Steam... I have to say once I learned the basics of Nuclear reactors I felt a little depressed.
I thought they were these cool things, like the equivalent of Solar Panels arranged in a sphere to absorb the radiation that was being emitted. Or some other really cool thing converting radiation -> electricity.
Instead, they are glorified steam engines only using hot radioactive rods instead of coal.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not belittling how complicated and advanced these reactors are. I'm just saying... it was like figuring out a magic trick as a young child... it sad.
It's not just government, lots of businesses do that for their internal stuff... at least some of my friends' places do that and they're in the private sector.
They have to go through their budget... else the bean counters will literally say "well you obviously didn't need that much so here's less" and subtract the difference next year. Which in THEORY would be fine... except not every year is the same. Maybe THIS year you were light on the budget but next year you know you have to buy hardware or whatever
Government isn't the only place where this inefficient accounting and mind-set exists.
The power situation in the USA isn't that bad. Only in some areas. That weird cascading thing from like 10 years ago was a freak occurence.
However, what stinks is that here many of the states / regions in the US have above-ground wiring; so on just about every street there are power-poles with power+phone+data wires running along the sidewalk. AND the communities like to plant trees along those same paths along those same sidewalks.
Sure it looks nice having all of those trees, but when you have branches above and in MANY cases pointing BETWEEN the various lines you're just asking for trouble.
Of course... things go sideways when there's a bad storm or heavy wind. The next thing you know, entire towns are dark because trees took out lots of power lines. Which stinks.
A year before storm Sandy we had a mild fall so by Halloween many of our trees were still green. Then a freak snowstorm came: the leaves captured all of the snow like cups,the branches broke, and took out a LOT of powerlines. Much of New Jersey was dark for a week before they could repair the damage.
The storm Sandy came and similar things happened: heavy winds branches moved and fell, trees fell, etc. And again, much of the north-east was without power for a week.
Why shouldn't they use drones? They use surveillance helicopters. This is just another method of doing the same thing.
I kind of agree on this.
I'm not saying I'm all for high-surveillance and I DO acknowledge things are just getting Orwellian every day.
But that ship has sailed. We're already caught on dozens / hundreds of camera just on our way to work every day: bank, traffic, speeding, surveillance, helicopter, etc.
So now they want to put more up there... I'm not really against that. So long as they stay "up there" and aren't hovering outside my 2nd-floor window to see what I'm up to in the privacy of my own home. But watching the areas outside? Fine. Heck if they want to see a beached whale sunbathing on a balcony they can pass over my house while I give them the-bird. But for them to see the public spaces, easily get decent high-res bird's-eye views of critical events / crimes / etc? Meh
Again, that's probably not a popular opinion on slashdot and I'll get modded down. And I realize the old saying about security and freedom... I'm just saying it's just yet-another-camera out there, and cheaper and quicker-to-deploy than a helicopter. Except the keyword "Drone" makes it scary.
NOW... if they arm the flippin' things (even with non-lethal ordinance) or they say it's cool for them to check out the inside of buildings' windows then it's alllllll over.
Not sure truckers are the first to go but they are certainly on the list. I bet cabbies are the first to be chopped. Also on the list: UPS/Fedex, Postal Service, Delivery Services (Pizza for example). The 2nd order changes are also interesting - Parking Garage Attendants, Parking Meter enforcement, Traffic cops, and many more. None of these examples will completely go away but will be greatly reduced. We will still need truck drivers (which will become just passengers) that are trained in delivering hazmat materials to customers. Although these jobs will be lower paid than they currently are.
I don't know... Fedex/UPS might want to keep a human on board. Some of those items are important / fragile / expensive. With a human on board there's someone there to "mind the inventory" and to react if something goes wrong (accident / breakdown / etc.) Instead of the brown-robotic-truck sending out an SOS and waiting for someone to come, a person can be there to make sure none of the boxes "walk way"
Sure... some Fedex/UPS stuff "goes missing off the back of the truck" and I'm sure the drivers are sometimes behind it... but better to have a human there just in case.
I agree with the truckers and HazMat stuff. You want someone around, even if it's just to get help.
To play devil's advocate I can see one logical reason
By using the x-million (or whatever) combinations of the DNA sequence it acts like a barcode. So just because you have some random DNA sludge on you from one place doesn't mean you have it from the place they're looking at.
With chemicals you're limited in the combinations. Sure you can have chemical markers like most of the chemical products out there have (this % of inert compound is batch A, % of that inert compound is batch B%). But if you're talking about a thin film of chemicals surviving on a person for a few days... who's to say the Mass Spec readings won't be tainted by exposure to every day stuff (soaps, detergents, cooking ingredients, fertilizer, etc).
So with the chemicals, a few days later you find a guy and can say in the report: he has enough of the "base" on him to say he was exposed to BrandX chemical marker, unfortunately we can't say with enough certainty that it was from BuildingY because the mass spec is getting lots of different readings
With DNA, you can say "OK, we found a fair amount of this DNA marker from sweat-swabs, and said marker does not appear to exist in nature. So he was at least in BuildingY and got hit with the BrandX chemical marker at some point.
I'm not saying I agree with DNA-laced film vs compound, or even this whole "fog" concept in general. Just saying, there's at least one valid reason.
Ignoring the legal ramifications of this (for now)...
Facial Recognition is neat, I'll give it that. BUT it's not as accurate as people think. Against a small sample set (hundreds) OR with very solid source pics (both A and B) it's decent. But between poor surveillance images and the "margin of error" settings on the software you can end up with lots of false positives.
Add that to the huge DMV databases across the country, you're going to get a LOT of false positives. Sometimes too much data is worse than too little. Imagine showing all 30 matches of VERY VERY similar people to a witness who's already nervous enough. I know the cops already show them handfuls of similar pics: but the "similar" pics might be "chubby white-skinned guy" and not "chubby white-skinned guys that looks REALLY REALLY REALLY similar"
All of this noise is going to cause a headache. Even just adjoining states, you're going to have close enough hits. So what, you're going to have to investigate them? If you're basing off a picture you can't just say "Well he's 30miles away so let's consider him but NOT that guy who's 40miles away"
Sure you might say "Well we'll factor criminal background into this." But if you're basing on a criminal record, then well, why not just use the mug shots?
I'm cool with dye packs. They're immediate, short-range, they make it very visible that you're the bad-guy or were at least near the money at some point. In the days / hours following the heist there's a chance someone saw a fluorescent blue guy running around. Maybe you were part of the crime or maybe you were near a discarded pack when it went off. In either case, it's a visibly obvious way to at least track where the money was going.
So: short range, easy to notice (and complain about) accidental exposure, etc.
This... I don't know. What happens if you were exposed by accident; via a leak or rub-off from someone else. You won't know, in which case if it gets "found" then you have a big hassle of explaining your alibi. IE: they find out you were there around that day, check you out, and zap you have the DNA residue.
And of course, some a$$hats will just assume it's fool-proof and that you're involved. Some people really gobble this stuff up; every new thing is infallible and the best thing since sliced bread.
So they take it a step farther and instead of passively spraying someone when an exhibit case opens, they spray it on unsuspecting crowds during a riot / protest while you're buying some street hotdog. And going along with the a$$hat argument, they try to say "Well you were there so you must have been a trouble maker"
...what is this, the telegraph? reddit? Not news, not for nerds, definitely doesn't matter. All the headline is missing is a punctuation mark, and a more sensationalized headline, and we could call it/r/circlejerk
I guess there's the science aspect of archaeology in there, and there are some archaeology nerds out there.
Like an A/C responded below, I usually get annoyed when people whine about Article X being posted on slashdot. Especially when there's obviously a science-angle or fuel for a techie debate within the contents.
But I have to admit... this one is kind of pushing it. It's more of like a CNN or Local-News blurb to fill in 3 minutes of air time.
You only have to spy if you are trying to maintain an empire
Not really
Even non-empire countries will have clandestine groups. The only difference is size and scope. This isn't just a USA/Russia/UK/* Korea thing. Though I imagine those mentioned countries have larger spy and clandestine groups than most other countries.
Even if it's just counter-intel to the various other countries that might want to spy on you.
And then there's the military angle. Even if you're a quiet country not involved in any wars... chances are you have at least a small military presence within your OWN borders. In which case, said surveillance agency helps let you know "Oh by the way, your neighbors are practicing maneuvers near the border."
My post wasn't in response to the overall issue. It was to the parent post who says the whole "sunlight is the best disinfectant" line. Which I've heard in real-life used as a mantra for people against ALL clandestine organizations / operations.
So I was responding to that mantra and not the whole PRISM debacle.
There are two schools of thought. Both are valid but it requires a balancing act between the two.
A) Who watches the watchers. If an organization is too secret and has too much power / autonomy then it's a dangerous thing: both to our safety and our liberties.
B) You need to actually be secret and discreet if you want to spy successfully. Face it, there will always be spies and espionage: every country out there does it to some degree. People in surveillance + intelligence + espionage can't "do your job" if you're too far into the sunlight.
USA Politician: Oh, here's a list of personnel and here are the strategies we're using. Foreign Politician: OK, good to know... we'll work on messing with these people and/or bribing them, and our counter-Intel guys will try to avoid your strategies.
Its pretty bad when your "free" society has a real life version of "Catch-22". You can't know the "law" but it can be used against you at every turn. Make no mistake about it these days legal "opinions" are, at least in our screwed up justice system, laws. If they weren't police in various jurisdictions wouldn't be using "wiretapping" laws specifically written for phone conversations to arrest people for videotaping officers misdeeds.
While the law codes are atrocious: unorganized, poorly worded, sometimes contradictory...
Your statement is not really a catch-22 since you can technically "know" or learn the law. Nothing is stopping you, except for the desire to read a LOT of poorly-worded text. Or, in the case of guns, one can more easily focus on stuff related to gun ownership + sales.
A catch-22 is more of a paradox, and-or deadlock. For example: you can't do A without B, but ALSO can't do B without A.
You example is: You can't do A without knowing B... and you just didn't bother trying to learn B
They'll just get the logs from the carrier by subpoena which is what they should be doing in the first place. Unless you were the only person in the car, they will also have to prove that you used the phone while driving.
That doesn't help with texting. A lot of texting-based accidents happen while the user is typing a message, or reading a message.
When typing, there is no way for the provider to know whether you're typing it. Only if you clicked the send button at a specific instant. In which case, if the *bam* comes before that, no dice.
With reading... they can tell if you received a text a couple of minutes prior to the accident. But not if you're actively reading it at a specific time. Personally if I hear my phone chime while driving I wait until I pull over. So... no luck there.
If the other driver was aware enough of the other car to see if he was on the phone or not, there probably isn't an accident in the first place.
Not true, I've seen it often. Fortunately laying on the horn has saved my bacon. Usually I'm stopped (stop sign, parking lot, etc.) or on the highway and some idiot is about to drift into my car.
Just the other month some young woman in an Escalade almost plowed into me in a parking lot. I couldn't move my car because there were people in front and behind me.
She was coming at me perpendicularly, looking down at her phone just plowing forward, driving THROUGH the parking spaces like they weren't even there. I had to lay on my horn, and she barely avoided hitting me. She had to jam on the flippin' brakes.
The kicker, she got pissed off at me for being in her way.
From Microsoft's standpoint... if nothing else the XBox is kind of like a drug pusher that's trying to hook kids while they're young. Kind of like a PR / advertising thing targeted at kids. Spending money to keep from losing (as many) future customers.
MS gets a lot of hate, especially from the young crowd. A lot of Apple and Linux love from the teens if for no other reason than trying to "rebel against 'the man' " And without the XBox, the company is quite boring to a kid. Throw in some group of friends in school bad-mouthing Micro$oft and they may lose him.
So, XBox gets the kids to at least like the idea of Microsoft. After all, they're responsible for bringing them fun games and good memories... and they're not just about Windows and Excel. They're Master Chief! Or at least that's what they're trying to make themselves out to be.
Indeed, since the ToS specifically denies you the right to have multiple accounts on Steam (commonly done to allow the account to be sold so the game can be sold, or so that a ban on one account does not ban all games on steam), many people doing so are just as "guilty" of computer fraud and misuse as this HBO case, even if you're NOT sharing your account.
But does Steam list prison as a consequence?
Or does it just say they'll kill your account and thus lose all of your purchases.
The "prison" thing is the headline-grabber here. Not that HBO is against you doing it.
If they make a solidly secure iPhone + OS that makes it either impossible to root OR makes it impossible to remote-kill if it's stolen. Then A) your info about be safe and B) eventually the thieves will learn that the phones aren't worth stealing since they're remote-killed within a few hours / days. Eventually the demand would go down because who wants a phone that's going to be zapped within days / hours.
Of course... this is all pie-in-the-sky. I really don't know how feasible it is to try to make a consumer package so secure that it's impossible to bypass.
IANAL but it's kind of walking the line of "fishing" for more more proof... perhaps they want to be able to bump up the number of charges to their accurate levels... though I don't know how you quantify charges for child p***. By Gigabyte? By number of individuals? etc. Or perhaps they suspect he's also guilty of related charges (physically interacting with kids, etc.)
For example: you find evidence on his hard drive he murdered two people in a very specific way... congratulations, you got him on murder. But could those other hard drives contain evidence that he murdered even MORE people? Maybe he's a serial killer and bodies 3+ are on the other drives?
Unfortunately, now they tend to go directly into the system. I've seen a lot of places where either they directly scan your fingers/palm electronically, or they put the cards into the system immediately.
In which case... from their point of view they might as well leave them in. They're not taking up any space and they have them "just in case"
Agreed on most of it... like I said it was kind of a package-fail. But the writing wasn't too bad, save for like you said with too many "villains" and the ultimate villain being lame.
But as for Ryan... it wasn't that bad. Let me first start out by saying: he would have been a better "Flash" than a GL. He definitely has that vibe. But while he definitely wasn't my first choice for Hal... he did "ok" (not great, but not bad).
I've seen Hal depicted in various ways... but in his early days he's almost ALWAYS a woman-izer and he's usually a Type-A-Test-Pilot personality with a major chip on his shoulder. After that, it varies: sometimes he's as serious as John Stewart (the lantern, not the TV personality), sometimes he's a wise-a$$, sometimes he's just a middle-of-the-road risk-taker.
I think Ryan did an "ok" job at depicting both aspects: both cruising @ 30k feet and cruising for chicks.
And by the end of the film, he starts to "mellow out" to be the more mellow-risk-taker persona he is sometimes shown as having.
Slashdot Mirror
Steam... I have to say once I learned the basics of Nuclear reactors I felt a little depressed.
I thought they were these cool things, like the equivalent of Solar Panels arranged in a sphere to absorb the radiation that was being emitted. Or some other really cool thing converting radiation -> electricity.
Instead, they are glorified steam engines only using hot radioactive rods instead of coal.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not belittling how complicated and advanced these reactors are. I'm just saying... it was like figuring out a magic trick as a young child... it sad.
It's not just government, lots of businesses do that for their internal stuff... at least some of my friends' places do that and they're in the private sector.
They have to go through their budget... else the bean counters will literally say "well you obviously didn't need that much so here's less" and subtract the difference next year. Which in THEORY would be fine... except not every year is the same. Maybe THIS year you were light on the budget but next year you know you have to buy hardware or whatever
Government isn't the only place where this inefficient accounting and mind-set exists.
God no, I hated those things
Granted, looking at me you'd think I lived on those things. But nope, they never appealed to me.
Everyone loves mass-produced pastries. They're good. /quote
Except Twinkies... I'm not going to say they were horrible because I'm sure they appealed to some person's tastes. But I just can't see it.
I should clarify... most / much of the north-east was without power.
Many areas were without it for a week. But lots places got it back in a day or so. I don't know what the "average" was.
The power situation in the USA isn't that bad. Only in some areas. That weird cascading thing from like 10 years ago was a freak occurence.
However, what stinks is that here many of the states / regions in the US have above-ground wiring; so on just about every street there are power-poles with power+phone+data wires running along the sidewalk. AND the communities like to plant trees along those same paths along those same sidewalks.
Sure it looks nice having all of those trees, but when you have branches above and in MANY cases pointing BETWEEN the various lines you're just asking for trouble.
Of course... things go sideways when there's a bad storm or heavy wind. The next thing you know, entire towns are dark because trees took out lots of power lines. Which stinks.
A year before storm Sandy we had a mild fall so by Halloween many of our trees were still green. Then a freak snowstorm came: the leaves captured all of the snow like cups,the branches broke, and took out a LOT of powerlines. Much of New Jersey was dark for a week before they could repair the damage.
The storm Sandy came and similar things happened: heavy winds branches moved and fell, trees fell, etc. And again, much of the north-east was without power for a week.
Why shouldn't they use drones? They use surveillance helicopters. This is just another method of doing the same thing.
I kind of agree on this.
I'm not saying I'm all for high-surveillance and I DO acknowledge things are just getting Orwellian every day.
But that ship has sailed. We're already caught on dozens / hundreds of camera just on our way to work every day: bank, traffic, speeding, surveillance, helicopter, etc.
So now they want to put more up there... I'm not really against that. So long as they stay "up there" and aren't hovering outside my 2nd-floor window to see what I'm up to in the privacy of my own home. But watching the areas outside? Fine. Heck if they want to see a beached whale sunbathing on a balcony they can pass over my house while I give them the-bird. But for them to see the public spaces, easily get decent high-res bird's-eye views of critical events / crimes / etc? Meh
Again, that's probably not a popular opinion on slashdot and I'll get modded down. And I realize the old saying about security and freedom... I'm just saying it's just yet-another-camera out there, and cheaper and quicker-to-deploy than a helicopter. Except the keyword "Drone" makes it scary.
NOW... if they arm the flippin' things (even with non-lethal ordinance) or they say it's cool for them to check out the inside of buildings' windows then it's alllllll over.
Not sure truckers are the first to go but they are certainly on the list. I bet cabbies are the first to be chopped. Also on the list: UPS/Fedex, Postal Service, Delivery Services (Pizza for example). The 2nd order changes are also interesting - Parking Garage Attendants, Parking Meter enforcement, Traffic cops, and many more. None of these examples will completely go away but will be greatly reduced. We will still need truck drivers (which will become just passengers) that are trained in delivering hazmat materials to customers. Although these jobs will be lower paid than they currently are.
I don't know... Fedex/UPS might want to keep a human on board. Some of those items are important / fragile / expensive. With a human on board there's someone there to "mind the inventory" and to react if something goes wrong (accident / breakdown / etc.) Instead of the brown-robotic-truck sending out an SOS and waiting for someone to come, a person can be there to make sure none of the boxes "walk way"
Sure... some Fedex/UPS stuff "goes missing off the back of the truck" and I'm sure the drivers are sometimes behind it... but better to have a human there just in case.
I agree with the truckers and HazMat stuff. You want someone around, even if it's just to get help.
Seriously, wtf.
To play devil's advocate I can see one logical reason
By using the x-million (or whatever) combinations of the DNA sequence it acts like a barcode. So just because you have some random DNA sludge on you from one place doesn't mean you have it from the place they're looking at.
With chemicals you're limited in the combinations. Sure you can have chemical markers like most of the chemical products out there have (this % of inert compound is batch A, % of that inert compound is batch B%). But if you're talking about a thin film of chemicals surviving on a person for a few days... who's to say the Mass Spec readings won't be tainted by exposure to every day stuff (soaps, detergents, cooking ingredients, fertilizer, etc).
So with the chemicals, a few days later you find a guy and can say in the report: he has enough of the "base" on him to say he was exposed to BrandX chemical marker, unfortunately we can't say with enough certainty that it was from BuildingY because the mass spec is getting lots of different readings
With DNA, you can say "OK, we found a fair amount of this DNA marker from sweat-swabs, and said marker does not appear to exist in nature. So he was at least in BuildingY and got hit with the BrandX chemical marker at some point.
I'm not saying I agree with DNA-laced film vs compound, or even this whole "fog" concept in general. Just saying, there's at least one valid reason.
Ignoring the legal ramifications of this (for now)...
Facial Recognition is neat, I'll give it that. BUT it's not as accurate as people think. Against a small sample set (hundreds) OR with very solid source pics (both A and B) it's decent. But between poor surveillance images and the "margin of error" settings on the software you can end up with lots of false positives.
Add that to the huge DMV databases across the country, you're going to get a LOT of false positives. Sometimes too much data is worse than too little. Imagine showing all 30 matches of VERY VERY similar people to a witness who's already nervous enough. I know the cops already show them handfuls of similar pics: but the "similar" pics might be "chubby white-skinned guy" and not "chubby white-skinned guys that looks REALLY REALLY REALLY similar"
All of this noise is going to cause a headache. Even just adjoining states, you're going to have close enough hits. So what, you're going to have to investigate them? If you're basing off a picture you can't just say "Well he's 30miles away so let's consider him but NOT that guy who's 40miles away"
Sure you might say "Well we'll factor criminal background into this." But if you're basing on a criminal record, then well, why not just use the mug shots?
I'm cool with dye packs. They're immediate, short-range, they make it very visible that you're the bad-guy or were at least near the money at some point. In the days / hours following the heist there's a chance someone saw a fluorescent blue guy running around. Maybe you were part of the crime or maybe you were near a discarded pack when it went off. In either case, it's a visibly obvious way to at least track where the money was going.
So: short range, easy to notice (and complain about) accidental exposure, etc.
This... I don't know. What happens if you were exposed by accident; via a leak or rub-off from someone else. You won't know, in which case if it gets "found" then you have a big hassle of explaining your alibi. IE: they find out you were there around that day, check you out, and zap you have the DNA residue.
And of course, some a$$hats will just assume it's fool-proof and that you're involved. Some people really gobble this stuff up; every new thing is infallible and the best thing since sliced bread.
So they take it a step farther and instead of passively spraying someone when an exhibit case opens, they spray it on unsuspecting crowds during a riot / protest while you're buying some street hotdog. And going along with the a$$hat argument, they try to say "Well you were there so you must have been a trouble maker"
...what is this, the telegraph? reddit? Not news, not for nerds, definitely doesn't matter. All the headline is missing is a punctuation mark, and a more sensationalized headline, and we could call it /r/circlejerk
I guess there's the science aspect of archaeology in there, and there are some archaeology nerds out there.
Like an A/C responded below, I usually get annoyed when people whine about Article X being posted on slashdot. Especially when there's obviously a science-angle or fuel for a techie debate within the contents.
But I have to admit... this one is kind of pushing it. It's more of like a CNN or Local-News blurb to fill in 3 minutes of air time.
You only have to spy if you are trying to maintain an empire
Not really
Even non-empire countries will have clandestine groups. The only difference is size and scope. This isn't just a USA/Russia/UK/* Korea thing. Though I imagine those mentioned countries have larger spy and clandestine groups than most other countries.
Even if it's just counter-intel to the various other countries that might want to spy on you.
And then there's the military angle. Even if you're a quiet country not involved in any wars... chances are you have at least a small military presence within your OWN borders. In which case, said surveillance agency helps let you know "Oh by the way, your neighbors are practicing maneuvers near the border."
My post wasn't in response to the overall issue. It was to the parent post who says the whole "sunlight is the best disinfectant" line. Which I've heard in real-life used as a mantra for people against ALL clandestine organizations / operations.
So I was responding to that mantra and not the whole PRISM debacle.
There are two schools of thought. Both are valid but it requires a balancing act between the two.
A) Who watches the watchers. If an organization is too secret and has too much power / autonomy then it's a dangerous thing: both to our safety and our liberties.
B) You need to actually be secret and discreet if you want to spy successfully. Face it, there will always be spies and espionage: every country out there does it to some degree. People in surveillance + intelligence + espionage can't "do your job" if you're too far into the sunlight.
USA Politician: Oh, here's a list of personnel and here are the strategies we're using.
Foreign Politician: OK, good to know... we'll work on messing with these people and/or bribing them, and our counter-Intel guys will try to avoid your strategies.
My response was to his first sentence. That it's a catch-22 because you can't know the law but it can be used against you.
Obviously, there are instances of actual catch-22's in the legal system. But that sentence by itself was not one of them.
Its pretty bad when your "free" society has a real life version of "Catch-22". You can't know the "law" but it can be used against you at every turn. Make no mistake about it these days legal "opinions" are, at least in our screwed up justice system, laws. If they weren't police in various jurisdictions wouldn't be using "wiretapping" laws specifically written for phone conversations to arrest people for videotaping officers misdeeds.
While the law codes are atrocious: unorganized, poorly worded, sometimes contradictory...
Your statement is not really a catch-22 since you can technically "know" or learn the law. Nothing is stopping you, except for the desire to read a LOT of poorly-worded text. Or, in the case of guns, one can more easily focus on stuff related to gun ownership + sales.
A catch-22 is more of a paradox, and-or deadlock. For example: you can't do A without B, but ALSO can't do B without A.
You example is: You can't do A without knowing B... and you just didn't bother trying to learn B
They'll just get the logs from the carrier by subpoena which is what they should be doing in the first place. Unless you were the only person in the car, they will also have to prove that you used the phone while driving.
That doesn't help with texting. A lot of texting-based accidents happen while the user is typing a message, or reading a message.
When typing, there is no way for the provider to know whether you're typing it. Only if you clicked the send button at a specific instant. In which case, if the *bam* comes before that, no dice.
With reading... they can tell if you received a text a couple of minutes prior to the accident. But not if you're actively reading it at a specific time. Personally if I hear my phone chime while driving I wait until I pull over. So... no luck there.
If the other driver was aware enough of the other car to see if he was on the phone or not, there probably isn't an accident in the first place.
Not true, I've seen it often. Fortunately laying on the horn has saved my bacon. Usually I'm stopped (stop sign, parking lot, etc.) or on the highway and some idiot is about to drift into my car.
Just the other month some young woman in an Escalade almost plowed into me in a parking lot. I couldn't move my car because there were people in front and behind me.
She was coming at me perpendicularly, looking down at her phone just plowing forward, driving THROUGH the parking spaces like they weren't even there. I had to lay on my horn, and she barely avoided hitting me. She had to jam on the flippin' brakes.
The kicker, she got pissed off at me for being in her way.
From Microsoft's standpoint... if nothing else the XBox is kind of like a drug pusher that's trying to hook kids while they're young. Kind of like a PR / advertising thing targeted at kids. Spending money to keep from losing (as many) future customers.
MS gets a lot of hate, especially from the young crowd. A lot of Apple and Linux love from the teens if for no other reason than trying to "rebel against 'the man' " And without the XBox, the company is quite boring to a kid. Throw in some group of friends in school bad-mouthing Micro$oft and they may lose him.
So, XBox gets the kids to at least like the idea of Microsoft. After all, they're responsible for bringing them fun games and good memories... and they're not just about Windows and Excel. They're Master Chief! Or at least that's what they're trying to make themselves out to be.
Indeed, since the ToS specifically denies you the right to have multiple accounts on Steam (commonly done to allow the account to be sold so the game can be sold, or so that a ban on one account does not ban all games on steam), many people doing so are just as "guilty" of computer fraud and misuse as this HBO case, even if you're NOT sharing your account.
But does Steam list prison as a consequence?
Or does it just say they'll kill your account and thus lose all of your purchases.
The "prison" thing is the headline-grabber here. Not that HBO is against you doing it.
I think their intended (pipe-dream) goal is...
If they make a solidly secure iPhone + OS that makes it either impossible to root OR makes it impossible to remote-kill if it's stolen. Then A) your info about be safe and B) eventually the thieves will learn that the phones aren't worth stealing since they're remote-killed within a few hours / days. Eventually the demand would go down because who wants a phone that's going to be zapped within days / hours.
Of course... this is all pie-in-the-sky. I really don't know how feasible it is to try to make a consumer package so secure that it's impossible to bypass.
IANAL but it's kind of walking the line of "fishing" for more more proof... perhaps they want to be able to bump up the number of charges to their accurate levels... though I don't know how you quantify charges for child p***. By Gigabyte? By number of individuals? etc. Or perhaps they suspect he's also guilty of related charges (physically interacting with kids, etc.)
For example: you find evidence on his hard drive he murdered two people in a very specific way... congratulations, you got him on murder. But could those other hard drives contain evidence that he murdered even MORE people? Maybe he's a serial killer and bodies 3+ are on the other drives?
Unfortunately, now they tend to go directly into the system. I've seen a lot of places where either they directly scan your fingers/palm electronically, or they put the cards into the system immediately.
In which case... from their point of view they might as well leave them in. They're not taking up any space and they have them "just in case"
Agreed on most of it... like I said it was kind of a package-fail. But the writing wasn't too bad, save for like you said with too many "villains" and the ultimate villain being lame.
But as for Ryan... it wasn't that bad. Let me first start out by saying: he would have been a better "Flash" than a GL. He definitely has that vibe. But while he definitely wasn't my first choice for Hal... he did "ok" (not great, but not bad).
I've seen Hal depicted in various ways... but in his early days he's almost ALWAYS a woman-izer and he's usually a Type-A-Test-Pilot personality with a major chip on his shoulder. After that, it varies: sometimes he's as serious as John Stewart (the lantern, not the TV personality), sometimes he's a wise-a$$, sometimes he's just a middle-of-the-road risk-taker.
I think Ryan did an "ok" job at depicting both aspects: both cruising @ 30k feet and cruising for chicks.
And by the end of the film, he starts to "mellow out" to be the more mellow-risk-taker persona he is sometimes shown as having.