I know how frustrating it is. I posted a story a couple of weeks ago that I was going to be in the hospital for nearly a week for emergency surgery. Not a single person I've talked to since then saw the post. It was depressing thinking no one cared when in reality no one knew.
It was important to you that people knew but you relied on a mechanism that is geared towards monetizing you and if it works for you all the better. If it doesn't, oh well. Not like you can sue them over it.
Heh, maybe you can sue then if you payed them (like in the story)
Sorry to reply to myself, but I have a comment about OS support;
It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files[...]
iTunes is not supported on Linux, and works horribly in Wine. Amazon MP3 have downloaders for some old 32-bit versions of Linux, which is quite useless, but their Windows downloader works fine under Wine (it invokes iTunes by default, but that can be disabled). Ubuntu One MP3 is only supported on Ubuntu and Windows! (AFAICT), so no luck on other OSes/distros. Sound can probably be set up to work in Wine or in a VM, but I find it's better to use a native audio player.
Plus p2p file-sharing gives a better product without bullshit like unskippable ads, DRM, and idiotic FBI warnings on legally purchased media.
The music industry isn't that bad in terms of freedom. It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files at sites like iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, etc. The streaming sites/apps are arguably easier to use than both legal and pirated downloads, so they are in a separate category (still not well enough developed licensing that I can trust them as my only source of music). Your point about not supporting the war on the free internet is a very interesting one, but I think the movie industry is much worse, the TV industry seems to be less involved with the internet alltogether, but neither of these even offer DRM-free content. If we only consider the current state, not the previous actions, it almost seems good to support the music industry in comparison to Hollywod.
Intel, with their open-source graphics stack, makes for some of the easiest-to-maintain Linux boxes around. I'm typing this right now on Arch with Intel graphics. Sure, they don't have a lot of "gaming punch" but they are darn stable and just work with Linux.
If you don't need gaming performance, you can go with anything on the market. I know that the AMD open source drivers are very stable and support Compiz-like effects, and the same is probably true for NVidia.
TSA actually did their job properly - some TSA agent noticed something that to the untrained eye would have been an ordinary hug, but very plausibly could have been a pre-planned ploy to sneak contraband into the airport. Maybe the TSA could have approached the child more reasonably and given her more time to cool off, but overall I think that a patdown was justified.
Indeed, the agents should be suspicious when people move through the checkpoint without authorisation. I too doubt that terrorists would have a moral objection to using children, so the only problem is the agent's lack of ability to deal well with children, not his actions. This is of course only valid if you accept the premise that the tactics of TSA helps improve security, but that's not what people are complaining about here.
I thought the same thing. "Respect" is very strange to use here, as the US government already has to respect the 4th amendment because it is the law. If they violate the 4th amendment rights of someone, that's a judicial problem, not a legislative one. It's quite obvious, though, that this bill is to put in place specific practical measures.
Speaking of TLDs, one thing that irks me is a certain major local channel that, inconsistently but increasingly, has dropped the.com from mentions of its 7online website (especially during their local news) and even shows subpaths as e.g. 7online/protect (what you'd see if you ever run into their missing person commercial things). As you'd expect, that URL doesn't work-as-given.
In Firefox it takes me to a Google search, where the first result is their homepage (not/protect). In bing I get a single result with their page. While what you say seems like a conspiracy theory, I can think of no other explanation for this (well, laziness like you said). I thought it was like BBC saying "Search for <Show> <Topic>" instead of giving a URL, but this is even worse, they give an incorrect URL.
I don't understand this aversion to.com URLs. Everyone knows what they are and how to use them (someone pastes them into Google, but that still gives a good result). They can be made short and simple. They are easy to identify as web adresses.
Maybe the problem is with short+simple though. Even in the best-case scenario BBC would have to say bbc.co.uk/news/trainwreck which is a mouthful compared to "search for BBC trainwreck". Maybe they could get away without using news/ if they used temporary redirections. I guess most companies prefer to outsource lookups to Google, even though Google results are not unique, they differ wildly by country, city, Google+ login and previous searches
as every phone today has a microUSB port it should be possible to connect them to a networked computer for someone without wifi
Android can do this ("reverse tethering") if rooted. IMHO it should be supported by default though, useful in offices where there is no wi-fi, in hotels with wired connections and especially in places with obnoxious captive web portals that require you to type a password if inactive for 15 mins.
Why would Universities participate in that? Are these people that naive? Why not spend the money on education materials, or web sites explaining the sexual predators techniques so at risk populations can be smarter, rather than helping governments build Skynet?
If the alternative is that the governments build this secretly, then it's much better to have it out in the open, as public research. It's maybe even a question of civil rights, if this was implemented in a live environment.
There's something that annoys me about streaming high-quality video to a battery-operated device, and then for that device to send it back over a the same half-duplex network to the Apple TV. I know tech is there to do our bidding, but it just seems so...wrong
Kraków (ac. Cracovia, jid. Kroke, niem. Krakau, fr. Cracovie, ang. Cracow, hiszp. & w. Cracovia) – miasto na prawach powiatu w poudniowej Polsce, siedziba wadz województwa maopolskiego, drugie w kraju pod wzgldem liczby mieszkaców[1][4] i pod wzgldem powierzchni[1].
Pooone nad Wis, na obszarze Bramy Krakowskiej, Niecki Nidziaskiej i Pogórza Zachodniobeskidzkiego. Jest jednym z najstarszych miast Polski o ponadtysicletniej historii, z wieloma wartociowymi obiektami architektonicznymi. Dziaa w nim równie wiele instytucji i placówek kulturalnych gromadzcych bezcenne zabytki. Do 1795 r. Kraków by formalnie stolic Polski[5] a do 1611 r. siedzib wadców pastwa polskiego. W latach 1596–1795, czyli do III rozbioru Polski, jako stolica Rzeczypospolitej[6] funkcje stoeczne dzieli z Warszaw, która staa si miastem rezydencjalnym króla[7][8].
Obecnie jest stolic województwa maopolskiego, a take centralnym orodkiem metropolitalnym aglomeracji krakowskiej. W zapisach historycznych jest uznawany za gówne miasto historycznej Maopolski. Do historycznej funkcji Krakowa odnosi si jego pena nazwa[9] – Stoeczne Królewskie Miasto Kraków usankcjonowana prawnie przez Rad Ministrów jak i wczeniej przez naczelne wadze pastwowe II Rzeczypospolitej, które uyway tej nazwy w swoich aktach prawnych[10][11]. Równie nazwy skróconej tj.: st. król. miasto Kraków, st.kr. miasto Kraków albo sto. król. miasto Kraków. Niektóre z tych aktów prawnych obowizuj do dzisiaj[12][13]. Na arenie midzynarodowej Kraków postrzegany jest jako "duchowe i naukowe serce Polski"[14].
W Krakowie znajduj si gówne siedziby m.in. : Polskiej Akademii Umiejtnoci, Narodowego Centrum Nauki, Europejskiego Towarzystwa Chirurgicznego [15], Polskiego Towarzystwa Promieniowania Synchrotronowego[16], Krajowej Szkoy Sdownictwa i Prokuratury[17], dowództwa Wojsk Specjalnych RP[18], Polskiego Zwizku Narciarskiego[19]. Miasto posiada równie wiele placówek kulturalnych o znaczeniu i statusie narodowym m.in. Narodowy Stary Teatr, Muzeum Narodowe, Drukarnia Narodowa, Biblioteka Jagielloska, Instytut Ksiki[20].
Miasto peni funkcj centrum administracyjnego, kulturalnego, edukacyjnego, naukowego, gospodarczego, usugowego i turystycznego. Kraków jest drugim, po Warszawie, najwikszym w kraju rynkiem nowoczesnej powierzchni biurowej[21] a take jednym z kluczowych wzów drogowych i kolejowych w Polsce. W Balicach pod Krakowem znajduje si drugi co do wielkoci polski port lotniczy o znaczeniu midzynarodowym. Wedug raportu inwestycyjnego Konferencji ds. Handlu i Rozwoju ONZ (UNCTAD) z 2011 roku Kraków jest najlepszym miejscem na wiecie do lokowania centrów usug dla biznesu[22].
Pooenie[edytuj]
Kraków jest pooony w poudniowej Polsce, w rodkowo-pónocnej czci województwa maopolskiego. Miasto ley nad Wis i na jego terenie znajduj si ujcia dopywów rzeki Wisy: Biauchy (dolny bieg Prdnika), Rudawy, Dubni, Drwiny Dugiej i Wilgi. Kraków znajduje si w miejscu zbiegu kilku krain geograficznych: Bramy Krakowskiej, Kotliny Owicimskiej, Kotliny Sandomierskiej, Pogórza Zachodniobeskidzkiego, Wyyny Krakowsko-Czstochowskiej. Pooenie Krakowa sprawia, e jest on baz dla wycieczek w polskie góry, czy wypadów do malowniczej Jury Krakowsko-Czstochowskiej.
Z Krakowem ssiaduj gminy: Igoomia-Wawrzeczyce, Kocmyrzów-Luborzyca, Koniusza, Liszki, Michaowice, Mogilany, Niepoomice, Skawina, witniki Górne, Wieliczka, Wielka Wie, Zabierzów, Zielonki. Gminy te nale do dwóch powiatów ssiadujcych z Krakowem: powiat krakowski oraz powiat wielicki.
Podzia administracyjny[edytuj]
Information icon.svg Osobne artykuy: Podzia administracyjny Krakowa i ulice Krakowa.
Dzielnice Krakowa
Widok na rzek Wis oraz Most Dbnicki ze Wzgórza Wawelskiego
Why should I have to use my entire 24" or bigger display(s) to do ONE thing?
Sorry to be pedantic (I completely agree with your post), but you can do "one thing" with many windows. If you're reading a paper and have another reference document open, you're still just reading a paper. You just don't have to alt-tab to the reference every minute. Same when coding; if you have the.h and.cpp file open at the same time, that's still just coding a class. When developing a website, you may need a file manager, a html editor and a browser just to do that one thing. The multi-window paradigm is most useful when doing one thing (a close second is when you're running programs that take O(minutes), then it's useful to do something else while waiting for them to finish)
You can use Alt+Space to get the window menu, then arrow down a couple of times, then hit enter and move the window around with the arrow keys. After you have moved it with with the keys, it can also be moved using the mouse.
Wow, they have been selling something with just 1080i in all of 2011? I thought it was just the Wii that was left at 1080p. Well, AppleTV isn't actually their flagship anyway.
It takes at least a third of a second to load a web page if all resources but the main HTML document are cached. If you have to load additional pictures and scripts, it will most likely take more than a second, just due to latency.
Typing in a SSH terminal will appear choppy and using the interactive functions of the sheell (arrow up, down, etc) will become uncomfortable
The delay in VoIP is clearly noticeable, but it's not impossible to have a conversation
Email is completely unaffected, or like browsing if using webmail
Large downloads and torrents are not directly affected by latency
Somewhat bad lag in most games
Of course, you probably know this, and was asking about what is normal. Here's another data point: 5Mbit DSL, 67 ms to my provider's website with a couple of torrents running
a rare CPU condition is exponentially more difficult to narrow down than most programming mistakes.
You could say that the difficulty is proportional to the amount of possibility you have to check (~complexity). If the bug is at a lower level of abstraction, you have to check all the possible errors in that underlying platform as well as your own code.
Thus you can indeed say something like "difficulty ~ exp(highest level of abstraction - level of abstraction where the bug appears)"
I don't even know where to check for more info... I definitely want to get my CPU replaced if it has this bug. I reckon AMD will not be eager to publicize this (if they linked to it from their support page, they would already be better than Intel)
Precisely! Upgrading for the sake up upgrading is the hobgoblin of little minds.
It's like with Linux vs. BSD (I hope this doesn't get modded up, don't want to start a flamewar, it's just a good analogy). Linux changes the interface all the time, and software that is over 6 months old and interacts with the kernel is almost by definition broken. The changes are for the better, but the gain is minimal. The idea of many developers is that for a piece of software to be usable, it has to have an active community that maintains it. In reality, though, as long as the platform underneath it is stable, a stable piece of software wil just continue to work forever (albeit with a few bugs). The months I had on FreeBSD before I could no longer deal with the bad ATI support taught me that things can be different. I bet that a BSD CD burner app that worked in 2002 would run just as well today. Still, Linux is where it's at for most people, and I think developers love the experimental nature, after all it's much more fun to invent an API than to implement an existing one.
it's basically impossible to shut down, or compromise effectively, without severely screwing up the internet. Which is probably the next step.
In the war between pirates and copyright cartels, the Internet suffers all the collateral damage. I wish we could leave things like they are now. Torrents can be very efficient if the client selects nearby peers -- most network tech is symmetric, so torrents just make better use of the upstream bandwidth. Darknets, on the other hand, are quite inefficient, like the one in TFA which requires an extra hop to transfer a file. And most people pay for entertainment now anyway.. Torrents are sufficiently difficult to deal with (just file management, really) that many people will opt for streaming/iTunes like systems. HTTP download and illegal streaming sites go up and down, and it's not a very pleasant experience either -- those who have money will use the simpler legal options.
Slashdot Mirror
It was important to you that people knew but you relied on a mechanism that is geared towards monetizing you and if it works for you all the better. If it doesn't, oh well. Not like you can sue them over it.
Heh, maybe you can sue then if you payed them (like in the story)
actually it's infinity percent markup since SMS costs telcos nothing at all...
Great, now let's tunnel IP over SMS and get infinite, free data bandwidth
It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files[...]
iTunes is not supported on Linux, and works horribly in Wine. Amazon MP3 have downloaders for some old 32-bit versions of Linux, which is quite useless, but their Windows downloader works fine under Wine (it invokes iTunes by default, but that can be disabled). Ubuntu One MP3 is only supported on Ubuntu and Windows! (AFAICT), so no luck on other OSes/distros. Sound can probably be set up to work in Wine or in a VM, but I find it's better to use a native audio player.
Plus p2p file-sharing gives a better product without bullshit like unskippable ads, DRM, and idiotic FBI warnings on legally purchased media.
The music industry isn't that bad in terms of freedom. It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files at sites like iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, etc. The streaming sites/apps are arguably easier to use than both legal and pirated downloads, so they are in a separate category (still not well enough developed licensing that I can trust them as my only source of music). Your point about not supporting the war on the free internet is a very interesting one, but I think the movie industry is much worse, the TV industry seems to be less involved with the internet alltogether, but neither of these even offer DRM-free content. If we only consider the current state, not the previous actions, it almost seems good to support the music industry in comparison to Hollywod.
Intel, with their open-source graphics stack, makes for some of the easiest-to-maintain Linux boxes around. I'm typing this right now on Arch with Intel graphics. Sure, they don't have a lot of "gaming punch" but they are darn stable and just work with Linux.
If you don't need gaming performance, you can go with anything on the market. I know that the AMD open source drivers are very stable and support Compiz-like effects, and the same is probably true for NVidia.
A propagation of high quality mics and adc's into phones versus a crap Labtec mics on 90's era PC's constitutes the rest of the difference.
Maybe Labtec got better with time, but my 6 year old Labtec is fantastic compared all laptop mics I've seen, and I prefer it to some headsets.
TSA actually did their job properly - some TSA agent noticed something that to the untrained eye would have been an ordinary hug, but very plausibly could have been a pre-planned ploy to sneak contraband into the airport. Maybe the TSA could have approached the child more reasonably and given her more time to cool off, but overall I think that a patdown was justified.
Indeed, the agents should be suspicious when people move through the checkpoint without authorisation. I too doubt that terrorists would have a moral objection to using children, so the only problem is the agent's lack of ability to deal well with children, not his actions. This is of course only valid if you accept the premise that the tactics of TSA helps improve security, but that's not what people are complaining about here.
In other words, a literal "solution in search of a problem."
Finally someone anticipates a problem before it happens, and they get shot down like this?
I thought the same thing. "Respect" is very strange to use here, as the US government already has to respect the 4th amendment because it is the law. If they violate the 4th amendment rights of someone, that's a judicial problem, not a legislative one. It's quite obvious, though, that this bill is to put in place specific practical measures.
Speaking of TLDs, one thing that irks me is a certain major local channel that, inconsistently but increasingly, has dropped the .com from mentions of its 7online website (especially during their local news) and even shows subpaths as e.g. 7online/protect (what you'd see if you ever run into their missing person commercial things). As you'd expect, that URL doesn't work-as-given.
In Firefox it takes me to a Google search, where the first result is their homepage (not /protect). In bing I get a single result with their page. While what you say seems like a conspiracy theory, I can think of no other explanation for this (well, laziness like you said). I thought it was like BBC saying "Search for <Show> <Topic>" instead of giving a URL, but this is even worse, they give an incorrect URL.
I don't understand this aversion to .com URLs. Everyone knows what they are and how to use them (someone pastes them into Google, but that still gives a good result). They can be made short and simple. They are easy to identify as web adresses.
Maybe the problem is with short+simple though. Even in the best-case scenario BBC would have to say bbc.co.uk/news/trainwreck which is a mouthful compared to "search for BBC trainwreck". Maybe they could get away without using news/ if they used temporary redirections. I guess most companies prefer to outsource lookups to Google, even though Google results are not unique, they differ wildly by country, city, Google+ login and previous searches
as every phone today has a microUSB port it should be possible to connect them to a networked computer for someone without wifi
Android can do this ("reverse tethering") if rooted. IMHO it should be supported by default though, useful in offices where there is no wi-fi, in hotels with wired connections and especially in places with obnoxious captive web portals that require you to type a password if inactive for 15 mins.
Why would Universities participate in that? Are these people that naive? Why not spend the money on education materials, or web sites explaining the sexual predators techniques so at risk populations can be smarter, rather than helping governments build Skynet?
If the alternative is that the governments build this secretly, then it's much better to have it out in the open, as public research. It's maybe even a question of civil rights, if this was implemented in a live environment.
There's something that annoys me about streaming high-quality video to a battery-operated device, and then for that device to send it back over a the same half-duplex network to the Apple TV. I know tech is there to do our bidding, but it just seems so...wrong
Kraków (ac. Cracovia, jid. Kroke, niem. Krakau, fr. Cracovie, ang. Cracow, hiszp. & w. Cracovia) – miasto na prawach powiatu w poudniowej Polsce, siedziba wadz województwa maopolskiego, drugie w kraju pod wzgldem liczby mieszkaców[1][4] i pod wzgldem powierzchni[1]. Pooone nad Wis, na obszarze Bramy Krakowskiej, Niecki Nidziaskiej i Pogórza Zachodniobeskidzkiego. Jest jednym z najstarszych miast Polski o ponadtysicletniej historii, z wieloma wartociowymi obiektami architektonicznymi. Dziaa w nim równie wiele instytucji i placówek kulturalnych gromadzcych bezcenne zabytki. Do 1795 r. Kraków by formalnie stolic Polski[5] a do 1611 r. siedzib wadców pastwa polskiego. W latach 1596–1795, czyli do III rozbioru Polski, jako stolica Rzeczypospolitej[6] funkcje stoeczne dzieli z Warszaw, która staa si miastem rezydencjalnym króla[7][8]. Obecnie jest stolic województwa maopolskiego, a take centralnym orodkiem metropolitalnym aglomeracji krakowskiej. W zapisach historycznych jest uznawany za gówne miasto historycznej Maopolski. Do historycznej funkcji Krakowa odnosi si jego pena nazwa[9] – Stoeczne Królewskie Miasto Kraków usankcjonowana prawnie przez Rad Ministrów jak i wczeniej przez naczelne wadze pastwowe II Rzeczypospolitej, które uyway tej nazwy w swoich aktach prawnych[10][11]. Równie nazwy skróconej tj.: st. król. miasto Kraków, st.kr. miasto Kraków albo sto. król. miasto Kraków. Niektóre z tych aktów prawnych obowizuj do dzisiaj[12][13]. Na arenie midzynarodowej Kraków postrzegany jest jako "duchowe i naukowe serce Polski"[14]. W Krakowie znajduj si gówne siedziby m.in. : Polskiej Akademii Umiejtnoci, Narodowego Centrum Nauki, Europejskiego Towarzystwa Chirurgicznego [15], Polskiego Towarzystwa Promieniowania Synchrotronowego[16], Krajowej Szkoy Sdownictwa i Prokuratury[17], dowództwa Wojsk Specjalnych RP[18], Polskiego Zwizku Narciarskiego[19]. Miasto posiada równie wiele placówek kulturalnych o znaczeniu i statusie narodowym m.in. Narodowy Stary Teatr, Muzeum Narodowe, Drukarnia Narodowa, Biblioteka Jagielloska, Instytut Ksiki[20]. Miasto peni funkcj centrum administracyjnego, kulturalnego, edukacyjnego, naukowego, gospodarczego, usugowego i turystycznego. Kraków jest drugim, po Warszawie, najwikszym w kraju rynkiem nowoczesnej powierzchni biurowej[21] a take jednym z kluczowych wzów drogowych i kolejowych w Polsce. W Balicach pod Krakowem znajduje si drugi co do wielkoci polski port lotniczy o znaczeniu midzynarodowym. Wedug raportu inwestycyjnego Konferencji ds. Handlu i Rozwoju ONZ (UNCTAD) z 2011 roku Kraków jest najlepszym miejscem na wiecie do lokowania centrów usug dla biznesu[22]. Pooenie[edytuj] Kraków jest pooony w poudniowej Polsce, w rodkowo-pónocnej czci województwa maopolskiego. Miasto ley nad Wis i na jego terenie znajduj si ujcia dopywów rzeki Wisy: Biauchy (dolny bieg Prdnika), Rudawy, Dubni, Drwiny Dugiej i Wilgi. Kraków znajduje si w miejscu zbiegu kilku krain geograficznych: Bramy Krakowskiej, Kotliny Owicimskiej, Kotliny Sandomierskiej, Pogórza Zachodniobeskidzkiego, Wyyny Krakowsko-Czstochowskiej. Pooenie Krakowa sprawia, e jest on baz dla wycieczek w polskie góry, czy wypadów do malowniczej Jury Krakowsko-Czstochowskiej. Z Krakowem ssiaduj gminy: Igoomia-Wawrzeczyce, Kocmyrzów-Luborzyca, Koniusza, Liszki, Michaowice, Mogilany, Niepoomice, Skawina, witniki Górne, Wieliczka, Wielka Wie, Zabierzów, Zielonki. Gminy te nale do dwóch powiatów ssiadujcych z Krakowem: powiat krakowski oraz powiat wielicki. Podzia administracyjny[edytuj] Information icon.svg Osobne artykuy: Podzia administracyjny Krakowa i ulice Krakowa. Dzielnice Krakowa Widok na rzek Wis oraz Most Dbnicki ze Wzgórza Wawelskiego
Why should I have to use my entire 24" or bigger display(s) to do ONE thing?
Sorry to be pedantic (I completely agree with your post), but you can do "one thing" with many windows. If you're reading a paper and have another reference document open, you're still just reading a paper. You just don't have to alt-tab to the reference every minute. Same when coding; if you have the .h and .cpp file open at the same time, that's still just coding a class. When developing a website, you may need a file manager, a html editor and a browser just to do that one thing. The multi-window paradigm is most useful when doing one thing (a close second is when you're running programs that take O(minutes), then it's useful to do something else while waiting for them to finish)
You can use Alt+Space to get the window menu, then arrow down a couple of times, then hit enter and move the window around with the arrow keys. After you have moved it with with the keys, it can also be moved using the mouse.
Thanks for the link. I hope this can be fixed by microcode.
That's supposed to say "<1080p"
Wow, they have been selling something with just 1080i in all of 2011? I thought it was just the Wii that was left at 1080p. Well, AppleTV isn't actually their flagship anyway.
Or take that resolution and put it in a 24" display. Maybe this iPad will nudge monitors out of the stagnation called "Full HD".
It takes at least a third of a second to load a web page if all resources but the main HTML document are cached. If you have to load additional pictures and scripts, it will most likely take more than a second, just due to latency.
Typing in a SSH terminal will appear choppy and using the interactive functions of the sheell (arrow up, down, etc) will become uncomfortable
The delay in VoIP is clearly noticeable, but it's not impossible to have a conversation
Email is completely unaffected, or like browsing if using webmail
Large downloads and torrents are not directly affected by latency
Somewhat bad lag in most games
Of course, you probably know this, and was asking about what is normal. Here's another data point: 5Mbit DSL, 67 ms to my provider's website with a couple of torrents running
a rare CPU condition is exponentially more difficult to narrow down than most programming mistakes.
You could say that the difficulty is proportional to the amount of possibility you have to check (~complexity). If the bug is at a lower level of abstraction, you have to check all the possible errors in that underlying platform as well as your own code.
Thus you can indeed say something like "difficulty ~ exp(highest level of abstraction - level of abstraction where the bug appears)"
I don't even know where to check for more info... I definitely want to get my CPU replaced if it has this bug. I reckon AMD will not be eager to publicize this (if they linked to it from their support page, they would already be better than Intel)
Precisely! Upgrading for the sake up upgrading is the hobgoblin of little minds.
It's like with Linux vs. BSD (I hope this doesn't get modded up, don't want to start a flamewar, it's just a good analogy). Linux changes the interface all the time, and software that is over 6 months old and interacts with the kernel is almost by definition broken. The changes are for the better, but the gain is minimal. The idea of many developers is that for a piece of software to be usable, it has to have an active community that maintains it. In reality, though, as long as the platform underneath it is stable, a stable piece of software wil just continue to work forever (albeit with a few bugs). The months I had on FreeBSD before I could no longer deal with the bad ATI support taught me that things can be different. I bet that a BSD CD burner app that worked in 2002 would run just as well today. Still, Linux is where it's at for most people, and I think developers love the experimental nature, after all it's much more fun to invent an API than to implement an existing one.
it's basically impossible to shut down, or compromise effectively, without severely screwing up the internet. Which is probably the next step.
In the war between pirates and copyright cartels, the Internet suffers all the collateral damage. I wish we could leave things like they are now. Torrents can be very efficient if the client selects nearby peers -- most network tech is symmetric, so torrents just make better use of the upstream bandwidth. Darknets, on the other hand, are quite inefficient, like the one in TFA which requires an extra hop to transfer a file. And most people pay for entertainment now anyway.. Torrents are sufficiently difficult to deal with (just file management, really) that many people will opt for streaming/iTunes like systems. HTTP download and illegal streaming sites go up and down, and it's not a very pleasant experience either -- those who have money will use the simpler legal options.