A merger is supposed to help the companies' and their investors. A merger is not meant to "help" consumers. So asking if a merger will "hurt" consumers is kinda sorta irrelevant.
If what "helps" the companies' and their investors also "helps" consumers . . . well, that's great.
If what "helps" the companies' and their investors "hurts" consumers . . . well, that's just tough luck.
When planning a merger, the interests of consumers are the last thing that the merger cabal will consider, if even at all . . .
Of course, governments are supposed to regulate mergers, to represent the interests of consumers . . . which means that politicians will need to be "lobbied" . . . or better stated, "bribed". Bribes are planned by business' as part of a merger's necessary expenses, like legal fees.
From their website: "The Q.rad produces heat by computation, the electricity consumption is measured by an embedded counter and related expenses are automatically refunded to the host."
. . . refunded . . . ?!? Like, when . . . ?!?!? When "monkeys fly out of their asses" is probably the correct answer.
"Thank you for your participation in our ThinkFarter initiative!" You will receive a prototype of our device real soon now!"
When politicians can't face up to their own mistakes, they blame foreigners for all their country's problems. Hillary Clinton lost, what in her mind, should have been simple election victory for herself. She can't accept the fact that a lot of folks just plain don't like her. So the evil Russian Hackers must be the blame. For his part, Trump said we need a wall to defend ourselves against the Mongol Hordes from Mexico. They all do the same thing.
Hey, bashing foreigners is the new orange or black or whatever.
"They" are out to get us, and "we" must be vigilant and get them first . . .
How would you monitor their engagement? Eye tracking? Manual corrections to the car's path/speed?
Well, with any automobile . . . the biggest mechanical danger is . . . "The Loose Nut Behind the Wheel" . . .
"Autopilots" are probably something that most "normal" drivers should not be using anyway. Hey, driving is a privilege, and not a right.
Hey, take someone who can't read the traffic signs and is abysmally clueless as to traffic laws . . . no wonder that stuff like this will happen more often. We'll just have to wait and see how the American lawyers will deal with this. They could kill self-driving cars . . . but then again . . . it would be more lucrative for them to milk the industry.
They knew about the breach when they started lobbying for that.
How do we even know if this was a "breach" at all . . . ? Maybe some folks at Equifax were just following the Facebook and Google business model, and were just selling "information services" on the side . . . ?
Hey, the old, time-tested methods work best: You want something? Bribe or blackmail someone. It works all the time.
As described in the announcement, all facial recognition is done locally. Nothing touches a "cloud" server.
Tech companies lie like rugs when asked about their "cooperation" with creepier folks like the NSA.
If they should so desire . . . the entire contents of "your" smartphone can be uploaded by the Secret Squirrels to their clouds. Courtesy of the hospitable help from your smartphone manufacturer.
Any information that can be stored anywhere will be eventually abused by somebody.
Do people regularly use their Samsung S3s or iPhone 3GSs?
Well, I regularly use my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I'm not a big Smartphone user . . . I use it for programming my own apps. Hey, it still has the original battery! And, yes, this is my main cell phone.
It's been dropped multiple times. The screen looks like an LSD induced episode of the Spider Man cartoon from the late 60's. But the damn thing still works! An "IBM Fellow" looked at my phone once and told me that it was a sign of honor among geeks . . . to have phone with a bashed up screen that still works. Kinda sorta like that boring book we were forced to read in high school, "The Red Badge of Courage".
When this kid actually was a kid . . . we had a big, black, butt-ugly phone on the wall from Ma Bell for as long as I can remember. With . . . a dial! Have any Slashdotters actually dialed a telephone!?!?! Well, the thing worked, and I guess folks talked with each other more back then, instead of hanging on the telephone all day with their pseudo-friends, so why replace it . . . ? Hey, if you have a Windows Phone, you took the wrong boat, and it won't be updated and shiny new every year or so . . . but if it does what you need . . . why get rid of it . . . ?
Oh, I also programmed FORTRAN on an IBM punch card machine in the late 70's in high school, and used a Teletype to save BASIC programs on paper tape . . . so I'm a bit of a dinosaur.
Ah, that crisp, crunchy touch of the Teletype keyboard. . . being a geek was fun back in those days!
Does not include 2nd stage coverage, since it's classified.
Well, here on Slashdot, "Nudes for Nerds", we always say, "GIFs or it didn't happen!"
Not to split too many hairs, but if it's "classified" . . . this kinda sorta of implies that it is "classified as something". Like, "classified as safe for human consumption", or "classified as very likely to start WWIII on the Korean Peninsula".
So what is this critter classified as . . . ?
On another note, I would just absolutely love to see SpaceX hire the late Gerry Anderson to design their spacecrafts.
Oh, nature recycles it. When coal is burned, it is converted into CO2, which ends up in the atmosphere. Plants & trees "breathe" in the CO2 from the atmosphere and "burn" it for energy, which converts it back into coal again in the plants & trees. The plants & trees then "poop" out the coal back through the roots into the ground . . .
. . . for the next, great generation of coal miners to dig up yet again, and thus repeating this great journey of life!
Have you been forced by google to change your film script?
I don't write film scripts. However, maybe I do like to have a choice to listen to what others have to say . . . ? Is Google limiting that choice based on what they think they would like people to listen to . . . ?
That sounds like the stuff what countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia, et al do with the Internet: Limit the voices of anything that the government doesn't like.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Encouraging diversity is good idea, in my opinion. Using censorship to do it by a private organization is not good social hygiene, and a wee bit dangerous, methinks. Maybe some folks with lots of money will start using censorship to promote other agendas, that are not so altruistic . . . ?
"Hi, I'm Dave, your new, ideal TV friend! I buy all my food and things online from Amazon! All my closest friends use Facebook all the time! You'll want to be like me, and also by from Amazon and use Facebook!"
Sound silly? Take a look at some old former East German TV shows and films from the late 80's trying to promote their illusion of Socialist Ideals. They are hilarious. When push comes to shove, the former East Germany was just another totalitarian state: a small group of rich and powerful decided what they thought was best for everyone, and force fed their dogma to everyone. Sure you were free to leave whenever you want, but they shot at you a bit while you were on your way out the door. The top politicians in the former East Germany even had their own gated community, with stores stuffed with Western luxury goods. Kinda sorta sounds like the Google folks running this show living in Silicon Valley . . . um, do they live in diverse communities . . . or gated ones . . . ?
Maybe instead of trying to force others to promote diversity, they could maybe do something about it themselves . . . ? Oh, the housing prices there will ensure that Google executives will have neighbors with the "right kind" of diversity.
Newer documentaries with interviews of artists who struggled under censorship of the old Communists are less amusing.
I'm really confused by why you are so angry about this.
I'm not angry about it . . . I just don't like forced censorship. I like free speech.
Every film should be a documentary on your gritty white suburban life?
No, all filmmakers should be able to choose for themselves if they make cheesy Disney Star Wars sugar-festival film, or boring reality Kardashian infotainment, or The Heart Healthy Good 'Ole Zombie Deep Fried Turkey cook show, or a THX-1138.
A private company with too much money and promoting their own agenda, no matter how noble, by forcibly manipulating content providers . . . ?
No, thanks. Read up on what "Totalitarianism" means.
And these companies are supposed to be trusted with actually securing the data that we provide them?
No, that's incorrect. A big part of their business is providing private data to security services: see Lawful Interception (LI) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They are coerced by government agencies to do this. And just about every government passes laws requiring that ISPs and Telcos implement components that allow the security services to "just drop in" whenever they want. Usually, the government agencies are supposed to obtain warrants before tapping and sipping up someone's data, but these days . . . who's checking warrants any more . . . ?
I worked on an ISP platform for a major telco in Europe, and it was interesting to see their LI system. Even the ISP operators themselves are not able to determine who and when the government is tapping. This is done so the "enemies" can't smuggle in mole operators into the ISPs who could alert their friends outside not to talk too loud on the line.
Someone just found one of these hidden features for "special" users in AT&T.
The whole purpose of this is NOT to be consistent with reality, and NOT show things as they really are. The goal is to create an illusionist Utopia la-la land where everyone rides winged unicorns, where minorities ARE the majority, all races just absolutely love each other, Muslim terrorists drop the van keys and mount flowers on their machetes and swords, etc.
Hmmm . . . so they call this practice "Intervention" . . . I'd call it censorship++. This is stuff the former East German Stasi Secret Police used to do with televisions programs there. The scripts were inspected and "re-written be conform with Socialist Ideology.
TV shows that are reality-space-time-Schrödinger's-Cat-In-Your-Laptop-warped crazy propaganda tend to be unintentionally funny.
I'm guessing that a lot will just leave on their own, and not be forced out of tech jobs. Ever since the end of the 80's, I've see more and more folks entering the IT business, not because they are tech geeks, but because they think that they can make easy money there. When they realize, after a few years, that they do not like their work . . . AND . . . they are not making that big IT money . . . they pick up their marbles and go into some other careers.
Slashdot Mirror
A merger is supposed to help the companies' and their investors. A merger is not meant to "help" consumers. So asking if a merger will "hurt" consumers is kinda sorta irrelevant.
If what "helps" the companies' and their investors also "helps" consumers . . . well, that's great.
If what "helps" the companies' and their investors "hurts" consumers . . . well, that's just tough luck.
When planning a merger, the interests of consumers are the last thing that the merger cabal will consider, if even at all . . .
Of course, governments are supposed to regulate mergers, to represent the interests of consumers . . . which means that politicians will need to be "lobbied" . . . or better stated, "bribed". Bribes are planned by business' as part of a merger's necessary expenses, like legal fees.
So paying $3.00 for a bottle of water at an event is a rip-off when you can bring your own bottle of tap-water for nearly nothing from home?
If you bring your own bottle of tap-water to an event . . . U R TERRORIST!!!!
This is why it's banned at events and on airlines. They want to protect you from TERRORISTS!
They don't ban it so the airport shops and event vendors can make tidy profits . . . like some skeptical folks might assume.
It's hard to believe the internet would hyperbolize something just for fun.
Well, I was searching for duct tape on Amazon to patch the tubes of the Internet, and the algorithm kept suggesting:
"Would you like some hamsters along with your duct tape?"
So I guess the Internet's ideas of fun can be somewhat bizarre . . .
The report also mentions a home security camera that is in the works, capable of linking up to Amazon's existing Echo connected devices.
Hey, so Amazon can snoop around your house, and suggest that you need a new toaster or coffee table.
That would be very nice of them, wouldn't it . . . ?
From their website: "The Q.rad produces heat by computation, the electricity consumption is measured by an embedded counter and related expenses are automatically refunded to the host."
. . . refunded . . . ?!? Like, when . . . ?!?!? When "monkeys fly out of their asses" is probably the correct answer.
"Thank you for your participation in our ThinkFarter initiative!" You will receive a prototype of our device real soon now!"
When politicians can't face up to their own mistakes, they blame foreigners for all their country's problems. Hillary Clinton lost, what in her mind, should have been simple election victory for herself. She can't accept the fact that a lot of folks just plain don't like her. So the evil Russian Hackers must be the blame. For his part, Trump said we need a wall to defend ourselves against the Mongol Hordes from Mexico. They all do the same thing.
Hey, bashing foreigners is the new orange or black or whatever.
"They" are out to get us, and "we" must be vigilant and get them first . . .
How would you monitor their engagement? Eye tracking? Manual corrections to the car's path/speed?
Well, with any automobile . . . the biggest mechanical danger is . . . "The Loose Nut Behind the Wheel" . . .
"Autopilots" are probably something that most "normal" drivers should not be using anyway. Hey, driving is a privilege, and not a right.
Hey, take someone who can't read the traffic signs and is abysmally clueless as to traffic laws . . . no wonder that stuff like this will happen more often. We'll just have to wait and see how the American lawyers will deal with this. They could kill self-driving cars . . . but then again . . . it would be more lucrative for them to milk the industry.
More and the weather at eleven . . .
No, I'm human. Mostly.
Yes, you are . . . Number Six . . .
So does almost everybody in the world own a BT device?
In Putinist Amerika . . . Bluetooth owns you!
So just turn off bluetooth forever and keep it off? .
Gee, that old-fashioned audio jack ain't lookin' too bad right now . . .
I usually leave Bluetooth off anyway, because of the battery drain.
They knew about the breach when they started lobbying for that.
How do we even know if this was a "breach" at all . . . ? Maybe some folks at Equifax were just following the Facebook and Google business model, and were just selling "information services" on the side . . . ?
Hey, the old, time-tested methods work best: You want something? Bribe or blackmail someone. It works all the time.
As described in the announcement, all facial recognition is done locally. Nothing touches a "cloud" server.
Tech companies lie like rugs when asked about their "cooperation" with creepier folks like the NSA.
If they should so desire . . . the entire contents of "your" smartphone can be uploaded by the Secret Squirrels to their clouds. Courtesy of the hospitable help from your smartphone manufacturer.
Any information that can be stored anywhere will be eventually abused by somebody.
Just wait long enough to find out . . .
Do people regularly use their Samsung S3s or iPhone 3GSs?
Well, I regularly use my Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I'm not a big Smartphone user . . . I use it for programming my own apps. Hey, it still has the original battery! And, yes, this is my main cell phone.
It's been dropped multiple times. The screen looks like an LSD induced episode of the Spider Man cartoon from the late 60's. But the damn thing still works! An "IBM Fellow" looked at my phone once and told me that it was a sign of honor among geeks . . . to have phone with a bashed up screen that still works. Kinda sorta like that boring book we were forced to read in high school, "The Red Badge of Courage".
When this kid actually was a kid . . . we had a big, black, butt-ugly phone on the wall from Ma Bell for as long as I can remember. With . . . a dial! Have any Slashdotters actually dialed a telephone!?!?! Well, the thing worked, and I guess folks talked with each other more back then, instead of hanging on the telephone all day with their pseudo-friends, so why replace it . . . ? Hey, if you have a Windows Phone, you took the wrong boat, and it won't be updated and shiny new every year or so . . . but if it does what you need . . . why get rid of it . . . ?
Oh, I also programmed FORTRAN on an IBM punch card machine in the late 70's in high school, and used a Teletype to save BASIC programs on paper tape . . . so I'm a bit of a dinosaur.
Ah, that crisp, crunchy touch of the Teletype keyboard. . . being a geek was fun back in those days!
Does not include 2nd stage coverage, since it's classified.
Well, here on Slashdot, "Nudes for Nerds", we always say, "GIFs or it didn't happen!"
Not to split too many hairs, but if it's "classified" . . . this kinda sorta of implies that it is "classified as something". Like, "classified as safe for human consumption", or "classified as very likely to start WWIII on the Korean Peninsula".
So what is this critter classified as . . . ?
On another note, I would just absolutely love to see SpaceX hire the late Gerry Anderson to design their spacecrafts.
That would be really cool.
Creimer's mom doesn't let him wear that sort of outfits out in public.
Well, that's just grand . . . so he is running around in the nude, wherever he is . . .
(not logged in because of mods, yes I mod)
So I'm confused.
When you say, "not logged in because of mods", I think, "Oh, he doesn't like Mods!"
However, when you say, yes I mod, it sounds like you do like them. Depending on the definition of what the phrase "I mod" is, Dr. Clinton.
So what is it . . . ? : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So no one will ever be able to use it again...
Oh, nature recycles it. When coal is burned, it is converted into CO2, which ends up in the atmosphere. Plants & trees "breathe" in the CO2 from the atmosphere and "burn" it for energy, which converts it back into coal again in the plants & trees. The plants & trees then "poop" out the coal back through the roots into the ground . . .
. . . for the next, great generation of coal miners to dig up yet again, and thus repeating this great journey of life!
Now if every household used coal just like you, we'd look just like china!
. . . except the air would be so bad, that we wouldn't even be able to see what we look like.
Have you been forced by google to change your film script?
I don't write film scripts. However, maybe I do like to have a choice to listen to what others have to say . . . ? Is Google limiting that choice based on what they think they would like people to listen to . . . ?
That sounds like the stuff what countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia, et al do with the Internet: Limit the voices of anything that the government doesn't like.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Encouraging diversity is good idea, in my opinion. Using censorship to do it by a private organization is not good social hygiene, and a wee bit dangerous, methinks. Maybe some folks with lots of money will start using censorship to promote other agendas, that are not so altruistic . . . ?
"Hi, I'm Dave, your new, ideal TV friend! I buy all my food and things online from Amazon! All my closest friends use Facebook all the time! You'll want to be like me, and also by from Amazon and use Facebook!"
Sound silly? Take a look at some old former East German TV shows and films from the late 80's trying to promote their illusion of Socialist Ideals. They are hilarious. When push comes to shove, the former East Germany was just another totalitarian state: a small group of rich and powerful decided what they thought was best for everyone, and force fed their dogma to everyone. Sure you were free to leave whenever you want, but they shot at you a bit while you were on your way out the door. The top politicians in the former East Germany even had their own gated community, with stores stuffed with Western luxury goods. Kinda sorta sounds like the Google folks running this show living in Silicon Valley . . . um, do they live in diverse communities . . . or gated ones . . . ?
Maybe instead of trying to force others to promote diversity, they could maybe do something about it themselves . . . ? Oh, the housing prices there will ensure that Google executives will have neighbors with the "right kind" of diversity.
Newer documentaries with interviews of artists who struggled under censorship of the old Communists are less amusing.
I'm really confused by why you are so angry about this.
I'm not angry about it . . . I just don't like forced censorship. I like free speech.
Every film should be a documentary on your gritty white suburban life?
No, all filmmakers should be able to choose for themselves if they make cheesy Disney Star Wars sugar-festival film, or boring reality Kardashian infotainment, or The Heart Healthy Good 'Ole Zombie Deep Fried Turkey cook show, or a THX-1138.
A private company with too much money and promoting their own agenda, no matter how noble, by forcibly manipulating content providers . . . ?
No, thanks. Read up on what "Totalitarianism" means.
And these companies are supposed to be trusted with actually securing the data that we provide them?
No, that's incorrect. A big part of their business is providing private data to security services: see Lawful Interception (LI) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They are coerced by government agencies to do this. And just about every government passes laws requiring that ISPs and Telcos implement components that allow the security services to "just drop in" whenever they want. Usually, the government agencies are supposed to obtain warrants before tapping and sipping up someone's data, but these days . . . who's checking warrants any more . . . ?
I worked on an ISP platform for a major telco in Europe, and it was interesting to see their LI system. Even the ISP operators themselves are not able to determine who and when the government is tapping. This is done so the "enemies" can't smuggle in mole operators into the ISPs who could alert their friends outside not to talk too loud on the line.
Someone just found one of these hidden features for "special" users in AT&T.
That's all.
You should have noticed when it was sick, not waited until it was dead and then waited for google to come around and notice there were flies on it.
"When I bought it 'alf an hour ago Google assured me that its total lack of movement was due to its being tired and shagged out after a long squawk."
At least make it consistent with reality
The whole purpose of this is NOT to be consistent with reality, and NOT show things as they really are. The goal is to create an illusionist Utopia la-la land where everyone rides winged unicorns, where minorities ARE the majority, all races just absolutely love each other, Muslim terrorists drop the van keys and mount flowers on their machetes and swords, etc.
Hmmm . . . so they call this practice "Intervention" . . . I'd call it censorship++. This is stuff the former East German Stasi Secret Police used to do with televisions programs there. The scripts were inspected and "re-written be conform with Socialist Ideology.
TV shows that are reality-space-time-Schrödinger's-Cat-In-Your-Laptop-warped crazy propaganda tend to be unintentionally funny.
I'm guessing that a lot will just leave on their own, and not be forced out of tech jobs. Ever since the end of the 80's, I've see more and more folks entering the IT business, not because they are tech geeks, but because they think that they can make easy money there. When they realize, after a few years, that they do not like their work . . . AND . . . they are not making that big IT money . . . they pick up their marbles and go into some other careers.
it happened when you Krauts became too uppity, it can happen again.
Well, you can try to give the Americans a call for help again, but I don't think that they will save you from the Krauts this time around.
They will be busy cleaning up after Harvey and building a Wall . . .