When you buy hardware as a service, I guess you should expect that your hardware could fail if the service goes away for whatever reason. The problem is, the hardware isn't advertised as "working until we brick it, which may be sooner than you think". The more this happens, the more consumers will demand a firmer guarantee. Or balk at "smart" stuff altogether. Or at least expensive "smart" stuff.
My Mom had a "Memory Frame" that used a 3rd party service to display pictures from Flickr, facebook, etc. Actually, I guess it would be a "4th party" since this was an online intermediary between the frame and the social sites. The fine print on the box implied those features would only work as long as the service existed, but to the casual reader that seemed to imply that if, e.g., facebook disappeared, then so would the pics. Well sure, you think, can't see your facebook stuff if facebook goes away. Fair enough. The intermediary service was only disclosed in the fine print of the "agreement" in the user manual sealed in the box. Users complaining on the Toshiba forums were advised that the company had a right to shut it down at any time: "just look at the fine print as you'll see we're right!"
So I'm resistant to getting a smart TV, or a smart door lock or a smart thermostat, and not just for security reasons. When you buy a product like that in the "durable goods" category, you expect it to have a working lifespan worthy of being called a durable good. Not to have to call the HVAC guy in the middle of the night in sometime January because Google discontinues Nest support and your thermostat is now just a piece of decor.
I'm in! Why not? I can't wait for that settlement when I get 47 cents off my next eBay invoice. Or 0.2% of my seller fees charged from July 1, 1998 to August 27th, 2004 refunded to my account if I have the documentation to prove it.
As per my usual, my eBay account has all fake information and a throw-away password.
I don't get it. Why? How do you buy or sell stuff with fake info? Of if you don't buy or sell stuff, why create a login at all? Can't one browse through listings all they want without an account?
Would it pull over if it sees the blinking lights / siren behind it?
Could you spoof it with a bunch of blinking xmas lights on the side of the road?
Actually a very interesting question - makes me wonder if driverless cars will have some law-enforcement override (some remote "pul over" switch) that's required for their usage.
One of the remaining systems not ready for prime time is vehicle communication systems for autonomous cars. Usually examples cited are vehicle-to-vehicle: turn signals, brake lights, etc. and infrastructure-to-vehicle: signs, traffic lights. Detecting the robot car was being pulled over by the cops would be in the former category, I suppose. Or maybe it would just be an auto-debit on the owners bank account.
That was just too easy. I figured it would be a lot harder to get The Man to admit that traffic enforcement is at least as much a moneymaker as it is a public safety function. Everybody knew it, but it is refreshing to see it in black and white.
Obviously there are exceptions. "Quality and Safety" is one of the top level links on GM's website. And "Ignition Recall" is right there on the front page.
Never buy a car from GM. A company that practices this type of policy can not have my confidence in any way.
All you know from TFA is that GM has a list. What you don't know is whether other automakers -- or manufacturers in general -- have similar lists. Given that all companies of any size have lawyers whose job it is to reduce potential legal liability, I'd have to assume that GM is not alone in having such a policy.
Then learn! RubiksPlace has one of the better tutorials on the net. Good cubes can be purchased for under $15. Buy one by Dayan, or a similar company. The official Rubik's ones mostly suck. Follow the instructions on the site and you'll have a solve within half an hour. Then you can proceed onto learning and understanding the process. It's rather fun. I've just started and my goal for this year to get a sub one minute solve. I'm busy, so if I can nail that I'll be very happy.
Having tried some, I'm willing to state that there is no tutorial in the world that would enable me to solve it, either. The cube is filed in the same folder as juggling, having a baby, and curling up my tongue -- under "stuff I just can't ever do". I tried 13 moves on the google doodle before just angrily clicking all over in frustration to see how high I could drive the counter.
I'm not sure, but I imagined this would make it unsolvable.
I can't solve it either, so this is pretty much PIDOOMA, but I believe that you -- WELL, not you or me, but someone -- can rotate any arbitrary piece in any arbitrary direction. So doing this does not prevent the cube from being solved. Would love to see this confirmed or denied for someone who actually knows for sure . ..
Also, if the thing is 40 years old, that means that having mine for only 34-ish years, I will never set the "longest time to solve a cube" record.
Holy mojibake, Batman! I don't know how:SÃf£o Paulo renders in your browser -- maybe it looks ok to you -- but at least I have a chance of figuring it out as "Sao Paolo" in the summary rather than the character salad Slashdot makes of your "correction".
Since you've already heard about getting alarms, insurance, making backups and inventorying your electronics, computers or priceless antique cans, you might want to think about upgrading your door locks - assuming you're not renting, of course. Did you get them re-keyed when you moved in? If you're like most people, you didn't get around to it. Why not have the locksmith come out and do that and install new locks at the same time. Maybe reinforce the door jam if necessary around the deadbolt, and see if he's got other advice.
Do your windows all lock? Go outside and pretend you lost your key. Try to figure out how to get back inside.
If you make your house a little harder to break into than your neighbors', it probably won't be you that gets robbed.
Remember that old Barbara Stanwyck movie where she's a streetwise singer on the lam hiding out with a bunch of nerdy lexicographers who are just coincidentally trying to add modern slang to their encyclopedia?
I don't know why I just thought of that now. Oh well. Please carry on with the lesson.
. . . it needs to be understandable by the non-geeks in the charity — there is no IT expertise here . ..
you need to do the simplest possible solution. And by simple, I mean one flat file you can backup and restore and one application that needs to be (re)installed would not be overkill (or is that underkill for this situation?)*. The more you have to add to that in terms of re-creating the system after a failure, the more you've set up a "dead-man" system -- where the "dead man" is you. One out-of-control cement mixer with your name on it and your system is one dead hard drive from gone. You'll know you're successful if you feel you can quit the volunteer gig without feeling guilty that the system won't be running in six months.
*That specific case may be too simple, I don't know. What I really mean is: as simple as possible without sacrificing essential features.
Thing is, Comcast is so insanely profitable they have no need to 'recoup their revenue'. They do not have some magic entitlement to such profits, esp when they get them in part by promising service levels they can not actually provide.
You know what's better than insane profits? More insane profits. And unlike data, there's no profit cap.
There are obviously huge numbers of poor and destitute that have no access to luxuries like mobile phones. Wealthier people are walking around with multiple mobile subscriptions. Either by work/personal accounts, or accounts for tablets and modems, or whatever. So I wonder how far past 100% they will be able to go? 150%? 200 even? It's a good time to be Samsung. Also hard to believe that HTC and Nokia are in so much trouble. Even a small part of 7 billion is a lot of business.
Interestingly enough, mobile phones aren't the luxury in the developing world we might think them to be, considering that more people have phones than have electricity*. They're used to replace obvious things, like wired communications, and less obvious services, like banking.
While actual evidence would be good, it will likely never be "proven" in the same way that for fifty years, smoking was never "proven" to cause lung cancer.
Imidaclopirid is a really useful insecticide, and I am not at all thrilled that it might be completely banned. It works perfectly in greenhouses and indoors. Perhaps instead of banning it, they could increase the number of beehives by a factor of ten? Or maybe they could breed imidaclopirid-resistant bees?
Or maybe I just have to buy a 50-year supply of the stuff.
Might want to buy a 50 year supply of honey, macadamia nuts, apples, squash, melons, canola oil (I sure didn't know that one!), etc., too. I can personally pollinate -- but it seems really creepy -- a one-person supply of spaghetti squash, but what about all the folks in apartments and whose HOAs forbid growing food?
I've got one of those no-horizon white backdrop things, cheapo-style. I saw a big one at a photographer's studio that you could put a whole family on for a portrait. I thought it would be a good idea for shooting ebay stuff, so I "made" one by partially rolling up a large sheet (#102 on the patent diagrams) of white cardstock. And lights. I borrowed everyone's bedside lamps (106, 107, 115, 117) in the house. I just figured I was stealing a standard photographic technique. Didn't occur to me that the photographer whose studio technique I cribbed was one of those unknown geniuses who didn't know what a gold mine he was sitting on.
Slashdot Mirror
When you buy hardware as a service, I guess you should expect that your hardware could fail if the service goes away for whatever reason. The problem is, the hardware isn't advertised as "working until we brick it, which may be sooner than you think". The more this happens, the more consumers will demand a firmer guarantee. Or balk at "smart" stuff altogether. Or at least expensive "smart" stuff.
My Mom had a "Memory Frame" that used a 3rd party service to display pictures from Flickr, facebook, etc. Actually, I guess it would be a "4th party" since this was an online intermediary between the frame and the social sites. The fine print on the box implied those features would only work as long as the service existed, but to the casual reader that seemed to imply that if, e.g., facebook disappeared, then so would the pics. Well sure, you think, can't see your facebook stuff if facebook goes away. Fair enough. The intermediary service was only disclosed in the fine print of the "agreement" in the user manual sealed in the box. Users complaining on the Toshiba forums were advised that the company had a right to shut it down at any time: "just look at the fine print as you'll see we're right!"
So I'm resistant to getting a smart TV, or a smart door lock or a smart thermostat, and not just for security reasons. When you buy a product like that in the "durable goods" category, you expect it to have a working lifespan worthy of being called a durable good. Not to have to call the HVAC guy in the middle of the night in sometime January because Google discontinues Nest support and your thermostat is now just a piece of decor.
Who's with me?
I'm in! Why not? I can't wait for that settlement when I get 47 cents off my next eBay invoice. Or 0.2% of my seller fees charged from July 1, 1998 to August 27th, 2004 refunded to my account if I have the documentation to prove it.
As per my usual, my eBay account has all fake information and a throw-away password.
I don't get it. Why? How do you buy or sell stuff with fake info? Of if you don't buy or sell stuff, why create a login at all? Can't one browse through listings all they want without an account?
As I stated, NO ALERTS in my account. So perhaps you should learn to read. Since you missed the major portion of what I wrote.
So you can read stuff from the future, but instead of checking lottery results or the Daily Racing Form, you're reading your eBay messages?
Wait, I've gotten speeding tickets before and I've always had to write the check to the city/county courthouse, not the police department.
Salesmen get commissions, why not the cops?
Would it pull over if it sees the blinking lights / siren behind it?
Could you spoof it with a bunch of blinking xmas lights on the side of the road?
Actually a very interesting question - makes me wonder if driverless cars will have some law-enforcement override (some remote "pul over" switch) that's required for their usage.
One of the remaining systems not ready for prime time is vehicle communication systems for autonomous cars. Usually examples cited are vehicle-to-vehicle: turn signals, brake lights, etc. and infrastructure-to-vehicle: signs, traffic lights. Detecting the robot car was being pulled over by the cops would be in the former category, I suppose. Or maybe it would just be an auto-debit on the owners bank account.
If [the police] think someone is suspicious, they look for a traffic violation as an excuse to pull them over and investigate.
That is awfully reminiscent of:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
-(attributed to) Richelieu
That was just too easy. I figured it would be a lot harder to get The Man to admit that traffic enforcement is at least as much a moneymaker as it is a public safety function. Everybody knew it, but it is refreshing to see it in black and white.
For using all 69 words. No exceptions, right?
Obviously there are exceptions. "Quality and Safety" is one of the top level links on GM's website. And "Ignition Recall" is right there on the front page.
Never buy a car from GM. A company that practices this type of policy can not have my confidence in any way.
All you know from TFA is that GM has a list. What you don't know is whether other automakers -- or manufacturers in general -- have similar lists. Given that all companies of any size have lawyers whose job it is to reduce potential legal liability, I'd have to assume that GM is not alone in having such a policy.
. . . the cube does, in fact, become unsolvable.
[Mr. Burns Voice]Excellent.[/Mr Burns Voice] You've made at least two guys' day with that piece of info. Heh heh heh.
I can solve a 5x5x5 rubik's cube in 10 minutes. How about you?
Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?
Then learn! RubiksPlace has one of the better tutorials on the net. Good cubes can be purchased for under $15. Buy one by Dayan, or a similar company. The official Rubik's ones mostly suck. Follow the instructions on the site and you'll have a solve within half an hour. Then you can proceed onto learning and understanding the process. It's rather fun. I've just started and my goal for this year to get a sub one minute solve. I'm busy, so if I can nail that I'll be very happy.
Having tried some, I'm willing to state that there is no tutorial in the world that would enable me to solve it, either. The cube is filed in the same folder as juggling, having a baby, and curling up my tongue -- under "stuff I just can't ever do". I tried 13 moves on the google doodle before just angrily clicking all over in frustration to see how high I could drive the counter.
I'm not sure, but I imagined this would make it unsolvable.
I can't solve it either, so this is pretty much PIDOOMA, but I believe that you -- WELL, not you or me, but someone -- can rotate any arbitrary piece in any arbitrary direction. So doing this does not prevent the cube from being solved. Would love to see this confirmed or denied for someone who actually knows for sure . . .
Also, if the thing is 40 years old, that means that having mine for only 34-ish years, I will never set the "longest time to solve a cube" record.
Holy mojibake, Batman! I don't know how :SÃf£o Paulo renders in your browser -- maybe it looks ok to you -- but at least I have a chance of figuring it out as "Sao Paolo" in the summary rather than the character salad Slashdot makes of your "correction".
Bringing them into Canada makes sense, with some of the highest sin taxes in the world, though. They're $14 a pack in this province.
So, if you accidentally try to bring more than your personal quota into the country, is it a sin tax error?
Since you've already heard about getting alarms, insurance, making backups and inventorying your electronics, computers or priceless antique cans, you might want to think about upgrading your door locks - assuming you're not renting, of course. Did you get them re-keyed when you moved in? If you're like most people, you didn't get around to it. Why not have the locksmith come out and do that and install new locks at the same time. Maybe reinforce the door jam if necessary around the deadbolt, and see if he's got other advice.
Do your windows all lock? Go outside and pretend you lost your key. Try to figure out how to get back inside.
If you make your house a little harder to break into than your neighbors', it probably won't be you that gets robbed.
If you don't know what it means, don't use it.
Remember that old Barbara Stanwyck movie where she's a streetwise singer on the lam hiding out with a bunch of nerdy lexicographers who are just coincidentally trying to add modern slang to their encyclopedia?
I don't know why I just thought of that now. Oh well. Please carry on with the lesson.
Given this info you've given us:
. . . it needs to be understandable by the non-geeks in the charity — there is no IT expertise here . . .
you need to do the simplest possible solution. And by simple, I mean one flat file you can backup and restore and one application that needs to be (re)installed would not be overkill (or is that underkill for this situation?)*. The more you have to add to that in terms of re-creating the system after a failure, the more you've set up a "dead-man" system -- where the "dead man" is you. One out-of-control cement mixer with your name on it and your system is one dead hard drive from gone. You'll know you're successful if you feel you can quit the volunteer gig without feeling guilty that the system won't be running in six months.
*That specific case may be too simple, I don't know. What I really mean is: as simple as possible without sacrificing essential features.
Thing is, Comcast is so insanely profitable they have no need to 'recoup their revenue'. They do not have some magic entitlement to such profits, esp when they get them in part by promising service levels they can not actually provide.
You know what's better than insane profits? More insane profits. And unlike data, there's no profit cap.
There are obviously huge numbers of poor and destitute that have no access to luxuries like mobile phones. Wealthier people are walking around with multiple mobile subscriptions. Either by work/personal accounts, or accounts for tablets and modems, or whatever. So I wonder how far past 100% they will be able to go? 150%? 200 even? It's a good time to be Samsung. Also hard to believe that HTC and Nokia are in so much trouble. Even a small part of 7 billion is a lot of business.
Interestingly enough, mobile phones aren't the luxury in the developing world we might think them to be, considering that more people have phones than have electricity*. They're used to replace obvious things, like wired communications, and less obvious services, like banking.
*WTF, right? How do you charge your phone?
Don't cell phones have GPS and Tower Tracking to get this information out?
Those things are nowhere near as accurate all the time as you might hope they were.
Good article in IEEE Spectrum on emergency calls (911, 999, etc.) and the impact of newer communication technology like VOIP and mobile.
While actual evidence would be good, it will likely never be "proven" in the same way that for fifty years, smoking was never "proven" to cause lung cancer.
Imidaclopirid is a really useful insecticide, and I am not at all thrilled that it might be completely banned. It works perfectly in greenhouses and indoors. Perhaps instead of banning it, they could increase the number of beehives by a factor of ten? Or maybe they could breed imidaclopirid-resistant bees?
Or maybe I just have to buy a 50-year supply of the stuff.
Might want to buy a 50 year supply of honey, macadamia nuts, apples, squash, melons, canola oil (I sure didn't know that one!), etc., too. I can personally pollinate -- but it seems really creepy -- a one-person supply of spaghetti squash, but what about all the folks in apartments and whose HOAs forbid growing food?
I've got one of those no-horizon white backdrop things, cheapo-style. I saw a big one at a photographer's studio that you could put a whole family on for a portrait. I thought it would be a good idea for shooting ebay stuff, so I "made" one by partially rolling up a large sheet (#102 on the patent diagrams) of white cardstock. And lights. I borrowed everyone's bedside lamps (106, 107, 115, 117) in the house. I just figured I was stealing a standard photographic technique. Didn't occur to me that the photographer whose studio technique I cribbed was one of those unknown geniuses who didn't know what a gold mine he was sitting on.
What about lecturers where the only real value is the grade from showing up?
That kinda answers itself, doesn't it?