Political leaders of any stripe can almost always be classified as "elites". It's practically a prerequisite for the job. Even Che Guevara, whose father was the great-grandson of one of the richest men in South America at the time, and whose fully blue-blooded mother (of Spanish nobility) was the granddaughter of a wealthy landowner, was an elite.
They do, and there's been a large amount of investment in its tech sector by companies in the US and elsewhere. A lot of the newest CPU microarchitecture has been designed in Israel, such as Sandy Bridge (which is featured in the newer Core i7s and others).
There certainly is a popular feeling of distrust towards everything the government does here in the US; hell, that's American as apple pie.
The problem is, is that much of the information that gets disseminated to us by private entities like the ones you mentioned originates from US government sources. Especially so if that information is related to foreign affairs. These private entities, be it Fox News or MSNBC, are wholly dependant on the government for information on these topics. They can certainly add their own spin and view on the matter, but there's only so far you can take a piece of information. In the end, a lot of it comes out the same across networks.
Remember, most US news agencies no longer maintain foreign bureaus. They have no real foreign correspondents. The owners of these agencies decided, quite rightly so, that dedicating those kinds of resources towards reporting on foreign matters was not at all cost-effective. There was simply too little genuine interest in the public for things happening on the other side of the world. I believe the only US news agency that still has foreign bureaus and correspondents is CNN.
So, don't dismiss the possibility that the media is an excellent avenue for the government to use in order to shape public opinion.
There are multiple VPN providers that advertise their services as a way to use BitTorrent anonymously. While that may seem like a meaningless marketing gimmick, it lets you know about how the service owners intend their product to be used. There are many VPN providers that will actually block BitTorrent traffic, namely because of the subpoenas they may have received in the past in response to filesharing. Plenty of people use VPN in order to circumvent harsh government censorship and control, as opposed to downloading crappy music or movies. So, don't expect all VPN providers to tolerate your use of their services for filesharing purposes.
Depending on the service and various time-variant factors, you can expect speeds to be fairly satisfactory. I wouldn't expect speeds in the 1.0+ MB/s range or anything. Perhaps someone can offer experience contrary to that.
In regards to industry lawyers getting your info from VPN providers: sure, that's still a possibility. That's why it is important to see what country the VPN is based in, as laws regarding the matter differ from place to place. Also, these providers prominently advertise their policy in regards to logging user information. Some will say they keep no logs; a more believable pitch is that they keep logs only for one or more days. Whether you believe any of that or not is up to you, but without logs, there wouldn't be anything connecting you to what you were doing.
While that's very considerate of you, a funny post marked as 'Informative' is more than likely to get subsequently modded down; messages with comedic substance tend to come across as wholly incorrect assertions when read from sources being represented as useful information.
While the assistance with the bail is neat, the real story here is that Michael Moore has said he will be lending support in regards to the online availability of the WikiLeaks content.
If he follows through on that promise, then I believe that will be very beneficial for WikiLeaks, as they're starting to need help in this area (given that their service is getting cut by all these different institutions).
It only took two days since the attack occurred for the perpetrator to be tracked down and arrested? I can't say I've ever heard of such a fast response time to a computer crime. I'm quite surprised.
The lawyers are taking home 25% of the 8.5 million (plus interest), plus reimbursement of costs and expenses, according to the class action website.
Frankly, if I had to choose between a company keeping the money it has earned versus going to a random group of lawyers, I'd go with the former. Maybe I'd be more for punishing an organization financially if they were engaging in risky behavior and refusing to stop; however, from what I can remember about the incident, Google apologized and shut the thing down quickly (I'm not 100% on that, though).
Although it lacks any special sort of strange shape that promotes ergonomic use of a keyboard, this keyboard is mechanical-switch, very large and sturdy, and a pleasure to type on: Customizer 104/105.
This is true; it is difficult to get TV service if you subscribe to Comcast Business.
As far as I'm concerned, high quality Internet service trumps TV any day. I get great download/upload speeds (not sure what residential is at, but it is fine for my purposes), great 24 hour customer/technical support that knows wtf they're talking about (Me: "Hey, can you set up reverse DNS for me?" Them: "Sure!"), two or more static IP's, consistent monthly prices that don't go up, etc.
I'll never buy TV service again, ever. What a waste of time. Sure it's just as easy to waste time on the computer, but at least there's a chance you might end up doing something productive.
(By the way, for people having issues with their Domain Helper crap: Have your network set to use the 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3 (etc.) nameservers for DNS. I never even knew about this new service until reading about it here.)
Although you'll get different interpretations of the same talking points by sampling polarizing US media, it's doubtful you'll get any different, tenable pieces of information from the endeavor.
I believe that the most important interpretation and view point regarding a current event at the end of the day is your own. Instead of juggling interpretations of the same data provided by journalists who are all working under the same framework, I find it more useful to juggle opposing accounts and data.
To do so you need to find sources that operate with interests that are actually opposed to those held by your average news sources. That means, if the news topic is regarding Iran, comparing what you have read in US media to articles put out by Iranian news agencies and other countries in the surrounding region.
While you may think that anything coming out of a state-run Iranian news agency is rubbish, the fact of the matter is plenty of journalists in the Western world rely on information provided by their own government in regards to matters on the world stage (not entirely of course, but a large amount of it is). The information provided will be whatever it needs to be in order to fuel their interests while (hopefully) conforming to any applicable laws, and that's it.
It's a completely reasonable assertion to view a news source as potentially unreliable based simply on its point of origin vs the subject matter.
It isn't necessarily because the people writing the article are untrustworthy or biased, instead it is the framework they operate in (where they get their information from, government sources, etc.) itself that is biased, as it naturally has interests.
If pirating software is anything but an impossible endeavor for users, then it is going to happen.
If a solid revenue stream is your primary concern as a developer, and piracy is something that is keeping you up at night, then you should be making apps that cater to businesses instead of individual users.
If the platform is such that targeting anything but individual users is not feasible, then unless your app is extremely popular, it is a poor platform to use for generating revenue.
Nuclear weapons, by their very nature are NOT defensive.
Regardless of whether mutual assured destruction is a sound military doctrine or not, the fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons have resulted in the deterrence of conventional aggression between states belonging to the developed world.
Throughout history, the great powers of Europe have regularly gone to war with each other; that is, up until 1945. Since then, there have been no major conflicts at all between the major states. These are the same states that suffered unbelievable devastation and losses due to World War I, and still that wasn't enough to prevent a second World War from occurring a short time after.
To say that the nature of government underwent a fundamental change in the year 1945 would be a ridiculous claim. A more reasonable claim is that, for the first time in history, the costs of committing acts of conventional aggression (between major powers) have become so great and terrible as to dissuade their execution.
Individuals supporting nuclear abolition have good intentions. After all, nuclear weapons are horrible weapons of destruction easily capable of causing our complete eradication. While that's true, I assume that, based on our own long history, that complete nuclear abolition would usher in the return of conventional aggression between major powers, leading to major conflicts or even a new world war.
I bet a disproportionate number of CEO's have MBAs.
Actually, based on a 2005 study on S&P 500 CEOs, only 39% of S&P 500 CEOs have a MBA degree. I suppose that can still be considered disproportionate in comparison to the general public; however, there are other professions whose practitioners are more likely to have MBAs that would have better served as examples for the point you were making.
Putting all of that aside, the most interesting part of the study linked above, in my opinion, is the listing of the most common undergraduate degrees among CEOs. It would appear that the most common type of undergraduate degree among S&P 500 CEOs is actually a type of Engineering degree (20%). If you look at only the top 100 CEOs, then that figure gets even greater (22%).
Engineers are typically going to possess a large amount of scientific knowledge, general intelligence, and excellent problem solving abilities (I would hope). If someone has all of these traits, but can also develop excellent social skills and excellent business/financial smarts, they can go very far.
While this may be a "neat" solution, if a spammer has your facebook credentials, then they have access to this new system as well.
I must admit I am not familiar with the nature of "facebook spam", but I assume that it is possible that the user may not know his or her account has been compromised. He or she may have no inclination to be constantly monitoring the list of logged on devices.
The spammer most certainly would be, and I'd imagine that they would just block the legitimate user's devices as they appeared.
I'm sure getting back access to your account at that point would be a really fun experience.
Still hoping for a true successor to BG. A great story is crucial, however what BG offered to me that NWN never did was the ability to greatly increase the challenge and tactical elements of encounters in the game through the use of tactics and AI improving mods.
Although NWN featured an editor for creating new modules, I don't believe it offered people the kind of access to the mechanics of the game that the mods created by the reverse-engineered Infinity Engine editors had. I make that assumption because I could never find any mod that increased the AI and the tactical elements of encounters significantly for NWN.
On the same note, Dragon Age was too easy. You shouldn't be able to beat the last boss on your first or second try, or any significant encounter for that matter when the difficulty is turned up. At that point you are no longer playing a game, you're watching a movie that requires subtle hand movements and simple thought processing for playback.
Damn straight, I loved that game. I remember the first (and only the first) game in that series (actually, it was a remake of the first) was available for the Macintosh, which was all I was using back then. The rest of the series was only available for Windows.
I'm not sure why that was the case, but that pretty much caused me to dump the Mac for Windows 95 as soon as I could.
After discovering a local ISP wasn't able to service my apartment appropriately, I ended up getting Comcast Business class. You get a lot for a pittance of additional cost (~$20 / month more than residential around here).
One thing that's very different is the support. The support is phenomenally better. You call the phone number, and in seconds a knowledgeable person who is able to speak English well will get on the line (never had to be transferred to someone useful) 24/7. Other than better support, I get two static IP's with the package, and I believe that the business service has no monthly cap. Additionally, and unlike the residential service (where your monthly bill can get jacked up for no good reason) the rates I pay are contractually locked.
So (at least in my area) if you get residential, you're pretty much a sucker.
It is also valuable simply to see where the writers of the articles got their information from,
A problem I have been noticing lately is that many of the references in older articles are dead links. I am unsure what the rate of articles with dead references is across Wikipedia as a whole; however, it seems to be quite high across the small subset of articles I have read.
While this isn't really any concern for references that originate from a printed source, a number of them appear to originate from, and exist solely on, the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Political leaders of any stripe can almost always be classified as "elites". It's practically a prerequisite for the job. Even Che Guevara, whose father was the great-grandson of one of the richest men in South America at the time, and whose fully blue-blooded mother (of Spanish nobility) was the granddaughter of a wealthy landowner, was an elite.
They do, and there's been a large amount of investment in its tech sector by companies in the US and elsewhere. A lot of the newest CPU microarchitecture has been designed in Israel, such as Sandy Bridge (which is featured in the newer Core i7s and others).
There certainly is a popular feeling of distrust towards everything the government does here in the US; hell, that's American as apple pie.
The problem is, is that much of the information that gets disseminated to us by private entities like the ones you mentioned originates from US government sources. Especially so if that information is related to foreign affairs. These private entities, be it Fox News or MSNBC, are wholly dependant on the government for information on these topics. They can certainly add their own spin and view on the matter, but there's only so far you can take a piece of information. In the end, a lot of it comes out the same across networks.
Remember, most US news agencies no longer maintain foreign bureaus. They have no real foreign correspondents. The owners of these agencies decided, quite rightly so, that dedicating those kinds of resources towards reporting on foreign matters was not at all cost-effective. There was simply too little genuine interest in the public for things happening on the other side of the world. I believe the only US news agency that still has foreign bureaus and correspondents is CNN.
So, don't dismiss the possibility that the media is an excellent avenue for the government to use in order to shape public opinion.
I have a similar story and situation and I couldn't agree more. No work on Christmas however; have to give the family face time every now and then.
There are multiple VPN providers that advertise their services as a way to use BitTorrent anonymously. While that may seem like a meaningless marketing gimmick, it lets you know about how the service owners intend their product to be used. There are many VPN providers that will actually block BitTorrent traffic, namely because of the subpoenas they may have received in the past in response to filesharing. Plenty of people use VPN in order to circumvent harsh government censorship and control, as opposed to downloading crappy music or movies. So, don't expect all VPN providers to tolerate your use of their services for filesharing purposes.
Depending on the service and various time-variant factors, you can expect speeds to be fairly satisfactory. I wouldn't expect speeds in the 1.0+ MB/s range or anything. Perhaps someone can offer experience contrary to that.
In regards to industry lawyers getting your info from VPN providers: sure, that's still a possibility. That's why it is important to see what country the VPN is based in, as laws regarding the matter differ from place to place. Also, these providers prominently advertise their policy in regards to logging user information. Some will say they keep no logs; a more believable pitch is that they keep logs only for one or more days. Whether you believe any of that or not is up to you, but without logs, there wouldn't be anything connecting you to what you were doing.
Besides, the NYT is the lapdog of the liberal left..
Informative? Hardly.
... what more do u want?
The definitive text on the topic, I'd say. Google is great for introductions on things.
If I want the price to be free for my über game, and Amazon decides it is worth $5? They get $4 per sale and i get $1 (that I didn't ask for).
Are you complaining about making money?
I like to reward folks for being funny.
While that's very considerate of you, a funny post marked as 'Informative' is more than likely to get subsequently modded down; messages with comedic substance tend to come across as wholly incorrect assertions when read from sources being represented as useful information.
China has a permanent seat on the UN security council.
That being said, they have the ability to veto any substantive resolution designed to address their intrusion into Google's computer systems.
While the assistance with the bail is neat, the real story here is that Michael Moore has said he will be lending support in regards to the online availability of the WikiLeaks content.
If he follows through on that promise, then I believe that will be very beneficial for WikiLeaks, as they're starting to need help in this area (given that their service is getting cut by all these different institutions).
It only took two days since the attack occurred for the perpetrator to be tracked down and arrested? I can't say I've ever heard of such a fast response time to a computer crime. I'm quite surprised.
Is this typical these days?
The lawyers are taking home 25% of the 8.5 million (plus interest), plus reimbursement of costs and expenses, according to the class action website.
Frankly, if I had to choose between a company keeping the money it has earned versus going to a random group of lawyers, I'd go with the former. Maybe I'd be more for punishing an organization financially if they were engaging in risky behavior and refusing to stop; however, from what I can remember about the incident, Google apologized and shut the thing down quickly (I'm not 100% on that, though).
Although it lacks any special sort of strange shape that promotes ergonomic use of a keyboard, this keyboard is mechanical-switch, very large and sturdy, and a pleasure to type on: Customizer 104/105.
This is true; it is difficult to get TV service if you subscribe to Comcast Business.
As far as I'm concerned, high quality Internet service trumps TV any day. I get great download/upload speeds (not sure what residential is at, but it is fine for my purposes), great 24 hour customer/technical support that knows wtf they're talking about (Me: "Hey, can you set up reverse DNS for me?" Them: "Sure!"), two or more static IP's, consistent monthly prices that don't go up, etc.
I'll never buy TV service again, ever. What a waste of time. Sure it's just as easy to waste time on the computer, but at least there's a chance you might end up doing something productive.
(By the way, for people having issues with their Domain Helper crap: Have your network set to use the 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3 (etc.) nameservers for DNS. I never even knew about this new service until reading about it here.)
Although you'll get different interpretations of the same talking points by sampling polarizing US media, it's doubtful you'll get any different, tenable pieces of information from the endeavor.
I believe that the most important interpretation and view point regarding a current event at the end of the day is your own. Instead of juggling interpretations of the same data provided by journalists who are all working under the same framework, I find it more useful to juggle opposing accounts and data.
To do so you need to find sources that operate with interests that are actually opposed to those held by your average news sources. That means, if the news topic is regarding Iran, comparing what you have read in US media to articles put out by Iranian news agencies and other countries in the surrounding region.
While you may think that anything coming out of a state-run Iranian news agency is rubbish, the fact of the matter is plenty of journalists in the Western world rely on information provided by their own government in regards to matters on the world stage (not entirely of course, but a large amount of it is). The information provided will be whatever it needs to be in order to fuel their interests while (hopefully) conforming to any applicable laws, and that's it.
It's a completely reasonable assertion to view a news source as potentially unreliable based simply on its point of origin vs the subject matter.
It isn't necessarily because the people writing the article are untrustworthy or biased, instead it is the framework they operate in (where they get their information from, government sources, etc.) itself that is biased, as it naturally has interests.
If pirating software is anything but an impossible endeavor for users, then it is going to happen.
If a solid revenue stream is your primary concern as a developer, and piracy is something that is keeping you up at night, then you should be making apps that cater to businesses instead of individual users.
If the platform is such that targeting anything but individual users is not feasible, then unless your app is extremely popular, it is a poor platform to use for generating revenue.
Regardless of whether mutual assured destruction is a sound military doctrine or not, the fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons have resulted in the deterrence of conventional aggression between states belonging to the developed world.
Throughout history, the great powers of Europe have regularly gone to war with each other; that is, up until 1945. Since then, there have been no major conflicts at all between the major states. These are the same states that suffered unbelievable devastation and losses due to World War I, and still that wasn't enough to prevent a second World War from occurring a short time after.
To say that the nature of government underwent a fundamental change in the year 1945 would be a ridiculous claim. A more reasonable claim is that, for the first time in history, the costs of committing acts of conventional aggression (between major powers) have become so great and terrible as to dissuade their execution.
Individuals supporting nuclear abolition have good intentions. After all, nuclear weapons are horrible weapons of destruction easily capable of causing our complete eradication. While that's true, I assume that, based on our own long history, that complete nuclear abolition would usher in the return of conventional aggression between major powers, leading to major conflicts or even a new world war.
Here's a very short paper on the subject from a foreign-policy think tank in DC: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Miller1.pdf.
Actually, based on a 2005 study on S&P 500 CEOs, only 39% of S&P 500 CEOs have a MBA degree. I suppose that can still be considered disproportionate in comparison to the general public; however, there are other professions whose practitioners are more likely to have MBAs that would have better served as examples for the point you were making.
Putting all of that aside, the most interesting part of the study linked above, in my opinion, is the listing of the most common undergraduate degrees among CEOs. It would appear that the most common type of undergraduate degree among S&P 500 CEOs is actually a type of Engineering degree (20%). If you look at only the top 100 CEOs, then that figure gets even greater (22%).
Engineers are typically going to possess a large amount of scientific knowledge, general intelligence, and excellent problem solving abilities (I would hope). If someone has all of these traits, but can also develop excellent social skills and excellent business/financial smarts, they can go very far.
While this may be a "neat" solution, if a spammer has your facebook credentials, then they have access to this new system as well.
I must admit I am not familiar with the nature of "facebook spam", but I assume that it is possible that the user may not know his or her account has been compromised. He or she may have no inclination to be constantly monitoring the list of logged on devices.
The spammer most certainly would be, and I'd imagine that they would just block the legitimate user's devices as they appeared.
I'm sure getting back access to your account at that point would be a really fun experience.
Still hoping for a true successor to BG. A great story is crucial, however what BG offered to me that NWN never did was the ability to greatly increase the challenge and tactical elements of encounters in the game through the use of tactics and AI improving mods.
Although NWN featured an editor for creating new modules, I don't believe it offered people the kind of access to the mechanics of the game that the mods created by the reverse-engineered Infinity Engine editors had. I make that assumption because I could never find any mod that increased the AI and the tactical elements of encounters significantly for NWN.
On the same note, Dragon Age was too easy. You shouldn't be able to beat the last boss on your first or second try, or any significant encounter for that matter when the difficulty is turned up. At that point you are no longer playing a game, you're watching a movie that requires subtle hand movements and simple thought processing for playback.
Damn straight, I loved that game. I remember the first (and only the first) game in that series (actually, it was a remake of the first) was available for the Macintosh, which was all I was using back then. The rest of the series was only available for Windows.
I'm not sure why that was the case, but that pretty much caused me to dump the Mac for Windows 95 as soon as I could.
After discovering a local ISP wasn't able to service my apartment appropriately, I ended up getting Comcast Business class. You get a lot for a pittance of additional cost (~$20 / month more than residential around here).
One thing that's very different is the support. The support is phenomenally better. You call the phone number, and in seconds a knowledgeable person who is able to speak English well will get on the line (never had to be transferred to someone useful) 24/7. Other than better support, I get two static IP's with the package, and I believe that the business service has no monthly cap. Additionally, and unlike the residential service (where your monthly bill can get jacked up for no good reason) the rates I pay are contractually locked.
So (at least in my area) if you get residential, you're pretty much a sucker.
A problem I have been noticing lately is that many of the references in older articles are dead links. I am unsure what the rate of articles with dead references is across Wikipedia as a whole; however, it seems to be quite high across the small subset of articles I have read.
While this isn't really any concern for references that originate from a printed source, a number of them appear to originate from, and exist solely on, the Internet.