I wish I could mod you up more, because you sir definitely get it. [...] And while they're content not knowing or caring, I'm quite content rooting and flashing
Thanks, but people's frustrations are real enough I feel.
Coming from (mostly) the PCs' Windows world, people have been spoiled because they've come expect to be able to choose when to install OS updates, and which NASCAR/Disney pre-installed applications they could uninstall from their own paid-for devices, and which applications they can use on the data connection they're supposedly already paying dearly for as well.
Enabling number portability was a big step in the right direction (in fact many people are still pissed off it took so long to get that in the first place), but without mandated network device interchangeability like they have in Europe, without mandated wireless net neutrality enforced for all carriers using public airwaves, and without admin privileges enabled by default on all phones (technically, I shouldn't even have to root my own personal phone, it should come with an admin root account I can set up by default, just like with Windows XP/7 used to do before Windows 8), no one will really ever own their own personal phones until then.
It's a little odd that Wikimedia filed a separate action; I'd think a simple demurral would make the original case go away more cheaply.
Apparently in the previous case with Xenforo, Internet Brands (who had purchased Jelsoft/VBulletin) sued xenForo and its former employees both in the UK and in California. And this is despite Internet Brands having its' HQ in California and this is also despite the fact that most of the parties involved: Jelsoft, VBulletin, and xenforo, also had all originated from California and were California-based at the time as well (and I assume that most of those former employees in question, the ones who started Xenforo, must also have been located in California as well).
On 4 October 2010, "Internet Brands commenced a lawsuit in the courts of England and Wales against XenForo, and its founders, Kier, Mike and Ashley".[5]
On 29 October 2010, Internet Brands filed a second lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California through its wholly owned subsidiary vBulletin Solutions, Inc. against xenForo Ltd., and its founders Kier, Mike and Ashley. The lawsuit alleges "widespread infringement and unlawful exploitation" of vBulletin's source code and "equally damaging misappropriation of trade secrets" developed and owned by vBulletin with "investments of millions of dollars over the last ten years." The lawsuit further alleges that the developers of XenForo Ltd. "took with them virtually every type of document a competitor would need to enter the market and unlawfully create a competing bulletin board software program." [6]
But since the lawsuit was first started in the UK -- that limited the scope of the lawsuit in California. See this one paragraph (in current need of citation) from their Xenforo Wikipedia page:
On 7th February 2011, Judge Manuel Real denied all three motions by XenForo and its developer Kier Darby, to dismiss the case on grounds of forum non conveniens, non-subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction in California arguing that the California lawsuit is duplicative of the UK action[citation needed].
My guess is that the Wikimedia Foundation probably took preemptive action in California to make sure that IB (Internet Brands) wouldn't attempt to file the case in the UK against Wikimedia and the two volunteers, as IB did with xenForo and their former employees when IB knew that those guys really didn't have the resources to easily fight from across the world.
But then, this is just a guess. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even sure what a "demurral" is (except for what its standard definition is on dictionary.com). Would a "demurral" be enough to keep a potential lawsuit on your jurisdictional home turf? To a layman like me, but it doesn't even make sense that in the case of xenForo vs. IB (Jelsoft/VBulletin), that the UK got in the middle of a lawsuit between two parties that were mostly based in the same foreign country and in the same state abroad.
"Three major revisions of Google's Android operating system have launched..."
Really? I thought it was just one major revision.
"Android 3.0" was for tablets only. Perhaps, they should just have called it "Android 2.0 Tablet edition", which was really what it was. Take "Windows XP 32bit" users for example, it's not like they complained when "Windows XP for Netbook" came out, or when "Windows XP 64bit" came out.
And Jellybeans is just Android 4.1. That's not a major revision, that's a just minor one, hence the ".1" and the minor number of changes compared to Ice Cream Sandwich version - Android 4.0.
...made posts stating that 'WikiTravel (a trademark) was moving to WikiMedia'.
I doubt that's what they posted.
Posting the trademark symbol next to the word WikiTravel on August 18th, 2012, is illegal and it's a finable offense. The filing of the trademark only occurred on August 22nd, 2012, coincidentally just four days after the alleged incident. And no, pay no attention to "FIRST USE: 20030724. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 2003072", that part won't help them.
The fine for falsely claiming a Trademark is pretty significant. I don't think it's a mistake they would have made. You'll notice that the current site doesn't even have the trademark symbol anywhere yet, although technically they now have the right to use the symbol since August 22nd.
29. For example, on August 18, 2012, Holliday improperly and wrongfully emailed at least several hundred of Wikitravel members, purporting to be from Wikitravel and informing members that the Wikitravel Website was “migrating” to the Wikimedia Foundation. Upon information and belief, the number emailed is far greater.
I'll assume that this is still their interpretation and their paraphrasing of what happened, since there are no quotes that are used except for one single word.
So moving right along...
30. Specifically, Holliday’s email contained the Subject Line, “Important information about Wikitravel” and its body stated, “This email is being sent to you on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators since you have put some real time and effort into working on Wikitravel. We wanted to make sure that you are up to date and in the loop regarding big changes in the community that will affect the future of your work! As you may already have heard, Wikitravel’s community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation.”
Ok, now we're getting somewhere!
They're finally quoting the people they're suing. Please note the careful wording inside those quotes: "on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators" and "Wikitravel's community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation."
Is anything of this really untrue?
It seems to me like Internet Brands only started clamping down on its unpaid volunteer administrators only after they sent this message out, so they were still formally volunteer admins at the time? Right? That's the problem of giving volunteers unfettered access to your mailing list and web site. You can't just accept the benefit of all their work, you have to also accept all the downside that could possibly come from giving them such privileges (especially if they're not getting paid by you).
Plus, it's not like Internet Brands can't have the final word in all of this. I'm sure that they promptly locked down their mailing list and possibly locked down their wiki site as well, thus possibly locking out even more existing volunteers from participating in the discussion, and then sent follow-up emails telling their own side of the story.
In the end, owning the actual mailing list and the actual site gives them the final word. And the people that were contacted will have to make up their minds whether the community is still mostly with Wikitravel, or migrated elsewhere. That being said, I'm not a lawyer, and this is only my layman opinion regarding the reported Trademark claim made in the parent post. Perhaps the other claims they're making have more teeth to them, those other parts I really know nothing about.
Don't like it? Maybe mandatory health screenings for visitors to the US, but if you even start talking about it you'll be called all sorts of names by various groups and who is going to pay for it?
The US is not the only developed country with visitors/immigrants coming from 3rd World countries, and yet it's the only developed country in the world with recurrent outbreaks of tuberculosis among its own homeless population in places like Berkeley or San Francisco.
Provide a minimum of healthcare to illegal immigrants and to the homeless population. Do not rely on Emergency Rooms for that purpose. That's the only thing we need to do. You and I both know that mandatory health screenings will only work for the people that are coming over legally and are already in the system. And it will only drive the people who are sick even more underground.
Unfortunately, the problem of paying for that kind of solution still remains. To that, I don't have an answer.
I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
The same for me. Plus, I love the fact that their wikipedia entry for Xenforo says: "Its popularity is growing according to feedback from various community forums and weblogs.[2]". With the citation pointing back to just one blog, its own company blog with absolutely zero comments posted on it (despite having that feature turned on).
Or, just maybe, due to the fact that this was a rape and murder, they can be certain it was a man who did it. As in, there was semen present in the victim's body that didn't belong there.
You misinterpreted what I said. I don't doubt a male (or males) did this.
It's just the reason they're giving those men for the DNA samples. If you read the summary/article, they're basically telling them: we're not saying you did anything, in fact we're mostly doing this because we want to use your dna sample to see if it matches any relative: son, father, uncle, grandfather, brother, cousin, distant cousin, etc (who refused to get tested, or who may not live in the immediate vicinity of the crime, but who may come to the area, or be familiar with the area, because of your connection to them).
And I was just pointing out, that perhaps this was a little white lie to get them to give them a sample, otherwise they would be asking for samples from the women in the area as well, since those women have brothers and uncles (from their side of the family at least) that could have done the crime as well, but that may not have any genetic material in common with the men who are willing to get tested.
Do you seriously think the courts would allow DNA evidence if it was only 25% accurate?
I personally do not, but then I would have to take a look at the kind of dna samples sent and the lab results in question. DNA lab results usually come with all kinds of qualifications and disclaimers anyhow.
And just like fingerprints has edge cases, where the fingerprint is only partial and incomplete, it could also happen that the dna samples have edge cases as well, where the dna is is too degraded or incomplete to reach the right conclusion.
That's why courts not only rely on dna evidence, but they also rely on expert testimony from both sides (assuming there is enough money on both sides) to interpret those results.
Individuals answer the question differently. What happens if you say no, I wonder?
"No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
Essentially, they're doing the same thing we're already doing in the US. If you say no, the authorities start implying that you're probably the guilty party. They start investigating you as the real suspect, and during the course of their investigation into your background, it becomes clear to all your friends, girlfriend/wife, coworkers, and family members, that you must have refused to supply them with your dna sample, or refused to take the lie detector test (otherwise, they wouldn't be asking such questions).
And they're claiming they're looking for "family members", but notice they're not asking for dna samples from female participants. Either this is a little white lie designed to minimize the outrage the men must be feeling at being singled out, or perhaps they're hoping to nab a male teenager through the analysis of his fathers' dna (since getting dna from hundreds of male teenagers in the vicinity may actually be harder to achieve politically) .
Why go to all those troubles when the off button would work just as well?
It's a fashion accessory issue. Faraday envelopes can double as hats just in case. And with a powered-on phone inside a faraday envelope, you wouldn't need to wear a watch anymore -- completely covered in tin foil.
This looks like click-bait, but I just can't help myself.
In our capitalist society, robots already have limited rights by virtue of the fact that they're private property and they're still going to be expensive (for a little while at least). That fact alone gives more protection to robots than most dogs, from outsiders who may want to harm our pets, or damage our robots.
And I don't see a law protecting a robot from its own owner anytime soon. Cruelty to a robot is not even going to be considered an issue. Now, if we're talking about a visually impaired person having his prosthetic camera-eye forcibly ripped out of his head, then yes, that would be hell of cruel, but cruel to the visually impaired disabled person, not necessarily cruel to the tool.
the reality is: there's zero guarantee they'll stand up to the government, something twitter actually does.
Yeah, and how long is this going to last?
Twitter has only proven that they could be bought with the NBC censorship debacle, going against their own terms of services. Now governments just need to invest millions of dollars in regular ad campaigns with Twitter and then threaten to pull out whenever they want something censored.
It was actually a pretty smart move on their part. By doing that, Twitter has shown that they can't be intimidated, but that at least they can be bought -- assuming the amount of money is high enough. Perhaps other online companies could learn a thing or two from Twitter. There is profit in not acquiescing to censorship requests right away. If they can't bully you to do something right away, they may pay you handsomely -- if you can hold out long enough until then.
tell me how this is any different from xmpp+chatrooms+db+php rss feeds?
It wouldn't be.
In any case, with kickstarters concepts, you don't usually just invest in the idea. You invest in the people first and foremost. For instance, if the creator of a previous online service I had been using and I actually liked, were to start a kickstarters' project, and if his idea was decent (not great, but decent enough), I might chip in $50, even if the project went no where.
That being said, I don't know the guy. I've never used his previous project before, so I'm just going to watch from the sidelines. I wish him luck. If nothing else, this kickstarters project should be viewed as a meaningful petition that many Twitter addicts (and third party developers) are starting to get fed up with the service.
the 'failure' of the linux desktop is basically applications. libreoffice and linux gaming initiatives are the way to win that battle. making a prettier desktop is not.
Why does it need to win anything? For me, in my home at least, linux desktop won less than a year ago. That's the time I reformatted my last remaining dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu laptop with only Ubuntu (I really didn't need Windows anymore, it's not that I'm some kind of linux evangelist). Now, I have no Windows machine/software in sight.
I'm perfectly satisfied with Ubuntu/linux desktop as it is. And no, I'm not even one of the "kernel people" Icaza keeps referring to (by the way, I love the imagery of tiny little kernel people or little gnome people running around and blaming each other). I'm an actual Linux/Ubuntu desktop user. I don't need games on my desktop. I have enough games on my other devices. I'm spending way too much time playing games anyway. Between LibreOffice and Google Docs, I really don't need anything more elaborate. Gimp, I do not know how to use well yet, but then again, I never learned how to use Photoshop well either.
My opinion is that this Icaza guy is still stuck in the 90s. He wants to make linux desktop into something Windows was twenty years ago. And yet, very few people still use their desktop the way they used to use it twenty years ago. We all have many devices, whether those devices are smart TVs, small internet appliances, consoles, smart phones, or tablets. And many of us are heavily using free/freemium online services, for things that we could only do traditionally on dedicated specialized desktop software. And for the many that do want to depend less on online services, they have their own external hard drives and/or homegrown entertainment/specialized setups.
It's a fragmented world out there and it's only getting more fragmented. I realize that the term fragmentation is usually used in a negative context, but that's not int the context I'm using it right now. Why not embrace the fragmentation instead of fighting against it? After all, one can only control what he purchases for himself, or his family. He can't absolutely control what devices/computers his neighbor is going to get.
As long as I'm not considered an eccentric candidate for sending my resume in pdf (in addition to the doc format in case the formatting doesn't transfer 100%). And as long I can print from my desktop at home, or even print directly from my phone when I'm at a Kinkos' Fedex office. And find movies/televisions/radio shows that can play easily on most of my devices. And that my devices at home can do transfers with each other, even if they're not by the same maker, which they already do. That's all I really want.
Of course, others' experiences may vary, some may not consider the war won yet, and that's ok with me. Just do not expect my allegiance when you try to imply that I'm enlisted in your imaginary war.
Low rents? Is there truly lower rent in large cities across the US?
That's certainly not the case in San Francisco (unless you're under rent control), and especially not for businesses. In San Francisco, you not only get filth, falsified lowered crime statistics, and a broken infrastructure, but you also get sky high rent. One could argue that the folks under rent control pay little, but it's not like anyone under rent control is ever to give up their apartments, so that just increases the scarcity and the rent for everyone else.
The one reason people will pick San Francisco over the surrounding suburbs is because of the night life. It's not like the surrounding suburbs have no night life, or that you couldn't drive in once in a while. It's just that San Francisco has so much night life relative to the suburbs, some people just refuse to live far away from the city for that reason. And also, there is the jobs issue. People like to live where the jobs are. A one to two hour commute every day each way takes away a lot of your personal time.
Emergency services needs reliability. If your department can't afford a few mobile broadband units, you should seriously look into throwing a couple more raffles or asking for more money from the city/county/township/state.
The guy is a volunteer firefighter. His fire department is most likely all volunteers, with probably little -- to no budget.
Having reliable tools and services for emergencies is great, but government-based emergency services can be notoriously slow at adapting to changing circumstances and at adopting/trying out new technologies.
This is why you need to the people on the front-lines to do their own experimenting. If soldiers in Iraq for instance, had really waited for the next round of funding to get the body armor they needed, or the gps units they needed, instead of jerry-rigging their own version of body armor, or asking their family back home to buy them civilian gps units from Costco, many more would have died if they had not been allowed to use their own make-shift half-fast solutions.
And besides, no one is arguing that firefighters should give up on their existing communication infrastructure, to try out this new approach. This new approach would most likely be used in conjunction with those existing communication channels, trying to supplement them, not replace them (unless of course, those existing channels/tools had become non-operational, or over saturated for some reason, like they were on 9/11, or during Katrina).
I have to wonder though, what's wrong with good old fashioned radios.
If you're stuck under some rubbles somewhere, or if the cell towers are non-operational and you can't be notified of an extreme emergency coming your way, the chances that you'll have a cell phone on you instead of a two-radio radio may be higher.
That's why having some fire departments maintain their own licensed ad-hoc portable gsm emergency networks may not be such a bad idea. The truck ladders could be used to place antennas on high, or even have antennas affixed to them. Not to mention, such portable mobile gsm networks could probably be used for triangulation purposes.
And as a volunteer fire department, if you ever want to help out other Counties, or other States/Countries, to help during their major disasters. Your equipment and your budding expertise in this technical area could suddenly become very valuable there too.
Actually except for Jellybeans (which doesn't have an HTC Sense equivalent yet), I'd choose HTC Sense over vanilla android in most cases (which is not to say that I like Samsungs' TouchWiz or Motorolas' MotoBlur, I think those tend to hurt vanilla android more they help). Even when I select a custom ROM, I tend to gravitate toward the ROMs based on Sense (which may not be entirely legal, but thus far they haven't pursued anybody).
With HTC, I've never had my gps google maps voice navigation get laggy, or force close on me. Plus HTC usually has the best looking clock widgets, a decent selection of attractive wallpapers, and the smoothest phone contacts scrolling interaction. Those little details make a huge difference in my opinion.
Really, the only Samsung/TouchWiz device I'd really salivate over would be the Samsung Galaxy Note (not its HTC Flyer equivalent), but even there, the low sound volume that Samsung phones usually have could be a showstopper for me (so I'd have to double-check that before I ever go that route).
If you do it well, fame will be yours. If you sell it well, fortune too. Unless there is no demand for this feature.
Oh no, there is a demand for this feature. There are even a few Android ROMs that have this feature. Personally, I had such a ROM installed for about a week, before I gave up on it and reverted to a different ROM. As it turns out, the Googe Maps/Navigation auto-complete feature is much easier and more convenient to use if your phone doesn't have short-term amnesia between uses. And yes, I admit it. I am trading privacy for convenience and ease of use. Thought, I don't mind it.
If you just browse the xda forums a little bit, you'll see that there are many people that care about privacy, and are willing to pay the price of privacy in terms of ease of use and convenience, much more than I do. So do not take my example as proof that there is no demand, there is actually a demand. It's just that there is already plenty of existing grassroots competition for that kind of feature in the rooted custom-ROM Android ecosystem.
As an American, I already use Baidu for search. I might as well buy myself a tablet that phones home to he Kremlin. For the things that I'm doing on the internet, I'm much more afraid of the American mafia than the Chinese triads, or the Russian mob. Of course, your circumstances will vary. If I was in China, I would probably be avoiding Baidu. And if I was in Russia, I'd probably avoid any churches where singing was going on.
Why is this even news? Even China did the same. It would be irresponsible not to.
For Russia, it's the North Pole. And for China, it was the Tibet. If you let an American company suddenly do your mapping for you, or tell you where you're standing with their satellites, then you might as well kiss whatever new territory you just claimed an hour ago good bye.
It's a steep slippery slope. One day, the North pole is gone. The next day, Moscow is part of Alaska. And your average citizen doesn't have a clue because he's too busy drinking vodka and industrial alcohol and looking at his phone for gps directions.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could mod you up more, because you sir definitely get it.
[...]
And while they're content not knowing or caring, I'm quite content rooting and flashing
Thanks, but people's frustrations are real enough I feel.
Coming from (mostly) the PCs' Windows world, people have been spoiled because they've come expect to be able to choose when to install OS updates, and which NASCAR/Disney pre-installed applications they could uninstall from their own paid-for devices, and which applications they can use on the data connection they're supposedly already paying dearly for as well.
Enabling number portability was a big step in the right direction (in fact many people are still pissed off it took so long to get that in the first place), but without mandated network device interchangeability like they have in Europe, without mandated wireless net neutrality enforced for all carriers using public airwaves, and without admin privileges enabled by default on all phones (technically, I shouldn't even have to root my own personal phone, it should come with an admin root account I can set up by default, just like with Windows XP/7 used to do before Windows 8), no one will really ever own their own personal phones until then.
It's a little odd that Wikimedia filed a separate action; I'd think a simple demurral would make the original case go away more cheaply.
Apparently in the previous case with Xenforo, Internet Brands (who had purchased Jelsoft/VBulletin) sued xenForo and its former employees both in the UK and in California. And this is despite Internet Brands having its' HQ in California and this is also despite the fact that most of the parties involved: Jelsoft, VBulletin, and xenforo, also had all originated from California and were California-based at the time as well (and I assume that most of those former employees in question, the ones who started Xenforo, must also have been located in California as well).
On 4 October 2010, "Internet Brands commenced a lawsuit in the courts of England and Wales against XenForo, and its founders, Kier, Mike and Ashley".[5]
On 29 October 2010, Internet Brands filed a second lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California through its wholly owned subsidiary vBulletin Solutions, Inc. against xenForo Ltd., and its founders Kier, Mike and Ashley. The lawsuit alleges "widespread infringement and unlawful exploitation" of vBulletin's source code and "equally damaging misappropriation of trade secrets" developed and owned by vBulletin with "investments of millions of dollars over the last ten years." The lawsuit further alleges that the developers of XenForo Ltd. "took with them virtually every type of document a competitor would need to enter the market and unlawfully create a competing bulletin board software program." [6]
But since the lawsuit was first started in the UK -- that limited the scope of the lawsuit in California. See this one paragraph (in current need of citation) from their Xenforo Wikipedia page:
On 7th February 2011, Judge Manuel Real denied all three motions by XenForo and its developer Kier Darby, to dismiss the case on grounds of forum non conveniens, non-subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction in California arguing that the California lawsuit is duplicative of the UK action[citation needed].
My guess is that the Wikimedia Foundation probably took preemptive action in California to make sure that IB (Internet Brands) wouldn't attempt to file the case in the UK against Wikimedia and the two volunteers, as IB did with xenForo and their former employees when IB knew that those guys really didn't have the resources to easily fight from across the world.
But then, this is just a guess. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not even sure what a "demurral" is (except for what its standard definition is on dictionary.com). Would a "demurral" be enough to keep a potential lawsuit on your jurisdictional home turf? To a layman like me, but it doesn't even make sense that in the case of xenForo vs. IB (Jelsoft/VBulletin), that the UK got in the middle of a lawsuit between two parties that were mostly based in the same foreign country and in the same state abroad.
Apparently, you stopped reading before you got to the remote custom hardware interface hardwired into the flight controls part.
"Three major revisions of Google's Android operating system have launched..."
Really? I thought it was just one major revision.
"Android 3.0" was for tablets only. Perhaps, they should just have called it "Android 2.0 Tablet edition", which was really what it was. Take "Windows XP 32bit" users for example, it's not like they complained when "Windows XP for Netbook" came out, or when "Windows XP 64bit" came out.
And Jellybeans is just Android 4.1. That's not a major revision, that's a just minor one, hence the ".1" and the minor number of changes compared to Ice Cream Sandwich version - Android 4.0.
Wow! Politicians and corporate raiders do have a lot in common.
...made posts stating that 'WikiTravel (a trademark) was moving to WikiMedia'.
I doubt that's what they posted.
Posting the trademark symbol next to the word WikiTravel on August 18th, 2012, is illegal and it's a finable offense. The filing of the trademark only occurred on August 22nd, 2012, coincidentally just four days after the alleged incident. And no, pay no attention to "FIRST USE: 20030724. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 2003072", that part won't help them.
The fine for falsely claiming a Trademark is pretty significant. I don't think it's a mistake they would have made. You'll notice that the current site doesn't even have the trademark symbol anywhere yet, although technically they now have the right to use the symbol since August 22nd.
29. For example, on August 18, 2012, Holliday improperly and wrongfully emailed at least several hundred of Wikitravel members, purporting to be from Wikitravel and informing members that the Wikitravel Website was “migrating” to the Wikimedia Foundation. Upon information and belief, the number emailed is far greater.
I'll assume that this is still their interpretation and their paraphrasing of what happened, since there are no quotes that are used except for one single word.
So moving right along...
30. Specifically, Holliday’s email contained the Subject Line, “Important information about Wikitravel” and its body stated, “This email is being sent to you on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators since you have put some real time and effort into working on Wikitravel. We wanted to make sure that you are up to date and in the loop regarding big changes in the community that will affect the future of your work! As you may already have heard, Wikitravel’s community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation.”
Ok, now we're getting somewhere!
They're finally quoting the people they're suing. Please note the careful wording inside those quotes: "on behalf of the Wikitravel administrators" and "Wikitravel's community is looking to migrate to the Wikimedia Foundation."
Is anything of this really untrue?
It seems to me like Internet Brands only started clamping down on its unpaid volunteer administrators only after they sent this message out, so they were still formally volunteer admins at the time? Right? That's the problem of giving volunteers unfettered access to your mailing list and web site. You can't just accept the benefit of all their work, you have to also accept all the downside that could possibly come from giving them such privileges (especially if they're not getting paid by you).
Plus, it's not like Internet Brands can't have the final word in all of this. I'm sure that they promptly locked down their mailing list and possibly locked down their wiki site as well, thus possibly locking out even more existing volunteers from participating in the discussion, and then sent follow-up emails telling their own side of the story.
In the end, owning the actual mailing list and the actual site gives them the final word. And the people that were contacted will have to make up their minds whether the community is still mostly with Wikitravel, or migrated elsewhere. That being said, I'm not a lawyer, and this is only my layman opinion regarding the reported Trademark claim made in the parent post. Perhaps the other claims they're making have more teeth to them, those other parts I really know nothing about.
Don't like it? Maybe mandatory health screenings for visitors to the US, but if you even start talking about it you'll be called all sorts of names by various groups and who is going to pay for it?
The US is not the only developed country with visitors/immigrants coming from 3rd World countries, and yet it's the only developed country in the world with recurrent outbreaks of tuberculosis among its own homeless population in places like Berkeley or San Francisco.
Provide a minimum of healthcare to illegal immigrants and to the homeless population. Do not rely on Emergency Rooms for that purpose. That's the only thing we need to do. You and I both know that mandatory health screenings will only work for the people that are coming over legally and are already in the system. And it will only drive the people who are sick even more underground.
Unfortunately, the problem of paying for that kind of solution still remains. To that, I don't have an answer.
This comes from pork, so don't eat undercooked pork. Tapeworms, in general, come from raw/undercooked meat.
...and fish.
Basically, also don't eat sushi/sashimi.
Salmon for instance has one type of tapeworm, although it goes elsewhere -- not the brain. :-)
I would boycott these assholes if I'd ever heard of them.
The same for me. Plus, I love the fact that their wikipedia entry for Xenforo says: "Its popularity is growing according to feedback from various community forums and weblogs.[2]". With the citation pointing back to just one blog, its own company blog with absolutely zero comments posted on it (despite having that feature turned on).
Or, just maybe, due to the fact that this was a rape and murder, they can be certain it was a man who did it. As in, there was semen present in the victim's body that didn't belong there.
You misinterpreted what I said. I don't doubt a male (or males) did this.
It's just the reason they're giving those men for the DNA samples. If you read the summary/article, they're basically telling them: we're not saying you did anything, in fact we're mostly doing this because we want to use your dna sample to see if it matches any relative: son, father, uncle, grandfather, brother, cousin, distant cousin, etc (who refused to get tested, or who may not live in the immediate vicinity of the crime, but who may come to the area, or be familiar with the area, because of your connection to them).
And I was just pointing out, that perhaps this was a little white lie to get them to give them a sample, otherwise they would be asking for samples from the women in the area as well, since those women have brothers and uncles (from their side of the family at least) that could have done the crime as well, but that may not have any genetic material in common with the men who are willing to get tested.
Do you seriously think the courts would allow DNA evidence if it was only 25% accurate?
I personally do not, but then I would have to take a look at the kind of dna samples sent and the lab results in question. DNA lab results usually come with all kinds of qualifications and disclaimers anyhow.
And just like fingerprints has edge cases, where the fingerprint is only partial and incomplete, it could also happen that the dna samples have edge cases as well, where the dna is is too degraded or incomplete to reach the right conclusion.
That's why courts not only rely on dna evidence, but they also rely on expert testimony from both sides (assuming there is enough money on both sides) to interpret those results.
Individuals answer the question differently. What happens if you say no, I wonder?
"No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
Essentially, they're doing the same thing we're already doing in the US. If you say no, the authorities start implying that you're probably the guilty party. They start investigating you as the real suspect, and during the course of their investigation into your background, it becomes clear to all your friends, girlfriend/wife, coworkers, and family members, that you must have refused to supply them with your dna sample, or refused to take the lie detector test (otherwise, they wouldn't be asking such questions).
And they're claiming they're looking for "family members", but notice they're not asking for dna samples from female participants. Either this is a little white lie designed to minimize the outrage the men must be feeling at being singled out, or perhaps they're hoping to nab a male teenager through the analysis of his fathers' dna (since getting dna from hundreds of male teenagers in the vicinity may actually be harder to achieve politically) .
Why go to all those troubles when the off button would work just as well?
It's a fashion accessory issue. Faraday envelopes can double as hats just in case. And with a powered-on phone inside a faraday envelope, you wouldn't need to wear a watch anymore -- completely covered in tin foil.
This looks like click-bait, but I just can't help myself.
In our capitalist society, robots already have limited rights by virtue of the fact that they're private property and they're still going to be expensive (for a little while at least). That fact alone gives more protection to robots than most dogs, from outsiders who may want to harm our pets, or damage our robots.
And I don't see a law protecting a robot from its own owner anytime soon. Cruelty to a robot is not even going to be considered an issue. Now, if we're talking about a visually impaired person having his prosthetic camera-eye forcibly ripped out of his head, then yes, that would be hell of cruel, but cruel to the visually impaired disabled person, not necessarily cruel to the tool.
the reality is: there's zero guarantee they'll stand up to the government, something twitter actually does.
Yeah, and how long is this going to last?
Twitter has only proven that they could be bought with the NBC censorship debacle, going against their own terms of services. Now governments just need to invest millions of dollars in regular ad campaigns with Twitter and then threaten to pull out whenever they want something censored.
It was actually a pretty smart move on their part. By doing that, Twitter has shown that they can't be intimidated, but that at least they can be bought -- assuming the amount of money is high enough. Perhaps other online companies could learn a thing or two from Twitter. There is profit in not acquiescing to censorship requests right away. If they can't bully you to do something right away, they may pay you handsomely -- if you can hold out long enough until then.
tell me how this is any different from xmpp+chatrooms+db+php rss feeds?
It wouldn't be.
In any case, with kickstarters concepts, you don't usually just invest in the idea. You invest in the people first and foremost. For instance, if the creator of a previous online service I had been using and I actually liked, were to start a kickstarters' project, and if his idea was decent (not great, but decent enough), I might chip in $50, even if the project went no where.
That being said, I don't know the guy. I've never used his previous project before, so I'm just going to watch from the sidelines. I wish him luck. If nothing else, this kickstarters project should be viewed as a meaningful petition that many Twitter addicts (and third party developers) are starting to get fed up with the service.
the 'failure' of the linux desktop is basically applications. libreoffice and linux gaming initiatives are the way to win that battle. making a prettier desktop is not.
Why does it need to win anything? For me, in my home at least, linux desktop won less than a year ago. That's the time I reformatted my last remaining dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu laptop with only Ubuntu (I really didn't need Windows anymore, it's not that I'm some kind of linux evangelist). Now, I have no Windows machine/software in sight.
I'm perfectly satisfied with Ubuntu/linux desktop as it is. And no, I'm not even one of the "kernel people" Icaza keeps referring to (by the way, I love the imagery of tiny little kernel people or little gnome people running around and blaming each other). I'm an actual Linux/Ubuntu desktop user. I don't need games on my desktop. I have enough games on my other devices. I'm spending way too much time playing games anyway. Between LibreOffice and Google Docs, I really don't need anything more elaborate. Gimp, I do not know how to use well yet, but then again, I never learned how to use Photoshop well either.
My opinion is that this Icaza guy is still stuck in the 90s. He wants to make linux desktop into something Windows was twenty years ago. And yet, very few people still use their desktop the way they used to use it twenty years ago. We all have many devices, whether those devices are smart TVs, small internet appliances, consoles, smart phones, or tablets. And many of us are heavily using free/freemium online services, for things that we could only do traditionally on dedicated specialized desktop software. And for the many that do want to depend less on online services, they have their own external hard drives and/or homegrown entertainment/specialized setups.
It's a fragmented world out there and it's only getting more fragmented. I realize that the term fragmentation is usually used in a negative context, but that's not int the context I'm using it right now. Why not embrace the fragmentation instead of fighting against it? After all, one can only control what he purchases for himself, or his family. He can't absolutely control what devices/computers his neighbor is going to get.
As long as I'm not considered an eccentric candidate for sending my resume in pdf (in addition to the doc format in case the formatting doesn't transfer 100%). And as long I can print from my desktop at home, or even print directly from my phone when I'm at a Kinkos' Fedex office. And find movies/televisions/radio shows that can play easily on most of my devices. And that my devices at home can do transfers with each other, even if they're not by the same maker, which they already do. That's all I really want.
Of course, others' experiences may vary, some may not consider the war won yet, and that's ok with me. Just do not expect my allegiance when you try to imply that I'm enlisted in your imaginary war.
Low rents? Is there truly lower rent in large cities across the US?
That's certainly not the case in San Francisco (unless you're under rent control), and especially not for businesses. In San Francisco, you not only get filth, falsified lowered crime statistics, and a broken infrastructure, but you also get sky high rent. One could argue that the folks under rent control pay little, but it's not like anyone under rent control is ever to give up their apartments, so that just increases the scarcity and the rent for everyone else.
The one reason people will pick San Francisco over the surrounding suburbs is because of the night life. It's not like the surrounding suburbs have no night life, or that you couldn't drive in once in a while. It's just that San Francisco has so much night life relative to the suburbs, some people just refuse to live far away from the city for that reason. And also, there is the jobs issue. People like to live where the jobs are. A one to two hour commute every day each way takes away a lot of your personal time.
Emergency services needs reliability. If your department can't afford a few mobile broadband units, you should seriously look into throwing a couple more raffles or asking for more money from the city/county/township/state.
The guy is a volunteer firefighter. His fire department is most likely all volunteers, with probably little -- to no budget.
Having reliable tools and services for emergencies is great, but government-based emergency services can be notoriously slow at adapting to changing circumstances and at adopting/trying out new technologies.
This is why you need to the people on the front-lines to do their own experimenting. If soldiers in Iraq for instance, had really waited for the next round of funding to get the body armor they needed, or the gps units they needed, instead of jerry-rigging their own version of body armor, or asking their family back home to buy them civilian gps units from Costco, many more would have died if they had not been allowed to use their own make-shift half-fast solutions.
And besides, no one is arguing that firefighters should give up on their existing communication infrastructure, to try out this new approach. This new approach would most likely be used in conjunction with those existing communication channels, trying to supplement them, not replace them (unless of course, those existing channels/tools had become non-operational, or over saturated for some reason, like they were on 9/11, or during Katrina).
I have to wonder though, what's wrong with good old fashioned radios.
If you're stuck under some rubbles somewhere, or if the cell towers are non-operational and you can't be notified of an extreme emergency coming your way, the chances that you'll have a cell phone on you instead of a two-radio radio may be higher.
That's why having some fire departments maintain their own licensed ad-hoc portable gsm emergency networks may not be such a bad idea. The truck ladders could be used to place antennas on high, or even have antennas affixed to them. Not to mention, such portable mobile gsm networks could probably be used for triangulation purposes.
And as a volunteer fire department, if you ever want to help out other Counties, or other States/Countries, to help during their major disasters. Your equipment and your budding expertise in this technical area could suddenly become very valuable there too.
Actually except for Jellybeans (which doesn't have an HTC Sense equivalent yet), I'd choose HTC Sense over vanilla android in most cases (which is not to say that I like Samsungs' TouchWiz or Motorolas' MotoBlur, I think those tend to hurt vanilla android more they help). Even when I select a custom ROM, I tend to gravitate toward the ROMs based on Sense (which may not be entirely legal, but thus far they haven't pursued anybody).
With HTC, I've never had my gps google maps voice navigation get laggy, or force close on me. Plus HTC usually has the best looking clock widgets, a decent selection of attractive wallpapers, and the smoothest phone contacts scrolling interaction. Those little details make a huge difference in my opinion.
Really, the only Samsung/TouchWiz device I'd really salivate over would be the Samsung Galaxy Note (not its HTC Flyer equivalent), but even there, the low sound volume that Samsung phones usually have could be a showstopper for me (so I'd have to double-check that before I ever go that route).
Mentioning where I live (if it is not obvious already) would introduce a juicy red herring.
Yes, referencing the year and the "aggressive" nature of the enemy kind of gave it away.
If you do it well, fame will be yours. If you sell it well, fortune too. Unless there is no demand for this feature.
Oh no, there is a demand for this feature. There are even a few Android ROMs that have this feature. Personally, I had such a ROM installed for about a week, before I gave up on it and reverted to a different ROM. As it turns out, the Googe Maps/Navigation auto-complete feature is much easier and more convenient to use if your phone doesn't have short-term amnesia between uses. And yes, I admit it. I am trading privacy for convenience and ease of use. Thought, I don't mind it.
If you just browse the xda forums a little bit, you'll see that there are many people that care about privacy, and are willing to pay the price of privacy in terms of ease of use and convenience, much more than I do. So do not take my example as proof that there is no demand, there is actually a demand. It's just that there is already plenty of existing grassroots competition for that kind of feature in the rooted custom-ROM Android ecosystem.
As an American, I already use Baidu for search. I might as well buy myself a tablet that phones home to he Kremlin. For the things that I'm doing on the internet, I'm much more afraid of the American mafia than the Chinese triads, or the Russian mob. Of course, your circumstances will vary. If I was in China, I would probably be avoiding Baidu. And if I was in Russia, I'd probably avoid any churches where singing was going on.
Why is this even news? Even China did the same. It would be irresponsible not to.
For Russia, it's the North Pole. And for China, it was the Tibet. If you let an American company suddenly do your mapping for you, or tell you where you're standing with their satellites, then you might as well kiss whatever new territory you just claimed an hour ago good bye.
It's a steep slippery slope. One day, the North pole is gone. The next day, Moscow is part of Alaska. And your average citizen doesn't have a clue because he's too busy drinking vodka and industrial alcohol and looking at his phone for gps directions.