"You might have heard there's a problem with our products... THIS IS NOT TRUE. A government agency (the Consumer Product Safety Commission) is saying they should be recalled because children occasionally get ahold of them. This is unfair. We market exclusively to adults. We are vigorously defending our right to market these products you love. Let us know how you feel about this: Comment on Facebook; send a tweet; tell your friends; complain loudly; or just buy a set to stick it to the CPSC. Read more here."
iPhone sales are now dependent (to an certain extent) on people upgrading.
In previous years the numbers of upgrading users where smaller and those people had less reason to wait. The new iPhone was going to be better but functionally much the same.
This year I suspect a larger number people are waiting because for the first time in five years there is a substantial functional upgrade coming on stream. So wait for that announcement. Then either by the older (and by then cheaper 4S) or the newer 5.
Upgrading now means locking into the 4S at the current higher price.
Possibly Apple could have avoided this somewhat by starting to bring the price on the 4S down a couple of months ahead of the anticipated launch date. Giving people a reason to jump on those if they didn't feel the need for the new features. Its also possible that while that would have kept the overall numbers up the margins would be down. So possibly a wash for profits.
Exactly, there is a very low bar really. Robotic cars will be much safer and will reduce fatalities. Its really just an engineering problem. And the world is turning out a LOT of good engineers today.
Once robotic caras start to be deployed and show that they are safer there will be a very fast adoption rate.
Over the course of 5-10 years society will adopt an attitude towards human drivers that is similar to how we view drunk drivers today. Think in terms of MAHD - Mothers Against Human Drivers.
10-15 years from now you will get the same looks from people if you say you drive your own car that you get today if you tell them you got blotto drunk and still managed to drive home from the pub last night.
Actually they will be MUCH safer in a world of 100% automated (>= 4 wheel) traffic.
Most of the problems with motocycles and bicycles are getting hit by idiot drivers not paying attention.
Automated cars don't fall asleep, don't listen to music, eat, drink, fiddle with the radio, text, or talk on their phone.
And when we reach 100% automated traffic the cars can do things like having all three lanes of traffic move over in tandem to avoid a cyclist.
This is not simply because it is nice to do that for cyclists, but something needed to avoid hitting, dogs, cats, raccoons, deer, etc.
It will of course be ILLEGAL to ride your motorcycle in an unsafe manner that requires automated cars to avoid you. AND since these cars are well connected be sure that the police will be notified quickly and provided with video, lidar and other recordings showing exactly what you did. So I expect that joy riding like that will be eliminated quickly as well. You get fined on the first offence. We keep your motorcycle on the second offense.
I ran my own mail servers from 1987 to about 2007 which probably predates most people reading Slashdot. Got sick and tired of redoing everything every two years when I rolled over the linux server.
Switched everything to Gmail and haven't had any trouble or had to re-install since... far less make work and if the government (or Google) wants to look at my mail they'll find it pretty boring.
Our Canadian laws don't prevent access from any legitimate law enforcement agency, including US or any others.
It DOES say that such access MUST BE granted by a Canadian court. If the FBI or anyone else wants to look at my Canadian data stored on a Canadian server then they can go through the appropriate process in a Canadian court.
This makes sense, as presumably if I'm located in Canada then I am subject to the Laws of Canada and not of any other country. You want me you need to convince a Canadian court that I have broken a law in your jurisdiction.
The point is that if Canadian data is stored on a US server then US law enforcement can access it.
The opposite is also true for US data stored on a Canadian server, it can be accessed by Canadian law enforcement.
I'll note that a) not many services have data farms in Canada and b) Canadian laws make it slightly harder.
The end result is that if you have data that must be stored and be accessible ONLY under Canadian privacy laws (i.e. safe from US law enforcement eyes, e.g. personal data stored by government or public institutions like schools or colleges) then you simply cannot store it in the cloud unless your provider can guarantee that it (the data) remains under Canadian law which in turn currently means on a Canadian server (and most likely with access over Canadian network links.)
Hopefully Apple, Google et al will recognize a business opportunity and either start locating server farms regionally (with appropriate internal controls ensuring that data is isolated to servers in a geographic / political area) OR get laws changed so that data can be stored subject ONLY to the laws where the data originated (which may also be on a bi-lateral basis, which would for example mean US / Canada would be OK but US / Pakistan would not be.)
Not only an outgrowth of Google Docs. It really is just Google Docs. Plus some apps for Windows and Mac (eventually Linux, iOS and Android) to make your Google Docs files appear in a Folder on your desktop (and eventually mobile device.)
Not a trivial programming exercise but certainly not a difficult one.
The hard part was the massive shared file storage in the cloud and Google has had that in spades for years (before Dropbox!)
Conventional farming is what produces the largest amount of food that feeds the world at reasonably low costs with reasonably low labor requirements allowing most people to work in non-agriculture related jobs and was mostly developed over the last 40-60 years. Its largely responsible for keeping many billions of people fed (in fact over fed).
Traditional farming is the techniques that where used to barely sustain civilization at a high cost with very high labor inputs such that few people could do anything other than work on the land producing food. It kept most people poor and undernourished and only a very small number of people (the landowners) got rich or enjoyed the fruits of life. And that was for a much smaller number of people (few billions) that where around at the time.
For better or worse modern or conventional farming techniques feed several orders of magnitude more people than traditional farming techniques ever did or could.
From that page Papayas are grown in many tropical countries. But papaya cultivation is being threatened by Papaya Ringspot-Virus, a disease that is sharply lowering yields. In the late 1980s, the University of Hawaii began developing a papaya cultivar resistant to Papaya Ringspot Virus. To do this, certain viral genes encoding capsid proteins were transferred to the papaya genome. These viral capsid proteins elicit something similar to an "immune response" from the papaya plant. These new, genetically modified papaya plants are no longer susceptible to infection, allowing farmers to cultivate the fruit even when the virus is widespread.
That mentions Golden rice (increased Vitamin A) and allergen free rice, as well as (gasp, horror) some work on (what is the world coming to) pesticide resistance.
GMO crops have many more purposes than pesticide sales and are being worked on by many researchers outside of the big agri biz labs.
Strictly speaking its the courts that will nail you for omissions, inconsistencies and inaccuracies. The lawyers just keep reacting to which way the courts rule on previous cases to hopefully eliminate the same issues coming up again (and again.)
DMCA takedowns should have a built-in cost to the issuer. Issue a cheque for $X when the notice is sent. $X is returned if they subsequently prove the copyright is valid.
$X does not have to be very large (even a couple hundred dollars) as its just meant to defray the costs of processing the takedown iff it was not valid. And to make massive numbers of invalid notices costs something (currently the only cost is their lawyer to draft and issue them.)
Smith sees Jones walking down the street, suspects he is armed and dangerous because of the way Jones is acting, fears for his life and pulls out his gun, preparing to defend himself.
Jones sees Smith looking at him funny, sees the gun, assumes he is some wannabe vigilante and pulls out his own gun.
Both start shooting. One or both end up dead.
Who, if anyone, is at fault, or liable?
Both can defend a decision to shoot based on the Stand your ground legislation. This is the fundamental flaw in this type legislation.
Strict rules on rounding: "For all prices, after tax of course, businesses will round up or round down based on government issued standards. Prices ending in.01,.02,.06, and.07 will be rounded down to the nearest dollar or nickel amount. Prices ending in.03,.04,.08, and.09 will be rounded up, accordingly. The penny will continue to be accepted indefinitely, and rounding rules will not apply to purchases made by check or credit/debit cards"
The net effect over the long run is everyone averages out. Also this is done on the final total only. Everything will continue to be priced in $.01 increments as now and credit / debit transactions are paid exactly not rounded.
Presumably because you have been hiding under a rock.... or more charitably heard the news stories about Apple and Foxconn that where generated AFTER the American Life story pushed this issues into every bodies fore brain.
This WAS a big story. And it WAS hyper-inflated at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
From: https://www.getbuckyballs.com/order/buckyballs/
"You might have heard there's a problem with our products...
THIS IS NOT TRUE.
A government agency (the Consumer Product Safety Commission) is saying they should be recalled because children occasionally get ahold of them. This is unfair. We market exclusively to adults. We are vigorously defending our right to market these products you love. Let us know how you feel about this: Comment on Facebook; send a tweet; tell your friends; complain loudly; or just buy a set to stick it to the CPSC. Read more here."
See the part that says "exclusively to adults".
The original "Nearly all of Greenland’s massive ice sheet suddenly started melting a bit this month, a freak event that surprised scientists."
Then the media conflated "massive ice sheet" and "started melting" to give us the headline "NASA: Sudden Massive Melt in Greenland".
Reality check, live webcam: http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/
Click here to see all the melting! Live webcam from Summit Staion Greenland.
http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/
iPhone sales are now dependent (to an certain extent) on people upgrading.
In previous years the numbers of upgrading users where smaller and those people had less reason to wait. The new iPhone was going to be better but functionally much the same.
This year I suspect a larger number people are waiting because for the first time in five years there is a substantial functional upgrade coming on stream. So wait for that announcement. Then either by the older (and by then cheaper 4S) or the newer 5.
Upgrading now means locking into the 4S at the current higher price.
Possibly Apple could have avoided this somewhat by starting to bring the price on the 4S down a couple of months ahead of the anticipated launch date. Giving people a reason to jump on those if they didn't feel the need for the new features. Its also possible that while that would have kept the overall numbers up the margins would be down. So possibly a wash for profits.
Well you can either say they are reliable but then we need to re-assess earlier (well Mann's) work.
Or we can say that tree rings are worthless and then we really do need to re-assess earlier (again Mann's) work.
Take your pick, but either way we re-assess Mann's work. :-)
2063?
More like 2023!
Today's teenagers are the last generation that will need to learn to drive.
It will be optional for the next set (next 10-20 years.)
And will not be allowed after that.
This is obviously an idiotic observation.
The first and biggest perk that people with money have is their chauffeured lifestyle.
Do you really think that people will object to being driven around? To having their kids drive to school?
Get real. Its fun to drive but its not fun to commute.
Exactly, there is a very low bar really. Robotic cars will be much safer and will reduce fatalities. Its really just an engineering problem. And the world is turning out a LOT of good engineers today.
Once robotic caras start to be deployed and show that they are safer there will be a very fast adoption rate.
Over the course of 5-10 years society will adopt an attitude towards human drivers that is similar to how we view drunk drivers today. Think in terms of MAHD - Mothers Against Human Drivers.
10-15 years from now you will get the same looks from people if you say you drive your own car that you get today if you tell them you got blotto drunk and still managed to drive home from the pub last night.
Actually they will be MUCH safer in a world of 100% automated (>= 4 wheel) traffic.
Most of the problems with motocycles and bicycles are getting hit by idiot drivers not paying attention.
Automated cars don't fall asleep, don't listen to music, eat, drink, fiddle with the radio, text, or talk on their phone.
And when we reach 100% automated traffic the cars can do things like having all three lanes of traffic move over in tandem to avoid a cyclist.
This is not simply because it is nice to do that for cyclists, but something needed to avoid hitting, dogs, cats, raccoons, deer, etc.
It will of course be ILLEGAL to ride your motorcycle in an unsafe manner that requires automated cars to avoid you. AND since these cars are well connected be sure that the police will be notified quickly and provided with video, lidar and other recordings showing exactly what you did. So I expect that joy riding like that will be eliminated quickly as well. You get fined on the first offence. We keep your motorcycle on the second offense.
You takes your choice.... either fix the laws and the US can be a center for progress for this technology.
Or you can go with the flow and the technology will be developed and built somewhere else.
I think Singapore or China. Lots of engineers, lots of traffic and a government that can mandate an insurance solution.
Then the US can simply import the cars from there.
And this will be more disruptive than pc's or smart-phones.
I ran my own mail servers from 1987 to about 2007 which probably predates most people reading Slashdot. Got sick and tired of redoing everything every two years when I rolled over the linux server.
Switched everything to Gmail and haven't had any trouble or had to re-install since... far less make work and if the government (or Google) wants to look at my mail they'll find it pretty boring.
Our Canadian laws don't prevent access from any legitimate law enforcement agency, including US or any others.
It DOES say that such access MUST BE granted by a Canadian court. If the FBI or anyone else wants to look at my Canadian data stored on a Canadian server then they can go through the appropriate process in a Canadian court.
This makes sense, as presumably if I'm located in Canada then I am subject to the Laws of Canada and not of any other country. You want me you need to convince a Canadian court that I have broken a law in your jurisdiction.
The point is that if Canadian data is stored on a US server then US law enforcement can access it.
The opposite is also true for US data stored on a Canadian server, it can be accessed by Canadian law enforcement.
I'll note that a) not many services have data farms in Canada and b) Canadian laws make it slightly harder.
The end result is that if you have data that must be stored and be accessible ONLY under Canadian privacy laws (i.e. safe from US law enforcement eyes, e.g. personal data stored by government or public institutions like schools or colleges) then you simply cannot store it in the cloud unless your provider can guarantee that it (the data) remains under Canadian law which in turn currently means on a Canadian server (and most likely with access over Canadian network links.)
Hopefully Apple, Google et al will recognize a business opportunity and either start locating server farms regionally (with appropriate internal controls ensuring that data is isolated to servers in a geographic / political area) OR get laws changed so that data can be stored subject ONLY to the laws where the data originated (which may also be on a bi-lateral basis, which would for example mean US / Canada would be OK but US / Pakistan would not be.)
Not only an outgrowth of Google Docs. It really is just Google Docs. Plus some apps for Windows and Mac (eventually Linux, iOS and Android) to make your Google Docs files appear in a Folder on your desktop (and eventually mobile device.)
Not a trivial programming exercise but certainly not a difficult one.
The hard part was the massive shared file storage in the cloud and Google has had that in spades for years (before Dropbox!)
In point of fact Apple would find itself sued by shareholders if they did not use any and all methods to reduce tax and increase shareholder wealth.
Adjusting ones affairs to avoid taxes (tax avoidance) is legal.
Evading taxes that are due (tax evasion) is not.
Sometimes its a fine line and thats why corporations like Apple spends mega bucks on tax accountants and lawyers specializing it this.
Conventional farming is what produces the largest amount of food that feeds the world at reasonably low costs with reasonably low labor requirements allowing most people to work in non-agriculture related jobs and was mostly developed over the last 40-60 years. Its largely responsible for keeping many billions of people fed (in fact over fed).
Traditional farming is the techniques that where used to barely sustain civilization at a high cost with very high labor inputs such that few people could do anything other than work on the land producing food. It kept most people poor and undernourished and only a very small number of people (the landowners) got rich or enjoyed the fruits of life. And that was for a much smaller number of people (few billions) that where around at the time.
For better or worse modern or conventional farming techniques feed several orders of magnitude more people than traditional farming techniques ever did or could.
They say that ignorance is bliss, but since you asked... here is one http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/grocery_shopping/fruit_vegetables/14.genetically_modified_papayas_virus_resistance.html
From that page
Papayas are grown in many tropical countries. But papaya cultivation is being threatened by Papaya Ringspot-Virus, a disease that is sharply lowering yields.
In the late 1980s, the University of Hawaii began developing a papaya cultivar resistant to Papaya Ringspot Virus. To do this, certain viral genes encoding capsid proteins were transferred to the papaya genome. These viral capsid proteins elicit something similar to an "immune response" from the papaya plant. These new, genetically modified papaya plants are no longer susceptible to infection, allowing farmers to cultivate the fruit even when the virus is widespread.
Also various variations on rice: http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/grocery_shopping/crops/24.genetically_modified_rice.html
That mentions Golden rice (increased Vitamin A) and allergen free rice, as well as (gasp, horror) some work on (what is the world coming to) pesticide resistance.
GMO crops have many more purposes than pesticide sales and are being worked on by many researchers outside of the big agri biz labs.
Strictly speaking its the courts that will nail you for omissions, inconsistencies and inaccuracies. The lawyers just keep reacting to which way the courts rule on previous cases to hopefully eliminate the same issues coming up again (and again.)
DMCA takedowns should have a built-in cost to the issuer. Issue a cheque for $X when the notice is sent. $X is returned if they subsequently prove the copyright is valid.
$X does not have to be very large (even a couple hundred dollars) as its just meant to defray the costs of processing the takedown iff it was not valid. And to make massive numbers of invalid notices costs something (currently the only cost is their lawyer to draft and issue them.)
Smith sees Jones walking down the street, suspects he is armed and dangerous because of the way Jones is acting, fears for his life and pulls out his gun, preparing to defend himself.
Jones sees Smith looking at him funny, sees the gun, assumes he is some wannabe vigilante and pulls out his own gun.
Both start shooting. One or both end up dead.
Who, if anyone, is at fault, or liable?
Both can defend a decision to shoot based on the Stand your ground legislation. This is the fundamental flaw in this type legislation.
What's is Rim's competitor to the iPhone 3GS?
The Senators from the states that mine zinc are the only thing preventing the US from getting rid of the penny.
Strict rules on rounding: .01, .02, .06, and .07 will be rounded down to the nearest dollar or nickel amount. Prices ending in .03, .04, .08, and .09 will be rounded up, accordingly. The penny will continue to be accepted indefinitely, and rounding rules will not apply to purchases made by check or credit/debit cards"
"For all prices, after tax of course, businesses will round up or round down based on government issued standards. Prices ending in
The net effect over the long run is everyone averages out. Also this is done on the final total only. Everything will continue to be priced in $.01 increments as now and credit / debit transactions are paid exactly not rounded.
Perhaps Apple should refuse to allow any reported stolen iPhone or iPad to be used with iTunes.
Wouldn't totally prevent stolen devices from being used but would make them a lot less valuable.
Presumably because you have been hiding under a rock.... or more charitably heard the news stories about Apple and Foxconn that where generated AFTER the American Life story pushed this issues into every bodies fore brain.
This WAS a big story. And it WAS hyper-inflated at the time.