Clearly, Microsoft isn't really interested in satisfying their desktop users. Instead, they're desperately trying to get into the 'customer as a product' business model, because they sense, (probably correctly), that they're doomed if they don't. That's why they did what they did with Win10 - they want a captive user base whose data they can control and exploit. Bing has been pretty much a failure, and their foray into the mobile market has been a total disaster. They're losing a lot of server business to *nix. They see the likes of Google and Facebook dominating the Web. They see leveraging their desktop presence as the only possible path to the kind of success that others are enjoying, because they no longer posses the imagination to strike out in a truly new direction, and because they're iron-bound by the artery-hardened internal bureaucracy that all big corporations eventually succumb to. Windows 10 was the desperate plan of a dinosaur in its death throes.
In the second link you provided, the grip closest to the one I use is the one that shows the optimal screen area for thumb access. Interestingly, that grip seems NOT to be among those in the diagrams above. Also, the areas labelled "easy and accurate" and "okay" are almost reversed for me.
... that you need a bezel?
If my phone were more 'blockish', (as the older ones tended to be), I wouldn't feel the need to wrap my fingertips around to the front of the phone to get a good grip, so having all of the front viewable would probably work. But the edges of my current phone are quite thin - damn that stooopid curved back - and my fingertips would obscure part of the viewable area were it not for a bezel which, frankly, could be a bit wider than it is.
On a related note, having the viewable area take up most of the front means that the Back, Home, and Menu buttons are part of the viewable area. That means that apps, (such as my camera app), can dick with them. I hate that too - I want those buttons always to be visible and to have the same look. Unfortunately I've already lost that battle.
It's not a fscking TV, it's a phone, and a bezel is a feature, not a drawback. You know, an area that allows a case, (and my fingers), to have enough overlap to actually grip the phone securely - important now that the phones are so god-damned thin they bend in a gust of wind and are already hard to hold on to. Besides, it's not like anyone is making a video wall out of phones. Enough already!
Where I work, sometimes you want it on-the-record. I want proof I said something, or did something, far more often than I'd ever want to be able to deny such actions later on.
That's because you're a peon. Perhaps well-paid and well-respected, but a peon nonetheless, compared with those who effectively run the world. The farther up people are on the ladder of power, the harder it tends to be to tell the difference between them, and the criminals recognized as such by the justice system. Most of them cover their tracks, live substantially covert lives, and have adopted 'plausible deniability' as a second-nature practice. It might simply be prudence, or it might be the vestige of a guilty conscience in an otherwise sociopathic makeup. Whatever it is, it seems to go with the territory.
Only you can determine if it has enough storage and RAM for your needs, but it's been fine for me. I'm now running a Lenovo T420S because the slightly bigger screen is better for my aging eyes. But I still love the Chromebook. I didn't bother with Crouton - I went straight to full-on Linux, first Bodhi, then Xubuntu. There was a bit of a fiddle getting the touchpad working, but not a big deal if you're already comfortable with Linux. And it's available on Amazon for $185.
Which sharp and capable minds should get the money? For what purpose? You're asking us to make decisions of considerable import without thinking about the decisions.
That's a fair point. And yes, there should be some kind of vetting process to determine the likely validity of a given scientific pursuit. The point I'm trying to make is that we should be funding based on potential benefit, not just on potential profitability. A good example is plant-based pharmaceuticals; another one is new treatments using old medicines whose patents have expired. In both cases funding is deficient because the private sector won't devote significant funding to something it can't make a killing on. Such treatments may be better and/or safer, (as well as cheaper), or may be useful adjuncts to more profitable treatment regimens; but the research, testing, and approvals processes aren't being undertaken because they don't make money.
That's why private enterprise can't be allowed to have the upper hand in science funding - all too often its interests conflict with the greater good.
By the way, the National Science Foundation is training researchers in marketing and other traditional business skills. They want to improve the success rate of moving research out of the lab and into the marketplace so they are teaching researchers to do customer discovery, an iterative product development cycle, realistic planning to move from early adopters to a more mainstream market, etc.
This approach is founded on two false premises:
1) The only valuable scientific research is that which results in immediately marketable ideas, processes, and products
2) We have the ability to know beforehand which avenues of inquiry are likely to result in profitable results
Scientific inquiry is terribly distorted when it's results-driven rather than exploratory. Any work that doesn't seem to have good money-making prospects will be abandoned or, worse yet, never undertaken. Ironically, when we reject science that might help humanity or that just seems to satisfy curiosity, (but which some crystal-ball gazer deems unprofitable), we may also end up not following up on ideas that might well be very profitable. That's because we think we can predict the future, but we can't. As I said in an earlier comment, "we don't know what we don't know".
Besides all that, do we really want those sharp and capable scientific minds having to spend time marketing themselves and their work? Wouldn't we be better off letting them get on with what they're already good at and passionate about?
Those inclined to do research well (some idea what they were doing, enjoyed it) would come to the people with resources with good ideas. The people with resources, as long as they agreed the ideas were good, would fund these "researchers"...
What makes you think the "people with resources" can reliably evaluate whether or not an idea is good? Even scientists can't do that - not because of a failure on their part, but because "we don't know what we don't know". Science progresses by following curiosity while maintaining rigorous experimental and observational practices. It's a process of discovery, and it doesn't move forward by attempts to divine the future. You can't draw the map until you've explored the territory. You won't know whether there's gold, oil, or just a whole lotta dirt unless you actually go there.
Why would you treat someone like their plan was worth funding if you didn't see any value in it?
Oh, so you're talking about value. I can't be certain, but given the context and the tone of your comment, I'm going to assume you're talking about profitability. If you are, then you're suggesting that science be subjugated to profit-and-loss statements. So do a thought experiment: walk through history and eliminate all the important scientific discoveries that were motivated only by vision and sheer tenacious curiosity, and not by mercantile considerations. Then come back and tell me that making science entirely profit-driven, (or even largely so), is a good idea.
State governments in the pockets of corporations? Who knew?
What's that you say? Corporations own the Federal government too? I'll be damned.
It really seems that municipal governments are the last, (but admittedly shaky) bastions of functioning democracy in North America. Heaven help us when the corporate cancer swallows them entirely as well.
As Frank Zappa said, "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way
Unless you buy the smaller, cheaper Macbook Pro, (that probably should have been called an "Air Plus" or something), the new Pros have no dedicated function keys. (People are already posting instructions on how to configure a physical Escape key). But you DO get a whiz-bang OLED strip that gives you, (among other things), stuff like emojis and more streamlined online payments. Also, you can't charge an iPhone with the new MacBook Pro, unless you buy a pricey adapter; and then you'll have yet another piece of hardware cruft to be broken, lost, or forgotten. How is this "improved in nearly every way"? For that matter, how does it qualify as "Pro"?
The new MacBook DOES have a stereo headphone jack though. I guess their 'courage' failed them this time. Apple should get rid of their courage altogether - their products would be the better for it. I've never liked Apple, but mostly I at least respected them. With their latest product decisions, even that respect is gone.
Since tech is at the root of a lot of global warming, and tech will likely figure prominently in any solutions we might come up with, and there's already a pretty big tech sector devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions - this IS a tech story, fucktard. Get your head out of your ass, and your ass out of Mom's basement.
I expect to see criminals starting to wear chain mail. I'm sure modern techniques could make it quite light and easy to use, especially since it doesn't need to stop bullets or blades. All it needs to do is prevent the taser darts from penetrating so deeply that the chain mail can no longer short them out. Then most of the taser current should pass through the armour instead of the victim's flesh. I suspect victims might feel some pain, and perhaps even a lot of pain, because of the imperfect electrical connections between links in the mail; but I think enough current would be diverted around nerves and muscles to prevent the truly debilitating effects normally associated with electroshock weapons.
It's been said countless times here. Requiring both a fingerprint and a passcode would have protected phone owners from this fishing expedition.
As for the greater ramifications of the unprecedentedly broad warrant that was issued, well, I'm glad I'm not a US citizen and don't live there. And I'm increasingly reluctant to travel there as well, precisely because of things like this. America has become a scary, scary place.
The last thing I want (well, one of the last things I want), is for Google or anyone else to have one bit of information about me than they absolutely must have. This is why I give fake names, addresses, and phone numbers to 95% of the online 'accounts' that I have. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to 'opt out' of sharing information. The defaults of almost every application is to grab everything and beam it home to the mother ship. Even when you tell it NO, many will keep bugging you until you say yes. Every 'upgrade' will reset the defaults and if you are not paying attention, you are screwed.
I second this. I NEVER give my phone number or real name to any service I'm not paying for, and I'm very careful about info I give to services I DO pay for. Google may have my cell number because I have an Android phone, but it's not associated with my account in any public-facing place AFAICT. And Google doesn't officially have my real name. I'm sure they know it just because they're Google - but my Gmail account is under a pseudonym, and I don't use it except to the extent necessary to use Google Play. So again, the association probably isn't available to casual hackers - they'd have to get deeper into Google to make the association, and that's beyond my control, short of becoming a techno-hermit.
I also don't update apps immediately - I wait to see what others have to say in the reviews. Sometimes I don't update at all: as far as I'm concerned, in the Android ecosystem it's often a saw-off between patching old vulns and introducing new ones. I don't have location enabled, and WiFi, Bluetooth, and Data are turned off unless I'm using them. And I run a firewall. I have no illusions that these things make me either secure or anonymous, but I do try to make it a little harder for the carrion to pick clean the bones of the mostly-dead carcass of my privacy.
Samsung joined Sony on my 'forbidden' list when they started pushing out Smart TV firmware upgrades that had non-optional advertising built in. So I'm not surprised in the least by their recent attempt at censorship.
The campaign for the highest political office in the land is based on cheap shots, empty hyperbole, and crass corruption. Talk about bread and circuses! The presidential race IS a circus; not even a classy one like Cirque du Soleil, but rather a seedy low-rent carnival sideshow. There are disquieting similarities between this election and any given episode of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. I suppose that's fitting, given that one of the 'contestants' really is a reality show star, and now the other one is taking her cues from him. When I think about the situation I'm torn between sadness and disgust, and end up feeling both. Yuck. Is this really how things are done now, in what arguably used to be the greatest nation in the world?
...I find that the software available from the repos is surprisingly good/and/ is not laden with "appeal to the lowest denominator" graphics nonsense (virus scanners on Windows with animations to demonstrate to the user that it's "doing something" as a particularly egregious example). This nonsense is rife throughout the "windows universe of valuable things."
This, exactly. Just today I was doing some work for my old boss and had to use an old Windows laptop. I kept being interrupted by Norton telling me what a wonderful job it was doing, and Windows asking me if I wanted to disable some IE6 plugins to speed things up - and I wasn't even using IE at the time. It was such an annoying, distracting clownshow, reminiscent of a young child starved for attention and saying 'look at me!'. I've been spoiled by Linux - it (mostly) does what I want, it stays out of the way, its automatic update process is very polite and graceful, and I can do everything I need to do, including schematic capture and PCB design. I truly feel sorry for those who have no choice but to use Windows on an ongoing basis.
Why are so many public schools such hellholes that administrators feel they need to take such measures in the name of "student safety"? If the argument is that the problems in schools originate outside of the schools, then mightn't the schooling of previous generations bear at least some of the blame? And a related question - why do so many schools have cops on duty?
When you start to come to grips with the overwhelming evidence that public education was designed to extend immaturity, foster dependence and obedience, and ensure a qualified labour pool, then it's no surprise to find that school boards and the CIA might share common goals and methods.
automation and AI will have eliminated the vast majority of jobs for humans anyway. So let the point-one-percenters start applying these genetic criteria to each other - and watch them eat their own. Pass the popcorn! If we poor plebeians are still able to afford popcorn, that is...
Geo-blocking movies is like geo-blocking automobiles, and it makes about as much sense. Can you imagine a car dealer or rental agency telling you "sorry, your car won't work in the following geographic areas"? Geo-blocking is all about artificial scarcity, and if it was being done between US states it might even be treated as collusion. But since it's an international thing, the law says it's OK. Movie watchers beg to differ.
Thanks to the Internet, the world is now a very small place; when a movie is released, it's usually all over the world within hours, regardless of rights-holders wishes and fantasies to the contrary. So content owners can continue to tie the hands of companies like Netflix, and Netflix and the like have no choice but to honour the content owners' wishes. And the stricter the enforcement of geo-blocking is, the more Netflix users will resort to torrenting, or stop watching altogether. Either way, the industry is shooting itself in the foot - it has people willing to pay to watch a movie, and it's telling them to fuck off.
If cars were geo-blocked there would be a brisk business devoted to unblocking them, even though it might cost quite a bit of money. The equivalent for movie fans is a torrent site - except torrented movies can be had almost for free. I expect a rise in torrenting among non-geeks who would rather spend their money on legally obtained movies, if only someone would put out their hand and take it.
Perhaps it was about the journey and not the destination? If you follow the link you'll see that he was using a network scanner and other tactics to coax it into working that suggest his motivation was curiosity. He's not an average consumer, he's a tinkerer/hacker.
Good point. I have to wonder, though, if he bought the kettle knowing he was facing a major integration effort, or if he just wanted a cuppa. The article doesn't make that clear.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, Microsoft isn't really interested in satisfying their desktop users. Instead, they're desperately trying to get into the 'customer as a product' business model, because they sense, (probably correctly), that they're doomed if they don't. That's why they did what they did with Win10 - they want a captive user base whose data they can control and exploit. Bing has been pretty much a failure, and their foray into the mobile market has been a total disaster. They're losing a lot of server business to *nix. They see the likes of Google and Facebook dominating the Web. They see leveraging their desktop presence as the only possible path to the kind of success that others are enjoying, because they no longer posses the imagination to strike out in a truly new direction, and because they're iron-bound by the artery-hardened internal bureaucracy that all big corporations eventually succumb to. Windows 10 was the desperate plan of a dinosaur in its death throes.
Current iPhones can already fold in half, if you push hard enough. Wake me up when we can unfold them back into a functional state.
You're folding it wrong!
I see what you did there - bravo!
I don't get it. How do you hold your phone...
In the second link you provided, the grip closest to the one I use is the one that shows the optimal screen area for thumb access. Interestingly, that grip seems NOT to be among those in the diagrams above. Also, the areas labelled "easy and accurate" and "okay" are almost reversed for me.
... that you need a bezel?
If my phone were more 'blockish', (as the older ones tended to be), I wouldn't feel the need to wrap my fingertips around to the front of the phone to get a good grip, so having all of the front viewable would probably work. But the edges of my current phone are quite thin - damn that stooopid curved back - and my fingertips would obscure part of the viewable area were it not for a bezel which, frankly, could be a bit wider than it is.
On a related note, having the viewable area take up most of the front means that the Back, Home, and Menu buttons are part of the viewable area. That means that apps, (such as my camera app), can dick with them. I hate that too - I want those buttons always to be visible and to have the same look. Unfortunately I've already lost that battle.
It's not a fscking TV, it's a phone, and a bezel is a feature, not a drawback. You know, an area that allows a case, (and my fingers), to have enough overlap to actually grip the phone securely - important now that the phones are so god-damned thin they bend in a gust of wind and are already hard to hold on to. Besides, it's not like anyone is making a video wall out of phones. Enough already!
Where I work, sometimes you want it on-the-record. I want proof I said something, or did something, far more often than I'd ever want to be able to deny such actions later on.
That's because you're a peon. Perhaps well-paid and well-respected, but a peon nonetheless, compared with those who effectively run the world. The farther up people are on the ladder of power, the harder it tends to be to tell the difference between them, and the criminals recognized as such by the justice system. Most of them cover their tracks, live substantially covert lives, and have adopted 'plausible deniability' as a second-nature practice. It might simply be prudence, or it might be the vestige of a guilty conscience in an otherwise sociopathic makeup. Whatever it is, it seems to go with the territory.
Only you can determine if it has enough storage and RAM for your needs, but it's been fine for me. I'm now running a Lenovo T420S because the slightly bigger screen is better for my aging eyes. But I still love the Chromebook. I didn't bother with Crouton - I went straight to full-on Linux, first Bodhi, then Xubuntu. There was a bit of a fiddle getting the touchpad working, but not a big deal if you're already comfortable with Linux. And it's available on Amazon for $185.
Which sharp and capable minds should get the money? For what purpose? You're asking us to make decisions of considerable import without thinking about the decisions.
That's a fair point. And yes, there should be some kind of vetting process to determine the likely validity of a given scientific pursuit. The point I'm trying to make is that we should be funding based on potential benefit, not just on potential profitability. A good example is plant-based pharmaceuticals; another one is new treatments using old medicines whose patents have expired. In both cases funding is deficient because the private sector won't devote significant funding to something it can't make a killing on. Such treatments may be better and/or safer, (as well as cheaper), or may be useful adjuncts to more profitable treatment regimens; but the research, testing, and approvals processes aren't being undertaken because they don't make money.
That's why private enterprise can't be allowed to have the upper hand in science funding - all too often its interests conflict with the greater good.
By the way, the National Science Foundation is training researchers in marketing and other traditional business skills. They want to improve the success rate of moving research out of the lab and into the marketplace so they are teaching researchers to do customer discovery, an iterative product development cycle, realistic planning to move from early adopters to a more mainstream market, etc.
This approach is founded on two false premises:
1) The only valuable scientific research is that which results in immediately marketable ideas, processes, and products
2) We have the ability to know beforehand which avenues of inquiry are likely to result in profitable results
Scientific inquiry is terribly distorted when it's results-driven rather than exploratory. Any work that doesn't seem to have good money-making prospects will be abandoned or, worse yet, never undertaken. Ironically, when we reject science that might help humanity or that just seems to satisfy curiosity, (but which some crystal-ball gazer deems unprofitable), we may also end up not following up on ideas that might well be very profitable. That's because we think we can predict the future, but we can't. As I said in an earlier comment, "we don't know what we don't know".
Besides all that, do we really want those sharp and capable scientific minds having to spend time marketing themselves and their work? Wouldn't we be better off letting them get on with what they're already good at and passionate about?
Those inclined to do research well (some idea what they were doing, enjoyed it) would come to the people with resources with good ideas. The people with resources, as long as they agreed the ideas were good, would fund these "researchers"...
What makes you think the "people with resources" can reliably evaluate whether or not an idea is good? Even scientists can't do that - not because of a failure on their part, but because "we don't know what we don't know". Science progresses by following curiosity while maintaining rigorous experimental and observational practices. It's a process of discovery, and it doesn't move forward by attempts to divine the future. You can't draw the map until you've explored the territory. You won't know whether there's gold, oil, or just a whole lotta dirt unless you actually go there.
Why would you treat someone like their plan was worth funding if you didn't see any value in it?
Oh, so you're talking about value. I can't be certain, but given the context and the tone of your comment, I'm going to assume you're talking about profitability. If you are, then you're suggesting that science be subjugated to profit-and-loss statements. So do a thought experiment: walk through history and eliminate all the important scientific discoveries that were motivated only by vision and sheer tenacious curiosity, and not by mercantile considerations. Then come back and tell me that making science entirely profit-driven, (or even largely so), is a good idea.
State governments in the pockets of corporations? Who knew?
What's that you say? Corporations own the Federal government too? I'll be damned.
It really seems that municipal governments are the last, (but admittedly shaky) bastions of functioning democracy in North America. Heaven help us when the corporate cancer swallows them entirely as well.
As Frank Zappa said, "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way
Unless you buy the smaller, cheaper Macbook Pro, (that probably should have been called an "Air Plus" or something), the new Pros have no dedicated function keys. (People are already posting instructions on how to configure a physical Escape key). But you DO get a whiz-bang OLED strip that gives you, (among other things), stuff like emojis and more streamlined online payments. Also, you can't charge an iPhone with the new MacBook Pro, unless you buy a pricey adapter; and then you'll have yet another piece of hardware cruft to be broken, lost, or forgotten. How is this "improved in nearly every way"? For that matter, how does it qualify as "Pro"?
The new MacBook DOES have a stereo headphone jack though. I guess their 'courage' failed them this time. Apple should get rid of their courage altogether - their products would be the better for it. I've never liked Apple, but mostly I at least respected them. With their latest product decisions, even that respect is gone.
They should merge and become Orangeacle, The Bigly Data Company.
Damn! I'd mod you up as Funny, but I just finished spending my mod points.
Since tech is at the root of a lot of global warming, and tech will likely figure prominently in any solutions we might come up with, and there's already a pretty big tech sector devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions - this IS a tech story, fucktard. Get your head out of your ass, and your ass out of Mom's basement.
I expect to see criminals starting to wear chain mail. I'm sure modern techniques could make it quite light and easy to use, especially since it doesn't need to stop bullets or blades. All it needs to do is prevent the taser darts from penetrating so deeply that the chain mail can no longer short them out. Then most of the taser current should pass through the armour instead of the victim's flesh. I suspect victims might feel some pain, and perhaps even a lot of pain, because of the imperfect electrical connections between links in the mail; but I think enough current would be diverted around nerves and muscles to prevent the truly debilitating effects normally associated with electroshock weapons.
It's been said countless times here. Requiring both a fingerprint and a passcode would have protected phone owners from this fishing expedition.
As for the greater ramifications of the unprecedentedly broad warrant that was issued, well, I'm glad I'm not a US citizen and don't live there. And I'm increasingly reluctant to travel there as well, precisely because of things like this. America has become a scary, scary place.
Maybe this insightful commentary really comes from McAfee's tax accountant - or from a prostitute in Bangkok... :-D
Isn't it time the tech community wrote him a Dear John letter?
The last thing I want (well, one of the last things I want), is for Google or anyone else to have one bit of information about me than they absolutely must have. This is why I give fake names, addresses, and phone numbers to 95% of the online 'accounts' that I have. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to 'opt out' of sharing information. The defaults of almost every application is to grab everything and beam it home to the mother ship. Even when you tell it NO, many will keep bugging you until you say yes. Every 'upgrade' will reset the defaults and if you are not paying attention, you are screwed.
I second this. I NEVER give my phone number or real name to any service I'm not paying for, and I'm very careful about info I give to services I DO pay for. Google may have my cell number because I have an Android phone, but it's not associated with my account in any public-facing place AFAICT. And Google doesn't officially have my real name. I'm sure they know it just because they're Google - but my Gmail account is under a pseudonym, and I don't use it except to the extent necessary to use Google Play. So again, the association probably isn't available to casual hackers - they'd have to get deeper into Google to make the association, and that's beyond my control, short of becoming a techno-hermit.
I also don't update apps immediately - I wait to see what others have to say in the reviews. Sometimes I don't update at all: as far as I'm concerned, in the Android ecosystem it's often a saw-off between patching old vulns and introducing new ones. I don't have location enabled, and WiFi, Bluetooth, and Data are turned off unless I'm using them. And I run a firewall. I have no illusions that these things make me either secure or anonymous, but I do try to make it a little harder for the carrion to pick clean the bones of the mostly-dead carcass of my privacy.
Samsung just joined Sony on my "Do not buy" list.
Samsung joined Sony on my 'forbidden' list when they started pushing out Smart TV firmware upgrades that had non-optional advertising built in. So I'm not surprised in the least by their recent attempt at censorship.
The campaign for the highest political office in the land is based on cheap shots, empty hyperbole, and crass corruption. Talk about bread and circuses! The presidential race IS a circus; not even a classy one like Cirque du Soleil, but rather a seedy low-rent carnival sideshow. There are disquieting similarities between this election and any given episode of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. I suppose that's fitting, given that one of the 'contestants' really is a reality show star, and now the other one is taking her cues from him. When I think about the situation I'm torn between sadness and disgust, and end up feeling both. Yuck. Is this really how things are done now, in what arguably used to be the greatest nation in the world?
...I find that the software available from the repos is surprisingly good /and/ is not laden with "appeal to the lowest denominator" graphics nonsense (virus scanners on Windows with animations to demonstrate to the user that it's "doing something" as a particularly egregious example). This nonsense is rife throughout the "windows universe of valuable things."
This, exactly. Just today I was doing some work for my old boss and had to use an old Windows laptop. I kept being interrupted by Norton telling me what a wonderful job it was doing, and Windows asking me if I wanted to disable some IE6 plugins to speed things up - and I wasn't even using IE at the time. It was such an annoying, distracting clownshow, reminiscent of a young child starved for attention and saying 'look at me!'. I've been spoiled by Linux - it (mostly) does what I want, it stays out of the way, its automatic update process is very polite and graceful, and I can do everything I need to do, including schematic capture and PCB design. I truly feel sorry for those who have no choice but to use Windows on an ongoing basis.
Why are so many public schools such hellholes that administrators feel they need to take such measures in the name of "student safety"? If the argument is that the problems in schools originate outside of the schools, then mightn't the schooling of previous generations bear at least some of the blame? And a related question - why do so many schools have cops on duty?
Might there be a fundamental flaw in public education - one that goes back to the inception of American public schools (pdf) and was based on an insufferable level of presumption that was explicitly stated at the time?
When you start to come to grips with the overwhelming evidence that public education was designed to extend immaturity, foster dependence and obedience, and ensure a qualified labour pool, then it's no surprise to find that school boards and the CIA might share common goals and methods.
His name must not be "Information", because he obviously DOESN'T want to be free...
automation and AI will have eliminated the vast majority of jobs for humans anyway. So let the point-one-percenters start applying these genetic criteria to each other - and watch them eat their own. Pass the popcorn! If we poor plebeians are still able to afford popcorn, that is...
Geo-blocking movies is like geo-blocking automobiles, and it makes about as much sense. Can you imagine a car dealer or rental agency telling you "sorry, your car won't work in the following geographic areas"? Geo-blocking is all about artificial scarcity, and if it was being done between US states it might even be treated as collusion. But since it's an international thing, the law says it's OK. Movie watchers beg to differ.
Thanks to the Internet, the world is now a very small place; when a movie is released, it's usually all over the world within hours, regardless of rights-holders wishes and fantasies to the contrary. So content owners can continue to tie the hands of companies like Netflix, and Netflix and the like have no choice but to honour the content owners' wishes. And the stricter the enforcement of geo-blocking is, the more Netflix users will resort to torrenting, or stop watching altogether. Either way, the industry is shooting itself in the foot - it has people willing to pay to watch a movie, and it's telling them to fuck off.
If cars were geo-blocked there would be a brisk business devoted to unblocking them, even though it might cost quite a bit of money. The equivalent for movie fans is a torrent site - except torrented movies can be had almost for free. I expect a rise in torrenting among non-geeks who would rather spend their money on legally obtained movies, if only someone would put out their hand and take it.
Perhaps it was about the journey and not the destination? If you follow the link you'll see that he was using a network scanner and other tactics to coax it into working that suggest his motivation was curiosity. He's not an average consumer, he's a tinkerer/hacker.
Good point. I have to wonder, though, if he bought the kettle knowing he was facing a major integration effort, or if he just wanted a cuppa. The article doesn't make that clear.