Canada has a very sensible system for copying movies on optical discs. They charge a fee on blank media to reimburse content producers, and then you can feel free to copy anything you want.
They should implement a similar "copying fee" for internet bandwidth, so Canadians can just stream or torrent whatever they like with no compunctions.
You're not "hearing" anything, your brain is just filling in missing information the best that it can.
... and your brain is doing it wrong. It the pylon was actually making any noise, there would be a noticeable speed-of-sound delay before the sound of the impact reached your ears.
Terrorists will simply use methods which are 100% immune to this law - which are plentiful.
So will plenty of other people. They can simply drive across the nearest border to buy their phone in Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, etc. That isn't far since Germany is tiny, smaller than California. It would fit into Texas twice. So this will hurt the German economy, but otherwise have little effect on anyone with anything to hide.
Perhaps you should learn more about cows. Their social lives are very complex, and they have distinct personalities.
I don't eat whales, but I don't eat cows either. If you eat cows, but are outraged about people eating minke whales (which are plentiful), they you are being hypocritical. There is no moral difference.
If it were constantly sending full audio and video back to the mothership...
Nobody is saying cellphones are doing it "constantly". Monitoring a microphone requires very little power, and it could then only record when a human voice is detected. Lossy compression works well for voice, and can vastly reduce transmission size. The phone can also wait until it is on a charger to transmit.
Also, a cellphone does not require malicious intent from the manufacturer. A malicious app can have full access to the microphone and camera. Amazon Echo doesn't work that way. It has third party apps, but they do not have access to the microphone. They only get specific "trigger" phrases that follow the "Alexa" keyword.
If the security issues with the Echo were a candle, issues with a cellphone would be the midday sun. Only the paranoid survive, but you need to be paranoid about the right things.
Actually, they don't. Whale meat is not very good, and there is not much of a market for it. Japanese whale harvesting is really about subsidies to a special interest group which donates liberally and is adept at exploiting nationalism and the "culture" angle in their propaganda. Much of the whale meat ends of in dog food.
On the other hand, minke whales are plentiful and I don't see any moral difference between killing them and killing cows.
Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, and I don't eat whales or cows.
I have absolutely zero tolerance for anyone who believes that they can safely operate a 2 ton vehicle when they aren't looking at the road
I appreciate your concern, but my vehicle weighs over 4 tons, which is more than enough inertia to protect me in an accident while texting. Don't worry, I will be safe.
In most states, credits from CCs are guaranteed to be transferable to the state's 4 year public universities. In California it is easier to transfer credits from a CC into the UC system that to transfer from the "Cal State" system. The CCs are explicitly set up as an affordable pipeline into the 4 year public universities.
Which is crap (generally tea dust, fannings if you are lucky).
The dust and fannings come from the exact same tea leaves as the larger pieces, and don't taste any different. They will pass through a metal infuser, but work fine in teabags. In a blind taste test I seriously doubt if you could tell the difference.
I remember the scene in In Time, when Justin Timberlake's character is waiting in line to buy a cup of coffee. He has less than 24 hours to live, and he is about to spend 2 minutes of his "time" to buy a cup of coffee. I did some quick mental math, and was thinking that if he just skipped the coffee, and a few other stupid expenditures, then he would have plenty of "time" to spare and his life would not be a constant crisis. Then he gets to the front of the line, and discovers that the price has gone up to 4 minutes. He and his friend bitch about how they are being exploited, and then BUY THE COFFEE ANYWAY. I think the moral of this scene was supposed to be about how the rich exploit the poor, but I think it was really "idiots will be idiots". A few scenes later his mother dies and what he had spent on the coffee would have saved her.
Disclaimer: I am a tea drinker: 100 teabags for $4.
He thinks people who aren't millionaires just spend all their money on booze or women or movies.
He's just exploiting a winning political issue. Estate/inheritance taxes are deeply unpopular, and even though only "the rich" pay them, they are actually even more unpopular with low income people. Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that 40% of Americans believe that they will someday be in the top 1%.
please don't use "R" in place of "are", "U" in place of "you", "B" in place of "be", "2" in place of "to" (or "too") or make other such idiotic assaults on our language.
If the traffic light is about to turn green, and I still have two more messages to send, then I don't have time to spell everything out.
Yes, "receiver pays" is an American thing. The reason is that at the very beginning mobile phones were overlaid on top of the existing phone system, with the same area codes, and it was impossible for a caller to know if they were calling a landline or a mobile. In America, this is mostly still true.
In most of the rest of the world, mobile phones have a different prefix, and often even a different number of digits. You can look at a phone number, and in a glance you can tell that it is a mobile number. So "caller pays" is reasonable. This is one reason that other countries have a lot less phone spam, and a lot less robo-calling.
...so, the radius of the observable universe ! Is there some deeper meaning to this or is that just a coincidence ?
It is not likely a coincidence. As an object approaches a blackhole's event horizon, any light it emits undergoes a redshift, and the wavelength gets longer and longer the closer it gets. As it crosses the event horizon, the wavelength goes to infinity, and it is no longer observable. This is exactly what also happens at the edge of the observable universe. If the Schwarzschild Radius of the universe was larger, then we should be able to see further out, and the observable universe would be larger as well.
A neutron star has a density of roughly 1e14 gm/cm^3.
A black hole the mass of the earth would have a radius of about 9mm and a density of about 2e27, ten trillion times denser than a neutron star.
A black hole the mass of the sun would have a radius of about 3 km, and a density of about 1.8e16, a hundred times denser than a neutron star.
A black hole with the mass of our galaxy would have a radius of about 0.2 lightyears, and a density less than air.
A black hole with the mass of the known universe would have a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears, and a density far less than the highest vacuum that humans have ever produced.
Slashdot Mirror
Canada has a very sensible system for copying movies on optical discs. They charge a fee on blank media to reimburse content producers, and then you can feel free to copy anything you want.
They should implement a similar "copying fee" for internet bandwidth, so Canadians can just stream or torrent whatever they like with no compunctions.
How much you willing to bet that if Germany succeeds here, they'll push for an EU-wide version?
If only there was some historical evidence that Germans are more willing than other people to resort to authoritarianism ...
Which is already (since the Hitler years) illegal.
Bullcrap. There is currently no German law against using cell phones purchased in foreign countries, and millions of people do it everyday.
I've long said the death of sane politics in the West ...
Can you point to a specific point in the past when politics were "sane"?
You're not "hearing" anything, your brain is just filling in missing information the best that it can.
... and your brain is doing it wrong. It the pylon was actually making any noise, there would be a noticeable speed-of-sound delay before the sound of the impact reached your ears.
Disclaimer: I heard nothing.
Terrorists will simply use methods which are 100% immune to this law - which are plentiful.
So will plenty of other people. They can simply drive across the nearest border to buy their phone in Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, etc. That isn't far since Germany is tiny, smaller than California. It would fit into Texas twice. So this will hurt the German economy, but otherwise have little effect on anyone with anything to hide.
Perhaps you should learn more about cows. Their social lives are very complex, and they have distinct personalities.
I don't eat whales, but I don't eat cows either. If you eat cows, but are outraged about people eating minke whales (which are plentiful), they you are being hypocritical. There is no moral difference.
I think Hitler had something like this, no?
Yes. He had Garbo, who provided him with detailed information about the upcoming Allied invasion of Calais.
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty could go wrong. But there is also a lot wrong with the existing system.
The CIA/DIA/NSA are notoriously weak in HUMINT.
There are also benefits to not depending too much on one channel, or you may end up with another Kim Philby situation.
If it were constantly sending full audio and video back to the mothership ...
Nobody is saying cellphones are doing it "constantly". Monitoring a microphone requires very little power, and it could then only record when a human voice is detected. Lossy compression works well for voice, and can vastly reduce transmission size. The phone can also wait until it is on a charger to transmit.
Also, a cellphone does not require malicious intent from the manufacturer. A malicious app can have full access to the microphone and camera. Amazon Echo doesn't work that way. It has third party apps, but they do not have access to the microphone. They only get specific "trigger" phrases that follow the "Alexa" keyword.
If the security issues with the Echo were a candle, issues with a cellphone would be the midday sun. Only the paranoid survive, but you need to be paranoid about the right things.
Paypal is my most dangerous account since it's hooked to live bank accounts so I use my best passwords for it.
This has nothing to do with your Paypal account.
The leak occurred in a subsidiary company that processes utility payments in Canada.
How would having your bank account number be an issue? It isn't a secret.
It was never a secret. It is printed on your checks. Everyone you have ever transacted with could see it.
Maybe we should fix our financial system so that it doesn't rely on the same information being both widely known and secret.
So the universe is definitely inside a black hole?
With our current understanding of cosmology, I don't think there is much that is "definite".
a bad thing for anyone except media companies that want to profit from fast lanes?
Media companies don't profit from fast lanes. Telecoms profit. Media companies are the losers, and oppose "fast lanes".
They want to eat the whales.
Actually, they don't. Whale meat is not very good, and there is not much of a market for it. Japanese whale harvesting is really about subsidies to a special interest group which donates liberally and is adept at exploiting nationalism and the "culture" angle in their propaganda. Much of the whale meat ends of in dog food.
On the other hand, minke whales are plentiful and I don't see any moral difference between killing them and killing cows.
Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, and I don't eat whales or cows.
I have absolutely zero tolerance for anyone who believes that they can safely operate a 2 ton vehicle when they aren't looking at the road
I appreciate your concern, but my vehicle weighs over 4 tons, which is more than enough inertia to protect me in an accident while texting. Don't worry, I will be safe.
credits may not transfer
In most states, credits from CCs are guaranteed to be transferable to the state's 4 year public universities. In California it is easier to transfer credits from a CC into the UC system that to transfer from the "Cal State" system. The CCs are explicitly set up as an affordable pipeline into the 4 year public universities.
and few offer 4 year degrees.
That is not what CCs are for.
Which is crap (generally tea dust, fannings if you are lucky).
The dust and fannings come from the exact same tea leaves as the larger pieces, and don't taste any different. They will pass through a metal infuser, but work fine in teabags. In a blind taste test I seriously doubt if you could tell the difference.
I remember the scene in In Time, when Justin Timberlake's character is waiting in line to buy a cup of coffee. He has less than 24 hours to live, and he is about to spend 2 minutes of his "time" to buy a cup of coffee. I did some quick mental math, and was thinking that if he just skipped the coffee, and a few other stupid expenditures, then he would have plenty of "time" to spare and his life would not be a constant crisis. Then he gets to the front of the line, and discovers that the price has gone up to 4 minutes. He and his friend bitch about how they are being exploited, and then BUY THE COFFEE ANYWAY. I think the moral of this scene was supposed to be about how the rich exploit the poor, but I think it was really "idiots will be idiots". A few scenes later his mother dies and what he had spent on the coffee would have saved her.
Disclaimer: I am a tea drinker: 100 teabags for $4.
He thinks people who aren't millionaires just spend all their money on booze or women or movies.
He's just exploiting a winning political issue. Estate/inheritance taxes are deeply unpopular, and even though only "the rich" pay them, they are actually even more unpopular with low income people. Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that 40% of Americans believe that they will someday be in the top 1%.
please don't use "R" in place of "are", "U" in place of "you", "B" in place of "be", "2" in place of "to" (or "too") or make other such idiotic assaults on our language.
If the traffic light is about to turn green, and I still have two more messages to send, then I don't have time to spell everything out.
In the rest of the world the sender pays the bill
Yes, "receiver pays" is an American thing. The reason is that at the very beginning mobile phones were overlaid on top of the existing phone system, with the same area codes, and it was impossible for a caller to know if they were calling a landline or a mobile. In America, this is mostly still true.
In most of the rest of the world, mobile phones have a different prefix, and often even a different number of digits. You can look at a phone number, and in a glance you can tell that it is a mobile number. So "caller pays" is reasonable. This is one reason that other countries have a lot less phone spam, and a lot less robo-calling.
...so, the radius of the observable universe ! Is there some deeper meaning to this or is that just a coincidence ?
It is not likely a coincidence. As an object approaches a blackhole's event horizon, any light it emits undergoes a redshift, and the wavelength gets longer and longer the closer it gets. As it crosses the event horizon, the wavelength goes to infinity, and it is no longer observable. This is exactly what also happens at the edge of the observable universe. If the Schwarzschild Radius of the universe was larger, then we should be able to see further out, and the observable universe would be larger as well.
A neutron star has a density of roughly 1e14 gm/cm^3.
A black hole the mass of the earth would have a radius of about 9mm and a density of about 2e27, ten trillion times denser than a neutron star.
A black hole the mass of the sun would have a radius of about 3 km, and a density of about 1.8e16, a hundred times denser than a neutron star.
A black hole with the mass of our galaxy would have a radius of about 0.2 lightyears, and a density less than air.
A black hole with the mass of the known universe would have a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears, and a density far less than the highest vacuum that humans have ever produced.
Is there a "singularity inside a blackhole"?
Perhaps. But it is not a falsifiable hypothesis. We don't know, and we don't know if there will ever be a way to know.