It's an interesting idea, but quite unlikely... Remember that the speed of light is (supposedly!) an absolute, somewhat like absolute zero, and thing tend to approach it asymptotically. One can therefore tend to see where exactly the asymptote lies, and we'd quite likely notice the difference. For example, particles in the LHC travel at c - 0.0000009% and have the corresponding properties as predicted by relativity. If they were, in fact, traveling at c - 0.03% our calculations should be / are off by over 3 orders of magnitude (gamma 7500 vs 4).
In short, that much error in c would pretty much wreck relativity anyways.
With the caveat that I don't really have better qualifications than you:).
If they are indeed intending to make these 1km^2 area sheets as long rolls instead of ridiculous squares, it seems to me that this has interesting implications for a space elevator. At a lenth of 35,000km, an area of 1 km^2 works out to be 2.8cm, which could then be rolled into essentially a giant nano tube. According to Wikipedia, graphene's tensile strength is 130GPa, which is incidentally precisely the estimated material strength required to build a space elevator (again, according to a quick Wiki check).
So, it looks like if they can indeed manage this, we will be much closer to the tech required to build a space elevator. (And perhaps, in a more general sense, finally have what nanotubes have long promised.)
While I initially thought the same as you, I have to image this is what they're after as a square strikes me as not only impractical but also rather useless.
It's quite unlikely that T-Mobile will just go away. They have a fair amount of inherent value in their infrastructure, and anyone wanting to become a mobile provider (e.g. Google, venture capitalists, etc) would save themselves a great deal of pain by buying T-Mobile (vs. trying to get towers and spectrum themselves). Realistically, though, it seems most likely they'll get spun off as their own business.
The point is, there's more than enough room for T-Mobile or a similar company in the mobile playing field. About the only problems they have are people willing to sacrifice everything else (i.e. cost, customer service, etc) to get an iPhone or avoid that little dead spot that may or may not even exist. This is more a marketing failure than anything. Implying that T-Mobile will disappear is implying that there's not market for well priced reasonable service.
That's not really going to do it. This attack seems to rely primarily on the dynamic back lighting in modern LCDs. That and the line about "second by second" implies that the detection bandwidth is 1Hz, and more likely minute long detections of average light and dark periods which they then correlate to known values in the streams they're searching. As this is very low frequency, you'd want your noise band to be more like.001 - 1Hz rather than 10 to 1000 Hz as you are implying, where it would average out over the periods they're measuring.
That said, a C processes would still be the better choice; the cron bit was mostly a quip to highly the unnecessary extreme of building a discrete device.
P.S. Bonus points if you have your program just SIGSTOP/SIGCONT BOINC or similar:)
Lights, Fridge, A/C don't provide much noise, and neither will an idling computer*. The last is largely because many people these days use laptops (low power with a big filter to begin with) and often leave them sleeping or with no apps running. Of course, if they're actually using it while watching TV, then all bets are off.
The thing about TV's, is what you said would be true for CRTs and early LCDs, but I think this will depend a lot on the dynamic features that LCDs employ. Very dark scenes diminish the back light, while very bright will turn it up. Flashing will cause the panel to basically overdrive crystals, etc. I can imagine that, with enough time, you can pick up useful power deviations.
*I'm assuming the variations they're picking up are on the order of 5W, which are easily distinguished from 100W cooling devices / stoves and the mW white noise that a light might provide.
You could just do it with a cron script or similar. I doubt the variance they're picking up is any larger than the difference between idle and full power on a modern desktop computer. Hell, just leaving a bunch of tabs open on Firefox while watching TV may provide enough variance to prevent this analysis.
> They had a good PR idea of keeping it mysterious in the beginning
I disagree completely. By allowing us to preview it, we could see the 'evils' of its real name policy, account tie ins (and bans), and so on. If they opened it straight away, everyone probably would have jumped on at once (new thing!) and they might have stood a chance. Instead they gave us time to mull over its fundamental design problems^Wgoals and Facebook time to upgrade, and now it's dead before it even lived.
That's completely ignoring the most important market force: value (not simple cost). A reputable brand's product in a store is _worth_ more than the supposedly some stuff back alley deal. Hell, people even buy brand name aspirin when the store brand costs quite a bit less, has to meet the same standards, and is sitting right in front of them. Sure there will always be people poor and disinterested enough to find some thug to sell them smuggled stuff cut with poison, but really smugglers can't compete on value once legitimate channels are present.
Well, at the very least if they're not a giant government unionized workforce they can be sued, and bad employees can be terminated. The airlines will probably also outline _exactly_ what is and isn't allowed, so they don't just randomly take your stuff as the TSA does. (It always gets me when I see something as "not recommend". Like, it's allowed, but expect a TSA bully to not realize it and take it anyway.)
Depending on regulations, they wouldn't spend billions of tax payer dollars on machines that have no justification and no evaluation safety. (A class action lawsuit on the matter, even if lost, would basically destroy them.)
Moreover (also depending on regulations), airlines may be able to decide on the amount of scanning they want to do, which would allow those of us that don't want this charade to get by with a good old gun and TNT check.
Of course, by the time they're done with the legislation, I expect there to be requirements to be at least as strict as the TSA, buy machines from the same kickback providing companies, indemnification and unionization of employees, and a giant blank check to get out of lawsuits. But at least there's a glimmer of hope that doing away with the TSA won't result in a 'private' bloated branch of the government er I mean company doing the same thing.
"Please try again" is soooo classy, especially when you're wrong:/.
First, the stock market is completely tied to the economy and follows it fairly closely. Or do you think that all the economists looking at it don't know what they're talking about? Sure, in theory, the market could go to zero. Or aliens could kill off humanity. The simple fact of the matter is that there are feedback mechanisms inherent to the market (both stock and whole) that make that basically impossible.
More to the point, though, is that you're completely ignoring how the market actually works. A new company doesn't start selling their stock a $0, but rather some price (say $X). People buying that give money to the company in exchange for stock. The company has $X and the stockholder 'has' $X in the market. The market has grown by $X because the introduction of a new business. Who do you think created that new company but new people (in the big picture)? This is just like the economy as a whole. More people -> Bigger/more companies -> bigger market.
So long as the population grows, so will the economy and the market will follow, just like I said. When the population shrinks, so does the economy and market, also like I said. What this means is that to size of the market roughly follows the size of the population. So yes, across all of human history starting with the first humans and ending with the last, the market will indeed be zero sum. However, during these trades and, well, any other time people are discussing the market that's simply not the case.
The economy isn't inherently zero sum because growth in the populous leads to an increase in wealth. Basically, think that the amount of gold is constant, but the number of people wanting it grows, so its price goes up with the population (which is how we used to use gold for coins, but now that's almost unthinkable). You could buy gold one year and sell it for a profit the next. The person that bought it could then resell it the year after and also make money. Nobody lost. (This assumes, of course, its increase in value outpaces inflation and there is unbounded growth.)
Of course, that very last bit is the sticking point. Probably the main reason we are in a recession these days (not that, of course, people can get past blaming politicians long enough to realize it) is because the enormous growth (birth rate 3.8) provided by the baby boomers pumped up the economy, which is what funded the "greatest generation". These days, the birth rate is around 2 for the US and 1.5 for Europe (where about 2.1 is replacement). A decline in the population naturally cases and rescission, but the effect is massively amplified by hedging on unbounded growth (social security, pensions, etc). In short, the market will hemorrhage for years.
So, in summery, the economy isn't zero sum, and in the current market, the 'winners' may have only gotten about half of what was lost.
By my interpretation (IANAL), the decision was basically that contracts can set where and how arbitration is applied for dispute resolution without limit. In particular, they may require arbitration for all disputes, and class action arbitration may be limited because it may disrupt the goals of arbitration (which is basically to have an informal dispute resolution). I do agree that it's a pretty weak decision.
However, that only says that such terms are not _necessarily_ unconscionable, but still seems to leave plenty of room open for the circumstances to make them unconscionable in a specific contract with specific circumstances. In this case we have: 1) A terms of service which is not provided on an individual basis (i.e. there's no discernible ability to negotiate the contract's terms) 2) An update to an existing service which basically constitutes a sort of bait-and-switch mechanic. Such terms weren't present during the purchase of the console, and as there is no replacement service available one must agree to the update or face devaluation of the product.
The cell phone contract had neither of these stipulations, and I would think automatically applying that ruling to a case like this would be an extremely poor decision. (But then again, IANAL)
While I didn't quite see that mentioned in the articles, you'll almost certainly be giving them your account name (so necessarily your contact information), which combined with the data they have gets your full name (via G+) and approximate GPS coordinates, etc.
But in exchange they won't track you with your AP anymore (they'll just use your neightbor's, firend's, office's,...)
What bothers me is that this isn't really that important. Who cares if they know where the access point is? It's just another AP. Sure you can tie it to a location, but what's the matter with that? The only information being associated is a GPS coordinate and an (internal!) MAC address and maybe an SSID. Big deal. You know there's an AP at these coordinates, but you could probably have guessed that buy looking them up and seeing there's a house there. So now they know for sure (within a few houses) and its MAC address (which, again, isn't visible on the net).
What bothers me isn't that they know where APs are, it's why. Basically, it lets them track all the major places in your life, even if you have your GPS off, just by passively listening on WiFi bands. Home, office, friends house, etc. It even has the benefit of being able to determine this _without_ frequency analysis (like GPS) because of the availability of out of band data like SSID text and whether you have the network saved. It even works on laptops! I'm amazed that no one seems to ever raise these concerns and instead focuses on GPS and AP locations (like this law) when this is just as, if not more, invasive.
The point being, this is far from "don't track me" and is more like, "track me via my neighbor's and office's APs, not mine".
People say that, and I understand the notion, but it really misses the point.
Fission power _always_ worked. At it's most basic level you could attach a thermocouple to radium and boom, power. Hell, just put enough enriched uranium (we had known about its fission properties) in one place and BOOM for sure. The only question was the actual engineering engineering effort to design a useful plant. Fusion is different. While it has long been possible to actually make it happen, getting it to produce a useful amount of energy has not. The science just isn't (or at least hasn't been) there. Then we need engineering on top of that... It's one thing to create 2J or heat with 1J of electricity in the lab and a whole different one it converting to electricity and refining the fuel and still have a usable energy source... basically, not possible.
So, as far as funding is concerned, the ITER, is projected to cost $25 billion. That's not really chump change for a research reactor: consider that the Shippingport reactor (first commercial fission) cost only $500 million to make, adjusted for inflation. Oh, and this one isn't expected to produce power... Their _goal_ is to produce 10x in heat what they put into making the plasma. Specifically, they aren't counting conversion to electricity, the costs of refining fuel (it's tritium/duterium) and other operation costs (coolant pumps, etc). Also, they don't yet have a design that will last long enough vs. the fusion products to be commercially viable. And the reactor core will become radioactive, too, making replacement especially fun.
That last bit is the real take away here. They have $25 billion in funding, and they don't even know what a useful version could be made out of. That isn't a $25 billion question, that's more like a $25 million question. And it's one that needs to be answered in a big way, and yet that's not their focus. Am I to believe if they got $26 billion that the extra 4% would go to solving these vital problems? Sure their big demo reactor is fun^W^Wshould be helpful, and yeah, if they had twice the budget they probably could have finished it sooner. But what's the point? It's still not a halfway viable design for reasons completely unrelated to funding.
I love C, but as a web application language... It ain't great. If only because web development is where programers when they can't comprehend C. > trollface, in b4 flamebait, etc
In all seriousness, though, C is a very general language to use for sure a relatively specific task. (As the difficultly of string handling vs the prevalence of string handling in web development make it particularly unsuitable.) A language specifically designed for the task, as designed well (I'm looking at you PHP!) would be welcome.
Really, though, I just hope it's not a framework. I find frameworks just make life so much harder for no real reason aside from, I guess, hiding how the web actually works and replacing it with an even more convoluted "object model" or such crap. Occasionally helpful, but for how infrequent that is I'd rather just handle the requests and print out the result myself, thanks.
Uh... no. I was responding to a post that said that being a hypocrite doesn't matter, and I said why it did. Then I said how you'd apply that in this case. So your reply is not really to the topic of my post anyways, even if you are indeed not arguing that they aren't hypocrites.
Besides, I don't actually give a damn about global warming and am much more concerned with what will be done in its name than what will come of it itself. Frankly I'm in full support of them enjoying their money how they see fit. My problem is when super wealthy people like them want to tell _other_ people how they can spend their money (and it's not just global warming, mind you), unless they're (also) rich enough to exempt themselves from the rules (e.g. carbon credits, or tax shelters, trusts, etc for other cases).
That aside, I did, in fact, indicate why this is a lot of CO2: It's the average annual car emissions of _13_ people. For one weekend trip. To save this amount of CO2, that would mean _26_ people would either have to drive hybrids (22mpg was the figure used) or drive half as much. Or, probably about 60, then, could save that by biking to work whenever possible.
For a year. For one flight.
So, when these people come saying how you need to bike to work, or buy a hybrid, and it's so great that gas prices are high because they encourage people to do these things just remember: You and 25 others have to do that to balance out one weekend trip.
Calling someone a hypocrite doesn't invalid their point, but it does put it in a meaningful context. If someone is saying the world is going to end next year and we should all repent, how seriously would you take them if they put a great deal of money into a 2 year CD? That's hypocritical. If they truly believed what they were saying they'd be donating it, or at least blowing it. The fact that they're making a long term investment gives you a gauge on their confidence in their own beliefs. Maybe they're just hedging their bets, sure, but you can be sure they are especially certain (regardless of what they say) that their prediction is correct.
So in this case, you have two guys that in one joy ride spewed about 60 tons of CO2* (vs. 4.5 for a average year's car travel). How serious can they actually think global warming is? Do they want government intervention because they can't control themselves? Or do they not actually give a damn and think/expect the rules won't apply to those with enough money like them?
For me, at least, the latter is the real sticking point. You have all these rich/privileged people like CEOs and congressmen pushing for massive regulation to fix a problem that they disproportionally cause. Between that and the ridiculous cap and trade bill**, it becomes quite clear that people like them are using global warming as an excuse to leverage even more government control and prevent market competition.
So, yes, just because they're hypocritical doesn't mean that global warming is fake. It does, however, speak very strongly to their motivations which is mostly what the GP was addressing.
*According to http://www.conservation.org/act/live_green/carboncalc/pages/methodology.aspx and a round trip estimate of 6000 miles, which looks about right. **There's a small chance I'm remembering incorrectly, but even supporters of GW legislation said the bill would to nothing to combat the problem and would only prevent new/small businesses from growing and competing with existing large ones.
They mention mobile, but that's not terribly interesting: Someone (TI, IIRC) has had stackable memory for a while. In particular RAM and Flash that can be soldered directly onto their CPU (though I'm not sure how many of either it supports). That saves routing/board design costs and can make the overall device smaller. There's not too much point in having a stack of RAM elsewhere as you're probably only going to have 2 chips at the most... Current densities are 1GB/chip, so unless you're looking for 2+GB, this won't save any space at all.
I also question their power savings claim... Unless I missed some specific interesting numbers in TFA, I can't imagine they're saving much more than like 5%... Aside from the quiescent power draw, which isn't negligible, they're still routing the same DIMM with the same connections and the same number of data line. The best I can see is this saving about a 2 inches routing the address lines to multiple packages, but at the cost of making the data lines about 1 inch longer on average (as the chip stack is now centered, rather than over the DIMM's data pins like they are now). Guess which ones do most of the switching and burn most of the power? Hell, as the DIMM isn't driving the address lines this looks like it'd actually increase power consumption at the memory and maybe save a little for the CPU/chipset.
tl;dr, unless I'm missing something here (I don't design DIMMs after all), this looks like they're playing up some patent they just got.
Yes, DIMM is referring to the board form factor, not layout. Specifically, they are dual because the gold fingers on each side have independent signals, while SIMMs have the same signal replicated on each side.
I like how folk here are willing to redefine legal terms because some circumstances just aren't "real" enough for them. Look up you state's laws, I expect you'll find this meets the legal definition of rape... It does for federal statutes where they apply, e.g. prisons (which I posted above) and the military. Was there criminal intent? That's for a court/jury to decide, not you.
This is like claiming that punching someone out in a bar isn't assault because sometimes people get beaten to within an inch of their life and never make a full recovery. Yeah, that latter is a lot _worse_, but they're both still assault. And I think victims of date rape would take serious issue with your definition, which, lacking any violent aspect ('spirit' of your law) and "intent to... control and discomfort ('letter', as you specifically said "and") wouldn't count as 'real' rape.
Perhaps, then you ought not look up the legal definition then, huh? "The term 'rape' means a) the... sexual assault with an object, or sexual fondling of a person, forcibly or against that person's will;" http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/42/147/15609 That seems to be regarding prisons, but was a quick federal search result. You may have to refer to your state for "common" circumstances but I suspect you'll find the same. Basically, any non consensual penetration of anything with anything. I believe this was largely spearheaded as the much older definition was sexist (i.e. man->woman only) and didn't cover as many cases as they wanted. So in most jurisdictions this would legally be considered rape.
Eh, it's only 1MB (which is actually quite large considering uncompressed would be 1.8MB by my estimate). Given how carelessly pages are designed these days, you're probably saving 100+ requests and 1MB of data by them not linking the page...
That's true, but there are laws (rather than amendments) preventing private parties from snooping as well. For example: wire tapping, breaking and entering, and perhaps even some anti-voyeurism statutes as well. In computer related situations there are even additional laws like that federal anti-hacking law.
Further, as you somewhat noted, the 4th amendment kicks in if they are acting as an agent of the police... However, that does not simply mean if the police _ask_, but if the party is determined to be working with police at all... Obviously it's case by case, but generally speaking after one has talked to the police about an issue any additional investigation can be bound by the 4th, regardless of whether they actually asked, simply winked, or even flat out said not to. A sufficiently good lawyer may well be able to make it stick is this case because these people were specifically collecting evidence to hand over to the police. (v.s. say, a private party investigating a souse for infidelity and coming across evidence of a crime where the 4th certainly does not apply.)
Finally, additional civil issues may apply here. They violated copyright (though I do forget what exemptions are present for evidence, IIRC they don't exist for private parties) and there may also be a case for defamation of character depending on how far they spread.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an interesting idea, but quite unlikely... Remember that the speed of light is (supposedly!) an absolute, somewhat like absolute zero, and thing tend to approach it asymptotically. One can therefore tend to see where exactly the asymptote lies, and we'd quite likely notice the difference. For example, particles in the LHC travel at c - 0.0000009% and have the corresponding properties as predicted by relativity. If they were, in fact, traveling at c - 0.03% our calculations should be / are off by over 3 orders of magnitude (gamma 7500 vs 4).
In short, that much error in c would pretty much wreck relativity anyways.
With the caveat that I don't really have better qualifications than you :).
If they are indeed intending to make these 1km^2 area sheets as long rolls instead of ridiculous squares, it seems to me that this has interesting implications for a space elevator. At a lenth of 35,000km, an area of 1 km^2 works out to be 2.8cm, which could then be rolled into essentially a giant nano tube. According to Wikipedia, graphene's tensile strength is 130GPa, which is incidentally precisely the estimated material strength required to build a space elevator (again, according to a quick Wiki check).
So, it looks like if they can indeed manage this, we will be much closer to the tech required to build a space elevator. (And perhaps, in a more general sense, finally have what nanotubes have long promised.)
It's also 1m x 1,000,000 m, i.e. a giant roll.
While I initially thought the same as you, I have to image this is what they're after as a square strikes me as not only impractical but also rather useless.
It's quite unlikely that T-Mobile will just go away. They have a fair amount of inherent value in their infrastructure, and anyone wanting to become a mobile provider (e.g. Google, venture capitalists, etc) would save themselves a great deal of pain by buying T-Mobile (vs. trying to get towers and spectrum themselves). Realistically, though, it seems most likely they'll get spun off as their own business.
The point is, there's more than enough room for T-Mobile or a similar company in the mobile playing field. About the only problems they have are people willing to sacrifice everything else (i.e. cost, customer service, etc) to get an iPhone or avoid that little dead spot that may or may not even exist. This is more a marketing failure than anything. Implying that T-Mobile will disappear is implying that there's not market for well priced reasonable service.
That's not really going to do it. This attack seems to rely primarily on the dynamic back lighting in modern LCDs. That and the line about "second by second" implies that the detection bandwidth is 1Hz, and more likely minute long detections of average light and dark periods which they then correlate to known values in the streams they're searching. As this is very low frequency, you'd want your noise band to be more like .001 - 1Hz rather than 10 to 1000 Hz as you are implying, where it would average out over the periods they're measuring.
That said, a C processes would still be the better choice; the cron bit was mostly a quip to highly the unnecessary extreme of building a discrete device.
P.S. Bonus points if you have your program just SIGSTOP/SIGCONT BOINC or similar :)
Lights, Fridge, A/C don't provide much noise, and neither will an idling computer*. The last is largely because many people these days use laptops (low power with a big filter to begin with) and often leave them sleeping or with no apps running. Of course, if they're actually using it while watching TV, then all bets are off.
The thing about TV's, is what you said would be true for CRTs and early LCDs, but I think this will depend a lot on the dynamic features that LCDs employ. Very dark scenes diminish the back light, while very bright will turn it up. Flashing will cause the panel to basically overdrive crystals, etc. I can imagine that, with enough time, you can pick up useful power deviations.
*I'm assuming the variations they're picking up are on the order of 5W, which are easily distinguished from 100W cooling devices / stoves and the mW white noise that a light might provide.
You could just do it with a cron script or similar. I doubt the variance they're picking up is any larger than the difference between idle and full power on a modern desktop computer. Hell, just leaving a bunch of tabs open on Firefox while watching TV may provide enough variance to prevent this analysis.
> They had a good PR idea of keeping it mysterious in the beginning
I disagree completely. By allowing us to preview it, we could see the 'evils' of its real name policy, account tie ins (and bans), and so on. If they opened it straight away, everyone probably would have jumped on at once (new thing!) and they might have stood a chance. Instead they gave us time to mull over its fundamental design problems^Wgoals and Facebook time to upgrade, and now it's dead before it even lived.
That's completely ignoring the most important market force: value (not simple cost). A reputable brand's product in a store is _worth_ more than the supposedly some stuff back alley deal. Hell, people even buy brand name aspirin when the store brand costs quite a bit less, has to meet the same standards, and is sitting right in front of them. Sure there will always be people poor and disinterested enough to find some thug to sell them smuggled stuff cut with poison, but really smugglers can't compete on value once legitimate channels are present.
Well, at the very least if they're not a giant government unionized workforce they can be sued, and bad employees can be terminated. The airlines will probably also outline _exactly_ what is and isn't allowed, so they don't just randomly take your stuff as the TSA does. (It always gets me when I see something as "not recommend". Like, it's allowed, but expect a TSA bully to not realize it and take it anyway.)
Depending on regulations, they wouldn't spend billions of tax payer dollars on machines that have no justification and no evaluation safety. (A class action lawsuit on the matter, even if lost, would basically destroy them.)
Moreover (also depending on regulations), airlines may be able to decide on the amount of scanning they want to do, which would allow those of us that don't want this charade to get by with a good old gun and TNT check.
Of course, by the time they're done with the legislation, I expect there to be requirements to be at least as strict as the TSA, buy machines from the same kickback providing companies, indemnification and unionization of employees, and a giant blank check to get out of lawsuits. But at least there's a glimmer of hope that doing away with the TSA won't result in a 'private' bloated branch of the government er I mean company doing the same thing.
"Please try again" is soooo classy, especially when you're wrong :/.
First, the stock market is completely tied to the economy and follows it fairly closely. Or do you think that all the economists looking at it don't know what they're talking about? Sure, in theory, the market could go to zero. Or aliens could kill off humanity. The simple fact of the matter is that there are feedback mechanisms inherent to the market (both stock and whole) that make that basically impossible.
More to the point, though, is that you're completely ignoring how the market actually works. A new company doesn't start selling their stock a $0, but rather some price (say $X). People buying that give money to the company in exchange for stock. The company has $X and the stockholder 'has' $X in the market. The market has grown by $X because the introduction of a new business. Who do you think created that new company but new people (in the big picture)? This is just like the economy as a whole. More people -> Bigger/more companies -> bigger market.
So long as the population grows, so will the economy and the market will follow, just like I said. When the population shrinks, so does the economy and market, also like I said. What this means is that to size of the market roughly follows the size of the population. So yes, across all of human history starting with the first humans and ending with the last, the market will indeed be zero sum. However, during these trades and, well, any other time people are discussing the market that's simply not the case.
The economy isn't inherently zero sum because growth in the populous leads to an increase in wealth. Basically, think that the amount of gold is constant, but the number of people wanting it grows, so its price goes up with the population (which is how we used to use gold for coins, but now that's almost unthinkable). You could buy gold one year and sell it for a profit the next. The person that bought it could then resell it the year after and also make money. Nobody lost. (This assumes, of course, its increase in value outpaces inflation and there is unbounded growth.)
Of course, that very last bit is the sticking point. Probably the main reason we are in a recession these days (not that, of course, people can get past blaming politicians long enough to realize it) is because the enormous growth (birth rate 3.8) provided by the baby boomers pumped up the economy, which is what funded the "greatest generation". These days, the birth rate is around 2 for the US and 1.5 for Europe (where about 2.1 is replacement). A decline in the population naturally cases and rescission, but the effect is massively amplified by hedging on unbounded growth (social security, pensions, etc). In short, the market will hemorrhage for years.
So, in summery, the economy isn't zero sum, and in the current market, the 'winners' may have only gotten about half of what was lost.
By my interpretation (IANAL), the decision was basically that contracts can set where and how arbitration is applied for dispute resolution without limit. In particular, they may require arbitration for all disputes, and class action arbitration may be limited because it may disrupt the goals of arbitration (which is basically to have an informal dispute resolution). I do agree that it's a pretty weak decision.
However, that only says that such terms are not _necessarily_ unconscionable, but still seems to leave plenty of room open for the circumstances to make them unconscionable in a specific contract with specific circumstances.
In this case we have:
1) A terms of service which is not provided on an individual basis (i.e. there's no discernible ability to negotiate the contract's terms)
2) An update to an existing service which basically constitutes a sort of bait-and-switch mechanic. Such terms weren't present during the purchase of the console, and as there is no replacement service available one must agree to the update or face devaluation of the product.
The cell phone contract had neither of these stipulations, and I would think automatically applying that ruling to a case like this would be an extremely poor decision. (But then again, IANAL)
While I didn't quite see that mentioned in the articles, you'll almost certainly be giving them your account name (so necessarily your contact information), which combined with the data they have gets your full name (via G+) and approximate GPS coordinates, etc.
But in exchange they won't track you with your AP anymore (they'll just use your neightbor's, firend's, office's, ...)
What bothers me is that this isn't really that important. Who cares if they know where the access point is? It's just another AP. Sure you can tie it to a location, but what's the matter with that? The only information being associated is a GPS coordinate and an (internal!) MAC address and maybe an SSID. Big deal. You know there's an AP at these coordinates, but you could probably have guessed that buy looking them up and seeing there's a house there. So now they know for sure (within a few houses) and its MAC address (which, again, isn't visible on the net).
What bothers me isn't that they know where APs are, it's why. Basically, it lets them track all the major places in your life, even if you have your GPS off, just by passively listening on WiFi bands. Home, office, friends house, etc. It even has the benefit of being able to determine this _without_ frequency analysis (like GPS) because of the availability of out of band data like SSID text and whether you have the network saved. It even works on laptops! I'm amazed that no one seems to ever raise these concerns and instead focuses on GPS and AP locations (like this law) when this is just as, if not more, invasive.
The point being, this is far from "don't track me" and is more like, "track me via my neighbor's and office's APs, not mine".
People say that, and I understand the notion, but it really misses the point.
Fission power _always_ worked. At it's most basic level you could attach a thermocouple to radium and boom, power. Hell, just put enough enriched uranium (we had known about its fission properties) in one place and BOOM for sure. The only question was the actual engineering engineering effort to design a useful plant. Fusion is different. While it has long been possible to actually make it happen, getting it to produce a useful amount of energy has not. The science just isn't (or at least hasn't been) there. Then we need engineering on top of that... It's one thing to create 2J or heat with 1J of electricity in the lab and a whole different one it converting to electricity and refining the fuel and still have a usable energy source... basically, not possible.
So, as far as funding is concerned, the ITER, is projected to cost $25 billion. That's not really chump change for a research reactor: consider that the Shippingport reactor (first commercial fission) cost only $500 million to make, adjusted for inflation. Oh, and this one isn't expected to produce power... Their _goal_ is to produce 10x in heat what they put into making the plasma. Specifically, they aren't counting conversion to electricity, the costs of refining fuel (it's tritium/duterium) and other operation costs (coolant pumps, etc). Also, they don't yet have a design that will last long enough vs. the fusion products to be commercially viable. And the reactor core will become radioactive, too, making replacement especially fun.
That last bit is the real take away here. They have $25 billion in funding, and they don't even know what a useful version could be made out of. That isn't a $25 billion question, that's more like a $25 million question. And it's one that needs to be answered in a big way, and yet that's not their focus. Am I to believe if they got $26 billion that the extra 4% would go to solving these vital problems? Sure their big demo reactor is fun^W^Wshould be helpful, and yeah, if they had twice the budget they probably could have finished it sooner. But what's the point? It's still not a halfway viable design for reasons completely unrelated to funding.
I love C, but as a web application language... It ain't great. If only because web development is where programers when they can't comprehend C.
> trollface, in b4 flamebait, etc
In all seriousness, though, C is a very general language to use for sure a relatively specific task. (As the difficultly of string handling vs the prevalence of string handling in web development make it particularly unsuitable.) A language specifically designed for the task, as designed well (I'm looking at you PHP!) would be welcome.
Really, though, I just hope it's not a framework. I find frameworks just make life so much harder for no real reason aside from, I guess, hiding how the web actually works and replacing it with an even more convoluted "object model" or such crap. Occasionally helpful, but for how infrequent that is I'd rather just handle the requests and print out the result myself, thanks.
Uh... no. I was responding to a post that said that being a hypocrite doesn't matter, and I said why it did. Then I said how you'd apply that in this case. So your reply is not really to the topic of my post anyways, even if you are indeed not arguing that they aren't hypocrites.
Besides, I don't actually give a damn about global warming and am much more concerned with what will be done in its name than what will come of it itself. Frankly I'm in full support of them enjoying their money how they see fit. My problem is when super wealthy people like them want to tell _other_ people how they can spend their money (and it's not just global warming, mind you), unless they're (also) rich enough to exempt themselves from the rules (e.g. carbon credits, or tax shelters, trusts, etc for other cases).
That aside, I did, in fact, indicate why this is a lot of CO2: It's the average annual car emissions of _13_ people. For one weekend trip. To save this amount of CO2, that would mean _26_ people would either have to drive hybrids (22mpg was the figure used) or drive half as much. Or, probably about 60, then, could save that by biking to work whenever possible.
For a year. For one flight.
So, when these people come saying how you need to bike to work, or buy a hybrid, and it's so great that gas prices are high because they encourage people to do these things just remember: You and 25 others have to do that to balance out one weekend trip.
Calling someone a hypocrite doesn't invalid their point, but it does put it in a meaningful context. If someone is saying the world is going to end next year and we should all repent, how seriously would you take them if they put a great deal of money into a 2 year CD? That's hypocritical. If they truly believed what they were saying they'd be donating it, or at least blowing it. The fact that they're making a long term investment gives you a gauge on their confidence in their own beliefs. Maybe they're just hedging their bets, sure, but you can be sure they are especially certain (regardless of what they say) that their prediction is correct.
So in this case, you have two guys that in one joy ride spewed about 60 tons of CO2* (vs. 4.5 for a average year's car travel). How serious can they actually think global warming is? Do they want government intervention because they can't control themselves? Or do they not actually give a damn and think/expect the rules won't apply to those with enough money like them?
For me, at least, the latter is the real sticking point. You have all these rich/privileged people like CEOs and congressmen pushing for massive regulation to fix a problem that they disproportionally cause. Between that and the ridiculous cap and trade bill**, it becomes quite clear that people like them are using global warming as an excuse to leverage even more government control and prevent market competition.
So, yes, just because they're hypocritical doesn't mean that global warming is fake. It does, however, speak very strongly to their motivations which is mostly what the GP was addressing.
*According to http://www.conservation.org/act/live_green/carboncalc/pages/methodology.aspx and a round trip estimate of 6000 miles, which looks about right.
**There's a small chance I'm remembering incorrectly, but even supporters of GW legislation said the bill would to nothing to combat the problem and would only prevent new/small businesses from growing and competing with existing large ones.
They mention mobile, but that's not terribly interesting: Someone (TI, IIRC) has had stackable memory for a while. In particular RAM and Flash that can be soldered directly onto their CPU (though I'm not sure how many of either it supports). That saves routing/board design costs and can make the overall device smaller. There's not too much point in having a stack of RAM elsewhere as you're probably only going to have 2 chips at the most... Current densities are 1GB/chip, so unless you're looking for 2+GB, this won't save any space at all.
I also question their power savings claim... Unless I missed some specific interesting numbers in TFA, I can't imagine they're saving much more than like 5%... Aside from the quiescent power draw, which isn't negligible, they're still routing the same DIMM with the same connections and the same number of data line. The best I can see is this saving about a 2 inches routing the address lines to multiple packages, but at the cost of making the data lines about 1 inch longer on average (as the chip stack is now centered, rather than over the DIMM's data pins like they are now). Guess which ones do most of the switching and burn most of the power? Hell, as the DIMM isn't driving the address lines this looks like it'd actually increase power consumption at the memory and maybe save a little for the CPU/chipset.
tl;dr, unless I'm missing something here (I don't design DIMMs after all), this looks like they're playing up some patent they just got.
Yes, DIMM is referring to the board form factor, not layout. Specifically, they are dual because the gold fingers on each side have independent signals, while SIMMs have the same signal replicated on each side.
I like how folk here are willing to redefine legal terms because some circumstances just aren't "real" enough for them. Look up you state's laws, I expect you'll find this meets the legal definition of rape... It does for federal statutes where they apply, e.g. prisons (which I posted above) and the military. Was there criminal intent? That's for a court/jury to decide, not you.
This is like claiming that punching someone out in a bar isn't assault because sometimes people get beaten to within an inch of their life and never make a full recovery. Yeah, that latter is a lot _worse_, but they're both still assault. And I think victims of date rape would take serious issue with your definition, which, lacking any violent aspect ('spirit' of your law) and "intent to ... control and discomfort ('letter', as you specifically said "and") wouldn't count as 'real' rape.
Perhaps, then you ought not look up the legal definition then, huh? ... sexual assault with an object, or sexual fondling of a person, forcibly or against that person's will;"
"The term 'rape' means a) the
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/42/147/15609
That seems to be regarding prisons, but was a quick federal search result. You may have to refer to your state for "common" circumstances but I suspect you'll find the same. Basically, any non consensual penetration of anything with anything. I believe this was largely spearheaded as the much older definition was sexist (i.e. man->woman only) and didn't cover as many cases as they wanted. So in most jurisdictions this would legally be considered rape.
Eh, it's only 1MB (which is actually quite large considering uncompressed would be 1.8MB by my estimate). Given how carelessly pages are designed these days, you're probably saving 100+ requests and 1MB of data by them not linking the page...
But hey, you don't have to listen to me; check out http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com/
Total HTTP Requests: 312
Total Size: 1828125 bytes
Woohoo! Slashdot is doing them a favor.
That's true, but there are laws (rather than amendments) preventing private parties from snooping as well. For example: wire tapping, breaking and entering, and perhaps even some anti-voyeurism statutes as well. In computer related situations there are even additional laws like that federal anti-hacking law.
Further, as you somewhat noted, the 4th amendment kicks in if they are acting as an agent of the police... However, that does not simply mean if the police _ask_, but if the party is determined to be working with police at all... Obviously it's case by case, but generally speaking after one has talked to the police about an issue any additional investigation can be bound by the 4th, regardless of whether they actually asked, simply winked, or even flat out said not to. A sufficiently good lawyer may well be able to make it stick is this case because these people were specifically collecting evidence to hand over to the police. (v.s. say, a private party investigating a souse for infidelity and coming across evidence of a crime where the 4th certainly does not apply.)
Finally, additional civil issues may apply here. They violated copyright (though I do forget what exemptions are present for evidence, IIRC they don't exist for private parties) and there may also be a case for defamation of character depending on how far they spread.