Well, not necessarily, you're not redistributing the derivative work. Nor are you doing it for profit. They're changing a copyrighted work, distributing it, for profit. That seems to tick more copyright violations than general torrenting does (the for monetary profit). IANAL, but if they're deliberately giving you a different page than you think you're getting it's at least a hijack a la various malware, and may constitute fraud. And if they fake google in some way, they're probably infringing the trademark as well.
No they don't -- many old cars required petrol with added lead. Well, it probably depends on what you mean by old. Your average 15 year old car didn't need lead, and mostly "just works" assuming of course that all the physical parts work. Your average 15 year old software? Much less likely to "just work" even though the code is an *exact* copy of the original.
Heck, with computer hardware we have that problem like ISA cards - used for lots of industrial machinery that itself is fine, but try connecting one up to a modern PC. The one adapter I've found is flaky, the one motherboard I've found with ISA slots is a custom PC build. At least USB to Serial works well or I'd really be screwed.
I suppose it depends on your setup (and please elaborate as I'd love to improve mine), but sure, maybe 20Minutes to get the image down over the network or 5 from a USB HD. 10 minutes installing drivers and joining the domain etc.
But then you have to restore / reconfigure Outlook settings for them, restore any data files they need, help them re-set up their desktop shortcuts so they can find their folders etc.
Then there's all the non-standard software they may need - where I work that can be days of installing Labview, Autodesk Inventor, Ansys, Matlab, Igor Pro, Microsoft Project, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Creative Suite, TortiseSVN, Visual Studio, etc, etc. Not every system needs all of the software so it's basically a per user after config. I've found that a re-install of a PC can take an average of a week before they have it back and are reasonably productive again.
Of course, if all the user needs is our standard image, it takes about 35 minutes, but that is rare.
Sure, I deal with users like you every day. If management would let us sign over the responsibilities that come with admining the computer over to you in addition with the increased rights, I'd be fine. I.e. if your computer gets a virus and we could say, not our problem, you clean it up as you're the "admin of record" then I'd be fine with what you want. But if I have to drop my projects, or push off a computer that needs an upgrade for someone who *wants* a managed, supported computer, then it annoys me.
If you were responsible for the software licensing and EULA compliance for that computer, and the one to re-image if the software conflicts, and the one to figure out if installing that driver before installing Labview is why your hardware doesn't work with that PC, then fine, be admin.
Or, heck, if your department wanted to pay someone's salary (even mine maybe) to sit around and re-image and re-install when the zbot infection gets your PC or the random software installs and uninstalls finally break Windows then that's that person's job. Or maybe pay the local consultant / geek squad / whatever to do it.
A lot of this is of course management - they have to decide what balance of IT they want paid to re-image PCs weekly and what balance they want enabling new infrastructure, new OSs, new capabilities etc.
Don't let the users run as administrators, and most of the infection problems will go away I wish. This used to be the case, but most of the FakeAV stuff can run and infect fine in a user context. Sure, you can blow the user account away and you're clean, but still, doing that several times a week because yet another infected ad on CNN or whatever hosed their profile, even through Firefox, even with ad-blocking at the squid proxy, is a PITA.
Sure, non-admin means less re-images, but it isn't stopping many of the dangerous attack vectors (zeus etc).
Well, does the iPhone support PGP? Cause I certainly don't trust some random site like dropbox (never heard of it till now) with any of my data. Let me know when I can access an CIFS share or FTP site over my WLAN. (Maybe I could, but there are plenty of other reasons I don't have a "smartphone".)
My point in that example is that it is far more likely that you would die trying to physically steal one of my servers before getting away. Somewhat redundant, but this of course is only the case in one sort of "attack", that of an unarmed and rather bad thief. I can think of several additional scenarios, depending on your threat profile. How much is the data physically (yet unencrypted) on the server worth? To whom?
My additional suggestions: a) Bribe. Everyone necessary to have the "super secure by ex-military people" delivered to the convenient loading dock for my truck. b) Really good infiltration team. c) Better armed assault team to take out security (knock out, kill, tie up, etc). d) Some of all of the above like social engineer the security, find legitimate employee with a grudge you can convince to betray the company, etc.
Just like there's a whole set of ways to hack the servers, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of ways of varying plausibility to physically remove a server from a co-lo facility. But you're also right, by far the easiest method is likely via the net somehow.
+1 to this, I like this in NY. I don't want to defraud the state of taxes, but I also don't think it's fair for me to have a very high burden of tracking every purchase that I never used to have, and don't have with any other purchase types. One thing I don't like in NY is that if I do buy something for $1k+, I'm supposed to then track every other item manually as well. It would be nice to only have to track the $1k separately and then do the same estimate for the rest.
All that said, I really wish taxes were simpler in general - it's like there's another tax in the purchase yearly of TurboTax or going to an accountant etc for most people...
I think we're sort of agreeing. I think faster speeds lead to more useage, but I certainly didn't mean to imply it would be a 1:1 ratio. I'm just saying as speeds go up, more and more things are using transfer, and by the nature of it taking less time per data transfer, people think less of having even more things that use data.
The examples I'm thinking of are on dial-up, I wouldn't imagine any video. On DSL, Youtube is a click away. Heck, we watch clips at home, at work, where ever. That's a big jump from 0 to something. With barely broadband, most people didn't get "stuff"(nor was it sold) that was updateable. Now, your TV, your DVD player, your set top box, your console and potentially your washing machine can get updates over the net. Patch sizes have exploded - now it's not unusual to download 100MB of patches for a retail game or OS install or AV program or whatever. That didn't happen with dial up, or even slow DSL (512k etc). Game demos were 50MB-500MB, now they're 500MB-5GB. That's a big difference. Consoles *didn't* have downloadable content before the "current gen" that I recall, so till 2007 or so, you were at 0 transfer for your playstation. Now you've got social networks on the console, you've got the demos, you've got the extra content, you've got the whole games. That's GB when you use it. Maybe not monthly, but it's a big change. Now we're using voice chat WITH the games, before you were text chat - that's a big bandwidth increase.
I'm speaking relatively here, but that's what's shocking the companies. It's also what's wrong with caps. The usage is going to trend upwards. There's a reason companies can sell gigabit home switches and Wireless G and N gear. And as has been pointed out, these price decreases have lead from one PC on dial up to one PC on broadband, to multiple computing devices. I don't expect it's unusual for there to be a legacy desktop for browsing the web, each kid has an itouch or netbook or laptop or gaming console or several. All on one connection. Each one going to websites. That's a major increase.
My point is that while a single computer loading a single web page may not be 2x faster with a 2x speed increase, 5 devices on the network might well be able to consume 3x the data that one device at half the speed can just by allowing multiple users to reasonably use the newer functionality at the same time.
That's still a stupid sort of claim. It is like claiming your gas mileage is unlimited, as long as you don't move your car, because you can sit in your car forever without having to refuel it if it's off. Well, yes, true and great, but certainly not at all anyone's intended use of the car, nor any way anyone I know would possibly think to interpret it.
I mean, does anyone really subscribe to the INTERNET with the expectation that they can be "online" 24/7 for that period, but can't actually go to a website/use it? What does being on a network that you can't transfer data over even mean? Is it even possible? Don't you have to do at least some control traffic (arp etc) to be on a network?
In reality, of course, the two are inseparably related. But to the average person, the two concepts are orthogonal, and more importantly when he selects a higher bandwidth rating for his plan the average person is thinking "I want my email to load twice as fast, he's not thinking "I want to transfer twice as much data per month". I just don't see how this is likely to be true. I mean, do you really figure the "average person" is also thinking "Hey, I can use the internet for half as long each month because I upgraded!"??? Because that's what you just said...
Now, 2x a small use amount for webpages is still likely a small amount, but I have my doubts that the person who upgraded to a faster net connection is also going to half their time spent going to pages so their actual data use stays the same. I think it's just as likely that they'll potentially look at *more* web pages over the same amount of time as they won't wait as long for each one to load. Of course, this is somewhat esoteric on broadband till we get to internet radio and video and VoIP and game demos and pirating. Then, their data use may well go up as they can do more at the same time, or they can watch two shows a night as they aren't waiting overnight to get one episode or game demo or update or whatever.
They might also now be able to click that HD button on Youtube - same time / consumption from most peoples view, but way more data transfer.
one car in the fast lane only going slightly faster than the slow lane? While an AT is not always the cause, I could see a legitimate argument being made that, often, that phenomenon may be caused by the driver in the fast lane having an AT and not really being able to, 'punch it,' the way an MT driver can. Umm, no - have you ever driven an even vaguely modern AT car in the US? Every car I've driven from a 93 onwards can 'punch it' just fine with an AT. It's simple, push down the gas pedal.
The phenomenon you're referring to is most likely caused by cruise control, and people not wanting to obviously speed (they're going 75 in a 65 and the guy they're passing is doing 73. They don't want to 'punch it' to 85+ Mph to clear that other car) and risk a ticket.
Similarly, when navigating small, mountain roads, having a driver in front of you that goes through the cycle of speed up, brake hard, speed up, brake hard, ad infinitum is not only annoying to watch, but quite a concern as they do not appear to have control of their car. I see this - they're stupid. AT doesn't cause this, I can downshift my AT to 3rd or 2nd just as well as an MT and the engine will hold the speed and I rarely have to brake. I'm sure you'd be amazed. Having a car make decisions for you regarding the power of your vehicle is, in my opinion, inherently dangerous. I see this case made, but good computer controls usually help correct for poor driving. They very rarely hurt good driving (see the amount of press this Toyota caused - because it *doesn't* happen every day.
Cruise Control helps people in every day situations avoid the 55,45,55,60,55 etc speed up slow down crap. That's HARD to do 'manually' for many people. ABS help everyone 'pump the brakes' better than any pro driver on ice/snow. And AT helps many drivers who would get the wrong gear, stall out, or otherwise damage their car, or just cause themselves an inconvenience shift as well as an average stick shifter...
This is like the people who think everyone should be in the top 10% of computer knowledge to be on the Internet. It's stupid. Not everyone can be a race car driver or enthusiast. Many people just want to get to work and back. This is also why everyone isn't buying sports cars for that fine control...
What sort of car are you driving? I'm pretty sure many cars go faster than that in 1st gear - I know the Subaru Impreza goes to 28 Mph in 1st gear . . .
I'm woefully late to this discussion, but I think the main issue is Farmville. It's about as complicated as a slot machine. I haven't played it, but I've watched a few people play it and have asked several others - it's basically repeatedly clicking on something. It's the first computer game I've thought a) isn't repeatedly doing something what computers were invented for b) I think a short autoit script could do that It's like if you play WoW for the grind or gold farming. I mean, sure, you could - but why? It's like working at a really boring factory job for the *fun* of the job. Really? I mean, at least there you got paid. (I'm thinking of the summer I spent at a book bindery where I stripped old bindings off literally hundreds of books)... It wasn't challenging, it wasn't interesting and it certainly wouldn't be something I would *volunteer* to do. And heck, at least there I had a physical result. Somebody (local college) got books repaired or improved. With farmville, no one gets anything.
I really can't understand it. I've not even been told it's fun by the people who play it - they say it's like an addiction, or a contest to stay ahead of someone else...
Hey, I (and I think many on the left) are all for single-payer health care. Cut out the insurance industry sounds good to me - they don't add anything useful except somehow making our current system partially work. I think we should have gone fully over to single payer, but heck, just expanding coverage and stopping some abuses of the current system was called a goverment takeover - imaging the screaming if the government did take over health care. Of course, as you point out, that would be better than what we got... but never let the good fall to the wayside for the perfect.
Please - how is the fire department any less of an individual entitlement than a hospital? Each sometimes provides a service for both individual citizens and indirectly for the entire community. Example, fire department puts out house fire, stops spread around the entire city. Hospital contains/cures disease, prevents spread around city.
Of course, that's very simplified, but enabling people to be treated by vaccines or antibiotics or whatever appropriate treatment helps herd immunity and that, plus just limiting the time a person is contagious helps stop other people from getting sick.
I also find it quite callous that you're ok trying to save a persons house (fire department) but not willing to try to save their life (health care). Where are our priorities?
Why are Police or Firemen not individual entitlements in the same way a doctor is? That is, the Police do more than just come after a crime, they do prevention work. The Firemen do as well, we get fire codes and inspections from them in addition to coming and putting out a fire.
Why would it be wrong to not have Police and let people own their own guns (well, we do that, but to use them for protection) or hire "pinkertons" for their own security? We have fire insurance, why not just have a subscription for the fire department?
I'm against the above suggestions, but I can't see why those socialized services are expected and ok, while others like health care aren't?
I guess what they really need is out of band confirmation of the transaction. I.E. you don't type the little number you get from SMS or whatever into the browser. You SMS back to the bank a prearranged code that means OK, or anything else is NO. If you could trust USB plugged in devices with strong security somehow, you could of course send an RSA signed message back saying OK for this amount to this account. I wonder if you could create something with Air Gap that would somehow MD5 hash a combo of your 30 second code, amount, master pass phrase and account number that the bank could then do the same hash on what they get and see if it was changed or some such - but output in a form that was both secure and reasonable to type in. I doubt it, but that would probably be almost as good as the RSA key.
I thought I was the only one who thought reading in the dark was important. Glad to see I'm not alone. The reason I put reading in the dark up there is it's one of the few plusses for me to an e-book vs a physical book. If the e-book has all the same failings as a paper book, why am I spending ~$300 extra to read it when I can spend $0 extra to read a paperback?
To be honest, I used to use a rocket e-book reader constantly. But I found that either I had to pay more for the e-books than the paperback (still generally true) or put up with horribly formatted conversions of online Fan Fiction (I used to like reading this when I didn't have money but lots of time to read), or read old books from gutenburg that I didn't want to read. I got a job and I started buying paperbacks again and haven't looked back.
That said, I've got some online released books I'm interested in again (they are free postings), so maybe eventually I'll look at a newer e-reader, or figure out how to convert onto my old RocketEbook...
I think this has to be a personal preference and it will vary between individuals. I never had any problems with reading on my CRT/LCD on my computer, and so far have much preferred the backlight LCD on my ancient RocketEbook reader to any newer e-book reader on display, because I can read it in the dark. Seriously - the main places I'd use an e-book reader, that is in bed at night, on a plane, as a passanger in a car - are all places where a significant amount of the time, it's useful to be able to read sans flashlight/overhead light... The rest of the time, it's just as easy, cheaper, and IMO a better value to just read a paperback.
My biggest gripe about e-books that you buy is generally that you get less than you do with a paperback copy. I have to buy the reader @ $300 or so. I generally have DRM so I can't give it to my Dad to read and then donate it on to the local Legion or Library book sale. I can't really throw it in a closet and keep it for the rest of my life without taking time to convert formats etc... I can't drop it, or throw it around and not worry about breaking it. For all that, and I'm supposed to pay more per book as well? Why would I do that?
I suppose it only makes sense for die hard readers who need 200 books with them at all times (not I) or people who can't easily carry one or two paperbacks around...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not necessarily, you're not redistributing the derivative work. Nor are you doing it for profit. They're changing a copyrighted work, distributing it, for profit. That seems to tick more copyright violations than general torrenting does (the for monetary profit). IANAL, but if they're deliberately giving you a different page than you think you're getting it's at least a hijack a la various malware, and may constitute fraud. And if they fake google in some way, they're probably infringing the trademark as well.
I don't know that anyone is going to sue though.
No they don't -- many old cars required petrol with added lead.
Well, it probably depends on what you mean by old. Your average 15 year old car didn't need lead, and mostly "just works" assuming of course that all the physical parts work. Your average 15 year old software? Much less likely to "just work" even though the code is an *exact* copy of the original.
Heck, with computer hardware we have that problem like ISA cards - used for lots of industrial machinery that itself is fine, but try connecting one up to a modern PC. The one adapter I've found is flaky, the one motherboard I've found with ISA slots is a custom PC build. At least USB to Serial works well or I'd really be screwed.
I suppose it depends on your setup (and please elaborate as I'd love to improve mine), but sure, maybe 20Minutes to get the image down over the network or 5 from a USB HD. 10 minutes installing drivers and joining the domain etc.
But then you have to restore / reconfigure Outlook settings for them, restore any data files they need, help them re-set up their desktop shortcuts so they can find their folders etc.
Then there's all the non-standard software they may need - where I work that can be days of installing Labview, Autodesk Inventor, Ansys, Matlab, Igor Pro, Microsoft Project, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Creative Suite, TortiseSVN, Visual Studio, etc, etc. Not every system needs all of the software so it's basically a per user after config. I've found that a re-install of a PC can take an average of a week before they have it back and are reasonably productive again.
Of course, if all the user needs is our standard image, it takes about 35 minutes, but that is rare.
Sure - but see:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1633504&cid=32008666
If management *won't* let you do that, then the person who does the "bad practice" ought to be the responsible party.
Sure, I deal with users like you every day. If management would let us sign over the responsibilities that come with admining the computer over to you in addition with the increased rights, I'd be fine. I.e. if your computer gets a virus and we could say, not our problem, you clean it up as you're the "admin of record" then I'd be fine with what you want. But if I have to drop my projects, or push off a computer that needs an upgrade for someone who *wants* a managed, supported computer, then it annoys me.
If you were responsible for the software licensing and EULA compliance for that computer, and the one to re-image if the software conflicts, and the one to figure out if installing that driver before installing Labview is why your hardware doesn't work with that PC, then fine, be admin.
Or, heck, if your department wanted to pay someone's salary (even mine maybe) to sit around and re-image and re-install when the zbot infection gets your PC or the random software installs and uninstalls finally break Windows then that's that person's job. Or maybe pay the local consultant / geek squad / whatever to do it.
A lot of this is of course management - they have to decide what balance of IT they want paid to re-image PCs weekly and what balance they want enabling new infrastructure, new OSs, new capabilities etc.
Don't let the users run as administrators, and most of the infection problems will go away
I wish. This used to be the case, but most of the FakeAV stuff can run and infect fine in a user context. Sure, you can blow the user account away and you're clean, but still, doing that several times a week because yet another infected ad on CNN or whatever hosed their profile, even through Firefox, even with ad-blocking at the squid proxy, is a PITA.
Sure, non-admin means less re-images, but it isn't stopping many of the dangerous attack vectors (zeus etc).
Well, does the iPhone support PGP? Cause I certainly don't trust some random site like dropbox (never heard of it till now) with any of my data. Let me know when I can access an CIFS share or FTP site over my WLAN. (Maybe I could, but there are plenty of other reasons I don't have a "smartphone".)
My point in that example is that it is far more likely that you would die trying to physically steal one of my servers before getting away.
Somewhat redundant, but this of course is only the case in one sort of "attack", that of an unarmed and rather bad thief. I can think of several additional scenarios, depending on your threat profile. How much is the data physically (yet unencrypted) on the server worth? To whom?
My additional suggestions:
a) Bribe. Everyone necessary to have the "super secure by ex-military people" delivered to the convenient loading dock for my truck.
b) Really good infiltration team.
c) Better armed assault team to take out security (knock out, kill, tie up, etc).
d) Some of all of the above like social engineer the security, find legitimate employee with a grudge you can convince to betray the company, etc.
Just like there's a whole set of ways to hack the servers, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of ways of varying plausibility to physically remove a server from a co-lo facility. But you're also right, by far the easiest method is likely via the net somehow.
+1 to this, I like this in NY. I don't want to defraud the state of taxes, but I also don't think it's fair for me to have a very high burden of tracking every purchase that I never used to have, and don't have with any other purchase types. One thing I don't like in NY is that if I do buy something for $1k+, I'm supposed to then track every other item manually as well. It would be nice to only have to track the $1k separately and then do the same estimate for the rest.
All that said, I really wish taxes were simpler in general - it's like there's another tax in the purchase yearly of TurboTax or going to an accountant etc for most people...
I think we're sort of agreeing. I think faster speeds lead to more useage, but I certainly didn't mean to imply it would be a 1:1 ratio. I'm just saying as speeds go up, more and more things are using transfer, and by the nature of it taking less time per data transfer, people think less of having even more things that use data.
The examples I'm thinking of are on dial-up, I wouldn't imagine any video. On DSL, Youtube is a click away. Heck, we watch clips at home, at work, where ever. That's a big jump from 0 to something. With barely broadband, most people didn't get "stuff"(nor was it sold) that was updateable. Now, your TV, your DVD player, your set top box, your console and potentially your washing machine can get updates over the net. Patch sizes have exploded - now it's not unusual to download 100MB of patches for a retail game or OS install or AV program or whatever. That didn't happen with dial up, or even slow DSL (512k etc). Game demos were 50MB-500MB, now they're 500MB-5GB. That's a big difference. Consoles *didn't* have downloadable content before the "current gen" that I recall, so till 2007 or so, you were at 0 transfer for your playstation. Now you've got social networks on the console, you've got the demos, you've got the extra content, you've got the whole games. That's GB when you use it. Maybe not monthly, but it's a big change. Now we're using voice chat WITH the games, before you were text chat - that's a big bandwidth increase.
I'm speaking relatively here, but that's what's shocking the companies. It's also what's wrong with caps. The usage is going to trend upwards. There's a reason companies can sell gigabit home switches and Wireless G and N gear. And as has been pointed out, these price decreases have lead from one PC on dial up to one PC on broadband, to multiple computing devices. I don't expect it's unusual for there to be a legacy desktop for browsing the web, each kid has an itouch or netbook or laptop or gaming console or several. All on one connection. Each one going to websites. That's a major increase.
My point is that while a single computer loading a single web page may not be 2x faster with a 2x speed increase, 5 devices on the network might well be able to consume 3x the data that one device at half the speed can just by allowing multiple users to reasonably use the newer functionality at the same time.
Don't most speaker makers also list RMS in addition to peak?
That's still a stupid sort of claim. It is like claiming your gas mileage is unlimited, as long as you don't move your car, because you can sit in your car forever without having to refuel it if it's off. Well, yes, true and great, but certainly not at all anyone's intended use of the car, nor any way anyone I know would possibly think to interpret it.
I mean, does anyone really subscribe to the INTERNET with the expectation that they can be "online" 24/7 for that period, but can't actually go to a website/use it? What does being on a network that you can't transfer data over even mean? Is it even possible? Don't you have to do at least some control traffic (arp etc) to be on a network?
In reality, of course, the two are inseparably related. But to the average person, the two concepts are orthogonal, and more importantly when he selects a higher bandwidth rating for his plan the average person is thinking "I want my email to load twice as fast, he's not thinking "I want to transfer twice as much data per month".
I just don't see how this is likely to be true. I mean, do you really figure the "average person" is also thinking "Hey, I can use the internet for half as long each month because I upgraded!"??? Because that's what you just said...
Now, 2x a small use amount for webpages is still likely a small amount, but I have my doubts that the person who upgraded to a faster net connection is also going to half their time spent going to pages so their actual data use stays the same. I think it's just as likely that they'll potentially look at *more* web pages over the same amount of time as they won't wait as long for each one to load. Of course, this is somewhat esoteric on broadband till we get to internet radio and video and VoIP and game demos and pirating. Then, their data use may well go up as they can do more at the same time, or they can watch two shows a night as they aren't waiting overnight to get one episode or game demo or update or whatever.
They might also now be able to click that HD button on Youtube - same time / consumption from most peoples view, but way more data transfer.
one car in the fast lane only going slightly faster than the slow lane? While an AT is not always the cause, I could see a legitimate argument being made that, often, that phenomenon may be caused by the driver in the fast lane having an AT and not really being able to, 'punch it,' the way an MT driver can.
Umm, no - have you ever driven an even vaguely modern AT car in the US? Every car I've driven from a 93 onwards can 'punch it' just fine with an AT. It's simple, push down the gas pedal.
The phenomenon you're referring to is most likely caused by cruise control, and people not wanting to obviously speed (they're going 75 in a 65 and the guy they're passing is doing 73. They don't want to 'punch it' to 85+ Mph to clear that other car) and risk a ticket.
Similarly, when navigating small, mountain roads, having a driver in front of you that goes through the cycle of speed up, brake hard, speed up, brake hard, ad infinitum is not only annoying to watch, but quite a concern as they do not appear to have control of their car.
I see this - they're stupid. AT doesn't cause this, I can downshift my AT to 3rd or 2nd just as well as an MT and the engine will hold the speed and I rarely have to brake. I'm sure you'd be amazed.
Having a car make decisions for you regarding the power of your vehicle is, in my opinion, inherently dangerous.
I see this case made, but good computer controls usually help correct for poor driving. They very rarely hurt good driving (see the amount of press this Toyota caused - because it *doesn't* happen every day.
Cruise Control helps people in every day situations avoid the 55,45,55,60,55 etc speed up slow down crap. That's HARD to do 'manually' for many people. ABS help everyone 'pump the brakes' better than any pro driver on ice/snow. And AT helps many drivers who would get the wrong gear, stall out, or otherwise damage their car, or just cause themselves an inconvenience shift as well as an average stick shifter...
This is like the people who think everyone should be in the top 10% of computer knowledge to be on the Internet. It's stupid. Not everyone can be a race car driver or enthusiast. Many people just want to get to work and back. This is also why everyone isn't buying sports cars for that fine control...
What sort of car are you driving? I'm pretty sure many cars go faster than that in 1st gear - I know the Subaru Impreza goes to 28 Mph in 1st gear . . .
I'm woefully late to this discussion, but I think the main issue is Farmville. It's about as complicated as a slot machine. I haven't played it, but I've watched a few people play it and have asked several others - it's basically repeatedly clicking on something. It's the first computer game I've thought
a) isn't repeatedly doing something what computers were invented for
b) I think a short autoit script could do that
It's like if you play WoW for the grind or gold farming. I mean, sure, you could - but why? It's like working at a really boring factory job for the *fun* of the job. Really? I mean, at least there you got paid. (I'm thinking of the summer I spent at a book bindery where I stripped old bindings off literally hundreds of books)... It wasn't challenging, it wasn't interesting and it certainly wouldn't be something I would *volunteer* to do. And heck, at least there I had a physical result. Somebody (local college) got books repaired or improved. With farmville, no one gets anything.
I really can't understand it. I've not even been told it's fun by the people who play it - they say it's like an addiction, or a contest to stay ahead of someone else...
Hey, I (and I think many on the left) are all for single-payer health care. Cut out the insurance industry sounds good to me - they don't add anything useful except somehow making our current system partially work. I think we should have gone fully over to single payer, but heck, just expanding coverage and stopping some abuses of the current system was called a goverment takeover - imaging the screaming if the government did take over health care. Of course, as you point out, that would be better than what we got... but never let the good fall to the wayside for the perfect.
Please - how is the fire department any less of an individual entitlement than a hospital? Each sometimes provides a service for both individual citizens and indirectly for the entire community.
Example, fire department puts out house fire, stops spread around the entire city.
Hospital contains/cures disease, prevents spread around city.
Of course, that's very simplified, but enabling people to be treated by vaccines or antibiotics or whatever appropriate treatment helps herd immunity and that, plus just limiting the time a person is contagious helps stop other people from getting sick.
I also find it quite callous that you're ok trying to save a persons house (fire department) but not willing to try to save their life (health care). Where are our priorities?
Why are Police or Firemen not individual entitlements in the same way a doctor is? That is, the Police do more than just come after a crime, they do prevention work. The Firemen do as well, we get fire codes and inspections from them in addition to coming and putting out a fire.
Why would it be wrong to not have Police and let people own their own guns (well, we do that, but to use them for protection) or hire "pinkertons" for their own security? We have fire insurance, why not just have a subscription for the fire department?
I'm against the above suggestions, but I can't see why those socialized services are expected and ok, while others like health care aren't?
Not to be an idiot, but doesn't the mean = the common term average? See wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_mean
Did you mean the median, or some other thing I can't figure out from the post(s)?
I guess what they really need is out of band confirmation of the transaction. I.E. you don't type the little number you get from SMS or whatever into the browser. You SMS back to the bank a prearranged code that means OK, or anything else is NO. If you could trust USB plugged in devices with strong security somehow, you could of course send an RSA signed message back saying OK for this amount to this account. I wonder if you could create something with Air Gap that would somehow MD5 hash a combo of your 30 second code, amount, master pass phrase and account number that the bank could then do the same hash on what they get and see if it was changed or some such - but output in a form that was both secure and reasonable to type in. I doubt it, but that would probably be almost as good as the RSA key.
I thought I was the only one who thought reading in the dark was important. Glad to see I'm not alone. The reason I put reading in the dark up there is it's one of the few plusses for me to an e-book vs a physical book. If the e-book has all the same failings as a paper book, why am I spending ~$300 extra to read it when I can spend $0 extra to read a paperback?
To be honest, I used to use a rocket e-book reader constantly. But I found that either I had to pay more for the e-books than the paperback (still generally true) or put up with horribly formatted conversions of online Fan Fiction (I used to like reading this when I didn't have money but lots of time to read), or read old books from gutenburg that I didn't want to read. I got a job and I started buying paperbacks again and haven't looked back.
That said, I've got some online released books I'm interested in again (they are free postings), so maybe eventually I'll look at a newer e-reader, or figure out how to convert onto my old RocketEbook...
I think this has to be a personal preference and it will vary between individuals. I never had any problems with reading on my CRT/LCD on my computer, and so far have much preferred the backlight LCD on my ancient RocketEbook reader to any newer e-book reader on display, because I can read it in the dark. Seriously - the main places I'd use an e-book reader, that is in bed at night, on a plane, as a passanger in a car - are all places where a significant amount of the time, it's useful to be able to read sans flashlight/overhead light... The rest of the time, it's just as easy, cheaper, and IMO a better value to just read a paperback.
My biggest gripe about e-books that you buy is generally that you get less than you do with a paperback copy. I have to buy the reader @ $300 or so. I generally have DRM so I can't give it to my Dad to read and then donate it on to the local Legion or Library book sale. I can't really throw it in a closet and keep it for the rest of my life without taking time to convert formats etc... I can't drop it, or throw it around and not worry about breaking it. For all that, and I'm supposed to pay more per book as well? Why would I do that?
I suppose it only makes sense for die hard readers who need 200 books with them at all times (not I) or people who can't easily carry one or two paperbacks around...
I still love the rocket reader ... I want my backlight!