I hope that this is the beginning of the death knell for the credit bureaus. They serve no purpose whatsoever except to discriminate and punish consumers. It's about time they get a taste of their own bad medicine.
They did not do this out of altruism. They expect to make a handsome profit over selling access to it. I find it hard to get excited about corporate giants that innovate. I get more excited when the little guy achieves something big.
That's what T-Mobile will most likely do in a merger situation. The royalty fees paid to Qualcomm for the use of CDMA are just a revenue sucker. T-Mobile did the same with MetroPCS. They retired the CDMA network and repurposed the spectrum to GSM/LTE.
If history is an indicator, less competition means higher prices and lower quality of service. There is a reason that there are regulations that are supposed to be put into place to prevent monopolies for exactly that reason. But what do I know? I am just a lowly human being....
That's corporate speak for an assumption and an insult to consumers. I work in technology for a living and do not appreciate being labeled as being "too dumb to repair my own shit." This is what "Apple's top environmental officer" is accusing me of. I would have more respect for Apple if the head shed just came out and said, "We want to control repairs so that we have another stream of revenue." Don't try to sell me on how having an Apple authorized repair center will magically make things easier and worry free because I shouldn't be bothered with wanting to repair my own device. I replaced my girlfriend's cracked screen in an hour simply by watching a Youtube video. 2 years later, it's still working.
The internet has become too corporatized, monetized, and regulated! The internet is nothing more than a tool for corporations to reach their customer bases. It's lost the glamour of innovation and fun. The internet used to be far more open and the barriers to entry far less. Now that big telecom got its ugly mitts on it, you have to pay a minimum of 50.00 a month for a connection. Certainly it is at a higher speed and with today's technologies you need more speed but prices are still high enough to block out access for the poor. The poor need to visit a library with big brother Librarian and Government watching their every move. It is time to fork the internet into a community maintained network to take it out of the hands of regulation and corporate interests.
The cable television companies have gotten very greedy because of their veritable monopolies and duopolies. In my area, you have a choice of Verizon Fios or Comcast Xfinity; if you can even call it a choice because Verizon Fios internet speeds are much faster given that it is fibre to the home. I hope the upstarts offering TV via streaming really disrupt an industry that is ripe for disruption.
These two ex-Googlers ought to get out of their ivory tower and see what life is like in a poor, inner-city environment where it is either the bodega or a food desert. I am from Philadelphia and neighborhoods thrive on bodegas where food is cheap and available. We don't have Whole Foods, Giant, Super Fresh, and shit that caters to millennials. We're poor folk living on scraps. I live in this neighborhood because it is all I can afford. I don't have a credit or debit card because no bank will touch me because life happened, I got sick, and became disabled. I don't have the luxury of even living in a safe neighborhood. Leave the bodega alone, assholes!
If you treat your every day rank and file service employees poorly and pay them less than a livable wage, then you can expect them to get angry and rise up. I am pro-union. As long as the upper echelon of companies are going to be greedy and expect slavery, then there has to be some checks and balances. And don't bother replying with some sarcastic response to pro-Union. Just go your own fucking way.
I would never spend that amount of money on a pair of headphones anyway. That's just ridiculous that they even get a 1,000% mark-up. I hope Apple loses this one!
This is great! I love it when a patent troll get's its collective ass handed to it! However, this story is indicative of a much deeper problem that exists in the US Patent system. It's become a method for lawyers to create patents over trivial things and sue for profit. Research into "prior art" by the US Patent Office is minimal at best, which the lawyers know and exploit. Another problem is the entire idea of software patents which have become ridiculous and have actually stifled innovation for fear of infringement. The patent system was originally introduced to protect mechanical and electro-mechanical innovations. These, IMHO, are real innovations which deserve protection by the system to allow the engineers and inventors to recoup design costs and profit. If you want to get even more technical about patent laws, they were designed to protect the small entrepreneur from large corporations stealing and mass-producing their invention. The US PTO had no business granting a patent to Amazon for a single click to buy scheme. There was NOTHING innovative about that.
As we become more and more dependent on technology, we introduce what is tantamount to a single point of failure: electronics. If a terror cell were to detonate several well-placed electromagnetic pulse weapons, we literally turn the clock back over a hundred years. An EMP is significantly easier and cheaper to build, disguise, and ship. Maybe it would not even take that... maybe all it will take is a cybercriminal to gain access to critical computing systems while government and industry is busy blaming each other, posturing, and threatening. Imagine if a cyberterrorist gained access to critical control systems at several nuclear power generation plants, disabling the safety systems, and stopping the water cooling system. The resulting explosion would make Chernobyl look like a camp fire by comparison. The delivery of nuclear weapon is rapidly becoming too expensive and complicated when there are cheaper options that could be just as effective. It would even be safer for the cyberterrorist because his tracks would be covered by proxy as a result of the ensuing chaos.
Slashdot Mirror
The only smartphone that is secure enough to hold cryptocurrency is the the one that is not connected to anything at all.
The Bell Canada VP has friends in the Canadian edition of MPAA and RIAA.
It was meant to be a joke. Alas, good sarcasm is missed by millennials.
This time I will make an exception. Go get 'em, Waymo!
I block China! So there! :-D
This from the man who's organization still runs unpatched Exchange Servers from 2003.
That's just Hubris and I am going to store this little nugget for when Cloudflare does get DDoS'd. Then I will laugh.
Much of this happens due to shoddy programming practices and marketing's rush to get untested stuff into production.
Companies are trying to save a buck so they sent their programming work to India. In many cases, the work performed was shoddy.
I hope that this is the beginning of the death knell for the credit bureaus. They serve no purpose whatsoever except to discriminate and punish consumers. It's about time they get a taste of their own bad medicine.
They did not do this out of altruism. They expect to make a handsome profit over selling access to it. I find it hard to get excited about corporate giants that innovate. I get more excited when the little guy achieves something big.
I would love to see IBM open source Lotus Notes and Domino but that will never happen!
That's what T-Mobile will most likely do in a merger situation. The royalty fees paid to Qualcomm for the use of CDMA are just a revenue sucker. T-Mobile did the same with MetroPCS. They retired the CDMA network and repurposed the spectrum to GSM/LTE.
If history is an indicator, less competition means higher prices and lower quality of service. There is a reason that there are regulations that are supposed to be put into place to prevent monopolies for exactly that reason. But what do I know? I am just a lowly human being....
That's corporate speak for an assumption and an insult to consumers. I work in technology for a living and do not appreciate being labeled as being "too dumb to repair my own shit." This is what "Apple's top environmental officer" is accusing me of. I would have more respect for Apple if the head shed just came out and said, "We want to control repairs so that we have another stream of revenue." Don't try to sell me on how having an Apple authorized repair center will magically make things easier and worry free because I shouldn't be bothered with wanting to repair my own device. I replaced my girlfriend's cracked screen in an hour simply by watching a Youtube video. 2 years later, it's still working.
I'll be long dead by that time anyhow. It will be someone else's problem.
The internet has become too corporatized, monetized, and regulated! The internet is nothing more than a tool for corporations to reach their customer bases. It's lost the glamour of innovation and fun. The internet used to be far more open and the barriers to entry far less. Now that big telecom got its ugly mitts on it, you have to pay a minimum of 50.00 a month for a connection. Certainly it is at a higher speed and with today's technologies you need more speed but prices are still high enough to block out access for the poor. The poor need to visit a library with big brother Librarian and Government watching their every move. It is time to fork the internet into a community maintained network to take it out of the hands of regulation and corporate interests.
The cable television companies have gotten very greedy because of their veritable monopolies and duopolies. In my area, you have a choice of Verizon Fios or Comcast Xfinity; if you can even call it a choice because Verizon Fios internet speeds are much faster given that it is fibre to the home. I hope the upstarts offering TV via streaming really disrupt an industry that is ripe for disruption.
I will laugh when some of the neighborhood boys come in costume and make quick work of damaging their shit.
Mod this OP up! They get it!
These two ex-Googlers ought to get out of their ivory tower and see what life is like in a poor, inner-city environment where it is either the bodega or a food desert. I am from Philadelphia and neighborhoods thrive on bodegas where food is cheap and available. We don't have Whole Foods, Giant, Super Fresh, and shit that caters to millennials. We're poor folk living on scraps. I live in this neighborhood because it is all I can afford. I don't have a credit or debit card because no bank will touch me because life happened, I got sick, and became disabled. I don't have the luxury of even living in a safe neighborhood. Leave the bodega alone, assholes!
If you treat your every day rank and file service employees poorly and pay them less than a livable wage, then you can expect them to get angry and rise up. I am pro-union. As long as the upper echelon of companies are going to be greedy and expect slavery, then there has to be some checks and balances. And don't bother replying with some sarcastic response to pro-Union. Just go your own fucking way.
I would never spend that amount of money on a pair of headphones anyway. That's just ridiculous that they even get a 1,000% mark-up. I hope Apple loses this one!
This is great! I love it when a patent troll get's its collective ass handed to it! However, this story is indicative of a much deeper problem that exists in the US Patent system. It's become a method for lawyers to create patents over trivial things and sue for profit. Research into "prior art" by the US Patent Office is minimal at best, which the lawyers know and exploit. Another problem is the entire idea of software patents which have become ridiculous and have actually stifled innovation for fear of infringement. The patent system was originally introduced to protect mechanical and electro-mechanical innovations. These, IMHO, are real innovations which deserve protection by the system to allow the engineers and inventors to recoup design costs and profit. If you want to get even more technical about patent laws, they were designed to protect the small entrepreneur from large corporations stealing and mass-producing their invention. The US PTO had no business granting a patent to Amazon for a single click to buy scheme. There was NOTHING innovative about that.
As we become more and more dependent on technology, we introduce what is tantamount to a single point of failure: electronics. If a terror cell were to detonate several well-placed electromagnetic pulse weapons, we literally turn the clock back over a hundred years. An EMP is significantly easier and cheaper to build, disguise, and ship. Maybe it would not even take that ... maybe all it will take is a cybercriminal to gain access to critical computing systems while government and industry is busy blaming each other, posturing, and threatening. Imagine if a cyberterrorist gained access to critical control systems at several nuclear power generation plants, disabling the safety systems, and stopping the water cooling system. The resulting explosion would make Chernobyl look like a camp fire by comparison. The delivery of nuclear weapon is rapidly becoming too expensive and complicated when there are cheaper options that could be just as effective. It would even be safer for the cyberterrorist because his tracks would be covered by proxy as a result of the ensuing chaos.