Government regulations that encourage or promote competition are good (e.g. regulations designed to encourage competition in the broadband market) Government regulations that prevent a monopoly from abusing their market power are good (e.g. net neutrality regulations) Government regulations that limit competition are bad (e.g. regulations banning or restricting services like Uber or regulations limiting the ability of municipalities or co-ops from running internet services in competition with the local telco or cableco)
If ads didn't cause so many problems, people like me wouldn't be blocking them. And I dont mean problems like obtrusive ads that hover over the page content. Or ads that play audio. Or even the tracking that ad companies do.
The biggest problem with ads is that compromised ad servers are a BIG delivery vector for malware though things like Flash vulnerabilities and drive-by downloads.
If you live in the US, write your appropriate federal representatives (using an actual physical letter is still more likely to get noticed than an email I believe) and ask them to support the "Secure Data Act" which is designed to stop exactly this (the use of NSLs and other things to mandate backdoors and compromises in software)
See http://www.wyden.senate.gov/ne... for details of the bill and get behind it (and spread the word about it). Is it perfect? No. But it (at least to my non-lawyer reading of the relavent info) seems to be a good place to start.
Here in Australia that's exactly what they do, local councils collect fees to fund garbage collection (usually collected as part of a general annual fee paid by property owners called "rates" that covers all the many services and things councils deliver) and then either runs garbage collection themselves or contracts out to a 3rd party to do it.
Even where its a private for-profit business being contracted, the business knows that if they jack prices up too much, the council could always buy some garbage trucks and do it themselves or find another contractor.
I doubt Target or K-Mart are going to loose much in the way of sales for this game. The sort of hardcore gamers who play games like GTA are more likely to be buying their games at EB Games or JB Hi-Fi or through an online download service than through K-Mart or Target.
I have always wondered why some parental control vendor doesn't make their own browser (or adapt an existing browser) that can sit there and monitor whats going on in the browser before the HTTPS is ever applied.
The first issue is that it can take time for updates to roll out over-the-air even once they are available. There are usually ways to manually download and install it if you dont want to wait for OTA.
The second issue (and the more important one) is that for many phones carriers will take sometimes months to approve an update or may not release it all (usually making some claims about some "carrier acceptance testing" BS). In some cases updates for the generic unbranded versions of a phone still get hit with a delay in order to keep the OEMs carrier partners happy.
Apple got it right by controlling all updates for the phone from day one and not giving the carriers any ability to block or hold up updates.
All those things COULD move to smartphone apps. But its unlikely that they will anytime soon, especially when there are so few phones that support NFC (and support the right flavors of NFC in the right way)
Even if EFTPOS (and the entities that own it) brought in a way to pay for EFTPOS transactions via a NFC phone, there would still be tens of thousands of businesses out there that don't support such payments. And the 1000s of ATMs would need to be updated too (although at least one bank has a system where you dont need a card, you just log into your smartphone online banking app and it gives you a token you input into the ATM and both systems talk to each other and give you money)
As for the Go Card, how many of the NFC-enabled phones out there are capable of supporting the proprietary MIFARE Classic format that the cards use? Not to mention issues it could cause
And for the health cards, same thing as the EFTPOS, how long will it take for all those doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, optometrists, dentists, physios and other medicos to update their gear to support it? Not that the government would want to spend the costs involved in making a medicare card app...
Here in Australia I have found that its faster to go to an ATM of my bank, take money out and then go into a branch of the other guys bank with their account number and make a deposit into their account than it is to do a direct transfer via my internet banking.
My wallet has: a proof-of-age card (government photo ID card like a drivers license but doesn't let you drive), useful for when I need to show ID for some reason a Go Card (payment smart card for the local bus and train system) Loyalty cards for stores Library card VISA Debit/EFTPOS/ATM card Cash Australian Government Medicare card (for the public health system) Private health insurance card
None of these are likely to be replaced by a smartphone anytime soon (even if I could use my phone to pay for stuff with the VISA, I wouldn't be able to withdraw cash from an ATM with it plus I prefer to pay with EFTPOS rather than credit)
Yes sure the 65816 on the IIGS got things beyond assembly. But the very-resource-constrained (in both RAM and ROM) SNES never got such a thing that I am aware of.
Its always great to see code for console and computer platforms which don't otherwise have a lot of code available.
The source code for the Atari Jaguar version of Doom is out there somewhere too.
Personally I want to see more source for games (Doom or otherwise) on platforms like the NES, SNES, N64 and Genesis. Would be very interesting to see the code (assembly I would imagine) for a proper commercial SNES title...
The issue here isn't that AT&T or Verizon are handing over data. The police are basically using devices produced (without the cooperation of carriers in many cases) that essentially "man in the middle" cellular telephony signals to capture the information they want.
There are plenty of ways to make cars better without going all-electric-all-the-time. Firstly they need to close all the loopholes in the fuel economy regulations that give free passes to big gas guzzling SUVs and crossovers (like the one that doesn't count them for fuel economy purposes if they happen to be capable of running on E85 even though most of them will never see a drop of E85 in their lifetime or the loophole that made the ugly-as-sin PT Cruiser count as a truck when it clearly wasn't or the regulation that allows big pickups and SUVs to gain weight to avoid fuel economy regulations and guzzle even more gas)
Many utilities in the US are fighting rooftop solar through various means. The south-eastern states in particular are the worst for this.
Utilities are getting laws passed banning the "solar lease scheme" so popular in other parts of the US. And getting laws passed banning off-grid solar installs. And not providing net metering (either "you get paid for your excess electricity" or the "electricity you feed into the grid offsets what you use when the sun isn't shining but you wont get any money if you produce more than you use" model). And doing everything they can to push electricity generated from dirty black coal or nuclear reactors built to outdated 50s era designs instead of clean green energy.
Being backed by Mozilla, Firefox will obviously support it, as will SeaMonkey and Thunderbird (since they use the same set of certs as Firefox from the same NSS tree). But how will they get the other big browser vendors to support it? In particular Microsoft (you can bet VeriSign will be using its very close relationship with Microsoft to lobby hard for MS not to support this in IE)
Here in Brisbane, there are quite a few public toilets (that is, toilets managed by the local council for the benefit of the public). Not just in the CBD but also in public parks and areas all over the the place.
The problem is that companies like Mars, Hershey's, Nestle and Cadbury aren't willing to pay more for their cocoa since that would mean making the end product more expensive (or making less profit). If you increase the price (to cover the higher cost of the cocoa), less people will buy your product and more people will buy from your competitors (who haven't increased the price)
Write to your city government and ask why they continue to sign these exclusive deals... I suspect the answer will be "without the exclusive deal Comcast has said it wont invest into its network" (which is probably true)
The problem is that Comcast is deliberately refusing to upgrade its links to big backbone providers like Level 3 in order to force providers like Netflix and others to pay Comcast for private links.
If Comcast would invest some of the money they get from subscribers on actually upgrading the links at their peering points, there wouldn't be an issue and those peering points wouldn't be so congested.
If that's the case they should drop subsidies for the airlines as a whole and instead say "any airline providing service to airport xyz gets a direct payment for the flights they run" to make flying to airports that wouldn't get service in a purely competitive market viable.
The real question is, would the advantages of a high speed train from, say, Washington DC to New York (leaves from a central station instead of out at the airport, dont need to go through as much security crap, dont need to be there hours in advance, don't have to worry so much about luggage, faster total door-to-door time etc) outweigh the disadvantage of paying a fair bit more for the ticket than you would pay to fly between the same cities on one of the cheaper airlines?
Brisbane proper does well. Whats missing is more resources devoted to better service levels in areas like the northern gold coast, suburbs like Ormeau, Coomera, Pimpama, Pacific Pines, Oxenford etc.
I have family who live in the area (Upper Coomera near the Masters Hardware and Woolies and stuff) and the last bus through that area leaves Coomera Station at 5:07 or Ormeau Station at 6:01, totally useless for anyone wanting to commute to Brisbane. Weekends get even less service.
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Government regulations that encourage or promote competition are good (e.g. regulations designed to encourage competition in the broadband market)
Government regulations that prevent a monopoly from abusing their market power are good (e.g. net neutrality regulations)
Government regulations that limit competition are bad (e.g. regulations banning or restricting services like Uber or regulations limiting the ability of municipalities or co-ops from running internet services in competition with the local telco or cableco)
If ads didn't cause so many problems, people like me wouldn't be blocking them. And I dont mean problems like obtrusive ads that hover over the page content. Or ads that play audio. Or even the tracking that ad companies do.
The biggest problem with ads is that compromised ad servers are a BIG delivery vector for malware though things like Flash vulnerabilities and drive-by downloads.
If you live in the US, write your appropriate federal representatives (using an actual physical letter is still more likely to get noticed than an email I believe) and ask them to support the "Secure Data Act" which is designed to stop exactly this (the use of NSLs and other things to mandate backdoors and compromises in software)
See http://www.wyden.senate.gov/ne... for details of the bill and get behind it (and spread the word about it). Is it perfect? No. But it (at least to my non-lawyer reading of the relavent info) seems to be a good place to start.
Here in Australia that's exactly what they do, local councils collect fees to fund garbage collection (usually collected as part of a general annual fee paid by property owners called "rates" that covers all the many services and things councils deliver) and then either runs garbage collection themselves or contracts out to a 3rd party to do it.
Even where its a private for-profit business being contracted, the business knows that if they jack prices up too much, the council could always buy some garbage trucks and do it themselves or find another contractor.
They want it to be as cheap as possible for them to make so when they sell it (to other power companies or to consumers) they can maximize profits.
I doubt Target or K-Mart are going to loose much in the way of sales for this game. The sort of hardcore gamers who play games like GTA are more likely to be buying their games at EB Games or JB Hi-Fi or through an online download service than through K-Mart or Target.
I have always wondered why some parental control vendor doesn't make their own browser (or adapt an existing browser) that can sit there and monitor whats going on in the browser before the HTTPS is ever applied.
The first issue is that it can take time for updates to roll out over-the-air even once they are available. There are usually ways to manually download and install it if you dont want to wait for OTA.
The second issue (and the more important one) is that for many phones carriers will take sometimes months to approve an update or may not release it all (usually making some claims about some "carrier acceptance testing" BS). In some cases updates for the generic unbranded versions of a phone still get hit with a delay in order to keep the OEMs carrier partners happy.
Apple got it right by controlling all updates for the phone from day one and not giving the carriers any ability to block or hold up updates.
All those things COULD move to smartphone apps. But its unlikely that they will anytime soon, especially when there are so few phones that support NFC (and support the right flavors of NFC in the right way)
Even if EFTPOS (and the entities that own it) brought in a way to pay for EFTPOS transactions via a NFC phone, there would still be tens of thousands of businesses out there that don't support such payments. And the 1000s of ATMs would need to be updated too (although at least one bank has a system where you dont need a card, you just log into your smartphone online banking app and it gives you a token you input into the ATM and both systems talk to each other and give you money)
As for the Go Card, how many of the NFC-enabled phones out there are capable of supporting the proprietary MIFARE Classic format that the cards use? Not to mention issues it could cause
And for the health cards, same thing as the EFTPOS, how long will it take for all those doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, optometrists, dentists, physios and other medicos to update their gear to support it? Not that the government would want to spend the costs involved in making a medicare card app...
Here in Australia I have found that its faster to go to an ATM of my bank, take money out and then go into a branch of the other guys bank with their account number and make a deposit into their account than it is to do a direct transfer via my internet banking.
Ridiculous...
My wallet has:
a proof-of-age card (government photo ID card like a drivers license but doesn't let you drive), useful for when I need to show ID for some reason
a Go Card (payment smart card for the local bus and train system)
Loyalty cards for stores
Library card
VISA Debit/EFTPOS/ATM card
Cash
Australian Government Medicare card (for the public health system)
Private health insurance card
None of these are likely to be replaced by a smartphone anytime soon (even if I could use my phone to pay for stuff with the VISA, I wouldn't be able to withdraw cash from an ATM with it plus I prefer to pay with EFTPOS rather than credit)
Yes sure the 65816 on the IIGS got things beyond assembly. But the very-resource-constrained (in both RAM and ROM) SNES never got such a thing that I am aware of.
Its always great to see code for console and computer platforms which don't otherwise have a lot of code available.
The source code for the Atari Jaguar version of Doom is out there somewhere too.
Personally I want to see more source for games (Doom or otherwise) on platforms like the NES, SNES, N64 and Genesis. Would be very interesting to see the code (assembly I would imagine) for a proper commercial SNES title...
The issue here isn't that AT&T or Verizon are handing over data.
The police are basically using devices produced (without the cooperation of carriers in many cases) that essentially "man in the middle" cellular telephony signals to capture the information they want.
There are plenty of ways to make cars better without going all-electric-all-the-time. Firstly they need to close all the loopholes in the fuel economy regulations that give free passes to big gas guzzling SUVs and crossovers (like the one that doesn't count them for fuel economy purposes if they happen to be capable of running on E85 even though most of them will never see a drop of E85 in their lifetime or the loophole that made the ugly-as-sin PT Cruiser count as a truck when it clearly wasn't or the regulation that allows big pickups and SUVs to gain weight to avoid fuel economy regulations and guzzle even more gas)
Many utilities in the US are fighting rooftop solar through various means. The south-eastern states in particular are the worst for this.
Utilities are getting laws passed banning the "solar lease scheme" so popular in other parts of the US. And getting laws passed banning off-grid solar installs. And not providing net metering (either "you get paid for your excess electricity" or the "electricity you feed into the grid offsets what you use when the sun isn't shining but you wont get any money if you produce more than you use" model). And doing everything they can to push electricity generated from dirty black coal or nuclear reactors built to outdated 50s era designs instead of clean green energy.
Being backed by Mozilla, Firefox will obviously support it, as will SeaMonkey and Thunderbird (since they use the same set of certs as Firefox from the same NSS tree). But how will they get the other big browser vendors to support it? In particular Microsoft (you can bet VeriSign will be using its very close relationship with Microsoft to lobby hard for MS not to support this in IE)
Is it the City Council who dont want it? Or is it the Toronto taxi companies lobbying behind the scenes?
Here in Brisbane, there are quite a few public toilets (that is, toilets managed by the local council for the benefit of the public). Not just in the CBD but also in public parks and areas all over the the place.
The problem is that companies like Mars, Hershey's, Nestle and Cadbury aren't willing to pay more for their cocoa since that would mean making the end product more expensive (or making less profit). If you increase the price (to cover the higher cost of the cocoa), less people will buy your product and more people will buy from your competitors (who haven't increased the price)
Write to your city government and ask why they continue to sign these exclusive deals...
I suspect the answer will be "without the exclusive deal Comcast has said it wont invest into its network" (which is probably true)
The problem is that Comcast is deliberately refusing to upgrade its links to big backbone providers like Level 3 in order to force providers like Netflix and others to pay Comcast for private links.
If Comcast would invest some of the money they get from subscribers on actually upgrading the links at their peering points, there wouldn't be an issue and those peering points wouldn't be so congested.
If that's the case they should drop subsidies for the airlines as a whole and instead say "any airline providing service to airport xyz gets a direct payment for the flights they run" to make flying to airports that wouldn't get service in a purely competitive market viable.
The real question is, would the advantages of a high speed train from, say, Washington DC to New York (leaves from a central station instead of out at the airport, dont need to go through as much security crap, dont need to be there hours in advance, don't have to worry so much about luggage, faster total door-to-door time etc) outweigh the disadvantage of paying a fair bit more for the ticket than you would pay to fly between the same cities on one of the cheaper airlines?
Brisbane proper does well. Whats missing is more resources devoted to better service levels in areas like the northern gold coast, suburbs like Ormeau, Coomera, Pimpama, Pacific Pines, Oxenford etc.
I have family who live in the area (Upper Coomera near the Masters Hardware and Woolies and stuff) and the last bus through that area leaves Coomera Station at 5:07 or Ormeau Station at 6:01, totally useless for anyone wanting to commute to Brisbane. Weekends get even less service.