Anything you say can and will be used against you. Nothing you say, to the police or other second parties [unless under oath], can or will be used to help you.
So, yes it's evidence because you said it, and anything you say directly can be used as evidence for or against you.
Now, this case is a bit worrying. Sure she's a DUI driver and she should be punished and have her right to drive taken away.
The article doesn't state clearly whether deleting her facebook account was part of some plea bargain deal or not. In either case, it's disturbing. No judge or prosecutor should be making deals or orders to take away free speech rights, free association rights, freedom of press rights.
Let's face it, FB and Google+ and other social networking sites are the personal blogs of many "ordinary" people. Some people have real blogs. Blogs are the new priinting press. Let's face lots of us get news from bloggers and friends on FB or/. or wherever. Newspapers are dead. News magazines aren't far behind. This [the inrternet] is the new Soap Box in the town square. Forcing a person to delete a FB account is thse same as ordering them not to jump on a soap box in front of City Hall.
This sets a very disturbing precedent. As much as I hate FB and would not shed a tear at it's closure.
DeBeers had an office in the US. They used to own the diamond mine down in Arkansas. But due to the Apartheid thing, and the price fixing, they were forced out, and on the way out they dynamited the diamond mine rather than leave an operation working mine. Almost all the diamonds coming out of Diamond Crater are gem quality. The Star of Arkansas came from there. A beautiful colored diamond.
Diamonds are very common. However, large carat diamonds are not. Very large diamonds are indeed quite rare. As well as the fancy color diamonds. Red diamonds being quite rare indeed. Why people are willing to pay so much for plain old white diamonds is a mystery to me. Certainly flawless diamonds are more rare, but considering DeBeers, et al are sitting on the motherlode of them, it's hard to know just how much more rare they are, if at all.
Actually, I consider my fact #2 to quite a strong argument, unless of course you see nothing wrong with a National infrastructure designed to be able to track any given individual and hence by definition *every single individual* in the US 24/7/365.25, to be nothing to worry about.
I for one find it deeply disturbing that anyone in the US even thinks this is even remotely a good idea, and not at the least not in the top three most insidious ideas ever put forward. I can tell you one thing if it ever happens, I'm out of here. Now matter what the personal cost is to me and my family. I'd rather live in China, than a country tracking me everywhere I go. No matter how non-existent or insignificant a target I might be.
And had you bothered to even read my coment, rather than knee-jerk rea-act because I dared attack a comment that was clearly as over-the-top as the tin-foil hat comments, that my arguemnt wasn't all about things happening in the past, but mostly things happening in the now and in planning/implementing stages.
But apparently no argument short of a Stalin Death March proof will be strong enough for you. Hence you must be a troll or a fool who waits because first they came for the Free Press, but you weren't the Frees Press, then they came for the Socialists, but you weren't a Socialist, then they Democrats but you weren't a Democrat, then they came for the Catholics, but you weren't a Catholic, then they came for you type of person.
One person's paranoid delusion is another person's rational conclusion based on the facts and evidence available.
Fact, the Feds have build a huge database on every person in America.
Fact, the Feds want to build a National Facial recognition system to track every citzen in America.
Fact, the Feds have made wide indiscriminate tapping of inbound and outbound international phone calls in secret hidden and without reasonable suspicion.
Fact, the Feds have a long history of lying to and deception of the public. Some of which is necessary in order to do their job.
Need I go on?
The fact these were UDIDs and other information was not either released with it or contained in the database, neither helps nor harms Anon's claim. While the UDIDs may not be much use alone, and the claim they came from a laptop was always suspect, it would not surprise me to see a Fed agent with such a list and not encrypted. Since the list could simply be a useful tool in the field which could be later tied in to a real and complete db. But that's pretty thin.
You're absolutely right! The governement has no desire or plans to track every person in America. If they wanted to track every person in America, they'd just install/tap into a nationwide facial recognition network, which we know they'd never... oh wait...
you mean they are installing a nationwide facial recognition system? Well, they'd never implement a nationwide database of every person's DNA they could get their hands on. What? Oh.
Well at least they aren't compiling a list to track identities of every person in America. Say what?
The simplest answer is Blue Toad is doing outsourced work for the FBI or another agency. Or it's as the article says, they have those ids because the've sold stuff to 11 million unique iPxd devices. Or both. What better cover than start a legitimate company selling to Peter and Paul at the same time. It's possible the DOS/DOD/FBI has outsourced this for multiple reasons. Not the least of which *might* be deniability. UDID? Us? No way. Never. That would be our sub-contractor's job. The gov't routinely outsources work to properly screened clearance approved private companies. Considering Blue Toad had the data.
The next question should be, "Why did Blue Toad have 11 miilion UDIDs from Apple and where did they get it from?"
Not, "Oh well that's not the FBI, why did Anonymous lie?"
Perhaps Anon knows that the FBI contacted Blue toad to get these ids, but can't say so, without risking exposing themselves?
Nope, the whole thing stinks. I'm more inclined to believe Blue Toad is shovelling something, and it's not chocolate shavings from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Mountain.Their whole business model seems bizarre. But then, I'm not an iPad user, and never heard of Blue Toad before today.
One thing: While they may refuse to let you on a flight, you have a legally binding contract with them (you should really read those plane tickets and the laws related to them sometime), and they are legally required to complete their contract. Either with them or on another carrier. There are situations in which they can break that, but none of those apply here. And in those cases they are required to cover the costs (including any reasonable hotel, restaurant and incidental costs) to make you whole and get you to your destination. So it's not analogous to a Starbucks. They can't just "kick you out". Also, if Star Buck had already taken your money, but not yet delivered your drinks and whatever else you purchased, thay can't just kick you out. They would have to:
a) refund your money, or
b) fulfill the contractual sale.
But airlines can't just refund your money and leave you potentially stranded far from your home, or your destination. Unless you are on a no fly list, or for other legal reasons. They can refuse to allow you to board if not properly attired. But since he consented to change his shirt, they didn't have that for a reason. Too bad he didn't know his full rights, and make them put him on a competitors flight at their cost.
Hell, I know you won't find me driving through the streets of Detroit. The only way I'd send aid to Detroit is an air-drop. That place is a freaking War Zone.
Which would be true. The legal drugs you can buy in Canada are made in the US, and sold much cheaper in Canada than in the US. This is why so many people in border states would drive across the border and fill prescriptions there. The US passed a law [or tried to, I don't recall and too lazy to look it up] against that I think, or forced Canada to do so. Hence the origin of the Canadian Internet pharmacies. Which then attracted all the counterfeits.
Now had he been selling counterfeit drugs, they wouldn't have needed to add the "foreign and". Since they have linked them together, they only need to prove one to get a conviction.
Personally, if I could know for certain that I could order "Canadian" drugs from an online Canadian pharmacy, and that the US Customs wouldn't divert them, I'd buy from them. But the Pharma Companies have the US Gov't in their pocket and with both hands in our pockets in the form of ridiculously high prices in one hand and a big chunk of our taxpayers dollars in the other. It's list a fistful of dollars, except with both hands.
That's funny, I could swear my hearing aid picks up sound in more than one direction. I can hear in front of me, behind me, to the side, not as much from the other side, as my thick skull and wet brain seem to do a handy job of blocking and absorbing sound from that direction. A hearing aid microphone might point mono-directionally, but is definitely not mono-directional.
It can also have numerous stored filters, easily switchable. Furthermore frequencies that have gone deaf can sometimes be compensated for by vibrationally triggering the hammer. I know they do this from the hearing tests they give me in figuring out what to program. Some of the tests send sound through my skull behind my ear, and not into my ear. But that's only because I have a functioning drum and hammer. Not everyone does. There is as much variation in hearing loss as in makes and models of cars.
You're oversimplifying. While it may take nothing to calculate the filter, each filter has to be individually programmed into a device built to fit in 1/4 of in space or less, including the battery, that has to be connected, and if not blue-tooth enabled physically so, to a computer or device to upload the programmed filter(s).
Not to mention it then has to be installed into a custom made plastic shell, which has to be thick and strong enough to not break by being held and manipulated daily for 365 days of the year for 3 years (the standard warranty on such a device), and continue to work for at least 17,520 hours. All of which again has to be.25" or less. Now, of course, that doesn't mean the prices are not inflated they certainly are, but perhaps not as much the questioner is leading/. to believe. Knee-jerk reactions. Personally, I would love to not spend the price of a car on a pair of hearing aids, but being able to swim AND hear my children at the same time? Priceless.
You do realize all these components are miniaturized so as to fit in or behind one's ear. This is not some commercially available chip that is.5" this is a device the entire contents of which may be.1" or less. I have one in my ear right now. A large part of the cost is these are not made in mass quantities to 10s of millions of people. It's partly market. It's partly miniaturization. These aren't simple filters. I hear in certain frequencies and amplitudes and the filter is preset at the manufacturer, and hand tuned by an actual person with a computer software package in a physical office. It often takes several minutes to do this. So the $$$$ goes to:
1) the manufacturer who is using the supply-demand pricing scheme,
2) the people who wrote the software to do the filtering,
3 the people in the factory/warehouse who operate the computer, to connect to and program each and every device, one at a time,
4) the people in the office who need to be there to fine tune and repair the devices, often with 3 year warranties fully paid for, shipping, parts and labor,
5) the cost of maintaining physical stores to distribute them.
Are they all making huge profits? Probably. But you're not going to see these selling for a few hundred dollars, because it would be a losing deal. It probably costs at least few hundred to make these, cover repairs, and cover the cost of selling them. They could definitely be cheaper. But you are all ignoring lots of factors. Each device is custom made to order, with different filters individually set. You can't mass produce this like an iPad or a Model T Ford. There has to be at least two people in the mix to hook the device up to a PC and set the filter. I will on average have a device in for fully paid repairs 3-10 during the life of the warranty. These are tiny devices and very delicate. Wires are almost microscopic, and soldered joints ARE microscopic.
But you can get a hearing aid for under $1000. Just not the fancy blue-tooth, enabled, digitally tuned, remotely programmable, waterproof to three feet version I have in my ear. If you are hard pressed for money and can't afford $1000-$1500 for a basic hearing aid, there are many source that will pay all or part of it for you.
Now you know more of the "rest of the story". It's not all black and white.
I for one welcome our very own WAL2000* home automation overlord...
As long as it isn't in any house I'm in. I don't want to be there when the house OS Blue Screens. It could give a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
News flash: A family in New Jersey was locked inside their house, and killed by the house automation security system, due to a bug in the code that loads the defense protocols before loading the authorized users list. Oops!
* If you need this explained, please hand over your geeks creds at the door.
The reason Linux on the desktop isn't happening, is because MS controls that, with huge financial penalties for any manufacturer who install Linux on machines.
People don't necessarily care what OS they are using, as long as it is the one that comes installed on their shiny new computer. If you start shipping computers with no OS, and just a choice screen asking the user which OS to install, and giving the price of each, then you'll see Linux take off on the desktop in a hurry.
Let me sum up Barbara-not-Barbie's complaint about Linux.
Linux has no native SimCity4 release.
Based on her post, she claims to have years of experience with Linux, but hasn't learned how to export her data from her mail client, webbrowser, and other applications to import in a new distro. Nor knows how to create a home partition that doesn't get upgraded. But complains about problems when trying to use upgrade functions, that have warnings in the most pronounced ways possible to not use them in many places popular with Linux folks. Then when she couldn't come up with a problem for Mint invents some phony BS about them not knowing which direction they are going. WTF!? So, Ubuntu with it's near infinite flavors is more stable? I've not seen anything but rock-solid stability in Mint. Total BS. Barbara-not-Barbie gets -5 street cred for just the Mint comment. Then she slams Linux servers, which are so unstable they run half the Internet. Well, howdie do Bill! Glad to see you coming out of retirement, for another pot shot at Linux.
Anyone who says they don't know which version to recommend is a troll.
That's my official stand.
If you're using Linux, and you wanted to introduce a friend to Linux, then it's only natural you'd
recommend the distro you run. Since you'll be supporting it. Or a user-friendly Linux in the same "family", and is well known.
For desktops, there's: Ubuntu, RH, SuSE, and Mint at or near the top. All offering slight differences, and most from different "families".
Any Linux user worth his/her salt knows these things.
The BS that "there are over 100 distros, what do I recommend?", whining is disingenuous. There are over 100 different makers of golf clubs, which do I recommend. There are over a 100 different restaurants in my area which one do I recommend? Etc. As PJ would say, puh-lease!
My wife is a total PC illiterate, and yet she has no problem using a Linux desktop. Then of course you have all those millions using Linux in smartphones and what not. Linux, in my opinion is way more user-friendly than Windows. On several list I belong to which are geek oriented (mostly old people searching genealogy), I am constantly reminded of how useful Linux is, by calls fro help from Windows users. Those of us on the list using Macs and Linux offer help to get them to a point where they can get close to the same functionality out of Windows, that is just a no-brainer in Linux or Macs. Ever tried printing to a file, and having a usable (ie can open in an OTS app) in Out-of-the-Box Windows? I can't be done. You get [filename].prn. PRN? WTF? Where's the PDF print? Oh you have to buy something to get that.
Besides, the market isn't in Desktops anymore. That is so 20th Century. The future is portables, which has, umm..., no real Windows footprint. It's all Apple and Linux baby. So KDE and Gnome better get their shit together, and get ports done. Like yesterday.
Based on your inability to be sure if you could read data from servers on which you have root access makes me glad I don't have you or your company as a provider. As a person who has root level access to computers running cloud services, I can assure you, I CAN read every single unencrypted file on the server. As root, I have access to all the public keys and many private keys, and can unlock many of the encrypted files on the systems with those keys. Only uploaded files encrypted off-line, with keys and passwords I don't have access to, are safe from my prying eyes. But having access to them and having access to some of your encrypted passwords and possibly public/private keys, I have lots of data to use to crack open any secrets you upload to my servers.
You might want to consider a different line of work..
All I have to add is, politicians should beware the Ides of March. The blood of Patriots runs through many Americans. It's only a matter of time until the pot boils over into another Revolution.
Fat chance that will happen. The MPAA is not about to let any politician do anything even remotely intelligent like that. Although this move by Australia is hardly surprising post MegaUpload. So the Us Gov't is complaining that not enough countries are using US based cloud services so they don't need to deal with all that messy coordinated policing of all those darned filesharers outside the US who are singlehandedly killing the profits of those Golden Cows worshipped by Washington, DC (MPAA & RIAA)?
This looks like a job for... Captain Obvious! Defender of the Unthinking and Free (DUF). Keeper of the Faith and Ultimate Defender (FUD) of the Idiot Populace (IP).
Furthermore the US does send aid to Europe, also. I know for a fact they sent money and humanitarian aid to Czechoslovakia, several years ago because of flooding.
1) MS has been historically a bully and no one likes bullies.
2) MS is still a bully, but now a bully with a gang of surrogates. Rather than doing the bullying out in the open they send their legions to do it.
3) MS has been two-faced. "Do as I say, not as I do".
4) MS is still two-faced.
5) MS has been a thief, stealing other people's code. There are many lawsuits proving this. Stacker compression being just one case.
6) MS has been petty to companies and yes the members of the press.
7) Members of the press have long memories.
8) This is getting to be a long list. you get the picture, I hope.
9) There are lots of features in MS products that are there, because exactly one person asked for it. Making programs bulky, and error prone.
10) MS products are millions of lines of code maintained with patch after patch over decades and reused, based on a design that lacked vision (which is admittedly a difficult thing to have, Steve Jobs was one of those few visionaries).
The lesson we learn here is if you do evil, lack vision, are too greedy, and don't play nice with others, people won't like you. Hence MS is only reaping the rewards of decades of arduous planting of seeds they have sown. Or you reap what you sow.
Slashdot Mirror
BS. No they don't I've deleted my account before and rejoined using thre same email address.
Anything you say can and will be used against you. Nothing you say, to the police or other second parties [unless under oath], can or will be used to help you.
So, yes it's evidence because you said it, and anything you say directly can be used as evidence for or against you.
Now, this case is a bit worrying. Sure she's a DUI driver and she should be punished and have her right to drive taken away.
The article doesn't state clearly whether deleting her facebook account was part of some plea bargain deal or not. In either case, it's disturbing. No judge or prosecutor should be making deals or orders to take away free speech rights, free association rights, freedom of press rights.
Let's face it, FB and Google+ and other social networking sites are the personal blogs of many "ordinary" people. Some people have real blogs. Blogs are the new priinting press. Let's face lots of us get news from bloggers and friends on FB or /. or wherever. Newspapers are dead. News magazines aren't far behind. This [the inrternet] is the new Soap Box in the town square. Forcing a person to delete a FB account is thse same as ordering them not to jump on a soap box in front of City Hall.
This sets a very disturbing precedent. As much as I hate FB and would not shed a tear at it's closure.
DeBeers had an office in the US. They used to own the diamond mine down in Arkansas. But due to the Apartheid thing, and the price fixing, they were forced out, and on the way out they dynamited the diamond mine rather than leave an operation working mine. Almost all the diamonds coming out of Diamond Crater are gem quality. The Star of Arkansas came from there. A beautiful colored diamond.
Diamonds are very common. However, large carat diamonds are not. Very large diamonds are indeed quite rare. As well as the fancy color diamonds. Red diamonds being quite rare indeed. Why people are willing to pay so much for plain old white diamonds is a mystery to me. Certainly flawless diamonds are more rare, but considering DeBeers, et al are sitting on the motherlode of them, it's hard to know just how much more rare they are, if at all.
Actually, I consider my fact #2 to quite a strong argument, unless of course you see nothing wrong with a National infrastructure designed to be able to track any given individual and hence by definition *every single individual* in the US 24/7/365.25, to be nothing to worry about.
I for one find it deeply disturbing that anyone in the US even thinks this is even remotely a good idea, and not at the least not in the top three most insidious ideas ever put forward. I can tell you one thing if it ever happens, I'm out of here. Now matter what the personal cost is to me and my family. I'd rather live in China, than a country tracking me everywhere I go. No matter how non-existent or insignificant a target I might be.
And had you bothered to even read my coment, rather than knee-jerk rea-act because I dared attack a comment that was clearly as over-the-top as the tin-foil hat comments, that my arguemnt wasn't all about things happening in the past, but mostly things happening in the now and in planning/implementing stages.
But apparently no argument short of a Stalin Death March proof will be strong enough for you. Hence you must be a troll or a fool who waits because first they came for the Free Press, but you weren't the Frees Press, then they came for the Socialists, but you weren't a Socialist, then they Democrats but you weren't a Democrat, then they came for the Catholics, but you weren't a Catholic, then they came for you type of person.
One person's paranoid delusion is another person's rational conclusion based on the facts and evidence available.
Fact, the Feds have build a huge database on every person in America.
Fact, the Feds want to build a National Facial recognition system to track every citzen in America.
Fact, the Feds have made wide indiscriminate tapping of inbound and outbound international phone calls in secret hidden and without reasonable suspicion.
Fact, the Feds have a long history of lying to and deception of the public. Some of which is necessary in order to do their job.
Need I go on?
The fact these were UDIDs and other information was not either released with it or contained in the database, neither helps nor harms Anon's claim. While the UDIDs may not be much use alone, and the claim they came from a laptop was always suspect, it would not surprise me to see a Fed agent with such a list and not encrypted. Since the list could simply be a useful tool in the field which could be later tied in to a real and complete db. But that's pretty thin.
You're absolutely right! The governement has no desire or plans to track every person in America. If they wanted to track every person in America, they'd just install/tap into a nationwide facial recognition network, which we know they'd never ... oh wait ...
you mean they are installing a nationwide facial recognition system? Well, they'd never implement a nationwide database of every person's DNA they could get their hands on. What? Oh.
Well at least they aren't compiling a list to track identities of every person in America. Say what?
Um, oh, well nevermind.
The simplest answer is Blue Toad is doing outsourced work for the FBI or another agency. Or it's as the article says, they have those ids because the've sold stuff to 11 million unique iPxd devices. Or both. What better cover than start a legitimate company selling to Peter and Paul at the same time. It's possible the DOS/DOD/FBI has outsourced this for multiple reasons. Not the least of which *might* be deniability. UDID? Us? No way. Never. That would be our sub-contractor's job. The gov't routinely outsources work to properly screened clearance approved private companies. Considering Blue Toad had the data.
The next question should be, "Why did Blue Toad have 11 miilion UDIDs from Apple and where did they get it from?"
Not, "Oh well that's not the FBI, why did Anonymous lie?"
Perhaps Anon knows that the FBI contacted Blue toad to get these ids, but can't say so, without risking exposing themselves?
Nope, the whole thing stinks. I'm more inclined to believe Blue Toad is shovelling something, and it's not chocolate shavings from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Mountain.Their whole business model seems bizarre. But then, I'm not an iPad user, and never heard of Blue Toad before today.
One thing: While they may refuse to let you on a flight, you have a legally binding contract with them (you should really read those plane tickets and the laws related to them sometime), and they are legally required to complete their contract. Either with them or on another carrier. There are situations in which they can break that, but none of those apply here. And in those cases they are required to cover the costs (including any reasonable hotel, restaurant and incidental costs) to make you whole and get you to your destination. So it's not analogous to a Starbucks. They can't just "kick you out". Also, if Star Buck had already taken your money, but not yet delivered your drinks and whatever else you purchased, thay can't just kick you out. They would have to:
a) refund your money, or
b) fulfill the contractual sale.
But airlines can't just refund your money and leave you potentially stranded far from your home, or your destination. Unless you are on a no fly list, or for other legal reasons. They can refuse to allow you to board if not properly attired. But since he consented to change his shirt, they didn't have that for a reason. Too bad he didn't know his full rights, and make them put him on a competitors flight at their cost.
Hell, I know you won't find me driving through the streets of Detroit. The only way I'd send aid to Detroit is an air-drop. That place is a freaking War Zone.
One point that should be made.
The FDA has charged him with:
Which would be true. The legal drugs you can buy in Canada are made in the US, and sold much cheaper in Canada than in the US. This is why so many people in border states would drive across the border and fill prescriptions there. The US passed a law [or tried to, I don't recall and too lazy to look it up] against that I think, or forced Canada to do so. Hence the origin of the Canadian Internet pharmacies. Which then attracted all the counterfeits.
Now had he been selling counterfeit drugs, they wouldn't have needed to add the "foreign and". Since they have linked them together, they only need to prove one to get a conviction.
Personally, if I could know for certain that I could order "Canadian" drugs from an online Canadian pharmacy, and that the US Customs wouldn't divert them, I'd buy from them. But the Pharma Companies have the US Gov't in their pocket and with both hands in our pockets in the form of ridiculously high prices in one hand and a big chunk of our taxpayers dollars in the other. It's list a fistful of dollars, except with both hands.
Except for the salary of the person who has to do it.
Mine also does blue-tooth to the HDTV.
That's funny, I could swear my hearing aid picks up sound in more than one direction. I can hear in front of me, behind me, to the side, not as much from the other side, as my thick skull and wet brain seem to do a handy job of blocking and absorbing sound from that direction. A hearing aid microphone might point mono-directionally, but is definitely not mono-directional.
It can also have numerous stored filters, easily switchable. Furthermore frequencies that have gone deaf can sometimes be compensated for by vibrationally triggering the hammer. I know they do this from the hearing tests they give me in figuring out what to program. Some of the tests send sound through my skull behind my ear, and not into my ear. But that's only because I have a functioning drum and hammer. Not everyone does. There is as much variation in hearing loss as in makes and models of cars.
You're oversimplifying. While it may take nothing to calculate the filter, each filter has to be individually programmed into a device built to fit in 1/4 of in space or less, including the battery, that has to be connected, and if not blue-tooth enabled physically so, to a computer or device to upload the programmed filter(s).
Not to mention it then has to be installed into a custom made plastic shell, which has to be thick and strong enough to not break by being held and manipulated daily for 365 days of the year for 3 years (the standard warranty on such a device), and continue to work for at least 17,520 hours. All of which again has to be .25" or less. Now, of course, that doesn't mean the prices are not inflated they certainly are, but perhaps not as much the questioner is leading /. to believe. Knee-jerk reactions. Personally, I would love to not spend the price of a car on a pair of hearing aids, but being able to swim AND hear my children at the same time? Priceless.
You do realize all these components are miniaturized so as to fit in or behind one's ear. This is not some commercially available chip that is .5" this is a device the entire contents of which may be .1" or less. I have one in my ear right now. A large part of the cost is these are not made in mass quantities to 10s of millions of people. It's partly market. It's partly miniaturization. These aren't simple filters. I hear in certain frequencies and amplitudes and the filter is preset at the manufacturer, and hand tuned by an actual person with a computer software package in a physical office. It often takes several minutes to do this. So the $$$$ goes to:
1) the manufacturer who is using the supply-demand pricing scheme,
2) the people who wrote the software to do the filtering,
3 the people in the factory/warehouse who operate the computer, to connect to and program each and every device, one at a time,
4) the people in the office who need to be there to fine tune and repair the devices, often with 3 year warranties fully paid for, shipping, parts and labor,
5) the cost of maintaining physical stores to distribute them.
Are they all making huge profits? Probably. But you're not going to see these selling for a few hundred dollars, because it would be a losing deal. It probably costs at least few hundred to make these, cover repairs, and cover the cost of selling them. They could definitely be cheaper. But you are all ignoring lots of factors. Each device is custom made to order, with different filters individually set. You can't mass produce this like an iPad or a Model T Ford. There has to be at least two people in the mix to hook the device up to a PC and set the filter. I will on average have a device in for fully paid repairs 3-10 during the life of the warranty. These are tiny devices and very delicate. Wires are almost microscopic, and soldered joints ARE microscopic.
But you can get a hearing aid for under $1000. Just not the fancy blue-tooth, enabled, digitally tuned, remotely programmable, waterproof to three feet version I have in my ear. If you are hard pressed for money and can't afford $1000-$1500 for a basic hearing aid, there are many source that will pay all or part of it for you.
Now you know more of the "rest of the story". It's not all black and white.
I for one welcome our very own WAL2000* home automation overlord...
As long as it isn't in any house I'm in. I don't want to be there when the house OS Blue Screens. It could give a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
News flash: A family in New Jersey was locked inside their house, and killed by the house automation security system, due to a bug in the code that loads the defense protocols before loading the authorized users list. Oops!
* If you need this explained, please hand over your geeks creds at the door.
The reason Linux on the desktop isn't happening, is because MS controls that, with huge financial penalties for any manufacturer who install Linux on machines.
People don't necessarily care what OS they are using, as long as it is the one that comes installed on their shiny new computer. If you start shipping computers with no OS, and just a choice screen asking the user which OS to install, and giving the price of each, then you'll see Linux take off on the desktop in a hurry.
What a load of bull.
Let me sum up Barbara-not-Barbie's complaint about Linux.
Linux has no native SimCity4 release.
Based on her post, she claims to have years of experience with Linux, but hasn't learned how to export her data from her mail client, webbrowser, and other applications to import in a new distro. Nor knows how to create a home partition that doesn't get upgraded. But complains about problems when trying to use upgrade functions, that have warnings in the most pronounced ways possible to not use them in many places popular with Linux folks. Then when she couldn't come up with a problem for Mint invents some phony BS about them not knowing which direction they are going. WTF!? So, Ubuntu with it's near infinite flavors is more stable? I've not seen anything but rock-solid stability in Mint. Total BS. Barbara-not-Barbie gets -5 street cred for just the Mint comment. Then she slams Linux servers, which are so unstable they run half the Internet. Well, howdie do Bill! Glad to see you coming out of retirement, for another pot shot at Linux.
Sorry, this is all the troll feeding time I have.
Anyone who says they don't know which version to recommend is a troll.
That's my official stand.
If you're using Linux, and you wanted to introduce a friend to Linux, then it's only natural you'd recommend the distro you run. Since you'll be supporting it. Or a user-friendly Linux in the same "family", and is well known.
For desktops, there's: Ubuntu, RH, SuSE, and Mint at or near the top. All offering slight differences, and most from different "families".
Then of course there is DistroWatch.
Any Linux user worth his/her salt knows these things.
The BS that "there are over 100 distros, what do I recommend?", whining is disingenuous. There are over 100 different makers of golf clubs, which do I recommend. There are over a 100 different restaurants in my area which one do I recommend? Etc. As PJ would say, puh-lease!
My wife is a total PC illiterate, and yet she has no problem using a Linux desktop. Then of course you have all those millions using Linux in smartphones and what not. Linux, in my opinion is way more user-friendly than Windows. On several list I belong to which are geek oriented (mostly old people searching genealogy), I am constantly reminded of how useful Linux is, by calls fro help from Windows users. Those of us on the list using Macs and Linux offer help to get them to a point where they can get close to the same functionality out of Windows, that is just a no-brainer in Linux or Macs. Ever tried printing to a file, and having a usable (ie can open in an OTS app) in Out-of-the-Box Windows? I can't be done. You get [filename].prn. PRN? WTF? Where's the PDF print? Oh you have to buy something to get that.
Besides, the market isn't in Desktops anymore. That is so 20th Century. The future is portables, which has, umm..., no real Windows footprint. It's all Apple and Linux baby. So KDE and Gnome better get their shit together, and get ports done. Like yesterday.
Based on your inability to be sure if you could read data from servers on which you have root access makes me glad I don't have you or your company as a provider. As a person who has root level access to computers running cloud services, I can assure you, I CAN read every single unencrypted file on the server. As root, I have access to all the public keys and many private keys, and can unlock many of the encrypted files on the systems with those keys. Only uploaded files encrypted off-line, with keys and passwords I don't have access to, are safe from my prying eyes. But having access to them and having access to some of your encrypted passwords and possibly public/private keys, I have lots of data to use to crack open any secrets you upload to my servers.
You might want to consider a different line of work..
All I have to add is, politicians should beware the Ides of March. The blood of Patriots runs through many Americans. It's only a matter of time until the pot boils over into another Revolution.
Fat chance that will happen. The MPAA is not about to let any politician do anything even remotely intelligent like that. Although this move by Australia is hardly surprising post MegaUpload. So the Us Gov't is complaining that not enough countries are using US based cloud services so they don't need to deal with all that messy coordinated policing of all those darned filesharers outside the US who are singlehandedly killing the profits of those Golden Cows worshipped by Washington, DC (MPAA & RIAA)?
This looks like a job for ... Captain Obvious! Defender of the Unthinking and Free (DUF). Keeper of the Faith and Ultimate Defender (FUD) of the Idiot Populace (IP).
Furthermore the US does send aid to Europe, also. I know for a fact they sent money and humanitarian aid to Czechoslovakia, several years ago because of flooding.
Since you probably won't believe a US source. Here's proof that the US gives lots of aid everywhere.
World's most charitable countries. US is #1
Perhaps it can be explained this way.
1) MS has been historically a bully and no one likes bullies.
2) MS is still a bully, but now a bully with a gang of surrogates. Rather than doing the bullying out in the open they send their legions to do it.
3) MS has been two-faced. "Do as I say, not as I do".
4) MS is still two-faced.
5) MS has been a thief, stealing other people's code. There are many lawsuits proving this. Stacker compression being just one case.
6) MS has been petty to companies and yes the members of the press.
7) Members of the press have long memories.
8) This is getting to be a long list. you get the picture, I hope.
9) There are lots of features in MS products that are there, because exactly one person asked for it. Making programs bulky, and error prone.
10) MS products are millions of lines of code maintained with patch after patch over decades and reused, based on a design that lacked vision (which is admittedly a difficult thing to have, Steve Jobs was one of those few visionaries).
The lesson we learn here is if you do evil, lack vision, are too greedy, and don't play nice with others, people won't like you. Hence MS is only reaping the rewards of decades of arduous planting of seeds they have sown. Or you reap what you sow.