And that's the issue. so many artificial limitations. To go with the tire example above, I could buy tires from overseas, but then the tires wouldn't have my government's safety stamp on them (they'd be identical tires otherwise, and just as safe, but without the safety stamp they'd be illegal) I could buy my DVDs overseas, but they'd have the wrong region coding, and even though that is trivial to get around, doing so violates federal law. Many other products are hit with exorbitant import duties to protect "local" industries (that aren't actually local any more)
I have no problem with companies charging whatever they want. I do have a problem when they get laws passed preventing me from buying the product wherever I want.
People claim this is just the free market in action, I have no problem with the free market, but only the multi-nationals have one. For the consumer the market is so heavily regulated that it just isn't free.
Yeah, but that wasn't software, and we all know that as soon as you add "on a computer" all sense flies out the window and it's completely different somehow...
I have no problem with you charging $50 for that loaf of bread. I do however have a problem if you get laws passed that stop me from going to your store in the next town to buy the same loaf of bread for $1. And that's what this boils down to. Large multi-national companies get the best of both worlds. they shop around for the cheapest source of parts, labour, and raw materials from any country in the world. meanwhile they lobby for laws and restrictions that prevent their customers from doing the same. (DVD Region coding combined with DMCA style laws, import tariffs, bogus safety laws that are really industry protectionism in disguise, etc)
If you want to make your device in China instead of locally to save on money, don't get upset with me when I buy it from the USA instead of locally for the same reason.
And again I'm not arguing that a kinetic attack should be the first choice for a response. but realistically you have to make the threat stop, and if a kinetic attack is the only way to do that, you'd be stupid not to use it. And yes, it would be a "proportional" response if it followed the usual escalations, or if the software attack had equivalent real world consequences (yes, modern software controls physical things that CAN kill)
That's actually the really good news from all of this. The news articles are all highlighting the difference in numbers, when the real news is that this basically confirms that we were right all along. sure the numbers are slightly different for age of the universe, rate of expansion, and amount of matter, but all of the numbers are close to what we already knew. This is confirmation that our models are right, and more detailed data to refine things further. This is the way science works, and it's really good news!
That's because of the extra 20 million it took for Slashdot to post this after the news broke in every other media outlet. I find the sad part being that Slashdot used to be the place to go to find this stuff. Now I found out about this in two local news publications first, went to slashdot for more detail only to find that slashdot still didn't know anything about it...
Ignore europe then and explain how people in Canada drive diesels with no problem while you claim the northern US can't. I think you just haven't tried a decent diesel.
Odd, most places where the temperature can get that low you don't need to add anything because the fuel retailers do it for you... (In Canada you can't buy diesel in the winter that would need an additive, at -40 celcius (why you specified farenheit I don't know because they are the same) my diesel is still liquid, and I don't need to add anything. and while I try to use the block heater at those temperatures, I have started below -30c without it.
Diesel engines are simply harder to start and when it is cold it is even more difficult. Gasoline engines start easier in difficult conditions. That's all I'm trying to say..
Unfortunately what you are trying to say isn't grounded in fact. A properly tuned diesel engine works fine at ridiculously cold temperatures, at least as well as your average gasoline engine. I've used my last 3 diesel vehicles frequently in conditions where many gasoline vehicles wouldn't start. Sure some people with diesels couldn't get started, but some people with gasoline engines were in the same situation. it all boils down to maintenance, And on a diesel that's easy, even if you neglect some of it, you can overcome a lot of problems just by making sure your battery is in good shape (keep that starter spinning and a diesel will start eventually, regardless of temperature, even if all the glow plugs are burnt out.)
Problem is, environmental regulations in North America are absurd when it comes to emissions. they truly are stacked in favour of larger engines. they don't measure total emissions, but instead measure parts per million of certain things inside the emissions. So basically the cure for harmful emissions is MORE emissions that haven't yet been classed as harmful. If we took the sensible approach and measured total emissions, or emissions per a certain distance, or even per a certain cargo capacity times a certain distance, we'd solve that absurd skewing of the regulations.
(as an example, a community of import vehicles I dealt with a while back had a problem with local smog-check measurements, turns out their 660cc engines sometimes failed if not fully tuned up. the solution was to tell the examiner that it was actually a 1L engine, suddenly they would pass (and in north america the same vehicle would have at least a 1.5 if not 2L engine anyway, so they were probably less polluting even though the smog-check thought they were worse))
In the large population centers of the north east, even gasoline cars can be difficult to start on the colder winter days.
That has been my experience with gasoline vehicles here in Canada too, they just won't start on the cold days like my diesel does. seriously, my wife's compact car, and my work truck both have a lot of trouble starting down at -30c or so. luckily my diesels have never had that problem, they have always started fine at those temperatures without any need for a block heater.
Diesel cars would be hopeless at -20F without special attention or a heated garage,
My diesel doesn't fit in the garage, and -20F is no problem at all for any of my last 3 diesel vehicles (and I usually don't plug them in). My wife's care however won't start at -20c (-4F) and my work truck has a limit of about -30c (-22F) Those 2 are both gasoline though.
where a gasoline engines generally work at lower temperatures than Diesel
Complete and utter BS. All my personal vehicles have always been diesel, and I have never, not even once, run in to a situation where I wished for a gasoline engine. I live in Canada, we get winter (and if you are American, and not from Alaska, you don't get to argue that your winter is any worse than mine) My diesels have always started when other gasoline engines won't. I've been called by friends and family several times to go boost their gasoline vehicles when they won't start in the cold, but the diesel will.
The only time I've had trouble getting my diesel going was below -30c with my glow plugs burnt out, but even then it started (though with over a full minute and a half of cranking) I'd like to see you get your gas car going with the spark plugs burnt out. That's a maintenance issue, not a temperature one, and the fact that I could drive to the shop to get new plugs puts it in a category far above the gasoline counterpart.
All my personal vehicles have always been diesel, I've never once wished for a gasoline powered vehicle instead, or felt that one would have any advantage whatsoever, and yes, we get real winter here.
I generally avoid north american diesels (they tend to be absurdly loud, inefficient, and polluting by comparison to the imports). But my experience with some foreign models: 1983 Mercedes inline 5 cylinder 2.5L turbo diesel: when the electrical system worked (a different story...) started fine, without being plugged in, at -25c (well... "fine" was probably a lot of cranking, maybe even 15-20 seconds worth, but it went) 1991 Mitsubishi 4 cylinder 2.5L turbo diesel: started fine without being plugged in down to -30c (probably 5-10 seconds of cranking) started at -10c with burnt out glow plugs with 30-40 seconds of cranking 1994 Mitsubishi 4 cylinder 2.8L intercooled turbo diesel: starts fine down to -35c without being plugged in, the only time I've tried colder it was plugged in and worked fine. (5 seconds or less of cranking) I also have limited experience with a 1997 Ford diesel van (not sure what the engine is), it starts with about 2 seconds of cranking or less even if you forget to wait for the glow plugs. of course that's also in a heated garage kept at about 18-20c and never really gets shut off outdoors (it's an ambulance, so from the hall, idle at the scene, indoors at the hospital)
For comparison: 2005 Hyundai accent, gas: won't start below -20c without a lot of assistance. 2008 Ford F350, gas: won't start below -30c period. no amount of work with booster cables or battery chargers will help, the ONLY way to get that truck started at those temperatures is with the block heater, you can crank it over until the battery is dead and the engine is close to cutting out in the truck trying to boost you and you still aren't going anywhere.
On a side note, neither of the mitsubishi's came with a block heater, nor did my father's VW TDI, however living in a climate that can reach -40 they've been added (though my schedule is odd enough that I don't always have enough notice to use it before leaving the house)
Politicians and government officials are fair game during war. They just aren't generally attacked for a couple reasons: 1) they are usually much harder to get at then the lower ranking people 2) politicians and government officials make the decisions, and don't want someone else making that one on behalf of the other side.
Of course if the death toll in that group was generally much higher in war, we'd probably see many fewer wars...
In a conventional war, if the enemy sends a few guys with rifles, you send MORE guys with rifles, or a couple bombs, The point is that you don't counter with the same force, you always counter with just a bit higher (after all, the goal is to win, not lose) Obviously you don't go straight for the nukes in this case. However if your proportional response fails to stop the attack, you slowly ratchet up the pressure until it does. If the enemy is sending wave after wave of men with rifles, and you can't stop them no matter how many men with rifles you employ, you start looking at bigger and bigger weapons until you achieve your goal. No country is going to surrender because they ran out of rifle rounds while they still have tanks, bombers, and missiles sitting unused just because the other guy only used rifles, but just happened to have more ammunition.
So too it goes with cyber warfare. The question becomes more a point of at what level you consider the damage they have done with their hacking critical enough to warrant a more aggressive response.
I fully agree that you shouldn't bomb the guy behind the computer as a first choice. But if dedicated counter-hacking attempts fail to stop the attack, and the attack is on critical infrastructure... Is it really a good idea to just shrug your shoulders and say "well, we tried" and let it continue? or should you not respond with the minimum amount of force necessary to stop the attack? And if that minimum level requires a physical attack, is it not justified if you already tried all other options first?
So would it not be "fair game" to bomb said bunker in Virginia to make the attack stop? If they are working from a government installation the risk of killing civilians is no more so than attacking any other military installation which are generally considered fair game in a shooting war.
That said, I agree that an appropriate reaction would be counter-hacking first, (just like nukes aren't generally considered an appropriate response to a squad of infantry with rifles, neither would bombs be the first response to hacking, but just as in that scenario, if initial force fails to stop the attack, escalated response is generally considered appropriate)
In Canada diesel is black, or green, or yellow depending on the station you go to. about the only standardized part is that it's usually (though not always) a different colour than the gasoline nozle.
I'm Canadian, I drive a diesel. It starts unassisted down to ridiculously cold temperatures (hasn't failed me yet) in fact it will start when neither my gasoline powered work truck, nor my wife's gasoline powered compact car will.
People who think diesels don't start in the cold either have never used one, or have never bothered to maintain the one they had. If spark plugs burn out, people change them. if glow plugs burn out people complain about how hard it is to start a diesel engine (hint, even without the glow plugs, it will still start eventually, love you to say the same for a gasoline vehicle without working spark plugs!)
Suddenly I wish the publisher had proven their case that their works didn't fall under copyright. Then reselling them would have been legal, but so too would photocopying, re-printing, and doing anything else you want with it!
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we got rid of copyright on all imported products?
As for Silverlight, that wasn't good but that was a trauma for developers not end users.
I'm an end user, not a developer... and I really wish Silverlight would finally die. Unfortunately, no matter how many times we hear that it's going to vanish, some web developer decides to implement their brand new website in it. Unfortunately that means that us Linux users are out of luck.
Obviously the people who trained up on Silverlight are making sure to get their money's worth, because I just can't seem to get away from it.
Unfortunately that doesn't help the end user if the developer is lazy.
I have a few apps I'd love to use, but stopped working when I upgraded. Is there some way to force the system to allow you to try on the wrong version and take your chances?
Slashdot Mirror
And that's the issue. so many artificial limitations. To go with the tire example above, I could buy tires from overseas, but then the tires wouldn't have my government's safety stamp on them (they'd be identical tires otherwise, and just as safe, but without the safety stamp they'd be illegal)
I could buy my DVDs overseas, but they'd have the wrong region coding, and even though that is trivial to get around, doing so violates federal law.
Many other products are hit with exorbitant import duties to protect "local" industries (that aren't actually local any more)
I have no problem with companies charging whatever they want. I do have a problem when they get laws passed preventing me from buying the product wherever I want.
People claim this is just the free market in action, I have no problem with the free market, but only the multi-nationals have one. For the consumer the market is so heavily regulated that it just isn't free.
Yeah, but that wasn't software, and we all know that as soon as you add "on a computer" all sense flies out the window and it's completely different somehow...
I have no problem with you charging $50 for that loaf of bread. I do however have a problem if you get laws passed that stop me from going to your store in the next town to buy the same loaf of bread for $1.
And that's what this boils down to. Large multi-national companies get the best of both worlds. they shop around for the cheapest source of parts, labour, and raw materials from any country in the world. meanwhile they lobby for laws and restrictions that prevent their customers from doing the same. (DVD Region coding combined with DMCA style laws, import tariffs, bogus safety laws that are really industry protectionism in disguise, etc)
If you want to make your device in China instead of locally to save on money, don't get upset with me when I buy it from the USA instead of locally for the same reason.
And again I'm not arguing that a kinetic attack should be the first choice for a response. but realistically you have to make the threat stop, and if a kinetic attack is the only way to do that, you'd be stupid not to use it. And yes, it would be a "proportional" response if it followed the usual escalations, or if the software attack had equivalent real world consequences (yes, modern software controls physical things that CAN kill)
I'm just pointing out that the lack of availability has nothing whatsoever to do with diesels not working in the weather in North America.
Slashdot did at one point bill itself as a news site for nerds...
That's actually the really good news from all of this. The news articles are all highlighting the difference in numbers, when the real news is that this basically confirms that we were right all along. sure the numbers are slightly different for age of the universe, rate of expansion, and amount of matter, but all of the numbers are close to what we already knew. This is confirmation that our models are right, and more detailed data to refine things further.
This is the way science works, and it's really good news!
That's because of the extra 20 million it took for Slashdot to post this after the news broke in every other media outlet. I find the sad part being that Slashdot used to be the place to go to find this stuff. Now I found out about this in two local news publications first, went to slashdot for more detail only to find that slashdot still didn't know anything about it...
Ignore europe then and explain how people in Canada drive diesels with no problem while you claim the northern US can't. I think you just haven't tried a decent diesel.
Odd, most places where the temperature can get that low you don't need to add anything because the fuel retailers do it for you... (In Canada you can't buy diesel in the winter that would need an additive, at -40 celcius (why you specified farenheit I don't know because they are the same) my diesel is still liquid, and I don't need to add anything. and while I try to use the block heater at those temperatures, I have started below -30c without it.
Diesel engines are simply harder to start and when it is cold it is even more difficult. Gasoline engines start easier in difficult conditions. That's all I'm trying to say..
Unfortunately what you are trying to say isn't grounded in fact. A properly tuned diesel engine works fine at ridiculously cold temperatures, at least as well as your average gasoline engine. I've used my last 3 diesel vehicles frequently in conditions where many gasoline vehicles wouldn't start.
Sure some people with diesels couldn't get started, but some people with gasoline engines were in the same situation. it all boils down to maintenance, And on a diesel that's easy, even if you neglect some of it, you can overcome a lot of problems just by making sure your battery is in good shape (keep that starter spinning and a diesel will start eventually, regardless of temperature, even if all the glow plugs are burnt out.)
Problem is, environmental regulations in North America are absurd when it comes to emissions. they truly are stacked in favour of larger engines. they don't measure total emissions, but instead measure parts per million of certain things inside the emissions. So basically the cure for harmful emissions is MORE emissions that haven't yet been classed as harmful. If we took the sensible approach and measured total emissions, or emissions per a certain distance, or even per a certain cargo capacity times a certain distance, we'd solve that absurd skewing of the regulations.
(as an example, a community of import vehicles I dealt with a while back had a problem with local smog-check measurements, turns out their 660cc engines sometimes failed if not fully tuned up. the solution was to tell the examiner that it was actually a 1L engine, suddenly they would pass (and in north america the same vehicle would have at least a 1.5 if not 2L engine anyway, so they were probably less polluting even though the smog-check thought they were worse))
In the large population centers of the north east, even gasoline cars can be difficult to start on the colder winter days.
That has been my experience with gasoline vehicles here in Canada too, they just won't start on the cold days like my diesel does. seriously, my wife's compact car, and my work truck both have a lot of trouble starting down at -30c or so. luckily my diesels have never had that problem, they have always started fine at those temperatures without any need for a block heater.
Diesel cars would be hopeless at -20F without special attention or a heated garage,
My diesel doesn't fit in the garage, and -20F is no problem at all for any of my last 3 diesel vehicles (and I usually don't plug them in). My wife's care however won't start at -20c (-4F) and my work truck has a limit of about -30c (-22F) Those 2 are both gasoline though.
where a gasoline engines generally work at lower temperatures than Diesel
Complete and utter BS. All my personal vehicles have always been diesel, and I have never, not even once, run in to a situation where I wished for a gasoline engine. I live in Canada, we get winter (and if you are American, and not from Alaska, you don't get to argue that your winter is any worse than mine) My diesels have always started when other gasoline engines won't. I've been called by friends and family several times to go boost their gasoline vehicles when they won't start in the cold, but the diesel will.
The only time I've had trouble getting my diesel going was below -30c with my glow plugs burnt out, but even then it started (though with over a full minute and a half of cranking) I'd like to see you get your gas car going with the spark plugs burnt out. That's a maintenance issue, not a temperature one, and the fact that I could drive to the shop to get new plugs puts it in a category far above the gasoline counterpart.
All my personal vehicles have always been diesel, I've never once wished for a gasoline powered vehicle instead, or felt that one would have any advantage whatsoever, and yes, we get real winter here.
I generally avoid north american diesels (they tend to be absurdly loud, inefficient, and polluting by comparison to the imports). But my experience with some foreign models:
1983 Mercedes inline 5 cylinder 2.5L turbo diesel: when the electrical system worked (a different story...) started fine, without being plugged in, at -25c (well... "fine" was probably a lot of cranking, maybe even 15-20 seconds worth, but it went)
1991 Mitsubishi 4 cylinder 2.5L turbo diesel: started fine without being plugged in down to -30c (probably 5-10 seconds of cranking) started at -10c with burnt out glow plugs with 30-40 seconds of cranking
1994 Mitsubishi 4 cylinder 2.8L intercooled turbo diesel: starts fine down to -35c without being plugged in, the only time I've tried colder it was plugged in and worked fine. (5 seconds or less of cranking)
I also have limited experience with a 1997 Ford diesel van (not sure what the engine is), it starts with about 2 seconds of cranking or less even if you forget to wait for the glow plugs. of course that's also in a heated garage kept at about 18-20c and never really gets shut off outdoors (it's an ambulance, so from the hall, idle at the scene, indoors at the hospital)
For comparison:
2005 Hyundai accent, gas: won't start below -20c without a lot of assistance.
2008 Ford F350, gas: won't start below -30c period. no amount of work with booster cables or battery chargers will help, the ONLY way to get that truck started at those temperatures is with the block heater, you can crank it over until the battery is dead and the engine is close to cutting out in the truck trying to boost you and you still aren't going anywhere.
On a side note, neither of the mitsubishi's came with a block heater, nor did my father's VW TDI, however living in a climate that can reach -40 they've been added (though my schedule is odd enough that I don't always have enough notice to use it before leaving the house)
Politicians and government officials are fair game during war. They just aren't generally attacked for a couple reasons:
1) they are usually much harder to get at then the lower ranking people
2) politicians and government officials make the decisions, and don't want someone else making that one on behalf of the other side.
Of course if the death toll in that group was generally much higher in war, we'd probably see many fewer wars...
In a conventional war, if the enemy sends a few guys with rifles, you send MORE guys with rifles, or a couple bombs, The point is that you don't counter with the same force, you always counter with just a bit higher (after all, the goal is to win, not lose) Obviously you don't go straight for the nukes in this case. However if your proportional response fails to stop the attack, you slowly ratchet up the pressure until it does. If the enemy is sending wave after wave of men with rifles, and you can't stop them no matter how many men with rifles you employ, you start looking at bigger and bigger weapons until you achieve your goal. No country is going to surrender because they ran out of rifle rounds while they still have tanks, bombers, and missiles sitting unused just because the other guy only used rifles, but just happened to have more ammunition.
So too it goes with cyber warfare. The question becomes more a point of at what level you consider the damage they have done with their hacking critical enough to warrant a more aggressive response.
I fully agree that you shouldn't bomb the guy behind the computer as a first choice. But if dedicated counter-hacking attempts fail to stop the attack, and the attack is on critical infrastructure... Is it really a good idea to just shrug your shoulders and say "well, we tried" and let it continue? or should you not respond with the minimum amount of force necessary to stop the attack? And if that minimum level requires a physical attack, is it not justified if you already tried all other options first?
So would it not be "fair game" to bomb said bunker in Virginia to make the attack stop? If they are working from a government installation the risk of killing civilians is no more so than attacking any other military installation which are generally considered fair game in a shooting war.
That said, I agree that an appropriate reaction would be counter-hacking first, (just like nukes aren't generally considered an appropriate response to a squad of infantry with rifles, neither would bombs be the first response to hacking, but just as in that scenario, if initial force fails to stop the attack, escalated response is generally considered appropriate)
In Canada diesel is black, or green, or yellow depending on the station you go to. about the only standardized part is that it's usually (though not always) a different colour than the gasoline nozle.
I'm Canadian, I drive a diesel. It starts unassisted down to ridiculously cold temperatures (hasn't failed me yet) in fact it will start when neither my gasoline powered work truck, nor my wife's gasoline powered compact car will.
People who think diesels don't start in the cold either have never used one, or have never bothered to maintain the one they had. If spark plugs burn out, people change them. if glow plugs burn out people complain about how hard it is to start a diesel engine (hint, even without the glow plugs, it will still start eventually, love you to say the same for a gasoline vehicle without working spark plugs!)
Suddenly I wish the publisher had proven their case that their works didn't fall under copyright. Then reselling them would have been legal, but so too would photocopying, re-printing, and doing anything else you want with it!
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we got rid of copyright on all imported products?
The two most recent ones I've run in to are:
TELUS streaming video
Questrade stock trading platform
they're usually locked in for 3 years or so...
As for Silverlight, that wasn't good but that was a trauma for developers not end users.
I'm an end user, not a developer... and I really wish Silverlight would finally die. Unfortunately, no matter how many times we hear that it's going to vanish, some web developer decides to implement their brand new website in it. Unfortunately that means that us Linux users are out of luck.
Obviously the people who trained up on Silverlight are making sure to get their money's worth, because I just can't seem to get away from it.
MS has been abusing it's customer base for decades, and it hasn't bankrupted them yet...
Unfortunately that doesn't help the end user if the developer is lazy.
I have a few apps I'd love to use, but stopped working when I upgraded. Is there some way to force the system to allow you to try on the wrong version and take your chances?