I fail to see why that's a problem. Having a type A slot on the charger means that any phone w/ the correct cord can be charged - not just Apple or Android but also past generations of phones that may have used other types, like mini USB (used on the old Moto Razrs) or the proprietary types from Nokia, Samsung or LG.
Only issue as far as charging goes is iToys sometimes refusing to charge when not using the original white Apple made connectors. But even that happens only in certain environments, like a car's USB port.
As far as standardizing goes, USB has a pretty sordid record itself. Type A & Type B was fine, then you had mini, then micro, now Type C is coming out that is symmetric... Why can't the USB committee just standardize on Apple's lightning connector, instead of reinventing the wheel?
Well, several problems with the summary.
1) Micro USB sucks. I mean, USB Type C is coming out and for good reason - plugging in cables without doing the twist-around dance is a good thing. Rumor has it Apple actually gave that design to the USB forum because well, uni-directional connectors stink especially on mobile. Heck, there are several designs for the old Type A connector that are... reversible! Unfortunately, the design of the Type A means they are fragile
2) USB lightning cables aren't expensive, nor proprietary. The chip only comes into play if you want to do anything more than connect a sync/charge cable. You can pick up a ton of sync/charge USB to lightning cables on eBay/DealExtreme/monoprice/Alibaba for $5 shipped these days. There's a lot of clone cables out there. Hell, even licensed cables are only $10 on sale nowadays.
3) The chip allows lightning to do fancy things like send audio or video data out of it. USB has no such functionality directly (except through USB Host ports faking OTG - no one implements real OTG), so it's considered a "value add".
4) Reversible connectors are good. Imagine trying to design a phone accessory that uses the USB port - if you want to support a lot of phones, it's hard because half will have the USB plug one way, the other half will be the opposite, so you get stuck with releasing a product with a pigtail and some hokey attachment option.
5) Apple chargers have special resistors to tell you how much current the charger allows. USB Charging spec shorts D+/D-, offering no clue as to how much you can draw. And it's changed - 500mA, 800mA, 1A and 2A are valid. And devices that draw 2A have been known to explode/set on fire cheap chargers. Why the USB folks couldn't have adopted the Apple system (which is cheap, requires no special hardware (the resistors pull the D+/D- lines to logical 0 and 1 states) to measure or use and lets you mix and match chargers at will, I have no idea. I mean, why can't the charger tell the device it only supports 500mA? (FYI - the circuits to detect a USB charger are the same as Apple resistors - the D+/D- short coupled with "special resistors" inside the device across ground and Vbus means you detect it because the USB lines go a certain way)
6) Government mandating USB Micro is already limiting - consumers won't get Type C style connectors on their phone. I mean it's good it's standardized, but you really want to harm innovation like this? Of course, you can allow adapters for the Apple folks, and the Type C phone folks as well. (And face it - more phones are coming with Type C nowadays).
SO no, I'm sure Apple's really worried. Because likely the adapter provision will have to say, or you're going to really deny people the ability to buy phones that have USB Type C?
I think the SDOs (ISO, ANSI, IEEE, etc) made a fundamental mistake when they decided to accept patented technologies as part of formal (de jure) standards.
That's because you don't know how these groups work.
They're a consortium of industry groups who get together to make standards.
Here's how in general it works - if people want to make a new standard, they get together. Each company sends a few technical people to hash out the specification, because every standard is not done for technical excellence, but on backroom deals.
Remember, there's two ways to make money on patents - you can be a big fish in a small pond by not licensing and basically controlling it (which works for companies like Apple who don't offer "innovation" in the traditional sense of moving technology forward, but make it more accessible, and the goal is to avoid all the hard work being stolen by someone else). Or you can be a small fish in a big shared pool, where you're basically going to make it off license fees.
So back to standards groups - basically it's a collection of people trying to get their patent in the spec. That's it - a standard is obtained containing the most politically savvy engineers who managed to convince everyone their patents should be in. And politically savvy means making lots of backroom deals - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
And there's a lot of Old Boy's Club going on as well - Apple brought a patent into it, licensed for $0, and roughly half rejected it - while the other half promoted it. The rejected half tried to come up with a similar-but-different model to counter Apple (most likely NOT $0 as Apple offered, and all that). The only reason? Basically to keep pesky companies like Apple out of the club and sucking on the teat of everyone else.
And that's how standards are made. And everything has patents - Ethernet (every GigE port pays HP for the MDI/MDIX patent they hold - it's actually in the standard by name), WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, etc. etc. etc. That's not to say there aren't patent-free specs - all the internet RFCs are basically it, for example.
And IoT isn't standard because it's too new - too much stuff out there, and so far the public isn't buying it all up. Mostly because it's still expensive, and most people really don't have a need for that. I mean, walk through all the stuff available and most people will never have more than one or two. You may have a fancy light bulb, or an environment monitor, fancy thermostat, or a surveillance camera. But it's unlikely you'll have all three.
With consumers not picking up multiple units, they don't care about standardization. I mean, if they pick up a bunch of Philips bulbs, they'll likely just continue to pick them up (regular consumers). If you offer them a cheaper bulb, they may ignore you, fearing they have to worry about another app.
Right now the technology is too expensive - most people I know aren't even considering fancy lamps, or super smart thermostats, or video cameras. And most don't care what the indoor humidity is.
There's a big difference between "conserving our precious natural resources" and greenwashing. Low flow toilets are a pretty good example, I still have one of the first generation of them, the ones which require multiple flushes to get rid of a few squares of TP. Most of those LF toilets were dismal failures, using far more water than their standard counterparts. Most newer models have overcome those shortfalls but how many resources were wasted because of the idiotic push to force them into the market before they were ready.
The problem is, if the push didn't happen, we'd still be using 10 gallon flush toilets. The low-flow toilets sucked, yes, but it forced innovation on the market - because they sucked, people went on to do the R&D to make even lower flow toilets that work even better than the old toilets ever did, all while consuming a couple of gallons of water. (Low-flows the first gen were only half).
You have to realize that innovation can either happen organically, or more often than not, in response to regulation and consumer choice. Consumer choice is hard, because those who buy into the new technologies are few and far between, and without an external push, often are too small a market to care.
Take electric cars - the first gens sucked, but now we're getting decent ranges (enough to go about town), and while Tesla is still the king for long range, there are competitors coming to the market.
Otherwise, what happens is people don't care.
Take CFCs. They were phased out in the 80s. Except for one industry - asthma inhalers. They got an except that died out in 2015 or so. So for 20+ years, they got a pass, while everyone else from air conditioners to refrigerators have moved on to CFC-free alternatives. In fact, the first gen of those sucked, too, but those have evolved as people wanted better cooling.
What did the makers of asthma inhalers do? Sure, some moved to a different gas, but they were small and the prices, expensive, while the big guys rested on their laurels for 20+ years. Until their exception came up and there was a big "Oh shit" moment when they realized their deadline was coming up. And the only alternative sucked because it was pricier because no one bought them despite being early to the market for a CFC-free inhaler.
And that really is a problem - industry won't change unless they're forced to. It's always been that way. It's why they fight long and hard against everything from smoking, flame retardants, leaded fuels, and climate change - they don't want to change and evolve, they just want to rake in money the same way.
Hell, aviation still uses leaded gas - but even that industry is changing because the writing's on the wall - the EPA is wanting to crack down on leaded avgas (no doubt spurred by many environmental groups), and all the big industry players know it's coming - either adapt and find a new fuel now or suffer dearly when it's gone. And the signs are there - Tetraethyl lead is only available from one company in the UK, refineries hate it because they can't mix leaded and unleaded processes (and unleaded sells more, so the need to clean the processes really sucks) so fewer are able to refine it, and the demand isn't there - one day's production of leaded avgas is sufficient to meet the needs of North America's avgas needs for an entire year. So an unleaded alternative is desired because the economics are finally not making sense, and pressure is being applied by the government to seek alternatives. There are a few lead-free alternatives to avgas already being tested, some by research labs, others by big oil companies. And heck, there's even diesel - sure it requires a new engine, but you go from avgas to Jet-A, which is stupidly easy to get, fairly cheap, and available literally everywhere (avgas is harder to find, while Jet-A is the same stuff airliners use so there's huge distribution networks and infrastructure and lots of competition)
Maybe a fan of the Apple/MS Surface/Lumia model? That the OEMs aren't really adding any value and you could just cut the middle man. Because from what I understand that's mainly what they do these days, they take hardware from AMD/nVidia/Intel + various others for screen, touchpad etc., software mainly from Microsoft and outsource the assembly to Foxconn-style assemblers and the support to call centers somewhere. It would probably be pretty bad for Linux users, not sure it'd be all that bad for Windows users. The Surface line seems to be getting pretty good reviews and sell well...
But the OEMs are what make PCs, well, PCs.
They are the ones that created (for better or worse) the immense diversity in PCs.
For an example, look at Apple. Everytime Apple releases a new Mac, people complain - too expensive, or a PC is cheaper, or they don't have X, or they don't sell a $250 laptop, etc. etc. etc.
Well, that's what OEMs are for - Apple simply picks and chooses the markets they want to sell to. Other OEMs find their own markets. And these days, the results are clear computing wise - we've got more diversity in computing now than ever before - I mean, Windows can be had on a PC costing $100 (tablet or "desktop" compute stick). This is unheard of.
Yes, for a time the market got stuck - and we were stuck with shitty $500 laptops with 1366x768 screens and nothing to fulfill the high end market. Except Apple who was making a killing selling $1000+ laptops that no OEM wanted to touch and offering high-res screens and GPUs and all t hat. Then Intel formed the Ultrabook market to entice OEMs to produce MacBook Air competitors. Which dragged OEMs into the premium market as well.
OEMs added value by creating computers that fit their target demographic. Sure sometimes people optimize too well and you hit a local minima (like desktops and laptops being almost all budget and crap), but a push away and now you have OEMs producing higher margin higher end PCs and competing against Apple.
Heck, remember the netbook craze that completely died away because of tablets? It's sorta making a comeback because you can get really cheap computing devices. And heck, my $100 Windows tablet runs the latest Windows and runs software written for a time when it couldn't be imagined that a computer for $100 was possible. Heck, most of the technologies that power the tablet weren't even thought of.
And fully automatic rifles in countless homes... somehow I don't think many of those pushing for a more Swiss style system also want that.
Well, the reason is every Swiss citizen basically has to spend a couple of years serving their country. As their "reward", they're a reserve member of the Swiss Army and thus have their own full auto rifle.
So if you're willing to subject every citizen through mandatory service (which is generally the rule - the voluntary service in the US and several other countries is actually an exception) then keep them as reserve military personnel, then yes, the guns are fine.
The other thing is well, if you've gone through the training, then you're also less likely to be stupid about gun safety. After all, the real problem with guns in the US is pretty much anyone is allowed to own one - I'm sure the Swiss screen their candidates as well. And everyone there also gets training in its use, care safety and storage, something which is likely lacking in the US. I'm sure the NRA (who was founded on the principles of everyone should be taught how to properly shoot and take proper care of a gun, not the current "guns solve everything") will have a fit if someone even suggested that every gun owner have to take a firearms course.
Of course, perhaps we should also add safe gun handling to the Home Economics curriculum - we can't do anything about stupid adults, but maybe we can educate the kids into not being idiots with guns.
The classic example used by logical positivists in the early 20th century was any conjecture about the far side of the Moon. Until we developed spacecraft any statement about the half of the Moon we can't see would have been untestable in practical terms, but it would have been testable in principle.
And the problem with String Theory is, the stuff may not be testable, ever, because of physics. Measuring stuff at the scale of String Theory invokes the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which means that if String Theory makes a prediction, you can't test it, ever because no piece of equipment will be able to measure it.
And that's where things get interesting. The technology required is impossible to build, ever, barring some fundamental shift in physics as we know it today.
Of course, I suppose it's possible to try to extend its predictions to larger objects and do it by induction, but things get complex and much more variables come into play.
probably australian governent buys the sms sending with a shitty deal with either expensive or nonfunctional internationl sms's - and just expensive for them for domestic.
they probably bought it from telstra or some other shit company for ten cents a piece or something and thought they were getting a great deal because they had not checked the market in 15 years...
No, likely it's that the user forgets to update his account with a new phone number.
I mean, if you're traveling and you're using a local SIM, it may not occur to you to update the phone number on your various 2FA websites. So you go to log in, and they send a code, but it doesn't occur to you that the number is different from what you registered. So you try and try and you don't get the code.
Now, if you're lucky, you have the right SIM with you, and hopefully you don't mind paying whatever the rate is to receive a text while roaming. (Because you need the code in order to log in and change the number, and likely to change it back so you better still have the SIM when you change it back).
It doesn't matter how well you do it - if it's dependent on SMS and people swap to local SIMs to avoid roaming charges, you're going to run into issues like this.
I know it seems silly but sometimes I play the lottery. There is a game where sometimes the odds of winning are about one in half a million, if there are no winners a few days in a row, sometimes the jackpot gets to be over half a million. I know that in itself shows how little chance there is of ever winning, but I can at least sort of justify it though math.
Well, you can justify buying ONE ticket. Just one. Because it's a sort of entertainment - you bought the ticket, then you spent hours dreaming what you would do with the money if you won it.
But that's only good for ONE ticket. Any more and the entertainment value's the same.
Same with the scratch and wins - I'd say they were the original "app" to be used when you had a few minutes to spare then you'd take them out and occupy yourself while you wait. Of course, this presumes you got the nicer ones where you do stuff and not merely one that you scratch off a box and try to find 3 matches.
That's it. Gambling is where you play with the expectation of winning. This is more of a game,
That said, I don't do the lottery by myself anymore - costs too much m oney. Instead, I play with a lottery pool - because now you have people to talk with about it.
Seems stupid, but you can kill a lot of time talking about your "winnings", so there's an entertainment factor.
Hassle as in NOT have to pay $15 in advance entry fee? Or Hassle as in NOT have to get a visa? Or hassle as in only have to flick your passport once at the destination airport and then being able to travel to ~20 other countries without a single border control?
Could you give an example of what you're referring to?
And don't blame it on Europe if the "hassle" is only in obtaining a passport because US bureaucracy is as swift as a 70s banana republic's. That's homemmade.
Well most Americans actually don't have a passport. And a startlingly large number of them have never left their home towns (nor home state).
Heck, there was a point when you didn't even need a passport in the US - I still remember seeing Americans going through immigration with little more than driver's licenses. Always amazed me as a Canadian that passports were optional.
So of that, I'm sure a bunch of US citizens don't travel because now they have to get a passport when it wasn't required before.
And really, one thing I've found fascinating is the US is really quite a set of disparate people - every region in the US different, with different accents and customs. I still remember dealing with a company from Atlanta, Georgia and that thick Southern drawl. (And then wondering why one person from that company had a west coast accent - turns out he was remotely working from California).
So you can really experience a lifetime's worth of culture just by travelling within the US.
Report it once, to their abuse address. If it continues (it did), block their IP-range. Problem solved (unless you have a lot of spare time and really WANT to waste time on this instead of reading a book or play computer games).
The problem is the IP range IS blocked. But the router does their port scan detection prior to the IP blacklist and will still notify him of the attack despite the packets being dropped.
But you really can intercept Ctrl-U. The thing is, most browsers simply ignore it, for obvious reasons.
Well, in Firefox and probably others, shift-right-click bypasses all right-click javascript. So if a site disables right-clicking, you can just hold shift and still access "View Page Source" in the context menu. Or anything else - I use an addon called "Nuke Anything" that lets you remove bits of the page and right-click javascript often disables that...
The problem here isn't that a company patented something; it's that there is a patent-encumbered standard. Patents on implementations are fine, but patents on protocols or interfaces (even connector geometry and signal definition, in my opinion) should be disallowed.
That's pretty much every standard out there.
Standards aren't seeking the best technical solution - a standards committee is actually a gathering of all the movers and shakers who go about and make side deals trying to incorporate as many patents as possible. Lots of "if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" to get support for patents to be included.
And patents is power - when the 4G standard was being ratified, Apple was holding a few patents for which there was huge support for and against - the carriers wanted it in, the device makers wanted it out. It didn't mean diddly that Apple was charging nothing for it (because it has to e FRAND), other than Apple was now "joining the club".
And there isn't any standard that isn't encumbered - Some of them are well organized like Ethernet and USB, others are well managed, like h.264, while others are chaotic, like HEVC (who created another organization because they hated the things MPEG-LA did to get h.264 widely adopted everywhere (free streaming on free public sites, caps on royalties, etc). In fact, they're backpedaling because guess what - no one's adopting HEVC due to all the costs).
Microsoft Surface had Apple worried enough for Tim Cook to announce the iPad Pro.
So 'market driven' is a salient point; the cannibalisation has begun.
Oh and Apple once produced a touchscreen laptop with a stylus running a tablet OS. The eMate 300 was 18 1/2 years ahead of its time.
Well, I've seen more than a few people carry around iPads as their sole computing device whilst traveling. Yes, sole computing device. It does their email, accesses their files and marketing materials and that's it. I can imagine that if people are migrating to Surface, it may be because of screen size, so an iPad Pro might be useful for those who wanted a larger screen (like two iPads side by side big). And add a stylus because if it isn't execs, you could at least retarget it for the creative types.
But Apple knows tablet users are finicky, and they also know tablets have saturated the market - they didn't release an iPad Air 3 because the demand is slowing.
And cannibalization? Well, iPads have been nipping at the low end of the Mac market - especially some of the higher end configurations costing just as much as a Mac if not more. (I think the more reasonable iPad Pro configurations cost as much as a Mac).
But Apple is known to do that - because it's hard to predict - rather than protect low end Mac sales from high end iPad sales, offer it at comparable price points so the market can speak. Some people just want a higher end iPad more than a Mac because their workflow is more optimized for that. Others may see the high end iPad and feel the Mac fits their needs better.
The eMate was more of an experiment to produce a ruggedized education computer more so than a regular computer. Basically it needed to last all day or all week, survive school abuse and be useful, so at the time, the only way to do that was repackage the Newton. Because that was cheaper than a regular laptop (hundreds of dollars versus thousands), battery life was incredibly good (days versus... an hour), and kid-friendly. Plus it was easy to lock down which is essential for a kid computer.
They shouldn't call such a thing an 'olympics' of any sort, because there's no real athleticism involved; it's more like a technology demonstration, and has more in common with 'Battlebots' than it does the Olympics.
Of course that being said, the Olympics, anymore, are more about world politics than they are about athleticism anyway.
This.
It's nice as a tech demo, but I wouldn't put much value in the results because really, it's just which country can spend the most money. And after a few times of it being between the US and China and a few other countries, interest will drop.
I know the regular Olympics have rules regarding how much technology can be used (and sometimes it completely fails in amusing ways - US Olympic Swim Team, anyone?) because once it becomes a pure who can spend the most on R&D competition, interest fades.
1/3 Random Chance: Billions of cell divisions occur to in our lives. The protein machinery that makes this happen has incredible fidelity but mistakes inevitably occur and this DNA damage can cause cancer, usually later in life. There is no lifestyle choice that an individual can make to prevent this damage from occurring. I would also lump into random chance the random inflammatory insults that occur over a lifetime -- a cold at a young age that damaged a subset of lung tissue that mutated the p53 gene giving rise to etc.
This is also beneficial because it's how evolution happens - random genetic mutations potentially give us traits that make us more (or less) successful at surviving.
The problem is the cell has lots of mechanisms to detect copy errors - there are proofreaders to ensure the right bases are joined together, there are cell division mechanisms that detect abnormalities and cause the cell to commit suicide, etc. And they're remarkably effective, but not 100%. That's good in that random genetic mutations are necessary for life, but bad in that sometimes the mechanisms fail to detect a cancer condition and cause cell suicide. (It's a problem of large numbers - even if it was 99.99999% effective, enough cells divide all the time that the failure of detecting the mutation means you will get lots of them in the end.
Random errors happen. But they aren't all bad, and they happen remarkably often due to the law of large numbers. Not every mutation will turn into cancer, after all.
No, the third (and probably much more likely) solution is that widespread adoption of driverless cars will result in modification in the behavior of the idiotic humans, because traffic conditions will be different.
You seem to think that the current situation of stupid people generally acting like assholes is somehow optimal. Which is nuts.
You missed the idiotic humans being the ones that actually buy autonomous cars.
In North America, driving is pretty much a necessity. It's much different in other parts of the world. So the idiot drivers are often that way because driving is not something they want to do. It's just a chore, and there are plenty of other things they'd rather be doing. No surprise they actually do (distracted driving is now the #1 cause of accidents, it overtook drunk driving as the primary cause).
So yeah, those people all herky-jerky would probably get off the road and into a car that would drive for them, reducing the number of idiots on the road.
The rest of the population who likes to drive will probably enjoy it a lot more because instead of having to deal with idiot drivers, they can deal much better with more predictable self-driving cars.
So if you sign a lease and then you have a child you must seek the property owner's permission for your child to live there with you? I'm assuming children are legally people. And "even if they are sub-letting" isn't requiring that they be subletting. (Before someone says "but the child isn't subletting.")
I'd say the law as written says you have to ask permission. If that's not the intention then the law is badly written. Wouldn't that mean discrimination against people with children is allowed?
Not to surprise you, but yes, you do need permission. Because a child living on premises might not actually be allowed!
There are many places that are adults-only who choose to live there because they don't want to live (or deal with) children. Just like there are many properties that don't allow pets, for example. Or restrict what kind of pets.
Heck, there was even a case where a property was for elderly people - sure non-elderly people were allowed to live there, but there had to be at least one elderly person there. Well, said elderly person passed, and the landlord started the eviction process because their son wasn't elderly.
Anyhow, this is probably better - if you want to negotiate the ability to sublet, your landlord might jack up the rent significantly because of the insurance and other issues. And usually for sublets they demand to know who you're subletting to ahead of time. With this, the landlord only gets increased rent when you actually rent out the place.
Seriously this. Weights and Measures are the ones who keep honest people honest, by auditing and randomly testing anything that relies on metering. They are one making sure out of town people are not being cheated at the gas pump. If Comcast wants to measure and meter data usage, then they should be compelled to install a tested and sealed device that spits out the data usage to customer on premise.
Exactly.
First, we need a standard way of measuring the data, because there's a heck of a lot of different ways, so we need to standardize.
Things like - what headers are included - IP level headers? transport headers? (Some providers charge for DOCSIS headers too!). Then you have to define the quantities - what's 1 GB - 1GB, or 1GiB (10^9 vs. 2^30)? (Cellphone providers use base 10, and many include the OTA headers - add about 5%).
Next, what traffic do we use? This one is important because there's a LOT of unsolicited traffic out there - do we count it? Or not? Does being the victim of a pingflood mean you'll be billed extra?
Seriously, these are important questions (especially unsolicited traffic). Comcast shouldn't be the one who defines it. Weights and Measures should - and even if they pick the worst case scenario, at least we know what's being measured and how. So if Comcast advertises 250GB, we know it's probably around 200GiB all said and done, for example.
Then we can develop measurement boxes that Comcast and others have to use to determine traffic, sealed and inspected like your electric, water or gas meter with a display that's human readable, so when you get your bill (no one said the meter couldn't be electronically readable) you can check against the box.
Anything measured for trade has to be certified. If you look closely, you'll see seals, calibration stickers and sometimes expiry dates on the meters (be it gas (natural or petrol), electricity, or water).
And yes, we do this because people have cheated in the past. Scales that were off, calibrated weights (for balances) that weren't correct, etc.
In fact, because they are so strict, gas pumps generally err on the side of giving the customer too much (read low - you get 1.01 gallons for every gallon indicated) than shorting the customer. Especially in colder climates where the gas contracts a bit so a gallon of cold gas has technically more energy than a gallon of warm gas.
Well, it isn't just small pieces - these people have been posting the entirety of the major plot points and scenes that could very well ruin the entire experience for someone looking forward to watching it in the theater.
True, but guess what? If you don't want spoilers, you're screwed - get off the internet - don't use Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media tool. Because people are going to post spoilers the instant they see it. And guess what? Lots of people have seen it already!
Hell, you might want to avoid the Internet altogether because spoilers are going to be flying around. If you haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to be spoiled, you have to unplug.
That's the reality of it. People are going to post spoilers. The instant anyone sees it, well, the internet will be flooded with them. Applies to TV too - cord cutters have been known to subscribe to cable so they can be among the crowd to discuss a TV show instead of being able to talk about it days later when it's all been spoiled and everyone's moved on.
That's the only way. Even if people aren't trying to spoil it intentionally, you'll run into unintentional spoilers.
Apparently, according to the longer document (which is an interesting way to kill an hour or two), there was also some kind of conferencing system between the individual launch control centers in each flight. The keys had to be turned at the local consoles, but at least one other control center also had to "vote" to launch, presumably by turning their keys as well.
Later, this was augmented by the addition of a box with some thumbwheel switches that required the entry of a specific code from SAC as a condition for launch.
Well, the other silo "voting" is to prevent silo madness. You have to remember that each silo is staffed by two people, who basically have to sit by the console for hours each day, every day, for months on end. It's total isolation - there's no TV or radio on purpose.
And unlike carefully screened astronauts, you start getting cabin fever, and hallucinations or other things start becoming real possibilities.
So while the two keys keep one person from going mad from launching, the two people could also get into sync and start believing in the same delusions. So you add in a second silo just in case.
The keywheels are a third protection - not from launch, but from the warhead going off. What happens is the key wheels form a password, and that password then decrypts the timing parameters required to detonate a nuclear warhead. Each warhead is manufactured differently and as a result, the timing of the operations needed to set it off differ. If the right key isn't present, then the timing parameters are decrypted wrong and the warhead doesn't go off.
You added the smiley but this is exactly their reasoning. Municipal broadband would hurt the other ISPs because the competition might force prices down and might force the big ISPs to improve their service. All this would mean lower profits which "hurts" those companies. Instead, we've got to let the big ISPs grow bigger and get fatter and fatter with profits.
Of course, I mean, the CEOs need their new yachts and condo buildings as well.
So yeah, they're representing "the people". Just if you're not making $1,000,000/year or more, you're not "the people", you're just an annoying noisy little slave. And we all know slaves aren't people.
When we are born we are so clean that even our stomachs do not have bacteria. It is hypothesized that our first dose of this bacteria comes from normal child birth and then we are put in our mothers arms so kissing and cuddling further transfers the bacteria. Is this cuddling and kissing where we get the first face mites too or are we born with them?
In fact, for the first two weeks after birth, the immune system is actually suppressed (while the baby has the antibodies conferred from the mother, immune activity is suppressed). It is believed this is to get a head start in populating symbiotic bacteria in the stomach, intestines and skin.
Presumably a lot of touching confers it as well - our skins are full of bacteria, and on it live some species that we live symbiotically with - being territorial, any foreign invader gets attacked by them before they have a chance to invade us.
And we live in a very dirty world - there are more foreign cells in and on our bodies than there are human cells, so the merest touches really help spawn colonies on a baby. We're so dirty it probably isn't possible to get anything completely sterile - instead, by sterile we really mean free from contaminants that could cause harm. All the other stuff we live with doesn't really harm us, and we live in peace with them.
OtherOS on PS4 would be nothing more than a novelty.
You have to think a bit more thoroughly.
First, a console that could somehow run homebrew means homebrewers will likely use that mechanism to run homebrew. Like OtherOS, or XNA. This keeps a highly technical crowd busy and happy. This leaves pirates to work by themselves trying to figure out how to pirate games.
But take away that ability, and suddenly the homebrewers and pirates goals have aligned - homebrewers want to write code and pirates want to run code.
So when Sony took away OtherOS, the homebrewers were suddenly looking at how to get it back. And that's when they discovered the fatal flaws of the Sony OS. Pirates rejoiced because homebrewers, who are some of the most technically skilled people around, were doing all the hard work and found the critical bugs - now not only could homebrewers write their own code, but pirates had full access too.
Microsoft learned this the hard way with the original Xbox - homebrewers found critical flaws in the system and broke it open. The homebrewers even kindly asked Microsoft for an "official" way to homebrew after they found the bug - revealing they found a critical system flaw. Microsoft didn't give way, and the homebrewers released their code, resulting in the complete breaking of the original Xbox.
I'm sure the homebrewers did the same for Sony, but Sony refused to allow OtherOS and they released their code. At which point other hackers discovered the keys were easily obtainable and got the official master keys.
In the meantime, Microsoft created an official way to homebrew called XNA, charged a little money for it, and the Xbox360 was never completely cracked - there were optical drive exploits (for pirating games, but those were detectable by the OS), and odd versions of software could run Linux, but that's about it.
The problem with your 4-way stops is they are fucking as dangerous as hell. You could hardly design a less safe junction if you tried. Introducing a roundabout has been proven may times over to lead to around a 90% drop in fatality rates at junctions.
The roundabout has also shown itself to increase throughput, too - more cars can get through a roundabout than a 4-way stop in a given period of time. (And 4-way stops aren't the only configuration - there are the oddball 5 way stops as well.)
In Canada, the signs do tell you how many ways the stop sign applies (3-way, 4-way, 5-way) , but in the US, it goes "All way". Except in shopping malls, because there the road rules are completely confusing - you can have an intersection, and 3 of the 4 directions has a stop sign marked "3 way", while the remaining direction has right of way.
On the other hand, keeping individual device speeds done helps prevent users killing the network. I know, traffic management can be done digitally, but having 10/100 instead of gigabit on the device is basically fool-proof, and if you're running an office of 200 non-technical users on a single network connection, there will be a significant minority of fools in there that think it's OK to download stupidly large files in the middle of the working day.
Most offices have internet speeds that are way less than 100Mbit. Usually in the 10-50Mbit range. And 200 non-technical people generally means the internet is not a huge priority as it would be for say, a technical company that interacts with customers through the internet.
So no, having 10/100 does absolutely zilch for users downloading large files over the network link. All it does is prevent them from accessing large files on the fileserver in a timely fashion. At gigabit speeds, a 1GB file can be transferred in a few seconds, which expands to a minute or two over 100Mbps.
At best, it may prevent a user from taking down the core switches should something go crazy and they spew packages at gigabit speeds (or say, a network loop).
Hell, modern WiFi is often faster than a lot of office internet connections.
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Well, several problems with the summary.
1) Micro USB sucks. I mean, USB Type C is coming out and for good reason - plugging in cables without doing the twist-around dance is a good thing. Rumor has it Apple actually gave that design to the USB forum because well, uni-directional connectors stink especially on mobile. Heck, there are several designs for the old Type A connector that are... reversible! Unfortunately, the design of the Type A means they are fragile
2) USB lightning cables aren't expensive, nor proprietary. The chip only comes into play if you want to do anything more than connect a sync/charge cable. You can pick up a ton of sync/charge USB to lightning cables on eBay/DealExtreme/monoprice/Alibaba for $5 shipped these days. There's a lot of clone cables out there. Hell, even licensed cables are only $10 on sale nowadays.
3) The chip allows lightning to do fancy things like send audio or video data out of it. USB has no such functionality directly (except through USB Host ports faking OTG - no one implements real OTG), so it's considered a "value add".
4) Reversible connectors are good. Imagine trying to design a phone accessory that uses the USB port - if you want to support a lot of phones, it's hard because half will have the USB plug one way, the other half will be the opposite, so you get stuck with releasing a product with a pigtail and some hokey attachment option.
5) Apple chargers have special resistors to tell you how much current the charger allows. USB Charging spec shorts D+/D-, offering no clue as to how much you can draw. And it's changed - 500mA, 800mA, 1A and 2A are valid. And devices that draw 2A have been known to explode/set on fire cheap chargers. Why the USB folks couldn't have adopted the Apple system (which is cheap, requires no special hardware (the resistors pull the D+/D- lines to logical 0 and 1 states) to measure or use and lets you mix and match chargers at will, I have no idea. I mean, why can't the charger tell the device it only supports 500mA? (FYI - the circuits to detect a USB charger are the same as Apple resistors - the D+/D- short coupled with "special resistors" inside the device across ground and Vbus means you detect it because the USB lines go a certain way)
6) Government mandating USB Micro is already limiting - consumers won't get Type C style connectors on their phone. I mean it's good it's standardized, but you really want to harm innovation like this? Of course, you can allow adapters for the Apple folks, and the Type C phone folks as well. (And face it - more phones are coming with Type C nowadays).
SO no, I'm sure Apple's really worried. Because likely the adapter provision will have to say, or you're going to really deny people the ability to buy phones that have USB Type C?
That's because you don't know how these groups work.
They're a consortium of industry groups who get together to make standards.
Here's how in general it works - if people want to make a new standard, they get together. Each company sends a few technical people to hash out the specification, because every standard is not done for technical excellence, but on backroom deals.
Remember, there's two ways to make money on patents - you can be a big fish in a small pond by not licensing and basically controlling it (which works for companies like Apple who don't offer "innovation" in the traditional sense of moving technology forward, but make it more accessible, and the goal is to avoid all the hard work being stolen by someone else). Or you can be a small fish in a big shared pool, where you're basically going to make it off license fees.
So back to standards groups - basically it's a collection of people trying to get their patent in the spec. That's it - a standard is obtained containing the most politically savvy engineers who managed to convince everyone their patents should be in. And politically savvy means making lots of backroom deals - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
And there's a lot of Old Boy's Club going on as well - Apple brought a patent into it, licensed for $0, and roughly half rejected it - while the other half promoted it. The rejected half tried to come up with a similar-but-different model to counter Apple (most likely NOT $0 as Apple offered, and all that). The only reason? Basically to keep pesky companies like Apple out of the club and sucking on the teat of everyone else.
And that's how standards are made. And everything has patents - Ethernet (every GigE port pays HP for the MDI/MDIX patent they hold - it's actually in the standard by name), WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, etc. etc. etc. That's not to say there aren't patent-free specs - all the internet RFCs are basically it, for example.
And IoT isn't standard because it's too new - too much stuff out there, and so far the public isn't buying it all up. Mostly because it's still expensive, and most people really don't have a need for that. I mean, walk through all the stuff available and most people will never have more than one or two. You may have a fancy light bulb, or an environment monitor, fancy thermostat, or a surveillance camera. But it's unlikely you'll have all three.
With consumers not picking up multiple units, they don't care about standardization. I mean, if they pick up a bunch of Philips bulbs, they'll likely just continue to pick them up (regular consumers). If you offer them a cheaper bulb, they may ignore you, fearing they have to worry about another app.
Right now the technology is too expensive - most people I know aren't even considering fancy lamps, or super smart thermostats, or video cameras. And most don't care what the indoor humidity is.
The problem is, if the push didn't happen, we'd still be using 10 gallon flush toilets. The low-flow toilets sucked, yes, but it forced innovation on the market - because they sucked, people went on to do the R&D to make even lower flow toilets that work even better than the old toilets ever did, all while consuming a couple of gallons of water. (Low-flows the first gen were only half).
You have to realize that innovation can either happen organically, or more often than not, in response to regulation and consumer choice. Consumer choice is hard, because those who buy into the new technologies are few and far between, and without an external push, often are too small a market to care.
Take electric cars - the first gens sucked, but now we're getting decent ranges (enough to go about town), and while Tesla is still the king for long range, there are competitors coming to the market.
Otherwise, what happens is people don't care.
Take CFCs. They were phased out in the 80s. Except for one industry - asthma inhalers. They got an except that died out in 2015 or so. So for 20+ years, they got a pass, while everyone else from air conditioners to refrigerators have moved on to CFC-free alternatives. In fact, the first gen of those sucked, too, but those have evolved as people wanted better cooling.
What did the makers of asthma inhalers do? Sure, some moved to a different gas, but they were small and the prices, expensive, while the big guys rested on their laurels for 20+ years. Until their exception came up and there was a big "Oh shit" moment when they realized their deadline was coming up. And the only alternative sucked because it was pricier because no one bought them despite being early to the market for a CFC-free inhaler.
And that really is a problem - industry won't change unless they're forced to. It's always been that way. It's why they fight long and hard against everything from smoking, flame retardants, leaded fuels, and climate change - they don't want to change and evolve, they just want to rake in money the same way.
Hell, aviation still uses leaded gas - but even that industry is changing because the writing's on the wall - the EPA is wanting to crack down on leaded avgas (no doubt spurred by many environmental groups), and all the big industry players know it's coming - either adapt and find a new fuel now or suffer dearly when it's gone. And the signs are there - Tetraethyl lead is only available from one company in the UK, refineries hate it because they can't mix leaded and unleaded processes (and unleaded sells more, so the need to clean the processes really sucks) so fewer are able to refine it, and the demand isn't there - one day's production of leaded avgas is sufficient to meet the needs of North America's avgas needs for an entire year. So an unleaded alternative is desired because the economics are finally not making sense, and pressure is being applied by the government to seek alternatives. There are a few lead-free alternatives to avgas already being tested, some by research labs, others by big oil companies. And heck, there's even diesel - sure it requires a new engine, but you go from avgas to Jet-A, which is stupidly easy to get, fairly cheap, and available literally everywhere (avgas is harder to find, while Jet-A is the same stuff airliners use so there's huge distribution networks and infrastructure and lots of competition)
But the OEMs are what make PCs, well, PCs.
They are the ones that created (for better or worse) the immense diversity in PCs.
For an example, look at Apple. Everytime Apple releases a new Mac, people complain - too expensive, or a PC is cheaper, or they don't have X, or they don't sell a $250 laptop, etc. etc. etc.
Well, that's what OEMs are for - Apple simply picks and chooses the markets they want to sell to. Other OEMs find their own markets. And these days, the results are clear computing wise - we've got more diversity in computing now than ever before - I mean, Windows can be had on a PC costing $100 (tablet or "desktop" compute stick). This is unheard of.
Yes, for a time the market got stuck - and we were stuck with shitty $500 laptops with 1366x768 screens and nothing to fulfill the high end market. Except Apple who was making a killing selling $1000+ laptops that no OEM wanted to touch and offering high-res screens and GPUs and all t hat. Then Intel formed the Ultrabook market to entice OEMs to produce MacBook Air competitors. Which dragged OEMs into the premium market as well.
OEMs added value by creating computers that fit their target demographic. Sure sometimes people optimize too well and you hit a local minima (like desktops and laptops being almost all budget and crap), but a push away and now you have OEMs producing higher margin higher end PCs and competing against Apple.
Heck, remember the netbook craze that completely died away because of tablets? It's sorta making a comeback because you can get really cheap computing devices. And heck, my $100 Windows tablet runs the latest Windows and runs software written for a time when it couldn't be imagined that a computer for $100 was possible. Heck, most of the technologies that power the tablet weren't even thought of.
Well, the reason is every Swiss citizen basically has to spend a couple of years serving their country. As their "reward", they're a reserve member of the Swiss Army and thus have their own full auto rifle.
So if you're willing to subject every citizen through mandatory service (which is generally the rule - the voluntary service in the US and several other countries is actually an exception) then keep them as reserve military personnel, then yes, the guns are fine.
The other thing is well, if you've gone through the training, then you're also less likely to be stupid about gun safety. After all, the real problem with guns in the US is pretty much anyone is allowed to own one - I'm sure the Swiss screen their candidates as well. And everyone there also gets training in its use, care safety and storage, something which is likely lacking in the US. I'm sure the NRA (who was founded on the principles of everyone should be taught how to properly shoot and take proper care of a gun, not the current "guns solve everything") will have a fit if someone even suggested that every gun owner have to take a firearms course.
Of course, perhaps we should also add safe gun handling to the Home Economics curriculum - we can't do anything about stupid adults, but maybe we can educate the kids into not being idiots with guns.
And the problem with String Theory is, the stuff may not be testable, ever, because of physics. Measuring stuff at the scale of String Theory invokes the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which means that if String Theory makes a prediction, you can't test it, ever because no piece of equipment will be able to measure it.
And that's where things get interesting. The technology required is impossible to build, ever, barring some fundamental shift in physics as we know it today.
Of course, I suppose it's possible to try to extend its predictions to larger objects and do it by induction, but things get complex and much more variables come into play.
No, likely it's that the user forgets to update his account with a new phone number.
I mean, if you're traveling and you're using a local SIM, it may not occur to you to update the phone number on your various 2FA websites. So you go to log in, and they send a code, but it doesn't occur to you that the number is different from what you registered. So you try and try and you don't get the code.
Now, if you're lucky, you have the right SIM with you, and hopefully you don't mind paying whatever the rate is to receive a text while roaming. (Because you need the code in order to log in and change the number, and likely to change it back so you better still have the SIM when you change it back).
It doesn't matter how well you do it - if it's dependent on SMS and people swap to local SIMs to avoid roaming charges, you're going to run into issues like this.
Well, you can justify buying ONE ticket. Just one. Because it's a sort of entertainment - you bought the ticket, then you spent hours dreaming what you would do with the money if you won it.
But that's only good for ONE ticket. Any more and the entertainment value's the same.
Same with the scratch and wins - I'd say they were the original "app" to be used when you had a few minutes to spare then you'd take them out and occupy yourself while you wait. Of course, this presumes you got the nicer ones where you do stuff and not merely one that you scratch off a box and try to find 3 matches.
That's it. Gambling is where you play with the expectation of winning. This is more of a game,
That said, I don't do the lottery by myself anymore - costs too much m oney. Instead, I play with a lottery pool - because now you have people to talk with about it.
Seems stupid, but you can kill a lot of time talking about your "winnings", so there's an entertainment factor.
Well most Americans actually don't have a passport. And a startlingly large number of them have never left their home towns (nor home state).
Heck, there was a point when you didn't even need a passport in the US - I still remember seeing Americans going through immigration with little more than driver's licenses. Always amazed me as a Canadian that passports were optional.
So of that, I'm sure a bunch of US citizens don't travel because now they have to get a passport when it wasn't required before.
And really, one thing I've found fascinating is the US is really quite a set of disparate people - every region in the US different, with different accents and customs. I still remember dealing with a company from Atlanta, Georgia and that thick Southern drawl. (And then wondering why one person from that company had a west coast accent - turns out he was remotely working from California).
So you can really experience a lifetime's worth of culture just by travelling within the US.
The problem is the IP range IS blocked. But the router does their port scan detection prior to the IP blacklist and will still notify him of the attack despite the packets being dropped.
Well, in Firefox and probably others, shift-right-click bypasses all right-click javascript. So if a site disables right-clicking, you can just hold shift and still access "View Page Source" in the context menu. Or anything else - I use an addon called "Nuke Anything" that lets you remove bits of the page and right-click javascript often disables that...
That's pretty much every standard out there.
Standards aren't seeking the best technical solution - a standards committee is actually a gathering of all the movers and shakers who go about and make side deals trying to incorporate as many patents as possible. Lots of "if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" to get support for patents to be included.
And patents is power - when the 4G standard was being ratified, Apple was holding a few patents for which there was huge support for and against - the carriers wanted it in, the device makers wanted it out. It didn't mean diddly that Apple was charging nothing for it (because it has to e FRAND), other than Apple was now "joining the club".
And there isn't any standard that isn't encumbered - Some of them are well organized like Ethernet and USB, others are well managed, like h.264, while others are chaotic, like HEVC (who created another organization because they hated the things MPEG-LA did to get h.264 widely adopted everywhere (free streaming on free public sites, caps on royalties, etc). In fact, they're backpedaling because guess what - no one's adopting HEVC due to all the costs).
Well, I've seen more than a few people carry around iPads as their sole computing device whilst traveling. Yes, sole computing device. It does their email, accesses their files and marketing materials and that's it. I can imagine that if people are migrating to Surface, it may be because of screen size, so an iPad Pro might be useful for those who wanted a larger screen (like two iPads side by side big). And add a stylus because if it isn't execs, you could at least retarget it for the creative types.
But Apple knows tablet users are finicky, and they also know tablets have saturated the market - they didn't release an iPad Air 3 because the demand is slowing.
And cannibalization? Well, iPads have been nipping at the low end of the Mac market - especially some of the higher end configurations costing just as much as a Mac if not more. (I think the more reasonable iPad Pro configurations cost as much as a Mac).
But Apple is known to do that - because it's hard to predict - rather than protect low end Mac sales from high end iPad sales, offer it at comparable price points so the market can speak. Some people just want a higher end iPad more than a Mac because their workflow is more optimized for that. Others may see the high end iPad and feel the Mac fits their needs better.
The eMate was more of an experiment to produce a ruggedized education computer more so than a regular computer. Basically it needed to last all day or all week, survive school abuse and be useful, so at the time, the only way to do that was repackage the Newton. Because that was cheaper than a regular laptop (hundreds of dollars versus thousands), battery life was incredibly good (days versus ... an hour), and kid-friendly. Plus it was easy to lock down which is essential for a kid computer.
This.
It's nice as a tech demo, but I wouldn't put much value in the results because really, it's just which country can spend the most money. And after a few times of it being between the US and China and a few other countries, interest will drop.
I know the regular Olympics have rules regarding how much technology can be used (and sometimes it completely fails in amusing ways - US Olympic Swim Team, anyone?) because once it becomes a pure who can spend the most on R&D competition, interest fades.
This is also beneficial because it's how evolution happens - random genetic mutations potentially give us traits that make us more (or less) successful at surviving.
The problem is the cell has lots of mechanisms to detect copy errors - there are proofreaders to ensure the right bases are joined together, there are cell division mechanisms that detect abnormalities and cause the cell to commit suicide, etc. And they're remarkably effective, but not 100%. That's good in that random genetic mutations are necessary for life, but bad in that sometimes the mechanisms fail to detect a cancer condition and cause cell suicide. (It's a problem of large numbers - even if it was 99.99999% effective, enough cells divide all the time that the failure of detecting the mutation means you will get lots of them in the end.
Random errors happen. But they aren't all bad, and they happen remarkably often due to the law of large numbers. Not every mutation will turn into cancer, after all.
You missed the idiotic humans being the ones that actually buy autonomous cars.
In North America, driving is pretty much a necessity. It's much different in other parts of the world. So the idiot drivers are often that way because driving is not something they want to do. It's just a chore, and there are plenty of other things they'd rather be doing. No surprise they actually do (distracted driving is now the #1 cause of accidents, it overtook drunk driving as the primary cause).
So yeah, those people all herky-jerky would probably get off the road and into a car that would drive for them, reducing the number of idiots on the road.
The rest of the population who likes to drive will probably enjoy it a lot more because instead of having to deal with idiot drivers, they can deal much better with more predictable self-driving cars.
Not to surprise you, but yes, you do need permission. Because a child living on premises might not actually be allowed!
There are many places that are adults-only who choose to live there because they don't want to live (or deal with) children. Just like there are many properties that don't allow pets, for example. Or restrict what kind of pets.
Heck, there was even a case where a property was for elderly people - sure non-elderly people were allowed to live there, but there had to be at least one elderly person there. Well, said elderly person passed, and the landlord started the eviction process because their son wasn't elderly.
Anyhow, this is probably better - if you want to negotiate the ability to sublet, your landlord might jack up the rent significantly because of the insurance and other issues. And usually for sublets they demand to know who you're subletting to ahead of time. With this, the landlord only gets increased rent when you actually rent out the place.
Exactly.
First, we need a standard way of measuring the data, because there's a heck of a lot of different ways, so we need to standardize.
Things like - what headers are included - IP level headers? transport headers? (Some providers charge for DOCSIS headers too!). Then you have to define the quantities - what's 1 GB - 1GB, or 1GiB (10^9 vs. 2^30)? (Cellphone providers use base 10, and many include the OTA headers - add about 5%).
Next, what traffic do we use? This one is important because there's a LOT of unsolicited traffic out there - do we count it? Or not? Does being the victim of a pingflood mean you'll be billed extra?
Seriously, these are important questions (especially unsolicited traffic). Comcast shouldn't be the one who defines it. Weights and Measures should - and even if they pick the worst case scenario, at least we know what's being measured and how. So if Comcast advertises 250GB, we know it's probably around 200GiB all said and done, for example.
Then we can develop measurement boxes that Comcast and others have to use to determine traffic, sealed and inspected like your electric, water or gas meter with a display that's human readable, so when you get your bill (no one said the meter couldn't be electronically readable) you can check against the box.
Anything measured for trade has to be certified. If you look closely, you'll see seals, calibration stickers and sometimes expiry dates on the meters (be it gas (natural or petrol), electricity, or water).
And yes, we do this because people have cheated in the past. Scales that were off, calibrated weights (for balances) that weren't correct, etc.
In fact, because they are so strict, gas pumps generally err on the side of giving the customer too much (read low - you get 1.01 gallons for every gallon indicated) than shorting the customer. Especially in colder climates where the gas contracts a bit so a gallon of cold gas has technically more energy than a gallon of warm gas.
True, but guess what? If you don't want spoilers, you're screwed - get off the internet - don't use Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media tool. Because people are going to post spoilers the instant they see it. And guess what? Lots of people have seen it already!
Hell, you might want to avoid the Internet altogether because spoilers are going to be flying around. If you haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to be spoiled, you have to unplug.
That's the reality of it. People are going to post spoilers. The instant anyone sees it, well, the internet will be flooded with them. Applies to TV too - cord cutters have been known to subscribe to cable so they can be among the crowd to discuss a TV show instead of being able to talk about it days later when it's all been spoiled and everyone's moved on.
That's the only way. Even if people aren't trying to spoil it intentionally, you'll run into unintentional spoilers.
Well, the other silo "voting" is to prevent silo madness. You have to remember that each silo is staffed by two people, who basically have to sit by the console for hours each day, every day, for months on end. It's total isolation - there's no TV or radio on purpose.
And unlike carefully screened astronauts, you start getting cabin fever, and hallucinations or other things start becoming real possibilities.
So while the two keys keep one person from going mad from launching, the two people could also get into sync and start believing in the same delusions. So you add in a second silo just in case.
The keywheels are a third protection - not from launch, but from the warhead going off. What happens is the key wheels form a password, and that password then decrypts the timing parameters required to detonate a nuclear warhead. Each warhead is manufactured differently and as a result, the timing of the operations needed to set it off differ. If the right key isn't present, then the timing parameters are decrypted wrong and the warhead doesn't go off.
Of course, I mean, the CEOs need their new yachts and condo buildings as well.
So yeah, they're representing "the people". Just if you're not making $1,000,000/year or more, you're not "the people", you're just an annoying noisy little slave. And we all know slaves aren't people.
In fact, for the first two weeks after birth, the immune system is actually suppressed (while the baby has the antibodies conferred from the mother, immune activity is suppressed). It is believed this is to get a head start in populating symbiotic bacteria in the stomach, intestines and skin.
Presumably a lot of touching confers it as well - our skins are full of bacteria, and on it live some species that we live symbiotically with - being territorial, any foreign invader gets attacked by them before they have a chance to invade us.
And we live in a very dirty world - there are more foreign cells in and on our bodies than there are human cells, so the merest touches really help spawn colonies on a baby. We're so dirty it probably isn't possible to get anything completely sterile - instead, by sterile we really mean free from contaminants that could cause harm. All the other stuff we live with doesn't really harm us, and we live in peace with them.
You have to think a bit more thoroughly.
First, a console that could somehow run homebrew means homebrewers will likely use that mechanism to run homebrew. Like OtherOS, or XNA. This keeps a highly technical crowd busy and happy. This leaves pirates to work by themselves trying to figure out how to pirate games.
But take away that ability, and suddenly the homebrewers and pirates goals have aligned - homebrewers want to write code and pirates want to run code.
So when Sony took away OtherOS, the homebrewers were suddenly looking at how to get it back. And that's when they discovered the fatal flaws of the Sony OS. Pirates rejoiced because homebrewers, who are some of the most technically skilled people around, were doing all the hard work and found the critical bugs - now not only could homebrewers write their own code, but pirates had full access too.
Microsoft learned this the hard way with the original Xbox - homebrewers found critical flaws in the system and broke it open. The homebrewers even kindly asked Microsoft for an "official" way to homebrew after they found the bug - revealing they found a critical system flaw. Microsoft didn't give way, and the homebrewers released their code, resulting in the complete breaking of the original Xbox.
I'm sure the homebrewers did the same for Sony, but Sony refused to allow OtherOS and they released their code. At which point other hackers discovered the keys were easily obtainable and got the official master keys.
In the meantime, Microsoft created an official way to homebrew called XNA, charged a little money for it, and the Xbox360 was never completely cracked - there were optical drive exploits (for pirating games, but those were detectable by the OS), and odd versions of software could run Linux, but that's about it.
The roundabout has also shown itself to increase throughput, too - more cars can get through a roundabout than a 4-way stop in a given period of time. (And 4-way stops aren't the only configuration - there are the oddball 5 way stops as well.)
In Canada, the signs do tell you how many ways the stop sign applies (3-way, 4-way, 5-way) , but in the US, it goes "All way". Except in shopping malls, because there the road rules are completely confusing - you can have an intersection, and 3 of the 4 directions has a stop sign marked "3 way", while the remaining direction has right of way.
Most offices have internet speeds that are way less than 100Mbit. Usually in the 10-50Mbit range. And 200 non-technical people generally means the internet is not a huge priority as it would be for say, a technical company that interacts with customers through the internet.
So no, having 10/100 does absolutely zilch for users downloading large files over the network link. All it does is prevent them from accessing large files on the fileserver in a timely fashion. At gigabit speeds, a 1GB file can be transferred in a few seconds, which expands to a minute or two over 100Mbps.
At best, it may prevent a user from taking down the core switches should something go crazy and they spew packages at gigabit speeds (or say, a network loop).
Hell, modern WiFi is often faster than a lot of office internet connections.