This is like lighting someones business on fire so they can no longer operate their business. Versus actual non-violent activities like peaceful protests.
For the record, I don't actually support these DDoS activities, I don't use peer-to-peer for much beyond downloading Ubuntu distributions, and the only free music I download is placed in the public domain or licensed for free distribution (e.g. Creative Commons, free songs direct from the artists, or free samplers from Amazon.) But except in some fairly unlikely scenarios, a DDoS is essentially the same as a sit-in, and about as violent. If a couple of hundred students block the doors of a university building and stage a sit-in, the university is unable to conduct business as long as they are there. If a sit-in is staged at a lunch counter, the establishment is unable to conduct business as long as they are there. If a business site is DDoS'd, the site is unable to conduct business as long as it continues. Once the "protest" is over, things go back to normal. As long as no one has been physically injured or permanent damage done, I'd say these are all non-violent acts. Illegal & disruptive, yes. Similar to vandalism, I might agree. Liable for civil damages, probably. Violent is probably going a little too far.
That said, I agree, I can't buy parallels with MLK and nonviolent civil disobedience. It's not enough to break a law and avoid violence - I think there needs to be some element of personal risk. You need to show that your cause is so just, so right, that you're willing to accept the risk of unjust punishments to call society's attention to it. Hiding in anonymity and directing a botnet to DDoS a site makes people think more of extortion than nonviolent civil disobedience, regardless of whether your cause is just. I also think you really need to stake out clear moral high ground to successfully employ a strategy of nonviolent protests to affect change. Society has to feel outraged that you, clearly acting in a moral manner, are being persecuted. But content creators do deserve some compensation, and providing them with absolutely none knocks the activists off the high ground.
Don't me wrong, depriving the public domain of content that should belong to everyone through DRM and obscene extensions of copyright keeps the industry associations from claiming the high ground, too. There's a gradient between the two extremes, and that makes it hard for people to line up on a side, so I doubt this kind of activism will achieve its desired goals. I think any real solution is a long way off, too.
The EFF is not exactly swimming in money. In 2008, they actually spent $400K more than they took in. I'm happy that they spend more of their limited resources fighting for individuals than for well-heeled industries already well represented by lobbyists and millions of dollars pumped into political campaigns. I bet Time Warner alone spent more money on lobbying congress in 2010 than the entire EFF budget -- and I picked them because they were at the bottom of the list. I wouldn't be surprised to find that many TV/Movie/Recording industry companies each pay their retained lawyers many times the entire EFF annual budget. And the EFF is fighting on many fronts. So give them a break when they reserve resources to fight for the underrepresented.
Even if we do not buy all of the Persian Gulf oil, the availability of that supply has a large impact upon the global market. As of 2002, I think the Middle East supplied around 20% of the world's oil. If Persian Gulf oil stopped flowing tomorrow, would the other countries that do buy that oil stop using oil? Or would they try to buy it from countries that we get oil from? Do you think Mexican, South American and African oil prices would remain constant, or do you think they would rise? Do you even think oil from the United States would stay at the same price?
I'm not saying that Middle Eastern oil should have as much influence as it does on our foreign policy. I'm just saying that by estimating its impact as a "mere 5% of our total energy usage," you are perhaps undervaluing it. Oil is, for most purposes, a highly fungible commodity. But, of course, you're absolutely right that the best way to drive down whatever influence it does have is to invest in alternatives, like nuclear, wind, solar, etc.
Anyone know what's going to be in the "Smart Phone" QR block? I'd love to see it have enough data so an app could take that info, plus a the data from a week/month/year of GPS &/or accelerometer data (recorded by my GPS or smart phone) and give me a better estimate of how much a car would cost me to operate, if my driving habits remained roughly the same. At the very least, it could probably factor in my true mix of city/highway, and it might even be able to tweak that if I've got a heavy left foot, and insist on 1G starts at every stop sign.
So what's the risk of gene transfer giving us "Roundup Ready" kudzu, poison ivy, etc. in the near future?
The most honest answer to that question is "we don't know".
I'm pretty sure the honest answer is "unlikely" (though certainly not impossible - see especially the links about widespread HGT for mitochondrial genes among plants), but as a previous AC poster has mentioned, you don't need to directly modify the genes of kudzu, poison ivy, or any other "undesirable" plant to end up with a "RoundUp Ready" variety - all you need to do is selectively breed such organisms by spraying RoundUp indiscriminately until you create one "naturally". Monsanto may have done a lot of work to come up with a GM short-cut, but we've bred drug-resistant strains of bacteria, pesticide resistant strains of insects, and herbicide resistant strains of plants before, all without tinkering directly with the genes.
Reader n4djs notes that Monsanto has been known to sue farmers for patent infringement when their crops unintentionally contain genetically modified plants.
This might have happened, but the Percy Schmeiser case is not such a case. The Supreme Court of Canada found that Schmeiser deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications.
It rather scares me that one of the leading anti-GMO spokesmen is someone who deliberately planted his field with genetically modified seed and then lied about it when he got caught.
I wasn't familiar with the case, and maybe others not involved in the GMO/anti-GMO fight aren't either. There's a little info on the Percy Schmeiser wikipedia page, which at least serves as a starting point of more info.
When you say "deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications," it sounds like he stole Monsanto seed and planted it in his field. From reading the wiki page, it sounds more like he collected seeds from his own fields that had been pollinated with Monsanto GM naturally. In the former case, I'd say Monsanto should win - stealing their seeds is wrong. But if his fields had been naturally pollinated, why should he be responsible for Monsanto's inability to contain their pollen? In fact, if he was in the business of selling non-GMO, the contamination of his fields could cost him value, customers, or even entire markets. If Monsanto can modify the GM in their plants, couldn't they have made the pollen incompatible with regular crops? And if not, perhaps they shouldn't have planted it if they couldn't control it?
I'm not one of the "all GMO is evil!!" crowd. I think there is great potential for good in GMO, even though there are risks. I just think it's ridiculous to make a self-propagating piece of "property", and then claim that when it self-propagates, someone else is responsible for that, but you aren't.
I prefer letting each individual display sarcasm on their screen as they prefer. That's why I enclose my sarcasm in <P> and </P> tags. Aren't those the sarcasm indicators?
The Inmarsat iSatPhone PRO isn't too bad (hey, at ~$600, it's in line with the original list price of the first iPhone!), and you can rent it from those guys (outfitterconnect.com) if you're just going on a trip off the net for a while. Advantages over amateur radio are simplicity, GPS location services built in, no need for an exam / license, direct connectivity to the world wide phone network, and it's 24/7 always available. Oh, and I almost forgot, it has BlueTooth! Seriously, if the idea is just to have it for emergencies, there's even an EMS plan for ~$16/mo that has no minutes built in, w/ ~$1.50/min rate for calls. If you don't ever plan on calling anyone because you enjoy being out in the wilderness all alone, but want to have that safety backstop of being able to reach someone in an emergency (and give them lat/long of where you are), that sounds ideal. Just don't drop it in a river or land on it when you fall off the rock face.
and Apple has posted their own antenna page with videos of competing phones losing signal.
Wow, I've been of the opinion that this whole thing was somewhat overblown, and that Apple's response of the cases/refunds was good, but I'm really disappointed in this "Look at them! Look at them!" attitude. I just want to say to them, "You're APPLE. Your marketing mantra for years has been 'it just works' and you've grown because of problem free customer experiences. If the best you can say is 'See? We're just like our competitors!' then you have lost. Your customers expect more, because you've told them to expect more!" Personally, I think they'd be better off stating that while there does seem to be some effect, their testing and surveys of customers have indicated that in practice it does not have a pronounced effect on calls *, and that user experience is so important to them that they will give a free bumper case or a refund to any customer who requests one within the first 30 days of ownership - then leave it at that. No pointing fingers at competitors' products - let crazy fanbois do that for you. It's hard to sling mud without getting any on yourself. Stay above it, focus on the features, play up the positive experiences. Don't mention your competitors' products at all. People don't stand in line to buy iPhones because their signal quality issues are the same as HTC or Samsung phones. People stand in line to buy iPhones because they perceive iPhones to be better. Equating the iPhone with its competitors seems like a bad strategy.
* Note: Whether the experience is common or not, I find it hard to believe they can't produce results that say this, by proper selection of survey questions.
Unfortunately, it can take about 6 months for something to become available on archive.org. You'll be able to see the archive of the sharronangle.com site's primary election content (or the Harry Reid equivalent) just about when it becomes moot.
Even if they didn't take 6 months, they'd happily take down the content upon request.
When I tried it, it misidentified my ISP, picked a server ~20 miles away, but only reported half the speed that dslreports.com shows when testing from a server 100 miles away (and the speed I get from dslreports.com is close to what I see when downloading files). I think maybe when it misidentifies the ISP, peering arrangements might come into play. I wonder how often it does that and how accurate the data really is.
I spent a few weeks traveling in TX last year, visiting the in-laws, and stayed at a number of small motels around the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston region - mom & pop, value chains, etc. All of them had free WiFi, except one: Red Roof. This report says Red Roof DOES have free WiFi, but it wasn't the case for me last year. Maybe it was just this one particular motel, it was the worst motel we stayed in the whole trip. The rest of the time, your observation held true. The WiFi was free and pretty reliable. I'd set up an SCP transfer and push hundreds of photos back home overnight. And on the expensive hotel side, I stayed at a ski resort in Durango almost 2 yrs ago, expensive room, crap WiFi. But it was free, at least.
One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.
Would failing to return a property constitute theft? Or only the penalty for that particular return to police laws should apply?
A judge will tell.
Yes, failing to return it appears to constitute theft, at least "without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner..." I guess the question is whether whatever the original "finder" did constitutes "reasonable and just efforts". Selling it without that would seem pretty clearly "apporpriat[ing] such property" "to the use of another person not entitled thereto". Once it was theft, selling it would be selling stolen property; I'd think receiving it would be receiving stolen property. On the other hand, maybe the original "finder" and Gizmodo can claim that the article was itself merely a "reasonable and just effort to find the owner." After all, it was quite effective! Once the article ran, the owner turned up immediately!
That's funny, because I dropped PNC precisely because they gave me the runaround for weeks when my card number was stolen, refusing to credit the stolen money back until they had completed their investigation. This was over a decade ago, and I ended up having to borrow money from my parents to pay my bills that month. So, I dropped PNC and went with a credit union. When a similar situation happened a few years later, the credit union refunded my money by the morning after the day I reported the fraudulent charges. But, that was a decad ago, maybe PNC got some customer focus in one of the mergers.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
As someone who uses recipes quite a lot, I just don't want a tablet. I'm in an environment with lots of flour, fat, water, alcohol and vegetables. A tablet computer just doesn't play nice there unless it's been designed around that stuff.
I also make notes as I'm cooking, and again, what's really easier? A pen or opening up a touch keyboard when I've got pastry on my hands? I don't really care if I get pastry on a recipe or a $1 pen. When it comes to a $500 tablet, it's a whole different thing.
I agree wholeheartedly. I don't bring my laptop into the kitchen now, but it's not because it's big, heavy, or has short battery life. Compared to an iPad, those things are all true. The reason I don't bring my laptop into the kitchen is that a printout (which I can get from an iPad or a laptop) is just as good and about 1/10000 as expensive. I don't need someone on video telling me what to do - if they go too fast, I'd be pausing and rewinding, if they go too slow, what do I do, wait? I had the ability to do that already (I get FoodTV and I have a small TV in the kitchen), but I don't. And as for browsing recipes while I'm in the kitchen, I doubt it. I'm selecting my recipes in advance - otherwise I don't know what ingredients I need, what tools (mixing bowls? blender? 9x13" baking pan?) I need, if I need to preheat something, or if I need to prep something in ahead of time and let it rest or cool. With a printout, I can pause/rewind/play all with my eyes, and if it ends up with raw chicken on it, I can throw it away.
The iPad might be revolutionary and awesome (I dunno, I don't have one), but I don't think this is really a "killer app."
No, I've changed the case and power supply too. What I'm saying is I've never changed everything (including monitor and keyboard and mouse) all at once; there's always been some part that's been kept in any upgrade. So at what point do you say it's a "new" computer?
This is my grandfather's axe: my father fitted it with a new stock, and I have fitted it with a new head.
Anyway, if you had an Amiga in 1991, you might have found it harder to do this. As a result, I don't think I have the ability to read the old QIK tapes that I made back then, even if their magnetic coatings are still good.
I don't think I'm going to spring on a BD-XL or IH-BD any time soon. I still haven't even put a BD in my computer yet. I think anything really important gets copied from medium to medium as I go. I find all the current optical media (DVD or BD) too small and too slow for much. I do burn my photos to DVD, but that's just a last ditch save if the RAID fails and the backup HD doesn't work. And given the (lack of) care with which I store my backup DVDs, that's a very small hope.
1) Creates massive amounts of hype, for some reason.
2) Functions as an Itunes-like music player.
It seems to me that one group of people thinks Songbird is way over-hyped, and an equally large group has never heard of it. Count me in the second group. But I guess I won't bother looking in to it now.
I disagree - while there was a time when this feature was costing Sony money, there is no one buying a PS3 today to get this feature. New PS3s sold today do not have this feature. Sony is no longer "selling processing power at a loss". No one is saying Sony should spend any money on it - they don't need to "support" the OtherOS feature, just not deactivate it, because their customers paid for it. If I was Sony, I'd weigh the costs of leaving this feature in (but unsupported) against the bad publicity and loss of some of the best kind of customers. Remember, no one who uses only the OtherOS feature exclusively will be harmed by this, other than the loss of potential resale value of a machine that should have a feature it will now lack. The people who WILL be harmed by this are people who have older machines (so they are early adopters), AND who actually DO buy games, BluRay movies, and/or use PSN to buy downloadable content. If they didn't do these things, loss of PSN functionality wouldn't matter, so they just wouldn't update. These are the people who will NOT be early adopters of the next Sony product. These are the people who will stop purchasing PSN downloadable content. They were customers. Probably "fanbois", too, spreading good publicity. And, they'll be angry about it and scream "Remember the PS3!" and "Never buy Sony!" when the next Sony product is released.
Yes, Sony, DO release new machines without the OtherOS capability if you don't want any more "Linux Only" customers. I agree, this is probably a good decision on your part. But DON'T piss off the early adopters that raved about your products to all of their friends by taking away something that they paid for. That's just going to generate bad publicity and alienate some of your best supporters. And, if this was really all about the hack of the hypervisor in January, I have a feeling that this action may not have the desired effect.
As the owner of a "Slim" PS3, I'm hoping that this prompts a complete crack of the whole HV system, so I can eventually install Linux on this thing. No, I don't want to pirate games or anything like that, I just want the ability to run a better browser on it.
I'm going to guess this is Japan Standard Time, what with Sony Corporation being headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, and Japan being such a big market for the PS3.
I think this should be a wake-up call to all Sony owners. I have a Slim, and I never had this ability. But, what if they decided tomorrow that the next release would take away the ability to play Blu-Ray movies? And if we all didn't take the new release, we couldn't use PSN, couldn't use chat, couldn't play all those movies we bought online that require "checking in" with DRM servers, couldn't play new games that require at least the new firmware release, etc. Sure, this particular feature revocation doesn't directly impact ME, and it might not impact most owners of older PS3s because they don't use this feature. But if they can take away the "Install Other OS" feature from older PS3s, how do I know they won't take away features I DO use? What is my protection here? This doesn't directly impact me, but it's a disturbing precedent. Should I buy content on PSN, knowing they might disable my ability to use it sometime in the future? Who owns this box sitting under my TV? What did I actually buy? Do I have a promise that it will retain any of its features?
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This is like lighting someones business on fire so they can no longer operate their business. Versus actual non-violent activities like peaceful protests.
For the record, I don't actually support these DDoS activities, I don't use peer-to-peer for much beyond downloading Ubuntu distributions, and the only free music I download is placed in the public domain or licensed for free distribution (e.g. Creative Commons, free songs direct from the artists, or free samplers from Amazon.) But except in some fairly unlikely scenarios, a DDoS is essentially the same as a sit-in, and about as violent. If a couple of hundred students block the doors of a university building and stage a sit-in, the university is unable to conduct business as long as they are there. If a sit-in is staged at a lunch counter, the establishment is unable to conduct business as long as they are there. If a business site is DDoS'd, the site is unable to conduct business as long as it continues. Once the "protest" is over, things go back to normal. As long as no one has been physically injured or permanent damage done, I'd say these are all non-violent acts. Illegal & disruptive, yes. Similar to vandalism, I might agree. Liable for civil damages, probably. Violent is probably going a little too far.
That said, I agree, I can't buy parallels with MLK and nonviolent civil disobedience. It's not enough to break a law and avoid violence - I think there needs to be some element of personal risk. You need to show that your cause is so just, so right, that you're willing to accept the risk of unjust punishments to call society's attention to it. Hiding in anonymity and directing a botnet to DDoS a site makes people think more of extortion than nonviolent civil disobedience, regardless of whether your cause is just. I also think you really need to stake out clear moral high ground to successfully employ a strategy of nonviolent protests to affect change. Society has to feel outraged that you, clearly acting in a moral manner, are being persecuted. But content creators do deserve some compensation, and providing them with absolutely none knocks the activists off the high ground.
Don't me wrong, depriving the public domain of content that should belong to everyone through DRM and obscene extensions of copyright keeps the industry associations from claiming the high ground, too. There's a gradient between the two extremes, and that makes it hard for people to line up on a side, so I doubt this kind of activism will achieve its desired goals. I think any real solution is a long way off, too.
The EFF is not exactly swimming in money. In 2008, they actually spent $400K more than they took in. I'm happy that they spend more of their limited resources fighting for individuals than for well-heeled industries already well represented by lobbyists and millions of dollars pumped into political campaigns. I bet Time Warner alone spent more money on lobbying congress in 2010 than the entire EFF budget -- and I picked them because they were at the bottom of the list. I wouldn't be surprised to find that many TV/Movie/Recording industry companies each pay their retained lawyers many times the entire EFF annual budget. And the EFF is fighting on many fronts. So give them a break when they reserve resources to fight for the underrepresented.
Even if we do not buy all of the Persian Gulf oil, the availability of that supply has a large impact upon the global market. As of 2002, I think the Middle East supplied around 20% of the world's oil. If Persian Gulf oil stopped flowing tomorrow, would the other countries that do buy that oil stop using oil? Or would they try to buy it from countries that we get oil from? Do you think Mexican, South American and African oil prices would remain constant, or do you think they would rise? Do you even think oil from the United States would stay at the same price?
I'm not saying that Middle Eastern oil should have as much influence as it does on our foreign policy. I'm just saying that by estimating its impact as a "mere 5% of our total energy usage," you are perhaps undervaluing it. Oil is, for most purposes, a highly fungible commodity. But, of course, you're absolutely right that the best way to drive down whatever influence it does have is to invest in alternatives, like nuclear, wind, solar, etc.
Anyone know what's going to be in the "Smart Phone" QR block? I'd love to see it have enough data so an app could take that info, plus a the data from a week/month/year of GPS &/or accelerometer data (recorded by my GPS or smart phone) and give me a better estimate of how much a car would cost me to operate, if my driving habits remained roughly the same. At the very least, it could probably factor in my true mix of city/highway, and it might even be able to tweak that if I've got a heavy left foot, and insist on 1G starts at every stop sign.
Thought I'd add a link to this article on Roundup resistant "Palmer pigweed".
The most honest answer to that question is "we don't know".
I'm pretty sure the honest answer is "unlikely" (though certainly not impossible - see especially the links about widespread HGT for mitochondrial genes among plants), but as a previous AC poster has mentioned, you don't need to directly modify the genes of kudzu, poison ivy, or any other "undesirable" plant to end up with a "RoundUp Ready" variety - all you need to do is selectively breed such organisms by spraying RoundUp indiscriminately until you create one "naturally". Monsanto may have done a lot of work to come up with a GM short-cut, but we've bred drug-resistant strains of bacteria, pesticide resistant strains of insects, and herbicide resistant strains of plants before, all without tinkering directly with the genes.
Reader n4djs notes that Monsanto has been known to sue farmers for patent infringement when their crops unintentionally contain genetically modified plants.
This might have happened, but the Percy Schmeiser case is not such a case. The Supreme Court of Canada found that Schmeiser deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications.
It rather scares me that one of the leading anti-GMO spokesmen is someone who deliberately planted his field with genetically modified seed and then lied about it when he got caught.
I wasn't familiar with the case, and maybe others not involved in the GMO/anti-GMO fight aren't either. There's a little info on the Percy Schmeiser wikipedia page, which at least serves as a starting point of more info.
When you say "deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications," it sounds like he stole Monsanto seed and planted it in his field. From reading the wiki page, it sounds more like he collected seeds from his own fields that had been pollinated with Monsanto GM naturally. In the former case, I'd say Monsanto should win - stealing their seeds is wrong. But if his fields had been naturally pollinated, why should he be responsible for Monsanto's inability to contain their pollen? In fact, if he was in the business of selling non-GMO, the contamination of his fields could cost him value, customers, or even entire markets. If Monsanto can modify the GM in their plants, couldn't they have made the pollen incompatible with regular crops? And if not, perhaps they shouldn't have planted it if they couldn't control it?
I'm not one of the "all GMO is evil!!" crowd. I think there is great potential for good in GMO, even though there are risks. I just think it's ridiculous to make a self-propagating piece of "property", and then claim that when it self-propagates, someone else is responsible for that, but you aren't.
I prefer letting each individual display sarcasm on their screen as they prefer. That's why I enclose my sarcasm in <P> and </P> tags. Aren't those the sarcasm indicators?
The Inmarsat iSatPhone PRO isn't too bad (hey, at ~$600, it's in line with the original list price of the first iPhone!), and you can rent it from those guys (outfitterconnect.com) if you're just going on a trip off the net for a while. Advantages over amateur radio are simplicity, GPS location services built in, no need for an exam / license, direct connectivity to the world wide phone network, and it's 24/7 always available. Oh, and I almost forgot, it has BlueTooth! Seriously, if the idea is just to have it for emergencies, there's even an EMS plan for ~$16/mo that has no minutes built in, w/ ~$1.50/min rate for calls. If you don't ever plan on calling anyone because you enjoy being out in the wilderness all alone, but want to have that safety backstop of being able to reach someone in an emergency (and give them lat/long of where you are), that sounds ideal. Just don't drop it in a river or land on it when you fall off the rock face.
and Apple has posted their own antenna page with videos of competing phones losing signal.
Wow, I've been of the opinion that this whole thing was somewhat overblown, and that Apple's response of the cases/refunds was good, but I'm really disappointed in this "Look at them! Look at them!" attitude. I just want to say to them, "You're APPLE. Your marketing mantra for years has been 'it just works' and you've grown because of problem free customer experiences. If the best you can say is 'See? We're just like our competitors!' then you have lost. Your customers expect more, because you've told them to expect more!" Personally, I think they'd be better off stating that while there does seem to be some effect, their testing and surveys of customers have indicated that in practice it does not have a pronounced effect on calls *, and that user experience is so important to them that they will give a free bumper case or a refund to any customer who requests one within the first 30 days of ownership - then leave it at that. No pointing fingers at competitors' products - let crazy fanbois do that for you. It's hard to sling mud without getting any on yourself. Stay above it, focus on the features, play up the positive experiences. Don't mention your competitors' products at all. People don't stand in line to buy iPhones because their signal quality issues are the same as HTC or Samsung phones. People stand in line to buy iPhones because they perceive iPhones to be better. Equating the iPhone with its competitors seems like a bad strategy.
* Note: Whether the experience is common or not, I find it hard to believe they can't produce results that say this, by proper selection of survey questions.
Aw, I thought they were a breath of fres... nevermind.
I'm not sure how expensive it is, but if you're sailing around the world, you probably have a different view of expenses than I do.
Unfortunately, it can take about 6 months for something to become available on archive.org. You'll be able to see the archive of the sharronangle.com site's primary election content (or the Harry Reid equivalent) just about when it becomes moot. Even if they didn't take 6 months, they'd happily take down the content upon request.
When I tried it, it misidentified my ISP, picked a server ~20 miles away, but only reported half the speed that dslreports.com shows when testing from a server 100 miles away (and the speed I get from dslreports.com is close to what I see when downloading files). I think maybe when it misidentifies the ISP, peering arrangements might come into play. I wonder how often it does that and how accurate the data really is.
A USB-to-RS232 adapter cable runs about $6 at monoprice.com, check eBay for alternatives.
I spent a few weeks traveling in TX last year, visiting the in-laws, and stayed at a number of small motels around the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston region - mom & pop, value chains, etc. All of them had free WiFi, except one: Red Roof. This report says Red Roof DOES have free WiFi, but it wasn't the case for me last year. Maybe it was just this one particular motel, it was the worst motel we stayed in the whole trip. The rest of the time, your observation held true. The WiFi was free and pretty reliable. I'd set up an SCP transfer and push hundreds of photos back home overnight. And on the expensive hotel side, I stayed at a ski resort in Durango almost 2 yrs ago, expensive room, crap WiFi. But it was free, at least.
Stolen != Found So it's not as clear cut as you want it to be. But there is that other law requiring found property to be returned to the police...
Well, I'm no lawyer, but I did find this: California Penal Code 485
485. Appropriation of lost property by finder
One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.
Would failing to return a property constitute theft? Or only the penalty for that particular return to police laws should apply? A judge will tell.
Yes, failing to return it appears to constitute theft, at least "without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner..." I guess the question is whether whatever the original "finder" did constitutes "reasonable and just efforts". Selling it without that would seem pretty clearly "apporpriat[ing] such property" "to the use of another person not entitled thereto". Once it was theft, selling it would be selling stolen property; I'd think receiving it would be receiving stolen property. On the other hand, maybe the original "finder" and Gizmodo can claim that the article was itself merely a "reasonable and just effort to find the owner." After all, it was quite effective! Once the article ran, the owner turned up immediately!
That's funny, because I dropped PNC precisely because they gave me the runaround for weeks when my card number was stolen, refusing to credit the stolen money back until they had completed their investigation. This was over a decade ago, and I ended up having to borrow money from my parents to pay my bills that month. So, I dropped PNC and went with a credit union. When a similar situation happened a few years later, the credit union refunded my money by the morning after the day I reported the fraudulent charges. But, that was a decad ago, maybe PNC got some customer focus in one of the mergers.
As someone who uses recipes quite a lot, I just don't want a tablet. I'm in an environment with lots of flour, fat, water, alcohol and vegetables. A tablet computer just doesn't play nice there unless it's been designed around that stuff.
I also make notes as I'm cooking, and again, what's really easier? A pen or opening up a touch keyboard when I've got pastry on my hands? I don't really care if I get pastry on a recipe or a $1 pen. When it comes to a $500 tablet, it's a whole different thing.
I agree wholeheartedly. I don't bring my laptop into the kitchen now, but it's not because it's big, heavy, or has short battery life. Compared to an iPad, those things are all true. The reason I don't bring my laptop into the kitchen is that a printout (which I can get from an iPad or a laptop) is just as good and about 1/10000 as expensive. I don't need someone on video telling me what to do - if they go too fast, I'd be pausing and rewinding, if they go too slow, what do I do, wait? I had the ability to do that already (I get FoodTV and I have a small TV in the kitchen), but I don't. And as for browsing recipes while I'm in the kitchen, I doubt it. I'm selecting my recipes in advance - otherwise I don't know what ingredients I need, what tools (mixing bowls? blender? 9x13" baking pan?) I need, if I need to preheat something, or if I need to prep something in ahead of time and let it rest or cool. With a printout, I can pause/rewind/play all with my eyes, and if it ends up with raw chicken on it, I can throw it away.
The iPad might be revolutionary and awesome (I dunno, I don't have one), but I don't think this is really a "killer app."
No, I've changed the case and power supply too. What I'm saying is I've never changed everything (including monitor and keyboard and mouse) all at once; there's always been some part that's been kept in any upgrade. So at what point do you say it's a "new" computer?
This is my grandfather's axe: my father fitted it with a new stock, and I have fitted it with a new head.
See also Ship of Theseus
Have you been reading Hofstadter recently?
Anyway, if you had an Amiga in 1991, you might have found it harder to do this. As a result, I don't think I have the ability to read the old QIK tapes that I made back then, even if their magnetic coatings are still good.
I don't think I'm going to spring on a BD-XL or IH-BD any time soon. I still haven't even put a BD in my computer yet. I think anything really important gets copied from medium to medium as I go. I find all the current optical media (DVD or BD) too small and too slow for much. I do burn my photos to DVD, but that's just a last ditch save if the RAID fails and the backup HD doesn't work. And given the (lack of) care with which I store my backup DVDs, that's a very small hope.
Songbird does two things:
1) Creates massive amounts of hype, for some reason. 2) Functions as an Itunes-like music player.
It seems to me that one group of people thinks Songbird is way over-hyped, and an equally large group has never heard of it. Count me in the second group. But I guess I won't bother looking in to it now.
Yes, Sony, DO release new machines without the OtherOS capability if you don't want any more "Linux Only" customers. I agree, this is probably a good decision on your part. But DON'T piss off the early adopters that raved about your products to all of their friends by taking away something that they paid for. That's just going to generate bad publicity and alienate some of your best supporters. And, if this was really all about the hack of the hypervisor in January, I have a feeling that this action may not have the desired effect.
As the owner of a "Slim" PS3, I'm hoping that this prompts a complete crack of the whole HV system, so I can eventually install Linux on this thing. No, I don't want to pirate games or anything like that, I just want the ability to run a better browser on it.
I'm going to guess this is Japan Standard Time, what with Sony Corporation being headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, and Japan being such a big market for the PS3.
I think this should be a wake-up call to all Sony owners. I have a Slim, and I never had this ability. But, what if they decided tomorrow that the next release would take away the ability to play Blu-Ray movies? And if we all didn't take the new release, we couldn't use PSN, couldn't use chat, couldn't play all those movies we bought online that require "checking in" with DRM servers, couldn't play new games that require at least the new firmware release, etc. Sure, this particular feature revocation doesn't directly impact ME, and it might not impact most owners of older PS3s because they don't use this feature. But if they can take away the "Install Other OS" feature from older PS3s, how do I know they won't take away features I DO use? What is my protection here? This doesn't directly impact me, but it's a disturbing precedent. Should I buy content on PSN, knowing they might disable my ability to use it sometime in the future? Who owns this box sitting under my TV? What did I actually buy? Do I have a promise that it will retain any of its features?