I cant believe we have deteriorated as to let a corporation stalk us
With Google Chrome you can turn many of their tracking features off although if you are feeling paranoid there are other web browsers you can use. It does get more difficult to control or stop information being sent to one or more interested parties if the operating system you are using is configured by default to do so and you can't blame Google Chrome for that.
Like it or not any site, you visit with a web browser will log your information as metadata. Under normal circumstances, metadata is only used for debugging purposes unless a court order is presented to the appropriate managers, (ah the good old days) however depending on the privacy policies of the company that metadata can be sold to interested parties.
It must be noted that most computers even from the 1950's onward logged metadata which as I have explained before is extremely useful for debugging purposes. Under normal circumstances, metadata was only kept for a few days or months (depends on company policy), however, it appears metadata can be used for other purposes and depending which country you live in there may be government policies in place that require retention of metadata for years.
BTW. I run Linux as my primary operating system and I have instant access to four web browsers, those are Google Chrome, Firefox, Konqueror and Qupzilla. There are other browsers I could install (takes about a minute or two) but I choose not to. No matter which browser I use any site I visit will log my activity as metadata even if I am using incognito settings. At least I don't have to worry that my operating system is sending data to interested parties.
I take it the two of you aren't actually familiar with kodi addons.
I was only replying to his VLC comment, not Kodi.
For your interest, I only run Linux on my desktop and laptops (Fedora 27). Although I do have Kodi installed I don't really use the application and I am aware it does have plugins, some of which can be used to pirate certain content. Still, most of that content I am not interested in so I have not investigated it.
In other news, google has removed the terms "debugger", "defective -by-design", and "EFF" from their auto complete results due to their association the word "piracy" as the latest savlo in their on going censorship campaign.
Well you can enter "piracy" or "p" in the google search and you do get the "piracy" hint (well I do) as the first word then if you enter or select "piracy" as your search you get the definition of the word followed by top stories (as per 30th March 2018) of which the first one is Kodi. Great advertising.:)
Well, all know that Microsoft would not condone "piracy". I mean just type in the word "sea" and I get "sea of thieves" as my first hint. Oh, wait!... Must fight the urge.:)
A nomadic system? Are you for real? so you want people to go back to scrounging off the land and "bartering" which throughout history would usually be by the gun and sword? For any society to move to the so-called nomadic system would literally condemn billions of humans to death and tens of millions more to a brutal and in most cases a short life except of course for the wealthy.
Capitalism was built upon slavery,
Look at History. Capitalism was not built on slavery although you could argue that during the Industrial Revolution some workers were treated poorly and were not that much better off than some slaves.
How successful has capitalism been, hmm, world wars, hundreds of millions dead, mass starvation, global terrorism, all the product of capitalism, ugly indeed.
Most wars, starvation, terrorism etc have underlying roots in religion, in fact, hundreds of millions have been killed for religious ideology alone throughout history. You can easily confirm what I said to be true with some simple searches (don't just restrict yourself to Christianity). Sure capitalism is not a perfect solution but it is still much better than anarchy or totalitarianism.
Like it or not you will always have humans who for one reason or another will accumulate wealth and some of those people will abuse that wealth. You could have a person who has power such as a King, Queen, Emperor, Empress, Dictator, Strong-man (see nomads), Pharaohs, Religious Leader,... etc and eventually that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. At least death is a great leveler.
I get the impression you are very anti Capitalism but like it or not there are many small investors who without investing in companies would not have much money to live relatively comfortably when they retire.
If you really want to get righteously angry why don't you look at some of these religious organizations? Just in the US alone religion is a trillion plus dollar per year business and they pay little if any taxes. So what do they give back? Well, prayers and on the odd occasion, they raise funds (rarely theirs of course) and help for disasters.
BTW. If you live in the US take an in-depth look at the latest so-called tax cuts. Great if you are wealthy but over the long term a disaster for low to mid-income earners. Yes, that is the ugly side of Capitalism (ie. lobbying) but in reality isn't that the greed and collusion of your politicians?
Chrome 63.0.3239.108 (Official Build) (64-bit) the score is 528 Firefox 57.0.1 (64-bit) the score is 483 QupZilla Application version 2.2.3, QtWebEngine version 5.9.2 the score is 517
The above I have running on my Fedora 27 distribution.
From the HTML5 Compatibility Test site, they say that the following: Opera is 518 Edge is 476 Safari is 406
It must be noted that you should look at what the scores actually mean since there are groupings such as "Elements", "Video", "Audio", "2D Graphics", "Security" just to name a few. If you care to look you will find that some features are proprietary and in the case of Chrome and Firefox are not supported while if you look at Edge some proprietary features are supported. A very good example of this falls under the "Streaming" category.
That being said, usually services are designed to work with other browsers and keeping features a bit behind, as to support the general population. Telling people to use chrome is bad form.
You are quite right most browsers support what can be considered common services, however, what is wrong "telling/informing" other people about Chrome, aren't people allowed to have opinions and express them in a none violent way?
There's already too much Chrome-specific stuff and the point is: it's growing. Sure, Chrome started as fully standards-based, but then so did IE in the (very) early days when it was the best browser around. Then the years went on, and the IE-specific stuff grew until we had the world of IE6.
Chrome is starting to look like it's on that trajectory. Sure, it's still mostly standards-based, but its trajectory is away from that, and in fact looks very much like the trajectory from IE3 to IE6.
How is there too much Chrome-specific stuff? Please define "stuff".
Chrome at it's basic is a W3C compliant Web browser (ie. an application) and can be optionally run on multiple operating systems while IE6 is also a W3C compliant (cough!) web browser that is "tied" to a Microsoft operating system.
... as a monitor. Because no videos will be in 8K!
You have not been keeping up with technology. Tokyo Olympics in 8K resolution. There are plenty of other references for 8K if you care to look.
To be fair I will concede that 8K has very little content available at the moment but then again 4K when it first came out also had little content. Even 1080p content became commercially viable when Bluray (yes I do know about HD-DVD) became the industry standard. Currently in order of the most content for media is DVD followed by HD Bluray (ie. 1080p) then UHD Bluray (ie. 4K).
BTW. Streaming is by far the largest means of display content and in the future (eg. 5, 10, 20?? years) physical media will die out.
Here's a new year's resolution for you: Strap yourself to a rocket and launch it to demonstrate that the Earth is flat.
Not really since "flat earthers" would not believe no matter what they were shown. However, it would be an excellent example of how the so-called "flat earther" could win a coveted Darwin Award .
Matter falls into a black hole and leaves one universe. In another universe a big bang happens as that universe is formed. So universes bud off from each other, and the budding point is a black hole
Cool. Now prove it
Disprove it. QED.
No, the onus is on the person who postulated the idea or as it is more popularly known "The burden of proof" . Very useful to know when religious people turn up at your door.
BTW. The first AC was correct. You, on the other hand, are not.
A black hole with the mass of the known universe would have a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears
...so, the radius of the observable universe ! Is there some deeper meaning to this or is that just a coincidence ?
The radius of the known universe is 46.6 billion light years, although the age of the universe is estimated at 13.799±0.021 billion years. You also have to remember that Universe has been expanding since the "big bang" so obviously the known universe will have a larger radius than 13.8 billion light years.
A good certified drip brewer that brews fast enough to not make the coffee bitter easily costs a couple of hundred for the cheap models.
The are many ways to brew ground coffee with the cheapest and quickest ways being 1) Drip filter (you do have to pay for the one use filters) and 2) Plunger (you may get fine grounds in your cup) although deciding to go this way will depend on your taste in coffee. You can also use a coffee percolator which is relatively cheap although I personally find that the result can be bit of a hit or a miss.
I actually purchased a Sunbeam Caff Creamer for $99 AUD ($75 USD) when it was on special and have found it to be quite good (has 15 bar pressure) in making one or two (depends on which stainless steel filter you use) cups of short black and if you use the steam frother you can make cappuccino although you do need a little practice in frothing the milk. It takes me about three to four minutes to make a cappuccino from cold and cleaning takes about 30 seconds.
Yes, you can go ridiculous and spend money on barista and automatic coffee machines but the one I have works really well and produces a nice cappuccino which both myself and my wife like.
As for capsule machines, I personally don't find that much of a difference between using a good instant coffee which is cheaper. Of course, other people will have a different opinion.
I installed Win10 in a VM to test it and didn't like it. Does that count?
I did the same thing and after confirming (with Wireshark) that Windows 10 loves to phone home even though I told it not to, I shut it down and have not used it since and that was over a year ago. I haven't missed it but then again I really have not used MS Windows seriously for over ten years.
but what is the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)? Maybe the batteries are ridiculously expensive to maintain?
My wife has a Tesla Model S. Here are the maintenance costs so far:
Battery maintenance: $0
Oil changes: $0
New oil filters: $0
Brake pads: $0
Tire rotation: Free
Windshield wiper fluid: $6
New spark plugs: $0
Radiator fluid: $0
Air filters: $0
Total: $6
Fantastic, however, you left out the most important part. What is the cost of charging and how far can you travel on a single charge? Like it or not electrical charging does have a cost whether you use mains or solar (ie. cost of installation). You also have to consider the initial price and resale value of the car although to be fair that should be a consideration for any car.
It was rather pointless stating the items which are related to a gas/petrol/diesel car although you will have to replace the tires, air conditioning filter and brakes (yes I am aware of regenerative braking) over the electric cars lifetime which should be fairly minimal.
Can someone please explain to me the difference between this and buying a pack of CCG or Baseball cards.
There would little or no difference between loot boxes giving out cosmetic items and purchasing a pack of (using your example) "baseball cards" which like it or not are a form a gambling (ie. chance). Where the difference becomes significant is when those loot boxes give out statical buffs for items and even new items which can be construed "pay to win" thereby giving an unfair advantage (ie. cheats) to online players that are willing to pay. You won't see that in "baseball cards" although it may be possible that some rare cards could fetch a high price however that is "trading" and is a totally different thing.
$60 is not a bad price if you're going to get hundreds of hours out of the game. But it's an outrageous price for 10 hours of gameplay.
The problem you have is that the liking of games is subjective and while I do agree that the best value for a game may be the number of enjoyable hours you can get from that game, other people may prefer the overall enjoyment of a particular game which may not translate to the number of hours you can possibly get from that game.
To give some examples. I have put in hundreds of enjoyable hours into Skyrim and have IMHO got my monies worth at a few cents per hour. Other people may have purchased a game like Overwatch at full price which requires online access only to play and they may play two to three hours per week yet they would consider their money well spent. Those same people that like a game such as Overwatch which has no campaign mode "may" find a game like Skyrim boring and not worth playing while gamers like myself are not interested in FPS games especially ones that have no campaign mode.
Note: The above examples are from my perspective and I am quite sure there will be many people that would quite rightly disagree with me.
As far as loot boxes go they are a form of gambling which is chance (look up what the law states for gambling is for your country). This would not have raised the ire of many gamers if the results of loot boxes were purely cosmetic but loot boxes in Battlefront 2 has buffs and items that effectively gave on-line players an unfair advantage or "pay to win" which in weasel speak is "accelerated experience".
BTW. I don't have any objection to microtransactions if they are cosmetic only and don't interfere with the gameplay.
Buy up all ISPs in his area and simply refuse service to him. Since it's not based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or anything it should be no problem to deny him service.
Do honestly think that would sway Ajit Pai?
Personally, I think he would love to play the martyr and spin it in such a way that he would come out smelling of roses.
If you wish to something about "Net Neutrality" being repealed it would be best to make your congressman or and/or state representative know. You should talk to your friends and get them to do the same (unfortunately many will be apathetic). Also if you are a firm that has been impacted by the repeal such as being coerced into paying for higher speeds which can be considered "extortion", then make it known on your websites. Ratbags don't like their dirty washing being hung out for all to see.:-)
I don't live in the US nor am I a US citizen but the removal of Net Neutrality in the US will eventually affect me since governments do have a tendency to listen to people with money although their main priority is to get votes.
Outdated should have been inconvenient. Today's researchers survive by getting funding and they tend to get funding from groups with a preconceived agenda. The scientific method tends to conflict with those agendas frequently. As long as people are involved there will be deception
Interesting article. Thanks for that.
It's very risky to pull a deception in science since peer review will eventually (if not immediately) pick this up and the people who were involved in the deception will be totally discredited. It is far more honest to put forward a hypothesis and present your findings with an appropriate methodology for peer review knowing that if your hypothesis is proven wrong then to gracefully admit and learn from it.
It is also possible that while a particular hypothesis may be wrong parts of it may have some valid points which can be expanded on or provide different trains of thought and can therefore still be used for valid citing purposes. In the case of the article, the person concerned was totally discredited and while it may have been possible that some of what he said had valid points why would any member of the Scientific and Engineering community believe him?
Yeah, but those guys were paid by big oil to do that.
You forgot about big tobacco and big pharma.
An interesting article on pot taxes has come to light which will upset many of the "holy than though" (sorry I find it pointless alluding to the "left' or "right"). Still, $85 million USD is not to be sneezed at especially when that money can be spent responsibly. Of course, I do think that the "don't drive when under the influence" rule still applies.
I'll no doubt regret agreeing with Spun on anything, but he's right.
Science, and for that matter logic has been condemned as an instrument of the patriarchy for around 30 years now. It's a core tenet of Post-Modernism that logic itself is a tool of oppression to be discarded, and Post-Modernism devoured academic feminism decades ago. I read peer-reviewed papers (in philosophy) to this effect in the early 90s, and it's only become more mainstream in academia.
If you look at history serious science (not pseudo-science) has been at best tolerated and worst condemned usually with loss of life since science has a tendency to find out how things actually work in the real world. This, of course, makes many religions very uncomfortable since the God of the gaps is shrinking.
You only have to look at the Theory of Evolution (not to be confused with Abiogenesis ) and Astronomy which is not to be confused with the so-called psudo science of Astrology.
Even today you have smart (I am being polite here) people who deny the evidence preferring to believe some "old" books that were purportedly written by their deity of choice but strangely all have earthbound writers and publishers.
In Sydney Australia (population about 4 million) and in most of the major cities we do have bus lanes which predominately follow the major roads however normal drivers are banned from these lanes except in an emergency or turning left (we drive on the left-hand side) otherwise you risk a fine. In addition, some bus lanes have corridors which can bypass more potentially congested roads. So yes a bus can get to a particular destination faster than cars can even though it may have to stop every two to three kilometers to pick up and set down passengers.
We also have what is called transit lanes such as T2 (one or more passengers) and T3 (two or more passengers) which allows cars that meet the appropriate criteria to use at certain times of the day. In addition, we have clearways where no one is allowed to park at certain times of the day. It's not perfect but it does improve the traffic flow.
We also have a train system (underground through the city center) that is not as elaborate as cities like New York, London, Paris, etc but I have found that it is far cheaper, faster and less stress full than taking a car if I wish to travel to any major city centers.
Of course, we also have expressways and toll roads although it is very galling when you have had a toll free expressway for years and then the government decides to upgrade (debatable) it and then slap on a toll. Then they wonder why commuters bypass it by doing what is commonly called "rat running" which is a means of avoiding the toll road by driving through suburban streets.
@orlanz: "People need to get from point A to B."
Goods and services need to get from A to B. Given the cost on the environment, moving people from A to B is something we're going to look on as a a luxury.
Err no. Goods and services need to get from A to B, C, D, E, F. G... etc and it does not help if {name your subset here} are not on the main transport line. This is where efficient city/town planning comes in which can work well in newly planned cities/towns but for older environments planning can be a logistical nightmare. This is not to say don't do it but unfortunately, the solutions can be expensive and disruptive.
Slashdot Mirror
I cant believe we have deteriorated as to let a corporation stalk us
With Google Chrome you can turn many of their tracking features off although if you are feeling paranoid there are other web browsers you can use. It does get more difficult to control or stop information being sent to one or more interested parties if the operating system you are using is configured by default to do so and you can't blame Google Chrome for that.
Like it or not any site, you visit with a web browser will log your information as metadata. Under normal circumstances, metadata is only used for debugging purposes unless a court order is presented to the appropriate managers, (ah the good old days) however depending on the privacy policies of the company that metadata can be sold to interested parties.
It must be noted that most computers even from the 1950's onward logged metadata which as I have explained before is extremely useful for debugging purposes. Under normal circumstances, metadata was only kept for a few days or months (depends on company policy), however, it appears metadata can be used for other purposes and depending which country you live in there may be government policies in place that require retention of metadata for years.
BTW. I run Linux as my primary operating system and I have instant access to four web browsers, those are Google Chrome, Firefox, Konqueror and Qupzilla. There are other browsers I could install (takes about a minute or two) but I choose not to. No matter which browser I use any site I visit will log my activity as metadata even if I am using incognito settings. At least I don't have to worry that my operating system is sending data to interested parties.
I take it the two of you aren't actually familiar with kodi addons.
I was only replying to his VLC comment, not Kodi.
For your interest, I only run Linux on my desktop and laptops (Fedora 27). Although I do have Kodi installed I don't really use the application and I am aware it does have plugins, some of which can be used to pirate certain content. Still, most of that content I am not interested in so I have not investigated it.
VLC doesn't have plugins which let you stream pirated content directly from pirate sites.
Don't get me wrong; this is definitely stupid. But your comparison isn't really valid.
Bring up VLC then click on Media and select Open Network Stream. Enter the URL of the video you want to play.
In case you are interested the above does work with YouTube as well.
Basically, if you can see it and/or hear it you can pirate it.
Kodi's official homepage is returned as the first search result.
Cheers, MS!
Well, you could try "sea of" and get "Sea of Thieves" Microsoft's latest game.
Err isn't that about pirates? Yes, Microsoft is a good role model.
In other news, google has removed the terms "debugger", "defective -by-design", and "EFF" from their auto complete results due to their association the word "piracy" as the latest savlo in their on going censorship campaign.
Well you can enter "piracy" or "p" in the google search and you do get the "piracy" hint (well I do) as the first word then if you enter or select "piracy" as your search you get the definition of the word followed by top stories (as per 30th March 2018) of which the first one is Kodi. Great advertising. :)
Well, all know that Microsoft would not condone "piracy". I mean just type in the word "sea" and I get "sea of thieves" as my first hint. Oh, wait! ... Must fight the urge. :)
The only free market, the nomadic system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
A nomadic system? Are you for real? so you want people to go back to scrounging off the land and "bartering" which throughout history would usually be by the gun and sword? For any society to move to the so-called nomadic system would literally condemn billions of humans to death and tens of millions more to a brutal and in most cases a short life except of course for the wealthy.
Capitalism was built upon slavery,
Look at History. Capitalism was not built on slavery although you could argue that during the Industrial Revolution some workers were treated poorly and were not that much better off than some slaves.
How successful has capitalism been, hmm, world wars, hundreds of millions dead, mass starvation, global terrorism, all the product of capitalism, ugly indeed.
Most wars, starvation, terrorism etc have underlying roots in religion, in fact, hundreds of millions have been killed for religious ideology alone throughout history. You can easily confirm what I said to be true with some simple searches (don't just restrict yourself to Christianity). Sure capitalism is not a perfect solution but it is still much better than anarchy or totalitarianism.
Like it or not you will always have humans who for one reason or another will accumulate wealth and some of those people will abuse that wealth. You could have a person who has power such as a King, Queen, Emperor, Empress, Dictator, Strong-man (see nomads), Pharaohs, Religious Leader, ... etc and eventually that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. At least death is a great leveler.
I get the impression you are very anti Capitalism but like it or not there are many small investors who without investing in companies would not have much money to live relatively comfortably when they retire.
If you really want to get righteously angry why don't you look at some of these religious organizations? Just in the US alone religion is a trillion plus dollar per year business and they pay little if any taxes. So what do they give back? Well, prayers and on the odd occasion, they raise funds (rarely theirs of course) and help for disasters.
BTW. If you live in the US take an in-depth look at the latest so-called tax cuts. Great if you are wealthy but over the long term a disaster for low to mid-income earners. Yes, that is the ugly side of Capitalism (ie. lobbying) but in reality isn't that the greed and collusion of your politicians?
However I am curious. Chrome, seems to score highest on the HTML5 Compatibility Test, compared to other browsers.
From the HTML5 Compatibility Test
Chrome 63.0.3239.108 (Official Build) (64-bit) the score is 528
Firefox 57.0.1 (64-bit) the score is 483
QupZilla Application version 2.2.3, QtWebEngine version 5.9.2 the score is 517
The above I have running on my Fedora 27 distribution.
From the HTML5 Compatibility Test site, they say that the following:
Opera is 518
Edge is 476
Safari is 406
It must be noted that you should look at what the scores actually mean since there are groupings such as "Elements", "Video", "Audio", "2D Graphics", "Security" just to name a few. If you care to look you will find that some features are proprietary and in the case of Chrome and Firefox are not supported while if you look at Edge some proprietary features are supported. A very good example of this falls under the "Streaming" category.
That being said, usually services are designed to work with other browsers and keeping features a bit behind, as to support the general population. Telling people to use chrome is bad form.
You are quite right most browsers support what can be considered common services, however, what is wrong "telling/informing" other people about Chrome, aren't people allowed to have opinions and express them in a none violent way?
There's already too much Chrome-specific stuff and the point is: it's growing. Sure, Chrome started as fully standards-based, but then so did IE in the (very) early days when it was the best browser around. Then the years went on, and the IE-specific stuff grew until we had the world of IE6.
Chrome is starting to look like it's on that trajectory. Sure, it's still mostly standards-based, but its trajectory is away from that, and in fact looks very much like the trajectory from IE3 to IE6.
How is there too much Chrome-specific stuff? Please define "stuff".
Chrome at it's basic is a W3C compliant Web browser (ie. an application) and can be optionally run on multiple operating systems while IE6 is also a W3C compliant (cough!) web browser that is "tied" to a Microsoft operating system.
I don't see a problem when it comes to beta sites
Does Google have sites which aren't in beta?
From "Help --> About Google Chrome" I get the following
Version 63.0.3239.108 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Where is the "Beta"?
... as a monitor. Because no videos will be in 8K!
You have not been keeping up with technology. Tokyo Olympics in 8K resolution. There are plenty of other references for 8K if you care to look.
To be fair I will concede that 8K has very little content available at the moment but then again 4K when it first came out also had little content. Even 1080p content became commercially viable when Bluray (yes I do know about HD-DVD) became the industry standard. Currently in order of the most content for media is DVD followed by HD Bluray (ie. 1080p) then UHD Bluray (ie. 4K).
BTW. Streaming is by far the largest means of display content and in the future (eg. 5, 10, 20?? years) physical media will die out.
Here's a new year's resolution for you: Strap yourself to a rocket and launch it to demonstrate that the Earth is flat.
Not really since "flat earthers" would not believe no matter what they were shown. However, it would be an excellent example of how the so-called "flat earther" could win a coveted Darwin Award .
Matter falls into a black hole and leaves one universe. In another universe a big bang happens as that universe is formed. So universes bud off from each other, and the budding point is a black hole
Cool. Now prove it
Disprove it. QED.
No, the onus is on the person who postulated the idea or as it is more popularly known "The burden of proof" . Very useful to know when religious people turn up at your door.
BTW. The first AC was correct. You, on the other hand, are not.
A black hole with the mass of the known universe would have a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears
...so, the radius of the observable universe ! Is there some deeper meaning to this or is that just a coincidence ?
The radius of the known universe is 46.6 billion light years, although the age of the universe is estimated at 13.799±0.021 billion years. You also have to remember that Universe has been expanding since the "big bang" so obviously the known universe will have a larger radius than 13.8 billion light years.
A good certified drip brewer that brews fast enough to not make the coffee bitter easily costs a couple of hundred for the cheap models.
The are many ways to brew ground coffee with the cheapest and quickest ways being 1) Drip filter (you do have to pay for the one use filters) and 2) Plunger (you may get fine grounds in your cup) although deciding to go this way will depend on your taste in coffee. You can also use a coffee percolator which is relatively cheap although I personally find that the result can be bit of a hit or a miss.
I actually purchased a Sunbeam Caff Creamer for $99 AUD ($75 USD) when it was on special and have found it to be quite good (has 15 bar pressure) in making one or two (depends on which stainless steel filter you use) cups of short black and if you use the steam frother you can make cappuccino although you do need a little practice in frothing the milk. It takes me about three to four minutes to make a cappuccino from cold and cleaning takes about 30 seconds.
Yes, you can go ridiculous and spend money on barista and automatic coffee machines but the one I have works really well and produces a nice cappuccino which both myself and my wife like.
As for capsule machines, I personally don't find that much of a difference between using a good instant coffee which is cheaper. Of course, other people will have a different opinion.
4) Most customers prefer Windows to any alternative OS.
4) Most customers don't know of any alternative OS and stick with the OS (ie. MS Windows) that is pre-installed on their PC.
There fixed it for you.
I installed Win10 in a VM to test it and didn't like it. Does that count?
I did the same thing and after confirming (with Wireshark) that Windows 10 loves to phone home even though I told it not to, I shut it down and have not used it since and that was over a year ago. I haven't missed it but then again I really have not used MS Windows seriously for over ten years.
but what is the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)? Maybe the batteries are ridiculously expensive to maintain?
My wife has a Tesla Model S. Here are the maintenance costs so far:
Battery maintenance: $0 Oil changes: $0 New oil filters: $0 Brake pads: $0 Tire rotation: Free Windshield wiper fluid: $6 New spark plugs: $0 Radiator fluid: $0 Air filters: $0
Total: $6
Fantastic, however, you left out the most important part. What is the cost of charging and how far can you travel on a single charge? Like it or not electrical charging does have a cost whether you use mains or solar (ie. cost of installation). You also have to consider the initial price and resale value of the car although to be fair that should be a consideration for any car.
It was rather pointless stating the items which are related to a gas/petrol/diesel car although you will have to replace the tires, air conditioning filter and brakes (yes I am aware of regenerative braking) over the electric cars lifetime which should be fairly minimal.
Can someone please explain to me the difference between this and buying a pack of CCG or Baseball cards.
There would little or no difference between loot boxes giving out cosmetic items and purchasing a pack of (using your example) "baseball cards" which like it or not are a form a gambling (ie. chance). Where the difference becomes significant is when those loot boxes give out statical buffs for items and even new items which can be construed "pay to win" thereby giving an unfair advantage (ie. cheats) to online players that are willing to pay. You won't see that in "baseball cards" although it may be possible that some rare cards could fetch a high price however that is "trading" and is a totally different thing.
$60 is not a bad price if you're going to get hundreds of hours out of the game. But it's an outrageous price for 10 hours of gameplay.
The problem you have is that the liking of games is subjective and while I do agree that the best value for a game may be the number of enjoyable hours you can get from that game, other people may prefer the overall enjoyment of a particular game which may not translate to the number of hours you can possibly get from that game.
To give some examples. I have put in hundreds of enjoyable hours into Skyrim and have IMHO got my monies worth at a few cents per hour. Other people may have purchased a game like Overwatch at full price which requires online access only to play and they may play two to three hours per week yet they would consider their money well spent. Those same people that like a game such as Overwatch which has no campaign mode "may" find a game like Skyrim boring and not worth playing while gamers like myself are not interested in FPS games especially ones that have no campaign mode.
Note: The above examples are from my perspective and I am quite sure there will be many people that would quite rightly disagree with me.
As far as loot boxes go they are a form of gambling which is chance (look up what the law states for gambling is for your country). This would not have raised the ire of many gamers if the results of loot boxes were purely cosmetic but loot boxes in Battlefront 2 has buffs and items that effectively gave on-line players an unfair advantage or "pay to win" which in weasel speak is "accelerated experience".
BTW. I don't have any objection to microtransactions if they are cosmetic only and don't interfere with the gameplay.
Buy up all ISPs in his area and simply refuse service to him. Since it's not based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or anything it should be no problem to deny him service.
Do honestly think that would sway Ajit Pai?
Personally, I think he would love to play the martyr and spin it in such a way that he would come out smelling of roses.
If you wish to something about "Net Neutrality" being repealed it would be best to make your congressman or and/or state representative know. You should talk to your friends and get them to do the same (unfortunately many will be apathetic). Also if you are a firm that has been impacted by the repeal such as being coerced into paying for higher speeds which can be considered "extortion", then make it known on your websites. Ratbags don't like their dirty washing being hung out for all to see. :-)
I don't live in the US nor am I a US citizen but the removal of Net Neutrality in the US will eventually affect me since governments do have a tendency to listen to people with money although their main priority is to get votes.
Outdated should have been inconvenient. Today's researchers survive by getting funding and they tend to get funding from groups with a preconceived agenda. The scientific method tends to conflict with those agendas frequently. As long as people are involved there will be deception
Interesting article. Thanks for that.
It's very risky to pull a deception in science since peer review will eventually (if not immediately) pick this up and the people who were involved in the deception will be totally discredited. It is far more honest to put forward a hypothesis and present your findings with an appropriate methodology for peer review knowing that if your hypothesis is proven wrong then to gracefully admit and learn from it.
It is also possible that while a particular hypothesis may be wrong parts of it may have some valid points which can be expanded on or provide different trains of thought and can therefore still be used for valid citing purposes. In the case of the article, the person concerned was totally discredited and while it may have been possible that some of what he said had valid points why would any member of the Scientific and Engineering community believe him?
Yeah, but those guys were paid by big oil to do that.
You forgot about big tobacco and big pharma.
An interesting article on pot taxes has come to light which will upset many of the "holy than though" (sorry I find it pointless alluding to the "left' or "right"). Still, $85 million USD is not to be sneezed at especially when that money can be spent responsibly. Of course, I do think that the "don't drive when under the influence" rule still applies.
I'll no doubt regret agreeing with Spun on anything, but he's right.
Science, and for that matter logic has been condemned as an instrument of the patriarchy for around 30 years now. It's a core tenet of Post-Modernism that logic itself is a tool of oppression to be discarded, and Post-Modernism devoured academic feminism decades ago. I read peer-reviewed papers (in philosophy) to this effect in the early 90s, and it's only become more mainstream in academia.
If you look at history serious science (not pseudo-science) has been at best tolerated and worst condemned usually with loss of life since science has a tendency to find out how things actually work in the real world. This, of course, makes many religions very uncomfortable since the God of the gaps is shrinking.
You only have to look at the Theory of Evolution (not to be confused with Abiogenesis ) and Astronomy which is not to be confused with the so-called psudo science of Astrology.
Even today you have smart (I am being polite here) people who deny the evidence preferring to believe some "old" books that were purportedly written by their deity of choice but strangely all have earthbound writers and publishers.
In Sydney Australia (population about 4 million) and in most of the major cities we do have bus lanes which predominately follow the major roads however normal drivers are banned from these lanes except in an emergency or turning left (we drive on the left-hand side) otherwise you risk a fine. In addition, some bus lanes have corridors which can bypass more potentially congested roads. So yes a bus can get to a particular destination faster than cars can even though it may have to stop every two to three kilometers to pick up and set down passengers.
We also have what is called transit lanes such as T2 (one or more passengers) and T3 (two or more passengers) which allows cars that meet the appropriate criteria to use at certain times of the day. In addition, we have clearways where no one is allowed to park at certain times of the day. It's not perfect but it does improve the traffic flow.
We also have a train system (underground through the city center) that is not as elaborate as cities like New York, London, Paris, etc but I have found that it is far cheaper, faster and less stress full than taking a car if I wish to travel to any major city centers.
Of course, we also have expressways and toll roads although it is very galling when you have had a toll free expressway for years and then the government decides to upgrade (debatable) it and then slap on a toll. Then they wonder why commuters bypass it by doing what is commonly called "rat running" which is a means of avoiding the toll road by driving through suburban streets.
@orlanz: "People need to get from point A to B." Goods and services need to get from A to B. Given the cost on the environment, moving people from A to B is something we're going to look on as a a luxury.
Err no. Goods and services need to get from A to B, C, D, E, F. G ... etc and it does not help if {name your subset here} are not on the main transport line. This is where efficient city/town planning comes in which can work well in newly planned cities/towns but for older environments planning can be a logistical nightmare. This is not to say don't do it but unfortunately, the solutions can be expensive and disruptive.