If you're wearing the kind of gloves that would prevent you from unzipping a zipper, you're going to have to take them off to use the phone anyway.
Maybe that's just another argument for a watch, but by this point, you're so bundled up you probably can't even see your watch. If I'm in the middle of a ski-trip I'm not on that kind of a schedule anyway.
That is ridiculous. There are plenty of parts to the world where you need to drive in order to get by. Since you have the right to live, you have the right to drive if you live in those locations.
There is absolutely no reason you can't set your phone down for the drive
There are plenty of reasons one may want to check their phone while they're driving. Maybe I'm using a GPS navigator to drive and I want to look at the map to better understand its driving directions? Maybe I'm making a delivery and now that I've gotten close to my destination I want to call them and let them know so someone will be there to let me in. Maybe I'm bored because there are no other cars on the road and I've been driving for an hour and a half and I want to check my Facebook. Who the hell are you to say? You don't know everyone's unique driving situation, so why do you think you're so smart you can make broad generalizations about what kinds of distractions pose an unnecessary risk?
You can choose to take the bus or walk if you want to use your phone.
I live 25 miles from the nearest bus-stop. Maybe I should move if I want to use my phone? Yeah because that doesn't infringe on my rights at all. . .
The fact of the matter is, you could write a bullshit excuse like this to explain writing a law to prevent almost anything we are normally free to do. You could easily write something like this to justify a ban people eating fast food. This is literally THE justification given for prohibitions of drugs. It is the reason that was given for making alcohol illegal. It's the reason trotted out time and again for promoting greater levels of gun control.
And all of these prohibitions have one thing in common, they do little to achieve their core objective of "saving lives." Have traffic fatalities decreased since they banned texting and talking on your phone while you're driving? No?! So now you think maybe we should just double down! Maybe we could use your phones capacitance sensor to see if you touched your phone while you were driving so we can issue you a ticket.
So basically, the problem is that you, and people like you, think you are the smartest people on the whole planet, and that you can make decisions better than the rest of us. That's the whole reason we have a bunch of bullshit laws doing nothing but giving people a lot of stupid tickets and putting a lot of innocent people in jail. You are the criminal, not them.
The problem is that you have to balance the minor inconvenience of maybe having a hard time looking at your phone when you're doing something else, with the major inconvenience of having to make sure the watch is charged and that you're wearing it in addition to your smartphone.
Most people just wait to check their phone until a more convenient time. If you're in the middle of something, you aren't even likely to stop everything to check your watch either, frankly. There's a reason checking your watch used to mean you where bored.
I agree that the government shouldn't be powerful enough to enforce these kinds of laws. The the reality of modern data collection is that it's so cheap and easy practically any government could do it. Moreover, such surveillance has the potential to increases the strength of the rule of law by making the enforcement of laws more consistent. Stopping it as probably an unrealistic goal. Everyone in a position of authority wants more information.
It's probably more like the "Apple TV" rumors. Steve said he thought he had a good living room device, and that got into it s autobiography. I have an Apple TV, so I knew he was talking about the existing product (which has never sold well, but really works well). But all the analysis took it to mean they were going to make a whole television set. Really? Who would buy an Apple branded television?
The smart watch is not a particularly good idea. It might be a reasonable niche product as a fashion accessory, or a a watch replacement for people who are used to wearing them. But the screen it to small fulfill a lot of smartphone applications, which makes it a poor stand-alone device. As a result it's unlikely Apple would release a product that would fit the definition of a "smart watch" that's been talked about in the media. It's more likely someone simply misconstrued something they heard form their Apple source about wearable technologies being developed at Apple.
No country claiming to be a bastion of freedom should be in the business of mass data collection of its citizens' comings and goings.
That's probably just a consequence of having the ability to collect such data. I'm more worried about they way they encourage people they have a problem with to engage in illegal activities just so that they can arrest them. Or the way the way laws have been passed prohibiting recreational drug use, effectively declaring 10% or so of the population to be criminals. Them tracking our comings and goings wouldn't be such a problem if our innocent activities weren't illegal in the first place.
There are many quotes in that article, if you care to actually read it:
Broadly speaking, when a telco can pass five to 65 locations for every mile of outside plant, the cost per home ranges between $4,000 and $5,000 per location. When the number of locations drops below five passings per plant mile, costs escalate quickly, up to $19,000 a location.
At densities of about five to 10 locations per linear plant mile, costs were about $5,000 per location.Generally speaking, at densities of 35 locations per plant mile or more, costs dropped below $5,000 a mile.
But others say the cost of fiber plant, even in rural areas, is about $1,100 per location.
Analysis by the International Telecommunications Union has looked at overall fiber to home costs (not just U.S. or North American cases) and come up with cost per home passed ranging from $3,000 to $4,000.
The study by Vantage Point Solutions, an engineering firm based in Mitchell, S.D., estimated costs based on site density, especially measured as “passings per linear plant mile.” Overall costs per location were double in the rural areas – $9,286 compared with $4,438 in the “town” portions of the networks.
Why, you may ask, are all these estimates different? Because the costs are dependent on what factors you include. My estimate was based on labor costs, it might have been low, but it wasn't half of what it should have been, because the situation was more similar to the low end ($3,000) estimates than the high end ones. But as far as the per user cost, $17/month is still probably high because you should be able to get a better rate when you finance than I've used in my estimate (that's highly variable though, so it's probably safer to be conservative).
Believe it or not, I have been paid to make these kind of estimates. And my estimates are usually pretty close to reality. Of course, I'd do a much more in-depth estimate if I were actually looking to build a fiber network.
That's rural fiber. Also, I didn't say $200 per location, I said $300,000 for 125 houses, that's $2,400 per location. Learn to read and think before you post.
I've done plenty of work in neighborhoods. The work is easier, because there is less traffic. No, you don't have to rip everything up, initially you'd take a big saw, saw out the pavement, run a trencher down it, put in the cable with boxes for each house, bury it and pave it over. It'd take maybe a day per block with at most dozen people, so maybe $5,000 for a block of a two dozen houses (both sides of the street). That's just $200 per house initially. Then you'd connect people when they sign up, because people aren't gong to let you bury a cable in their yard for a service they aren't getting. That would probably be a half days work for a team of 4, so about $800. So if you were doing a neighborhood of 1000 houses, you'd need $200,000 initially which you'd probably issue bonds for, you could easily get those at 10% annual interest because it's for physical infrastructure. If 125 houses signed up you'd need another $100,000 to wire them up and you'd probably take out bank loans to cover that cost, which you could get for much less than 5%. Your annual costs for the interest would be less than $20,000 for initial capital, and less than $5,000 for the connections. The total cost on interest would be just $17 per month per connected house in this scenario. Assuming you were installing premium fiber, you could charge $50-$100 per month, so the cost of installing the fiber would be relatively minimal.
if it makes its winding way to becoming law, it will be a big step towards curtailing the NSA's bulk metadata collection
First of all, the don't only collect metadata, they collect everything. Secondly, they were doing it before the PATRIOT act, and they will continue doing it for the foreseeable future regardless of whatever bills congress passes to curtail their behavior.
The NSA is tasked with identifying all potential threats to the US and it's interests abroad. We just had an article about how Healthcare.gov is a mess because of congressional micro-management. Even if you ask them to stop, the people who work for the NSA take their jobs seriously enough that they won't.
That's ridiculous. I used to install pipelines and wells beneath roads in southern California. That's a much slower and messier process than laying underground cables (I know because we did that too). Believe me, the residents did stand for it. To them it's just more road work. It would be easy for a company to lay new subterranean cable, and it would be even easier to place it above ground.
What you're forgetting is that you're commenting on an article about the government secretly forcing corporations to give up their customers' information, essentially side-stepping their fourth amendment rights. So you're saying that a corporations customers are giving up their rights simply by purchasing a product form that corporation. Does that sound good to you?
You wouldn't happen to work for Microsoft would you? It seems like I've heard this before. . .
I've been using the new versions since they came out. They have more features than the previous versions, not fewer. As far as I can tell, there's no reason to use Office anymore, and I doubt I will. And from the sounds of it, the decision makers at Microsoft are very scared of this update. They are doing everything they can to devalue it.
If you have it, then you're using a mac one way or another. They want you using the latest software. The more people who use it the more benefit they get in terms mac or iDevice sales. They've already spent the money writing the software so they can sell more hardware. There is practically no marginal cost for distributing it.
I'm in the middle of something, so I can't try this, but did you try downloading the control panel at apple. Of course, you have to have an iCloud membership so I'm not sure if that'd work for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't someone have to use Google Plus for this to work? So this is never going to be a real thing then.
If you're wearing the kind of gloves that would prevent you from unzipping a zipper, you're going to have to take them off to use the phone anyway.
Maybe that's just another argument for a watch, but by this point, you're so bundled up you probably can't even see your watch. If I'm in the middle of a ski-trip I'm not on that kind of a schedule anyway.
My coat has a zippered pocket on the outside for my iPhone.
That is ridiculous. There are plenty of parts to the world where you need to drive in order to get by. Since you have the right to live, you have the right to drive if you live in those locations.
There are plenty of reasons one may want to check their phone while they're driving. Maybe I'm using a GPS navigator to drive and I want to look at the map to better understand its driving directions? Maybe I'm making a delivery and now that I've gotten close to my destination I want to call them and let them know so someone will be there to let me in. Maybe I'm bored because there are no other cars on the road and I've been driving for an hour and a half and I want to check my Facebook. Who the hell are you to say? You don't know everyone's unique driving situation, so why do you think you're so smart you can make broad generalizations about what kinds of distractions pose an unnecessary risk?
I live 25 miles from the nearest bus-stop. Maybe I should move if I want to use my phone? Yeah because that doesn't infringe on my rights at all. . .
The fact of the matter is, you could write a bullshit excuse like this to explain writing a law to prevent almost anything we are normally free to do. You could easily write something like this to justify a ban people eating fast food. This is literally THE justification given for prohibitions of drugs. It is the reason that was given for making alcohol illegal. It's the reason trotted out time and again for promoting greater levels of gun control.
And all of these prohibitions have one thing in common, they do little to achieve their core objective of "saving lives." Have traffic fatalities decreased since they banned texting and talking on your phone while you're driving? No?! So now you think maybe we should just double down! Maybe we could use your phones capacitance sensor to see if you touched your phone while you were driving so we can issue you a ticket.
So basically, the problem is that you, and people like you, think you are the smartest people on the whole planet, and that you can make decisions better than the rest of us. That's the whole reason we have a bunch of bullshit laws doing nothing but giving people a lot of stupid tickets and putting a lot of innocent people in jail. You are the criminal, not them.
It's just an annoying, unnecessary thing. I already carry my cellphone pretty much everywhere, so the watch is redundant.
Yes. It's crazy, I know. Probably takes almost a whole second. I'm wasting my life away with all the time I spend pulling my phone out of my pocket.
The problem is that you have to balance the minor inconvenience of maybe having a hard time looking at your phone when you're doing something else, with the major inconvenience of having to make sure the watch is charged and that you're wearing it in addition to your smartphone.
Most people just wait to check their phone until a more convenient time. If you're in the middle of something, you aren't even likely to stop everything to check your watch either, frankly. There's a reason checking your watch used to mean you where bored.
I don't think people stuck in the '90s buy a lot of gadgets.
Upskirt, obviously. If they were stalker shots, he could just pull out his phone and pretend to be checking his email while he snaps the picture.
I agree that the government shouldn't be powerful enough to enforce these kinds of laws. The the reality of modern data collection is that it's so cheap and easy practically any government could do it. Moreover, such surveillance has the potential to increases the strength of the rule of law by making the enforcement of laws more consistent. Stopping it as probably an unrealistic goal. Everyone in a position of authority wants more information.
It's probably more like the "Apple TV" rumors. Steve said he thought he had a good living room device, and that got into it s autobiography. I have an Apple TV, so I knew he was talking about the existing product (which has never sold well, but really works well). But all the analysis took it to mean they were going to make a whole television set. Really? Who would buy an Apple branded television?
The smart watch is not a particularly good idea. It might be a reasonable niche product as a fashion accessory, or a a watch replacement for people who are used to wearing them. But the screen it to small fulfill a lot of smartphone applications, which makes it a poor stand-alone device. As a result it's unlikely Apple would release a product that would fit the definition of a "smart watch" that's been talked about in the media. It's more likely someone simply misconstrued something they heard form their Apple source about wearable technologies being developed at Apple.
That's probably just a consequence of having the ability to collect such data. I'm more worried about they way they encourage people they have a problem with to engage in illegal activities just so that they can arrest them. Or the way the way laws have been passed prohibiting recreational drug use, effectively declaring 10% or so of the population to be criminals. Them tracking our comings and goings wouldn't be such a problem if our innocent activities weren't illegal in the first place.
There are many quotes in that article, if you care to actually read it:
Why, you may ask, are all these estimates different? Because the costs are dependent on what factors you include. My estimate was based on labor costs, it might have been low, but it wasn't half of what it should have been, because the situation was more similar to the low end ($3,000) estimates than the high end ones. But as far as the per user cost, $17/month is still probably high because you should be able to get a better rate when you finance than I've used in my estimate (that's highly variable though, so it's probably safer to be conservative).
Believe it or not, I have been paid to make these kind of estimates. And my estimates are usually pretty close to reality. Of course, I'd do a much more in-depth estimate if I were actually looking to build a fiber network.
That's rural fiber. Also, I didn't say $200 per location, I said $300,000 for 125 houses, that's $2,400 per location. Learn to read and think before you post.
I've done plenty of work in neighborhoods. The work is easier, because there is less traffic. No, you don't have to rip everything up, initially you'd take a big saw, saw out the pavement, run a trencher down it, put in the cable with boxes for each house, bury it and pave it over. It'd take maybe a day per block with at most dozen people, so maybe $5,000 for a block of a two dozen houses (both sides of the street). That's just $200 per house initially. Then you'd connect people when they sign up, because people aren't gong to let you bury a cable in their yard for a service they aren't getting. That would probably be a half days work for a team of 4, so about $800. So if you were doing a neighborhood of 1000 houses, you'd need $200,000 initially which you'd probably issue bonds for, you could easily get those at 10% annual interest because it's for physical infrastructure. If 125 houses signed up you'd need another $100,000 to wire them up and you'd probably take out bank loans to cover that cost, which you could get for much less than 5%. Your annual costs for the interest would be less than $20,000 for initial capital, and less than $5,000 for the connections. The total cost on interest would be just $17 per month per connected house in this scenario. Assuming you were installing premium fiber, you could charge $50-$100 per month, so the cost of installing the fiber would be relatively minimal.
First of all, the don't only collect metadata, they collect everything. Secondly, they were doing it before the PATRIOT act, and they will continue doing it for the foreseeable future regardless of whatever bills congress passes to curtail their behavior.
The NSA is tasked with identifying all potential threats to the US and it's interests abroad. We just had an article about how Healthcare.gov is a mess because of congressional micro-management. Even if you ask them to stop, the people who work for the NSA take their jobs seriously enough that they won't.
That's ridiculous. I used to install pipelines and wells beneath roads in southern California. That's a much slower and messier process than laying underground cables (I know because we did that too). Believe me, the residents did stand for it. To them it's just more road work. It would be easy for a company to lay new subterranean cable, and it would be even easier to place it above ground.
What you're forgetting is that you're commenting on an article about the government secretly forcing corporations to give up their customers' information, essentially side-stepping their fourth amendment rights. So you're saying that a corporations customers are giving up their rights simply by purchasing a product form that corporation. Does that sound good to you?
Don't be ridiculous, US laws don't protect enemy combatants.
How many constitutionally guaranteed rights can the DHS violate with a single action? Quite a few it turns out. . .
You wouldn't happen to work for Microsoft would you? It seems like I've heard this before. . .
I've been using the new versions since they came out. They have more features than the previous versions, not fewer. As far as I can tell, there's no reason to use Office anymore, and I doubt I will. And from the sounds of it, the decision makers at Microsoft are very scared of this update. They are doing everything they can to devalue it.
If you have it, then you're using a mac one way or another. They want you using the latest software. The more people who use it the more benefit they get in terms mac or iDevice sales. They've already spent the money writing the software so they can sell more hardware. There is practically no marginal cost for distributing it.
I don't understand why in 2013 I still have to save things. It's not like they haven't figured out how to do it automatically.
I'm in the middle of something, so I can't try this, but did you try downloading the control panel at apple. Of course, you have to have an iCloud membership so I'm not sure if that'd work for you.
They are free with all new macs or iOS devices.