand, and then got rid of her to make way for a love-interest-of-the-week (which is how Kirk got his reputation)
Uhh, kinda no. Been reviewing TOS, like actually watching them, and the whole Kirk-boinks-a-green-chick-each-episode thing really doesn't hold up; even when Kirk does get some action, it almost always ends badly. This regrettable myth that Kirk was a jack-ass cowboy instead of a hard officer has overshadowed much of what made TOS so successful in the first place, so much so that studio idiots are still trying to beat life out of this dead horse.
As for "child-like" Yeoman Rand, it's a toss-up whether actress Grace Lee Whitney was written out because of some creative decision or because she was sexually assaulted on the studio lot by an still-not-identified executive associated with the series.
The continued need for legacy ports is the excuse that was used to pillory Apple for going with USB-A. I wonder how that turned out...
Yes, but no. Apple products never had "legacy ports" like RS-232 serial ports, parallel ports, PS/2 ports, any of that "legacy" stuff PC's carried around. All their stuff was proprietary round DIN sockets for serial/Appletalk, or round 4-pin Apple-exclusive Apple Desktop Bus. The only "legacy" Apple was breaking from was its own, and they chose a standard being pushed by Intel, one that was prime to be adopted by PC's as well because their ports were just as weird, old, and inflexible.
Here, the need to rush to USB-C isn't that great. USB-A is almost just as capable. The only thing standardizing on USB-C does for Apple's laptops is shave a little more space, but there are plenty of PC laptops comparably thin and light that, at the cost of a few grams, offer HDMI and USB-A in addition to thunderbolt so the user can get straight to work. Again, PC laptops don't all stink anymore, and this is just one more reason not to pay the Apple tax. Sometimes, a little market research is worthwhile.
Stanford University economist Tony Seba forecasts in his new report that petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will no longer be sold anywhere in the world within the next eight years.
...and I thought Stanford was, like, where smart people go? I mean, I'm all for EV's and all, but nothing short of an invasion of space aliens or global thermonuclear war is gonna sink fossil fuels in 8 years. Did he stick that in a footnote somewhere?
Hell, I'd like to see what other fascinating reports Mr. Seba has published, like when when the giraffe's are going to eat our brains, or that all people will walk around around without pants by 2021, devastating the Levi Strauss Company.
I would also like to experience the "inspiration" for this fascinating report. I expect it's green and sticky and comes from a "dispensary" in return for a "prescription" you get from a "doctor" for your "anxiety".
I love California, I really do.
A pro-level machine needs pro-level connectivity.
True. I went for a refurb of last-year's Pro, just for the ports. A photographer friend of mind is suffering with his Touchbar model because he HAS to have USB Type-A style ports for his cameras and other equipment, so he's got this cheesy-looking third-party multi-port dongle that keeps falling out when he moves the machine from place to place because Type-C is so damn small and doesn't grip that hard.
Apple should take notice that PC laptops don't all stink anymore... and they all feature a full variety of ports. USB Type-A, in particular, is not going away soon, nor is it likely that the thumb-drive your co-worker just handed you has a Type-C connector. Maybe for the tiny Macbook a single Type-C with Thunderbolt is ok, but for the bucks you throw down on a Pro model, it's just irritating that you have to shell out yet more bucks (and space in your bag) for at least a Type-A dongle, which makes comparably equipped PC's that much more attractive.
and so-what that the Type-C can be used for power... stop showing off and bring back the MagSafe connector.
SCREENS were invented as a part of 1960s/1970s
Screens? In the 60's early 70's? Would have loved to have screens! We had teletype machines, line-printers with keyboards attached! You're "screen" was a roll of paper. Files edited one line at a time. You think they call 'em "carriage-return" and "line-feed" for nothing?
Gett^H off my lawn^H^H^H^HLAWN!
Back in the 1970s, you either paid for a movie ticket to see a movie, or waited
Back in the 1970s, the normal news cycle didn't carry news of how much money a movie made on its opening weekend. Now, news of the top-5 money-making movies is all-important, both for studios to brag about and to persuade gullible people that the movie is worth watching. Drop the price of tickets and that number goes down, and guys in suits get twitchy. It's weird, but true, because you can't objectively measure whether a movie is good or bad, certainly not when it's released, but you can measure how much money it brings in. Jacking up ticket prices helps to inflate those numbers, and may also help a stinker break even.
"YES" - for such critical needed updates
and by doing it this once, Microsoft may have just screwed itself into supporting XP again... like when the next killer worm start going around. Microsoft truly wants XP to go away, but if WCry tells us anything, it's how many crucial systems still rely on XP. We're talking banks, hospitals, factories, power-plants and stuff, all around the globe. Two things are obvious: Microsoft had or could produce a fix, but withheld it until WCry became an international catastrophe.
What's Microsoft to do? Sit back and blame it on the user and risk a massive class-action lawsuit? or save the day and risk supporting XP into perpetuity, making judgment call after judgment call whether the latest thing affecting XP is serious enough.
It is human nature to abuse privilege once it is attained. There is simply no good reason not to.
Morality is for chumps.
Mod parent up. and I'll add that if Spotify's CEO had dominant market share, he'd be abusing a little too.
Gonna happen eventually. Trusting your online identity to Google or Yahoo or some outfit that may go bankrupt someday is becoming more and more stupid, in a world where having a persistent, secure, accountable and trustworthy e-mail account unique to you is becoming essential to pay your bills, do your taxes, get your Medicare, and other plain life stuff. People are afraid of government, sure, but Google or Microsoft or AOL/Verizon do not owe you an e-mail account, and can probably shut it down any time they want (you ain't paying for it, for example, and if they go bankrupt, who ya gonna sue to pull it back from backups?) Smart guys can roll their own servers, of course, or work for a university their whole life. But that's still no guarantee that their e-mails are coming from then - the server gets hacked and someone uses it to steal your tax return, there's nobody to turn to.
I see a national e-mail account as an inevitability, like getting a passport, run by the Post Office for example, as soon as government don't wanna pay for letting people do business any other way (like paper). Just a matter of when. Maybe not soon, but someday.
Wrong. Corporations run the country. Comedians just work for them.
This comedian was simply suggesting people exercise their right to comment before rules go into force. You know, democracy, rulemaking. Look it up.
It's actually quite good, just nobody knows about it, except lawyers and lobbyists, I suppose because either people sleep through their high-school civics class, or your state doesn't bother even having a civics class in the curriculum because, you know, wasteful government spending teaching kids their rights as citizens and how to participate in their government. How do most kids even know they have a right to an attorney if arrested? Saw it on TV somewhere.