They undercut the taxi's by being uninsured and unlicensed. They are cheaper right up until the point you are in an accident.
No, Uber drivers are not uninsured. Uber gives them commercial coverage (for when they are logged into the application). Please do your research before spouting misinformation.
Or it could just be an automatic response of the system. If a person files for a refund enough times, that person may automatically be banned by the system. After all, this is how other systems handle similar issues.
Australia has pretty clear guidelines and regulations for operating for hire service including commercial insurance and commercial drivers license.
What are those?
The fact that you're mentioning "commercial insurance" only proves to me that you don't think Uber has any, or that Uber hasn't even tried to comply with the required insurance in Australia.
The fact that you've spelled "license" the American way, instead of the Australian way, and the fact that I couldn't find the Australian "commercial licen[c/s]e"as you called it makes me think that Australians use a different label/designation for commercial licences than Americans usually do.
Please cite your sources. I'm not disputing what you're saying. I just want to get my news from a slightly more reliable source than what some American guy on Slashdot thinks about the subject.
It's actually all part of their new freemium strategy. They give away their junior dictionary for free, or for below cost. But then, when the kid really needs to find a word like "forest" because the kid has actually no idea what a "forest" is outside the context of Minecraft, and the school purposefully makes him read completely outdated tree-hugging communist manifestos from long dead authors that may contain the word "forest" in them, then the parent feels naturally obligated to upgrade to the next version.
This is terrible. Without the ability to send me the pile-of-crap emoji, my wife...
You better not let her read this post, otherwise it's the red-fuming-mad Emoji, closely followed by silent-treatment Emoji, and you're-sleeping-on-the-couch Emoji.
1. Apple ships support for Emoji ships, but it's rubbish and no one needs it anyway. 2. Google's amazing new Emoji for is almost ready to ship, revolutionising web browsing on OS X.
And Chrome Emoji support only works on OS X, whatever that means.
I assume that the unlucky Windows users and the unlucky Linux users will be left without the ability to express emotions on the internet anymore. That's the real tragedy here. The fact that all Windows and Linux users will be left emotionless if they can't afford to switch to OS X. As a Linux user, this makes me cry inside, but the best I can manage is this poor looking emoticon instead.:,-(
Oh damn you Linux! Damn you!! Why do you have to be so late at copying the big core features from everybody? If only Linux had come up with Emoji support a couple of years before everybody else, Desktop Linux would now be reaching 90% of the desktop market at the very least.
Yeah, but unlike Saddam I'd like to think we're not a bunch of assholes who would put an old video game ahead of the well-being of kids.
That is just wishful thinking.
Ahmed Wali Karzai for instance, the brother of Hamid Karzai, was the largest warlord and drug trafficker in Afghanistan during his brother's presidency. It's not because someone is on our side, that they're suddenly saints. In fact, Saddam was described in glowing terms by some of our politicians, to defend him against claims of genocide made by the Europeans, long before his relationship even went sideways with the US.
Also, I can assure you that many world leaders have people in the US, that can procure things for them in the US for the right fee. So even if an Ebay auction is purposefully limited to the US, it doesn't mean you're bidding against just US residents. In any case, that's probably a moot point anyway. The probability that the bidding is driven by fraudulent accounts, like someone else said already, is probably even higher still.
Yes, I can see a possible rational for bullying them into compliance. That being said, does that really work? And is the fact that some people are disgusted with TD people really a major problem to begin with? Won't the stance of Putin just lead to more suicides -- like it currently happens in US high schools for young gay males? And won't this kind of policy just prevent TD people from contacting the police when they really need it for fear of being bullied even more by the police itself? This is essentially a short-sighted policy for what is essentially a taboo.
Once a government authority implicitly gives the silent nod to start punishing a group of people, then things can quickly escalate when bullies think they're acting on the wishes of their government. This new official discrimination policy is going to have far reaching consequences, many of which won't have anything to do with the driver license itself.
That head of MI5 is just an idiot opportunist with a very poor sense of taste and timing. Of course, MI5 can't guarantee that it can stop a muslim extremist terrorist attack. No one can guarantee that, except may be North Korea.
The major negative impact from TG people is only that which society places on them and thus an unnatural impact.
Yes, just wait until some of them get beaten up or killed on the streets as a result of this policy.
Then, they'll probably also be barred from taking public transportation or using the sidewalks, to avoid the poor other citizens from beating up on them.
...they got banned by 6241 online casinos and bragging here is the only thing left?
The problem with online casinos (the ones that are not regulated) is that if the online casino decides you're winning too much, they can just decide to make you lose when you're betting the most (this has actually happened a lot).
It's just like three card Monte, it looks like it's an easy game to beat when other people are playing it, but unbeknownst to you, those other people are friends of the dealer, and the game becomes rigged for you to lose when you start playing it.
Right now, the app is an alert system designed to tell you when we have new campaigns
Okay, let me get this straight - the EFF has their knickers in a twist because they don't like Apple's terms for their walled garden. I'm sure Apple users are really upset that they can't download an app whose purpose is to spam them.
Trying to complain about spam when it comes to free apps is kind of like complaining about the smell of tomatoes in a ketchup factory.
The entire point of free apps is to hammer you with spam until you actually spend money. There's no getting away from that shit, so don't assume consumers are somehow upset. They agree to be spammed every single day with the other 73 apps installed.
Assuming what the OP is implying is true, that EFF's only underlying to purpose is to spam you.
And yes, it's certainly true that users couldn't care less about having an app from the EFF, I personally wouldn't care for it. And yes, while it's certainly true that this agreement mostly applies to app developers, and not users, and that only developers have to agree to it, not users.
This is actually what the EFF is complaining about (the emphasis in bold is mine):
Ban on Public Statements: Section 10.4 prohibits developers from making any "public statements" about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not "Apple Confidential Information" as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking "publicly" about them.
Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would "enable others" to reverse engineer, the software development kit (SDK) or iPhone OS.
App Store Only: Section 7.3 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia.
No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the "ban on jailbreaking" provision that appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or "enabling others to do so."
Apple Owns Your Security: Section 6.1 explains that Apple has to approve any bug fixes or security releases. If Apple does not approve such updates very quickly, this requirement could put many people in jeopardy.
Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time." Steve Jobs once confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.
So I don't know about you guys, but as an app developer, this agreement would scare the hell out of me.
Thankfully, I'm not an iOS developer, so my livelihood does not depend on the personal approval and whims of Apple, but then again, I'm not an iOS developer, that also means that if there were any serious issues with Apple's OS or SDKs, or any good tools that iOS developers needed, my opinion wouldn't be worth much more than just a random fart in the wind.
And by the way, before bashing Apple too much about this. There is another large 500 lbs gorilla that has an equally bad agreement for Android app developers. And before anyone blames EFF for missing it. I would say it's very easy to miss since no one actually publishes their app to their particular app store (everyone just publishes t
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.
This kind of thing actually happens quite often. When a journalist is about to miss a deadline, he goes to a PR dept or an advocacy group. The PR department, which is staffed by former professional journalists (except that they're being paid far better than their counterpart), effectively write a unique article for the struggling journalist, and with a nudge and wink tell him or her, that he can just use the article in its entirety and take full credit for tit.
Of course, the struggling journalist is free to edit such an article if wishes, but if the PR department is lucky enough, or if the writers on staff at that PR dept are skillful enough, the struggling journalist may just take the lazy way out and just republish the entire story as is - without changing a single word. And when that happens, the PR person just feels like has won the jackpot, and then goes up and down the corporation telling every executive he may find, that someone from a reputable news outlet has copied his article verbatim and published it under his own name.
And no, before someone says it, that kind of article can't look like it's just another press release with too many buzzwords. That's actually the point of it. it must look enough like a real original article for a struggling journalist to actually want to plagiarize it.
How is this not, basically, wiretapping (for which a warrant would ordinarily be necessary)?
It's not wiretapping. The FBI says so. Apparently, the FBI is saying that any private citizen can just set up their own "stingrays" to intercept phone calls as long as they're in public places, and the FBI won't prosecute (at least, not with wiretapping laws). This makes sense.
This makes as much sense as waterboarding without consent not being a crime.
>The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible
If I father a child (creator) and raise it to be... less than respectful of the law... my child then robs a bank. Do they put *me* in jail? By your definition they should...
Come on? A child is a device now! May be if the authors had been using some kind of artificial intelligence for their bot, but from the article, it does sound like they deliberately picked a gray marketplace just so they could generate some kind of contrived moral dilemma, or some social media publicity for themselves.
In any case, $100 isn't much. Imagine if the budget had been $10,000, that could easily get you a freshly cut human head for that price.
This story is a dupe from my grandfather's generation, who cried about the same thing.
You mean, this story is a re-run from Gilligan's island, except now George is the professor, not the skipper. And the characters have been switched around to avoid getting sued over copyright infringement.
Networks run by professionals can't keep the hackers out, and I want my home to have an operating system? I'm not intereested in my appliences sending me text messages, and my furnace is already on a fairly sophisticated timer. For me, at least, the answer is "no" - for the time being. I really don't see any show-stopping need beyond "wow, my house is wired!"
I couldn't agree more.
Give me a gadget that can tell me when my washer/dryer is finished. It can be wireless/bluetooth-like, because washers and dryers are usually just far enough, that you can't really hear their buzzer when they're done, but connect that same gadget to the cloud, and you've lost me permanently as a potential customer. Don't give me what I don't need. Do not give me what I don't want. For instance, I already have a smart meter, but this is certainly not because I was given a choice. If I wasn't such a helpless sheep, I would have destroyed that smart meter as soon as I noticed it.
Also, do not build that gadget into the washer/dryer itself and do not embed a tablet or anything too complex like an OS into an appliance. Just like I do not trust Ford to make good and cost-effective built-in gps units with free regular updates, I do not trust a washer/dryer manufacturer to make a good reliable gadget that's easy to fix, or easy/cheap to replace, or can even be easily kept up-to-date, compared to my own dedicated phone, or my own dedicated tablet, which I tend to replace much more frequently.
Also please take into account, that when I move apartments, I usually don't take the washer and dryer with me, nor the fridge. The same goes with some people who actually own homes and move from house to house. Some people do, but not everyone moves in/out with their large appliances. Do not limit the market for your goods to such a small subset of people.
If you want to do something useful, just get out of my way, or make room for my things. It would be nice if my tablet could hang on top of my stove, or on top my fridge. It would be nice if it could be protected from potential splashes, or from heat or smoke, or smudges. It would be nice if my tablet could easily be charged from its stand. And it would be nicer if the form factor of the fridge/stove was flexible enough that it could adapt to a wide range of devices, from my small old recycled re-purposed android phone to the latest and greatest tablet out there, whether it be my device, or the device of a family member/friend visiting me for a day.
I've never understood the appeal of museums. They are the most boring place in the world to be dragged to. It's not like you can learn anything or interact with anything there. It's like people are afraid to admit they are boring because they are afraid to appear uncultured. Does anyone honestly enjoy museums?
It depends on the museum.
For example, the Exploratorium on Pier 15 in San Francisco is super interactive. And the Computer History Museum in San Jose is also very good. For the more "boring" museums, it really depends on who you go to the museum with. If you're not enthusiastic about a particular museum, you need to accompany someone who is enthusiastic about that museum. That person can be your guide. And if you're lucky enough, some of that enthusiasm can rub off on you a little. Just be careful thought, pick someone you like who is genuinely enthusiastic about that museum, not someone who only sees their interest in a museum as some kind of status symbol for them self. That can happen too.
That being said, if the choice is between drinking at a crowded night club, or drinking at a museum, I'd pick drinking at a museum always. Museum parties usually have more space, by that same token they're also less crowded, and they're usually less noisy than bars or night clubs. Also, museums already tend to be in prime real estate areas and city centers, so if they didn't have adult-only parties during those hours, all that infrastructure and all that space would go to waste during those times outside of their regular visiting hours.
Also, if it's between drinking at the museum and drinking at the zoo, I'd pick drinking at the museum any time. At least at the museums, the stuffed animals are not likely to escape their enclosures and kill the drunk assholes that try to provoke them thus ruining the experience for everyone else.
Let your uses dictate your choice. What are you going to use this device for?
Email? Browsing the web? Programming? Watching movies? Games? Making the best of your time in a subway? What other devices do you already have? Is this going to be your primary computer? Is power consumption a consideration? Etc.
I'm afraid that there is currently no good one-size-fits-all solution. Whatever you decide, it will have to be a compromise.
"Well, Mr. Justice, it appears from the following web searches you made over the last eight months that you like chicks with dicks. Now you can either rule for the the Government, or the Wall Street Journal gets a hot new exclusive..."
That's way too tame. This is the way I'd envision the conversation.
"Well, Mr. Justice, we have the videotapes of your sexual harassment campaign against your subordinates, we have the books that prove all the fraud you and your wife committed in real estate, and we have the remote kill-switch to your pacemaker. Why do you think you got the job? You would obviously never had gotten the job if we had no leverage against you.
Please just wait ten years before you shut down the worst of our programs. In ten years time, we'll be using new technology, new loopholes, and new programs, that even Snowden doesn't know about. "
Either way its difficult to defend the idea that China intentionally did this when google gladly censors their search results and complies with all local regulations.
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” Google wrote in a lengthy blog post. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Slashdot Mirror
They undercut the taxi's by being uninsured and unlicensed. They are cheaper right up until the point you are in an accident.
No, Uber drivers are not uninsured. Uber gives them commercial coverage (for when they are logged into the application). Please do your research before spouting misinformation.
Or it could just be an automatic response of the system. If a person files for a refund enough times, that person may automatically be banned by the system. After all, this is how other systems handle similar issues.
Australia has pretty clear guidelines and regulations for operating for hire service including commercial insurance and commercial drivers license.
What are those?
The fact that you're mentioning "commercial insurance" only proves to me that you don't think Uber has any, or that Uber hasn't even tried to comply with the required insurance in Australia.
The fact that you've spelled "license" the American way, instead of the Australian way, and the fact that I couldn't find the Australian "commercial licen[c/s]e"as you called it makes me think that Australians use a different label/designation for commercial licences than Americans usually do.
Please cite your sources. I'm not disputing what you're saying. I just want to get my news from a slightly more reliable source than what some American guy on Slashdot thinks about the subject.
It's actually all part of their new freemium strategy. They give away their junior dictionary for free, or for below cost. But then, when the kid really needs to find a word like "forest" because the kid has actually no idea what a "forest" is outside the context of Minecraft, and the school purposefully makes him read completely outdated tree-hugging communist manifestos from long dead authors that may contain the word "forest" in them, then the parent feels naturally obligated to upgrade to the next version.
This is terrible. Without the ability to send me the pile-of-crap emoji, my wife...
You better not let her read this post, otherwise it's the red-fuming-mad Emoji, closely followed by silent-treatment Emoji, and you're-sleeping-on-the-couch Emoji.
1. Apple ships support for Emoji ships, but it's rubbish and no one needs it anyway.
2. Google's amazing new Emoji for is almost ready to ship, revolutionising web browsing on OS X.
And Chrome Emoji support only works on OS X, whatever that means.
I assume that the unlucky Windows users and the unlucky Linux users will be left without the ability to express emotions on the internet anymore. That's the real tragedy here. The fact that all Windows and Linux users will be left emotionless if they can't afford to switch to OS X. As a Linux user, this makes me cry inside, but the best I can manage is this poor looking emoticon instead. :,-(
Oh damn you Linux! Damn you!! Why do you have to be so late at copying the big core features from everybody? If only Linux had come up with Emoji support a couple of years before everybody else, Desktop Linux would now be reaching 90% of the desktop market at the very least.
Yeah, but unlike Saddam I'd like to think we're not a bunch of assholes who would put an old video game ahead of the well-being of kids.
That is just wishful thinking.
Ahmed Wali Karzai for instance, the brother of Hamid Karzai, was the largest warlord and drug trafficker in Afghanistan during his brother's presidency. It's not because someone is on our side, that they're suddenly saints. In fact, Saddam was described in glowing terms by some of our politicians, to defend him against claims of genocide made by the Europeans, long before his relationship even went sideways with the US.
Also, I can assure you that many world leaders have people in the US, that can procure things for them in the US for the right fee. So even if an Ebay auction is purposefully limited to the US, it doesn't mean you're bidding against just US residents. In any case, that's probably a moot point anyway. The probability that the bidding is driven by fraudulent accounts, like someone else said already, is probably even higher still.
Ooops: I should have said TG people, not TD people.
Yes, I can see a possible rational for bullying them into compliance. That being said, does that really work? And is the fact that some people are disgusted with TD people really a major problem to begin with? Won't the stance of Putin just lead to more suicides -- like it currently happens in US high schools for young gay males? And won't this kind of policy just prevent TD people from contacting the police when they really need it for fear of being bullied even more by the police itself? This is essentially a short-sighted policy for what is essentially a taboo.
Once a government authority implicitly gives the silent nod to start punishing a group of people, then things can quickly escalate when bullies think they're acting on the wishes of their government. This new official discrimination policy is going to have far reaching consequences, many of which won't have anything to do with the driver license itself.
Let me be clear: it's awful what has happened. But so is the death of a child hit by a drunk drivers car.
Actually, those people killed were the last people in the world that wanted a government with more snooping powers. Warning: Some of these drawings may not be work safe. http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... http://www.le-livre.fr/photos/... http://www.iconovox.com/blog/w...
That head of MI5 is just an idiot opportunist with a very poor sense of taste and timing. Of course, MI5 can't guarantee that it can stop a muslim extremist terrorist attack. No one can guarantee that, except may be North Korea.
The major negative impact from TG people is only that which society places on them and thus an unnatural impact.
Yes, just wait until some of them get beaten up or killed on the streets as a result of this policy.
Then, they'll probably also be barred from taking public transportation or using the sidewalks, to avoid the poor other citizens from beating up on them.
...they got banned by 6241 online casinos and bragging here is the only thing left?
The problem with online casinos (the ones that are not regulated) is that if the online casino decides you're winning too much, they can just decide to make you lose when you're betting the most (this has actually happened a lot).
It's just like three card Monte, it looks like it's an easy game to beat when other people are playing it, but unbeknownst to you, those other people are friends of the dealer, and the game becomes rigged for you to lose when you start playing it.
Right now, the app is an alert system designed to tell you when we have new campaigns
Okay, let me get this straight - the EFF has their knickers in a twist because they don't like Apple's terms for their walled garden. I'm sure Apple users are really upset that they can't download an app whose purpose is to spam them.
Trying to complain about spam when it comes to free apps is kind of like complaining about the smell of tomatoes in a ketchup factory.
The entire point of free apps is to hammer you with spam until you actually spend money. There's no getting away from that shit, so don't assume consumers are somehow upset. They agree to be spammed every single day with the other 73 apps installed.
Assuming what the OP is implying is true, that EFF's only underlying to purpose is to spam you.
And yes, it's certainly true that users couldn't care less about having an app from the EFF, I personally wouldn't care for it. And yes, while it's certainly true that this agreement mostly applies to app developers, and not users, and that only developers have to agree to it, not users.
This is actually what the EFF is complaining about (the emphasis in bold is mine):
Ban on Public Statements: Section 10.4 prohibits developers from making any "public statements" about the terms of the Agreement. This is particularly strange, since the Agreement itself is not "Apple Confidential Information" as defined in Section 10.1. So the terms are not confidential, but developers are contractually forbidden from speaking "publicly" about them.
Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that would "enable others" to reverse engineer, the software development kit (SDK) or iPhone OS.
App Store Only: Section 7.3 makes it clear that any applications developed using Apple's SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store, and that Apple can reject an app for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements disclosed by Apple. So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like Cydia.
No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: Section 3.2(e) is the "ban on jailbreaking" provision that appears to prohibit developers from tinkering with any Apple software or technology, not just the iPhone, or "enabling others to do so."
Apple Owns Your Security: Section 6.1 explains that Apple has to approve any bug fixes or security releases. If Apple does not approve such updates very quickly, this requirement could put many people in jeopardy.
Kill Your App Any Time: Section 8 makes it clear that Apple can "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time." Steve Jobs once confirmed that Apple can remotely disable apps, even after they have been installed by users. This contract provision would appear to allow that.
So I don't know about you guys, but as an app developer, this agreement would scare the hell out of me.
Thankfully, I'm not an iOS developer, so my livelihood does not depend on the personal approval and whims of Apple, but then again, I'm not an iOS developer, that also means that if there were any serious issues with Apple's OS or SDKs, or any good tools that iOS developers needed, my opinion wouldn't be worth much more than just a random fart in the wind.
And by the way, before bashing Apple too much about this. There is another large 500 lbs gorilla that has an equally bad agreement for Android app developers. And before anyone blames EFF for missing it. I would say it's very easy to miss since no one actually publishes their app to their particular app store (everyone just publishes t
I have just formed the Power Alliance for Wireless, which I will agree to "merge" with you all also for only $10k, payable directly to me.
Don't be slut. You're almost giving it away for free at that price.
If Apple is holding out for 40% of the retail price for each unit, you should at least be holding out for 35%.
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
"We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."
Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.
This kind of thing actually happens quite often. When a journalist is about to miss a deadline, he goes to a PR dept or an advocacy group. The PR department, which is staffed by former professional journalists (except that they're being paid far better than their counterpart), effectively write a unique article for the struggling journalist, and with a nudge and wink tell him or her, that he can just use the article in its entirety and take full credit for tit.
Of course, the struggling journalist is free to edit such an article if wishes, but if the PR department is lucky enough, or if the writers on staff at that PR dept are skillful enough, the struggling journalist may just take the lazy way out and just republish the entire story as is - without changing a single word. And when that happens, the PR person just feels like has won the jackpot, and then goes up and down the corporation telling every executive he may find, that someone from a reputable news outlet has copied his article verbatim and published it under his own name.
And no, before someone says it, that kind of article can't look like it's just another press release with too many buzzwords. That's actually the point of it. it must look enough like a real original article for a struggling journalist to actually want to plagiarize it.
How is this not, basically, wiretapping (for which a warrant would ordinarily be necessary)?
It's not wiretapping. The FBI says so. Apparently, the FBI is saying that any private citizen can just set up their own "stingrays" to intercept phone calls as long as they're in public places, and the FBI won't prosecute (at least, not with wiretapping laws). This makes sense.
This makes as much sense as waterboarding without consent not being a crime.
>The creator of a device that breaks the law because the creator either negligently or intentionally set up the device to break the law is responsible
If I father a child (creator) and raise it to be... less than respectful of the law... my child then robs a bank. Do they put *me* in jail? By your definition they should...
Come on? A child is a device now! May be if the authors had been using some kind of artificial intelligence for their bot, but from the article, it does sound like they deliberately picked a gray marketplace just so they could generate some kind of contrived moral dilemma, or some social media publicity for themselves.
In any case, $100 isn't much. Imagine if the budget had been $10,000, that could easily get you a freshly cut human head for that price.
This story is a dupe from my grandfather's generation, who cried about the same thing.
You mean, this story is a re-run from Gilligan's island, except now George is the professor, not the skipper. And the characters have been switched around to avoid getting sued over copyright infringement.
Networks run by professionals can't keep the hackers out, and I want my home to have an operating system? I'm not intereested in my appliences sending me text messages, and my furnace is already on a fairly sophisticated timer. For me, at least, the answer is "no" - for the time being. I really don't see any show-stopping need beyond "wow, my house is wired!"
I couldn't agree more.
Give me a gadget that can tell me when my washer/dryer is finished. It can be wireless/bluetooth-like, because washers and dryers are usually just far enough, that you can't really hear their buzzer when they're done, but connect that same gadget to the cloud, and you've lost me permanently as a potential customer. Don't give me what I don't need. Do not give me what I don't want. For instance, I already have a smart meter, but this is certainly not because I was given a choice. If I wasn't such a helpless sheep, I would have destroyed that smart meter as soon as I noticed it.
Also, do not build that gadget into the washer/dryer itself and do not embed a tablet or anything too complex like an OS into an appliance. Just like I do not trust Ford to make good and cost-effective built-in gps units with free regular updates, I do not trust a washer/dryer manufacturer to make a good reliable gadget that's easy to fix, or easy/cheap to replace, or can even be easily kept up-to-date, compared to my own dedicated phone, or my own dedicated tablet, which I tend to replace much more frequently.
Also please take into account, that when I move apartments, I usually don't take the washer and dryer with me, nor the fridge. The same goes with some people who actually own homes and move from house to house. Some people do, but not everyone moves in/out with their large appliances. Do not limit the market for your goods to such a small subset of people.
If you want to do something useful, just get out of my way, or make room for my things. It would be nice if my tablet could hang on top of my stove, or on top my fridge. It would be nice if it could be protected from potential splashes, or from heat or smoke, or smudges. It would be nice if my tablet could easily be charged from its stand. And it would be nicer if the form factor of the fridge/stove was flexible enough that it could adapt to a wide range of devices, from my small old recycled re-purposed android phone to the latest and greatest tablet out there, whether it be my device, or the device of a family member/friend visiting me for a day.
I've never understood the appeal of museums. They are the most boring place in the world to be dragged to. It's not like you can learn anything or interact with anything there. It's like people are afraid to admit they are boring because they are afraid to appear uncultured. Does anyone honestly enjoy museums?
It depends on the museum.
For example, the Exploratorium on Pier 15 in San Francisco is super interactive. And the Computer History Museum in San Jose is also very good. For the more "boring" museums, it really depends on who you go to the museum with. If you're not enthusiastic about a particular museum, you need to accompany someone who is enthusiastic about that museum. That person can be your guide. And if you're lucky enough, some of that enthusiasm can rub off on you a little. Just be careful thought, pick someone you like who is genuinely enthusiastic about that museum, not someone who only sees their interest in a museum as some kind of status symbol for them self. That can happen too.
That being said, if the choice is between drinking at a crowded night club, or drinking at a museum, I'd pick drinking at a museum always. Museum parties usually have more space, by that same token they're also less crowded, and they're usually less noisy than bars or night clubs. Also, museums already tend to be in prime real estate areas and city centers, so if they didn't have adult-only parties during those hours, all that infrastructure and all that space would go to waste during those times outside of their regular visiting hours.
Also, if it's between drinking at the museum and drinking at the zoo, I'd pick drinking at the museum any time. At least at the museums, the stuffed animals are not likely to escape their enclosures and kill the drunk assholes that try to provoke them thus ruining the experience for everyone else.
So someone gave a disposable email address, downloaded an Xbox SDK, and then reposted the SDK somewhere else?
Is this what we're talking about here? Or is there actually more to the story?
Let your uses dictate your choice. What are you going to use this device for?
Email? Browsing the web? Programming? Watching movies? Games? Making the best of your time in a subway? What other devices do you already have? Is this going to be your primary computer? Is power consumption a consideration? Etc.
I'm afraid that there is currently no good one-size-fits-all solution. Whatever you decide, it will have to be a compromise.
"Well, Mr. Justice, it appears from the following web searches you made over the last eight months that you like chicks with dicks. Now you can either rule for the the Government, or the Wall Street Journal gets a hot new exclusive..."
That's way too tame. This is the way I'd envision the conversation.
"Well, Mr. Justice, we have the videotapes of your sexual harassment campaign against your subordinates, we have the books that prove all the fraud you and your wife committed in real estate, and we have the remote kill-switch to your pacemaker. Why do you think you got the job? You would obviously never had gotten the job if we had no leverage against you.
Please just wait ten years before you shut down the worst of our programs. In ten years time, we'll be using new technology, new loopholes, and new programs, that even Snowden doesn't know about. "
Either way its difficult to defend the idea that China intentionally did this when google gladly censors their search results and complies with all local regulations.
They apparently stopped doing that a while ago.
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” Google wrote in a lengthy blog post. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.
Or simpler still, it could just be Chinese authorities purposefully messing with DNS propagation.