Ideally, the fact that the majority of the US population detests the *AA's position on this issue would be enough to stop them. However, that's not how things work in America, especially in our post-Citizens United world. What may save us, though, is that not all large corporations are on the *AA's side here. Google, for instance, probably doesn't want to be held legally responsible for everything everyone posts to YouTube. And Google is bigger than the whole recording industry put together. In the past, the *AAs have gotten their way because there was no corporate behemoth ready to stand up to them. That may have changed.
Of course, it would be better yet if we could fix representative democracy in the US so that Congressmen actually did what their voters want, as opposed to what lobbyists and campaign contributors tell them to.
That's true enough, but the point is that with 50%+1 support in the legislature you CAN pass legislation. There's none of this crap like in the US where 41% of the Senators can block the other 59% from getting anything done (and due to the way the Senate is apportioned, those 41 filibusterers may represent as little as 10%-20% of the US population).
Instead, what we have is a system that is designed to provide gridlock, obstructionism and anything but efficiency. The very notion of a bicameral debating society insures that little is going to get done unless it is really, really important and everyone agrees right away. So we have endless periods where they find something that people can agree upon, like naming a post office after some dead person. And every once in a while a new law actually does get passed, usually by the slimmest of margins.
This is the way it is supposed to work, and if it wasn't working so incredibly inefficiently we would all be in lots of trouble.
Nonsense. Most European countries have parliamentary systems. This means that if a party campaigns on a platform and wins election, it can actually enact its agenda without having to jump through 20,000 flaming hoops in the Senate. Does this mean Europe is a totalitarian hellhole? Of course not. You'd be hard-pressed to claim that, say, Swedes or Norwegians are any less free in a meaningful sense than Americans are.
Android is open-source. The whole selling point is that you don't need Google's permission to use it.
(I know Honeycomb is different, but it looks like ICS will revert to the old pattern - fortunately the scare stories to the contrary didn't pan out.)
Indeed I do. They claim it means "Life's Good", but it really stands for "Lucky Goldstar" the old company name. They still make garbage low end phones.
LG used to make crap, but their current products are actually pretty good. Not the absolute best, but a lot better than the junk coming out of mainland China.
I agree, and then there's the fact that Google has no experience on developing mobile OS. They seem to assume they can just overuse the hardware and not limit it in any way, which obviously turns the hardware to scrap metal really soon.
WTF does this mean? Whenever I build a PC, the very first thing I do is run it through a 24+ hour CPU+GPU stress test to make sure everything holds up and stays within normal parameters when it is under 100% load. If mobile phone vendors are building hardware so crappy that it can't run within the official specifications, then that is their fault, not Google's.
You should be skeptical because Newton didn't get it right. Einstein was closer, and able to account for certain extreme phenomena, but not all. We STILL don't understand how gravity works, and you should be SKEPTICAL of anyone who says otherwise.
For 99% of real-world situations, Newton's laws are close enough to being correct that the error bars are irrelevant. It may be true that we don't know the exact mechanics of gravity yet, but so what? We can still predict to a very high degree of accuracy what it is going to do in any given situation. Likewise, we may not 100% understand the mechanics of climate change, but the evidence is clear that it's happening and that human activity is a major precipitating factor. Your argument isn't quibbling over the mechanics of gravity, it's the equivalent of saying Newton's laws are a crock so we can jump off a 10-story building with no ill effects.
Basically, politicians aren't accountable because they're spending other people's money. So they can afford to be wasteful.
You do realize, don't you, that more or less the same thing applies to corporate executives. Principal-agent problems aren't limited to the public sector.
So, Steven VanRoekel wants to run the federal government's IT infrastructure more like a startup.
Is he aware that the majority of startups fail?
On top of that, Federal worker bees have been under a pay/hiring freeze for several years, and generally do not receive competitive pay even in good times. To make up for this, they do have stronger job security than their counterparts in the private sector. But this is antithetical to how startups work. With startups, everyone knows going in that it is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. Our federal government cannot and should not operate that way.
How many (if any) of these off-the-shelf devices use ECC RAM?
How many (if any) of them use the ZFS file system?
NAS isn't even worth considering unless both are present. Otherwise, data integrity cannot be guaranteed.
Any NAS device needs ECC RAM and the ZFS file system. Your setup covers the second, but not the first, since Intel only supports ECC on Xeons.
Also, you should always be using Seasonic for power supplies.
Between Chrome, Firefox, and Windows 8 (Start screen), it seems that the new trend in UI design is contempt for users, especially advanced users who want customization options. The UX "professionals" are dead-set on the notion that there is One True Way of doing things, that adding options just confuses people, and that users need to get with the program whether they like it or not.
It's a sign of how broken our patent system is that a company has to go out of its way to avoid inadvertent infringement. If two different inventors in the same field, working independently, would reasonably be expected to come up with the same idea, it shouldn't be subject to patent at all.
You mean "guaranteed" that you'll get back what it says on your balance? Nope, you're not. It's entirely possible that you could go to take it out, and the bank just says "No, sorry, we haven't got it, we gambled with it and lost. Sorry!"
Try googling FDIC. It's designed expressly to prevent scenarios like this from happening. It's only been around since 1933, so I understand you might not have heard of it yet...
This Google experiment proves that you can build a self driving car who can drive safely for thousands of miles on actual public roads. Yes, there are some additional conditions which are not practical (like the driving the path manually before to record a precise map), but it has been done.
For commuters with long drives, an automated vehicle would be extremely convenient even if it did require one manual use before automation could commence. After all, they are currently making the trip manually every work day.
Chili peppers cause the eater's insides to rev up, activating the sympathetic nervous system â" which helps control most of the body's internal organs â" to expend more energy, so the body burns more calories when the same food is eaten with chili peppers.
To me, this was the most interesting part of the article. If chili peppers cause an increase in the rate of burning calories, it seems like they'd be quite useful to dieters. For those who don't have a taste for spicy foods, might capsules full of chili extract or chili powder have a similar effect on the sympathetic nervous system as full-fledged chili dishes or raw peppers? I'd be interested to see if there were any studies on this.
About two and a half years ago, my home PC got rooted by a drive-by exploit that took advantage of a Java security hole. After wiping and rebuilding, I didn't install the Java plugin. Guess what? In those two and a half years, I never once have come across a site that really needs it. One site I occasionally read has animated buttons that are supposed to use Java, but not having the plugin just means that you see the alt text instead. And that's one single site. 99.9% of the time, not having the Java plugin means nothing changes.
The average user should not have Java installed.
Competent people are indeed hard to find. But nonetheless, a majority of competent people don't make millions of dollars a year, or anything close to it.
"Even if Apple is 100% guilty and infringing, a judge would never issue an injunction if it means the death of Apple."
Why not? I am not aware of any legal principle that would justify such a refusal. Was Apple declared "too big to fail" at some point and I missed it?
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Ideally, the fact that the majority of the US population detests the *AA's position on this issue would be enough to stop them. However, that's not how things work in America, especially in our post-Citizens United world. What may save us, though, is that not all large corporations are on the *AA's side here. Google, for instance, probably doesn't want to be held legally responsible for everything everyone posts to YouTube. And Google is bigger than the whole recording industry put together. In the past, the *AAs have gotten their way because there was no corporate behemoth ready to stand up to them. That may have changed.
Of course, it would be better yet if we could fix representative democracy in the US so that Congressmen actually did what their voters want, as opposed to what lobbyists and campaign contributors tell them to.
That's true enough, but the point is that with 50%+1 support in the legislature you CAN pass legislation. There's none of this crap like in the US where 41% of the Senators can block the other 59% from getting anything done (and due to the way the Senate is apportioned, those 41 filibusterers may represent as little as 10%-20% of the US population).
Instead, what we have is a system that is designed to provide gridlock, obstructionism and anything but efficiency. The very notion of a bicameral debating society insures that little is going to get done unless it is really, really important and everyone agrees right away. So we have endless periods where they find something that people can agree upon, like naming a post office after some dead person. And every once in a while a new law actually does get passed, usually by the slimmest of margins.
This is the way it is supposed to work, and if it wasn't working so incredibly inefficiently we would all be in lots of trouble.
Nonsense. Most European countries have parliamentary systems. This means that if a party campaigns on a platform and wins election, it can actually enact its agenda without having to jump through 20,000 flaming hoops in the Senate. Does this mean Europe is a totalitarian hellhole? Of course not. You'd be hard-pressed to claim that, say, Swedes or Norwegians are any less free in a meaningful sense than Americans are.
Android is open-source. The whole selling point is that you don't need Google's permission to use it. (I know Honeycomb is different, but it looks like ICS will revert to the old pattern - fortunately the scare stories to the contrary didn't pan out.)
Indeed I do. They claim it means "Life's Good", but it really stands for "Lucky Goldstar" the old company name. They still make garbage low end phones.
LG used to make crap, but their current products are actually pretty good. Not the absolute best, but a lot better than the junk coming out of mainland China.
I agree, and then there's the fact that Google has no experience on developing mobile OS. They seem to assume they can just overuse the hardware and not limit it in any way, which obviously turns the hardware to scrap metal really soon.
WTF does this mean? Whenever I build a PC, the very first thing I do is run it through a 24+ hour CPU+GPU stress test to make sure everything holds up and stays within normal parameters when it is under 100% load. If mobile phone vendors are building hardware so crappy that it can't run within the official specifications, then that is their fault, not Google's.
From what I've read of it...while it does have a very few provisions that actually concern jobs...it is mostly a spending bill, labeled a jobs bill.
In the midst of a recession, this amounts to the same thing. Basic Keynesianism.
You should be skeptical because Newton didn't get it right. Einstein was closer, and able to account for certain extreme phenomena, but not all. We STILL don't understand how gravity works, and you should be SKEPTICAL of anyone who says otherwise.
For 99% of real-world situations, Newton's laws are close enough to being correct that the error bars are irrelevant. It may be true that we don't know the exact mechanics of gravity yet, but so what? We can still predict to a very high degree of accuracy what it is going to do in any given situation. Likewise, we may not 100% understand the mechanics of climate change, but the evidence is clear that it's happening and that human activity is a major precipitating factor. Your argument isn't quibbling over the mechanics of gravity, it's the equivalent of saying Newton's laws are a crock so we can jump off a 10-story building with no ill effects.
Basically, politicians aren't accountable because they're spending other people's money. So they can afford to be wasteful.
You do realize, don't you, that more or less the same thing applies to corporate executives. Principal-agent problems aren't limited to the public sector.
So, Steven VanRoekel wants to run the federal government's IT infrastructure more like a startup.
Is he aware that the majority of startups fail?
On top of that, Federal worker bees have been under a pay/hiring freeze for several years, and generally do not receive competitive pay even in good times. To make up for this, they do have stronger job security than their counterparts in the private sector. But this is antithetical to how startups work. With startups, everyone knows going in that it is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. Our federal government cannot and should not operate that way.
How many (if any) of these off-the-shelf devices use ECC RAM? How many (if any) of them use the ZFS file system? NAS isn't even worth considering unless both are present. Otherwise, data integrity cannot be guaranteed.
Any NAS device needs ECC RAM and the ZFS file system. Your setup covers the second, but not the first, since Intel only supports ECC on Xeons. Also, you should always be using Seasonic for power supplies.
But CyanogenMod needs Honeycomb or ICS to provide a good experience on tablets. Now it appears that may never happen.
Between Chrome, Firefox, and Windows 8 (Start screen), it seems that the new trend in UI design is contempt for users, especially advanced users who want customization options. The UX "professionals" are dead-set on the notion that there is One True Way of doing things, that adding options just confuses people, and that users need to get with the program whether they like it or not.
It's a sign of how broken our patent system is that a company has to go out of its way to avoid inadvertent infringement. If two different inventors in the same field, working independently, would reasonably be expected to come up with the same idea, it shouldn't be subject to patent at all.
You mean "guaranteed" that you'll get back what it says on your balance? Nope, you're not. It's entirely possible that you could go to take it out, and the bank just says "No, sorry, we haven't got it, we gambled with it and lost. Sorry!"
Try googling FDIC. It's designed expressly to prevent scenarios like this from happening. It's only been around since 1933, so I understand you might not have heard of it yet...
This Google experiment proves that you can build a self driving car who can drive safely for thousands of miles on actual public roads. Yes, there are some additional conditions which are not practical (like the driving the path manually before to record a precise map), but it has been done.
For commuters with long drives, an automated vehicle would be extremely convenient even if it did require one manual use before automation could commence. After all, they are currently making the trip manually every work day.
Chili peppers cause the eater's insides to rev up, activating the sympathetic nervous system â" which helps control most of the body's internal organs â" to expend more energy, so the body burns more calories when the same food is eaten with chili peppers.
To me, this was the most interesting part of the article. If chili peppers cause an increase in the rate of burning calories, it seems like they'd be quite useful to dieters. For those who don't have a taste for spicy foods, might capsules full of chili extract or chili powder have a similar effect on the sympathetic nervous system as full-fledged chili dishes or raw peppers? I'd be interested to see if there were any studies on this.
Predator drones have worldwide jurisdiction.
How many users are willing to have all websites broken by default until each one is explicitly whitelisted?
About two and a half years ago, my home PC got rooted by a drive-by exploit that took advantage of a Java security hole. After wiping and rebuilding, I didn't install the Java plugin. Guess what? In those two and a half years, I never once have come across a site that really needs it. One site I occasionally read has animated buttons that are supposed to use Java, but not having the plugin just means that you see the alt text instead. And that's one single site. 99.9% of the time, not having the Java plugin means nothing changes.
The average user should not have Java installed.
Competent people are indeed hard to find. But nonetheless, a majority of competent people don't make millions of dollars a year, or anything close to it.
This article on CSICOP has detailed descriptions on several alleged cases of "spontaneous human combustion," and explanations for what probably actually happened in each one. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/not-so-spontaneous_human_combustion/
Well, yes. If someone sees the incident, then it can be rationally explained, so it will not be described as "SHC."
"Even if Apple is 100% guilty and infringing, a judge would never issue an injunction if it means the death of Apple."
Why not? I am not aware of any legal principle that would justify such a refusal. Was Apple declared "too big to fail" at some point and I missed it?