Tax euros predominantly come from the middle class, not from the happy few who can afford to spend large sums on gaudy frippery. And that's where the downsides of this scheme will be felt. In principle it sounds simple. Instead of giving only unemployed people €800 / month, we'll simply give everyone that amount, but if you have a job we'll take most of that back in taxes. Where do those taxes come from, though? A 65% tax on the first €2400 of your wages (the tax in that band is already at 35%, not counting the deductible)? Doable, but keep in mind that not everyone makes that much, so taxes for higher earners will have to be increased even further.
In the Netherlands, the marginal tax burden is enormous. In some specific cases (single earner, two child household), the difference between gross minimum wage and the "modal" income is over €16,000 a year. However the net difference is... only €1,800, because of taxes and no longer being eligible for additional benefits. Which is due to another important issue: the complexity of the Dutch benefits scheme is not in the base stipends like dole money, state pensions or workman's comp. It's in the Byzantine maze of extra measures piled on by the state or the councils: child support, health care subsidy (health care is not provided; you need insurance but low incomes get a subsidy to pay for it), rent subsidy, tax breaks for the chronically ill, waiving of certain local taxes for low incomes, transport subsidy, aid in kind, and so on. Many of these measures are not to compensate for low incomes but to account for differences in composition of households. None of this will disappear with a universal basic income.
So why work at a minimum wage or even a better-paying job? You'll be better off just taking the basic income and all it's additional benefits, perhaps doing a few odd jobs on the side, off the books, for a couple of hours a week. The rest is leisure time. And that's the real issue: even if we could make the scheme work at current levels of unemployment, some people will decide that getting up every morning to sit in traffic and work at a sucky job for 40 hours a week isn't worth it. Already economists complain that the gap between the dole and minimum wage is too small to encourage people to find a job; in some cases the gap is negative due to losing many of the aforementioned additional benefits. Opponents to this scheme argue that no one will want to work anymore; proponents argue that people will still find fulfilment in the work itself and will want the extra cash, however small the amount. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle... and that middle part will have to be paid for. It will be expensive. And it will be paid, as always, by the middle class.
I love e-books, but the submitter of the article is right about one thing: most e-readers offer a terrible browsing experience, are piss-poor at providing meaningful recommendations, and suck at helping you organize your library. There is a lot of room for improvement there.
Hue bulbs (or Zigbee/Z-Wave enabled bulbs in general) aren't connected to the Internet. They are connected to a hub, which may or may not be connected to the Internet depending on the brand and on your home network setup. And this problem is not unique to home automation or IoT stuff. It's simply a manufacturer promising interoperability with other brands (by subscribing to the Zigbee / LightLink protocol), and then breaking that interoperability.
That's precisely the point: sideswiping the car next to you is such a risky manoeuver that machine nor man can probably make that judgment call very well, with any vehicle. So an automatic car wouldn't. Take evasive action if it's safe (more or less within traffic rules, i.e. without hitting anything else; the car should be able to make that call), stop in your own lane if possible, or slow down as much as you can and crash into the obstacle in your lane. Avoid the impending accident if you can do so safely, or let it happen if you can't. Of course there may be exceptions explicitly defined if they fit into a simple decision tree, like driving into the guardrail. But mostly the car shouldn't go looking for the lesser accident or the harder target, because that's where the complexity (and liability) comes in.
Exactly: there is never a such clear-cut decision between "my owner or that bus full of nuns". I can imagine that cars will be programmed to make decisions based on certain basic principles, but those principles will be nothing like the 3 laws of robotics. Taking drastic action to avoid an accident may lead to a worse one, and it'll be a long while before our machines will be anywhere near able to make such complex decisions.
To begin with: if everyone sticks to the rules of the road and drives normally, there is very little chance of an accident occurring. If an exceptional situation occurs, the fault of an ensuing accident primarily lies with whomever caused that exceptional situation (even if it's unintentional). If someone's tyre blows and they swerve into your lane as a result, if a child chases a ball into the road, or if a cyclist runs a red light in front of your car, you'd (probably) do everything to avoid a crash and so should a self-driving car, but you are not under any moral obligation to drive yourself into the side of a building in order to avoid the other car, child or cyclist. Self driving cars should operate under the same premise: it should never be considered necessary to sacrifice the driver.
If something unexpected happens, cars might follow a protocol similar to this one:
1) Stay in your lane and come to a controlled stop.
2) If a controlled stop will not prevent a collision (and this is something that self-driving cars should be able to assess fairly accurately), change to a different lane if there is an unobstructed one.
3) If there are no unobstructed lanes but the road ahead is clear and the local speed limit is below x, change into oncoming traffic.
4) If all else fails, reduce speed as much as possible and allow the collision to happen.
These are not meant to be complete and valid for all situations, it's just to give an idea of how such "laws" could be formulated, in the form of a decision tree that self-driving cars would be able to follow, without having to make complex judgment calls or difficult moral decisions. And I can well imagine that a basic set of such rules will be set into law so that all self-driving cars will follow the same basic protocol. As a driver you'd have little incentive to change the programming in your favour, and if you did, it would become immediately apparent as soon as you're involved in an accident.
Responsible adulthood? Look at the average adult these days, whiny and complaining about the slightest wrong. "I want" or "I am entitled to" rather than "I can". Helpless when it comes even to simple tasks like changing a flat tyre. And above all looking towards others, or the government, when something goes wrong or something needs to be done. That's what you get if you shelter children when they grow up: what is called the "rubber tile society" over here.
Exploring in freedom (i.e. without adult supervision), making your own mistakes and learning from them. Those things teach self-reliance, healthy curiosity and teamwork, and they are an important part of growing up. Perhaps there are better or safer ways to teach those things to children, but my sad observation is that we haven't even tried to find them. Curiosity and self-reliance are certainly not things that seem to be valued in today's schools and today's society. But without these, how on earth can we expect our children to become adults? "Trying to child-proof the world makes us neglect the more important task of world-proofing the child"
It's been long established that people are surrounded by a "filter bubble" online, where they're only exposed to viewpoints they already agree with.
As opposed to people consuming traditional media, who are exposed to a healthy broad range of viewpoints and in-depth analysis of The Truth. Give me a break. Personally, I find exchanging ideas and arguing with people holding opposing viewpoints to be rather educational, and that's something that the internet offers but traditional media can't. Online discussions have made me rethink my deeply-held beliefs, forced me to re-examine my arguments, changed my opinion on several occasions, and offered me a more nuanced view of those with opposing viewpoints, and insight into their lines of reasoning. At the very least it has made me critical of anything that is offered up as "evidence". And that's something that I only very rarely get in traditional media. A newspaper article can offer up bullshit statistics as "facts", the same statistics online will be picked apart, debunked, and countered with other data in no time.
But you're right: this is still just talking, not protesting.
The Star Simpson case cited in TFA is a nice illustration of the tyrannical nature of these agencies. Not the fact that a TSA guy got spooked by her electronic ornament, and not even the fact that she was subsequently arrested at gunpoint in the ensuing confusion; those are just regrettable but understandable mistakes. But the fact that this whole messy incident ever made it to court illustrates that. And even when they dropped the "hoax device" charge against her, they still could not bring themselves to let her go scot free and admit their mistake in blowing this thing out of proportion, and forced her into an f-ing plea bargain on a charge of "disorderly conduct" which is something that'll stick nicely to anyone, especially when already having been arrested in chains. And to add insult to injury, they made her issue a public apology.
I've seen the same disgusting proceedings in my own country: if an agency makes a mistake against an individual, whether it is a wrongful arrrest, an incorrectly denied zoning permit, or a bloody traffic fine: if they know they can make you back down instead of having to admit their own mistake, by making your life a living legal hell at the taxpayers' expense with zero risk or inconvenience to themselves, they will. And the sad thing is: even if these cases and the sickening behaviour of the officials driving them become publicly known, nothing ever happens to these officials or to those ultimately responsible.
Many people of all manner of beliefs already celebrated something around the 25th of December (near the winter solstice). Christmas trees are a pagan tradition. Santa Claus is a weird mix of Northern European Christian traditions and pagan myths. (Interestingly, st. Nicholas or Sinterklaas as he's called over here, from whom both the name and the idea of Santa Claus appears to have originated, is celebrated as a separate holiday on December 5th here in the Netherlands and Belgium. 30 years ago, Sinterklaas was the children's holiday of the year, with Christmas mostly being a family gettogether where kids might perhaps receive a small gift)
So Christmas has some religious roots though they certainly aren't all Christian, and the rest is all of pagan origin. It has long since ceased to be a religious festival and evolved into something that non-Christians enjoy celebrating as a nice family holiday as well (especially since we don't have something like Thanksgiving over here). Instead of going full PC and banning Christmas trees from public offices for fear of offending someone, better to pitch Christmas as a generic holiday. Hell, I know some Muslims who have a family dinner on Christmas eve even if they don't go so far as to call it that.
Were the requirements for this software incorrect? If so, who signed off on them? And if they were correct, who signed off on the test script and results? Go track those people down and throw them in jail.
Your experience at the US border will depend a lot on the airport. Kennedy was the worst: long lines and surly staff. Houston had long lines but polite staff. The immigration guy at Miami was downright cheerful and I breezed through the whole process. I never got patted down upon arrival. When leaving they did pat me down (lightly) but the DHS guys were generally polite and efficient. Much unlike Schiphol airport (Amsterdam), where security staff is downright rude and the Marechaussee (passport control) seem to do their best to make things move along as slowly as possible.
Then the authorities probably have some data on him. What kind of imam is he? Moderate, or the Muslim equivalent of the Baby-eating Bishop of Bath-and-Wells? There's free speech and all that, but what you say publicly does have consequences, and the US might be reluctant to admit hate-mongers. My own country very rarely refuses anyone entry on vague fears or suspicions if they meet the regular entry requirements, but extremist imams visiting from the Middle East are precisely the type they do refuse.
ESTA seems like a pretty lightweight check. Also, if I remember correctly it's valid for 1-2 years or so and it can be used for multiple entries, unless they've changed that. Given the level of paranoia, I can imagine that they want to perform an additional check against the passenger list. What I really wonder is against what data and which criteria this check is performed. The ESTA form and any additional data provided by the airlines do not exactly give detailed insight. Maybe it's just about having the wrong surname.
Well worth getting! Not just for the unbelievable crapfest that is the SW Holiday Special itself, but for the awesome Riff commentary... and for the decidedly dated advertisements (which are Riffed on as well!) and CBS announcements.
Was this in the early days of water cooling? The technology has come along rather well and fittings and tubings have improved a lot (and have been more or less standardized as well). I built a water cooled gaming rig about 5 years ago because I wanted a quiet machine, and it hasn't had any major leak in years of intensive use (some coolant did slowly leak out and evaporate somewhere, as I had to top up the system every 6 months or so).
Think about the plumbing in your house, or perhaps something closer to data center cooling: a house with hot water / radiator based heating. How common is it to have a major leak in that? Not common at all: some of the plumbing here goes back 30 years and none of it has leaked so far. Most leaks seem to come from people accidentally drilling into a pipe, frozen pipes bursting, or faulty washing machines. The rest of it is pretty reliable.
They may have a point, though I suspect it has more to do with the managers than with the engineers. I've seen plenty of managers sweep a proposed innovative change off the table because it goes against what they are used to: "Not on my watch!" The manager who has worked with networked PCs his whole life does not approve of thin clients and desktop streaming. Mr. Big Iron hates the idea of decentralized data processing. Then another manager comes along and approves the change. In this case, I can see a manager say "Water in the data center? Not on my watch", whereas the next guy who is already familiar with the concept (and may even have some hands-on experience) decides to go ahead with it.
People are looking at their smart phones a lot these days, and a bigger screen helps. As does the higher resolution of newer phones. When I'm at home and I need to look up something on a web site, I no longer bother to pick up the iPad lying next to me if I'm already holding my phone.
Years ago we were warned to turn off Outlook previews, for exactly this reason. Also, my copy of Outlook doesn't download or render attachments (or even images) unless told to, for every individual email. As far as I know, that is the default behaviour. The danger is that you can whitelist senders so that their attachments are downloaded without confirmation, and spammers often use commonly used email addresses as the originator.
The summary is incorrect as well. FTA: "The only condition is that the user views or previews the email in which the attacker has embedded a malicious Flash file." So you still need to click. The only exception is if your Outlook is set to always download attachments, show a preview, and if the malicious email is the last one to arrive, since the mail will then be shown in the preview window upon opening Outlook.
They look a lot more real as well. The props and special effects sometimes look a bit cheesy and dated by today's standards, but they still hold up surprisingly well. And I prefer them over the way overdone CGI-gasm of the prequels, which often end up looking fake. Not special-effects fake, but "no one in their right mind would design / build / fly like that". The acting in the prequels was horrible as well; almost everything is being acted out in front of a green screen, and it shows. Some people commented on the Spanish dubbed versions being much better because you'd at least have voice acting from people who are trained to convey some emotion while sitting in a recording booth.
Thankfully, it seems that the upcoming episode is closer to the originals in look & feel. Lucas not being in charge anymore is probably the best thing that could possibly happen to the franchise. Anyway, I'm planning to watch episodes 4-6 this weekend as well. The original versions. thankyouverymuch.
Solar farms are no different from other forms of power generation in that they require a significant investment. Solar power is by no means free, but it is arguably safer and cleaner to the local environment than most other forms of power plants. A solar farm will make money. So tax their profits like any other business. But a profitable industrial project that is forced to pay tribute to the local warlord (even a democratically elected one) is absolutely not my idea of how things are supposed to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Tax euros predominantly come from the middle class, not from the happy few who can afford to spend large sums on gaudy frippery. And that's where the downsides of this scheme will be felt. In principle it sounds simple. Instead of giving only unemployed people €800 / month, we'll simply give everyone that amount, but if you have a job we'll take most of that back in taxes. Where do those taxes come from, though? A 65% tax on the first €2400 of your wages (the tax in that band is already at 35%, not counting the deductible)? Doable, but keep in mind that not everyone makes that much, so taxes for higher earners will have to be increased even further.
In the Netherlands, the marginal tax burden is enormous. In some specific cases (single earner, two child household), the difference between gross minimum wage and the "modal" income is over €16,000 a year. However the net difference is... only €1,800, because of taxes and no longer being eligible for additional benefits. Which is due to another important issue: the complexity of the Dutch benefits scheme is not in the base stipends like dole money, state pensions or workman's comp. It's in the Byzantine maze of extra measures piled on by the state or the councils: child support, health care subsidy (health care is not provided; you need insurance but low incomes get a subsidy to pay for it), rent subsidy, tax breaks for the chronically ill, waiving of certain local taxes for low incomes, transport subsidy, aid in kind, and so on. Many of these measures are not to compensate for low incomes but to account for differences in composition of households. None of this will disappear with a universal basic income.
So why work at a minimum wage or even a better-paying job? You'll be better off just taking the basic income and all it's additional benefits, perhaps doing a few odd jobs on the side, off the books, for a couple of hours a week. The rest is leisure time. And that's the real issue: even if we could make the scheme work at current levels of unemployment, some people will decide that getting up every morning to sit in traffic and work at a sucky job for 40 hours a week isn't worth it. Already economists complain that the gap between the dole and minimum wage is too small to encourage people to find a job; in some cases the gap is negative due to losing many of the aforementioned additional benefits. Opponents to this scheme argue that no one will want to work anymore; proponents argue that people will still find fulfilment in the work itself and will want the extra cash, however small the amount. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle... and that middle part will have to be paid for. It will be expensive. And it will be paid, as always, by the middle class.
I love e-books, but the submitter of the article is right about one thing: most e-readers offer a terrible browsing experience, are piss-poor at providing meaningful recommendations, and suck at helping you organize your library. There is a lot of room for improvement there.
Hue bulbs (or Zigbee/Z-Wave enabled bulbs in general) aren't connected to the Internet. They are connected to a hub, which may or may not be connected to the Internet depending on the brand and on your home network setup. And this problem is not unique to home automation or IoT stuff. It's simply a manufacturer promising interoperability with other brands (by subscribing to the Zigbee / LightLink protocol), and then breaking that interoperability.
That's precisely the point: sideswiping the car next to you is such a risky manoeuver that machine nor man can probably make that judgment call very well, with any vehicle. So an automatic car wouldn't. Take evasive action if it's safe (more or less within traffic rules, i.e. without hitting anything else; the car should be able to make that call), stop in your own lane if possible, or slow down as much as you can and crash into the obstacle in your lane. Avoid the impending accident if you can do so safely, or let it happen if you can't. Of course there may be exceptions explicitly defined if they fit into a simple decision tree, like driving into the guardrail. But mostly the car shouldn't go looking for the lesser accident or the harder target, because that's where the complexity (and liability) comes in.
Exactly: there is never a such clear-cut decision between "my owner or that bus full of nuns". I can imagine that cars will be programmed to make decisions based on certain basic principles, but those principles will be nothing like the 3 laws of robotics. Taking drastic action to avoid an accident may lead to a worse one, and it'll be a long while before our machines will be anywhere near able to make such complex decisions.
To begin with: if everyone sticks to the rules of the road and drives normally, there is very little chance of an accident occurring. If an exceptional situation occurs, the fault of an ensuing accident primarily lies with whomever caused that exceptional situation (even if it's unintentional). If someone's tyre blows and they swerve into your lane as a result, if a child chases a ball into the road, or if a cyclist runs a red light in front of your car, you'd (probably) do everything to avoid a crash and so should a self-driving car, but you are not under any moral obligation to drive yourself into the side of a building in order to avoid the other car, child or cyclist. Self driving cars should operate under the same premise: it should never be considered necessary to sacrifice the driver.
If something unexpected happens, cars might follow a protocol similar to this one:
1) Stay in your lane and come to a controlled stop.
2) If a controlled stop will not prevent a collision (and this is something that self-driving cars should be able to assess fairly accurately), change to a different lane if there is an unobstructed one.
3) If there are no unobstructed lanes but the road ahead is clear and the local speed limit is below x, change into oncoming traffic.
4) If all else fails, reduce speed as much as possible and allow the collision to happen.
These are not meant to be complete and valid for all situations, it's just to give an idea of how such "laws" could be formulated, in the form of a decision tree that self-driving cars would be able to follow, without having to make complex judgment calls or difficult moral decisions. And I can well imagine that a basic set of such rules will be set into law so that all self-driving cars will follow the same basic protocol. As a driver you'd have little incentive to change the programming in your favour, and if you did, it would become immediately apparent as soon as you're involved in an accident.
Or indeed any article.
Responsible adulthood? Look at the average adult these days, whiny and complaining about the slightest wrong. "I want" or "I am entitled to" rather than "I can". Helpless when it comes even to simple tasks like changing a flat tyre. And above all looking towards others, or the government, when something goes wrong or something needs to be done. That's what you get if you shelter children when they grow up: what is called the "rubber tile society" over here.
Exploring in freedom (i.e. without adult supervision), making your own mistakes and learning from them. Those things teach self-reliance, healthy curiosity and teamwork, and they are an important part of growing up. Perhaps there are better or safer ways to teach those things to children, but my sad observation is that we haven't even tried to find them. Curiosity and self-reliance are certainly not things that seem to be valued in today's schools and today's society. But without these, how on earth can we expect our children to become adults? "Trying to child-proof the world makes us neglect the more important task of world-proofing the child"
Linda, is that you?
It's been long established that people are surrounded by a "filter bubble" online, where they're only exposed to viewpoints they already agree with.
As opposed to people consuming traditional media, who are exposed to a healthy broad range of viewpoints and in-depth analysis of The Truth. Give me a break. Personally, I find exchanging ideas and arguing with people holding opposing viewpoints to be rather educational, and that's something that the internet offers but traditional media can't. Online discussions have made me rethink my deeply-held beliefs, forced me to re-examine my arguments, changed my opinion on several occasions, and offered me a more nuanced view of those with opposing viewpoints, and insight into their lines of reasoning. At the very least it has made me critical of anything that is offered up as "evidence". And that's something that I only very rarely get in traditional media. A newspaper article can offer up bullshit statistics as "facts", the same statistics online will be picked apart, debunked, and countered with other data in no time.
But you're right: this is still just talking, not protesting.
The Star Simpson case cited in TFA is a nice illustration of the tyrannical nature of these agencies. Not the fact that a TSA guy got spooked by her electronic ornament, and not even the fact that she was subsequently arrested at gunpoint in the ensuing confusion; those are just regrettable but understandable mistakes. But the fact that this whole messy incident ever made it to court illustrates that. And even when they dropped the "hoax device" charge against her, they still could not bring themselves to let her go scot free and admit their mistake in blowing this thing out of proportion, and forced her into an f-ing plea bargain on a charge of "disorderly conduct" which is something that'll stick nicely to anyone, especially when already having been arrested in chains. And to add insult to injury, they made her issue a public apology.
I've seen the same disgusting proceedings in my own country: if an agency makes a mistake against an individual, whether it is a wrongful arrrest, an incorrectly denied zoning permit, or a bloody traffic fine: if they know they can make you back down instead of having to admit their own mistake, by making your life a living legal hell at the taxpayers' expense with zero risk or inconvenience to themselves, they will. And the sad thing is: even if these cases and the sickening behaviour of the officials driving them become publicly known, nothing ever happens to these officials or to those ultimately responsible.
Many people of all manner of beliefs already celebrated something around the 25th of December (near the winter solstice). Christmas trees are a pagan tradition. Santa Claus is a weird mix of Northern European Christian traditions and pagan myths. (Interestingly, st. Nicholas or Sinterklaas as he's called over here, from whom both the name and the idea of Santa Claus appears to have originated, is celebrated as a separate holiday on December 5th here in the Netherlands and Belgium. 30 years ago, Sinterklaas was the children's holiday of the year, with Christmas mostly being a family gettogether where kids might perhaps receive a small gift)
So Christmas has some religious roots though they certainly aren't all Christian, and the rest is all of pagan origin. It has long since ceased to be a religious festival and evolved into something that non-Christians enjoy celebrating as a nice family holiday as well (especially since we don't have something like Thanksgiving over here). Instead of going full PC and banning Christmas trees from public offices for fear of offending someone, better to pitch Christmas as a generic holiday. Hell, I know some Muslims who have a family dinner on Christmas eve even if they don't go so far as to call it that.
Were the requirements for this software incorrect? If so, who signed off on them? And if they were correct, who signed off on the test script and results? Go track those people down and throw them in jail.
Your experience at the US border will depend a lot on the airport. Kennedy was the worst: long lines and surly staff. Houston had long lines but polite staff. The immigration guy at Miami was downright cheerful and I breezed through the whole process. I never got patted down upon arrival. When leaving they did pat me down (lightly) but the DHS guys were generally polite and efficient. Much unlike Schiphol airport (Amsterdam), where security staff is downright rude and the Marechaussee (passport control) seem to do their best to make things move along as slowly as possible.
Then the authorities probably have some data on him. What kind of imam is he? Moderate, or the Muslim equivalent of the Baby-eating Bishop of Bath-and-Wells? There's free speech and all that, but what you say publicly does have consequences, and the US might be reluctant to admit hate-mongers. My own country very rarely refuses anyone entry on vague fears or suspicions if they meet the regular entry requirements, but extremist imams visiting from the Middle East are precisely the type they do refuse.
ESTA seems like a pretty lightweight check. Also, if I remember correctly it's valid for 1-2 years or so and it can be used for multiple entries, unless they've changed that. Given the level of paranoia, I can imagine that they want to perform an additional check against the passenger list. What I really wonder is against what data and which criteria this check is performed. The ESTA form and any additional data provided by the airlines do not exactly give detailed insight. Maybe it's just about having the wrong surname.
Well worth getting! Not just for the unbelievable crapfest that is the SW Holiday Special itself, but for the awesome Riff commentary... and for the decidedly dated advertisements (which are Riffed on as well!) and CBS announcements.
How is that different from any other successful franchise? You can buy Angry Birds lunch boxes and Grumpy Cat throw pillows for crying out loud.
It's 1984 2:1985, Attack of the Proles.
Was this in the early days of water cooling? The technology has come along rather well and fittings and tubings have improved a lot (and have been more or less standardized as well). I built a water cooled gaming rig about 5 years ago because I wanted a quiet machine, and it hasn't had any major leak in years of intensive use (some coolant did slowly leak out and evaporate somewhere, as I had to top up the system every 6 months or so).
Think about the plumbing in your house, or perhaps something closer to data center cooling: a house with hot water / radiator based heating. How common is it to have a major leak in that? Not common at all: some of the plumbing here goes back 30 years and none of it has leaked so far. Most leaks seem to come from people accidentally drilling into a pipe, frozen pipes bursting, or faulty washing machines. The rest of it is pretty reliable.
They may have a point, though I suspect it has more to do with the managers than with the engineers. I've seen plenty of managers sweep a proposed innovative change off the table because it goes against what they are used to: "Not on my watch!" The manager who has worked with networked PCs his whole life does not approve of thin clients and desktop streaming. Mr. Big Iron hates the idea of decentralized data processing. Then another manager comes along and approves the change. In this case, I can see a manager say "Water in the data center? Not on my watch", whereas the next guy who is already familiar with the concept (and may even have some hands-on experience) decides to go ahead with it.
People are looking at their smart phones a lot these days, and a bigger screen helps. As does the higher resolution of newer phones. When I'm at home and I need to look up something on a web site, I no longer bother to pick up the iPad lying next to me if I'm already holding my phone.
Years ago we were warned to turn off Outlook previews, for exactly this reason. Also, my copy of Outlook doesn't download or render attachments (or even images) unless told to, for every individual email. As far as I know, that is the default behaviour. The danger is that you can whitelist senders so that their attachments are downloaded without confirmation, and spammers often use commonly used email addresses as the originator.
The summary is incorrect as well. FTA: "The only condition is that the user views or previews the email in which the attacker has embedded a malicious Flash file." So you still need to click. The only exception is if your Outlook is set to always download attachments, show a preview, and if the malicious email is the last one to arrive, since the mail will then be shown in the preview window upon opening Outlook.
Lastly, Flash needs to die
It's metric grammar
They look a lot more real as well. The props and special effects sometimes look a bit cheesy and dated by today's standards, but they still hold up surprisingly well. And I prefer them over the way overdone CGI-gasm of the prequels, which often end up looking fake. Not special-effects fake, but "no one in their right mind would design / build / fly like that". The acting in the prequels was horrible as well; almost everything is being acted out in front of a green screen, and it shows. Some people commented on the Spanish dubbed versions being much better because you'd at least have voice acting from people who are trained to convey some emotion while sitting in a recording booth.
Thankfully, it seems that the upcoming episode is closer to the originals in look & feel. Lucas not being in charge anymore is probably the best thing that could possibly happen to the franchise. Anyway, I'm planning to watch episodes 4-6 this weekend as well. The original versions. thankyouverymuch.
Solar farms are no different from other forms of power generation in that they require a significant investment. Solar power is by no means free, but it is arguably safer and cleaner to the local environment than most other forms of power plants. A solar farm will make money. So tax their profits like any other business. But a profitable industrial project that is forced to pay tribute to the local warlord (even a democratically elected one) is absolutely not my idea of how things are supposed to work.