Perhaps you should actually read some of his stuff. Start with that article "IT doesn't matter", which is rather insightful, especially considering when it was written (today, the conclusion of the article seems obvious).
He's right about the lawyers, though. Being "truthy" is making wild claims in your ad, then covering any lie in the 25 seconds of hasty, unintelligible mumbling following the ad. Disclaimers do nothing for the truthfulness of ads, they just make sure advertisers cannot be called out on their lies. They are meaningless legalese that makes government regulators, consumer advocates, and corporations all a little happier while accomplishing nothing; you're better off without them. And that's the hard to swallow truth*
*) May or may not be the truth. Not valid in the state of California. May cause irreversible damage to kidneys and liver. Conditions apply.
But you misunderstand. "Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they're not a tack on". Instead of moaning about ads, you should sit back and enjoy the enhanced experience they offer.
Seriously, whoever came up with the idea of selling ads to the public as an "experience" (a turn of phrase that is increasingly heard) has lost all connection with reality. People put up with ads at best. And it may entice them to click or buy something from time to time. But no one wants them.
I heard good things about Virgin. A while ago I made regular trips from Amsterdam to Tokyo on KLM, with a few co-workers flying in from London on Virgin. After their description of the lounge and the in-flight service I was sorely tempted to grab a flight to London on my own dime and hop on that Virgin flight instead of sticking with KLM, just to experience a service where people actually make an effort (KLM isn't terrible, but it feels like they always do as little as they can get away with).
Copyright is an artificial construct that was thought up as a reasonable compromise between "information wants to be free", and monetary incentive for creators to create and publish their work. To extend copyright beyond the life of the creator is ridiculous. You can argue that extending copyright increases its value to whomever hopes to cash in on creative works, and will thus offer a better price to the creators, but there is absolutely no moral justification for creators to be able to levy a tax on the use of their works from beyond the grave, and take an advance on the proceeds. 10 years is a bit short, the author's life should be the absolute maximum. Something in between would be reasonable.
It's not always due to cost, sometimes it's plain stupidity. I did some work for a company that experienced a similar outage (not an airline company but one equally dependent on their datacenter). They had a new DC and spent good money on it, with redundant systems and power, top notch fire suppression systems, spare no expense. One day the mains power failed, the backup generator dutifully kicked in, died, and the secondary backup tried to start and failed. Turns out they had 2 backup generators. Hooked up to the same Diesel tank. Which was empty. The cost of adding a second tank would have been trivial, not to mention the paltry cost of having someone periodically check that there actually is some fuel in there.
Rubbish. no one doubted that the "gay rights thing" would end up in schools, since that's where it belongs. And just what the hell are you insinuating about your teacher, teaching about gays and transsexuals and "living across the street". Afraid he's gonna come after your daughter? Come on...
By now it's pretty clear that many gays and transgenders discovered their sexuality at an early age, and that having had to suppress that during childhood and adolescence has caused untold emotional damage to them. No one is advocating that little 6 year old Johnny gets to play "nurse" with his little girlfriends at school, then gets whisked off to a hospital to undergo a sex change because he wants to be one of the girls. First and foremost kids need to be taught about this stuff so they can be comfortable with themselves and with any gay or transgender classmates. I do agree that (as always) the SJW crowd has taken things too far with the "rights" crap: you have the right to pick your own gender, race or species, and you MUST be respected on pain of (social) death. How many letters have we appended to LGBTqiwuwhbsjsjk these days?
Very few people read up on that stuff. His fans (we have them here in Europe as well) laud him for his business savvy, and think that'll make him a president who knows how to fix things and get things done. Point out how crappy most of his businesses actually did, and they'll dismiss those facts as slanderous lies.
Reminds me of the story of the SS Rotterdam. A consortium bought this old steam liner and expected to spend a couple million € to fix her up. Parly due to absestos the final bill ended up somewhere around €350 million. In the end they sold the ship to a hotel chain for €27 mil.
How does R&D even enter into this? They can now simply wait until someone else uses this, then send a lawyer to their office to wave that patent in their face.
I've seen something to handle that, though I don't know if a patent was granted for it. Noise-cancelling headphones that only filter out certain sounds, or that switch on when a certain sound is detected, kind of like those automatic welding masks.
By the way, there's another damn patent that should not have been granted because nothing new was invented: we already have noise-cancelling headphones as well as stuff to detect certain sounds. Combining them in this way is clever, but not more than that. Worth a cookie, not a patent.
That's why I prefer script blockers over ad blockers: the static stuff and animated GIFs still get through, while blocking Flash ads and those ads that will animate and play a sound when you roll over them. If a lot of people start doing this, perhaps the ad networks will start to see a pattern, and adjust accordingly.
Not going to happen, despite these costs and strictures, media companies still stand to make money so they will play ball. And the US committee is just following the Olympic committee, who have demanded (and gotten) similar injuctions against nasty free-loading IP pirates in previous editions of the Games. SA gave them special IP police. And some details were published from the Bid Book instructions given to the Dutch commission when they were preparing their bid. It had plenty of provisions to very strictly enforce what went on in the stadiums (including tweets), and they even demanded that all neon signs for beers other than the sponsoring brands to be removed from bars in a 3 km radius around all olympic locations. Oh and they wanted highway lanes closed off at set times so the brass could quickly shuttle between locations in their limos.
It's the countries who should tell them to screw it. Sadly they will not do so either, the Games offer prestige and an enormous opportunity for politicians to shine (and have their pals make a bit of cash too). And the Olympic Committee know this, as well as the fact that if you can put something good on the table (or under it), any politician is willing to bargain, no matter how outlandish your demands.
I love those, sadly we don't have any left in Rotterdam. But our regular cinemas are decent enough, they are clean, with pretty comfortable seats, good picture and sound, and it's pretty rare for the patrons to be actively disruptive. I make one exception: not to ever visit the cinema during Ramadan; the place will be stacked to the rafters with f'ed-up teens looking for trouble.
This sounds like one of those instances where the spirit rather than the letter of the law should be applied. When using a fingerprint to unlock a phone, it is clearly being used as a passcode rather than "physical evidence".
FTA:
iOS also only permits five Touch ID unlock attempts before the passcode is required, so smart criminals would either register their little finger and use up those attempts with other fingers.
So in this case, where a judge compels a suspect to unlock his phone using his fingerprint, and he blocks the phone with 5 bogus attempts, can he be held in contempt of court? Or he could claim that the phone didn't recognize his fingers because of sweaty hands.
Somebody fakes my eyescan successfuly once, it loses all future use to me
That's the real kicker. Imagine a password written on a yellow sticky, kept in your wallet. A password that is thus easily stolen, lost or duplicated. Now imagine that you cannot change that password, ever.
You mean Monster Aether? Plugs into the wall like those room perfume thingies, and spreads complex organic molecules tuned to the specific BT frequencies, to help carry the signal and keep it coherent. Reduces noise in BT headsets and results in a more natural, warmer sound, and completely eliminates bit-flutter. Comes in pine & lavender or sweet jasmine. Only €49,99
Depends... For example, many countries distinguish between licensed cabs and private hire car (limo) services: cabs need a license and meet minimums standards, and the fares are often fixed. They can do curbside pickups if you flag them down, while private hire cars have to work through a dispatcher. That's where the discussion starts: the cabbies (and some legislators) have argued that having an app that instantly routes the nearest car to your location amounts to flagging down a driver, if there are enough of these cars roaming the streets.
Exactly. And it doesn't have to be this Rita doing the blackmailing. If she stores the customer info electronically, it can be stolen. If LinkedIn gets hacked, you change your password and you get a bit more spam. If Rita gets hack, you are (figuratively speaking) fucked.
WhatsApp covers a somewhat different market segment. One of its strong points is that accounts are (in most cases) tied to phone numbers. This makes it an attractive option for mobile phone users: the app instantly knows who on your contact list is also using Whatsapp. When the service was launched, this made the switch from SMS rather painless, since there was no need to add existing contacts manually into a new list. Whatsapp probably has a fair slice of those users who do not, for whatever reason, have a FB account. They could drop Whatsapp in favor of Messenger, but they risk losing those customers. Instead, why not keep both and datamine the crap out of both market segments?
If this was staged coup, it was a very well designed one: relatively small scale and little damage, but highly visible (lots of "cool effects"), maximum incitement of the population, but controlled to not escalate into an actual coup. Also note how control of "the media" (well, TRT) changed hands precisely at the right times to widely announce the coup, then declare its failure, while throughout the entire proceedings the prime minister was able to spread the message: "we're still here!"
Slashdot Mirror
And a significant fire hazard
Perhaps you should actually read some of his stuff. Start with that article "IT doesn't matter", which is rather insightful, especially considering when it was written (today, the conclusion of the article seems obvious).
He's right about the lawyers, though. Being "truthy" is making wild claims in your ad, then covering any lie in the 25 seconds of hasty, unintelligible mumbling following the ad. Disclaimers do nothing for the truthfulness of ads, they just make sure advertisers cannot be called out on their lies. They are meaningless legalese that makes government regulators, consumer advocates, and corporations all a little happier while accomplishing nothing; you're better off without them. And that's the hard to swallow truth*
*) May or may not be the truth. Not valid in the state of California. May cause irreversible damage to kidneys and liver. Conditions apply.
But you misunderstand. "Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they're not a tack on". Instead of moaning about ads, you should sit back and enjoy the enhanced experience they offer.
Seriously, whoever came up with the idea of selling ads to the public as an "experience" (a turn of phrase that is increasingly heard) has lost all connection with reality. People put up with ads at best. And it may entice them to click or buy something from time to time. But no one wants them.
I heard good things about Virgin. A while ago I made regular trips from Amsterdam to Tokyo on KLM, with a few co-workers flying in from London on Virgin. After their description of the lounge and the in-flight service I was sorely tempted to grab a flight to London on my own dime and hop on that Virgin flight instead of sticking with KLM, just to experience a service where people actually make an effort (KLM isn't terrible, but it feels like they always do as little as they can get away with).
Copyright is an artificial construct that was thought up as a reasonable compromise between "information wants to be free", and monetary incentive for creators to create and publish their work. To extend copyright beyond the life of the creator is ridiculous. You can argue that extending copyright increases its value to whomever hopes to cash in on creative works, and will thus offer a better price to the creators, but there is absolutely no moral justification for creators to be able to levy a tax on the use of their works from beyond the grave, and take an advance on the proceeds. 10 years is a bit short, the author's life should be the absolute maximum. Something in between would be reasonable.
Whatever. A content provider who also provides access or playback equipment is pure evil. The equation works every time.
It's not always due to cost, sometimes it's plain stupidity. I did some work for a company that experienced a similar outage (not an airline company but one equally dependent on their datacenter). They had a new DC and spent good money on it, with redundant systems and power, top notch fire suppression systems, spare no expense. One day the mains power failed, the backup generator dutifully kicked in, died, and the secondary backup tried to start and failed. Turns out they had 2 backup generators. Hooked up to the same Diesel tank. Which was empty. The cost of adding a second tank would have been trivial, not to mention the paltry cost of having someone periodically check that there actually is some fuel in there.
By the way, this was a European company.
Rubbish. no one doubted that the "gay rights thing" would end up in schools, since that's where it belongs. And just what the hell are you insinuating about your teacher, teaching about gays and transsexuals and "living across the street". Afraid he's gonna come after your daughter? Come on...
By now it's pretty clear that many gays and transgenders discovered their sexuality at an early age, and that having had to suppress that during childhood and adolescence has caused untold emotional damage to them. No one is advocating that little 6 year old Johnny gets to play "nurse" with his little girlfriends at school, then gets whisked off to a hospital to undergo a sex change because he wants to be one of the girls. First and foremost kids need to be taught about this stuff so they can be comfortable with themselves and with any gay or transgender classmates. I do agree that (as always) the SJW crowd has taken things too far with the "rights" crap: you have the right to pick your own gender, race or species, and you MUST be respected on pain of (social) death. How many letters have we appended to LGBTqiwuwhbsjsjk these days?
Very few people read up on that stuff. His fans (we have them here in Europe as well) laud him for his business savvy, and think that'll make him a president who knows how to fix things and get things done. Point out how crappy most of his businesses actually did, and they'll dismiss those facts as slanderous lies.
Reminds me of the story of the SS Rotterdam. A consortium bought this old steam liner and expected to spend a couple million € to fix her up. Parly due to absestos the final bill ended up somewhere around €350 million. In the end they sold the ship to a hotel chain for €27 mil.
Which is why very few governments will tell the Olympic Committee to go f* themselves with their idiotic rules. They should, though.
How does R&D even enter into this? They can now simply wait until someone else uses this, then send a lawyer to their office to wave that patent in their face.
I've seen something to handle that, though I don't know if a patent was granted for it. Noise-cancelling headphones that only filter out certain sounds, or that switch on when a certain sound is detected, kind of like those automatic welding masks.
By the way, there's another damn patent that should not have been granted because nothing new was invented: we already have noise-cancelling headphones as well as stuff to detect certain sounds. Combining them in this way is clever, but not more than that. Worth a cookie, not a patent.
That's why I prefer script blockers over ad blockers: the static stuff and animated GIFs still get through, while blocking Flash ads and those ads that will animate and play a sound when you roll over them. If a lot of people start doing this, perhaps the ad networks will start to see a pattern, and adjust accordingly.
Not going to happen, despite these costs and strictures, media companies still stand to make money so they will play ball. And the US committee is just following the Olympic committee, who have demanded (and gotten) similar injuctions against nasty free-loading IP pirates in previous editions of the Games. SA gave them special IP police. And some details were published from the Bid Book instructions given to the Dutch commission when they were preparing their bid. It had plenty of provisions to very strictly enforce what went on in the stadiums (including tweets), and they even demanded that all neon signs for beers other than the sponsoring brands to be removed from bars in a 3 km radius around all olympic locations. Oh and they wanted highway lanes closed off at set times so the brass could quickly shuttle between locations in their limos.
It's the countries who should tell them to screw it. Sadly they will not do so either, the Games offer prestige and an enormous opportunity for politicians to shine (and have their pals make a bit of cash too). And the Olympic Committee know this, as well as the fact that if you can put something good on the table (or under it), any politician is willing to bargain, no matter how outlandish your demands.
I love those, sadly we don't have any left in Rotterdam. But our regular cinemas are decent enough, they are clean, with pretty comfortable seats, good picture and sound, and it's pretty rare for the patrons to be actively disruptive. I make one exception: not to ever visit the cinema during Ramadan; the place will be stacked to the rafters with f'ed-up teens looking for trouble.
iOS also only permits five Touch ID unlock attempts before the passcode is required, so smart criminals would either register their little finger and use up those attempts with other fingers.
So in this case, where a judge compels a suspect to unlock his phone using his fingerprint, and he blocks the phone with 5 bogus attempts, can he be held in contempt of court? Or he could claim that the phone didn't recognize his fingers because of sweaty hands.
Somebody fakes my eyescan successfuly once, it loses all future use to me
That's the real kicker. Imagine a password written on a yellow sticky, kept in your wallet. A password that is thus easily stolen, lost or duplicated. Now imagine that you cannot change that password, ever.
You mean Monster Aether? Plugs into the wall like those room perfume thingies, and spreads complex organic molecules tuned to the specific BT frequencies, to help carry the signal and keep it coherent. Reduces noise in BT headsets and results in a more natural, warmer sound, and completely eliminates bit-flutter. Comes in pine & lavender or sweet jasmine. Only €49,99
Depends... For example, many countries distinguish between licensed cabs and private hire car (limo) services: cabs need a license and meet minimums standards, and the fares are often fixed. They can do curbside pickups if you flag them down, while private hire cars have to work through a dispatcher. That's where the discussion starts: the cabbies (and some legislators) have argued that having an app that instantly routes the nearest car to your location amounts to flagging down a driver, if there are enough of these cars roaming the streets.
Maybe that's just where his mind went...
It's kind of a better example though: subs are waaaay more careful about picking clients or dates than dommes, for obvious reasons.
Exactly. And it doesn't have to be this Rita doing the blackmailing. If she stores the customer info electronically, it can be stolen. If LinkedIn gets hacked, you change your password and you get a bit more spam. If Rita gets hack, you are (figuratively speaking) fucked.
WhatsApp covers a somewhat different market segment. One of its strong points is that accounts are (in most cases) tied to phone numbers. This makes it an attractive option for mobile phone users: the app instantly knows who on your contact list is also using Whatsapp. When the service was launched, this made the switch from SMS rather painless, since there was no need to add existing contacts manually into a new list. Whatsapp probably has a fair slice of those users who do not, for whatever reason, have a FB account. They could drop Whatsapp in favor of Messenger, but they risk losing those customers. Instead, why not keep both and datamine the crap out of both market segments?
If this was staged coup, it was a very well designed one: relatively small scale and little damage, but highly visible (lots of "cool effects"), maximum incitement of the population, but controlled to not escalate into an actual coup. Also note how control of "the media" (well, TRT) changed hands precisely at the right times to widely announce the coup, then declare its failure, while throughout the entire proceedings the prime minister was able to spread the message: "we're still here!"