One question I wonder: will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens."
Your google-fu is weak, submitter. Apple is indeed looking at this technology and have filed several patents. Samsung though beat them to market; but it's a pyrric victory at a $1000 price tag.
No. Advertising is just fine. Ever submitted a resume for a job? Advertising. Ever held up a sign to protest something? Advertising. Ever posted something political to your Facebook? Advertising. Advertising is nothing more than heading out into the big blue room and yelling "Here I am! Over here! Look at me!"... or if you're from the South, "y'all ain't gonna believe this shit. Hold my beer." Advertising is neither good nor evil, neither harmful nor beneficial. It's just an umbrella term for anything that tries to get another person's attention.
Advertising becomes harmful when it encourages people to do things they shouldn't be doing. For example; Casinoes. Ever notice they almost exclusively target the elderly? These are vulnerable adults who, due to age-related cognitive deterioration, don't have the best critical thinking skills and tend to be overly-trusting. They're easy to take advantage of. And most of the lever-pulling zombies they have on the floor really, really, should not be there. They're on fixed income and they're pissing money away to pull a lever like some lab rat. A cocaine habit would be cheaper for some of these poor bastards.
Advertising becomes harmful when it crosses lines of privacy and cultural norms to get that extra sale. Obama, please stop sending me e-mails. I also don't want v1agr@ for 'cheep', penis or breast enlargement pills, and the list goes on. This isn't just ineffectual advertising, but it results in loss of impact globally, creating a Red Queen race amongst advertisers.
Advertising also becomes harmful when there's too much of it. Something like 1/3rd of television is overt advertisement, more if you consider the pop-unders and animated shit they put across the screen while you're watching the show. And then there's paid product placement. All tallied, probably over half of TV content is advertising.
And not just harmful to you or me, but also harmful to the advertiser! Having to jack the volume up to level 99 to try and capture the attention of your viewers because it's a veritable crap-flood for 5 minutes at a go, fed to you in 10-30 second screams out of your idiot box... is not improving your sales figures.
And that's just TV and print media. On the internet, advertising isn't just annoying or ineffectual -- the platforms for serving these ads all over the internet can be compromised to spread malware, viruses, and government-endorsed spyware to millions in mere moments.
My point here is that advertising itself isn't harmful; Particular advertising methods are. You can't get rid of advertising, and in fact, it has a valid use. Companies need ways of attracting new business. Targeted advertising, especially opt-in, is much better at doing that than previous methods. But as a society, we need to figure out a way to balance the legitimate business needs here with the equally legitimate privacy and quality of life concerns of the general population. A good balance between these things benefits all parties -- businesses and citizens alike.
But right now, it isn't balanced, and in fact is so out of balance it's toxic. But that does not mean advertising, as a concept, is harmful. So please be careful tossing off one-liners like this -- they rarely paint a complete picture, and encourage black and white thinking.
so far so good. but stepping back a bit. what legitimate reason would there be for wait4 to take invalid flags only if the uid is 0? this is clearly a back door.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but in Linux and Unix, uid 0 is god. There's lots of code in the kernel that says "Don't ever, under any circumstances, allow this. Unless of course God asks you to."
Let's just go forward with what we know and stop the speculation
Skip that. How about we go with "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." We're talking about a single character that turns what everyone seems to agree would be an error-check, into an exploit. This sort of thing happens all the time, and nobody says the butler did it, in the observatory, with the lead pipe, when it does. They say "Hey, man, your last diff patch might have a bug." (explains bug)... a few hours to days later, they reply back with "Oh hey thanks for catching that!"
And assuming this was the NSA is laughable; Have you heard about their latest data center in Ohio? It apparently regularly shorts out in spectacular fashion shooting bolts of lightning between racks of equipment, killing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment everytime. There's a king sized pissing contest going on as to what the cause is between the NSA, the contractors who built it, and the Army Corp of Engineers, all of whom identify a different cause, or point the finger at a different person. It's a big circle jerk.
Does this sound like the paragon of competence and subtlety to you?
If your answers are Yes and No respectively, you should not have any expectation of pay beyond salary or credit beyond "attaboy!" If this bothers you, please seek asylum in your preferred alternate society.
"Yes... it is perfectly acceptable for one group of people to exploit another without compensation. If this bothers you, it must be because you're mentally ill. Love it or leave it, trolololoooo..."
You know, we had a civil war to get rid of people like you. Do we need to come out and burn your plantation down? This is America -- flip over your currency sometime. It says 'E Pluribus Unum'. It's not latin for 'Every man for himself'.
What I find interesting is that the AC gave a plausible number of "greats" to match Louis XVI's generation.
What I find interesting is the massively huge assumption staring everyone in the face but nobody sees it: The idea that the living relatives might be an invented fairy tale. It wouldn't be the first time a royal lineage met its end and the "secret sauce" was switched and records altered to maintain the appearance of an unbroken line.
This 'forensic evidence' is based on records that are hundreds of years old; Altering birth and death records was a time-honored tradition back then. It was the Photoshop of the Dark Ages, and churches had just as much reason to perpetuate a fraud as anyone -- their power was often derived from royal mandate. You don't think, at a time when chopping heads off and torturing people was called 'Tuesday', that a little re-inking of a few geneology documents would be beyond the morality of these people, do you?
And it's well understood that past is always prologue.
Actually, it's well-understood by northerners that southerners are all bark and no bite. Oh sure they talk a good talk about government welfare and blah de-de-blah, but they're the biggest recipients. If we cut the South off and let them form their own country, and split the deficit based on population present in each... we'd have ours paid off in full within 15 years, while they'd be turning to the UN for humanitarian aid after they started dying by the droves and jumping into the Ocean trying to swim to Cuba. I kid you not; There's not enough fertile land in the south, nor enough water, to support their population. They lack anything in the way of natural resources (unless stupidity counts), and with the exception of Texas and North Carolina, have almost dick in terms of major industry.
And as much as Texas claims it loves the south, 10 years of trying to support 13 other hungry screaming children looking at them like they're a pork chop (which is sorta what the shape of Texas is, incidentally), you better believe they'd cut them off.
No. The only 'military tradition' the south has is providing one of the few ways for the youth unfortunate enough to be born there a chance to escape, earn some money, get an education, and have a future, in exchange for a bullet in the ass risk. And yeah, us northerners pay for that... mostly because we know once you have an education, you generally come up here and become a productive member of society instead of some bible-thumping, beer-swilling leech-person who claims to have the solutions to all the government problems; All we have to do is fuck ourselves into the dirt! -_-
802.11ac will probably suffer the same fate. The minimum implementation to get the "wireless ac" sticker on the box is going to be what half to three quarters of the devices on the market will support, even 10 years from now.
Every technology will suffer the same fate. Look, the problem isn't the technology, but noise pollution. The noise floor across the whole of the RF spectrum is rising by an average of 1db a year. That means that every three years, the 'room' gets twice as loud. Every new technology we roll out, every new device, is just another nail in that coffin. Like every other natural resource, humans just consume and consume, gorging themselves to excess until eventually there's nothing left.
In the 1930s, a single AM broadcast tower could cover most of a region in the US in the evening. Certain frequencies carried a worldwide range, albeit due to the unpredictable nature of the ionosphere, you never knew just where in the world your low power signal would land. They did this using spark gap radios and shit with vaccum tubes in it. Today, the same feat can only be achieved with DSPs because the noise floor has come up so much most of the signal is trash after only a couple hundred miles.
Cell phone companies are continually trying to keep up with ever denser concentrations of towers; And it's not because of data-thirsty hipster iphones... it's because a few hundred milliwatts barely gets you across the street anymore. It's a regulatory nightmare just finding a spot for a new tower and getting it approved... and companies fall farther behind every year on meeting coverage goals.
We aren't just sucking up bandwidth on a per-frequency basis... every radio device contributes to global noise. Our RF spectrum is dying the death of a thousand papercuts. And all of this we can blame on two things; A complete lack of government coordination to share bandwidth and unify technologies using something like SDR across all wireless devices, brought on by competition by various companies to be the last man standing at the auctions and with technology able to "scream" just a little bit louder than the competition through a dizzying array of RF engineering cheats to increase effective broadcast power in a way the FCC can't penalize.
Well, ordinarily I would thank you for not namecalling, but you're just a tenth of a step up from that; You were a condescending asshole. Soooo.... politely now; Fuck off.
Actually, most do - if you are a reasonably frequent guest. Loyalty programs are structured to encourage and reward repeat customers and identify the ones who drive profit and try to ensure they remain loyal customers. It's another way to drive loyalty by offering a tangible savings, which has little marginal cost for the hotel. In the end, many customers don't care about saving the $10 because they don't pay it anyway.
My dad had an expression about this sort of thing: In one ear, out the other. Thanks dad. Even though you're now long gone, your combination of stubbornness and jadedness continues to help me survive even the stupidest internet pundit...
It doesn't sound like a game. It sounds like Choose Your Own Adventure: Powerpoint Edition. At the risk of snarking with one of the oldest lines ever on the internet...
Telecommuting is nice for the workers, and I too like it, but is absolute shit for creating quality work in a timely manner. Slag at this all you want, but that is my perspective from two projects implementing the same system using two different management policies: telecommuting versus 'no telecommuting'. And 'no telecommuting' produced better work.
You're using personal experience to make your argument. Well, good for you. Glad it worked out in your case. However, not everyone agrees. I was lampooning this CEO's blanket policy decision. Blanket policies are universally bad -- there has never been one that didn't leave a trail of carnage in its wake. "Ruling a kingdom is like cooking a fish. Don't overdo it." -- Lao Tzu. Effective leadership is more about a direction than a destination. It is less about policy and more about guideline. And great leadership is so transparent you don't even notice it. Everything just seems to click. Well... things at HP aren't clicking. And this CEO is coming in and trying to prove herself with a nice big shakeup. This is what almost every CEO does. It's like when people buy a house... they invariably paint it a different color as soon as they can! The other color might have been their favorite color. It might have been the best color for the house. But it has to be changed, because until it is, for psychological reasons that person won't consider the house "theirs" until it does.
This is about painting a house. It's about marking territory. Because if it wasn't, then the CEO would be making that decision on a per-business unit basis. Some lines of work function better with it. Some don't. Investigating and then making a decision shows thoughtfulness and consideration of the complexities of the business. Shoving a policy down everyone's throats screams "I gotta paint my new house!"
Anyone who says workers are slaves doesn't deserve an articulate response. And I guess that probably includes you.
No, they don't. But give them one anyway, not because they deserve it, but because you do. Sometimes we need to affirm our own moral and ethical center, even if we know it's falling on deaf ears.
With the exception of public sector employees, where unionization is alive and kicking. The rest were pretty much done in with the wave of globalization that begin around 1990 and was accelerated by the Internet and vastly improved worldwide telecommunications bandwidth.
Sir, you need to get educated on the political realities of our age. "In 2010, the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States (or total labor union "density") was 11.4%, compared to 18.4% in Germany, 27.5% in Canada, and 70% in Finland.[1] Union membership in the private sector has fallen under 7% â" levels not seen since 1932." Source
That's not winning. That's losing. That's losing badly.
That may be, but it's not like those 1 percent are
It doesn't matter who, what, where, or when they are. The fact is, 1% controls 40% of the wealth in this country. This is not a good thing! Economies function best with high liquidity, when trade is abundant, when money trades hands quickly. This doesn't happen when a few million people are hoarding cash to the point it probably passes a clinical threshold. The end! They could be the patron saint of charity, but it doesn't change the fact that the money isn't moving. It's not helping anyone but them. And while we're on the topic of charity, common sense demanding and answer to "If they're so generous, how come everyone else is so poor" notwithstanding, survey after survey indicates the wealthy give far less to charity than the poor. Click the link, it explains one reason why that might be.
I completely disagree with that. Compared with Roman slaves, African-American slaves before the civil war, peasants who were indentured servants to feudal lords before the industrial revolution? Hell no. A slave is someone whose life is basically controlled by someone else, and who cannot escape even if they were willing to make financial sacrifices.
Yeah, small problem: While there were quite a few of those kinds of slaves, indentured servitude has historically been more prevalant, and socially acceptable. Did you know it took the United States until 2000 to outlaw it? And while it's now on the books under human trafficing laws, tens of millions of Americans are functionally indentured servants. Anyone here on a work visa; If you're fired, you gotta go home. Anyone who has ever been chased by debt collectors is well aware that they can take everything down to the clothes on your back legally for any debt, and many states allow ex parte orders to invoke police authority to confinscate any and all personal property.
We change the definitions around, you know, paint smiles on the bags over people's heads... but we're still abusing the crap out of the poor in this country. They are functional slaves. They do not have very many options, if any. It's shit minimum wage jobs, paycheck to paycheck living, and having to decide between pills and food. We treat our prisoners better than our poor in this country. At least in prison you get three square meals and basic medical care. Until a week ago, the poor didn't get medical care outside of prison. They're still going hungry.
Well, so do most of the top 1 percent you're talking about,
You know, having a 20 mil a year income means you can take regular vacations. Work short weeks. Take time off to see the kids. You know what having a 20 thou a year income means? Busting your balls 40-70 hours a week. No vacation. No sick time. Maybe seeing your family through bleary eyes as you collapse in your own bed. When I say "working to death", I assumed you'd be smart enough to realize I was talking about the quality of a person's life, not the quanti
1. We do have a labor party: the democrats. They're just not
Please stop. You have no idea what you're talking about. First, here is the current list of Labor parties around the world. The democrats aren't on that list. Second, the democratic party platform is nothing like the labor party platform. Labor parties around the world typically prioritize issues directly relating to labor law, such as child labour, overtime pay, collective bargaining, and occupational safety. They strongly support unions and defend the right of anyone to strike. The democrats don't make any of these things a priority.
Someone has to pay for healthcare: a service rendered by these slaves you mentioned
Umm, unless 89% of the US population works in a hospital or in the medical profession, no. And most people in the medical profession are in just as bad a shape as the rest of us. The cost of putting yourself through medical school, then paying for medical malpractice insurance, leaves many in the industry only somewhat better off than people asking if you'd like fries with that. The problems I mentioned affect 90% or so of Americans. Doctors are part of that 90%.
It's not this free magic that would pour out of the ether if we'd only vote in more democrats. In fact, the costs wouldn't be so high if the government didn't [derp deleted] It's easy to spend other people's money [more derp]
3. Profit motive is no better or worse than any other. [long tea bagging derp omitted]
Nice strawman. Wealth inequity is due to greed; which is a lot more accurate word to describe how 1% of Americans compulsively hoarde wealth than "profit motive", which is a more flattering term for it.
. The last thing I'd want is the UN here, 'liberating' us from our constitution or
"The guv'munt is tryin' to steal mah guns!" The Tea Bag is strong with this one. The UN hasn't "liberated" anything, and nobody said this, you warped backwater conspiracy theorist. We need humanitarian aid for our poor because our lawmakers have become about as detached from reality as you are, and it's killing people. Literally. Right now. Nobody wants your fucking gun, or "the constitution", for whatever good that's doing all the people starving to death right now in places like New Orleans and Detroit. I'm pretty sure a loaf of bread is much more in demand than some whack-ass political ideology.
7. The media does lie, that is true. Guess which party they
Both. Next stupid question?
8. Wealth inequity is an expression of nature,[bullshit rationalization omitted]
No. Greed, gluttony, and sociopathy are not in any way normal. You know what's normal? People helping each other. People breaking bread with each other. People sharing. Because at our very core, the essence of what it means to be human, is that we are social creatures. Our default is to cooperate, not compete. E Pluribus Unum is not latin for "every man for himself". People like you yammer on about the Constitution, but you got not a fucking clue amongst the lot of you about what it actually means. What our founding fathers were trying to create.
Well, let me spell it out for you: The purpose of a democracy isn't to make wealth, or a great country, or a big military. The purpose of a democracy is to make great people. We need more Einsteins, more Martin Luther Kings, more George Washingtons, more Fredrick Douglasses. We don't need more Larry Ellisons, or the Kooches and Waltons, or Ralph Murdocks, etc., etc.
And that's what you idiot teabaggers will never comprehend, and what you're a blight upon the political landscape of this country, a veritable dog shit on the lawn of human decency and compassion. Your twisted logic leads to sociopathy and neuroticism. Thank you and good day, sir.
You forgot to mention that we will default this month. And while I can't tell you how people will recover from it, I'm fairly certain that the future of the United States of America will no longer be "united". Old Glory is about to get a change in star count sooner than we all think.
I'm fairly certain Texas will lose. Badly. Just like the last time they tried this. As did every other state that joined the Confederacy. But by all means, if they want round two, us Northerners are only too happy to mop the floor with them. Again. We'll probably be home in time for dinner... not much has changed since the last civil war: They got shit infrastructure, industry, no natural resources, and depend on welfare from the rest of the union. As I understand it... Alabama and Tennessee are now trading insults because Alabama had the good sense to pump all its water reserves dry and is now rapidly turning into a desert wasteland of empty beer bottles and trucks up on blocks.
CEO makes blanket policy decision, backs it up only with "Because I said so," film at 11. In other news... this is the human equivalent of marking your territory by peeing on something, then kicking up grass. Will it screw a lot of things up? Of course. Will anyone complain? Assuredly not. Is it news? No. We have a term for this kind of behavior in corporate america: Tuesday.
I'm Not dumping that kind of money on the net, and having it show up wrong, dented, or what ever with out a local-ish resource.
Okay dude, seriously... if you drop 25-50k on a car, do you honestly think the company cares so little for your purchase, when it's so small and desperate for customers, that it's going to just flip you the bird? No. They'll send the goddamned engineers who built that car on the next flight to your house to personally buff and shine that fucker. So please; Don't insult everyone's intelligence here by suggesting that is any kind of a possibility. Amazon provides better customer service than that when I buy a pair of shoes off their website.
No. This is about convenience, and human psychology. If you're going to be spending an hour or more a day inside that metal can on wheels, you want it to be comfortable. You want it to be easy. Satisfying. And you can't satisfy those emotional needs unless you sit in the damn thing first and drive it around. That's why you go to the dealer -- to test drive. Find out if you find the car... suitable. No other reason. I bet if Tesla had lots in every major city where you could just show up, test drive it, then bring it back... and that was it, no dealers, no pressure, no bullshit... and everything else was done online, you'd pony up the 25-50k. You'd do it because then you'd know what you're getting.
But don't say it "show up wrong, dented or what ever" is really a serious hinderance in the buying process.
Well Tesla has, what, one model, with very few options available. More coming, sure, but today, its pick your color and battery size, and send a check.
Consider what they're up against: GM isn't just on the Fortune 500, or even the Fortune 100. They are in the Fortune, uhh... 5. This is a massive corporation, one deemed by our own government as "too big to fail". They have an extensive network of lobbyists. Do you know how many times Tesla has tried to get stores opened only to be denied by state and federal law -- passed very recently and at the behest of GM? Google "Tesla permit"... then shit a fat brick. You wonder why they only have a website? It's because that's the one thing they don't need approval from these paid off politicians to get going. And... SURPRISE! Guess what the next thing GM wants to do is: Make buying a car online functionally illegal. They're real close to doing it too.
Now when you're pissing in the wind against that kind of a political power player... how much money do you think they're blowing just to keep their head above water in that department? A fuck ton. They'd love to give you a dozen new models. They could too... except every last dime is dedicated to surviving the regulatory onslaught GM has orchestrated. GM has spent more on campaign contributions this year than Tesla has ever made from all of its sales. Ever.
Still you have to give them credit for trying. You can already "custom build" by picking package options from most manufacturers. (Not with anywhere near a desirable level of granularity.) But you are going to go through a dealer somewhere along the line.
GM thanks you for your patriotic opinion, Citizen. Our extensive network of exclusive dealerships really is the only way to shop.
Americans are work-aholics relatively speaking and thus will
Stop. Please, just stop. You don't call slaves "workaholics". We aren't the smiling factory workers depicted in your imaginary propaganda world, happily clocking in unlimited overtime because we're filled with patriotic pride. We do it because we have no labor party. There are no unions. The top 1% in this country control over 40% of the wealth, and the top 10% control over 80%. We are a nation of slaves. We work, and we work, and then we drop dead. And until recently, we didn't even have health care. Arguably, we still don't -- Obamacare is such a poor substitute for true national health care I almost makes me cry. You have to pay for it; Which means it's squeezing the already failing middle class by forcing them to sign up for it. It exempts the poor, and the rich... well, they don't need it. So in the final analysis, our health care system, while a vast improvement over the previous one which suffered a total existance failure, is still just contributing to an already serious problem. It's the untold story you won't hear on Fox, or CNN, or NBC. You'll have to go somewhere like Al Jezerra or the BBC to pick up any trace of it.
You people who aren't from here act like it's all sunshine and daisies. That we ride around in tanks slurping down ginormous sodas and cheeseburgers, living it up. Everything about our culture is toxic. It will kill you, slowly. Living here is like smoking cigarettes -- it kills you one breath at a time. We're dealing with a nation of people who don't sleep enough, who are forced out of bed before the sun is up to go to work, and don't get back until it's back down again. Many of us work the weekends too, just to pay the bills. We're saddled with piles of debt, high taxes, and everything needs a credit check, even if you want to pay in cash. Our banks didn't just kill our economy -- they trigger a global, worldwide, recession. You think you felt the hurt? We were ground zero.
A Just-In-Time education system may be a better approach than trying to hammer in concepts while young hoping they are hammered in deep enough to stay in.
Your solution to severe and pervasive societal-level problems is to play buzzword bingo? Are you fucking kidding me? We don't need a "just in time" education system. We need any education system. Check out the high school graduation rates in all of our major cities -- they're falling like a rock. No Child Left Behind has become an unmitigated clusterfuck that punishes our best schools by defunding them. No, that's literally how it works, that isn't a typo. The law is written so that schools are funded based on the improvement in test scores from the previous year. Not from having high test scores and a great graduation rate -- those are signs of imminent school shutdown! We fund the worst schools because they're the easiest to bring test scores up, and we cut the best ones, because you can't improve anymore once you're in that top percentile.
The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.
It doesn't need augmentation; It was working just fine before. It needs to have all the profiteering assholes nailed to a cross and put out in the courtyards and left to be eaten by goddamned vultures to serve a warning to any rich bastard that would try to profit from the institutions that prepare our young adults for specialized work. These assholes singlehandedly killed any potential for an entire generation to escape poverty. These kids are sucking down $100,000 student loan debts. If current trends continue, they'll be in their 40s before they even make enough money to pay back the interest alone on that... let alone start getting at the principle.
No sir, no sir you are dead wrong about everything that's wrong with this country. The conservatives in this country have hated public education from day one -- that was an invent
Of course they are paying for all of that stuff, but the tea is almost pure profit
Well, when you cut out all the costs, then yeah, it's "pure profit". In other news, you have no point. In the restaurant business, food costs make up anywhere from 9--23% of total costs. Note that transport is included in that. To put this in perspective, the primary thing that a restaurant does -- serve food, makes up about the same percentage as the hotels are charging for an amenity.
Do you get it yet, or do you feel a need to make another non-point?
"Hey, I'm so rich, that I don't care about a $9.95 internet fee tacked onto my hotel bill per night" -- said many (not all, granted) rich people, every day.
They'd care if they knew they could go across the street and save $10 a night... or about 10-15%. But they don't, so they can't.
And that's why high-end hotels don't offer free wifi.
People are already buying gallons of it for at least 4000% more than cost and very happy about it.
That would be because the food cost only makes up a small fraction of the total cost on a bill for dining out. You're paying for the labor to make that tea, the labor to take that order, the labor to fill that order, the labor to clean up your table when you're done. You're paying for the electricity and utilities of that location. You're paying for government licensure costs.
Fat or not, agile or not... it's sure a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) to buy a GM vehicle than it is a Tesla. GM dealerships are near everywhere (as is their quick fueling options)... not so much with Tesla.
Yeah... that couldn't be because of political pressure to deny them permits, could it? Great argument you got there.
Tesla has a great bit of tech behind them, they are still the new comer and have a great deal of mindshare to win with regards to 'the big three'.
You say that like they're all playing the same game, and under the same rules. You couldn't be more wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
One question I wonder: will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens."
Your google-fu is weak, submitter. Apple is indeed looking at this technology and have filed several patents. Samsung though beat them to market; but it's a pyrric victory at a $1000 price tag.
Advertising Considered Harmful.
No. Advertising is just fine. Ever submitted a resume for a job? Advertising. Ever held up a sign to protest something? Advertising. Ever posted something political to your Facebook? Advertising. Advertising is nothing more than heading out into the big blue room and yelling "Here I am! Over here! Look at me!" ... or if you're from the South, "y'all ain't gonna believe this shit. Hold my beer." Advertising is neither good nor evil, neither harmful nor beneficial. It's just an umbrella term for anything that tries to get another person's attention.
Advertising becomes harmful when it encourages people to do things they shouldn't be doing. For example; Casinoes. Ever notice they almost exclusively target the elderly? These are vulnerable adults who, due to age-related cognitive deterioration, don't have the best critical thinking skills and tend to be overly-trusting. They're easy to take advantage of. And most of the lever-pulling zombies they have on the floor really, really, should not be there. They're on fixed income and they're pissing money away to pull a lever like some lab rat. A cocaine habit would be cheaper for some of these poor bastards.
Advertising becomes harmful when it crosses lines of privacy and cultural norms to get that extra sale. Obama, please stop sending me e-mails. I also don't want v1agr@ for 'cheep', penis or breast enlargement pills, and the list goes on. This isn't just ineffectual advertising, but it results in loss of impact globally, creating a Red Queen race amongst advertisers.
Advertising also becomes harmful when there's too much of it. Something like 1/3rd of television is overt advertisement, more if you consider the pop-unders and animated shit they put across the screen while you're watching the show. And then there's paid product placement. All tallied, probably over half of TV content is advertising.
And not just harmful to you or me, but also harmful to the advertiser! Having to jack the volume up to level 99 to try and capture the attention of your viewers because it's a veritable crap-flood for 5 minutes at a go, fed to you in 10-30 second screams out of your idiot box... is not improving your sales figures.
And that's just TV and print media. On the internet, advertising isn't just annoying or ineffectual -- the platforms for serving these ads all over the internet can be compromised to spread malware, viruses, and government-endorsed spyware to millions in mere moments.
My point here is that advertising itself isn't harmful; Particular advertising methods are. You can't get rid of advertising, and in fact, it has a valid use. Companies need ways of attracting new business. Targeted advertising, especially opt-in, is much better at doing that than previous methods. But as a society, we need to figure out a way to balance the legitimate business needs here with the equally legitimate privacy and quality of life concerns of the general population. A good balance between these things benefits all parties -- businesses and citizens alike.
But right now, it isn't balanced, and in fact is so out of balance it's toxic. But that does not mean advertising, as a concept, is harmful. So please be careful tossing off one-liners like this -- they rarely paint a complete picture, and encourage black and white thinking.
so far so good. but stepping back a bit. what legitimate reason would there be for wait4 to take invalid flags only if the uid is 0? this is clearly a back door.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but in Linux and Unix, uid 0 is god. There's lots of code in the kernel that says "Don't ever, under any circumstances, allow this. Unless of course God asks you to."
Let's just go forward with what we know and stop the speculation
Skip that. How about we go with "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." We're talking about a single character that turns what everyone seems to agree would be an error-check, into an exploit. This sort of thing happens all the time, and nobody says the butler did it, in the observatory, with the lead pipe, when it does. They say "Hey, man, your last diff patch might have a bug." (explains bug) ... a few hours to days later, they reply back with "Oh hey thanks for catching that!"
And assuming this was the NSA is laughable; Have you heard about their latest data center in Ohio? It apparently regularly shorts out in spectacular fashion shooting bolts of lightning between racks of equipment, killing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment everytime. There's a king sized pissing contest going on as to what the cause is between the NSA, the contractors who built it, and the Army Corp of Engineers, all of whom identify a different cause, or point the finger at a different person. It's a big circle jerk.
Does this sound like the paragon of competence and subtlety to you?
If your answers are Yes and No respectively, you should not have any expectation of pay beyond salary or credit beyond "attaboy!" If this bothers you, please seek asylum in your preferred alternate society.
"Yes... it is perfectly acceptable for one group of people to exploit another without compensation. If this bothers you, it must be because you're mentally ill. Love it or leave it, trolololoooo..."
You know, we had a civil war to get rid of people like you. Do we need to come out and burn your plantation down? This is America -- flip over your currency sometime. It says 'E Pluribus Unum'. It's not latin for 'Every man for himself'.
What I find interesting is that the AC gave a plausible number of "greats" to match Louis XVI's generation.
What I find interesting is the massively huge assumption staring everyone in the face but nobody sees it: The idea that the living relatives might be an invented fairy tale. It wouldn't be the first time a royal lineage met its end and the "secret sauce" was switched and records altered to maintain the appearance of an unbroken line.
This 'forensic evidence' is based on records that are hundreds of years old; Altering birth and death records was a time-honored tradition back then. It was the Photoshop of the Dark Ages, and churches had just as much reason to perpetuate a fraud as anyone -- their power was often derived from royal mandate. You don't think, at a time when chopping heads off and torturing people was called 'Tuesday', that a little re-inking of a few geneology documents would be beyond the morality of these people, do you?
And it's well understood that past is always prologue.
Actually, it's well-understood by northerners that southerners are all bark and no bite. Oh sure they talk a good talk about government welfare and blah de-de-blah, but they're the biggest recipients. If we cut the South off and let them form their own country, and split the deficit based on population present in each... we'd have ours paid off in full within 15 years, while they'd be turning to the UN for humanitarian aid after they started dying by the droves and jumping into the Ocean trying to swim to Cuba. I kid you not; There's not enough fertile land in the south, nor enough water, to support their population. They lack anything in the way of natural resources (unless stupidity counts), and with the exception of Texas and North Carolina, have almost dick in terms of major industry.
And as much as Texas claims it loves the south, 10 years of trying to support 13 other hungry screaming children looking at them like they're a pork chop (which is sorta what the shape of Texas is, incidentally), you better believe they'd cut them off.
No. The only 'military tradition' the south has is providing one of the few ways for the youth unfortunate enough to be born there a chance to escape, earn some money, get an education, and have a future, in exchange for a bullet in the ass risk. And yeah, us northerners pay for that... mostly because we know once you have an education, you generally come up here and become a productive member of society instead of some bible-thumping, beer-swilling leech-person who claims to have the solutions to all the government problems; All we have to do is fuck ourselves into the dirt! -_-
802.11ac will probably suffer the same fate. The minimum implementation to get the "wireless ac" sticker on the box is going to be what half to three quarters of the devices on the market will support, even 10 years from now.
Every technology will suffer the same fate. Look, the problem isn't the technology, but noise pollution. The noise floor across the whole of the RF spectrum is rising by an average of 1db a year. That means that every three years, the 'room' gets twice as loud. Every new technology we roll out, every new device, is just another nail in that coffin. Like every other natural resource, humans just consume and consume, gorging themselves to excess until eventually there's nothing left.
In the 1930s, a single AM broadcast tower could cover most of a region in the US in the evening. Certain frequencies carried a worldwide range, albeit due to the unpredictable nature of the ionosphere, you never knew just where in the world your low power signal would land. They did this using spark gap radios and shit with vaccum tubes in it. Today, the same feat can only be achieved with DSPs because the noise floor has come up so much most of the signal is trash after only a couple hundred miles.
Cell phone companies are continually trying to keep up with ever denser concentrations of towers; And it's not because of data-thirsty hipster iphones... it's because a few hundred milliwatts barely gets you across the street anymore. It's a regulatory nightmare just finding a spot for a new tower and getting it approved... and companies fall farther behind every year on meeting coverage goals.
We aren't just sucking up bandwidth on a per-frequency basis... every radio device contributes to global noise. Our RF spectrum is dying the death of a thousand papercuts. And all of this we can blame on two things; A complete lack of government coordination to share bandwidth and unify technologies using something like SDR across all wireless devices, brought on by competition by various companies to be the last man standing at the auctions and with technology able to "scream" just a little bit louder than the competition through a dizzying array of RF engineering cheats to increase effective broadcast power in a way the FCC can't penalize.
Your tax dollars at work people.
Well, ordinarily I would thank you for not namecalling, but you're just a tenth of a step up from that; You were a condescending asshole. Soooo.... politely now; Fuck off.
Actually, most do - if you are a reasonably frequent guest. Loyalty programs are structured to encourage and reward repeat customers and identify the ones who drive profit and try to ensure they remain loyal customers. It's another way to drive loyalty by offering a tangible savings, which has little marginal cost for the hotel. In the end, many customers don't care about saving the $10 because they don't pay it anyway.
My dad had an expression about this sort of thing: In one ear, out the other. Thanks dad. Even though you're now long gone, your combination of stubbornness and jadedness continues to help me survive even the stupidest internet pundit...
It doesn't sound like a game. It sounds like Choose Your Own Adventure: Powerpoint Edition. At the risk of snarking with one of the oldest lines ever on the internet...
Pics or it didn't happen.
Telecommuting is nice for the workers, and I too like it, but is absolute shit for creating quality work in a timely manner. Slag at this all you want, but that is my perspective from two projects implementing the same system using two different management policies: telecommuting versus 'no telecommuting'. And 'no telecommuting' produced better work.
You're using personal experience to make your argument. Well, good for you. Glad it worked out in your case. However, not everyone agrees. I was lampooning this CEO's blanket policy decision. Blanket policies are universally bad -- there has never been one that didn't leave a trail of carnage in its wake. "Ruling a kingdom is like cooking a fish. Don't overdo it." -- Lao Tzu. Effective leadership is more about a direction than a destination. It is less about policy and more about guideline. And great leadership is so transparent you don't even notice it. Everything just seems to click. Well... things at HP aren't clicking. And this CEO is coming in and trying to prove herself with a nice big shakeup. This is what almost every CEO does. It's like when people buy a house... they invariably paint it a different color as soon as they can! The other color might have been their favorite color. It might have been the best color for the house. But it has to be changed, because until it is, for psychological reasons that person won't consider the house "theirs" until it does.
This is about painting a house. It's about marking territory. Because if it wasn't, then the CEO would be making that decision on a per-business unit basis. Some lines of work function better with it. Some don't. Investigating and then making a decision shows thoughtfulness and consideration of the complexities of the business. Shoving a policy down everyone's throats screams "I gotta paint my new house!"
Anyone who says workers are slaves doesn't deserve an articulate response. And I guess that probably includes you.
No, they don't. But give them one anyway, not because they deserve it, but because you do. Sometimes we need to affirm our own moral and ethical center, even if we know it's falling on deaf ears.
With the exception of public sector employees, where unionization is alive and kicking. The rest were pretty much done in with the wave of globalization that begin around 1990 and was accelerated by the Internet and vastly improved worldwide telecommunications bandwidth.
Sir, you need to get educated on the political realities of our age. "In 2010, the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States (or total labor union "density") was 11.4%, compared to 18.4% in Germany, 27.5% in Canada, and 70% in Finland.[1] Union membership in the private sector has fallen under 7% â" levels not seen since 1932." Source
That's not winning. That's losing. That's losing badly.
That may be, but it's not like those 1 percent are
It doesn't matter who, what, where, or when they are. The fact is, 1% controls 40% of the wealth in this country. This is not a good thing! Economies function best with high liquidity, when trade is abundant, when money trades hands quickly. This doesn't happen when a few million people are hoarding cash to the point it probably passes a clinical threshold. The end! They could be the patron saint of charity, but it doesn't change the fact that the money isn't moving. It's not helping anyone but them. And while we're on the topic of charity, common sense demanding and answer to "If they're so generous, how come everyone else is so poor" notwithstanding, survey after survey indicates the wealthy give far less to charity than the poor. Click the link, it explains one reason why that might be.
I completely disagree with that. Compared with Roman slaves, African-American slaves before the civil war, peasants who were indentured servants to feudal lords before the industrial revolution? Hell no. A slave is someone whose life is basically controlled by someone else, and who cannot escape even if they were willing to make financial sacrifices.
Yeah, small problem: While there were quite a few of those kinds of slaves, indentured servitude has historically been more prevalant, and socially acceptable. Did you know it took the United States until 2000 to outlaw it? And while it's now on the books under human trafficing laws, tens of millions of Americans are functionally indentured servants. Anyone here on a work visa; If you're fired, you gotta go home. Anyone who has ever been chased by debt collectors is well aware that they can take everything down to the clothes on your back legally for any debt, and many states allow ex parte orders to invoke police authority to confinscate any and all personal property.
We change the definitions around, you know, paint smiles on the bags over people's heads... but we're still abusing the crap out of the poor in this country. They are functional slaves. They do not have very many options, if any. It's shit minimum wage jobs, paycheck to paycheck living, and having to decide between pills and food. We treat our prisoners better than our poor in this country. At least in prison you get three square meals and basic medical care. Until a week ago, the poor didn't get medical care outside of prison. They're still going hungry.
Well, so do most of the top 1 percent you're talking about,
You know, having a 20 mil a year income means you can take regular vacations. Work short weeks. Take time off to see the kids. You know what having a 20 thou a year income means? Busting your balls 40-70 hours a week. No vacation. No sick time. Maybe seeing your family through bleary eyes as you collapse in your own bed. When I say "working to death", I assumed you'd be smart enough to realize I was talking about the quality of a person's life, not the quanti
1. We do have a labor party: the democrats. They're just not
Please stop. You have no idea what you're talking about. First, here is the current list of Labor parties around the world. The democrats aren't on that list. Second, the democratic party platform is nothing like the labor party platform. Labor parties around the world typically prioritize issues directly relating to labor law, such as child labour, overtime pay, collective bargaining, and occupational safety. They strongly support unions and defend the right of anyone to strike. The democrats don't make any of these things a priority.
Someone has to pay for healthcare: a service rendered by these slaves you mentioned
Umm, unless 89% of the US population works in a hospital or in the medical profession, no. And most people in the medical profession are in just as bad a shape as the rest of us. The cost of putting yourself through medical school, then paying for medical malpractice insurance, leaves many in the industry only somewhat better off than people asking if you'd like fries with that. The problems I mentioned affect 90% or so of Americans. Doctors are part of that 90%.
It's not this free magic that would pour out of the ether if we'd only vote in more democrats. In fact, the costs wouldn't be so high if the government didn't [derp deleted] It's easy to spend other people's money [more derp]
Error: Tea bagger detected. Logic fail. Error. Cyclic redundancy check failure. Warning. Exception fault handling module commonsense.exe.
3. Profit motive is no better or worse than any other. [long tea bagging derp omitted]
Nice strawman. Wealth inequity is due to greed; which is a lot more accurate word to describe how 1% of Americans compulsively hoarde wealth than "profit motive", which is a more flattering term for it.
. The last thing I'd want is the UN here, 'liberating' us from our constitution or
"The guv'munt is tryin' to steal mah guns!" The Tea Bag is strong with this one. The UN hasn't "liberated" anything, and nobody said this, you warped backwater conspiracy theorist. We need humanitarian aid for our poor because our lawmakers have become about as detached from reality as you are, and it's killing people. Literally. Right now. Nobody wants your fucking gun, or "the constitution", for whatever good that's doing all the people starving to death right now in places like New Orleans and Detroit. I'm pretty sure a loaf of bread is much more in demand than some whack-ass political ideology.
7. The media does lie, that is true. Guess which party they
Both. Next stupid question?
8. Wealth inequity is an expression of nature,[bullshit rationalization omitted]
No. Greed, gluttony, and sociopathy are not in any way normal. You know what's normal? People helping each other. People breaking bread with each other. People sharing. Because at our very core, the essence of what it means to be human, is that we are social creatures. Our default is to cooperate, not compete. E Pluribus Unum is not latin for "every man for himself". People like you yammer on about the Constitution, but you got not a fucking clue amongst the lot of you about what it actually means. What our founding fathers were trying to create.
Well, let me spell it out for you: The purpose of a democracy isn't to make wealth, or a great country, or a big military. The purpose of a democracy is to make great people. We need more Einsteins, more Martin Luther Kings, more George Washingtons, more Fredrick Douglasses. We don't need more Larry Ellisons, or the Kooches and Waltons, or Ralph Murdocks, etc., etc.
And that's what you idiot teabaggers will never comprehend, and what you're a blight upon the political landscape of this country, a veritable dog shit on the lawn of human decency and compassion. Your twisted logic leads to sociopathy and neuroticism. Thank you and good day, sir.
You forgot to mention that we will default this month. And while I can't tell you how people will recover from it, I'm fairly certain that the future of the United States of America will no longer be "united". Old Glory is about to get a change in star count sooner than we all think.
I'm fairly certain Texas will lose. Badly. Just like the last time they tried this. As did every other state that joined the Confederacy. But by all means, if they want round two, us Northerners are only too happy to mop the floor with them. Again. We'll probably be home in time for dinner... not much has changed since the last civil war: They got shit infrastructure, industry, no natural resources, and depend on welfare from the rest of the union. As I understand it... Alabama and Tennessee are now trading insults because Alabama had the good sense to pump all its water reserves dry and is now rapidly turning into a desert wasteland of empty beer bottles and trucks up on blocks.
CEO makes blanket policy decision, backs it up only with "Because I said so," film at 11. In other news... this is the human equivalent of marking your territory by peeing on something, then kicking up grass. Will it screw a lot of things up? Of course. Will anyone complain? Assuredly not. Is it news? No. We have a term for this kind of behavior in corporate america: Tuesday.
I'm Not dumping that kind of money on the net, and having it show up wrong, dented, or what ever with out a local-ish resource.
Okay dude, seriously... if you drop 25-50k on a car, do you honestly think the company cares so little for your purchase, when it's so small and desperate for customers, that it's going to just flip you the bird? No. They'll send the goddamned engineers who built that car on the next flight to your house to personally buff and shine that fucker. So please; Don't insult everyone's intelligence here by suggesting that is any kind of a possibility. Amazon provides better customer service than that when I buy a pair of shoes off their website.
No. This is about convenience, and human psychology. If you're going to be spending an hour or more a day inside that metal can on wheels, you want it to be comfortable. You want it to be easy. Satisfying. And you can't satisfy those emotional needs unless you sit in the damn thing first and drive it around. That's why you go to the dealer -- to test drive. Find out if you find the car... suitable. No other reason. I bet if Tesla had lots in every major city where you could just show up, test drive it, then bring it back... and that was it, no dealers, no pressure, no bullshit... and everything else was done online, you'd pony up the 25-50k. You'd do it because then you'd know what you're getting.
But don't say it "show up wrong, dented or what ever" is really a serious hinderance in the buying process.
Well Tesla has, what, one model, with very few options available. More coming, sure, but today, its pick your color and battery size, and send a check.
Consider what they're up against: GM isn't just on the Fortune 500, or even the Fortune 100. They are in the Fortune, uhh... 5. This is a massive corporation, one deemed by our own government as "too big to fail". They have an extensive network of lobbyists. Do you know how many times Tesla has tried to get stores opened only to be denied by state and federal law -- passed very recently and at the behest of GM? Google "Tesla permit" ... then shit a fat brick. You wonder why they only have a website? It's because that's the one thing they don't need approval from these paid off politicians to get going. And... SURPRISE! Guess what the next thing GM wants to do is: Make buying a car online functionally illegal. They're real close to doing it too.
Now when you're pissing in the wind against that kind of a political power player... how much money do you think they're blowing just to keep their head above water in that department? A fuck ton. They'd love to give you a dozen new models. They could too... except every last dime is dedicated to surviving the regulatory onslaught GM has orchestrated. GM has spent more on campaign contributions this year than Tesla has ever made from all of its sales. Ever.
Still you have to give them credit for trying. You can already "custom build" by picking package options from most manufacturers. (Not with anywhere near a desirable level of granularity.) But you are going to go through a dealer somewhere along the line.
GM thanks you for your patriotic opinion, Citizen. Our extensive network of exclusive dealerships really is the only way to shop.
Americans are work-aholics relatively speaking and thus will
Stop. Please, just stop. You don't call slaves "workaholics". We aren't the smiling factory workers depicted in your imaginary propaganda world, happily clocking in unlimited overtime because we're filled with patriotic pride. We do it because we have no labor party. There are no unions. The top 1% in this country control over 40% of the wealth, and the top 10% control over 80%. We are a nation of slaves. We work, and we work, and then we drop dead. And until recently, we didn't even have health care. Arguably, we still don't -- Obamacare is such a poor substitute for true national health care I almost makes me cry. You have to pay for it; Which means it's squeezing the already failing middle class by forcing them to sign up for it. It exempts the poor, and the rich... well, they don't need it. So in the final analysis, our health care system, while a vast improvement over the previous one which suffered a total existance failure, is still just contributing to an already serious problem. It's the untold story you won't hear on Fox, or CNN, or NBC. You'll have to go somewhere like Al Jezerra or the BBC to pick up any trace of it.
You people who aren't from here act like it's all sunshine and daisies. That we ride around in tanks slurping down ginormous sodas and cheeseburgers, living it up. Everything about our culture is toxic. It will kill you, slowly. Living here is like smoking cigarettes -- it kills you one breath at a time. We're dealing with a nation of people who don't sleep enough, who are forced out of bed before the sun is up to go to work, and don't get back until it's back down again. Many of us work the weekends too, just to pay the bills. We're saddled with piles of debt, high taxes, and everything needs a credit check, even if you want to pay in cash. Our banks didn't just kill our economy -- they trigger a global, worldwide, recession. You think you felt the hurt? We were ground zero.
A Just-In-Time education system may be a better approach than trying to hammer in concepts while young hoping they are hammered in deep enough to stay in.
Your solution to severe and pervasive societal-level problems is to play buzzword bingo? Are you fucking kidding me? We don't need a "just in time" education system. We need any education system. Check out the high school graduation rates in all of our major cities -- they're falling like a rock. No Child Left Behind has become an unmitigated clusterfuck that punishes our best schools by defunding them. No, that's literally how it works, that isn't a typo. The law is written so that schools are funded based on the improvement in test scores from the previous year. Not from having high test scores and a great graduation rate -- those are signs of imminent school shutdown! We fund the worst schools because they're the easiest to bring test scores up, and we cut the best ones, because you can't improve anymore once you're in that top percentile.
The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.
It doesn't need augmentation; It was working just fine before. It needs to have all the profiteering assholes nailed to a cross and put out in the courtyards and left to be eaten by goddamned vultures to serve a warning to any rich bastard that would try to profit from the institutions that prepare our young adults for specialized work. These assholes singlehandedly killed any potential for an entire generation to escape poverty. These kids are sucking down $100,000 student loan debts. If current trends continue, they'll be in their 40s before they even make enough money to pay back the interest alone on that... let alone start getting at the principle.
No sir, no sir you are dead wrong about everything that's wrong with this country. The conservatives in this country have hated public education from day one -- that was an invent
Of course they are paying for all of that stuff, but the tea is almost pure profit
Well, when you cut out all the costs, then yeah, it's "pure profit". In other news, you have no point. In the restaurant business, food costs make up anywhere from 9--23% of total costs. Note that transport is included in that. To put this in perspective, the primary thing that a restaurant does -- serve food, makes up about the same percentage as the hotels are charging for an amenity.
Do you get it yet, or do you feel a need to make another non-point?
"Hey, I'm so rich, that I don't care about a $9.95 internet fee tacked onto my hotel bill per night" -- said many (not all, granted) rich people, every day.
They'd care if they knew they could go across the street and save $10 a night... or about 10-15%. But they don't, so they can't.
And that's why high-end hotels don't offer free wifi.
People are already buying gallons of it for at least 4000% more than cost and very happy about it.
That would be because the food cost only makes up a small fraction of the total cost on a bill for dining out. You're paying for the labor to make that tea, the labor to take that order, the labor to fill that order, the labor to clean up your table when you're done. You're paying for the electricity and utilities of that location. You're paying for government licensure costs.
Oh, and their wifi is free.
Customers who aren't price sensitive, aren't, well, price sensitive.
"Hey, I'm so rich I don't care how much anything costs!"
-- Said no rich person. Ever.
Fat or not, agile or not... it's sure a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) to buy a GM vehicle than it is a Tesla. GM dealerships are near everywhere (as is their quick fueling options)... not so much with Tesla.
Yeah... that couldn't be because of political pressure to deny them permits, could it? Great argument you got there.
Tesla has a great bit of tech behind them, they are still the new comer and have a great deal of mindshare to win with regards to 'the big three'.
You say that like they're all playing the same game, and under the same rules. You couldn't be more wrong.