While I agree to much of your post and the reasoning behind it, there's still flight AF447. This loss of a recently made, well maintained aircraft of a major carrier is still pretty unaccounted for.
We think we know now the first officer's inputs kept the plane in a constant stall while the plane practically fell straight down, for all the three minutes the crew had left between incident and accident. But the reasons behind this are still in the dark. Pilot error may be one reason, but even the worst pilots usually aren't that crazy to keep pulling up on a stalled plane that's all but falling from the sky hard and fast. There's probably more to it and, judging from the bits we know about, it probably has an electronic background.
At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.
There's also much "anecdotal evidence" of ghosts and associated metaphysics.
No one believes them to be true either, unless one haunted house can be scientifically and rigorously tested.
Without tests, "anecdotal evidence" of PED interference is worth nothing. Pilots are indeed usually superstitious, but airplane engineers should not be.
Please tell us more on how to differentiate between gravity and acceleration, even more inside an aluminum barrel with cloud-obstructed windows, at night.
I think a certain Mr. Albert E. would like to have a word with you.
Plant insurance is the another thing that comes to mind: nobody, really, nobody will insure a nuclear power plant against the risk of meltdown, no matter how small.
So the plants run uninsured.
Not a big deal, since meltdowns happen quite rarely. BUT: Coal, gas and oil fired power plants have to provide private insurance. Nuclear plants don't.
But since damages will be felt by people, will destroy property, will destroy health and wipe out entire towns, an uninsured nuclear power plant is in fact still insured against meltdown - just by the taxpayer.
Therefore, a running power plant will bring profits to a private corporation, while the general population aka the Taxpayers bear the risks.
Private gains for public risks. Now why do even die-hard free-market zealots have a problem with nuclear power?
With the cost of education and training for each individual soldier and the pensions to be paid if something should happen to them, expensive ammunition is the least of financial worries to a modern army of professionals. Getting the mission done with all your men coming out unharmed is worth a lot, not only financially, but also strategically: you can influence and take part in battles you've never could before, because the risk is higher for a spectacular failure. Wounded soldiers always cause public inquiries on exactly why The Army of One needed to be there. When it's more likely that all the blue guys get home unharmed, you can take much more chances in ethically/morally/economically questionable settings. And that is worth not only the insane cost per bullet for some...
Some of us live in that magical land of fairytales where it's below zero every night for about half the year, every year, with temperatures during the day being not much higher.
In a climate like this, banning small electric heaters that also give off some light is pretty hilarious.
People heating their homes with electricity (very popular in France, BTW) should not use electric light bulbs because of what?
Nobody knows for sure, but judging from the evidence presented and the circumstances surrounding them, a clear verdict should be possible.
A cached database of location points is only created for a reason, especially when it's done on a mobile device, using scarce CPU cycles and even scarcer battery power to do it. The GPS receiver and CPU consume quite a bit of power, which is the most precious resource on a smartphone. Switching on the main radio for triangulating its position when GPS is unavailable is even worse, considering it is then usually triggered inside buildings, where the main radio has to ramp up transmit power to get to their cell tower.
Fine-grained tracks recorded when no application is actively requesting them? An uncalled-for but constant drain on the most precious resource and deciding factor of a smartphone - its battery? Neat position databases with no discernible limits in length, just for a cache? Large amounts of data synchronized to a new phone via the owner's synced computer, by accident? All this effort for a database that until now wasn't documented, unused and unavailable to any existing app in the entire app store, for a legitimate reason?
All cheaters usually exclaim even when caught red-handed "It's not what you think, it's not what it seems, there's a good explanation for it."
But all things considered, this is a textbook example of "if it quacks like a duck". And Apple cheated on this one. Face it and show them the door.
First, it's important how many of your friends have a BluRay drive, so you can watch your movies at their place and vice versa.
Second, it's equally important how many high-resolution movies you have watched. After several movie nights with a razor-sharp, crystal-clear image, it needs some willpower to go back to regular resolution DVD. I'm discounting pirated downloads of several GB that take ages to complete and online streaming that freeze a few times per movie as your flatmates, kids, spouses or neighbors download something else on your shared line. BluRay has none of that, but a perfect image. After a few movie nights with a high-res display or home cinema projector, going back is painful.
(But they have forced advertising on BR discs, and do I hate these bastards for that)
The BluRay burner in my Thinkpad is only 2x speed, which translates to 25GB burned in about 40 minutes. About the same time it takes to burn a DL DVD-R. I can live with that, as it is twenty-five full gigabytes of stuff. Ripping or transcoding I have not even tried, but I know it takes a literal whole day, so 40min of burn time is a joke compared to that.
But it is a godsend when you also have a high-megapixel digital camera and an itchy trigger finger. Movies go straight to portable HDDs anyway, but with each digicam picture weighing in at 5mb, a single at disc worth 25GB is golden, even more as it is at least somewhat resistant against shocks, electrical failure and totally immune to erroneous overwriting.
If the only thing that prevents the collapse of the Western World is protection of intellectual property, then be sure to have a good bug-out location.
Maybe I'm just too jaded, but relying on intellectual property that can be copied digitally, perfectly within a few seconds is probably not the most sustainable basis for an economy.
When all you have is something that can be multiplied a millionfold within a few hours, you're hosed. Sorry to break it to you, but it's true.
Of course we can make laws and enforce them, but unlike physical crimes like theft and murder, it is no real harm done, but all hypothetical musings on "potential lost sales". And it is nothing but statistics and vague guesswork. I think many people have bought real, genuine Bluray-discs of movies they already possessed pirated copies of. Actual loss of sale = 0, probably even better, since they may not ever heard of that movie before. And I think many people have seen pirated copies of movies they would have never spent a single dime on and regretted every minute of time wasted for it. Actual loss of sale = 0 as well.
You cannot make reliable assumptions on potential sales lost. Therefore, you cannot judge about a fair punishment on it. Something that cannot be punished fairly cannot not be punished without hurting tangible, actual rights. If the business model of the Western world relies on that, I'd sell my stock in them, fast.
But please. Think about the number of immigrant people that are too many for any given situation to remain reasonably stable. And then think about the 3 billion people in this world that would give everything to be a migrant worker in your country. Why don't we accept them all? Why don't we invite everyone, from everywhere. Stricly everyone. No limits, no questions asked, everyone's invited, the more the merrier.
Why not? We let some in, why do we treat them different.
Think of oodles of people, marching without end, a never ending stream of human flesh, a quarter mile wide, endless over the horizon. A Tokio subway in rush hour. Without end. One person per square foot, for as long as the eye can see.
Is that too many? Is it racist even though the immigrant's "race" is absolutely irrelevant here?
Is there any number of people that are too many, any number after which migrant workers become invaders?
If yes, we need to get honest and discuss on which number that is. If no, we need to be consistent and let everyone in, all 3 billions. Everyone living in a household with more than 3 square foot per person should freely accept another migrant worker into their apartment. And then another one and another one, and then some more. And their children. Don't be racist, let them in until every inch of floor is covered with people.
You always have a choice on how much you drive on the roads. (Choosing not to drive is impossible, of course)
Change the place of residence, buy from a different supermarket, choose another job, choose another form of commute, get a different school for the kids. There's usually an option to change the distance to travel for daily routine trips. It's not always convenient and certainly not free as in beer to do so, but it can be done. Sometimes, it is the cheaper option, sometimes it's the only one and sometimes it's impossible.
It's a completely insane move of Motorola to think they can home-grow an OS the quality of Android or iOS for a competitive price, let alone duplicate even a tiny fraction of the apps in their respective app stores.
A platform can never compete with Apple's iOS if it is similarly locked down. Economy of scale, years of experience, steadily earned billions in the app store and a brand recognition of superior, but locked-down quality will not allow anyone to profit against them. That way, it's nigh-impossibly hard to compete even against used iPhone 3's from eBay.
Can someone explain to me why in the mobile phone market, everything all participating companies do revolves around control, control and absolute control?
Control may be a means to an end, that is profit, but it's neither the only nor a guaranteed successful one. So why does everyone focus on control?
Is it just the mindset of the entire industry that is perspiring through every product and service or does it have true profitable goals? Is it possible that everyone is thinking Apple's succeeded only because of their iron grip - and now tries to copy it verbatim?
After all, usual company goals are revolving around short term cash flow, mid term profit and long term growth. Control for control's sake brings neither. Apple did succeed because of better-than-excellent hardware, highly polished OS, coupled with insanely high marketing efforts, high brand recognition. They could repeat their first mover advantage in the face of crappy competitive music players against a world of crappy smartphone OS competition. They had good interface design and a clear "just-has-to-work-everytime-for-the-average-joe" development goal. All that success components AND their closed hardware with the associated closed, quality-assured, firstborn-stealing store.
And yet, whenever some lame company tries to copy Apple's success, they only choose to close down their otherwise less-than-excellent hardware, lock down their polished turd of an OS, try only half-hearted marketing efforts failing to secure any brand recognition, as they are simply a decade too late after first mover Apple. Not to mention that all other's interface design is unintuitive and laggy even in the default state.
Android was the only exception to that and they needed the largest software company to back it up.
In the face of excellent competition with a firstborn-stealing app store, everyone else will fail. Only Android could hope to outrank iOS in terms of OS quality and app store variety, but the resulting handset has to be extremely well-built for their combination to succeed.
It is extremely hard to outrank iPhones and iPods on any measure of quality. Next-to-impossible-hard. The only downsides Apple has are price and freedom.
Producing a similarly locked-down handset for the only OS that could compete with Apple is already a risky bet, since if people need to have their soul stolen by an app store, they will choose the one that is most worth it. Android wins by openness, never by features nor UI polish. It can't. With all those billions pouring in from the app store, Apple can outrun everyone else on quality.
Home-growing a competitive OS into a ten-year matured market of mobile OS development cannot be done while keeping the final price of the product below Apple's. Even with half the features left out, it's impossible to beat their economy of scale.
Producing a locked-down handset with a home-grown OS that cannot compete on quality or features with neither Android nor Apple is a suicide pact. Sell Motorola shares, because someone up their chain of command has gone batshit crazy with their stockholder's money.
Seconded. Manufacturers of rock solid hardware cannot get even the simplest of software straight.
How often did we have perfect hardware utterly destroyed by their accompanying drivers? It took GPU manufacturers years, almost decades, to work out issues in their drivers.
Software delivered by hardware manufacturers is almost always a buggy, laggy, bloated piece of stuff that is usually deactivated, deinstalled, thrown away as soon as possible, unless it's a driver or other absolute neccessity.
It *is* stealing electricity - in small amounts. It also is trespassing into private property, eavesdropping on private communication, "breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit", i.e. fraud.
Forging concert tickets is illegal, sneaking into cinemas is illegal, riding the subway without a ticket is illegal. The same should apply to using a password-protected router owned by someone else without permission.
All that is just polishing the turds. Or at least reinventing a mediocre replacement for a proper wheel.
Just use HTTPS for everything. One certificate per year is certainly cheaper than one person-day for IT staff trying to implement a workaround. Buy cert (or get a StartSSL free one), install cert, behold a safe website.
With governments, companies, data miners growing greedier every day, plaintext is going the way of the dodo. Only a few bearded Internet founders still believe in the good of mankind to send their traffic unencrypted.
If Facebook can do it for their free network on a true planetary scale, so can you. The age of lame excuses is over.
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Correction: we still *think* AF447 crashed because of an iced pitot tube. We still don't know for sure.
On the recorder, we saw a constant nose-up input from the pilot, with the plane stalled and falling fast.
It could've been an electronics failure or a crazy pilot's error...
While I agree to much of your post and the reasoning behind it, there's still flight AF447. This loss of a recently made, well maintained aircraft of a major carrier is still pretty unaccounted for.
We think we know now the first officer's inputs kept the plane in a constant stall while the plane practically fell straight down, for all the three minutes the crew had left between incident and accident. But the reasons behind this are still in the dark. Pilot error may be one reason, but even the worst pilots usually aren't that crazy to keep pulling up on a stalled plane that's all but falling from the sky hard and fast. There's probably more to it and, judging from the bits we know about, it probably has an electronic background.
How much cargo do you think a 747 can hold?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-400#747-400ERF --> 112,760 kg
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-8#747-8_Freighter --> 140,000 kg
At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.
There's also much "anecdotal evidence" of ghosts and associated metaphysics.
No one believes them to be true either, unless one haunted house can be scientifically and rigorously tested.
Without tests, "anecdotal evidence" of PED interference is worth nothing. Pilots are indeed usually superstitious, but airplane engineers should not be.
Please tell us more on how to differentiate between gravity and acceleration, even more inside an aluminum barrel with cloud-obstructed windows, at night.
I think a certain Mr. Albert E. would like to have a word with you.
Good point.
Plant insurance is the another thing that comes to mind: nobody, really, nobody will insure a nuclear power plant against the risk of meltdown, no matter how small.
So the plants run uninsured.
Not a big deal, since meltdowns happen quite rarely. BUT: Coal, gas and oil fired power plants have to provide private insurance. Nuclear plants don't.
But since damages will be felt by people, will destroy property, will destroy health and wipe out entire towns, an uninsured nuclear power plant is in fact still insured against meltdown - just by the taxpayer.
Therefore, a running power plant will bring profits to a private corporation, while the general population aka the Taxpayers bear the risks.
Private gains for public risks. Now why do even die-hard free-market zealots have a problem with nuclear power?
With the cost of education and training for each individual soldier and the pensions to be paid if something should happen to them, expensive ammunition is the least of financial worries to a modern army of professionals. Getting the mission done with all your men coming out unharmed is worth a lot, not only financially, but also strategically: you can influence and take part in battles you've never could before, because the risk is higher for a spectacular failure. Wounded soldiers always cause public inquiries on exactly why The Army of One needed to be there. When it's more likely that all the blue guys get home unharmed, you can take much more chances in ethically/morally/economically questionable settings. And that is worth not only the insane cost per bullet for some...
Some of us live in that magical land of fairytales where it's below zero every night for about half the year, every year, with temperatures during the day being not much higher.
In a climate like this, banning small electric heaters that also give off some light is pretty hilarious.
People heating their homes with electricity (very popular in France, BTW) should not use electric light bulbs because of what?
Nobody knows for sure, but judging from the evidence presented and the circumstances surrounding them, a clear verdict should be possible.
A cached database of location points is only created for a reason, especially when it's done on a mobile device, using scarce CPU cycles and even scarcer battery power to do it. The GPS receiver and CPU consume quite a bit of power, which is the most precious resource on a smartphone. Switching on the main radio for triangulating its position when GPS is unavailable is even worse, considering it is then usually triggered inside buildings, where the main radio has to ramp up transmit power to get to their cell tower.
Fine-grained tracks recorded when no application is actively requesting them?
An uncalled-for but constant drain on the most precious resource and deciding factor of a smartphone - its battery?
Neat position databases with no discernible limits in length, just for a cache?
Large amounts of data synchronized to a new phone via the owner's synced computer, by accident?
All this effort for a database that until now wasn't documented, unused and unavailable to any existing app in the entire app store, for a legitimate reason?
All cheaters usually exclaim even when caught red-handed "It's not what you think, it's not what it seems, there's a good explanation for it."
But all things considered, this is a textbook example of "if it quacks like a duck". And Apple cheated on this one. Face it and show them the door.
It's also a network effect at work here:
First, it's important how many of your friends have a BluRay drive, so you can watch your movies at their place and vice versa.
Second, it's equally important how many high-resolution movies you have watched. After several movie nights with a razor-sharp, crystal-clear image, it needs some willpower to go back to regular resolution DVD. I'm discounting pirated downloads of several GB that take ages to complete and online streaming that freeze a few times per movie as your flatmates, kids, spouses or neighbors download something else on your shared line. BluRay has none of that, but a perfect image. After a few movie nights with a high-res display or home cinema projector, going back is painful.
(But they have forced advertising on BR discs, and do I hate these bastards for that)
The BluRay burner in my Thinkpad is only 2x speed, which translates to 25GB burned in about 40 minutes. About the same time it takes to burn a DL DVD-R. I can live with that, as it is twenty-five full gigabytes of stuff. Ripping or transcoding I have not even tried, but I know it takes a literal whole day, so 40min of burn time is a joke compared to that.
But it is a godsend when you also have a high-megapixel digital camera and an itchy trigger finger. Movies go straight to portable HDDs anyway, but with each digicam picture weighing in at 5mb, a single at disc worth 25GB is golden, even more as it is at least somewhat resistant against shocks, electrical failure and totally immune to erroneous overwriting.
If the only thing that prevents the collapse of the Western World is protection of intellectual property, then be sure to have a good bug-out location.
Maybe I'm just too jaded, but relying on intellectual property that can be copied digitally, perfectly within a few seconds is probably not the most sustainable basis for an economy.
When all you have is something that can be multiplied a millionfold within a few hours, you're hosed. Sorry to break it to you, but it's true.
Of course we can make laws and enforce them, but unlike physical crimes like theft and murder, it is no real harm done, but all hypothetical musings on "potential lost sales". And it is nothing but statistics and vague guesswork. I think many people have bought real, genuine Bluray-discs of movies they already possessed pirated copies of. Actual loss of sale = 0, probably even better, since they may not ever heard of that movie before. And I think many people have seen pirated copies of movies they would have never spent a single dime on and regretted every minute of time wasted for it. Actual loss of sale = 0 as well.
You cannot make reliable assumptions on potential sales lost. Therefore, you cannot judge about a fair punishment on it. Something that cannot be punished fairly cannot not be punished without hurting tangible, actual rights. If the business model of the Western world relies on that, I'd sell my stock in them, fast.
But please. Think about the number of immigrant people that are too many for any given situation to remain reasonably stable. And then think about the 3 billion people in this world that would give everything to be a migrant worker in your country. Why don't we accept them all? Why don't we invite everyone, from everywhere. Stricly everyone. No limits, no questions asked, everyone's invited, the more the merrier.
Why not? We let some in, why do we treat them different.
Think of oodles of people, marching without end, a never ending stream of human flesh, a quarter mile wide, endless over the horizon. A Tokio subway in rush hour. Without end. One person per square foot, for as long as the eye can see.
Is that too many? Is it racist even though the immigrant's "race" is absolutely irrelevant here?
Is there any number of people that are too many, any number after which migrant workers become invaders?
If yes, we need to get honest and discuss on which number that is.
If no, we need to be consistent and let everyone in, all 3 billions. Everyone living in a household with more than 3 square foot per person should freely accept another migrant worker into their apartment. And then another one and another one, and then some more. And their children. Don't be racist, let them in until every inch of floor is covered with people.
Welfare don't necessarily need to stop. But with open borders, it's ruining any and all financially stable situation.
Close borders and/or limit welfare.
Strictly maintaining both is fiscal suicide, or in old terms: treason.
With the Army and Reserve and National Guard gone, it's a matter of months.
And yes, you are being invaded every second. Because your only important Border is a Swiss Cheese, and the Border Guards responsible are handcuffed.
You always have a choice on how much you drive on the roads. (Choosing not to drive is impossible, of course)
Change the place of residence, buy from a different supermarket, choose another job, choose another form of commute, get a different school for the kids. There's usually an option to change the distance to travel for daily routine trips. It's not always convenient and certainly not free as in beer to do so, but it can be done. Sometimes, it is the cheaper option, sometimes it's the only one and sometimes it's impossible.
It's a completely insane move of Motorola to think they can home-grow an OS the quality of Android or iOS for a competitive price, let alone duplicate even a tiny fraction of the apps in their respective app stores.
A platform can never compete with Apple's iOS if it is similarly locked down. Economy of scale, years of experience, steadily earned billions in the app store and a brand recognition of superior, but locked-down quality will not allow anyone to profit against them. That way, it's nigh-impossibly hard to compete even against used iPhone 3's from eBay.
Can someone explain to me why in the mobile phone market, everything all participating companies do revolves around control, control and absolute control?
Control may be a means to an end, that is profit, but it's neither the only nor a guaranteed successful one. So why does everyone focus on control?
Is it just the mindset of the entire industry that is perspiring through every product and service or does it have true profitable goals? Is it possible that everyone is thinking Apple's succeeded only because of their iron grip - and now tries to copy it verbatim?
After all, usual company goals are revolving around short term cash flow, mid term profit and long term growth. Control for control's sake brings neither. Apple did succeed because of better-than-excellent hardware, highly polished OS, coupled with insanely high marketing efforts, high brand recognition. They could repeat their first mover advantage in the face of crappy competitive music players against a world of crappy smartphone OS competition. They had good interface design and a clear "just-has-to-work-everytime-for-the-average-joe" development goal. All that success components AND their closed hardware with the associated closed, quality-assured, firstborn-stealing store.
And yet, whenever some lame company tries to copy Apple's success, they only choose to close down their otherwise less-than-excellent hardware, lock down their polished turd of an OS, try only half-hearted marketing efforts failing to secure any brand recognition, as they are simply a decade too late after first mover Apple. Not to mention that all other's interface design is unintuitive and laggy even in the default state.
Android was the only exception to that and they needed the largest software company to back it up.
In the face of excellent competition with a firstborn-stealing app store, everyone else will fail. Only Android could hope to outrank iOS in terms of OS quality and app store variety, but the resulting handset has to be extremely well-built for their combination to succeed.
It is extremely hard to outrank iPhones and iPods on any measure of quality. Next-to-impossible-hard. The only downsides Apple has are price and freedom.
Producing a similarly locked-down handset for the only OS that could compete with Apple is already a risky bet, since if people need to have their soul stolen by an app store, they will choose the one that is most worth it. Android wins by openness, never by features nor UI polish. It can't. With all those billions pouring in from the app store, Apple can outrun everyone else on quality.
Home-growing a competitive OS into a ten-year matured market of mobile OS development cannot be done while keeping the final price of the product below Apple's. Even with half the features left out, it's impossible to beat their economy of scale.
Producing a locked-down handset with a home-grown OS that cannot compete on quality or features with neither Android nor Apple is a suicide pact. Sell Motorola shares, because someone up their chain of command has gone batshit crazy with their stockholder's money.
Seconded. Manufacturers of rock solid hardware cannot get even the simplest of software straight.
How often did we have perfect hardware utterly destroyed by their accompanying drivers? It took GPU manufacturers years, almost decades, to work out issues in their drivers.
Software delivered by hardware manufacturers is almost always a buggy, laggy, bloated piece of stuff that is usually deactivated, deinstalled, thrown away as soon as possible, unless it's a driver or other absolute neccessity.
Yes. It is fraud, as in "breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit".
It *is* stealing electricity - in small amounts. It also is trespassing into private property, eavesdropping on private communication, "breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit", i.e. fraud.
Forging concert tickets is illegal, sneaking into cinemas is illegal, riding the subway without a ticket is illegal. The same should apply to using a password-protected router owned by someone else without permission.
No, that would be politically incorrect. The correct term is "enrichment", no matter it it makes the state poor.
A short tweet like "We are attacking the Death Star tomorrow morning" is probably enough for the other side to set up a serious trap.
Free speech without anonymity isn't free speech. It's an invitation for thugs.
All that is just polishing the turds. Or at least reinventing a mediocre replacement for a proper wheel.
Just use HTTPS for everything. One certificate per year is certainly cheaper than one person-day for IT staff trying to implement a workaround. Buy cert (or get a StartSSL free one), install cert, behold a safe website.
With governments, companies, data miners growing greedier every day, plaintext is going the way of the dodo. Only a few bearded Internet founders still believe in the good of mankind to send their traffic unencrypted.
If Facebook can do it for their free network on a true planetary scale, so can you. The age of lame excuses is over.