OK, the whole scenario is a bit far fetched, however this is how it would play out, and their is historical precedent.
1) The USA has by far the largest, most powerful, most advanced, most strategic, military forces in the world. The next two in line Russia and China, are also not all that dominated by Muslims. When you start to look down the list, you got to go WAY down the list to find Muslim dominated countries with advanced military might. So in a strictly conventional war, it is really no contest.
However, as recent history has shown, it isn't entire nations, but radicalized groups... but of course we are talking entire populations, but whatever....
2) Only two nuclear weapons were ever used in war. They were used for basically one reason. The reports on what the estimated casualty rate of American soldiers varied but it was in the range of 500,000 to 1 million troops dead to invade Japan. A politician then weighed how unpopular it would be to order 1 million american citizens to their death VS incinerating a couple hundred thousands enemy civilians in a far off land. Obliviously, they went with Plan B, and that was just on the off chance that it MIGHT work. If you think that the US is incapable of making that exact same decision again, if faced with similar circumstances, particularly when the enemy lacks a response or anyway to deliver it, then you would be wrong. If you want to see how fast the moderates are in exposing and eradicating the radicalized components of that society, it wouldn't take long.
So you are right, anything like that would be unpopular as hell. However it only has to be less unpopular than the alternative for it to happen.
The last time I was in the store was a big disappointment. I recall good experiences when I was younger. About two years ago, the CD player in my car died. It was old enough that it didn't even have an aux out port, so it was basically a radio after that, and then a speaker stopped working.
I bought a new deck from Future Shop and tried to install it myself, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. As it turns out my car (2002 Nissan Sentra, Spec V SER) comes with a "premium" stereo package which includes 7 speakers and a SW with amp in the trunk which makes things vastly more complicated. If I have had a normal stereo, the process would have been painless likely. Anyway not even the Nissan dealer wanted to touch it with a 10ft pole (jerks).
Eventually have a lot of research online, it seemed the cause of my troubles (Alternator whine, speakers popping, etc...) was because of multiple grounds, and no matter which way I tried to ground the thing, nothing would work. Talking to places, they would want to rewire the whole car system (at large cost). Finally I found a possible solution, in a electronic device called a "Ground Loop Isolator". Obviously not something you find everywhere, and because I wanted it NOW (I was really sick of this project not working), one of only places that had such a thing was Radio Shack. So I went to Radio Shack for the first time in a long time.
Not only did none of the staff know what the hell I was talking about or even if they carried it, it took all the staff to even find one on their shelf. It was only 2 channel, so I would probably have to buy 2, and they cost 50$. As it was I decided to buy one and try it out. I did it in the parking lot as I brought my tools. As it turns out, it wasn't even the correct one, as it had only male connectors, not both male and female. I immediately returned it, and got my 50$ back.
It cost me 8$, was 4 channel, and had the correct connectors. I installed it, and it works fine. It messes with your levels, so you have to adjust them in your stereo setup at the start. Which can be annoying as every time I take my car in for service they seem to love disconnecting my battery, which resets my stereo to the defaults, which makes me have to set it up again. However it does what it is supposed to do.
So it is not surprising that they are going out of business. If you are going to sell overpriced electronics, you actually need staff that know what they are selling or talking about. Otherwise I might as well just go online and take my chances...
There is a difference between immigration and hiring US citizens then there is to hire foreign workers from another country...
If there is a problem, then maybe fix the immigration and citizenship process rather than doing an end run around the whole process and makes what is essentially an "exception" to the rules to allow for it. As it is, the American Dream (TM) is being killed, where immigrated US citizens can't get a job in IT because all the work has been farmed out to cheap foreign imports.
I had my house broken into this past year and was robbed a few months ago. I was only gone from the house for about 4 hours.
They took my 40" LCD TV. They took my Xbox 360 and all my games. Then even took my fscking Kelvin Kline cologne.
The one thing they didn't take? My desktop. It was easily worth more money than anything else I had, and in fact if you added up everything else they took, it wouldn't have equaled what my PC was worth (data and sentiment aside also).
Why? Because A) It is difficult and confusing for idiot robbers. There is a rats nest of cables plugged into everything that all need to be taken apart, and you need all the pieces. B) It is large and unwieldy (mine is even an ITX build!), big components, and multiple things to carry, and C) Ever bought a PC used or second hand? Not much of a market for it, and they are not worth much, particularly if you do not know what is in the guts.
If that was a Laptop, or a Tablet, or a Ultrabook (particularly anything recognizable as Apple) it would have been one of the very first things stolen. Easy to identify, easy to transport, easy to sell, worth money.
So there you go: 6) Theft Deterrent!
I think my next build will either be some super expensive system in a massive full tower case, or I'll find a nice bland beige box circa 1995 to put it in... Call it thievery camouflage...
Upgrading really hasn't made much sense in some time. About the only upgrades that make sense, is if you build your system wrong initially, you *might* be able to upgrade to fix it. i.e. you underestimated RAM usage, or gaming VS video card etc... The problem is players like Intel change their standards every 2-3 years. So if you are trying to upgrade anything beyond that, good luck as it won't be compatible anymore. It will use a different socket, it will use a different DDR, it will use a different power cable, etc... which would force you to replace so many things, you might as well just buy a whole new boxen.
Not so sure of all the influence of those milestones, however years ago our organization went from a 3 year lease cycle to a 4 year one, and over time that would slow the market, but ultimately it would level off again so that makes sense.
I'm sure that there were also a bunch of people that jumped on the Tablet bandwagon thinking that was all they need only to find out it wasn't quite as useful as they thought it might be. Everyone has already mentioned also how much of a drag Windows 8 was also.
Well I don't use Firefox anymore other than as another alternate browser for weird instances... However I remember two things both good and bad:
1) Memory management in Firefox was terrible (at least in the last version I used). 2) Some Firefox extensions were very useful for certain things... Like Firebug and debugging JavaScript.
considering that Google is by far the largest contributor to Mozilla, it would actually be in the best interests NOT to compete with Google.
Though upon reading the wiki, it seems they are now getting the Money from Yahoo, of which MS takes a 12% cut as it actually goes though Bing, so it may not be in the best interests to compete with anyone really!:)
In a secure enterprise environment, users typically cannot download and install anything. It should have been addressed in testing, and deployed with proper patches, drivers, etc... However because it wasn't, and they didn't, it caused issues later (which have since been addressed, but made the transition unnecessarily fraught with issues).
That might work when the user has a specific application. In the two instances I saw, it was the fact that the print servers were not compatible (nothing user can do), so it was a matter of IT installing the 64 bit drivers. Ditto with the remote in software IT uses to network with users computers, which caused them some support headaches. However that works now also. Were they to go with 64bit initially, test it first, and address the issue then, none of it would have been an issue.
But someone somewhere made the decision that the entire org should stick with 32bit forever...
Windows 7 works fine here. The transition was mostly painless. About the only thing that has caused some issues, is that they decided to go with 32bit as the standard, likely for compatibility reasons. However some power users fought and won to get the 64bit version because of a requirement for more then 4GB of RAM (hardly surprising). The 64bit does have a few compatibility issues, particularly with some of the IT remote applications (and some print drivers). Should have just went with 64bit to begin with, updated the few incompatible applications as required, then you're not supporting two different OS versions for years and years to come.
It might, but then again you are then trying to use it in an enterprise environment, deploying it on thousands of computers, etc... fraught with potential issues. I mean everyone is supposed to be using the same template images, yet even that gets screwed up all the time, then network deployment, with seems piecemeal half the time etc...
Even in Canada, we have had some crazy political appointments that made little sense, and are pretty embarrassing.
Off the top of my head we've had a Education Minister that never graduated from High School, a Science and Technology Minister, who was a creationist and believed the world was 5,000 years old, a Minister of the Environment that was a a right wing business talk show host, etc... Though some of that might be a mix of both Federal and Provincial governments.
We just started preliminary testing of 8.1, which I foresee having many problems. Rollout and compatibility aside (which will be huge issues no doubt), there is the fact that a great deal of "normal" users can barely function in a Windows 7 environment. Windows 8.1 will be like giving an iPhone to a caveman in many cases. Help desk is going to love that transition I am thinking...
i am pretty sure it was went they went back in time or whatever, and when they used the old version of the Neuralizer it made that sound. Hence the possible gag, in that it was old and obsolete...
Or they just do not care. I think it is a situation where ideology trumps common sense in most cases.
Most laws and the like are not written by politicians, but the direction and marching orders are. The bureaucrats that drafted it up, probably knew all about the issues, and told the politicians all about them.
However when you are told to do it, get it done, and get it out, I am pretty sure any nay saying falls on deaf ears. That and the patented, we'll fix it later once implemented, or we'll see what happens, or lets risk manage that, etc...
As far as incompetent goes, I would say that because they rammed it through it does show they are incompetent politicians, as they should have saw this coming, underestimated the greed of the media groups, and foresaw that this is going to cause a real political issue when Little Jimmy or Grandma gets a letter saying that they are going to get sued into oblivion, with an election coming up.
Solving problems you didn't know you had. I know a lot of people that try to hold on to work. I am constantly trying to be rid of it. This is usually done by automation where possible, or solutions to fix an issue causing more work.
I also agree that "intelligence" is more than just that. I think I am a pretty smart guy, but it is probably other qualities that enhance that into something a bit more. It is one thing to be curious, but another to be driven to figure something out because it bugs you not to. Likewise if like being engaged and questioning, but do not want to look foolish, then there is a impetus to figure out as much of a subject as possible to be able to do so. I think much of it is also environmental, parents, siblings, culture, etc... I'm a pretty laid back guy for the most part, however when it comes to efficiency I may have a touch of the OCD in that regard. It sort of bugs me when I or others do something that isn't optimal? Even running errands, the route taken, the order of tasks, etc.. I can be pretty obsessive about, because why would you do it any other way?:) Even to the point of not doing something one day because I can batch it more effectively with other tasks on another day... Though I try now to be a little more relaxed about that sort of thing...
I laughed aloud during MIB3 (a rare event indeed) when one of the gizmos they were using made that exact modem connection sound. Everyone in the theater was probably too young to get it.
I couldn't decide if they just used the sound bite as a stock sound and they didn't really know what it was, or if it was sort of an inside joke about that particular piece of fictional technology being a POS or something:)
Looks to me like a very flowery letter that is actually a phishing expedition for your personal information.
As Teksavvy stated in the preamble, they protect your identity, only the courts can release it, which would require a warrant.
Yet here they are asking you to voluntarily surrender your personal information in the form of an email or letter, which I am sure once they have it, an extortion letter or civil proceeding may follow...
"You think countries haven't honoured each other's decisions and court orders since the middle ages?"
In this particular case, no.:)
That said, I see the slimy way this will happen is that they will use the law and Canadian courts to get personal information, then use that information in US court, likely in a State with stupid IP laws such as east Texas, to try to extort money from Canadians. These things typically don't go to court, but are just used as blunted objects to scare people into paying money. Even should it go to court, I question how enforceable it will be in Canada, however should you ever want to travel to the US, it may cause some issues.
The big thing in past with this BS, was in the US, in certain States you can sue a "John Doe" (i.e. an IP address you don't know who is the identity) to get at the personal information, drop the case, then start a new case using said personal information in the usual extortion scheme. This was already tried in Canada, and the ISP's, courts, government, told them to take a hike. Now however this will allow the collection of the personal information.
I suspect this will eventually cause a political situation with the Privacy Commissioners Office getting involved. There is a Federal Election going to happen soon in Canada, so Media companies would be stupid to try this crap right now (which they seem to be doing regardless), because all it is going to take is a bunch of examples of this BS happening to make it a political situation where politicians will be using it as a voting issue, and the should they win, will kill the law or amend it so that it is no longer being exploited.
Several online poker sites have been caught with "poker bots" in the past. While they may not use 12TB of data or be "perfect", they do not have to be. They just have to beat the bad human players, and considering the house takes 3% or whatever anyway it hardly matters.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, the whole scenario is a bit far fetched, however this is how it would play out, and their is historical precedent.
1) The USA has by far the largest, most powerful, most advanced, most strategic, military forces in the world. The next two in line Russia and China, are also not all that dominated by Muslims. When you start to look down the list, you got to go WAY down the list to find Muslim dominated countries with advanced military might. So in a strictly conventional war, it is really no contest.
However, as recent history has shown, it isn't entire nations, but radicalized groups... but of course we are talking entire populations, but whatever....
2) Only two nuclear weapons were ever used in war. They were used for basically one reason. The reports on what the estimated casualty rate of American soldiers varied but it was in the range of 500,000 to 1 million troops dead to invade Japan. A politician then weighed how unpopular it would be to order 1 million american citizens to their death VS incinerating a couple hundred thousands enemy civilians in a far off land. Obliviously, they went with Plan B, and that was just on the off chance that it MIGHT work. If you think that the US is incapable of making that exact same decision again, if faced with similar circumstances, particularly when the enemy lacks a response or anyway to deliver it, then you would be wrong. If you want to see how fast the moderates are in exposing and eradicating the radicalized components of that society, it wouldn't take long.
So you are right, anything like that would be unpopular as hell. However it only has to be less unpopular than the alternative for it to happen.
The last time I was in the store was a big disappointment. I recall good experiences when I was younger. About two years ago, the CD player in my car died. It was old enough that it didn't even have an aux out port, so it was basically a radio after that, and then a speaker stopped working.
I bought a new deck from Future Shop and tried to install it myself, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. As it turns out my car (2002 Nissan Sentra, Spec V SER) comes with a "premium" stereo package which includes 7 speakers and a SW with amp in the trunk which makes things vastly more complicated. If I have had a normal stereo, the process would have been painless likely. Anyway not even the Nissan dealer wanted to touch it with a 10ft pole (jerks).
Eventually have a lot of research online, it seemed the cause of my troubles (Alternator whine, speakers popping, etc...) was because of multiple grounds, and no matter which way I tried to ground the thing, nothing would work. Talking to places, they would want to rewire the whole car system (at large cost). Finally I found a possible solution, in a electronic device called a "Ground Loop Isolator". Obviously not something you find everywhere, and because I wanted it NOW (I was really sick of this project not working), one of only places that had such a thing was Radio Shack. So I went to Radio Shack for the first time in a long time.
Not only did none of the staff know what the hell I was talking about or even if they carried it, it took all the staff to even find one on their shelf. It was only 2 channel, so I would probably have to buy 2, and they cost 50$. As it was I decided to buy one and try it out. I did it in the parking lot as I brought my tools. As it turns out, it wasn't even the correct one, as it had only male connectors, not both male and female. I immediately returned it, and got my 50$ back.
Then I went online and got this:
http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...
It cost me 8$, was 4 channel, and had the correct connectors. I installed it, and it works fine. It messes with your levels, so you have to adjust them in your stereo setup at the start. Which can be annoying as every time I take my car in for service they seem to love disconnecting my battery, which resets my stereo to the defaults, which makes me have to set it up again. However it does what it is supposed to do.
So it is not surprising that they are going out of business. If you are going to sell overpriced electronics, you actually need staff that know what they are selling or talking about. Otherwise I might as well just go online and take my chances...
Sorry, all serious free speech debate aside, I just thought it funny that the POPE said he would punch someone...
In my mind he would yell "POPE PUNCH", right before doing so.... :)
There is a difference between immigration and hiring US citizens then there is to hire foreign workers from another country...
If there is a problem, then maybe fix the immigration and citizenship process rather than doing an end run around the whole process and makes what is essentially an "exception" to the rules to allow for it. As it is, the American Dream (TM) is being killed, where immigrated US citizens can't get a job in IT because all the work has been farmed out to cheap foreign imports.
Also, it will allow dramatically hopeful crew to tap the gauges as they edge towards criticality...
I had my house broken into this past year and was robbed a few months ago. I was only gone from the house for about 4 hours.
They took my 40" LCD TV. They took my Xbox 360 and all my games. Then even took my fscking Kelvin Kline cologne.
The one thing they didn't take? My desktop. It was easily worth more money than anything else I had, and in fact if you added up everything else they took, it wouldn't have equaled what my PC was worth (data and sentiment aside also).
Why? Because A) It is difficult and confusing for idiot robbers. There is a rats nest of cables plugged into everything that all need to be taken apart, and you need all the pieces. B) It is large and unwieldy (mine is even an ITX build!), big components, and multiple things to carry, and C) Ever bought a PC used or second hand? Not much of a market for it, and they are not worth much, particularly if you do not know what is in the guts.
If that was a Laptop, or a Tablet, or a Ultrabook (particularly anything recognizable as Apple) it would have been one of the very first things stolen. Easy to identify, easy to transport, easy to sell, worth money.
So there you go:
6) Theft Deterrent!
I think my next build will either be some super expensive system in a massive full tower case, or I'll find a nice bland beige box circa 1995 to put it in... Call it thievery camouflage...
Upgrading really hasn't made much sense in some time. About the only upgrades that make sense, is if you build your system wrong initially, you *might* be able to upgrade to fix it. i.e. you underestimated RAM usage, or gaming VS video card etc... The problem is players like Intel change their standards every 2-3 years. So if you are trying to upgrade anything beyond that, good luck as it won't be compatible anymore. It will use a different socket, it will use a different DDR, it will use a different power cable, etc... which would force you to replace so many things, you might as well just buy a whole new boxen.
Not so sure of all the influence of those milestones, however years ago our organization went from a 3 year lease cycle to a 4 year one, and over time that would slow the market, but ultimately it would level off again so that makes sense.
I'm sure that there were also a bunch of people that jumped on the Tablet bandwagon thinking that was all they need only to find out it wasn't quite as useful as they thought it might be. Everyone has already mentioned also how much of a drag Windows 8 was also.
Well I don't use Firefox anymore other than as another alternate browser for weird instances... However I remember two things both good and bad:
1) Memory management in Firefox was terrible (at least in the last version I used).
2) Some Firefox extensions were very useful for certain things... Like Firebug and debugging JavaScript.
considering that Google is by far the largest contributor to Mozilla, it would actually be in the best interests NOT to compete with Google.
Though upon reading the wiki, it seems they are now getting the Money from Yahoo, of which MS takes a 12% cut as it actually goes though Bing, so it may not be in the best interests to compete with anyone really! :)
In a secure enterprise environment, users typically cannot download and install anything. It should have been addressed in testing, and deployed with proper patches, drivers, etc... However because it wasn't, and they didn't, it caused issues later (which have since been addressed, but made the transition unnecessarily fraught with issues).
That might work when the user has a specific application. In the two instances I saw, it was the fact that the print servers were not compatible (nothing user can do), so it was a matter of IT installing the 64 bit drivers. Ditto with the remote in software IT uses to network with users computers, which caused them some support headaches. However that works now also. Were they to go with 64bit initially, test it first, and address the issue then, none of it would have been an issue.
But someone somewhere made the decision that the entire org should stick with 32bit forever...
Windows 7 works fine here. The transition was mostly painless. About the only thing that has caused some issues, is that they decided to go with 32bit as the standard, likely for compatibility reasons. However some power users fought and won to get the 64bit version because of a requirement for more then 4GB of RAM (hardly surprising). The 64bit does have a few compatibility issues, particularly with some of the IT remote applications (and some print drivers). Should have just went with 64bit to begin with, updated the few incompatible applications as required, then you're not supporting two different OS versions for years and years to come.
It might, but then again you are then trying to use it in an enterprise environment, deploying it on thousands of computers, etc... fraught with potential issues. I mean everyone is supposed to be using the same template images, yet even that gets screwed up all the time, then network deployment, with seems piecemeal half the time etc...
Even in Canada, we have had some crazy political appointments that made little sense, and are pretty embarrassing.
Off the top of my head we've had a Education Minister that never graduated from High School, a Science and Technology Minister, who was a creationist and believed the world was 5,000 years old, a Minister of the Environment that was a a right wing business talk show host, etc... Though some of that might be a mix of both Federal and Provincial governments.
We just started preliminary testing of 8.1, which I foresee having many problems. Rollout and compatibility aside (which will be huge issues no doubt), there is the fact that a great deal of "normal" users can barely function in a Windows 7 environment. Windows 8.1 will be like giving an iPhone to a caveman in many cases. Help desk is going to love that transition I am thinking...
i am pretty sure it was went they went back in time or whatever, and when they used the old version of the Neuralizer it made that sound. Hence the possible gag, in that it was old and obsolete...
Or they just do not care. I think it is a situation where ideology trumps common sense in most cases.
Most laws and the like are not written by politicians, but the direction and marching orders are.
The bureaucrats that drafted it up, probably knew all about the issues, and told the politicians all about them.
However when you are told to do it, get it done, and get it out, I am pretty sure any nay saying falls on deaf ears. That and the patented, we'll fix it later once implemented, or we'll see what happens, or lets risk manage that, etc...
As far as incompetent goes, I would say that because they rammed it through it does show they are incompetent politicians, as they should have saw this coming, underestimated the greed of the media groups, and foresaw that this is going to cause a real political issue when Little Jimmy or Grandma gets a letter saying that they are going to get sued into oblivion, with an election coming up.
Solving problems you didn't know you had. I know a lot of people that try to hold on to work. I am constantly trying to be rid of it. This is usually done by automation where possible, or solutions to fix an issue causing more work.
Though you do have to watch out for this from time to time:
http://xkcd.com/1319/
I also agree that "intelligence" is more than just that. I think I am a pretty smart guy, but it is probably other qualities that enhance that into something a bit more. It is one thing to be curious, but another to be driven to figure something out because it bugs you not to. Likewise if like being engaged and questioning, but do not want to look foolish, then there is a impetus to figure out as much of a subject as possible to be able to do so. I think much of it is also environmental, parents, siblings, culture, etc... I'm a pretty laid back guy for the most part, however when it comes to efficiency I may have a touch of the OCD in that regard. It sort of bugs me when I or others do something that isn't optimal? Even running errands, the route taken, the order of tasks, etc.. I can be pretty obsessive about, because why would you do it any other way? :) Even to the point of not doing something one day because I can batch it more effectively with other tasks on another day... Though I try now to be a little more relaxed about that sort of thing...
I laughed aloud during MIB3 (a rare event indeed) when one of the gizmos they were using made that exact modem connection sound. Everyone in the theater was probably too young to get it.
I couldn't decide if they just used the sound bite as a stock sound and they didn't really know what it was, or if it was sort of an inside joke about that particular piece of fictional technology being a POS or something :)
Sobriety was a listed mental disorder in Russia, there is a well known oral treatment however...
Community College Certification Project!
Or possibly this one might be better: Universal Student Scholarship Registry...
I am sure Fox will come up with something catchy. Hopefully not something stupid like Obamalearn...
Looks to me like a very flowery letter that is actually a phishing expedition for your personal information.
As Teksavvy stated in the preamble, they protect your identity, only the courts can release it, which would require a warrant.
Yet here they are asking you to voluntarily surrender your personal information in the form of an email or letter, which I am sure once they have it, an extortion letter or civil proceeding may follow...
"You think countries haven't honoured each other's decisions and court orders since the middle ages?"
In this particular case, no. :)
That said, I see the slimy way this will happen is that they will use the law and Canadian courts to get personal information, then use that information in US court, likely in a State with stupid IP laws such as east Texas, to try to extort money from Canadians. These things typically don't go to court, but are just used as blunted objects to scare people into paying money. Even should it go to court, I question how enforceable it will be in Canada, however should you ever want to travel to the US, it may cause some issues.
The big thing in past with this BS, was in the US, in certain States you can sue a "John Doe" (i.e. an IP address you don't know who is the identity) to get at the personal information, drop the case, then start a new case using said personal information in the usual extortion scheme. This was already tried in Canada, and the ISP's, courts, government, told them to take a hike. Now however this will allow the collection of the personal information.
I suspect this will eventually cause a political situation with the Privacy Commissioners Office getting involved. There is a Federal Election going to happen soon in Canada, so Media companies would be stupid to try this crap right now (which they seem to be doing regardless), because all it is going to take is a bunch of examples of this BS happening to make it a political situation where politicians will be using it as a voting issue, and the should they win, will kill the law or amend it so that it is no longer being exploited.
This has/is already happening.
Several online poker sites have been caught with "poker bots" in the past. While they may not use 12TB of data or be "perfect", they do not have to be. They just have to beat the bad human players, and considering the house takes 3% or whatever anyway it hardly matters.