"We" meaning most officials and most voters, including those on Slashdot. If you look back at old posts, you'll see criticism that while the government knew this and the government knew that, the government didn't put the two together because the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.
In this case, we probably actually want to keep the left hand and the right hand apart. I don't want the CIA involved in drug enforcement.
The reasoning at the time was that by creating the Department of Homeland Security, the relevant agencies would be under one umbrella and therefore it would be easier for them to cooperate.
But again, having the foreign surveillance agency cooperating with the domestic law enforcement might not be a good thing. The balance went to far toward cooperation, in my opinion, but the reasoning made sense to chief of staff and others at the time. (Chief of staff Andrew Card was partly responsible for developing a reorganization plan without getting mired in the "corporate politics " of each agency head wanting their agency to be top dog. )
> problem is that some people will lack nuance in their understanding of the issues. As such, seeing what they perceive as unjust ________ laws, they may disregard all
Or in my case, disregard the ones that are inconvenient to my (selfish) wants. Of course anyone could imagine a law that should be disobeyed. In the real world USA, most laws aren't of that type - they are more or less reasonable. Some more, some less, but all reasonable enough to survive the electorate. Then we're each faced with a question- what is our default action to be?
Some of us ignore rules by default, only following the ones that we understand and have internalized. That group tends to learn the hard way why there's a rule against each thing. "Don't screw your neighbor's wife", the rule says. Our friend has to try it out for himself, and gets a beating delivered by the neighbor. My friend Lonnie follows rules by default, figuring that most rules are there for a reason, and following them has worked well for him over the last 50 years.
Then a lot of us are in the middle, like me. We follow rules unless we can justify not following them. The neighbor's wife is separated from her husband (and she's really hot) so it's okay for me to sleep with her. I fall for her and that's when I find out that they separated because she's crazy and he's violent. They want to get back together and now I'm in the middle of crazy chick and violent dude. I find that when I justify why I don't need to follow the rules this time, the justification I tell myself and you often has less to with it than me simply wanting to fulfill my selfish desires, and coming up with an excuse to do.
My post is descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm talking about what they do, not what they should do.
> People bend the rules all the time and usually aren't even aware they are until they're caught.
Yep, many people don't even notice when they're breaking the law. They want people who pay close attention to the rules. They think that Russian spies are after their secrets, so that attractive woman at the bar might be a Russian spy. Bending the rules by bragging about your work could risk national security, they believe.
My dad was like that - careful to do exactly right. He may have never received a speeding ticket in his life. We're pretty sure he did some work for ONI, our nation's oldest intelligence agency. The intelligence agency will use people who travel, such as celebrity entertainers and top business executives, as part-time spies. We think they did that with him because he used to meet with royal families in the middle east in his role at an oil company and when he died the navy immediately came for a box he had in the closet. He was in the navy before, and circumstances suggest he might have done work for them. We'll never know because if it was a secret, he'd keep the secret.
I almost mentioned the name of my company as the one that hasn't been hacked. We take security very seriously. No Microsoft products are allowed on the premises, employees are armed, etc.
Then I realized posting that could make us a Target.
> The head honcho can dictate policy, but they don't actually implement it and don't really have a way to ensure that it does get implemented.
See subject line. Firing federal employees is little different from firing in the private sector, but it's doable. You can also assign somebody to the outpost in the Mojave desert. Within the executive branch (only), if the president cares that something gets done, it gets done. Done poorly and over budget perhaps, but at high levels you get ahead (and stick around) by doing what your boss needs done, and the president is most definitely the big boss. Congress and the courts are separate beasts, of course.
Like most positions at a similar level, the director is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. I just double checked that to make sure I wasn't remembering incorrectly. He's supposed to get recommendations from DOD first. Of course, he appoints the head of DOD, the Secretary of Defense, and he appoints someone who is very loyal to him as Sec D.
> NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment.
Very well said. In the security arena, and I think intelligence as well, the default position is "need to know". You only give information to people who have an operational need to know that specific piece of information. See also "loose lips sink ships". That makes perfect sense from an operational security perspective. HOWEVER, the US is supposed to be a representative republic, where the government os accountable to the people. These two facts do create a natural tension, and finding exactly the right balance is difficult.
I'm reminded of just after 9-11 there was criticism that the CIA, FBI, and NSA hadn't coordinated well, sharing information. Had they shared information with each other freely and effectively , 9-11 might not have happened. However, we are now being reminded that there's a good reason you don't want your spy agencies getting too close with your domestic law enforcement. You don't want the resources and tactics of the NSA to be used for domestic law enforcement. There are some tactics that might be good to use for spying on the Russians and China, but shouldn't be used to investigate Tommy Chong. We forgot that in our calls for more inter-agency cooperation after 9-11. Some of these things require just the right balance.
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
Somebody who reads too many blogs will reply "civil service act". The civil service act forbids firing a covered employee because they didn't donate to your campaign. He can fire them for any other reason. The act is only about one page, read it if you like.
The thing is, Vemont, you're probably a brilliant person, but (literally) don't know the very first thing about copyright . It's the right to make copies. That's like the first sentence in the "Introduction to Copyright" pamphlet, and it"s news to you. Again, you're probably very good at what you do. Clearly, what you do is not copyright law. Arguing copyright law with you would be like arguing international monetary policy with a second grader.
Your "argument" is a good example of the expression "not even wrong". If you're not familiar with the expression you may want to Google it.
I'm not doing it anymore, not programming mostly open source software for general use. I'm no longer contributing to the Linux kernel. Instead, I now work for a government agency.
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing. Really, since you took wanted to use my work, you'd have been better off paying for what you took than ripping me off, turning me bitter, and having me apply me security expertise to advance the government's projects rather than projects around open source.
You took the stuff I made , without my permission. That makes you a crook. My expectation was that people who wanted the little bit of software I didn't opened n source would pay the small price I charged for it, not rip me off.
Do you shoplift, and justify it by saying "the store owner expected me to pay for what I got from him, but times have changed"?
You're simply low life scum, simple as that. I kind of wish I had put a trojaned copy of my software on the torrents for guys like you.
App stores may make a big difference, by making it so easy to pay a dollar. Before, just the hassle of filling out the payment meant it was rarely worth it to sell anything online for less than $30. (There's a reason that 99.9% of paid web sites are $29.95. Lower cost doesn't increase sales due to the hassle of paying.)
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing.
As a matter of fact, agents of both the FBI and various intelligence entities were at our offices just recently. Remember on 9/11 the guy who whispered into Bush's ear? He was just here talking about how they tried to reform the intelligence agencies to cooperate better and share information about threats. (There is a good reason the CIA wasn't allowed to share information with the FBI before, but that seemed less important just after 9/11).
Congress didn't follow the law (Constitution) when they passed laws allowing the NSA crap, and the politicians and the friends they appointed didn't follow the law. I said they like to HIRE people who follow the law, not BE people who follow the law. If you're APPOINTED to head the agency, you're probably a weasely political type. If you're HIRED as an agent or analyst, you probably learned to follow the rules closely while in the military or certain other organizations. Loose lips sink ships.
I fully agree, terms are ridiculous. I'd cut them dramatically if I were a veteran senator. Unfortunately, I'm a lowly programmer, and my customers mere photographers.
Ten years ago, gnutella and similar were easier than even just filling out the payment form for each purchase. Today, Amazon has a very nice, easy store with one-click purchase and most digital goods cost a dollar. It's actually EASIER to use the app store on my phone than it is to get stuff illegally. There are dozens of good stores to choose from. You mentioned tracking- Google is in the ad business, and logs the heck out of advertising- related data. Apple is in the hardware business. They don't much care about the data.
Personally, I choose to use Google products, fully understanding that they have database rows for ad viewer #8943384683783 (me). I don't care too much, partly because I understand they aren't a) tracking b) me. Their computer is logging purchase and viewing history and correlating a viewer number. They aren't interested in me as a person, just a purchase history. If that's not your thing, maybe you'll prefer Amazon, or another store.
The 1500 you deleted don't matter. The 30 you kept and enjoy on a regular basis are the ones you would have paid for ten years ago, and you're ripping off the artist, the editor, the producer, the guitar tuner, the studio tech, and the studio musicians when you don't throw in your $1 for that song you keep because they brought you joy through their hard work.
When an album was $15, it could be hard to fork over $15 to get mainly one song you wanted, with ten others thrown in. Now that it takes one click to buy a non-DRM mp3 for one measly dollar, you're just being a dick. You're enjoying the song, repeatedly. Toss a friggin dollar in the jar.
I don't like some of the things the MPAA and RIAA have done. I do like Pulp Fiction and I Like Big Butts. The song, not the butts. I want Hollywood to make more big movies with Samuel L Jackson, and I don't want to get ripped off. What to do? I think the Netflix/ Hulu / Amazon Prime model along with the Red Box model can fund big movies and also provide good value to the consumer. So my message to Hollywood is this - of you want my money, you'll have to get it by putting your movies on Netflix or Red Box. That way I get good value and you get money to use to make your next movie. I won't let you rip me off, I will work with you only when you give me good value for my money.
> Most piracy does not represent lost sales, but sales that never would have happened.
That's true, based on my knowledge of tens of thousands of content producers over the last fifteen years. That is, however, irrelevant to their take home pay. Suppose that 90% of piracy is cases that would not have purchased. The other 10% is people who would have - the producers income stream. What matters is that people who used to buy no longer do, the pirate/steal. People who used to buy one album per year now take twenty albums and pay for none. The 19 you take that you wouldn't have paid for don't matter much. It's the one you would have paid for but no longer do that matters. When is the last time you bought an album, or some porn? Sure, most of the content you consume now you didn't consume in 2000, that just costs bandwidth. But in 2000 you probably paid for one web site or one album. In 2014, you probably didn't pay for any. Instead you used pornhub (mostly stolen content) and unlawfully downloaded music. When most people don't pay for your product, it's hard to make a living.
> In fact I would bet that piracy tends to make money for less well-known producers of content.
I know one case where piracy worked as branding, and the lady who produced the content. I know of thousands where it didn't. Ten years ago, if your marketing was poor but the branding on the product itself was good, piracy could make you money by getting your name out there. These days, 20,000 will pirate it and zero will buy it. Getting your name out doesn't do any good when almost nobody pays for things they want.
> Of course, if all they want are upper middle-class drones who follow every rule that has ever been made, just because it's a rule, then I suppose this is effective.
You can drop the "upper middle class" part, as this is about following the law. Full stop. The FBI and especially the intelligence services will tell you that they very much try to hire people who follow the law and other rules. In some cases, being sloppy about following the rules can have huge consequences. So they lool for military people and people from certain social groups who culturally tend to follow the rules.
The irony of that is obvious.
As to "just because they are rules" - Not that we need to debate it, and you'll probably never give up your excuse for taking stuff without paying for it, but my family and coworkers have been greatly harmed by the seachange shift to a culture of most people taking what they want illegally rather than paying the 99 cents to buy it from those of us who create it. The rule that what I create with my own hands os mine to give away, trade, or sell exists for a very good reason. Yes, it does mean that app or song I spent a year working on will cost you a whopping $1, but that's just how it is. (Coming from a guy whose daughter would be MUCH better taken care of if everyone who uses my software regularly had paid a dollar for it. Buying another candy bar is more important than doing the right thing, though. )
With BitTorrent, there's a very good chance that you're downloading from some who are near and also some who are far away. With a CDN, you'd be using the nearest one. There is an unofficial protocol extension to _favor_ closer peers, which _some_ torrent users use.
The great thing about torrents is that the volunteers who run the CentOS project don't have to pay for a CDN, or for high bandwidth. It costs less. That's a great thing. Sometimes, that's very important. Other times, you don't want the cheapest solution, you want the fastest, or the most reliable, etc. When you want the cheapest way to deliver a big file to a lot of techies, BitTorrent is the way to go. It does have disadvantages too.
The documentation says that the result will be correct until the last decimal place. So if the CPU says the answer is:
0.123 456 789 123 456 789
You have have a close approximation, accurate to the 17th decimal place, according to the documentation. The problem is, the correct answer may be: 0.123 444 555 666 777 888
The documentation says it's fairly precise. In truth, it's only good to the fourth decimal place in some cases, whereas Intel documented the function to be accurate to 66 bits or so.
Slashdot Mirror
"We" meaning most officials and most voters, including those on Slashdot. If you look back at old posts, you'll see criticism that while the government knew this and the government knew that, the government didn't put the two together because the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.
In this case, we probably actually want to keep the left hand and the right hand apart. I don't want the CIA involved in drug enforcement.
The reasoning at the time was that by creating the Department of Homeland Security, the relevant agencies would be under one umbrella and therefore it would be easier for them to cooperate.
But again, having the foreign surveillance agency cooperating with the domestic law enforcement might not be a good thing. The balance went to far toward cooperation, in my opinion, but the reasoning made sense to chief of staff and others at the time. (Chief of staff Andrew Card was partly responsible for developing a reorganization plan without getting mired in the "corporate politics " of each agency head wanting their agency to be top dog. )
> problem is that some people will lack nuance in their understanding of the issues. As such, seeing what they perceive as unjust ________ laws, they may disregard all
Or in my case, disregard the ones that are inconvenient to my (selfish) wants.
Of course anyone could imagine a law that should be disobeyed. In the real world USA, most laws aren't of that type - they are more or less reasonable. Some more, some less, but all reasonable enough to survive the electorate. Then we're each faced with a question- what is our default action to be?
Some of us ignore rules by default, only following the ones that we understand and have internalized. That group tends to learn the hard way why there's a rule against each thing. "Don't screw your neighbor's wife", the rule says. Our friend has to try it out for himself, and gets a beating delivered by the neighbor. My friend Lonnie follows rules by default, figuring that most rules are there for a reason, and following them has worked well for him over the last 50 years.
Then a lot of us are in the middle, like me. We follow rules unless we can justify not following them. The neighbor's wife is separated from her husband (and she's really hot) so it's okay for me to sleep with her. I fall for her and that's when I find out that they separated because she's crazy and he's violent. They want to get back together and now I'm in the middle of crazy chick and violent dude. I find that when I justify why I don't need to follow the rules this time, the justification I tell myself and you often has less to with it than me simply wanting to fulfill my selfish desires, and coming up with an excuse to do.
Ps - yes copyright terms are ridiculously long.
> So they should never ...
My post is descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm talking about what they do, not what they should do.
> People bend the rules all the time and usually aren't even aware they are until they're caught.
Yep, many people don't even notice when they're breaking the law. They want people who pay close attention to the rules. They think that Russian spies are after their secrets, so that attractive woman at the bar might be a Russian spy. Bending the rules by bragging about your work could risk national security, they believe.
My dad was like that - careful to do exactly right. He may have never received a speeding ticket in his life. We're pretty sure he did some work for ONI, our nation's oldest intelligence agency. The intelligence agency will use people who travel, such as celebrity entertainers and top business executives, as part-time spies. We think they did that with him because he used to meet with royal families in the middle east in his role at an oil company and when he died the navy immediately came for a box he had in the closet. He was in the navy before, and circumstances suggest he might have done work for them. We'll never know because if it was a secret, he'd keep the secret.
I almost mentioned the name of my company as the one that hasn't been hacked. We take security very seriously. No Microsoft products are allowed on the premises, employees are armed, etc.
Then I realized posting that could make us a Target.
> The head honcho can dictate policy, but they don't actually implement it and don't really have a way to ensure that it does get implemented.
See subject line. Firing federal employees is little different from firing in the private sector, but it's doable. You can also assign somebody to the outpost in the Mojave desert. Within the executive branch (only), if the president cares that something gets done, it gets done. Done poorly and over budget perhaps, but at high levels you get ahead (and stick around) by doing what your boss needs done, and the president is most definitely the big boss. Congress and the courts are separate beasts, of course.
Like most positions at a similar level, the director is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. I just double checked that to make sure I wasn't remembering incorrectly. He's supposed to get recommendations from DOD first. Of course, he appoints the head of DOD, the Secretary of Defense, and he appoints someone who is very loyal to him as Sec D.
> NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment.
Very well said. In the security arena, and I think intelligence as well, the default position is "need to know". You only give information to people who have an operational need to know that specific piece of information. See also "loose lips sink ships". That makes perfect sense from an operational security perspective. HOWEVER, the US is supposed to be a representative republic, where the government os accountable to the people. These two facts do create a natural tension, and finding exactly the right balance is difficult.
I'm reminded of just after 9-11 there was criticism that the CIA, FBI, and NSA hadn't coordinated well, sharing information. Had they shared information with each other freely and effectively , 9-11 might not have happened. However, we are now being reminded that there's a good reason you don't want your spy agencies getting too close with your domestic law enforcement. You don't want the resources and tactics of the NSA to be used for domestic law enforcement. There are some tactics that might be good to use for spying on the Russians and China, but shouldn't be used to investigate Tommy Chong. We forgot that in our calls for more inter-agency cooperation after 9-11. Some of these things require just the right balance.
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
Somebody who reads too many blogs will reply "civil service act". The civil service act forbids firing a covered employee because they didn't donate to your campaign. He can fire them for any other reason. The act is only about one page, read it if you like.
The thing is, Vemont, you're probably a brilliant person, but (literally) don't know the very first thing about copyright . It's the right to make copies. That's like the first sentence in the "Introduction to Copyright" pamphlet, and it"s news to you. Again, you're probably very good at what you do. Clearly, what you do is not copyright law. Arguing copyright law with you would be like arguing international monetary policy with a second grader.
Your "argument" is a good example of the expression "not even wrong". If you're not familiar with the expression you may want to Google it.
I'm not doing it anymore, not programming mostly open source software for general use. I'm no longer contributing to the Linux kernel. Instead, I now work for a government agency.
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing. Really, since you took wanted to use my work, you'd have been better off paying for what you took than ripping me off, turning me bitter, and having me apply me security expertise to advance the government's projects rather than projects around open source.
You took the stuff I made , without my permission. That makes you a crook.
My expectation was that people who wanted the little bit of software I didn't opened n source would pay the small price I charged for it, not rip me off.
Do you shoplift, and justify it by saying "the store owner expected me to pay for what I got from him, but times have changed"?
You're simply low life scum, simple as that. I kind of wish I had put a trojaned copy of my software on the torrents for guys like you.
App stores may make a big difference, by making it so easy to pay a dollar. Before, just the hassle of filling out the payment meant it was rarely worth it to sell anything online for less than $30. (There's a reason that 99.9% of paid web sites are $29.95. Lower cost doesn't increase sales due to the hassle of paying.)
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing.
As a matter of fact, agents of both the FBI and various intelligence entities were at our offices just recently. Remember on 9/11 the guy who whispered into Bush's ear? He was just here talking about how they tried to reform the intelligence agencies to cooperate better and share information about threats. (There is a good reason the CIA wasn't allowed to share information with the FBI before, but that seemed less important just after 9/11).
Congress didn't follow the law (Constitution) when they passed laws allowing the NSA crap, and the politicians and the friends they appointed didn't follow the law. I said they like to HIRE people who follow the law, not BE people who follow the law. If you're APPOINTED to head the agency, you're probably a weasely political type. If you're HIRED as an agent or analyst, you probably learned to follow the rules closely while in the military or certain other organizations. Loose lips sink ships.
I fully agree, terms are ridiculous. I'd cut them dramatically if I were a veteran senator. Unfortunately, I'm a lowly programmer, and my customers mere photographers.
Ten years ago, gnutella and similar were easier than even just filling out the payment form for each purchase. Today, Amazon has a very nice, easy store with one-click purchase and most digital goods cost a dollar. It's actually EASIER to use the app store on my phone than it is to get stuff illegally. There are dozens of good stores to choose from. You mentioned tracking- Google is in the ad business, and logs the heck out of advertising- related data. Apple is in the hardware business. They don't much care about the data.
Personally, I choose to use Google products, fully understanding that they have database rows for ad viewer #8943384683783 (me). I don't care too much, partly because I understand they aren't a) tracking b) me. Their computer is logging purchase and viewing history and correlating a viewer number. They aren't interested in me as a person, just a purchase history. If that's not your thing, maybe you'll prefer Amazon, or another store.
Fyi, it's copy right - the right to copy. Please feel free to lecture me about the history after you at least learn what it's called.
The 1500 you deleted don't matter. The 30 you kept and enjoy on a regular basis are the ones you would have paid for ten years ago, and you're ripping off the artist, the editor, the producer, the guitar tuner, the studio tech, and the studio musicians when you don't throw in your $1 for that song you keep because they brought you joy through their hard work.
When an album was $15, it could be hard to fork over $15 to get mainly one song you wanted, with ten others thrown in. Now that it takes one click to buy a non-DRM mp3 for one measly dollar, you're just being a dick. You're enjoying the song, repeatedly. Toss a friggin dollar in the jar.
Thank you for doing the right thing.
I don't like some of the things the MPAA and RIAA have done. I do like Pulp Fiction and I Like Big Butts. The song, not the butts. I want Hollywood to make more big movies with Samuel L Jackson, and I don't want to get ripped off. What to do? I think the Netflix/ Hulu / Amazon Prime model along with the Red Box model can fund big movies and also provide good value to the consumer. So my message to Hollywood is this - of you want my money, you'll have to get it by putting your movies on Netflix or Red Box. That way I get good value and you get money to use to make your next movie. I won't let you rip me off, I will work with you only when you give me good value for my money.
Read his post again. He said HE doesn't have a reason to use it. He didn't say you're not allowed to.
Your first sentence was a reminder to yourself I suppose.
> Most piracy does not represent lost sales, but sales that never would have happened.
That's true, based on my knowledge of tens of thousands of content producers over the last fifteen years. That is, however, irrelevant to their take home pay. Suppose that 90% of piracy is cases that would not have purchased. The other 10% is people who would have - the producers income stream. What matters is that people who used to buy no longer do, the pirate/steal. People who used to buy one album per year now take twenty albums and pay for none. The 19 you take that you wouldn't have paid for don't matter much. It's the one you would have paid for but no longer do that matters. When is the last time you bought an album, or some porn? Sure, most of the content you consume now you didn't consume in 2000, that just costs bandwidth. But in 2000 you probably paid for one web site or one album. In 2014, you probably didn't pay for any. Instead you used pornhub (mostly stolen content) and unlawfully downloaded music. When most people don't pay for your product, it's hard to make a living.
> In fact I would bet that piracy tends to make money for less well-known producers of content.
I know one case where piracy worked as branding, and the lady who produced the content. I know of thousands where it didn't. Ten years ago, if your marketing was poor but the branding on the product itself was good, piracy could make you money by getting your name out there. These days, 20,000 will pirate it and zero will buy it. Getting your name out doesn't do any good when almost nobody pays for things they want.
> Of course, if all they want are upper middle-class drones who follow every rule that has ever been made, just because it's a rule, then I suppose this is effective.
You can drop the "upper middle class" part, as this is about following the law. Full stop.
The FBI and especially the intelligence services will tell you that they very much try to hire people who follow the law and other rules. In some cases, being sloppy about following the rules can have huge consequences. So they lool for military people and people from certain social groups who culturally tend to follow the rules.
The irony of that is obvious.
As to "just because they are rules" -
Not that we need to debate it, and you'll probably never give up your excuse for taking stuff without paying for it, but my family and coworkers have been greatly harmed by the seachange shift to a culture of most people taking what they want illegally rather than paying the 99 cents to buy it from those of us who create it. The rule that what I create with my own hands os mine to give away, trade, or sell exists for a very good reason. Yes, it does mean that app or song I spent a year working on will cost you a whopping $1, but that's just how it is. (Coming from a guy whose daughter would be MUCH better taken care of if everyone who uses my software regularly had paid a dollar for it. Buying another candy bar is more important than doing the right thing, though. )
With BitTorrent, there's a very good chance that you're downloading from some who are near and also some who are far away. With a CDN, you'd be using the nearest one. There is an unofficial protocol extension to _favor_ closer peers, which _some_ torrent users use.
The great thing about torrents is that the volunteers who run the CentOS project don't have to pay for a CDN, or for high bandwidth. It costs less. That's a great thing. Sometimes, that's very important. Other times, you don't want the cheapest solution, you want the fastest, or the most reliable, etc. When you want the cheapest way to deliver a big file to a lot of techies, BitTorrent is the way to go. It does have disadvantages too.
Given the small file size of Snapchat pics, it should be about 600,000 pictures out of 30 million users, if I did the math right.
Here's an example from TFA:
tan(1.5707963267948966193)
actual -39867976298117107068
x87 fpu -36893488147419103232
error 743622037674500958.81 ulp
The documentation says that the result will be correct until the last decimal place. So if the CPU says the answer is:
0.123 456 789 123 456 789
You have have a close approximation, accurate to the 17th decimal place, according to the documentation.
The problem is, the correct answer may be:
0.123 444 555 666 777 888
The documentation says it's fairly precise. In truth, it's only good to the fourth decimal place in some cases, whereas Intel documented the function to be accurate to 66 bits or so.