The goal of a democratic government is to maximize the population's well being."
That is not at all the goal of a democratic government.
A lot of people mistakenly think that "insure domestic tranquility" and "promote the general welfare" mean "try to make everyone happy" and "give the people what the want", when they really mean is "maintain order so things runs smoothly" and "provide a system of laws that allows people to pursue their interests without undue interference from the government". Note that the Surpreme Court ruled that "the Preamble indicates the general purpose for which the people ordained and established the Constitution" and went on to point out that "[the Preamble] has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government...", in Jacobson v. Mass
The great recession of 2009 became the justification of many companies to lay off workers
Hiring isn't driven by revenue and profits, although the lack of them will certainly put a damper on things. Hiring is mainly driven by demand for goods and services, unless the business in question has undergone a revolution in automation.
Seriously? Your arithmetic is great and all, but really; you jumped to leap year's effect on GDP? He's talking about 2012 being a Presidential election year.
And, just to ask again, what makes people in Angola mature almost at half the age compared to people in Bahrain? Am I the only one who thinks it's odd?
You're confusing "maturity" with "age of consent". The facts that the age of consent is 12 in Angola and 21 in Bahrain would not lead a reasonable person to conclude that Angolan youths mature at an earlier age than Bahraini youths, either emotionally or physically. The Angolan government is not saying that a 12 year old is as mature as a 21 year old Bahraini; if anything, they're saying that a person doesn't have to be mature to give informed consent. Angola has a long record of human rights violations, including commonplace child abuse. Lowering the age of consent makes it look better to the outside world; after all, it isn't child abuse if the victim isn't a child, is it?
Arbitrary age thresholds are, well, arbitrary. You can argue for lowering the threshold age no matter what it's set at, because it's obvious that the passing of a single day doesn't magically confer wisdom on an individual. Eventually, though, you just end up looking silly.
Relax; you're arguing a moot point. To put it another way, you're right, but it doesn't matter in the context of the discussion. Whether the number is 30 million or 25 million, the end result is the same: I agree that my initial estimate of the number of players was 'way off; you agree that the comparison to cars is inappropriate.
Bluray has been around quite a while (an entire generation of XBox), and is now the primary format of new releases.
The first 50-GB Blu-ray movies were released in 2006, but uptake was pretty miserable until mid-2011. It's improved since then, so let's assume you're right about the 2.5 million number being low by a factor of 10. That would still mean only 25 million players for 110 million households, and that is far below the penetration levels of automobiles, which is what this thread is about.
Regarding Blu-ray being the primary format of new releases, I don't know what you mean by "primary". To me, it means that new releases would always be available in Blu-ray, but might not be available in DVD. I have no idea whether that is true, but I'm skeptical. There is still a very large segment of the video consuming public who don't have Blu-ray players, and who consider DVD quality perfectly adequate, so content producers would be ignoring a very large market segment if they went that way. But, like I said, I really have no idea.
There have been 2.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the United States.... Only 26% of American homes have a Blu-ray player.
There's something wrong with your numbers here -- there were about 115 million households in the U.S. in 2010. The sources I can find with a quick Googling say the number is more like 40 million Blu-ray players.
40 million players in 115 million households does not mean 40/115 households have players. That would be assuming one player per household; This may not be a good assumption considering how many households may have a Blu-ray player and a game console containing a Blu-ray player, or multiple TV sets each with a connected player, or computers with players.
Not knowing Blu-Ray is akin to not knowing what a car is.
That is ridiculous. Cars are ubiquitous. Blu-ray, not so much. There have been 2.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the United States. Based on my own personal experience, a fair chunk of those were bought to replace a broken one. On the other hand, there are about 128 million passenger cars and 74 million light trucks currently in use in the US. 95% of US households own at least one car, and many own multiple cars. Only 26% of American homes have a Blu-ray player. Most Americans consider the automobile an essential part of their lives. No adult would consider it an onerous hardship to be deprived of the use of their Blu-ray player for a short period of time.
I think it would be interesting to research whether earlier "tech terms" were far more widely known that modern ones. Do you really think the average person even knows what FM and AM are?
It would be useful to see the actual survey questions. You wouldn't expect a lot of people to know that AM and FM are abbreviations for amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, but I would guess that most people would associate the terms with radio as opposed to, say medicine or arts & crafts.
It should read, Of LA Times readers XX% think,,,,.
The Times didn't conduct the survey; it was only reporting on a survey done by vouchercloud. Perhaps someone should conduct a survey on Slashdot posters' reading comprehension.
Keep in mind that all Social Security is supposed to do is write checks that people cash.
You wrote that as if it was fact rather than your opinion of how it should be. If that was on purpose, you appear to be somewhat uninformed with respect to the charter and organizational structure of the Social Security Administration. You really should read up on it, as over your lifetime you and the people you work for will be pouring a lot of money into it.g
Given what TFA had to say about who could actually get their hands on one of these phones, I think you're right. I've been involved in anti-tamper design and implementation for DoD projects, and the level of paranoia and secrecy associated with the whole subject is extremely high. I'm going to guess that anything that has been publicly "revealed" by Boeing regarding the anti-tamper implementation is probably untrue, or at least misleading. Anti-tamper is like Fight Club; you're not supposed to talk about it. And the goal of anti-tamper is not to make it impossible to tamper with a device; it's to make it expensive and time consuming. No anti-tamper implementation that has been reviewed and approved by a government V&V team is going to be defeated by a Dremel-wielding neckbeard.
I doubt they would have neglected to put an NSA approved back-door in.
I understand it's fashionable to believe, and it might even be true, that the NSA is sticking their nose any place they can, but based on my experience in the field they would not want a back door that bypasses an anti-tamper implementation. NSA is the agency that developed, and continues to actively develop, anti-tamper guidelines and rules for DoD. Any back door usable by NSA is a back door that could be exploited by an adversary. However, NSA would definitely be privy to the details of the anti-tamper implementation, and would be able to defeat it.
The $629 version is not the Boeing Black at all, but the "similarly named Blackphone." "That high-security phone was revealed earlier this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It was developed by a team of cryptographers and is currently available for preorder at $629."
To be fair there is a lot of FUD in the story. How did "bitcoin", a distributed crypto-currency, do a press conference? They mean someone claiming to speak for it did.
It's the summary that screwed up the press conference reference (what a shock). According to the WSJ article, the press conference was held by Mark Karpelès and his team of lawyers.
Over half of US state prison inmates are incarcerated for having committed violent crimes. Many of the rest are drug offenders. In general, they're probably not in prison because they were trying to pay mom's rent.
Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed.
Apparently, the definition of "not much larger" is flexible enough to accommodate "almost twice as large". A standard King bed is about 42 square feet.
No one has every done that. As they shouldn't. Unless they work for the bar, they have no right to dictate other customers behavior.
Of course people do that. There is nothing uncommon or inappropriate about asking people to modify their rude and offensive conduct in a public setting. What is inappropriate is thinking that you can get away with acting any way you like, regardless of the effect of your behavior on the people around you. Or maybe you're the type of person who is just fine with the guy in the airline seat next to you taking a 5-hour nap with his head on your shoulder, drooling in your ear.
Is that legal? Who knows.. now someone has to take it to court.
Sheesh. Just because you don't know, does not mean it isn't known. Only a person with common authority over the premises in question may consent to a search. Since you don't know what "common authority" means, you should look it up Hint: it was defined by the Supreme Court in United States v. Matlock. And by Matlock, I don't mean Andy Griffith. In case you don't want to look it up, the answer to your "Is that legal?" question is, "No. No, it is not."
Occupant A doesn't give consent and then gets arrested. So of course Occupant B gives consent... he just watched them arrest the other guy.
Occupant A wasn't arrested for refusing consent. He was arrested for committing robbery. Occupant B gave consent, very likely because Occupant A beat the crap out of Occupant B. Instant karma!
Personally, I'm more concerned with how they define "occupant". Is it anybody that happens to be in the house at that time? Do children count?
If you were actually concerned, you could, you know, look it up. In order to consent to search, the Supreme Court has ruled that a person must have "common authority" over the area to be searched. Common authority has been defined by the Supreme Court to mean a legal adult who has mutual use of the property and who has joint access or mutual control for most purposes. Minors don't count. House sitters don't count. Uncle Ferd visiting from Indiana doesn't count. Rover the dog and Fluffy the can don't count. Landlords don't count either.
In a free country the government must always defend any limitation of personal freedom. You should never have to justify it's free exercise. Anything else is not a freedom it's a privilege.
You know what? You're right about the distinction between a freedom (aka, a right) and a privilege. You know what else? Operating an automobile is a privilege, not a right. You might as well be talking about the government not interfering with your right to bear arms on commercial airline flights.
The fact that you can't eliminate all distractions does not mean you should not try to eliminate the distractions that can be eliminated.
With regard to the navigation issue, my car's nav system displays the direction of and distance to the next turn (as well as the name of the street/offramp) in a small display area separate from the fancy LCD screen, straight in front of the driver between the speedometer and tach. That and voice cues from the system make it so I never have to look at the LCD at all while driving. I have used my phone's nav system while driving rental cars, and it felt genuinely unsafe to do anything other than listen to the voice cues.
You probably don't realize it, and most likely won't agree, but your post is not a refutation of a single point made in the comment to which you were replying. Rather, it's a list of excuses that tries to rationalize the shortcomings of the smartphone platform because of its popularity. That stylishly trendy expensive disposable object in your pocket is popular mostly for the same reasons that masturbation is popular.
Slashdot Mirror
The goal of a democratic government is to maximize the population's well being."
That is not at all the goal of a democratic government.
A lot of people mistakenly think that "insure domestic tranquility" and "promote the general welfare" mean "try to make everyone happy" and "give the people what the want", when they really mean is "maintain order so things runs smoothly" and "provide a system of laws that allows people to pursue their interests without undue interference from the government". Note that the Surpreme Court ruled that "the Preamble indicates the general purpose for which the people ordained and established the Constitution" and went on to point out that "[the Preamble] has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government...", in Jacobson v. Mass
The great recession of 2009 became the justification of many companies to lay off workers
Hiring isn't driven by revenue and profits, although the lack of them will certainly put a damper on things. Hiring is mainly driven by demand for goods and services, unless the business in question has undergone a revolution in automation.
I'm guessing you're talking about a leap year.
Seriously? Your arithmetic is great and all, but really; you jumped to leap year's effect on GDP? He's talking about 2012 being a Presidential election year.
And, just to ask again, what makes people in Angola mature almost at half the age compared to people in Bahrain? Am I the only one who thinks it's odd?
You're confusing "maturity" with "age of consent". The facts that the age of consent is 12 in Angola and 21 in Bahrain would not lead a reasonable person to conclude that Angolan youths mature at an earlier age than Bahraini youths, either emotionally or physically. The Angolan government is not saying that a 12 year old is as mature as a 21 year old Bahraini; if anything, they're saying that a person doesn't have to be mature to give informed consent. Angola has a long record of human rights violations, including commonplace child abuse. Lowering the age of consent makes it look better to the outside world; after all, it isn't child abuse if the victim isn't a child, is it?
Arbitrary age thresholds are, well, arbitrary. You can argue for lowering the threshold age no matter what it's set at, because it's obvious that the passing of a single day doesn't magically confer wisdom on an individual. Eventually, though, you just end up looking silly.
Relax; you're arguing a moot point. To put it another way, you're right, but it doesn't matter in the context of the discussion. Whether the number is 30 million or 25 million, the end result is the same: I agree that my initial estimate of the number of players was 'way off; you agree that the comparison to cars is inappropriate.
That doesn't sound nearly high enough.
Bluray has been around quite a while (an entire generation of XBox), and is now the primary format of new releases.
The first 50-GB Blu-ray movies were released in 2006, but uptake was pretty miserable until mid-2011. It's improved since then, so let's assume you're right about the 2.5 million number being low by a factor of 10. That would still mean only 25 million players for 110 million households, and that is far below the penetration levels of automobiles, which is what this thread is about.
Regarding Blu-ray being the primary format of new releases, I don't know what you mean by "primary". To me, it means that new releases would always be available in Blu-ray, but might not be available in DVD. I have no idea whether that is true, but I'm skeptical. There is still a very large segment of the video consuming public who don't have Blu-ray players, and who consider DVD quality perfectly adequate, so content producers would be ignoring a very large market segment if they went that way. But, like I said, I really have no idea.
There have been 2.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the United States. ... Only 26% of American homes have a Blu-ray player.
There's something wrong with your numbers here -- there were about 115 million households in the U.S. in 2010. The sources I can find with a quick Googling say the number is more like 40 million Blu-ray players.
40 million players in 115 million households does not mean 40/115 households have players. That would be assuming one player per household; This may not be a good assumption considering how many households may have a Blu-ray player and a game console containing a Blu-ray player, or multiple TV sets each with a connected player, or computers with players.
Not knowing Blu-Ray is akin to not knowing what a car is.
That is ridiculous. Cars are ubiquitous. Blu-ray, not so much. There have been 2.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the United States. Based on my own personal experience, a fair chunk of those were bought to replace a broken one. On the other hand, there are about 128 million passenger cars and 74 million light trucks currently in use in the US. 95% of US households own at least one car, and many own multiple cars. Only 26% of American homes have a Blu-ray player. Most Americans consider the automobile an essential part of their lives. No adult would consider it an onerous hardship to be deprived of the use of their Blu-ray player for a short period of time.
I think it would be interesting to research whether earlier "tech terms" were far more widely known that modern ones. Do you really think the average person even knows what FM and AM are?
It would be useful to see the actual survey questions. You wouldn't expect a lot of people to know that AM and FM are abbreviations for amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, but I would guess that most people would associate the terms with radio as opposed to, say medicine or arts & crafts.
It should read, Of LA Times readers XX% think,,,,.
The Times didn't conduct the survey; it was only reporting on a survey done by vouchercloud. Perhaps someone should conduct a survey on Slashdot posters' reading comprehension.
It's the equivalent of saying X model of car is absolutely horrible because you don't like the layout of the dash.
You may be right about that. The thing is, most people don't want to buy a car that pisses them off every time they slide into the driver's seat.
Keep in mind that all Social Security is supposed to do is write checks that people cash.
You wrote that as if it was fact rather than your opinion of how it should be. If that was on purpose, you appear to be somewhat uninformed with respect to the charter and organizational structure of the Social Security Administration. You really should read up on it, as over your lifetime you and the people you work for will be pouring a lot of money into it.g
No, it is meant to stop sophisticated attackers.
Given what TFA had to say about who could actually get their hands on one of these phones, I think you're right. I've been involved in anti-tamper design and implementation for DoD projects, and the level of paranoia and secrecy associated with the whole subject is extremely high. I'm going to guess that anything that has been publicly "revealed" by Boeing regarding the anti-tamper implementation is probably untrue, or at least misleading. Anti-tamper is like Fight Club; you're not supposed to talk about it. And the goal of anti-tamper is not to make it impossible to tamper with a device; it's to make it expensive and time consuming. No anti-tamper implementation that has been reviewed and approved by a government V&V team is going to be defeated by a Dremel-wielding neckbeard.
I doubt they would have neglected to put an NSA approved back-door in.
I understand it's fashionable to believe, and it might even be true, that the NSA is sticking their nose any place they can, but based on my experience in the field they would not want a back door that bypasses an anti-tamper implementation. NSA is the agency that developed, and continues to actively develop, anti-tamper guidelines and rules for DoD. Any back door usable by NSA is a back door that could be exploited by an adversary. However, NSA would definitely be privy to the details of the anti-tamper implementation, and would be able to defeat it.
Or $629 if you bothered to read...
The $629 version is not the Boeing Black at all, but the "similarly named Blackphone." "That high-security phone was revealed earlier this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It was developed by a team of cryptographers and is currently available for preorder at $629."
To be fair there is a lot of FUD in the story. How did "bitcoin", a distributed crypto-currency, do a press conference? They mean someone claiming to speak for it did.
It's the summary that screwed up the press conference reference (what a shock). According to the WSJ article, the press conference was held by Mark Karpelès and his team of lawyers.
Over half of US state prison inmates are incarcerated for having committed violent crimes. Many of the rest are drug offenders. In general, they're probably not in prison because they were trying to pay mom's rent.
Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed.
Apparently, the definition of "not much larger" is flexible enough to accommodate "almost twice as large". A standard King bed is about 42 square feet.
No one has every done that. As they shouldn't. Unless they work for the bar, they have no right to dictate other customers behavior.
Of course people do that. There is nothing uncommon or inappropriate about asking people to modify their rude and offensive conduct in a public setting. What is inappropriate is thinking that you can get away with acting any way you like, regardless of the effect of your behavior on the people around you. Or maybe you're the type of person who is just fine with the guy in the airline seat next to you taking a 5-hour nap with his head on your shoulder, drooling in your ear.
Exactly! After all, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.
Is that legal? Who knows.. now someone has to take it to court.
Sheesh. Just because you don't know, does not mean it isn't known. Only a person with common authority over the premises in question may consent to a search. Since you don't know what "common authority" means, you should look it up Hint: it was defined by the Supreme Court in United States v. Matlock. And by Matlock, I don't mean Andy Griffith. In case you don't want to look it up, the answer to your "Is that legal?" question is, "No. No, it is not."
Occupant A doesn't give consent and then gets arrested. So of course Occupant B gives consent... he just watched them arrest the other guy.
Occupant A wasn't arrested for refusing consent. He was arrested for committing robbery. Occupant B gave consent, very likely because Occupant A beat the crap out of Occupant B. Instant karma!
Personally, I'm more concerned with how they define "occupant". Is it anybody that happens to be in the house at that time? Do children count?
If you were actually concerned, you could, you know, look it up. In order to consent to search, the Supreme Court has ruled that a person must have "common authority" over the area to be searched. Common authority has been defined by the Supreme Court to mean a legal adult who has mutual use of the property and who has joint access or mutual control for most purposes. Minors don't count. House sitters don't count. Uncle Ferd visiting from Indiana doesn't count. Rover the dog and Fluffy the can don't count. Landlords don't count either.
In a free country the government must always defend any limitation of personal freedom. You should never have to justify it's free exercise. Anything else is not a freedom it's a privilege.
You know what? You're right about the distinction between a freedom (aka, a right) and a privilege. You know what else? Operating an automobile is a privilege, not a right. You might as well be talking about the government not interfering with your right to bear arms on commercial airline flights.
The fact that you can't eliminate all distractions does not mean you should not try to eliminate the distractions that can be eliminated.
With regard to the navigation issue, my car's nav system displays the direction of and distance to the next turn (as well as the name of the street/offramp) in a small display area separate from the fancy LCD screen, straight in front of the driver between the speedometer and tach. That and voice cues from the system make it so I never have to look at the LCD at all while driving. I have used my phone's nav system while driving rental cars, and it felt genuinely unsafe to do anything other than listen to the voice cues.
You probably don't realize it, and most likely won't agree, but your post is not a refutation of a single point made in the comment to which you were replying. Rather, it's a list of excuses that tries to rationalize the shortcomings of the smartphone platform because of its popularity. That stylishly trendy expensive disposable object in your pocket is popular mostly for the same reasons that masturbation is popular.
There's an old saying: To gain knowledge, add something every day; to gain wisdom, get rid of something every day.
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad."
--Miles Kington