In my local area they recently (as in just over a year ago) built a roundabout (complete with the slightly flared entrances) on a small residential-area 4-way junction that used to have stop signs on one road and nothing on the other road. This was (as far as I know) done more to slow traffic passing through the intersection down rather than as a traffic control measure. It also has the benefit of making it safer for pedestrians crossing this intersection.
Despite the "cover story" spread by the big media companies, all their action is not really about stopping piracy, its about stopping the biggest threat to the big media companies since Edison invented the phonograph.
Specifically, the Internet threatens to take away the control that the big media companies have as gatekeepers of what we consume.
Infected emails? Hacked website or ad provider serving out drive-by-downloads? Compromised IM accounts? All of the above?
Personally I think someone needs to write an "Internet Security for Dummies" book that uses real world analogies to explain internet security concepts to clueless people. For example, it could compare leaving your front door unlocked to not having a firewall. Or it could show real-world things that most people would never do (give their credit card or bank details to a total stranger because the total stranger promised money) and then explain that doing the same things on the Internet is just as dangerous. Or it could show that buying pills from an online site advertized is a spam message is just as risky as buying them from a guy in a back alley. Or whatever.
Give it a scary sounding title and blurb to scare people into thinking the internet is really dangerous (which it is if you dont know what you are doing) and get them to pick up the book.
There should be a change to the law to make it illegal for a company to make a claim that someone elses product infringes on their patents UNLESS the claims they are making contain actual patent numbers.
This prevents the nebulous threats like Microsoft vs Linux/Android and MPEGLA vs WebM/VP8
I went to University (in Australia) and have a Computer Science degree on my wall and other than one required maths unit (aimed at giving you the maths you need for computer science stuff) and a couple of electives I took because I was interested in it (like the introductory Economics unit), everything else I studied was computer science related.
The #1 problem these days in IT is that degrees dont matter anywhere near as much as they used to. These days its all about "commercial experience" (and finding people to hire you so you can GET that experience is hard)
Nope, NBN is still going strong. As for Perth, I happen to live there and no, its not the boondocks. And I have a choice of plenty of plans, most at ADSL2+ speed (and most with providers other than Tel$tra)
See, your problem is expecting to pay US prices for Australian products. Everything costs more in Australia. Here in Australia, a LEGO pirate ship will cost about $210US at current conversion rates. In the US, the same pirate ship costs only $119.
Also, I have no idea whether your price comparison includes AU or US line rental charges or not. Or where in Australia your parents live (based on the talk of 1.5Mbit speeds, I am guessing its out in the boondocks somewhere because these days that's about the only place you find speeds that slow)
Of course, when the NBN reaches your parents house (be it Fiber or wireless) things will change and 1.5Mbit speeds will be a thing of the past.
But for it to be successful, it has to: 1.Have minimum order requirements to stop someone ordering a pack of chips and a bottle of soda and nothing else. 2.Not try to roll delivery costs into item prices. Charges actual costs for delivery from wherever the local warehouse/delivery point is. 3.Have prices and range (including fresh fruit and veg, meat, bakery, dairy etc) that are comparable to what one finds in a local supermarket.
Get that right and people who are willing to trade money (delivery costs) for time (time spent going to the supermarket etc) will use it.
Actually, Australian caps are not that bad. I can get a 500GB plan from any number of ISPs, some offer even more. Compared to the low caps many US ISPs want to introduce...
There is a BIG difference between online poker (as it stands today) and offline poker.
With online poker you dont get ANY of the normal signals (body language etc) that good players use to tell what the other player might be thinking, what their hand might be etc. I did hear though that some sites are looking into using webcam technology to both provide this (i.e. people who are being filmed and shown to other players would give away clues) and to allow verification that a real human being is playing and not a computer.
That said, I DO support this bill and want to see online poker legalized. And I see no reason FullTilt or PokerStars couldn't set up shop in a gambling-friendly locale if that's what it takes to become legal under the new law. (or promise big bucks to a state that's not openly hostile to gambling but doesn't have an established gambling industry to challenge the "upstarts")
I would end ALL subsidies to corn farmers. Ending subsidies to corn farmers would make corn more expensive. This then makes foods containing corn products more expensive. It also makes meat (chicken, pork and beef) from feedlots using corn as a feed more expensive.
It may sound counter-intuitive to make food more expensive at a time when things are so bad. But the food that will become more expensive is the food that is really bad for you.
One of the biggest contributors to the obesity crisis in the US is that you can feed a family at McDonalds or KFC for LESS than it would cost to buy a meal for that family at a supermarket. Make junk food more expensive and parents will start saying "Now that I have to pay $3-$4 for a hamburger at McDonalds instead of $1, I am going to rethink how often I buy McDonalds food for the family"
Its not just IBM, far too many companies have abandoned everything except short-term shareholder gains.
I think the root cause of this (and other problems plaguing the western world and its companies) comes from the changes in the mid-late 20th century where the typical shareholder mix of public companies changed away from businessmen and rich people who cared about the companies they bought to investment funds, managed funds, brokerages, day traders and others who see shares as a short term investment to be bought and sold on a daily basis and the companies they are buying and selling as nothing more than names on a computer screen.
I concur. I played Oblivion on the XBOX 360 and it felt great. Then I played it on the PC and the controls felt lame and too much like a half-assed console re-do instead of a proper PC setup.
I have a mouse. Why the hell cant I use that mouse to click on an item to pick it up? Or on a chest to open it? Why do I need to press keyboard keys to activate the chest or pick up the item?
Instead of being non-neutral, just start charging people for the bandwidth they use just like you pay for electricity, water and gas.
Here in Australia, I get 130GB of data per month to use how I see fit with no restrictions or blocks. If I decide I need more (and am willing to pay for it), I can move up to a higher tier plan. There are lower tier plans also. But none of these plans (or those from many other ISPs) have anything non-neutral about them.
So you use an authentication like the little calculators some banks give. Things that can't be compromised by hackers.
Unless the transaction details you see on the screen match the real transaction details, the special hash displayed by the little calculator wont match and the bank will reject the transaction.
The ideas with the little calculator and the one-time-SMS work just fine, even if the bad guys have compromised the browser, the results of the little calculator or the one time SMS wont be usable.
Good banking security isn't rocket science and it doesn't need to cost banks a fortune either.
Slashdot Mirror
Motorola is doing exactly that. They are refusing to pay up to Microsoft nor are they supporting Windows Phone 7.
In my local area they recently (as in just over a year ago) built a roundabout (complete with the slightly flared entrances) on a small residential-area 4-way junction that used to have stop signs on one road and nothing on the other road. This was (as far as I know) done more to slow traffic passing through the intersection down rather than as a traffic control measure. It also has the benefit of making it safer for pedestrians crossing this intersection.
Despite the "cover story" spread by the big media companies, all their action is not really about stopping piracy, its about stopping the biggest threat to the big media companies since Edison invented the phonograph.
Specifically, the Internet threatens to take away the control that the big media companies have as gatekeepers of what we consume.
Use a cloud company with no US operations whatsoever.
Infected emails?
Hacked website or ad provider serving out drive-by-downloads?
Compromised IM accounts?
All of the above?
Personally I think someone needs to write an "Internet Security for Dummies" book that uses real world analogies to explain internet security concepts to clueless people. For example, it could compare leaving your front door unlocked to not having a firewall. Or it could show real-world things that most people would never do (give their credit card or bank details to a total stranger because the total stranger promised money) and then explain that doing the same things on the Internet is just as dangerous.
Or it could show that buying pills from an online site advertized is a spam message is just as risky as buying them from a guy in a back alley. Or whatever.
Give it a scary sounding title and blurb to scare people into thinking the internet is really dangerous (which it is if you dont know what you are doing) and get them to pick up the book.
There should be a change to the law to make it illegal for a company to make a claim that someone elses product infringes on their patents UNLESS the claims they are making contain actual patent numbers.
This prevents the nebulous threats like Microsoft vs Linux/Android and MPEGLA vs WebM/VP8
Its not just program guide data, the set top boxes also need to download new encryption keys (which come over the sattelite feed I believe)
I went to University (in Australia) and have a Computer Science degree on my wall and other than one required maths unit (aimed at giving you the maths you need for computer science stuff) and a couple of electives I took because I was interested in it (like the introductory Economics unit), everything else I studied was computer science related.
The #1 problem these days in IT is that degrees dont matter anywhere near as much as they used to. These days its all about "commercial experience" (and finding people to hire you so you can GET that experience is hard)
The other reason the roadster is going away is because the car its based on (a Lotus) is also going away.
I dont think Telstra or Optus have the technical ability to mess with their wholesale customers in this way.
Don't ban it, just declare it an "airplane" and require a pilots license.
Nope, NBN is still going strong.
As for Perth, I happen to live there and no, its not the boondocks. And I have a choice of plenty of plans, most at ADSL2+ speed (and most with providers other than Tel$tra)
See, your problem is expecting to pay US prices for Australian products.
Everything costs more in Australia. Here in Australia, a LEGO pirate ship will cost about $210US at current conversion rates. In the US, the same pirate ship costs only $119.
Also, I have no idea whether your price comparison includes AU or US line rental charges or not.
Or where in Australia your parents live (based on the talk of 1.5Mbit speeds, I am guessing its out in the boondocks somewhere because these days that's about the only place you find speeds that slow)
Of course, when the NBN reaches your parents house (be it Fiber or wireless) things will change and 1.5Mbit speeds will be a thing of the past.
They are also VERY large and might actually have the resources to fight back long enough to get the patent overturned.
Suing people who are likely to settle because they cant afford to fight is a common tactic of patent trolls.
But for it to be successful, it has to:
1.Have minimum order requirements to stop someone ordering a pack of chips and a bottle of soda and nothing else.
2.Not try to roll delivery costs into item prices. Charges actual costs for delivery from wherever the local warehouse/delivery point is.
3.Have prices and range (including fresh fruit and veg, meat, bakery, dairy etc) that are comparable to what one finds in a local supermarket.
Get that right and people who are willing to trade money (delivery costs) for time (time spent going to the supermarket etc) will use it.
Actually, Australian caps are not that bad.
I can get a 500GB plan from any number of ISPs, some offer even more.
Compared to the low caps many US ISPs want to introduce...
There is a BIG difference between online poker (as it stands today) and offline poker.
With online poker you dont get ANY of the normal signals (body language etc) that good players use to tell what the other player might be thinking, what their hand might be etc. I did hear though that some sites are looking into using webcam technology to both provide this (i.e. people who are being filmed and shown to other players would give away clues) and to allow verification that a real human being is playing and not a computer.
That said, I DO support this bill and want to see online poker legalized. And I see no reason FullTilt or PokerStars couldn't set up shop in a gambling-friendly locale if that's what it takes to become legal under the new law. (or promise big bucks to a state that's not openly hostile to gambling but doesn't have an established gambling industry to challenge the "upstarts")
I would end ALL subsidies to corn farmers.
Ending subsidies to corn farmers would make corn more expensive.
This then makes foods containing corn products more expensive.
It also makes meat (chicken, pork and beef) from feedlots using corn as a feed more expensive.
It may sound counter-intuitive to make food more expensive at a time when things are so bad. But the food that will become more expensive is the food that is really bad for you.
One of the biggest contributors to the obesity crisis in the US is that you can feed a family at McDonalds or KFC for LESS than it would cost to buy a meal for that family at a supermarket. Make junk food more expensive and parents will start saying "Now that I have to pay $3-$4 for a hamburger at McDonalds instead of $1, I am going to rethink how often I buy McDonalds food for the family"
Its not just IBM, far too many companies have abandoned everything except short-term shareholder gains.
I think the root cause of this (and other problems plaguing the western world and its companies) comes from the changes in the mid-late 20th century where the typical shareholder mix of public companies changed away from businessmen and rich people who cared about the companies they bought to investment funds, managed funds, brokerages, day traders and others who see shares as a short term investment to be bought and sold on a daily basis and the companies they are buying and selling as nothing more than names on a computer screen.
Dreamcast piracy happened because there were bugs/loopholes in the firmware that allowed booting off CD-Rs.
I concur. I played Oblivion on the XBOX 360 and it felt great. Then I played it on the PC and the controls felt lame and too much like a half-assed console re-do instead of a proper PC setup.
I have a mouse. Why the hell cant I use that mouse to click on an item to pick it up? Or on a chest to open it? Why do I need to press keyboard keys to activate the chest or pick up the item?
No it couldn't because the idea is that you enter the transaction details (amount and account number) into the little calculator thing.
Instead of being non-neutral, just start charging people for the bandwidth they use just like you pay for electricity, water and gas.
Here in Australia, I get 130GB of data per month to use how I see fit with no restrictions or blocks. If I decide I need more (and am willing to pay for it), I can move up to a higher tier plan. There are lower tier plans also. But none of these plans (or those from many other ISPs) have anything non-neutral about them.
So you use an authentication like the little calculators some banks give. Things that can't be compromised by hackers.
Unless the transaction details you see on the screen match the real transaction details, the special hash displayed by the little calculator wont match and the bank will reject the transaction.
The ideas with the little calculator and the one-time-SMS work just fine, even if the bad guys have compromised the browser, the results of the little calculator or the one time SMS wont be usable.
Good banking security isn't rocket science and it doesn't need to cost banks a fortune either.