EFF has done a great job with their "Encrypt the Web" campaign and gotten a lot of big websites to switch to https as their default protocol. The difference is that people running those servers are usually more technically minded (they're admins), so the implementation goes a lot easier. When dealing with non-technical end users, you can't expect them to do anything extra to set it up for them; it's just gotta become the default and get pushed to them. Anything else is a recipe for non-adoptance.
But it is a problem in this case. Both bad cops as well as "activists" lie their asses off in the absence of conclusive video, and in today's ultra polarized society, we end up with things like institutionalized police brutality and the Ferguson riots when that happens. We now have cameras because some bad actors on both sides of the equation can't act like decent human beings. I'm not claiming that cameras are the end-all solution, but sadly, they're becoming more and more necessary to protect both good cops and peaceful activists and protesters legally exercising their 1st Amendment rights.
You still have it. Spend $40 and buy an HDTV antenna and stick it on the window sill. We just did it after our local cable provider pulled the same Clear QAM encrypting shenanigans and found we get about 35 channels -- all the locals in HD, plus PBS and a handful of others. You can even get a bigger amplified antenna on your roof or in your attic and split the signal and distribute it to your various TVs likely using your existing cable TV wiring . . . just like in the old days.:-)
Plex today bought Watchup, which means soon you'll be able to get over a hundred channels of news streamed to any Plex client associated to your Plex Pass (or some similar deal) -- no need to tie it to a single silly screen plugged into your Roku. Expect more of this. Day by day, the cord cutters are winning and the Comcasts of the world are losing. They don't want you to time shift, cut commercials out, or consume content on anything but their Comcast-approved device, all "supported" by the worst customer service ever seen. Fuck them and their obsolete business model -- they are reaping decades of thumbing their collective noses at their customers.
A big part of this was because of the guy who came before him. That generation had just lived through the gas lines, and the Iran hostage crisis, and 16% inflation and 22% mortgages. Jimmy Carter is still generally remembered by all but the far left as a very good man who was a bad President. Compared to him, Reagan was perceived by many as a savior, and the magnitude of his election victories attests to this.
In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention. If you could pay one 17 year who you trained to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floor, and he stayed at the job for more than a few months, wouldn't that ultimately be cheaper than having to train a new person with some frequency, even if the training isn't overly complex?
No. Because once that 17 year old (or anyone) is there for more than a few months, they generally get paid benefits like vacation / PTO, healthcare, and (back then) pension or savings plans, which gets expensive for the store really quick. I worked in KMart during my high school years for a tiny bit above minimum wage ($5.25 / hour) -- full time during the summer and part time during high school. Because of this, I was never eligible for the benefits that the year-round full-timers were. The store kept a number of us in rotation because a) our group had relatively high turnover and b) they could scale up / down easily as needed (i.e., seasonal peaks like Christmas) -- but the real reason is that it cut down on their benefits costs and increased their profitability, even back then. The low cost to retrain a new high school kid to perform an easy job like folding clothes or stocking the shelves is waaaay cheaper than paying full benefits, in perpetuity, to a long term FTE.
Is there a colorimeter-based solution that one can actually put on the screen to measure a TV's output and verify any of these claims? E.g., with a "pro" color accurate monitor, you can calibrate it and the software measures and then confirms that the display is operating within the requested parameters. It sure seems that we are counting an awful lot on buzzwords from the marketing shills that these expensive TVs really are "better," but there's no way for the public to measure their performance to be sure.
Fuck these ransom guys. Keeping good backups is a little bit of extra work, but at least you have the option to restore, even if you've been hacked because of gross negligence / shameful ignorance / plain stupidity like this.
This counts as "innovative" now? Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave. Between this, removing the headphone jack and replacing it with $149 wireless earbuds, and a host of other unnecessary mediocrity, Apple is doings its best to fuck up its cash cow.
Their mobile app rocks and is highly responsive (I mean in the way it provides up-to-date / real-time pricing info on auctions you are watching, not regarding UI design), which is critical when an auction is ending. It keeps people from being chained to a desktop PC, which in and of itself makes it worthwhile.
Oh, you mean all the geniuses like FiveThirtyEight and NYT that coronated Hillary months in advance? Yeah, I'll wait to see the real numbers for myself, thanks.
And yet, the same media has done the same exact thing with her and Trump during the entire general election -- I'm talking batshit crazy stuff like the NYT constantly posting all over their website Hillary had a 95%+ chance of victory -- and look what happened. I agree that the "polls" conducted by the media are complete nonsense, but how do you explain the difference in outcomes in these two cases?
Oh, horseshit. I'm no Trump fan, at all, but democracy worked just fine last night -- you are just butthurt about the results. Well, too bad -- maybe your team should run a decent candidate next time instead of trying to coronate a human trash can. Part of the reason that your tribe lost is because people are tired of hearing the kind of hysterical nonsense you are spouting. We've heard the same shit from the hard right for the last eight years and now we get to hear it from the likes of you for the next four. I can already hear you screaming about abuse of executive orders like a little bitch. Grow the fuck up already.
How about taking steps to cut the birth rate in key polluters like China and India with populations which are already insanely huge? If we're thinking about cutting things related to / causing climate change, certainly that's one of the most effective moves that could be made.
You can't buy your software anymore, you just rent it. That means you can't just pay once and do whatever you want with that license -- you keep paying, forever (way more than you would have under the old "buy a copy of version x" model) and, being that this software is constantly phoning home to Microsoft, can be changed, cut off, etc. at their whim (as well as more easily hacked / hijacked). Adobe, Intuit, and others of the old desktop software brigade are all moving to this model. It's great for them because of the recurring cash flow, but exactly what is the benefit for the end user besides promised "upgrades"? Do we really need another version of Word (God no -- quit changing it and forcing us to re-learn your shitty interface!)? Did Generally Accepted Accounting Principles change that much that a new major version of QuickBooks is required every year? This should be a huge slam dunk opportunity for the open source desktop software community.
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It's not like there aren't any other metro areas with strong tech communities. California is a great place to visit, but I'd never live there again.
. . . of carbon credits!
EFF has done a great job with their "Encrypt the Web" campaign and gotten a lot of big websites to switch to https as their default protocol. The difference is that people running those servers are usually more technically minded (they're admins), so the implementation goes a lot easier. When dealing with non-technical end users, you can't expect them to do anything extra to set it up for them; it's just gotta become the default and get pushed to them. Anything else is a recipe for non-adoptance.
But it is a problem in this case. Both bad cops as well as "activists" lie their asses off in the absence of conclusive video, and in today's ultra polarized society, we end up with things like institutionalized police brutality and the Ferguson riots when that happens. We now have cameras because some bad actors on both sides of the equation can't act like decent human beings. I'm not claiming that cameras are the end-all solution, but sadly, they're becoming more and more necessary to protect both good cops and peaceful activists and protesters legally exercising their 1st Amendment rights.
You still have it. Spend $40 and buy an HDTV antenna and stick it on the window sill. We just did it after our local cable provider pulled the same Clear QAM encrypting shenanigans and found we get about 35 channels -- all the locals in HD, plus PBS and a handful of others. You can even get a bigger amplified antenna on your roof or in your attic and split the signal and distribute it to your various TVs likely using your existing cable TV wiring . . . just like in the old days. :-)
Plex today bought Watchup, which means soon you'll be able to get over a hundred channels of news streamed to any Plex client associated to your Plex Pass (or some similar deal) -- no need to tie it to a single silly screen plugged into your Roku. Expect more of this. Day by day, the cord cutters are winning and the Comcasts of the world are losing. They don't want you to time shift, cut commercials out, or consume content on anything but their Comcast-approved device, all "supported" by the worst customer service ever seen. Fuck them and their obsolete business model -- they are reaping decades of thumbing their collective noses at their customers.
A big part of this was because of the guy who came before him. That generation had just lived through the gas lines, and the Iran hostage crisis, and 16% inflation and 22% mortgages. Jimmy Carter is still generally remembered by all but the far left as a very good man who was a bad President. Compared to him, Reagan was perceived by many as a savior, and the magnitude of his election victories attests to this.
In actuality Walmart seems to be slowly realizing that its employment practices lead to high turnover, and the cost of training new employees is actually costing it money. There's something to be said for a decent wage and benefits if you're talking about retention. If you could pay one 17 year who you trained to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floor, and he stayed at the job for more than a few months, wouldn't that ultimately be cheaper than having to train a new person with some frequency, even if the training isn't overly complex?
No. Because once that 17 year old (or anyone) is there for more than a few months, they generally get paid benefits like vacation / PTO, healthcare, and (back then) pension or savings plans, which gets expensive for the store really quick. I worked in KMart during my high school years for a tiny bit above minimum wage ($5.25 / hour) -- full time during the summer and part time during high school. Because of this, I was never eligible for the benefits that the year-round full-timers were. The store kept a number of us in rotation because a) our group had relatively high turnover and b) they could scale up / down easily as needed (i.e., seasonal peaks like Christmas) -- but the real reason is that it cut down on their benefits costs and increased their profitability, even back then. The low cost to retrain a new high school kid to perform an easy job like folding clothes or stocking the shelves is waaaay cheaper than paying full benefits, in perpetuity, to a long term FTE.
Wow . . . so this is just like that time Obama hired a tax cheat to be his first US Secretary of the Treasury!
Is there a colorimeter-based solution that one can actually put on the screen to measure a TV's output and verify any of these claims? E.g., with a "pro" color accurate monitor, you can calibrate it and the software measures and then confirms that the display is operating within the requested parameters. It sure seems that we are counting an awful lot on buzzwords from the marketing shills that these expensive TVs really are "better," but there's no way for the public to measure their performance to be sure.
Fuck these ransom guys. Keeping good backups is a little bit of extra work, but at least you have the option to restore, even if you've been hacked because of gross negligence / shameful ignorance / plain stupidity like this.
Don't you mean, "This is just CIA bullshit"?
"If you pay us enough, we'll do whatever you want." No sure why this would surprise anyone after the Yahoo revelations.
The first message received was, "Don't let me leave, Murph!" in a douchey whine.
This counts as "innovative" now? Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave. Between this, removing the headphone jack and replacing it with $149 wireless earbuds, and a host of other unnecessary mediocrity, Apple is doings its best to fuck up its cash cow.
Their mobile app rocks and is highly responsive (I mean in the way it provides up-to-date / real-time pricing info on auctions you are watching, not regarding UI design), which is critical when an auction is ending. It keeps people from being chained to a desktop PC, which in and of itself makes it worthwhile.
And it'll be YUUUGE.
Oh, you mean all the geniuses like FiveThirtyEight and NYT that coronated Hillary months in advance? Yeah, I'll wait to see the real numbers for myself, thanks.
Those ages will still be available on the Wayback Machine page caches, in perpetuity. Pepperidge Farm remembers.
And yet, the same media has done the same exact thing with her and Trump during the entire general election -- I'm talking batshit crazy stuff like the NYT constantly posting all over their website Hillary had a 95%+ chance of victory -- and look what happened. I agree that the "polls" conducted by the media are complete nonsense, but how do you explain the difference in outcomes in these two cases?
Oh, horseshit. I'm no Trump fan, at all, but democracy worked just fine last night -- you are just butthurt about the results. Well, too bad -- maybe your team should run a decent candidate next time instead of trying to coronate a human trash can. Part of the reason that your tribe lost is because people are tired of hearing the kind of hysterical nonsense you are spouting. We've heard the same shit from the hard right for the last eight years and now we get to hear it from the likes of you for the next four. I can already hear you screaming about abuse of executive orders like a little bitch. Grow the fuck up already.
How about taking steps to cut the birth rate in key polluters like China and India with populations which are already insanely huge? If we're thinking about cutting things related to / causing climate change, certainly that's one of the most effective moves that could be made.
You can't buy your software anymore, you just rent it. That means you can't just pay once and do whatever you want with that license -- you keep paying, forever (way more than you would have under the old "buy a copy of version x" model) and, being that this software is constantly phoning home to Microsoft, can be changed, cut off, etc. at their whim (as well as more easily hacked / hijacked). Adobe, Intuit, and others of the old desktop software brigade are all moving to this model. It's great for them because of the recurring cash flow, but exactly what is the benefit for the end user besides promised "upgrades"? Do we really need another version of Word (God no -- quit changing it and forcing us to re-learn your shitty interface!)? Did Generally Accepted Accounting Principles change that much that a new major version of QuickBooks is required every year? This should be a huge slam dunk opportunity for the open source desktop software community.
Just torrent from the pink or green skulls to avoid malware. Bonus points for using a VPN.