Man that is outdated. Have you driven a modern German car? Of course not, no one drives a modern German car, they sit in the tow truck up front. I used to have incredible respect for German engineering. Emphasis on the past tense.
For what scenario? I find most Americas don't bother with a handbrake at all and if you drive a manual and leave the car in gear if it is flat many people don't use it either. It used to be required in manual cars without reverse rolling protection on hills, but that is a thing of the past now too. Frankly about the only use case for a handbrake in a modern automatic car is to change a tire.
It sure as hell doesn't have any scenario where it should be used while moving, except if you're goal is to go around corners sideways.
A nice red plastic button that when hit, disengages all software/electronics that might take control away from you, and either kills the engine completely as well, or lets you take full-manual control of everything?
So what are we talking about here: Loss of hydraulic assisted breaking. Loss of power steering. Loss of ABS and traction control. Cutting a lot of these services while moving is incredibly dangerous as anyone who's lost a utility belt while driving will understand.
Given the extremely low number of situations in which software in cars seems to do anything that attempts to overrule the driver and the fact that these scenarios are actively recalled and fixed at large expense to the manufacturer I think you have invented a cure worse than the disease.
A car weighing over 1 ton and going at 70MPH or more IS dangerous equipment.
Now imagine how dangerous it would be without all the utilities listed above. Quite interestingly you don't see stop / panic buttons on all equipment, only equipment which is interacted with and presents a very reasonable ability for the user to make a mistake necessitating that stop button. When an inherently safer option is found the stop buttons are often omitted, in very complex machinery, that stop button is likely a software switch anyway.
The question is, the word is supposed to be distinct enough that you're not going to accidentally trigger it.
The word is distinct (unless you have someone named Alexa in the house). Computer interpretation of sounds is not.
What Amazon is insinuating is they use "Alexa" a lot in their conversation and thus end up triggering their devices "accidentally".
Amazon is insinuating no such thing. It's right there in the summary with the words "sounding like". Computer vision and sound are often fooled by strange collections of sounds. Coincidentally enough I was at dinner with friends yesterday and in a conversation about cycling without any mention of Alexa (didn't know they had one) it decided to turn on and play some kind of children's tune, I think it was the bananas in pyjamas theme.
Even worse, doesn't Alexa acknowledge commands? If Amazon say it heard "send message" to a contact, wouldn't it be good for it to say "OK, message sent to John Doe" to acknowledge that yes, it actually did it?
Yes indeed it does. Read the summary. Incidentally if you're carrying on a conversation somewhere, some little computer off in the distance confirming what you said can easily be overheard. One of the bigger problems is that of attentiveness. It's all good and fine for a computer to sit idly waiting for a keyword, but once it hears the keyword it will do its damnedest to turn the following sounds it hears into an instruction and with its limited instruction set you're likely to hit something you sometimes don't want.
Interesting analogy. One person who would have a lot at stake in ensuring that a blood supply is protected is the person who relies on it as food. Dracula would be most ideal in protecting blood.
Now to go back to the analogy I think you were trying to say:
a) Are you saying MS will misappropriate defence data? Care to cite a case where they have done that to an enterprise customer in the past? b) Are you saying MS will lose or let this data get into the wrong hands? Care to cite a case where they have done that to an enterprise customer in the past?
A lot of people see their Windows boxen crash, and ransomware take over because a user clicked a dodgy link and then creatively extrapolate that to: MS cloud services are not secure or to be trusted. But I've yet to see someone actually come up with a direct reason of why.
and instead of pulling the weed it just burns them to the dirt, it might be quicker and the dead weed can just sit there and decompose back in to the soil
Doesn't kill the roots. Many weeds are notoriously hard to kill.
Huh? Who so far has completely blamed the cops? The only posts I see conclusively directed at the cops are rebuttals to posts which give the cops complete innocence and make no assessment at all to the nature of the SWATer.
Did the cop act on orders and according to procedure?
The procedure covering this literally leaves the entire situation to be interpreted and executed by the cop in question. Not only is the "I was following orders" a cop-out excuse that has historically been proven to not be a defence, but in this case the order was literally to decide for ones self.
Stop making excuses for murderous trigger happy thugs.
Depression and recession are not the same thing. Recession has a clear definition. Depression does not, and depending which defintion you use you could argue that America only suffered through 3 years of depression. Those "worst 5 years" that Forbes are talking about are none the less 5 years of sustained growth and are far preferable to the actual recessions that have happened many times.
As for the GP, he is right. This is the second longest we've been between recessions (the longest being the dot-com era between 1991 and the banking crisis. Prior to that we had recessions more frequently than every 8 years.
Nope. But it's a simple use case kind of issue. I'm sure you will find people who want that kind of thing, but it's not for me. We can go down the list:
$600 - Yes in my price range. 18mm thick - No I prefer thin phones. 10mm would be about my limit. 5" 1920x1080 screen - No, need a higher res phone because I enjoy playing with VR. 6000 mAh battery - Yes, but it won't fit in that package. I'm happy to accept an external battery pack if needed but not necessary. This would be far more interesting to my girlfriend who Pokemon Gos everywhere. ran stock Android - Yes 5 GB RAM/128 GB Flash - Would like it but would happily forgo it. IP68 rated - Not required. Splashproof is good enough headphone jack - Yes - lack of it would be a dealbreaker dual SIM card capable - No and would take MicroSD cards - Yes - lack of it would be a dealbreaker
There is too much of ~then some noise in the background is interpreted as a command~ excuses to make it a plausible explanation for me.
Why? Only the first part needs to be mistaken, the device will then put a lot of effort into attempting to interpret the second part as a usable command.
Had an Alexa come on during dinner today with some friends and play some children's music. The conversation was about cycling and I didn't even know he had an Alexa until the music came on.
Actually had it happen today. Having a conversation about cycling in the living room and the guy's Alexa kicks in and starts playing music... children's music like bananas in pyjamas stuff.
It will get it wrong, it just depends if getting it wrong is innocuous or if it sends your dirty pics to your grandma.
The fact that they know what happened to this level of detail means that it's always recording and they can go back to their records far enough, even days later.
Turn this shit off.
Err no. The fact that they know this means that the device does exactly what it says on the box, waits for a code word and then sends a search query to Amazon. It only misinterpreted the code word, or maybe someone actually mentioned Alexa and then didn't check to see if the little blue ring lit up.
OK, so these deices ARE listening to everything at all times.
Well of course they are, how do you think they recognise their code word? There has never been a question of whether they are listening at all times, the question has only ever been if everything is being sent back to be processed by the borg, and as far as anyone has been able to tell the answer to that is no, not until the code word has been identified (or in this case, thought it had been identified).
Okay so you have no clue really about mobile phones at all. Let me break it down for you:
All displays are off the shelf unless you're LG or Samsung. There's no development cost there. Every version of the Android is effectively custom software unless you're duplicating someone else's phone which effectively makes the entire scenario pointless. As for off the shelf mainboard.... Yeah you clearly have no idea. Every mainboard in every model of phone is custom. Not only that the very specs you quoted would necessitate a custom mainboard and a custom chassis even if these things were interchangable between any model of phone (which they aren't).
This is really a packaging deal
NO! It isn't. It's not remotely packaging. Packaging is such a small part of what you propose that it makes it almost insignificant.
This is much more akin to developing a custom body to put on an existing car.
Nope, you're talking about converting a porch into a dune buggy. The entire premise of product is a different platform than what is on the market.
development of these kinds of products (which I have done in the past)
While I have no doubt you have developed some kind of product you have quite clearly shown that you haven't a clue about *these* kinds of products.
School shootings are simply the most emotional of cases from the general topic of gun violence. It is quite disingenuous to separate the two especially given the rate at which gun related deaths off your citizens.
No. ZTE was getting a lot of its components from American companies. There are no American jobs at stake here. Have you heard of fabless semiconductor companies? That's what many American suppliers are. You own the IP, but manufacturing is done in China as it is. ZTE lost access to the IP, it was never about shipping actual American made stuff over to a Chinese supplier.
Don't doubt it. Companies are generally happy to forgo some ridiculous markups in exchange for access to a wider market. It is the very definition of pricing what the market will bear.
I also remember the outrage in Australia a few years ago where a backpack company founded and based in Australia, manufactured in China sold backpacks in the USA for less than half the cost and with significantly higher expenses (import duties and longer shipping route). The answer to the outrage was simple: "I charge what I need to in order to maximise my profit. Australians were willing to pay this price."
It is the same in China. Interestingly in China it's not based on the general country level market but is highly localised. I went to a nice supermarket in a nice part of town and they were charging the equivalent of $90USD for Nautica polo shirts. I've never paid more than $40 for a genuine Nautica polo in my life. I sure as hell didn't expect to see this price on the Chinese mainland (Hong Kong or Macau I would have expected it). On the other side of town you could get the identical shirt, same fabric, same cut, same modern season colour for $20.
Okay hold up for a second. You're talking about something that happened to an ~40 year old company some 15 years ago. Very little of what happened in a company that long ago applies in the modern world. Your assessment is way off base. Microsoft innovation on anything desktop related HAS ground to a halt, well and truly, even in products they are behind in such as Edge.
They have demonstrated beyond a doubt that their only core competency remaining is cloud services.
Slashdot Mirror
Now get off my lawn!
May I interest you in an electric fence?
Man that is outdated. Have you driven a modern German car? Of course not, no one drives a modern German car, they sit in the tow truck up front. I used to have incredible respect for German engineering. Emphasis on the past tense.
BMW - Bayerische Mist Wagen (Bavarian Shit Wagon)
Yeah good call: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
EPBs are still garbage, though.
For what scenario? I find most Americas don't bother with a handbrake at all and if you drive a manual and leave the car in gear if it is flat many people don't use it either. It used to be required in manual cars without reverse rolling protection on hills, but that is a thing of the past now too. Frankly about the only use case for a handbrake in a modern automatic car is to change a tire.
It sure as hell doesn't have any scenario where it should be used while moving, except if you're goal is to go around corners sideways.
A nice red plastic button that when hit, disengages all software/electronics that might take control away from you, and either kills the engine completely as well, or lets you take full-manual control of everything?
So what are we talking about here: Loss of hydraulic assisted breaking. Loss of power steering. Loss of ABS and traction control. Cutting a lot of these services while moving is incredibly dangerous as anyone who's lost a utility belt while driving will understand.
Given the extremely low number of situations in which software in cars seems to do anything that attempts to overrule the driver and the fact that these scenarios are actively recalled and fixed at large expense to the manufacturer I think you have invented a cure worse than the disease.
A car weighing over 1 ton and going at 70MPH or more IS dangerous equipment.
Now imagine how dangerous it would be without all the utilities listed above. Quite interestingly you don't see stop / panic buttons on all equipment, only equipment which is interacted with and presents a very reasonable ability for the user to make a mistake necessitating that stop button. When an inherently safer option is found the stop buttons are often omitted, in very complex machinery, that stop button is likely a software switch anyway.
The question is, the word is supposed to be distinct enough that you're not going to accidentally trigger it.
The word is distinct (unless you have someone named Alexa in the house). Computer interpretation of sounds is not.
What Amazon is insinuating is they use "Alexa" a lot in their conversation and thus end up triggering their devices "accidentally".
Amazon is insinuating no such thing. It's right there in the summary with the words "sounding like". Computer vision and sound are often fooled by strange collections of sounds. Coincidentally enough I was at dinner with friends yesterday and in a conversation about cycling without any mention of Alexa (didn't know they had one) it decided to turn on and play some kind of children's tune, I think it was the bananas in pyjamas theme.
Even worse, doesn't Alexa acknowledge commands? If Amazon say it heard "send message" to a contact, wouldn't it be good for it to say "OK, message sent to John Doe" to acknowledge that yes, it actually did it?
Yes indeed it does. Read the summary. Incidentally if you're carrying on a conversation somewhere, some little computer off in the distance confirming what you said can easily be overheard. One of the bigger problems is that of attentiveness. It's all good and fine for a computer to sit idly waiting for a keyword, but once it hears the keyword it will do its damnedest to turn the following sounds it hears into an instruction and with its limited instruction set you're likely to hit something you sometimes don't want.
Here, have a Sunday funny fail involving Alexa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Interesting analogy. One person who would have a lot at stake in ensuring that a blood supply is protected is the person who relies on it as food. Dracula would be most ideal in protecting blood.
Now to go back to the analogy I think you were trying to say:
a) Are you saying MS will misappropriate defence data? Care to cite a case where they have done that to an enterprise customer in the past?
b) Are you saying MS will lose or let this data get into the wrong hands? Care to cite a case where they have done that to an enterprise customer in the past?
A lot of people see their Windows boxen crash, and ransomware take over because a user clicked a dodgy link and then creatively extrapolate that to: MS cloud services are not secure or to be trusted. But I've yet to see someone actually come up with a direct reason of why.
Their offerings are just legacy hosted servers wrapped with a fuckton of poorly trained people.
So they are what you would call a Silicon Valley Cloud Startup then?
Don't be silly. Linux doesn't BSOD.
and instead of pulling the weed it just burns them to the dirt, it might be quicker and the dead weed can just sit there and decompose back in to the soil
Doesn't kill the roots. Many weeds are notoriously hard to kill.
its either completely the cops fault
Huh? Who so far has completely blamed the cops? The only posts I see conclusively directed at the cops are rebuttals to posts which give the cops complete innocence and make no assessment at all to the nature of the SWATer.
Did the cop act on orders and according to procedure?
The procedure covering this literally leaves the entire situation to be interpreted and executed by the cop in question. Not only is the "I was following orders" a cop-out excuse that has historically been proven to not be a defence, but in this case the order was literally to decide for ones self.
Stop making excuses for murderous trigger happy thugs.
Depression and recession are not the same thing. Recession has a clear definition. Depression does not, and depending which defintion you use you could argue that America only suffered through 3 years of depression. Those "worst 5 years" that Forbes are talking about are none the less 5 years of sustained growth and are far preferable to the actual recessions that have happened many times.
As for the GP, he is right. This is the second longest we've been between recessions (the longest being the dot-com era between 1991 and the banking crisis. Prior to that we had recessions more frequently than every 8 years.
Nope. But it's a simple use case kind of issue. I'm sure you will find people who want that kind of thing, but it's not for me. We can go down the list:
$600 - Yes in my price range.
18mm thick - No I prefer thin phones. 10mm would be about my limit.
5" 1920x1080 screen - No, need a higher res phone because I enjoy playing with VR.
6000 mAh battery - Yes, but it won't fit in that package. I'm happy to accept an external battery pack if needed but not necessary. This would be far more interesting to my girlfriend who Pokemon Gos everywhere.
ran stock Android - Yes
5 GB RAM/128 GB Flash - Would like it but would happily forgo it.
IP68 rated - Not required. Splashproof is good enough
headphone jack - Yes - lack of it would be a dealbreaker
dual SIM card capable - No
and would take MicroSD cards - Yes - lack of it would be a dealbreaker
There is too much of ~then some noise in the background is interpreted as a command~ excuses to make it a plausible explanation for me.
Why? Only the first part needs to be mistaken, the device will then put a lot of effort into attempting to interpret the second part as a usable command.
Had an Alexa come on during dinner today with some friends and play some children's music. The conversation was about cycling and I didn't even know he had an Alexa until the music came on.
Actually had it happen today. Having a conversation about cycling in the living room and the guy's Alexa kicks in and starts playing music ... children's music like bananas in pyjamas stuff.
It will get it wrong, it just depends if getting it wrong is innocuous or if it sends your dirty pics to your grandma.
The fact that they know what happened to this level of detail means that it's always recording and they can go back to their records far enough, even days later.
Turn this shit off.
Err no. The fact that they know this means that the device does exactly what it says on the box, waits for a code word and then sends a search query to Amazon. It only misinterpreted the code word, or maybe someone actually mentioned Alexa and then didn't check to see if the little blue ring lit up.
OK, so these deices ARE listening to everything at all times.
Well of course they are, how do you think they recognise their code word? There has never been a question of whether they are listening at all times, the question has only ever been if everything is being sent back to be processed by the borg, and as far as anyone has been able to tell the answer to that is no, not until the code word has been identified (or in this case, thought it had been identified).
Okay so you have no clue really about mobile phones at all. Let me break it down for you:
All displays are off the shelf unless you're LG or Samsung. There's no development cost there. ... Yeah you clearly have no idea. Every mainboard in every model of phone is custom. Not only that the very specs you quoted would necessitate a custom mainboard and a custom chassis even if these things were interchangable between any model of phone (which they aren't).
Every version of the Android is effectively custom software unless you're duplicating someone else's phone which effectively makes the entire scenario pointless.
As for off the shelf mainboard.
This is really a packaging deal
NO! It isn't. It's not remotely packaging. Packaging is such a small part of what you propose that it makes it almost insignificant.
This is much more akin to developing a custom body to put on an existing car.
Nope, you're talking about converting a porch into a dune buggy. The entire premise of product is a different platform than what is on the market.
development of these kinds of products (which I have done in the past)
While I have no doubt you have developed some kind of product you have quite clearly shown that you haven't a clue about *these* kinds of products.
You shouldn't care about school shootings either.
School shootings are simply the most emotional of cases from the general topic of gun violence. It is quite disingenuous to separate the two especially given the rate at which gun related deaths off your citizens.
they were told ahead of time what the consequences would be for not doing what they agreed to do, and they did it anyway
Can you blame them? Look at what happened. No one cares about the Commerce Department when you have friends in all the right places.
No. ZTE was getting a lot of its components from American companies. There are no American jobs at stake here. Have you heard of fabless semiconductor companies? That's what many American suppliers are. You own the IP, but manufacturing is done in China as it is. ZTE lost access to the IP, it was never about shipping actual American made stuff over to a Chinese supplier.
Are you sure the ones you saw were genuine Levis?
Don't doubt it. Companies are generally happy to forgo some ridiculous markups in exchange for access to a wider market. It is the very definition of pricing what the market will bear.
I also remember the outrage in Australia a few years ago where a backpack company founded and based in Australia, manufactured in China sold backpacks in the USA for less than half the cost and with significantly higher expenses (import duties and longer shipping route). The answer to the outrage was simple: "I charge what I need to in order to maximise my profit. Australians were willing to pay this price."
It is the same in China. Interestingly in China it's not based on the general country level market but is highly localised. I went to a nice supermarket in a nice part of town and they were charging the equivalent of $90USD for Nautica polo shirts. I've never paid more than $40 for a genuine Nautica polo in my life. I sure as hell didn't expect to see this price on the Chinese mainland (Hong Kong or Macau I would have expected it). On the other side of town you could get the identical shirt, same fabric, same cut, same modern season colour for $20.
IE6 demonstrated beyond a shadow
Okay hold up for a second. You're talking about something that happened to an ~40 year old company some 15 years ago. Very little of what happened in a company that long ago applies in the modern world. Your assessment is way off base. Microsoft innovation on anything desktop related HAS ground to a halt, well and truly, even in products they are behind in such as Edge.
They have demonstrated beyond a doubt that their only core competency remaining is cloud services.
Wherein browsers are actually simply video players.
Well yeah, 75% of internet traffic is video. What do you use for Netflix? The app from the Windows Store? Don't make me laugh. :-)