Despite noise from a few yammerheads about Matt getting 'free advertising' on Slashdot, which is unlikely since the vast majority of Slashdot users are more likely to compete with him than to hire him
As a Yammerhead myself (whatever that means, by the way thanks a lot Dice for calling me names)
I'm more upset at you guys for turning Slashdot into a Slashvertisement for Dice.
Before the purchase from Dice Holdings, Slashdot wasn't really a place for recruitment advice or recruitment news. I know that as owners of Slashdot, you can do whatever you want with the editorial content, but just know that you've been steadily losing most of your readers here.
The only Android handset I've really been interested in is the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, the battery life being a major reason.
You won't need a case for that one, that phone is basically indestructible. But that phone is actually too thin and too rectangular. It looks cool, but it definitely doesn't feel good when you're holding it.
It's basically the complete opposite of LG phones. While LG phones seem to focus on how good they feel in your hands, which is actually pretty awesome, they're super fragile and they definitely need a case for sure (which completely defeats the sensory experience they were going for).
The truth is that everyone negotiates, even women.
Need a relocation package to minimize the risk you're taking? Now a woman or a man can't even ask for one because the CEO has tunnel vision and doesn't want hear your needs. Need special hours, either much earlier or much later, to avoid being stuck in traffic for one hour and a half on the 101 (instead of breezing by in 42 minutes)? Now you're out of luck, because the CEO is demanding that HR sticks their fingers in their ears and says "Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer. Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer. Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer." ad infinitum.
Not that I expect the people lower in the ranks to actually listen to their CEO. Management from on high, whether it being lead by a man or led by a woman, usually has a poor understanding of what's really happening in the trenches. And a good HR person (despite the cynical thoughts of many of you), who really wants to hire someone, will give the illusion of listening to management's commands while still trying to be reasonable at the same time.
Why bother giving free advertisement that, based on Internet standards, last for eternity just to get a 30 day trial? Is the company doing so poorly that they can't sacrifice 4,000 phones? Also, when they take them back, do they repackage them as new? What do they do with the used phones?
The returned devices could just be used as loaners for developer testing and device lab testing.
Or they may just do like Intel and require that you sign a piece of paper saying that you'll destroy the device yourself after the time is up. If the device gets supposedly "destroyed", or even purchased after the fact, then LG Electronics can avoid paying the full retail gift tax rate that some governments may require them to pay.
no irregular verbs, we could call it, let's say ^'Esperanto.
I would vote for Klingon for boys. Thanks to Star Trek and mainstream television, Klingon already beat Esperanto by a wide margin. Then if we want to capture the teenage girls demographics, we would need to invent a special language for vampires (the good looking vampires and the gay vampires especially).
These two languages don't even need to intersect, it's not like those two demographics will ever talk to each other.
Exactly. I haven't seen this specific show, but every other crime drama on TV seems to portray the cops as being able to go snatch information from just about anything they can get into, through any means, without any discussion of a warrant.
That's correct. Barring one or two exceptions, crime drama on TV also seems to portray cops as wanting to get to the bottom of murders.
When in fact, it's quite the opposite in real life. Cops who get promoted, classify murders, as suicides, or as death by natural cause. That's the most politically expedient solution. That's the cold hard truth of our society. In San Francisco for instance, it took international pressure from the French government to reopen a case where the death of a French man was ruled as suicide despite the fact that he was stabbed repeatedly and that the knife was never found.
Also, I know someone who works as a CSI in Florida. She said to me that CSIs are not criminal investigators, they're more like social workers. They're there to process dead bodies, not to try to inflate the official rate of murders in their jurisdiction. So forget that notion of super detectives, they're not super detectives (as most of us already know of course), but take it even a step further, they're not even allowed to be detectives since the entire bureaucracy is only incentivized to ignore murders (instead of investigating them).
So if these TV shows inspire any young people to get into these professions, those young people are in for a very rude awakening one day.
This is exactly right. This what the Bart police did to protesters in 2011.
Obviously, the problem was not that the Bart police shot a protester in the back while he was handcuffed and lying face down (see video at 1:25). It was that too many people filmed the incident with their cell phone cameras and that not all the cell phones could be confiscated in time before the content could be uploaded to the internet.
By shutting down cell networks, you no longer have to worry about people streaming your actions on to the internet and you can just confiscate their device claiming that they contain evidence, and that they're just obstructing justice if they refuse to give their device to you.
"The Internet Association represents America’s leading Internet companies and their global community of users." - Their members are companies that would hurt without Net Neutrality.
As the article originally posted points out.
Theran pointed to the role McCarthy played in advancing a key tech-industry priority: patent reform. Under McCarthy's floor leadership, the House passed the Innovation Act 325-91 in December 2013. Tech companies hope that the bill, which is designed to cut back on frivolous lawsuits from so-called "patent trolls," will soon pass the Senate.
It is better to spend less than tax more. (Dec 2005) Voted NO on extending AMT exemptions to avoid hitting middle-income. (Jun 2008) Voted NO on paying for AMT relief by closing offshore business loopholes. (Dec 2007) Taxpayer Protection Pledge: no new taxes. (Aug 2010) No European-style VAT (value-added tax). (May 2010) Supports the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. (Jan 2012)
Legislative transparency: post bills on Internet for a week. (Sep 2010) Voted YES on protecting cyber security by sharing data with government. (Apr 2013) Voted YES on terminating funding for National Public Radio. (Mar 2011) Voted NO on delaying digital TV conversion by four months. (Mar 2009) Voted YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms' warrantless surveillance. (Jun 2008) Voted YES on $23B instead of $4.9B for waterway infrastructure. (Nov 2007) Facilitate nationwide 2-1-1 phone line for human services. (Jan 2007) Permanent ban on state & local taxation of Internet access. (Oct 2007) Prohibit the return of the Fairness Doctrine. (Jan 2009)
Invested lottery winnings to start deli business at age 19. (Sep 2010) Voted YES on workforce training by state block grants & industry partners. (Mar 2013) Voted NO on letting shareholders vote on executive compensation. (Jul 2009) Voted YES on more funding for nanotechnology R&D and commercialization. (Jul 2009) Voted NO on allowing stockholder voting on executive compensation. (Apr 2007) Repeal ObamaCare reporting requirements for small business. (Jan 2011) Rated 14% by UFCW, indicating a pro-management voting record. (May 2012)
After all, if you're a CEO, which one is more important to you? net neutrality, or tax loopholes and your overall executive compensation package?
The Swiss still make mostly mechanical watches with loads of beautifully machined small moving parts. Those that want that kind of watch probably aren't even considering an electronic watch.
Swiss watches are fashion accessories. The Apple watch is a fashion accessory.
Back in the day when I was a pupil I had "library addiction" for several years. I spent most of my free time in the library reading books.
If you were reading books, that's completely different.
However, if you had been going to the library to stare at the same page of your year book day after day pining over a classmate you had a crush on, or going to the library only to hide behind a bookshelf staring at your crush while she's studying with her boyfriend, that would be a closer analogue to what people do on the internet nowadays.
The letter didn't mention what Federal criminal code violation he wanted the FBI to use to justify such a response. After a quick search, I found no such law.
I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability.
You must be from the future, because if there is a silver-bullet book reader solution for blind people, I certainly couldn't find one for my half-blind mother.
Currently, there is the audiobook reader provided for free by the Library of Congress. That reader is great in terms of physical interface design, but it's limited only to books that have had professional voice actors read them.
And then in terms of text-to-speech technology, the best technological solution out there is currently Ivona (now owned by Amazon), but despite all the awesome progress this technology has made over the years, it still isn't good enough for most blind users who want a book read to them for leisure.
So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them because although application interface years ahead of any other application in regrades to the blind and severely disabled, their words, it did not accommodate the deaf. An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the largest national organizations" out there, and why you would even need their seal of approval in the first place, but if your venture was looking to get cash from them, or get some kind of exclusive endorsement from them, for what seemed like a commercial venture, it doesn't really matter the reason they gave you for that denial.
There is currently no perfect usable book reader for the blind. It doesn't really matter if the blind person is deaf, or not. For instance, my mother certainly wasn't deaf, and she certainly loved books, but there really wasn't a book reader solution that was satisfactory to her.
>The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
How can they know this so quickly ? I thought terrorist was a label for persons using violence for political motives.
Who said they were using violence? Trespassing doesn't imply violence. And they were the ones who got shot. They themselves didn't shoot anyone.
They could just have been a couple of well known protesters with no history of violence, but with an history of trying to do publicity stunts for their cause.
If anyone should know, it's the NSA. For about an hour, I bet every NSA analyst dropped what they were doing to investigate and go through the life records of these two individuals.
That and they don't even realize they're barely capable of speaking in French -- they're illiterate in both offficial languages. I've known people from France who have to speak to people from Quebec in English because Quebecoise is such a mongrel of a language.
To be fair, it's the French language from France that is becoming a mongrel of a language.
I've never been to Québec, but aside from their annoying accent, the French-speaking people from Québec I've met seem to be using really old French.
Even if the police make this data private, the general population will jump in to make this (and most) data such as this freely available.
Actually, there are private companies that already do this. They drive around streets and parking lots scanning people's license plates. Then they aggregate that information on a national level to resell to other companies. This data is really handy for car/truck repos, private detectives, and stalker exes.
And the information they have dwarves any information the police department has themselves. It's such a new area, it's not regulated yet.
They are cutting themselves out of market reach by excluding consumers.
This portapotty-like shelter seems to have been optimized for government use. As far I can tell, it will tip over in extreme winds and it will suffocate its occupants in extreme heat. The last thing they want is the extremely bad reviews that might come from actual consumer adoption/experimentation before the government/Halliburton money comes in.
So instead of simply buying a waterproof case or putting pens and paper under UV light for a few minutes they want high pressure water proof tablets which no doubt cost 200% more than the original item
Don't worry, it doesn't seem like those devices were modified at all.
My Xperia Z Ultra is already waterproof and both has capacitive touch and resistive touch, so I can write on it with a standard pen or pencil. The only thing they seem to have added is an extra case, which is probably unnecessary as well, my Z Ultra doesn't look like it, but it's basically indestructible.
and 5,000,000% more some UV lightbulbs and some pens and paper.
A pen and paper is nice, but you still need someone to enter that data into a database of some kind. Especially with Ebola, you don't want the notes to be left in a drawer somewhere in a foreign hospital waiting for someone to type up. Also with a tablet, you can annotate your notes with pictures and videos.
That being said, all of this is most likely a PR move from Sony. Undoubtedly, they gave those tablets to MSF for free. In exchange, MSF can say they're using it, which will be true initially, but in fact, most of those devices will be stolen, or will have disappeared, after a week or two. After all, it's not like these doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres will be staying in five star hotels in Africa, they will have to go where the poor people are. And to a poor person in Africa, the value of an Xperia device is the equivalent of a couple years of wages.
If it had been known that google was manipulating the search results to favor themselves, it would have been a huge credibility hit.
How did you not know??? Seriously? It's a given that their own sites take precedence in the results.
This is a far cry from what Yahoo was doing ten years ago when they were ranking search results that were only tangentially related to your search because 3rd parties paid them to.
and just have a card in the machine with your music and ebooks to keep you amused on the long flight. (its about 12 hrs from LAX)
Hopefully, all your music is legal and your ebook titles don't sound suspicious.
And how many customs officials do they have on duty at AKL anyway? do they have time to go through all 300+ passengers phones/tablets/laptops?
This can be fully automated. In the UK, I recall they recorded the entire hard drive of your laptop. They said this was a measure against pedophiles, although this policy seems to only have affected a couple of reporters as far as I can tell. They never did this to me when I entered the UK.
This is in contrast with France.
At least, the French make a copy of your hard drive when you don't know they're doing it. Waiting until you've left your hotel room, or waiting until you've fallen asleep, is much less obtrusive.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite noise from a few yammerheads about Matt getting 'free advertising' on Slashdot, which is unlikely since the vast majority of Slashdot users are more likely to compete with him than to hire him
As a Yammerhead myself (whatever that means, by the way thanks a lot Dice for calling me names)
I'm more upset at you guys for turning Slashdot into a Slashvertisement for Dice.
Before the purchase from Dice Holdings, Slashdot wasn't really a place for recruitment advice or recruitment news. I know that as owners of Slashdot, you can do whatever you want with the editorial content, but just know that you've been steadily losing most of your readers here.
The only Android handset I've really been interested in is the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, the battery life being a major reason.
You won't need a case for that one, that phone is basically indestructible. But that phone is actually too thin and too rectangular. It looks cool, but it definitely doesn't feel good when you're holding it.
It's basically the complete opposite of LG phones. While LG phones seem to focus on how good they feel in your hands, which is actually pretty awesome, they're super fragile and they definitely need a case for sure (which completely defeats the sensory experience they were going for).
We come up with an offer that we think is fair.
The truth is that everyone negotiates, even women.
Need a relocation package to minimize the risk you're taking? Now a woman or a man can't even ask for one because the CEO has tunnel vision and doesn't want hear your needs. Need special hours, either much earlier or much later, to avoid being stuck in traffic for one hour and a half on the 101 (instead of breezing by in 42 minutes)? Now you're out of luck, because the CEO is demanding that HR sticks their fingers in their ears and says "Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer. Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer. Take it or leave it! This is a fair offer." ad infinitum.
Not that I expect the people lower in the ranks to actually listen to their CEO. Management from on high, whether it being lead by a man or led by a woman, usually has a poor understanding of what's really happening in the trenches. And a good HR person (despite the cynical thoughts of many of you), who really wants to hire someone, will give the illusion of listening to management's commands while still trying to be reasonable at the same time.
Why bother giving free advertisement that, based on Internet standards, last for eternity just to get a 30 day trial? Is the company doing so poorly that they can't sacrifice 4,000 phones? Also, when they take them back, do they repackage them as new? What do they do with the used phones?
The returned devices could just be used as loaners for developer testing and device lab testing.
Or they may just do like Intel and require that you sign a piece of paper saying that you'll destroy the device yourself after the time is up. If the device gets supposedly "destroyed", or even purchased after the fact, then LG Electronics can avoid paying the full retail gift tax rate that some governments may require them to pay.
no irregular verbs, we could call it, let's say ^'Esperanto.
I would vote for Klingon for boys. Thanks to Star Trek and mainstream television, Klingon already beat Esperanto by a wide margin. Then if we want to capture the teenage girls demographics, we would need to invent a special language for vampires (the good looking vampires and the gay vampires especially).
These two languages don't even need to intersect, it's not like those two demographics will ever talk to each other.
Exactly. I haven't seen this specific show, but every other crime drama on TV seems to portray the cops as being able to go snatch information from just about anything they can get into, through any means, without any discussion of a warrant.
That's correct. Barring one or two exceptions, crime drama on TV also seems to portray cops as wanting to get to the bottom of murders.
When in fact, it's quite the opposite in real life. Cops who get promoted, classify murders, as suicides, or as death by natural cause. That's the most politically expedient solution. That's the cold hard truth of our society. In San Francisco for instance, it took international pressure from the French government to reopen a case where the death of a French man was ruled as suicide despite the fact that he was stabbed repeatedly and that the knife was never found.
Also, I know someone who works as a CSI in Florida. She said to me that CSIs are not criminal investigators, they're more like social workers. They're there to process dead bodies, not to try to inflate the official rate of murders in their jurisdiction. So forget that notion of super detectives, they're not super detectives (as most of us already know of course), but take it even a step further, they're not even allowed to be detectives since the entire bureaucracy is only incentivized to ignore murders (instead of investigating them).
So if these TV shows inspire any young people to get into these professions, those young people are in for a very rude awakening one day.
This is exactly right. This what the Bart police did to protesters in 2011.
Obviously, the problem was not that the Bart police shot a protester in the back while he was handcuffed and lying face down (see video at 1:25). It was that too many people filmed the incident with their cell phone cameras and that not all the cell phones could be confiscated in time before the content could be uploaded to the internet.
By shutting down cell networks, you no longer have to worry about people streaming your actions on to the internet and you can just confiscate their device claiming that they contain evidence, and that they're just obstructing justice if they refuse to give their device to you.
"The Internet Association represents America’s leading Internet companies and their global community of users." - Their members are companies that would hurt without Net Neutrality.
As the article originally posted points out.
Theran pointed to the role McCarthy played in advancing a key tech-industry priority: patent reform. Under McCarthy's floor leadership, the House passed the Innovation Act 325-91 in December 2013. Tech companies hope that the bill, which is designed to cut back on frivolous lawsuits from so-called "patent trolls," will soon pass the Senate.
Also, these other votes could of his have had an impact on their decision.
It is better to spend less than tax more. (Dec 2005)
Voted NO on extending AMT exemptions to avoid hitting middle-income. (Jun 2008)
Voted NO on paying for AMT relief by closing offshore business loopholes. (Dec 2007)
Taxpayer Protection Pledge: no new taxes. (Aug 2010)
No European-style VAT (value-added tax). (May 2010)
Supports the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. (Jan 2012)
Legislative transparency: post bills on Internet for a week. (Sep 2010)
Voted YES on protecting cyber security by sharing data with government. (Apr 2013)
Voted YES on terminating funding for National Public Radio. (Mar 2011)
Voted NO on delaying digital TV conversion by four months. (Mar 2009)
Voted YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms' warrantless surveillance. (Jun 2008)
Voted YES on $23B instead of $4.9B for waterway infrastructure. (Nov 2007)
Facilitate nationwide 2-1-1 phone line for human services. (Jan 2007)
Permanent ban on state & local taxation of Internet access. (Oct 2007)
Prohibit the return of the Fairness Doctrine. (Jan 2009)
Invested lottery winnings to start deli business at age 19. (Sep 2010)
Voted YES on workforce training by state block grants & industry partners. (Mar 2013)
Voted NO on letting shareholders vote on executive compensation. (Jul 2009)
Voted YES on more funding for nanotechnology R&D and commercialization. (Jul 2009)
Voted NO on allowing stockholder voting on executive compensation. (Apr 2007)
Repeal ObamaCare reporting requirements for small business. (Jan 2011)
Rated 14% by UFCW, indicating a pro-management voting record. (May 2012)
After all, if you're a CEO, which one is more important to you? net neutrality, or tax loopholes and your overall executive compensation package?
The Swiss still make mostly mechanical watches with loads of beautifully machined small moving parts. Those that want that kind of watch probably aren't even considering an electronic watch.
Swiss watches are fashion accessories. The Apple watch is a fashion accessory.
There is an overlap in market there.
Back in the day when I was a pupil I had "library addiction" for several years. I spent most of my free time in the library reading books.
If you were reading books, that's completely different.
However, if you had been going to the library to stare at the same page of your year book day after day pining over a classmate you had a crush on, or going to the library only to hide behind a bookshelf staring at your crush while she's studying with her boyfriend, that would be a closer analogue to what people do on the internet nowadays.
The reason the FBI isn't doing more to combat revenge porn is thus: It's not illegal.
At the very least, it seems to be considered identity theft.
But if blackmail, or hacking, is involved, then other charges can follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#Criminal_prosecutions
The letter didn't mention what Federal criminal code violation he wanted the FBI to use to justify such a response. After a quick search, I found no such law.
You Google Foo must not be very strong then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#Criminal_prosecutions
I was once part of an audio book venture that created a book reader app and and associated library application library that was specifically designed to be used by the blind and severely disabled. It actually met all its goals in regards to usability.
You must be from the future, because if there is a silver-bullet book reader solution for blind people, I certainly couldn't find one for my half-blind mother.
Currently, there is the audiobook reader provided for free by the Library of Congress. That reader is great in terms of physical interface design, but it's limited only to books that have had professional voice actors read them.
And then in terms of text-to-speech technology, the best technological solution out there is currently Ivona (now owned by Amazon), but despite all the awesome progress this technology has made over the years, it still isn't good enough for most blind users who want a book read to them for leisure.
So the company took it to the largest national organizations to get their seal of approval for it. The company was turned down by all of them because although application interface years ahead of any other application in regrades to the blind and severely disabled, their words, it did not accommodate the deaf. An audio book application that did not accommodate the deaf.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the largest national organizations" out there, and why you would even need their seal of approval in the first place, but if your venture was looking to get cash from them, or get some kind of exclusive endorsement from them, for what seemed like a commercial venture, it doesn't really matter the reason they gave you for that denial.
There is currently no perfect usable book reader for the blind. It doesn't really matter if the blind person is deaf, or not. For instance, my mother certainly wasn't deaf, and she certainly loved books, but there really wasn't a book reader solution that was satisfactory to her.
No, we're still on April 1st in California. They're just messing around with the date.
I know not everyone is in California, but this is the first time I'm seeing a date and time on Slashdot that's not using the local time of my browser.
>The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
How can they know this so quickly ? I thought terrorist was a label for persons using violence for political motives.
Who said they were using violence? Trespassing doesn't imply violence. And they were the ones who got shot. They themselves didn't shoot anyone.
They could just have been a couple of well known protesters with no history of violence, but with an history of trying to do publicity stunts for their cause.
If anyone should know, it's the NSA. For about an hour, I bet every NSA analyst dropped what they were doing to investigate and go through the life records of these two individuals.
You mean like preventing a plane from landing on the Hudson river?
Give me a break! This was only one incident.
Treating pilots like little kids who need someone to help every time they go to the bathroom is not a solution.
The extremely rare occurence of such an event doesn't justify the regular inconvenience and demeaning aspect of such a halfway measure.
That and they don't even realize they're barely capable of speaking in French -- they're illiterate in both offficial languages. I've known people from France who have to speak to people from Quebec in English because Quebecoise is such a mongrel of a language.
To be fair, it's the French language from France that is becoming a mongrel of a language.
I've never been to Québec, but aside from their annoying accent, the French-speaking people from Québec I've met seem to be using really old French.
wavelength research (remember, wi-fi was ‘invented’ in Australia),
Silly me, I thought wifi was invented in 1942 by an Austrian-American woman and an American guy.
Austria and Australia do sound the same, I admit.
Even if the police make this data private, the general population will jump in to make this (and most) data such as this freely available.
Actually, there are private companies that already do this. They drive around streets and parking lots scanning people's license plates. Then they aggregate that information on a national level to resell to other companies. This data is really handy for car/truck repos, private detectives, and stalker exes.
And the information they have dwarves any information the police department has themselves. It's such a new area, it's not regulated yet.
They are cutting themselves out of market reach by excluding consumers.
This portapotty-like shelter seems to have been optimized for government use. As far I can tell, it will tip over in extreme winds and it will suffocate its occupants in extreme heat. The last thing they want is the extremely bad reviews that might come from actual consumer adoption/experimentation before the government/Halliburton money comes in.
So instead of simply buying a waterproof case or putting pens and paper under UV light for a few minutes they want high pressure water proof tablets which no doubt cost 200% more than the original item
Don't worry, it doesn't seem like those devices were modified at all.
My Xperia Z Ultra is already waterproof and both has capacitive touch and resistive touch, so I can write on it with a standard pen or pencil. The only thing they seem to have added is an extra case, which is probably unnecessary as well, my Z Ultra doesn't look like it, but it's basically indestructible.
and 5,000,000% more some UV lightbulbs and some pens and paper.
A pen and paper is nice, but you still need someone to enter that data into a database of some kind. Especially with Ebola, you don't want the notes to be left in a drawer somewhere in a foreign hospital waiting for someone to type up. Also with a tablet, you can annotate your notes with pictures and videos.
That being said, all of this is most likely a PR move from Sony. Undoubtedly, they gave those tablets to MSF for free. In exchange, MSF can say they're using it, which will be true initially, but in fact, most of those devices will be stolen, or will have disappeared, after a week or two. After all, it's not like these doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres will be staying in five star hotels in Africa, they will have to go where the poor people are. And to a poor person in Africa, the value of an Xperia device is the equivalent of a couple years of wages.
And yet, on iOS you can only use the bundled one and nothing else.
I don't think anyone can accuse iOS's shrinking marketshare of being a monopoly. They're currently second and they will stay second for a long time.
If it had been known that google was manipulating the search results to favor themselves, it would have been a huge credibility hit.
How did you not know??? Seriously? It's a given that their own sites take precedence in the results.
This is a far cry from what Yahoo was doing ten years ago when they were ranking search results that were only tangentially related to your search because 3rd parties paid them to.
and just have a card in the machine with your music and ebooks to keep you amused on the long flight. (its about 12 hrs from LAX)
Hopefully, all your music is legal and your ebook titles don't sound suspicious.
And how many customs officials do they have on duty at AKL anyway? do they have time to go through all 300+ passengers phones/tablets/laptops?
This can be fully automated. In the UK, I recall they recorded the entire hard drive of your laptop. They said this was a measure against pedophiles, although this policy seems to only have affected a couple of reporters as far as I can tell. They never did this to me when I entered the UK.
This is in contrast with France.
At least, the French make a copy of your hard drive when you don't know they're doing it. Waiting until you've left your hotel room, or waiting until you've fallen asleep, is much less obtrusive.