Oh, and I forgot to add regarding your "sometimes they're $20 more than another airline"
I've never flown on one of those flights where it was the actual airline's plane that I was on. It's always a "code-share" flight with some smaller, frequently Mexico-based, "regional" airline.
Because they want to sell them to schools and students. Only naïve students and administrators would actually buy their somewhat useful, but priced way beyond their utility in today's market, devices.
Well, not the schools specifically. But that schools are TI's primary market for graphing calculators, and they have a huge markup due to using outdated hardware, so they're going to want to push them.
Unfortunately, schools require the calculators to be crippled to prevent their use for cheating (which could be non-math related cheating...), thus ensuring that students will learn to lean on devices that they will never see in their subsequent careers in industry or research.
If the portable math-machine really were something that people felt they needed, you'd see iPhone apps that were actually useful: the hardware is far more capable than the piddling processors they're putting in the math-class toys, or you'd see the prices of dedicated hardware drop into the $10-$20 range that scientific calculators have been in for decades.
Graphing calculators, at the moment, seem to have little more purpose than to bilk schools out of money from well-meaning but ill-informed "technology initiatives."
Monsanto fight so hard and spend so much money and lobby so much to prevent non-GMO food producers from labeling their products as such?
That really doesn't have to do with the benefits of the food itself. Until there are people who will specifically buy GM food because it's GM, they'd be restricting their market by putting such a label on. That doesn't mean that we should grant them that freedom, only that they would lobby for it regardless of the benefits and risks, because labeling's affect on their marketability is, at the moment, only negative.
Perhaps, the labeling requirement should also include what they were modified to do, too. If it's for nutrition, it might be a selling point, but just herbicide resistance isn't really a benefit that the consumer can really realize, except by lowering the price anyway.
On the other hand, the barrier rock now has a bunch of pin pricks in it. If they drain the reservoir, there won't be any oil under those wells to spill....
US banks, being run by lawyers and the like, chose contracturally limited liability instead.
It's actually a general problem over here that goes back quite far, but I only first noticed in the 90s with the early cell phones: They were transmitting, iirc, using ordinary FM (might have even been AM) in the 800 MHz band.
Rather than using encryption, which was possible and even economically feasible even then, or other scrambling they chose instead to "protect their customers' privacy" by having congress block out frequencies as illegal to listen to, as if eavesdroppers would be stopped by having to buy older model scanners, or modify/designing their own FM 800 MHz receivers.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they still don't use any kind of encryption, although it is, at least, marginally more difficult to eavesdrop on a CDMA signal than bog-standard FM.
The problem is intrinsic to our lawyer-heavy society. As they say, "when what you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"
. It might slow down the creation of media personalities and blockbuster special-effects extravaganzas, but not artists. Color me unconcerned with the future of civilization.
Interesting.
So you're saying it might slow down the creation of the very kind of movies that I'm actually interested in...
Not every low budget film is "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction." Most of them are "Blair Witch Project."
It is, in fact, not a crime to shout fire in a crowded theater. Neither however, does the first amendment protect you from liability, civil or criminal for the results of your act.
You could easily "get off scott free" if no one was injured in any way!
You might think it "only reasonable" that "shouting fire in a theater" and analogous acts be unlawful, but this rhetorical "reasonableness exemption" to the bill of rights is tiresome, and only contributes to the steady erosion of our rights, enumerated and otherwise.
Parent makes a very good point though. Storage is now so cheap that it actually would be feasible, if you could generate enough bits, to simply store a mass of bits on the card itself to use as a OTP for transaction data. How many bytes do you really need for "authorize [amount] in [currency] on [date] to [vendor name] from [user name]"
Surely, the barriers to building a real cryptographic card are very low and falling even still. My guess is that the banks are simply too large and the management has too many aging MBAs who spend all their time at the golf course "networking" that simply aren't even aware of what their options are. Let alone smart enough to start a project to implement one of them.
Because gas stations are no longer gas stations manned by trained mechanics. They are convenience stores, manned by people who generally don't have any control or technical knowledge of the pumps..
Wait.. are you nostalgic for the days when cars needed repairs as frequently as they needed fill-ups?
Plus, most people chose the less expensive and less power-hungry LCD models, and don't run even that one television all through the night every night....
Transmit pricing information with whatever time-granularity you think is appropriate based on supply and current demand and the utilization will magically smooth out very quickly. Voluntarily. No central-control of people's homes necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Something's fishy about your poll:
# 63 percent of Republicans think Obama is a socialist, 16 percent are not sure, 21 percent say he is not
Story continues below
Wait.. what? Just 63 percent? of Republicans, the party that he's not in? Even after he said he wanted to "spread the wealth around"?
# 39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 29 percent are not sure, 32 percent said he should not be voted out of office.
That doesn't sound like something a Republican would say about a Democrat.
Erm.. Ceglia is Saruman. He doesn't want to destroy the precious. He wants to have its power for himself.
What good would that do? He can owe all he wants. There wouldn't be assets under his control to cover that debt.
Or gyms would...
Oh, and I forgot to add regarding your "sometimes they're $20 more than another airline"
I've never flown on one of those flights where it was the actual airline's plane that I was on. It's always a "code-share" flight with some smaller, frequently Mexico-based, "regional" airline.
I think the biggest irony there is that Southwest is a "discount" airline...
IIRC, it was the whole atoll set! And they rebuilt another atoll, which is what caused the budget to be so huge.
Because they want to sell them to schools and students. Only naïve students and administrators would actually buy their somewhat useful, but priced way beyond their utility in today's market, devices.
Well, not the schools specifically. But that schools are TI's primary market for graphing calculators, and they have a huge markup due to using outdated hardware, so they're going to want to push them.
Unfortunately, schools require the calculators to be crippled to prevent their use for cheating (which could be non-math related cheating...), thus ensuring that students will learn to lean on devices that they will never see in their subsequent careers in industry or research.
If the portable math-machine really were something that people felt they needed, you'd see iPhone apps that were actually useful: the hardware is far more capable than the piddling processors they're putting in the math-class toys, or you'd see the prices of dedicated hardware drop into the $10-$20 range that scientific calculators have been in for decades.
Graphing calculators, at the moment, seem to have little more purpose than to bilk schools out of money from well-meaning but ill-informed "technology initiatives."
Wow, Hansen's Disease much? Seriously though, very colorful. Poetic. I rate this threat two thumbs up!
It's a pirate resistor.
Monsanto fight so hard and spend so much money and lobby so much to prevent non-GMO food producers from labeling their products as such?
That really doesn't have to do with the benefits of the food itself. Until there are people who will specifically buy GM food because it's GM, they'd be restricting their market by putting such a label on. That doesn't mean that we should grant them that freedom, only that they would lobby for it regardless of the benefits and risks, because labeling's affect on their marketability is, at the moment, only negative.
Perhaps, the labeling requirement should also include what they were modified to do, too. If it's for nutrition, it might be a selling point, but just herbicide resistance isn't really a benefit that the consumer can really realize, except by lowering the price anyway.
On the other hand, the barrier rock now has a bunch of pin pricks in it. If they drain the reservoir, there won't be any oil under those wells to spill....
Comic book ray gun, obviously.
Wow aspergers much? GP's description was poetry. Geez man, literature is even something the Dutch are famous for.
US banks, being run by lawyers and the like, chose contracturally limited liability instead.
It's actually a general problem over here that goes back quite far, but I only first noticed in the 90s with the early cell phones: They were transmitting, iirc, using ordinary FM (might have even been AM) in the 800 MHz band.
Rather than using encryption, which was possible and even economically feasible even then, or other scrambling they chose instead to "protect their customers' privacy" by having congress block out frequencies as illegal to listen to, as if eavesdroppers would be stopped by having to buy older model scanners, or modify/designing their own FM 800 MHz receivers.
In fact, I'm pretty sure they still don't use any kind of encryption, although it is, at least, marginally more difficult to eavesdrop on a CDMA signal than bog-standard FM.
The problem is intrinsic to our lawyer-heavy society. As they say, "when what you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"
. It might slow down the creation of media personalities and blockbuster special-effects extravaganzas, but not artists. Color me unconcerned with the future of civilization.
Interesting.
So you're saying it might slow down the creation of the very kind of movies that I'm actually interested in...
Not every low budget film is "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction." Most of them are "Blair Witch Project."
Steve Buscemi, IIRC. Which I probably do not.
It is, in fact, not a crime to shout fire in a crowded theater. Neither however, does the first amendment protect you from liability, civil or criminal for the results of your act.
You could easily "get off scott free" if no one was injured in any way!
You might think it "only reasonable" that "shouting fire in a theater" and analogous acts be unlawful, but this rhetorical "reasonableness exemption" to the bill of rights is tiresome, and only contributes to the steady erosion of our rights, enumerated and otherwise.
Parent makes a very good point though. Storage is now so cheap that it actually would be feasible, if you could generate enough bits, to simply store a mass of bits on the card itself to use as a OTP for transaction data. How many bytes do you really need for "authorize [amount] in [currency] on [date] to [vendor name] from [user name]"
Surely, the barriers to building a real cryptographic card are very low and falling even still. My guess is that the banks are simply too large and the management has too many aging MBAs who spend all their time at the golf course "networking" that simply aren't even aware of what their options are. Let alone smart enough to start a project to implement one of them.
Because gas stations are no longer gas stations manned by trained mechanics. They are convenience stores, manned by people who generally don't have any control or technical knowledge of the pumps. .
Wait.. are you nostalgic for the days when cars needed repairs as frequently as they needed fill-ups?
Khaaaaan!
And the biggest winner of all? The battery manufacturers...
Plus, most people chose the less expensive and less power-hungry LCD models, and don't run even that one television all through the night every night....
Gah, how many times does this have to be said:
Transmit pricing information with whatever time-granularity you think is appropriate based on supply and current demand and the utilization will magically smooth out very quickly. Voluntarily. No central-control of people's homes necessary.