...though the keyboard *really* does do what I typed in the title when it gets moody.
Now, for a quick "My two cents worth."
They keys ae (<--- REALL MISS) too close together. That means if you miss one, even slightly, you are going to type something lile thjis.
They sometimes miss characters. That means that I have to pay close attention to my touch typing or I will make an error.
It randomly repeats characters.
The touch pad is too close to the keyboard, which increases errors because of random touches. Think of it this way, multi field forms + random mouse movements = odd responses.
It does feel nice though.
When I sell this thing, at least it's going to have a new top case.
Apple's margin is extremely high on phones. It's one of the reasons it is a darling of Wall Street.
What's the margin on new PC hardware? Minimal, even for Apple.
If Apple were to come out with new computers every year, they would have a higher amount NRE on their books, and the components to make their computers would be more expensive to boot. Older components on a large scale are cheaper by a long shot. Apple can't compete with smaller companies since it needs parts on such a scale when it releases new computers that manufacturers can't keep up. By not investing in new computer development, Apple is playing the dangerous game of having a locked in market, overcharging those who use their gear, and expecting it to last -- or not caring about its users at all.
Normally, providing a backup of software with a computer is a good thing for customers and a show of good customer service. In this case, the twisted way Microsoft licenses software made him a "criminal."
Here's how:
M$ licenses software to an OEM with the ability for that company to sub-license the software to end users. To the end user, OEM licenses aren't "from" M$, but from the company that made the computer.
The OEM license requires two parts: The first is the sticker, or firmware key that's on all PC's. The second is the "original media" as provided to the end user. That can be what is on the hard drive from the manufacturer or it can also be backup media. Both are considered part of the license and without both parts, the computer does not have a license.
Installing a generic OEM copy of Windows isn't possible without M$'s explicit permission -- even if the computer has a valid sticker. That's because the generic copy isn't licensed to the company that's distributing it.
For a refurbisher to install Windows 10 on a PC, they need to provide original media, or purchase new licenses from M$ (For about 25.00/each) and install that (with a new sticker) on the PC.
By making his own disks, Eric was essentially pirating software by distributing the wrong version with computers that had valid keys for one that was sub-licensed by other vendors.
Talk about a tangled web. Bit for bit, it is the same code. Legally, it might as well be Xenix.
Without any other supporting evidence, It seems like there are some mental deficits in play. I'm not even going to grace the preceding statement by calling it a hypothesis, however, on the surface it looks like the only reason the story is relevant to/. is because the label "cyber" has been attached to a generic threat from a person who might be better off in an in-patient care facility instead of prison.
I really meant that part of my message to be about budgeting for the care and feeding of Meraki devices.
If you purchase a license for 10 switches, the clock starts ticking when you buy the license, not when you activate the switches.
If you activate "claim" only 9 switches, the clock still counts 10
Remove a device, the clock is still ticking as if you had ten.
If then you were to buy five more licenses for a completely different (Let's say less expensive) product, then it would be averaged in to the 10 (not 8) switches you currently have on-line.
Say those five licenses were for one year use of an access point and the ten were for more expensive switches.
You could find your one year for the access points chewed down to a few months or less because of the way they do things.
It's really next to impossible to budget for their product without using their on-line calculator. Add their price doubling on top of that... I wish their users the best of luck!
The red dude downstairs could learn a few things from their legal department.
A little while ago, I inherited a network form a-person-who-called-him-self-an-admin-but-was-clueless.
He had started replacing old campus switches with Meraki units. Meraki is a marketing company that is owned by Cisco. Meraki hardware runs Linux, but they've locked it down to the point of uselessness. They prey on those in the business who have no idea what they are doing by offering a "Simple" solution. They are worth staying away from for many reasons, some of which I'll list here:
A. Technical support with NO tools to provide support.
4 support calls to Meraki.
0 successful solutions.
1 actual bug.
1 email back with a link to a PDF of an advertising spec sheet.
1 "Make a Wish" button.
1 "lesson in Pcap" from a person who had no idea how to interpret the results.
B. No support for critical protocols.
- CDP, nope.
- LLDP, somewhat. If it fails, then they have you run Pcap. Silly since I know what's being sent to the switch and know how to diagnose what is going through my network. I needed to know what the switch was doing with the data once it got there.
- 802.1s (MSTP), not at all. In fact, I had an "engineer" tell me that He would be "surprised if I had an actual use case to implement it." I responded by pasting a URL to the help section of Cisco's mainline web site back to him explaining its' uses and how to set it up on actual Cisco hardware.
C. Near complete lack of any ability whatsoever to debug what the switch was doing.
- Their solution. You must not need what you are asking for. Did I mention Pcap?
D: A Faustian contract.
- No better way to put it. The switches run Linux, but if you don't pay them they stop working at the end of the contract.
- It's near impossible to actually predict when your devices will expire because of the complexity of the contract.
- They provide an online "calculator" to help you figure out why a ten year support contract on a switch is actually only 9 months long.
D. Greasy sales people. I received an email from them the other month telling me that Cisco was going to make them double all their prices, but "If I acted now..."
End game.
My response was simple. "It's ok, we're upgrading to Dell."
Their response, "Sorry to hear that, if there's anything we can do..."
Me, "Tell me about your upgrade program to mainline Cisco hardware."
Meraki, "We don't have a program like that."
Me, "It's ok, Dell does."
(Well, it might not, but I *had* to tell them that.)
We scrapped the last bit of Meraki equipment last week. Seems like it might have been pretty good timing on our part.
There are many IOT companies that market a product, sell it, design it, then die; in that order too.
A light switch can last decades. I'm going to use that has a hypothetical IOT device.
Let's say there is an orphaned brand of light switch that was installed in many places decades ago. It might have been "secure" when it was released, but encryption and systems security are only as good as the next few generations of computers. At some point in the future, everything will need to be patched.
All else being equal, we need to make sure that orphaned devices can be supported in the future via open source or have some form of insurance to replace expensive insecure systems when companies drop the ball.
IMHO it's not much of a problem now, but as IOT matures, there will be many orphaned, and possibly forgotten devices waiting to get breached.
For us Gen X'ers, in the old days before Streaming video and DVR's, we were forced to watch 30 second commercials.
There was no alternative....except for VCR's, but those could be as annoying to use as commercials were to watch and early on, were really expensive.
I don't think it's that we had a long attention span. I didn't. It's that we had no choice what so ever. It wasn't the length of the ad, it was how many you'd have to ignore at a time.
We coped though. I always amazed myself with how much homework I could do three to four minutes at a time.
This is a topic that has no simple answer and really covers two completely different subjects...
Let me start by saying that IMHO the prison system in the United States is broken. It's often more about making a profit and/or punishing people rather than actually correcting behavior.
That said, I'll move on to the problem.
For blocking drones, just umm.. order a cheap baby monitor from... Alibaba. Actually, that one I don't have a real solution to. SDR would make it next to impossible to block signals from a really determined bad guy.
As for phones:
This is really a "What's the best worst option."
Here's one bad option:
1: Cell Phones have GPS's in them. Many have several different kinds of GPS receivers. 2: Using GPS, Carriers and cell phones are quite capable of determining when a phone is in the exact footprint of a correctional facility. 3: We could fund carriers to pay folks like us so we can develop a method where cell phone calls are restricted within certain geographical areas.
- Commercial Drones already do that by themselves. 4: Instead of blocking calls within that footprint, we could allow emergency calls and not impede the safety of legitimate cell phone users. 5: If done right, this is the kind of thing that can be implemented without violating the privacy or security of legitimate cell phone users.
Worst of the best? Nope. Best of the worst? There are probably better ideas.
I've lived in Phoenix most of my life. My family has been in Arizona since the 1930's. It's the summer now, it's hot.
Late June has always been the hottest part of the year in the southern desert. The high today is well within the curve we expect this time of year. Insane hot? Yes. Atypical, no. Fun watching some unlucky Weather Channel reporter standing outside in the sun saying "Yep it's hot." We try not to do that ourselves.
However:
Yearly average temperatures are hotter than before. It's getting hot earlier in the year and staying hot until much later in the year. It's not attention-grabbing enough to say that it didn't drop below freezing for the past two years in Phoenix, but that is significant. It's just significant in a way that has more to do with microclimate, rather than macroclimate.
Over the years, Phoenix has grown. It's now the 5th largest city in the US. Phoenix also has many satellite cities. Some of them are major cities in their own right. For example, Mesa by it's self is slightly bigger than Atlanta GA. What that means is lots of concrete, paved roads, and air conditioning. All produce or retain heat. Phoenix has developed an urban "Heat Island," which repels rain storms and makes the city even hotter.
In other words, the Temperature in Phoenix today is NOT a valid indicator of global climate.
Now, let's go two hours North of Phoenix to Sedona and Flagstaff. Those smaller cities are in forested areas which are drier and slightly warmer than before. It's easy to see large swaths of dead trees in the forests caused by the stresses of longer-term changes in climate (and poor forest management.)
Now for the irony: Most voters in Arizona take it in faith that what they are told by their political party is correct. Arizona is also strongly Republican. See where I'm heading? Strange if you think of it. Perhaps it's the heat?
Let me start with a little history which will bore you, then I'll get to the idea.
I'm smack in the middle of Gen X. When I was growing up, we had a remote with volume, power and channel control on it. We had a regular TV, but there was no such thing as a DVR. Video tape recorders were out by the time I was in high school, but there were lots of jokes about how it took an engineer to figure out how to program one. Makes my wonder why I followed the career path I am on.
I now have two daughters. Both have nice smart phones. We also have a 4k Smart TV with an Apple TV and a Cable DVR. I have no problems using any of the devices, but grumble about how the DVR programmers must have never heard about global variables.
Here are some other observations:
The interface on the Cisco DVR is poor. My youngest daughter (8th grade honors math when she should be in 5th grade, but skipped a year) has figured out the interface, but hates using it because it's "stupid." She prefers using the Apple TV and has mastered the art of changing the Input on the Smart TV to it.
My oldest Daughter (all honors courses too) took a while to figure out the way to switch the smart TV input (2 different remotes) to the Apple TV (one mediocre touch pad remote plus a Bluetooth Keyboard.)
My wife... Magna Cum Laude at UofA and now a 2nd grade teacher... lost it when the Tivo came out.
All three of them watch videos a lot. All of them use their smartphones. Seldom do my daughters use the TV.
I wouldn't call it even a Hypothesis, but it seems like the era of the big screen TV at home is waning. Perhaps if TV's and content were tied together as cleanly as shown on the TV show "The Expanse," then things would be different. I understand why content companies want to keep full control over their work, and why electronics companies want exclusivity which makes working with other devices harder, but we have a lot of work to do to keep large TV's and content made for them relevant.
No doubt about it, Walmart IT is sophisticated. I've heard stories about how they monitor weather and when hurricane is approaching, fill shelves with extra beer and pop-tarts. Oh, and at a higher price too in stores more likely to have people around who will stock up and ride it out.
Walmart always pays low prices. It's part of their game. They dominate the low-end retail sector and prevent brands from selling to that market unless they cut prices and quality to match Walmart's demands. If the brands don't play, Walmart gives cheaper ones better shelve space and then returns unsold inventory tot he manufacturer for a refund.
They are like any other retailer in that they charge what the market will bear.
Example: Walk in to the TV section. In the hallway before it, you will see many cheap and/or refurbished TV's. As you walk in, you will see better ones at a slightly higher price. Walk further and they have their best sets at full retail. Did they pay full wholesale? Probably not.
As I see it, Walmart isn't a destination. It's what happens at 2am when you are done partying and need to buy something to eat.
Thank You! This is a perfect example of why we should teach critical thinking.
whale.to is a site that uses strong-arm tactics to sell you stuff. In sales parlance, it finds the fear, then offers a DVD to make you feel better. I'd call it a trap for those under the spell of a strong selection bias. In reality, it's nothing more than a scary scam site that is trying to foist off its wares to unaware passers by.
Without going in to too much detail, she had a bad reaction to the cake at her first birthday party. Allergy screening showed several *strong* reactions to what counted. About 10% of kids who react that way outgrow it by high school. We were lucky.
I'm one of those *few* parents who had a child that was allergic and could not be vaccinated against one of the more virulent diseases. Fortunately, when she was older she outgrew that allergy and is now current on all her vaccinations. As a parent, sending my daughter to school where others CHOSE to not vaccinate their children thereby risking exposing mine to something nasty was a hard thing to do. I felt like I was living in the dark ages where being a part of any group could be anywhere from bad to a death sentence.
We might say that the parents who decide not to do the right thing are simply "dumb," or, as I called them, "*(!^*(&^!*%**'s." Time has taught me otherwise. In the US and elsewhere, many people aren't taught or don't remember basic scientific method. They have no idea what the difference is between doubting what they have been told, and actually engaging in critical, productive, thinking. STEM is important, but perhaps we should require those who can't handle it to take something more akin to STEM lite. Barring that, penalties for parents who refuse to take care of *OTHER PEOPLES CHILDREN* shouldn't be frowned upon. IMHO.
I recently had a memory issue in an Apple MacBook Pro that was manufactured in early 2014. Before I brought it to the Apple Store, I removed the SSD, wiped it in a different computer, then put it back. The Apple "Genius" (Who didn't even go to College, and of course didn't have an Engineering degree) looked at me funny and, in an extremely over friendly way, made it subtly clear that people just don't do that with Apple products.
Apple charged more than $650.00 for a new logic board with installation. A single ram chip, new and in low quantity is a few dollars.
If it were a PC and used standard RAM, it would have cost less than $50.00 to replace all the memory and that would have been that.
Third party companies aren't provided the utilities to accurately figure out which chip is bad and needs replacement. Some specialist Apple repair shops can do the job, but that's totally without Apple's support. It also takes time to ship the computer there, have it fixed, and get it back.
Next time I'll just bite the bullet, send the computer to Louis Rossman and be done with it.
Steve Jobs = Imagine what the user actually wants. Tim Cook = Imagine what the user actually wants to look like.
Apple: There is always a balance between form and function. You cannot choose one over the other.
Anodizing an under-powered micro laptop in pretty colors is cool, but pointless. Anodizing a bleeding edge micro laptop with features (think more than size) that no other has (in pretty colors) is cool and to the point.
The value I expect to receive for my dollar is much more than what I see, it's what's under the hood that lets me work more efficiently and make that dollar work for me.
The right to free speech comes great responsibility.
The heavy-handed approach that China is taking to the "fake news" problem is fundamentally different than ours. What works for them cannot work for us. In the US, we have a long history of protected speech and we would not be where we are now if we didn't. We are a country of people from all parts of the world. Free speech is a fundamental tool we use to find common ground.
Obnoxious and repugnant forms of speech are protected -- for good reason -- in the United States. The purpose of free speech is to promote alternative view points and guarantee our liberty through discourse. That said, there are forms of speech that can be used to cause harm to others.
In the case United States v. Schenck (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the concept that shouting "Fire" in a theater was not protected speech. Incitement to commit criminal acts, obscenity, and a few other very specific things are also not considered as protected speech.
Now, to the point, freedom of the press is also guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution. It specifically codifies the right to publish without government restriction and subject only to the laws of libel, sedation, obscenity, and so on. Again, these laws are in place to guarantee our liberty.
Based on the summary above, I have a question:
All else equal, is a "fake news" article protected if it contains false information designed to scare or panic people into reading it for the purpose of profiting the writer?
In reality, I think it's cool that they are going to give names to a few.
In the end, it seems it will wind up to be like trying to assign dns to every possible address in IPv6.
Nice to think about, makes things seem much more in scale, but it's always going to be less than a drop in the oceans.
CTRL-History Cool things happen all the time!
on
Goodbye, Ctrl-S
·
· Score: 1
...but no we have automobile correct on our spilling.
Ok, seriously, what we are seeing is just another incremental step in mass-computing. One of the many millions of cool things that have happened since the beginning of computing.
Years ago (Pre-Fidonet), one of the almost daily "Big Things" was that you could actually have a "Disk Operating System" where you didn't have to type call -151, then c600g to actually load a program. No Play on Tape. Just turn the computer on. It was cool.
If we go further back, no punch cards (before my time), and no acoustic couplers (also before my time). Must've been cool!
Still, management tools aside, if only there was a switch/router operating system that maintained automatic revisions at the command-line.
Some minor problems: In general: laptop speakers and microphones are optimized for recording and producing sounds the human ear can detect. Lousy for networking. Laptop speakers and microphones are also not calibrated with a high degree of precision. You would need access to the boot loader which would have to come from a different "virus" or at the factory -- in which case, you already "own" the computer.
Recommendations: Decent anti-virus software and a reasonable security policy. Tin Foil lined Laptop Bag.
Slashdot Mirror
...though the keyboard *really* does do what I typed in the title when it gets moody.
Now, for a quick "My two cents worth."
They keys ae (<--- REALL MISS) too close together. That means if you miss one, even slightly, you are going to type something lile thjis.
They sometimes miss characters. That means that I have to pay close attention to my touch typing or I will make an error.
It randomly repeats characters.
The touch pad is too close to the keyboard, which increases errors because of random touches. Think of it this way, multi field forms + random mouse movements = odd responses.
It does feel nice though.
When I sell this thing, at least it's going to have a new top case.
Apple's margin is extremely high on phones. It's one of the reasons it is a darling of Wall Street.
What's the margin on new PC hardware? Minimal, even for Apple.
If Apple were to come out with new computers every year, they would have a higher amount NRE on their books, and the components to make their computers would be more expensive to boot. Older components on a large scale are cheaper by a long shot. Apple can't compete with smaller companies since it needs parts on such a scale when it releases new computers that manufacturers can't keep up. By not investing in new computer development, Apple is playing the dangerous game of having a locked in market, overcharging those who use their gear, and expecting it to last -- or not caring about its users at all.
Normally, providing a backup of software with a computer is a good thing for customers and a show of good customer service.
In this case, the twisted way Microsoft licenses software made him a "criminal."
Here's how:
M$ licenses software to an OEM with the ability for that company to sub-license the software to end users. To the end user, OEM licenses aren't "from" M$, but from the company that made the computer.
The OEM license requires two parts: The first is the sticker, or firmware key that's on all PC's. The second is the "original media" as provided to the end user. That can be what is on the hard drive from the manufacturer or it can also be backup media. Both are considered part of the license and without both parts, the computer does not have a license.
Installing a generic OEM copy of Windows isn't possible without M$'s explicit permission -- even if the computer has a valid sticker. That's because the generic copy isn't licensed to the company that's distributing it.
For a refurbisher to install Windows 10 on a PC, they need to provide original media, or purchase new licenses from M$ (For about 25.00/each) and install that (with a new sticker) on the PC.
By making his own disks, Eric was essentially pirating software by distributing the wrong version with computers that had valid keys for one that was sub-licensed by other vendors.
Talk about a tangled web. Bit for bit, it is the same code. Legally, it might as well be Xenix.
-D
Without any other supporting evidence, It seems like there are some mental deficits in play. I'm not even going to grace the preceding statement by calling it a hypothesis, however, on the surface it looks like the only reason the story is relevant to /. is because the label "cyber" has been attached to a generic threat from a person who might be better off in an in-patient care facility instead of prison.
True that. I should have ranted more clearly.
I really meant that part of my message to be about budgeting for the care and feeding of Meraki devices.
If you purchase a license for 10 switches, the clock starts ticking when you buy the license, not when you activate the switches.
If you activate "claim" only 9 switches, the clock still counts 10
Remove a device, the clock is still ticking as if you had ten.
If then you were to buy five more licenses for a completely different (Let's say less expensive) product, then it would be averaged in to the 10 (not 8) switches you currently have on-line.
Say those five licenses were for one year use of an access point and the ten were for more expensive switches.
You could find your one year for the access points chewed down to a few months or less because of the way they do things.
It's really next to impossible to budget for their product without using their on-line calculator. Add their price doubling on top of that... I wish their users the best of luck!
The red dude downstairs could learn a few things from their legal department.
There is no way to backup Meraki configuration data. It's a tool they intentionally lock users out of.
A little while ago, I inherited a network form a-person-who-called-him-self-an-admin-but-was-clueless.
He had started replacing old campus switches with Meraki units. Meraki is a marketing company that is owned by Cisco. Meraki hardware runs Linux, but they've locked it down to the point of uselessness. They prey on those in the business who have no idea what they are doing by offering a "Simple" solution. They are worth staying away from for many reasons, some of which I'll list here:
A. Technical support with NO tools to provide support.
4 support calls to Meraki.
0 successful solutions.
1 actual bug.
1 email back with a link to a PDF of an advertising spec sheet.
1 "Make a Wish" button.
1 "lesson in Pcap" from a person who had no idea how to interpret the results.
B. No support for critical protocols.
- CDP, nope.
- LLDP, somewhat. If it fails, then they have you run Pcap. Silly since I know what's being sent to the switch and know how to diagnose what is going through my network. I needed to know what the switch was doing with the data once it got there.
- 802.1s (MSTP), not at all. In fact, I had an "engineer" tell me that He would be "surprised if I had an actual use case to implement it." I responded by pasting a URL to the help section of Cisco's mainline web site back to him explaining its' uses and how to set it up on actual Cisco hardware.
C. Near complete lack of any ability whatsoever to debug what the switch was doing.
- Their solution. You must not need what you are asking for. Did I mention Pcap?
D: A Faustian contract.
- No better way to put it. The switches run Linux, but if you don't pay them they stop working at the end of the contract.
- It's near impossible to actually predict when your devices will expire because of the complexity of the contract.
- They provide an online "calculator" to help you figure out why a ten year support contract on a switch is actually only 9 months long.
D. Greasy sales people.
I received an email from them the other month telling me that Cisco was going to make them double all their prices, but "If I acted now..."
End game.
My response was simple. "It's ok, we're upgrading to Dell."
Their response, "Sorry to hear that, if there's anything we can do..."
Me, "Tell me about your upgrade program to mainline Cisco hardware."
Meraki, "We don't have a program like that."
Me, "It's ok, Dell does."
(Well, it might not, but I *had* to tell them that.)
We scrapped the last bit of Meraki equipment last week. Seems like it might have been pretty good timing on our part.
_Dan
There are many IOT companies that market a product, sell it, design it, then die; in that order too.
A light switch can last decades. I'm going to use that has a hypothetical IOT device.
Let's say there is an orphaned brand of light switch that was installed in many places decades ago. It might have been "secure" when it was released, but encryption and systems security are only as good as the next few generations of computers. At some point in the future, everything will need to be patched.
All else being equal, we need to make sure that orphaned devices can be supported in the future via open source or have some form of insurance to replace expensive insecure systems when companies drop the ball.
IMHO it's not much of a problem now, but as IOT matures, there will be many orphaned, and possibly forgotten devices waiting to get breached.
-D
For us Gen X'ers, in the old days before Streaming video and DVR's, we were forced to watch 30 second commercials.
...except for VCR's, but those could be as annoying to use as commercials were to watch and early on, were really expensive.
There was no alternative.
I don't think it's that we had a long attention span. I didn't. It's that we had no choice what so ever. It wasn't the length of the ad, it was how many you'd have to ignore at a time.
We coped though. I always amazed myself with how much homework I could do three to four minutes at a time.
This is a topic that has no simple answer and really covers two completely different subjects...
Let me start by saying that IMHO the prison system in the United States is broken.
It's often more about making a profit and/or punishing people rather than actually correcting behavior.
That said, I'll move on to the problem.
For blocking drones, just umm.. order a cheap baby monitor from... Alibaba.
Actually, that one I don't have a real solution to. SDR would make it next to impossible to block signals from a really determined bad guy.
As for phones:
This is really a "What's the best worst option."
Here's one bad option:
1: Cell Phones have GPS's in them. Many have several different kinds of GPS receivers.
2: Using GPS, Carriers and cell phones are quite capable of determining when a phone is in the exact footprint of a correctional facility.
3: We could fund carriers to pay folks like us so we can develop a method where cell phone calls are restricted within certain geographical areas.
- Commercial Drones already do that by themselves.
4: Instead of blocking calls within that footprint, we could allow emergency calls and not impede the safety of legitimate cell phone users.
5: If done right, this is the kind of thing that can be implemented without violating the privacy or security of legitimate cell phone users.
Worst of the best? Nope. Best of the worst? There are probably better ideas.
-Dan
I've lived in Phoenix most of my life. My family has been in Arizona since the 1930's. It's the summer now, it's hot.
Late June has always been the hottest part of the year in the southern desert. The high today is well within the curve we expect this time of year. Insane hot? Yes. Atypical, no. Fun watching some unlucky Weather Channel reporter standing outside in the sun saying "Yep it's hot." We try not to do that ourselves.
However:
Yearly average temperatures are hotter than before. It's getting hot earlier in the year and staying hot until much later in the year. It's not attention-grabbing enough to say that it didn't drop below freezing for the past two years in Phoenix, but that is significant. It's just significant in a way that has more to do with microclimate, rather than macroclimate.
Over the years, Phoenix has grown. It's now the 5th largest city in the US. Phoenix also has many satellite cities. Some of them are major cities in their own right. For example, Mesa by it's self is slightly bigger than Atlanta GA. What that means is lots of concrete, paved roads, and air conditioning. All produce or retain heat. Phoenix has developed an urban "Heat Island," which repels rain storms and makes the city even hotter.
In other words, the Temperature in Phoenix today is NOT a valid indicator of global climate.
Now, let's go two hours North of Phoenix to Sedona and Flagstaff. Those smaller cities are in forested areas which are drier and slightly warmer than before. It's easy to see large swaths of dead trees in the forests caused by the stresses of longer-term changes in climate (and poor forest management.)
Now for the irony:
Most voters in Arizona take it in faith that what they are told by their political party is correct. Arizona is also strongly Republican. See where I'm heading? Strange if you think of it. Perhaps it's the heat?
-D
I get my daily caffeine transfusion from coffee beans which are younger than me.
Works every time.
Probably much safer too... for me... not the bean.
Let me start with a little history which will bore you, then I'll get to the idea.
I'm smack in the middle of Gen X. When I was growing up, we had a remote with volume, power and channel control on it. We had a regular TV, but there was no such thing as a DVR. Video tape recorders were out by the time I was in high school, but there were lots of jokes about how it took an engineer to figure out how to program one. Makes my wonder why I followed the career path I am on.
"Fast Forward to" (Gen X) "Skip to" (Gen Y+) current times.
I now have two daughters. Both have nice smart phones. We also have a 4k Smart TV with an Apple TV and a Cable DVR. I have no problems using any of the devices, but grumble about how the DVR programmers must have never heard about global variables.
Here are some other observations:
The interface on the Cisco DVR is poor. My youngest daughter (8th grade honors math when she should be in 5th grade, but skipped a year) has figured out the interface, but hates using it because it's "stupid." She prefers using the Apple TV and has mastered the art of changing the Input on the Smart TV to it.
My oldest Daughter (all honors courses too) took a while to figure out the way to switch the smart TV input (2 different remotes) to the Apple TV (one mediocre touch pad remote plus a Bluetooth Keyboard.)
My wife... Magna Cum Laude at UofA and now a 2nd grade teacher... lost it when the Tivo came out.
All three of them watch videos a lot. All of them use their smartphones. Seldom do my daughters use the TV.
I wouldn't call it even a Hypothesis, but it seems like the era of the big screen TV at home is waning. Perhaps if TV's and content were tied together as cleanly as shown on the TV show "The Expanse," then things would be different. I understand why content companies want to keep full control over their work, and why electronics companies want exclusivity which makes working with other devices harder, but we have a lot of work to do to keep large TV's and content made for them relevant.
IMHO
No doubt about it, Walmart IT is sophisticated. I've heard stories about how they monitor weather and when hurricane is approaching, fill shelves with extra beer and pop-tarts. Oh, and at a higher price too in stores more likely to have people around who will stock up and ride it out.
Walmart always pays low prices. It's part of their game. They dominate the low-end retail sector and prevent brands from selling to that market unless they cut prices and quality to match Walmart's demands. If the brands don't play, Walmart gives cheaper ones better shelve space and then returns unsold inventory tot he manufacturer for a refund.
They are like any other retailer in that they charge what the market will bear.
Example: Walk in to the TV section. In the hallway before it, you will see many cheap and/or refurbished TV's. As you walk in, you will see better ones at a slightly higher price. Walk further and they have their best sets at full retail. Did they pay full wholesale? Probably not.
As I see it, Walmart isn't a destination. It's what happens at 2am when you are done partying and need to buy something to eat.
Thank You! This is a perfect example of why we should teach critical thinking.
whale.to is a site that uses strong-arm tactics to sell you stuff. In sales parlance, it finds the fear, then offers a DVD to make you feel better. I'd call it a trap for those under the spell of a strong selection bias. In reality, it's nothing more than a scary scam site that is trying to foist off its wares to unaware passers by.
Without going in to too much detail, she had a bad reaction to the cake at her first birthday party. Allergy screening showed several *strong* reactions to what counted. About 10% of kids who react that way outgrow it by high school. We were lucky.
Shouldn't matter. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
I'm one of those *few* parents who had a child that was allergic and could not be vaccinated against one of the more virulent diseases. Fortunately, when she was older she outgrew that allergy and is now current on all her vaccinations. As a parent, sending my daughter to school where others CHOSE to not vaccinate their children thereby risking exposing mine to something nasty was a hard thing to do. I felt like I was living in the dark ages where being a part of any group could be anywhere from bad to a death sentence.
We might say that the parents who decide not to do the right thing are simply "dumb," or, as I called them, "*(!^*(&^!*%**'s." Time has taught me otherwise. In the US and elsewhere, many people aren't taught or don't remember basic scientific method. They have no idea what the difference is between doubting what they have been told, and actually engaging in critical, productive, thinking. STEM is important, but perhaps we should require those who can't handle it to take something more akin to STEM lite. Barring that, penalties for parents who refuse to take care of *OTHER PEOPLES CHILDREN* shouldn't be frowned upon. IMHO.
I recently had a memory issue in an Apple MacBook Pro that was manufactured in early 2014. Before I brought it to the Apple Store, I removed the SSD, wiped it in a different computer, then put it back. The Apple "Genius" (Who didn't even go to College, and of course didn't have an Engineering degree) looked at me funny and, in an extremely over friendly way, made it subtly clear that people just don't do that with Apple products.
Apple charged more than $650.00 for a new logic board with installation. A single ram chip, new and in low quantity is a few dollars.
If it were a PC and used standard RAM, it would have cost less than $50.00 to replace all the memory and that would have been that.
Third party companies aren't provided the utilities to accurately figure out which chip is bad and needs replacement. Some specialist Apple repair shops can do the job, but that's totally without Apple's support. It also takes time to ship the computer there, have it fixed, and get it back.
Next time I'll just bite the bullet, send the computer to Louis Rossman and be done with it.
-D
Steve Jobs = Imagine what the user actually wants.
Tim Cook = Imagine what the user actually wants to look like.
Apple:
There is always a balance between form and function.
You cannot choose one over the other.
Anodizing an under-powered micro laptop in pretty colors is cool, but pointless.
Anodizing a bleeding edge micro laptop with features (think more than size) that no other has (in pretty colors) is cool and to the point.
The value I expect to receive for my dollar is much more than what I see, it's what's under the hood that lets me work more efficiently and make that dollar work for me.
Remember the old adage: Looks Fade.
-D
Job security. Someone needs to manage the AI's. ..now all I need to do is learn Hindi.
Politics and Parties aside:
The right to free speech comes great responsibility.
The heavy-handed approach that China is taking to the "fake news" problem is fundamentally different than ours. What works for them cannot work for us. In the US, we have a long history of protected speech and we would not be where we are now if we didn't. We are a country of people from all parts of the world. Free speech is a fundamental tool we use to find common ground.
Obnoxious and repugnant forms of speech are protected -- for good reason -- in the United States. The purpose of free speech is to promote alternative view points and guarantee our liberty through discourse. That said, there are forms of speech that can be used to cause harm to others.
In the case United States v. Schenck (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the concept that shouting "Fire" in a theater was not protected speech. Incitement to commit criminal acts, obscenity, and a few other very specific things are also not considered as protected speech.
Now, to the point, freedom of the press is also guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution. It specifically codifies the right to publish without government restriction and subject only to the laws of libel, sedation, obscenity, and so on. Again, these laws are in place to guarantee our liberty.
Based on the summary above, I have a question:
All else equal, is a "fake news" article protected if it contains false information designed to scare or panic people into reading it for the purpose of profiting the writer?
Ceti Alpha V!
(Sorry, just being a geek...)
In reality, I think it's cool that they are going to give names to a few.
In the end, it seems it will wind up to be like trying to assign dns to every possible address in IPv6.
Nice to think about, makes things seem much more in scale, but it's always going to be less than a drop in the oceans.
...but no we have automobile correct on our spilling.
Ok, seriously, what we are seeing is just another incremental step in mass-computing. One of the many millions of cool things that have happened since the beginning of computing.
Years ago (Pre-Fidonet), one of the almost daily "Big Things" was that you could actually have a "Disk Operating System" where you didn't have to type call -151, then c600g to actually load a program. No Play on Tape. Just turn the computer on. It was cool.
If we go further back, no punch cards (before my time), and no acoustic couplers (also before my time). Must've been cool!
Still, management tools aside, if only there was a switch/router operating system that maintained automatic revisions at the command-line.
Some minor problems:
In general: laptop speakers and microphones are optimized for recording and producing sounds the human ear can detect. Lousy for networking.
Laptop speakers and microphones are also not calibrated with a high degree of precision.
You would need access to the boot loader which would have to come from a different "virus" or at the factory -- in which case, you already "own" the computer.
Recommendations:
Decent anti-virus software and a reasonable security policy.
Tin Foil lined Laptop Bag.
-Dan