Ironically, that's a feature that was intentionally removed/broken in the latest android youtube App. Previously, you could start up a youtube video, turn off your screen and the video would continue to play. Now the app will intentionally pause the video if the screen is turned off. This is a problem because there are a lot of videos where I only want the audio, or I'm outputting the video via HDMI to a projector and I want my phone's screen to turn off to save battery/power/heatbuildup.
Google has a very annoying habit to apply changes with no ability to disable/enable them. The Youtube app is just one of my complaints.
The problem is that this is Google. The company that releases Android, has all the incentive in the world to integrate their products, yet does things like this:
1. Google Talk does not have an option to sync between devices. I don't like 'ghost' half conversations if I was chatting with someone on my phone and I sit down at my computer. Even worse, when sitting at your computer you will discover that the google talk client, will not sync with the google chat plugin for gmail... on the SAME PC! I'll be checking my email, have a message popup and not realize that it popped up in my gmail instead of the client, so closing gmail kills the conversation...
2. Google voice SMS. How can you have an android phone, and not have better integration of SMS messaging. Give me the option to direct 'SMS style messages' to the client of my choosing. 90% of apps that handle SMS notifications break when faced with google voice. Bad design.
3. Google Earth does not have the ability to turn off satellite imagery and simply overlay the Google maps maps... They actually have so many layers but leave out one of the most important layers. I want to see the road where the road is, not a bunch of trees and gravel pits which are no longer there in real life.
I could keep going, but there are so many integration issues that are dead simple but Google misses (or almost breaks), it's astounding. Google, if you read this, you are losing users for no reason (by losing I mean forcing them to use non Google products to get simple tasks done because the google products don't play well together)
Astoundingly simple changes that don't even require backend fixes could resolve a whoel bunch of interoperability issues.
I'm half tempted to do them myself and shop them to Google.
I suspect that any network admins worth their pay would be able to tell 1) if the exploit / entry method the guy was talking about was true, and 2) what he did when he got in there. If not, they have bigger problems.
The problem is that it doesn't stop at 2)
2. Verify what he did when he got there. If he tells you what he did, then yes, you should be able to check that.
Now comes the fun part: 3. Prove that he didn't do anything else. This isn't easy, in fact, you are trying to prove a negative. You assume that their systems are perfectly designed to log/alert/block/etc anything additional, and that this is possible for a network admin 'worth their pay'. Let me tell you, no network admin worth their pay should assume that this is possible.
Why would you ever assume that you would be good enough to know that addition intrusion did not occur if you know for a fact that he was already capable of defeating your public-facing security?
This is a problem because you cannot know for certain that he did only what he claimed he did, and thus you now have to incur a cost to verify to a sufficient level of confidence that further intrusion did not occur. That is not free, and should never be assumed on the word of someone who already violated your trust.
That's the thing, isn't it? They're locking it to ensure that you pay the amount you agreed to. I "own" a home, but the deed is "locked" until I pay off the mortgage. I "own" a car, but the title is "locked" until I pay off the car loan. There are finance companies that can actually remotely disable a vehicle if the loan payments aren't being made (there were/. stories on this).
The problem is that this law is irrespective of contract status.
If you pay off your mortgage, your mortgage company has no say on what you do to your home. If you pay off your phone contract, your phone is STILL locked to that original phone company. They are claiming a perpetual ownership stake in the phone.
I thought pitchforks were made to stab and fling hay. Shovels were made to shovel manure.
Pitchforks have long sharp tines, and if someone armed himself with a pitchfork and said, GTFO. No one sane without a firearm would risk doing anything but giving that guy at least 10' of clearance. A pitchfork will easily send 4x 10" steel spikes right through you without hesitation. I've seen it happen. (Hey, I used to live in Lancaster, PA of course I saw a pitchfork stabbing).
There is no blocking a pitchfork. They can be pretty fearsome weapons and the only reason people don't use them more often is they are pretty obvious.
I realize this reply is a bit late, but here goes.
Anything firing LOS from a fixed position (echo base) is going to have a range limited by the curvature of the planet. You could land anything you wanted beyond LOS and approach by land (ie, that's what it looks like they did.)
With regard to time, I'm not talking about the time it takes to get something from 200km to 0, I'm talking about the time it takes to get something from wherever the hell they are sourcing the mass from. While objects small enough to be transported and stored for this sort of use will indeed have a large amount of energy upon impact, even by our technology here on Earth you have to be nearly dead on accurate to damage a hardened building even with kiloton level weapons. That's why we have bunker busters, they need very specialized weapons to survive long enough to penetrate far enough to cause actual damage. A de-orbited KE weapon is not likely to easily penetrate without ripping itself apart too early. Missing by a kilometer would result in nearly no damage (of military significance) being caused.
It would be quite possible to disrupt a KE weapon during its descent, not enough to prevent it from landing, but to make it ineffective at penetrating anything. Impart any bit of yaw into it's motion and it will quickly tumble out of control.
Take a look at the meteor that hit over Russia. It's hard to keep something moving that fast intact once it starts tumbling/heating/etc.
So your options would be limited to getting so much mass deorbited that it doesn't matter if you 'miss'. Such a mass would NOT be quick in even getting to the planet, and would have to come from a passing asteroid. Moving something like that would take months or years with our technology, and likely days to hours with Star Wars tech. That's why I mentioned the time factor.
It does, it's just that it is hard to interpret the Bill of Rights as a limitation on rights without mental gymnastics.
For example, if you take the basic statement for the First and Second Amendments, it seems pretty clear. Don't abridge speech, don't infringe on the right to bear arms.
Now, if someone wanted to interpret those statements in a manner to imply a limitation on rights, they will focus on the peculiarities in the wording. For the Second, people like to focus on the terminology of regulated and militia. For the First, they will focus on the term 'Press'.
As you can see, it's the same process for both Rights. People who want to curtail those rights will use the wording to try and carve out a protected subclass of the citizenry. Conveniently, this subclass often doesn't have the same concerns/interests as the newly excluded, so you can expect less resistance from them since 'their Rights' have been preserved.
In essence: Beware anyone who tries to ascribe a Right to a subset of the population.
If folks did get the government to force carriers to only provide unlocked phones, say bye bye to paying for a pricey phone over time. Everyone will be stuck either paying full price or leasing the phone and never owning it
Hogwash.
Let's say I want to buy an expensive product, maybe even worth several hundred times that of a phone, there is this amazing thing you can do.
There are places right now, offering objects for sale at prices in excess of $30,000. I could walk into one of these stores right now, talk to a salesman, and sign an agreement to pay them for it in little bits over the course of 3-5 years. They do this so often that they even have standardized forms and terms for this. Even more amazing is that I could drive away with that object within minutes of signing the paperwork.
But get this, here is the real stunner:
I could take this object, get it serviced anywhere, by any repair shop, and the store I bought it from wouldn't have a say. I could even take this object and sell it to someone else! Of course, I am still required to pay the amount I agreed to pay when I first bought it.
It's amazing that such a process exists, and I'm pretty sure that such a thing could apply to 'expensive phones'. So don't worry, I think there will be ways to pay for 'a pricey phone over time'.
No. I bought a phone for $X. I signed a contract to pay a company $Y for 2 years. I also agreed that I would pay an additional $Z should I not make the $Y payments.
I could take the phone, set it on fire, crush it to dust, and flush it down the toilet. I'm still on the hook to pay $Y for 2 years regardless of the state/location/performance/existence of my phone.
The cost of the subsidy doesn't matter to me because that is covered by the early termination fee of the contract. Unlocking the phone and going to another carrier does not in any way eliminate my contractual obligation to continue to pay the original carrier $Y for 2 years.
Locking phones can only be considered anticompetitive bullshit because the carrier has accounted for the loss in the contract.
Futhermore, if the carrier has not accounted for the potential loss of money due to their business model, then that company NEEDS to fail. If a company sells mulch for $5/m^3, and it costs them $6/m^3, should there be a law which prevents someone from purchasing that mulch and reselling it to other people to protect the original company from their own failed business practices?
This is a bad law which distorts markets and stifles competition. It needs to go.
Banning is insufficient. People may actually try to live their lives in a non-optimal manner. We can't stop until everyone behaves in the manner which has been deemed to provide the maximum productive output with minimal societal cost.
We live in a world where we have beaten most diseases and already live longer than we should
Oh yeah... beaten most disease? Give me a fucking break. We certainly nailed some big viruses, but those aren't diseases.
Let me know when you figure out how to cure something as simple as Migraine headaches. How about depression, we have 'treatments' but certainly no cures, and those treatments are a crapshoot. Maybe this drug works... oh no, well lets try this one... Yeah it works, but your heartrate doubled...
The simple fact of the matter is that the current state of 'medicine' is that your options for actually beating a disease are: 1. Take a vaccine for the cause before you actually get the disease (if a vaccine exists) 2. Take antibiotics if it is bacterial in nature. Hope that the infection hasn't caused irreversable damage 3. Take a knife and cut it out. 4. Sew it back up.
Everything else is basically palliative care. We are just now beginning to se the barest glimpse of genetic treatments, and you are considering most diseases beaten and that people live too long?
I know misanthropy is hip on slashdot, but that doesn't make you right.
We've had primal tribal & religious bickering our entire existence. What makes you think we can get beyond that?
What makes you think that is important? You might as well complain that some bacterial colony 400 million years ago took over the edge of a thermal vent from some other bacterial colony.
I would think that a uniform thinking self-replicating group of organisms would be an odd thing to long to become.
It's only a matter of time before what is being sold is access to a server, and not a game.
I sell you a game. As part of that game, you log into my servers and establish an account/character/etc. The game then logs into this account every time you play. You get tired, and later sell the game (box, DVD, packaging).
When the next person installs the game they will see a login screen, and an option to 'buy' an account if they don't have a login. I'm not sure that EU law requires server access to be transferrable, I'm not even sure if I would want to to be transferrable even though I find the idea of permanently binding games to individuals to be an evil business practice.
What if on the box it listed a 1 year membership to XYZ gaming-club, and that gaming-club membership was required for the software to operate. I don't LIKE it, but I don't see how that's against the law.
How do you recover those Joules with regenerative braking and no batteries?
(don't worry, I recognize that the scale of those batteries is much different)
But here is what you are missing:
With tracks, you must maintain, inspect, and repair every inch of those tracks/rails/wires. If it snows, it is your job to ensure those tracks/rails/wires are working and cleared. You also have to maintain the cars themselves.
With charging stations, you only have to maintain, inspect, and repair verify specific locations. The roads maintenance is something that is already being paid for. The cars aren't really an added expense because you already have to inspect/service/repair them with a traditional electric system, their costs should be similar.
I respectfully disagree. Games do depreciate in value, much in the same way that old computers depreciate in value.
An old computer can pretty much do exactly what it could do when it was new, but if you tried to sell a 5 year old computer today, even if it were worth $2000 new, you might be able to get $50 for it. That's a huge amount of depreciation. Much more than a car.
A video game is very similar, it can do exactly what it used to be able to do 5 years ago, but it has lost a lot of value. The graphics are older and likely behind modern games. It may not work on modern systems without tweaks and patches, which leads to an important loss: The community. Without an active community, games lose a LOT of value. Don't expect fan patches to fix bugs due to new OS incompatability. Don't expect to even be able to download some patches. And perhaps more importantly, don't expect to be able to play the game in a multiplayer environment.
One of the saddest things about old games, is remembering what the community USED to be like with regard to multiplayer.
So in summary, old games DO lose a lot of value, perhaps even more value than old cars. Leave a game on a shelf for 5 years untouched, and while the data on it might be preserved, everything else is going to leave it behind. Leave a car in a garage for 5 years, and it is still going to be the same car. (leave it in a garage for 30 years and it might even gain in value). (obvious aging of rubber, and fluids aside)
OH, get 'it' for 15-30% off? Could you tell me what 'it' is?
Is 'it' the game I want to buy? Or is 'it' some game which may not even interest me, that has been discounted hoping that I'll buy 'it' because 'it' is such a great deal that I'd be a fool to pass on 'it'.
I'm sure glad that games aren't overpriced because in 2 months there will be a selection of games chosen by people other than me which will be temporarily reduced in price.
I used to, then my office got moved across the river. Here is what my costs were (approximate since I can't quite remember the costs, but it was basically $12/day):
15 minutes to Train station Parking Fee: $4.50 30 minutes in: $4.00 10 minute walk to work: Free 30 minutes back: $4.00 Total Cost: $12.50 + 55 minutes
Driving: 30 minutes to work $180/month (approx $9/workday) parking fee 30-45 minutes home
Slightly more expensive to drive, but then I would have a car with me and it was faster.
Now that my office is across the Potomac the rail time is almost 2 hours due to transfers between lines and waiting for the trains, and then walking a much longer distance from the station to my office.
Public transit in DC is great if you pick a location to live based on your commute to work, and hope to god that that location never works because your best bet is to move your whole god damned household to keep using it.
They aren't talking about being burned in the sense of watching a bad movie, they are talking about getting burned in the sense of:
1. Playing a Game for Windows Live (GFWL) game on Steam and having the GFWL fail to connect, disconnect midgame, and choke up so often as to make a fun game unfun (Dark Souls...) 2. Renting a HD movie from Amazon on a Roku box, and deciding to finish watching the movie on a bigscreen powered by a HTPC only to discover then that Amazon won't show HD content on a PC. 3. Having the multi-player servers shut down and not being given an option to run your own. 4. Forced configurations and patches for non-multiplayer games. (Opps, looks like that patch changed something you liked, or broke the game for your machine) 5. Paying again to access services you already pay for (Netflix on Xbox) 6. Online requirements for single player games 7. permanent locking of games to accounts 8....
Yeah, there are a lot ways to get burned by companies even without considering if the content is actually good.
Those I've listed above are just those that have directly impacted me, I'm quite sure the list goes on.
Oh wait, I forgot about whatever the hell that nasty DRM break your CDROM malware is. Starforce stardock? I can't even remember the name, I just remember having to spend a couple hours trying to get the damned crap off a PC a couple years back.
I lease a car, and I get a pretty good deal on it, but I do try to avoid running up the mileage. So for long trips, I'll look for a train or bus if I can, and if I can't, I just rent a car.
I still regularly use Zipcar as well whenever I need a pickup truck.
An electric car is not going to cover 100% of cases, because even my gasoline car can't cover 100% of cases. It's a slight adjustment, but it's not necessarily one that is worse, just different.
Ignoring unjust laws and lawsuits based upon them is good.
NO NO NO NO. No one in the US should ever follow this advice because it will very likely destroy you and whatever cause you seek to promote.
You don't do civil disobedience by ignoring lawsuits because the judge is going to consider a lack of rebuttal on your part as an acceptance of the claims made by the plaintiff. In essence, by ignoring the lawsuit (assuming it was properly served) you are saying "Yeah, just accept whatever that guy says, and make it fact from the perspective of the law"
The concept of civil disobedience against an unjust law is that when you ignore the law, you sure as hell DO SHOW UP IN COURT and explain exactly why you did not follow that law. Appearing before a judge is the EXACT THING YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO because that is your first best chance to get someone to literally judge your case. The judge could very well say "Yes, that law is unjust and you are free to go." Or he might not, but the point is you must accept the penalty for your actions and work your way though the judicial system.
Ignoring a lawsuit is the worst possible legal advice I have ever seen on the internet. Perhaps the only thing you could have given which was worse advice is to ignore the lawsuit, and then threaten the judge and the judge's family... Very bad advice.
I'll say it again, never never never never ignore a lawsuit. If someone files a lawsuit against you, go get a lawyer, and be prepared to present your case to a judge.
It's an interesting 'flaw' in electric cars to be sure. Typically in an ICE the heater is just a fan which diverts engine heat into the cabin. That's why the general advice for an overheating engine is to turn ON the heater since that will help divert heat away from the engine.
I'm guessing that in an electric vehicle, since heat is pure waste, every effort to minimize heat has been taken and the motor doesn't get hot enough to function as a heating element so you can't perform the same trick as an ICE.
Obviously I have 'flaw' in quotes because the flaw is due to the fact that the motor being more efficient is the 'flaw' that prevents this trick.
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Ironically, that's a feature that was intentionally removed/broken in the latest android youtube App. Previously, you could start up a youtube video, turn off your screen and the video would continue to play. Now the app will intentionally pause the video if the screen is turned off. This is a problem because there are a lot of videos where I only want the audio, or I'm outputting the video via HDMI to a projector and I want my phone's screen to turn off to save battery/power/heatbuildup.
Google has a very annoying habit to apply changes with no ability to disable/enable them. The Youtube app is just one of my complaints.
The problem is that this is Google. The company that releases Android, has all the incentive in the world to integrate their products, yet does things like this:
1. Google Talk does not have an option to sync between devices. I don't like 'ghost' half conversations if I was chatting with someone on my phone and I sit down at my computer. Even worse, when sitting at your computer you will discover that the google talk client, will not sync with the google chat plugin for gmail... on the SAME PC! I'll be checking my email, have a message popup and not realize that it popped up in my gmail instead of the client, so closing gmail kills the conversation...
2. Google voice SMS. How can you have an android phone, and not have better integration of SMS messaging. Give me the option to direct 'SMS style messages' to the client of my choosing. 90% of apps that handle SMS notifications break when faced with google voice. Bad design.
3. Google Earth does not have the ability to turn off satellite imagery and simply overlay the Google maps maps... They actually have so many layers but leave out one of the most important layers. I want to see the road where the road is, not a bunch of trees and gravel pits which are no longer there in real life.
I could keep going, but there are so many integration issues that are dead simple but Google misses (or almost breaks), it's astounding. Google, if you read this, you are losing users for no reason (by losing I mean forcing them to use non Google products to get simple tasks done because the google products don't play well together)
Astoundingly simple changes that don't even require backend fixes could resolve a whoel bunch of interoperability issues.
I'm half tempted to do them myself and shop them to Google.
I suspect that any network admins worth their pay would be able to tell 1) if the exploit / entry method the guy was talking about was true, and 2) what he did when he got in there. If not, they have bigger problems.
The problem is that it doesn't stop at 2)
2. Verify what he did when he got there. If he tells you what he did, then yes, you should be able to check that.
Now comes the fun part:
3. Prove that he didn't do anything else. This isn't easy, in fact, you are trying to prove a negative. You assume that their systems are perfectly designed to log/alert/block/etc anything additional, and that this is possible for a network admin 'worth their pay'. Let me tell you, no network admin worth their pay should assume that this is possible.
Why would you ever assume that you would be good enough to know that addition intrusion did not occur if you know for a fact that he was already capable of defeating your public-facing security?
This is a problem because you cannot know for certain that he did only what he claimed he did, and thus you now have to incur a cost to verify to a sufficient level of confidence that further intrusion did not occur. That is not free, and should never be assumed on the word of someone who already violated your trust.
That's the thing, isn't it? They're locking it to ensure that you pay the amount you agreed to. I "own" a home, but the deed is "locked" until I pay off the mortgage. I "own" a car, but the title is "locked" until I pay off the car loan. There are finance companies that can actually remotely disable a vehicle if the loan payments aren't being made (there were /. stories on this).
The problem is that this law is irrespective of contract status.
If you pay off your mortgage, your mortgage company has no say on what you do to your home. If you pay off your phone contract, your phone is STILL locked to that original phone company. They are claiming a perpetual ownership stake in the phone.
The only standard definition I've seen for netbook is:
Clamshell and no optical drive.
Damn those burglarists.
I thought pitchforks were made to stab and fling hay. Shovels were made to shovel manure.
Pitchforks have long sharp tines, and if someone armed himself with a pitchfork and said, GTFO. No one sane without a firearm would risk doing anything but giving that guy at least 10' of clearance. A pitchfork will easily send 4x 10" steel spikes right through you without hesitation. I've seen it happen. (Hey, I used to live in Lancaster, PA of course I saw a pitchfork stabbing).
There is no blocking a pitchfork. They can be pretty fearsome weapons and the only reason people don't use them more often is they are pretty obvious.
I realize this reply is a bit late, but here goes.
Anything firing LOS from a fixed position (echo base) is going to have a range limited by the curvature of the planet. You could land anything you wanted beyond LOS and approach by land (ie, that's what it looks like they did.)
With regard to time, I'm not talking about the time it takes to get something from 200km to 0, I'm talking about the time it takes to get something from wherever the hell they are sourcing the mass from. While objects small enough to be transported and stored for this sort of use will indeed have a large amount of energy upon impact, even by our technology here on Earth you have to be nearly dead on accurate to damage a hardened building even with kiloton level weapons. That's why we have bunker busters, they need very specialized weapons to survive long enough to penetrate far enough to cause actual damage. A de-orbited KE weapon is not likely to easily penetrate without ripping itself apart too early. Missing by a kilometer would result in nearly no damage (of military significance) being caused.
It would be quite possible to disrupt a KE weapon during its descent, not enough to prevent it from landing, but to make it ineffective at penetrating anything. Impart any bit of yaw into it's motion and it will quickly tumble out of control.
Take a look at the meteor that hit over Russia. It's hard to keep something moving that fast intact once it starts tumbling/heating/etc.
So your options would be limited to getting so much mass deorbited that it doesn't matter if you 'miss'. Such a mass would NOT be quick in even getting to the planet, and would have to come from a passing asteroid. Moving something like that would take months or years with our technology, and likely days to hours with Star Wars tech. That's why I mentioned the time factor.
It does, it's just that it is hard to interpret the Bill of Rights as a limitation on rights without mental gymnastics.
For example, if you take the basic statement for the First and Second Amendments, it seems pretty clear. Don't abridge speech, don't infringe on the right to bear arms.
Now, if someone wanted to interpret those statements in a manner to imply a limitation on rights, they will focus on the peculiarities in the wording. For the Second, people like to focus on the terminology of regulated and militia. For the First, they will focus on the term 'Press'.
As you can see, it's the same process for both Rights. People who want to curtail those rights will use the wording to try and carve out a protected subclass of the citizenry. Conveniently, this subclass often doesn't have the same concerns/interests as the newly excluded, so you can expect less resistance from them since 'their Rights' have been preserved.
In essence: Beware anyone who tries to ascribe a Right to a subset of the population.
It seems an odd statement.
I've always wondered what a device that FAILED to accept interference would do?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile ??
If folks did get the government to force carriers to only provide unlocked phones, say bye bye to paying for a pricey phone over time. Everyone will be stuck either paying full price or leasing the phone and never owning it
Hogwash.
Let's say I want to buy an expensive product, maybe even worth several hundred times that of a phone, there is this amazing thing you can do.
There are places right now, offering objects for sale at prices in excess of $30,000. I could walk into one of these stores right now, talk to a salesman, and sign an agreement to pay them for it in little bits over the course of 3-5 years. They do this so often that they even have standardized forms and terms for this. Even more amazing is that I could drive away with that object within minutes of signing the paperwork.
But get this, here is the real stunner:
I could take this object, get it serviced anywhere, by any repair shop, and the store I bought it from wouldn't have a say. I could even take this object and sell it to someone else! Of course, I am still required to pay the amount I agreed to pay when I first bought it.
It's amazing that such a process exists, and I'm pretty sure that such a thing could apply to 'expensive phones'. So don't worry, I think there will be ways to pay for 'a pricey phone over time'.
No.
I bought a phone for $X.
I signed a contract to pay a company $Y for 2 years. I also agreed that I would pay an additional $Z should I not make the $Y payments.
I could take the phone, set it on fire, crush it to dust, and flush it down the toilet. I'm still on the hook to pay $Y for 2 years regardless of the state/location/performance/existence of my phone.
The cost of the subsidy doesn't matter to me because that is covered by the early termination fee of the contract. Unlocking the phone and going to another carrier does not in any way eliminate my contractual obligation to continue to pay the original carrier $Y for 2 years.
Locking phones can only be considered anticompetitive bullshit because the carrier has accounted for the loss in the contract.
Futhermore, if the carrier has not accounted for the potential loss of money due to their business model, then that company NEEDS to fail. If a company sells mulch for $5/m^3, and it costs them $6/m^3, should there be a law which prevents someone from purchasing that mulch and reselling it to other people to protect the original company from their own failed business practices?
This is a bad law which distorts markets and stifles competition. It needs to go.
Banning is insufficient. People may actually try to live their lives in a non-optimal manner. We can't stop until everyone behaves in the manner which has been deemed to provide the maximum productive output with minimal societal cost.
We live in a world where we have beaten most diseases and already live longer than we should
Oh yeah... beaten most disease? Give me a fucking break. We certainly nailed some big viruses, but those aren't diseases.
Let me know when you figure out how to cure something as simple as Migraine headaches. How about depression, we have 'treatments' but certainly no cures, and those treatments are a crapshoot. Maybe this drug works... oh no, well lets try this one... Yeah it works, but your heartrate doubled...
The simple fact of the matter is that the current state of 'medicine' is that your options for actually beating a disease are:
1. Take a vaccine for the cause before you actually get the disease (if a vaccine exists)
2. Take antibiotics if it is bacterial in nature. Hope that the infection hasn't caused irreversable damage
3. Take a knife and cut it out.
4. Sew it back up.
Everything else is basically palliative care. We are just now beginning to se the barest glimpse of genetic treatments, and you are considering most diseases beaten and that people live too long?
I know misanthropy is hip on slashdot, but that doesn't make you right.
We've had primal tribal & religious bickering our entire existence. What makes you think we can get beyond that?
What makes you think that is important? You might as well complain that some bacterial colony 400 million years ago took over the edge of a thermal vent from some other bacterial colony.
I would think that a uniform thinking self-replicating group of organisms would be an odd thing to long to become.
Would it be immediately obvious to you which material to pick that can be deposited by a 3D printer and be structurally sound yet dissolved away?
Then why isn't the patent for that material, instead of the concept of soluble material?
It's only a matter of time before what is being sold is access to a server, and not a game.
I sell you a game. As part of that game, you log into my servers and establish an account/character/etc. The game then logs into this account every time you play. You get tired, and later sell the game (box, DVD, packaging).
When the next person installs the game they will see a login screen, and an option to 'buy' an account if they don't have a login. I'm not sure that EU law requires server access to be transferrable, I'm not even sure if I would want to to be transferrable even though I find the idea of permanently binding games to individuals to be an evil business practice.
What if on the box it listed a 1 year membership to XYZ gaming-club, and that gaming-club membership was required for the software to operate. I don't LIKE it, but I don't see how that's against the law.
How do you recover those Joules with regenerative braking and no batteries?
(don't worry, I recognize that the scale of those batteries is much different)
But here is what you are missing:
With tracks, you must maintain, inspect, and repair every inch of those tracks/rails/wires. If it snows, it is your job to ensure those tracks/rails/wires are working and cleared. You also have to maintain the cars themselves.
With charging stations, you only have to maintain, inspect, and repair verify specific locations. The roads maintenance is something that is already being paid for. The cars aren't really an added expense because you already have to inspect/service/repair them with a traditional electric system, their costs should be similar.
I respectfully disagree. Games do depreciate in value, much in the same way that old computers depreciate in value.
An old computer can pretty much do exactly what it could do when it was new, but if you tried to sell a 5 year old computer today, even if it were worth $2000 new, you might be able to get $50 for it. That's a huge amount of depreciation. Much more than a car.
A video game is very similar, it can do exactly what it used to be able to do 5 years ago, but it has lost a lot of value. The graphics are older and likely behind modern games. It may not work on modern systems without tweaks and patches, which leads to an important loss: The community. Without an active community, games lose a LOT of value. Don't expect fan patches to fix bugs due to new OS incompatability. Don't expect to even be able to download some patches. And perhaps more importantly, don't expect to be able to play the game in a multiplayer environment.
One of the saddest things about old games, is remembering what the community USED to be like with regard to multiplayer.
So in summary, old games DO lose a lot of value, perhaps even more value than old cars. Leave a game on a shelf for 5 years untouched, and while the data on it might be preserved, everything else is going to leave it behind. Leave a car in a garage for 5 years, and it is still going to be the same car. (leave it in a garage for 30 years and it might even gain in value). (obvious aging of rubber, and fluids aside)
OH, get 'it' for 15-30% off? Could you tell me what 'it' is?
Is 'it' the game I want to buy? Or is 'it' some game which may not even interest me, that has been discounted hoping that I'll buy 'it' because 'it' is such a great deal that I'd be a fool to pass on 'it'.
I'm sure glad that games aren't overpriced because in 2 months there will be a selection of games chosen by people other than me which will be temporarily reduced in price.
I used to, then my office got moved across the river. Here is what my costs were (approximate since I can't quite remember the costs, but it was basically $12/day):
15 minutes to Train station
Parking Fee: $4.50
30 minutes in: $4.00
10 minute walk to work: Free
30 minutes back: $4.00
Total Cost: $12.50 + 55 minutes
Driving:
30 minutes to work
$180/month (approx $9/workday) parking fee
30-45 minutes home
Slightly more expensive to drive, but then I would have a car with me and it was faster.
Now that my office is across the Potomac the rail time is almost 2 hours due to transfers between lines and waiting for the trains, and then walking a much longer distance from the station to my office.
Public transit in DC is great if you pick a location to live based on your commute to work, and hope to god that that location never works because your best bet is to move your whole god damned household to keep using it.
They aren't talking about being burned in the sense of watching a bad movie, they are talking about getting burned in the sense of:
1. Playing a Game for Windows Live (GFWL) game on Steam and having the GFWL fail to connect, disconnect midgame, and choke up so often as to make a fun game unfun (Dark Souls...)
2. Renting a HD movie from Amazon on a Roku box, and deciding to finish watching the movie on a bigscreen powered by a HTPC only to discover then that Amazon won't show HD content on a PC.
3. Having the multi-player servers shut down and not being given an option to run your own.
4. Forced configurations and patches for non-multiplayer games. (Opps, looks like that patch changed something you liked, or broke the game for your machine)
5. Paying again to access services you already pay for (Netflix on Xbox)
6. Online requirements for single player games
7. permanent locking of games to accounts
8....
Yeah, there are a lot ways to get burned by companies even without considering if the content is actually good.
Those I've listed above are just those that have directly impacted me, I'm quite sure the list goes on.
Oh wait, I forgot about whatever the hell that nasty DRM break your CDROM malware is. Starforce stardock? I can't even remember the name, I just remember having to spend a couple hours trying to get the damned crap off a PC a couple years back.
That's how I do it.
I lease a car, and I get a pretty good deal on it, but I do try to avoid running up the mileage. So for long trips, I'll look for a train or bus if I can, and if I can't, I just rent a car.
I still regularly use Zipcar as well whenever I need a pickup truck.
An electric car is not going to cover 100% of cases, because even my gasoline car can't cover 100% of cases. It's a slight adjustment, but it's not necessarily one that is worse, just different.
Ignoring unjust laws and lawsuits based upon them is good.
NO NO NO NO. No one in the US should ever follow this advice because it will very likely destroy you and whatever cause you seek to promote.
You don't do civil disobedience by ignoring lawsuits because the judge is going to consider a lack of rebuttal on your part as an acceptance of the claims made by the plaintiff. In essence, by ignoring the lawsuit (assuming it was properly served) you are saying "Yeah, just accept whatever that guy says, and make it fact from the perspective of the law"
The concept of civil disobedience against an unjust law is that when you ignore the law, you sure as hell DO SHOW UP IN COURT and explain exactly why you did not follow that law. Appearing before a judge is the EXACT THING YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO because that is your first best chance to get someone to literally judge your case. The judge could very well say "Yes, that law is unjust and you are free to go." Or he might not, but the point is you must accept the penalty for your actions and work your way though the judicial system.
Ignoring a lawsuit is the worst possible legal advice I have ever seen on the internet. Perhaps the only thing you could have given which was worse advice is to ignore the lawsuit, and then threaten the judge and the judge's family... Very bad advice.
I'll say it again, never never never never ignore a lawsuit. If someone files a lawsuit against you, go get a lawyer, and be prepared to present your case to a judge.
It's an interesting 'flaw' in electric cars to be sure. Typically in an ICE the heater is just a fan which diverts engine heat into the cabin. That's why the general advice for an overheating engine is to turn ON the heater since that will help divert heat away from the engine.
I'm guessing that in an electric vehicle, since heat is pure waste, every effort to minimize heat has been taken and the motor doesn't get hot enough to function as a heating element so you can't perform the same trick as an ICE.
Obviously I have 'flaw' in quotes because the flaw is due to the fact that the motor being more efficient is the 'flaw' that prevents this trick.