I kind of disagree. I get accused of being a part of the loony left more often than I get accused of being a right-wing nutjob, but I have been accused of both. I've also been accused of being a Mac fanboy, a Microsoft shill, and an open source militant. My general Slashdot experience is, some percentage of any viewpoint gets modded down. It doesn't really matter what position you take, there's going to be someone who doesn't like it, and if that person has mod points, you're going to get modded down.
However, at least in my experience, if your post is reasonable, getting modded down won't be the norm. You might have one post modded down to 0 or -1 for every 10 posts that get modded +5. Meanwhile, you'll have 100 posts that are practically ignored by the mods. I actually think the mod system works pretty well, and it's not too entirely biased one way or another.
I mean, I just looked at some of the scores for your recent post history, and it seems to match a similar pattern. Mostly 2's, a couple 3's, a couple 4's, and a couple 5's, and then one thing modded down to 1. It doesn't seem like the mods are preventing your voice from being heard.
But just to be serious for a second, some of the benefits of getting Apple devices come from the fact that they're all made by the same company, designed to work together. Like you can get an iMac, a Kindle TV thing, Windows phone, and Android-based watch, and the iMac still works fine. But if you get an Apple TV, iPhone, and Apple Watch, then you can link them all with your Apple ID, and now they interact in nice ways. You can take a picture with your phone, and it shows up in your Apple Photos app. You can unlock your iMac with your watch. If you use the iCloud drive, you can copy a file to your "Documents" folder, and have it show up on your iPhone. You can get notifications for your iPhone apps in your watch. That's just off the top of my head, but there are a *lot* of little integrations like that.
Now admittedly, Android/Windows stuff has a bunch of the same features, or at least similar features. And you can also cobble together a lot of the same effects by other means. For example, you can use Dropbox instead of iCloud Drive (I prefer Dropbox). You can use Google Photos to have the photos on your phone sync with your desktop machine (which is what I do).
And also, you could point out that it's self-serving on Apple's part. In having all those integrations, they kind of lock you into their ecosystem, and owning one product pushes you to use others.
Regardless, I do think that the level of integration across products is one of the strengths of Apple's ecosystem. By manufacturing the hardware and developing the software for all the devices, they can get them all working together a bit more smoothly than other vendors.
You aren't required to have an Apple account, but you'll probably want to. Having an Apple ID allows you to do a cloud backup of any iOS devices you might get. It allows you to access the app stores for both MacOS and iOS. It lets you use "Find my Mac" to track or remote-wipe your computer if you lose it, and "Back to my Mac", which gives you file sharing and remote screen access to your other Macs without needing a VPN, if you have multiple of them, even if they're behind a firewall. If you want to buy anything from iTunes, you'll need an Apple ID. It's even the sign-on if you want to order anything directly from Apple's website. If you want to anything that connects to Apple, you'll want an Apple ID.
That doesn't mean you need to get one. You don't need to link it to your local sign-on. You don't even need to use Apple's domain (e.g. you can have the Apple ID use a Gmail address or whatever) unless you want to get a free email account with it.
It's ultimately not that onerous. They don't try to railroad you into to the degree that Microsoft does.
Ri-i-ight... all that's ailing the American political scene is fixable with a web site and the right software.... It's laughable to think that the solution to the disconnect between politicians and their constituents is some ridiculous social media platform.
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me, or if you think I was saying a social networking site could fix our political system. I said, "I actually really like the idea of trying to experiment with public forums to find ways to give everyone a voice". I'm not even necessarily talking about a "forum" in the sense of an Internet forum, but just like... a place for conversation. Being able to communicate and advocate for your position is vital to democracy, and the way people have traditionally communicated is through newspapers, and then later radio and television. Relying on mass media and lobbyists to advocate political positions is a big part of what has been concentrating polticial power among the wealthiest.
So why wouldn't we look for new ways to communicate? Given all the improvements to communication technology, why wouldn't we make use of that new technology to see if there are more equitable ways of making our voices heard? It'd be foolish not to try.
But clearly I wasn't saying that there was an easy fix. I was just saying that, given the impact communication has on politics, it'd also be foolish to allow one of these social networking sites to dictate how we communicate, just so they can make money from advertising.
You start off by asking if this is legal, and I fear that question is probably a distraction. It's probably currently legal, and no worse for representing constituents than the lobbying that has gone on for decades. However, I think the more important question is, is this a good idea?
I would 100% agree that a more open platform is called for. In fact, it seems to me that we should be using technology to make government more open and transparent. Perhaps, even if it is currently legal, it shouldn't be. Or perhaps it should remain legal, but should be frowned upon and discouraged.
I actually really like the idea of trying to experiment with public forums to find ways to give everyone a voice, where the voice of a lobbyist has no more power than that of an average citizen, and the force of a person's argument has a greater impact than the size of their pocket book. However, that raises a lot of problems, not the least of which being that the world is full of ignorant people and trolls, and it's difficult to moderate a forum like that without stifling free speech. To figure out how to tackle that problem, we don't need a company like Facebook, with its own agenda, making arbitrary decisions for us. We should have a say in developing our own democracy, not have it forced on us by the whoever happens to be the most influential software engineers (no matter how well-meaning they may be).
Yes, that's also a fair point. However, the limited information I've heard so far isn't exactly confidence inspiring. You have a President who fired the Director of the FBI, announcing publicly that it was done to hinder an investigation into corruption in that President's campaign. So already, people are going to be suspicious of whoever gets nominated. It's easy to imagine that the President would go looking for someone who would be loyal to him, personally, and help to quash the whole investigation.
And then the guy they pick turns out to have helped to protect a member of that President's campaign from accusations of corruption. Even if the nominee is a total boy scout, of course it's going to cause some eye rolls and face-palms.
Russian hacking attempts have been public knowledge for some time before she decided to provide The Intercept with the classified info in question - all her leak did was provide some details on said Russian hacking attempts.
Though it's true that we already knew there were Russian hacking attempts, you're not quite right to imply that nothing important was learned from this leak. We knew that Russian hackers had hacked the both Democrats and Republicans, but only chose to release information on Republicans. However, we've been lead to believe that there wasn't any Russian hacking that could have actually changed votes. The information released indicates that the Russians were actively mounting attacks to change votes, and that at the very least, they got close.
It's still inconclusive as to whether they had any success. However, spear phishing is pretty effective, and if they sent emails to election officials all over the country, I would bet that they got at least a few people who were fooled. I wonder if they've been able to perform an audit of all the people who had been emailed to see whether anyone was compromised.
At the same time, I don't support her decision to release this information. I do think that the American people should be informed about this kind of thing, but not while the matter is still under active investigation. At some point, this should be declassified and released.
If we had reached a point where it was clear that the Trump administration had been trying to cover this up, and the investigation was quashed, then I think it could be argued that she was a whistleblower.
Well, smart lawyers understand where they duty lies, and ethical lawyers will follow through with those obligations. That doesn't mean that this guy is a smart and ethical lawyer.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm *not* saying that this guy is dumb or unethical. I'm just suggesting that you're skipping some steps in your logical reasoning. "Smart lawyers understand where their duty lies" =/= "This particular lawyer would never do anything inappropriate".
Also Manafort, Kushner, and Sessions. Maybe Carter Page and Roger Stone, too? I can't remember. Actually, far from being unable to name people, it's getting hard to keep track of all the people from the Trump campaign who have been caught lying about some kind of suspicious dealings with Russia.
Are you still on the Anniversary Update? Like I said, it keeps getting worse. It's possible that the OneDrive and Office 365 pop-ups didn't really become obnoxious until the Creator's update...? I don't remember. This latest update has turned the annoyance factor down a little. I've successfully gotten it to leave me alone regarding OneDrive, but I had to find a setting to get it to stop. Also, it seems like Cortana sometimes reenables herself.
And why is that crazy? If the software runs on a standalone computer, not connected to the internet, why does it matter? As long as it runs and does what it has to do, what's the problem?
Well in my opinion, the AC you're responding to made a bad comparison. What he's complaining about is not really like a business building a physical plant or factory and expecting it to run for 50 years. It's more like a business building a refinery, and expecting it to run for 50 years without any maintenance, upgrades, or cleaning, meanwhile firing everyone who understands how the refinery works or knows why it was built the way it was.
To answer your question more directly, there are a few different problems with expecting to run a legacy piece of software on a standalone computer, not connected to the Internet, for decades on end. First, if the system needs to interact with other systems, then you can't really isolate it from the Internet. It might not be directly on the Internet, but it could still be compromised from another computer that is connected to the Internet. Second, what if the hardware the software runs on breaks? Are you going to be able to get replacement parts in 20 years?
There's also another problem that's a little bit more nebulous and therefore harder to argue for, but: You don't know what you're going to need in 10 years. I've had to deal with companies that have some old unmaintained business-critical application running on a server somewhere. Since they began using this application, they've upgraded all their computers 3 times, and started using a couple other applications. They'd like to have their various applications talk to each other instead of doing manual entry to keep the apps in sync, but they can't, because the old app wasn't designed to do that.
They want to be able to access the old database from an iPad, but they can't, since it requires a Windows client-side app. It might be that they've been continuing to buy Windows 7 machines for the past several years because the client-side app doesn't run on newer versions of Windows, and they don't have a way to update it. Once Microsoft started trying to force everyone to use Windows 10, this has become a problem. Maybe they'll have to run a Windows 7 VM if they ever want to update their desktops again.
Then they go to update their networking equipment, and they want to change their IP scheme and move their servers to a new VLAN. They can't do that. Whoever wrote the application seems to have hard-coded an IP address somewhere, and changing the IP address of the server breaks everything.
The server they're running the application on developed a problem where it crashes occasionally. The IT team realizes that the hardware might be failing, so they want to spin up a VM on a new server and install the app from scratch. They can't. Nobody at the company knows how to install the application anymore. They instead P2V the existing server, but the problem still occurs. Oh well, I guess they'll have to live with occasional crashes.
I'm kind of cobbling together different examples of problems that I've run into over the years, but the point is, this crap always seems to turn into a mess. If your business relies on a piece of software, you should have some support contract with a developer capable of supporting and (if needed) updating the application, installing it from scratch on a new computer with a brand new OS.
So honestly, the comparison is kind of stupid. He wants things to be as clear as "wins and losses", but that's not how the world operates. When you have a well defined game with contrived endpoints and rules that are agreed upon, it's easy to find clarity. One team wins because we all agreed to an arbitrary set of rules that say the game ends after a set period of time, and whoever has the most points wins.
So with a tech company, when does the game end? What constitutes "winning"? Obviously, if you're stupid, you might say, "Whoever has the most net profit at the end of the year wins!" But that doesn't deal with the question of which company achieved more growth, or which company is better positioned for future years. It might be that a company didn't make much money this year, but they work they did this year will get them more money 5 or 10 years from now. That's not like a game. In basketball, you can't say, "I didn't win this game, but the play I pulled off this game will get me 100 points next game!"
He points out that, in basketball, either you make the playoffs or you don't. You won or you didn't. Achievement is binary. In tech, and in the rest of life, that's not the case at all. It's not win or lose. Honestly, coming in second is often basically as good as coming in first. Or really, more to the point, most of us will come in 300th, which is about as good as coming in 299th. Plus, a lot of people start businesses and run businesses because they like what they do, and achieving high metrics just isn't the chief concern.
It's kind of disturbing to me, when he says:
In business, you can say, “Well, I didn’t get it right, but we’re gonna keep working. Okay, we’ll improve that.” In tech, employees like to yak: “My review score—what is it? How much is this? How much is that? Did I do a good job? Let me talk to you.”
So he's complaining that, in business, you might not get things right, and then continue to work on it? He's complaining that people want to know if they did a good job? And if your employees were focusing on their review score, maybe you should consider that it's because you, as the head of the company, instituted review scores. If you set up a system of metrics and then base employee success on meeting those metrics, you shouldn't be surprised or put off when those employees want to know how well they're meeting those metrics.
Finally, the whole way of talking about it shows that he doesn't understand the nature of professional basketball either. Owning a basketball team is also a business. He talks as though his success as an owner can be determined easily with the binary metric of a win or a loss, but sports teams have a lot more to contend with than that. What about ticket sales? Merchandise sales? Brand association, licensing, fan satisfaction? What about maintaining good relationships within the league? Getting good players and coaches so you can build a better team for future years? I mean, is he really so dumb that he's measuring his success as an owner based on whether his team won the last game, or whether his team makes it to the playoffs?
No, I think you might just be missing my point here. It's fucking Twitter. An emotionally unstable and mentally retarded man-child has decided not to read your tweets. This is not a constitutional crisis.
What you're saying is like the city saying it can regulate who is allowed to write letters to the editor of a local newspaper, because the newspaper is private.
No, what I'm saying is that the local newspaper can throw away your letter without reading it.
It probably means that it is unwise to have any routine government communications on a social media platform.
Well... yeah. The government shouldn't be relying on social networks (or any private company) to disseminate information. And it's probably not wise for an individual to take the PotUS's Tweets as official communications. Especially not if it's from his personal account. And especially not if the PotUS is a moronic child with self-control issues.
Sorry, I think you'll have to explain that a little more. Again, "schools aren't teaching critical thinking skills" and " politicians are trying to make education more readily available", how are these two things supposed to be connected? I could make up an argument to connect the two, but neither you nor s.petry have really explained how you think they're connected.
Or are you saying that s.petry's argument is a result of schools not teaching critical thinking?
Maybe you haven't been updating it? A lot of it didn't happen until the Anniversary Update, which, probably not coincidentally, was released right after their big push to force people to upgrade. It also seems to be getting worse with each major update.
First, no, I don't think this is a First Amendment issue. Because (a) you can still post to Twitter; (b) even if you couldn't, Twitter is a privately owned site, and the first amendment doesn't guarantee you access to someone else's soapbox; and (c) even if the government were running a website, I would think they should be able to moderate it to some degree, e.g. posting porn to a discussion forum for infrastructure spending.
But also, honestly, of all the stupid and screwed up things the Trump administration is doing, this shouldn't even register.
I believe the better generalization would be that Colleges are teaching students "What" to think, and not "How" to think. Since cognitive dissonance is painful, and it feels good to belong to something you believe is important, it's easy to get people to go along with the game.
When you consider that the people with political power on the left are pushing for more "free" college the prospect 10 years down the road could look much worse.
I'm not sure how you're trying to connect "schools aren't teaching critical thinking" with "it's the fault of politicians trying to make education more readily available." I think there are ways that the two could be connected, but it's not clear from your post what you have in mind.
Either way, I think part of the problem is that colleges and universities are increasingly motivated by profits. There ends up being a lot of focus on having a fun 4-year summer camp, complete with minor league sports teams, that parents will feel good about sending their kids to. Also, because they're charging so much, there's an emphasis on vocational training that will supposedly guarantee a good return on investment for the students.
What's more, critical thinking is aided by exposure to a variety of views and perspectives, which means that having a diverse student body should be helpful. Therefore, if you want real education rather than shallow vocational training, then you should see some value in providing some kind of financial aid, so that people from all backgrounds have the possibility of attending college.
Of course people want faster connections. Duh. Want isnt need tho.
Ehhh... I mean, we don't "need" very much, in hunter/gatherer terms. Do I need a fast Internet connection? I suppose not, in that I wouldn't suddenly starve to death. But I also don't "need" any Internet or TV whatsoever.
But once you get past that kind of argument, the distinction between "want" and "need" get really fuzzy. Do I "need" a fast Internet connection? Well no, I could give up on the idea of 4K video. I could be completely unproductive at work. I could forget about streaming an kind of media, and go back to a 56K modem. I could.
But on the other hand, yes, I absolutely do need a fast Internet connection. Because I want to be able to stream high-quality media in real time. Because I want to be able to get my work done. Because I wan to be able to protect all my data with an online backup. Because, god damnit, all of us are dealing with large data sets, and this isn't 1998 anymore.
Have you used Windows 10? Windows 10 Pro constantly pops up to tell you to try out a new game from their app store, use OneDrive, use Cortana, or buy Office 365. Even after I've cleared the notification, it pops up again within a few days.
How about they start pitching a version of cable, stripped down to a few channels, each actually meaningful and with varied programming, with NO COMMERCIALS in exchange for the subscription costs... you know, like it all started out?
I find it funny, now, to think about how it all started. The reason you had channels called things like "The SciFi Channel" or "Comedy Central" or "Music Television" was cable packages basically had a scifi channel, a comedy channel, and a music channel. It's like, "Oh, you want some comedy? Put on Comedy Central. It's recordings of stand-up comedy, 24x7. You want music? We have a channel of music videos, again, 24x7."
Sorry, I'm going off topic.
I think the real change is going to be when they simply get rid of channels altogether. I mean, think about it. Channels don't make sense. Everything should be on-demand. If you want people to be able to watch the latest episode of a show at a specific time, just make it available at that time. Even for live events, make a stream available when the event starts, but allow people to start at the beginning at any time they like. But why bother with channels and time slots, when you can just watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it?
I think the future has been obvious for years, though the industry is going to fight it tooth and nail. You don't need cable companies, and you don't need channels. Basically, you need dumb-pipe ISPs, and then you need services like Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu/iTunes. I think Amazon Prime is actually a good model of where things are eventually going. You have one base service that provides certain content on-demand, and then you have "rentals" where you pay a certain premium for the newest content, a la carte. Then, you can also subscribe to other "channels", were you pay $x a month, and now you can watch Showtime's content, or HBO's content, all on demand and ad-free. Ideally, you should be able to go through a single service, subscribe to what you want, and through that, get all the content you want.
Netflix works just fine at 1.3/384k... We don't necessary need faster, we just need truly limitless, like it always has been.
At the same time, if you're happy with low-bitrate streams, that can also help to take care of the "limitless" part. If cable companies cap your bandwidth, Netflix could just give you the option to watch streams at a low enough bitrate that you're unlikely to hit your cap. You could listen to all your concerts at 64 kbps audio to cut down on your usage, since you don't care about quality.
That's not to say caps are ok, just to say that your post is short-sighted. The amount of data we shove around is ever-increasing, and it's not just about entertainment media. I tend to move around a lot of big files for my work, and having transfers take a long time wastes my time, and makes my clients unhappy. We don't just need our Internet to be limitless, we also need it to be fast. And reliable on top of that. The traditional problem is that these companies have not wanted to invest in improving internet speed and reliability, since it enabled customers to use competing services. The introduction of data caps has only arisen as a method of blocking use of those competing services as they increase speed.
Well first, I'm not saying they should be. I use my Mac for work, and I'd rather have them continue to refine the desktop experience than make a half-assed play for the gaming market.
However, they took a chunk of time in the conference to talk about 3D performance and VR, which would easily lead someone to think they're interested in gaming. That's not quite how I took it, but I could understand someone making that assumption.
Also, there is a strategic reason for Apple to go after the gaming market: it's one of the hold-out uses for Windows that keeps people from switching. I have a Windows machine for gaming. If, instead of buying that Windows machine, I could have purchased a Mac with comparable performance for a comparable price, and run all the same games on MacOS, bypassing Windows entirely, I would have done that.
So that'd be at least one additional Mac purchase they'd have today. I'm sure I'm not the only one, so there probably is a market for for Mac gaming machines. But, of course, there are other considerations. Is the market big enough to warrant investment in developing new products? Would those sales really create new purchases, or would they cannibalize existing sales? I don't know the answers to those questions.
Slashdot Mirror
I kind of disagree. I get accused of being a part of the loony left more often than I get accused of being a right-wing nutjob, but I have been accused of both. I've also been accused of being a Mac fanboy, a Microsoft shill, and an open source militant. My general Slashdot experience is, some percentage of any viewpoint gets modded down. It doesn't really matter what position you take, there's going to be someone who doesn't like it, and if that person has mod points, you're going to get modded down.
However, at least in my experience, if your post is reasonable, getting modded down won't be the norm. You might have one post modded down to 0 or -1 for every 10 posts that get modded +5. Meanwhile, you'll have 100 posts that are practically ignored by the mods. I actually think the mod system works pretty well, and it's not too entirely biased one way or another.
I mean, I just looked at some of the scores for your recent post history, and it seems to match a similar pattern. Mostly 2's, a couple 3's, a couple 4's, and a couple 5's, and then one thing modded down to 1. It doesn't seem like the mods are preventing your voice from being heard.
Now admittedly, Android/Windows stuff has a bunch of the same features, or at least similar features. And you can also cobble together a lot of the same effects by other means. For example, you can use Dropbox instead of iCloud Drive (I prefer Dropbox). You can use Google Photos to have the photos on your phone sync with your desktop machine (which is what I do).
And also, you could point out that it's self-serving on Apple's part. In having all those integrations, they kind of lock you into their ecosystem, and owning one product pushes you to use others.
Regardless, I do think that the level of integration across products is one of the strengths of Apple's ecosystem. By manufacturing the hardware and developing the software for all the devices, they can get them all working together a bit more smoothly than other vendors.
Yeah, pretty much.
You aren't required to have an Apple account, but you'll probably want to. Having an Apple ID allows you to do a cloud backup of any iOS devices you might get. It allows you to access the app stores for both MacOS and iOS. It lets you use "Find my Mac" to track or remote-wipe your computer if you lose it, and "Back to my Mac", which gives you file sharing and remote screen access to your other Macs without needing a VPN, if you have multiple of them, even if they're behind a firewall. If you want to buy anything from iTunes, you'll need an Apple ID. It's even the sign-on if you want to order anything directly from Apple's website. If you want to anything that connects to Apple, you'll want an Apple ID.
That doesn't mean you need to get one. You don't need to link it to your local sign-on. You don't even need to use Apple's domain (e.g. you can have the Apple ID use a Gmail address or whatever) unless you want to get a free email account with it.
It's ultimately not that onerous. They don't try to railroad you into to the degree that Microsoft does.
Ri-i-ight... all that's ailing the American political scene is fixable with a web site and the right software.... It's laughable to think that the solution to the disconnect between politicians and their constituents is some ridiculous social media platform.
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me, or if you think I was saying a social networking site could fix our political system. I said, "I actually really like the idea of trying to experiment with public forums to find ways to give everyone a voice". I'm not even necessarily talking about a "forum" in the sense of an Internet forum, but just like... a place for conversation. Being able to communicate and advocate for your position is vital to democracy, and the way people have traditionally communicated is through newspapers, and then later radio and television. Relying on mass media and lobbyists to advocate political positions is a big part of what has been concentrating polticial power among the wealthiest.
So why wouldn't we look for new ways to communicate? Given all the improvements to communication technology, why wouldn't we make use of that new technology to see if there are more equitable ways of making our voices heard? It'd be foolish not to try.
But clearly I wasn't saying that there was an easy fix. I was just saying that, given the impact communication has on politics, it'd also be foolish to allow one of these social networking sites to dictate how we communicate, just so they can make money from advertising.
You start off by asking if this is legal, and I fear that question is probably a distraction. It's probably currently legal, and no worse for representing constituents than the lobbying that has gone on for decades. However, I think the more important question is, is this a good idea?
I would 100% agree that a more open platform is called for. In fact, it seems to me that we should be using technology to make government more open and transparent. Perhaps, even if it is currently legal, it shouldn't be. Or perhaps it should remain legal, but should be frowned upon and discouraged.
I actually really like the idea of trying to experiment with public forums to find ways to give everyone a voice, where the voice of a lobbyist has no more power than that of an average citizen, and the force of a person's argument has a greater impact than the size of their pocket book. However, that raises a lot of problems, not the least of which being that the world is full of ignorant people and trolls, and it's difficult to moderate a forum like that without stifling free speech. To figure out how to tackle that problem, we don't need a company like Facebook, with its own agenda, making arbitrary decisions for us. We should have a say in developing our own democracy, not have it forced on us by the whoever happens to be the most influential software engineers (no matter how well-meaning they may be).
Yes, that's also a fair point. However, the limited information I've heard so far isn't exactly confidence inspiring. You have a President who fired the Director of the FBI, announcing publicly that it was done to hinder an investigation into corruption in that President's campaign. So already, people are going to be suspicious of whoever gets nominated. It's easy to imagine that the President would go looking for someone who would be loyal to him, personally, and help to quash the whole investigation.
And then the guy they pick turns out to have helped to protect a member of that President's campaign from accusations of corruption. Even if the nominee is a total boy scout, of course it's going to cause some eye rolls and face-palms.
Russian hacking attempts have been public knowledge for some time before she decided to provide The Intercept with the classified info in question - all her leak did was provide some details on said Russian hacking attempts.
Though it's true that we already knew there were Russian hacking attempts, you're not quite right to imply that nothing important was learned from this leak. We knew that Russian hackers had hacked the both Democrats and Republicans, but only chose to release information on Republicans. However, we've been lead to believe that there wasn't any Russian hacking that could have actually changed votes. The information released indicates that the Russians were actively mounting attacks to change votes, and that at the very least, they got close.
It's still inconclusive as to whether they had any success. However, spear phishing is pretty effective, and if they sent emails to election officials all over the country, I would bet that they got at least a few people who were fooled. I wonder if they've been able to perform an audit of all the people who had been emailed to see whether anyone was compromised.
At the same time, I don't support her decision to release this information. I do think that the American people should be informed about this kind of thing, but not while the matter is still under active investigation. At some point, this should be declassified and released.
If we had reached a point where it was clear that the Trump administration had been trying to cover this up, and the investigation was quashed, then I think it could be argued that she was a whistleblower.
Smart lawyers understand where their duty lies.
Well, smart lawyers understand where they duty lies, and ethical lawyers will follow through with those obligations. That doesn't mean that this guy is a smart and ethical lawyer.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm *not* saying that this guy is dumb or unethical. I'm just suggesting that you're skipping some steps in your logical reasoning. "Smart lawyers understand where their duty lies" =/= "This particular lawyer would never do anything inappropriate".
Also Manafort, Kushner, and Sessions. Maybe Carter Page and Roger Stone, too? I can't remember. Actually, far from being unable to name people, it's getting hard to keep track of all the people from the Trump campaign who have been caught lying about some kind of suspicious dealings with Russia.
Are you still on the Anniversary Update? Like I said, it keeps getting worse. It's possible that the OneDrive and Office 365 pop-ups didn't really become obnoxious until the Creator's update...? I don't remember. This latest update has turned the annoyance factor down a little. I've successfully gotten it to leave me alone regarding OneDrive, but I had to find a setting to get it to stop. Also, it seems like Cortana sometimes reenables herself.
And why is that crazy? If the software runs on a standalone computer, not connected to the internet, why does it matter? As long as it runs and does what it has to do, what's the problem?
Well in my opinion, the AC you're responding to made a bad comparison. What he's complaining about is not really like a business building a physical plant or factory and expecting it to run for 50 years. It's more like a business building a refinery, and expecting it to run for 50 years without any maintenance, upgrades, or cleaning, meanwhile firing everyone who understands how the refinery works or knows why it was built the way it was.
To answer your question more directly, there are a few different problems with expecting to run a legacy piece of software on a standalone computer, not connected to the Internet, for decades on end. First, if the system needs to interact with other systems, then you can't really isolate it from the Internet. It might not be directly on the Internet, but it could still be compromised from another computer that is connected to the Internet. Second, what if the hardware the software runs on breaks? Are you going to be able to get replacement parts in 20 years?
There's also another problem that's a little bit more nebulous and therefore harder to argue for, but: You don't know what you're going to need in 10 years. I've had to deal with companies that have some old unmaintained business-critical application running on a server somewhere. Since they began using this application, they've upgraded all their computers 3 times, and started using a couple other applications. They'd like to have their various applications talk to each other instead of doing manual entry to keep the apps in sync, but they can't, because the old app wasn't designed to do that.
They want to be able to access the old database from an iPad, but they can't, since it requires a Windows client-side app. It might be that they've been continuing to buy Windows 7 machines for the past several years because the client-side app doesn't run on newer versions of Windows, and they don't have a way to update it. Once Microsoft started trying to force everyone to use Windows 10, this has become a problem. Maybe they'll have to run a Windows 7 VM if they ever want to update their desktops again.
Then they go to update their networking equipment, and they want to change their IP scheme and move their servers to a new VLAN. They can't do that. Whoever wrote the application seems to have hard-coded an IP address somewhere, and changing the IP address of the server breaks everything.
The server they're running the application on developed a problem where it crashes occasionally. The IT team realizes that the hardware might be failing, so they want to spin up a VM on a new server and install the app from scratch. They can't. Nobody at the company knows how to install the application anymore. They instead P2V the existing server, but the problem still occurs. Oh well, I guess they'll have to live with occasional crashes.
I'm kind of cobbling together different examples of problems that I've run into over the years, but the point is, this crap always seems to turn into a mess. If your business relies on a piece of software, you should have some support contract with a developer capable of supporting and (if needed) updating the application, installing it from scratch on a new computer with a brand new OS.
So honestly, the comparison is kind of stupid. He wants things to be as clear as "wins and losses", but that's not how the world operates. When you have a well defined game with contrived endpoints and rules that are agreed upon, it's easy to find clarity. One team wins because we all agreed to an arbitrary set of rules that say the game ends after a set period of time, and whoever has the most points wins.
So with a tech company, when does the game end? What constitutes "winning"? Obviously, if you're stupid, you might say, "Whoever has the most net profit at the end of the year wins!" But that doesn't deal with the question of which company achieved more growth, or which company is better positioned for future years. It might be that a company didn't make much money this year, but they work they did this year will get them more money 5 or 10 years from now. That's not like a game. In basketball, you can't say, "I didn't win this game, but the play I pulled off this game will get me 100 points next game!"
He points out that, in basketball, either you make the playoffs or you don't. You won or you didn't. Achievement is binary. In tech, and in the rest of life, that's not the case at all. It's not win or lose. Honestly, coming in second is often basically as good as coming in first. Or really, more to the point, most of us will come in 300th, which is about as good as coming in 299th. Plus, a lot of people start businesses and run businesses because they like what they do, and achieving high metrics just isn't the chief concern.
It's kind of disturbing to me, when he says:
In business, you can say, “Well, I didn’t get it right, but we’re gonna keep working. Okay, we’ll improve that.” In tech, employees like to yak: “My review score—what is it? How much is this? How much is that? Did I do a good job? Let me talk to you.”
So he's complaining that, in business, you might not get things right, and then continue to work on it? He's complaining that people want to know if they did a good job? And if your employees were focusing on their review score, maybe you should consider that it's because you, as the head of the company, instituted review scores. If you set up a system of metrics and then base employee success on meeting those metrics, you shouldn't be surprised or put off when those employees want to know how well they're meeting those metrics.
Finally, the whole way of talking about it shows that he doesn't understand the nature of professional basketball either. Owning a basketball team is also a business. He talks as though his success as an owner can be determined easily with the binary metric of a win or a loss, but sports teams have a lot more to contend with than that. What about ticket sales? Merchandise sales? Brand association, licensing, fan satisfaction? What about maintaining good relationships within the league? Getting good players and coaches so you can build a better team for future years? I mean, is he really so dumb that he's measuring his success as an owner based on whether his team won the last game, or whether his team makes it to the playoffs?
Really, people should not listen to this man.
No, I think you might just be missing my point here. It's fucking Twitter. An emotionally unstable and mentally retarded man-child has decided not to read your tweets. This is not a constitutional crisis.
Ok, then I'll go with "you're just full of shit or fucking nuts".
What you're saying is like the city saying it can regulate who is allowed to write letters to the editor of a local newspaper, because the newspaper is private.
No, what I'm saying is that the local newspaper can throw away your letter without reading it.
It probably means that it is unwise to have any routine government communications on a social media platform.
Well... yeah. The government shouldn't be relying on social networks (or any private company) to disseminate information. And it's probably not wise for an individual to take the PotUS's Tweets as official communications. Especially not if it's from his personal account. And especially not if the PotUS is a moronic child with self-control issues.
Sorry, I think you'll have to explain that a little more. Again, "schools aren't teaching critical thinking skills" and " politicians are trying to make education more readily available", how are these two things supposed to be connected? I could make up an argument to connect the two, but neither you nor s.petry have really explained how you think they're connected.
Or are you saying that s.petry's argument is a result of schools not teaching critical thinking?
Maybe you haven't been updating it? A lot of it didn't happen until the Anniversary Update, which, probably not coincidentally, was released right after their big push to force people to upgrade. It also seems to be getting worse with each major update.
First, no, I don't think this is a First Amendment issue. Because (a) you can still post to Twitter; (b) even if you couldn't, Twitter is a privately owned site, and the first amendment doesn't guarantee you access to someone else's soapbox; and (c) even if the government were running a website, I would think they should be able to moderate it to some degree, e.g. posting porn to a discussion forum for infrastructure spending.
But also, honestly, of all the stupid and screwed up things the Trump administration is doing, this shouldn't even register.
I believe the better generalization would be that Colleges are teaching students "What" to think, and not "How" to think. Since cognitive dissonance is painful, and it feels good to belong to something you believe is important, it's easy to get people to go along with the game.
When you consider that the people with political power on the left are pushing for more "free" college the prospect 10 years down the road could look much worse.
I'm not sure how you're trying to connect "schools aren't teaching critical thinking" with "it's the fault of politicians trying to make education more readily available." I think there are ways that the two could be connected, but it's not clear from your post what you have in mind.
Either way, I think part of the problem is that colleges and universities are increasingly motivated by profits. There ends up being a lot of focus on having a fun 4-year summer camp, complete with minor league sports teams, that parents will feel good about sending their kids to. Also, because they're charging so much, there's an emphasis on vocational training that will supposedly guarantee a good return on investment for the students.
What's more, critical thinking is aided by exposure to a variety of views and perspectives, which means that having a diverse student body should be helpful. Therefore, if you want real education rather than shallow vocational training, then you should see some value in providing some kind of financial aid, so that people from all backgrounds have the possibility of attending college.
Of course people want faster connections. Duh. Want isnt need tho.
Ehhh... I mean, we don't "need" very much, in hunter/gatherer terms. Do I need a fast Internet connection? I suppose not, in that I wouldn't suddenly starve to death. But I also don't "need" any Internet or TV whatsoever.
But once you get past that kind of argument, the distinction between "want" and "need" get really fuzzy. Do I "need" a fast Internet connection? Well no, I could give up on the idea of 4K video. I could be completely unproductive at work. I could forget about streaming an kind of media, and go back to a 56K modem. I could.
But on the other hand, yes, I absolutely do need a fast Internet connection. Because I want to be able to stream high-quality media in real time. Because I want to be able to get my work done. Because I wan to be able to protect all my data with an online backup. Because, god damnit, all of us are dealing with large data sets, and this isn't 1998 anymore.
Have you used Windows 10? Windows 10 Pro constantly pops up to tell you to try out a new game from their app store, use OneDrive, use Cortana, or buy Office 365. Even after I've cleared the notification, it pops up again within a few days.
How about they start pitching a version of cable, stripped down to a few channels, each actually meaningful and with varied programming, with NO COMMERCIALS in exchange for the subscription costs... you know, like it all started out?
I find it funny, now, to think about how it all started. The reason you had channels called things like "The SciFi Channel" or "Comedy Central" or "Music Television" was cable packages basically had a scifi channel, a comedy channel, and a music channel. It's like, "Oh, you want some comedy? Put on Comedy Central. It's recordings of stand-up comedy, 24x7. You want music? We have a channel of music videos, again, 24x7."
Sorry, I'm going off topic.
I think the real change is going to be when they simply get rid of channels altogether. I mean, think about it. Channels don't make sense. Everything should be on-demand. If you want people to be able to watch the latest episode of a show at a specific time, just make it available at that time. Even for live events, make a stream available when the event starts, but allow people to start at the beginning at any time they like. But why bother with channels and time slots, when you can just watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it?
I think the future has been obvious for years, though the industry is going to fight it tooth and nail. You don't need cable companies, and you don't need channels. Basically, you need dumb-pipe ISPs, and then you need services like Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu/iTunes. I think Amazon Prime is actually a good model of where things are eventually going. You have one base service that provides certain content on-demand, and then you have "rentals" where you pay a certain premium for the newest content, a la carte. Then, you can also subscribe to other "channels", were you pay $x a month, and now you can watch Showtime's content, or HBO's content, all on demand and ad-free. Ideally, you should be able to go through a single service, subscribe to what you want, and through that, get all the content you want.
Netflix works just fine at 1.3/384k... We don't necessary need faster, we just need truly limitless, like it always has been.
At the same time, if you're happy with low-bitrate streams, that can also help to take care of the "limitless" part. If cable companies cap your bandwidth, Netflix could just give you the option to watch streams at a low enough bitrate that you're unlikely to hit your cap. You could listen to all your concerts at 64 kbps audio to cut down on your usage, since you don't care about quality.
That's not to say caps are ok, just to say that your post is short-sighted. The amount of data we shove around is ever-increasing, and it's not just about entertainment media. I tend to move around a lot of big files for my work, and having transfers take a long time wastes my time, and makes my clients unhappy. We don't just need our Internet to be limitless, we also need it to be fast. And reliable on top of that. The traditional problem is that these companies have not wanted to invest in improving internet speed and reliability, since it enabled customers to use competing services. The introduction of data caps has only arisen as a method of blocking use of those competing services as they increase speed.
Well first, I'm not saying they should be. I use my Mac for work, and I'd rather have them continue to refine the desktop experience than make a half-assed play for the gaming market.
However, they took a chunk of time in the conference to talk about 3D performance and VR, which would easily lead someone to think they're interested in gaming. That's not quite how I took it, but I could understand someone making that assumption.
Also, there is a strategic reason for Apple to go after the gaming market: it's one of the hold-out uses for Windows that keeps people from switching. I have a Windows machine for gaming. If, instead of buying that Windows machine, I could have purchased a Mac with comparable performance for a comparable price, and run all the same games on MacOS, bypassing Windows entirely, I would have done that.
So that'd be at least one additional Mac purchase they'd have today. I'm sure I'm not the only one, so there probably is a market for for Mac gaming machines. But, of course, there are other considerations. Is the market big enough to warrant investment in developing new products? Would those sales really create new purchases, or would they cannibalize existing sales? I don't know the answers to those questions.