I think the authorities will still say "it's not possible it's a fake, it's signed" and it'll be up to the victim (or the victim's lawyer) to know that the signage has been broken.
The last time I was stopped in a speed trap (on motorcycle), I knew it was coming up (they always put a speed trap in this particular construction zone on weekends because people ignore the temporary "35" signs 'cause there's nobody working on Sunday, but I digress) and had slowed way down before taking the turn, but was waved over anyway. I was pretty sure he'd tracked the (obviously faster) car one lane over instead of me, and said so. He said "the gun can't be wrong, I had a firm lock on you." I can see the stupid radar gun in his hand right there, and it's not like there's a scope on it, or even if he actually had me in crosshairs, that it could tell the difference between a slow moving object in the foreground and a much faster object in the background. I maintained that he could not possibly have locked on me, because he would have read 33 MPH, which is what my speedo was displaying at the time. I said it obviously had "locked" on the car that passed me shortly after the corner. The cop said that this was impossible, radar guns don't make that kind of mistake.
Well hell, there's a huge body of evidence that radar guns make "mistakes" all the time. I laid out exactly how the error could have occurred, he continued to insist that the gun can't make mistakes. I finally said "ok, whatever. We'll see what the judge says." He went away, talked to his cohorts for awhile, came back and issued me a "verbal warning", let me go. Now, I strongly suspect that if I'd acted like I knew nothing about the technical details of radar guns, I'd have gotten a ticket.
Well, yes, but besides that. What I meant was, although it doesn't happen as much anymore, it used to be fairly common for a windows update to cause issues that you would need to repair, often by hand. Or even brick your computer. It certainly kept me busy the earlier part of this century. That an update has some danger of causing problems on a large number of machines has (apparently) not stopped Microsoft from releasing them, why would the FBI care? Especially, as someone has noted, on machines that are already damaged?
> 'While the 'uninstall' command has been tested by the FBI and appears to work, it is nevertheless possible that the execution of the 'uninstall' command may produce unanticipated consequences, including damage to the infected computers [...]
I'd say go for it. I mean how is this any different from Windows Update?
> If you look back at movies and TV, you see this same complaint against any new advance, that the improvements are useless. Silent film to "talkies" was a clear advance, and I am sure that there were SOME complaints from those who didn't care for it. When color came out, some saw it as useless and then there were more complaints. Color TV was the same way, an added expense that did not add to the quality of the movie or show in the eyes of some. When stereo first came out, again, some complained and they didn't hear how it improved things, or surround sound. All of these things added to the overall experience of going to the movies or watching TV/movies at home, even if not everyone notices or cares about the improvements that have been added.
But again, just because some people didn't like color tv when it came out, doesn't mean that every new gimmick that some people don't like is the next color tv.
I avoid 3D because I really don't enjoy it, my wife gets motion sickness, and it's generally used more for gimmicky purpose than to actually add to the story. But if other people like it, fine. Let the market decide.
But be careful of comparing people who don't like one particular technology to people who didn't like other technologies that went on to be wildly popular. Just because some people didn't like HDTV, and didn't want to adopt it, doesn't mean that every damned fool thing that people don't like and don't want to adopt will someday be as ubiquitous as HDTV. It's like the "they said he was crazy" argument. Hey, some people *are* crazy. And some technologies really *are* fads that will pass with time. I don't know if the current incantation of 3D is one of those, but I suspect so.
...except the word "bizarre". I'm a little surprised the circumstances around this arrest aren't common, let alone rare enough to be considered "bizarre".
Months ago we moved entirely to windows media center, netflix/amazon/hulu and conventional antenna, and dropped cable TV. It's more convenient and a fraction of the cost.
One of the big problems with cable service and cable provided set-top DVRs is that the cable companies, under the mistaken impression that they were the only game in town, priced themselves right out of the market. The service was hidiously expensive (essentially buying the hardware over and over each month), didn't work very well, and had a tiny amount of storage by today's standards, with no realistic way to upgrade. Well guess what, they're no longer the only game in town. The media center has its problems, but I can own terabytes of new storage for the cost of renting gigabytes of storage. There's just no comparison. I think the cable companies are only going on inertia now. You really only need internet and telephone these days. Scratch that, you only need internet these days.
You're right, reporters, editors, and proof readers don't change much.
> But then you've got "printers, printer overhead, then distributors, distributor overhead, then a delivery mechanism", which is directly related to the number of readers. Similarly, "web hosting (bandwidth, servers, backups, etc.)" costs are also directly related to the number of readers.
To a certain extent, but that's not really the point. The point is that it takes dramatically fewer people to man a datacenter, than it does to deliver newspapers, for a given number of users. Think about the tons of paper and ink that have to be lugged to printers, the operation of the printers the maintenance of same, every day for every issue. Consider those tons of paper are turned into -- tons of papers, which have to be baled, transported to and loaded into trucks, and then those trucks driven to distribution centers, where they're broken down into smaller trucks and taken to other locations, where they're delivered to news stands or smaller distribution centers where they're doled out to individual carriers. You're talking massive manual labor here. And you're not even considering the creation of those huge rolls of paper and thousands of gallons of ink -- those people will be out of work too. I know, computers in a hosting farm have to be created also, but computers are generally capital investments, not consumables as are paper and ink. In other words, you don't buy a computer and expend it to create one issue, as you do paper and ink. You buy a computer and keep it for a long time.
Now, consider how many employees are needed to maintain a data center for half a million web users. This is done all the time, methods are well known, and it doesn't take more than a handful of people. Orders of magnitude fewer than all those drivers and handlers and loaders necessary to make a print business work for half a million customers. Moreover, the jobs in a data center will tend to be technical in nature, as opposed to driving a forklift or humping bales, and they will almost certainly be non-union.
> Maybe it takes the same or more jobs to maintain an online presence as it does to print and distribute paper.
I used to work in the paper business many years ago, so I can state categorically that this is not the case, but I'd rather approach the answer from a different angle.
On the one side, you have reporters, editors, then typesetters, proofreaders, printers, printer overhead, then distributors, distributor overhead, then a delivery mechanism, and the overhead associated with that. The wider your readership gets, the more it costs.
On the other side, you have reporters, editors, web designers, proofreaders, web hosting (which can be outsourced) and then... wait, you're done. The wider your readership gets... nope, pretty much the same price.
Obviously a simplification, but I'm hoping you can see that there's no way switching to a web-only presence from print media would employ more than a tiny fraction of the people a print distribution would. This needs to be faced -- a lot of people are going to be out of a job, and they're going to have skills that are largely not needed anymore.
I have no idea what that means. If you mean you wouldn't accept an 11mm slot in any gadget on the miniscule chance that it'll change the structural integrity in any way that you're at all likely to notice, then all I have to say is, that's taking "purist" to a whole new level....So, none of your devices have, for instance, a removable battery?
> all print subscribers get free access to their web content. Whether or not that 100,000 includes people who are logging on through their print subscriptions, well, that's up in the air.
Oooh, good point. So having 100K subscribers isn't proof in and of itself that the online model is working.
...Mind you, I think their only hope of survival is online, but I'm not convinced they can make it work.
...is what they're going to do about all those Union contracts for the print side of the paper. All those jobs are dead as soon as print is dead, and I'm sure this has occurred to the union bosses. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
Does anyone know what the NYT print readership averages? At first glance 100,000 sounds like a lot, but for a world class newspaper, it seems like a pittance.
I dunno, even when the iPad 12 has a terabyte of internal memory, everyone else in the world will be offering similar products with a slot that will take a 2 terabyte card. These things tend to leapfrog each other. So I don't think he'll ever be right, except perhaps momentarily due to vaguarities in the market.
> That's notable these days? Every single consumer electronics device I've bought in at least 5 years, from my television set to my digital camera to my ultra-mobile PC has an SD slot. I didn't think it was possible to buy anything these days that _doesn't_ have one.
Any Apple product.
That's what makes it notable -- not that other Android devices don't have them, but that no Apple touchscreen device has them. Or ever will. Apple's business model is built on you paying their prices for memory, and discarding your old device in order to increase memory capacity. Having an SD card slot would invalidate that.
Now, in my opinion, what makes an Android device *truly* notable, even amongst other Android devices, is USB hosting capability. To my knowledge, only one tablet has that, and it's not out yet. What I want is to be able to move the photos from my camera to my tablet without dragging a PC into the field, and I can't do that if both devices think they're USB peripherals. (...and my camera is a pro body that uses compact flash, so having an SD card slow doesn't help me.)
(If it's a Sony TV or other product, it'll be Memory Stick instead of SD card, but that doesn't invalidate your point.)
I don't particularly care what system we use as long as it's consistent. I own a Harley -- what am I supposed to do, remove all the Standard fasteners and replace them with Metric? Shall I become a metric commando, tear down MPH signs on the highway in the dead of night and put up KPH signs?
Personally I'd like to own just one set of tools (and not have to sit there and try to remember what the next size is after 17/32) and have only one scale on my speedometer, but there's really not a lot we as individuals can do about it.
I know there are people out there who say "I tried to convert this recipe to metric but one tablespoon of sugar is 14.7868 milliliters and who can measure that accurately?" but if that's the best argument you can make, you don't deserve to participate in the discussion.
...it'll just no longer be supported by Microsoft. (Who actually uses Microsoft support anyway? The only time I ever called them was when "genuine advantage" broke my license.) From a home standpoint, it's still no reason to upgrade, as far as I can see. In fact, my daughter would lose the use of her Canon scanner, which still works fine but does not have drivers for Win7. I did the upgrade from 98 to XP when I had an application that necessitated it. Will do same to the computers at home when forced by HW or SW incompatibility, but otherwise, nah.
Moreover, I bet you a nickel my company, which is still entirely on XP on the desktop, won't be in any hurry at all to upgrade all those boxes to Win7. At best, they may allow Win7 on new hardware. (...Which is currently forbidden. New PCs with Win7 are reimaged with XP.)
Wifi only is fine. Most of my usage will be at home or work, both of which have wifi (aside: google needs to fix the proxy issue in Android or risk losing the business market). There's enough free wifi on the road to make the tablet useful. In a pinch I can turn on the hotspot on my cell phone, or with USB hosting on some tablets, I could tether a cell that doesn't have hotspot capability. In any case, I don't need to carry around redundant cell phone circuitry, or pay yet another monthly fee.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the authorities will still say "it's not possible it's a fake, it's signed" and it'll be up to the victim (or the victim's lawyer) to know that the signage has been broken.
The last time I was stopped in a speed trap (on motorcycle), I knew it was coming up (they always put a speed trap in this particular construction zone on weekends because people ignore the temporary "35" signs 'cause there's nobody working on Sunday, but I digress) and had slowed way down before taking the turn, but was waved over anyway. I was pretty sure he'd tracked the (obviously faster) car one lane over instead of me, and said so. He said "the gun can't be wrong, I had a firm lock on you." I can see the stupid radar gun in his hand right there, and it's not like there's a scope on it, or even if he actually had me in crosshairs, that it could tell the difference between a slow moving object in the foreground and a much faster object in the background. I maintained that he could not possibly have locked on me, because he would have read 33 MPH, which is what my speedo was displaying at the time. I said it obviously had "locked" on the car that passed me shortly after the corner. The cop said that this was impossible, radar guns don't make that kind of mistake.
Well hell, there's a huge body of evidence that radar guns make "mistakes" all the time. I laid out exactly how the error could have occurred, he continued to insist that the gun can't make mistakes. I finally said "ok, whatever. We'll see what the judge says." He went away, talked to his cohorts for awhile, came back and issued me a "verbal warning", let me go. Now, I strongly suspect that if I'd acted like I knew nothing about the technical details of radar guns, I'd have gotten a ticket.
But if you must... Where did you live again?
This is actually a news item??
Well, yes, but besides that. What I meant was, although it doesn't happen as much anymore, it used to be fairly common for a windows update to cause issues that you would need to repair, often by hand. Or even brick your computer. It certainly kept me busy the earlier part of this century. That an update has some danger of causing problems on a large number of machines has (apparently) not stopped Microsoft from releasing them, why would the FBI care? Especially, as someone has noted, on machines that are already damaged?
> 'While the 'uninstall' command has been tested by the FBI and appears to work, it is nevertheless possible that the execution of the 'uninstall' command may produce unanticipated consequences, including damage to the infected computers [...]
I'd say go for it. I mean how is this any different from Windows Update?
> If you look back at movies and TV, you see this same complaint against any new advance, that the improvements are useless. Silent film to "talkies" was a clear advance, and I am sure that there were SOME complaints from those who didn't care for it. When color came out, some saw it as useless and then there were more complaints. Color TV was the same way, an added expense that did not add to the quality of the movie or show in the eyes of some. When stereo first came out, again, some complained and they didn't hear how it improved things, or surround sound. All of these things added to the overall experience of going to the movies or watching TV/movies at home, even if not everyone notices or cares about the improvements that have been added.
But again, just because some people didn't like color tv when it came out, doesn't mean that every new gimmick that some people don't like is the next color tv.
I avoid 3D because I really don't enjoy it, my wife gets motion sickness, and it's generally used more for gimmicky purpose than to actually add to the story. But if other people like it, fine. Let the market decide.
But be careful of comparing people who don't like one particular technology to people who didn't like other technologies that went on to be wildly popular. Just because some people didn't like HDTV, and didn't want to adopt it, doesn't mean that every damned fool thing that people don't like and don't want to adopt will someday be as ubiquitous as HDTV. It's like the "they said he was crazy" argument. Hey, some people *are* crazy. And some technologies really *are* fads that will pass with time. I don't know if the current incantation of 3D is one of those, but I suspect so.
So the horse is from Kentucky?
Months ago we moved entirely to windows media center, netflix/amazon/hulu and conventional antenna, and dropped cable TV. It's more convenient and a fraction of the cost.
One of the big problems with cable service and cable provided set-top DVRs is that the cable companies, under the mistaken impression that they were the only game in town, priced themselves right out of the market. The service was hidiously expensive (essentially buying the hardware over and over each month), didn't work very well, and had a tiny amount of storage by today's standards, with no realistic way to upgrade. Well guess what, they're no longer the only game in town. The media center has its problems, but I can own terabytes of new storage for the cost of renting gigabytes of storage. There's just no comparison. I think the cable companies are only going on inertia now. You really only need internet and telephone these days. Scratch that, you only need internet these days.
You're right, reporters, editors, and proof readers don't change much.
> But then you've got "printers, printer overhead, then distributors, distributor overhead, then a delivery mechanism", which is directly related to the number of readers. Similarly, "web hosting (bandwidth, servers, backups, etc.)" costs are also directly related to the number of readers.
To a certain extent, but that's not really the point. The point is that it takes dramatically fewer people to man a datacenter, than it does to deliver newspapers, for a given number of users. Think about the tons of paper and ink that have to be lugged to printers, the operation of the printers the maintenance of same, every day for every issue. Consider those tons of paper are turned into -- tons of papers, which have to be baled, transported to and loaded into trucks, and then those trucks driven to distribution centers, where they're broken down into smaller trucks and taken to other locations, where they're delivered to news stands or smaller distribution centers where they're doled out to individual carriers. You're talking massive manual labor here. And you're not even considering the creation of those huge rolls of paper and thousands of gallons of ink -- those people will be out of work too. I know, computers in a hosting farm have to be created also, but computers are generally capital investments, not consumables as are paper and ink. In other words, you don't buy a computer and expend it to create one issue, as you do paper and ink. You buy a computer and keep it for a long time.
Now, consider how many employees are needed to maintain a data center for half a million web users. This is done all the time, methods are well known, and it doesn't take more than a handful of people. Orders of magnitude fewer than all those drivers and handlers and loaders necessary to make a print business work for half a million customers. Moreover, the jobs in a data center will tend to be technical in nature, as opposed to driving a forklift or humping bales, and they will almost certainly be non-union.
Bet you a nickel the iOS kernel infringes in much the same way.
Okkkaaay, fine, but what does that have to do with having an SD slot?
> Maybe it takes the same or more jobs to maintain an online presence as it does to print and distribute paper.
I used to work in the paper business many years ago, so I can state categorically that this is not the case, but I'd rather approach the answer from a different angle.
On the one side, you have reporters, editors, then typesetters, proofreaders, printers, printer overhead, then distributors, distributor overhead, then a delivery mechanism, and the overhead associated with that. The wider your readership gets, the more it costs.
On the other side, you have reporters, editors, web designers, proofreaders, web hosting (which can be outsourced) and then... wait, you're done. The wider your readership gets... nope, pretty much the same price.
Obviously a simplification, but I'm hoping you can see that there's no way switching to a web-only presence from print media would employ more than a tiny fraction of the people a print distribution would. This needs to be faced -- a lot of people are going to be out of a job, and they're going to have skills that are largely not needed anymore.
> No, I'm saying I wouldn't make that compromise.
I have no idea what that means. If you mean you wouldn't accept an 11mm slot in any gadget on the miniscule chance that it'll change the structural integrity in any way that you're at all likely to notice, then all I have to say is, that's taking "purist" to a whole new level. ...So, none of your devices have, for instance, a removable battery?
> all print subscribers get free access to their web content. Whether or not that 100,000 includes people who are logging on through their print subscriptions, well, that's up in the air.
Oooh, good point. So having 100K subscribers isn't proof in and of itself that the online model is working.
Does anyone know what the NYT print readership averages? At first glance 100,000 sounds like a lot, but for a world class newspaper, it seems like a pittance.
> The one aspect of fanboys that disgusts me is how they twist drawbacks into being "features"[...]
Well, it's either that or Zoloft...
I dunno, even when the iPad 12 has a terabyte of internal memory, everyone else in the world will be offering similar products with a slot that will take a 2 terabyte card. These things tend to leapfrog each other. So I don't think he'll ever be right, except perhaps momentarily due to vaguarities in the market.
You're seriously saying that an 11mm wide slot would compromise the device's structure in any significant way?
> That's notable these days? Every single consumer electronics device I've bought in at least 5 years, from my television set to my digital camera to my ultra-mobile PC has an SD slot. I didn't think it was possible to buy anything these days that _doesn't_ have one.
Any Apple product.
That's what makes it notable -- not that other Android devices don't have them, but that no Apple touchscreen device has them. Or ever will. Apple's business model is built on you paying their prices for memory, and discarding your old device in order to increase memory capacity. Having an SD card slot would invalidate that.
Now, in my opinion, what makes an Android device *truly* notable, even amongst other Android devices, is USB hosting capability. To my knowledge, only one tablet has that, and it's not out yet. What I want is to be able to move the photos from my camera to my tablet without dragging a PC into the field, and I can't do that if both devices think they're USB peripherals. (...and my camera is a pro body that uses compact flash, so having an SD card slow doesn't help me.)
(If it's a Sony TV or other product, it'll be Memory Stick instead of SD card, but that doesn't invalidate your point.)
I don't particularly care what system we use as long as it's consistent. I own a Harley -- what am I supposed to do, remove all the Standard fasteners and replace them with Metric? Shall I become a metric commando, tear down MPH signs on the highway in the dead of night and put up KPH signs?
Personally I'd like to own just one set of tools (and not have to sit there and try to remember what the next size is after 17/32) and have only one scale on my speedometer, but there's really not a lot we as individuals can do about it.
I know there are people out there who say "I tried to convert this recipe to metric but one tablespoon of sugar is 14.7868 milliliters and who can measure that accurately?" but if that's the best argument you can make, you don't deserve to participate in the discussion.
Moreover, I bet you a nickel my company, which is still entirely on XP on the desktop, won't be in any hurry at all to upgrade all those boxes to Win7. At best, they may allow Win7 on new hardware. (...Which is currently forbidden. New PCs with Win7 are reimaged with XP.)
Wifi only is fine. Most of my usage will be at home or work, both of which have wifi (aside: google needs to fix the proxy issue in Android or risk losing the business market). There's enough free wifi on the road to make the tablet useful. In a pinch I can turn on the hotspot on my cell phone, or with USB hosting on some tablets, I could tether a cell that doesn't have hotspot capability. In any case, I don't need to carry around redundant cell phone circuitry, or pay yet another monthly fee.
Ron
They tried, it sucked, they buried it.