Quite a bit of this information _had been available_ even before WikiLeaks released it. There's quite a bit more that is available that they haven't. But nobody's heard about it. Why? Because nobody's looking for it. Hell, I seem to recall hearing that some of the information of some of the massive WikiLeaks releases was sent to mainstream media outlets first...and they didn't care. I mean, I agree that Assange is probably in it to feed his ego, but having his name and his brand on this _makes sure it gets coverage_. And that's a good thing.
Eh. Even if it is me, the touch hasn't been treated any differently than my older ones, yet the older ones survived _far_ longer. And it's not just my own iPods that I've seen these issues on. With the older ones, the only problems I have _ever_ seen is the battery getting too old to hold a charge. Easy fix - replace it and you're probably good for another decade. With the newer ones, it's usually the headphone jack (which is near impossible to repair on the touch - though it can be done on the older nanos easily enough) or the screens that go bad, long before the battery gives out.
As for the laptops - Meh. I've had $500 Dell laptops survive 5+ years. I don't even consider durability when I buy a computer, because every one I've ever owned has been replaced because it was just time for better hardware, not because of any hardware failure. That's not to say I've _never_ seen hardware failure on a computer, but generally it's faulty hardware to begin with that will fail within the first year, and it's simple enough to get that repaired under warranty. And that's a risk with any brand - I've seen just as many problems with Apple as I have with Dell or Toshiba or HP. But in my experience, once you're through that first year, you should be fine for a decade if you really wanna push it that far.
I dunno, lately their quality seems to be in the gutter. I have 3rd generation iPods that have outlived iPod touches and nanos. Since the first nano, I haven't seen an iPod last more than a year or two...while the 3rd gen iPod I bought used about 6 years ago is still going strong. The 'iPod Classic' line still seems fine, but everything else is garbage. I started buying iPods because they were durable, easy to repair, and easy to get used. But now Archos has them beat on everything except being easy to find used. But used iPods don't last long enough to be worth buying anymore anyway.
Rolling release is the reason I love Arch, and half the reason I'm planning to put it on a server I'll be building soon. Between Arch, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Fedora, Arch is the most stable distro I've ever used. It's not like the packages they distribute are alpha quality or anything - they're stable versions, they're just the _newest_ stable version. Meaning they've hopefully fixed the major bugs from previous releases. Plus, Arch is rather minimal...which I think any rolling release distro would have to be. The distros that release versions every x months always seems like a carefully balanced house of cards - I can't tell you how many times upgrading _one_ package to the latest version screwed up a large portion of the entire system. Never had that problem on Arch. It's a bit harder to set up, but once it's up and running, everything just works.
EXACTLY what I was here to say. He doesn't quite fit the criteria, but what 8 year old _wouldn't_ love him? He's _CLASSIC_ mad scientist! Only problem is that you'd have to spend some time explaining who he is. But seriously - the world as we know it would not exist without him...and this is the same man who was thinking of death rays, worldwide free wireless electricity, global communications - he damn near thought of the internet before we even had electricity!
Section 508 only applies to federal departments and agencies. And it has right in the first paragraph: "...unless an undue burden would be imposed on the department or agency...".
So, it doesn't apply _at all_ to private entities creating websites, which seems to be largely what this change is about, and it also pretty much says that if it's too hard to implement, you don't have to. How is that a problem?
Except moderation schemes are usually skewed towards hiding things. Look at slashdot: Say 10 people moderate the same post. Half of them like it, half of them hate it. So it gets -5 Troll and +5 insightful or something. It's still at 0 or 1. Nobody will see it.
Plus, people only read so many items on the average site. So say we have a news site where the highest ranked items go to the top of the front page (basically how Digg works? I think? Maybe?) Well, if 100% or 99% etc of the people like an article, it'll be at the top, and everyone will read it. But if the site has a lot of readers and a lot of articles, the things that only 50% or 75% of the readers like will still get buried too low for anyone to actually read them.
What we need to solve that problem is more filters on what type of content you want to see - but then people only see things they agree with, further reinforcing their prejudices. There's really no good system I guess.
But is that limited by horsepower or a governor? Makes a big difference. Plus, 125MPH is still 45MPH faster than the legal speed limit anywhere in the US. Not that that means a damn thing. But anyway, as long as it's not a horsepower limit...if you're spending that kind of money and plan on going that fast, I'm sure you can find a way to get it reprogrammed. And since it's right at 125MPH, I'd imagine it's a programmed limit and they're using U or H rated tires. Could be wrong though.
And top universities cost a lot of money. I know plenty of people who are far more intelligent than I am that are going to far worse universities - or no university at all - simply because they can't pay for it. The most intelligent person I ever met is currently working at McDonald's, trying to earn enough money to pay for tuition at a rather terrible university.
I'm personally not a huge fan of having the government entirely composed of people who have no idea what it's like to not have health insurance. People who have no concept of life on less than a 6 figure salary. People who don't know the meaning of the word debt. Yes, that's exactly who's in there now. In some cases it works. In many others, it's a complete failure. Not everything can be understood through numbers and statistics. How can you claim to represent people when you don't have even the tiniest concept of what life is actually like for 95% of them?
I think you're confusing 'elitism' with 'intelligence'...
'elite' implies wealth and power. True, that typically also leads to a better education, but you can put any idiot through Harvard and he'll still be an idiot.Just because you do well at an ivy-league school does not mean you're intelligent. Hell, I find that people who do well on exams are just good at memorizing information. When it comes to actually using that information or having any common sense at all, many of them can't and don't. So you can remember the formulas the prof gives you, remember the problem formats, and manage to pull numbers out and plug them into the right formula. I've seen plenty of people do that without having any clue what the formula actually _means_. Hell, there have been times where I've done that myself.
What we really need in government are people who know how to interpret and use information. That's about it. I'm not saying Ed Felten can or can't do this, I'm just saying that that's certainly not part of being 'elite'. It is, however, a large part of intelligence.
Anyone can rent a storefront and set up a branch of your bank too. The difference is, when it's online it's a lot cheaper/easier, and there's a much lower risk. You aren't going to get shut down in a few days, and you can operate well outside the jurisdiction of the people you're ripping off. But hey, look at how many criminals have success with ATM skimmers, or stealing credit card info at restaurants, or anything like that. Those aren't secured either.
Nothing makes a store front, or an ATM, or any other physical object more secure than the online equivalent - at least in terms of phishing attacks. The difference is just that everything is cheaper and more remote online.
It's a bit of effort and not quite what you were looking for, but I've found that the absolute best decision I ever made to reduce RSI and other such effects was to switch to the Dvorak layout with an IBM Model M. It's actually pretty easy to learn Dvorak with an M too since it's so easy to rearrange the keycaps. But yea, it's more of an investment (in terms of time), but I would say it's worth looking into.
Penn State upgraded about a year ago from 4GB/week to 10GB/week. Man, that was rough. Have to set up downloading linux ISOs on Sunday night - if they were DVD images, one download could eat your entire cap. That or use the wifi - but there's no wifi in the dorms, so you'd have to go elsewhere for that. I used to leave my laptop running in it's bag so it could hop between wifi nodes and download while I walked from class to class.
I have had a 100% failure rate with WD drives. I've only ever had two, but both were dead in under a year. Haven't bought one since. Never had a hard drive of any other brand fail. Hell, I've got drives from '95 that are still running fine, but the WDs can't make it 10 months!
Meh. I was in a Sony store not too long ago and they had 3D TVs running with glasses to try it out. I honesty didn't notice much difference at all when putting on the glasses, but I had a headache in under a minute of wearing them.
I was fairly impressed at CES last year I think when I saw Guitar Hero on a large screen in 3D - the effect was quite noticeable there, but it was still not something I'd want to have all the time. Maybe for playing video games - I could see Call of Duty in 3D being pretty cool - but for watching movies it seems kinda pointless. I mean, it's one thing if you're in an interactive environment that you can move around in. But when you're just seeing what the director wants you to see, WTF is the point of having it in 3D?
Google Maps, AFAIK, has _always_ included non-satellite imagery. Higher resolution images have _always_ been from aerial photographs taken by aircraft. From the Google Blog, a few days ago:
...The folks who created Google Earth devised a way to stitch aerial and satellite imagery together into a seamless, searchable map of the world and make it available to anyone with a computer...
I wonder if it says 'property of the FBI' on it? If not, he should have destroyed it before they came for it. I doubt there are many judges who would punish a kid for destroying a device that some unknown entity intentionally left on his property...but once he knows it's an FBI device, that gets a bit more tricky. I personally think he should still be able to do what he wants with it, it seems exceedingly strange for the FBI to expect to get their spying devices back in such cases (besides, how can they be sure he didn't tamper with it?)
Of course Apple is in the lead. Hasn't 'Apple TV' been around for _years_ now? I mean, sure, they have a new version of the device now, but my girlfriend got an Apple TV about two years ago....
On every PS3 I've ever used, I've never noticed it saying anything about a system update...until you try to play a game. As soon as you go to start that game, it starts installing the update automatically. I don't think it even asks if you want it installed, it just does it. Real PITA. It's like, all I wanna do is play some CoD in campaign mode, but I gotta sit here for 20 minutes while this damn thing updates first.
But what are these people doing that they aren't having the updates installed automagically? Did they buy a gaming console just as a DVD player or something? I'd imagine _some_ may have, since IIRC it was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market for a while, but was it really _that_ many? And if so, why do you even care about firmware updates?
Thanks for the heads up. I loved the two Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games - but they had no DLC. Even if the price worked out to be the same in the end, I'm not paying for a game just to have to pay again to play it. Especially since I play multiplayer _some_, but not a lot. Enough that I'd want it, but not enough to justify $25 for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite a bit of this information _had been available_ even before WikiLeaks released it. There's quite a bit more that is available that they haven't. But nobody's heard about it. Why? Because nobody's looking for it. Hell, I seem to recall hearing that some of the information of some of the massive WikiLeaks releases was sent to mainstream media outlets first...and they didn't care. I mean, I agree that Assange is probably in it to feed his ego, but having his name and his brand on this _makes sure it gets coverage_. And that's a good thing.
Eh. Even if it is me, the touch hasn't been treated any differently than my older ones, yet the older ones survived _far_ longer. And it's not just my own iPods that I've seen these issues on. With the older ones, the only problems I have _ever_ seen is the battery getting too old to hold a charge. Easy fix - replace it and you're probably good for another decade. With the newer ones, it's usually the headphone jack (which is near impossible to repair on the touch - though it can be done on the older nanos easily enough) or the screens that go bad, long before the battery gives out.
As for the laptops - Meh. I've had $500 Dell laptops survive 5+ years. I don't even consider durability when I buy a computer, because every one I've ever owned has been replaced because it was just time for better hardware, not because of any hardware failure. That's not to say I've _never_ seen hardware failure on a computer, but generally it's faulty hardware to begin with that will fail within the first year, and it's simple enough to get that repaired under warranty. And that's a risk with any brand - I've seen just as many problems with Apple as I have with Dell or Toshiba or HP. But in my experience, once you're through that first year, you should be fine for a decade if you really wanna push it that far.
I dunno, lately their quality seems to be in the gutter. I have 3rd generation iPods that have outlived iPod touches and nanos. Since the first nano, I haven't seen an iPod last more than a year or two...while the 3rd gen iPod I bought used about 6 years ago is still going strong. The 'iPod Classic' line still seems fine, but everything else is garbage. I started buying iPods because they were durable, easy to repair, and easy to get used. But now Archos has them beat on everything except being easy to find used. But used iPods don't last long enough to be worth buying anymore anyway.
Rolling release is the reason I love Arch, and half the reason I'm planning to put it on a server I'll be building soon. Between Arch, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Fedora, Arch is the most stable distro I've ever used. It's not like the packages they distribute are alpha quality or anything - they're stable versions, they're just the _newest_ stable version. Meaning they've hopefully fixed the major bugs from previous releases. Plus, Arch is rather minimal...which I think any rolling release distro would have to be. The distros that release versions every x months always seems like a carefully balanced house of cards - I can't tell you how many times upgrading _one_ package to the latest version screwed up a large portion of the entire system. Never had that problem on Arch. It's a bit harder to set up, but once it's up and running, everything just works.
EXACTLY what I was here to say. He doesn't quite fit the criteria, but what 8 year old _wouldn't_ love him? He's _CLASSIC_ mad scientist! Only problem is that you'd have to spend some time explaining who he is. But seriously - the world as we know it would not exist without him...and this is the same man who was thinking of death rays, worldwide free wireless electricity, global communications - he damn near thought of the internet before we even had electricity!
Section 508 only applies to federal departments and agencies. And it has right in the first paragraph: "...unless an undue burden would be imposed on the department or agency...".
So, it doesn't apply _at all_ to private entities creating websites, which seems to be largely what this change is about, and it also pretty much says that if it's too hard to implement, you don't have to. How is that a problem?
And for anyone else wondering wtf section 508 is:
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?fuseAction=1998Amend
Except moderation schemes are usually skewed towards hiding things. Look at slashdot: Say 10 people moderate the same post. Half of them like it, half of them hate it. So it gets -5 Troll and +5 insightful or something. It's still at 0 or 1. Nobody will see it.
Plus, people only read so many items on the average site. So say we have a news site where the highest ranked items go to the top of the front page (basically how Digg works? I think? Maybe?) Well, if 100% or 99% etc of the people like an article, it'll be at the top, and everyone will read it. But if the site has a lot of readers and a lot of articles, the things that only 50% or 75% of the readers like will still get buried too low for anyone to actually read them.
What we need to solve that problem is more filters on what type of content you want to see - but then people only see things they agree with, further reinforcing their prejudices. There's really no good system I guess.
But is that limited by horsepower or a governor? Makes a big difference. Plus, 125MPH is still 45MPH faster than the legal speed limit anywhere in the US. Not that that means a damn thing. But anyway, as long as it's not a horsepower limit...if you're spending that kind of money and plan on going that fast, I'm sure you can find a way to get it reprogrammed. And since it's right at 125MPH, I'd imagine it's a programmed limit and they're using U or H rated tires. Could be wrong though.
And top universities cost a lot of money. I know plenty of people who are far more intelligent than I am that are going to far worse universities - or no university at all - simply because they can't pay for it. The most intelligent person I ever met is currently working at McDonald's, trying to earn enough money to pay for tuition at a rather terrible university.
I'm personally not a huge fan of having the government entirely composed of people who have no idea what it's like to not have health insurance. People who have no concept of life on less than a 6 figure salary. People who don't know the meaning of the word debt. Yes, that's exactly who's in there now. In some cases it works. In many others, it's a complete failure. Not everything can be understood through numbers and statistics. How can you claim to represent people when you don't have even the tiniest concept of what life is actually like for 95% of them?
I think you're confusing 'elitism' with 'intelligence'...
'elite' implies wealth and power. True, that typically also leads to a better education, but you can put any idiot through Harvard and he'll still be an idiot.Just because you do well at an ivy-league school does not mean you're intelligent. Hell, I find that people who do well on exams are just good at memorizing information. When it comes to actually using that information or having any common sense at all, many of them can't and don't. So you can remember the formulas the prof gives you, remember the problem formats, and manage to pull numbers out and plug them into the right formula. I've seen plenty of people do that without having any clue what the formula actually _means_. Hell, there have been times where I've done that myself.
What we really need in government are people who know how to interpret and use information. That's about it. I'm not saying Ed Felten can or can't do this, I'm just saying that that's certainly not part of being 'elite'. It is, however, a large part of intelligence.
Yes, 1/1.5 = 0.67
You're doing diodes per word, he's doing words per diode.
Anyone can rent a storefront and set up a branch of your bank too. The difference is, when it's online it's a lot cheaper/easier, and there's a much lower risk. You aren't going to get shut down in a few days, and you can operate well outside the jurisdiction of the people you're ripping off. But hey, look at how many criminals have success with ATM skimmers, or stealing credit card info at restaurants, or anything like that. Those aren't secured either.
Nothing makes a store front, or an ATM, or any other physical object more secure than the online equivalent - at least in terms of phishing attacks. The difference is just that everything is cheaper and more remote online.
I would argue the findings don't matter a bit, because they didn't reach people not interested in seeing the messages sent.
From the _summary_:
The fake accounts were probably controlled by a script that randomly picked a Twitter user to reply to...
You don't have to be followed/following to reply to someone else's tweets. And they'll still see it.
It's a bit of effort and not quite what you were looking for, but I've found that the absolute best decision I ever made to reduce RSI and other such effects was to switch to the Dvorak layout with an IBM Model M. It's actually pretty easy to learn Dvorak with an M too since it's so easy to rearrange the keycaps. But yea, it's more of an investment (in terms of time), but I would say it's worth looking into.
Penn State upgraded about a year ago from 4GB/week to 10GB/week. Man, that was rough. Have to set up downloading linux ISOs on Sunday night - if they were DVD images, one download could eat your entire cap. That or use the wifi - but there's no wifi in the dorms, so you'd have to go elsewhere for that. I used to leave my laptop running in it's bag so it could hop between wifi nodes and download while I walked from class to class.
I have had a 100% failure rate with WD drives. I've only ever had two, but both were dead in under a year. Haven't bought one since. Never had a hard drive of any other brand fail. Hell, I've got drives from '95 that are still running fine, but the WDs can't make it 10 months!
Meh. I was in a Sony store not too long ago and they had 3D TVs running with glasses to try it out. I honesty didn't notice much difference at all when putting on the glasses, but I had a headache in under a minute of wearing them.
I was fairly impressed at CES last year I think when I saw Guitar Hero on a large screen in 3D - the effect was quite noticeable there, but it was still not something I'd want to have all the time. Maybe for playing video games - I could see Call of Duty in 3D being pretty cool - but for watching movies it seems kinda pointless. I mean, it's one thing if you're in an interactive environment that you can move around in. But when you're just seeing what the director wants you to see, WTF is the point of having it in 3D?
Google Maps, AFAIK, has _always_ included non-satellite imagery. Higher resolution images have _always_ been from aerial photographs taken by aircraft. From the Google Blog, a few days ago:
...The folks who created Google Earth devised a way to stitch aerial and satellite imagery together into a seamless, searchable map of the world and make it available to anyone with a computer...
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/world-as-eagle-and-wild-goose-see-it.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/MKuf+(Official+Google+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Your phone company charges you for texts they send to you? I've never heard of such a thing...What crappy third-rate cell company are you using?
Depends on who that woman is. I just broke up with one and find myself _flooded_ with free time to spend on coding and other projects.
I wonder if it says 'property of the FBI' on it? If not, he should have destroyed it before they came for it. I doubt there are many judges who would punish a kid for destroying a device that some unknown entity intentionally left on his property...but once he knows it's an FBI device, that gets a bit more tricky. I personally think he should still be able to do what he wants with it, it seems exceedingly strange for the FBI to expect to get their spying devices back in such cases (besides, how can they be sure he didn't tamper with it?)
Of course Apple is in the lead. Hasn't 'Apple TV' been around for _years_ now? I mean, sure, they have a new version of the device now, but my girlfriend got an Apple TV about two years ago....
Also, I'd just like to say that TV is dead.
On every PS3 I've ever used, I've never noticed it saying anything about a system update...until you try to play a game. As soon as you go to start that game, it starts installing the update automatically. I don't think it even asks if you want it installed, it just does it. Real PITA. It's like, all I wanna do is play some CoD in campaign mode, but I gotta sit here for 20 minutes while this damn thing updates first.
But what are these people doing that they aren't having the updates installed automagically? Did they buy a gaming console just as a DVD player or something? I'd imagine _some_ may have, since IIRC it was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market for a while, but was it really _that_ many? And if so, why do you even care about firmware updates?
Thanks for the heads up. I loved the two Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games - but they had no DLC. Even if the price worked out to be the same in the end, I'm not paying for a game just to have to pay again to play it. Especially since I play multiplayer _some_, but not a lot. Enough that I'd want it, but not enough to justify $25 for it.