And yet, Windows updates, even weeks-old ones, used to break my DisplayLink adapter's functionality on a regular enough basis that I finally stopped using it altogether.
This issue today has nothing to do with OS updates and everything to do with a shoddy company who has built their product on top of a pile of brittle hacks that fall apart at the slightest touch.
The reason there’s no mention of DisplayLink is because DisplayLink isn’t part of the system any more than Adobe Flash or other unsupported third-party products are. I suspect that you and many others may be confused and thinking of DisplayPort instead.
DisplayLink is a third-party company that I know as one that produces chips and drivers for use in USB devices that allows those devices (e.g. adapters or hubs) to appear as displays to the computer. I used a USB adapter of theirs to add a third monitor to a computer that only had video outputs for two monitors, and it worked okay for the most part, so long as you didn’t breathe or look at it funny, and so long as you were okay with the advertised 1080p being at about 5-10 Hz, making it suitable for web browsing static pages and not much else. The whole setup was incredibly brittle and seemed as if it was built of top of a pile of hacks, since I had it stop working more than once in the few years that I was using it. Driver updates to my Windows partition would break it. Driver updates to my Mac partition would break it. Driver updates to the device itself wouldn’t always fix it. Occasionally you’d plug it in or just turn everything back on after being off for the night and it just wouldn’t work, even though nothing had changed.
My experience using DisplayLink products years ago was poor enough that I stopped using them as soon as it was practical to do so.
Blaming Apple is a deflection from the real issue: it sounds as if their product is still built on top of a pile of brittle hacks and that their QA is still as poor as it was years ago. I was able to make it work because I was only using it for personal use; I couldn’t imagine anyone trying to use their stuff in a business environment.
Indeed. Price drives decisions for the average consumer in this space. Performance is secondary, especially so since any of them will work just fine for the average consumer. Asking "how will they know which CPU they need?" makes about as much sense as asking "How will they know whether they need a Ferrari or a Corolla?"
The last few generations of A-processors have been beating increasingly higher-tier MacBooks in performance benchmarks these last few years. They may not be ready to replace the highest-end chips yet, but they were ready to replace the low-end ones a few years ago, and that lead has only been growing.
Almost all Americans have two or more broadband providers available to them
The FCC disagrees. Keeping in mind that broadband is still officially classified as 25Mbps down/3Mbps up, Figure 4 from last month's Internet Access Services report shows that only 56% of census blocks have a choice (i.e. 2+ broadband providers available), which is a far cry from "almost all Americans".
Moreover, just because broadband is available in a census block does not mean that it's available for any given household. If an ISP provides even a single residential address in a census block with broadband speeds, that census block has broadband speeds "available" so far as the self-reported numbers used in that chart are concerned, even if the remaining 99.9% of people have no access at all. In my suburban neighborhood, for instance, I have two fixed ISPs and one WISP claiming to provide broadband, but in personally contacting all of them I discovered that only one actually provides broadband at my specific address (smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood).
All of which is to say, the actual availability of 2+ broadband ISPs for any given household within the US is at most 56%, but is in all likelihood actually far less.
Innovations like "we give you a free phone with Facebook in return for ads" have been killed.
And what exactly killed them? It certainly wasn't regulation, since wireless is—and has been—specifically exempted from Title II regulation. If that innovation stopped it's not because regulations killed it: it's because market forces did. Even so, I'm not actually convinced those sorts of "innovations" are nearly as dead as you claim. T-Mobile seems to be making a habit of delivering services (e.g. Binge On) that are contrary to Net Neutrality yet good for them and consumers.
I have lived with government-run telecoms and they were a disaster; when they were privatized, service improved massively and prices went down.
I'm not suggesting we take private ISPs public, nor do I view government-run utilities as the panacea that some make them out to be. I simply view them as a way to introduce healthy competition, which is what's sorely needed in the broadband space. Some public ISPs will be lousy and some will be outstanding (just as with private ones), but the outstanding ones will force private ISPs to improve, and that improvement will bring benefits to customers outside the regions they serve.
Utility pricing is completely out of whack. In California [...]
Let's just stop right there and agree that California is doing it wrong. California's example is not how it should be done, nor is it how it's done in most other places. The fact that some places do it incorrectly doesn't mean that it's an inherently bad idea. It just means that they've botched the implementation. My local municipality provides electric and water at rates that make sense to everyone, and I'd certainly trust them to provide Internet as well, were they allowed to do so by the state.
One addendum to everything you said (which is correct): just because it has 25% as many PCIe channels doesn't mean the performance is 25% what it could have been. In practice, a GTX 1080 will still perform at about 70-75% of its capability when connected via x4 instead of x16. There won't necessarily be any delays, but the raw performance will be less than what the card is capable of.
One other minor note: Apple isn't selling an Apple-branded eGPU box at this time. It's possible they might when the new Mac Pro debuts later this year or next, since they've talked about going to a more modular design and this change would seem to lay that groundwork, but whether they will or won't remains to be seen.
This is a wedge designed to divide us. After all, you’re right, of course; there are VERY good arguments to be made for allowing exceptions. The real problem here is that they’re trying to convince people that supporting Net Neutrality means we can’t have all those nice things, thus making anyone who supports Net Neutrality appear to be an unreasonable person.
For example, the fast lane that Pai has been trumpeting is telemedicine, which, like VoIP, is sensitive to spikes in latency. He’s been suggesting that repealing the 2015 regulations will finally allow telemedicine to take off. After all, the 2015 regulations were holding it back because they disallowed all “fast lanes”.
Except they didn’t.
The 2015 rules already carved out exceptions for certain services, telemedicine being one of them. And yet, I don’t recall any of us here on Slashdot suggesting that the 2015 regulations were anything other than Net Neutral, despite that apparent contradiction. Maybe there have been some Net Neutrality purists crying in a corner somewhere?
Anyway, what Comcast and Pai are trying to do is suggest that Net Neutrality is mutually exclusive with common sense that any normal person would agree with. It’s not. The 2015 regulations already showed us that we don’t have to give up on Net Neutrality to allow for exceptions that simply make sense.
This isn’t an either/or decision. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Net profit margins for telecoms are around 11%; that's the maximum you could save if government operated as efficiently as a for profit corporation.
The dominant ISPs achieved their positions by leveraging natural monopolies. They’ve had no real competition in years. They’ve grown complacent and lazy because they’ve had no reason to innovate, compete, or even just try.
Why in the world would you consider their low standard to be the best that a local utility could hope to achieve in terms of efficiency? At a minimum you can cut the lobbyists to see an immediate improvement to the bottom line.
As for your other point about cross-subsidizing, I agree, but I don’t see the relevance. Where I’m from, the public electric and water utility bills us based on our usage. I’d assume they’d do the same with Internet, and I’m fine with that, given that it’s a perfectly equitable way of handling things, even if it does mean that I’m likely to be paying the highest bill in the neighborhood I live in.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
That’s...not how local public utilities typically operate. If your local municipality is operating utilities via taxes instead of usage-based billing, I’d say you’ve got some idiots at the helm and that the incentives are not aligned with the best interests of the community. Thankfully, that approach isn’t exactly common.
Instead, public utilities are generally operated via usage-based billing on an at-cost basis, rather than through taxes. I can live entirely off the grid without having to pay a dime to my local municipality for utilities. I could pay a private utility company and avoid paying the local municipality. There may be an infrastructure buildout paid for via taxes, but private and public groups both usually benefit from and get to use that infrastructure, so you’d be paying it either way.
I take it you’re unaware that alphanumeric passcodes have been supported since iOS 4? In iOS 11, you just need to tap the rather obviously named Passcode Options button when you go to change your passcode to bring up the options for formats other than the six-digit default.
When have 2nd amendment proponents ever done anything to protect people's privacy rights? I don't see them protesting data collection
Actually, gun rights proponents are almost certainly the most successful lobbyists against data collection in modern America, which, depending on your views, may not be a good thing.
Mind you, it’s their own privacy that they’re interested in protecting, but they’ve lobbied Congress so we’ll that it’s currently illegal for the US government to create or maintain databases of gun owners, historical gun purchases, or even the guns themselves, despite massive efforts by people on the other side of those debates to collect exactly that information. And even the paltry records that do exist (i.e. records from private gun stores that went out of business), are not allowed to be computerized. If you’d like more information, it’s easy to come by because the ways that the ATF has been hamstrung by the NRA get re-reported every time there’s another major shooting. And it’s not just at the national level either. Gun enthusiasts are quite active in protesting locally as well.
I do agree with the overarching point you were trying to get at, but that particular argument you used to make your point was an extraordinarily poor choice.
While I wouldn't express it quite as you did, the notion that each moment in time is merely a cross-section of a static universe that already exists in its entirety both forwards and backwards through time is my belief as well.
Interestingly, it turns the question of the universe being deterministic vs. non-deterministic on its head, since both of those options presuppose a dynamic universe. If the universe is in fact a static, four dimensional object, arguing about determinism vs. non-determinism is like arguing whether the rings in cross-sections of dead trees cause predictable changes in subsequent cross-sections: it's nonsensical, since the rings in a dead tree aren't effecting change, predictable or otherwise. Sure, we can look at one cross-section and have a good idea of what the next one will look like, but that's not because one cross-section caused the next, it's because both cross-sections are part of a larger object that has a degree of consistency across a three-dimensional space, just as the universe does across a four-dimensional space.
At the end of the day, all of this is merely one way of approaching the Ship of Theseus paradox. Alternatively, it's a way of addressing those who disagree with Heraclitus' notion that we can enter the same river twice.
You seem to be reading quite a bit into what I said. I neither said the FCC’s rules were bad nor suggested there was a problem with them, so feel free to keep using ad hominem to attack that straw man you built out of things I never said.
Rather, I pointed out that the GP was factually incorrect about their central claim and then went on to suggest that the FCC’s rules were more or less redundant on account of existing regulations already being successfully enforced.
Would I prefer that the rules stayed in place? Yes! Having multiple avenues for defense of consumers is rarely a bad thing. Even so, I don’t see the loss of these rules as a “the sky is falling!” sort of scenario that others seem to be painting it as. I prefer to reserve my moral outrage for the situations that actually warrant it.
As much as I don’t like Pai, this ruling, at least on its face, isn’t necessarily the horrible thing it’s being made out to be, since the FTC has been providing better regulation on this issue for far longer, and has been enlisting technology companies to provide solutions to the issue as well.
It’s interesting to note, but I agree that it’s of little significance. Moreover, while it looks odd, I can’t say with 100% certainty that it’s a bug at all (though if I had to bet, I’d bet it was), given that it allows the eye to start processing the text before the animation completes, which may have been an intentional decision. There are numerous examples of companies intentionally making odd choices of exactly that sort in order to enhance usability, even if it comes at the cost of what looks correct when you go through it frame by frame or pixel by pixel.
There are two seemingly mutually exclusive requirements for an ideal voting system: 1) An inability to prove one's voting choices is necessary to ensure a safe and free election (i.e. one where people cannot be compelled to vote a particular way).
2) The ability to verify the accuracy of your vote and that it was counted towards the results is the best means by which to establish confidence in the system.
Blockchain may provide a path to marrying the two, but the system implemented in Sierra Leone is not yet it.
The birthday problem has zero relevance here and you seem to have a backwards understanding of what they're even trying to do (based on their claims), not to mention how the statistics should be applied.
A) This is happening at the gate in place of scanning boarding passes. They aren't comparing you against crooks at this step, nor does it make sense for them to bother; they're comparing you against the passenger manifest to make sure you're on the right flight.
B) As such, a false positive isn't a problem for typical passengers; it would mean they've been falsely matched to someone else who is also cleared to be on the flight, resulting in them being allowed to fly, just as they should have been. The only time a false positive might adversely affect a passenger is if they attempt to board a flight other than their own, in which case their error would go uncorrected.
C) A false negative has the potential to be a concern, but the false negative rate is 4% and it results in nothing more than the gate agent falling back to scanning an identifying document in the passenger's possession, no different than they currently do 100% of the time.
D) A false positive could allow a "bad guy" to board a flight other than their own, but even if the false positive rate was the same 4% as the false negative rate, you'd still catch 96% of "bad guys" who had slipped through all other checks. Alternatively, all negatives for "bad guys" attempting to board flights other than their own must necessarily be true and would result in them being denied boarding.
E) If they're going to misidentify you as a criminal, it'll happen before you ever arrive at the airport, let alone the gate. Consider: they already have your face on file (after all, that's what they're comparing against at the gate) and airlines already clear each passenger with the government before issuing tickets, so there's no need for you to even show up before they check your face against known criminals. If that sort of misidentification was to occur (and it does), you would have been denied entry to the secure area altogether.
All of that said, despite my (seeming) defense of the system up to this point, I actually find it abhorrent, given that this system will almost certainly be abused in all of the ways we expect and fear.
I subscribe to the sort of puritanical, prudish beliefs that many here frown upon, but even I don't understand or support this misguided attempt at a bill.
If companies with vested interests in keeping sexually explicit content off their platforms can't do so (e.g. Nintendo's Miiverse app was aimed at children and was apparently rife with users sending drawings of exactly the sort you'd expect in the days immediately prior to its recent shutdown), how are ISPs supposed to make that happen across every single platform that's Internet-accessible?
Moreover, as it's written in the summary, these rules apply so broadly as to be meaningless, given that they'd require ISPs to...
...monitor all chat rooms and chat messages (after all, the bill is for "sexual content" not "sexual imagery", so sexting is just as against the rules as porn)
...intrude on the privacy of marriages (after all, the bill isn't just for web or publicly-accessible content, and we wouldn't want husbands to be having innuendo-laden video chats with their wives, let alone something steamier!)
...illegally circumvent DRM protections (after all, the bill doesn't carve out an exception for encrypted traffic, so ISPs will have to break any DRM used by streaming video providers to ensure that the content isn't sexual, lest a customer watch something racy on Netflix like the PG-rated Airplane—which just happens to have a naked woman randomly run across the screen in one scene—without paying their $20 fee to end the abuse of women like that one).
Just as bad, there's no mention of a grace period to block the content after it's been identified, so how are they supposed to identify sexual content across literally every single realtime stream of content available online at any given moment? Even live TV crews can't manage to perfectly do so for justone video stream at a time, and they have teams of full-time staff dedicated to the problem.
And that's before we even broach the discussion of where we draw the line for "sexual content". Rumor has it that the authors of the bill are working to hash out a new definition, with there being some internal disagreement about whether it's okay to draw the line at the knees, or if they instead should insist that skirts cover the ankle as well.
Anyway, the only guaranteed way an ISP can ensure they don't run afoul of this bill is for them to leave Rhode Island.
What are you even talking about? No one involved in any of this is opposed to legitimate competition (e.g. someone selling their own product for whatever price they want to set). The problem here is that someone is falsely claiming to be selling someone else’s product when what they’re actually selling is something else entirely.
The cheap knockoff company is selling a counterfeit item that purports to be the real deal by illegally using the brand name’s trademarks, packaging, and nearly exact product design. No one is suggesting they shouldn’t be allowed to sell their own product under their own name for $1.50. But instead of doing that, they’re falsely claiming to sell a name brand thing for less, literally stealing sales from the name brand in the process.
And even if you don’t care about brand names (which I have no problem with), you should care about people getting what they pay for, which isn’t happening when these counterfeits get sold in place of the real goods. That’s fraud, plain and simple. The fact that you’re dismissing illegal activities that are hostile towards both legitimate businesses and consumers as nothing more than someone crying about competition is astoundingly absurd.
You seem to be suggesting that American law trumps Irish law because Microsoft is an American company. That may very well be the way that this particular scenario plays out in practice (though I doubt it), but it's not an accurate picture of the legal situation.
Microsoft has a legal obligation as an American company to abide by American law and has a legal obligation as a company operating in Ireland to abide by Irish/EU law. Having legal obligations in different countries usually isn't an issue for companies, since it's generally agreed that American law applies in America and foreign law applies elsewhere (i.e. each country has sovereignty within its own borders). Inasmuch as one set of laws extends beyond that country's borders (e.g. US corporate taxes), it does not—and legally cannot—contravene the law in other jurisdictions.
Which, to be clear, is how it should be, since attempts to force your law in another country may potentially be viewed as an act of war, given that you would be violating that other nation's sovereignty. And nations tend to take their sovereignty pretty seriously, as you might imagine.
Anyway, all of this just means that the US lacks the authority to demand that—while in Ireland—Microsoft engage in activities that are contrary to Irish/EU law. Any attempt on the part of the US to do so would mean that the US is asserting the supremacy of its laws over Irish and EU laws within Ireland's borders, and could be construed as an act of war.
If only there was an avenue through which the US Justice Department could request that data without having to make demands.
Oh wait, there is!
We have treaties for resolving exactly these sorts of situations where one country wants something that they don't have the authority to demand. All the Justice Department needs to do is contact the Irish government and ask for its help in extraditing the data. Simple as that. Doing it that way ensures that no Irish laws are broken, no American laws are broken, that each nation's sovereignty is respected, and that no company is asked to choose between a rock and a hard place. The Irish government may deny America's request, but that's their prerogative, given that it's their country.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they have to deal with reality, rather than legal theory, and the reality of the situation is that if they lose this appeal they'll have to choose between the rock and the hard place. If I were them, I'd be running the numbers to figure out what they'd be losing each way. Refusing to abide by the US order will likely result in some fines, but I'd imagine little else. Refusing to abide by Irish/EU privacy laws, however, seems like it could carry some significantly more severe consequences, not least of which is that they'd immediately lose a huge number of their European customers.
Was trying to find a different network hog this weekend and saw iTunes uploading to AWS, which made no sense.
It makes sense to me. There are a number of reasons that could be happening. Just off the top of my head: * If you have the "Genius" feature enabled (it's on by default), it's sending metadata back to Apple regarding the new songs you've added to your library so that it can improve and personalize the recommendations it makes for you. Given that many of iCloud's services are (and have been) hosted via AWS, it makes sense that you'd see a connection to them.
* It could be asking Gracenote for the CD so that it can populate the track name and other fields. I don't believe you can disable this lookup, but it isn't necessary for ripping CDs, so if you simply disable iTunes' network access things should still work just fine. You'll possibly have to provide your own track names and other data, but otherwise it shouldn't be a problem.
* It could be pulling down album artwork from the iTunes Store's servers (which, again, are oftentimes hosted on AWS). I believe you can disable this in the Store settings, but like Gracenote, it too isn't necessary, so disabling iTunes' network access won't inhibit your ability to rip CDs. It'll simply force you to have to provide your own artwork.
Mind you, none of this is intended as a defense of the abomination that is iTunes. I'm simply pointing out that there are explanations for the network activity you were seeing.
A better analogy is that they’re no longer selling new plants to old gardens, given that this is simply access to the iTunes Store we’re talking about, not core functionality. Existing content that’s already been downloaded will continue to work just fine. New iTunes Store content purchased on other devices should still be viewable on the Apple TV via Home Sharing. The only thing people won’t be able to do is buy or rent new iTunes Store movies and shows (apps weren’t even supported on this model, that’s how old it is) directly from this device.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, Windows updates, even weeks-old ones, used to break my DisplayLink adapter's functionality on a regular enough basis that I finally stopped using it altogether.
This issue today has nothing to do with OS updates and everything to do with a shoddy company who has built their product on top of a pile of brittle hacks that fall apart at the slightest touch.
The reason there’s no mention of DisplayLink is because DisplayLink isn’t part of the system any more than Adobe Flash or other unsupported third-party products are. I suspect that you and many others may be confused and thinking of DisplayPort instead.
DisplayLink is a third-party company that I know as one that produces chips and drivers for use in USB devices that allows those devices (e.g. adapters or hubs) to appear as displays to the computer. I used a USB adapter of theirs to add a third monitor to a computer that only had video outputs for two monitors, and it worked okay for the most part, so long as you didn’t breathe or look at it funny, and so long as you were okay with the advertised 1080p being at about 5-10 Hz, making it suitable for web browsing static pages and not much else. The whole setup was incredibly brittle and seemed as if it was built of top of a pile of hacks, since I had it stop working more than once in the few years that I was using it. Driver updates to my Windows partition would break it. Driver updates to my Mac partition would break it. Driver updates to the device itself wouldn’t always fix it. Occasionally you’d plug it in or just turn everything back on after being off for the night and it just wouldn’t work, even though nothing had changed.
My experience using DisplayLink products years ago was poor enough that I stopped using them as soon as it was practical to do so.
Blaming Apple is a deflection from the real issue: it sounds as if their product is still built on top of a pile of brittle hacks and that their QA is still as poor as it was years ago. I was able to make it work because I was only using it for personal use; I couldn’t imagine anyone trying to use their stuff in a business environment.
Indeed. Price drives decisions for the average consumer in this space. Performance is secondary, especially so since any of them will work just fine for the average consumer. Asking "how will they know which CPU they need?" makes about as much sense as asking "How will they know whether they need a Ferrari or a Corolla?"
The last few generations of A-processors have been beating increasingly higher-tier MacBooks in performance benchmarks these last few years. They may not be ready to replace the highest-end chips yet, but they were ready to replace the low-end ones a few years ago, and that lead has only been growing.
Almost all Americans have two or more broadband providers available to them
The FCC disagrees. Keeping in mind that broadband is still officially classified as 25Mbps down/3Mbps up, Figure 4 from last month's Internet Access Services report shows that only 56% of census blocks have a choice (i.e. 2+ broadband providers available), which is a far cry from "almost all Americans".
Moreover, just because broadband is available in a census block does not mean that it's available for any given household. If an ISP provides even a single residential address in a census block with broadband speeds, that census block has broadband speeds "available" so far as the self-reported numbers used in that chart are concerned, even if the remaining 99.9% of people have no access at all. In my suburban neighborhood, for instance, I have two fixed ISPs and one WISP claiming to provide broadband, but in personally contacting all of them I discovered that only one actually provides broadband at my specific address (smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood).
All of which is to say, the actual availability of 2+ broadband ISPs for any given household within the US is at most 56%, but is in all likelihood actually far less.
Innovations like "we give you a free phone with Facebook in return for ads" have been killed.
And what exactly killed them? It certainly wasn't regulation, since wireless is—and has been—specifically exempted from Title II regulation. If that innovation stopped it's not because regulations killed it: it's because market forces did. Even so, I'm not actually convinced those sorts of "innovations" are nearly as dead as you claim. T-Mobile seems to be making a habit of delivering services (e.g. Binge On) that are contrary to Net Neutrality yet good for them and consumers.
I have lived with government-run telecoms and they were a disaster; when they were privatized, service improved massively and prices went down.
I'm not suggesting we take private ISPs public, nor do I view government-run utilities as the panacea that some make them out to be. I simply view them as a way to introduce healthy competition, which is what's sorely needed in the broadband space. Some public ISPs will be lousy and some will be outstanding (just as with private ones), but the outstanding ones will force private ISPs to improve, and that improvement will bring benefits to customers outside the regions they serve.
Utility pricing is completely out of whack. In California [...]
Let's just stop right there and agree that California is doing it wrong. California's example is not how it should be done, nor is it how it's done in most other places. The fact that some places do it incorrectly doesn't mean that it's an inherently bad idea. It just means that they've botched the implementation. My local municipality provides electric and water at rates that make sense to everyone, and I'd certainly trust them to provide Internet as well, were they allowed to do so by the state.
One addendum to everything you said (which is correct): just because it has 25% as many PCIe channels doesn't mean the performance is 25% what it could have been. In practice, a GTX 1080 will still perform at about 70-75% of its capability when connected via x4 instead of x16. There won't necessarily be any delays, but the raw performance will be less than what the card is capable of.
One other minor note: Apple isn't selling an Apple-branded eGPU box at this time. It's possible they might when the new Mac Pro debuts later this year or next, since they've talked about going to a more modular design and this change would seem to lay that groundwork, but whether they will or won't remains to be seen.
This is a wedge designed to divide us. After all, you’re right, of course; there are VERY good arguments to be made for allowing exceptions. The real problem here is that they’re trying to convince people that supporting Net Neutrality means we can’t have all those nice things, thus making anyone who supports Net Neutrality appear to be an unreasonable person.
For example, the fast lane that Pai has been trumpeting is telemedicine, which, like VoIP, is sensitive to spikes in latency. He’s been suggesting that repealing the 2015 regulations will finally allow telemedicine to take off. After all, the 2015 regulations were holding it back because they disallowed all “fast lanes”.
Except they didn’t.
The 2015 rules already carved out exceptions for certain services, telemedicine being one of them. And yet, I don’t recall any of us here on Slashdot suggesting that the 2015 regulations were anything other than Net Neutral, despite that apparent contradiction. Maybe there have been some Net Neutrality purists crying in a corner somewhere?
Anyway, what Comcast and Pai are trying to do is suggest that Net Neutrality is mutually exclusive with common sense that any normal person would agree with. It’s not. The 2015 regulations already showed us that we don’t have to give up on Net Neutrality to allow for exceptions that simply make sense.
This isn’t an either/or decision. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Net profit margins for telecoms are around 11%; that's the maximum you could save if government operated as efficiently as a for profit corporation.
The dominant ISPs achieved their positions by leveraging natural monopolies. They’ve had no real competition in years. They’ve grown complacent and lazy because they’ve had no reason to innovate, compete, or even just try.
Why in the world would you consider their low standard to be the best that a local utility could hope to achieve in terms of efficiency? At a minimum you can cut the lobbyists to see an immediate improvement to the bottom line.
As for your other point about cross-subsidizing, I agree, but I don’t see the relevance. Where I’m from, the public electric and water utility bills us based on our usage. I’d assume they’d do the same with Internet, and I’m fine with that, given that it’s a perfectly equitable way of handling things, even if it does mean that I’m likely to be paying the highest bill in the neighborhood I live in.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
That’s...not how local public utilities typically operate. If your local municipality is operating utilities via taxes instead of usage-based billing, I’d say you’ve got some idiots at the helm and that the incentives are not aligned with the best interests of the community. Thankfully, that approach isn’t exactly common.
Instead, public utilities are generally operated via usage-based billing on an at-cost basis, rather than through taxes. I can live entirely off the grid without having to pay a dime to my local municipality for utilities. I could pay a private utility company and avoid paying the local municipality. There may be an infrastructure buildout paid for via taxes, but private and public groups both usually benefit from and get to use that infrastructure, so you’d be paying it either way.
I take it you’re unaware that alphanumeric passcodes have been supported since iOS 4? In iOS 11, you just need to tap the rather obviously named Passcode Options button when you go to change your passcode to bring up the options for formats other than the six-digit default.
Sourced via Digitimes, no less, the noted bastion of journalism.
Oh wait, no, they pretty much report every single rumor from the Asian supply chain, with no regard for how far-fetched they are.
When have 2nd amendment proponents ever done anything to protect people's privacy rights? I don't see them protesting data collection
Actually, gun rights proponents are almost certainly the most successful lobbyists against data collection in modern America, which, depending on your views, may not be a good thing.
Mind you, it’s their own privacy that they’re interested in protecting, but they’ve lobbied Congress so we’ll that it’s currently illegal for the US government to create or maintain databases of gun owners, historical gun purchases, or even the guns themselves, despite massive efforts by people on the other side of those debates to collect exactly that information. And even the paltry records that do exist (i.e. records from private gun stores that went out of business), are not allowed to be computerized. If you’d like more information, it’s easy to come by because the ways that the ATF has been hamstrung by the NRA get re-reported every time there’s another major shooting. And it’s not just at the national level either. Gun enthusiasts are quite active in protesting locally as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... (paywalled)
https://www.informationweek.co...
http://www.heraldtribune.com/n...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
I do agree with the overarching point you were trying to get at, but that particular argument you used to make your point was an extraordinarily poor choice.
While I wouldn't express it quite as you did, the notion that each moment in time is merely a cross-section of a static universe that already exists in its entirety both forwards and backwards through time is my belief as well.
Interestingly, it turns the question of the universe being deterministic vs. non-deterministic on its head, since both of those options presuppose a dynamic universe. If the universe is in fact a static, four dimensional object, arguing about determinism vs. non-determinism is like arguing whether the rings in cross-sections of dead trees cause predictable changes in subsequent cross-sections: it's nonsensical, since the rings in a dead tree aren't effecting change, predictable or otherwise. Sure, we can look at one cross-section and have a good idea of what the next one will look like, but that's not because one cross-section caused the next, it's because both cross-sections are part of a larger object that has a degree of consistency across a three-dimensional space, just as the universe does across a four-dimensional space.
At the end of the day, all of this is merely one way of approaching the Ship of Theseus paradox. Alternatively, it's a way of addressing those who disagree with Heraclitus' notion that we can enter the same river twice.
Uh huh. Feel free to provide links, AC. Thanks.
You seem to be reading quite a bit into what I said. I neither said the FCC’s rules were bad nor suggested there was a problem with them, so feel free to keep using ad hominem to attack that straw man you built out of things I never said.
Rather, I pointed out that the GP was factually incorrect about their central claim and then went on to suggest that the FCC’s rules were more or less redundant on account of existing regulations already being successfully enforced.
Would I prefer that the rules stayed in place? Yes! Having multiple avenues for defense of consumers is rarely a bad thing. Even so, I don’t see the loss of these rules as a “the sky is falling!” sort of scenario that others seem to be painting it as. I prefer to reserve my moral outrage for the situations that actually warrant it.
so now there may be no legal restrictions on robocall devices.
Sure there are. The FTC already regulates robocallers (and the Do Not Call list) separately from the FCC.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/f...
As much as I don’t like Pai, this ruling, at least on its face, isn’t necessarily the horrible thing it’s being made out to be, since the FTC has been providing better regulation on this issue for far longer, and has been enlisting technology companies to provide solutions to the issue as well.
Ha, point taken, though to be fair, I did couch it by saying that I think it’s a bug.
It’s interesting to note, but I agree that it’s of little significance. Moreover, while it looks odd, I can’t say with 100% certainty that it’s a bug at all (though if I had to bet, I’d bet it was), given that it allows the eye to start processing the text before the animation completes, which may have been an intentional decision. There are numerous examples of companies intentionally making odd choices of exactly that sort in order to enhance usability, even if it comes at the cost of what looks correct when you go through it frame by frame or pixel by pixel.
There are two seemingly mutually exclusive requirements for an ideal voting system:
1) An inability to prove one's voting choices is necessary to ensure a safe and free election (i.e. one where people cannot be compelled to vote a particular way).
2) The ability to verify the accuracy of your vote and that it was counted towards the results is the best means by which to establish confidence in the system.
Blockchain may provide a path to marrying the two, but the system implemented in Sierra Leone is not yet it.
The birthday problem has zero relevance here and you seem to have a backwards understanding of what they're even trying to do (based on their claims), not to mention how the statistics should be applied.
A) This is happening at the gate in place of scanning boarding passes. They aren't comparing you against crooks at this step, nor does it make sense for them to bother; they're comparing you against the passenger manifest to make sure you're on the right flight.
B) As such, a false positive isn't a problem for typical passengers; it would mean they've been falsely matched to someone else who is also cleared to be on the flight, resulting in them being allowed to fly, just as they should have been. The only time a false positive might adversely affect a passenger is if they attempt to board a flight other than their own, in which case their error would go uncorrected.
C) A false negative has the potential to be a concern, but the false negative rate is 4% and it results in nothing more than the gate agent falling back to scanning an identifying document in the passenger's possession, no different than they currently do 100% of the time.
D) A false positive could allow a "bad guy" to board a flight other than their own, but even if the false positive rate was the same 4% as the false negative rate, you'd still catch 96% of "bad guys" who had slipped through all other checks. Alternatively, all negatives for "bad guys" attempting to board flights other than their own must necessarily be true and would result in them being denied boarding.
E) If they're going to misidentify you as a criminal, it'll happen before you ever arrive at the airport, let alone the gate. Consider: they already have your face on file (after all, that's what they're comparing against at the gate) and airlines already clear each passenger with the government before issuing tickets, so there's no need for you to even show up before they check your face against known criminals. If that sort of misidentification was to occur (and it does), you would have been denied entry to the secure area altogether.
All of that said, despite my (seeming) defense of the system up to this point, I actually find it abhorrent, given that this system will almost certainly be abused in all of the ways we expect and fear.
I subscribe to the sort of puritanical, prudish beliefs that many here frown upon, but even I don't understand or support this misguided attempt at a bill.
If companies with vested interests in keeping sexually explicit content off their platforms can't do so (e.g. Nintendo's Miiverse app was aimed at children and was apparently rife with users sending drawings of exactly the sort you'd expect in the days immediately prior to its recent shutdown), how are ISPs supposed to make that happen across every single platform that's Internet-accessible?
Moreover, as it's written in the summary, these rules apply so broadly as to be meaningless, given that they'd require ISPs to...
...monitor all chat rooms and chat messages (after all, the bill is for "sexual content" not "sexual imagery", so sexting is just as against the rules as porn)
...intrude on the privacy of marriages (after all, the bill isn't just for web or publicly-accessible content, and we wouldn't want husbands to be having innuendo-laden video chats with their wives, let alone something steamier!)
...illegally circumvent DRM protections (after all, the bill doesn't carve out an exception for encrypted traffic, so ISPs will have to break any DRM used by streaming video providers to ensure that the content isn't sexual, lest a customer watch something racy on Netflix like the PG-rated Airplane—which just happens to have a naked woman randomly run across the screen in one scene—without paying their $20 fee to end the abuse of women like that one).
Just as bad, there's no mention of a grace period to block the content after it's been identified, so how are they supposed to identify sexual content across literally every single realtime stream of content available online at any given moment? Even live TV crews can't manage to perfectly do so for justone video stream at a time, and they have teams of full-time staff dedicated to the problem.
And that's before we even broach the discussion of where we draw the line for "sexual content". Rumor has it that the authors of the bill are working to hash out a new definition, with there being some internal disagreement about whether it's okay to draw the line at the knees, or if they instead should insist that skirts cover the ankle as well.
Anyway, the only guaranteed way an ISP can ensure they don't run afoul of this bill is for them to leave Rhode Island.
What are you even talking about? No one involved in any of this is opposed to legitimate competition (e.g. someone selling their own product for whatever price they want to set). The problem here is that someone is falsely claiming to be selling someone else’s product when what they’re actually selling is something else entirely.
The cheap knockoff company is selling a counterfeit item that purports to be the real deal by illegally using the brand name’s trademarks, packaging, and nearly exact product design. No one is suggesting they shouldn’t be allowed to sell their own product under their own name for $1.50. But instead of doing that, they’re falsely claiming to sell a name brand thing for less, literally stealing sales from the name brand in the process.
And even if you don’t care about brand names (which I have no problem with), you should care about people getting what they pay for, which isn’t happening when these counterfeits get sold in place of the real goods. That’s fraud, plain and simple. The fact that you’re dismissing illegal activities that are hostile towards both legitimate businesses and consumers as nothing more than someone crying about competition is astoundingly absurd.
You seem to be suggesting that American law trumps Irish law because Microsoft is an American company. That may very well be the way that this particular scenario plays out in practice (though I doubt it), but it's not an accurate picture of the legal situation.
Microsoft has a legal obligation as an American company to abide by American law and has a legal obligation as a company operating in Ireland to abide by Irish/EU law. Having legal obligations in different countries usually isn't an issue for companies, since it's generally agreed that American law applies in America and foreign law applies elsewhere (i.e. each country has sovereignty within its own borders). Inasmuch as one set of laws extends beyond that country's borders (e.g. US corporate taxes), it does not—and legally cannot—contravene the law in other jurisdictions.
Which, to be clear, is how it should be, since attempts to force your law in another country may potentially be viewed as an act of war, given that you would be violating that other nation's sovereignty. And nations tend to take their sovereignty pretty seriously, as you might imagine.
Anyway, all of this just means that the US lacks the authority to demand that—while in Ireland—Microsoft engage in activities that are contrary to Irish/EU law. Any attempt on the part of the US to do so would mean that the US is asserting the supremacy of its laws over Irish and EU laws within Ireland's borders, and could be construed as an act of war.
If only there was an avenue through which the US Justice Department could request that data without having to make demands.
Oh wait, there is!
We have treaties for resolving exactly these sorts of situations where one country wants something that they don't have the authority to demand. All the Justice Department needs to do is contact the Irish government and ask for its help in extraditing the data. Simple as that. Doing it that way ensures that no Irish laws are broken, no American laws are broken, that each nation's sovereignty is respected, and that no company is asked to choose between a rock and a hard place. The Irish government may deny America's request, but that's their prerogative, given that it's their country.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, they have to deal with reality, rather than legal theory, and the reality of the situation is that if they lose this appeal they'll have to choose between the rock and the hard place. If I were them, I'd be running the numbers to figure out what they'd be losing each way. Refusing to abide by the US order will likely result in some fines, but I'd imagine little else. Refusing to abide by Irish/EU privacy laws, however, seems like it could carry some significantly more severe consequences, not least of which is that they'd immediately lose a huge number of their European customers.
Was trying to find a different network hog this weekend and saw iTunes uploading to AWS, which made no sense.
It makes sense to me. There are a number of reasons that could be happening. Just off the top of my head:
* If you have the "Genius" feature enabled (it's on by default), it's sending metadata back to Apple regarding the new songs you've added to your library so that it can improve and personalize the recommendations it makes for you. Given that many of iCloud's services are (and have been) hosted via AWS, it makes sense that you'd see a connection to them.
* It could be asking Gracenote for the CD so that it can populate the track name and other fields. I don't believe you can disable this lookup, but it isn't necessary for ripping CDs, so if you simply disable iTunes' network access things should still work just fine. You'll possibly have to provide your own track names and other data, but otherwise it shouldn't be a problem.
* It could be pulling down album artwork from the iTunes Store's servers (which, again, are oftentimes hosted on AWS). I believe you can disable this in the Store settings, but like Gracenote, it too isn't necessary, so disabling iTunes' network access won't inhibit your ability to rip CDs. It'll simply force you to have to provide your own artwork.
Mind you, none of this is intended as a defense of the abomination that is iTunes. I'm simply pointing out that there are explanations for the network activity you were seeing.
A better analogy is that they’re no longer selling new plants to old gardens, given that this is simply access to the iTunes Store we’re talking about, not core functionality. Existing content that’s already been downloaded will continue to work just fine. New iTunes Store content purchased on other devices should still be viewable on the Apple TV via Home Sharing. The only thing people won’t be able to do is buy or rent new iTunes Store movies and shows (apps weren’t even supported on this model, that’s how old it is) directly from this device.