The latter would be impossible. One of the features of Alexa is to learn your voice so that it can track your preferences, recent playlist, etc...
I agree that recordings shouldn't be easily accessible by any Amazon employee - or any random person for that matter. There should be solid procedures when it comes to the recordings, say anything over a week or two old gets archived somewhere, beyond 6 months is deleted. In order to retrieve recordings requires verification of identity and two-person integrity on Amazon's part to confirm whatever goes outside their doors.
I have a couple local chains that do both curbside pickup and delivery. The former has dedicated parking spots, you text a number, and they come out with your order. The latter they pull up and drop off your stuff. In either case you sign up for a particular timeslot (e.g. 5:30 ) and they'll have your stuff ready, in-fridge or dropped off shortly after that time. At least in my case, both charge 3% per item for the "shopping" done by an employee at the store, then curbside is a $6 fee, delivery is $15. Not free, but it certainly makes you think about what you need and limits impulse shopping.
Compare that with Prime Now, where you get a handful of things that you don't have an option of looking at before and have no real recourse to return if it's the wrong item. Oh, and it'll be there in two hours.
Yea, that's handy when you have that "oh shit, I forgot dog food and need to get dinner started for the family" moments. But how often do those moments really happen?
Folks are also forgetting one of the other recent buzzwords - "Unit Testing".
Java has Junit and a slew of libraries to support package-time testing of all of your classes - as long as you've taken some time to write 2-3 tests for each function. Packages like this exist in C and C++ too, though I haven't used them directly. I can say that carving out some dev time certainly helps identify those simple logic errors like "I didn't handle a negative index" or "I went past my array size" sorts of error handling.
As one of my professors said "Java won't give you the gun. C++ will hand it to you, C will help you aim it at your foot".
You're missing the point of being a CEO. He is also the face and spokesman for his company - it is up to him to come to its defense and uphold its reputation. If there is a risk of legal action or damage to the business, you get your ass on that plane, answer questions and spread the word about the great things you're doing.
Apples stock would take nose-dives when news of Jobs' health was declining - whether it was true or not.
Ballmer's hot-headedness and throwing of chairs is the stuff of legend now and painted MS as the wanna-be crybaby phone maker it was. It only needed to happen once.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups" - George Carlin
And now those groups are bigger and better connected. Just look at the persistence of this whole anti-vaccination nonsense that stirs up every year or two.
Steve Jobs never bent metal, designed PCB's, or wrote Operating System code. Did that make him a terrible leader of the most profitable technology company?
Bill Gates never designed PCB's, never built his own gaming system, though he did write the original MS DOS. Does that make him a terrible leader?
William Clay Ford Jr. never drew up design documents for a work truck, never casted an engine block, and (honestly) probably never looked at an assembly line in detail. Does that make him unfit to lead Ford Motor Co?
Lots of C-level folks have never done the jobs of those they hire. Just because they haven't gotten their hands dirty in the design lab or production line doesn't mean they have no grasp of what it takes to run the business and how to find the big brains to answer those questions. True businessmen know when they're being lied to, and know when to cut losses - often those go hand-in-hand.
But being aggressively anti-union and using your control over an economic behemoth to keep salaries down and workers firmly under your thumb... that's not bullying at all, right?
The first problem is: who gets to decide what's unethical?
Or even better, who is at fault for the piss-poor working conditions? The corporation that tries to keep costs low and profits high - through salary caps, anti-union campaigning, and tax deals? Or the workers that continue to apply for jobs at said companies?
There are other tech industry jobs that allow unions, have solid benefits, and a great work-life balance. If Google and Amazon start bleeding employees en-masse to other, better companies (MS? Apple? startups?) then their profits go down the tubes and they'll have to fix the complaints. Hard to make profits if no one wants to work for you. With how regularly these articles come up it feels more and more like sob stories about that on-again off-again ex that treats you like crap, but you just cant quit them.
mac pro now delayed to 2020 (intel may it so AMD is not going to happen)
I'm struggling with what you're trying to say here. "may it so"? "AMD is not going to happen?" Huh? I don't think Apples "tech refresh" is in any way dependent on Intel's process size. There hasn't been any correlation that I've seen between process size and "mac[book] pro" releases. Despite not yet hitting 10nm, Intel has still released new iterations of their i-series chips pretty consistently.
Intel has done some underhanded things in the past to push AMD out - and got slapped with anticompetitive lawsuits. AMD has proven they've got solid designs with the PS4 and XB1. Only time will tell if Apple cares about name and reputation (such as it is) versus solid technology at a reasonable price. Any new shiny computer from Apple will be priced the same high price, regardless if it's Intel or AMD inside. Besides, Apple has been making noise about developing their own ARM chips for laptop computing. So this may all be a moot point.
This is why I installed "Hiya" on my phone. I've set it to intercept known marketers and neighboring numbers. I used to get harassed a few times a week, now only one made it through in the past month. I still am able to get calls from those that aren't in my contact list, like an insurance or credit card company (that I have an account with). I've even had AT&T call me with their (obviously) spoofed number and everything worked fine.
Of course, it's an easy tell when your phone number's area code doesn't match the area code of your home address. These 'neighbors' are easily 700 miles away.
Exactly this. Studios have settled on the cable tv mantra of 20 min of commercials per hour for $10 a month. Once one has better-than-average content, no ads, and a reasonable price then *everyone* will flock to it. It worked for Netflix back in the beginning, now everyone wants their own home-grown money stream and won't play well with others. Greed is gonna bite them in the ass yet again.
"Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" and all that.
We have to decide what levels we're willing to accept as intrusion. Papers please are not acceptable to me nor are these civil, out of context, fines. YMMV.
Where do we draw the line? There's thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of undocumented immigrants. Many are here pursuing a better life and will (hopefully) become documented and work toward citizenship. Others have less than noble goals. When is it okay to do something about the latter? Before or after they hurt a legal citizen?
Where in the DEA's list of responsibilities does it say anything about traffic fines? I could see local PD using these for that sort of thing - it's a mobile speeding camera. The fed has no jurisdiction for traffic management and enforcement. The best we could get from them is tracking foreign license plates, which I would argue is a *good* thing. See previous paragraph. I don't see it as any more of an intrusion than using Google Maps. So someone knows you passed 1st and Main on Tuesday around noon. So did dozens/hundreds of others.
This is exactly why I haven't signed up for Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or any other non-banking financial ANYTHING. I don't even like PayPal - considering they refused to investigate fraud committed on a stolen credit card and fake account.
I'll stick with my tried-and-true banks and credit unions, thanks.
Further than that, what about the push for higher and higher resolutions? Neflix 1080p encoded video is at least 3Mbps (higher recommended). What about 4k? 8k? What about other parts of the stream (e.g. locally computed updates)?
To say "we've got it handled in a few years" is incredibly naive -- they're claiming they're going to hit a moving target. Every time we get a new technology, we find ways to push its limits, then we develop better technology, rinse, repeat.
According to Wikipedia gambling requires three elements: consideration, chance and prize.
Packs of cards certainly have the first two - consideration is (according to my reading) the promise or exchange of payment. I'm not sure I'd agree about "prize", considering packs of cards are clearly labeled to have "n random cards". Some may be worth more than others, but it's unlikely to buy a new pack of Magic cards to find one card worth much more than the price paid for the cards.
Loot boxes, on the other hand, have prizes that have 'street value' much higher than the price paid. Though due to the chance the prize is often much lower. That's more akin to Poker, there's some slim chance you can win 100x what you paid, though more often than not you lose money.
Yes, but "Galaxy Note 9" doesn't have the same ring as "iPhone excess Max". The cherry on top would be the "i'm rich" app with the little gem in the task bar.
Gluttony and Envy are strong in the ranks of technology.
Windows 10 already eats WAY too much of my internet connection on its stupid updates. (No I don't need an update of Internet Edge, because I never use it.... where's the stupid "turn updates off" option?) It slows everything down, such that I can't even load Youtube and watch a video until the update is finished.
Now they want to offload tempt files across my line too? Come on! I truly hate this company (and that hatred goes back to 1990).
Microsoft: Please stop sucking. Please treat your users & their computers with RESPECT instead of your personal servants.
win + r, gpedit.msc Poke around and change some settings, it's pretty well documented what each flag/option does. Then again, if you can't be bothered to google for an answer to your questions, then I doubt this comment would be much help either.
Or all the crap from Windows/Temp or Windows/winsxs. The former is all of the random crud from installs and updates (much like/tmp/). The latter is the pre-install downloaded patches and updates - which is kept around for god knows how long "just in case" something goes wrong. I've seen 50GB taken up between them, and their automated cleanup tool doesn't help. The winsxs folder in particular requires SYSTEM access to clean up.
To be fair, at the rate the government moves 20 years is roughly 5 years for a corporation. Just look at the computers being used on the air field - go ahead, I'll catch up with my 5.25" floppies in a minute.
When we get mega-corporations that compete in more than one arena the consumer ALWAYS loses. Comcast has local monopilies around the US and can command whatever price they want for their shit service - and NOBODY can do anything about it. The consumer has to suck it up and pay up for dropped connections and piss poor speed, or do without. The internet is becoming a necessity, so most will cough up the dough.
Now imagine Amazon had a stranglehold on something that's a true necessity like food distribution. They own Whole Foods and move forward with storehouses as you suggested. They control the price that the consumer pays - and profit from both the food and shipping. They can command whatever price they like, either pay up or starve (literally). They already have had some lawsuits regarding price fixing (Apple is who turns up for ebook fixing - seem to remember Amazon had some hand in it too), so I don't believe for a second Amazon would be altruistic in their pricing.
Keep the competition fair and consumers win. Let Amazon Shipping compete with UPS, FedEx and USPS on shipping and logistics, and Whole Foods (without the Amazon umbrella) compete with Smiths/Wegmans/Albertsons/whatever on food.
My nearest bus stop is 7 miles away, nearest train stop is 3 miles from work (~12 miles for me). My options are ~35 min of drive time, an hour and a half of biking, an hour for car + train, or near two hours for some combination with a bus. As mentioned in one of my previous comments, even dedicated bike lanes are in short supply and I'd be taking my life in my own hands with 3000lb wrecking balls flying 3 feet next to me at 50mph.
My city doesn't even have buses, I'd be going to an adjacent city to get to work. How's that for fun?
Personally, I think the best way is to set caps on compensation. Specifically, the CEO should only be able to make n times as much as their lowest-paid employee. Lets set that number to something reasonable, like 25. If Mr/Mrs CEO wants to make somewhere in the millions, then that lowest paid employee is going to be making $40k minimum. The law would have to include verbiage accounting for things like stock options and whatnot - so we do away with this "My CEO salary is $1, but I got my $100m bonus and $500m in stock options" nonsense.
The problem isn't necessarily corporate greed, but personal greed. Corporations are not money-grubbing ass-hats, the people running them are.
Taking this one step further, your eye only has roughly 6-7 million color sensitive cones, with a large density of them in the center of your vision. 1920 x 1080 is 2,073,600 total pixels, while 4k has ~ 4 million pixels. At some point your eyes are physically not going to be able to take in all of the information being presented to them.
In other words, 8k is simply too many pixels for the human eye to make sense of - even if you were somehow able to limit your vision to only the 8k screen right in front of you.
Slashdot Mirror
The latter would be impossible. One of the features of Alexa is to learn your voice so that it can track your preferences, recent playlist, etc...
I agree that recordings shouldn't be easily accessible by any Amazon employee - or any random person for that matter. There should be solid procedures when it comes to the recordings, say anything over a week or two old gets archived somewhere, beyond 6 months is deleted. In order to retrieve recordings requires verification of identity and two-person integrity on Amazon's part to confirm whatever goes outside their doors.
I have a couple local chains that do both curbside pickup and delivery. The former has dedicated parking spots, you text a number, and they come out with your order. The latter they pull up and drop off your stuff. In either case you sign up for a particular timeslot (e.g. 5:30 ) and they'll have your stuff ready, in-fridge or dropped off shortly after that time. At least in my case, both charge 3% per item for the "shopping" done by an employee at the store, then curbside is a $6 fee, delivery is $15. Not free, but it certainly makes you think about what you need and limits impulse shopping.
Compare that with Prime Now, where you get a handful of things that you don't have an option of looking at before and have no real recourse to return if it's the wrong item. Oh, and it'll be there in two hours.
Yea, that's handy when you have that "oh shit, I forgot dog food and need to get dinner started for the family" moments. But how often do those moments really happen?
Folks are also forgetting one of the other recent buzzwords - "Unit Testing".
Java has Junit and a slew of libraries to support package-time testing of all of your classes - as long as you've taken some time to write 2-3 tests for each function. Packages like this exist in C and C++ too, though I haven't used them directly. I can say that carving out some dev time certainly helps identify those simple logic errors like "I didn't handle a negative index" or "I went past my array size" sorts of error handling.
As one of my professors said "Java won't give you the gun. C++ will hand it to you, C will help you aim it at your foot".
sitting around, looking like Data from Star Trek.
Fixed that for you
You're missing the point of being a CEO. He is also the face and spokesman for his company - it is up to him to come to its defense and uphold its reputation. If there is a risk of legal action or damage to the business, you get your ass on that plane, answer questions and spread the word about the great things you're doing.
Apples stock would take nose-dives when news of Jobs' health was declining - whether it was true or not.
Ballmer's hot-headedness and throwing of chairs is the stuff of legend now and painted MS as the wanna-be crybaby phone maker it was. It only needed to happen once.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups" - George Carlin
And now those groups are bigger and better connected. Just look at the persistence of this whole anti-vaccination nonsense that stirs up every year or two.
Steve Jobs never bent metal, designed PCB's, or wrote Operating System code. Did that make him a terrible leader of the most profitable technology company?
Bill Gates never designed PCB's, never built his own gaming system, though he did write the original MS DOS. Does that make him a terrible leader?
William Clay Ford Jr. never drew up design documents for a work truck, never casted an engine block, and (honestly) probably never looked at an assembly line in detail. Does that make him unfit to lead Ford Motor Co?
Lots of C-level folks have never done the jobs of those they hire. Just because they haven't gotten their hands dirty in the design lab or production line doesn't mean they have no grasp of what it takes to run the business and how to find the big brains to answer those questions. True businessmen know when they're being lied to, and know when to cut losses - often those go hand-in-hand.
But being aggressively anti-union and using your control over an economic behemoth to keep salaries down and workers firmly under your thumb... that's not bullying at all, right?
The first problem is: who gets to decide what's unethical?
Or even better, who is at fault for the piss-poor working conditions? The corporation that tries to keep costs low and profits high - through salary caps, anti-union campaigning, and tax deals? Or the workers that continue to apply for jobs at said companies?
There are other tech industry jobs that allow unions, have solid benefits, and a great work-life balance. If Google and Amazon start bleeding employees en-masse to other, better companies (MS? Apple? startups?) then their profits go down the tubes and they'll have to fix the complaints. Hard to make profits if no one wants to work for you. With how regularly these articles come up it feels more and more like sob stories about that on-again off-again ex that treats you like crap, but you just cant quit them.
mac pro now delayed to 2020 (intel may it so AMD is not going to happen)
I'm struggling with what you're trying to say here. "may it so"? "AMD is not going to happen?" Huh?
I don't think Apples "tech refresh" is in any way dependent on Intel's process size. There hasn't been any correlation that I've seen between process size and "mac[book] pro" releases. Despite not yet hitting 10nm, Intel has still released new iterations of their i-series chips pretty consistently.
Intel has done some underhanded things in the past to push AMD out - and got slapped with anticompetitive lawsuits. AMD has proven they've got solid designs with the PS4 and XB1. Only time will tell if Apple cares about name and reputation (such as it is) versus solid technology at a reasonable price. Any new shiny computer from Apple will be priced the same high price, regardless if it's Intel or AMD inside. Besides, Apple has been making noise about developing their own ARM chips for laptop computing. So this may all be a moot point.
This is why I installed "Hiya" on my phone. I've set it to intercept known marketers and neighboring numbers. I used to get harassed a few times a week, now only one made it through in the past month. I still am able to get calls from those that aren't in my contact list, like an insurance or credit card company (that I have an account with). I've even had AT&T call me with their (obviously) spoofed number and everything worked fine.
Of course, it's an easy tell when your phone number's area code doesn't match the area code of your home address. These 'neighbors' are easily 700 miles away.
Something, something, 3 was the only true KDE!
Pry 4.whatever from my cold, dead hands!
Exactly this.
Studios have settled on the cable tv mantra of 20 min of commercials per hour for $10 a month. Once one has better-than-average content, no ads, and a reasonable price then *everyone* will flock to it.
It worked for Netflix back in the beginning, now everyone wants their own home-grown money stream and won't play well with others. Greed is gonna bite them in the ass yet again.
"Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" and all that.
We have to decide what levels we're willing to accept as intrusion. Papers please are not acceptable to me nor are these civil, out of context, fines. YMMV.
Where do we draw the line? There's thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of undocumented immigrants. Many are here pursuing a better life and will (hopefully) become documented and work toward citizenship. Others have less than noble goals. When is it okay to do something about the latter? Before or after they hurt a legal citizen?
Where in the DEA's list of responsibilities does it say anything about traffic fines? I could see local PD using these for that sort of thing - it's a mobile speeding camera. The fed has no jurisdiction for traffic management and enforcement. The best we could get from them is tracking foreign license plates, which I would argue is a *good* thing. See previous paragraph. I don't see it as any more of an intrusion than using Google Maps. So someone knows you passed 1st and Main on Tuesday around noon. So did dozens/hundreds of others.
Where I grew up the common story was to remove your license plate and pants, then rip by speeding cameras on your motorcycle.
I can only assume the police found it amusing to get pictures of the great white streak. Not sure if tickets were ever actually given.
This is exactly why I haven't signed up for Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or any other non-banking financial ANYTHING. I don't even like PayPal - considering they refused to investigate fraud committed on a stolen credit card and fake account.
I'll stick with my tried-and-true banks and credit unions, thanks.
Further than that, what about the push for higher and higher resolutions?
Neflix 1080p encoded video is at least 3Mbps (higher recommended). What about 4k? 8k? What about other parts of the stream (e.g. locally computed updates)?
To say "we've got it handled in a few years" is incredibly naive -- they're claiming they're going to hit a moving target. Every time we get a new technology, we find ways to push its limits, then we develop better technology, rinse, repeat.
According to Wikipedia gambling requires three elements: consideration, chance and prize.
Packs of cards certainly have the first two - consideration is (according to my reading) the promise or exchange of payment. I'm not sure I'd agree about "prize", considering packs of cards are clearly labeled to have "n random cards". Some may be worth more than others, but it's unlikely to buy a new pack of Magic cards to find one card worth much more than the price paid for the cards.
Loot boxes, on the other hand, have prizes that have 'street value' much higher than the price paid. Though due to the chance the prize is often much lower. That's more akin to Poker, there's some slim chance you can win 100x what you paid, though more often than not you lose money.
Yes, but "Galaxy Note 9" doesn't have the same ring as "iPhone excess Max". The cherry on top would be the "i'm rich" app with the little gem in the task bar.
Gluttony and Envy are strong in the ranks of technology.
Windows 10 already eats WAY too much of my internet connection on its stupid updates. (No I don't need an update of Internet Edge, because I never use it.... where's the stupid "turn updates off" option?) It slows everything down, such that I can't even load Youtube and watch a video until the update is finished.
Now they want to offload tempt files across my line too? Come on! I truly hate this company (and that hatred goes back to 1990).
Microsoft: Please stop sucking. Please treat your users & their computers with RESPECT instead of your personal servants.
win + r, gpedit.msc
Poke around and change some settings, it's pretty well documented what each flag/option does. Then again, if you can't be bothered to google for an answer to your questions, then I doubt this comment would be much help either.
Or all the crap from Windows/Temp or Windows/winsxs. The former is all of the random crud from installs and updates (much like /tmp/). The latter is the pre-install downloaded patches and updates - which is kept around for god knows how long "just in case" something goes wrong. I've seen 50GB taken up between them, and their automated cleanup tool doesn't help. The winsxs folder in particular requires SYSTEM access to clean up.
To be fair, at the rate the government moves 20 years is roughly 5 years for a corporation. Just look at the computers being used on the air field - go ahead, I'll catch up with my 5.25" floppies in a minute.
When we get mega-corporations that compete in more than one arena the consumer ALWAYS loses. Comcast has local monopilies around the US and can command whatever price they want for their shit service - and NOBODY can do anything about it. The consumer has to suck it up and pay up for dropped connections and piss poor speed, or do without. The internet is becoming a necessity, so most will cough up the dough.
Now imagine Amazon had a stranglehold on something that's a true necessity like food distribution. They own Whole Foods and move forward with storehouses as you suggested. They control the price that the consumer pays - and profit from both the food and shipping. They can command whatever price they like, either pay up or starve (literally). They already have had some lawsuits regarding price fixing (Apple is who turns up for ebook fixing - seem to remember Amazon had some hand in it too), so I don't believe for a second Amazon would be altruistic in their pricing.
Keep the competition fair and consumers win. Let Amazon Shipping compete with UPS, FedEx and USPS on shipping and logistics, and Whole Foods (without the Amazon umbrella) compete with Smiths/Wegmans/Albertsons/whatever on food.
My nearest bus stop is 7 miles away, nearest train stop is 3 miles from work (~12 miles for me). My options are ~35 min of drive time, an hour and a half of biking, an hour for car + train, or near two hours for some combination with a bus. As mentioned in one of my previous comments, even dedicated bike lanes are in short supply and I'd be taking my life in my own hands with 3000lb wrecking balls flying 3 feet next to me at 50mph.
My city doesn't even have buses, I'd be going to an adjacent city to get to work. How's that for fun?
Personally, I think the best way is to set caps on compensation. Specifically, the CEO should only be able to make n times as much as their lowest-paid employee. Lets set that number to something reasonable, like 25. If Mr/Mrs CEO wants to make somewhere in the millions, then that lowest paid employee is going to be making $40k minimum. The law would have to include verbiage accounting for things like stock options and whatnot - so we do away with this "My CEO salary is $1, but I got my $100m bonus and $500m in stock options" nonsense.
The problem isn't necessarily corporate greed, but personal greed. Corporations are not money-grubbing ass-hats, the people running them are.
Oracle forgets a major point about cloud services. They have to be both available AND work.
Taking this one step further, your eye only has roughly 6-7 million color sensitive cones, with a large density of them in the center of your vision. 1920 x 1080 is 2,073,600 total pixels, while 4k has ~ 4 million pixels. At some point your eyes are physically not going to be able to take in all of the information being presented to them.
In other words, 8k is simply too many pixels for the human eye to make sense of - even if you were somehow able to limit your vision to only the 8k screen right in front of you.