That's a bit like claiming storage solutions before S3 were a shell for Maxtor or Seagate.
S3 simply provided a technology that enabled a small company to offer massive storage and scale smoothly as demand increased. It's not like S3 was selling storage aimed directly at consumers. Development of things like dropbox was exactly why Amazon created S3 - as a way to monetize their capacity and infrastructure.
This is a pretty obscure outcome of the recent Quantitative Easing of the Fed and the Bank of England, and a little confusing as Microsoft is a US company.
You have to remember that Microsoft's main European headquarters is in Dublin in Ireland, and hence operates in Euros. The quantitative easing of the pound means that the UK goods become cheaper to export, and that conversely, it becomes more expensive for UK-ians to import good from abroad. In this case, it has become 33% more expensive for them to import MS software from Ireland.
Indeed over the past three years there pound has been steadily recovering its value against the Euro, which should make imports from the Eurozone more affordable, not less.
Now, compared to the US Dollar, the pound is well below where it was pre 1999, but has been quite stable for some time now. It seems very strange to be blaming 29% price changes on currency fluctuations that are no-where close to 29%
Texas hardly has a reputation for being profligate in its spending, and this does not increase the tax burden on anyone in the state. Texas already has a use tax set at an equal rate to sales tax and payable on purchases brought into the state, such as those from Amazon.
It's a lot easier for states to stay in their budget if they can make sure every taxpayer is picking up his or her own share.
If your argument is that taxes should be lower, that's a separate issue altogether and one for the political process to resolve. If Texans would prefer fewer services in return for lower taxes, I'm pretty sure they have the option of voting for that.
Let me tell you about my first Kindle purchase. I paid $12 for a novel that retailed on Amazon at $13.
I read the book, thoroughly enjoyed it and told a friend a couple of days later. She responded by saying she'd love to borrow it. I had to explain that wasn't possible.
So, I saved a dollar.
The publisher saved the cost of printing a paperback book, physically transporting it to Amazon. Amazon saved having the physically store the book in a warehouse and didn't have to pay UPS to deliver it to me.
Once I had read the book, I couldn't lend it or sell it. The bits were used and might as werll be deleted. The publisher and Amazon win again, as there's no second hand market for that purchase.
I have made Kindle purchases since, but I'm much more selective. Typically I'll only do it where I need a book now, or I can be sure it's a book I won't want to share.
It's not because I'm too stingly - I'm still buying books. What I don't want is to lose the rights I have through the first sale doctrine simply because I purchased bits and bytes rather than tree pulp.
I have to wonder about the Siemens issue here. Sounds like this could rapidly move into the hands of lawyers unless the CERT communications were disclosed during the transaction.
RuggedCom's management held $55.8 million (CAD) worth of stock, so pocketed handsomely from this takeover. Would RuggedCom still be worth $33/share this morning?
Also, it's just USB. Use any phone charger (most phones has USB outlets these days).
That's the point - plain USB chargers won't charge a PS3 accessory. They demand a proper USB negotiation before they'll charge, i.e. they need to see something with a 'brain'. Simply connecting them to a powered hub, or a simple wall charger doesn't do anything.
You are joking right? Using the PS3 to actually charge your PS3 controller is IMHO stupid and wasteful of electricity unless you are actually playing a game and then there is the inconvenience of the USB charging cable.
For someone who is quick to judge others' reading ability you seem to be having some comprehension difficulties yourself.
My very point WAS that using your PS3 is a stupid and wasteful way to charge accessories BECAUSE of Sony's inane design decision that the USB ports don't deliver a current while the PS3 is asleep. Having to power up a desktop computer consuming 100+ Watts to charge your accessories in an hour is stupid and wasteful.
That shocked you? Were you shocked when your I-Pod didn't charge when it was plugged into a powered off PC? Are you shocked when your car battery drains when the engine is off?
As others have said, it's perfectly possible to deliver a current from the USB ports when the PS3 is asleep. Plenty of laptops can and do manage this.
Secondly, a principle purpose of the USB ports is charging - unlike those on most computers, since most computers do not come with accessories requiring charging via a USB port. Using your example, my iPod will charge if plugged into a car adapter, it will charge if plugged into a USB wall adapter and it will charge if plugged into my laptop, whether or not it's asleep.
Thirdly, even when connected to a powered USB port - such as a mains USB adapter or a powered USB hub, the accessories will not charge unless the PS3 is on. It's not just the current, these devices were actually designed to make charging unnecessarily difficult without leaving the PS3 on or paying extra for an unnecessary charging device.
What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.
This is an absurd state of affairs and has, apparently, persisted through hardware revisions. The device itself can power on overnight from standby and sync with the PS network/download patches etc, but you need to wake the thing to charge the controller. This encourages the device being left on 24x7 with all the expense and environmental consequences that go along with that.
they go after far cheaper eBooks while they're still young.
Do you have an example of a major textbook that's "far cheaper" in ebook format?
Usually I see at most a 10-20% difference. For that you get a book you cannot write in, and which has no resale value. Many paper textbooks can be resold for 40-50% of their purchase price.
Internet Censorship Bill Goes After Free Speech In Arizona
Doesn't the bill itself state: (b) Does not include constitutionally protected activity.
If constitutionally protected free speech is not being outlawed, isn't this simply the state pushing its laws to the constitutional limit? It's an attack on free speech only insomuch as SCOTUS allows any state restrictions on free speech.
The strip search is unreasonable. There is absolutely nothing that could possibly justify the sexual abuse of someone who is falsely accused of paying a fine.
Is there a problem with drugs, weapons, cell phones and money being smuggled into jails?
If so, then surely there's something that _could_ justify a full body search of everyone entering the general prison population. Why would someone being jailed for not paying a fine be less likely to want to smuggle items of value into jail?
Whether jailing someone for non-payment of a fine is an appropriate punishment is a whole other question.
I don't think you realize how absolutely STUPID your posts are sounding. Basically you are asking for a computer to know AND decide your spending habits better than yourself. Or s/computer/person the prior statement.
As was said above - the rest of the world moved to Chip and PIN years ago, yet the US is getting their in a year or so. Yet somehow I'm the one that's stupid? I'm frankly amazed that someone hanging out on/. would think technology can't help make fraud detection easier for the end user.
I can think of dozens of ways computers could analyze my transactions and make spotting fraud much easier. The only reason it doesn't happen is because no-one is forcing the banks to do so.
Your statement could come with transactions sorted by risk - if you spend $100-200 each week at the same grocery store, that's a low risk transaction. You spend $5ish each weekday at work, that's low risk. You spend money at a new store you've never visited before, that's high risk, so make it stand out.
At gas stations, you fill up once a week and never buy more than 12 gallons. Suddenly you fill up with 15 gallons 3 times in a week - it's high risk, so flag it up.
Banks want us to use our cards for everything. They make more money that way. In return I don't see why they shouldn't be playing their part. Like I mentioned above, there's no technological need for a business to be storing users credit card details, yet it happens because the card issuers haven't presented an alternative. As a result consumers pick up the cost when data breaches occur.
Everything I've suggested is either common sense or low cost and is either in use elsewhere or could be introduced using the information available to banks today. Why exactly is that stupid?
Am I not looking after my finances when I entrust them to (and pay handsomely for) banks to look after them?
Either through interest payments or transaction fees, we are paying a small fortune to multi-billion dollar corporations who want us to use their products so they can make even more money. Why should they be permitted to supply a product but not required to make sure it's reasonably secure?
Many of us are making almost every transaction by card these days - effectively paying banks something like 2.5% of our take-home salary to provide the service that they do. And as we use it more, manual auditing of small transaction values becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible.
Even if it takes 20 minutes a month to check each transaction, that's 4 hours a year for 200 million plus in the US alone, or getting close to one billion hours of lost time each year. That's crazy.
The burden on the consumer to protect themselves is not high. All you have to do is what you should already be doing, looking over your statement and reporting anything you have questions about.
Why should I be doing this? I make dozens, perhaps hundreds of transactions each month. My looking over my statement is easily subject to human error.
It should be much harder for this information to be stolen. We should have more one-time use numbers for online transactions. Credit card firms could prohibit merchants storing complete credit card numbers, instead providing an individual merchant with an authorization code restricted to that merchant and that individual card number. Then if their database was compromised, the thief acquires only a number that's not by itself valid and useful only to that retailer.
US card issuers could adopt and require chip and pin like the rest of the world.
U.S. card issuers could start demanding retailers check signatures.
There are technological solutions available. Requiring me to account for each line of the statement is woefully inefficient and simply passes the buck from where it should be resting.
Isn't the big problem that Sealand's cables would still have to come ashore somewhere? Even if they used satellite the ground stations would still be in somebody's jurisdiction.
The only way I can see their concept working is on their local LAN. Once they hook up to the internet, they can simply be regulated through their upstream carriers.
But a criminal sentence for saying something? You do realize that it isn't a very big step between that, and a criminal sentence for saying anything a majority of people don't like, right? Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
Perhaps the difference is that people in the UK feel comfortable that they can change their government if they should so wish, without even the need for an armed militia. They've had many governments of different colors, parties have come and gone, but there will be an election and there's generally no fear of tyranny.
In other words, if the government wants to enact what the majority see as a sensible measure, that someone should not be allowed to use a public forum to insight hared on the basis of race, it's not perceived or expected to be the start of a slippery slope.
Hell, I knew about these things when I was 16 and so did every other guy I knew who ever had used SSH.
To be fair, I'm sure there are sixteen year olds reading/.
I don't expect every article to be useful to me. Not sure why you would expect that.
I haven't read the article - I think I'm familar enough myself with ssh - but as long as the info is accurate, I'd image it's a useful tutorial for folk getting into Linux.
And for the ones that aren't deterred, you think a firefight in the street is preferable to carriers simply blocking the phones and making the mugging less attractive in the first place?
One could argue that the phone company technically "owns" more of the phone than you do because of subsidies. So in that case, "somebody" has to pay for a new SIM card so the phone company gets a customer.
Wouldn't that suggest you should be released from your contract of your phone is stolen?
Really? It would honestly astonish you that Siri would require any development, testing, QA, integration, sales, administrative, or other costs? It would be completely free? Or do you not consider paying for engineering talent a "technical" cost?
You're absolutely right. It's a shame no-one at Apple has been able to come up with a way of letting users of their mobile operating system purchase individual programs to provide new functionality. Someone should come up with some sort of online shop where these programs could be marketed to end users.
Should you ever have a need to hire an attorney, you may well appreciate that they are pedantic. Sure, that can often be annoying, but without it,we'd introduce a lot of vagueness into our legal system.
In this case it's documents being copied. But lets say the law firm is litigating over a music CD. They send a paralegal down to the nearest store to pick up a copy, then duplicate that copy for every attorney on the case. Would that be okay?
How about if it's a computer program. Can they just duplicate it for every attorney because it's part of a case? A movie?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a bit like claiming storage solutions before S3 were a shell for Maxtor or Seagate.
S3 simply provided a technology that enabled a small company to offer massive storage and scale smoothly as demand increased. It's not like S3 was selling storage aimed directly at consumers. Development of things like dropbox was exactly why Amazon created S3 - as a way to monetize their capacity and infrastructure.
I'm not sure I follow. The Euro has hardly been outperforming Sterling
Indeed over the past three years there pound has been steadily recovering its value against the Euro, which should make imports from the Eurozone more affordable, not less.
Now, compared to the US Dollar, the pound is well below where it was pre 1999, but has been quite stable for some time now. It seems very strange to be blaming 29% price changes on currency fluctuations that are no-where close to 29%
No, they have a tax on items imported from another state and then kept within the state of Texas and used by a resident.
Many if not most states have a similar tax.
Texas hardly has a reputation for being profligate in its spending, and this does not increase the tax burden on anyone in the state. Texas already has a use tax set at an equal rate to sales tax and payable on purchases brought into the state, such as those from Amazon.
It's a lot easier for states to stay in their budget if they can make sure every taxpayer is picking up his or her own share.
If your argument is that taxes should be lower, that's a separate issue altogether and one for the political process to resolve. If Texans would prefer fewer services in return for lower taxes, I'm pretty sure they have the option of voting for that.
Let me tell you about my first Kindle purchase. I paid $12 for a novel that retailed on Amazon at $13.
I read the book, thoroughly enjoyed it and told a friend a couple of days later. She responded by saying she'd love to borrow it. I had to explain that wasn't possible.
So, I saved a dollar.
The publisher saved the cost of printing a paperback book, physically transporting it to Amazon. Amazon saved having the physically store the book in a warehouse and didn't have to pay UPS to deliver it to me.
Once I had read the book, I couldn't lend it or sell it. The bits were used and might as werll be deleted. The publisher and Amazon win again, as there's no second hand market for that purchase.
I have made Kindle purchases since, but I'm much more selective. Typically I'll only do it where I need a book now, or I can be sure it's a book I won't want to share.
It's not because I'm too stingly - I'm still buying books. What I don't want is to lose the rights I have through the first sale doctrine simply because I purchased bits and bytes rather than tree pulp.
I have to wonder about the Siemens issue here. Sounds like this could rapidly move into the hands of lawyers unless the CERT communications were disclosed during the transaction.
RuggedCom's management held $55.8 million (CAD) worth of stock, so pocketed handsomely from this takeover. Would RuggedCom still be worth $33/share this morning?
That's the point - plain USB chargers won't charge a PS3 accessory. They demand a proper USB negotiation before they'll charge, i.e. they need to see something with a 'brain'. Simply connecting them to a powered hub, or a simple wall charger doesn't do anything.
For someone who is quick to judge others' reading ability you seem to be having some comprehension difficulties yourself.
My very point WAS that using your PS3 is a stupid and wasteful way to charge accessories BECAUSE of Sony's inane design decision that the USB ports don't deliver a current while the PS3 is asleep. Having to power up a desktop computer consuming 100+ Watts to charge your accessories in an hour is stupid and wasteful.
As others have said, it's perfectly possible to deliver a current from the USB ports when the PS3 is asleep. Plenty of laptops can and do manage this.
Secondly, a principle purpose of the USB ports is charging - unlike those on most computers, since most computers do not come with accessories requiring charging via a USB port. Using your example, my iPod will charge if plugged into a car adapter, it will charge if plugged into a USB wall adapter and it will charge if plugged into my laptop, whether or not it's asleep.
Thirdly, even when connected to a powered USB port - such as a mains USB adapter or a powered USB hub, the accessories will not charge unless the PS3 is on. It's not just the current, these devices were actually designed to make charging unnecessarily difficult without leaving the PS3 on or paying extra for an unnecessary charging device.
Yes, design like that is shocking.
What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.
This is an absurd state of affairs and has, apparently, persisted through hardware revisions. The device itself can power on overnight from standby and sync with the PS network/download patches etc, but you need to wake the thing to charge the controller. This encourages the device being left on 24x7 with all the expense and environmental consequences that go along with that.
What decline?
http://goo.gl/yRwK5
Compared to their competitors, IBM seems to be doing okay if the markets are to be believed.
Do you have an example of a major textbook that's "far cheaper" in ebook format?
Usually I see at most a 10-20% difference. For that you get a book you cannot write in, and which has no resale value. Many paper textbooks can be resold for 40-50% of their purchase price.
Seven digit UID? Probably not.
Doesn't the bill itself state: (b) Does not include constitutionally protected activity.
If constitutionally protected free speech is not being outlawed, isn't this simply the state pushing its laws to the constitutional limit? It's an attack on free speech only insomuch as SCOTUS allows any state restrictions on free speech.
Is there a problem with drugs, weapons, cell phones and money being smuggled into jails?
If so, then surely there's something that _could_ justify a full body search of everyone entering the general prison population. Why would someone being jailed for not paying a fine be less likely to want to smuggle items of value into jail?
Whether jailing someone for non-payment of a fine is an appropriate punishment is a whole other question.
As was said above - the rest of the world moved to Chip and PIN years ago, yet the US is getting their in a year or so. Yet somehow I'm the one that's stupid? I'm frankly amazed that someone hanging out on /. would think technology can't help make fraud detection easier for the end user.
I can think of dozens of ways computers could analyze my transactions and make spotting fraud much easier. The only reason it doesn't happen is because no-one is forcing the banks to do so.
Your statement could come with transactions sorted by risk - if you spend $100-200 each week at the same grocery store, that's a low risk transaction. You spend $5ish each weekday at work, that's low risk. You spend money at a new store you've never visited before, that's high risk, so make it stand out.
At gas stations, you fill up once a week and never buy more than 12 gallons. Suddenly you fill up with 15 gallons 3 times in a week - it's high risk, so flag it up.
Banks want us to use our cards for everything. They make more money that way. In return I don't see why they shouldn't be playing their part. Like I mentioned above, there's no technological need for a business to be storing users credit card details, yet it happens because the card issuers haven't presented an alternative. As a result consumers pick up the cost when data breaches occur.
Everything I've suggested is either common sense or low cost and is either in use elsewhere or could be introduced using the information available to banks today. Why exactly is that stupid?
Am I not looking after my finances when I entrust them to (and pay handsomely for) banks to look after them?
Either through interest payments or transaction fees, we are paying a small fortune to multi-billion dollar corporations who want us to use their products so they can make even more money. Why should they be permitted to supply a product but not required to make sure it's reasonably secure?
Many of us are making almost every transaction by card these days - effectively paying banks something like 2.5% of our take-home salary to provide the service that they do. And as we use it more, manual auditing of small transaction values becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible.
Even if it takes 20 minutes a month to check each transaction, that's 4 hours a year for 200 million plus in the US alone, or getting close to one billion hours of lost time each year. That's crazy.
Why should I be doing this? I make dozens, perhaps hundreds of transactions each month. My looking over my statement is easily subject to human error.
It should be much harder for this information to be stolen. We should have more one-time use numbers for online transactions. Credit card firms could prohibit merchants storing complete credit card numbers, instead providing an individual merchant with an authorization code restricted to that merchant and that individual card number. Then if their database was compromised, the thief acquires only a number that's not by itself valid and useful only to that retailer.
US card issuers could adopt and require chip and pin like the rest of the world.
U.S. card issuers could start demanding retailers check signatures.
There are technological solutions available. Requiring me to account for each line of the statement is woefully inefficient and simply passes the buck from where it should be resting.
Isn't the big problem that Sealand's cables would still have to come ashore somewhere? Even if they used satellite the ground stations would still be in somebody's jurisdiction.
The only way I can see their concept working is on their local LAN. Once they hook up to the internet, they can simply be regulated through their upstream carriers.
Perhaps the difference is that people in the UK feel comfortable that they can change their government if they should so wish, without even the need for an armed militia. They've had many governments of different colors, parties have come and gone, but there will be an election and there's generally no fear of tyranny.
In other words, if the government wants to enact what the majority see as a sensible measure, that someone should not be allowed to use a public forum to insight hared on the basis of race, it's not perceived or expected to be the start of a slippery slope.
To be fair, I'm sure there are sixteen year olds reading /.
I don't expect every article to be useful to me. Not sure why you would expect that.
I haven't read the article - I think I'm familar enough myself with ssh - but as long as the info is accurate, I'd image it's a useful tutorial for folk getting into Linux.
And for the ones that aren't deterred, you think a firefight in the street is preferable to carriers simply blocking the phones and making the mugging less attractive in the first place?
Wouldn't that suggest you should be released from your contract of your phone is stolen?
You're absolutely right. It's a shame no-one at Apple has been able to come up with a way of letting users of their mobile operating system purchase individual programs to provide new functionality. Someone should come up with some sort of online shop where these programs could be marketed to end users.
Should you ever have a need to hire an attorney, you may well appreciate that they are pedantic. Sure, that can often be annoying, but without it,we'd introduce a lot of vagueness into our legal system.
In this case it's documents being copied. But lets say the law firm is litigating over a music CD. They send a paralegal down to the nearest store to pick up a copy, then duplicate that copy for every attorney on the case. Would that be okay?
How about if it's a computer program. Can they just duplicate it for every attorney because it's part of a case? A movie?