It's not that it makes the beverage bitter -- it's that it makes it less sweet. The manufacturers add extra sugar to overcome the reduced sweetness in order to get the taste profile back to where they want it to be.
Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.
Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?
Caffeine is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.
Currently, we switch from one day to another when 0000 local time passes.
However, if everyone starts using UTC, when does the day change? If everyone is using the same time clock, doesn't it make the most sense to do the same with the date increment?
And if you do that, somewhere in the world it's going to be November 8th when you start your workday, but somewhere in the middle will switch to November 9th. And that's just ugly.
I suppose you could de-coordinate the date increment from 0000 -- but if you're going to keep the date change coupled with the local concept of "midnight", why bother de-coupling 0000 from midnight in the first place?
Please put this back onto the bad idea pile for disposal. Thank-you.
Thank you. So i should set my computer's BIOS to UTC and then offset by 8 hours(West coast USA) What about mobiles? They pretty much exclusively rely on network time Protocol (NTP) of some form. What about non-cellular tablets? How do they get time? From Google/Apple?
iOS and android mobiles use Unix time as their internal time representations, and Unix time is defined based on UTC. NTP also transmits time in UTC. This is actually the default for most OSs these days; last I checked Windows was the only remaining outlier in this regard (not sure if this has changed in the last few releases or not).
I'm not sure about Android, but on iOS there is an option to set time automatically via NTP against an Apple NTP server (time.apple.com).
Running your own DNS server will protect you from most internet garbage.
Why is this? DNS just resolves IPs, do ISP DNS get hacked and redirected all the time?
While that could happen, I think it's more of an issue of it being possible for your DNS provider to log all queries, and then have the ability to filter on IP address o get a list of every website (or other named service) you've visited.
AFAIK, while Webkit has an implementation of the Battery Status API, Apple always specifically disabled it in their Safari builds.
From what I can see, the only browsers affected by it currently are Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Microsoft and Apple had enough wisdom to stay away from this API in their shipping browsers.
I know they are there to protect investors from greedy governments. However, in the EU, we already have laws protecting your private property. In case the state requires your house the state must compensate you for that.
Yes, however ISDS doesn't just cover eminent domain seizures; it also protects investors from governments passing BS laws that disadvantage foreign imports in order to confer a special advantage to competing local interests.
Let's look at a (completely made up) example. Bombardier, a Canadian company, competes with Airbus, a French company in the aerospace field. Let's say that France wanted to confer a trade advantage to Airbus, and so decided to pass a law requiring X% of French-made parts in jets sold in France. The United States isn't party to CETA, and there is no tariff involved, so on the face of it, some politician might think this is legit. However, it would put Bombardier at a significant disadvantage -- the United States is Canada's largest trading partner, and importing parts made in France to Canada is going to cause the Canadian company to confer an added expense to ship parts to Canada that the French manufacturer doesn't have. In effect, it's a no-tarrif way to bypass a free trade agreement.
EU laws protecting property doesn't cover such a scenario. And that's why there are Investor protections built in -- to prevent such shenanigans.
The problem with such international courts is that they only value investors and they provide them extra protection beyond being treated equally. In case of leaked parts of TTIP and CETA, if a state would forbid carbon fueled engines by 2040/2050 (which we must do), this could become extremely expensive for a state, as any car manufacturer could sue them.
You can sue anybody for anything. Winning the suit is a completely different matter.
I've spent some time since yesterday reading the text of CETA, and Chapter 24 on Environmental Protection seems to apply in this case. Indeed, Article 24.2 seems to promote the type of protection you're talking about. Article 24.3 specifically states that parties have the right to regulate and encourage high levels of environmental protection. However, I will note that IANAL, and CETA is hugely long, thus there could be some details I've missed. Again, it seems that so long as such measures are applied equally and fairly, a scenario such as the one you've suggested would be completely permitted (Chapter 8, Section C).
Now, as the text does seem to indicate that the "parties" are Canada and the EU, so the treaty might require harmonization of such laws within the EU (as the above sections tend to talk about application to "the parties", and I'm not sure if individual nations within the EU are considered parties individually, or only as a collective). You'd need to take that up with a trade lawyer who knows more about this than I do. If that's the case I could see why some people have a problem with this, however isn't such harmonization the entire point of the EU in the first place?
BTW: another issue with this treaty is the inability to quit and it is valid indefinitely. This is rubbish. No one should ever sign such treaty. What if the next generation wants a different treaty or no treaty?
Any treaty can be quit. You don't need special wording added to an agreement to quit. Indeed, there are two ways you could conceptually quit CETA:
Leave the EU: as we are currently seeing with the "Brexit", you can get out of a treaty such as CETA by leaving the EU. The EU charter has text on how to exit the EU, and as CETA is between Canada and the EU, if you're not in the EU, you're not party to CETA.
Just announce you'll no longer recognize the treaty: or you can go the old-fashioned route and just ignore the treaty, and stop participating. Sure, this might trigger and old-fashioned trade war and cause a diplomatic crisis, however it has
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU.
Investor protection isn't a bad thing to have in a trade deal per se. The main idea is supposed to be to prevent things like nationalization of an industry after a trading partner country's company(s) setup shop, or to pass laws that effectively bypass the agreement altogether by passing laws which directly disadvantages the trade partners industries, while favouring the local industries (i.e.: make widgets sold by the trading partner illegal, but permit locally made widgets). I would think that if you owned a Canadian company and decided to spend a ton of money to setup a factory in Belgium, only for a local government to expropriate your factory without permission or compensation (like Cuba did to various US companies in 1960), you would be pretty pissed off. Likewise (and probably more likely), you'd also be pretty cheesed if you spent a bunch of money and effort to import your widgets to (say) France, only for the French government to turn around and find some bullshit reason to make import and sell your product effectively impossible (i.e.: perhaps they decide suddenly post-agreement that all widgets must contain 100% raw goods refined in France, or that all workers building widgets must be fed a steady diet of baguettes made in Paris), you'd likewise be pretty pissed that the goalpost was moved in order to disadvantage you, while giving your competition within a trade partner nation an unfair advantage.
Ideally under such protections, changes to environmental and product safety laws shouldn't be a problem so long as they apply to everyone equally. That's the goal at least -- not having read CETA myself, I can't say how close it comes to the ideal. However, as a comparison here is a list of all current NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Disputes, which makes for an interesting read on the types of disagreements the NAFTA ISDS-equivalent has dealt with.
Ultimately, I don't think that a clause in a free trade agreement that says "you'll treat our companies and goods as you do your own companies and goods" is a bad thing, and anyone who is automatically against the concept of an Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is wrong (there really isn't a point to a free trade system without one). I think that criticism of the implementation of an ISDS system is fair game (so long as the goal is to make the system fair and reasonable) -- but as there are a lot of ways legislation can be drafted to disadvantage foreign goods without tariffs, a free trade agreement without such a system in place is meaningless.
(And if you really can't stand having your local industries on a level footing with a foreign trading partner (and vice-versa), then you need to either negotiate an exemption for those industries when you (re)negotiate the agreement in the first place, or have the decency to back out of the agreement entirely. Disadvantaging your trading partners trade while expecting them to uphold their end of the agreement is a completely dick move that makes a mockery of trade agreements).
The competing product from Google and Facebook are both available on iOS and Android. Add to that the fact that Android owns so much more of the smart phone market than Apple.
Yes, however iMessage covers not only the iPhone, but every iPad, every iWatch, and every Mac as well. That's a pretty damn big ecosystem.
But that's just a guess. Of course that being said, Netflix is cutting back their shipping hubs. Those fuckers axed the one that was next day away from me and I have to use one a state over that takes 2 to 3 days each way.
It's worth noting that outside the US, Netflix doesn't run (and AFAIK has never run) any DVD shipping service. It's been streaming only. So in theory that shut weigh in Netflix US's favour somewhat.
Go shop for a new inkjet printer and tell me how many have USB-C connections on them vs. traditional USB right now.
I think you chose a poor example. Most printers that I'm aware of feature a USB Type-B connector on them, and don't come with any sort of cable.
USB Type-C is just a new USB connector. It's still signal compatible with existing USB devices. As virtually all inkjet printers don't come with a cable, you just ensure you buy a USB Type C to USB Type B cable to go with your printer, the same way you'd need to buy a USB Type C to USB Type A cable.
The problems that have been announced almost invariably revolve around the connectivity provided in the stadium, rather than the tablets themselves. This is an NFL problem.. iPad, Surface, Galaxy Tab, whatever.. not going to be different until the NFL forces teams and stadiums to provide adequate connectivity.
This is the NFL. They aren't exactly poor, so the simple solution would seem to be to use 4G enabled tablets. I can't imagine that cell service is so terrible from within stadiums (indeed, I'd expect cell companies to target stadiums for better reception. Nothing worse for your brand than having a venue that supports 40 000+ people who can't use their devices to tweet pics of themselves wearing a foam finger because your service sucks in a (typically) downtown stadium.
That's an interesting way of looking at it... But keep in mind that GP's argument about destroying shareholder value isn't just about a lower stock price due to a damaged brand, the actual value (assets) of the company may have decreased by a similar amount at the same time. Instead of paying $100 for an $80 item, you're now paying $50 for a $40 item. The price may be lower but it's still a crap buy.
But the numbers don't bear this out. These things are reported publicly, and can be easily looked up.
Like a lot of virtual services, Twitter doesn't have a ton of real value to start with. They don't have significant real estate holdings -- their latest earnings report lists $758 837 of "Property and Equipment, net", which is up from $699 502 YoY, and at an all-time high. So the hypothesis doesn't stand in light of the facts.
Twitter's whole value is in their Monthly Active Users (MAU), and that was up 1% during the last reported quarter. Twitters problem is that they don't have much of any real value (as mentioned above, they only have about 3/4 of a million in property and equipment), there isn't much growth potential, and advertising revenue is stagnant.
Making up stuff about SJWs being the reason why Twitter's valuation is down is just mental masturbation, and an attempt to paint "SJW's" as a societal ill. But Twitter's problems have nothing to do with Anita Sarkeesian, or five Conservative (in)Justice Warriors who have had their accounts banned for being abusing dicks. Hell, advertisers generally don't want to be associated with such people anyway -- it devalues their brand. The numbers -- which are publicly available -- bear this out.
And after having damaged their brand and destroyed billions worth of shareholder value, lo and behold, no one wants to buy them! Gee, turns out that alienating half your user base at the behest of a tiny cadre of radical feminists is a lousy business strategy...
Yeah, except that's not the reality of the situation.
As of Twitter's latest earnings report, its user base grew more than expected, up to 313 million active monthly users. Their problem has been a softening of advertiser demand, which has reduced revenues below expectations.
Indeed, all of the companies interested in buying Twitter have only been interested because of the reduced shareholder value. Twitter isn't a good buy-out candidate when its stock value is worth more than the real value of its assets; it's only when its market value is at or below the value of its assets and expected revenues that it suddenly becomes something everyone could be interested in buying out. As such, the "destroyed billions worth of shareholder value" is actually a good thing for a company looking to buy them out -- you buy low, not high.
So congrats -- you've invented an argument by working backward form a premise, while ignoring basic math and economics. Because if your argument had any real merit, any big company could buy Twitter, fire Ms. Sarkeesian, re-instate five accounts, and suddenly they'd be able to increase the value of the company by billions. But here's a hint -- the advertisers don't care who is visiting Twitter, or what their politics are. The fact that they gained over 3 million monthly visitors in the last reported quarter (to 313 million) is all they are going to care about -- and advertising is virtually all of Twitter's revenue. But advertisers are going elsewhere -- and its certainly not because there are some butt-hurt Conservative Justice Warriors who can't handle people calling them out for being complete douchbags. These companies have looked at Twitter's fundamentals, and it appears they come up wanting. Perhaps after they lose a few hundred million more in value someone will snap them up.
That's cute and everything, but when you buy a company you take on its liabilities[1]. I suspect that's why so companies are looking under the veil and walking away from the altar.
That's what I suspect as well. Their liabilities are probably well beyond their real estate, securities, and physical holdings, such that they aren't even worth buying as a fire sale.
Still, if I were to incorporate and pay myself some crazy amount to dismantle the company, that $5 + bag of doughnuts investment could pay off nicely...
The source code only has to be available to the people you ship binaries to.
Consider the following excerpts from the GNU General Public License, versions 2 and 3:
(From GPLv2)
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange
This offer must be available to "any third party".
Good job at selectively quoting the GPL to fit your narrative, but you're still wrong.
The section of the GPL v2 you quoted above is section 3b. The main text for Section 3 just above it reads (with emphasis added):
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
...followed by three options, one of which is the one you quoted. There are two other options that be be selected instead, keeping you in compliance with the GPL, neither of which requires you give source to third parties.
That's certainly true. But the point was that you as a programmer are better equipped to find bugs in your own code than in its dependencies, and that the runtime is basically a giant black box to most programmers, whereas libraries are more likely to get compiled from source (though not necessarily, of course).
Unless you're writing embedded code directly against the hardware, however, you already rely on a pile of giant black boxes. The Operating System is a giant black box. Your compiler is probably a giant black box. The standard libraries for your language is probably a giant black box. Even if they're OSS, how many developers really take the time to audit their entire toolchain and OS? And even if you have and audit the source, how often do developers go as far as to audit the compiled code? They're still giant boxes that you build atop, with lots of opportunity for things to go wrong..
But these methods to establish the lack of a Thompson trojan in a compiler will not work if the only publicly available implementation of a language is written in that same language.
Thanks for adding this -- it is certainly an interesting area of research.
However, I'm having a hard time finding much in the way of practical use of Wheeler Diverse Double Compiling technique. I found a single reference that GCC has a build switch that can do this, but that's about it. I haven't been able to find any details as to any other compilers that actually use DDC in practice. After all, the thrust of Thompson's talk was that at some point you have to have some level of trust in the software you run.
Besides which, I was responding to the claim that "most compilers are written in C". DDC doesn't specify any specific language for either of the compilers used in the initial pass; Wirth (for example) is quoted as saying the initial Pascal compiler was written in FORTRAN (Pascal is now self-hosting in most implementations, although Wikipedia notes that GCC Pascal is an exception, being written entirely in C and not self-hosting, which leads me to assume they don't use DDC at all, and the compiler can't compile itself). DDC is thus not an argument for "most compilers are written in C", as firstly it pre-supposes that the initial compiler was written in C (which is debatable with many counter-examples), and secondly that even when DDC is conceivably used, the end result is a self-hosted compiler, and that is what is shipped to users (i.e.: DDC is only used as a verification step, and doesn't determine or affect the shipping compilers compiler). I suppose the only logical caveat to that would be a self-hosting C compiler, which, by virtue of being self-hosting, would indeed be compiled in C.
On the other hand, a buffer overflow in your C code affects only your app, whereas a buffer overflow in Java's C code probably affects thousands of Java apps, and won't necessarily be triggered by any erroneous usage pattern in your Java code.
That in itself is a false analogy; you're comparing an app to an entire runtime environment.
What if your "app" is an Operating System? Or even just a library? In that case, a buffer overflow in your C code could affect anything (and in the case of an OS, potentially everything).
Secondly, almost all other languages are compiled using a 'C' compiler.
That's not necessarily true. It was at one time an important milestone in the development of a new language once the language became self-compiling (that is, when you could write the compiler in the language to be compiled; this is known as bootstrapping). This usually necessitated that the initial compiler be written in some lower-level language, but once constructed could be used to re-write the compiler in it's own language, to be compiled and shipped. Most C compilers, for example, are written in C, and not straight assembly. The Wikipedia link above provides a list of bootstrapped languages; the list is long enough that it pretty much disproves your assertion that "almost all other languages are compiled using a 'C' compiler".
If the 'C' language were a flawed language then producing code for all those other languages, using 'C' would make all of those languages inherently contain the same systemic flaws.
No. C is Turing Complete, and thus you can create a compiler for any other Turing-complete language within it. That doesn't imply that such languages will have the same set of flaws. For example, generally C compilers have no array bound checking, but it's certainly possible (indeed almost trivial) to write a compiler for another language with array bounds checking in C.
Yeah, so put it in the phone in hardware. Also, the user also has to pay for that external decoder. Also, in practice, one that does all those formats is likely to need a full-fledged processor onboard anyway. If it doesn't do all those formats it's likely to not have the one you want...
As you either have reading comprehension or memory problems, I'll just quote back from what I typed previously in this thread:
You could put decoding hardware in the phone for each of those audio formats, but it's going to be easier to offload that to the device instead. Phones are already pretty crammed for space on the logic board; adding more chips (or processor circuitry) to decode all of those formats in hardware would be sub-optimal. It's better to leave this to the audio device on the other end of the USB-C connection.
It's not going to consume less electricity if you put it in the audio device instead of in the mobile device.
It does when it means the difference between decoding in software on the mobile device on the primary CPU versus decoding in dedicated hardware in the audio device itself.
Hardware decoding is always more efficient than software decoding on a generalized CPU.
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It's not that it makes the beverage bitter -- it's that it makes it less sweet. The manufacturers add extra sugar to overcome the reduced sweetness in order to get the taste profile back to where they want it to be.
Yaz
Apart from bitter lemon, tonic water, birch beer and energy drinks containing taurine, i can't say I am familiar with any bitter sodas. Lots of them are highly acidic, but not bitter, which is a very distinct flavor from acidic.
Coca-Cola used to be bitter before it was carbonated and sugared, and actually contained coca extract, but that's a long time ago. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of?
Caffeine is quite bitter in raw form. Any soda that it is added to needs extra sugar to overcome the bitterness imparted by the caffeine.
Yaz
Currently, we switch from one day to another when 0000 local time passes.
However, if everyone starts using UTC, when does the day change? If everyone is using the same time clock, doesn't it make the most sense to do the same with the date increment?
And if you do that, somewhere in the world it's going to be November 8th when you start your workday, but somewhere in the middle will switch to November 9th. And that's just ugly.
I suppose you could de-coordinate the date increment from 0000 -- but if you're going to keep the date change coupled with the local concept of "midnight", why bother de-coupling 0000 from midnight in the first place?
Please put this back onto the bad idea pile for disposal. Thank-you.
Yaz
Thank you. So i should set my computer's BIOS to UTC and then offset by 8 hours(West coast USA) What about mobiles? They pretty much exclusively rely on network time Protocol (NTP) of some form. What about non-cellular tablets? How do they get time? From Google/Apple?
iOS and android mobiles use Unix time as their internal time representations, and Unix time is defined based on UTC. NTP also transmits time in UTC. This is actually the default for most OSs these days; last I checked Windows was the only remaining outlier in this regard (not sure if this has changed in the last few releases or not).
I'm not sure about Android, but on iOS there is an option to set time automatically via NTP against an Apple NTP server (time.apple.com).
Yaz
Running your own DNS server will protect you from most internet garbage.
Why is this? DNS just resolves IPs, do ISP DNS get hacked and redirected all the time?
While that could happen, I think it's more of an issue of it being possible for your DNS provider to log all queries, and then have the ability to filter on IP address o get a list of every website (or other named service) you've visited .
Yaz
AFAIK, while Webkit has an implementation of the Battery Status API, Apple always specifically disabled it in their Safari builds.
From what I can see, the only browsers affected by it currently are Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Microsoft and Apple had enough wisdom to stay away from this API in their shipping browsers.
Yaz
I know they are there to protect investors from greedy governments. However, in the EU, we already have laws protecting your private property. In case the state requires your house the state must compensate you for that.
Yes, however ISDS doesn't just cover eminent domain seizures; it also protects investors from governments passing BS laws that disadvantage foreign imports in order to confer a special advantage to competing local interests.
Let's look at a (completely made up) example. Bombardier, a Canadian company, competes with Airbus, a French company in the aerospace field. Let's say that France wanted to confer a trade advantage to Airbus, and so decided to pass a law requiring X% of French-made parts in jets sold in France. The United States isn't party to CETA, and there is no tariff involved, so on the face of it, some politician might think this is legit. However, it would put Bombardier at a significant disadvantage -- the United States is Canada's largest trading partner, and importing parts made in France to Canada is going to cause the Canadian company to confer an added expense to ship parts to Canada that the French manufacturer doesn't have. In effect, it's a no-tarrif way to bypass a free trade agreement.
EU laws protecting property doesn't cover such a scenario. And that's why there are Investor protections built in -- to prevent such shenanigans.
The problem with such international courts is that they only value investors and they provide them extra protection beyond being treated equally. In case of leaked parts of TTIP and CETA, if a state would forbid carbon fueled engines by 2040/2050 (which we must do), this could become extremely expensive for a state, as any car manufacturer could sue them.
You can sue anybody for anything. Winning the suit is a completely different matter.
I've spent some time since yesterday reading the text of CETA, and Chapter 24 on Environmental Protection seems to apply in this case. Indeed, Article 24.2 seems to promote the type of protection you're talking about. Article 24.3 specifically states that parties have the right to regulate and encourage high levels of environmental protection. However, I will note that IANAL, and CETA is hugely long, thus there could be some details I've missed. Again, it seems that so long as such measures are applied equally and fairly, a scenario such as the one you've suggested would be completely permitted (Chapter 8, Section C).
Now, as the text does seem to indicate that the "parties" are Canada and the EU, so the treaty might require harmonization of such laws within the EU (as the above sections tend to talk about application to "the parties", and I'm not sure if individual nations within the EU are considered parties individually, or only as a collective). You'd need to take that up with a trade lawyer who knows more about this than I do. If that's the case I could see why some people have a problem with this, however isn't such harmonization the entire point of the EU in the first place?
BTW: another issue with this treaty is the inability to quit and it is valid indefinitely. This is rubbish. No one should ever sign such treaty. What if the next generation wants a different treaty or no treaty?
Any treaty can be quit. You don't need special wording added to an agreement to quit. Indeed, there are two ways you could conceptually quit CETA:
Leave the EU: as we are currently seeing with the "Brexit", you can get out of a treaty such as CETA by leaving the EU. The EU charter has text on how to exit the EU, and as CETA is between Canada and the EU, if you're not in the EU, you're not party to CETA.
Just announce you'll no longer recognize the treaty: or you can go the old-fashioned route and just ignore the treaty, and stop participating. Sure, this might trigger and old-fashioned trade war and cause a diplomatic crisis, however it has
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU.
Investor protection isn't a bad thing to have in a trade deal per se. The main idea is supposed to be to prevent things like nationalization of an industry after a trading partner country's company(s) setup shop, or to pass laws that effectively bypass the agreement altogether by passing laws which directly disadvantages the trade partners industries, while favouring the local industries (i.e.: make widgets sold by the trading partner illegal, but permit locally made widgets). I would think that if you owned a Canadian company and decided to spend a ton of money to setup a factory in Belgium, only for a local government to expropriate your factory without permission or compensation (like Cuba did to various US companies in 1960), you would be pretty pissed off. Likewise (and probably more likely), you'd also be pretty cheesed if you spent a bunch of money and effort to import your widgets to (say) France, only for the French government to turn around and find some bullshit reason to make import and sell your product effectively impossible (i.e.: perhaps they decide suddenly post-agreement that all widgets must contain 100% raw goods refined in France, or that all workers building widgets must be fed a steady diet of baguettes made in Paris), you'd likewise be pretty pissed that the goalpost was moved in order to disadvantage you, while giving your competition within a trade partner nation an unfair advantage.
Ideally under such protections, changes to environmental and product safety laws shouldn't be a problem so long as they apply to everyone equally. That's the goal at least -- not having read CETA myself, I can't say how close it comes to the ideal. However, as a comparison here is a list of all current NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Disputes, which makes for an interesting read on the types of disagreements the NAFTA ISDS-equivalent has dealt with.
Ultimately, I don't think that a clause in a free trade agreement that says "you'll treat our companies and goods as you do your own companies and goods" is a bad thing, and anyone who is automatically against the concept of an Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is wrong (there really isn't a point to a free trade system without one). I think that criticism of the implementation of an ISDS system is fair game (so long as the goal is to make the system fair and reasonable) -- but as there are a lot of ways legislation can be drafted to disadvantage foreign goods without tariffs, a free trade agreement without such a system in place is meaningless.
(And if you really can't stand having your local industries on a level footing with a foreign trading partner (and vice-versa), then you need to either negotiate an exemption for those industries when you (re)negotiate the agreement in the first place, or have the decency to back out of the agreement entirely. Disadvantaging your trading partners trade while expecting them to uphold their end of the agreement is a completely dick move that makes a mockery of trade agreements).
Yaz
The competing product from Google and Facebook are both available on iOS and Android. Add to that the fact that Android owns so much more of the smart phone market than Apple.
Yes, however iMessage covers not only the iPhone, but every iPad, every iWatch, and every Mac as well. That's a pretty damn big ecosystem.
Yaz
But that's just a guess. Of course that being said, Netflix is cutting back their shipping hubs. Those fuckers axed the one that was next day away from me and I have to use one a state over that takes 2 to 3 days each way.
It's worth noting that outside the US, Netflix doesn't run (and AFAIK has never run) any DVD shipping service. It's been streaming only. So in theory that shut weigh in Netflix US's favour somewhat.
Yaz
Go shop for a new inkjet printer and tell me how many have USB-C connections on them vs. traditional USB right now.
I think you chose a poor example. Most printers that I'm aware of feature a USB Type-B connector on them, and don't come with any sort of cable.
USB Type-C is just a new USB connector. It's still signal compatible with existing USB devices. As virtually all inkjet printers don't come with a cable, you just ensure you buy a USB Type C to USB Type B cable to go with your printer, the same way you'd need to buy a USB Type C to USB Type A cable.
Yaz
The problems that have been announced almost invariably revolve around the connectivity provided in the stadium, rather than the tablets themselves. This is an NFL problem.. iPad, Surface, Galaxy Tab, whatever.. not going to be different until the NFL forces teams and stadiums to provide adequate connectivity.
This is the NFL. They aren't exactly poor, so the simple solution would seem to be to use 4G enabled tablets. I can't imagine that cell service is so terrible from within stadiums (indeed, I'd expect cell companies to target stadiums for better reception. Nothing worse for your brand than having a venue that supports 40 000+ people who can't use their devices to tweet pics of themselves wearing a foam finger because your service sucks in a (typically) downtown stadium.
Yaz
That's an interesting way of looking at it... But keep in mind that GP's argument about destroying shareholder value isn't just about a lower stock price due to a damaged brand, the actual value (assets) of the company may have decreased by a similar amount at the same time. Instead of paying $100 for an $80 item, you're now paying $50 for a $40 item. The price may be lower but it's still a crap buy.
But the numbers don't bear this out. These things are reported publicly, and can be easily looked up.
Like a lot of virtual services, Twitter doesn't have a ton of real value to start with. They don't have significant real estate holdings -- their latest earnings report lists $758 837 of "Property and Equipment, net", which is up from $699 502 YoY, and at an all-time high. So the hypothesis doesn't stand in light of the facts.
Twitter's whole value is in their Monthly Active Users (MAU), and that was up 1% during the last reported quarter. Twitters problem is that they don't have much of any real value (as mentioned above, they only have about 3/4 of a million in property and equipment), there isn't much growth potential, and advertising revenue is stagnant.
Making up stuff about SJWs being the reason why Twitter's valuation is down is just mental masturbation, and an attempt to paint "SJW's" as a societal ill. But Twitter's problems have nothing to do with Anita Sarkeesian, or five Conservative (in)Justice Warriors who have had their accounts banned for being abusing dicks. Hell, advertisers generally don't want to be associated with such people anyway -- it devalues their brand. The numbers -- which are publicly available -- bear this out.
The GP was being disingenuous, plain and simple.
Yaz
$5 and a bag of doughnuts? I think you're overpaying.
Well, it is 5 CANADIAN dollars, if that makes a difference!
Yaz
And after having damaged their brand and destroyed billions worth of shareholder value, lo and behold, no one wants to buy them! Gee, turns out that alienating half your user base at the behest of a tiny cadre of radical feminists is a lousy business strategy...
Yeah, except that's not the reality of the situation.
As of Twitter's latest earnings report, its user base grew more than expected, up to 313 million active monthly users. Their problem has been a softening of advertiser demand, which has reduced revenues below expectations.
Indeed, all of the companies interested in buying Twitter have only been interested because of the reduced shareholder value. Twitter isn't a good buy-out candidate when its stock value is worth more than the real value of its assets; it's only when its market value is at or below the value of its assets and expected revenues that it suddenly becomes something everyone could be interested in buying out. As such, the "destroyed billions worth of shareholder value" is actually a good thing for a company looking to buy them out -- you buy low, not high.
So congrats -- you've invented an argument by working backward form a premise, while ignoring basic math and economics. Because if your argument had any real merit, any big company could buy Twitter, fire Ms. Sarkeesian, re-instate five accounts, and suddenly they'd be able to increase the value of the company by billions. But here's a hint -- the advertisers don't care who is visiting Twitter, or what their politics are. The fact that they gained over 3 million monthly visitors in the last reported quarter (to 313 million) is all they are going to care about -- and advertising is virtually all of Twitter's revenue. But advertisers are going elsewhere -- and its certainly not because there are some butt-hurt Conservative Justice Warriors who can't handle people calling them out for being complete douchbags. These companies have looked at Twitter's fundamentals, and it appears they come up wanting. Perhaps after they lose a few hundred million more in value someone will snap them up.
Yaz
That's cute and everything, but when you buy a company you take on its liabilities[1]. I suspect that's why so companies are looking under the veil and walking away from the altar.
That's what I suspect as well. Their liabilities are probably well beyond their real estate, securities, and physical holdings, such that they aren't even worth buying as a fire sale.
Still, if I were to incorporate and pay myself some crazy amount to dismantle the company, that $5 + bag of doughnuts investment could pay off nicely...
Yaz
I have a nice crisp clean $5 bill here I'll be happy to pay for them. I'll even throw in a bag of doughnuts.
Anyone want to outbid me? Anyone?
Yaz
I suspect the problem is that the kettle is RFC 2324 compliant, and was returning a 418 error.
No worries -- I hear they're working on a firmware update to make the kettle RFC 7168 compliant, which should make integration much easier.
Yaz
The source code only has to be available to the people you ship binaries to.
Consider the following excerpts from the GNU General Public License, versions 2 and 3:
This offer must be available to "any third party".
Good job at selectively quoting the GPL to fit your narrative, but you're still wrong.
The section of the GPL v2 you quoted above is section 3b. The main text for Section 3 just above it reads (with emphasis added):
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
...followed by three options, one of which is the one you quoted. There are two other options that be be selected instead, keeping you in compliance with the GPL, neither of which requires you give source to third parties.
Yaz
That's certainly true. But the point was that you as a programmer are better equipped to find bugs in your own code than in its dependencies, and that the runtime is basically a giant black box to most programmers, whereas libraries are more likely to get compiled from source (though not necessarily, of course).
Unless you're writing embedded code directly against the hardware, however, you already rely on a pile of giant black boxes. The Operating System is a giant black box. Your compiler is probably a giant black box. The standard libraries for your language is probably a giant black box. Even if they're OSS, how many developers really take the time to audit their entire toolchain and OS? And even if you have and audit the source, how often do developers go as far as to audit the compiled code? They're still giant boxes that you build atop, with lots of opportunity for things to go wrong..
Yaz
But these methods to establish the lack of a Thompson trojan in a compiler will not work if the only publicly available implementation of a language is written in that same language.
Thanks for adding this -- it is certainly an interesting area of research.
However, I'm having a hard time finding much in the way of practical use of Wheeler Diverse Double Compiling technique. I found a single reference that GCC has a build switch that can do this, but that's about it. I haven't been able to find any details as to any other compilers that actually use DDC in practice. After all, the thrust of Thompson's talk was that at some point you have to have some level of trust in the software you run.
Besides which, I was responding to the claim that "most compilers are written in C". DDC doesn't specify any specific language for either of the compilers used in the initial pass; Wirth (for example) is quoted as saying the initial Pascal compiler was written in FORTRAN (Pascal is now self-hosting in most implementations, although Wikipedia notes that GCC Pascal is an exception, being written entirely in C and not self-hosting, which leads me to assume they don't use DDC at all, and the compiler can't compile itself). DDC is thus not an argument for "most compilers are written in C", as firstly it pre-supposes that the initial compiler was written in C (which is debatable with many counter-examples), and secondly that even when DDC is conceivably used, the end result is a self-hosted compiler, and that is what is shipped to users (i.e.: DDC is only used as a verification step, and doesn't determine or affect the shipping compilers compiler). I suppose the only logical caveat to that would be a self-hosting C compiler, which, by virtue of being self-hosting, would indeed be compiled in C.
Yaz
On the other hand, a buffer overflow in your C code affects only your app, whereas a buffer overflow in Java's C code probably affects thousands of Java apps, and won't necessarily be triggered by any erroneous usage pattern in your Java code.
That in itself is a false analogy; you're comparing an app to an entire runtime environment.
What if your "app" is an Operating System? Or even just a library? In that case, a buffer overflow in your C code could affect anything (and in the case of an OS, potentially everything).
Yaz
Secondly, almost all other languages are compiled using a 'C' compiler.
That's not necessarily true. It was at one time an important milestone in the development of a new language once the language became self-compiling (that is, when you could write the compiler in the language to be compiled; this is known as bootstrapping). This usually necessitated that the initial compiler be written in some lower-level language, but once constructed could be used to re-write the compiler in it's own language, to be compiled and shipped. Most C compilers, for example, are written in C, and not straight assembly. The Wikipedia link above provides a list of bootstrapped languages; the list is long enough that it pretty much disproves your assertion that "almost all other languages are compiled using a 'C' compiler".
If the 'C' language were a flawed language then producing code for all those other languages, using 'C' would make all of those languages inherently contain the same systemic flaws.
No. C is Turing Complete, and thus you can create a compiler for any other Turing-complete language within it. That doesn't imply that such languages will have the same set of flaws. For example, generally C compilers have no array bound checking, but it's certainly possible (indeed almost trivial) to write a compiler for another language with array bounds checking in C.
Yaz
Yeah, so put it in the phone in hardware. Also, the user also has to pay for that external decoder. Also, in practice, one that does all those formats is likely to need a full-fledged processor onboard anyway. If it doesn't do all those formats it's likely to not have the one you want...
As you either have reading comprehension or memory problems, I'll just quote back from what I typed previously in this thread:
You could put decoding hardware in the phone for each of those audio formats, but it's going to be easier to offload that to the device instead. Phones are already pretty crammed for space on the logic board; adding more chips (or processor circuitry) to decode all of those formats in hardware would be sub-optimal. It's better to leave this to the audio device on the other end of the USB-C connection.
Yaz
It's not going to consume less electricity if you put it in the audio device instead of in the mobile device.
It does when it means the difference between decoding in software on the mobile device on the primary CPU versus decoding in dedicated hardware in the audio device itself.
Hardware decoding is always more efficient than software decoding on a generalized CPU.
Yaz