Your math is a wee bit iffy just because you're taking the total number of channels but divide by the amount of hours X show is on - you'd have to limit it to the number of channels that also actually broadcast show X and assume that's your only interest. Let's say that's two channels (optimistic when most premium shows are on exactly 1 channel, not counting re-broadcasts under affiliates, etc.) $60 / (80 * 24) * 4 = $0.125 becomes $60 / (2 * 24) * 4 = $5 All of a sudden, streaming at 4 * $0.99 = $3.96 is not all that bad.
Of course, you're not likely to watch just one show. But the earlier math would definitely not work out; The bork is in practicality.
Basically, you cannot record all 80 channels. Let's assume you pick yourself up a DVR that can actually save multiple channels concurrently. I've enjoyed a Genie before, but since there's no direct cost associated with it that I've ever seen (you 'lease' it), let's go with the Moxi.. it can record 3 channels at the same time. It will also set you back $800. (.. though that's listed on one page, while the FAQ says they no longer actually sell them and you have to get them as part of a triple play offering from a cable provider. Whatever, let's roll with this anyway. )
So, you want to record 80 channels, let's be kind and assume you already have DirecTV with a Genie, so just 75. 75 / 3 = 25 of the Moxis. 25 * $800 = $20,000 up front cost.
Note that this is just the recorders. DirecTV claims about 200 hours of HD content for the Genie (divided by 5 gives 40 hours for each channel), Moxi claims (or claimed) 75 hours of HD content for their HD thing (divided by 3 gives about 25 hours for each channel). So if you ever wanted to bother with storing more than a day / 2 days' worth, you'd also have to invest in additional harddisks. But since we're compariing to streaming, let's ignore that and just stick to the $20,000 up front cost.
($20,000 + $60) / (80 * 24) * 4 = $41.80. Yow. Maybe you'll come out ahead after a year, though? $20,000 + (12m * $60) = $20,720 80c * 24h * 365d = 700,800h 12m * 4h/m = 48h $20,720 / 700,800h * 48h = $1.42 Of course series tend to run in seasons that only last half a year at best and more likely somewhere around 16 episodes per season, so you'd be closer to paying about $0.47/episode. Congratulations, it's finally cheaper by that math, even if there's two shows you want to watch, but you did just spend more than $20,000 on recording a bunch of stuff you'll never watch, or even want to watch;)
( I, too, may have borked some math here! )
Personally, I don't see how people think $0.99/TV episode is 'outrageous'. As I said, a season for a year may be 16 episodes, so let's say $16. If you can't scrounge up $16 in a year to watch something that you really enjoy (why else spend the time on it?), then you probably have more worrying financial issues. That's not to say that I don't think it'd be nice if it were only $0.125/episode - but then consider you just paid the price of a cheap hamburger or coffee, something most people don't even think twice about, on 16 hours of entertainment that perhaps will stick with you for years to come.. whereas the hamburger and coffee have done very little for you and ultimately end up down the sewer.
That would be functionally the same thing as I (and others) mentioned further up - except that we proposed sending the encrypted image/video and deleting that from the server.
Both have their pros/cons for the server/user, but sending the image/video seems the better option - less storage space required on the server, user gets the picture/video to pop up sooner (downloaded in the background, only have to wait for the key download and the decryption (fast even on budget smartphones)), and without the data on the servers there isn't even a brute force decryption possibility.
That just takes me to the home page. Perhaps because Netflix detects I'm in.nl, realizes that it's not part of their offer in.nl, and so just dumps me to the main page.
The other two work fine, but I think you took 'most popular' a bit too literal, and perhaps a bit too narrow.
Since Netflix doesn't seem to actually allow you to see their full library unless you log in (I can see a small selection - this alone is a good reason to give Netflix a thumbs down over torrents), perhaps we could give the 'Top 10 this week' from torrentfreak a try through http://www.flicksery.com/ ? http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-131014/ 1-10. no.
Or, if you want to stay on the legal avenue, the top 10 of 2012 according to imdb, rather than just the #1 slot? http://www.imdb.com/year/2012/ 1. Avengers - yes 2. Pitch Perfect - no 3. The Hunger Games - yes 4. The Dark Knight Rises - no 5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - no 6. Argo - no 7. Django Unchained - no 8. The Place Beyond the Pines - no 9. Spring Breakers - no 10. The Motel Life - no
2013, according to box office*, then? ( * because new releases are heavily skewed toward high scores on imdb, and via box office we get to the same #1 for 2013 so far, Iron Man 3 ) http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=2013,2013 1. Iron Man 3 - no? Weird - though after some googling, perhaps it's only available from Netflix in DVD form, rather than streaming - canistream.it seems to suggests so as well? Perhaps you could clarify that one. 2-10. - no
Don't get me wrong, Netflix is a wonderful service and people who just want to watch whatever movies or TV shows will find more material there than they can watch in a year. But it's not all going to be material they want to watch, the material they want to watch may not be on there, and overall it's just a poor comparison - gets even worse when you're in.nl;)
Everything is perfectly fine if they send the picture encrypted, and keep both hackers and insiders away from all stored pictures
The problem with that is that both the encrypted data and the key would reside with them. To clarify, let's say a hacker gets access to an e-mail-and-password list, but it's all weak MD5 hashes - running that across a rainbow table and further dictionary attacking will easily yield the passwords.
So what any good site would do is add a salt. Unless it's a salt that everybody in the world seems to use, that means the list has become largely useless. Unless, of course, the hacker in question also gets access to the module that does the encryption and finds the salt right there. Now all they have to do is drop that salt into the equation on their end.
Of course that's often a rather more difficult step, perhaps requiring multiple attack vectors to achieve, but it remains possible.
By moving the data completely out of their control, however, any attack is fruitless for existing data.
There is no reasonable requirement to keep law enforcement from executing search warrants
Well nobody is keeping law enforcement from executing the warrant - they'd just get a "sorry, but we don't have that data" as a reply.
If you're saying that this in itself is unreasonable, then I'd have to ask what would be reasonable? An ISP deleting logs after 4 weeks could be construed as unreasonable if statistics were to show that law enforcement has greater success finding perps who use an ISP that keeps logs for 6 weeks due to the data required being more than 4 weeks old. But then it's equally reasonable to argue that 8 weeks would be even better. Why not a year, or indefinitely?
I, for one, wouldn't be able to tell off hand where things stray from reasonable into unreasonable territory when it comes to privacy vs crime-fighting - let alone with hackers and organizations demanding (and getting) access for reasons other than crime-fighting complicating things.
Now if only they could stop the app from messing up its UI or crashing the base camera module on Android, I'm sure more people would care about SnapChat to begin with.
( You mis-replied in the thread - just a heads-up. )
Physical objects have an inherent value. Completly different.
True, though sometimes the deemed value is disproportionate to that inherent value.
A first run first issue of Superman has an inherent value of a few pennies if you only consider the paper for recycling purposes. It'll be a few dollars if you take its original value and adjust for inflation, etc. Yet if sold at police auction, you can bet that they'll want the $100,000 (or whatever it's at) for it.
Sure, a virtual currency representation will likely not be a collector's item, a piece of art, or appreciate in value based on sentiment in general. But there's no technical reason they can't sell it for whatever the market deems it to be worth.
As far as any legitimacy goes.. the U.S. government has already considered it 'legitimate', like most other goods (drugs being a particular exemption), and as soon as you trade it in for Dollars, will happily accept it being factored into your tax filings. In fact, they insist.
That's not the same as declaring it a currency that can be taxed directly, as Germany appears to have done, though.
I can take a brand new USA $100 bill and spend it on goods and services anywhere on the goddamn planet.
Good luck with that anywhere outside of the U.S., close to the border in Canada, slightly further out into Mexico, and places like South Korea and the Philippines where the U.S. has long held a military or political presence that makes it attractive for vendors there to accept U.S. Dollars.
Go to a Belgian grocery store, see how far you get with it. In the odd chance that they'll accept it, expect it to end up taking you only as far as $90, because they would promptly proceed to... convert it to Euros. And have to incur the exchange fee. And charge you a little extra still because now the manager has to make a trip to the exchange bureau.
As for places that accept Bitcoin.. not authoritative (some sites I saw no mention of Bitcoin, but then most of them only offer it on checkout - after filling in all your details, just like most retailers): https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/
And, of course, you can buy pretty much any Amazon.com item through a number of services, including those who sell gift cards (which includes an even longer list of retailers, restaurants, etc.)
The fact that they most likely convert it into U.S. Dollars is not an argument against Bitcoin any more than the fact that most of the funds a customer sends to Amazon for electronics items gets very quickly converted into Chinese Yuan is an argument against U.S. Dollars.
Funny.. the 1998 one wastes even more space left and right, yet is still easier to read:)
I suspect I need to hunt down that 'compact' option to eliminate some the whitespace. Make the central column resizable, apply CSS before the page has finished loading (now I see images before they disappear in 'headlines' view), check people's concerns about comments, and I think the redesign is actually not all that bad. I suspect it's mostly geared toward being more tablet-friendly, though.. haven't tried it on that yet.
They don't? That's sad - I think I got those kinds of subjects starting at what would be the 5th grade. Not at a particular deep level, of course, but that built up over years.
Aren't you told to write what's seen on the board? I think that's the author giving you explicit permission to copy it.
Counter to your examples, try copying your fellow student's test, paper, etc.
Similarly, schoolbook authors (well, publishers), know and accept that their books will be copied to an extent (excerpts photocopied, parts recited, etc.) but would still frown on you running the whole thing through OCR and dropping the PDF onto the world.
While I think 'piracy education' is a waste of time if it's just the 'piracy is bad, mkay' approach - I think it's a perfectly good topic in education if discussing pros and cons and how that may apply to the students themselves. Let them decide for themselves whether they're pro/con copyright/distribution rights/piracy, and let them explain why. Same as with discussion of laws, religion, etc. in sociology(?) class.
It's a small company, about 700 people who have machines (and only a subset of which still ran XP). We do image them with our own set up of Win8, automated.
The reason we wanted a Win7 install as part of the deal is because we do already have Win7 images, but we want to be sure that Win7 is actually going to run on those machines and get the support we're accustomed to.
Again, turned out that economically Win8 made more sense in the long run, and the perceived problem with employees getting confused was way overblown.
I can well understand a company of 10,000 having more reservations. On the other hand, if you have a blessed copy of Win7, why don't you have a blessed copy of Win8 (yet)? What is actually holding things back?
We have a few - that's why we're keeping a machine around.
Yes, our staff do 'grunt work', like 95% of people using computers to begin with - whether that's somebody typing up a document in Word, or somebody elegantly pushing function key combinations to keep an critical industrial process going (though I'm sure it pleases you to know that that's on a unix box), or somebody doing CAD work on a custom rig for transporting whatever it is the energy industry's come up with as the next best thing this time - it's all 'grunt work'.
Nice for us, indeed - that's why the very title is "Our experience with", and not "Everybody's experience with". Silly AC.
What I meant was - I rarely saw the Star Trek phaser used in a 'disintegrate' setting when used on living things, even though it would have been rather useful (no body to discover, e.g.)
The zat was of course used pretty much every other episode. Which is a shame - I'm partial to the staff weapon;)
We're finally getting around to having a bunch of XP boxes replaced with new ones, simply because they're old and a hardware failure in one of them triggered the decision to do pretty much all.
We looked at getting Win7 machines - or at least getting Win7 installed onto the machines as part of an agreement - but in the end, it just wasn't worth it. More than half our staff already has Win8 at home and are perfectly comfortable with it, and once you get past the start screen, Win8 is, for our purposes, practically the same as Win7. I do say 'once you get past the start screen', but we're actually seeing uptake in using it. We tried a few 3rd party start menu offerings (most of them are crap, from not letting you modify it through not even listing all of the installed software that you would see listed if it were a proper start menu), eventually settling on one.. only to realize that most of the staff felt perfectly comfortable with either A. going to the pinned items on the task bar, or B. typing the name of the program from the start screen (we haven't bothered with tiles for most things, and removed almost all of the defaults... if they want to know the weather, they can listen to the forecast every half an hour on the radio, or hunt down the app in 'all apps').
While the future direction of Win8 may be something to worry about (more and more store-centric, marginalizing the desktop, etc.), the future of Win7 isn't all roses either. Given that Win8 at least will enjoy support far past Win7, well, the choice was a lot easier than we anticipated.
Our biggest struggle has actually been with outdated software. 16bit software just won't run on Win8 (64bit - can be enabled on 32bit, but that's just another wall waiting to be hit), and while our admin would be comfortable with installing a VM to keep these going, we're just biting the bullet and converting legacy files to formats used by more modern software, finding alternatives for those applications that we do still actively use, and keeping two machines around for everything else; one running with a VNC, and the other in storage 'just in case'.
The normal maximum setting on a hand phaser would vaporize a humanoid lifeform or a Human-size android with a single hit. (TOS: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"; TNG: "The Vengeance Factor"; Star Trek: First Contact) This was also called disintegration. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II")
- memory-alpha.org
Though I suspect the Star Trek phaser suffered from the same problems as the StarGate zat'n'ktel, in that the effect would be a wee bit too convenient for plot reasons - as I've rarely seen them use it (even when they definitely had little regard for the wellbeing of whatever they pointed them at) in this manner.
The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks
What do you mean.. 'allow'?
While I'm unfamiliar with CDMA solutions, you can pick up GSM modules and radio away all day and night long within the limits of the module. That's the only bit they care about. There's hundreds of GSM projects for PIC, Arduino, RPi, etc. out there already, not to mention a bunch of off-the-shelf things like security systems (motion detection) that aren't strictly speaking 'phones' either and no carrier has to approve in advance.
They'll probably cut you off if you decide to make a script that rings random phone numbers and hangs up after 0.5s so that nobody has time to answer it but random people reach for their phones to try anyway. But that's unrelated to the device.
Although they're both abuse, I'm willing to concede to the idea that there's different vectors of abuse.
In the case of somebody feeling that something didn't smell right and acting on that, then later having their ass covered by a rule/regulation/law, that's one vector of abuse.
If then other people go and act based on not even "didn't smell right" or "gut feeling" but because they're just having a bad day, aren't a fan of people with red hair, or just literally didn't like the way a person smelled (a co-commenter thought I meant it literally in the first place, so why not), then *later* claim that things didn't smell right (as opposed to their actual reason).. that's another vector of abuse.. and a worse one, in my opinion.
It's basically like the UK situation with that guy they held. They can basically hold anybody and after the fact claim they found damaging material on them that would endanger lives if released - and no, they can't tell you what information that is, as that would endanger the lives if released. That's abuse of a much higher form.
1) A long time ago, they did. 2) A slightly longer time ago, they did.
The main problem is that the products do take so long to finally be delivered that difficulty has increased over time enough that they may never break even.
And yes, many people have asked that same question. Most of the answers are bullshit, and the more plausible ones are still pretty iffy.
Me, I think they probably do mine with them (some even admit to it) before delivering to customers, and either which way just think there's more profit in selling the miners than there is in mining, long-term. As it is, a lot of people recommend buying 'shares' in the companies that make them rather than buying their product.
You seem generally hostile toward Bitcoin, which I can certainly understand. But in terms of 'doing what it says on the tin', Bitcoin does most of these things. The problem is that there's a whole lot of mislabeled tins; e.g. 'anonymous' only applies if you treat it with the same glove as you would TrueCrypt's plausibly deniability. If you leave breadcrumbs, you're undermining the foundation. It's great for micropayments, but only if you don't mind waiting a very long time for confirmation. etc.
I suppose that could technically be solved through throw-away public key cryptography - just to identify one AC from another; it wouldn't eliminate the possibility that AC1 and AC2 are the same person, but it would eliminate the possibility that AC2 writes something and manages to sign it with AC1's key, unless AC2 has that key.. but then people can share regular accounts just as well (what are the odds slashdot accounts are on bugmenot?)
The law actually says, explicitly, that the powers of border detention can be exercised without meeting any standard of suspicion, 'reasonable' or otherwise. If that wasn't designed to be abused, I'm not sure what would qualify, it overtly allows up to 9 hours detention on any grounds whatsoever, or none. ('section 40(1)(b)' defines a 'terrorist')
Although it may very well have been designed to be abused, there's also a slightly more benign (insofar as evils being on a grade) explanation; covering asses.
Let's say all the suspicion is "didn't smell right" - not a particularly reasonable suspicion. Now say it turns out the person they detained had nefarious plans. They wouldn't want to start out any case by saying they didn't have reasonable suspicion with a law saying that they must have one. At best it damages their case, at worst it undermines it entirely. Politicians drawing up the laws similarly don't want to be responsible for having to let people go just because "didn't smell right" was not acceptable. It leads to abuse, and that could easily have been foreseen, but that in itself may not have been the driving force.
If you google "Block erupter", I'm sure you'll find places selling them. Stick to reputable bitcointalk sellers if you know what's good for you.
Mind you, I have no idea why you would want one. Unless your electricy (and time spent in maintenance, etc.) comes free - they're certainly not financially profitable, and even the geek factor (over mining with your GPU, say) is pretty low.
I read that, but none of that seemed like particularly good arguments. If anything, most people prefer apples over oranges anyway.
Just to address what they're saying.
WebP wouldn't be backported - great, but neither will APNG. If anything, if it were to gain support, it should have done so by now.
If you use WebP, a lot of people won't be able to see the images - true, but neither will those who use APNG (remember, no support in webkit-types without the plugin, and no support in IE).
If the argument from them is that if the tools are built, APNG becomes more popular, the other browsers will be forced to support it.. well, the same can be said for WebP.
The strongest point they've got is that an APNG decodes as a still PNG in any browser that doesn't support APNG so that the user at least still sees an image. It may not be the intended image, however; only the first frame is decoded, so if the animation is supposed to be, say, a company logo that fades into view then the first frame must be forced to be the logo not faded out or users with those browsers will never see the logo at all. Users with browsers that do support APNG on the other hand will first see the logo, then wonder why it suddenly popped away only to fade back in. This is but one example, I'd say find some animated GIFs (preferably not just video2gif types) and see how many of them work as just the first frame.
A more appropriate solution would be to use the the Accept header in the browser's request to check if the file type is supported and fall back to a supported format (such as animated gif or a more appropriate still) if it isn't. Unfortunately, there is no image/apng accept so the server can't determine this from the accept header (a compatibility table would have to be built based on user agent, or client-side scripting would have to be used). Admittedly, officially there's also no image/webp either but that's changing. Yes, that may mean having to store multiple file types or doing on-the-fly conversion for the time being - not exceedingly painful (hosting a full video at various resolutions and encodings being much worse) and with most CMS not even something the end-user would have to worry about.
one of those formats you listed are compressed as efficiently as 24-bit png with alpha. Not even close.
Try WebP.
As for the huge formats - not too long ago there were plenty of people who would prefer to see an inferior codec be used over h.264 for the reason of licensing. Even now (scroll down the comments) some would prefer to keep PNG over WebP because WebP may have some patent issues.
As for 'browsers', GP didn't specify - which is exactly why I added that information.
I disagree. If it's free-as-in-speech software, then - barring fraud - either... A. People will pledge for it, it gets made, and released in free-as-in-speech form. B. People won't pledge for it, it doesn't get made, and thus any argument over its being free or not is moot.
Kickstarter does see its share of software projects where sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been written on the authors' own time in spare time anyway and released on sourceforge only to be discovered months later by the masses. But many times even the failed projects receive an update from the authors that they're gonna go ahead and make it anyway (which in turn probably makes people wonder why they would bother pledging for such projects).
A similar thing happened with the iPhone app store 'revolution'. Instead of small programs, games, etc. being released for free / on the web (especially applicable to games), everybody and their dog released them for iOS and charged $1.99 or whatever for it. Of course that $1.99 is just a burger and I, and millions of others, will happily pay that. But it does mean that many authors who would otherwise have released it for free - out of necessity: there's no adequate small payments platform - for desktop systems are now concentrating on iOS (and, later, Android) instead. I find that drainage of developers much worse.
But considering the vast volume of free software, low and high quality, still being developed, I don't think either of these things really hurt.
And, perhaps, it's a bit of a coming of age. We're all rather used to getting things for free (where I'm from, many people download movies/tv shows - given that it's legal - and are scoffing even at $2 per TV episode.. after all, for an 80-episode series, that's $160; outrageous! om nom nom $4.00 burger + beer/week, though), while in the case of software development the polish and shine needed for a professional package may require time and effort investment that should translate into a monetary reward. ( The downside of the Kickstarter model is that you essentially send money before having the end-result in hand. The downside of the donation button model is that few people actually use it. )
Slashdot Mirror
First: sorry for the late reply :)
Your math is a wee bit iffy just because you're taking the total number of channels but divide by the amount of hours X show is on - you'd have to limit it to the number of channels that also actually broadcast show X and assume that's your only interest. Let's say that's two channels (optimistic when most premium shows are on exactly 1 channel, not counting re-broadcasts under affiliates, etc.)
$60 / (80 * 24) * 4 = $0.125
becomes
$60 / (2 * 24) * 4 = $5
All of a sudden, streaming at 4 * $0.99 = $3.96 is not all that bad.
Of course, you're not likely to watch just one show. But the earlier math would definitely not work out; The bork is in practicality.
Basically, you cannot record all 80 channels. Let's assume you pick yourself up a DVR that can actually save multiple channels concurrently. I've enjoyed a Genie before, but since there's no direct cost associated with it that I've ever seen (you 'lease' it), let's go with the Moxi.. it can record 3 channels at the same time. It will also set you back $800. ( .. though that's listed on one page, while the FAQ says they no longer actually sell them and you have to get them as part of a triple play offering from a cable provider. Whatever, let's roll with this anyway. )
So, you want to record 80 channels, let's be kind and assume you already have DirecTV with a Genie, so just 75. 75 / 3 = 25 of the Moxis. 25 * $800 = $20,000 up front cost.
Note that this is just the recorders. DirecTV claims about 200 hours of HD content for the Genie (divided by 5 gives 40 hours for each channel), Moxi claims (or claimed) 75 hours of HD content for their HD thing (divided by 3 gives about 25 hours for each channel).
So if you ever wanted to bother with storing more than a day / 2 days' worth, you'd also have to invest in additional harddisks. But since we're compariing to streaming, let's ignore that and just stick to the $20,000 up front cost.
($20,000 + $60) / (80 * 24) * 4 = $41.80. ;)
Yow. Maybe you'll come out ahead after a year, though?
$20,000 + (12m * $60) = $20,720
80c * 24h * 365d = 700,800h
12m * 4h/m = 48h
$20,720 / 700,800h * 48h = $1.42
Of course series tend to run in seasons that only last half a year at best and more likely somewhere around 16 episodes per season, so you'd be closer to paying about $0.47/episode. Congratulations, it's finally cheaper by that math, even if there's two shows you want to watch, but you did just spend more than $20,000 on recording a bunch of stuff you'll never watch, or even want to watch
( I, too, may have borked some math here! )
Personally, I don't see how people think $0.99/TV episode is 'outrageous'. As I said, a season for a year may be 16 episodes, so let's say $16. If you can't scrounge up $16 in a year to watch something that you really enjoy (why else spend the time on it?), then you probably have more worrying financial issues.
That's not to say that I don't think it'd be nice if it were only $0.125/episode - but then consider you just paid the price of a cheap hamburger or coffee, something most people don't even think twice about, on 16 hours of entertainment that perhaps will stick with you for years to come.. whereas the hamburger and coffee have done very little for you and ultimately end up down the sewer.
That would be functionally the same thing as I (and others) mentioned further up - except that we proposed sending the encrypted image/video and deleting that from the server.
Both have their pros/cons for the server/user, but sending the image/video seems the better option - less storage space required on the server, user gets the picture/video to pop up sooner (downloaded in the background, only have to wait for the key download and the decryption (fast even on budget smartphones)), and without the data on the servers there isn't even a brute force decryption possibility.
That just takes me to the home page. Perhaps because Netflix detects I'm in .nl, realizes that it's not part of their offer in .nl, and so just dumps me to the main page.
The other two work fine, but I think you took 'most popular' a bit too literal, and perhaps a bit too narrow.
Since Netflix doesn't seem to actually allow you to see their full library unless you log in (I can see a small selection - this alone is a good reason to give Netflix a thumbs down over torrents), perhaps we could give the 'Top 10 this week' from torrentfreak a try through http://www.flicksery.com/ ?
http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-131014/
1-10. no.
Or, if you want to stay on the legal avenue, the top 10 of 2012 according to imdb, rather than just the #1 slot?
http://www.imdb.com/year/2012/
1. Avengers - yes
2. Pitch Perfect - no
3. The Hunger Games - yes
4. The Dark Knight Rises - no
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - no
6. Argo - no
7. Django Unchained - no
8. The Place Beyond the Pines - no
9. Spring Breakers - no
10. The Motel Life - no
2013, according to box office*, then?
( * because new releases are heavily skewed toward high scores on imdb, and via box office we get to the same #1 for 2013 so far, Iron Man 3 )
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=2013,2013
1. Iron Man 3 - no? Weird - though after some googling, perhaps it's only available from Netflix in DVD form, rather than streaming - canistream.it seems to suggests so as well? Perhaps you could clarify that one.
2-10. - no
Don't get me wrong, Netflix is a wonderful service and people who just want to watch whatever movies or TV shows will find more material there than they can watch in a year. But it's not all going to be material they want to watch, the material they want to watch may not be on there, and overall it's just a poor comparison - gets even worse when you're in .nl ;)
The problem with that is that both the encrypted data and the key would reside with them. To clarify, let's say a hacker gets access to an e-mail-and-password list, but it's all weak MD5 hashes - running that across a rainbow table and further dictionary attacking will easily yield the passwords.
So what any good site would do is add a salt. Unless it's a salt that everybody in the world seems to use, that means the list has become largely useless.
Unless, of course, the hacker in question also gets access to the module that does the encryption and finds the salt right there. Now all they have to do is drop that salt into the equation on their end.
Of course that's often a rather more difficult step, perhaps requiring multiple attack vectors to achieve, but it remains possible.
By moving the data completely out of their control, however, any attack is fruitless for existing data.
Well nobody is keeping law enforcement from executing the warrant - they'd just get a "sorry, but we don't have that data" as a reply.
If you're saying that this in itself is unreasonable, then I'd have to ask what would be reasonable?
An ISP deleting logs after 4 weeks could be construed as unreasonable if statistics were to show that law enforcement has greater success finding perps who use an ISP that keeps logs for 6 weeks due to the data required being more than 4 weeks old. But then it's equally reasonable to argue that 8 weeks would be even better. Why not a year, or indefinitely?
I, for one, wouldn't be able to tell off hand where things stray from reasonable into unreasonable territory when it comes to privacy vs crime-fighting - let alone with hackers and organizations demanding (and getting) access for reasons other than crime-fighting complicating things.
By sending the picture (or video) encrypted with a unique key, and only sending the key when the recipient opens it.
They would still have to keep the decryption key, of course, but that won't do law enforcement, hackers, etc. any good without the data.
They are generally honest with their users, though - they do point out that any 'snaps' you send could be screenshot, that their 'screenshot!' indicator does not work in all cases, and that there's plenty of other ways (analog loophole, basically) people could save that picture/video of your risqué selfie and so you really should consider that before you send them.
Now if only they could stop the app from messing up its UI or crashing the base camera module on Android, I'm sure more people would care about SnapChat to begin with.
( You mis-replied in the thread - just a heads-up. )
True, though sometimes the deemed value is disproportionate to that inherent value.
A first run first issue of Superman has an inherent value of a few pennies if you only consider the paper for recycling purposes. It'll be a few dollars if you take its original value and adjust for inflation, etc. Yet if sold at police auction, you can bet that they'll want the $100,000 (or whatever it's at) for it.
Sure, a virtual currency representation will likely not be a collector's item, a piece of art, or appreciate in value based on sentiment in general. But there's no technical reason they can't sell it for whatever the market deems it to be worth.
As far as any legitimacy goes.. the U.S. government has already considered it 'legitimate', like most other goods (drugs being a particular exemption), and as soon as you trade it in for Dollars, will happily accept it being factored into your tax filings. In fact, they insist.
That's not the same as declaring it a currency that can be taxed directly, as Germany appears to have done, though.
Good luck with that anywhere outside of the U.S., close to the border in Canada, slightly further out into Mexico, and places like South Korea and the Philippines where the U.S. has long held a military or political presence that makes it attractive for vendors there to accept U.S. Dollars.
Go to a Belgian grocery store, see how far you get with it. In the odd chance that they'll accept it, expect it to end up taking you only as far as $90, because they would promptly proceed to... convert it to Euros. And have to incur the exchange fee. And charge you a little extra still because now the manager has to make a trip to the exchange bureau.
As for places that accept Bitcoin.. not authoritative (some sites I saw no mention of Bitcoin, but then most of them only offer it on checkout - after filling in all your details, just like most retailers):
https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/
And, of course, you can buy pretty much any Amazon.com item through a number of services, including those who sell gift cards (which includes an even longer list of retailers, restaurants, etc.)
The fact that they most likely convert it into U.S. Dollars is not an argument against Bitcoin any more than the fact that most of the funds a customer sends to Amazon for electronics items gets very quickly converted into Chinese Yuan is an argument against U.S. Dollars.
Funny.. the 1998 one wastes even more space left and right, yet is still easier to read :)
I suspect I need to hunt down that 'compact' option to eliminate some the whitespace. Make the central column resizable, apply CSS before the page has finished loading (now I see images before they disappear in 'headlines' view), check people's concerns about comments, and I think the redesign is actually not all that bad.
I suspect it's mostly geared toward being more tablet-friendly, though.. haven't tried it on that yet.
They don't? That's sad - I think I got those kinds of subjects starting at what would be the 5th grade. Not at a particular deep level, of course, but that built up over years.
Aren't you told to write what's seen on the board? I think that's the author giving you explicit permission to copy it.
Counter to your examples, try copying your fellow student's test, paper, etc.
Similarly, schoolbook authors (well, publishers), know and accept that their books will be copied to an extent (excerpts photocopied, parts recited, etc.) but would still frown on you running the whole thing through OCR and dropping the PDF onto the world.
While I think 'piracy education' is a waste of time if it's just the 'piracy is bad, mkay' approach - I think it's a perfectly good topic in education if discussing pros and cons and how that may apply to the students themselves. Let them decide for themselves whether they're pro/con copyright/distribution rights/piracy, and let them explain why. Same as with discussion of laws, religion, etc. in sociology(?) class.
That one.
It's a small company, about 700 people who have machines (and only a subset of which still ran XP). We do image them with our own set up of Win8, automated.
The reason we wanted a Win7 install as part of the deal is because we do already have Win7 images, but we want to be sure that Win7 is actually going to run on those machines and get the support we're accustomed to.
Again, turned out that economically Win8 made more sense in the long run, and the perceived problem with employees getting confused was way overblown.
I can well understand a company of 10,000 having more reservations. On the other hand, if you have a blessed copy of Win7, why don't you have a blessed copy of Win8 (yet)? What is actually holding things back?
We have a few - that's why we're keeping a machine around.
Yes, our staff do 'grunt work', like 95% of people using computers to begin with - whether that's somebody typing up a document in Word, or somebody elegantly pushing function key combinations to keep an critical industrial process going (though I'm sure it pleases you to know that that's on a unix box), or somebody doing CAD work on a custom rig for transporting whatever it is the energy industry's come up with as the next best thing this time - it's all 'grunt work'.
Nice for us, indeed - that's why the very title is "Our experience with", and not "Everybody's experience with". Silly AC.
Sorry, I used poor phrasing :)
What I meant was - I rarely saw the Star Trek phaser used in a 'disintegrate' setting when used on living things, even though it would have been rather useful (no body to discover, e.g.)
The zat was of course used pretty much every other episode. Which is a shame - I'm partial to the staff weapon ;)
We're finally getting around to having a bunch of XP boxes replaced with new ones, simply because they're old and a hardware failure in one of them triggered the decision to do pretty much all.
We looked at getting Win7 machines - or at least getting Win7 installed onto the machines as part of an agreement - but in the end, it just wasn't worth it. More than half our staff already has Win8 at home and are perfectly comfortable with it, and once you get past the start screen, Win8 is, for our purposes, practically the same as Win7.
I do say 'once you get past the start screen', but we're actually seeing uptake in using it. We tried a few 3rd party start menu offerings (most of them are crap, from not letting you modify it through not even listing all of the installed software that you would see listed if it were a proper start menu), eventually settling on one.. only to realize that most of the staff felt perfectly comfortable with either A. going to the pinned items on the task bar, or B. typing the name of the program from the start screen (we haven't bothered with tiles for most things, and removed almost all of the defaults... if they want to know the weather, they can listen to the forecast every half an hour on the radio, or hunt down the app in 'all apps').
While the future direction of Win8 may be something to worry about (more and more store-centric, marginalizing the desktop, etc.), the future of Win7 isn't all roses either. Given that Win8 at least will enjoy support far past Win7, well, the choice was a lot easier than we anticipated.
Our biggest struggle has actually been with outdated software. 16bit software just won't run on Win8 (64bit - can be enabled on 32bit, but that's just another wall waiting to be hit), and while our admin would be comfortable with installing a VM to keep these going, we're just biting the bullet and converting legacy files to formats used by more modern software, finding alternatives for those applications that we do still actively use, and keeping two machines around for everything else; one running with a VNC, and the other in storage 'just in case'.
- memory-alpha.org
Though I suspect the Star Trek phaser suffered from the same problems as the StarGate zat'n'ktel, in that the effect would be a wee bit too convenient for plot reasons - as I've rarely seen them use it (even when they definitely had little regard for the wellbeing of whatever they pointed them at) in this manner.
What do you mean.. 'allow'?
While I'm unfamiliar with CDMA solutions, you can pick up GSM modules and radio away all day and night long within the limits of the module. That's the only bit they care about. There's hundreds of GSM projects for PIC, Arduino, RPi, etc. out there already, not to mention a bunch of off-the-shelf things like security systems (motion detection) that aren't strictly speaking 'phones' either and no carrier has to approve in advance.
They'll probably cut you off if you decide to make a script that rings random phone numbers and hangs up after 0.5s so that nobody has time to answer it but random people reach for their phones to try anyway. But that's unrelated to the device.
Although they're both abuse, I'm willing to concede to the idea that there's different vectors of abuse.
In the case of somebody feeling that something didn't smell right and acting on that, then later having their ass covered by a rule/regulation/law, that's one vector of abuse.
If then other people go and act based on not even "didn't smell right" or "gut feeling" but because they're just having a bad day, aren't a fan of people with red hair, or just literally didn't like the way a person smelled (a co-commenter thought I meant it literally in the first place, so why not), then *later* claim that things didn't smell right (as opposed to their actual reason).. that's another vector of abuse.. and a worse one, in my opinion.
It's basically like the UK situation with that guy they held. They can basically hold anybody and after the fact claim they found damaging material on them that would endanger lives if released - and no, they can't tell you what information that is, as that would endanger the lives if released. That's abuse of a much higher form.
I agree that both are undesirable, though.
1) A long time ago, they did.
2) A slightly longer time ago, they did.
The main problem is that the products do take so long to finally be delivered that difficulty has increased over time enough that they may never break even.
And yes, many people have asked that same question. Most of the answers are bullshit, and the more plausible ones are still pretty iffy.
Me, I think they probably do mine with them (some even admit to it) before delivering to customers, and either which way just think there's more profit in selling the miners than there is in mining, long-term. As it is, a lot of people recommend buying 'shares' in the companies that make them rather than buying their product.
You seem generally hostile toward Bitcoin, which I can certainly understand. But in terms of 'doing what it says on the tin', Bitcoin does most of these things. The problem is that there's a whole lot of mislabeled tins; e.g. 'anonymous' only applies if you treat it with the same glove as you would TrueCrypt's plausibly deniability. If you leave breadcrumbs, you're undermining the foundation. It's great for micropayments, but only if you don't mind waiting a very long time for confirmation. etc.
I suppose that could technically be solved through throw-away public key cryptography - just to identify one AC from another; it wouldn't eliminate the possibility that AC1 and AC2 are the same person, but it would eliminate the possibility that AC2 writes something and manages to sign it with AC1's key, unless AC2 has that key.. but then people can share regular accounts just as well (what are the odds slashdot accounts are on bugmenot?)
Although it may very well have been designed to be abused, there's also a slightly more benign (insofar as evils being on a grade) explanation; covering asses.
Let's say all the suspicion is "didn't smell right" - not a particularly reasonable suspicion. Now say it turns out the person they detained had nefarious plans. They wouldn't want to start out any case by saying they didn't have reasonable suspicion with a law saying that they must have one. At best it damages their case, at worst it undermines it entirely. Politicians drawing up the laws similarly don't want to be responsible for having to let people go just because "didn't smell right" was not acceptable.
It leads to abuse, and that could easily have been foreseen, but that in itself may not have been the driving force.
If you google "Block erupter", I'm sure you'll find places selling them. Stick to reputable bitcointalk sellers if you know what's good for you.
Mind you, I have no idea why you would want one. Unless your electricy (and time spent in maintenance, etc.) comes free - they're certainly not financially profitable, and even the geek factor (over mining with your GPU, say) is pretty low.
I read that, but none of that seemed like particularly good arguments. If anything, most people prefer apples over oranges anyway.
Just to address what they're saying.
WebP wouldn't be backported - great, but neither will APNG. If anything, if it were to gain support, it should have done so by now.
If you use WebP, a lot of people won't be able to see the images - true, but neither will those who use APNG (remember, no support in webkit-types without the plugin, and no support in IE).
If the argument from them is that if the tools are built, APNG becomes more popular, the other browsers will be forced to support it.. well, the same can be said for WebP.
The strongest point they've got is that an APNG decodes as a still PNG in any browser that doesn't support APNG so that the user at least still sees an image. It may not be the intended image, however; only the first frame is decoded, so if the animation is supposed to be, say, a company logo that fades into view then the first frame must be forced to be the logo not faded out or users with those browsers will never see the logo at all. Users with browsers that do support APNG on the other hand will first see the logo, then wonder why it suddenly popped away only to fade back in. This is but one example, I'd say find some animated GIFs (preferably not just video2gif types) and see how many of them work as just the first frame.
A more appropriate solution would be to use the the Accept header in the browser's request to check if the file type is supported and fall back to a supported format (such as animated gif or a more appropriate still) if it isn't. Unfortunately, there is no image/apng accept so the server can't determine this from the accept header (a compatibility table would have to be built based on user agent, or client-side scripting would have to be used). Admittedly, officially there's also no image/webp either but that's changing.
Yes, that may mean having to store multiple file types or doing on-the-fly conversion for the time being - not exceedingly painful (hosting a full video at various resolutions and encodings being much worse) and with most CMS not even something the end-user would have to worry about.
Try WebP.
As for the huge formats - not too long ago there were plenty of people who would prefer to see an inferior codec be used over h.264 for the reason of licensing.
Even now (scroll down the comments) some would prefer to keep PNG over WebP because WebP may have some patent issues.
As for 'browsers', GP didn't specify - which is exactly why I added that information.
I disagree. If it's free-as-in-speech software, then - barring fraud - either...
A. People will pledge for it, it gets made, and released in free-as-in-speech form.
B. People won't pledge for it, it doesn't get made, and thus any argument over its being free or not is moot.
Kickstarter does see its share of software projects where sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been written on the authors' own time in spare time anyway and released on sourceforge only to be discovered months later by the masses. But many times even the failed projects receive an update from the authors that they're gonna go ahead and make it anyway (which in turn probably makes people wonder why they would bother pledging for such projects).
A similar thing happened with the iPhone app store 'revolution'. Instead of small programs, games, etc. being released for free / on the web (especially applicable to games), everybody and their dog released them for iOS and charged $1.99 or whatever for it. Of course that $1.99 is just a burger and I, and millions of others, will happily pay that. But it does mean that many authors who would otherwise have released it for free - out of necessity: there's no adequate small payments platform - for desktop systems are now concentrating on iOS (and, later, Android) instead.
I find that drainage of developers much worse.
But considering the vast volume of free software, low and high quality, still being developed, I don't think either of these things really hurt.
And, perhaps, it's a bit of a coming of age. We're all rather used to getting things for free (where I'm from, many people download movies/tv shows - given that it's legal - and are scoffing even at $2 per TV episode.. after all, for an 80-episode series, that's $160; outrageous! om nom nom $4.00 burger + beer/week, though), while in the case of software development the polish and shine needed for a professional package may require time and effort investment that should translate into a monetary reward.
( The downside of the Kickstarter model is that you essentially send money before having the end-result in hand. The downside of the donation button model is that few people actually use it. )