Nice spin, eh? Here's an idea, Verizon. If you want to "tailor" things to our unique needs, how about going all the way. If we're paying $30 for 2 GB, how about you refund us $15 for any month we use less than 1 GB? If bytes are the commodity you're making them out to be, that sounds fair to me. Alternatively, give us 'roll-over' data.
Uhhh, why stop there? Why doesn't everyone just pay for what they use? My electricity company is totally cool with charging me at the end of the month for a very specific usage figure... and you know what? I've never complained about or felt like I was getting the raw end of a deal. There could be a set of people that would actually pay more in this scenario but at least the charges would feel justified (I don't even know if I would be in that set).
And also, now that I've just recently signed myself up for your standard two year have-me-by-the-balls-via-smartphone-subsidy "plan"... what of my preconception that I will have unlimited data? I'm sure somewhere in the depths of the weighty tome that I signed for you has some fine print about how not only can you alter our agreement but you can also rape me with a pineapple in front of my wife and children. Could you at least grandfather us in though? I did make an agreement and purchase on that assumption.
"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"
And only one was sentenced to 18 months... unless the associated press article I quoted was wrong.
I like unpredictability and misery in my movies. I like my comedies dark. I am a big fan of unhappy endings.
While I prefer unhappy endings, I should point out that there's such a thing as a happy but flawed ending. Where the hero wins but must make some sort of sacrifice. It might be their life, it might be someone they love... hell, I would have been much more satiated with Thor's end of communication with the woman he loved. It's undoing the sacrifice that has made the hero what they are that bothers me. Many of my personal heroes in real life have made such drastic sacrifices through their lifetimes and it's made them better people because of it. When faced with adversity and loss, they have become what I love. Why is this absent from fantasy and fiction?
My wife likes predictability.
To me, her movies seem like watching the same movie over and over. To her, she can't possibly see why I'd want to watch something that isn't relaxing and removed from reality.
Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.
I don't want anyone to think my post was arguing against all happy endings or against Campbell's monomyth, it was more so a desire for diversity in film. Yes, predictability is bad but if the norm was for movies to have sacrifice, you shouldn't know what's coming next.
Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.
If you enjoyed all these movies, I'm not telling you your tastes suck I'm telling you that they are not very diverse. I can very much enjoy the occasional flawless ending if it's done in a novel or new way like Groundhog Day. What I can't deal with is the same old same old with not only a predictable ending but a flawless diabetes inducing ending. There's one or two directors (Aronofsky) I can cling to and that's about it. I just wish the big movies were more diverse. With movies like the reboot of Batman (as another reply noted), I got glimmers of that but it seems lately we're moving back to 100% happy 100% of the time.
Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me
on
Review: Green Lantern
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There's more sacrifice in real life than there are in modern movies. Really, it's an overused tactic from long ago but it has long since bored me when the main character makes a perceived sacrifice and the writers put everything back to normal. For long running series, this is necessary to keep the same characters rolling but a lot of what I see today just makes me feel patronized. Are they targeting a younger age group or afraid that I can't handle loss? And I'm not talking about "Oh boohoo, I have superpowers now and will never know what it's like to be a normal human." I'm talking about real permanent irrevocable loss from a tough decision. Whether it's fun or not gets overlooked in my mind when this act of personal sacrifice for the good is later trivialized.
<Thor Spoiler Alert> That's what bothered me about Thor... "oh the king is sick, nope instantly better." "Oh, I'll never see Amidala again! Just kidding, there's always a way to restore the waygates." "Oh no, he lost his brother Loki! Wait now Loki's talking to Nick Fury in the post-credits scene." What the hell, Hollywood? I understand that people go to movies to escape reality but what does it even mean when Thor sacrifices any connection to his woman to save an enemy race from genocide and then scenes later it turns out you're just going to make a sequel to undo that? </Thor Spoiler Alert>
What draws me to Sunshine, The Watchmen and Game of Thrones more so than The Green Lantern or Harry Potter? Your friends don't step in and save you at the end and there aren't any phoenix tears to make everything instantly better. Lazy plot devices and disney endings are a dime a dozen--am I the only person that feels this way? I guess profit margin says "yes." Go ahead and check your boxes for love plot, slapstick comedy, action and a happy ending. People have to get sick of your formulas at some point.
Or that his name would still be so well known? Just imagine if what's-his-name - you know, the web guy - had attached his name to HTTP. I'd remember who he is without having to look it up via the web.
I think I comprehend your point but I must be missing your joke. I know who Sir Tim Berners-Lee is and every time he postulates about the future, it's a Slashdot headline. If you're referring to the licensing of the Gopher protocol (a topic I've often commented on) I can assure you nobody remembers nor cares who it was that attached their names to the Gopher protocol. All that's left of it is a torrent archive (that my recent findings picked out three hilariously old trojan/dialers from).
Perfect example of the futility and backwardness of patenting protocols. Quality debates aside, it would have been nice to get an earlier start on the early growing pains of the web.
I can't access the article but, if I'm understanding this correctly, the part about the protocol is worse than a software patent. Protocol patents are very bothersome to me because in my mind they totally destroy the chance a competitor has to interface with your product. And in doing so it really hinders innovation and integration. It's very easy to see how a simple ploy can result in people being "bought in" to a line of products even though a better competing line may come along. This vendor lock-in or competitor lockout (whatever you want to call it) is a very serious problem in my line of work (ever had your boss demand that you "decrypt".doc files from years ago?).
Now, the common counter argument is that people would simply just buy products without patent laden protocols... but I think there have been many examples where this simply hasn't happened. Even now people don't realize/recognize this problem when they look for a solution to their needs. Massive companies seem fine with using proprietary protocols because they are of higher quality than the more open competition. I've seen cost/benefit studies where openness (protocol or software) doesn't even factor into the final scores of the products.
I think a good concrete example would be if Samuel Morse had patented not only the telegraph machine (his particular device design) but also the Morse Code protocol and sued anybody using that alphabet to send messages. Do you think telegraphy would have progressed as quickly if that had been the case?
Three days ago, I was called "clearly the fucking retarded idiot here" for claiming that this volatile currency would not be traded long. And I was modded down while comments like this one were modded up. "And it is always going up." Oh my how funny that is now that my longtime predictions are coming true.
I think the experiment has run its course. Now that some big player(s) have cashed out at the markets' expense, the faith in this currency/commodity should be just about dried up. "Illicit access to one account?" Your market teeters on the access to one account?! Yeah, I think that's the definition of volatile and holy hell that trader must have everyone else by the balls.
If the thief were to cash-out he or she would net just about $500,000 at current BitCoin-US Dollar exchange rates.
What type of moron would hand over $500,000 for BitCoins?
I mean, I understand that you can probably get small transactions honored through some super shady site but... does anyone really think that they're going to one day be able to take that big bank of BTC and get half a million in cash for it from someone?
Aside from the lack of verification of this report I have to wonder if that whole premise of "being worth $500,000" is flawed. Those coins are only worth what someone will pay for them -- maybe some products online you could buy with them. But I highly doubt the market is that robust (yet). And I doubt it will ever reach that level.
I don't doubt that there are early farmers out there sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in BTC just enjoying the hilarious deflation that is taking place. What I doubt is that anybody will ever be able to redeem those for what the "market" says they're worth.
What has led to the sudden hacking boom? Ease of access to tools has also led to an explosion in the numbers of people actively looking for companies with weakened defenses, according to security experts. Meanwhile, the recession has left thousands of highly skilled IT staff out of work and desperate for money, while simultaneously crimping companies' IT security budgets. The pressure to get systems up and running as quickly as possible also means that networks aren't locked down as tightly as they should be, which can leave back doors open for hackers.
But by that logic, we could have seen similar things when the dotcom bubble burst, right?
My view of this comes from a completely different place. I see an exceptionally large amount of users' rights being debated and discussed and we're seeing communities popping up devoted to this. Frankly, it seems like the users are just getting shit on. And, like any struggle for rights, there are negative things that happen. There are always going to be people that take it to an extreme level and there are going to be innocent bystanders turned into victims. While I still see this as a bad thing, some of these actions remind me of a sort of John Brown at Harpers Ferry incident. Similarly, there's the mindless looting during rights demonstrations and protest crowds at the G8 summit but it's not the overall message that's doing that. The opportunists come out of the woodwork.
Similarly the public and citizens of the internet are demanding more rights. While this fight is going on with Facebook, Sony, world governments, etc, the communities are going to pop up that take it to an extreme offensive. They will do bad things and I'm not going to be one condoning it but I see it as part of the growing pains of companies respecting peoples' rights.
It's a sort of vigilante justice that I don't agree with nor condone but I can somewhat sympathize when I feel like I've been unjustly wronged by some of the targets and have had no sense of justice in the matter. People who feel strongly about this and have that negative spark in them would have a motive to become a part of these new communities. And in my opinion that's a more plausible explanation as to why you're seeing an explosion -- not the recession or turnover in network employees.
"It seems the targets like Lockheed Martin are starting to get softened up. This isn't the end game; there is something bigger coming down the pipe and what we are seeing right now is a prelude to that. There could be a new warfare doctrine been created. I was in that world [NATO] for so long that when it looks and feels like a Cold War, there may be something else going down."
Congratulations on the nebulous statements, sir. You rival politicians. Not a single one of these statements is falsifiable. Oh, you're the head of a company that sells remedies to this horrible future? You don't say...
<Zoidberg> I'll take one "security" please! </Zoidberg>
During discussion about proposed changes to our campus-wide wireless network, I asked if the new system would support Macs, Linux and other Operating Systems.
What is the authentication and accreditation methods/technologies involved with this "new system?" It's entirely possible the meeting was for 10,000 feet people and not the actual IT folks. For instance, your current system appears to support Linux (PDF Warning) and I would be surprised if the plan was to drop this.
When I went to the University of Minnesota 2000-2004, the wireless was more or less agnostic to the operating system and their documentation has gotten much better. When I was there I helped set up some Gnu OCR stuff on Linux so that people could scan books in the labs and at halls--perhaps if your response had been to investigate and volunteer documentation for a Linux solution, they wouldn't have treated you as the punchline to a joke? (I know that not everyone has as much free time during college, this is just a suggestion.)
Have IT staff ever ridiculed you for asking questions about Linux?
Yes, of course, back in 2000 when I was fresh off the farm, I was constantly ridiculed for asking questions about Linux. But for different reasons. Because I didn't know the difference between Linux, Unix, Solaris and BSD. The labs at UMN supported all of those widely with many many seats (well, maybe not BSD) and when I sat down at one I was temporarily outside of my comfort zone and would ask incredibly stupid questions. If you adopted the role of being the friendly helper to your administration, perhaps they could, as did I, eventually realize the amazing awesomeness and power of these operating systems? If they don't, you can always argue that diversity is great and offer to help with supporting your operating system of choice by making some documentation.
Reminds Me of Something the Sony CEO Said ...
on
Has iTunes Been Hacked?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"This was an unprecedented situation," he said. "Most of these breaches go unreported by companies."
At first I thought this was just to spread generalized fear, take a cheap swipe at their competition or even shift attention to something else, but it appears we'll get to see how pervasive this becomes. Perhaps he wasn't completely full of lies...
I'm going to paraphrase your submission. I apologize ahead of time for being a blunt sarcastic asshole but this should be an indicator to you that I'm one of your "trusted technical people" that will tell the customer the true PROS and CONS of everything even when it means my company takes a fiscal loss.
I work for an IT consulting firm and recently I've been tasked with heading up our engineering consulting team — which without the fancy corporate speak means that we're trying to empower our engineering team to think a little like sales people instead of being purely service orientated.
Translation: We're asking our developers to wear more and more hats and now we're asking them to sell the product because our customer listens to them.
To clarify, our technical people are viewed by our customers as trusted advisors and when they see a opportunity for a complementary sale/network refresh/project they often involve our sales team, however when the customer sees the sales people, they always clam up because they're 'sales people' and customers think they are just interested in alleviating them of their money!
Translation: I hate it when my customer is smart. They're supposed to be stupid and buy whatever we tell them to. Now I've realized that prior deals have built cracks in the trust between our sales team and them so now we have to try to leverage our technical team as salesmen. Sure, it will destroy their credibility after a few deals but we have to make every bit of profit off our customer until we don't have any.
I'm interested in what the Slashdot community thinks of how we should remunerate engineering teams for this 'sales' work (which would cost us commission to sales people anyway) but in a way that doesn't foster any animosity between sales and tech staff because in the end sales people live and die on commission.
Translation: There seems to be some credibility we can capitalize on yet, what's the fastest way to do that?
Has anyone worked in this environment anywhere and what works/doesn't work in your experience?
Your technical team is doing you a favor and they sound like they're managing to stay technical. The phrase "technically correct" might seem foreign to you as you're probably used to dealing with "fiscally correct" more often than not.
My suggestion is to leave your technical team intact and trusted by your customer and don't try to turn your entire company into a sales team like Microsoft. Here's a helpful hint: your technical team will inadvertently become your sales team when what you are leading them to do for your customer is truly innovative and inventive and maybe even a little bit risky. Don't ask how you can turn your technical people into salesmen, ask how you can change yourself and your company's vision so your technical people can't help but logically be salesmen. If your technical team starts sounding like salesmen, your customer will simply stop listening to them and trusting them. You practically answer your own question and would come to the same conclusions were it not for profit margin motivations!
It happened to her. Just like one day it could happen to you.
No, it won't. But that's just because I am one boring person and I don't share much online. But hats off to your ridiculous fear mongering. While Gennette Cordova herself wasn't a celebrity or public figure, she worked for one and probably should have been careful about broadcasting that to the world.
I don't care if I work at goddamn McDonalds, I'm not going to associate my employer with anything online. One day I'm going to get done with work, get on twitter/facebook/slashdot and paraphrase Fight Club:
Because one of these days some manatee is going to come into the restaurant demanding his slaw and this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from drive-thru to drive-thru with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into customers and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
And I'm not going to be fired for venting.
In 1568 if you used a Gutenberg press to print off everything about you and you distributed it by hand to all the other serfs in your kingdom would you be surprised that they know it!? No? You grasp that concept?! Well what is so hard to grasp about putting your freaking life story on the internet only to be shocked when it's fed back to you by everyone on the goddamn planet?! It was true then and it's true now. Keep what you want to remain private as private. What changed after she got the photo that suddenly made her aware that everyone can see her profiles? What changed? Now other people are posting that same information? Because it was publicly available to anyone and any search engine? Ridiculous. Hoisted by her own petard.
The group demonstrated its capabilities in February, says the report, when it hacked into US-based defence contractor HBGary.
I neither defend nor condone Anonymous' actions but I take issue with this statement. Indeed, upon reading the report I get a little more accurate of a description:
Observers note that Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files. According to reports in February 2011, Anonymous demonstrated its ability to do just that. After WikiLeaks announced its plan of releasing information about a major bank, the US Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America reportedly hired the data intelligence company HBGary Federal to protect their servers and attack any adversaries of these institutions. In response, Anonymous hacked servers of HBGary Federal’s sister company and hijacked the CEO’s Twitter account. Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership.[36] It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted.[37]
(Emphasis mine). I don't know how certain members of Anonymous found themselves on the receiving end of Aaron Barr's maligned attacks on them but I don't see their reaction to such as all too out of line. Barr went after Anonymous and it's not entirely clear to me why persecution of Anonymous is sought. What would I do in that situation? Would I lash back out at this person tracking you? Probably although I might have taken a more litigious route (and I hope those named by Barr do, regardless of any possible involvement in Anonymous).
Whoever leaked these documents is at fault here, be it Bradley Manning or anyone else who had access to the documents and leaked them. I'm guessing they signed something saying they wouldn't do that so they're at fault. Wikileaks, the press, Anonymous, the whole internet, etc are not to blame for coming into possession of them through legal means. Attack the person who broke the rules and fix the problem from its source. Whether Manning was whistle-blowing or breaking his promise of national security will be decided by what he leaked. NATO should be telling the nations to deal with their own problems and not trying to enforce more ridiculous global control.
Why is it that slashdot is all about crowd sourcing things and peer-to-peer distributing the load until it comes to government? Then, suddenly, there's all kind of trust and faith in consolidation of power, authority, (re)distribution of resources, etc..
Why are you trying to pigeonhole a complex and (in most respects diverse) group of people that often exhibits conflicting but strong opinions? I think crowd sourcing is stupid or nothing more than marketing except for very special cases and I strive for a balance of government regulation so that we get the best we can from capitalism while avoiding some of its horrors that used to happen in our country and still happen worldwide.
The fact that there are stores that openly and proudly sells uncolored produce tells me that many consumers know the difference and make a strong choice based upon those differences.
Tell me, right now, how close you live to an organic produce store or farmer's market that sells oranges without dye? And how far do you live from (many) regular orange dying super markets? The "choice" has many dimensions and factors and the way you simplify it down is laughable. Do you step outside and see two identical orange stands in front of your house, one dyed and one uncolored? The fact of the matter is that you are subject to the options of the population around you.
As a person who believes that going against capitalism often has unintended negative consequences
Well, I'm glad that you cling to a generic belief when it comes to policy. For me, it's not so simple and I have to make an effort to become informed and make a rational and logical decision that I hope strikes the right balance between capitalism and government regulation so that the people benefit the most. What "unintended negative consequence" did stopping child labor have? What "unintended negative consequence" did banning CFCs have? Oh, of course, the profit margin of some companies.
, all I really ask to be mandated by government in this kind of case is truth in labeling.
And where does it stop? Hmmmm? Should they have to label how these oranges were delivered so I can calculate my carbon offset? Should they be required to list which country and company provided the harvest of the oranges and what kind of labor was employed? Labels can be just as extreme as regulation, you know. And labeling food can be just as detrimental to the population as a whole. You can effectively inundate a consumer with information on a product to the point that they just don't care anymore. That's just as big a danger as absolutely no label. Do you think the average high school graduate can look at two dietary labels on two competing products and tell you the precise differences those labels mean for their particular diet?
Citrus Red No. 2 which is used to color the oranges you buy in supermarkets.
Why the fuck do oranges have to be coloured? Are oranges not sufficiently orange?
Because oranges aren't always orange and they have imperfections. Shipping and storing only exacerbates this. But suppliers noticed that people bought more oranges when they looked "pure" orange. And the FDA allowed it (for whatever reason). Go to an organic food store sometime and look at the produce. You'll think it looks like shit. But it's really just not coated in dye.
Oh, but if the big bad evil government stopped oranges getting coated with food dye then everyone would complain that the nanny state is killing capitalism. So vote with your dollar and be lost in the sea of people who put perception above knowledge.
I heard this on NPR and they did a better job of putting this new classification into context (and probably detoothing the newsworthiness). It's classified by the IARC as Group 2B, not even Group 2A. The serious list is Group 1 which indicates they are carcinogenic to humans. Group 2B simply means "possibly carcinogenic to humans."
I would like to point out that also in Group 2B are Magnetic fields (extremely low frequency), pickled vegetables, coffee, nickel and the occupation of carpentry and joinery. And you know what else? Citrus Red No. 2 which is used to color the oranges you buy in supermarkets.
So they've put it next to coffee, coinage and food coloring. Why doesn't everyone flip out when things like those are added to Group 2B?
It seems pretty damn impressive that web browsers are as powerful as an entire computer...
I think it has more to do with the power/stability/impressiveness of the JavaScript engines and implementations of standardized ECMAScript specifications. I had submitted a story about Fabrice Bellard emulating a very basic (even primitive) computer and then running Linux in it. But that got rejected.
Developers are slowly coming full circle and using JavaScript a client side application. As the performance cost of emulation and virtualization are outweighed by better machines and as HTML5 become more solid and supported, expect some pretty crazy awesome demos to be seen and maybe a handful of them turning into something generalized and really useful (like the mentioned Emscripten).
Following a committee meeting just a week before the quake, some members of the group assured the public that they were in no danger.
If this is true, this is decidedly different from telling the public that they don't know whether there is any danger. Saying "I can't predict earthquakes" is fine. Saying "You are in no danger" would probably be interpreted differently than "We have no indications that you are at an elevated risk."
In the aftermath of the quake, which killed 309 people, many citizens said that these reassurances were the reason they did not take precautionary measures, such as leaving their homes.
More specifically, the accusation focuses on a statement made at a press conference on 31 March 2009 by Bernardo De Bernardinis, who was then deputy technical head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency and is now president of the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research in Rome. "The scientific community tells me there is no danger," he said, "because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favourable".
It appears that the crux of this case rests upon "he told me to say" versus "it's not our job to tell the public." But the civil servant who "summed" up the scientist's summary appears to have fallen victim to treating this like a forecasting of the weather. He will probably regret maintaining a neutral report and should have just said "inconclusive" instead of "looks good."
Vincenzo Vittorini, a physician in L'Aquila whose wife and daughter were killed in the earthquake and who is now president of the local victims' association '309 Martiri' (309 Martyrs), hopes the trial will lead to a thorough investigation into what went wrong in those days. "Nobody here wants to put science in the dock," he says. "We all know that the earthquake could not be predicted, and that evacuation was not an option. All we wanted was clearer information on risks in order to make our choices".
He says that the committee had precious information that was not passed on to citizens, for example on which buildings were most likely to collapse in the event of a strong earthquake. Vittorini thinks that those charged are not the only ones to blame, and that further investigations might eventually place greater responsibilities on politicians at the local and national level.
Indeed, this sounds to me more like a case against Italy's Civil Protection Agency instead of scientists and seismologists. Not that they couldn't predict the quake but general failure to provide earthquake plans and proper materials/handouts/PSAs to the public.
And I am pretty sure it would be hard to put this news in a light that wasn't anti-Apple.
I am one of the most anti-Apple people out there. I own a very old iPod I bought from a friend for $30 and I love the device but I hate the software so I use my own GPL software to access it. I will never buy an Apple product first hand. I will never buy their software and I will never develop for them. But I don't let that get in the way of facts about current news.
I personally feel like all the major phone makers were playing nicely until Apple joined and then someone kicked the patent hornet nest. If I recall correctly, Apple sued Samsung first but Samsung has since retorted with a patent lawsuit against Apple and as far as I'm concerned there are very few innocent players in the mobile phone market these days. It is my opinion that Apple's design (ornamental?) patents or look and feel patents do disgust me more than other functional oriented patents....
She [Judge Koh] also limited the results of discovery to "Outside Counsel Eyes Only," meaning neither Apple nor its in-house counsel will get a peek at the phones or related marketing materials.
(Emphasis mine.) I must confess that one does have to read the entire article of Courthouse News to get to that somewhat important and relevant tidbit but that is asking a bit much for an editor. Or perhaps that was known but "Court Counsel to Judge Samsung Prototypes" just doesn't boil up the anti-Apple blood like the current headline does?
You've done many parody songs like the recent song about Tom Cruise being crazy as a Scientologist. Have you faced any lawsuits because of subject matter or parody? How have they been resolved? Have you ever been forced to discontinue with something for fear or threat of litigation?
In music theory, there are a lot of things that tempt developers to "algorithmize" it. Coming from a programming background, did you/do you experiment with that? What about making your own patches or tweaking audio effects? Do you still code at all or is all of your time devoted to music and writing now?
You've released a number of studio albums, where are they recorded? Your own place? Do you have sound engineers or is it all DIY? If you have sound engineers, how do you reimburse them? How did you fund your setup if you use it yourself? Are things like an expensive mac hardware, isolation booths and Pro Tools a requirement to get decent sound quality or do you just wing it with whatever and some Sure microphones?
Slashdot Mirror
Nice spin, eh? Here's an idea, Verizon. If you want to "tailor" things to our unique needs, how about going all the way. If we're paying $30 for 2 GB, how about you refund us $15 for any month we use less than 1 GB? If bytes are the commodity you're making them out to be, that sounds fair to me. Alternatively, give us 'roll-over' data.
Uhhh, why stop there? Why doesn't everyone just pay for what they use? My electricity company is totally cool with charging me at the end of the month for a very specific usage figure ... and you know what? I've never complained about or felt like I was getting the raw end of a deal. There could be a set of people that would actually pay more in this scenario but at least the charges would feel justified (I don't even know if I would be in that set).
... what of my preconception that I will have unlimited data? I'm sure somewhere in the depths of the weighty tome that I signed for you has some fine print about how not only can you alter our agreement but you can also rape me with a pineapple in front of my wife and children. Could you at least grandfather us in though? I did make an agreement and purchase on that assumption.
And also, now that I've just recently signed myself up for your standard two year have-me-by-the-balls-via-smartphone-subsidy "plan"
"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers ... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"
And only one was sentenced to 18 months ... unless the associated press article I quoted was wrong.
I like unpredictability and misery in my movies. I like my comedies dark. I am a big fan of unhappy endings.
While I prefer unhappy endings, I should point out that there's such a thing as a happy but flawed ending. Where the hero wins but must make some sort of sacrifice. It might be their life, it might be someone they love ... hell, I would have been much more satiated with Thor's end of communication with the woman he loved. It's undoing the sacrifice that has made the hero what they are that bothers me. Many of my personal heroes in real life have made such drastic sacrifices through their lifetimes and it's made them better people because of it. When faced with adversity and loss, they have become what I love. Why is this absent from fantasy and fiction?
My wife likes predictability.
To me, her movies seem like watching the same movie over and over. To her, she can't possibly see why I'd want to watch something that isn't relaxing and removed from reality.
Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.
I don't want anyone to think my post was arguing against all happy endings or against Campbell's monomyth, it was more so a desire for diversity in film. Yes, predictability is bad but if the norm was for movies to have sacrifice, you shouldn't know what's coming next.
Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.
If you enjoyed all these movies, I'm not telling you your tastes suck I'm telling you that they are not very diverse. I can very much enjoy the occasional flawless ending if it's done in a novel or new way like Groundhog Day. What I can't deal with is the same old same old with not only a predictable ending but a flawless diabetes inducing ending. There's one or two directors (Aronofsky) I can cling to and that's about it. I just wish the big movies were more diverse. With movies like the reboot of Batman (as another reply noted), I got glimmers of that but it seems lately we're moving back to 100% happy 100% of the time.
There's more sacrifice in real life than there are in modern movies. Really, it's an overused tactic from long ago but it has long since bored me when the main character makes a perceived sacrifice and the writers put everything back to normal. For long running series, this is necessary to keep the same characters rolling but a lot of what I see today just makes me feel patronized. Are they targeting a younger age group or afraid that I can't handle loss? And I'm not talking about "Oh boohoo, I have superpowers now and will never know what it's like to be a normal human." I'm talking about real permanent irrevocable loss from a tough decision. Whether it's fun or not gets overlooked in my mind when this act of personal sacrifice for the good is later trivialized.
... "oh the king is sick, nope instantly better." "Oh, I'll never see Amidala again! Just kidding, there's always a way to restore the waygates." "Oh no, he lost his brother Loki! Wait now Loki's talking to Nick Fury in the post-credits scene." What the hell, Hollywood? I understand that people go to movies to escape reality but what does it even mean when Thor sacrifices any connection to his woman to save an enemy race from genocide and then scenes later it turns out you're just going to make a sequel to undo that? </Thor Spoiler Alert>
<Thor Spoiler Alert> That's what bothered me about Thor
What draws me to Sunshine, The Watchmen and Game of Thrones more so than The Green Lantern or Harry Potter? Your friends don't step in and save you at the end and there aren't any phoenix tears to make everything instantly better. Lazy plot devices and disney endings are a dime a dozen--am I the only person that feels this way? I guess profit margin says "yes." Go ahead and check your boxes for love plot, slapstick comedy, action and a happy ending. People have to get sick of your formulas at some point.
Or that his name would still be so well known? Just imagine if what's-his-name - you know, the web guy - had attached his name to HTTP. I'd remember who he is without having to look it up via the web.
I think I comprehend your point but I must be missing your joke. I know who Sir Tim Berners-Lee is and every time he postulates about the future, it's a Slashdot headline. If you're referring to the licensing of the Gopher protocol (a topic I've often commented on) I can assure you nobody remembers nor cares who it was that attached their names to the Gopher protocol. All that's left of it is a torrent archive (that my recent findings picked out three hilariously old trojan/dialers from).
Perfect example of the futility and backwardness of patenting protocols. Quality debates aside, it would have been nice to get an earlier start on the early growing pains of the web.
Software patents need to die. End of story.
I can't access the article but, if I'm understanding this correctly, the part about the protocol is worse than a software patent. Protocol patents are very bothersome to me because in my mind they totally destroy the chance a competitor has to interface with your product. And in doing so it really hinders innovation and integration. It's very easy to see how a simple ploy can result in people being "bought in" to a line of products even though a better competing line may come along. This vendor lock-in or competitor lockout (whatever you want to call it) is a very serious problem in my line of work (ever had your boss demand that you "decrypt" .doc files from years ago?).
... but I think there have been many examples where this simply hasn't happened. Even now people don't realize/recognize this problem when they look for a solution to their needs. Massive companies seem fine with using proprietary protocols because they are of higher quality than the more open competition. I've seen cost/benefit studies where openness (protocol or software) doesn't even factor into the final scores of the products.
Now, the common counter argument is that people would simply just buy products without patent laden protocols
I think a good concrete example would be if Samuel Morse had patented not only the telegraph machine (his particular device design) but also the Morse Code protocol and sued anybody using that alphabet to send messages. Do you think telegraphy would have progressed as quickly if that had been the case?
Three days ago, I was called "clearly the fucking retarded idiot here" for claiming that this volatile currency would not be traded long. And I was modded down while comments like this one were modded up. "And it is always going up." Oh my how funny that is now that my longtime predictions are coming true.
I think the experiment has run its course. Now that some big player(s) have cashed out at the markets' expense, the faith in this currency/commodity should be just about dried up. "Illicit access to one account?" Your market teeters on the access to one account?! Yeah, I think that's the definition of volatile and holy hell that trader must have everyone else by the balls.
If the thief were to cash-out he or she would net just about $500,000 at current BitCoin-US Dollar exchange rates.
What type of moron would hand over $500,000 for BitCoins?
... does anyone really think that they're going to one day be able to take that big bank of BTC and get half a million in cash for it from someone?
I mean, I understand that you can probably get small transactions honored through some super shady site but
Aside from the lack of verification of this report I have to wonder if that whole premise of "being worth $500,000" is flawed. Those coins are only worth what someone will pay for them -- maybe some products online you could buy with them. But I highly doubt the market is that robust (yet). And I doubt it will ever reach that level.
I don't doubt that there are early farmers out there sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in BTC just enjoying the hilarious deflation that is taking place. What I doubt is that anybody will ever be able to redeem those for what the "market" says they're worth.
What has led to the sudden hacking boom? Ease of access to tools has also led to an explosion in the numbers of people actively looking for companies with weakened defenses, according to security experts. Meanwhile, the recession has left thousands of highly skilled IT staff out of work and desperate for money, while simultaneously crimping companies' IT security budgets. The pressure to get systems up and running as quickly as possible also means that networks aren't locked down as tightly as they should be, which can leave back doors open for hackers.
But by that logic, we could have seen similar things when the dotcom bubble burst, right?
My view of this comes from a completely different place. I see an exceptionally large amount of users' rights being debated and discussed and we're seeing communities popping up devoted to this. Frankly, it seems like the users are just getting shit on. And, like any struggle for rights, there are negative things that happen. There are always going to be people that take it to an extreme level and there are going to be innocent bystanders turned into victims. While I still see this as a bad thing, some of these actions remind me of a sort of John Brown at Harpers Ferry incident. Similarly, there's the mindless looting during rights demonstrations and protest crowds at the G8 summit but it's not the overall message that's doing that. The opportunists come out of the woodwork.
Similarly the public and citizens of the internet are demanding more rights. While this fight is going on with Facebook, Sony, world governments, etc, the communities are going to pop up that take it to an extreme offensive. They will do bad things and I'm not going to be one condoning it but I see it as part of the growing pains of companies respecting peoples' rights.
It's a sort of vigilante justice that I don't agree with nor condone but I can somewhat sympathize when I feel like I've been unjustly wronged by some of the targets and have had no sense of justice in the matter. People who feel strongly about this and have that negative spark in them would have a motive to become a part of these new communities. And in my opinion that's a more plausible explanation as to why you're seeing an explosion -- not the recession or turnover in network employees.
"It seems the targets like Lockheed Martin are starting to get softened up. This isn't the end game; there is something bigger coming down the pipe and what we are seeing right now is a prelude to that. There could be a new warfare doctrine been created. I was in that world [NATO] for so long that when it looks and feels like a Cold War, there may be something else going down."
Congratulations on the nebulous statements, sir. You rival politicians. Not a single one of these statements is falsifiable. Oh, you're the head of a company that sells remedies to this horrible future? You don't say ...
<Zoidberg> I'll take one "security" please! </Zoidberg>
During discussion about proposed changes to our campus-wide wireless network, I asked if the new system would support Macs, Linux and other Operating Systems.
What is the authentication and accreditation methods/technologies involved with this "new system?" It's entirely possible the meeting was for 10,000 feet people and not the actual IT folks. For instance, your current system appears to support Linux (PDF Warning) and I would be surprised if the plan was to drop this.
When I went to the University of Minnesota 2000-2004, the wireless was more or less agnostic to the operating system and their documentation has gotten much better. When I was there I helped set up some Gnu OCR stuff on Linux so that people could scan books in the labs and at halls--perhaps if your response had been to investigate and volunteer documentation for a Linux solution, they wouldn't have treated you as the punchline to a joke? (I know that not everyone has as much free time during college, this is just a suggestion.)
Have IT staff ever ridiculed you for asking questions about Linux?
Yes, of course, back in 2000 when I was fresh off the farm, I was constantly ridiculed for asking questions about Linux. But for different reasons. Because I didn't know the difference between Linux, Unix, Solaris and BSD. The labs at UMN supported all of those widely with many many seats (well, maybe not BSD) and when I sat down at one I was temporarily outside of my comfort zone and would ask incredibly stupid questions. If you adopted the role of being the friendly helper to your administration, perhaps they could, as did I, eventually realize the amazing awesomeness and power of these operating systems? If they don't, you can always argue that diversity is great and offer to help with supporting your operating system of choice by making some documentation.
"This was an unprecedented situation," he said. "Most of these breaches go unreported by companies."
At first I thought this was just to spread generalized fear, take a cheap swipe at their competition or even shift attention to something else, but it appears we'll get to see how pervasive this becomes. Perhaps he wasn't completely full of lies ...
I work for an IT consulting firm and recently I've been tasked with heading up our engineering consulting team — which without the fancy corporate speak means that we're trying to empower our engineering team to think a little like sales people instead of being purely service orientated.
Translation: We're asking our developers to wear more and more hats and now we're asking them to sell the product because our customer listens to them.
To clarify, our technical people are viewed by our customers as trusted advisors and when they see a opportunity for a complementary sale/network refresh/project they often involve our sales team, however when the customer sees the sales people, they always clam up because they're 'sales people' and customers think they are just interested in alleviating them of their money!
Translation: I hate it when my customer is smart. They're supposed to be stupid and buy whatever we tell them to. Now I've realized that prior deals have built cracks in the trust between our sales team and them so now we have to try to leverage our technical team as salesmen. Sure, it will destroy their credibility after a few deals but we have to make every bit of profit off our customer until we don't have any.
I'm interested in what the Slashdot community thinks of how we should remunerate engineering teams for this 'sales' work (which would cost us commission to sales people anyway) but in a way that doesn't foster any animosity between sales and tech staff because in the end sales people live and die on commission.
Translation: There seems to be some credibility we can capitalize on yet, what's the fastest way to do that?
Has anyone worked in this environment anywhere and what works/doesn't work in your experience?
Your technical team is doing you a favor and they sound like they're managing to stay technical. The phrase "technically correct" might seem foreign to you as you're probably used to dealing with "fiscally correct" more often than not.
My suggestion is to leave your technical team intact and trusted by your customer and don't try to turn your entire company into a sales team like Microsoft. Here's a helpful hint: your technical team will inadvertently become your sales team when what you are leading them to do for your customer is truly innovative and inventive and maybe even a little bit risky. Don't ask how you can turn your technical people into salesmen, ask how you can change yourself and your company's vision so your technical people can't help but logically be salesmen. If your technical team starts sounding like salesmen, your customer will simply stop listening to them and trusting them. You practically answer your own question and would come to the same conclusions were it not for profit margin motivations!
It happened to her. Just like one day it could happen to you.
No, it won't. But that's just because I am one boring person and I don't share much online. But hats off to your ridiculous fear mongering. While Gennette Cordova herself wasn't a celebrity or public figure, she worked for one and probably should have been careful about broadcasting that to the world.
I don't care if I work at goddamn McDonalds, I'm not going to associate my employer with anything online. One day I'm going to get done with work, get on twitter/facebook/slashdot and paraphrase Fight Club:
Because one of these days some manatee is going to come into the restaurant demanding his slaw and this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from drive-thru to drive-thru with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into customers and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
And I'm not going to be fired for venting.
In 1568 if you used a Gutenberg press to print off everything about you and you distributed it by hand to all the other serfs in your kingdom would you be surprised that they know it!? No? You grasp that concept?! Well what is so hard to grasp about putting your freaking life story on the internet only to be shocked when it's fed back to you by everyone on the goddamn planet?! It was true then and it's true now. Keep what you want to remain private as private. What changed after she got the photo that suddenly made her aware that everyone can see her profiles? What changed? Now other people are posting that same information? Because it was publicly available to anyone and any search engine? Ridiculous. Hoisted by her own petard.
The group demonstrated its capabilities in February, says the report, when it hacked into US-based defence contractor HBGary.
I neither defend nor condone Anonymous' actions but I take issue with this statement. Indeed, upon reading the report I get a little more accurate of a description:
Observers note that Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files. According to reports in February 2011, Anonymous demonstrated its ability to do just that. After WikiLeaks announced its plan of releasing information about a major bank, the US Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America reportedly hired the data intelligence company HBGary Federal to protect their servers and attack any adversaries of these institutions. In response, Anonymous hacked servers of HBGary Federal’s sister company and hijacked the CEO’s Twitter account. Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership.[36] It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted.[37]
(Emphasis mine). I don't know how certain members of Anonymous found themselves on the receiving end of Aaron Barr's maligned attacks on them but I don't see their reaction to such as all too out of line. Barr went after Anonymous and it's not entirely clear to me why persecution of Anonymous is sought. What would I do in that situation? Would I lash back out at this person tracking you? Probably although I might have taken a more litigious route (and I hope those named by Barr do, regardless of any possible involvement in Anonymous).
Whoever leaked these documents is at fault here, be it Bradley Manning or anyone else who had access to the documents and leaked them. I'm guessing they signed something saying they wouldn't do that so they're at fault. Wikileaks, the press, Anonymous, the whole internet, etc are not to blame for coming into possession of them through legal means. Attack the person who broke the rules and fix the problem from its source. Whether Manning was whistle-blowing or breaking his promise of national security will be decided by what he leaked. NATO should be telling the nations to deal with their own problems and not trying to enforce more ridiculous global control.
Why is it that slashdot is all about crowd sourcing things and peer-to-peer distributing the load until it comes to government? Then, suddenly, there's all kind of trust and faith in consolidation of power, authority, (re)distribution of resources, etc..
Why are you trying to pigeonhole a complex and (in most respects diverse) group of people that often exhibits conflicting but strong opinions? I think crowd sourcing is stupid or nothing more than marketing except for very special cases and I strive for a balance of government regulation so that we get the best we can from capitalism while avoiding some of its horrors that used to happen in our country and still happen worldwide.
The fact that there are stores that openly and proudly sells uncolored produce tells me that many consumers know the difference and make a strong choice based upon those differences.
Tell me, right now, how close you live to an organic produce store or farmer's market that sells oranges without dye? And how far do you live from (many) regular orange dying super markets? The "choice" has many dimensions and factors and the way you simplify it down is laughable. Do you step outside and see two identical orange stands in front of your house, one dyed and one uncolored? The fact of the matter is that you are subject to the options of the population around you.
As a person who believes that going against capitalism often has unintended negative consequences
Well, I'm glad that you cling to a generic belief when it comes to policy. For me, it's not so simple and I have to make an effort to become informed and make a rational and logical decision that I hope strikes the right balance between capitalism and government regulation so that the people benefit the most. What "unintended negative consequence" did stopping child labor have? What "unintended negative consequence" did banning CFCs have? Oh, of course, the profit margin of some companies.
, all I really ask to be mandated by government in this kind of case is truth in labeling.
And where does it stop? Hmmmm? Should they have to label how these oranges were delivered so I can calculate my carbon offset? Should they be required to list which country and company provided the harvest of the oranges and what kind of labor was employed? Labels can be just as extreme as regulation, you know. And labeling food can be just as detrimental to the population as a whole. You can effectively inundate a consumer with information on a product to the point that they just don't care anymore. That's just as big a danger as absolutely no label. Do you think the average high school graduate can look at two dietary labels on two competing products and tell you the precise differences those labels mean for their particular diet?
What ever happened to critical thinking?
Why the fuck do oranges have to be coloured? Are oranges not sufficiently orange?
Because oranges aren't always orange and they have imperfections. Shipping and storing only exacerbates this. But suppliers noticed that people bought more oranges when they looked "pure" orange. And the FDA allowed it (for whatever reason). Go to an organic food store sometime and look at the produce. You'll think it looks like shit. But it's really just not coated in dye.
Oh, but if the big bad evil government stopped oranges getting coated with food dye then everyone would complain that the nanny state is killing capitalism. So vote with your dollar and be lost in the sea of people who put perception above knowledge.
I heard this on NPR and they did a better job of putting this new classification into context (and probably detoothing the newsworthiness). It's classified by the IARC as Group 2B, not even Group 2A. The serious list is Group 1 which indicates they are carcinogenic to humans. Group 2B simply means "possibly carcinogenic to humans."
I would like to point out that also in Group 2B are Magnetic fields (extremely low frequency), pickled vegetables, coffee, nickel and the occupation of carpentry and joinery. And you know what else? Citrus Red No. 2 which is used to color the oranges you buy in supermarkets.
So they've put it next to coffee, coinage and food coloring. Why doesn't everyone flip out when things like those are added to Group 2B?
It seems pretty damn impressive that web browsers are as powerful as an entire computer ...
I think it has more to do with the power/stability/impressiveness of the JavaScript engines and implementations of standardized ECMAScript specifications. I had submitted a story about Fabrice Bellard emulating a very basic (even primitive) computer and then running Linux in it. But that got rejected.
Developers are slowly coming full circle and using JavaScript a client side application. As the performance cost of emulation and virtualization are outweighed by better machines and as HTML5 become more solid and supported, expect some pretty crazy awesome demos to be seen and maybe a handful of them turning into something generalized and really useful (like the mentioned Emscripten).
Following a committee meeting just a week before the quake, some members of the group assured the public that they were in no danger.
If this is true, this is decidedly different from telling the public that they don't know whether there is any danger. Saying "I can't predict earthquakes" is fine. Saying "You are in no danger" would probably be interpreted differently than "We have no indications that you are at an elevated risk."
In the aftermath of the quake, which killed 309 people, many citizens said that these reassurances were the reason they did not take precautionary measures, such as leaving their homes.
More specifically, the accusation focuses on a statement made at a press conference on 31 March 2009 by Bernardo De Bernardinis, who was then deputy technical head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency and is now president of the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research in Rome. "The scientific community tells me there is no danger," he said, "because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favourable".
Hasn't it been established that movement of GPS ground stations (slippage) indicates increased risk of earthquakes? That was the basis for claims that the New Madrid fault line is overestimated ... and the above quote employs the exact opposite logic.
It appears that the crux of this case rests upon "he told me to say" versus "it's not our job to tell the public." But the civil servant who "summed" up the scientist's summary appears to have fallen victim to treating this like a forecasting of the weather. He will probably regret maintaining a neutral report and should have just said "inconclusive" instead of "looks good."
Vincenzo Vittorini, a physician in L'Aquila whose wife and daughter were killed in the earthquake and who is now president of the local victims' association '309 Martiri' (309 Martyrs), hopes the trial will lead to a thorough investigation into what went wrong in those days. "Nobody here wants to put science in the dock," he says. "We all know that the earthquake could not be predicted, and that evacuation was not an option. All we wanted was clearer information on risks in order to make our choices".
He says that the committee had precious information that was not passed on to citizens, for example on which buildings were most likely to collapse in the event of a strong earthquake. Vittorini thinks that those charged are not the only ones to blame, and that further investigations might eventually place greater responsibilities on politicians at the local and national level.
Indeed, this sounds to me more like a case against Italy's Civil Protection Agency instead of scientists and seismologists. Not that they couldn't predict the quake but general failure to provide earthquake plans and proper materials/handouts/PSAs to the public.
And I am pretty sure it would be hard to put this news in a light that wasn't anti-Apple.
I am one of the most anti-Apple people out there. I own a very old iPod I bought from a friend for $30 and I love the device but I hate the software so I use my own GPL software to access it. I will never buy an Apple product first hand. I will never buy their software and I will never develop for them. But I don't let that get in the way of facts about current news.
....
I personally feel like all the major phone makers were playing nicely until Apple joined and then someone kicked the patent hornet nest. If I recall correctly, Apple sued Samsung first but Samsung has since retorted with a patent lawsuit against Apple and as far as I'm concerned there are very few innocent players in the mobile phone market these days. It is my opinion that Apple's design (ornamental?) patents or look and feel patents do disgust me more than other functional oriented patents
Samsung Ordered to Hand Over Unreleased Designs to Apple
Uh huh ... well, when I go to the original source cited in the article I find this piece of text:
She [Judge Koh] also limited the results of discovery to "Outside Counsel Eyes Only," meaning neither Apple nor its in-house counsel will get a peek at the phones or related marketing materials.
(Emphasis mine.) I must confess that one does have to read the entire article of Courthouse News to get to that somewhat important and relevant tidbit but that is asking a bit much for an editor. Or perhaps that was known but "Court Counsel to Judge Samsung Prototypes" just doesn't boil up the anti-Apple blood like the current headline does?
You've done many parody songs like the recent song about Tom Cruise being crazy as a Scientologist. Have you faced any lawsuits because of subject matter or parody? How have they been resolved? Have you ever been forced to discontinue with something for fear or threat of litigation?
In music theory, there are a lot of things that tempt developers to "algorithmize" it. Coming from a programming background, did you/do you experiment with that? What about making your own patches or tweaking audio effects? Do you still code at all or is all of your time devoted to music and writing now?
You've released a number of studio albums, where are they recorded? Your own place? Do you have sound engineers or is it all DIY? If you have sound engineers, how do you reimburse them? How did you fund your setup if you use it yourself? Are things like an expensive mac hardware, isolation booths and Pro Tools a requirement to get decent sound quality or do you just wing it with whatever and some Sure microphones?