Well, you're free to disagree with me but here are my initial reactions to these words prior to reading the article and what they mean to a scientologist:
'Security-checked'
To me: Checked for security. Maybe used to say you checked out a building for how safe and secure it is or even referring to the process everyone goes through when they fly or enter a sports arena.
To a scientologist: when someone "blows" (or flees the church) they recover them ("blow drill") sometimes physically against the persons will and subject them to an E-meter test which the article says is a powerful form of thought control.
'contra-survival'
To me: Contrary to survival. Doesn't sound like you're committing suicide but maybe smoking or drinking? Making bad choices that jeopardize your health? Hell, driving while texting on a cell phone could be called 'contra-survival.'
To a scientologist: when someone explodes violently, often hitting someone or throwing things at them that is contra-survival. The article mentions that this often traces back to prior lives where the person was a violent or disturbed individual.
'suppressive persons'
To me: Anyone who suppresses you. Probably a jerk or bully. Maybe an evil tyrant?
To a scientologist: anyone in your life that says anything negative about scientology. It's always only someone you have a personal relationship with. The church determines who this is and oftentimes you must cut off contact with them completely or you will never be clear. The article lists tons of stories of families and lifelong friends being separated because of this. I'm sure Haggis is probably an SP now. If I ever meet a scientologist, I plan to announce immediately that I am an SP.
To me these words seemed harmless and tame until you realize what these labels function as inside the church. It's so arcane and ridiculous. I can't believe people don't recognize the easily abused power system here that has very direct and serious consequences in your life. The article was a real eye opener as to how that crazy O.T. III shit is gobbled up by people because by that point they've maybe signed a billion year contract and have easily spent $400k on course work and auditing so they have a huge investment and desire to keep the lie going in their mind.
Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went on to explain that this would involve installing easily exploited libraries and components of IE9 into WP7 kernel space with full read/write access to all other WP7 kernel modules so it could run faster than competing browsers on the devices. He then bragged that it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range. Where botnets had once been constrained to the family PC, Ballmer boasted a larger market for penetration and manipulation sitting next to televisions in 50 million homes and nearly everyone's pockets. Ballmer explained that this new strategy was actually a throwback to the days of IE6 and he suspected that this move would make IE9 as pervasive as IE6 once was. Sony and Nintendo were unavailable for comment but it's clear Microsoft has once again won the hearts -- and minds -- of the world's malware authors.
I'm confused with the random selection in the summary of the two examples. I looked up more nerdish books and was met with many examples of the exact same price: Kobo's Eye of the World vs BoB Eye of the World. Both $6.99. Makes me wonder if the prices aren't dictated by the publisher. I'm also confused how BoB calls itself "the Largest Independent eBookstore" as they're clearly hosting major publishers' works. I'm guessing the McCarthy book cited in the summary is going through different copyright fee channels with the distribution. Either way, I have yet to be impressed with any electronic publisher's prices and I don't think I ever will because when I visit publishers' websites like O'Reilly or Tor (Macmillan sub), the eBooks are often sold at or near the regular book price. So this tells me that our problem isn't the distribution site like Amazon or Kobo but instead the publishers who disagree with me on a fundamental level that a soft copy of a book's worth compared to a physical dead tree version. Until then, I'm staying old school. Go ahead and laugh at my room full of books, at least I own something and not an ethereal "right" on an electronic device locked down by some draconian DRM.
I simply don't understand the legacy this "book" has gathered over the years. I, in my infinite youth, once read the manual and you know what jumped out at me wasn't all these alleged homemade napalm and pipe bombs... in fact, that stuff seemed so low quality and stupid to me that I don't even remember much of it. And I've often been told the napalm in the book really isn't the best stuff you can make with homemade items. Apparently there are much better mediums to use with fuel like Vaseline (petroleum jelly) if you can get enough of it.
But what really stuck out to my late teenage mind was how the author of it seemed to be obsessed with disruption. I remember it reading like a case study for "common" scenarios whereby you could operate within questionable circumstances to undermine regular corporate and government actions -- specifically in Western nations.
For example, in one of the scenarios the book presupposes that you have a large contractor building some huge building right next door to your home that you refused to sell (like the beginning of the film Up). So it goes about how to put nails through strips of webbing, then lay them across the dig site at night and cover them with a bit of gravel to puncture holes in the tires of machinery. Or get used oil from your car and go spill it next to their machinery and then tip off the EPA. The list went on and on for many pages about how to sabotage several scenarios.
And I wasn't too impressed with it. It was as if everyone thought that until this point in time no one had ever engaged in determined guerrilla warfare or an unfriendly neighborly spat. This book exhibits somewhat of an active imagination in causing trouble... oftentimes this trouble is easily traced back to you no matter how well the book tries to convince the reader you're being super careful and are virtually untraceable.
It simply blew my mind that someone could be arrested for possession of this book because after all the notoriety it's really not that useful. Sure, if your given scenario matches any in the books, you've got some cheap tricks at your disposal but anyone with an imagination would be far better equipped than anyone with that book. I found nothing permanently useful in that book and would recommend any of the US Army Field Manuals for reading before that since the information is more generalized and interesting like the one on Counterinsurgency. FM 21-76 served me well in Boy Scouts -- probably better than the boy scout's manual. Why do we flip out that The Anarchist's Cookbook is available to terrorists when the Army is releasing far more useful books to anybody and everybody?
While they're by no means the only state with budget problems, it is kind of coincidental that we're seeing this from Texas in the midst of a budget deficit. With $10 billion in lost revenue, they're starting to get creative like demanding university offer a $10k bachelors degree. Oh the abuse of the educational system, both lower and higher education. It's probably going to come down to just cuts across the board. My friends from Texas have often bragged about it but Texas doesn't have income tax so it's sort of asking a lot to do all this on 6.25% sales tax. You can make promises like "no new taxes" and "more tax cuts" but it looks like they'll run Amazon out of town on this one. Well, they were right that taxes hurt businesses! Bye bye Amazon!
“And they certainly don’t want the additional monthly bill,” which can cost upwards of $30-50 extra, depending on the web service.
That's it. I held out until a year ago. I preferred my candy bar Nokia with $24/mo. Now I'm on a DROID with $77/mo cost. And that's with a 25% discount from my employer! Trust me, if I lost my job or found myself in hard times this would be the first thing to go. Unfortunately I'm in a two year contract -- yet another aspect that should scare you.
I predict dumbphones will continue to dominate until the major carriers stop this ridiculous pricing model. In my eyes, my DROID is waste -- albeit enjoyable and convenient. It's very hard to convince me that there is a $50 dollar per month difference in what these devices do on the carrier's network.
An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia.
I was a little confused by this quote as the minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 far exceed the vast majority of those developing nation cellphones. I believe those are mostly the candy bar cell phones or "dumbphones." I was under the impression that developing nations had a vast population of users who weren't in the market for smartphones. That might be changing but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the current models Nokia enjoys widespread distribution hinge on a trim microkernel operating system with little to no system requirements and I'm unaware of a version of Windows Phone 7 that satisfies these hardware constraints. Simply put, it's going to be a long time before Microsoft's WP7 dominates the developing nations as the de facto operating system. And good luck piling those licensing rights of WP7 on top of the cost of the phone to people who struggle to find potable water!
There was a really good article at Ars Technica this morning that covers chronologically the events relative to HBGary Federal's tangle with Anonymous. I know it's against Wikileak policy to release the source of the leak but I'm guessing that the accessing of large amounts of HBGary Federal's servers might be a potential source of this plan.
Of course the motivation for infiltrating Anonymous was profit as Arron Barr said in an e-mail:
Step 1 : Gather all the data
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Profit
Sort of an amusing story and very easy to see where Mr. Barr made the error of becoming part of this event (demonstration or debacle depending on your views) and seeking media attention. Pretty clear he was in over his head and doing his own thing thinking he was dealing with three individuals who were two bit morons. It almost deserves the cheesy "hunters have become the hunted" movie tag line. Well, the soft hack of HBGary Federal appears to be providing more than enough material for this to be a focus of media attention, congratulations are in order for Mr. Barr and let's all wish him the best of luck with step three. He's gonna need it!
“Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems,” Weichman said.
Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence.
“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.
Emphasis mine. See? They never said rape has actually gone up, they just make the reader think that but saying that it can cause them to go up. Not that it has or ever will.
I can do it too: "Reading Fox News can be seen by some as increasing racism, especially in localized areas that national statistics wouldn't be able to pick up."
A Tiny Bit of Compassion for the Iranian People
on
Iran's New Space Program
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I believe that recent military and defense transactions with "their most crazy neighbor to the south" has little to do with logic and more to do with lucrative arms deals that have recently been put on hold (I daresay in the interest of regional stability).
To answer your question in a historical context I might point you to the horrible things that Russia and the United States did during the Cold War that essentially provided puppet theaters for their ideologies to be fought out. Why risk your citizens when you can show the world who's right with war and poverty in weaker nations? Wikipedia does a decent job of summing this up but you might look up the 1953 Iranian coup d'état followed by the 1979 Iranian revolution and surmise why it would be in Russia's best interest to keep this thorn festering in the United States' side right up until today. The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Eastern Bloc and many other actions were basically a cowardly way of Russia and the United States putting external countries in chaos to prove who was the better country in our petty capitalism versus socialism spat (and after all that everybody's implementing a little bit of both).
Similar to the redrawing of national/political boundaries by the Allies following World War II, we (and I mean the world, US/Russian citizens, the citizens of those countries, everybody) will for a very long time feel the pain and suffering of putting such pressures on weaker nations during the Cold War.
When you say "it's most crazy neighbor to the south," it might benefit you to consider the pressures that added to that craziness. While the blame lies entirely on no one, everybody participated. For a somewhat more even handed introduction to Iran's problems, check out the intro to Persepolis (the movie or the manga).
You know who's really lost a lot in all of this? The Iranian citizens.
One of the beautiful aspects of capitalism is that it assumes everyone is inherently greedy and therefore the system is constructed so that even the greediest of society's members cannot abuse the system.
One of the horrible aspects of capitalism is that if someone is not greedy or negatively greedy (like the man in the example) and looks out for others, they're eaten like a sheep among wolves. Of course it is not society that is harmed but merely the perceptually insane individual.
In an age where lawmakers are trying to strike down healthcare for all of your fellow citizens and Social Security is just a cookie jar to be raped by fiscally careless politicians it's unfortunately pointless to pass up this job. You're just ensuring that you're the victim instead of someone else. Sadly, in a capitalistic society, that's not a sound plan to ensure your future and survival.
I respect the man for his decision but as someone who has watched my father go on and off unemployment, I implore him to adjust his attitude to just consider legality and not ethics. We live in a world today where all politicians and businesses lead by example in this department and playing the game optimally means that capitalism rewards them.
Allow me to answer the questions from the honorable Senator for the DHS which was established to protect me from the terrorists:
concerning the domain seizures and how they impact due process
Basically ICE assumes that since we are now dealing with the 'cyber' prefix, none of the old laws apply that don't specifically call out domain names. So your due process is largely non-existent and we just sorta make it up as we go along. I mean, a lot of the stuff gets reversed. You're actually guilty until proven innocent in our books! If you don't agree with that, it logically follows that you're a terrorist. That's your first warning.
free speech
Ah, yes, 'free speech.' Well, basically our domain seizing takes free speech, bends it over an arcade machine and violently rapes it in front of everyone. It's sort of funny because you'd think you wouldn't be able to rape anyone in public but, well, so far everyone's just been standing around and watching us so... And I mean we're DHS so what're they gonna do anyway, right? Side note, this is your second warning for asking terrorist questions, Senator.
sovereign rule in foreign countries
Foreign countries? No no no, there are two countries in the world: United States and everybody else. Everybody else gets rules only after our rules are established. And that's strike three, mister.
That's an awful nice schedule you got there, Senator, be a shame if someone were to put you on the No Fly list! wyden.senate.gov will now redirect to DHS and ICE seals until the good Senator can prove he did not import unlicensed pandas in 1978. Terrorists like Wyden make me sick.
Unfortunately for News Corp, as VentureBeat reports, it's already invested an astonishing $30 million just to launch this thing, and it will cost another $500,000 a week to keep it going. While Murdoch says the right things about taking the presses and the trucks out of the equation to produce a leaner operation, I'm left wondering how many subscribers and advertisers it will take to make the initial investment back, never mind make it profitable -- especially with Apple taking half of the subscription revenues.
News Corp has a quarterly revenue of around 8 billion dollars but their net income has been steadily declining (duh). To risk a one time cost of thirty million followed by a weekly liability of half a million to save that hemorrhaging is a bit of non issue in my opinion. I think Murdoch could give up one of his twenty yachts and reduce his yacht insurance to offset that if he wanted to pay for The Daily out of pocket.
The Apple comment further mystifies me. While terrible that they should lose so much money to Apple, it does give Apple incentive to see this succeed since it's designed for their product. So consider first how amazing Apple is at promoting products and how terribly backward News Corp has been as of late. It might turn out to be a paltry sum to have Apple selling their product with interest of seeing it succeed.
Regardless, if I've learned one thing from Microsoft and their initial XBox and Zune attempts, it's that a very very wealthy company that wants to shove something down the consumer's maw will not let up until it has turned a profit. The problem is that News Corp has what, eight billion sitting around in cash? Let the blood letting begin with this pin prick!
To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.
Apparently Google's accusations are viewed by some as a backhanded compliment.
"At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web"
Ohhh, right, that's why Ogg Theora isn't natively supported in Internet Explorer. Maybe you could concentrate on improving the support, capabilities and experience in your own browser before bothering to extend other browsers?
"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."
You could probably have blamed their producers or research people though.. for not giving them the 5 minute education beforehand.
I might point out that the format of these daily TV shows seems to encourage uninformed people to learn with the host(s). We work day jobs so we don't see this anymore but I think what appeals to my grandmother about Regis is that he acts like an average guy just trying to figure stuff out... and she can identify with that. Note that I said "uninformed" not "stupid." I would posit that the American people would rather embark on a learning adventure than be lectured... I think this is why Bill Nye (yes, I know he wasn't the original) appealed to me so much as a kid.
I agree I didn't find this very funny, I did not have a computer at the time and spent the majority of my free time reading, bailing hay, playing trombone and walking endless up and down acres of field collecting rocks baseball size or larger. Had you asked me about any of the technologies they addressed here, my answer might have been just as hilarious and even more clueless. Oh well, gotta start somewhere.
I found it cute or quaint at worst. Cute to recall the time when we didn't have this powerful force dictating and providing so much.
It seems like this is publicly available information.
But it's not, you obviously didn't read the article. Here was the process: 1) Google employee makes sure some fake word does not exist in google or bing search results. 2) Said employee points google's cache results of that word to some random page. 3) Said employee uses Internet Explorer at his desk at Google to make the search appear in Google, then selects the only link as the correct thing he was looking for and Bing somehow acquires this information. 4) Search now appears in Bing.
I've highlighted the step that isn't really public information. The step that indicates to Bing that the link is interesting to someone, the step that they are acquiring through internet explorer! Total privacy violation, in my opinion.
Aside from learning venues (which you could argue every tool has to offer), there's a whole range of tools of encryption that no longer function as they were intended when they were created. From Rome's Scytale to Germany's Enigma Machine, none of those tools are useful today on account of how easily they are cracked.
Saturday Live was a UK TV series that ran from 1985 to 1987 on Channel 4. It appears that Mr. Zuckerberg has himself a time machine. The case is afoot, can he be stopped before his time traveling makes Facebook the most powerful entity on the planet?! (sure explains how we've gotten to where we're at)
Hmmm, that's an interesting take on it -- I guess one that is diametrically opposed to my take on the situation. If you read the article, the author argues that a closed locked in product like you describe can only go so far before the open alternatives arise and overtake it. No doubt you can achieve massive success initially but it's only a matter of time before an open competitor appeals more to the community and users. Oh how I wish I could have the iPod hardware with an open source program in Linux to put music on it... unfortunately Apple does not want this. They want to keep me using iTunes and that software sickens me.
From the article:
"Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far... If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it."
Lo said the industry had "seen this movie play several times", pointing to the Betamax vs. VHS video format war, Mac vs. Windows and various proprietary networking protocols that at one stage tried to compete with the now dominant TCP/IP.
In each of the above cases, the more open platforms won more market share. However, Apple has bucked this trend so far with its closed ecosystems for the iPhone and iPad.
"Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they've been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs," said Lo.
"Eventually they've got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model."
The author is positing that the closed model you are so impressed with needs to change if they want to survive Android. Unfortunately, Jobs' ego will not allow this and they'll most likely end up in the same realm as Microsoft -- financially great but viewed as a 'has been' and opportunist by the community.
These bloodsuckers have been altered to have shorter lifespans.
Actually the modified Aedes aegypti in question are not bloodsuckers. From the AFP article:
In the first experiment of its kind in Asia, about 6,000 male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were released...
Like Homo sapiens, only the females drain the life out of their victims. The male Aedes aegypti only feed on plant juices (but I'm guessing pass the short lifespan trait on more effectively).
Slashdot Mirror
'Security-checked'
To me: Checked for security. Maybe used to say you checked out a building for how safe and secure it is or even referring to the process everyone goes through when they fly or enter a sports arena.
To a scientologist: when someone "blows" (or flees the church) they recover them ("blow drill") sometimes physically against the persons will and subject them to an E-meter test which the article says is a powerful form of thought control.
'contra-survival'
To me: Contrary to survival. Doesn't sound like you're committing suicide but maybe smoking or drinking? Making bad choices that jeopardize your health? Hell, driving while texting on a cell phone could be called 'contra-survival.'
To a scientologist: when someone explodes violently, often hitting someone or throwing things at them that is contra-survival. The article mentions that this often traces back to prior lives where the person was a violent or disturbed individual.
'suppressive persons'
To me: Anyone who suppresses you. Probably a jerk or bully. Maybe an evil tyrant?
To a scientologist: anyone in your life that says anything negative about scientology. It's always only someone you have a personal relationship with. The church determines who this is and oftentimes you must cut off contact with them completely or you will never be clear. The article lists tons of stories of families and lifelong friends being separated because of this. I'm sure Haggis is probably an SP now. If I ever meet a scientologist, I plan to announce immediately that I am an SP.
To me these words seemed harmless and tame until you realize what these labels function as inside the church. It's so arcane and ridiculous. I can't believe people don't recognize the easily abused power system here that has very direct and serious consequences in your life. The article was a real eye opener as to how that crazy O.T. III shit is gobbled up by people because by that point they've maybe signed a billion year contract and have easily spent $400k on course work and auditing so they have a huge investment and desire to keep the lie going in their mind.
Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went on to explain that this would involve installing easily exploited libraries and components of IE9 into WP7 kernel space with full read/write access to all other WP7 kernel modules so it could run faster than competing browsers on the devices. He then bragged that it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range. Where botnets had once been constrained to the family PC, Ballmer boasted a larger market for penetration and manipulation sitting next to televisions in 50 million homes and nearly everyone's pockets. Ballmer explained that this new strategy was actually a throwback to the days of IE6 and he suspected that this move would make IE9 as pervasive as IE6 once was. Sony and Nintendo were unavailable for comment but it's clear Microsoft has once again won the hearts -- and minds -- of the world's malware authors.
I'm confused with the random selection in the summary of the two examples. I looked up more nerdish books and was met with many examples of the exact same price: Kobo's Eye of the World vs BoB Eye of the World. Both $6.99. Makes me wonder if the prices aren't dictated by the publisher. I'm also confused how BoB calls itself "the Largest Independent eBookstore" as they're clearly hosting major publishers' works. I'm guessing the McCarthy book cited in the summary is going through different copyright fee channels with the distribution. Either way, I have yet to be impressed with any electronic publisher's prices and I don't think I ever will because when I visit publishers' websites like O'Reilly or Tor (Macmillan sub), the eBooks are often sold at or near the regular book price. So this tells me that our problem isn't the distribution site like Amazon or Kobo but instead the publishers who disagree with me on a fundamental level that a soft copy of a book's worth compared to a physical dead tree version. Until then, I'm staying old school. Go ahead and laugh at my room full of books, at least I own something and not an ethereal "right" on an electronic device locked down by some draconian DRM.
JohnMurtari notes that the media hype machines are massively promoting tonight's battle between Jeopardy champions and a super computer.
I'm so glad we're above that.
Seriously, if this thing doesn't accidentally observe the Higgs Boson while seeking for a question to an answer, I'm going to be disappointed.
Ah the book with the recipe for napalm ...
I simply don't understand the legacy this "book" has gathered over the years. I, in my infinite youth, once read the manual and you know what jumped out at me wasn't all these alleged homemade napalm and pipe bombs ... in fact, that stuff seemed so low quality and stupid to me that I don't even remember much of it. And I've often been told the napalm in the book really isn't the best stuff you can make with homemade items. Apparently there are much better mediums to use with fuel like Vaseline (petroleum jelly) if you can get enough of it.
... oftentimes this trouble is easily traced back to you no matter how well the book tries to convince the reader you're being super careful and are virtually untraceable.
But what really stuck out to my late teenage mind was how the author of it seemed to be obsessed with disruption. I remember it reading like a case study for "common" scenarios whereby you could operate within questionable circumstances to undermine regular corporate and government actions -- specifically in Western nations.
For example, in one of the scenarios the book presupposes that you have a large contractor building some huge building right next door to your home that you refused to sell (like the beginning of the film Up). So it goes about how to put nails through strips of webbing, then lay them across the dig site at night and cover them with a bit of gravel to puncture holes in the tires of machinery. Or get used oil from your car and go spill it next to their machinery and then tip off the EPA. The list went on and on for many pages about how to sabotage several scenarios.
And I wasn't too impressed with it. It was as if everyone thought that until this point in time no one had ever engaged in determined guerrilla warfare or an unfriendly neighborly spat. This book exhibits somewhat of an active imagination in causing trouble
It simply blew my mind that someone could be arrested for possession of this book because after all the notoriety it's really not that useful. Sure, if your given scenario matches any in the books, you've got some cheap tricks at your disposal but anyone with an imagination would be far better equipped than anyone with that book. I found nothing permanently useful in that book and would recommend any of the US Army Field Manuals for reading before that since the information is more generalized and interesting like the one on Counterinsurgency. FM 21-76 served me well in Boy Scouts -- probably better than the boy scout's manual. Why do we flip out that The Anarchist's Cookbook is available to terrorists when the Army is releasing far more useful books to anybody and everybody?
While they're by no means the only state with budget problems, it is kind of coincidental that we're seeing this from Texas in the midst of a budget deficit. With $10 billion in lost revenue, they're starting to get creative like demanding university offer a $10k bachelors degree. Oh the abuse of the educational system, both lower and higher education. It's probably going to come down to just cuts across the board. My friends from Texas have often bragged about it but Texas doesn't have income tax so it's sort of asking a lot to do all this on 6.25% sales tax. You can make promises like "no new taxes" and "more tax cuts" but it looks like they'll run Amazon out of town on this one. Well, they were right that taxes hurt businesses! Bye bye Amazon!
“And they certainly don’t want the additional monthly bill,” which can cost upwards of $30-50 extra, depending on the web service.
That's it. I held out until a year ago. I preferred my candy bar Nokia with $24/mo. Now I'm on a DROID with $77/mo cost. And that's with a 25% discount from my employer! Trust me, if I lost my job or found myself in hard times this would be the first thing to go. Unfortunately I'm in a two year contract -- yet another aspect that should scare you.
I predict dumbphones will continue to dominate until the major carriers stop this ridiculous pricing model. In my eyes, my DROID is waste -- albeit enjoyable and convenient. It's very hard to convince me that there is a $50 dollar per month difference in what these devices do on the carrier's network.
An alliance with Nokia gives it access to the world's largest phone maker and its huge mindshare — in many developing nations a mobile phone is known as a Nokia.
I was a little confused by this quote as the minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 far exceed the vast majority of those developing nation cellphones. I believe those are mostly the candy bar cell phones or "dumbphones." I was under the impression that developing nations had a vast population of users who weren't in the market for smartphones. That might be changing but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the current models Nokia enjoys widespread distribution hinge on a trim microkernel operating system with little to no system requirements and I'm unaware of a version of Windows Phone 7 that satisfies these hardware constraints. Simply put, it's going to be a long time before Microsoft's WP7 dominates the developing nations as the de facto operating system. And good luck piling those licensing rights of WP7 on top of the cost of the phone to people who struggle to find potable water!
Of course the motivation for infiltrating Anonymous was profit as Arron Barr said in an e-mail:
Step 1 : Gather all the data
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Profit
Sort of an amusing story and very easy to see where Mr. Barr made the error of becoming part of this event (demonstration or debacle depending on your views) and seeking media attention. Pretty clear he was in over his head and doing his own thing thinking he was dealing with three individuals who were two bit morons. It almost deserves the cheesy "hunters have become the hunted" movie tag line. Well, the soft hack of HBGary Federal appears to be providing more than enough material for this to be a focus of media attention, congratulations are in order for Mr. Barr and let's all wish him the best of luck with step three. He's gonna need it!
“Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems,” Weichman said.
Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence.
“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.
Emphasis mine. See? They never said rape has actually gone up, they just make the reader think that but saying that it can cause them to go up. Not that it has or ever will.
I can do it too: "Reading Fox News can be seen by some as increasing racism, especially in localized areas that national statistics wouldn't be able to pick up."
I believe that recent military and defense transactions with "their most crazy neighbor to the south" has little to do with logic and more to do with lucrative arms deals that have recently been put on hold (I daresay in the interest of regional stability).
To answer your question in a historical context I might point you to the horrible things that Russia and the United States did during the Cold War that essentially provided puppet theaters for their ideologies to be fought out. Why risk your citizens when you can show the world who's right with war and poverty in weaker nations? Wikipedia does a decent job of summing this up but you might look up the 1953 Iranian coup d'état followed by the 1979 Iranian revolution and surmise why it would be in Russia's best interest to keep this thorn festering in the United States' side right up until today. The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Eastern Bloc and many other actions were basically a cowardly way of Russia and the United States putting external countries in chaos to prove who was the better country in our petty capitalism versus socialism spat (and after all that everybody's implementing a little bit of both).
Similar to the redrawing of national/political boundaries by the Allies following World War II, we (and I mean the world, US/Russian citizens, the citizens of those countries, everybody) will for a very long time feel the pain and suffering of putting such pressures on weaker nations during the Cold War.
When you say "it's most crazy neighbor to the south," it might benefit you to consider the pressures that added to that craziness. While the blame lies entirely on no one, everybody participated. For a somewhat more even handed introduction to Iran's problems, check out the intro to Persepolis (the movie or the manga).
You know who's really lost a lot in all of this? The Iranian citizens.
One of the beautiful aspects of capitalism is that it assumes everyone is inherently greedy and therefore the system is constructed so that even the greediest of society's members cannot abuse the system.
One of the horrible aspects of capitalism is that if someone is not greedy or negatively greedy (like the man in the example) and looks out for others, they're eaten like a sheep among wolves. Of course it is not society that is harmed but merely the perceptually insane individual.
In an age where lawmakers are trying to strike down healthcare for all of your fellow citizens and Social Security is just a cookie jar to be raped by fiscally careless politicians it's unfortunately pointless to pass up this job. You're just ensuring that you're the victim instead of someone else. Sadly, in a capitalistic society, that's not a sound plan to ensure your future and survival.
I respect the man for his decision but as someone who has watched my father go on and off unemployment, I implore him to adjust his attitude to just consider legality and not ethics. We live in a world today where all politicians and businesses lead by example in this department and playing the game optimally means that capitalism rewards them.
concerning the domain seizures and how they impact due process
Basically ICE assumes that since we are now dealing with the 'cyber' prefix, none of the old laws apply that don't specifically call out domain names. So your due process is largely non-existent and we just sorta make it up as we go along. I mean, a lot of the stuff gets reversed. You're actually guilty until proven innocent in our books! If you don't agree with that, it logically follows that you're a terrorist. That's your first warning.
free speech
Ah, yes, 'free speech.' Well, basically our domain seizing takes free speech, bends it over an arcade machine and violently rapes it in front of everyone. It's sort of funny because you'd think you wouldn't be able to rape anyone in public but, well, so far everyone's just been standing around and watching us so ... And I mean we're DHS so what're they gonna do anyway, right? Side note, this is your second warning for asking terrorist questions, Senator.
sovereign rule in foreign countries
Foreign countries? No no no, there are two countries in the world: United States and everybody else. Everybody else gets rules only after our rules are established. And that's strike three, mister.
That's an awful nice schedule you got there, Senator, be a shame if someone were to put you on the No Fly list! wyden.senate.gov will now redirect to DHS and ICE seals until the good Senator can prove he did not import unlicensed pandas in 1978. Terrorists like Wyden make me sick.
Unfortunately for News Corp, as VentureBeat reports, it's already invested an astonishing $30 million just to launch this thing, and it will cost another $500,000 a week to keep it going. While Murdoch says the right things about taking the presses and the trucks out of the equation to produce a leaner operation, I'm left wondering how many subscribers and advertisers it will take to make the initial investment back, never mind make it profitable -- especially with Apple taking half of the subscription revenues.
News Corp has a quarterly revenue of around 8 billion dollars but their net income has been steadily declining (duh). To risk a one time cost of thirty million followed by a weekly liability of half a million to save that hemorrhaging is a bit of non issue in my opinion. I think Murdoch could give up one of his twenty yachts and reduce his yacht insurance to offset that if he wanted to pay for The Daily out of pocket.
The Apple comment further mystifies me. While terrible that they should lose so much money to Apple, it does give Apple incentive to see this succeed since it's designed for their product. So consider first how amazing Apple is at promoting products and how terribly backward News Corp has been as of late. It might turn out to be a paltry sum to have Apple selling their product with interest of seeing it succeed.
Regardless, if I've learned one thing from Microsoft and their initial XBox and Zune attempts, it's that a very very wealthy company that wants to shove something down the consumer's maw will not let up until it has turned a profit. The problem is that News Corp has what, eight billion sitting around in cash? Let the blood letting begin with this pin prick!
To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.
Apparently Google's accusations are viewed by some as a backhanded compliment.
the FBI has seized the apple.com domain name for facilitating piracy.
I think you mean DHS's ICE division. They're the guys running around seizing domain names for little to no reason.
"At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web"
Ohhh, right, that's why Ogg Theora isn't natively supported in Internet Explorer. Maybe you could concentrate on improving the support, capabilities and experience in your own browser before bothering to extend other browsers?
you have RTFA
Well, via Apple Insider I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response:
"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."
It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users.
You could probably have blamed their producers or research people though.. for not giving them the 5 minute education beforehand.
I might point out that the format of these daily TV shows seems to encourage uninformed people to learn with the host(s). We work day jobs so we don't see this anymore but I think what appeals to my grandmother about Regis is that he acts like an average guy just trying to figure stuff out ... and she can identify with that. Note that I said "uninformed" not "stupid." I would posit that the American people would rather embark on a learning adventure than be lectured ... I think this is why Bill Nye (yes, I know he wasn't the original) appealed to me so much as a kid.
I agree I didn't find this very funny, I did not have a computer at the time and spent the majority of my free time reading, bailing hay, playing trombone and walking endless up and down acres of field collecting rocks baseball size or larger. Had you asked me about any of the technologies they addressed here, my answer might have been just as hilarious and even more clueless. Oh well, gotta start somewhere.
I found it cute or quaint at worst. Cute to recall the time when we didn't have this powerful force dictating and providing so much.
It seems like this is publicly available information.
But it's not, you obviously didn't read the article. Here was the process: 1) Google employee makes sure some fake word does not exist in google or bing search results. 2) Said employee points google's cache results of that word to some random page. 3) Said employee uses Internet Explorer at his desk at Google to make the search appear in Google, then selects the only link as the correct thing he was looking for and Bing somehow acquires this information. 4) Search now appears in Bing.
I've highlighted the step that isn't really public information. The step that indicates to Bing that the link is interesting to someone, the step that they are acquiring through internet explorer! Total privacy violation, in my opinion.
Aside from learning venues (which you could argue every tool has to offer), there's a whole range of tools of encryption that no longer function as they were intended when they were created. From Rome's Scytale to Germany's Enigma Machine, none of those tools are useful today on account of how easily they are cracked.
That was quick slashdotting..any alternate links?
Here's the YouTube video I watched on his site while it was in Firehose.
What's "Saturday Live?"
Saturday Live was a UK TV series that ran from 1985 to 1987 on Channel 4. It appears that Mr. Zuckerberg has himself a time machine. The case is afoot, can he be stopped before his time traveling makes Facebook the most powerful entity on the planet?! (sure explains how we've gotten to where we're at)
From the article:
"Ultimately a closed system just can't go that far ... If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it's pretty difficult as I see it."
Lo said the industry had "seen this movie play several times", pointing to the Betamax vs. VHS video format war, Mac vs. Windows and various proprietary networking protocols that at one stage tried to compete with the now dominant TCP/IP.
In each of the above cases, the more open platforms won more market share. However, Apple has bucked this trend so far with its closed ecosystems for the iPhone and iPad.
"Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they've been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs," said Lo.
"Eventually they've got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model."
The author is positing that the closed model you are so impressed with needs to change if they want to survive Android. Unfortunately, Jobs' ego will not allow this and they'll most likely end up in the same realm as Microsoft -- financially great but viewed as a 'has been' and opportunist by the community.
These bloodsuckers have been altered to have shorter lifespans.
Actually the modified Aedes aegypti in question are not bloodsuckers. From the AFP article:
In the first experiment of its kind in Asia, about 6,000 male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were released ...
Like Homo sapiens, only the females drain the life out of their victims. The male Aedes aegypti only feed on plant juices (but I'm guessing pass the short lifespan trait on more effectively).
Moderators, ball's in your court.