Proper backups would be able to go back to a certain date and recover the data from before the files were locked out. Even if one set of backup data was completely lost, an older backup set should have been available to get back 99% of the data minus maybe very recent changes, and even that is normally considered a worse case scenario in restoring backups.
It's best to be able to get up to the minute backups, or roll back file versions. But the reality is, you might be so screwed that you have to go back to a "known good date" and deal with the loss of the data from that date to current date. Preferably this span of time is only a day or two, or as little time as is feasible.
It runs on the FireTV 4K boxes quite nice, and yes even Fire Sticks (a bit slower though). If you are worried about trace-ability, that is what VPN is for.
As for legality, I won't comment, but consider for a moment, that chances are even if you've pay for "legal" content, there is a high likelihood that you have still probably viewed some of those things in an illegal fashion before anyway. Considering the content makers practically consider the act of inviting a few friends over to watch a movie on PPV or DVD a "public viewing" which isn't covered under the normal fee you paid. Most practical people do it anyway because that's what happens when licensing and laws get too draconian, they start getting ignored.
What I want to know, is when they recount, are they going to toss out any votes from non-citizens and dead people as well. Because it could make the difference even larger than it currently stands if so. The Democrats need to be careful if they want to look closer at the votes and are claiming a rigged election. We know Clinton already underhandedly eliminated Sanders in the primary, so who does not think it isn't likely there were other shenanigan's going on in the real election as well.
Would be hilarious is they find out that Trump actually won by a larger margin after correcting for the voter fraud that Clinton's side is claiming happened.
I would recommend the Asus lineup, they are pretty sweet and feature rich. I haven't had problems with mine. They also are running an ASUS version of WRT on them (they call Asus-WRT) stock. I believe they can be reflashed with an open source OS as well.
For large upscale homes in my industry (automation/control), Umbiquity UniFi seems to be the go-to as they handle roaming nicely on bigger properties without dropping out. However, homes that size start getting network requirements that can also justify installing Cisco gear into as well, which is overkill for us average Joe's.
I don't have a lot of experience with the Apple Airport's, but the one thing that made my want to throw the crap away was the fact that Apple forces you to install their craptastic software on your computer in order to set them up. They have NO web GUI for setup, which is the ONLY time I've seen this from any of the dozen's of manufacturer's. I'm not in the Apple walled garden for anything, so I don't have any Apple software installed on my machine, but had to setup one for a client, which I needed to setup and connect a couple devices together, and was forced to install the dang Apple software. Wasn't happy, and was even more pissed after installing it to find that it installed a service on my PC that wants to keep the software up to date, as well as keep iTunes up to date (even though I don't have iTunes installed!). WTF apple. I can't speak to the quality of the devices, but they missed the mark by not allowing a simple web GUI for setup. I setup routers and AP's for clients all the time at various sites. If I had to install software for each brand of router, and have those routers linked to my PC forever after that, I'd have hundreds of routers in dozens of peices of software resident on PC, no way I want that. With a web UI, I login, setup, record the settings in a document that I can hand off to client and keep for future service visits, but I don't have my PC getting bogged down with more applications and auto-start services that want to update software that I don't even have installed. Good riddance to these things.
That's exactly what the bakery did. In one instance, an interview with the owners said they would NOT refuse service to gay people, and they have and still would bake a cake for gay customers. It was because of the 'kind of cake', or the fact it was specifically a wedding cake, which they didn't support, is why and what they refused. But it didn't seem to matter to the courts.
But a gay bakery would be just as compelled to bake them a cake even if they had a (much better, IMO) reason to not want to deal with religious conservatives.
Oh REALLY? How about this: http://www.thedenverchannel.co...
where a baker refused to bake a cake for religious customer that had bible scriptures on them referring to gays... Now I'm not condoning the messages requested, I'm simply pointing out the face that it has been done, and the court ruling was opposite. In fact, if I had to guess, I think this was done to prove a point, and that point was that these are biased judgments, and both sides are not being treated the same.
While this is new news for Tesla perhaps, it's nothing new or surprising in the scheme of trying to get people to go all electric before it makes economic sense for everyone.
Just look what the states carpool lanes did, first they offered the carpool lanes up for use to ULEV ICE vehicles, to incentivise buying hybrids and similar cars, then a couple years later, removed that "perk" from the deal. Then they allow full EV cars to use the HOV lanes, and soon it will be taken away (just watch...).
When full EV cars started getting pushed hard, with the Leaf and Tesla, companies (at least in Silicon Valley and Bay Area), were quick to convert the best parking spots closest to the building and right next to the handicap spots to EV charging stations, (mostly free of charge). Malls and other public parking spots started doing the same, to make it more attractive to buy EV vehicles even though they make little sense to much of population (economically speaking). Then most of the free chargers got turned into pay chargers (they still have primo parking locations though).
Now Tesla announces that the free SuperChargers are going to cost money... big surprise, as it follows the same pattern that been done for years now by state governments and local businesses with agendas to push.
I'm sure people will still act surprised when Roof Solar and EV purchases stop getting government subsidies to help prop them up to falsely compete in the market when it can't otherwise compete with existing technologies due to performance or price.
The problem with I see with how they described it is a big one... "I don't care what channel it's on, I just want to watch xyz". However, over the years, whether I had DirecTV, UVerse, or cable, is that the same show is duplicated on a variety of channels, some of which are in the "Guide" but that a user might not get. For instance, with DirecTV, if you wanted to watch Big Bang Theory as an example, the show would be populated on half a dozen channels in the Guide and different times.
For instance, it would show up on West Coast local channel (which I would get) standard definition, it would also show up on Central Local channel (which I don't get due to regional restrictions), and same for East Coast Local channel... Then all 3 of those same channels are duplicated as HD channels in the Guide as well. All 6 of these would be the current latest episode, and all 6 were at different local times due to time zone differences, however only 2 of those are a channel I get, and I prefer recording in HD when avail, so only 1 is the 'correct' channel/time. If the DVR recorded the wrong one, I would be greeted with a blank recording. That's why I think most DVR systems make you select the show and channel you want to watch, and it will stick with that.
Another issue, is when you add in the complexity of syndication for shows that have current episodes on major networks, and older syndicated episodes on various other extended channels (sometimes playing more than one episode per day for those syndicated episodes), and what you would end up is the DVR trying to 'guess' which is the correct version of the show you want to record out of a possible 6-12 different possibilities on various channels, time-slots, resolutions, and new episode/re-run episodes.
The cable companies don't make it easy, and neither do the channel networks. Depending on the DVR/Set-Top-Box you use, sometimes the guide is customizable to eliminate channels, but this takes hours to go through and setup on each receiver. Some, like ATT UVerse, won't let your customized list be used as the default, so it takes like 3-6 button presses to get to your customized guide list instead of the "All channels we serve from all packages" monolithic channel guide, which is horrible. Why cable companies still serve you SD channels when you subscribe to HD package is something I've never been able to figure out, other than it makes it LOOK like you are getting twice as many channels as you really do. All of this is frustrating from a human perspective, DVR's can only make it so easy before they start guessing at what you want.
Maybe the example given is easy to do, when you are talking about live sports games (all though, those get blacked out locally many times as well) that don't get reruns, are usually broadcast on single channels who have the contracts... But I don't think a DVR can know what you're intentions are by just saying, "I want you to record Big Bang Theory" are, just as another person wouldn't understand your intentions either without a bit more specific information, like SD/HD, what is your current channel package, new episode or rerun, it's playing in an hour, but you have another recording already scheduled, which show is more important to you? etc...
Just so the record shows I'm not a hypocrite... to answer your question, yes, I donate quite a bit to my local Church, who directly run a food bank (giving out groceries), a clothing closet, and also who take lunches to the homeless several times per month (actually go out to the parks and under bridges, etc to find them), Up until recently, we also hosted a substance abuse recovery program weekly (this was recently shut down after many years due to falloff and lack of attendees). This is one small church in a sea of local churches who are all doing different things to help many people that might be in a similar situation.
I am blessed that I have it as good as I do... As for exactly how much I donate, lets just say that is between me, my wife, and the Lord...
But it's nice to know that people such as you and the OP have to have it confiscated from you by threat of force before you'll help, since that is what you are implying when you say in not so many words, "I'd gladly give more to help, if only the government would step in, enact a tax, and make me give more with the threat that if I don't I will go to jail, or have everything taken from me by the IRS and end up like these people that I'm sooo willing to help."
This, I would give you mod points if I had 'em. I'm not against helping the less fortunate and homeless, but I would prefer where to donate my own money toward groups that I think my money will be best used, and not to a government that will spend to much for little gain, be taken advantage of by users, and have the fund raided for some other purpose eventually down the line, causing a request for yet more tax money to be raised for the 'solution'.
Now the more realistic problem: while there are a very small group of people that need assistance to 'get them back on their feet', there are unfortunately a larger group of people that for various reasons are homeless or in a state of 'constant need' that don't fall into that category. Most of the truely destitute out there, are mentally ill, and don't use the existing solutions that are in place currently to help them out. Many are substance abusers who aren't elegible for help or shelters because of a serious drug and alcohol problems. Nor are they willing to take advantage of free substance abuse programs to turn things around. There are dozens or more government assistance programs (federal and state) out there to give away money, food, subsidize shelter, free shelter, and so on, why will adding yet another program FIX this issue?
There are thousands of organizations, government and private, out there that help out the poor and needy. It's one of the main goals of many religious organizations, and tons of money is devoted to this cause. But many don't use those services, and end up in these situations anyway. In some cases, you lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink comes to mind. Throwing more tax money at the problem isn't a guaranteed solution, and is rarely a solution at all.
As the OP said, there is nothing stopping you from donating more of your money to any of these organizations to help the problem, no need to vote on a tax to do it, other than because you like to force how others spend their money.
Yes, this is true, they only send you what you are requesting... but they do leave some fixed overhead in their provisioning still over what your internet data plan is. They still need enough overhead for multiple streams, because their DVR can record up to 4 streams at the same time, so if a box was maxing out like this, it would need at least 4x the bandwidth of a single channel. Also depending on the installation, you could have 2,3,4 or more receivers in the house. The setup I had didn't allow each receiver to record 4 channels each, only a single box had the DVR functionality, and the other players shared the recording list...But you could still watch a live TV channel on these other boxes. Not sure how much bandwidth a single HD channel uses, but if you had like 4 channels recording and a couple other receivers watching live TV, you could in theory have 6+ streams coming in simultaneously.
I had the 18/1 plan as well for several years, and while I didn't have many service interruptions at all, the ceiling on the speed they could offer was a big factor in why I left. Once I decided to cut the cord and not do a traditional TV service, I wanted more bandwidth to make sure I could stream to several TV's simultaneously from HD sources and they couldn't provide much higher speed. And the price for that speed was the price that Comcast was charging for 100/10 service. The speed they can't compete on.
I don't think the IPTV service uses that much bandwidth either, so I doubt their "use the extra bandwidth for higher speed" suggestion will make much of a difference. When I looked at the gateway, I had 2 bonded lines running to me that provided 15Mb on each line, so total to my house was 30Mb/s. The highest speed I got on speedtest was 23Mb/s. If I had both TV's going, I might see my max internet speed drop to like 20Mb/s. This tells me that at most, their IPTV bandwidth was using less than 10Mb/s unless I"m overlooking something.
Freeing up that extra 10Mbs still won't get them anywhere close to what the other guys are able to achieve. Nevermind the pricepoint comparisons, just talking max speed.
Just did this about 4 months ago. Cancelled TV and home phone. Switched to Internet only, and added OOMA VoIP service. Saving quite a bit than I was previously paying.
I'm not sure how people are saying that internet a la carte is the same as a bundle price, unless you are comparing non-promo internet pricing to promo bundle pricing. Sure you might not save a hundreds of dollars, but in my case, the tv portion was going to be over $120 after promo pricing, and home phone was going to be $40. This was for the mid-tier channel lineup only, no premium channels.
I also don't think some people take into account the add-ons they end up having, or getting talked into. Sure, in some cases, with promo pricing, maybe TV is only $10-$20 more than just internet, but then when all is said and done, they realize that there is 1 channel that the base tier doesn't include, and move up to the next highest tier, then many want to add on HBO, Showtime, Sports package, or other popular packages as well. Also the monthly rental fees of the set-top boxes, and all the numerous taxes are higher because of the TV service being active on the account that aren't included in the price that is advertised (so they aren't factoring these in).
I think with a lot of people, they see the promo price of the bundle, and their brain locks that price in, "oh, I can get all 3 services for $60/mo!", but if they look at their bill after the first year or two, they would realize that after the special pricing ends, and they are paying all the real prices, and all the "Free HBO for 3 months" is over, with the options that they really signed up for, and they will realize that they are easily paying $150-$200/mo.
I read it differently and made a different, but similar, assumption. I read it as: the attackers didn't have inside info on their defenses, but that they were big enough, and lasted long enough, and possibly had various attacks going on, that it was causing Verisign to "reveal their hand" so to speak with their defenses... whether it was all of their defense strategies, or just more than would have liked to reveal is up for interpretation for the story I guess.
My comment about OpenDNS was just an example of a service that does what they are proposing already, and is opt-in only, and is not run by the government, and is customizable by the user (or network admin) to select what gets blocked and what doesn't, rather than some secret hidden list of sites. If you don't like OpenDNS, then pick another provider, or run your own DNS server.
I've used it for years without issues. If I have problems or don't like what they are doing, I can always point my home router to a different DNS provider and viola, I'm using a different service. You aren't stuck using them, and they aren't forced on you like is the possible implication of what the article is about.
It is unclear at this point, whether this would be possible to do with the system mentioned. It might be as easy as changing your DNS settings to point to 8.8.8.8 or something... or... they could be checking all outbound DNS requests and even if you are pointing to another provider it will still be blocked. If the worse case scenario, then your only option is to VPN through the blockade to use a different DNS service, which becomes more difficult for average people to do.
Not much good in this at all. There are already alternative DNS providers that will block most of this stuff selectively by each user. I use OpenDNS myself for this purpose. This is effectively censoring by the government, and nothing less.
Yes, it will eventually used to block torrent sites, the Pirate Bay, etc. It will be used to block any of the other downloading sites that are available whether they are torrent trackers or straight downloads or streaming sites.
Even more, if riots break out, or dissension protests start up, all of a sudden Twitter and FB will be temporarily blocked to prevent coordination by participants. The US has already done similar to this, for instance in bay area BART stations where they shutdown the cell phone repeaters to prevent communication in the stations when Oakland had riots/protests going on. If UK can do it by simply blocking DNS to these sites, the same results will happen.
Who decides what is considered "MalWare"? What are the criteria? Malware could be the typical kind, but could also include hacking software, keygen apps, apps that the RIAA/MPAA and big-media doesn't like? Everyones idea of what is malware, is probably slightly different. Viruses yes, but not all the others are malware. I know most virus scanners pick up keygen's and other cracking software as a virus even if it's not, but because want to scare away people from using them.
I agree with you 100%. As far as I know, this whole story has kind of came up out of no where recently, and I can't understand any of the motivations behind it. Nor can I think of any good reasons to do it. Therefore, I am very leery about the whole idea.
Why is this getting brought up? Who is actually proposing it and pushing for it (besides the handful of tech giants that are known to be evil[TM]).
Why would it be good for US to give up control?
How will it benefit internet users and website owners (the normal sized, everyday website owners that is)?
How will this benefit the internet in general, as far as infrastructure/protocols and managment?
What real benefits would other countries gain in obtaining this control from US (other than obvious nefarious purposes)?
I'm sure there are more questions that need answers, but without any answers or information for these basic questions, I am completely against the idea, I wouldn't want the US to relinquish control of it, an think it's a bad idea. And I'm usually against US government involvement and meddling in most cases.
Yes, that is the understanding of a "All you can eat" Buffet. That's what my understanding of it is when I purchase a buffet meal entrance. If I want to load up 2 mounding plates worth of only bacon, which empties the bacon tray, I can do that, and not feel bad. It's up to the restaurant to monitor and coordinate supplying more bacon for everyone behind/after me that wants some.
I think YOUR understanding of all you can eat buffet is skewed, not the other people that you so righteously called out...
This only works with items that don't have retailer specific model numbers... (I'm looking at you TV's!!). The common ploy for a long time with the big retail chains is to make deals with the manufacturers to basically sell them the items under custom model #'s that are specific to their store. So you'll see the same exact TV at BestBuy will be a XYZ-65-01, and at WalMart it will be a XYZ-65-02, and at Amazon.com it will be an XYZ-65-03. Therefore, even though it's the same device, the model numbers don't match exactly, giving the retailer an excuse to not price match. This has been a standard ploy for a very long time, going all the way back to when GoodGuys and Circuit City were still in business.
Not all electronics manufacturers participate in this practice, for instance a Sony PS4 is a Sony PS4 everywhere, but my point is, it doesn't always work.
I too am in the camp that just switched from ATT Uverse to Comcast within the last 3-6 months.
The reasons were several... First of all, I was paying for ATT Uverse Internet/TV/Phone package, and the bill I was paying was $154/mo (which was their promo pricing still). The promo pricing was ending, and I calculated what the new price would be for all of this, and it was over $170/mo. My family decided it wasn't worth it, and we were 'cutting the cord' for TV.
With that price from ATT, I was getting 18/2 internet speeds (actually got about 23/1.5). They couldn't get me any faster service in my neighborhood, they tried to boost me up to their top teir in my area of 25/2, but the speed went down instead of up. Just to get the 18/2 plan, they had to bring 2 lines to my house and bond them on the side of the house. The non promo price for internet alone was going to be $65/mo.
I switched to Comcast, internet only, and was able to get a 200/10 plan for $70/mo, which isn't bad. When the deal runs out, it will be $90/mo, at which point, I may keep it, or lower it down to their 100/10 plan for about the same price I'm paying now, which is still 4X faster than what I got on UVerse.
I signed up for a 3rd party VoIP provider for home phone, (Ooma in case anyone is interested), and pay about $12/mo for this, instead of the $40 that ATT wanted to charge. TV is being taken care of with streaming services, currently Hulu, but may move around as needs and content change, along with several FireTV boxes running Kodi as well.
Comcast speeds have been great, my actual speeds I'm getting are 240/12, so looking at this, the 'extra' provisioned speed I'm seeing over my advertised plan is more than entire UVerse plan speed! Couldn't believe it, and am happy at this. Plus, right after I switched, ATT announced they were going to enforce Caps, while currently Comcast has their Cap "not enforced" at the moment (for however long this lasts, but either way, staying with ATT would have gotten me Capped earlier anyway).
With Comcast, I was able to purchase my modem myself, and own it, instead of the forced monthly rental from ATT UVerse, and the service hasn't gone down in the several months I've gotten it, so it's not all bad. Granded I haven't had to deal with Customer NonSupport yet, but that's never fun no matter who your provider is. Another bonus was my "ping" time went from 32ms on UVerse to 12ms on Comcast, so it's better for gaming and other lower latency activities.
All in all, I'm saving a ton of money for way faster service. Granted some of the saving is from cutting the cord, but even taking TV out the picture, and comparing Internet/phone services, I'm still paying less for much more than I was getting before.
These are the reasons I switched, which made sense for me in my situation in my area. It sounds like different areas have different services for both Cable and ATT offerings though so it might not be the same story everywhere. It seems some areas are lucky enough to have ATT offer >100Mbps plans, which in my area they couldn't even touch. Also, even though I'm in the Bay Area, my neighborhood is an old neighborhood in the suburbs and there is no way Fiber of any kind is going to get brought in anytime while I'm alive, so I'm wasn't going to hold my breath for Google fiber or Fios.
You don't need to prevent spoofing, and you don't even need a community black list.
Implement this at the carrier and the problem will be done:
1) have service answer call, and make sure user is real and not a robocaller by asking them to press a specific (random) number key...
2) After completion of the previous step, ask the user to state their name.
3) after the completion of the previous steps, then ring the owners phone, and when they pick up, the service will tell them the phone number of the caller, along with a playback of the person's recorded name.
4) you have the option to dump/reject the caller, or allow them to connect.
Once you allow the caller through, that person goes through without authentication next time they call (unless you remove them from you whitelist). Non whitelisted number can still get through if they are legit, and numbers that are spoofed still have to go through the process before they make your phone ring. This would kill almost all robocalls and still allow screening of non-robocall sales calls.
Problem solved, just needs to be implemented for all phone line types.
Crestron integration is already happening with this from what I've heard from others in the industry. It's not native supported by Crestron, but more of a custom hack-together solution, being experimented with by a couple of people here and there but it is happening already, at least on a few programmers test bench (not sure if anything has been deployed in the field or to someones house yet). Same with Amazon Echo integration with Crestron, so you can talk to your Crestron control system and have it do things (which also relies on IFTTT as the middle man).
And I carry around several of the USB-to-RS232 adapters as well and use them in my day to day job ALL THE TIME. I wish they didn't disappear, but I'll admit that the uses for them have shrunk to a very small subset of (usually) tech personel of some type or another. Now, the quality of the adapter can be iffy, as not all them meet exact RS232 spec's and chipsets, so I've also had issues with some that work fine on most equipment, but some equipment won't talk to them because they are out of spec, making having top notch most expensive converters the ones that I have to buy to be reliable across the biggest set of devices.
The mini-phono jack however is not a 'niche' connector used by a shrinking group of computer nerds. It's EVERYWHERE. From day to day use phones, mp3 players, car stereo's, home stereo's, laptops, PC's, and extends into the pro-audio world on everything (well technically pro-audio uses 1/4 phono, but even then, a $2 passive adapter will adapt it to work with 1/8" mini). I even see some devices (Samsung TV's) that use 1/8" mini as a serial port. I've also seen Android apps that let you send serial commands from the headphone jack. So the uses are more than audio as well, even though that is the use case for 99.9% of people.
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Proper backups would be able to go back to a certain date and recover the data from before the files were locked out. Even if one set of backup data was completely lost, an older backup set should have been available to get back 99% of the data minus maybe very recent changes, and even that is normally considered a worse case scenario in restoring backups.
It's best to be able to get up to the minute backups, or roll back file versions. But the reality is, you might be so screwed that you have to go back to a "known good date" and deal with the loss of the data from that date to current date. Preferably this span of time is only a day or two, or as little time as is feasible.
It runs on the FireTV 4K boxes quite nice, and yes even Fire Sticks (a bit slower though). If you are worried about trace-ability, that is what VPN is for.
As for legality, I won't comment, but consider for a moment, that chances are even if you've pay for "legal" content, there is a high likelihood that you have still probably viewed some of those things in an illegal fashion before anyway. Considering the content makers practically consider the act of inviting a few friends over to watch a movie on PPV or DVD a "public viewing" which isn't covered under the normal fee you paid. Most practical people do it anyway because that's what happens when licensing and laws get too draconian, they start getting ignored.
What I want to know, is when they recount, are they going to toss out any votes from non-citizens and dead people as well. Because it could make the difference even larger than it currently stands if so. The Democrats need to be careful if they want to look closer at the votes and are claiming a rigged election. We know Clinton already underhandedly eliminated Sanders in the primary, so who does not think it isn't likely there were other shenanigan's going on in the real election as well.
Would be hilarious is they find out that Trump actually won by a larger margin after correcting for the voter fraud that Clinton's side is claiming happened.
I would recommend the Asus lineup, they are pretty sweet and feature rich. I haven't had problems with mine. They also are running an ASUS version of WRT on them (they call Asus-WRT) stock. I believe they can be reflashed with an open source OS as well.
For large upscale homes in my industry (automation/control), Umbiquity UniFi seems to be the go-to as they handle roaming nicely on bigger properties without dropping out. However, homes that size start getting network requirements that can also justify installing Cisco gear into as well, which is overkill for us average Joe's.
I don't have a lot of experience with the Apple Airport's, but the one thing that made my want to throw the crap away was the fact that Apple forces you to install their craptastic software on your computer in order to set them up. They have NO web GUI for setup, which is the ONLY time I've seen this from any of the dozen's of manufacturer's. I'm not in the Apple walled garden for anything, so I don't have any Apple software installed on my machine, but had to setup one for a client, which I needed to setup and connect a couple devices together, and was forced to install the dang Apple software. Wasn't happy, and was even more pissed after installing it to find that it installed a service on my PC that wants to keep the software up to date, as well as keep iTunes up to date (even though I don't have iTunes installed!). WTF apple. I can't speak to the quality of the devices, but they missed the mark by not allowing a simple web GUI for setup. I setup routers and AP's for clients all the time at various sites. If I had to install software for each brand of router, and have those routers linked to my PC forever after that, I'd have hundreds of routers in dozens of peices of software resident on PC, no way I want that. With a web UI, I login, setup, record the settings in a document that I can hand off to client and keep for future service visits, but I don't have my PC getting bogged down with more applications and auto-start services that want to update software that I don't even have installed. Good riddance to these things.
"Anyone not wearing 2 million sunblock is going to have a REALLY bad day... get it?!" - Sarah Conner
That's exactly what the bakery did. In one instance, an interview with the owners said they would NOT refuse service to gay people, and they have and still would bake a cake for gay customers. It was because of the 'kind of cake', or the fact it was specifically a wedding cake, which they didn't support, is why and what they refused. But it didn't seem to matter to the courts.
But a gay bakery would be just as compelled to bake them a cake even if they had a (much better, IMO) reason to not want to deal with religious conservatives.
Oh REALLY? How about this: http://www.thedenverchannel.co...
where a baker refused to bake a cake for religious customer that had bible scriptures on them referring to gays... Now I'm not condoning the messages requested, I'm simply pointing out the face that it has been done, and the court ruling was opposite. In fact, if I had to guess, I think this was done to prove a point, and that point was that these are biased judgments, and both sides are not being treated the same.
While this is new news for Tesla perhaps, it's nothing new or surprising in the scheme of trying to get people to go all electric before it makes economic sense for everyone.
Just look what the states carpool lanes did, first they offered the carpool lanes up for use to ULEV ICE vehicles, to incentivise buying hybrids and similar cars, then a couple years later, removed that "perk" from the deal. Then they allow full EV cars to use the HOV lanes, and soon it will be taken away (just watch...).
When full EV cars started getting pushed hard, with the Leaf and Tesla, companies (at least in Silicon Valley and Bay Area), were quick to convert the best parking spots closest to the building and right next to the handicap spots to EV charging stations, (mostly free of charge). Malls and other public parking spots started doing the same, to make it more attractive to buy EV vehicles even though they make little sense to much of population (economically speaking). Then most of the free chargers got turned into pay chargers (they still have primo parking locations though).
Now Tesla announces that the free SuperChargers are going to cost money... big surprise, as it follows the same pattern that been done for years now by state governments and local businesses with agendas to push.
I'm sure people will still act surprised when Roof Solar and EV purchases stop getting government subsidies to help prop them up to falsely compete in the market when it can't otherwise compete with existing technologies due to performance or price.
The problem with I see with how they described it is a big one... "I don't care what channel it's on, I just want to watch xyz". However, over the years, whether I had DirecTV, UVerse, or cable, is that the same show is duplicated on a variety of channels, some of which are in the "Guide" but that a user might not get. For instance, with DirecTV, if you wanted to watch Big Bang Theory as an example, the show would be populated on half a dozen channels in the Guide and different times.
For instance, it would show up on West Coast local channel (which I would get) standard definition, it would also show up on Central Local channel (which I don't get due to regional restrictions), and same for East Coast Local channel... Then all 3 of those same channels are duplicated as HD channels in the Guide as well. All 6 of these would be the current latest episode, and all 6 were at different local times due to time zone differences, however only 2 of those are a channel I get, and I prefer recording in HD when avail, so only 1 is the 'correct' channel/time. If the DVR recorded the wrong one, I would be greeted with a blank recording. That's why I think most DVR systems make you select the show and channel you want to watch, and it will stick with that.
Another issue, is when you add in the complexity of syndication for shows that have current episodes on major networks, and older syndicated episodes on various other extended channels (sometimes playing more than one episode per day for those syndicated episodes), and what you would end up is the DVR trying to 'guess' which is the correct version of the show you want to record out of a possible 6-12 different possibilities on various channels, time-slots, resolutions, and new episode/re-run episodes.
The cable companies don't make it easy, and neither do the channel networks. Depending on the DVR/Set-Top-Box you use, sometimes the guide is customizable to eliminate channels, but this takes hours to go through and setup on each receiver. Some, like ATT UVerse, won't let your customized list be used as the default, so it takes like 3-6 button presses to get to your customized guide list instead of the "All channels we serve from all packages" monolithic channel guide, which is horrible. Why cable companies still serve you SD channels when you subscribe to HD package is something I've never been able to figure out, other than it makes it LOOK like you are getting twice as many channels as you really do. All of this is frustrating from a human perspective, DVR's can only make it so easy before they start guessing at what you want.
Maybe the example given is easy to do, when you are talking about live sports games (all though, those get blacked out locally many times as well) that don't get reruns, are usually broadcast on single channels who have the contracts... But I don't think a DVR can know what you're intentions are by just saying, "I want you to record Big Bang Theory" are, just as another person wouldn't understand your intentions either without a bit more specific information, like SD/HD, what is your current channel package, new episode or rerun, it's playing in an hour, but you have another recording already scheduled, which show is more important to you? etc...
Just so the record shows I'm not a hypocrite... to answer your question, yes, I donate quite a bit to my local Church, who directly run a food bank (giving out groceries), a clothing closet, and also who take lunches to the homeless several times per month (actually go out to the parks and under bridges, etc to find them), Up until recently, we also hosted a substance abuse recovery program weekly (this was recently shut down after many years due to falloff and lack of attendees). This is one small church in a sea of local churches who are all doing different things to help many people that might be in a similar situation.
I am blessed that I have it as good as I do... As for exactly how much I donate, lets just say that is between me, my wife, and the Lord...
But it's nice to know that people such as you and the OP have to have it confiscated from you by threat of force before you'll help, since that is what you are implying when you say in not so many words, "I'd gladly give more to help, if only the government would step in, enact a tax, and make me give more with the threat that if I don't I will go to jail, or have everything taken from me by the IRS and end up like these people that I'm sooo willing to help."
This, I would give you mod points if I had 'em. I'm not against helping the less fortunate and homeless, but I would prefer where to donate my own money toward groups that I think my money will be best used, and not to a government that will spend to much for little gain, be taken advantage of by users, and have the fund raided for some other purpose eventually down the line, causing a request for yet more tax money to be raised for the 'solution'.
Now the more realistic problem: while there are a very small group of people that need assistance to 'get them back on their feet', there are unfortunately a larger group of people that for various reasons are homeless or in a state of 'constant need' that don't fall into that category. Most of the truely destitute out there, are mentally ill, and don't use the existing solutions that are in place currently to help them out. Many are substance abusers who aren't elegible for help or shelters because of a serious drug and alcohol problems. Nor are they willing to take advantage of free substance abuse programs to turn things around. There are dozens or more government assistance programs (federal and state) out there to give away money, food, subsidize shelter, free shelter, and so on, why will adding yet another program FIX this issue?
There are thousands of organizations, government and private, out there that help out the poor and needy. It's one of the main goals of many religious organizations, and tons of money is devoted to this cause. But many don't use those services, and end up in these situations anyway. In some cases, you lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink comes to mind. Throwing more tax money at the problem isn't a guaranteed solution, and is rarely a solution at all.
As the OP said, there is nothing stopping you from donating more of your money to any of these organizations to help the problem, no need to vote on a tax to do it, other than because you like to force how others spend their money.
Yes, this is true, they only send you what you are requesting... but they do leave some fixed overhead in their provisioning still over what your internet data plan is. They still need enough overhead for multiple streams, because their DVR can record up to 4 streams at the same time, so if a box was maxing out like this, it would need at least 4x the bandwidth of a single channel. Also depending on the installation, you could have 2,3,4 or more receivers in the house. The setup I had didn't allow each receiver to record 4 channels each, only a single box had the DVR functionality, and the other players shared the recording list...But you could still watch a live TV channel on these other boxes. Not sure how much bandwidth a single HD channel uses, but if you had like 4 channels recording and a couple other receivers watching live TV, you could in theory have 6+ streams coming in simultaneously.
I had the 18/1 plan as well for several years, and while I didn't have many service interruptions at all, the ceiling on the speed they could offer was a big factor in why I left. Once I decided to cut the cord and not do a traditional TV service, I wanted more bandwidth to make sure I could stream to several TV's simultaneously from HD sources and they couldn't provide much higher speed. And the price for that speed was the price that Comcast was charging for 100/10 service. The speed they can't compete on.
I don't think the IPTV service uses that much bandwidth either, so I doubt their "use the extra bandwidth for higher speed" suggestion will make much of a difference. When I looked at the gateway, I had 2 bonded lines running to me that provided 15Mb on each line, so total to my house was 30Mb/s. The highest speed I got on speedtest was 23Mb/s. If I had both TV's going, I might see my max internet speed drop to like 20Mb/s. This tells me that at most, their IPTV bandwidth was using less than 10Mb/s unless I"m overlooking something.
Freeing up that extra 10Mbs still won't get them anywhere close to what the other guys are able to achieve. Nevermind the pricepoint comparisons, just talking max speed.
Just did this about 4 months ago. Cancelled TV and home phone. Switched to Internet only, and added OOMA VoIP service. Saving quite a bit than I was previously paying.
I'm not sure how people are saying that internet a la carte is the same as a bundle price, unless you are comparing non-promo internet pricing to promo bundle pricing. Sure you might not save a hundreds of dollars, but in my case, the tv portion was going to be over $120 after promo pricing, and home phone was going to be $40. This was for the mid-tier channel lineup only, no premium channels.
I also don't think some people take into account the add-ons they end up having, or getting talked into. Sure, in some cases, with promo pricing, maybe TV is only $10-$20 more than just internet, but then when all is said and done, they realize that there is 1 channel that the base tier doesn't include, and move up to the next highest tier, then many want to add on HBO, Showtime, Sports package, or other popular packages as well. Also the monthly rental fees of the set-top boxes, and all the numerous taxes are higher because of the TV service being active on the account that aren't included in the price that is advertised (so they aren't factoring these in).
I think with a lot of people, they see the promo price of the bundle, and their brain locks that price in, "oh, I can get all 3 services for $60/mo!", but if they look at their bill after the first year or two, they would realize that after the special pricing ends, and they are paying all the real prices, and all the "Free HBO for 3 months" is over, with the options that they really signed up for, and they will realize that they are easily paying $150-$200/mo.
I read it differently and made a different, but similar, assumption. I read it as: the attackers didn't have inside info on their defenses, but that they were big enough, and lasted long enough, and possibly had various attacks going on, that it was causing Verisign to "reveal their hand" so to speak with their defenses... whether it was all of their defense strategies, or just more than would have liked to reveal is up for interpretation for the story I guess.
My comment about OpenDNS was just an example of a service that does what they are proposing already, and is opt-in only, and is not run by the government, and is customizable by the user (or network admin) to select what gets blocked and what doesn't, rather than some secret hidden list of sites. If you don't like OpenDNS, then pick another provider, or run your own DNS server.
I've used it for years without issues. If I have problems or don't like what they are doing, I can always point my home router to a different DNS provider and viola, I'm using a different service. You aren't stuck using them, and they aren't forced on you like is the possible implication of what the article is about.
It is unclear at this point, whether this would be possible to do with the system mentioned. It might be as easy as changing your DNS settings to point to 8.8.8.8 or something... or... they could be checking all outbound DNS requests and even if you are pointing to another provider it will still be blocked. If the worse case scenario, then your only option is to VPN through the blockade to use a different DNS service, which becomes more difficult for average people to do.
Not much good in this at all. There are already alternative DNS providers that will block most of this stuff selectively by each user. I use OpenDNS myself for this purpose. This is effectively censoring by the government, and nothing less.
Yes, it will eventually used to block torrent sites, the Pirate Bay, etc. It will be used to block any of the other downloading sites that are available whether they are torrent trackers or straight downloads or streaming sites.
Even more, if riots break out, or dissension protests start up, all of a sudden Twitter and FB will be temporarily blocked to prevent coordination by participants. The US has already done similar to this, for instance in bay area BART stations where they shutdown the cell phone repeaters to prevent communication in the stations when Oakland had riots/protests going on. If UK can do it by simply blocking DNS to these sites, the same results will happen.
Who decides what is considered "MalWare"? What are the criteria? Malware could be the typical kind, but could also include hacking software, keygen apps, apps that the RIAA/MPAA and big-media doesn't like? Everyones idea of what is malware, is probably slightly different. Viruses yes, but not all the others are malware. I know most virus scanners pick up keygen's and other cracking software as a virus even if it's not, but because want to scare away people from using them.
I agree with you 100%. As far as I know, this whole story has kind of came up out of no where recently, and I can't understand any of the motivations behind it. Nor can I think of any good reasons to do it. Therefore, I am very leery about the whole idea.
Why is this getting brought up? Who is actually proposing it and pushing for it (besides the handful of tech giants that are known to be evil[TM]).
Why would it be good for US to give up control?
How will it benefit internet users and website owners (the normal sized, everyday website owners that is)?
How will this benefit the internet in general, as far as infrastructure/protocols and managment?
What real benefits would other countries gain in obtaining this control from US (other than obvious nefarious purposes)?
I'm sure there are more questions that need answers, but without any answers or information for these basic questions, I am completely against the idea, I wouldn't want the US to relinquish control of it, an think it's a bad idea. And I'm usually against US government involvement and meddling in most cases.
Yes, that is the understanding of a "All you can eat" Buffet. That's what my understanding of it is when I purchase a buffet meal entrance. If I want to load up 2 mounding plates worth of only bacon, which empties the bacon tray, I can do that, and not feel bad. It's up to the restaurant to monitor and coordinate supplying more bacon for everyone behind/after me that wants some.
I think YOUR understanding of all you can eat buffet is skewed, not the other people that you so righteously called out...
This only works with items that don't have retailer specific model numbers... (I'm looking at you TV's!!). The common ploy for a long time with the big retail chains is to make deals with the manufacturers to basically sell them the items under custom model #'s that are specific to their store. So you'll see the same exact TV at BestBuy will be a XYZ-65-01, and at WalMart it will be a XYZ-65-02, and at Amazon.com it will be an XYZ-65-03. Therefore, even though it's the same device, the model numbers don't match exactly, giving the retailer an excuse to not price match. This has been a standard ploy for a very long time, going all the way back to when GoodGuys and Circuit City were still in business. Not all electronics manufacturers participate in this practice, for instance a Sony PS4 is a Sony PS4 everywhere, but my point is, it doesn't always work.
I too am in the camp that just switched from ATT Uverse to Comcast within the last 3-6 months.
The reasons were several... First of all, I was paying for ATT Uverse Internet/TV/Phone package, and the bill I was paying was $154/mo (which was their promo pricing still). The promo pricing was ending, and I calculated what the new price would be for all of this, and it was over $170/mo. My family decided it wasn't worth it, and we were 'cutting the cord' for TV.
With that price from ATT, I was getting 18/2 internet speeds (actually got about 23/1.5). They couldn't get me any faster service in my neighborhood, they tried to boost me up to their top teir in my area of 25/2, but the speed went down instead of up. Just to get the 18/2 plan, they had to bring 2 lines to my house and bond them on the side of the house. The non promo price for internet alone was going to be $65/mo.
I switched to Comcast, internet only, and was able to get a 200/10 plan for $70/mo, which isn't bad. When the deal runs out, it will be $90/mo, at which point, I may keep it, or lower it down to their 100/10 plan for about the same price I'm paying now, which is still 4X faster than what I got on UVerse.
I signed up for a 3rd party VoIP provider for home phone, (Ooma in case anyone is interested), and pay about $12/mo for this, instead of the $40 that ATT wanted to charge. TV is being taken care of with streaming services, currently Hulu, but may move around as needs and content change, along with several FireTV boxes running Kodi as well.
Comcast speeds have been great, my actual speeds I'm getting are 240/12, so looking at this, the 'extra' provisioned speed I'm seeing over my advertised plan is more than entire UVerse plan speed! Couldn't believe it, and am happy at this. Plus, right after I switched, ATT announced they were going to enforce Caps, while currently Comcast has their Cap "not enforced" at the moment (for however long this lasts, but either way, staying with ATT would have gotten me Capped earlier anyway).
With Comcast, I was able to purchase my modem myself, and own it, instead of the forced monthly rental from ATT UVerse, and the service hasn't gone down in the several months I've gotten it, so it's not all bad. Granded I haven't had to deal with Customer NonSupport yet, but that's never fun no matter who your provider is. Another bonus was my "ping" time went from 32ms on UVerse to 12ms on Comcast, so it's better for gaming and other lower latency activities.
All in all, I'm saving a ton of money for way faster service. Granted some of the saving is from cutting the cord, but even taking TV out the picture, and comparing Internet/phone services, I'm still paying less for much more than I was getting before.
These are the reasons I switched, which made sense for me in my situation in my area. It sounds like different areas have different services for both Cable and ATT offerings though so it might not be the same story everywhere. It seems some areas are lucky enough to have ATT offer >100Mbps plans, which in my area they couldn't even touch. Also, even though I'm in the Bay Area, my neighborhood is an old neighborhood in the suburbs and there is no way Fiber of any kind is going to get brought in anytime while I'm alive, so I'm wasn't going to hold my breath for Google fiber or Fios.
A web interface on your account login.
or- some tele-interface, simlar to how you interface voicemail currently.
Not that hard really.
You don't need to prevent spoofing, and you don't even need a community black list. Implement this at the carrier and the problem will be done: 1) have service answer call, and make sure user is real and not a robocaller by asking them to press a specific (random) number key... 2) After completion of the previous step, ask the user to state their name. 3) after the completion of the previous steps, then ring the owners phone, and when they pick up, the service will tell them the phone number of the caller, along with a playback of the person's recorded name. 4) you have the option to dump/reject the caller, or allow them to connect. Once you allow the caller through, that person goes through without authentication next time they call (unless you remove them from you whitelist). Non whitelisted number can still get through if they are legit, and numbers that are spoofed still have to go through the process before they make your phone ring. This would kill almost all robocalls and still allow screening of non-robocall sales calls. Problem solved, just needs to be implemented for all phone line types.
Crestron integration is already happening with this from what I've heard from others in the industry. It's not native supported by Crestron, but more of a custom hack-together solution, being experimented with by a couple of people here and there but it is happening already, at least on a few programmers test bench (not sure if anything has been deployed in the field or to someones house yet). Same with Amazon Echo integration with Crestron, so you can talk to your Crestron control system and have it do things (which also relies on IFTTT as the middle man).
And I carry around several of the USB-to-RS232 adapters as well and use them in my day to day job ALL THE TIME. I wish they didn't disappear, but I'll admit that the uses for them have shrunk to a very small subset of (usually) tech personel of some type or another. Now, the quality of the adapter can be iffy, as not all them meet exact RS232 spec's and chipsets, so I've also had issues with some that work fine on most equipment, but some equipment won't talk to them because they are out of spec, making having top notch most expensive converters the ones that I have to buy to be reliable across the biggest set of devices.
The mini-phono jack however is not a 'niche' connector used by a shrinking group of computer nerds. It's EVERYWHERE. From day to day use phones, mp3 players, car stereo's, home stereo's, laptops, PC's, and extends into the pro-audio world on everything (well technically pro-audio uses 1/4 phono, but even then, a $2 passive adapter will adapt it to work with 1/8" mini). I even see some devices (Samsung TV's) that use 1/8" mini as a serial port. I've also seen Android apps that let you send serial commands from the headphone jack. So the uses are more than audio as well, even though that is the use case for 99.9% of people.