Uber may ultimately fail, but that doesn't really matter - something else similar will take its place, and the only question is one of how long the process will take. There is a strong parallel between Uber and Napster. In both cases a disruptive technology was used to render existing scarcities obsolete. Those vested in the status quo fought back, but continue to lose ground - the market 'spoke' in the way it always does, but in these cases the incumbents didn't like what the market was saying.
Napster is dead, but online sharing of music and videos is here to stay. Uber may die, but if it does then other services will take its place, and will be with us for a long time. Then, something else will come along to replace these services, and there will be hand-wringing and protests against the loss of the 'traditional' services. It's the way of the world.
And the true elites - the ones who could heat their mansions by burning thousand-dollar bills and still be obscenely rich after a few decades - just love these controversies. It keeps everyone's attention off of the fact that without extreme wealth concentration, everyone in the entire world could enjoy a decent and comfortable standard of living and quality of life while working cooperatively to limit population growth and reverse global warming. Yes, maybe it's time to cue the John Lennon song 'Imagine'; but the true and vast potential of humankind needs to be pointed out and acknowledged and encouraged more.
And really, this is all irrelevant anyway, because there is no greatest civilization...
That wooshing sound you heard before posting was the tongue-in-cheek Third Reich reference flying swiftly over your head. Since you've been modded up to +4, I'm guessing it flew over a lot of heads...
"been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory " , uhmm , this is exactly why we have a Second Amendment. Fascist regimes use things like Motherland, Fatherland and Homeland to drum up support for all these SAME OLD TIRED IDEAS, the ideas are not new at all.
Exactly, and I have no clue why you were modded down. Regarding 'regimespeak' I've even been known to refer to DHS as DFS, just to emphasize the point. And as for "genuinely dangerous ideas", gee - wouldn't the American Revolution and the abolition of slavery count as such?
The thermal paste layer is supposed to be so thin as to almost be invisible. You're trying to create contact points between hills and valleys in the material that are so small you can't see them with the naked eye.
And yet I see ridiculously thick gobs of thermal transfer compound even on the OEM-applied heatsinks in laptops. I suspect the problem is that 'time is money' and nobody on the manufacturing side takes the time to do it properly. When I do it, I apply a bit of paste to both surfaces, rub it in to make sure any voids that are capable of being filled are in fact filled. Then I remove paste as necessary, mate the surfaces, and rotate / slide them against each other a bit to improve the bond and to help move any excess from between the chip and the heatsink. Only then do I apply whatever clamping method is used to hold the heatsink in place. This process takes way more time than an OEM would allow; but on several occasions I've seen the computers I've worked on speed up noticeably. Whether they run better after I'm done with them than they did when they were brand new, I can't say; but they certainly run better than they did immediately before I worked on them.
On an amusing side note, I once worked for a P ENG who thought that simply piling thermal compound over a semiconductor, (with no heatsink present at all), was a valid method of thermal management.
I have to wonder why such high pressure is necessary. With appropriately flat and smooth surfaces on the chip and the heatsink, and a properly thin and even layer of thermal paste, it shouldn't be necessary to apply much more pressure than that required to hold it all in place.
I've been doing some TV shopping lately, and it's getting more and more difficult to find TV's that aren't 'smart'. I've taken to proclaiming loudly "Smart TV's are for dumb people" whenever I'm in Best Buy or a similar store. But I may end up buying one of the damned things myself; if I do, I will immediately void the warranty by taking it apart and, at the very least, disconnecting the WiFi antenna.
...Pointless to question the govt. They are going to do whatever they want and raising a stink will merely put you in their crosshairs....
Wow Mr. AC! Didn't I encounter a couple of your nihilisticcomments in another story? Or are you just one of many agents charged with fostering hopelessness and indifference to help pave the way for those who would dominate and subjugate the people?
Wouldn't it be cruel, to try to get kids "used" to things that will not exist when they grow up?...
Ah, I see. I'm pretty sure you're the AC I responded to a few comments up - and that means that you're probably trolling. Generally, I try not to knowingly feed trolls, but in this case I'll make an exception - so fuck off, you small-minded anti-social anti-human shill for hopelessness.
Control over their computing devices is held by a multinational, whether Google or Apple or whoever.
And that shit hasn't changed in the last 10 years, and certainly won't change in the next 20. Not sure what you're wanting to fight here, or exactly how.
Well, I'd say that what we want to fight here are governmental overreach, (where the ostensible servant has become the master), and corporate rule, in which Big Business runs roughshod over the populace in the pursuit of profit while it burns the earth and destroys all of our futures.
Instead, we should be getting kids used to freedom, both the power and the responsibility that comes with it.
Sounds great. Now if I could just find where my freedom went. Oh yeah, that's been surgically removed from this country too. Again, not sure why the hell we should prepare the next generation for the opposite of what's to come.
If we don't prepare the next generation for what we want to come, then we're inevitably screwed. Are you advocating that we counsel our children to roll over and play dead so it will be easier for the corporate juggernaut to grind them under heel and into the dirt? Way to fight for human rights, sir or madam!
Oh, and if you want to know why I spell such doom and gloom for our future, well we have nameless, faceless terrorists to thank for that. As much as we sit back and claim we don't negotiate with them, what we've ultimately done is negotiate an exchange of true freedom for the illusion of protection.
Unfortunately, you are 100 percent correct in your assessment of the current situation. I'm really sorry that you feel it's impossible for us and/or our children to move out of the current insanity to something fairer and more sustainable. It must be hard to live without a shred of hope and optimism.
How does committing crimes "prove that the system is a failure"?
That depends on the nature of the "crime". If you had been incarcerated for possessing or selling a bit of weed, engaging in a peaceful protest, being Aaron Swartz, Living While Black, or simply pissing off the wrong LEO, then you too would likely feel that the system had failed. And you'd be right in that assessment. And there are cycles of poverty and hopelessness, (absolute breeding grounds for all kinds of violent anti-social behaviours), which are allowed to continue and sometimes even actively perpetuated by governments, law-enforcement agencies, and the attitudes of society-at-large. Again, FAIL.
Unless you are of the "it can't be my fault, the system is to blame" crowd.
No, it ain't always the system's fault, and personal responsibility and awareness are always to be encouraged and expected. But there are an awful lot of people in prison through no fault of their own, and a whole lot more who are there largely because of the contributory negligence of the society they live in. And the way most of them are being treated while in prison is pretty much a guarantee that they'll truly be bad-ass criminals when they are released - even if they were very minor criminals, or not criminals at all, when they were tossed in jail.
It seems pretty irresponsible to me that pacemakers and other implantable medical devices are accessible via WiFi and/or cellular data. Communication with the device in question should require a proximity measured in inches. Yes, it might still be possible with a strong transmitter and a sensitive receiver to extend that range to some tens of feet; but in that case the success of the attack is way less likely than one which can be launched from almost anywhere in the world.
CBC News ? really ? This must be the most politically biased media in the country... There is no reason for this company to be public, if not being a cash-cow for "artists" and unions...
Hyperbole AND off topic - good show! So you don't trust the CBC, eh? Then how about Global News?
x0ra ? really ? This must be the most politically biased member of Slashdot... There is no reason for this member to be here, if not being an apologist shill for Conservatives and corporations...
You think the guy who grew up in the household seeing daddy say, "Just watch me" is going to be good for the country?? Scientists unmuzzled? Don't make me laugh. Civil liberties in Canada are now walking dead... Mark my words, Canada is fucked.
Another Canadian here. I don't entirely agree with you, but you've made a reasonable argument in a reasonable tone. Fucked if I know why you were downmodded. People really need to get out of the habit of modding down out of mere disagreement with a point of view.
I wonder how large the difference is between 3D printer resin and the stuff my dentist uses - especially since the UV exposure time for dental resin seems really short. Mercury amalgam fillings are probably bad for health, but maybe resin fillings aren't a whole lot better.
If the datacentre came along AFTER the residences were built and populated, and if the majority of local residents say it's too noisy, then it IS too noisy. Never mind 'authorized limits', planning applications, and the like.
Exploiting basic human urges is simply a more cost effective means to ensure people who already watch this shit, continue to watch it.
This doesn't apply only to TV and consumerism. Conscious manipulation of large populations goes at least as far back as our transition from hunter-gatherers to storers of food and, by extension, wealth. It may go back even farther. It's the old 'bread and circuses' concept. But at some point the people being manipulated catch on to the fact, and then revolution is likely. I keep wondering why we haven't had one already - perhaps people are now so brainwashed that they will never wake up?
No, the focus should be on allowing the user to view, organize, and access the content in a way that is intuitive and convenient. Of course, the components of this ideal are vastly different across the user base - hence Firefox addons and 'about:config'. Firefox's market share has gone down as Mozilla has tried to force a more uniform, less configurable browser experience on their users - I doubt that a new browser with even less configurability is going to gain much traction.
Ignatius Loyola is purported to have said "Give me a child until he is seven, and he will be mine forever". Sounds like The Zuck believes that too.
The sad thing is that a large percentage of the population-at-large will probably think this initiative is a good thing, instead of seeing the dangers inherent in it. What better way to extend and entrench the hold that corporations have on the lives of 'free' citizens?
More disturbing is that people are going to pay to be subjected to ads.
Even worse than paying to see ads, is paying to BE an ad. I'm talking about all those millions of people who buy and wear clothing that is prominently branded with the manufacturer's name and logo. If clothing makers want me to be a walking advert for them, they can bloody well pay me for the privilege, just as they pay the owners of billboards.
Slashdot Mirror
Uber may ultimately fail, but that doesn't really matter - something else similar will take its place, and the only question is one of how long the process will take. There is a strong parallel between Uber and Napster. In both cases a disruptive technology was used to render existing scarcities obsolete. Those vested in the status quo fought back, but continue to lose ground - the market 'spoke' in the way it always does, but in these cases the incumbents didn't like what the market was saying.
Napster is dead, but online sharing of music and videos is here to stay. Uber may die, but if it does then other services will take its place, and will be with us for a long time. Then, something else will come along to replace these services, and there will be hand-wringing and protests against the loss of the 'traditional' services. It's the way of the world.
And the true elites - the ones who could heat their mansions by burning thousand-dollar bills and still be obscenely rich after a few decades - just love these controversies. It keeps everyone's attention off of the fact that without extreme wealth concentration, everyone in the entire world could enjoy a decent and comfortable standard of living and quality of life while working cooperatively to limit population growth and reverse global warming. Yes, maybe it's time to cue the John Lennon song 'Imagine'; but the true and vast potential of humankind needs to be pointed out and acknowledged and encouraged more.
This, exactly. My kingdom for a mod point.
And really, this is all irrelevant anyway, because there is no greatest civilization...
That wooshing sound you heard before posting was the tongue-in-cheek Third Reich reference flying swiftly over your head. Since you've been modded up to +4, I'm guessing it flew over a lot of heads...
"been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory " , uhmm , this is exactly why we have a Second Amendment. Fascist regimes use things like Motherland, Fatherland and Homeland to drum up support for all these SAME OLD TIRED IDEAS, the ideas are not new at all.
Exactly, and I have no clue why you were modded down. Regarding 'regimespeak' I've even been known to refer to DHS as DFS, just to emphasize the point. And as for "genuinely dangerous ideas", gee - wouldn't the American Revolution and the abolition of slavery count as such?
The thermal paste layer is supposed to be so thin as to almost be invisible. You're trying to create contact points between hills and valleys in the material that are so small you can't see them with the naked eye.
And yet I see ridiculously thick gobs of thermal transfer compound even on the OEM-applied heatsinks in laptops. I suspect the problem is that 'time is money' and nobody on the manufacturing side takes the time to do it properly. When I do it, I apply a bit of paste to both surfaces, rub it in to make sure any voids that are capable of being filled are in fact filled. Then I remove paste as necessary, mate the surfaces, and rotate / slide them against each other a bit to improve the bond and to help move any excess from between the chip and the heatsink. Only then do I apply whatever clamping method is used to hold the heatsink in place. This process takes way more time than an OEM would allow; but on several occasions I've seen the computers I've worked on speed up noticeably. Whether they run better after I'm done with them than they did when they were brand new, I can't say; but they certainly run better than they did immediately before I worked on them.
On an amusing side note, I once worked for a P ENG who thought that simply piling thermal compound over a semiconductor, (with no heatsink present at all), was a valid method of thermal management.
I have to wonder why such high pressure is necessary. With appropriately flat and smooth surfaces on the chip and the heatsink, and a properly thin and even layer of thermal paste, it shouldn't be necessary to apply much more pressure than that required to hold it all in place.
I've been doing some TV shopping lately, and it's getting more and more difficult to find TV's that aren't 'smart'. I've taken to proclaiming loudly "Smart TV's are for dumb people" whenever I'm in Best Buy or a similar store. But I may end up buying one of the damned things myself; if I do, I will immediately void the warranty by taking it apart and, at the very least, disconnecting the WiFi antenna.
...Pointless to question the govt. They are going to do whatever they want and raising a stink will merely put you in their crosshairs....
Wow Mr. AC! Didn't I encounter a couple of your nihilistic comments in another story? Or are you just one of many agents charged with fostering hopelessness and indifference to help pave the way for those who would dominate and subjugate the people?
Wouldn't it be cruel, to try to get kids "used" to things that will not exist when they grow up?...
Ah, I see. I'm pretty sure you're the AC I responded to a few comments up - and that means that you're probably trolling. Generally, I try not to knowingly feed trolls, but in this case I'll make an exception - so fuck off, you small-minded anti-social anti-human shill for hopelessness.
Control over their computing devices is held by a multinational, whether Google or Apple or whoever.
And that shit hasn't changed in the last 10 years, and certainly won't change in the next 20. Not sure what you're wanting to fight here, or exactly how.
Well, I'd say that what we want to fight here are governmental overreach, (where the ostensible servant has become the master), and corporate rule, in which Big Business runs roughshod over the populace in the pursuit of profit while it burns the earth and destroys all of our futures.
Instead, we should be getting kids used to freedom, both the power and the responsibility that comes with it.
Sounds great. Now if I could just find where my freedom went. Oh yeah, that's been surgically removed from this country too. Again, not sure why the hell we should prepare the next generation for the opposite of what's to come.
If we don't prepare the next generation for what we want to come, then we're inevitably screwed. Are you advocating that we counsel our children to roll over and play dead so it will be easier for the corporate juggernaut to grind them under heel and into the dirt? Way to fight for human rights, sir or madam!
Oh, and if you want to know why I spell such doom and gloom for our future, well we have nameless, faceless terrorists to thank for that. As much as we sit back and claim we don't negotiate with them, what we've ultimately done is negotiate an exchange of true freedom for the illusion of protection.
Unfortunately, you are 100 percent correct in your assessment of the current situation. I'm really sorry that you feel it's impossible for us and/or our children to move out of the current insanity to something fairer and more sustainable. It must be hard to live without a shred of hope and optimism.
How does committing crimes "prove that the system is a failure"?
That depends on the nature of the "crime". If you had been incarcerated for possessing or selling a bit of weed, engaging in a peaceful protest, being Aaron Swartz, Living While Black, or simply pissing off the wrong LEO, then you too would likely feel that the system had failed. And you'd be right in that assessment. And there are cycles of poverty and hopelessness, (absolute breeding grounds for all kinds of violent anti-social behaviours), which are allowed to continue and sometimes even actively perpetuated by governments, law-enforcement agencies, and the attitudes of society-at-large. Again, FAIL.
Unless you are of the "it can't be my fault, the system is to blame" crowd.
No, it ain't always the system's fault, and personal responsibility and awareness are always to be encouraged and expected. But there are an awful lot of people in prison through no fault of their own, and a whole lot more who are there largely because of the contributory negligence of the society they live in. And the way most of them are being treated while in prison is pretty much a guarantee that they'll truly be bad-ass criminals when they are released - even if they were very minor criminals, or not criminals at all, when they were tossed in jail.
Near. Field. Communications.
It seems pretty irresponsible to me that pacemakers and other implantable medical devices are accessible via WiFi and/or cellular data. Communication with the device in question should require a proximity measured in inches. Yes, it might still be possible with a strong transmitter and a sensitive receiver to extend that range to some tens of feet; but in that case the success of the attack is way less likely than one which can be launched from almost anywhere in the world.
What the hell does physical sabotage have to do with cyberattacks?
Um, maybe it's because a cyberattack IS a form of sabotage, and because in either case the grid goes down, with similar consequences. Just guessin'...
CBC News ? really ? This must be the most politically biased media in the country... There is no reason for this company to be public, if not being a cash-cow for "artists" and unions...
Hyperbole AND off topic - good show! So you don't trust the CBC, eh? Then how about Global News?
http://globalnews.ca/news/2005043/what-scientists-being-muzzled-looks-like-in-the-real-world/
Or CTV?
http://www.ctvnews.ca/global-research-panel-says-feds-muzzle-scientists-1.770203
x0ra ? really ? This must be the most politically biased member of Slashdot... There is no reason for this member to be here, if not being an apologist shill for Conservatives and corporations...
What information was muzzled during the last 10 years?
Here are a few examples:
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/federal-scientists-push-for-protection-from-political-interference/article24473222/
You think the guy who grew up in the household seeing daddy say, "Just watch me" is going to be good for the country?? Scientists unmuzzled? Don't make me laugh. Civil liberties in Canada are now walking dead... Mark my words, Canada is fucked.
Another Canadian here. I don't entirely agree with you, but you've made a reasonable argument in a reasonable tone. Fucked if I know why you were downmodded. People really need to get out of the habit of modding down out of mere disagreement with a point of view.
I wonder how large the difference is between 3D printer resin and the stuff my dentist uses - especially since the UV exposure time for dental resin seems really short. Mercury amalgam fillings are probably bad for health, but maybe resin fillings aren't a whole lot better.
If the datacentre came along AFTER the residences were built and populated, and if the majority of local residents say it's too noisy, then it IS too noisy. Never mind 'authorized limits', planning applications, and the like.
Totally agree with everything you just said.
Exploiting basic human urges is simply a more cost effective means to ensure people who already watch this shit, continue to watch it.
This doesn't apply only to TV and consumerism. Conscious manipulation of large populations goes at least as far back as our transition from hunter-gatherers to storers of food and, by extension, wealth. It may go back even farther. It's the old 'bread and circuses' concept. But at some point the people being manipulated catch on to the fact, and then revolution is likely. I keep wondering why we haven't had one already - perhaps people are now so brainwashed that they will never wake up?
All the focus should be on the content!
No, the focus should be on allowing the user to view, organize, and access the content in a way that is intuitive and convenient. Of course, the components of this ideal are vastly different across the user base - hence Firefox addons and 'about:config'. Firefox's market share has gone down as Mozilla has tried to force a more uniform, less configurable browser experience on their users - I doubt that a new browser with even less configurability is going to gain much traction.
Did you read the same article as the rest of us?
Read the article? Qu'est-ce que what?
Ignatius Loyola is purported to have said "Give me a child until he is seven, and he will be mine forever". Sounds like The Zuck believes that too.
The sad thing is that a large percentage of the population-at-large will probably think this initiative is a good thing, instead of seeing the dangers inherent in it. What better way to extend and entrench the hold that corporations have on the lives of 'free' citizens?
More disturbing is that people are going to pay to be subjected to ads.
Even worse than paying to see ads, is paying to BE an ad. I'm talking about all those millions of people who buy and wear clothing that is prominently branded with the manufacturer's name and logo. If clothing makers want me to be a walking advert for them, they can bloody well pay me for the privilege, just as they pay the owners of billboards.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1...
...thinks it's indistinguishable from God.