1) As the parent stated, gun violence will go up. Bad guys love unarmed targets.
I can't predict what will happen in Venezuela, but here is my personal experience, for what it's worth. I've lived in three European countries, all of which forbid the sale of firearms. Although crime does exist, for example breaking into apartments is common, not a single person of my very extended circles has ever faced an armed bad guy.
Believe me, small scale thieves here don't have guns. And even if you're a bad guy and you can find a gun, it's a really really stupid idea to take it with you when breaking into somebody's house, cause you don't need to protect yourself against other guns, and the last think you want is to commit murder in the heat of the moment. In "small" crimes, both the victim and the bad guy are better off without guns.
So if you want a Laptop that is Light, and Fast. For PC's you have a bunch of options many without too many extras. For Apple you have only a couple of models if that to choose from.
I just happened to be looking for a thin laptop, so let's compare the 13" MacBook Air and the Dell xps 13 ultrabook (the basic model for both).
- MBA has a bit higher resolution (1440x900 vs 1366x768) - MBA has SD card reader (but you can get a tiny usb reader for $10) - XPS is smaller (less width/depth, same height/weight) - XPS has USB 3.0 (MBA has Thunderbolt) - XPS includes 1 year on site repairs
MBA: $1299 XPS: $999
So I'd say Apple charges 30% more for (at most) equal value (I personally find on site repairs a big plus).
PS. To be fair, the XPS just came out, MBA is 7-8 months old.
1. obey the law 2. use common sense 3. stop immediately 4. turn that shit off 5. be polite 6. shut the fuck up 7. get a white friend 8. don't ride with a mad woman
"Public information => no need for privacy" is a very typical logical fallacy. Privacy is not a black-or-white thing, categorizing things into private/public misses the point.
For example: when you move out of your home, your location is public information. Anyone who can see you knows that you're there. Similarly, your "image" is public information, anyone can take a picture of you. This does not violates your privacy, as long as it happens by random people in the street. If someone tracks your every movement, takes a picture every minute and publishes this information on the net, your privacy is clearly violated.
I don't care that much about the SID thing, but people have every right to feel that their privacy is violated by automatic collection of data, even if the data are "public". Privacy has a lot to do with who has access to the data, what it does with it and even how easy the access is.
and most importantly, paying not the author of the research, nor the institution that financed the author, but some random publisher who did virtually nothing.
The current publishing system really amazes me (and yes I'm an academic). This is wonderful news, I wish more institutions encouraged their researchers to go open access.
If this is only at the TCP level, essentially forwarding all encrypted traffic unaltered, then there is no issue.
But looking at the content is very serious. If the browser shows that it sends the data encrypted to example.com, but in fact it sends them in cleartext to proxy.amazon.com, it's a ridiculous security hole. I doubt they are doing this.
I totally agree that it's completely impossible to create a product without infringing patents, especially software patents. The whole system is absurd.
Still, the issue here is whether Google knew about the _specific_ patents that Oracle is suing about. That's the point the judge is trying to make.
Hopefully the whole thing will be irrelevant if the patents are shown to be invalid (Google found lots of prior art).
It doesn't matter how this free / not free debate goes. One is a formal ISO standard, the other is whatever Google decides. How that makes H.264 somehow not open escapes me, but...
Here's my personal view on the issue. Abstract words without a proper definition mean nothing. What I find essential from a video format for the web is to be a "Free and Open Standard" based on this definition (main points: vendor neutral, freely available, no-patents). Ideally I would like such a standard to be published by W3C and included in the HTML5 spec (which currently does not specify a video format, so the "video" tag is essentially useless).
H.264 is clearly not a free and open standard. WebM is clearly not one either. Theora is "more or less" free and open based on this analysis.
Now, if the question is a preference between H.264 and WebM I would support WebM for 2 reasons. First, the freedom to implement a standard is IMHO far more important that being vendor-neutral. I cannot possibly imagine a Web where you need to pay someone to publish content or create a standards-compliant browser. Second, WebM has some realistic chances of becoming vendor-neutral if Google submits it to a standards organization. On the other hand H.264 has close to 0 chance of becoming patent-free.
The only useful scenario I could possibly imagine is that you use hard-disk encryption and your laptop is stolen while it's on, so the key is in memory. If you can shut it down the disk becomes useless.
But this is science finction (and there are known attacks for this scenario anyway). The kill switch idea sounds at best stupid, at worst goverment sponsored.
Same thing happens with corporations. Behaving purely "selfishly" (i.e. do everything to maximize profits) can have the opposite effect. (i.e. you have to pay a lot higher saleries if you want to hire the best and brightest, you lose customers because they think you are evil, etc)
Your argument is simply that if you try to maximize profits in a "bad way" you mind end up not actually maximizing them. So the company should stop behaving in that way. This only strengthens the view that the ultimate goal is maximizing the profits. You fail to provide an example where a company would knowingly choose an action that decreases their profit, based on a goal that is unrelated to profit (such as the benefit of society in general).
A large company will always act in a way that maximizes its profit. Every single time. The only positive thing, on which capitalism is based, is that the action that maximizes the company's profit _might coincidentally_ be the same that offers a benefit to society in general. Unfortunately this coincidence is often inexistent.
Slashdot Mirror
Go here, keep adding random stuff until you reach $10k.
Much better than wasting money on TVs.
From mozilla.org:
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet.
1) As the parent stated, gun violence will go up. Bad guys love unarmed targets.
I can't predict what will happen in Venezuela, but here is my personal experience, for what it's worth. I've lived in three European countries, all of which forbid the sale of firearms. Although crime does exist, for example breaking into apartments is common, not a single person of my very extended circles has ever faced an armed bad guy.
Believe me, small scale thieves here don't have guns. And even if you're a bad guy and you can find a gun, it's a really really stupid idea to take it with you when breaking into somebody's house, cause you don't need to protect yourself against other guns, and the last think you want is to commit murder in the heat of the moment. In "small" crimes, both the victim and the bad guy are better off without guns.
So if you want a Laptop that is Light, and Fast. For PC's you have a bunch of options many without too many extras. For Apple you have only a couple of models if that to choose from.
I just happened to be looking for a thin laptop, so let's compare the 13" MacBook Air and the Dell xps 13 ultrabook (the basic model for both).
- MBA has a bit higher resolution (1440x900 vs 1366x768)
- MBA has SD card reader (but you can get a tiny usb reader for $10)
- XPS is smaller (less width/depth, same height/weight)
- XPS has USB 3.0 (MBA has Thunderbolt)
- XPS includes 1 year on site repairs
MBA: $1299
XPS: $999
So I'd say Apple charges 30% more for (at most) equal value (I personally find on site repairs a big plus).
PS. To be fair, the XPS just came out, MBA is 7-8 months old.
Furthermore:
1. obey the law
2. use common sense
3. stop immediately
4. turn that shit off
5. be polite
6. shut the fuck up
7. get a white friend
8. don't ride with a mad woman
Accident? Two nerds walking down the street, outside their mother's basement. That's criminal negligence.
Get the whole Internet to go offline for a day and you might wake people up. It has never ceased to amaze me how many never used Google nor care too.
But now that I think about it, I know many people who don't really use the Internet that much. My mom certainly wouldn't care much. So...
Get supermarkets to close for a day and you might wake people up!
But I know some other people who ...
we don't need no water let the motherfucker burn!
"Public information => no need for privacy" is a very typical logical fallacy. Privacy is not a black-or-white thing, categorizing things into private/public misses the point.
For example: when you move out of your home, your location is public information. Anyone who can see you knows that you're there. Similarly, your "image" is public information, anyone can take a picture of you. This does not violates your privacy, as long as it happens by random people in the street. If someone tracks your every movement, takes a picture every minute and publishes this information on the net, your privacy is clearly violated.
I don't care that much about the SID thing, but people have every right to feel that their privacy is violated by automatic collection of data, even if the data are "public". Privacy has a lot to do with who has access to the data, what it does with it and even how easy the access is.
Now you only need to fill the arena with a bunch of robot-fans programmed to act excited.
Eliminate bankers!
Shoving billions down a spacetime hole: priceless
This is why "what if" scenarios are inherently stupid and pointless
They are indeed... but what if they were not?
Should I try it?
and most importantly, paying not the author of the research, nor the institution that financed the author, but some random publisher who did virtually nothing.
The current publishing system really amazes me (and yes I'm an academic). This is wonderful news, I wish more institutions encouraged their researchers to go open access.
If this is only at the TCP level, essentially forwarding all encrypted traffic unaltered, then there is no issue.
But looking at the content is very serious. If the browser shows that it sends the data encrypted to example.com, but in fact it sends them in cleartext to proxy.amazon.com, it's a ridiculous security hole. I doubt they are doing this.
I totally agree that it's completely impossible to create a product without infringing patents, especially software patents. The whole system is absurd.
Still, the issue here is whether Google knew about the _specific_ patents that Oracle is suing about. That's the point the judge is trying to make.
Hopefully the whole thing will be irrelevant if the patents are shown to be invalid (Google found lots of prior art).
So the GNU/Linux arguments start making a lot more sense now, aren't they? Cause if you just call it Linux, Android seems perfectly "Linux" to me.
Could this be the end of stamp collections and philately?
Not really.
Btw I'm selling the following RARE swedish stamp:
67XX5768XX34XX4233 (digits hidden for security reasons).
Anyone interested?
I'm using telnet for ssh too. Doing RSA in your head is a bit tricky at first, but once you get used to it it's really convenient.
PS. For a real challenge try to PPP authenticate over dial-up using your voice.
Isn't this akin to the DEA informing a grocery store that they can't have a parking lot, because a lot of drug deals are taking place there at night?
Worse, it's akin to suing the yellow pages for potentially listing the grocery store (even though it's not even printed yet).
It doesn't matter how this free / not free debate goes. One is a formal ISO standard, the other is whatever Google decides. How that makes H.264 somehow not open escapes me, but...
Here's my personal view on the issue. Abstract words without a proper definition mean nothing. What I find essential from a video format for the web is to be a "Free and Open Standard" based on this definition (main points: vendor neutral, freely available, no-patents). Ideally I would like such a standard to be published by W3C and included in the HTML5 spec (which currently does not specify a video format, so the "video" tag is essentially useless).
H.264 is clearly not a free and open standard. WebM is clearly not one either. Theora is "more or less" free and open based on this analysis.
Now, if the question is a preference between H.264 and WebM I would support WebM for 2 reasons. First, the freedom to implement a standard is IMHO far more important that being vendor-neutral. I cannot possibly imagine a Web where you need to pay someone to publish content or create a standards-compliant browser. Second, WebM has some realistic chances of becoming vendor-neutral if Google submits it to a standards organization. On the other hand H.264 has close to 0 chance of becoming patent-free.
The only useful scenario I could possibly imagine is that you use hard-disk encryption and your laptop is stolen while it's on, so the key is in memory. If you can shut it down the disk becomes useless.
But this is science finction (and there are known
attacks for this scenario anyway). The kill switch idea sounds at best stupid, at worst goverment sponsored.
LEGO
There, fixed that for ya.
Same thing happens with corporations. Behaving purely "selfishly" (i.e. do everything to maximize profits) can have the opposite effect. (i.e. you have to pay a lot higher saleries if you want to hire the best and brightest, you lose customers because they think you are evil, etc)
Your argument is simply that if you try to maximize profits in a "bad way" you mind end up not actually maximizing them. So the company should stop behaving in that way. This only strengthens the view that the ultimate goal is maximizing the profits. You fail to provide an example where a company would knowingly choose an action that decreases their profit, based on a goal that is unrelated to profit (such as the benefit of society in general).
A large company will always act in a way that maximizes its profit. Every single time. The only positive thing, on which capitalism is based, is that the action that maximizes the company's profit _might coincidentally_ be the same that offers a benefit to society in general. Unfortunately this coincidence is often inexistent.