Microsoft is a small player in this market. And frankly, competition works best when you have companies that are large enough to fight the good fight. As for controlling our digital lives, Microsoft is getting there but their influence is still largely limited to business systems and traditional markets.
Apple clearly holds the lead in consumer device markets; I am grateful that Google and Microsoft are actively bringing new ideas and fresh devices to the table and keeping Apple from stagnating in the style of IE 6.
I am so tired of people saying the president is directly responsible.
I'm so tired of people believing that he has no responsibility. He directs general NSA policy and focus, and he directs the executive branch. The only way I could remove his responsibility is if both the NSA and the White House were directly contradicting him.
What you're suggesting is that the President doesn't actually control the executive branch.
Any law that the NSA violates puts them at risk in court, and this could be especially hazardous as political climates change.
If the law isn't being enforced, that is the direct fault of the the President of the United States. He is in charge of enforcement, especially of executing laws related to national security. Don't weaken the law simply because the President fails to act.
But I prefer that my encryption tool and my cloud storage service be completely separate. (How do I know Lockbox isn't sending the keys to the NSA, or whoever?)
No, you're missing the point. The Government is supposed to provide all of those things. The Government takes a little more of our money, and in exchange we don't have to worry about those needy people.
Just think about it... one day we won't need charities or shelters. The Government will do it all.
abolish the distinction between part time and full time employees and increase minimum wage to a scale that follows the cost of basic food, utilities, shelter and transportation
I like this idea, but instead provide the first $18 an hour (or whatever) as a government provisioned pseudo-currency card, which is only useful for those concepts (basic food, utilities, shelter, transportation). Reduce abuse of the system while meeting basic needs.
Shareholders judge CEOs according to how stock prices have moved and how dividends have been released. These are usually the guys you have to please, over the term of a couple of years, to keep your job.
An objective observer would more likely judge a CEO by the stability and growth of the company over the course of half a decade or more. It's not always about the money. Some great private company owners don't care much about bringing in a corporate profit, but rather they just like what they're doing and want to pay their employees and the bills. (But of course, once you hold a majority share in a company that is worth billions of dollars, it becomes VERY hard to resist an IPO.)
There's also a big difference between a startup that is still on its way up vs. an established company. A company with its roots firmly planted, in my opinion, should value a CEO with the ability to continue pushing the company forward when market conditions provide overbearing competition and when economic times do not play well to the good or service being provided. Sometimes this means reducing cash in the bank and moving fiercely into related markets that are on the upswing.
I will present proof by contradiction. The assumption to be disproven: My friends are all creditworthy if I am creditworthy.
As a creditworthy person, I have a good job and always repay loans well in advance. I am responsible with my money. This allows me to volunteer where college students and other people who are not as well off frequent.
In turn, I'm friends with many of them on Facebook. Contradiction!
Same thing as iOS and as Android... by default (without jailbreaking or rooting), most tablets or phones you purchase require that you live within a closed system.
By that same token, I don't see how Windows RT is any more of a "real OS" than iOS or Android. On the other hand, Windows 8.* fits that definition much better.
You act like they are treated as slaves. I attended the wedding of my brother-in-law to his now-husband just 4 weeks ago, right here in the good ol' United States. I don't recall either of them being tied up with chains (although, he did wear a rainbow feather boa at one point...).
Shareholders want to turn as much profit as they can in as short a time frame as can be done.
Going public is a great way to slowly kill a good company. Many shareholders don't care where the company is in 10 years; they care about their dollar in one year. When the stocks start on a permanent trend downwards, those shareholders sell and move to the next company that has potential in the near term.
The government is exactly the structure you should use to control big corporations, through regulations.
Actually, competition is the structure that is best for controlling big corporations. At a fundamental level, corporations are still only as powerful as their dollar, and competition spreads that dollar and forces them to focus on screwing their competitors more than their customers and the public in general.
But, I agree with you when a corporation becomes so powerful that they can screw both competitors and consumers, and still have enough cash left over to buy their government lobby.
Thank you so much for teaching me to think for myself. As a result, I will always follow your words and never stray.
Besides, you are so correct, oh wise Internet sage. Who cares that we are talking about a potential madman controlling the most powerful nation in the history of the world. I should never compare such a thing to Hitler.
The checks and balances in our government are what stands between a successful government of the people and a dictatorship. What powers you give Obama today, or gave Bush yesterday, may be in the hands of a form of Hitler tomorrow.
This is ridiculous reasoning. Microsoft spent *months* willfully thumbing their nose at the public and declaring outright "my way or highway".
And then they kicked out the leader of that movement, Don Mattrick, when they began to notice just how out-of-touch he was with market conditions.
And back in the land of reality, *months* have come and gone and more *months* will come and go before the release. It's less than halfway from backlash to release date and they've gone out of their way to rework a system in a short timespan, a system they worked very hard to get where they felt it was just right, but a system in which customers simply didn't agree.
When Sony has done their customers wrong, how have they responded in the past? At least Microsoft laid it all out there and has been willing to compromise before release (which is a change from even the recent Windows 8 days). Sony put rootkits in PCs and the only way the public found out is that a security researcher found it and made it public.
It just seems better to use the random seed in the first place rather than throw it into some PRNG.
You're not incorrect, but it's more of an obfuscation technique. Even natural data that may seem random may be prone to patterns, and sensors all too often have flaws that are unnoticeable for their designed purpose but produce subtle patterns in what would be otherwise purely random data.
My thought is to combine as many flavors of this data as is reasonable, and put it all through cryptographic-strength PRNG to help protect the original seed value and thus the randomness of it. Increased algorithmic strength means you will need to rely on polling sensors less often, which will reduce the likelihood of guessing a new value based on any known device flaws.
This doesn't mean you throw in the towel. There are bad PRNG algorithms and better PRNG algorithms, and it's worth using better ones.
Plus, these devices have so many sensors that finding a fairly complex and truly random seed isn't all that difficult. Then throw the seed into a good PRNG and it becomes practically impossible to decode the seed values and, thus, produce any mechanism for finding patterns in the seed data.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is a small player in this market. And frankly, competition works best when you have companies that are large enough to fight the good fight. As for controlling our digital lives, Microsoft is getting there but their influence is still largely limited to business systems and traditional markets.
Apple clearly holds the lead in consumer device markets; I am grateful that Google and Microsoft are actively bringing new ideas and fresh devices to the table and keeping Apple from stagnating in the style of IE 6.
You are stupid.
Your mom.
I am so tired of people saying the president is directly responsible.
I'm so tired of people believing that he has no responsibility. He directs general NSA policy and focus, and he directs the executive branch. The only way I could remove his responsibility is if both the NSA and the White House were directly contradicting him.
What you're suggesting is that the President doesn't actually control the executive branch.
What? Source?
The Constitution of the United States
Any law that the NSA violates puts them at risk in court, and this could be especially hazardous as political climates change.
If the law isn't being enforced, that is the direct fault of the the President of the United States. He is in charge of enforcement, especially of executing laws related to national security. Don't weaken the law simply because the President fails to act.
1800 mSv is 36 times the maximum yearly dose permitted to US radiation workers. More here.
But I prefer that my encryption tool and my cloud storage service be completely separate. (How do I know Lockbox isn't sending the keys to the NSA, or whoever?)
No, you're missing the point. The Government is supposed to provide all of those things. The Government takes a little more of our money, and in exchange we don't have to worry about those needy people.
Just think about it... one day we won't need charities or shelters. The Government will do it all.
abolish the distinction between part time and full time employees and increase minimum wage to a scale that follows the cost of basic food, utilities, shelter and transportation
I like this idea, but instead provide the first $18 an hour (or whatever) as a government provisioned pseudo-currency card, which is only useful for those concepts (basic food, utilities, shelter, transportation). Reduce abuse of the system while meeting basic needs.
Shareholders judge CEOs according to how stock prices have moved and how dividends have been released. These are usually the guys you have to please, over the term of a couple of years, to keep your job.
An objective observer would more likely judge a CEO by the stability and growth of the company over the course of half a decade or more. It's not always about the money. Some great private company owners don't care much about bringing in a corporate profit, but rather they just like what they're doing and want to pay their employees and the bills. (But of course, once you hold a majority share in a company that is worth billions of dollars, it becomes VERY hard to resist an IPO.)
There's also a big difference between a startup that is still on its way up vs. an established company. A company with its roots firmly planted, in my opinion, should value a CEO with the ability to continue pushing the company forward when market conditions provide overbearing competition and when economic times do not play well to the good or service being provided. Sometimes this means reducing cash in the bank and moving fiercely into related markets that are on the upswing.
Agreed, but neither party in the example is being helped. Lenders make their money by drawing interest from lending to creditworthy people.
Take the following criteria:
A: Applicant always repays loans before due date
B: Applicants friends on Facebook are all creditworthy
The math probably shouldn't be "A + B". It should be more like "A ? A : B".
Because correlation does not equal causation.
I will present proof by contradiction. The assumption to be disproven: My friends are all creditworthy if I am creditworthy.
As a creditworthy person, I have a good job and always repay loans well in advance. I am responsible with my money. This allows me to volunteer where college students and other people who are not as well off frequent.
In turn, I'm friends with many of them on Facebook. Contradiction!
Same thing as iOS and as Android... by default (without jailbreaking or rooting), most tablets or phones you purchase require that you live within a closed system.
By that same token, I don't see how Windows RT is any more of a "real OS" than iOS or Android. On the other hand, Windows 8.* fits that definition much better.
As an expert at Kerbal Space Program, I can say for sure that using such a system will result in crashing into the nearest moon. As does everything.
Well, I'd like to live in a world where we focus on real crimes against humanity instead of what are, relatively speaking, inconveniences.
You act like they are treated as slaves. I attended the wedding of my brother-in-law to his now-husband just 4 weeks ago, right here in the good ol' United States. I don't recall either of them being tied up with chains (although, he did wear a rainbow feather boa at one point...).
Shareholders want to turn as much profit as they can in as short a time frame as can be done.
Going public is a great way to slowly kill a good company. Many shareholders don't care where the company is in 10 years; they care about their dollar in one year. When the stocks start on a permanent trend downwards, those shareholders sell and move to the next company that has potential in the near term.
The government is exactly the structure you should use to control big corporations, through regulations.
Actually, competition is the structure that is best for controlling big corporations. At a fundamental level, corporations are still only as powerful as their dollar, and competition spreads that dollar and forces them to focus on screwing their competitors more than their customers and the public in general.
But, I agree with you when a corporation becomes so powerful that they can screw both competitors and consumers, and still have enough cash left over to buy their government lobby.
Ever considered underneath the ocean? We are talking about connecting cities that are on the coast.
I chose my words wisely. You quoted my words wrongly.
Thank you so much for teaching me to think for myself. As a result, I will always follow your words and never stray.
Besides, you are so correct, oh wise Internet sage. Who cares that we are talking about a potential madman controlling the most powerful nation in the history of the world. I should never compare such a thing to Hitler.
The checks and balances in our government are what stands between a successful government of the people and a dictatorship. What powers you give Obama today, or gave Bush yesterday, may be in the hands of a form of Hitler tomorrow.
This is ridiculous reasoning. Microsoft spent *months* willfully thumbing their nose at the public and declaring outright "my way or highway".
And then they kicked out the leader of that movement, Don Mattrick, when they began to notice just how out-of-touch he was with market conditions.
And back in the land of reality, *months* have come and gone and more *months* will come and go before the release. It's less than halfway from backlash to release date and they've gone out of their way to rework a system in a short timespan, a system they worked very hard to get where they felt it was just right, but a system in which customers simply didn't agree.
When Sony has done their customers wrong, how have they responded in the past? At least Microsoft laid it all out there and has been willing to compromise before release (which is a change from even the recent Windows 8 days). Sony put rootkits in PCs and the only way the public found out is that a security researcher found it and made it public.
If fewer than 350 100-passenger tube-pods crash per year, you have a net improvement vs cars.
Not if there are only 350 100-passenger tube-pods launched per year.
It just seems better to use the random seed in the first place rather than throw it into some PRNG.
You're not incorrect, but it's more of an obfuscation technique. Even natural data that may seem random may be prone to patterns, and sensors all too often have flaws that are unnoticeable for their designed purpose but produce subtle patterns in what would be otherwise purely random data.
My thought is to combine as many flavors of this data as is reasonable, and put it all through cryptographic-strength PRNG to help protect the original seed value and thus the randomness of it. Increased algorithmic strength means you will need to rely on polling sensors less often, which will reduce the likelihood of guessing a new value based on any known device flaws.
This doesn't mean you throw in the towel. There are bad PRNG algorithms and better PRNG algorithms, and it's worth using better ones.
Plus, these devices have so many sensors that finding a fairly complex and truly random seed isn't all that difficult. Then throw the seed into a good PRNG and it becomes practically impossible to decode the seed values and, thus, produce any mechanism for finding patterns in the seed data.