This is Mike from Windows-IOT. Oh my goodness gracious, we have detected that your toaster is compromised. You must do the needfull and give us access to your toaster's remote interface. And also we need your credit card number to pay for securing your toaster.
Just like the "guaranteed payout" scheme pioneered by Mr. Carlo Ponzi https://mises.org/library/life... a defined benefit plan requires an ever-increasing contribution base. This may work for a growing startup company, but it dies when you hit major downsizing. Towards the end, just before their bankruptcy, GM had 100,000 contributing employees supporting 1,000,000 retirees and dependants. Let's just say that didn't work out very well.
Yes, we need repair shops/garages and service/tune-up centres. We don't need blood-sucking-leeches middlemen raking a percentage off the top of every sale. A salesman gets a Y-U-U-U-G-E commision for selling a new car. That's why the car's price drops drastically the momemt you drive it off the lot.
The dealerships also stock up on pimpmobiles. Safety features are one thing. But try to find a new car on the lot without a sun-roof, satellite radio, infotainment system, privacy-invading-constant-tracking (OnStar/etc), etc/etc. With a desktop PC or laptop, I have a choice between...
1) Ordering online from Dell and specifying the options/hardware I want/need.
2) Going in to Best Buy, picking from a limited selection the model that sort of comes close to my needs, and putting up with 20 minutes of nagging to buy extended warranty, etc.
I, and a lot of other people, prefer option 1) for computers. It would also be nice for cars. Right now car-buying is like buying a PC from Best Buy.
The icebreaker was supposed to navigate from Quebec City, down the St Lawrence River, up the east coast of Canada, and into Hudson's Bay for the research mission. But shit happens...
> The icebreaker was soon diverted. Dense ice -- up to 8 metres (25ft) thick -- had filled the > waters off the northern coast of Newfoundland, trapping fishing boats and ferries. > > "It was a really dramatic situation," said David Barber, the expedition's chief scientist. > "We were getting search and rescue calls from fishing boats that were stranded in the > ice and tankers that were stranded trying to get fuel into the communities. Nobody > could manage this ice because it was far too heavy to get through."
[...snip...]
> The decision to cancel the first leg of the expedition was made after it became clear that > continuing north would interrupt search and rescue operations and probably put lives at risk.
The first priority of the CCGS icebreaker is search and rescue, and there happened to be more work than anticipated, so the research mission was cancelled.
For those of you wondering, no, it is not a good idea to charter an "ice-reinforced ship", when you want to get up close to the ice and do first-hand measurements. You need a real icebreaker. The Akedemik Shokalskiy fiasco http://news.nationalgeographic... is still fresh in people's minds.
> Fortunately... unfortunately... irregardless... they are called Anti-fa, which ? is a separate group. And for claiming to be anti-fascist, they are remarkably > fascists. The black hood & mask are the new brown shirt or white robe.
They are anti-free speech. Just try to book a conservative speaker into Oakland.
Contextual advertising... I live in Toronto, Ontario. At the bottom of this article is an ad that says "Ontario Cable Companies Want This Device Banned Immediately". It's labelled as an "Advertorial for TVFrog". I couldn't make this stuff up.
...is widespread advanced brickerbot software. When everybody's internet-connected-whatever gets bricked a week after they buy it, the manufacturers will feel pain. And I can assure you that they probably don't have a clue about real security, either.
> Which major PC and mobile operating systems' network connection settings > provide a way to express this metering policy, such that your Ethernet connection > to your router becomes metered at 8 AM and no longer metered at midnight?
> We also produce half of the inventions that make life better and longer. Perhaps we > would all be better off if the rest of the world was more like us, not the other way around.
Let me translate... you have half the world's patent lawyers, and they go around patenting such obvious things that the American PTO is assumed to stand for "Patenting The Obvious". E.g... * a shopping cart "and a computer" https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... * swinging sideways on a swing https://yro.slashdot.org/story... * a hairstyle that allows Donald Trump to cover up his bald spot https://patentyogi.com/america...
> Actually, tax money gets spent and goes back into the economy > to pay somebody else's salary, who then spends money. -- quite > the opposite of sucking money out of the economy.
> Until companies that make small laptops stop making small laptops.
Dell disagrees. 329.99 pesos^H^H^H^H^H Canadian dollars (approx $250 US) for an Inspiron 11 3000 with 4 gigs of RAM. http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspi...
1366x768 11.6 inc screen is OK. The 32 gig eMMC drive may suck for capacity, but is reasonably safe from damage when the bus is travelling on a bumpy road. At home, plug in an external USB hard drive to a USB port (2.0 or 3.0). Or use a USB key. 256 gig keys are reasonably priced nowadays.
> Installing drivers are not automatic, like the are for most devices under Windows today.
Windows Update automatically installed new drivers for webcams... which made the webcams useless... oops. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec... And if you manage to revert the update, the next update will re-install the bad driver. Ask yourself... unless there is a security fix or a genuine feature improvement involved, ***WHY*** do you need constant driver updates?
> Yup, that was intentional. I started using FF when it was > still called Phoenix 0.3, and each release was like a > Christmas present full of wonderful new and useful features.
The name was changed because of legal/trademark threats from Phoenix, the BIOS company. Mozilla first used "Firebird" for a while, only to find out that there was already a database called Firebird... oops... https://firebirdsql.org/ They eventually switched the name to Firefox.
> And still leaves you with 1/4 of what you'd be getting on cable.
I do not want to pay for "the 500 channel universe".
Some people don't want sports. They're leaving ESPN (and/or cable altogether) in droves. ESPN has dropped from 100 million subscribers in Sep 2010 to 88 million in Feb 2017 https://seekingalpha.com/artic... Other people want only sports. MLB / NHL / etc have streaming subscriptions.
The music industry is a good analogy. They were doing well financially in the 1950's through 1970's. Their biggest market was teenagers, with limited disposable income. Their hottest product was "the 45 rpm single" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... with 1 song on each side.
Then the music industry got effing greedy, and dropped the $1 single in favour of the $25 CD. Teenagers with limited disposable income stopped buying due to sticker shock. Music sales plummetted... well... like... duhhhh.
The RIAA blamed piracy, but it was actually their own fault. Apple revived the concept of "the single, for $1", in digital format this time. Sales took off, and the music industry is making money again.
Going from a dozen bundled songs, most of which were crap, to a-la-carte, revived the music industry. If cable is smart, they'll follow the lead of the music industry, and unbundle channels so that people pay for only what they want.
"Cracking down on the internet" will do nothing but inconvenience innocent ordinary citizens.
The US had a very hard time finding Osama bin Laden after 9/11. He dropped off the net, and no cellphones either. He communicated via trusted couriers.
Another example is "Millenium Challenge 2002" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This was a simulated war game with "Blue" force (USA) versus "Red" force (middle eastern, probably Iran).
> Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted > an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic > surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line > troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
>At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed;
[...deletia...]
> After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script > drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script, > Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be > destroyed, and was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue > Force troops ashore. Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him > the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they > also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force > and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed.
The USA lost to "low tech" in Viet Nam. Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly "glorious victories" either. The UK seems to be falling into the same trap. They'll only succeed in shutting down internet connectivity for innocent citizens. Terrorists will continue to use "sneakernet", trusted couriers, etc.
Companies with enough advertising budget can figure it out for themselves "the hard way". Let's say that a specific widget sells X per week.
The company runs a series of ads with a radio station. Did sales increase enough to cover the cost of the ads, and then some?
A few months later, they'll try with another radio station, or a TV station, and look at what happens to weekly sales figures.
Similarly, they can launch an online ad campaign, and see what happens. The company will stick with whatever strategy works out best for them financially, because profit is the only goal.
Rather than have some guy spend days driving a truckload cross-country, howsabout...
* short-haul trailer from factory/port to nearest railroad yard * have the train take the loaded trailer cross-country to the nearest railyard to final destination * short-haul from railroad yard to warehouse or store
* Sep 2010 100 million * Sep 2011 99 million * Sep 2012 98 million * Sep 2013 99 million * Sep 2014 95 million * Sep 2015 92 million * Sep 2016 90 million * Feb 2017 88 million
> Existing self-checkout kiosks at major retail > outlets already handle cash perfectly fine.
A large supermarket near me used to do that. I even figured out how to use the machine without it calling the attendant. Just when I had things down pat, they changed the kiosks to debit/credit card only. http://www.iheartradio.ca/580-... I live in Greater Toronto, but the URL refers to their stores in Ottawa. It's probably a nationwide policy of theirs.
You mean like during the last decade where ***REPORTED*** inflation has been practically negative?
FTFY
See http://www.shadowstats.com/alt... for more realistic numbers. My 1974 Ford Maverick, 302 V8 and automatic transmission, was approximately $4070 CDN, sales-tax included. The 2017 Ford Focus is approx $14,400 CDN, before taxes. Public transit has also risen. http://globalnews.ca/news/2359... "From 3 cents to $3.25: a brief history of TTC fare hikes". And of course, house prices are going nuts.
Electronic toys have been worked into the stats to get low numbers. 10 years ago, I got a 50-inch "HDTV" (1366x768). Now, a 55-inch 4K UHD LED TV can be had for $450. This is "deflationary". The same governments that monkey the numbers to report low inflation rates are also monkeying the numbers to report tons of "global warming". I don't trust any numbers from governments.
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Hello?
This is Mike from Windows-IOT. Oh my goodness gracious, we have detected that your toaster is compromised. You must do the needfull and give us access to your toaster's remote interface. And also we need your credit card number to pay for securing your toaster.
Previous article https://politics.slashdot.org/... about almost 200,000,000 US voters' info leaking. Next it's going to go global. Bad idea.
Just like the "guaranteed payout" scheme pioneered by Mr. Carlo Ponzi https://mises.org/library/life... a defined benefit plan requires an ever-increasing contribution base. This may work for a growing startup company, but it dies when you hit major downsizing. Towards the end, just before their bankruptcy, GM had 100,000 contributing employees supporting 1,000,000 retirees and dependants. Let's just say that didn't work out very well.
Yes, we need repair shops/garages and service/tune-up centres. We don't need blood-sucking-leeches middlemen raking a percentage off the top of every sale. A salesman gets a Y-U-U-U-G-E commision for selling a new car. That's why the car's price drops drastically the momemt you drive it off the lot.
The dealerships also stock up on pimpmobiles. Safety features are one thing. But try to find a new car on the lot without a sun-roof, satellite radio, infotainment system, privacy-invading-constant-tracking (OnStar/etc), etc/etc. With a desktop PC or laptop, I have a choice between...
1) Ordering online from Dell and specifying the options/hardware I want/need.
2) Going in to Best Buy, picking from a limited selection the model that sort of comes close to my needs, and putting up with 20 minutes of nagging to buy extended warranty, etc.
I, and a lot of other people, prefer option 1) for computers. It would also be nice for cars. Right now car-buying is like buying a PC from Best Buy.
First they took away UHF channels 70-83 (800 mhz band)
Then they took away UHF channels 52-69 (700 mhz band)
Now they're taking away UHF channels 36-51 (600 mhz band)
See for more details https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
The icebreaker was supposed to navigate from Quebec City, down the St Lawrence River, up the east coast of Canada, and into Hudson's Bay for the research mission. But shit happens...
> The icebreaker was soon diverted. Dense ice -- up to 8 metres (25ft) thick -- had filled the
> waters off the northern coast of Newfoundland, trapping fishing boats and ferries.
>
> "It was a really dramatic situation," said David Barber, the expedition's chief scientist.
> "We were getting search and rescue calls from fishing boats that were stranded in the
> ice and tankers that were stranded trying to get fuel into the communities. Nobody
> could manage this ice because it was far too heavy to get through."
[...snip...]
> The decision to cancel the first leg of the expedition was made after it became clear that
> continuing north would interrupt search and rescue operations and probably put lives at risk.
The first priority of the CCGS icebreaker is search and rescue, and there happened to be more work than anticipated, so the research mission was cancelled.
For those of you wondering, no, it is not a good idea to charter an "ice-reinforced ship", when you want to get up close to the ice and do first-hand measurements. You need a real icebreaker. The Akedemik Shokalskiy fiasco http://news.nationalgeographic... is still fresh in people's minds.
> Fortunately... unfortunately... irregardless... they are called Anti-fa, which
? is a separate group. And for claiming to be anti-fascist, they are remarkably
> fascists. The black hood & mask are the new brown shirt or white robe.
They are anti-free speech. Just try to book a conservative speaker into Oakland.
Contextual advertising... I live in Toronto, Ontario. At the bottom of this article is an ad that says "Ontario Cable Companies Want This Device Banned Immediately". It's labelled as an "Advertorial for TVFrog". I couldn't make this stuff up.
...is widespread advanced brickerbot software. When everybody's internet-connected-whatever gets bricked a week after they buy it, the manufacturers will feel pain. And I can assure you that they probably don't have a clue about real security, either.
> Which major PC and mobile operating systems' network connection settings
> provide a way to express this metering policy, such that your Ethernet connection
> to your router becomes metered at 8 AM and no longer metered at midnight?
Linux and BSD, i.e. "man cron" and "man at".
...otherwise we'll finally get "The Year Of Linux (and BSD) On The Desktop"... because that'll be all that's left.
When airline travel becomes (literally) a pain in the ass, teleconferencing will grow big-time.
> We also produce half of the inventions that make life better and longer. Perhaps we
> would all be better off if the rest of the world was more like us, not the other way around.
Let me translate... you have half the world's patent lawyers, and they go around patenting such obvious things that the American PTO is assumed to stand for "Patenting The Obvious". E.g...
* a shopping cart "and a computer" https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
* swinging sideways on a swing https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
* a hairstyle that allows Donald Trump to cover up his bald spot https://patentyogi.com/america...
> Actually, tax money gets spent and goes back into the economy
> to pay somebody else's salary, who then spends money. -- quite
> the opposite of sucking money out of the economy.
It would get put into either the pockets of bigwigs at outfits like Solyndra http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/... or into the pockets of rich people who can afford to buy an $85,000 Tesla https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/su...
> Until companies that make small laptops stop making small laptops.
Dell disagrees. 329.99 pesos^H^H^H^H^H Canadian dollars (approx $250 US) for an Inspiron 11 3000 with 4 gigs of RAM. http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspi...
1366x768 11.6 inc screen is OK. The 32 gig eMMC drive may suck for capacity, but is reasonably safe from damage when the bus is travelling on a bumpy road. At home, plug in an external USB hard drive to a USB port (2.0 or 3.0). Or use a USB key. 256 gig keys are reasonably priced nowadays.
> Installing drivers are not automatic, like the are for most devices under Windows today.
Windows Update automatically installed new drivers for webcams... which made the webcams useless... oops. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec... And if you manage to revert the update, the next update will re-install the bad driver. Ask yourself... unless there is a security fix or a genuine feature improvement involved, ***WHY*** do you need constant driver updates?
> Yup, that was intentional. I started using FF when it was
> still called Phoenix 0.3, and each release was like a
> Christmas present full of wonderful new and useful features.
The name was changed because of legal/trademark threats from Phoenix, the BIOS company. Mozilla first used "Firebird" for a while, only to find out that there was already a database called Firebird... oops... https://firebirdsql.org/ They eventually switched the name to Firefox.
Apple and Google have competing standards? We can't have that.
https://xkcd.com/927/
> And still leaves you with 1/4 of what you'd be getting on cable.
I do not want to pay for "the 500 channel universe".
Some people don't want sports. They're leaving ESPN (and/or cable altogether) in droves. ESPN has dropped from 100 million subscribers in Sep 2010 to 88 million in Feb 2017 https://seekingalpha.com/artic... Other people want only sports. MLB / NHL / etc have streaming subscriptions.
The music industry is a good analogy. They were doing well financially in the 1950's through 1970's. Their biggest market was teenagers, with limited disposable income. Their hottest product was "the 45 rpm single" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... with 1 song on each side.
Then the music industry got effing greedy, and dropped the $1 single in favour of the $25 CD. Teenagers with limited disposable income stopped buying due to sticker shock. Music sales plummetted... well... like... duhhhh.
The RIAA blamed piracy, but it was actually their own fault. Apple revived the concept of "the single, for $1", in digital format this time. Sales took off, and the music industry is making money again.
Going from a dozen bundled songs, most of which were crap, to a-la-carte, revived the music industry. If cable is smart, they'll follow the lead of the music industry, and unbundle channels so that people pay for only what they want.
"Cracking down on the internet" will do nothing but inconvenience innocent ordinary citizens.
The US had a very hard time finding Osama bin Laden after 9/11. He dropped off the net, and no cellphones either. He communicated via trusted couriers.
Another example is "Millenium Challenge 2002" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This was a simulated war game with "Blue" force (USA) versus "Red" force (middle eastern, probably Iran).
> Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted
> an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic
> surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line
> troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
The initial result was an absolute disaster for "Blue" at the beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
>At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed;
[...deletia...]
> After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script
> drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script,
> Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be
> destroyed, and was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue
> Force troops ashore. Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him
> the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they
> also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force
> and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed.
The USA lost to "low tech" in Viet Nam. Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly "glorious victories" either. The UK seems to be falling into the same trap. They'll only succeed in shutting down internet connectivity for innocent citizens. Terrorists will continue to use "sneakernet", trusted couriers, etc.
Companies with enough advertising budget can figure it out for themselves "the hard way". Let's say that a specific widget sells X per week.
The company runs a series of ads with a radio station. Did sales increase enough to cover the cost of the ads, and then some?
A few months later, they'll try with another radio station, or a TV station, and look at what happens to weekly sales figures.
Similarly, they can launch an online ad campaign, and see what happens. The company will stick with whatever strategy works out best for them financially, because profit is the only goal.
Rather than have some guy spend days driving a truckload cross-country, howsabout...
* short-haul trailer from factory/port to nearest railroad yard
* have the train take the loaded trailer cross-country to the nearest railyard to final destination
* short-haul from railroad yard to warehouse or store
ESPN subscriber count
* Sep 2010 100 million
* Sep 2011 99 million
* Sep 2012 98 million
* Sep 2013 99 million
* Sep 2014 95 million
* Sep 2015 92 million
* Sep 2016 90 million
* Feb 2017 88 million
> Existing self-checkout kiosks at major retail
> outlets already handle cash perfectly fine.
A large supermarket near me used to do that. I even figured out how to use the machine without it calling the attendant. Just when I had things down pat, they changed the kiosks to debit/credit card only. http://www.iheartradio.ca/580-... I live in Greater Toronto, but the URL refers to their stores in Ottawa. It's probably a nationwide policy of theirs.
You mean like during the last decade where ***REPORTED*** inflation has been practically negative?
FTFY
See http://www.shadowstats.com/alt... for more realistic numbers. My 1974 Ford Maverick, 302 V8 and automatic transmission, was approximately $4070 CDN, sales-tax included. The 2017 Ford Focus is approx $14,400 CDN, before taxes. Public transit has also risen. http://globalnews.ca/news/2359... "From 3 cents to $3.25: a brief history of TTC fare hikes". And of course, house prices are going nuts.
But Canadian inflation is reported as being approx 2% http://www.inflation.eu/inflat...
Electronic toys have been worked into the stats to get low numbers. 10 years ago, I got a 50-inch "HDTV" (1366x768). Now, a 55-inch 4K UHD LED TV can be had for $450. This is "deflationary". The same governments that monkey the numbers to report low inflation rates are also monkeying the numbers to report tons of "global warming". I don't trust any numbers from governments.