It seems to me that the list is really 'products I don't like'. Certainly the dumbest idea of the year was MS WIndows 8, and Surface, write down of nearly 1 billion.
As far as the lack of professionalism in the IT sector, I worked in various professional enterprises. Some allow men to do whatever they want. Others have higher standards and require men to think. Say that men cannot think is silly. Men can think before they say or do stupid things. The trick is to fire the incompetent men who refuse to do so.
XBox is not a loser like surface, and trying to monetize Xbox is not dumb. MS responded to the issue.
The internship was stupid, but so are half the movies that get made.
The new Apple mail does suck. Where have you been? Every release Apple screws up one or two of the applications. Who is using google mail anyway? Google is the one company with a direct high speed link to the NSA, if a not NSA mining servers directly in their facility. The must have done something to rate the cheap gas.
When I bought my Powermac G4, it had no SCSI which left me in a pickle. Neither did it have floppy. Fortunate because it had Firewire it did not matter. A simple adapter meant that I could run all my SCSI stuff and a floppy. At the time USB was a toy. Fortunately such a thing exists for Thunderbolt, either as a cheap cable or a full docking station for Ethernet, monitor, firewire, USB, etc.
One advantage that the external expansion model has over the everything-stuck-inside PC model is migration is easier. Not everything has to replaced at once. It can be upgraded over time. I appreciate that I can add features without opening the case. I also appreciate that the Powermac has always been one of the easiest machines to upgrade and repair.
I argue that these less liberal copyright laws, along with changes in technology, are really the reason why kids today have little respect for copyright law. Some argue that the ability to sell ones work is an basic right, but really it is something we set in law to help and encourage creation of derivative works, as something that is completely new is quite rare. A compromise between a reality where things are chopped and screwed to maximize creation and where a producer can exclusively benefit economically for a short period of time, thus reducing the creation of works.
The developed western world is not going to be able to compete with these draconian copyright laws. Places like China are soon going to be a major competitor. Having things copyrighted in perpetuity provides not benefits for a nation, only for a select few who think they are above the nation. And at some point the cost of enforcing the law on mickey mouse is going to be so great that it will fall, just like the current war on drugs.
This is obviously advice for MS Windows, so a mirrored backup may be all that many people can deal with. However, I agree that if one has a way of doing continuous incremental backup, it does provide value. There seem to be a lot of cloud backup services that do incremental. But a simple mirror certainly will not do this.
My concern is the lack of whole system backup as part of the plan. This is clearly a MS Windows issue as MS does not seem to like to give consumer end users carte blanche to restore the system. However, as been mentioned, this is the easiest way to deal with some very horrible problems.
I would invest in something like Acronis and a terabyte hard drives. Backup the whole machine every few days. Incremental backup daily.
The incentives of the nation state are different from pure exploration. The incentives are either to be first, to establish national ownership, or research. No one nation can currently claim a planet. The precedent has been set with Antarctica, as well as more explicitly with the moon treaty.
So the question is why send anyone off earth. It is risky, expensive, and provides no value. The answer is of course entertainment. A Space Shuttle used to cost around half a billion to launch. Harry Potter probably cost as much to make if distribution and publicity are added in. Everyone says how much it costs to go to space, but those costs are not uncommon in other areas.
The people in Mars One are not likely to survive to reach a standard life expectancy if they travel to mars. They may die on the trip. They are volunteers giving their lives. I expect some of them to make it to the hatch and refuse to enter, or even get fully strapped in and then demand to get out. I often say I would die for the opportunity to go to space, but I really don't know if I would have the courage to sit there on a million pounds of explosives and actually go through with it. I would hope the show producers would actually do some science so these people would not give their lives just for entertainment.
Here is the final note. If they Mars One team dies on launch, en route, or on the planet, there is a whole range of liability and monetary claim. For instance in the Colombia disaster there were apparently million dollar awards from the manufacture as well as lawsuits fired against the government. The compensation for private disasters such as this are going to be different and not government backed, which means that liability exposure might be much less. For instance, the family of a women killed during a stunt for a reality show on the Discovery channel is asked for a mere $75,000. In other words, it is probably cheaper to have someone die as part of a tv show than as part of a legitimate research mission.
That said, I think this may be a scam as well. They will have actually launch a test vehicle in the next year if they are going to have a human certified ship in four.
this is simply a case of not caring. Here are three simple cheap things that can be done to insure that the effects of these attacks are minimal and tampering evident. 1) log USB port use in a secure memory space, uploading it periodically. 2) Place a validation on the USB port dating the last access. 3) Secure the USB port separately with some lock box, tiggering an alarm in the box is broken. 4) have a switch elsewhere is energize the USB port.
One issue pointed out in the article is that same machines were attacked repeatedly. A tamper evident security program would prevent that. This is often the case with computers. There is no way to determine if a box has been tampered with.
Basically the problem the US has is that it is difficult to escalate this to beyond a civil matter. He was not in the military, he was not employed by the federal government, he was not a spy for a foreign power. He was a private citizen who decided to become a whistleblower. The US has rules protecting whistleblowers. For instance, if the IRS were doing some of this, and he reported it, most of the conservatives in congress would be buying him hookers and drug and throwing a parade, even if it did mean that the US governments ability to pay bills might be jeopardized.
As far as treason is concerned, in the US that is a very narrow legal term defined by our constitution. That any high level government official would throw it around I think speaks to the lack of competency of that official. Treason is declaring war, giving aid and comfort or aligning with an enemy. Diplomatically, the US has few nation states that it claims as enemies. In fact we have a diplomatic term for them, 'rogue states', so we do not have to use the term enemy. In the current climate treason is a high bar, otherwise we would have some Generals who have been recently executed, for instance those that have somewhat decreased the ability of the navy in some parts of the world by selling secrets to foreign agents.
In the US the governement should not function under an excess of secrecy. People like Snowden are part of that. If he is convicted of anything, the next person who wants to report an abuse of power, for instance the FEMA concentration camps being built to imprison dissidents against the coming UN World Governemnt, will be too afraid to come forward. This is clearly not in the peoples interest.
Artists that make money during their lifetime by doing art tend to be pretty aggressive. Most consumers of art do not tend to belive living artists should be well compensated, perhaps only thinking that consumables and a minimum wage is required. Artists have to aggressively create a value added.
We can idealize astronauts and space, but ultimately we are all just humans trying to make a living. Astronauts do this by leveraging the opportunities they were given by the taxpayer. Hard earned opportunities, but taxpayer funded opportunities nevertheless. To say that we are going to believe one person over another, or deny one person his livelihood just because we find it inconvenient, is really a limited view.
This is what I was thinking. I have had jobs where bonuses were 35% of my compensation. In addition to that, there are other means to keep compensation non-transparent. Health care plans can be more expensive for certain employees. Certain employees may get various allowances. In the religious racket, these allowances are often kept hushed up to make it appear that leaders are compensated in a limited fashion. For corporate compensation, the number of under the table tricks are endless, including cars, jets, household staff.
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If one is transparent, one must include total compensation.
The perception is that a physical attack is expensive and risky while a cyber attack can be cheap and have little risk. This physical attack risks two people lives and only did limited damage. To do more damage you have to hire and train more people willing to be killed, and get them into place simultaneously before security responds.
The reality is that utilities have control systems that can be accessed from the outside by a well funded attacker, then that is a huge risk. Cyber attack can also be used for other nefarious purposes. For instance, if one wants to attack a location, and the location has a smart meter, then the smart meter can be used to track the traffic patterns, remotely, with no risk of discovery.
Many years ago there was a similar discussion of conventional versus biological or chemical weapons. The consensus was these types of weapons required a high level of skill and higher levels of risk that just blowing something up. I think the types of attacks we have seen of the past 15 years has substantiated this. We have seen very few successful biological or chemical attacks by 'terrorist' groups, but have seen even small governments manage. Does this mean we don't protect against these attacks. Sure we do. But it is probably more likely that someone gets a dirty bomb, or even a fusion device, to the top of the tallest building in a city than someone poisons the water supply, although both are probably highly unlikely.
For walk in sales, that is probably correct. A price is mis-marked, a few customers get the deal, yes you have happy customers. However it is not clear that online customers have such loyalties. They will tend to go where the low prices are, as there is little opportunity cost for doing so. That is why Amazon has what much a loss leading Amazon Prime program. To keep customers coming back not just for low prices, but other perks. Same thing for airlines.
So no, the rules for online are not to fullfill orders that have clearly incorrect prices. If I go into a big grocery store like Krogers, and some disgruntled employee has put a a 50 dollar bottle of wine on sale at $10, they are not going to sell it to me for $10 when it rings up for 50. There is a secondary check there for price, the human element. Likewise, if a computer glitch, maybe put in by a disgruntled employee, allows me to check out for half price, then this is an admitted grey area. My payment has been accepted.
I would say, however, that until a product is formally charged to a customers card, which often happens as it is shipped, and maybe even until it is delivered there the retailer has an opportunity to cancel the order. Possession is, of course, paramount. This is why I would say one the product is delivered the price must be honored. This is a grey area as well, and we have seen cases where retailers have demanded delivered products back, but this to me is clearly bad manners.
So why is Delta honoring the price? I think it is because of delivered product. When I buy a ticket, my card is charged, and I immediately get a confirmation that I am guaranteed a seat on that flight. If something happens and I do not get a seat on the flight, I at minimum am sure to get a seat on a similar flight, often with financial compensation above and beyond that seat. Also, unlike most small retailers, the airlines have algorithms that continuously adjust the price of seats to maximize the total revenue on each flight. Therefore it is harder for airline to use the 'disgruntled employee' excuse.
People are going to buy computers to do stuff. Email, facebook, ms word, that is what the average users says they do on the computer. One big problem with netbooks was that people assumed that could MS Word, and when they found out they couldn't they returned the computer. This is a solution where OEMs can expose people to other OS while still allowing MS Office to run. Maybe some people realize that they don't need MS Office. Maybe they don't want to pay a monthly fee for Office and realize that Google Docs or OpenOffice is sitting right there fore free. Maybe the next computer they buy doesn't have MS WIndows.
This is scary enough that MS, allegedly, has in the past prevented OEM from installing two OS. The last thing MS wants a computer user to know is there is another OS. Look at the misinformation on the Mac, how expensive it is, when my last Macbook Air was $1000. Yes, more expensive that they mythicla $300 MS laptop that runs everything, but about what a good laptop costs. We can argue price, but MS is scared of users knowing there is choice.
We also see this in past EULA in which certain versions of MS Windows could not be the guest OS. This is likely the future of the PC. A reasonably functional and free client OS on top of which a virtualized guest OS can be run. This is basically what MS is doing now with the instant upgrade. Start with a functionality locked out, and buy a full OS after the fact. Like the Mainframe manufacturers used to do. You have all the hardware, but have to pay extra to use it.
I think the aluminum is just the cheap way to increase the fuel economuy. The basic problem with a truck is the aerodynamics and the engine. The aerodynamics are always going to suck, and there is little that can be done about that. The engine, OTOH, can be adjusted.
Right now most trucks are powered assuming that they are going to be carrying a significant load, and that consumers are going to be expect a good performance with that load. The result of this, and the reason many like trucks, is that when they are not loaded they are overpowered and therefore can achieve a great speed. That many people buy trucks for speed and not load is indicated by the number of automatics that are sold.
This need not be the case. We had an old Toyota pickup and it was a four cylinder 100 horse power r siries engine. When loaded it was slow, but like most people I did not drive it loaded all the time. But it was a working truck. We had a big chevy truck as well for work around the farm. Fords engines are not inefficient, at around 50 horsepower per cylinder. The point is that most people are driving around in a six cylinder truck wasting gas when what they need is 4 cylinder. It can be significant. In they city my six cylinder car get 16 MPG while my 4 cylinder car, just a fast, gets over 20.
You know, all this is true. Men in my extended community were some of the first of die of AIDS as I was entering my free sexual period. Yet I had no cell phone, would go off on my bike, be gone all day, and was unsupervised after school. Maybe it was luck. Maybe I wasn't dumb. Maybe I was because I was poor, as it was the mostly the richer kids I knew who did recreational drugs and still got through school. We had drug houses across from where I went to school, where drugs were plentiful and cheap, but it was clear that that was not the path to success. I am not a person who thinks the war on drugs is anything but a waste of money, but I also never saw them as a way to a better life. For kids I think we should focus on the mostly likely path to a caring and successful life, they will figure out the fun detours on their own.
As far as 'meagan law' danger, it is safer now than when I growing up. When I was a kid, at least 28 teenage boys were raped, tortured, and murdered over a three year period. When parents reported them missing, the police just assumed they ran away. The murders would have continued and probably never be solved if not one of the co-conspirators shooting the ringleader and then confessing. Not even then the police did not want to deal with it. In a few cities we still have a high rate of abduction and murders of children. Not the police force is more professional and will tend to take these cases seriously. If I had been born a few years earlier, I might have been one of the dead.
By the time I was a teenager in 80's, that is 13-19 years of age, the back by dark rule was being relaxed. I had homework to do so mostly I came home as school ended and did it and other things. I recall my older siblings doing the same, unless they had work, and spending endless hours on the phone talking to their friends. On non school nights and in the summer we would spend quite a bit of time out after dark.
Here is what I see vis a vis the new constant communication paradigm. I see a lack of discipline. I see kids at school who need in constant communication with their parents. I see adults at work who need in constants communication with their lovers, thier spouse their kids, and whoever else will make them feel valuable as a person.
This is a great change from the 80's when I talked to my parents maybe in the morning, definitely checked in by phone after school, than saw them whenever we both were home. I talked to my friends at school, where we made plans for whatever nefarious activities we might want. When I started college and later working, I certainly did not spend the whole day texting everyone. Honestly, at college I was normally around the people I wanted to be around, and a work I already generally knew what I needed to know for after work. I did not have to spend the day, as one ex-coworker of mine spend the day texting to try to come up with some activity for the evening.
What I see here is pretty typical teenage logic, which is developmental appropriate, but hardly a major finding. If the lawgivers do not let me do what I want, I will find some way to circumvent it, and if it is bad it is their fault for making the law. In this case, i can't go wherever and whenever I want, so I will instead play with social media, and if it causes problems it is not my fault.
Seriously though setting limits and fighting such logic is an important part of child rearing. There was a case in West Virginia where this girl was murdered by her two best friends, which was possible because she was allowed to sneak our of the house. There are cases of other children killing themselves over bullying because they cannot put down their phones and so are constantly receiving bullying texts. There is also cases where kids are getting really messed up sleep wise because they cannot put down their phones.
There is really nothing special about this, and there is really nothing new. We always need to learn to live with technology, and parents need to help children learn to live with it. In some ways this is like TV where a new generation of parents really did not know how to balance the TV with the development of the child. It is certainly not the parents fault that it was a better choice to have a kid come home and watch tv instead of running unsupervised outside.
I don't think this has to do with the implied quality of work. I think this has to do with relationships and the assumption of the power of youth. When a professor dresses up, that tends to mean that have achieved a level, the level is often a well funded lab or many graduate students, but from the point of view of the student such a person has been successful and needs the costume of success to relate to other successful people. If dressing up is a requirement, then the idea of success has gone away. Students will then prefer the person they can relate to, the person who dresses like them. Such a person is clearly more related to the culture because the 'low' dress is an authentic decision, not a desperate attempt to relate to the kids. I see this all the time in some people wearing jeans when the dress code does not really allow it. This has little to do with ability, and much to do with presentation. Even the hoodie wearing professor is about presentation,
As far as the more general hoodie wearing CEO, this is simply about the projection of youth and being successful, or trying to be successful, at a young age. This is the college drop out who has no clothes, has no interest in clothes or cars, and is putting his or her full life resources into the building of a firm. Investors are not going to be funding this persons lifestyle, only the growth of the startup. When a startup becomes successful, the hoodie becomes the costume because that was what got the person to the top. The presentation that the money is going to the firm, not the $10,000 Italian suit.
Much of the concern, for the average person, is that stupid thing you did in high school and as a freshman in college will still be there when you are looking for a job. In practical terms the picture of drucken sex at a party that were posted on myspace will be back in 2007 may cause some problems now that one is looking for VC funding or a well paying job 6 years later.
This internet thing is recent and the 'content lasts forever' is a problem of the present generation. Before the turn of the century the stupid shit we did in high school and college would go away unless it generated an official governement record, and someone was inclined to do a deep background check. Now many document every little thing that happens and posts it on services that depend on keeping those records for a long time. No forever, just long enough to be annoying when one is trying to make money or get married. Facebook, tumblr, whoever, will eventually begin to archive, or there will so much new content that old will be harder to find. Even the sex videos will become overwhelmed with the new content. Memory is not just existence, but
establishing a navigable path to the content. Such a path will still have costs, and if we are not famous that cost will less liley be borne by the random stanger
Let me give you a benign example. For years I had a press photon online as part of minor research project. It was posted in the mid 90's, at the beginning of this internet thing, and would be what would pop up if anyone was looking for me. After a time, 10-15 years, it simply disappeared. from a casual search. I am sure that if one dug it is somewhere online. I am sure if one dug it is a newspaper or a hard drive. But who is going to do so? Not me, not anyone I could imagine.
If we had reached a point where human rights were considered basic, where a person could succeed without other looking at how they lived, then the pardon might be meaningful. But the church still controls so much of what we can and can't do. People are judged how they relate to the random dictates of old white men like Pope Francis and Phil Robertson rather than what they contribute to society. Only when they contribute something undeniable unique is their eccentricity accepted.
It is like an old episode of the Simpson: Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set.. If only every person who the religious nuts found offensive could do something great so they are accepted.
If I may quote another show, Yes, Prime Minister, It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it: I have an independent mind; you are an eccentric; he is round the twist. We should consider the nutters that like to deny basic human rights 'around the twist' but instead we give them a pass while those that do an honest days work gets the shaft.
You know, I never have never known anyone talking about defiling jebus, or the pope, or lynching a white man in a mnemonic. The reality is that christian white men tended to define political correctness, and not are upset because others want to be respected as well. When someone wants to make an image of jebus out of poo, or want to have a holiday sale, all these people come out and complain, and expect to be listened to, and expect this to change. When we want to have a discussion about how me may be negatively impacted people who are not christian white males, then all of the sudden there is a problem with being politically correct.
Finally, it is clear that this just a kneejerk reaction from someone who afraid they are no longer to have the right to discriminate. There is a great deal of difference between a new immigrant, a voluntary immigrant, and a forced immigrant, views their life in the US.Just like there is a difference between the entitlement that a backwoods rednecks expects and the entitlement that person who lives a diverse city expects.
Theoretically no one with a well designed browser. When coding, one of the biggest hits is communication the human interface and file interface. This is basic in in computing. It is why the 6502 was fast even though it was slow, it was why the Mac. If you want a fast computer, keep the UI routines low level and the as much stuff as possible off the bus.
The second rule is that often only a very small percentage of the code must be optimized. The rest is not going to run that often, maybe only once.
So if the browser is built to run the things that need to run fast natively. and then take javscript or whatever to run combinations of those things, I don't see what speed disadvantages there are. It should be a matter of a browser implementation. If there are some common numeric tasks that are slow, then that needs to be native. Like matrix calculations for rotations.
In fact the states that eat money are spread across the nation. Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota, Idaho. The exact listing depends on how things are calculated.
So here is the problem with breaking California. The parts of california that generates a net tax are still going to do so. Those that don't are going to need higher federal subsidies to support the government. It is like there would probably be a tax saving if the Midwestern states where no one wanted to live would combine governments so we would not have to pay for governors and senators who mostly represent cows and brush.
MS has tried to license a mobile OS and has failed to generate a profit. There is no evidence that a Mobile OS can be licensed in the way a desktop OS can. There is no reason to think that a mobile device makers will accept the meager profits and threats and control that a laptop or desktop manufacturer does.
Blackberry was making money when everyone was paying it monthly fee. This covered the costs of the BBM infrastructure. These are other costs are evidently very high, as Blackberry is losing what is going to end up being billions. It is going to cost half a billion just to restructure.
Two years ago many were saying that RIM should develop BBM for iPhone and Android, With Ice Cream Sandwich Android was a player, and the demise of RIM was insured. The one way out was to transfer those subscribed for secured corporate communication to other phones. Android, in particular, would have provided the ability to customize to the point where a secure device would be possible.
Instead RIM decided to remain in the hardware bussiness, ignoring that it's revenue stream was secure communication, and now we have Blackberry.
Can you imagine where Blackberry would be today if it could offer secure communications.
I would like to see a citation that states a significant number of people in the developed countries are not well nourished. The food one normally eats is fortified and processed.
In any case, I think this may be missing the point. Even if one has deficiencies, the best way to supplement may not be vitamins but with food. What the report, and most reports I have read are saying, is that most of supplements either get excreted or build up. If excreted, they put additional burden on the liver. If they build up, they may cause other harm to the body. Non food supplements do not actually get usefully absorbed into the body. This is not new research. This has been known. Which is why supplement advertising tends to focus on 'bioavailability' and the fact that the supplement contains thousands of time the dialy requirement. However, just be a supplement has bio available ingredients does not mean that it actually gets absorbed, and just because there is a lot of it does not mean it is more likely to get absorbed. Sinking your body into a swimming pool does not mean you get more hydrated, it just means you drown.
This complicated absorption scenario goes beyond vitamins. For instance milk has been recommended as an important food product because it has a large amount of calcium. However, it has been suggested that high levels of protien can block calcuim abortion. So it could be that vegetables like collard greens and okra could be a better source of calcium, as more of it will get absorbed, and less will have to be excreted.
Honestly, about the only thing that supplements has been proven to cause is extremely expensive urine.
Movie plot terrorism. It seems to be what our national security is based. We saw this movie where this mac was hooked up to an alien networks and crashed the whole thing. So we can't let macs into the office.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the lack of professionalism in the IT sector, I worked in various professional enterprises. Some allow men to do whatever they want. Others have higher standards and require men to think. Say that men cannot think is silly. Men can think before they say or do stupid things. The trick is to fire the incompetent men who refuse to do so.
XBox is not a loser like surface, and trying to monetize Xbox is not dumb. MS responded to the issue.
The internship was stupid, but so are half the movies that get made.
The new Apple mail does suck. Where have you been? Every release Apple screws up one or two of the applications. Who is using google mail anyway? Google is the one company with a direct high speed link to the NSA, if a not NSA mining servers directly in their facility. The must have done something to rate the cheap gas.
One advantage that the external expansion model has over the everything-stuck-inside PC model is migration is easier. Not everything has to replaced at once. It can be upgraded over time. I appreciate that I can add features without opening the case. I also appreciate that the Powermac has always been one of the easiest machines to upgrade and repair.
The developed western world is not going to be able to compete with these draconian copyright laws. Places like China are soon going to be a major competitor. Having things copyrighted in perpetuity provides not benefits for a nation, only for a select few who think they are above the nation. And at some point the cost of enforcing the law on mickey mouse is going to be so great that it will fall, just like the current war on drugs.
My concern is the lack of whole system backup as part of the plan. This is clearly a MS Windows issue as MS does not seem to like to give consumer end users carte blanche to restore the system. However, as been mentioned, this is the easiest way to deal with some very horrible problems.
I would invest in something like Acronis and a terabyte hard drives. Backup the whole machine every few days. Incremental backup daily.
So the question is why send anyone off earth. It is risky, expensive, and provides no value. The answer is of course entertainment. A Space Shuttle used to cost around half a billion to launch. Harry Potter probably cost as much to make if distribution and publicity are added in. Everyone says how much it costs to go to space, but those costs are not uncommon in other areas.
The people in Mars One are not likely to survive to reach a standard life expectancy if they travel to mars. They may die on the trip. They are volunteers giving their lives. I expect some of them to make it to the hatch and refuse to enter, or even get fully strapped in and then demand to get out. I often say I would die for the opportunity to go to space, but I really don't know if I would have the courage to sit there on a million pounds of explosives and actually go through with it. I would hope the show producers would actually do some science so these people would not give their lives just for entertainment.
Here is the final note. If they Mars One team dies on launch, en route, or on the planet, there is a whole range of liability and monetary claim. For instance in the Colombia disaster there were apparently million dollar awards from the manufacture as well as lawsuits fired against the government. The compensation for private disasters such as this are going to be different and not government backed, which means that liability exposure might be much less. For instance, the family of a women killed during a stunt for a reality show on the Discovery channel is asked for a mere $75,000. In other words, it is probably cheaper to have someone die as part of a tv show than as part of a legitimate research mission.
That said, I think this may be a scam as well. They will have actually launch a test vehicle in the next year if they are going to have a human certified ship in four.
One issue pointed out in the article is that same machines were attacked repeatedly. A tamper evident security program would prevent that. This is often the case with computers. There is no way to determine if a box has been tampered with.
As far as treason is concerned, in the US that is a very narrow legal term defined by our constitution. That any high level government official would throw it around I think speaks to the lack of competency of that official. Treason is declaring war, giving aid and comfort or aligning with an enemy. Diplomatically, the US has few nation states that it claims as enemies. In fact we have a diplomatic term for them, 'rogue states', so we do not have to use the term enemy. In the current climate treason is a high bar, otherwise we would have some Generals who have been recently executed, for instance those that have somewhat decreased the ability of the navy in some parts of the world by selling secrets to foreign agents.
In the US the governement should not function under an excess of secrecy. People like Snowden are part of that. If he is convicted of anything, the next person who wants to report an abuse of power, for instance the FEMA concentration camps being built to imprison dissidents against the coming UN World Governemnt, will be too afraid to come forward. This is clearly not in the peoples interest.
We can idealize astronauts and space, but ultimately we are all just humans trying to make a living. Astronauts do this by leveraging the opportunities they were given by the taxpayer. Hard earned opportunities, but taxpayer funded opportunities nevertheless. To say that we are going to believe one person over another, or deny one person his livelihood just because we find it inconvenient, is really a limited view.
' If one is transparent, one must include total compensation.
The reality is that utilities have control systems that can be accessed from the outside by a well funded attacker, then that is a huge risk. Cyber attack can also be used for other nefarious purposes. For instance, if one wants to attack a location, and the location has a smart meter, then the smart meter can be used to track the traffic patterns, remotely, with no risk of discovery.
Many years ago there was a similar discussion of conventional versus biological or chemical weapons. The consensus was these types of weapons required a high level of skill and higher levels of risk that just blowing something up. I think the types of attacks we have seen of the past 15 years has substantiated this. We have seen very few successful biological or chemical attacks by 'terrorist' groups, but have seen even small governments manage. Does this mean we don't protect against these attacks. Sure we do. But it is probably more likely that someone gets a dirty bomb, or even a fusion device, to the top of the tallest building in a city than someone poisons the water supply, although both are probably highly unlikely.
So no, the rules for online are not to fullfill orders that have clearly incorrect prices. If I go into a big grocery store like Krogers, and some disgruntled employee has put a a 50 dollar bottle of wine on sale at $10, they are not going to sell it to me for $10 when it rings up for 50. There is a secondary check there for price, the human element. Likewise, if a computer glitch, maybe put in by a disgruntled employee, allows me to check out for half price, then this is an admitted grey area. My payment has been accepted.
I would say, however, that until a product is formally charged to a customers card, which often happens as it is shipped, and maybe even until it is delivered there the retailer has an opportunity to cancel the order. Possession is, of course, paramount. This is why I would say one the product is delivered the price must be honored. This is a grey area as well, and we have seen cases where retailers have demanded delivered products back, but this to me is clearly bad manners.
So why is Delta honoring the price? I think it is because of delivered product. When I buy a ticket, my card is charged, and I immediately get a confirmation that I am guaranteed a seat on that flight. If something happens and I do not get a seat on the flight, I at minimum am sure to get a seat on a similar flight, often with financial compensation above and beyond that seat. Also, unlike most small retailers, the airlines have algorithms that continuously adjust the price of seats to maximize the total revenue on each flight. Therefore it is harder for airline to use the 'disgruntled employee' excuse.
This is scary enough that MS, allegedly, has in the past prevented OEM from installing two OS. The last thing MS wants a computer user to know is there is another OS. Look at the misinformation on the Mac, how expensive it is, when my last Macbook Air was $1000. Yes, more expensive that they mythicla $300 MS laptop that runs everything, but about what a good laptop costs. We can argue price, but MS is scared of users knowing there is choice.
We also see this in past EULA in which certain versions of MS Windows could not be the guest OS. This is likely the future of the PC. A reasonably functional and free client OS on top of which a virtualized guest OS can be run. This is basically what MS is doing now with the instant upgrade. Start with a functionality locked out, and buy a full OS after the fact. Like the Mainframe manufacturers used to do. You have all the hardware, but have to pay extra to use it.
Right now most trucks are powered assuming that they are going to be carrying a significant load, and that consumers are going to be expect a good performance with that load. The result of this, and the reason many like trucks, is that when they are not loaded they are overpowered and therefore can achieve a great speed. That many people buy trucks for speed and not load is indicated by the number of automatics that are sold.
This need not be the case. We had an old Toyota pickup and it was a four cylinder 100 horse power r siries engine. When loaded it was slow, but like most people I did not drive it loaded all the time. But it was a working truck. We had a big chevy truck as well for work around the farm. Fords engines are not inefficient, at around 50 horsepower per cylinder. The point is that most people are driving around in a six cylinder truck wasting gas when what they need is 4 cylinder. It can be significant. In they city my six cylinder car get 16 MPG while my 4 cylinder car, just a fast, gets over 20.
As far as 'meagan law' danger, it is safer now than when I growing up. When I was a kid, at least 28 teenage boys were raped, tortured, and murdered over a three year period. When parents reported them missing, the police just assumed they ran away. The murders would have continued and probably never be solved if not one of the co-conspirators shooting the ringleader and then confessing. Not even then the police did not want to deal with it. In a few cities we still have a high rate of abduction and murders of children. Not the police force is more professional and will tend to take these cases seriously. If I had been born a few years earlier, I might have been one of the dead.
Here is what I see vis a vis the new constant communication paradigm. I see a lack of discipline. I see kids at school who need in constant communication with their parents. I see adults at work who need in constants communication with their lovers, thier spouse their kids, and whoever else will make them feel valuable as a person.
This is a great change from the 80's when I talked to my parents maybe in the morning, definitely checked in by phone after school, than saw them whenever we both were home. I talked to my friends at school, where we made plans for whatever nefarious activities we might want. When I started college and later working, I certainly did not spend the whole day texting everyone. Honestly, at college I was normally around the people I wanted to be around, and a work I already generally knew what I needed to know for after work. I did not have to spend the day, as one ex-coworker of mine spend the day texting to try to come up with some activity for the evening.
What I see here is pretty typical teenage logic, which is developmental appropriate, but hardly a major finding. If the lawgivers do not let me do what I want, I will find some way to circumvent it, and if it is bad it is their fault for making the law. In this case, i can't go wherever and whenever I want, so I will instead play with social media, and if it causes problems it is not my fault.
Seriously though setting limits and fighting such logic is an important part of child rearing. There was a case in West Virginia where this girl was murdered by her two best friends, which was possible because she was allowed to sneak our of the house. There are cases of other children killing themselves over bullying because they cannot put down their phones and so are constantly receiving bullying texts. There is also cases where kids are getting really messed up sleep wise because they cannot put down their phones.
There is really nothing special about this, and there is really nothing new. We always need to learn to live with technology, and parents need to help children learn to live with it. In some ways this is like TV where a new generation of parents really did not know how to balance the TV with the development of the child. It is certainly not the parents fault that it was a better choice to have a kid come home and watch tv instead of running unsupervised outside.
As far as the more general hoodie wearing CEO, this is simply about the projection of youth and being successful, or trying to be successful, at a young age. This is the college drop out who has no clothes, has no interest in clothes or cars, and is putting his or her full life resources into the building of a firm. Investors are not going to be funding this persons lifestyle, only the growth of the startup. When a startup becomes successful, the hoodie becomes the costume because that was what got the person to the top. The presentation that the money is going to the firm, not the $10,000 Italian suit.
This internet thing is recent and the 'content lasts forever' is a problem of the present generation. Before the turn of the century the stupid shit we did in high school and college would go away unless it generated an official governement record, and someone was inclined to do a deep background check. Now many document every little thing that happens and posts it on services that depend on keeping those records for a long time. No forever, just long enough to be annoying when one is trying to make money or get married. Facebook, tumblr, whoever, will eventually begin to archive, or there will so much new content that old will be harder to find. Even the sex videos will become overwhelmed with the new content. Memory is not just existence, but
establishing a navigable path to the content. Such a path will still have costs, and if we are not famous that cost will less liley be borne by the random stanger
Let me give you a benign example. For years I had a press photon online as part of minor research project. It was posted in the mid 90's, at the beginning of this internet thing, and would be what would pop up if anyone was looking for me. After a time, 10-15 years, it simply disappeared. from a casual search. I am sure that if one dug it is somewhere online. I am sure if one dug it is a newspaper or a hard drive. But who is going to do so? Not me, not anyone I could imagine.
and no way to turn it off.
Mobile sites just make too many assumptions, with no way to configure. Mostly those assumptions have to with advertisements.
It is like an old episode of the Simpson: Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set.. If only every person who the religious nuts found offensive could do something great so they are accepted.
If I may quote another show, Yes, Prime Minister, It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it: I have an independent mind; you are an eccentric; he is round the twist. We should consider the nutters that like to deny basic human rights 'around the twist' but instead we give them a pass while those that do an honest days work gets the shaft.
Finally, it is clear that this just a kneejerk reaction from someone who afraid they are no longer to have the right to discriminate. There is a great deal of difference between a new immigrant, a voluntary immigrant, and a forced immigrant, views their life in the US.Just like there is a difference between the entitlement that a backwoods rednecks expects and the entitlement that person who lives a diverse city expects.
The second rule is that often only a very small percentage of the code must be optimized. The rest is not going to run that often, maybe only once.
So if the browser is built to run the things that need to run fast natively. and then take javscript or whatever to run combinations of those things, I don't see what speed disadvantages there are. It should be a matter of a browser implementation. If there are some common numeric tasks that are slow, then that needs to be native. Like matrix calculations for rotations.
So here is the problem with breaking California. The parts of california that generates a net tax are still going to do so. Those that don't are going to need higher federal subsidies to support the government. It is like there would probably be a tax saving if the Midwestern states where no one wanted to live would combine governments so we would not have to pay for governors and senators who mostly represent cows and brush.
Blackberry was making money when everyone was paying it monthly fee. This covered the costs of the BBM infrastructure. These are other costs are evidently very high, as Blackberry is losing what is going to end up being billions. It is going to cost half a billion just to restructure.
Two years ago many were saying that RIM should develop BBM for iPhone and Android, With Ice Cream Sandwich Android was a player, and the demise of RIM was insured. The one way out was to transfer those subscribed for secured corporate communication to other phones. Android, in particular, would have provided the ability to customize to the point where a secure device would be possible.
Instead RIM decided to remain in the hardware bussiness, ignoring that it's revenue stream was secure communication, and now we have Blackberry.
Can you imagine where Blackberry would be today if it could offer secure communications.
In any case, I think this may be missing the point. Even if one has deficiencies, the best way to supplement may not be vitamins but with food. What the report, and most reports I have read are saying, is that most of supplements either get excreted or build up. If excreted, they put additional burden on the liver. If they build up, they may cause other harm to the body. Non food supplements do not actually get usefully absorbed into the body. This is not new research. This has been known. Which is why supplement advertising tends to focus on 'bioavailability' and the fact that the supplement contains thousands of time the dialy requirement. However, just be a supplement has bio available ingredients does not mean that it actually gets absorbed, and just because there is a lot of it does not mean it is more likely to get absorbed. Sinking your body into a swimming pool does not mean you get more hydrated, it just means you drown.
This complicated absorption scenario goes beyond vitamins. For instance milk has been recommended as an important food product because it has a large amount of calcium. However, it has been suggested that high levels of protien can block calcuim abortion. So it could be that vegetables like collard greens and okra could be a better source of calcium, as more of it will get absorbed, and less will have to be excreted.
Honestly, about the only thing that supplements has been proven to cause is extremely expensive urine.
Movie plot terrorism. It seems to be what our national security is based. We saw this movie where this mac was hooked up to an alien networks and crashed the whole thing. So we can't let macs into the office.