I have to admit a little bit of schadenfreude at watching Apple gradually lose their reputation for having secure devices. If they didn't have such an arrogant and offensive attitude about the whole thing, it would be easier to sympathize.
why? It would be better if this money was used by the bank to loan it to start a new business, maybe some form of VC, giving money to government is always the wrong way to go.
No, it would be foolish to give banks a powerful motivation to never reconnect with the account holders. They need to be free to serve their customers' best interests without a bunch of distracting $100K carrots dangling in front of their noses.
"See, Mr. Auditor, I sent a letter to the account holder. How was I to know that it was sent to the wrong address?" (Gets large bonus later.)
You mean the private business that safeguarded it for all that time?
Ordinarily I would take the side of the private sector against government, but in this case you really don't want to give the entity holding the money a strong motivation to not reconnect with the account-holder. The bank needs to be free to work in the best interests of their customers. If they were claiming $100K accounts left and right you know their corporate strategies would be tweaked to optimize that income stream.
I don't trust the government very much either. The MAX_WAIT_TIME should be very, very long.
Maybe Gates deserves this in a (pop culture) karmic sense, but taken by themselves, these criticisms of his philanthropy are just about as absurd as Microsof't FUD about Linux.
Not an accurate comparison. If there's a signed contract, there's a basis for a lawsuit. Also, I think you misunderstand what the word "sarcasm" means. And use of the apostrophe.
ARM tablets, sure. But the forthcoming x86 Windows 8 tablets are going to be ~$900 and up. They're really ultrabooks in a different form factor, so the pricing won't be that unusual.
(Cool, thanks for the link. Somebody mod parent up.) Looks like viki.com is focused on non-English language films, which is probably how they stay under the radar of the MPAA.
It would be a lot cheaper for Netflix to capture a snapshot of a wiki-ized CC movie track and pay an intern to scan through it for vandalism than to pay somebody to actually type it all in along with time synchronization info. (And as the other jokester pointed out, it probably wouldn't offend any blind people.)
There are a lot of people who would participate in typing up the CC track for movies, especially if it was allowed to be copied around for noncommercial use. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that the MPAA would allow it, for the same reason they don't want you to rip your own DVD for backup purposes -- their policies are directed by lawyers whose priorities rarely overlap with what's good for consumers. If they could sue the IMDB project, they probably would.
Can you enter into a contract just by buying something? Isn't it true that EULAs have never really been tested in court? (If you're right, then Apple/Psystar is an example, maybe I'll have to read more about this.) Can I sell you a book with an attached EULA that says you may only read it in a blue rocking chair, and if you violate that you have to give the book back with no refund, and you agree to the contract merely by purchasing the book? Virtual property is problematic in many ways.
It blows my mind that Google can use a fairly complete Java clone over Oracles objections and pay nothing, while Apple sues people's socks off for making tablets shaped like rounded rectangles, and adding bounce to their scrollable views. I'm not a fan of software patents, so not saying I'm unhappy with the result. Just weirded out at the cluelessness of the legal system.
They could have the user do something like shake their head to prove that it's a 3D shape. And then somebody could write a tablet app that takes a flat photo and wraps it around a 3D, animatable head model. This could pretty much be a never-ending war of escalating sophistication.
As long as people know it's basically a toy and a way to keep honest people out, it will be OK.
I take for granted that Google is in bed with the three letter agencies and has been for a long time. I consider it reasonable to assume that government agencies have multiple hooks into the internet both at backbone locations (unencrypted traffic) as well as nodes inside key services like Gmail and Skype so they don't miss out on any of that juicy stuff either.
That irritates me because it probably should be considered unconstitutional, but it would probably take a huge whistleblowing movement to set right, and somebody would probably go to jail (or worse) along the way....and the powers that be would immediately set something else up, like Whack-a-Mole.
I agree re: the slippery slope. The Taliban is an interesting case. It's true that they have been allied with al-Qaeda at various times; but to the extent that we find factions of the Taliban to be fighting a defensive war for parts of Afghanistan, it isn't completely accurate to classify them as terrorists. At some point it seems hopeful that we could determine that al-Qaeda has been sufficiently exterminated along with many of their Taliban allies, that Afghanistan is engaged in what amounts to a civil war, and try to back out of that whole mess. There will be more international terrorists to kill, but it's not reasonable to suppose that everybody wearing a turban and holding a rifle in Afghanistan is one of them (much less a walkie-talkie -- I recall that the rules of engagement allow our snipers to kill walkie-talkie holders on sight in many areas, no guns required).
There's no legal guarantee of free speech in this context. The (metaphorical) microphone belongs to Google, since they are hosting everything and letting people upload their stuff at no cost. As long as they can make money off of what people say into their microphone, they'll let them keep talking. And if Google decides they occasionally want to grab their microphone back and make somebody stop talking into it, that's their right. People are free to complain and criticize such treatment, but that doesn't affect Google's right to do what they want with their microphone (metaphor for website).
Ironically, it could arguably be a violation of freedom if Google didn't have the right to censor their own website.
Note that Google didn't claim that the videos were terrorist, but rather that they "promoted terrorism". Most people would consider a video that supported the militant operations of al-Qaeda to have "promoted terrorism".
On the other hand, a video that urged extending legal protections to al-Qaeda detainees, such as those in Gitmo, might be widely disagreed with in some circles, but would not be censored by Google for this reason, because it's not promoting terrorism proper. Make sense?
tl;dr -- It's fun to rant, but sometimes this stuff actually makes decent sense when you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it.
Guys, ignore this comment. Riceballsan is a known spambot, and alternate handles are:$althandle1,$althandle2,and $althandle3.
Shopping for smelly melons? Look no more.
Economy be damned. We know how to fix it, we just choose to prioritize other things like tolerance for huge wealth inequality, low taxes, and lack of regulation.
That's a fair point. I can understand why Microsoft is deprecating processors without the NX bit, but it seems like they will annoy a lot of people who may not see the logic of blaming it on the malware authors.
Windows 7 was a small improvement over Vista in speed and efficiency. Windows 8 is supposed to be an even bigger jump "backwards", and will run on less capable machines, including many users running Atom and ARM CPUs, who will probably benefit from removal of Aero. For desktop machines plugged into the wall it's all kind of "meh", but Microsoft isn't spending its billions of $$$'s on the desktop -- it's all about mobile. Or something.
I think those billions in potential ad revenue are currently hidden in the same account with the unrealized potential profits of the *AA recording companies.
Slashdot Mirror
He proved there could be other malware apps like his successfully submitted and now lurking on the official App Store. So what was your point again?
I have to admit a little bit of schadenfreude at watching Apple gradually lose their reputation for having secure devices. If they didn't have such an arrogant and offensive attitude about the whole thing, it would be easier to sympathize.
why? It would be better if this money was used by the bank to loan it to start a new business, maybe some form of VC, giving money to government is always the wrong way to go.
No, it would be foolish to give banks a powerful motivation to never reconnect with the account holders. They need to be free to serve their customers' best interests without a bunch of distracting $100K carrots dangling in front of their noses.
"See, Mr. Auditor, I sent a letter to the account holder. How was I to know that it was sent to the wrong address?" (Gets large bonus later.)
You mean the private business that safeguarded it for all that time?
Ordinarily I would take the side of the private sector against government, but in this case you really don't want to give the entity holding the money a strong motivation to not reconnect with the account-holder. The bank needs to be free to work in the best interests of their customers. If they were claiming $100K accounts left and right you know their corporate strategies would be tweaked to optimize that income stream.
I don't trust the government very much either. The MAX_WAIT_TIME should be very, very long.
Maybe Gates deserves this in a (pop culture) karmic sense, but taken by themselves, these criticisms of his philanthropy are just about as absurd as Microsof't FUD about Linux.
Not an accurate comparison. If there's a signed contract, there's a basis for a lawsuit. Also, I think you misunderstand what the word "sarcasm" means. And use of the apostrophe.
ARM tablets, sure. But the forthcoming x86 Windows 8 tablets are going to be ~$900 and up. They're really ultrabooks in a different form factor, so the pricing won't be that unusual.
(Cool, thanks for the link. Somebody mod parent up.) Looks like viki.com is focused on non-English language films, which is probably how they stay under the radar of the MPAA.
It would be a lot cheaper for Netflix to capture a snapshot of a wiki-ized CC movie track and pay an intern to scan through it for vandalism than to pay somebody to actually type it all in along with time synchronization info. (And as the other jokester pointed out, it probably wouldn't offend any blind people.)
There are a lot of people who would participate in typing up the CC track for movies, especially if it was allowed to be copied around for noncommercial use. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that the MPAA would allow it, for the same reason they don't want you to rip your own DVD for backup purposes -- their policies are directed by lawyers whose priorities rarely overlap with what's good for consumers. If they could sue the IMDB project, they probably would.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google's Dalvik isn't positioned as being a GPL compliant code base.
So... if you treat your (non-lethal) basal cell carcinoma with a radioactive patch, can you accidentally give yourself (highly lethal) melanoma?
Can you enter into a contract just by buying something? Isn't it true that EULAs have never really been tested in court? (If you're right, then Apple/Psystar is an example, maybe I'll have to read more about this.) Can I sell you a book with an attached EULA that says you may only read it in a blue rocking chair, and if you violate that you have to give the book back with no refund, and you agree to the contract merely by purchasing the book? Virtual property is problematic in many ways.
fanboyism
We certainly wouldn't want any of that.
It blows my mind that Google can use a fairly complete Java clone over Oracles objections and pay nothing, while Apple sues people's socks off for making tablets shaped like rounded rectangles, and adding bounce to their scrollable views. I'm not a fan of software patents, so not saying I'm unhappy with the result. Just weirded out at the cluelessness of the legal system.
They could have the user do something like shake their head to prove that it's a 3D shape. And then somebody could write a tablet app that takes a flat photo and wraps it around a 3D, animatable head model. This could pretty much be a never-ending war of escalating sophistication.
As long as people know it's basically a toy and a way to keep honest people out, it will be OK.
I take for granted that Google is in bed with the three letter agencies and has been for a long time. I consider it reasonable to assume that government agencies have multiple hooks into the internet both at backbone locations (unencrypted traffic) as well as nodes inside key services like Gmail and Skype so they don't miss out on any of that juicy stuff either.
That irritates me because it probably should be considered unconstitutional, but it would probably take a huge whistleblowing movement to set right, and somebody would probably go to jail (or worse) along the way. ...and the powers that be would immediately set something else up, like Whack-a-Mole.
I agree re: the slippery slope. The Taliban is an interesting case. It's true that they have been allied with al-Qaeda at various times; but to the extent that we find factions of the Taliban to be fighting a defensive war for parts of Afghanistan, it isn't completely accurate to classify them as terrorists. At some point it seems hopeful that we could determine that al-Qaeda has been sufficiently exterminated along with many of their Taliban allies, that Afghanistan is engaged in what amounts to a civil war, and try to back out of that whole mess. There will be more international terrorists to kill, but it's not reasonable to suppose that everybody wearing a turban and holding a rifle in Afghanistan is one of them (much less a walkie-talkie -- I recall that the rules of engagement allow our snipers to kill walkie-talkie holders on sight in many areas, no guns required).
There's no legal guarantee of free speech in this context. The (metaphorical) microphone belongs to Google, since they are hosting everything and letting people upload their stuff at no cost. As long as they can make money off of what people say into their microphone, they'll let them keep talking. And if Google decides they occasionally want to grab their microphone back and make somebody stop talking into it, that's their right. People are free to complain and criticize such treatment, but that doesn't affect Google's right to do what they want with their microphone (metaphor for website).
Ironically, it could arguably be a violation of freedom if Google didn't have the right to censor their own website.
Note that Google didn't claim that the videos were terrorist, but rather that they "promoted terrorism". Most people would consider a video that supported the militant operations of al-Qaeda to have "promoted terrorism".
On the other hand, a video that urged extending legal protections to al-Qaeda detainees, such as those in Gitmo, might be widely disagreed with in some circles, but would not be censored by Google for this reason, because it's not promoting terrorism proper. Make sense?
tl;dr -- It's fun to rant, but sometimes this stuff actually makes decent sense when you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it.
Guys, ignore this comment. Riceballsan is a known spambot, and alternate handles are:$althandle1,$althandle2,and $althandle3.
Shopping for smelly melons? Look no more.
Economy be damned. We know how to fix it, we just choose to prioritize other things like tolerance for huge wealth inequality, low taxes, and lack of regulation.
Grecian attitude much?
That's a fair point. I can understand why Microsoft is deprecating processors without the NX bit, but it seems like they will annoy a lot of people who may not see the logic of blaming it on the malware authors.
Windows 7 was a small improvement over Vista in speed and efficiency. Windows 8 is supposed to be an even bigger jump "backwards", and will run on less capable machines, including many users running Atom and ARM CPUs, who will probably benefit from removal of Aero. For desktop machines plugged into the wall it's all kind of "meh", but Microsoft isn't spending its billions of $$$'s on the desktop -- it's all about mobile. Or something.
I think those billions in potential ad revenue are currently hidden in the same account with the unrealized potential profits of the *AA recording companies.