You cannot put that in the rifle and fire it, so your example is flawed. Sure, you can use a "clip" to help speed load a magazine, but you must remove the clip from the magazine before attaching the magazine to the rifle for shooting.
A true "clip" is used in the firearm while shooting, such as that used on WWII M1 Garand's. Where the clip was loaded into the rifle, and when the last shot was fired, the clip was ejected out.
Otherwise, the use a "Clip" in the form that you showed, is just a version of a speed-loader for a box magazine. The rifles mentioned however fire from a box magazine sans any "clips".
they can prove to a satisfactory degree that you owned the safe, and it is reasonable to presume that a person knows how to open their own safe. So there is nothing testimonial about admitting you know how to open the safe.
In the case of a physical lock, I'm pretty sure they still wouldn't force the person to provide the key to the lock or the combination to the safe during a search warrant. It's my understanding they can ask, but if the owner refuses during the execution of a search warrant, that they would simply confiscate the safe, and have a safe cracker or locksmith open it for them. As a last resort, they might even drill/cut the safe open (destroying said safe), in order to gain access without the suspects help.
I don't believe they would throw the suspect in jail indefinitely until they provided the combination to the safe like they are trying to do in a lot of these cases with passwords involved.
Was going to say something to this effect as well. I'm sure cipher text was a thing back then. Just because the encryption wasn't digital doesn't mean that any form of encryption didn't exist at all.
With that said, I'm pretty sure that the original intent of the 5th Amendment also covered not being required to decipher an encrypted note that you might have been carrying around, or that the authorities found among your person/papers/effects while performing a search warrant. If obtained by a proper warrant, they are free to TRY to decrypt it themselves, but cannot force you to help.
In this case, they want to force you to reveal your password, which is like forcing you to help decipher a letter written in code. It seems the courts are doing their best to make this seem different somehow, in order to help not only their current case, but also gain ruling for all future cases involving passwords and encryption. This is a troubling path IMO.
I somewhat agree, but see both sides of the argument here. I have a famliy of 5, and it gets expensive to do much of anything outside of the house often. The article mentions a weekend 'getaway' which does to me imply a vacation of sorts, which is different than an 'outing' for a day trip. A weekend vacation can be done on the cheap, but can also get very expensive depending on what you do.
An example of both extremes:
earlier this year our family went to Disneyland. We drove there to save money on travel (and have a car when we were there). Stayed in a hotel for the week, and while we were there ate out at restaurants. We had a blast, and we all consider this our 'once every few years' type of vacation. We did a day at Knott's Berry Farm, and 3 days at Disneyland (hopper passes), and did the medieval themed dinner nearby one night. We ate at Denny's, and a few snacks in the park, but also brought sandwiches that we made with us for lunch each day to save a bit on food. We easily spent $3000 for the several day trip there and back. Between gas, lodging, food, park tickets, groceries, and other odds and ends. It would have been even more had we decided to fly there instead, or not get groceries at a local store and eat-out more (or buy more meals in the parks). So the article and OP hit the nail on the head here, it's too expensive to do very often, requires saving for the trip, and planning/budgeting, and all that.
The other extreme, is we go camping during the summer a lot. We tent camp at various campgrounds and do the outdoors things because my wife and I grew up doing that kind of stuff and love it and so do our kids. Once you have all your camping gear purchased (tent/coolers/camp-chairs/stoves/lanterns/etc.), you can go camping for several days for relatively cheap. Unfortunately it still isn't "dirt cheap", as campgrounds have really raised prices, and are now usually $25 or more a night for most of them in these neck of the woods. But even then, a 4-5 day camping trip can be done for $100-$200 plus some groceries that you bring to eat and gas to get there (varies how far you go). Not too bad. We try to fit several trips in during the summer, but too many can get old too. The problem with this is that campgrounds within a few hours of us are PACKED! We can't go 'spur of the moment' anymore. These days, we have to make reservations starting in like February for the summer. One of our favorite campgrounds was already booked up by the end of February this year. Sure, we could really 'rough-it', and go backpacking into the wilderness for a couple days, but that doesn't work to well with a whole family, including young kids and toddlers. My famlily loves camping and hiking, but they aren't too keen on digging-a-hole type camping if you know what I mean.
But, for those of you saying, "you can go to the park for free" and all that, these aren't the 'weekend getaways' that the article is talking about. And yes, you can go to the park for free, or go hiking, or geo-caching, or whatever. But these kinds of activies only give you a couple hours to a day tops to do. What then? Say you take your family out of the house to the park on Saturday, after a few hours, it's hot, the kids are tired of playing, everyone is hungry, and they've done everything there is to do already. So you go home, and you have the rest of the day, and next day still to fill up with something in order to make it a "weekend outing". This doesn't really fill-in the whole weekend.
There is other stuff you can try, but again, typical local outings for a whole family can be expensive. I looked into taking the family to the SF Exploratorium, and it's like $150-$200 plus parking (or Bart). There is lots to do around here, it's a major tourist area, but all that stuff is freaking expensive....
Day trip to Alcatraz for the famlily = >$200
Day trip to Fisherman's Wharf = $100-$200
Day at the beach = $50
Day at a local amusement park = >$250
Day at a baseball game
Even taking the carriers out of the mix wouldn't be much better. The manufacturers hardly ever update either. With phone updates having to go through 3 steps, it's almost 100% doomed not to make it to your phone. Ever Android phone I've ever owned (with the exception of the Nexus 5x that I bought my wife), has at most only seen one update after the initial purchase.
The REAL questions that need to be addressed, is why we as consumers have allowed phones to be handled so different from PC's.
If I buy a laptop that comes with windows. When I first start it up for the first time, I give it an admin login credentials, and have full admin rights on the PC. Phones, you are locked out, with no admin rights unless you root it, which voids the warranty. Why shouldn't we have admin rights on these things by now, they are multi-purpose computers these days. People would freak out if a new laptop only came with 'basic user' login rights, and you couldn't have access to admin rights under windows. It would not be acceptable on a PC, and shouldn't be acceptable on a phone.
Also, why do the manufacture's and carriers get to 'bake' all kinds of crapware on the phone that can't be removed at all? Again, if I bought a Dell laptop, sure it might come with some Dell apps, but they can be removed. Samsung apps on a phone, not so much. Best Buy doesn't get to then add more crapware onto the Dell PC it sells as well, so that when you buy it has Dell bloatware and BestBuy bloatware baked into windows with no way to remove the apps or disable them. Phone do though, all kinds of crap from the manufacturer like Samsung store and other crap and about a dozen AT&T apps that you can't get rid of. not to mention that they bake-in normal apps too now, like my S5 has Uber preloaded, and baked in. Can't uninstall it or get rid of it. I've never used uber, and it's available in the Play store if I want it. Why is it locked onto my phone!
If Samsung wants to give it a branded skin, or some extra functionality, then fine. But if the first problem (admin rights) were respected, if we didn't like it, we would be able to easily wipe the ROM and put a vanilla android ROM on the phone like you can with a PC when you buy it. Same with the "permanent apps" that are preinstalled on the phone as well, admin rights would allow the removal of all of these. This would solve the update process, as I could opt to update to the latest version at any point. When microsoft releases a patch or update to windows, PC users don't have to wait until Dell (or HP/Asus/etc) get the update and add all their crap onto it, and pass it off to then to BestBuy/Walmart/NewEgg for the retailers to all their specific crap to it, before it gets pushed to your laptop. Why the hell does it work that way with phone?!?
It seems to me, that unfortunately, we as consumers allowed them to do this at the beginning and get away with it, and we didn't make a big enough stink over it. Now we are forever stuck with no admin rights, and several layers of 'baked-in' bloatware from everyone in the chain of manufactures and carriers. Why did we let them get away with it in the first place. And why do people accept it, when they wouldn't accept it with a PC.
These lease options are not subsidized like they used to be. You used to be able to get your choice of the latest flagship phone for somewhere around $100-$200 down, and no 'visible' payments after that, and you renewed a new 2-year contract with that purchase. AT&T had the 'New every two' program, that let you get a new subsidized phone every 2 years as long as you signed up for another 2-year contract. Other carriers had similar programs. If you didn't want the latest flagship, you could usually opt to get last years flagship at almost $0 extra cost.
Of course, they were getting their money out of you for the phone, but it wasn't a specific lease that was tied to the phone. If you didn't get your new phone, your monthly bill was still the same price, so you were probably better off to get the new phone, as at least you got a new phone for the price you paid, vs. paying the same monthly price and not getting a new phone. This was considered 'subsidized', because you got a $600 phone for $200.
All the carriers stopped doing that now, and now it's a payment program like you mentioned. You can get a new phone, but your bill goes up by ~$30-40/mo for set period of time, and when your phone is paid off, that charge goes away. It's separated from the mobile plan charges now. If you buy your own phone outright, your bill will be less than if you lease a new phone from them. These programs are not considered 'subsidized' because you are paying the full amount of the phone (or more). This is closer to financing your phone (or maybe open ended leasing depending on some of the terms).
Didn't school administrators get away with this a couple years back with school laptops that were loaned out to students. While the parents made a big deal out of it, I don't recall ever reading that any administrators or IT staff of the school department were arrested and/ prosecuted for it. I guess it helps to hide behind the mask of a large corp or a government agency, then you don't do jail time for stuff like that.
Isn't this the argument that business use to fire and reprimand people who use company laptops for personal uses? Same with company phones? Either it's the company's or it's the person who they lent it to. Who's device is it?
Aren't businesses allowed to install GPS trackers onto company vehicles and then lend those vehicles out to employees to use for work? And then track the whereabouts of those vehicles all day long to make sure they are at the locations they are supposed to be?
The first (and biggest) question is why did the officer feel the need to reenact the search of the vehicle in the first place if he was wearing a body cam at the time of the original search. To me it sounds like he performed the original search with the camera not rolling (which is a big problem if body cams are standard issue in that department), and then went "whoops, I had my camera off when I found that great evidence, and it would have looked SOOO good in court against this guy, that I must now re-do my search, but with the camera rolling...".
The body cam should have been recording during the original search. If police want to have body cams to exonerate themselves, and to use as evidence in court as "testimony", then they need to be rolling during the original encounter, otherwise juries are only getting an edited and redacted version of events.
What's next, is he going to ask that a suspect help him reenact the chase and resisting arrest event after the fact if he forgets to record the original too? "now mr. bad guy, if I remember correctly, you ran, and I tackled you, then you resisted, and I beat the crap out of you until half a dozen other officers came and joined in... ready? Lights! Camera! ACTION!".
Is this an ad for Citibank looking for an experienced COBOL programmer to fix the issue in the previous story about the woman who was 110 year old and the bank software couldn't handle an age that high?
They need to fix it, but they can't find any COBOL programmers! Doh!
With all the newer (re: younger) programming kids out there that are quick to jump on the fad programming language of the day, why can't they learn COBOL? Is it just because it's old, so it's not hip like all the other languages that come into fashion and fade out to oblivion faster than anyone can actually become proficient in them?
Or is it being driven from the employer, where they need someone experienced in an older language that isn't as popular, but are unwilling to PAY for the experienced person willing to learn a language that is used only in older systems. I realize COBOL isn't really a "niche" language, but the more rare it is to find proficient programmers in it, it does actually start qualifying as "niche". Rule of Thumb says, you usually have to pay more for persons experienced with "niche" programming environments/languages. If the money is there, I'm sure there will be more people willing to learn it, or will be able to find already experienced developers.
My first computer at home was I believe a 286 clone with 20MB harddrive and 5-1/4" floppy, and Amber monitor, which would have been fairly bleeding edge in the mid 80's. I spent a lot of time at my Grandfathers house as well, and I believe he had a lower spec 8088 based PC, with no HDD and dual 5-1/4" floppies. Running MS-DOS 3.x
A couple years later, when I was in Jr. High, I started working at a local TV station as an intern where we used Commodore Amiga's for graphic creation and Video Toaster based editing. The Amiga's really were awsome machines and ahead of their time, with multitasking, graphics, you name it they were a superior machine. Is a shame really what happened with the company and the Amiga dying out.
Around the same time, I saved up all summer from working and bought a state-of-the-art (at the time) Cyrix 486/DX based clone (parts at least, that was my first real PC build, using the case from the 286. Put a SoundBlaster card in it, and outfitted with 8MB ram. Cost me a pretty penny at the time, my mom split the cost with me, and my portion was close to $1000 at the time. Eventually bought a newer color monitor to go with it as well. I was into graphics and 3d rendering and later in High School got into programming with it. I needed the fastest PC I could afford at the time, as I was playing around with POVRay and 3DStudio R2 at the time, so if you know how long it would take to render a 3d ray-traced picture back then, you'd understand, as it was often timed in hours, and on complex images, even DAYS!.
A year or two later, my grandpa realized I was REALLY into computers, and found a second-hand Amiga 3000 for a decent deal, and bought it for me. This gave me the capability to run DPaint on it, and a buddy hooked me up with Lightwave 3D (which I was familiar with from working at the TV Station). I was in heaven.
I was also into BBS'ing back then as well, getting the free PC mags at the store and looking in the back for local BBS listings to try. I still remember plunking down like $200 for a 14.4K modem because file transfers were so slow with our original 2400baud that I started with. That was a good community back then... everyone wanted to help each other. Lost of shareware to download for free. Programming advice, graphics advice, people just learning together and teaching each other everything. Very open and welcoming, not at all like today's online groups.
I had my computer area setup with the PC and Amiga side-by-side, and frequently had them both running working on different things simultaneously though high-school years. I do miss those days. I kept the Amiga until after I got married, and had it for a few years after, but it mostly collected dust at that point. When my wife and I moved out of our first apartment, I figured at the time it wasn't worth anything, and tossed it out.
Those memories bring back an emotion that you just don't get with todays computers and technology. I don't know why, maybe it's because I was young, maybe because it was all new, or maybe because it was like being in a secret club that outsiders couldn't understand. I can't put my finger on why, but those years are full of fond memories for sure.
If I had to take a guess, the reason they don't WANT to open it up so the trigger word can be anything is two fold. The first reason is most likely, they want to keep the brand recognition and drill the brand into the users brain on a daily basis. When you have company over, or even by yourself, by using the specific "Alexa"/"OK Google"/"Hey Siri" phrases, it lets everyone around you that can here you know what brand you have, and also reinforces that brand in your own brain on a regular basis, so that you associate the smart home or assistant with that particular brand. ie: marketing psychology and all that...
The second reason rides on the first, that they definitely do not want to you to be able to name it whatever you want, including the competitor's name. Amazon would not want you to call their assistant "Google" or "Siri". Google doesn't want you to call theirs "Alexa". And Apple, I'm sure, already has everyone using Siri brainwashed that the "Siri" name is the best name that could possibly ever be chosen for a digital assistant, and anything else is inferior.:)
I hear that Alexa can let you pick out of 3 names now (changed since original launch), but that is still very limiting, and is an artificial limitation that doesn't make any other sense than for reason #1 I gave on why they don't allow custom keywords yet.
If the city ends up putting it in and it attracts people to hang out there, I would buy a cheap router with a strong antenna and set the SSID to the same one as the public hot spot is using and do the best to overpower the real SSID signal. Don't connect the router to the internet, so it goes no where.
Legally, companies have gotten away with using higher end Cisco gear to send de-auth packets to any wifi that wasn't the one managed by the Cisco controller. This would require some expensive gear to do though.
Then your training the AI with the wrong (or at least--incomplete) set of data. You wouldn't train the AI with what markers the human used before the machine was around. You would feed it the history of all the loans made, along with the data from each loan that was collected, and the information about whether it was paid, kept current, or defaulted on and the time-frames for those outcomes, as well as whether money was lost or not and how much if they went bad. Then let the AI make it's own set of determining factors about what loans are more likely to end up in default, and what the risk vs. reward is for giving out such loans on a scale of minor risk to major risk, and decline the more risky ones that have a high chance of going bad.
I have not been able to get the youtube app within Kodi to work for some time. It starts up and then errors out after clicking on anything to play. Has not worked for me for several years.
Luckily I can just back out of Kodi to get native FireTV menu (the platform I have it running on), and use the app from there and it works fine.
Actually Genesis was shut down quite a while ago (over a year ago or more). The creator moved on and released Exodus, which is "almost" the same but doesn't support Library integration functions (crippled it).
A couple Genesis forks came out, but the new people trying to maintain those forks have not been able to keep it working as reliable as the original creator and so they haven't been able to get the traction that the original had.
The ironic part, is that I own 3 Amazon FireTV's with Kodi installed on them. In fact, that was the #1 reason I bought the FireTV's at all, was not for Prime Video, nor for Netflix (or name your app store app)... But because it runs Kodi rather well for a $40 stick or $100 box. (even less if you wait until Amazon puts them on sale).
I remember dropping like $200 of my hard earned money (when I was like 13-14 yrs old) on a brand new external 14.4K modem to get on some of my favorite BBS's. That was about the same time, that RAM cost about $100/MB or so. Things were crazy expensive then.
This, I was thinking this too. If you post on amazon review a tech support question and expect ANY response from tech support you are a complete idiot. Sure some companies monitor it closely, but it wouldn't even be the 3rd place for me to go intuitively if I needed support.
second, how many of us have needed support during "off-hours" and just had to wait until the business was open again. Maybe some big big companies have 24hr tech support, but we are talking about a small company, with a product that opens/closes garage doors, what in the world would make you even think that this company is going to have 24hr tech support over the weekend.
We've all had to wait until business hours the following Monday when something doesn't work, it sounds like the person posting was an entitled jack-ass. I get that they might have been frustrated, but that is just the way it is. At least in this case it was something as insignificant as a garage door auxilliary control. The old method still worked fine for the time being, so you've lost nothing but a day or two of not getting it to work. Try and see what happens when your internet connection goes down on a Sat. Unless you are a business customer, you will be waiting until Monday morning as well, except that IS a bigger pain with no internet/VoIP/TV. It is what it is though.
That being said, the old adage that "2 wrongs don't make a right" can also apply to the manufacturer as well.
I don't think the manufacturer actually sent code to the device and literally bricked it. It sounds more likely, he figured out the SN of the box, and just blocked connection on the server side. so the device itself still works, but the network connection to the server that it relies on to do it's 'magic' cannot be made. This would make things a bit more murkey in the legal aspect of it for sure, as the box itself has not been altered or tampered with and is the same as when he bought it. The server that the manufacture controls however is not. Although it could be argued that the purchase of device assumes perpetual license to connect to the server services with it, but that isn't always true, look no further than video game makers for examples.
This is also why I don't like these boxes that REQUIRE the use of a server connection to perform functions that they could easily perform direct to the customer's device. It's only so that the manufacturer can keep their grip on you and your data that they do this. They could have easily made the app connect to any IP/port and then clients can setup their firewall to port forward to get to the box directly without the manufacturer being in the middle.
In other news... cars don't actually get the same MPG in real world driving as their manufacturer's claim. Sources say "the [fuel efficiency] claimed by [car] manufacturers rarely lives up to reality."
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You cannot put that in the rifle and fire it, so your example is flawed. Sure, you can use a "clip" to help speed load a magazine, but you must remove the clip from the magazine before attaching the magazine to the rifle for shooting. A true "clip" is used in the firearm while shooting, such as that used on WWII M1 Garand's. Where the clip was loaded into the rifle, and when the last shot was fired, the clip was ejected out. Otherwise, the use a "Clip" in the form that you showed, is just a version of a speed-loader for a box magazine. The rifles mentioned however fire from a box magazine sans any "clips".
I've never seen an AK or AR-15 that uses "clips" before. That's new!
they can prove to a satisfactory degree that you owned the safe, and it is reasonable to presume that a person knows how to open their own safe. So there is nothing testimonial about admitting you know how to open the safe.
In the case of a physical lock, I'm pretty sure they still wouldn't force the person to provide the key to the lock or the combination to the safe during a search warrant. It's my understanding they can ask, but if the owner refuses during the execution of a search warrant, that they would simply confiscate the safe, and have a safe cracker or locksmith open it for them. As a last resort, they might even drill/cut the safe open (destroying said safe), in order to gain access without the suspects help.
I don't believe they would throw the suspect in jail indefinitely until they provided the combination to the safe like they are trying to do in a lot of these cases with passwords involved.
Was going to say something to this effect as well. I'm sure cipher text was a thing back then. Just because the encryption wasn't digital doesn't mean that any form of encryption didn't exist at all.
With that said, I'm pretty sure that the original intent of the 5th Amendment also covered not being required to decipher an encrypted note that you might have been carrying around, or that the authorities found among your person/papers/effects while performing a search warrant. If obtained by a proper warrant, they are free to TRY to decrypt it themselves, but cannot force you to help.
In this case, they want to force you to reveal your password, which is like forcing you to help decipher a letter written in code. It seems the courts are doing their best to make this seem different somehow, in order to help not only their current case, but also gain ruling for all future cases involving passwords and encryption. This is a troubling path IMO.
I somewhat agree, but see both sides of the argument here. I have a famliy of 5, and it gets expensive to do much of anything outside of the house often. The article mentions a weekend 'getaway' which does to me imply a vacation of sorts, which is different than an 'outing' for a day trip. A weekend vacation can be done on the cheap, but can also get very expensive depending on what you do.
An example of both extremes:
earlier this year our family went to Disneyland. We drove there to save money on travel (and have a car when we were there). Stayed in a hotel for the week, and while we were there ate out at restaurants. We had a blast, and we all consider this our 'once every few years' type of vacation. We did a day at Knott's Berry Farm, and 3 days at Disneyland (hopper passes), and did the medieval themed dinner nearby one night. We ate at Denny's, and a few snacks in the park, but also brought sandwiches that we made with us for lunch each day to save a bit on food. We easily spent $3000 for the several day trip there and back. Between gas, lodging, food, park tickets, groceries, and other odds and ends. It would have been even more had we decided to fly there instead, or not get groceries at a local store and eat-out more (or buy more meals in the parks). So the article and OP hit the nail on the head here, it's too expensive to do very often, requires saving for the trip, and planning/budgeting, and all that.
The other extreme, is we go camping during the summer a lot. We tent camp at various campgrounds and do the outdoors things because my wife and I grew up doing that kind of stuff and love it and so do our kids. Once you have all your camping gear purchased (tent/coolers/camp-chairs/stoves/lanterns/etc.), you can go camping for several days for relatively cheap. Unfortunately it still isn't "dirt cheap", as campgrounds have really raised prices, and are now usually $25 or more a night for most of them in these neck of the woods. But even then, a 4-5 day camping trip can be done for $100-$200 plus some groceries that you bring to eat and gas to get there (varies how far you go). Not too bad. We try to fit several trips in during the summer, but too many can get old too. The problem with this is that campgrounds within a few hours of us are PACKED! We can't go 'spur of the moment' anymore. These days, we have to make reservations starting in like February for the summer. One of our favorite campgrounds was already booked up by the end of February this year. Sure, we could really 'rough-it', and go backpacking into the wilderness for a couple days, but that doesn't work to well with a whole family, including young kids and toddlers. My famlily loves camping and hiking, but they aren't too keen on digging-a-hole type camping if you know what I mean.
But, for those of you saying, "you can go to the park for free" and all that, these aren't the 'weekend getaways' that the article is talking about. And yes, you can go to the park for free, or go hiking, or geo-caching, or whatever. But these kinds of activies only give you a couple hours to a day tops to do. What then? Say you take your family out of the house to the park on Saturday, after a few hours, it's hot, the kids are tired of playing, everyone is hungry, and they've done everything there is to do already. So you go home, and you have the rest of the day, and next day still to fill up with something in order to make it a "weekend outing". This doesn't really fill-in the whole weekend.
There is other stuff you can try, but again, typical local outings for a whole family can be expensive. I looked into taking the family to the SF Exploratorium, and it's like $150-$200 plus parking (or Bart). There is lots to do around here, it's a major tourist area, but all that stuff is freaking expensive....
Day trip to Alcatraz for the famlily = >$200
Day trip to Fisherman's Wharf = $100-$200
Day at the beach = $50
Day at a local amusement park = >$250
Day at a baseball game
Even taking the carriers out of the mix wouldn't be much better. The manufacturers hardly ever update either. With phone updates having to go through 3 steps, it's almost 100% doomed not to make it to your phone. Ever Android phone I've ever owned (with the exception of the Nexus 5x that I bought my wife), has at most only seen one update after the initial purchase.
The REAL questions that need to be addressed, is why we as consumers have allowed phones to be handled so different from PC's.
If I buy a laptop that comes with windows. When I first start it up for the first time, I give it an admin login credentials, and have full admin rights on the PC. Phones, you are locked out, with no admin rights unless you root it, which voids the warranty. Why shouldn't we have admin rights on these things by now, they are multi-purpose computers these days. People would freak out if a new laptop only came with 'basic user' login rights, and you couldn't have access to admin rights under windows. It would not be acceptable on a PC, and shouldn't be acceptable on a phone.
Also, why do the manufacture's and carriers get to 'bake' all kinds of crapware on the phone that can't be removed at all? Again, if I bought a Dell laptop, sure it might come with some Dell apps, but they can be removed. Samsung apps on a phone, not so much. Best Buy doesn't get to then add more crapware onto the Dell PC it sells as well, so that when you buy it has Dell bloatware and BestBuy bloatware baked into windows with no way to remove the apps or disable them. Phone do though, all kinds of crap from the manufacturer like Samsung store and other crap and about a dozen AT&T apps that you can't get rid of. not to mention that they bake-in normal apps too now, like my S5 has Uber preloaded, and baked in. Can't uninstall it or get rid of it. I've never used uber, and it's available in the Play store if I want it. Why is it locked onto my phone!
If Samsung wants to give it a branded skin, or some extra functionality, then fine. But if the first problem (admin rights) were respected, if we didn't like it, we would be able to easily wipe the ROM and put a vanilla android ROM on the phone like you can with a PC when you buy it. Same with the "permanent apps" that are preinstalled on the phone as well, admin rights would allow the removal of all of these. This would solve the update process, as I could opt to update to the latest version at any point. When microsoft releases a patch or update to windows, PC users don't have to wait until Dell (or HP/Asus/etc) get the update and add all their crap onto it, and pass it off to then to BestBuy/Walmart/NewEgg for the retailers to all their specific crap to it, before it gets pushed to your laptop. Why the hell does it work that way with phone?!?
It seems to me, that unfortunately, we as consumers allowed them to do this at the beginning and get away with it, and we didn't make a big enough stink over it. Now we are forever stuck with no admin rights, and several layers of 'baked-in' bloatware from everyone in the chain of manufactures and carriers. Why did we let them get away with it in the first place. And why do people accept it, when they wouldn't accept it with a PC.
These lease options are not subsidized like they used to be. You used to be able to get your choice of the latest flagship phone for somewhere around $100-$200 down, and no 'visible' payments after that, and you renewed a new 2-year contract with that purchase. AT&T had the 'New every two' program, that let you get a new subsidized phone every 2 years as long as you signed up for another 2-year contract. Other carriers had similar programs. If you didn't want the latest flagship, you could usually opt to get last years flagship at almost $0 extra cost.
/mo for set period of time, and when your phone is paid off, that charge goes away. It's separated from the mobile plan charges now. If you buy your own phone outright, your bill will be less than if you lease a new phone from them. These programs are not considered 'subsidized' because you are paying the full amount of the phone (or more). This is closer to financing your phone (or maybe open ended leasing depending on some of the terms).
Of course, they were getting their money out of you for the phone, but it wasn't a specific lease that was tied to the phone. If you didn't get your new phone, your monthly bill was still the same price, so you were probably better off to get the new phone, as at least you got a new phone for the price you paid, vs. paying the same monthly price and not getting a new phone. This was considered 'subsidized', because you got a $600 phone for $200.
All the carriers stopped doing that now, and now it's a payment program like you mentioned. You can get a new phone, but your bill goes up by ~$30-40
Didn't school administrators get away with this a couple years back with school laptops that were loaned out to students. While the parents made a big deal out of it, I don't recall ever reading that any administrators or IT staff of the school department were arrested and/ prosecuted for it. I guess it helps to hide behind the mask of a large corp or a government agency, then you don't do jail time for stuff like that.
Isn't this the argument that business use to fire and reprimand people who use company laptops for personal uses? Same with company phones? Either it's the company's or it's the person who they lent it to. Who's device is it?
Aren't businesses allowed to install GPS trackers onto company vehicles and then lend those vehicles out to employees to use for work? And then track the whereabouts of those vehicles all day long to make sure they are at the locations they are supposed to be?
The first (and biggest) question is why did the officer feel the need to reenact the search of the vehicle in the first place if he was wearing a body cam at the time of the original search. To me it sounds like he performed the original search with the camera not rolling (which is a big problem if body cams are standard issue in that department), and then went "whoops, I had my camera off when I found that great evidence, and it would have looked SOOO good in court against this guy, that I must now re-do my search, but with the camera rolling...".
The body cam should have been recording during the original search. If police want to have body cams to exonerate themselves, and to use as evidence in court as "testimony", then they need to be rolling during the original encounter, otherwise juries are only getting an edited and redacted version of events.
What's next, is he going to ask that a suspect help him reenact the chase and resisting arrest event after the fact if he forgets to record the original too? "now mr. bad guy, if I remember correctly, you ran, and I tackled you, then you resisted, and I beat the crap out of you until half a dozen other officers came and joined in... ready? Lights! Camera! ACTION!".
Is this an ad for Citibank looking for an experienced COBOL programmer to fix the issue in the previous story about the woman who was 110 year old and the bank software couldn't handle an age that high?
They need to fix it, but they can't find any COBOL programmers! Doh!
With all the newer (re: younger) programming kids out there that are quick to jump on the fad programming language of the day, why can't they learn COBOL? Is it just because it's old, so it's not hip like all the other languages that come into fashion and fade out to oblivion faster than anyone can actually become proficient in them?
Or is it being driven from the employer, where they need someone experienced in an older language that isn't as popular, but are unwilling to PAY for the experienced person willing to learn a language that is used only in older systems. I realize COBOL isn't really a "niche" language, but the more rare it is to find proficient programmers in it, it does actually start qualifying as "niche". Rule of Thumb says, you usually have to pay more for persons experienced with "niche" programming environments/languages. If the money is there, I'm sure there will be more people willing to learn it, or will be able to find already experienced developers.
My first computer at home was I believe a 286 clone with 20MB harddrive and 5-1/4" floppy, and Amber monitor, which would have been fairly bleeding edge in the mid 80's. I spent a lot of time at my Grandfathers house as well, and I believe he had a lower spec 8088 based PC, with no HDD and dual 5-1/4" floppies. Running MS-DOS 3.x
A couple years later, when I was in Jr. High, I started working at a local TV station as an intern where we used Commodore Amiga's for graphic creation and Video Toaster based editing. The Amiga's really were awsome machines and ahead of their time, with multitasking, graphics, you name it they were a superior machine. Is a shame really what happened with the company and the Amiga dying out.
Around the same time, I saved up all summer from working and bought a state-of-the-art (at the time) Cyrix 486/DX based clone (parts at least, that was my first real PC build, using the case from the 286. Put a SoundBlaster card in it, and outfitted with 8MB ram. Cost me a pretty penny at the time, my mom split the cost with me, and my portion was close to $1000 at the time. Eventually bought a newer color monitor to go with it as well. I was into graphics and 3d rendering and later in High School got into programming with it. I needed the fastest PC I could afford at the time, as I was playing around with POVRay and 3DStudio R2 at the time, so if you know how long it would take to render a 3d ray-traced picture back then, you'd understand, as it was often timed in hours, and on complex images, even DAYS!.
A year or two later, my grandpa realized I was REALLY into computers, and found a second-hand Amiga 3000 for a decent deal, and bought it for me. This gave me the capability to run DPaint on it, and a buddy hooked me up with Lightwave 3D (which I was familiar with from working at the TV Station). I was in heaven.
I was also into BBS'ing back then as well, getting the free PC mags at the store and looking in the back for local BBS listings to try. I still remember plunking down like $200 for a 14.4K modem because file transfers were so slow with our original 2400baud that I started with. That was a good community back then... everyone wanted to help each other. Lost of shareware to download for free. Programming advice, graphics advice, people just learning together and teaching each other everything. Very open and welcoming, not at all like today's online groups.
I had my computer area setup with the PC and Amiga side-by-side, and frequently had them both running working on different things simultaneously though high-school years. I do miss those days. I kept the Amiga until after I got married, and had it for a few years after, but it mostly collected dust at that point. When my wife and I moved out of our first apartment, I figured at the time it wasn't worth anything, and tossed it out.
Those memories bring back an emotion that you just don't get with todays computers and technology. I don't know why, maybe it's because I was young, maybe because it was all new, or maybe because it was like being in a secret club that outsiders couldn't understand. I can't put my finger on why, but those years are full of fond memories for sure.
Do you still see Brontosaurus' around today? Didn't think so. I can only conclude that those weren't on the Ark for whatever reason.
If I had to take a guess, the reason they don't WANT to open it up so the trigger word can be anything is two fold. The first reason is most likely, they want to keep the brand recognition and drill the brand into the users brain on a daily basis. When you have company over, or even by yourself, by using the specific "Alexa"/"OK Google"/"Hey Siri" phrases, it lets everyone around you that can here you know what brand you have, and also reinforces that brand in your own brain on a regular basis, so that you associate the smart home or assistant with that particular brand. ie: marketing psychology and all that...
:)
The second reason rides on the first, that they definitely do not want to you to be able to name it whatever you want, including the competitor's name. Amazon would not want you to call their assistant "Google" or "Siri". Google doesn't want you to call theirs "Alexa". And Apple, I'm sure, already has everyone using Siri brainwashed that the "Siri" name is the best name that could possibly ever be chosen for a digital assistant, and anything else is inferior.
I hear that Alexa can let you pick out of 3 names now (changed since original launch), but that is still very limiting, and is an artificial limitation that doesn't make any other sense than for reason #1 I gave on why they don't allow custom keywords yet.
This is why you need to set a passphrase for authentication. Something like this should keep Google Home and Alexa from accidentally activating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If the city ends up putting it in and it attracts people to hang out there, I would buy a cheap router with a strong antenna and set the SSID to the same one as the public hot spot is using and do the best to overpower the real SSID signal. Don't connect the router to the internet, so it goes no where.
Legally, companies have gotten away with using higher end Cisco gear to send de-auth packets to any wifi that wasn't the one managed by the Cisco controller. This would require some expensive gear to do though.
Then your training the AI with the wrong (or at least--incomplete) set of data. You wouldn't train the AI with what markers the human used before the machine was around. You would feed it the history of all the loans made, along with the data from each loan that was collected, and the information about whether it was paid, kept current, or defaulted on and the time-frames for those outcomes, as well as whether money was lost or not and how much if they went bad. Then let the AI make it's own set of determining factors about what loans are more likely to end up in default, and what the risk vs. reward is for giving out such loans on a scale of minor risk to major risk, and decline the more risky ones that have a high chance of going bad.
I have not been able to get the youtube app within Kodi to work for some time. It starts up and then errors out after clicking on anything to play. Has not worked for me for several years.
Luckily I can just back out of Kodi to get native FireTV menu (the platform I have it running on), and use the app from there and it works fine.
Actually Genesis was shut down quite a while ago (over a year ago or more). The creator moved on and released Exodus, which is "almost" the same but doesn't support Library integration functions (crippled it).
A couple Genesis forks came out, but the new people trying to maintain those forks have not been able to keep it working as reliable as the original creator and so they haven't been able to get the traction that the original had.
The ironic part, is that I own 3 Amazon FireTV's with Kodi installed on them. In fact, that was the #1 reason I bought the FireTV's at all, was not for Prime Video, nor for Netflix (or name your app store app)... But because it runs Kodi rather well for a $40 stick or $100 box. (even less if you wait until Amazon puts them on sale).
I remember dropping like $200 of my hard earned money (when I was like 13-14 yrs old) on a brand new external 14.4K modem to get on some of my favorite BBS's. That was about the same time, that RAM cost about $100/MB or so. Things were crazy expensive then.
This, I was thinking this too. If you post on amazon review a tech support question and expect ANY response from tech support you are a complete idiot. Sure some companies monitor it closely, but it wouldn't even be the 3rd place for me to go intuitively if I needed support.
second, how many of us have needed support during "off-hours" and just had to wait until the business was open again. Maybe some big big companies have 24hr tech support, but we are talking about a small company, with a product that opens/closes garage doors, what in the world would make you even think that this company is going to have 24hr tech support over the weekend.
We've all had to wait until business hours the following Monday when something doesn't work, it sounds like the person posting was an entitled jack-ass. I get that they might have been frustrated, but that is just the way it is. At least in this case it was something as insignificant as a garage door auxilliary control. The old method still worked fine for the time being, so you've lost nothing but a day or two of not getting it to work. Try and see what happens when your internet connection goes down on a Sat. Unless you are a business customer, you will be waiting until Monday morning as well, except that IS a bigger pain with no internet/VoIP/TV. It is what it is though.
That being said, the old adage that "2 wrongs don't make a right" can also apply to the manufacturer as well.
I don't think the manufacturer actually sent code to the device and literally bricked it. It sounds more likely, he figured out the SN of the box, and just blocked connection on the server side. so the device itself still works, but the network connection to the server that it relies on to do it's 'magic' cannot be made. This would make things a bit more murkey in the legal aspect of it for sure, as the box itself has not been altered or tampered with and is the same as when he bought it. The server that the manufacture controls however is not. Although it could be argued that the purchase of device assumes perpetual license to connect to the server services with it, but that isn't always true, look no further than video game makers for examples.
This is also why I don't like these boxes that REQUIRE the use of a server connection to perform functions that they could easily perform direct to the customer's device. It's only so that the manufacturer can keep their grip on you and your data that they do this. They could have easily made the app connect to any IP/port and then clients can setup their firewall to port forward to get to the box directly without the manufacturer being in the middle.
In other news... cars don't actually get the same MPG in real world driving as their manufacturer's claim. Sources say "the [fuel efficiency] claimed by [car] manufacturers rarely lives up to reality."