you've obviously never had to file for bankruptcy or lived in a household on the verge of being bankrupt.
after my last year of college i had the pleasure of staying with a friend of mine who runs a tattoo shop in a suburb of Chicago. he let me stay with him and his family for a few months while he traded me some ink for a website for his shop. at first glance, his family seemed like an average white middle-class household. and aside from my tatted out friend, they were just a very stereotypical but upstanding italian-american family with traditional christian values.
i happen to be a liberal, an atheist, and Taiwanese, so i didn't exactly fit in in their very conservative and predominantly italian neighborhood (i was told that this was a "mob town"). but his entire family greeted me with open arms and treated me like one of the family. i'd never met kinder/warmer people in my life. for 2-3 months they put food on my plate and a roof over my head, and i got to know their entire family quite well.
but despite their generosity and the facade of a care-free atmosphere they tried to put up, it was very apparent that their family had hit upon hard times financially. eventually my friend's mother confided in me that they were facing bankruptcy and were already on debt arbitration.
now, these aren't a bunch of dumb or lazy people. my friend's father had been a fire-fighter for 30 odd years. his family was well-known and well-respected in their community. even the police were extremely friendly and courteous to us whenever i was with him or his family. they were all honest, hard-working people. his dad even worked part-time at the home-depot on the days when he wasn't on duty at the firehouse. my friend's mother just happened to have a very rare, and unfortunately incurable, blood disease causing her to be in chronically poor health, bed-ridden most of the time, and needed to breath bottled oxygen. she's often hospitalized for weeks at a time and has undergone countless operations. (just a week before i left Chicago she had to undergo another operation and remained at the hospital for the remainder of my stay with their family.) but despite her illness, she still cooked and helped out around the house however she could.
unfortunately for them, their insurance ran out long ago, and the mother's medication was slowly pushing them into bankruptcy. debt collectors call their house 24/7, hounding their family incessantly even though all of their debts are being handled through the debt arbitration company. even without the phone harassment, their family was under an enormous amount of stress from their desperate financial situation. one of the most heart-wrenching events i've ever witnessed was my friend's father yelling at his sick wife because he thought she was going through her meds too quickly.
my friend's dad isn't a bad person. his family aren't a bunch of "welfare leeches" (his dad is an ardent republican and is strongly opposed to welfare). but bankruptcy happens to good people sometimes, and it's anything but a free lunch. if you think it's fun having to file for bankruptcy then maybe you should try it out for the "free stuff" you think you can get. if you're single and can fall back on your rich parents then maybe it's not as bad. but wait till you have a family to support and are worried about getting evicted and having to live in the streets.
you're confusing early adopters with bandwidth hogs. there will always be people who need to be at the forefront of technology, but that's what drives technology forward.
you also don't seem to understand how network management works.
if ISPs can't meet demand then they need to upgrade their network and stop _overselling_, not tell everyone to use less internet or put artificial restrictions on demand.
more people are using HD because that's where we're headed technologically. broadband access is spreading globally and increasing in speed (in most places). technological usage will always remain in sync. with existing infrastructure. when everyone was using dial-up, you didn't see many people trading mp3s or movies. when broadband started becoming popular, people started sharing larger files that you could be reasonably transferred on a ~1.5-3 Mbps connection. now that it's relatively cheap to have 6~7 Mbps connections at home, you see people trading lossless FLAC files and entire DVD disc images.
if someone wants to spend 3-4 days downloading a 40GB Bluray video, that's their prerogative. their bandwidth is capped at 3.5 Mbps or 7 Mbps or whatever their ISP has sold them. if the ISP hasn't oversold their service in that area, there should be no problem. if they advertised honestly and told customers that it was 3.5 Mbps burst speeds, but capped at X GB/month, then they also wouldn't have to throttle P2P traffic and use packet-shaping to deceive customers.
and as i said in my original post, file sharing & "power users" do not explain why broadband is both much slower and at the same time much more expensive in the U.S. than in most developed nations. only someone who doesn't understand anything about internet access and computer networking would possibly buy these specious excuses given by American ISPs.
obviously more attention needs to be paid to this market segment. not only is this phone _way_ too expensive, it's also bulky and hideous (i know, i know. it's for the blind. but still...).
button placement aside, most of its accessibility features could be easily duplicated on much cheaper conventional phones. it doesn't take any special hardware to implement text-to-voice accessibility features. any phone above $50 these days includes enough processing power to handle that sort of stuff.
popular cellphone manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, etc. need to include text-to-voice features in their phone interfaces, or at least allow customers to order standard models with these accessibility features added. the visually-impaired shouldn't have to fork out $500+ just to have a phone that they're capable of operating.
the way it is now it seems like the visually-impaired are having to pay more money for less phone.
so what would be the best way to ensure the survival (or continuance) of the human race in the case of a global catastrophe?
obviously space colonization is probably the best way to safeguard our species from extinction. but short of building massive traveling space colonies to ferry human settlers to other parts of the galaxy, there's no real practical means of establishing new human settlements beyond our own solar system.
perhaps we could set up colonies on Mars, Titan, or even the Moon. maybe we can even build monoliths on various planets within our own solar system that contain genetic samples (several thousands or more, including animal and plant species as well) and also broadcast human DNA sequences encoded in radio signals.
i don't know much about material science, but could it be possible to seal DNA samples inside some kind of protective capsule and launch these into space, sorta like human-assisted panspermia? i think i saw somewhere that certain microscopic bugs can resist atmospheric re-entry inside of meteorites. so could it be possible to insert human DNA into some hardy bugs or bacteria so that it can survive long-journeys through space. obviously these "seeds" won't grow into humans by themselves or anything. but it would be one way to at least spread the genetic information in case humans go extinct here on earth.
ah... sorry. i didn't mean to imply that amsterdam was its own country. i was just citing the cheapest places on this this list, and Amsterdam just happens to be on there at the top of that chart. i don't know why it's listed there by itself while all the other names are of countries.
that's a pretty verse and all, but then aren't you implying it shouldn't make a difference who's DNA is sent up? so if someone's DNA is going to be sent to space, then why _not_ have it be yours?
besides, i don't get where you're getting your best/worst case scenarios from (Hollywood blockbusters?). who's to say that they're not going to put your DNA to benevolent uses.
perhaps humanity won't survive the next millennium. maybe some space-faring aliens will come across the DNA data and try to revive the human race using the DNA samples as the basal models. maybe they'll use our genetic material to extend or enhance their own physiology, find new cures for diseases, or simply learn more about other kinds of life.
imagine if it were us who stumbled across some preserved genetic code of a long-extinct alien species. how much of a boon to human knowledge and the science of genetics would that be?
not that these scenarios are likely to come true, but they're not any more speculative than the cynicism others have expressed.
well, that certainly explains our lower broadband penetration. and i agree that we should take geography and population density into account. but why should moderately-populated suburbs, or densely populated urban areas still have relatively poor/expensive broadband service compared to similar areas in other developed nations?
since all IT infrastructure is currently run by the private sector, shouldn't rural areas like Alaska, Wisconsin, etc. be part of a different market from states with similar population densities to Japan/South Korea/France/etc. such as California and New York?
i mean, if we had a nationalized ISP and networking infrastructure or municipal wi-fi, then i could accept the higher cost and lower average value of broadband access in the United States. we would be paying for a cohesive national IT infrastructure, whereby those of us living in more network-accessible states help to subsidize the cost of spreading broadband access out to rural areas like Alaska. i would be all for this kind of public internet access.
but that isn't the reason why i'm currently paying 10-15 times the average monthly rate for internet access as someone in France or Finland. and the majority of the U.S. population is still composed of urban communities and their surrounding suburbs. it's not like we're Canada or Australia.
but if you look at current trends, it seems like Americans are spending more to get less. if our rates were as low as South Korea, Amsterdam, Japan, France, Finland, etc. then i could understand the slow internet speeds. but we have some of the highest broadband prices for non-rural populations.
or do what smart businesses have done all throughout history: increase supply to satisfy demand. we have some of the slowest and simultaneously most expensive internet service in the world. as the richest nation in the world, and the global leader in science and technology, this should not be occurring.
check out this chart of broadband prices around the world. then take a look at this map of broadband speeds around the globe.
i refuse to believe that South-Korea, Sweden, and Japan have fewer "power users" per capita than the U.S. or that they don't have file sharing in those countries. blaming the problem on consumers to try and divert blame ignores the most obvious and logical solution.
perhaps ISPs should spend less money and energy on packet shaping technology and trying to curb p2p file sharing, and spend more resources on what we're actually paying them for: internet access. i'm not paying $50/month for them to tell me what i can or can't use my bandwidth for, or how i should be using my bandwidth. if they want customers to only use their connection for web access, then they should just call themselves "Web Access Providers."
well, that's sorta like saying someone who's dumb enough to get conned/scammed deserves to be scammed. i certainly don't promote ignorance (in fact, i find the overwhelming level of ignorance in our society quite frustrating) but you can't support, or let businesses get away with, unethical predatory lending practices.
and let's be honest here, who has never missed/skipped over a few lines of fine print when signing some kind of business contract? whether it was through conscious choice or accidental, we've all skimmed over parts of contracts or legal forms to some degree. i mean, who has never misread a word or sentence while reading a book/newspaper/magazine/street sign/etc.?
the very nature of fine print is inherently deceptive. that is precisely why businesses use fine print to conceal warnings, disclaimers or terms/conditions which consumers may be put off by. you can call the use of fine print a marketing tactic to make your service/product look more appealing. and it's considered completely legal usually. but at some point this kind of manipulation of consumers crosses into overt dishonesty.
if you have a 20-page cellphone contract full of verbose wording for trivial details and standard terms of agreement, but buried near the back you have, in fine print, a special clause that requires the signee to hand over all his personal assets to you and surrender himself to disciplinary flogging if he uses his phone to make a business call on the sabbath, then this probably wouldn't be considered a legally-binding contract by any sane court.
if you really are there to learn, then being on the wall of sheep shouldn't be a deterrent from bringing your own device. being hacked is a learning experience in itself.
and wouldn't you rather be hacked at a convention which promotes education and security awareness rather than in the real world where you're likely to be hacked by a script kiddie who's motivated by malice and won't be so kind as to let you know that your security has been compromised?
if you do find your system hacked into and can't figure out how it happened, i'm sure you could find plenty of people around you who could help you find the security hole and patch it up. i mean, it's all in good fun most of the time. it's not like someone at DefCon will hack into your laptop and then purposely delete all of your important documents or infect you with a virus.
yes, because we all know that 99% of all internet traffic is used for the transmission of e-mail passwords, credit card info, social security numbers, and other sensitive personal info. after all, no one would possibly want to read the news, or check their favorite blog or web comic, or play some online games while at DefCon.
and i'm sure no one at DefCon has ever heard of SSL.
that's very true. but that's why it's important to report these type of stories.
even though you can't legislate ethical behavior, a well-informed public aided by a responsible media can help to bridge the discernible disconnect between morality and legality. that's why it's important to have media institutions which have a sense of journalistic integrity. bad publicity can often still make profit-driven corporations do the 'right thing'.
and it's that kind of attitude that popularized predatory lending practices which created the current mortgage crisis. similar systemic problems have also been observed in the credit card industry, with credit card companies intentionally targeting the most financially distraught members for higher credit ratings knowing that they won't be able to pay off their debts.
if you lend money to someone who you know can't pay you back or afford the interest rate, and then they file for bankruptcy as a result, why should anyone bail _you_ out when you're in financial trouble? in these cases it's not borrowers who are trying to convince lenders to approve loans they know they can't afford it. it's usually the other way around, where the lenders convince borrowers to take out loans that any conscionable lender should know not to approve.
most people who fall victim to these practices are first-time homeowners. they're not mortgage industry professionals who are familiar with lending contracts. so it is understandable that they can be misled to sign into a loan which they are unable to pay back. such excuses cannot be made for the lenders. they should be well versed in sound lending practices.
the deceptive use of fine print doesn't clear a business of responsibility for unethical business practices.
i think a straightforward printout you can easily read in under a minute is much more useful to aviation professionals than a TV weather report.
a pilot doesn't need to know whether or not he should pack a heavy jacket if he's leaving town his weekend, or that this is the 2nd most humid day of the year, or any other miscellaneous info/small talk which TV weather reports generally consist of.
what pilots do need is precise and very specific pieces of info regarding their flight path and destination. they don't need a 7-day forecast that covers an entire state. and they certainly don't have the time to sit through a long-winded weather forecast giving him tips on how he should dress or laymen explanations of meteorological concepts.
using a standardized format that organizes and presents the data in a clear and precise manner also allows easier transmission of weather info by radio or other means. so it shouldn't be too hard to understand why the aviation sector (as well as professional meteorologists) have adopted simple codified formats such as TAF, METAR, etc.
i don't think that is what's usually meant by 'dumping'.
although it does seem to primarily refer to predatory pricing in the context of international trade, it's not when you sell something cheaper in one country than in another. it's simply when a product manufactured in one country is being exported to another country at a price below cost or below the market value in its home market.
as with most forms of predatory capitalism, its legality is fuzzy and often what one nation preaches is not what it practices--particularly western nations which like to tout the virtues of "Free Market" capitalism, such as the U.S.
so if a U.S. corporation wanted to dump products on another nation, they would condemn any protectionist policies which might oppose these actions. but simultaneously, if another country wanted to dump products in the U.S. which competed with domestic industries with powerful lobbies, antidumping petitions would be filed with the Dept. of Commerce.
things like 'fair value', or the difference between 'dumping' and selling a 'loss leader', are entirely subjective. they're simply used in whatever way most benefits a given group.
i know you're being sarcastic, but whatever third options we have today are quickly evaporating. with the rise of globalization the political/corporate culture of the U.S. is gradually being exported to all parts of the world.
the hegemonic influence of corporate America has never been greater. even Canada and Sweden and quickly falling in line with the RIAA/MPAA's demands. it's frightening how fast this de-democratization is happening even against these subject countries' own national interests.
if you're going to accuse or charge BT of negligence because they didn't catch these "pirates" then you might as well demand that ISPs start monitoring all traffic and forbid the use of encrypted connections. there's no way to accuse an ISP of negligence unless they're actually expected to encroach on the privacy of their subscribers. that's just not part of their job.
it's like accusing telephone companies of negligence because they don't monitor everyone's calls and make sure we're not discussing illegal activities over the phone.
is it possible then that both Dinosaurs and Mammals survived the K-T extinction, but that both groups lost their larger species as natural selection began favoring smaller body types?
after all, we know that birds evolved from dromaeosaurs, many of which were about the same size as a modern turkey. so it's not really fair to say that dinosaurs went extinct completely. just as i'm sure the larger mammals that you refer to wouldn't have had any more resistance to global catastrophe than large sauropods or large carnivores like the T-rex.
yea, i really couldn't see google using that part of the agreement to "steal the copyright of users" as everyone seemed to be suggesting. it just seemed like they were trying to protect themselves against liability for their online services, many of which deal with the reproduction, manipulation, and public displaying of user-contributed content. facebook has similar clauses in their user agreements as well--as do i'm sure most social networking sites.
while i have no experience in film production, and thus don't know what it's like from the perspective of the filmmakers, i know that the Democracy Player (currently known as Miro) used to be a great way to sample a wide variety of video content produced by independent filmmakers (and also not so independent ones).
Democracy player used the bittorrent protocol, i believe, so bandwidth was never a problem. the video quality was usually around that of VHS or standard def TV, but i think it varies depending on the channel you were watching.
so if you want something with better quality than YouTube, but without the bandwidth requirements of hosted downloads, you could try Democracy/Miro.
while i'm not a zoologist, i'd imagine that if the article is correct, and this was when insects first became a significant vector for disease transmission, then it's plausible that neither dinosaurs nor mammals would have had the immune system to defend themselves against illness.
it's much harder to adapt to a brand new class of diseases than it is to adapt to new variations of an existing form illness. so the attrition rate for evolving a suitable defense would have been extremely high.
as for why mammals would survive while dinosaurs didn't, it may have been because mammals reproduced much quicker. animals with shorter life cycles and higher reproduction rates tend to adapt to environmental changes much more easily. in the time it takes for a large dinosaur to go through 2-3 generations of changes, a small mammal such as a rodent may have gone through 20-30 generations or more. so in times of crisis small animals are much more likely to survive than larger ones.
another factor could be that, because mammals were at the bottom of the food chain, they tended to be nocturnal and live in burrows. being underground could perhaps have also protected them from the global catastrophes that were ravaging dinosaur populations. they probably didn't have as specialized of diets as the dinosaurs did, so when flowering plants began replacing the normal vegetation that herbivorous dinosaurs depended on, plant-eating mammals weren't affected. they also wouldn't have been affected by the mass population die-offs that would have starved the carnivorous dinosaurs.
lastly, insects would have provided a valuable new food source for primitive mammals. dinosaurs may have grown too large to do the same. and whenever animals at the top of the food chain are removed from an ecosystem, the animals at the bottom of the food chain flourish. so all of this would have contributed to the rise of the mammals.
if you're reading their EULA then you've already purchased their software and are trying to install it. if you don't click "OK" then you end up with a useless CD that, depending on the software retailer's return policy, you may have just wasted your money on.
if it's something like broadband service, you may not have any alternative vendors to choose from. so unless you are willing to use dial-up or go without internet access, then you _are_ forced to agree to their contract. if you have to use Microsoft products for school or work, then you are forced to agree to their EULA by the lack of available alternatives. in today's technological climate, it's pretty much impossible to get by without having to agree to ridiculously one-sided EULAs on a regular basis.
being forced to do something simply implies some form of coercion. it doesn't have to be someone placing a gun to your head or otherwise using physical force to make you do something. and i also don't think you understand what a 'negotiation' is--being presented with an OK/Cancel dialog is not negotiating.
eh, don't worry about it. i've gotten far ruder replies. and you're right about gmail still being in beta. so thank you for correcting me.
as far as Gmail's perpetual beta status is concerned, i think it may have been more of a marketing ploy that they've just decided to hang on to because it's become kind of a long-standing joke within the geek community.
and i completely agree that you have the right to complain. i mean, making a product or service free doesn't make it immune to criticisms. like you said, they still rely on users indirectly for advertising revenue. and even if that weren't so, one can still criticize the service purely for the sake of discussing their development methodology--you just wouldn't have any leverage to demand changes.
however, i don't think Google has been hiding behind the beta tag to deflect criticisms for buggy software. i mean, if they had the track record of Microsoft then that would be a valid criticism. but so far Google has done a pretty good job of maintaining production-level quality even with Gmail.
and i don't think it's fair to use Gmail's beta status to dismiss Chrome's appropriate use of the beta label. after all, Chrome has only been out for 1-2 days so far.
that isn't to say that the problems with Chrome shouldn't be pointed out, just that it's not reason enough to discount Google's development method or judge the long-term outlook of this inchoate application this early on.
i'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to hardware/electronics, but do you happen to know why they would need thermal and x-ray sensors for security--or how the contents of a microchip can be sniffed without firmware access?
i mean, i'm sure it's possible to do. but i'm just curious about the process and how difficult it would be. and is this how things like the Playstation or Xbox are hacked?
Slashdot Mirror
you've obviously never had to file for bankruptcy or lived in a household on the verge of being bankrupt.
after my last year of college i had the pleasure of staying with a friend of mine who runs a tattoo shop in a suburb of Chicago. he let me stay with him and his family for a few months while he traded me some ink for a website for his shop. at first glance, his family seemed like an average white middle-class household. and aside from my tatted out friend, they were just a very stereotypical but upstanding italian-american family with traditional christian values.
i happen to be a liberal, an atheist, and Taiwanese, so i didn't exactly fit in in their very conservative and predominantly italian neighborhood (i was told that this was a "mob town"). but his entire family greeted me with open arms and treated me like one of the family. i'd never met kinder/warmer people in my life. for 2-3 months they put food on my plate and a roof over my head, and i got to know their entire family quite well.
but despite their generosity and the facade of a care-free atmosphere they tried to put up, it was very apparent that their family had hit upon hard times financially. eventually my friend's mother confided in me that they were facing bankruptcy and were already on debt arbitration.
now, these aren't a bunch of dumb or lazy people. my friend's father had been a fire-fighter for 30 odd years. his family was well-known and well-respected in their community. even the police were extremely friendly and courteous to us whenever i was with him or his family. they were all honest, hard-working people. his dad even worked part-time at the home-depot on the days when he wasn't on duty at the firehouse. my friend's mother just happened to have a very rare, and unfortunately incurable, blood disease causing her to be in chronically poor health, bed-ridden most of the time, and needed to breath bottled oxygen. she's often hospitalized for weeks at a time and has undergone countless operations. (just a week before i left Chicago she had to undergo another operation and remained at the hospital for the remainder of my stay with their family.) but despite her illness, she still cooked and helped out around the house however she could.
unfortunately for them, their insurance ran out long ago, and the mother's medication was slowly pushing them into bankruptcy. debt collectors call their house 24/7, hounding their family incessantly even though all of their debts are being handled through the debt arbitration company. even without the phone harassment, their family was under an enormous amount of stress from their desperate financial situation. one of the most heart-wrenching events i've ever witnessed was my friend's father yelling at his sick wife because he thought she was going through her meds too quickly.
my friend's dad isn't a bad person. his family aren't a bunch of "welfare leeches" (his dad is an ardent republican and is strongly opposed to welfare). but bankruptcy happens to good people sometimes, and it's anything but a free lunch. if you think it's fun having to file for bankruptcy then maybe you should try it out for the "free stuff" you think you can get. if you're single and can fall back on your rich parents then maybe it's not as bad. but wait till you have a family to support and are worried about getting evicted and having to live in the streets.
you're confusing early adopters with bandwidth hogs. there will always be people who need to be at the forefront of technology, but that's what drives technology forward.
you also don't seem to understand how network management works.
if ISPs can't meet demand then they need to upgrade their network and stop _overselling_, not tell everyone to use less internet or put artificial restrictions on demand.
more people are using HD because that's where we're headed technologically. broadband access is spreading globally and increasing in speed (in most places). technological usage will always remain in sync. with existing infrastructure. when everyone was using dial-up, you didn't see many people trading mp3s or movies. when broadband started becoming popular, people started sharing larger files that you could be reasonably transferred on a ~1.5-3 Mbps connection. now that it's relatively cheap to have 6~7 Mbps connections at home, you see people trading lossless FLAC files and entire DVD disc images.
if someone wants to spend 3-4 days downloading a 40GB Bluray video, that's their prerogative. their bandwidth is capped at 3.5 Mbps or 7 Mbps or whatever their ISP has sold them. if the ISP hasn't oversold their service in that area, there should be no problem. if they advertised honestly and told customers that it was 3.5 Mbps burst speeds, but capped at X GB/month, then they also wouldn't have to throttle P2P traffic and use packet-shaping to deceive customers.
and as i said in my original post, file sharing & "power users" do not explain why broadband is both much slower and at the same time much more expensive in the U.S. than in most developed nations. only someone who doesn't understand anything about internet access and computer networking would possibly buy these specious excuses given by American ISPs.
obviously more attention needs to be paid to this market segment. not only is this phone _way_ too expensive, it's also bulky and hideous (i know, i know. it's for the blind. but still...).
button placement aside, most of its accessibility features could be easily duplicated on much cheaper conventional phones. it doesn't take any special hardware to implement text-to-voice accessibility features. any phone above $50 these days includes enough processing power to handle that sort of stuff.
popular cellphone manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, etc. need to include text-to-voice features in their phone interfaces, or at least allow customers to order standard models with these accessibility features added. the visually-impaired shouldn't have to fork out $500+ just to have a phone that they're capable of operating.
the way it is now it seems like the visually-impaired are having to pay more money for less phone.
so what would be the best way to ensure the survival (or continuance) of the human race in the case of a global catastrophe?
obviously space colonization is probably the best way to safeguard our species from extinction. but short of building massive traveling space colonies to ferry human settlers to other parts of the galaxy, there's no real practical means of establishing new human settlements beyond our own solar system.
perhaps we could set up colonies on Mars, Titan, or even the Moon. maybe we can even build monoliths on various planets within our own solar system that contain genetic samples (several thousands or more, including animal and plant species as well) and also broadcast human DNA sequences encoded in radio signals.
i don't know much about material science, but could it be possible to seal DNA samples inside some kind of protective capsule and launch these into space, sorta like human-assisted panspermia? i think i saw somewhere that certain microscopic bugs can resist atmospheric re-entry inside of meteorites. so could it be possible to insert human DNA into some hardy bugs or bacteria so that it can survive long-journeys through space. obviously these "seeds" won't grow into humans by themselves or anything. but it would be one way to at least spread the genetic information in case humans go extinct here on earth.
ah... sorry. i didn't mean to imply that amsterdam was its own country. i was just citing the cheapest places on this this list, and Amsterdam just happens to be on there at the top of that chart. i don't know why it's listed there by itself while all the other names are of countries.
that's a pretty verse and all, but then aren't you implying it shouldn't make a difference who's DNA is sent up? so if someone's DNA is going to be sent to space, then why _not_ have it be yours?
besides, i don't get where you're getting your best/worst case scenarios from (Hollywood blockbusters?). who's to say that they're not going to put your DNA to benevolent uses.
perhaps humanity won't survive the next millennium. maybe some space-faring aliens will come across the DNA data and try to revive the human race using the DNA samples as the basal models. maybe they'll use our genetic material to extend or enhance their own physiology, find new cures for diseases, or simply learn more about other kinds of life.
imagine if it were us who stumbled across some preserved genetic code of a long-extinct alien species. how much of a boon to human knowledge and the science of genetics would that be?
not that these scenarios are likely to come true, but they're not any more speculative than the cynicism others have expressed.
well, that certainly explains our lower broadband penetration. and i agree that we should take geography and population density into account. but why should moderately-populated suburbs, or densely populated urban areas still have relatively poor/expensive broadband service compared to similar areas in other developed nations?
since all IT infrastructure is currently run by the private sector, shouldn't rural areas like Alaska, Wisconsin, etc. be part of a different market from states with similar population densities to Japan/South Korea/France/etc. such as California and New York?
i mean, if we had a nationalized ISP and networking infrastructure or municipal wi-fi, then i could accept the higher cost and lower average value of broadband access in the United States. we would be paying for a cohesive national IT infrastructure, whereby those of us living in more network-accessible states help to subsidize the cost of spreading broadband access out to rural areas like Alaska. i would be all for this kind of public internet access.
but that isn't the reason why i'm currently paying 10-15 times the average monthly rate for internet access as someone in France or Finland. and the majority of the U.S. population is still composed of urban communities and their surrounding suburbs. it's not like we're Canada or Australia.
but if you look at current trends, it seems like Americans are spending more to get less. if our rates were as low as South Korea, Amsterdam, Japan, France, Finland, etc. then i could understand the slow internet speeds. but we have some of the highest broadband prices for non-rural populations.
or do what smart businesses have done all throughout history: increase supply to satisfy demand. we have some of the slowest and simultaneously most expensive internet service in the world. as the richest nation in the world, and the global leader in science and technology, this should not be occurring.
check out this chart of broadband prices around the world. then take a look at this map of broadband speeds around the globe.
i refuse to believe that South-Korea, Sweden, and Japan have fewer "power users" per capita than the U.S. or that they don't have file sharing in those countries. blaming the problem on consumers to try and divert blame ignores the most obvious and logical solution.
perhaps ISPs should spend less money and energy on packet shaping technology and trying to curb p2p file sharing, and spend more resources on what we're actually paying them for: internet access. i'm not paying $50/month for them to tell me what i can or can't use my bandwidth for, or how i should be using my bandwidth. if they want customers to only use their connection for web access, then they should just call themselves "Web Access Providers."
well, that's sorta like saying someone who's dumb enough to get conned/scammed deserves to be scammed. i certainly don't promote ignorance (in fact, i find the overwhelming level of ignorance in our society quite frustrating) but you can't support, or let businesses get away with, unethical predatory lending practices.
and let's be honest here, who has never missed/skipped over a few lines of fine print when signing some kind of business contract? whether it was through conscious choice or accidental, we've all skimmed over parts of contracts or legal forms to some degree. i mean, who has never misread a word or sentence while reading a book/newspaper/magazine/street sign/etc.?
the very nature of fine print is inherently deceptive. that is precisely why businesses use fine print to conceal warnings, disclaimers or terms/conditions which consumers may be put off by. you can call the use of fine print a marketing tactic to make your service/product look more appealing. and it's considered completely legal usually. but at some point this kind of manipulation of consumers crosses into overt dishonesty.
if you have a 20-page cellphone contract full of verbose wording for trivial details and standard terms of agreement, but buried near the back you have, in fine print, a special clause that requires the signee to hand over all his personal assets to you and surrender himself to disciplinary flogging if he uses his phone to make a business call on the sabbath, then this probably wouldn't be considered a legally-binding contract by any sane court.
if you really are there to learn, then being on the wall of sheep shouldn't be a deterrent from bringing your own device. being hacked is a learning experience in itself.
and wouldn't you rather be hacked at a convention which promotes education and security awareness rather than in the real world where you're likely to be hacked by a script kiddie who's motivated by malice and won't be so kind as to let you know that your security has been compromised?
if you do find your system hacked into and can't figure out how it happened, i'm sure you could find plenty of people around you who could help you find the security hole and patch it up. i mean, it's all in good fun most of the time. it's not like someone at DefCon will hack into your laptop and then purposely delete all of your important documents or infect you with a virus.
yes, because we all know that 99% of all internet traffic is used for the transmission of e-mail passwords, credit card info, social security numbers, and other sensitive personal info. after all, no one would possibly want to read the news, or check their favorite blog or web comic, or play some online games while at DefCon.
and i'm sure no one at DefCon has ever heard of SSL.
that's very true. but that's why it's important to report these type of stories.
even though you can't legislate ethical behavior, a well-informed public aided by a responsible media can help to bridge the discernible disconnect between morality and legality. that's why it's important to have media institutions which have a sense of journalistic integrity. bad publicity can often still make profit-driven corporations do the 'right thing'.
and it's that kind of attitude that popularized predatory lending practices which created the current mortgage crisis. similar systemic problems have also been observed in the credit card industry, with credit card companies intentionally targeting the most financially distraught members for higher credit ratings knowing that they won't be able to pay off their debts.
if you lend money to someone who you know can't pay you back or afford the interest rate, and then they file for bankruptcy as a result, why should anyone bail _you_ out when you're in financial trouble? in these cases it's not borrowers who are trying to convince lenders to approve loans they know they can't afford it. it's usually the other way around, where the lenders convince borrowers to take out loans that any conscionable lender should know not to approve.
most people who fall victim to these practices are first-time homeowners. they're not mortgage industry professionals who are familiar with lending contracts. so it is understandable that they can be misled to sign into a loan which they are unable to pay back. such excuses cannot be made for the lenders. they should be well versed in sound lending practices.
the deceptive use of fine print doesn't clear a business of responsibility for unethical business practices.
i think a straightforward printout you can easily read in under a minute is much more useful to aviation professionals than a TV weather report.
a pilot doesn't need to know whether or not he should pack a heavy jacket if he's leaving town his weekend, or that this is the 2nd most humid day of the year, or any other miscellaneous info/small talk which TV weather reports generally consist of.
what pilots do need is precise and very specific pieces of info regarding their flight path and destination. they don't need a 7-day forecast that covers an entire state. and they certainly don't have the time to sit through a long-winded weather forecast giving him tips on how he should dress or laymen explanations of meteorological concepts.
using a standardized format that organizes and presents the data in a clear and precise manner also allows easier transmission of weather info by radio or other means. so it shouldn't be too hard to understand why the aviation sector (as well as professional meteorologists) have adopted simple codified formats such as TAF, METAR, etc.
i don't think that is what's usually meant by 'dumping'.
although it does seem to primarily refer to predatory pricing in the context of international trade, it's not when you sell something cheaper in one country than in another. it's simply when a product manufactured in one country is being exported to another country at a price below cost or below the market value in its home market.
as with most forms of predatory capitalism, its legality is fuzzy and often what one nation preaches is not what it practices--particularly western nations which like to tout the virtues of "Free Market" capitalism, such as the U.S.
so if a U.S. corporation wanted to dump products on another nation, they would condemn any protectionist policies which might oppose these actions. but simultaneously, if another country wanted to dump products in the U.S. which competed with domestic industries with powerful lobbies, antidumping petitions would be filed with the Dept. of Commerce.
things like 'fair value', or the difference between 'dumping' and selling a 'loss leader', are entirely subjective. they're simply used in whatever way most benefits a given group.
i know you're being sarcastic, but whatever third options we have today are quickly evaporating. with the rise of globalization the political/corporate culture of the U.S. is gradually being exported to all parts of the world.
the hegemonic influence of corporate America has never been greater. even Canada and Sweden and quickly falling in line with the RIAA/MPAA's demands. it's frightening how fast this de-democratization is happening even against these subject countries' own national interests.
if you're going to accuse or charge BT of negligence because they didn't catch these "pirates" then you might as well demand that ISPs start monitoring all traffic and forbid the use of encrypted connections. there's no way to accuse an ISP of negligence unless they're actually expected to encroach on the privacy of their subscribers. that's just not part of their job.
it's like accusing telephone companies of negligence because they don't monitor everyone's calls and make sure we're not discussing illegal activities over the phone.
i guess i stand corrected.
is it possible then that both Dinosaurs and Mammals survived the K-T extinction, but that both groups lost their larger species as natural selection began favoring smaller body types?
after all, we know that birds evolved from dromaeosaurs, many of which were about the same size as a modern turkey. so it's not really fair to say that dinosaurs went extinct completely. just as i'm sure the larger mammals that you refer to wouldn't have had any more resistance to global catastrophe than large sauropods or large carnivores like the T-rex.
yea, i really couldn't see google using that part of the agreement to "steal the copyright of users" as everyone seemed to be suggesting. it just seemed like they were trying to protect themselves against liability for their online services, many of which deal with the reproduction, manipulation, and public displaying of user-contributed content. facebook has similar clauses in their user agreements as well--as do i'm sure most social networking sites.
while i have no experience in film production, and thus don't know what it's like from the perspective of the filmmakers, i know that the Democracy Player (currently known as Miro) used to be a great way to sample a wide variety of video content produced by independent filmmakers (and also not so independent ones).
Democracy player used the bittorrent protocol, i believe, so bandwidth was never a problem. the video quality was usually around that of VHS or standard def TV, but i think it varies depending on the channel you were watching.
so if you want something with better quality than YouTube, but without the bandwidth requirements of hosted downloads, you could try Democracy/Miro.
while i'm not a zoologist, i'd imagine that if the article is correct, and this was when insects first became a significant vector for disease transmission, then it's plausible that neither dinosaurs nor mammals would have had the immune system to defend themselves against illness.
it's much harder to adapt to a brand new class of diseases than it is to adapt to new variations of an existing form illness. so the attrition rate for evolving a suitable defense would have been extremely high.
as for why mammals would survive while dinosaurs didn't, it may have been because mammals reproduced much quicker. animals with shorter life cycles and higher reproduction rates tend to adapt to environmental changes much more easily. in the time it takes for a large dinosaur to go through 2-3 generations of changes, a small mammal such as a rodent may have gone through 20-30 generations or more. so in times of crisis small animals are much more likely to survive than larger ones.
another factor could be that, because mammals were at the bottom of the food chain, they tended to be nocturnal and live in burrows. being underground could perhaps have also protected them from the global catastrophes that were ravaging dinosaur populations. they probably didn't have as specialized of diets as the dinosaurs did, so when flowering plants began replacing the normal vegetation that herbivorous dinosaurs depended on, plant-eating mammals weren't affected. they also wouldn't have been affected by the mass population die-offs that would have starved the carnivorous dinosaurs.
lastly, insects would have provided a valuable new food source for primitive mammals. dinosaurs may have grown too large to do the same. and whenever animals at the top of the food chain are removed from an ecosystem, the animals at the bottom of the food chain flourish. so all of this would have contributed to the rise of the mammals.
if you're reading their EULA then you've already purchased their software and are trying to install it. if you don't click "OK" then you end up with a useless CD that, depending on the software retailer's return policy, you may have just wasted your money on.
if it's something like broadband service, you may not have any alternative vendors to choose from. so unless you are willing to use dial-up or go without internet access, then you _are_ forced to agree to their contract. if you have to use Microsoft products for school or work, then you are forced to agree to their EULA by the lack of available alternatives. in today's technological climate, it's pretty much impossible to get by without having to agree to ridiculously one-sided EULAs on a regular basis.
being forced to do something simply implies some form of coercion. it doesn't have to be someone placing a gun to your head or otherwise using physical force to make you do something. and i also don't think you understand what a 'negotiation' is--being presented with an OK/Cancel dialog is not negotiating.
eh, don't worry about it. i've gotten far ruder replies. and you're right about gmail still being in beta. so thank you for correcting me.
as far as Gmail's perpetual beta status is concerned, i think it may have been more of a marketing ploy that they've just decided to hang on to because it's become kind of a long-standing joke within the geek community.
and i completely agree that you have the right to complain. i mean, making a product or service free doesn't make it immune to criticisms. like you said, they still rely on users indirectly for advertising revenue. and even if that weren't so, one can still criticize the service purely for the sake of discussing their development methodology--you just wouldn't have any leverage to demand changes.
however, i don't think Google has been hiding behind the beta tag to deflect criticisms for buggy software. i mean, if they had the track record of Microsoft then that would be a valid criticism. but so far Google has done a pretty good job of maintaining production-level quality even with Gmail.
and i don't think it's fair to use Gmail's beta status to dismiss Chrome's appropriate use of the beta label. after all, Chrome has only been out for 1-2 days so far.
that isn't to say that the problems with Chrome shouldn't be pointed out, just that it's not reason enough to discount Google's development method or judge the long-term outlook of this inchoate application this early on.
i'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to hardware/electronics, but do you happen to know why they would need thermal and x-ray sensors for security--or how the contents of a microchip can be sniffed without firmware access?
i mean, i'm sure it's possible to do. but i'm just curious about the process and how difficult it would be. and is this how things like the Playstation or Xbox are hacked?