Not to mention gas for the car, or annual hunting and fishing licences and/or tags for the other examples, things like boats etc...
Also as someone who has been doing this (custom PC) for a long time, it has never been this brain numbingly easy or as inexpensive compared to what it used to be like. Not only that, by the curve by which games VS hardware intersect for playability and longevity have never been so low or as long. So pretty much "No" to everything in the article summary. If you're too lazy to even try or like do a few minutes of research or like "read" things, then don't bother, in fact it isn't much of a past time or hobby if you don't, just go buy a console...
That said... You CAN spend a ridiculous amount of money if you really want to. You just do not need to. Could be perhaps going to a store and asking for what you "need" will get you an upsell, but that is to be expected of pretty much anything you have little knowledge of. Go out and buy whatever CPU you want that costs about 250$ (I'd say Intel and watch the flame war), and a video card that costs about 150$, fill out the rest with whatever inexpensive things you can find, Done. It is all plug and play, stuff will only fit one place, and a lot of it will be color coded. You can probably get buy with even less than that and play all modern games at reasonable settings for many years. I have an Intel i5 that I got on sale for probably 230$, and a AMD7850 I think on sale for 125$... Sure I spent a lot more than that, but I really didn't need to. This was a number of years ago, but in Canadian dollars, so you get the idea. Don't want to build it? Well I'm sure you can still go buy a beige box from Dell with a discrete video card of some description in it.
I'd say one of the trends that is helping (if you can call it that, some might say hobbling) getting game requirements low is that everyone buys laptops now, and even if you buy a fancy one with an actual video card it will be slower than anything similar for the desktop market... Video game companies not wanting to loose that large and growing market make games that can be played on them, meaning if you have a desktop, the requirements are just that much lower, and the lifespan (provided it doesn't fail) that much longer.
I mean take a look at overclocking now. Used to be people would be physically altering their CPU's, manually configuring bios settings by trial and error. Now in many cases you need to maybe press a button, if that even. I had a multi-cpu setup when there were actually physically multiple CPU, now every CPU is a multiple CPU really. Water blocks and radiators you can buy in a box. Pre-built cases that weren't just a beige box. If you can read, fit a screwdriver in your meatfist, and be able to discern shapes, you can put together a custom gaming rig for several hundred dollars. Considering a modern console will cost you almost 600$ anyway, and have none of the other capabilities, that isn't bad (though gaming consoles do an awful lot more than they used to also)...
Meh. Canada's been trying the same since 2012. Only difference is that Russia was successful while Canada only partially so.
Bill C-30 "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act" (Struck down) Bill C-51 "Anti-terrorism Act, 2015" (Enacted)
One of the more interesting things I remember about C-30 when it was being talked about, was that our telecommunication Industry (i.e. Bell and Rogers Communication) opposed the idea due to the cost to upgrade their networks and systems to be able to have the data on hand and available and wanted the government of Canada to pay for it lol!
Then again there was Bill C-55 which I believe actually made it more difficult and provided additional oversight to enforcement agencies using warrantless telecommunication intercepts... But that was to address a decision made by the supreme court...
You're right in many ways the SD card slot seems to be an afterthought. I suspect this is because a lack of competition, and that those that buy a phone to get it, are just happy they can, even if the functionality isn't all that great. I've been buying phones with an SD slot back to a Nokia with a 2GB card. At the time it was for pictures, and it worked just fine. I briefly went to an Apple 3GS, and while a good phone, the closed market, and iTunes being a big POS drove me away. I had a Samsung G3 which I put a 64GB card into, and since moved to a LG G4 with the same 64GB card (BTW what is with the "G" in phones, move on companies!)...
Anyway I did have some problems with the 64GB card on the Samsung. Sure it was a bit annoying that most applications do not support the SD card, however other than a few crazy outliers like HearthStone taking up like 3GB of storage, it is really a moot point as most are small, and how many applications do you really need? Cleaning up crap I don't use every now and again solved application related issues. No what I used my memory (and likely what most people do), is for media storage (as that is what it is for), so pictures, movies, and music. Now to the main issue, which is of performance. Basically the Samsung 3G just didn't have the performance horsepower to handle a file system of that size. I loaded about 40GB of music on mine (i.e. a lot of little files), and for the little phone to parse that amount of data, or perform any actions on it were... frustrating. Also the transfer using USB didn't work so fast either and is flaky. Once you got stuff on there, it was more less fine to use, but making changes was a major hassle and after I had it loaded it remained pretty static. Oh one other thing that was really dumb, was that the Samsung would cache, or save an amount of storage on it's internal storage to handle music, which on 40GB amounted to almost 2GB on the internal as well which kinda sucked.
Fast forward to my new LG G4, and there is a big difference. The processing power has caught up to the storage, and it seems to handle the file system much better. However, the USB transfer mechanism is still flaky and frustrating as hell. Also the Camera doesn't like to natively save photos to the card either which is kind of silly. You can however just archive them there if you like, but really photos aren't so big or numerous for me to be a major issue. I'm still trying to figure out if I can get the USB transfer process to work better where the connection isn't lost, or hangs, or whatever, and I've only tried it really once so far so perhaps I can figure out a way to make it work better.
"30,000 work emails, 110 were classified, another 30,000 personal email none classified...peanuts." (Maxwell)
0.2% seems hardly gross negligence. Though to be fair a better metric would be the total number of classified emails she had to deal with. If it was 200, and she used her personal email for 110 of them, that seems a bit nonchalant.
Similarly there was a court case in Florida where people were suspicious of Breathalyzer results. Police use one produced by a company with closed source code. Court ordered them to open it up for inspection. They tried the "Trade Secrets" argument and refused. Court disagreed and starting fining them every day until they release the code. Once they did it was found to be horrible, and inaccurate, invalidating thousands of court cases... As it turned out they knew it was terrible, used it anyway, and was just trying to hide the fact that they were giving incorrect results much of the time for profit.
There is a much simpler answer than what was posted. It can be broken down into 3 parts: 1) Most companies outsource tech support to 3rd party companies. These companies get paid by call volume in a support contract. 2) These are generally call center mills with *high* turnover. If you've read your manual you probably have more training that the person on the phone. 3) Most now have incentives for "sales" rather than technical support. The support call is just a medium to up sell.
They are usually managed quite poorly also. Slum lord kind of mentality comes to mind. They do enough to get another contract, no more. Most even small call centers have a monthly training/hiring cycle because the don't (and don't try) retain people. They usually are poorly trained, thrust into service, paid little, and the folks that do it usually have little options due to education and lack of other work experience. I've know a lot, most of which I would say are not technically apt people. The get a script and a binder, and do the best they can until they are stressed and worn out enough that the quit and are replaced with the next cog.
So no, it is not surprising that generally speaking tech support is not great. This doesn't even include outsourcing, which adds another level of poor service usually simply to poor English language skills than anything not already mentioned. I generally never call tech support, unless I absolutely have to. That said, I've heard all sorts of crazy stories from people I've known over the years who have worked these call centers and some of the stupid things they call in for. Anyway they are poorly trained, thrown under the bus, and deal with angry people all day... I try to be nice the few times I call simply because I know it is such a soul sucking job.
We're talking in context of music. However as mentioned limiting the term is the other route. You think they are not going to make the next Deadpool because they might not have the copyright after 75 or 125 years? It made like half a billion dollars in a week. Cry me a river. Never mind the whole Hollywood accounting BS that goes on to justify it all.
This whole problem could be boiled down to the fact that Corporations are allowed to own the "rights" to Copyright. It is fabulously profitable. They lobby for it. Artists want to keep it, because they can get a big payday. Corporations transfer rights to other corporations...
This would all be solved by either caps on the term of copyright to something reasonable, say 10 or 20 years, or by simply not allowing a corporation to hold rights to copyright. If they want to sell your song, they pay a human to do so, etc... Rights are non-transferable. i.e. they die with you. Though hopefully that doesn't spawn a whole bunch of artist assassins...
You right though, copyright currently is doing exact the opposite of its intended purpose. The purpose is to provide some control over work to artists to make money to encourage them to make more art. Now, why bother, hit your payday and retire for the next 150 years or so.
If you compensate your employees appropriately you won't have to worry much about them leaving.
If you're paying someone 65k to do a job, and need someone to do a 85k job, train them but continue to pay them 65k, you won't get much sympathy should the employee decide to work someplace else...
Pretty much this. I was vocal about it at work, ignored, and just go with it now. I'm the same I have a million different usernames and passwords for various systems I have access to. There has been some improvement in the last couple of years, where we've managed to consolidate some systems into the same environment where we can share usernames/passwords, but for the most part it is still the same. Then every year some new systems are added to the pile, each with it's own username and passwords... Ideally you would use the same password, or a few, but then you get all these systems with various levels of security validation on what you can use for a password. There are a couple in particular which are so restrictive that, I have to sit there forever like when trying to pick a unique username for your WOW account back in the day... Then they all expire every 30 days, but not all a the same time, but on some random rotation to whenever the fcsk it was you last changed it. At one point I pretty much accused the IT group of just generating work for themselves for all the forgotten password requests they would get in a day, and then being able to report on how many hundreds of thousands of "issues" they've "resolved". However as the saying goes, never attribute to malice what is more likely stupidity. I don't think many people understand security very well. First of all it only has to be good enough in 99% of the cases to simply act as a "reasonable" deterrent. Everything doesn't have to be ironclad. Secondly even if their was a "breach" what is the worst case than can happen most the time? Usually very little. So you can log onto my financial account at work, great now you know how much I make, and can book me some time off, thanks. Not to mention the LAYERS of security. I mean there is the network security, the physical building security, there is my account security, there there are individual applications which have security, some of which also have a second layer of security built in themselves, then there are the account security within each application, etc... Nothing we do is really that terribly important. Then yes we have printers, and copiers, and plotters, and junk that all have their own codes.... So yeah it is no wonder that people write things down or have stupid passwords. As I said when I tried to raise the issue, I was pointed to "Security" and told too bad. I basically said, people are just going to use a post-it note or use stupid passwords, but the response back was well that is against policy, and they would just make them make "stronger" passwords. I finally came to the conclusion after a couple of years that "Security" actually means "scapegoat". If ever there is a breach, the only thing that matters is they can point to how policy was not followed, and it is all somebody else's fault than there's. Never mind they have zero interest in trying to make security actually work well...
To be honest, I think this has little to do with either waterproofing or making phones thinner. This has to do with selling more stuff to users for more profit, and further locking in what consumer base they already have because all their gear will only work with your product. This has been the Apple mantra since the iPhone came out. Considering how much money they have made, it has been working.
As far as "waterproofing" anything getting rid of a "port" is kinda pointless unless you get rid of all ports. Which might actually be possible now that you can do wireless charging and have wireless speakers (and wireless networking and communication). Heck if it wasn't for the touch screen, you could probably totally encase it in a solid block of plastic making it more less totally waterproof... Of course then you couldn't have removable battery or storage, but it isn't like apple does any of those things. As far as the SIM card goes I am sure there is probably a better way than having a physical chip you have to plug into your device anyway.
Not to mention the "type" of data. Sure there are other examples of data buys, but your basic apps and social stuff is going to be a hodgepodge of people. Linkedin, is mostly business professionals of some kind or another. So, A) the exact market MS is in, and B) folks that have slightly more spending power and decision making ability to be targeted with ads, than your typical 12 year old.
I actually think it is a very astute buy. Linkedin is the established dominant player with little competition, and it fits. Maybe they haven't made any money, but they might make MS money, even if for other divisions, or they will likely integrated it into their various products, like resume templates in Office for a small example, contacts in outlook, etc... plenty of examples of "synergies" (I'll kill myself later)
Anyway I see this as a lot smarter buy that most of the crap MS has spent money on...
"Collision" might be a bit of a stretch. It implies immediacy. I didn't RTFA and I am no physicist, however I expect that the "Collision" took an extraordinary amount of time (galactic even as opposed to geologic time periods). Millions of years maybe? I have no idea. Seems if that is the case the summary is a bit sensational, in that it could more accurately be described as the waves of two black holes that slowly eventually merged into one... The end may have happened a lot quicker I suppose, but the lead time was probably enormous.
but yes, the purpose of these things seem to be to bring piracy to the masses who could never figure it out on their own.
Had someone at work brag about their box and all their content.
I think the key thing here isn't so much the box itself, it is the legitimacy of it. There are probably a big chunk of people who get these boxes and think it is completely legit. Now one can argue about the nuances of copyright infringement all day, however at best these things are dubiously legal. At least when someone does it that knows what they are doing, they more less understand what it is they are really doing and are getting. For Ma and Pa android box owner, they may not have the same background to really understand what is going on other than "Hey pretty pictures!"
So not only, as you say, someone has to pay for content, but there is also the issues on the box owner getting into legal trouble without being really aware (heading off a lot of lawsuits before they start), and from the content owner if something like this becomes legitimate use, it undermines their ability to do anything about it if they ignore it.
Though to get the fullest potential from your Apple Energy, you really need the right cables. Apple has partnered with Monster Cables to provide you with the best in energy transport technology. Though it does come at a price, at 300$ per 6ft of cable, it is going to cost you a bit more than the basic copper those utility companies are going to give you, but do you really want to trust your important devices to that?
Apparently it doesn't generate power at all. Yet supplied the US with about 12kg of weapons grade plutonium a year for about 20 years. Apparently 6kg is enough for a Nagasaki sized bomb.
So why even mention the power generation size if it doesn't really have any baring on plutonium production at all? Just confuses the issue (least for me).
This has about as much to do with scientific research as [insert something funny here].
This is China. This is the South China Sea. This is about sovereignty. It is about establishing "use" and "continued presence" to extend national boarders or to strengthen their position in that regard. Which is ultimately about resources.
This happens all the time internationally, though I'll admit this is the first time I've seen it occur as a underwater sealab! It does have the bonus that once in place there is very little anyone can really do about it.
I think this is a rather obvious thing that people seem to have a hard time understanding. Statistically Poverty = Crime. Increase poverty, you are going to see a proportional increase in crime. It is pretty simple. If I don't have any means to support myself, a little means to alter that situation, one of the alternatives left is crime.
Anyway what might be more interesting, is while generally true, there are plenty of wealthy people that commit crimes as well, but what is the relative impact. Without running any numbers I would guess that the overwhelming portion of crimes committed for which people in poverty are thrown into jail amount to peanuts. While the crimes committed by relatively wealthy persons which largely go without conviction, are of a much greater value and impact.
Perhaps one explanation is one of perspective. If I break into you house and steal your TV, there is a physical connection to the event and a need for justice, whereas if I embezzle from mutual funds or other financial instruments affecting thousands of people it is more abstract and seemingly less of a priority.
I've always thought whenever people are talking about "fighting" crime with more police or like measures, that you are just catching more crime, not really reducing it. If you want to reduce crime you need to hit the root cause, poverty, and not the symptom, which is the crime itself.
I went though it, but so do most people. As smart as you might think you are, it is a big world out there. I was always near the top of my class in high school, however one thing that probably helped me, was that I had a sister that consistently did even better, so I always had that sort of competition.
I also saw some crash and burn, particularly in year one.
As much as people think University is for smart people, it really isn't. Sure you can't be a dummy, and need some solid educational foundations, but more than that you need to be willing to put in the work and have some determination and perseverance. As much as a degree is anything to an employer (and I'm not saying that is what it is ultimately for), it is more of an indication of certain basic foundations, and a recognition of work ethic and persistence. The harder or more elite the school really doesn't mean you actually know more or are smarter than someone else, it really just shows character more than anything else.
I know my personal challenges were more due to foundational curriculum as where I went to high school calculus wasn't even offered, and where I went to university (it was a requirement for CS) the introduction course expected high school calculus. So you can probably imagine how well that went for me without any prior experience. In the end (after dropping it once) I managed to postpone it until my final year of university. I was the oldest guy in class, struggled my way though it with the help of an enthusiastic young professor, who in the end probably knew it was my last requirement to graduate, appreciated my hard work, generally felt sorry for me, and let me squeak past...:)
Then again I also dropped a CS class twice (changing majors once), before passing it... but then on the other side I was one of six who managed to pass another CS class where 90% dropped out. There are other examples, but anyone who has gone though it probably has a list of their own experiences. Ability is great, but without drive it isn't a guarantee of success.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention gas for the car, or annual hunting and fishing licences and/or tags for the other examples, things like boats etc...
Also as someone who has been doing this (custom PC) for a long time, it has never been this brain numbingly easy or as inexpensive compared to what it used to be like. Not only that, by the curve by which games VS hardware intersect for playability and longevity have never been so low or as long. So pretty much "No" to everything in the article summary. If you're too lazy to even try or like do a few minutes of research or like "read" things, then don't bother, in fact it isn't much of a past time or hobby if you don't, just go buy a console...
That said... You CAN spend a ridiculous amount of money if you really want to. You just do not need to. Could be perhaps going to a store and asking for what you "need" will get you an upsell, but that is to be expected of pretty much anything you have little knowledge of. Go out and buy whatever CPU you want that costs about 250$ (I'd say Intel and watch the flame war), and a video card that costs about 150$, fill out the rest with whatever inexpensive things you can find, Done. It is all plug and play, stuff will only fit one place, and a lot of it will be color coded. You can probably get buy with even less than that and play all modern games at reasonable settings for many years. I have an Intel i5 that I got on sale for probably 230$, and a AMD7850 I think on sale for 125$... Sure I spent a lot more than that, but I really didn't need to. This was a number of years ago, but in Canadian dollars, so you get the idea. Don't want to build it? Well I'm sure you can still go buy a beige box from Dell with a discrete video card of some description in it.
I'd say one of the trends that is helping (if you can call it that, some might say hobbling) getting game requirements low is that everyone buys laptops now, and even if you buy a fancy one with an actual video card it will be slower than anything similar for the desktop market... Video game companies not wanting to loose that large and growing market make games that can be played on them, meaning if you have a desktop, the requirements are just that much lower, and the lifespan (provided it doesn't fail) that much longer.
I mean take a look at overclocking now. Used to be people would be physically altering their CPU's, manually configuring bios settings by trial and error. Now in many cases you need to maybe press a button, if that even. I had a multi-cpu setup when there were actually physically multiple CPU, now every CPU is a multiple CPU really. Water blocks and radiators you can buy in a box. Pre-built cases that weren't just a beige box. If you can read, fit a screwdriver in your meatfist, and be able to discern shapes, you can put together a custom gaming rig for several hundred dollars. Considering a modern console will cost you almost 600$ anyway, and have none of the other capabilities, that isn't bad (though gaming consoles do an awful lot more than they used to also)...
Meh. Canada's been trying the same since 2012. Only difference is that Russia was successful while Canada only partially so.
Bill C-30 "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act" (Struck down)
Bill C-51 "Anti-terrorism Act, 2015" (Enacted)
One of the more interesting things I remember about C-30 when it was being talked about, was that our telecommunication Industry (i.e. Bell and Rogers Communication) opposed the idea due to the cost to upgrade their networks and systems to be able to have the data on hand and available and wanted the government of Canada to pay for it lol!
Then again there was Bill C-55 which I believe actually made it more difficult and provided additional oversight to enforcement agencies using warrantless telecommunication intercepts... But that was to address a decision made by the supreme court...
You're right in many ways the SD card slot seems to be an afterthought. I suspect this is because a lack of competition, and that those that buy a phone to get it, are just happy they can, even if the functionality isn't all that great. I've been buying phones with an SD slot back to a Nokia with a 2GB card. At the time it was for pictures, and it worked just fine. I briefly went to an Apple 3GS, and while a good phone, the closed market, and iTunes being a big POS drove me away. I had a Samsung G3 which I put a 64GB card into, and since moved to a LG G4 with the same 64GB card (BTW what is with the "G" in phones, move on companies!)...
Anyway I did have some problems with the 64GB card on the Samsung. Sure it was a bit annoying that most applications do not support the SD card, however other than a few crazy outliers like HearthStone taking up like 3GB of storage, it is really a moot point as most are small, and how many applications do you really need? Cleaning up crap I don't use every now and again solved application related issues. No what I used my memory (and likely what most people do), is for media storage (as that is what it is for), so pictures, movies, and music. Now to the main issue, which is of performance. Basically the Samsung 3G just didn't have the performance horsepower to handle a file system of that size. I loaded about 40GB of music on mine (i.e. a lot of little files), and for the little phone to parse that amount of data, or perform any actions on it were... frustrating. Also the transfer using USB didn't work so fast either and is flaky. Once you got stuff on there, it was more less fine to use, but making changes was a major hassle and after I had it loaded it remained pretty static. Oh one other thing that was really dumb, was that the Samsung would cache, or save an amount of storage on it's internal storage to handle music, which on 40GB amounted to almost 2GB on the internal as well which kinda sucked.
Fast forward to my new LG G4, and there is a big difference. The processing power has caught up to the storage, and it seems to handle the file system much better. However, the USB transfer mechanism is still flaky and frustrating as hell. Also the Camera doesn't like to natively save photos to the card either which is kind of silly. You can however just archive them there if you like, but really photos aren't so big or numerous for me to be a major issue. I'm still trying to figure out if I can get the USB transfer process to work better where the connection isn't lost, or hangs, or whatever, and I've only tried it really once so far so perhaps I can figure out a way to make it work better.
You just survived a plane crash! You are now located in a pod floating (hopefully) in the middle of an ocean...
"30,000 work emails, 110 were classified, another 30,000 personal email none classified...peanuts." (Maxwell)
0.2% seems hardly gross negligence. Though to be fair a better metric would be the total number of classified emails she had to deal with. If it was 200, and she used her personal email for 110 of them, that seems a bit nonchalant.
Problem with closed source and science.
Similarly there was a court case in Florida where people were suspicious of Breathalyzer results. Police use one produced by a company with closed source code. Court ordered them to open it up for inspection. They tried the "Trade Secrets" argument and refused. Court disagreed and starting fining them every day until they release the code. Once they did it was found to be horrible, and inaccurate, invalidating thousands of court cases... As it turned out they knew it was terrible, used it anyway, and was just trying to hide the fact that they were giving incorrect results much of the time for profit.
There is a much simpler answer than what was posted. It can be broken down into 3 parts:
1) Most companies outsource tech support to 3rd party companies. These companies get paid by call volume in a support contract.
2) These are generally call center mills with *high* turnover. If you've read your manual you probably have more training that the person on the phone.
3) Most now have incentives for "sales" rather than technical support. The support call is just a medium to up sell.
They are usually managed quite poorly also. Slum lord kind of mentality comes to mind. They do enough to get another contract, no more. Most even small call centers have a monthly training/hiring cycle because the don't (and don't try) retain people. They usually are poorly trained, thrust into service, paid little, and the folks that do it usually have little options due to education and lack of other work experience. I've know a lot, most of which I would say are not technically apt people. The get a script and a binder, and do the best they can until they are stressed and worn out enough that the quit and are replaced with the next cog.
So no, it is not surprising that generally speaking tech support is not great. This doesn't even include outsourcing, which adds another level of poor service usually simply to poor English language skills than anything not already mentioned. I generally never call tech support, unless I absolutely have to. That said, I've heard all sorts of crazy stories from people I've known over the years who have worked these call centers and some of the stupid things they call in for. Anyway they are poorly trained, thrown under the bus, and deal with angry people all day... I try to be nice the few times I call simply because I know it is such a soul sucking job.
We're talking in context of music. However as mentioned limiting the term is the other route. You think they are not going to make the next Deadpool because they might not have the copyright after 75 or 125 years? It made like half a billion dollars in a week. Cry me a river. Never mind the whole Hollywood accounting BS that goes on to justify it all.
This whole problem could be boiled down to the fact that Corporations are allowed to own the "rights" to Copyright. It is fabulously profitable. They lobby for it. Artists want to keep it, because they can get a big payday. Corporations transfer rights to other corporations...
This would all be solved by either caps on the term of copyright to something reasonable, say 10 or 20 years, or by simply not allowing a corporation to hold rights to copyright. If they want to sell your song, they pay a human to do so, etc... Rights are non-transferable. i.e. they die with you. Though hopefully that doesn't spawn a whole bunch of artist assassins...
You right though, copyright currently is doing exact the opposite of its intended purpose. The purpose is to provide some control over work to artists to make money to encourage them to make more art. Now, why bother, hit your payday and retire for the next 150 years or so.
If you compensate your employees appropriately you won't have to worry much about them leaving.
If you're paying someone 65k to do a job, and need someone to do a 85k job, train them but continue to pay them 65k, you won't get much sympathy should the employee decide to work someplace else...
Saw an ad for this on TV the other day:
https://arkencounter.com/ ...and was like wtf?!
Boggles the mind.
Pretty much this. I was vocal about it at work, ignored, and just go with it now. I'm the same I have a million different usernames and passwords for various systems I have access to. There has been some improvement in the last couple of years, where we've managed to consolidate some systems into the same environment where we can share usernames/passwords, but for the most part it is still the same. Then every year some new systems are added to the pile, each with it's own username and passwords... Ideally you would use the same password, or a few, but then you get all these systems with various levels of security validation on what you can use for a password. There are a couple in particular which are so restrictive that, I have to sit there forever like when trying to pick a unique username for your WOW account back in the day... Then they all expire every 30 days, but not all a the same time, but on some random rotation to whenever the fcsk it was you last changed it. At one point I pretty much accused the IT group of just generating work for themselves for all the forgotten password requests they would get in a day, and then being able to report on how many hundreds of thousands of "issues" they've "resolved". However as the saying goes, never attribute to malice what is more likely stupidity. I don't think many people understand security very well. First of all it only has to be good enough in 99% of the cases to simply act as a "reasonable" deterrent. Everything doesn't have to be ironclad. Secondly even if their was a "breach" what is the worst case than can happen most the time? Usually very little. So you can log onto my financial account at work, great now you know how much I make, and can book me some time off, thanks. Not to mention the LAYERS of security. I mean there is the network security, the physical building security, there is my account security, there there are individual applications which have security, some of which also have a second layer of security built in themselves, then there are the account security within each application, etc... Nothing we do is really that terribly important. Then yes we have printers, and copiers, and plotters, and junk that all have their own codes.... So yeah it is no wonder that people write things down or have stupid passwords. As I said when I tried to raise the issue, I was pointed to "Security" and told too bad. I basically said, people are just going to use a post-it note or use stupid passwords, but the response back was well that is against policy, and they would just make them make "stronger" passwords. I finally came to the conclusion after a couple of years that "Security" actually means "scapegoat". If ever there is a breach, the only thing that matters is they can point to how policy was not followed, and it is all somebody else's fault than there's. Never mind they have zero interest in trying to make security actually work well...
Canada endorsed the not leaving the EU, largely because there has been a free trade agreement in the works for the last 5 years with the EU.
Not sure how leaving the EU makes that deal happen faster for the UK. Possibly though, if they make enough concessions.
To be honest, I think this has little to do with either waterproofing or making phones thinner. This has to do with selling more stuff to users for more profit, and further locking in what consumer base they already have because all their gear will only work with your product. This has been the Apple mantra since the iPhone came out. Considering how much money they have made, it has been working.
As far as "waterproofing" anything getting rid of a "port" is kinda pointless unless you get rid of all ports. Which might actually be possible now that you can do wireless charging and have wireless speakers (and wireless networking and communication). Heck if it wasn't for the touch screen, you could probably totally encase it in a solid block of plastic making it more less totally waterproof... Of course then you couldn't have removable battery or storage, but it isn't like apple does any of those things. As far as the SIM card goes I am sure there is probably a better way than having a physical chip you have to plug into your device anyway.
My question is: Is a ship without a sail still "sailing"?
Not to mention the "type" of data. Sure there are other examples of data buys, but your basic apps and social stuff is going to be a hodgepodge of people. Linkedin, is mostly business professionals of some kind or another.
So, A) the exact market MS is in, and B) folks that have slightly more spending power and decision making ability to be targeted with ads, than your typical 12 year old.
I actually think it is a very astute buy. Linkedin is the established dominant player with little competition, and it fits. Maybe they haven't made any money, but they might make MS money, even if for other divisions, or they will likely integrated it into their various products, like resume templates in Office for a small example, contacts in outlook, etc... plenty of examples of "synergies" (I'll kill myself later)
Anyway I see this as a lot smarter buy that most of the crap MS has spent money on...
"Collision" might be a bit of a stretch. It implies immediacy. I didn't RTFA and I am no physicist, however I expect that the "Collision" took an extraordinary amount of time (galactic even as opposed to geologic time periods). Millions of years maybe? I have no idea. Seems if that is the case the summary is a bit sensational, in that it could more accurately be described as the waves of two black holes that slowly eventually merged into one... The end may have happened a lot quicker I suppose, but the lead time was probably enormous.
but yes, the purpose of these things seem to be to bring piracy to the masses who could never figure it out on their own.
Had someone at work brag about their box and all their content.
I think the key thing here isn't so much the box itself, it is the legitimacy of it. There are probably a big chunk of people who get these boxes and think it is completely legit. Now one can argue about the nuances of copyright infringement all day, however at best these things are dubiously legal. At least when someone does it that knows what they are doing, they more less understand what it is they are really doing and are getting. For Ma and Pa android box owner, they may not have the same background to really understand what is going on other than "Hey pretty pictures!"
So not only, as you say, someone has to pay for content, but there is also the issues on the box owner getting into legal trouble without being really aware (heading off a lot of lawsuits before they start), and from the content owner if something like this becomes legitimate use, it undermines their ability to do anything about it if they ignore it.
From my experience with Bluetooth, that statement is pretty meaningless.
The "Standard" is 30 feet or 10 meters (which doesn't even add up, I guess we're all too stupid to be able to convert).
However I've found that some devices seem to meet that standard, while others have a range that could be more accurately measured in inches.
Therefore that POS wireless speaker I got at BestBuy for 80$ will have a range of 8 inches rather than only 4!
Though to get the fullest potential from your Apple Energy, you really need the right cables. Apple has partnered with Monster Cables to provide you with the best in energy transport technology. Though it does come at a price, at 300$ per 6ft of cable, it is going to cost you a bit more than the basic copper those utility companies are going to give you, but do you really want to trust your important devices to that?
OK this is what I was thinking about, produces about 1/3rd the medical isotopes in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apparently it doesn't generate power at all. Yet supplied the US with about 12kg of weapons grade plutonium a year for about 20 years. Apparently 6kg is enough for a Nagasaki sized bomb.
So why even mention the power generation size if it doesn't really have any baring on plutonium production at all? Just confuses the issue (least for me).
A) AI is advancing to the point where it can create a movie script!
or
B) Hollywood is devolving to the point that all movies are so formulaic as to be indistinguishable from that produced by a cold thoughtless computer.
Though I suppose you can say both are occurring with resulting curves intersecting at this point in time...
HA lol!
This has about as much to do with scientific research as [insert something funny here].
This is China. This is the South China Sea. This is about sovereignty. It is about establishing "use" and "continued presence" to extend national boarders or to strengthen their position in that regard. Which is ultimately about resources.
This happens all the time internationally, though I'll admit this is the first time I've seen it occur as a underwater sealab! It does have the bonus that once in place there is very little anyone can really do about it.
For a nicer way to do it see this:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Canada and Denmark contest a barren speck of rock as territory, but it seems both military's at least have a sense of humour!
I think this is a rather obvious thing that people seem to have a hard time understanding. Statistically Poverty = Crime. Increase poverty, you are going to see a proportional increase in crime. It is pretty simple. If I don't have any means to support myself, a little means to alter that situation, one of the alternatives left is crime.
Anyway what might be more interesting, is while generally true, there are plenty of wealthy people that commit crimes as well, but what is the relative impact. Without running any numbers I would guess that the overwhelming portion of crimes committed for which people in poverty are thrown into jail amount to peanuts. While the crimes committed by relatively wealthy persons which largely go without conviction, are of a much greater value and impact.
Perhaps one explanation is one of perspective. If I break into you house and steal your TV, there is a physical connection to the event and a need for justice, whereas if I embezzle from mutual funds or other financial instruments affecting thousands of people it is more abstract and seemingly less of a priority.
I've always thought whenever people are talking about "fighting" crime with more police or like measures, that you are just catching more crime, not really reducing it. If you want to reduce crime you need to hit the root cause, poverty, and not the symptom, which is the crime itself.
To educate, culture, and generally grow up.
I went though it, but so do most people. As smart as you might think you are, it is a big world out there. I was always near the top of my class in high school, however one thing that probably helped me, was that I had a sister that consistently did even better, so I always had that sort of competition.
I also saw some crash and burn, particularly in year one.
As much as people think University is for smart people, it really isn't. Sure you can't be a dummy, and need some solid educational foundations, but more than that you need to be willing to put in the work and have some determination and perseverance. As much as a degree is anything to an employer (and I'm not saying that is what it is ultimately for), it is more of an indication of certain basic foundations, and a recognition of work ethic and persistence. The harder or more elite the school really doesn't mean you actually know more or are smarter than someone else, it really just shows character more than anything else.
I know my personal challenges were more due to foundational curriculum as where I went to high school calculus wasn't even offered, and where I went to university (it was a requirement for CS) the introduction course expected high school calculus. So you can probably imagine how well that went for me without any prior experience. In the end (after dropping it once) I managed to postpone it until my final year of university. I was the oldest guy in class, struggled my way though it with the help of an enthusiastic young professor, who in the end probably knew it was my last requirement to graduate, appreciated my hard work, generally felt sorry for me, and let me squeak past... :)
Then again I also dropped a CS class twice (changing majors once), before passing it... but then on the other side I was one of six who managed to pass another CS class where 90% dropped out. There are other examples, but anyone who has gone though it probably has a list of their own experiences. Ability is great, but without drive it isn't a guarantee of success.