Re:Marketting garbage for future technology
on
TiVo Buries the VCR
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· Score: 1
"I agree, Tivo aren't the right people to bury the VCR, their offering is too crappy. If MythTV was a little easier to install (I did it, but some people may have trouble) and get working with all your hardware, and hardware was super-cheap and small, it would be perfect."
Care to expand on you opinion. Why do you think the Tivo is crappy?
Is it harder to install than MythTV? Does some of the hardware not work (ok, DirecTivos don't really have functional USB ports...)? Is the hardware not
cheap enough, not small enough? Oh right, it's crappy cause it has a monthly
fee.
Maybe that just makes your job crappy. I don't think it's worth my time to
build a MythTV when I can grab a Tivo at walmart and call DirecTV and... it
just works.
Who modded the above flambait? Is it inflamatory to not toe the FOSS party line? He raises very good questions. The OP declared TiVo "crappy" but then didn't give a single reason why. Isn't THAT flambait? I guess not on/.
Sorry, doesn't work that way. Remember, "violence never solved anything".
Such a tired cliche, and totally without basis in fact too. Just ask Tojo, or Hitler, or Napoleon, or Stalin, or the former residents of ancient Carthage whether violence ever solved anything.
The DoD is not developing an unmanned ground assault vehicle ...
I never claimed the DoD isn't interested in autonomous armed combat vehicles.
Liar. For what it's worth, I'm a student at Carnegie Military University, and yes, they are developing autonomous attack vehicles. Like the gladiator. To think these are technologies that DARPA is planning on researching and developing entirely separately is naive.
Good job quoting me out of context, fucktard. The first statement is specifically in regard to the DARPA Grand Challenge goal, as promised to congress, of fielding a vehicle system in the 2010-2015 time frame. This planned vehicle is not an autonomous attack vehicle, it's a cargo carrier. Here, let me rephrase the two quotes above with explicit elaboration of their context so that a dimwit like you can understand:
The DoD does not have as its stated goal the development of an unmanned ground assault vehicle, utilizing the results of the Grand Challenge participants, to be delivered within the 2010-2015 time frame, as they original poster suggests. ...
While it is patently obvious by the limited capabilities and short term nature of the Grand Challenge goal that the vehicle they intend to deliver will be capable of no more than delivery of cargo from point A to point B, I in no way implied that the DoD isn't interested in the idea of autonomous armed combat vehicles in general and doesn't have other programs in various states of completion working towards that goal.
Probably not, given that most of the people who buy tivos are sheep with too much money
Yeah, just like people who buy Toyotas/Lexus's are also sheep with too much money, 'cause no competent mechanic would ever buy a car that came pre-assembled from the factory and didn't need to be worked on. Add the fact that a TiVo box can be had for under $100 plus $200 for lifetime service, I find myself wondering how little money you must make to consider $300 "too much money"...
The lack of HD stuff - especially for DirectTV is another concern. You'd think that Tivo would be kicking the ass of DirectTV, etc, in order to get their product out to market in a timely manner.
TiVo doesn't have a whole lot of leverage with DirecTV. DirecTV has been hemming and hawing over dropping TiVo entirely and creating their own DVR platform for a while, in essence making it clear that TiVo is really only there at their sufferance.
They're not lying. It breaks your TV. If your TV needs to support the broadcast flag to display content, and your TV doesn't support it because it was made before this law was passed, what do you think will happen?
Unless the addition of the broadcast flag involves a change in transmission format, there's no way to make a TV not built to recognize such a flag react to its presence or absence. If there is a format change (i.e. HDTV), then it isn't the flag but the new, incompatible format that breaks the old TVs. The presence of the flag in that case is immaterial.
So how exactly is a short range magnetic field going to give you brain cancer?
The same way living under power lines gives you cancer, of course! 'Cause everyone knows there's no other differences in diet, work environments, or lifestyle between those people who live under powerlines and those who live in a mansion behind locked gates with a view of the Riviera Country Club out their back windows.
It's a bit hard to take you seriously when you call people names. Just state your opinion and shut up.
Frankly, I don't give a fuck. I don't have to work or live with anyone here, and I could not possibly care less how seriously my comments are taken. If I'm feeling like a jerk one day, I will call someone on/. a fucktard if it suits my fancy. As evidenced by the factually incorrect assertions in the original post, slashdot is a freee-for-all. Clearly, anyone can say anything they want, they don't have to wait their turn, or be quiet when they've had their say, or stick to only the topic at hand. If someone's truly out of line (and it takes a LOT to be out of line HERE) then the post will be modded down, right?
Their FAQ doesn't really say wether the research is for armed or unarmed.
True, but this has previously been their stated goal. I don't have a link to it offhand, but even without an explicit statement of such all it takes is a common sense examination of the facts. First, the Grand Challenge does nothing to advance the real hard part of building autonomous "killer robots": when and at whom to fire. We don't even have autonomous combat aircraft and the "friend vs. foe" problem is orders of magnitude easier in the air. Second, the ability to go from point A to point B represents only a fraction of the combat maneuvering problem, but it represents essentially the entirety of the cargo delivery problem. So what we have is clearly a project whose only useful result will be robotic vehicles that can drive long distances over rough terrain unattended: a cargo transport system. It will easily take 5-10 years to get all the bugs worked out of a system designed simply for that alone. There's no way in hell they could deliver an autonomous weapons system by 2010-2015. Someday, maybe as soon as 25-30 years from now, they will have built upon these early successes and field an autonomous combat robot; but to claim that universities are participating in building such devices because they are in the Grand Challenge is as asinine as saying Alexander Wood is responsible for IV drug use because he invented the hypodermic needle.
So yeah, it seems utterly clear that the DOD has no plans to incorporate technologies for ground navigation into assault vehicles.
Nice attempt to braoden and generalize, weasel. You said:
"the competition is designed to help the defense department deliver on its promise to congress to get most of its ground assault vehicles unmanned in the 2010 to 2015 time frame."
Clearly you're talking specifically about the Grand Challenge project, for which the time frame of "2010 to 2015" is relevant, and this is what I addressed. Stands to reason, as that's what this/. topic is about. You added in to word assault between "ground" and "vehicle" based on some internal editorial bias. I never claimed the DoD isn't interested in autonomous armed combat vehicles. I am simply stating the fact that the DARPA Grand Challenge is the preliminary step in developing an unmanned, unarmed, cargo carrier to be fielded in 2010-2015. This is what the linked DARPA site says. This is what all the articles say. You flasely claimed otherwise.
It seems logical to me that when granting a patent, the USPTO should stipulate that the invention being patented actually be produced or used to some degree, within a certain timeframe. Now, I realise that it would be important to come up with a clear definition of what consitutes implementation, but other than that purely logistical point, can anyone see a reason why we shouldn't do this?
Perhaps there should be a stipulation in patent law along the lines of "plaintiff must show a good-faith effort to have either developed the device, or attempted to license the patent to someone who could in order to claim infringement". The term "good faith effort" is wide open for interpretation, but it would definitely monkey wrench the "portfolio sitters".
I'm sorry, but there's no pretense about this: the competition is designed to help the defense department deliver on its promise to congress to get most of its ground assault vehicles unmanned in the 2010 to 2015 time frame. They state it explicitly, and all over the place. The universities competing in this competition know perfectly well they're helping the armed forces kill people.
By all means, don't allow facts to get in the way of your hysterical editorializing. The DoD is not developing an unmanned ground assault vehicle, and they do not state that explicitly at all. They are looking to procure an unmanned cargo carrying vehicle by 2015. You will, of course, probably point to how everything in the military is designed to support operations and is therefore contributing to killing people, but that'd just be weaseling. You clearly thought they were developing killer robots. Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Moron.
I failed to complete my argument above. Please add the following:
Now, just because someone calls themselves an "unbiased think tank", doesn't make it so! There are some "think tanks" that are clearly little more than lobbying front groups (Progress and Freedom Foundation). Other think tanks may have a certain general political bent-- but they usually announce it up front (Heritage Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute). No one should be surprised if, say, the Cato Institute comes out with a study that shows the ideal solution to a particular problem is the more limited-government/free market one. If you want a more impartial survey, you go to somplace the Rand Corp.
I had never really thought about it before, but the idea of a think tank being paid by a company or industry wishing to know or explore something seems a bit flawed. In order to stay in business this think tank isn't going to say their client is wrong in their thinking. If this group told the RIAA "Your method of expanding your business is ass-backwards. Here is a better way." they would never find work again. Can you really trust the "impartial" finding of a think tank?
The thing about "think tanks" is that they generally bill themselves as impartial. That's the whole point in paying big bucks for a fancy research corporation to look at your situation vs. paying less for a consultant, or commisioning a survey, or the like. Sure, a think tank can hand you a report that's a packet of smileys tied up with rainbows, but if it turns out just to be a load of hot air then it's just money down the rathole. You can find all manner of people who will blow sunshine up your ass for cheap. Finding someone who's willing to tell you you're going to die is expensive. Think tanks want to be considered members of the latter category.
Does anyone know the usage of the word "punter" in the article, though?
It's a British-ism meaning about the same as "bloke", only it can apply to men or women. Tends to have shades of "lowest common denominator" to it, meaning something like "an ordinary slob off the street picked at random".
1st poster made some typical right-wing rant about public government being more wasteful a priori than private enterprise.
No, first poster made the observation that even public enterprises should exercise basic fiscal responsibility, and that whining for more money when they've overspent is not appropriate behavior.
2nd poster made some coment about Googl doing Google Roads, Google Sanitation, Google Electricity. Shades of Snowcrash. Burbclave Absurdity. Seemed pretty ironic to me.
A snide comment to the effect of "well let's see Google do a better job", when nobody suggested that they could, or should, or even even wanted to; that's not irony. There is no subtle opposite of the supposed meaning. Mark Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, wherein his words claim to condemn Caesar, but actually subtly praise him and condemn his asassins; that's irony.
3rd poster seems never to have read Snowcrash and accepts everything he reads at face value.
I have read Snowcrash, and fail to see how making a largely irrelevant allusion to it via "Google Roads" et al qualifies as "irony".
2nd poster says - hey, I was being ironic and where is my audience?
Second poster is an ass who thinks he knows what irony is because he found a link to it in Wikipedia.
3rd poster responds with comment about how he still has not read Snowcrash, and still takez everything at face vlue.
Third poster made no such comment.
My judgment: 1st poster is a bit naive. 2nd poster is probably too subtle for/. and 3rd poster needs to read Snowcrash, more satire, and chill. Probably get out some more, and watch the Daily Show.
Yeah, because 2nd poster is as sharp a wit as Jon Stewart! This was my point: 2nd poster thought he was being witty, but he was just being idiotic.
Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that "more" and of the outsider's incomprehension.
Sarcastic non-sequitur does not qualify as irony. Feel free to prove me wrong by explaining the subtle, hidden meaning to your original statement, because to a philistine such as myself it sure sounds about as subtle and deep as a schoolboy calling someone a doody-head.
Really? Well then, let's see Google get into the business of building and maintaining roads, providing fire and public safety, and doing local health and zoning operatings.
Wow, what a well reasoned and rational reply! Yes, by all means, let's see google, a search engine company, take over a city government! What the fuck are you talking about?
As well how do you think NASA deals with sewage, water, garbage, etc? They have a contract with the nearest municipality to: attach to their water system, their sewage system, and probably dump on their dump. All of these things will be used to a much greater extent than was ever envisioned with just NASA on the property.
Just because you don't see the costs clearly doesn't mean they aren't there.
If the feds have are contracting with the city for these services, then it's being PAID FOR! And if you think the feds actually got a contract with the city for "all the water you can use, garbage you can dump, and sewage you can produce for one low price", well, then you're an idiot. I abso-fucking-lutely guarantee they're being charged by the weight of the garbage, and by volume on the water.
Try getting to NASA's research center without going through Santa Clara. Having increased traffic on roads costs money to maintain. Money they usually get from property tax.
How is this different from (for example) people in Santa Monica driving through Beverly Hills to get to downtown Los Angeles? Or any one of thousands of similar traffic situations throughout the country? Besides, most traffic to Moffett Field, unless it's from very close nearby, comes in off Highway 101. 101 is maintained by CalTrans (a state government agency), not Santa Clara.
Good point about the technological use restrictions, but they may not even release DVD's if they had to release them in a format that allowed for easy pirating. So it's not all bad.
+1 Insightful? More like -1 Ridiculous! They're in the freakin movie business. The way they make money is by selling movies. They wouldn't release DVDs if pirating were easy? Like they did with VHS? Yeah, not a single movie was released on VHS. Furthermore, it's not like region coding does diddley squat to prevent piracy. It's not even intended to stop piracy. It's sole purpose is to facilitate market segmentation, whereby the movie industry can squeeze the maximum possible profit out of every market in the world without the low income regions undercutting the high income ones by selling out of the country.
> > If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness?
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could.
So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at.
Major changes in course or altitude require coordination with ground control to avoid other planes, weather, etc. The existing ground control system is in now way set up to automate this. The suggestion that planes that get low pressure alarms should then have the autopilot "fly them to safety" are oversimplifying the situation. THere's more too it than just modifying the autopilot software. It's like wondering where our self-driving cars are because hey, we already have cruise control, right?
We all saw what happened with verizon, when they set the IP addresses of all the unregistered.org and.org domain names to their own search engine page.
Christ Almighty, people, it's Verisign. "Verizon" is a telephone service provider
It sounds like you're arguing, "since no money was lost, then the individual who owns the card really isn't harmed".
Sounds to me like I was arguing the exact opposite, but pointing out that others may not put any value on people's time.
This is the most annoying line of irrational thinking that comes from anticapitalists. They think that corporations are ethereal beings that have no connection to humanity. In truth, all corporations are comprised of individuals (some more moral than others) who all have individual lives. You can't harm a "faceless" corporation without harming individuals.
It may be annoying, but it does have some semi-rational basis. The idea is that stealing five bucks from a guy who tips the guy who washes his car $20 hardly even counts as he's unlikely to even notice it. Compare that to stealing five bucks from a homeless guy sleeping in the park. They don't feel it's as morally reprehensible to charge $2000 to Joe Schmoe's visa card because it's not Joe that'll be paying $2000, it's several million MBNA shareholders paying a fraction of a cent each. One person committing small-time fraud hardly even counts as a rounding error. True, it adds up when MANY people do it, but it's not MANY people making the decision together to commit fraud.
Robin Hood is frequently a hero of the Left, and young'uns are frequently Leftist....Robin Hood doesn't have to be bastardized -- he's already a bastard because he's a thief.
That depends on your interpretation of the Robin Hood story. Lefties like to think of him as simply "stealing from the rich and giving to the poor", much the same way they would like to see socialist tax policy implemented. I'd argue, however, that this interpretation of Robin Hood is completely wrong. He didn't steal from the "rich" so much as steal from the "brutal, confiscatory government tax collector". The Sheriff of Nottingham and the tyrannical usurper King? Sounds like government gone bad, not capitalism.
overlap with people who are into "carding" (which always harms someone else),
FWIW, people who engage in carding don't see it as harming someone else, but rather something else. Granted, people whose CC nums have been used incur a time loss in reporting the fraud* and having the charges removed, but the direct financial loss usually lands on the faceless credit card company. It's obviously fairly easy to rationalize the commission of fraud against companies in a business as "ethically challenged" as credit cards! The classic line of reasoning that "fraud costs us ALL" is questionable here. If fraud were eliminated, I guarantee interest rates and fees on credit cards wouldn't change a bit. Personally, I consider fraud unethical, but I can see how some, particularly young'uns, might have a kind of bastardized Robin Hood view of it.
* Just as copyright infringement isn't "theft", in the eyes of the law cradit card fraud isn't "theft", it's fraud.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to expand on you opinion. Why do you think the Tivo is crappy?
Is it harder to install than MythTV? Does some of the hardware not work (ok, DirecTivos don't really have functional USB ports ...)? Is the hardware not
cheap enough, not small enough? Oh right, it's crappy cause it has a monthly
fee.
Maybe that just makes your job crappy. I don't think it's worth my time to build a MythTV when I can grab a Tivo at walmart and call DirecTV and ... it
just works.
Who modded the above flambait? Is it inflamatory to not toe the FOSS party line? He raises very good questions. The OP declared TiVo "crappy" but then didn't give a single reason why. Isn't THAT flambait? I guess not on /.
Such a tired cliche, and totally without basis in fact too. Just ask Tojo, or Hitler, or Napoleon, or Stalin, or the former residents of ancient Carthage whether violence ever solved anything.
I never claimed the DoD isn't interested in autonomous armed combat vehicles.
Liar. For what it's worth, I'm a student at Carnegie Military University, and yes, they are developing autonomous attack vehicles. Like the gladiator. To think these are technologies that DARPA is planning on researching and developing entirely separately is naive.
Good job quoting me out of context, fucktard. The first statement is specifically in regard to the DARPA Grand Challenge goal, as promised to congress, of fielding a vehicle system in the 2010-2015 time frame. This planned vehicle is not an autonomous attack vehicle, it's a cargo carrier. Here, let me rephrase the two quotes above with explicit elaboration of their context so that a dimwit like you can understand:
Dumbass.
Yeah, just like people who buy Toyotas/Lexus's are also sheep with too much money, 'cause no competent mechanic would ever buy a car that came pre-assembled from the factory and didn't need to be worked on. Add the fact that a TiVo box can be had for under $100 plus $200 for lifetime service, I find myself wondering how little money you must make to consider $300 "too much money"...
The lack of HD stuff - especially for DirectTV is another concern. You'd think that Tivo would be kicking the ass of DirectTV, etc, in order to get their product out to market in a timely manner.
TiVo doesn't have a whole lot of leverage with DirecTV. DirecTV has been hemming and hawing over dropping TiVo entirely and creating their own DVR platform for a while, in essence making it clear that TiVo is really only there at their sufferance.
Unless the addition of the broadcast flag involves a change in transmission format, there's no way to make a TV not built to recognize such a flag react to its presence or absence. If there is a format change (i.e. HDTV), then it isn't the flag but the new, incompatible format that breaks the old TVs. The presence of the flag in that case is immaterial.
The same way living under power lines gives you cancer, of course! 'Cause everyone knows there's no other differences in diet, work environments, or lifestyle between those people who live under powerlines and those who live in a mansion behind locked gates with a view of the Riviera Country Club out their back windows.
Frankly, I don't give a fuck. I don't have to work or live with anyone here, and I could not possibly care less how seriously my comments are taken. If I'm feeling like a jerk one day, I will call someone on /. a fucktard if it suits my fancy. As evidenced by the factually incorrect assertions in the original post, slashdot is a freee-for-all. Clearly, anyone can say anything they want, they don't have to wait their turn, or be quiet when they've had their say, or stick to only the topic at hand. If someone's truly out of line (and it takes a LOT to be out of line HERE) then the post will be modded down, right?
True, but this has previously been their stated goal. I don't have a link to it offhand, but even without an explicit statement of such all it takes is a common sense examination of the facts. First, the Grand Challenge does nothing to advance the real hard part of building autonomous "killer robots": when and at whom to fire. We don't even have autonomous combat aircraft and the "friend vs. foe" problem is orders of magnitude easier in the air. Second, the ability to go from point A to point B represents only a fraction of the combat maneuvering problem, but it represents essentially the entirety of the cargo delivery problem. So what we have is clearly a project whose only useful result will be robotic vehicles that can drive long distances over rough terrain unattended: a cargo transport system. It will easily take 5-10 years to get all the bugs worked out of a system designed simply for that alone. There's no way in hell they could deliver an autonomous weapons system by 2010-2015. Someday, maybe as soon as 25-30 years from now, they will have built upon these early successes and field an autonomous combat robot; but to claim that universities are participating in building such devices because they are in the Grand Challenge is as asinine as saying Alexander Wood is responsible for IV drug use because he invented the hypodermic needle.
Nice attempt to braoden and generalize, weasel. You said:
Clearly you're talking specifically about the Grand Challenge project, for which the time frame of "2010 to 2015" is relevant, and this is what I addressed. Stands to reason, as that's what thisPerhaps there should be a stipulation in patent law along the lines of "plaintiff must show a good-faith effort to have either developed the device, or attempted to license the patent to someone who could in order to claim infringement". The term "good faith effort" is wide open for interpretation, but it would definitely monkey wrench the "portfolio sitters".
By all means, don't allow facts to get in the way of your hysterical editorializing. The DoD is not developing an unmanned ground assault vehicle, and they do not state that explicitly at all. They are looking to procure an unmanned cargo carrying vehicle by 2015. You will, of course, probably point to how everything in the military is designed to support operations and is therefore contributing to killing people, but that'd just be weaseling. You clearly thought they were developing killer robots. Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Moron.
I failed to complete my argument above. Please add the following: Now, just because someone calls themselves an "unbiased think tank", doesn't make it so! There are some "think tanks" that are clearly little more than lobbying front groups (Progress and Freedom Foundation). Other think tanks may have a certain general political bent-- but they usually announce it up front (Heritage Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute). No one should be surprised if, say, the Cato Institute comes out with a study that shows the ideal solution to a particular problem is the more limited-government/free market one. If you want a more impartial survey, you go to somplace the Rand Corp.
The thing about "think tanks" is that they generally bill themselves as impartial. That's the whole point in paying big bucks for a fancy research corporation to look at your situation vs. paying less for a consultant, or commisioning a survey, or the like. Sure, a think tank can hand you a report that's a packet of smileys tied up with rainbows, but if it turns out just to be a load of hot air then it's just money down the rathole. You can find all manner of people who will blow sunshine up your ass for cheap. Finding someone who's willing to tell you you're going to die is expensive. Think tanks want to be considered members of the latter category.
It's a British-ism meaning about the same as "bloke", only it can apply to men or women. Tends to have shades of "lowest common denominator" to it, meaning something like "an ordinary slob off the street picked at random".
No, first poster made the observation that even public enterprises should exercise basic fiscal responsibility, and that whining for more money when they've overspent is not appropriate behavior.
2nd poster made some coment about Googl doing Google Roads, Google Sanitation, Google Electricity. Shades of Snowcrash. Burbclave Absurdity. Seemed pretty ironic to me.
A snide comment to the effect of "well let's see Google do a better job", when nobody suggested that they could, or should, or even even wanted to; that's not irony. There is no subtle opposite of the supposed meaning. Mark Antony's speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, wherein his words claim to condemn Caesar, but actually subtly praise him and condemn his asassins; that's irony.
3rd poster seems never to have read Snowcrash and accepts everything he reads at face value.
I have read Snowcrash, and fail to see how making a largely irrelevant allusion to it via "Google Roads" et al qualifies as "irony".
2nd poster says - hey, I was being ironic and where is my audience?
Second poster is an ass who thinks he knows what irony is because he found a link to it in Wikipedia.
3rd poster responds with comment about how he still has not read Snowcrash, and still takez everything at face vlue.
Third poster made no such comment.
My judgment: 1st poster is a bit naive. 2nd poster is probably too subtle for /. and 3rd poster needs to read Snowcrash, more satire, and chill. Probably get out some more, and watch the Daily Show.
Yeah, because 2nd poster is as sharp a wit as Jon Stewart! This was my point: 2nd poster thought he was being witty, but he was just being idiotic.
Dr. Crawford has a DVM and a PhD in pharmacology. He is not an MD.
Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that "more" and of the outsider's incomprehension.
Sarcastic non-sequitur does not qualify as irony. Feel free to prove me wrong by explaining the subtle, hidden meaning to your original statement, because to a philistine such as myself it sure sounds about as subtle and deep as a schoolboy calling someone a doody-head.
Wow, what a well reasoned and rational reply! Yes, by all means, let's see google, a search engine company, take over a city government! What the fuck are you talking about?
If the feds have are contracting with the city for these services, then it's being PAID FOR! And if you think the feds actually got a contract with the city for "all the water you can use, garbage you can dump, and sewage you can produce for one low price", well, then you're an idiot. I abso-fucking-lutely guarantee they're being charged by the weight of the garbage, and by volume on the water.
How is this different from (for example) people in Santa Monica driving through Beverly Hills to get to downtown Los Angeles? Or any one of thousands of similar traffic situations throughout the country? Besides, most traffic to Moffett Field, unless it's from very close nearby, comes in off Highway 101. 101 is maintained by CalTrans (a state government agency), not Santa Clara.
+1 Insightful? More like -1 Ridiculous! They're in the freakin movie business. The way they make money is by selling movies. They wouldn't release DVDs if pirating were easy? Like they did with VHS? Yeah, not a single movie was released on VHS. Furthermore, it's not like region coding does diddley squat to prevent piracy. It's not even intended to stop piracy. It's sole purpose is to facilitate market segmentation, whereby the movie industry can squeeze the maximum possible profit out of every market in the world without the low income regions undercutting the high income ones by selling out of the country.
> Because it's on autopilot. The captain set the autopilot's target altitude, turned it on,
> and then keeled over. The autopilot held the altitude as long as it could. So change the way autopilot works, which is what the OP was getting at.
Major changes in course or altitude require coordination with ground control to avoid other planes, weather, etc. The existing ground control system is in now way set up to automate this. The suggestion that planes that get low pressure alarms should then have the autopilot "fly them to safety" are oversimplifying the situation. THere's more too it than just modifying the autopilot software. It's like wondering where our self-driving cars are because hey, we already have cruise control, right?
Christ Almighty, people, it's Verisign. "Verizon" is a telephone service provider
Sounds to me like I was arguing the exact opposite, but pointing out that others may not put any value on people's time.
This is the most annoying line of irrational thinking that comes from anticapitalists. They think that corporations are ethereal beings that have no connection to humanity. In truth, all corporations are comprised of individuals (some more moral than others) who all have individual lives. You can't harm a "faceless" corporation without harming individuals.
It may be annoying, but it does have some semi-rational basis. The idea is that stealing five bucks from a guy who tips the guy who washes his car $20 hardly even counts as he's unlikely to even notice it. Compare that to stealing five bucks from a homeless guy sleeping in the park. They don't feel it's as morally reprehensible to charge $2000 to Joe Schmoe's visa card because it's not Joe that'll be paying $2000, it's several million MBNA shareholders paying a fraction of a cent each. One person committing small-time fraud hardly even counts as a rounding error. True, it adds up when MANY people do it, but it's not MANY people making the decision together to commit fraud.
Robin Hood is frequently a hero of the Left, and young'uns are frequently Leftist....Robin Hood doesn't have to be bastardized -- he's already a bastard because he's a thief.
That depends on your interpretation of the Robin Hood story. Lefties like to think of him as simply "stealing from the rich and giving to the poor", much the same way they would like to see socialist tax policy implemented. I'd argue, however, that this interpretation of Robin Hood is completely wrong. He didn't steal from the "rich" so much as steal from the "brutal, confiscatory government tax collector". The Sheriff of Nottingham and the tyrannical usurper King? Sounds like government gone bad, not capitalism.
FWIW, people who engage in carding don't see it as harming someone else, but rather something else. Granted, people whose CC nums have been used incur a time loss in reporting the fraud* and having the charges removed, but the direct financial loss usually lands on the faceless credit card company. It's obviously fairly easy to rationalize the commission of fraud against companies in a business as "ethically challenged" as credit cards! The classic line of reasoning that "fraud costs us ALL" is questionable here. If fraud were eliminated, I guarantee interest rates and fees on credit cards wouldn't change a bit. Personally, I consider fraud unethical, but I can see how some, particularly young'uns, might have a kind of bastardized Robin Hood view of it.
* Just as copyright infringement isn't "theft", in the eyes of the law cradit card fraud isn't "theft", it's fraud.