I've been paying about the same for a medium-tier broadband service in a number of cities and for a number of years. At this time I am paying $30 a month for what used to be a 15Mbps service to Comcast. The catch is that it's a 6 month deal, it will go up to $40 a month for the next 6 months, and towards the end I have to perform the usual "I am leaving for ATT" song and dance to get the deal again (I have not had to actually switch yet, but might at some point - ATT service is priced the same, though they try to rip me off another $5 a month for equipment.
I also did a quick survey of what broadband services cost in a deregulated place like UK. Here is a link for Glasgow (because I like it:) ): http://www.cable.co.uk/local/broadband/glasgow/glasgow/ Note that prices on the right are for service from a provider and users still have to pay "line fees" (because, much like elsewhere, no one will put a second set of cables in the ground, so infrastructure is shared). If you click through on any of these deals, the total price with line fee for a 1 year contract is about 17-20 GBP which translates to approx. $30 for the same 15 Mbps service.
I don't know - I think we are on par here.
It'd be nice if Comcast didn't make me go through the silly annual rejection cycle, of course.
Japanese "realpolitik" is complicated and a lot happens "below the surface". While I'd like to hope the request was refused on the grounds of honoring their constitution, a skeptic in me suggests that the true reason must be more pragmatic. Perhaps they did not want US to gain access to their own trade or political secrets (wise choice, given what we now know about wiretapping European leaders). There is a lot of shady stuff going on between Japanese government and businesses (where does it not? I don't mean to single them out, though theirs is not a very transparent society).
So, while it's great to know that at least one rich country can say "no" to US, I wouldn't go moving my colocated mail services to Japan quite yet.
I know it's very fashionable to compare US to the communist countries, which most of you haven't lived in, and aren't even old enough to have seen on TV. I did - and let me just say it's nothing alike.
Still, perhaps it's worth reading the "FA" to understand exactly what it means?
tl;dr; version - some US prosecutors have been using evidence so derived in criminal cases without notifying defendants. Sometime during this summer someone higher up in Justice Department became aware of this (I'll take this claim at face value for now) and after some discussion (and presumably some opposition from those prosecutors who found the practice very convenient) it was decided that hiding the warrantless wiretaps from defendants is not acceptable (based on the way the law is interpreted).
Based on that, find 3 differences between US and East Germany. I'll take a stab at it: 1. There is a discussion in the prosecutorial branch wrt. legality of application of such law, and the outcome of that discussion is factual information provided to defendants, that may aid in their defense. 2. The court will take this in consideration, and we will see this debated, probably at every level of judiciary all the way to Supreme Court. 3. We are reading about all of this in the major media news outlet.
Do you need me to tell you which of these items did not apply to the "Soviet Russia"? You, people, have no f-ing idea and your childish fits undermine legitimate efforts to create more transparent government and more just society.
“That explains the one file they took but does not explain why they took four other files with my handwritten and typed interview notes with confidential sources, that I staked my reputation as a journalist to protect under the auspices of the First Amendment of the Constitution,”. Ok, so she swore to protect them and yet did not bother with even basic encryption? And then did not notice the loss of files for quite some time (article suggests a month after the raid, until she was notified by investigators that they took those files)
Well, perhaps she should not be trusted with confidential information, if she can't be bothered to take even basic care of it.
And yes, I am all against jackbooted government agents busting doors and grabbing whatever they please, but that does not absolve individual from responsibility to protect data.
Conventional display and media delivery technologies have reached a point of diminishing returns long ago. Humans are perfectly happy at current (and even somewhat outdated) resolution and quality. Any increases from now on do not improve viewer experience in a measurable way, at least not for majority of users.
On the other hand the "total quality" of "media output" seems to be a constant, while the amount is increasing exponentially - so each individual piece is, well, you know... (Disclaimer: I do not own a TV, may be things have improved recently?)
Sounds like it's high time time to start a VPN provider in SeaLand (or what do we have left that's not firmly in jurisdiction of governments with grubby hands and long noses)?
I think that means "they know just enough to be dangerous". Perhaps on occasion little knowledge is worse than none at all. That said, I do not find Tea Party supporters laughable at all. On the contrary - I think they are dead serious, and quite scary.
Tea party members - feel free to mod this "troll".
I was able to register fairly early (around the 3rd) - when the site was still undergoing the initial onslaught of gawkers. It seems to be working ok now - no more "please wait, we are too busy" page at initial login, logging in takes a few seconds. Once in - I am able to search and view policies for appropriate states. The only real issue I found so far is that some of the insurance companies make it difficult to find actual policy prospectus. BCBS does a decent job with direct links, a few others make you look it up in a list by name (which may or may not match the name they present on the main site) and one (Cigna) has broken links that lead nowhere (but their rates suck anyway).
All in all seems about as usable as I've ever seen in a government site. A heck of a lot better than the tax payment system feds have or any of the state DMV sites I had to deal with (and we are talking "red" states, who clearly should know better, right?)
I looked at his original comments - to me they appear perhaps even more offensive to women than to gay. He's clearly a "woman's place is in the kitchen" proponent.
Ms Pierson graduated from USFCA in 2003 (http://www.usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Office_and_Services/Alumni/PNW_Alumni_Invite.pdf). Her Linkedin profile says so as well. However, her Linkedin profile does not list any PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University or Palo Alto University, nor can I find any reference to such PhD on either university's site or in citations (in particular, here are all the graduates with PhD in neuroscience from Stanford: http://nsp2.stanford.edu/alumni/)
There are a few other facts in the story that I find inconsistent but we'll leave these on the writer's conscience - it's a feel-good story of overcoming adversity, and there is a natural inclination to emphasize certain things.
Cops have been breaking down doors, shooting people and abusing their power ever since the dawn of civilization. I think there is something about the Sheriff of Nottingham written about that. "Fritz the Cat" came out in 1972 and cops were called "pigs" then.
Just because your adult life is more recent, or your selective memory prefers to discard negative events (as human memory does), does not mean things have changed much. They did not call it "SWAT" or "raid" then, but they did the same thing.
That's not to say any of that is a "good" thing. But the false nostalgia for the "good old days when a friendly cop stood on the corner smiling to children and waving a friendly nightstick" is just that, and it's dangerous if used as a pretext to "let's go back to those wonderful times". Those times sucked. Move forward, fix things today.
He's a sociopath, huh? How'd you figure that one out?
And now he's mentally ill?
I did not say that either of those things are true. What I *did* say is that either of those things are *possible*. Hence, there is a need for investigation which, as far as I can tell, is ongoing. It is possible that they found something we did not.
Hasn't stopped you from casting judgement.
I provided no judgement. Rather, I specified what possible options are there (among with "completely innocent", obviously).
If and when more information becomes available - I may form a more specific opinion. I wish the required slashdot raging would be reserved until such time as well.
Is it me, or is something wrong with a statement "18 year old teenager". I kinda thought "teenagers" ended right about 16, and by 18 we should have, at least in theory, a fully functional member of society, who should be a little more responsible with words. Especially when those words are are direct threat to health and lives of others.
In any case, "j/k" and "lol" does not excuse a sociopath, nor does it guarantee that a mentally ill person will not actually act upon the threat. It would, of course, be better if authorities investigated this faster and, hopefully, found that no such threat exists. Aside from that, we don't know all the circumstances of the case (except for what one side with vested interest tells us). Perhaps such threat does really exist.
I'll reserve my raging for something else, if you do not mind.
I moved to Miami a few years ago from an area with significant technological presence. A contrast is quite striking. I see SoFla as a technological (and, really, intellectual) wasteland. There are no high tech companies to speak of (well, there is Citrix, I think). General level of education, technological and otherwise, is relatively low compared to more "hi-tech" parts of the country. Add to that a peculiar local demographics where vanity is the primary motivation, and you get an environment in which it's difficult to create or maintain a techie movement. I applaud these guys for trying, of course.
Once you jump through all those loops, who will you be talking to? And if such a person exists, he probably already knows what you are going to say, so why bother calling?:)
Mod parent up. iOS needs to keep doing what it's doing. It must be doing something right if/. consensus is that Android is "increasingly sophisticated". This is by the same group of people who don't understand why Linux does not have broad appeal.
As an iOS user and developer (as well as user and developer for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS and attempted but tired and frustrated user and developer for Android:) ) - I hope Apple continues with incremental and stable approach, giving users well thought out and tightly controlled new feature sets, while maintaining clean, simple and usable system.
Do *not* under any circumstances let engineers ruin this one.
So somehow you are able to better remember a single number for water freezing temperature if that number is 0, rather than if it is 32? I find that highly unusual. Are you, then, unable to remember the value for "normal" human body temperature in Celsius? It is not only non-zero, but also, usually, includes a decimal point (36.5 or so)?
Knots are not very romantic at all. They are consistently used in navigation, for very practical reason, same reason that "nautical mile" is a navigation's basic measurement unit. The reason is that nautical mile is derived from real world measurement too. It is in fact equal to 1 minute of meridian (or, approximately, equator), which makes it very handy for various navigation-related calculations.
So, in a highly "technical" field we have current, exclusive use of a non-"metric" unit (although modern NM has a well defined number of meters too). In aviation feet are also exclusively used as an official world-wide unit of altitude. Go figure.
What exactly is gained by change in units? As a metric "native" I can tell you that metric units are not based on real-world criteria. There is no way to naturally define an "approximate" centimeter or a gram (as opposed to approximate inch, foot or ounce, for example).
Metric units primary convenience in common use is to make shorthand in writing easier by avoiding decimal point or additional places of 0 and replacing them with predefined short prefixes. I suppose it may be useful to those who have good memory for greek-derived words but can't multiply or divide by 10, but are these people a majority? There are more convenient unit conversions when it comes to scientific use, but as far as I can tell, scientists do use metric quite universally.
More importantly - if you like metric system, just use it. I can't think of many (any?) products sold in US that are not dual-labeled. Virtually everything has either both imperial and metric weight/size etc. marked on it, or sold in metric and imperial versions. If metric system is superior in day-to-day life - market will no doubt prefer it without the need for government intervention.
Relatively few people will have access to building roof. Radio station would need constant maintenance, and (assuming it is running autonomously) a way to change music selection (although perhaps they were feeding data wirelessly?).
Just check janitors and maintenance personnel, and there you'll have it.
It doesn't. There is no way to scale classic economy where every person is required to provide some sort of "labor" in exchange for goods and services he needs, not anymore. We are at a point where needs of entire humanity can and will be served by ever decreasing amount of labor. The only options are: 1. Reduce total number of people to match that required for production, more or less. That'd be great - but difficult to do politically (except if contraceptives became mandatory part of cheap food and beer). 2. Provide some amount of goods and services to majority of people without requiring any labor. 3. Create token "jobs" that require nominal labor, and provide goods and services in exchange for that.
Note that we are apparently implementing some mix of 2 and 3. World would be a better place with 1, but it is highly unlikely.
Either way, a factory in US is probably a good thing for *some* people - but almost irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
If this processor is going to be designed and licensed under GPLv3 - I guess one won't be able to build any license-compatible proprietary software for it either. Curious - but count me out:)
Slashdot Mirror
I've been paying about the same for a medium-tier broadband service in a number of cities and for a number of years. At this time I am paying $30 a month for what used to be a 15Mbps service to Comcast. The catch is that it's a 6 month deal, it will go up to $40 a month for the next 6 months, and towards the end I have to perform the usual "I am leaving for ATT" song and dance to get the deal again (I have not had to actually switch yet, but might at some point - ATT service is priced the same, though they try to rip me off another $5 a month for equipment.
I also did a quick survey of what broadband services cost in a deregulated place like UK. Here is a link for Glasgow (because I like it :) ): http://www.cable.co.uk/local/broadband/glasgow/glasgow/
Note that prices on the right are for service from a provider and users still have to pay "line fees" (because, much like elsewhere, no one will put a second set of cables in the ground, so infrastructure is shared). If you click through on any of these deals, the total price with line fee for a 1 year contract is about 17-20 GBP which translates to approx. $30 for the same 15 Mbps service.
I don't know - I think we are on par here.
It'd be nice if Comcast didn't make me go through the silly annual rejection cycle, of course.
Japanese "realpolitik" is complicated and a lot happens "below the surface". While I'd like to hope the request was refused on the grounds of honoring their constitution, a skeptic in me suggests that the true reason must be more pragmatic. Perhaps they did not want US to gain access to their own trade or political secrets (wise choice, given what we now know about wiretapping European leaders). There is a lot of shady stuff going on between Japanese government and businesses (where does it not? I don't mean to single them out, though theirs is not a very transparent society).
So, while it's great to know that at least one rich country can say "no" to US, I wouldn't go moving my colocated mail services to Japan quite yet.
I know it's very fashionable to compare US to the communist countries, which most of you haven't lived in, and aren't even old enough to have seen on TV. I did - and let me just say it's nothing alike.
Still, perhaps it's worth reading the "FA" to understand exactly what it means?
tl;dr; version - some US prosecutors have been using evidence so derived in criminal cases without notifying defendants. Sometime during this summer someone higher up in Justice Department became aware of this (I'll take this claim at face value for now) and after some discussion (and presumably some opposition from those prosecutors who found the practice very convenient) it was decided that hiding the warrantless wiretaps from defendants is not acceptable (based on the way the law is interpreted).
Based on that, find 3 differences between US and East Germany. I'll take a stab at it:
1. There is a discussion in the prosecutorial branch wrt. legality of application of such law, and the outcome of that discussion is factual information provided to defendants, that may aid in their defense.
2. The court will take this in consideration, and we will see this debated, probably at every level of judiciary all the way to Supreme Court.
3. We are reading about all of this in the major media news outlet.
Do you need me to tell you which of these items did not apply to the "Soviet Russia"? You, people, have no f-ing idea and your childish fits undermine legitimate efforts to create more transparent government and more just society.
“That explains the one file they took but does not explain why they took four other files with my handwritten and typed interview notes with confidential sources, that I staked my reputation as a journalist to protect under the auspices of the First Amendment of the Constitution,”. Ok, so she swore to protect them and yet did not bother with even basic encryption? And then did not notice the loss of files for quite some time (article suggests a month after the raid, until she was notified by investigators that they took those files)
Well, perhaps she should not be trusted with confidential information, if she can't be bothered to take even basic care of it.
And yes, I am all against jackbooted government agents busting doors and grabbing whatever they please, but that does not absolve individual from responsibility to protect data.
Conventional display and media delivery technologies have reached a point of diminishing returns long ago. Humans are perfectly happy at current (and even somewhat outdated) resolution and quality. Any increases from now on do not improve viewer experience in a measurable way, at least not for majority of users.
On the other hand the "total quality" of "media output" seems to be a constant, while the amount is increasing exponentially - so each individual piece is, well, you know... (Disclaimer: I do not own a TV, may be things have improved recently?)
Oh, those individual-freedom-loving Texans.
Sounds like it's high time time to start a VPN provider in SeaLand (or what do we have left that's not firmly in jurisdiction of governments with grubby hands and long noses)?
I think that means "they know just enough to be dangerous". Perhaps on occasion little knowledge is worse than none at all.
That said, I do not find Tea Party supporters laughable at all. On the contrary - I think they are dead serious, and quite scary.
Tea party members - feel free to mod this "troll".
Their representatives in congress seem to do everything contrary to point number 9.
I was able to register fairly early (around the 3rd) - when the site was still undergoing the initial onslaught of gawkers. It seems to be working ok now - no more "please wait, we are too busy" page at initial login, logging in takes a few seconds. Once in - I am able to search and view policies for appropriate states. The only real issue I found so far is that some of the insurance companies make it difficult to find actual policy prospectus. BCBS does a decent job with direct links, a few others make you look it up in a list by name (which may or may not match the name they present on the main site) and one (Cigna) has broken links that lead nowhere (but their rates suck anyway).
All in all seems about as usable as I've ever seen in a government site. A heck of a lot better than the tax payment system feds have or any of the state DMV sites I had to deal with (and we are talking "red" states, who clearly should know better, right?)
I looked at his original comments - to me they appear perhaps even more offensive to women than to gay. He's clearly a "woman's place is in the kitchen" proponent.
Ms Pierson graduated from USFCA in 2003 (http://www.usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Office_and_Services/Alumni/PNW_Alumni_Invite.pdf). Her Linkedin profile says so as well. However, her Linkedin profile does not list any PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University or Palo Alto University, nor can I find any reference to such PhD on either university's site or in citations (in particular, here are all the graduates with PhD in neuroscience from Stanford: http://nsp2.stanford.edu/alumni/)
There are a few other facts in the story that I find inconsistent but we'll leave these on the writer's conscience - it's a feel-good story of overcoming adversity, and there is a natural inclination to emphasize certain things.
Just saying...
Sometimes I wish Apple was a private company and didn't have to look over the shoulder at "investors".
Cops have been breaking down doors, shooting people and abusing their power ever since the dawn of civilization. I think there is something about the Sheriff of Nottingham written about that. "Fritz the Cat" came out in 1972 and cops were called "pigs" then.
Just because your adult life is more recent, or your selective memory prefers to discard negative events (as human memory does), does not mean things have changed much. They did not call it "SWAT" or "raid" then, but they did the same thing.
That's not to say any of that is a "good" thing. But the false nostalgia for the "good old days when a friendly cop stood on the corner smiling to children and waving a friendly nightstick" is just that, and it's dangerous if used as a pretext to "let's go back to those wonderful times". Those times sucked. Move forward, fix things today.
He's a sociopath, huh? How'd you figure that one out?
And now he's mentally ill?
I did not say that either of those things are true. What I *did* say is that either of those things are *possible*. Hence, there is a need for investigation which, as far as I can tell, is ongoing. It is possible that they found something we did not.
Hasn't stopped you from casting judgement.
I provided no judgement. Rather, I specified what possible options are there (among with "completely innocent", obviously).
If and when more information becomes available - I may form a more specific opinion. I wish the required slashdot raging would be reserved until such time as well.
Is it me, or is something wrong with a statement "18 year old teenager". I kinda thought "teenagers" ended right about 16, and by 18 we should have, at least in theory, a fully functional member of society, who should be a little more responsible with words. Especially when those words are are direct threat to health and lives of others.
In any case, "j/k" and "lol" does not excuse a sociopath, nor does it guarantee that a mentally ill person will not actually act upon the threat. It would, of course, be better if authorities investigated this faster and, hopefully, found that no such threat exists.
Aside from that, we don't know all the circumstances of the case (except for what one side with vested interest tells us). Perhaps such threat does really exist.
I'll reserve my raging for something else, if you do not mind.
I moved to Miami a few years ago from an area with significant technological presence. A contrast is quite striking. I see SoFla as a technological (and, really, intellectual) wasteland. There are no high tech companies to speak of (well, there is Citrix, I think). General level of education, technological and otherwise, is relatively low compared to more "hi-tech" parts of the country. Add to that a peculiar local demographics where vanity is the primary motivation, and you get an environment in which it's difficult to create or maintain a techie movement. I applaud these guys for trying, of course.
Me, I am here for the diving :)
Once you jump through all those loops, who will you be talking to? And if such a person exists, he probably already knows what you are going to say, so why bother calling? :)
Mod parent up. iOS needs to keep doing what it's doing. It must be doing something right if /. consensus is that Android is "increasingly sophisticated". This is by the same group of people who don't understand why Linux does not have broad appeal.
As an iOS user and developer (as well as user and developer for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS and attempted but tired and frustrated user and developer for Android :) ) - I hope Apple continues with incremental and stable approach, giving users well thought out and tightly controlled new feature sets, while maintaining clean, simple and usable system.
Do *not* under any circumstances let engineers ruin this one.
So somehow you are able to better remember a single number for water freezing temperature if that number is 0, rather than if it is 32? I find that highly unusual. Are you, then, unable to remember the value for "normal" human body temperature in Celsius? It is not only non-zero, but also, usually, includes a decimal point (36.5 or so)?
Knots are not very romantic at all. They are consistently used in navigation, for very practical reason, same reason that "nautical mile" is a navigation's basic measurement unit. The reason is that nautical mile is derived from real world measurement too. It is in fact equal to 1 minute of meridian (or, approximately, equator), which makes it very handy for various navigation-related calculations.
So, in a highly "technical" field we have current, exclusive use of a non-"metric" unit (although modern NM has a well defined number of meters too). In aviation feet are also exclusively used as an official world-wide unit of altitude. Go figure.
What exactly is gained by change in units? As a metric "native" I can tell you that metric units are not based on real-world criteria. There is no way to naturally define an "approximate" centimeter or a gram (as opposed to approximate inch, foot or ounce, for example).
Metric units primary convenience in common use is to make shorthand in writing easier by avoiding decimal point or additional places of 0 and replacing them with predefined short prefixes. I suppose it may be useful to those who have good memory for greek-derived words but can't multiply or divide by 10, but are these people a majority? There are more convenient unit conversions when it comes to scientific use, but as far as I can tell, scientists do use metric quite universally.
More importantly - if you like metric system, just use it. I can't think of many (any?) products sold in US that are not dual-labeled. Virtually everything has either both imperial and metric weight/size etc. marked on it, or sold in metric and imperial versions. If metric system is superior in day-to-day life - market will no doubt prefer it without the need for government intervention.
Relatively few people will have access to building roof. Radio station would need constant maintenance, and (assuming it is running autonomously) a way to change music selection (although perhaps they were feeding data wirelessly?).
Just check janitors and maintenance personnel, and there you'll have it.
Also, it's Regions bank, not that anyone cares.
It doesn't. There is no way to scale classic economy where every person is required to provide some sort of "labor" in exchange for goods and services he needs, not anymore. We are at a point where needs of entire humanity can and will be served by ever decreasing amount of labor.
The only options are:
1. Reduce total number of people to match that required for production, more or less. That'd be great - but difficult to do politically (except if contraceptives became mandatory part of cheap food and beer).
2. Provide some amount of goods and services to majority of people without requiring any labor.
3. Create token "jobs" that require nominal labor, and provide goods and services in exchange for that.
Note that we are apparently implementing some mix of 2 and 3. World would be a better place with 1, but it is highly unlikely.
Either way, a factory in US is probably a good thing for *some* people - but almost irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
If this processor is going to be designed and licensed under GPLv3 - I guess one won't be able to build any license-compatible proprietary software for it either. Curious - but count me out :)