While I have no love for Facebook -or Zuckerberg - and its invasive policies, I have to wonder if Iran has any jurisdiction over Facebook anyway?
Does Facebook run any servers in Iran? Do they have any offices in Iran? Do they actively seek to bypass attempts by the Iranian government to block its citizens from accessing Facebook? And, if so, do they have any evidence that Zuckerberg himself is behind these heinous "crimes"?
The very fact that this judge is calling on Zuckerberg himself (and using inciteful language by calling him a "Zionist") rather than taking the Facebook.com to task reveals the true motivations of this summons. It has nothing to do with "privacy violations"; if Facebook.com's success was due to an awesome collection of cute kitty photos, the judge probably would have accused Zuckerberg of leading believers astray from the faith by distracting them with false idols or something.
There are many (many, many) problems with Facebook, Israel, the United States, etc. that need solving. However, the judge has no interest in opening discussion about these issues. This is just another obvious attempt by the Iranian political machine to inflame anti-American and anti-Semitic hatred.
You would get a lopsided view of the world if you base your opinions solely on the comments on some Internet forum.
Just like many of us would not commit a crime just because we feel it is wrong (and not in fear of any legal consequences), so many people do not make childish or rude comments just because it is on the Internet. As old the expression goes, "if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything". Unfortunately, this imbalance can often make it seem as if the Internet is full of sad jerks whereas the truth is more likely that there is a vast unspoken majority lurking behind the scenes.
More to the point, Sony cannot depend on recouping their investment from software sales because software piracy is so prevalent in China. Thus, Sony needs a console that they can sell without losing money on the hardware. This very likely rules out the Playstation 4, but probably not the Playstation 3.
As important, offering support is often tantamount to admitting there may be a problem with the product. Look at GM, which has forbidden its employees from even using words like "defect" or "problem". Providing support can open a can of worms that may leave the company open to legal or financial obligations they would rather just avoid.
Answering support questions also can give customers a false impression as to the quality of the product; for example, based solely on bug-counts, Linux compares poorly to Apple OS X. That doesn't mean OS X has any less problems; Apple is just being less open about the issue to maintain their reputation as an "easy-to-use" product while Linux looks complicated, difficult to use and something only for geeks. Better to be silent and leave the customers wondering if it is really a problem with the product in question or if they are somehow to blame (e.g., "holding it wrong").
There are very few products where offering real support makes any sense. Certainly it is not in the fickle consumer-electronic market (customers are far more sensitive to price than anything else), or highly specialized niche or monopoly markets (where there is often only one provider and the end-user has to deal with whatever awful support they get because there are no alternatives). It is only in small markets where there is competition that offering good support makes sense for a company, and in these days where everyone is operates internationally, that sort of market is disappearingly small.
I disagree. While its effectiveness at stopping tracking was never much at doubt, it very much brought out into the open how sleazy the advertising companies are. Ad companies for years paid lip-service about how they, of course, understood people's concerns but -because of how extensive their networks were - there unfortunately was no easy way to address these issues without actually tracking the users. Remember how you could go to doubleclick.net and have them set a special cookie that said "don't track me? Does anyone believed that actually worked (I have a bridge to sell you)?
Then comes along DoNotTrack, a little beacon that any user could set that immediately indicated their desire not to have their web-history and demographics compiled into some vast database, and exactly the solution to the above problem. And what happens?
The advertising companies ignore it. They out-and-out say they will not honor the users' request and will continue to stalk our activities across the web.
DoNotTrack might not have worked as designed, but it's a Snowden-like revelation on the true attitudes and operations of advertising companies. Yes, before DoNotTrack we all suspected this sort of behavior, but thanks to this little bit of software, now we know. No amount of marketing-speak can cover up that - despite any assurances of good and honorable intentions - they had a chance to stop stalking a user's habits and outright refused to do so.
There is a difference between serving advertisements and tracking the customer.
You can still show advertisements without employing tactics to track a user's movement across the web to gather demographic information on their viewing habits and interests. Put up a website about computers and solicit advertisements from computer manufacturers (Dell, Apple, etc.) and the like. Monitor your server logs to see which stories are read most and gauge what topics are found most interesting from there. If your website has a social aspect, keep tabs on the discussed issues and if there are particular hot-topics, use that to fine-tune your ad-stream (e.g., don't advertise Microsoft Windows on Slashdot). All this information can be gleaned without following your users to other websites or compiling databases of information about the interests of each particular user.
That is what Do Not Track is about. It is an insistence that we, the viewers, don't want to be cataloged, our habits followed across the web and then sold to anyone with a large enough wallet. Many of us/also/ do not like advertising itself, but that is a separate issue (your argument would be more pertinent against ad-blocking). Websites can (and some do) survive well without relying on intrusive data-monitoring of individual users. Unfortunately, the alternative has become both too convenient and too lucrative for some businesses to resist. They have put money over morals again and I have little sympathy for them if ad-blockers and anti-tracking software makes their tactics less profitable.
If you ticket the manufacturer, you incentivize them into creating a better, safer, product.
Either that or the manufacturer does not fix the safety issue and instead just raises the price of the car to pass the legal costs on to the customer. They may also employ lobbyists to keep more talented manufacturers from bringing a working product to market. After all, fixing stuff is hard and expensive.
Now, given the past few decades, which do you think is more likely?
Which is why all the music I buy these days is so heavily encumbered with DRM. Despite the shrill protests of the public, the only way to get the content was to accept DRM on my music files.
Oh wait, no, I don't.
It is not a losing battle to fight against DRM. Between the easy accessibility of non-DRM - albeit copyright-infringing - music and a company (Apple) with a large enough market-share to say, "You know what, screw DRM!", nowadays I can download all my songs in unencumbered MP3s. And - despite all their fears to the contrary - the music industry hasn't gone bankrupt because of this. Given an equitable price, combined with the convenience and legitimacy of an above-board purchase, music sales continue to be profitable.
Firefox had an opportunity to be an Apple here; they could have helped redirect the market into a new direction. Instead they caved into prophetic bullshit about declining marketshare and now all its users suffer for their shortsightedness. Mozilla could have said to big media, "this is a shit idea" and rather than sacrifice that huge potential audience the media conglomerates would have found a more favorable alternative.
The comparison doesn't work if the majority of the "roads" are unpaved and single-lane to begin with. Yes, you could argue that certain services should get priority, but the better solution in this case is just to improve the infrastructure. This is difficult to do with real roads, because so much of the surrounding land is already owned, but this sort of restriction does not hold true for the Internet; there is room to expand but no motivation to do so because it might cut into profits.
Once everybody has gigabit to the home, then maybe they can start to discuss prioritization. Until then, it is just a way for the telecoms to duck out of their responsibilities.
Homogenization happens on the Internet as well. The difference is that - because cost of access is so low on the Internet - as your favorite website/webvideo drifts more and more towards the lowest-common-denominator - it is easy for some other website to pick up the slack (a perfect example of this is Slashdot and Soylentnews). You can't do that on TV because - between FCC licenses, CableTV provider costs, and requiring enough content to fill a whole day (7 days a week, 365 days a year) - it requires a much higher start-up investment. On the web, you just need to pay for the content itself and the bandwidth; it is significantly easier to get started.
This is why net neutrality is so important; without it, the cost of access goes up dramatically. If you want to reach any sort of audience you will need to pay extra to the internet providers to let you into their little club. It gives the internet providers great power, not only from all that extra income but in deciding who and want they will allow on the internet.
Even better, it opens the path for even more abuse. Alone, H1Bs only had to worry about only they themselves losing their jobs and getting shipped back home; now, they have to worry that poor performance might tear apart their family. Would the wife (or husband) try to make it alone, or would she leave her good-paying job to follow him back to the home-country? Even if she stays, they might be living in a home that requires both of their incomes, so his departure could force the wife to relocate. And what if they have children?
Rather than deal with all these problems, the H1Bs will just accept lower pay and longer hours rather lest he risk losing his job. Meanwhile, the fact that there are workers willing to accept these conditions depresses the job market for native IT workers, who either have to accept jobs under similar conditions or go without.
The problem with H1Bs isn't that we are hiring foreigners; rather, it is the false and hypocritical logic used by its supporters. Companies do not need to look overseas for talented workers; America has a surplus. However, those workers have been brought up expecting a fair wage. H1Bs are made vulnerable by their immigrant status and companies are taking advantage of them. Companies go for H1Bs because it is cheaper, not because there is any need for them.
Microsoft has been quite explicit this is the future. They want an update process more like Apple's.
Apple can afford to put it's customers on such a tight upgrade schedule because Apple has such a tight grip on what hardware is being used. Microsoft does not have this luxury; this is both Window's blessing and its curse. On the one hand, it allows Microsoft to dominate the desktop because users are not tied down to one hardware vendor. On the other hand, support becomes infinitely more difficult because Microsoft has to deal with all the potential conflicts caused by that huge variety of hardware. This type of support means that Microsoft has to do far more testing to make sure its OS upgrades don't inadvertently break something. This means upgrades need to come out slower, both so MS has time to do all that testing, and so its end-users can do likewise.
Microsoft is trying to have it both ways: it wants all the advantages of its immense installation base without providing the necessary support for the full range of hardware. The the end-users are rightfully crying foul at this practice. Perhaps if MS had mandated that certain controlled hardware platforms (e.g., the Surface2) would not receive support unless upgraded to W81.u1 it would be one thing, but unilaterally declaring that any version of its mainstream OS that is older than a month not receive support? It sacrifices one of Windows greatest advantages: compatibility with older software and hardware. Without that, there is increasingly little reason to use Windows. It's almost as if Microsoft is intentionally trying to push its customers towards the alternatives.
Forget Netflix; most of the internet providers own their own content stores. The ISPs will just relegate Netflix (and others) to the "slow lane" while the in-house content gets the usable speeds. It would not matter if third-party content providers were to ignore Verizon/Comcast/etc.'s attempt at extortion because they would still suffer from the effects. The customers of the third-party content providers would get the unusable service while VerizonTV gets usable bandwidth. Customers would abandon Netflix in droves.
The problem can't be fixed by just ignoring it; even if content providers refuse to play ball, the ISPs will drive the third-party content providers out of business by giving the in-house content an unfair advantage. This will radically change the Internet from an open broadcast medium to one controlled by a small subset, just like print, radio and TV are today. Legal, technical, or economic sanctions/must/ be imposed to keep the network neutral. Or we need to accept the Internet as we know it today is dead.
"On by default" is not an entirely accurate description. When you first run a version of Internet Explorer that supports DNT (IE8), or Windows 7 or 8, you are presented with several configurable options, one of which asks if you want to allow tracking by advertisers. While the "yes" radio-button is pre-selected, users do have to actively accept this choice. It is not as if Microsoft invisibly enabled this feature without alerting the users.
Admittedly, many users will just accept the defaults and press "OK", but they are still making that choice. Given the choice people generally do not like being tracked, and - although most people have been trained to just press OK - were they properly educated about the issue most would likely enable DNT anyway. Moreso, few people complain that Microsoft also includes software to avoid phishing sites (e.g., SmartScreen) which are enabled by "default" similar to DNT; these capabilities are added because the end-users find them useful. Microsoft is just protecting users from skeevy internet marketing, and just because some firms depend on this sort of underhanded tracking in no way excuses them from their deceitful practices. Features like "Do Not Track" were created because advertisers pushed too hard in one direction; now they ignore user's attempts to bring balance to the equation. I have no sympathy for the Googles and Yahoos and Facebooks; they broke the social contract first.
The iPad - and tablets in general - fill an odd niche that is likely close to capacity. Despite claims about how tablets would replace computers, it quickly becomes obvious to any who have to work on a computer that the tablet form-factor is not sufficient for the task. For the average computer user, the tablet falls into an strange zone where it is both too large and too small. On the one hand, after using a tablet for a while, you will very quickly realize that a larger monitor, a keyboard and a pointer that doesn't involve touching the screen are all very desirable things to have. Sure, you can add these peripherals to a tablet, but if you are going down that route - essentially chaining yourself to a desk again - the limited processor and storage of the tablet and it's higher price means it makes more sense just to buy a proper PC. Meanwhile, if all you want is a portable data-access device - something you can carry around with you at all times to check out the scores or look up some random fact on Wikipedia - then the tablet is suddenly/too/ large; it cannot be conveniently stuck in a pocket like a smart phone.
Tablets are wonderful little machines for two sorts of people. First, those who aren't heavy computer computer users; the grandmothers of the world who check their email once a day. The tiny screen and on-board keyboard are no major inconvenience because they don't use either enough for it to become a significant problem. The small form factor means the tablet is easy to tuck away when not in use (unlike the big bulky computer which dominates whatever corner it sits in) and its uncomplicated OS makes it easy to use. The other group are people who want it solely for media consumption, whether that takes the form of watching a movie, listening to music, reading articles on the web or playing uncomplicated games. Some of this latter group will also have a proper computer and use the tablet as a supplementary device.
But the idea that the tablet was going to supplant the computer - and all its sales - is patently false. Its niche are users who either didn't really need a computer, (or needed it so rarely that they saw no need to upgrade regularly), or people who considered it an entertainment device that they expected - like a TV or game console - to last far longer than Apple's usual product cycle. These groups just don't see the importance of getting a new tablet every two years, even if it does have an Apple logo on it.
I like tablets; I own several and have found uses for all, but they are not the revolutionary industry-changing machines that some people thought them to be. They are useful and - like desktops - will probably remain with us until we all finally get cyber-brain implants but they are still just a small part of the overall computer ecosystem. If Apple - or any other major computer company - thought they could depend on tablets alone to maintain them, they should rethink that strategy.
With cable TV, the providers only have limited information about who is watching. With streaming video, they can gather much more demographic information, which they can either use themselves or resell to "business partners". It's yet another form of income for them. So Hulu (and similar services) are triple-dipping; they charge the viewer cash for the privilege of watching, then get paid for the adverts, then resell the collected demographics. The viewer pays in money, time, and privacy.
Signal interception is only half of the NSA's charter; the other half is "Information assurance", which means keeping The Bad Guys (tm) from doing the same to us.
The NSA has been too focused on the interception part of their job, to the point where they are allowing - or purposefully weakening - US security with weak or backdoored encryption methods. Too many government agencies rely on the Internet for them to have turned a blind eye to things like the OpenSSL vulnerability; the NSA has failed at one of the most important part of its jobs.
While I would be loathe to forbid an intelligence agency from using such a vulnerability against legitmate targets, at the same time I would be quite upset if they didn't make sure that they weren't doing what was necessary to keep its charges (us!) safe from being similarly penetrated, especially if that task was specifically part of their remit.
The various "worlds" are political, not an economic delimitation.
"After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with contrary views on government and the politically correct society:
1 - The bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, the "First World". 2 - The Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World". 3 - The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."" (source)
Third-world countries are often - but not always - developing or less wealthy countries, but also includes nations such as Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, both of which have relatively strong economies.
America by definition can never be anything but a First World country. It's just slowly shifting from an economic powerhouse to one that is in its decline.
I think the braindead reason is simply that when you're selling an OS version, it has to offer something different than the version that it's supposed to replace. Otherwise people won't see the point in throwing away their old computers just to get something even more bloated than the OS they have now.
Except people do not buy new computers for the OS; the operating system is just something that comes with the computer. People would still be buying new computers at more or less the same rate if they came with Windows XP.
Yes, new operating systems need to be updated so they can take advantage of hardware improvements (SSD drives, USB3, etc), and to fix known security issues. They should also feature improvements and extra features to put the OS more in line with how people actually use their computes (for instance, adding cloud storage or better syncing with mobile devices). But it has been repeatedly shown - with Metro, Unity, Vista and probably a dozen other examples - that changing the interface solely to market your product is going to backfire big-time unless there are some very obvious advantages (MacOS versus DOS, for instance). And Metro lacked those advantages.
Worse, Microsoft was repeatedly warned of this mistake and chose to ignore it. It focused on form over function and barring an excellent marketing team - which Microsoft has never had - it was inevitable that they would fail in their transition.
It is the CHILDREN who are paying by providing their personal usage habits and information. They are the ones surrendering their privacy to a mega-corporation (and ultimately, to the government) thanks to this short-sighted policy.
On the plus side, what with the poor state of America's Internet infrastructure, the kids will have a much better excuse for not turning in their homework assignments. Why claim "the dog ate it" when you can just use the much more believable lie that "the Internet was down"?
This story is ridiculous. Aside from all the ethical aspects - which are important - the whole idea that somebody will serve 1000 years just because we've drugged them is fallacious. They aren't going to experience 1000 years of prison; they will just feel as if time is moving really slowly for a few weeks. We have no innate sense of time and are very dependent on the environment for cues as to how much time has passed. Things like day and night, meals, bathroom breaks, etc. will quickly give lie to the idea that a 1000 year term is being served, even to the most drugged up prisoner. This is just bad science fiction coupled with vengeance fantasies.
Seed with limited number of generation, simply kick themselves out of any gene pool which has no such limitation.
While in the long run this is true, in the short run the effects of this can be ruinous to an environment.
In a natural setting, such self-limiting organisms would never be able to get a strong foothold; when they inevitably die out, the rest of the plant kingdom easily makes up the slack. Unfortunately, due to human intervention it is quite possible for these suicidal genes to spread far, far beyond what their 'natural' reach. Thus, when plants infected with these genes inevitably die off, the gap they will leave behind could be much larger than would be otherwise expected. Ultimately, there will be other plants - either those never infected with the "suicide" genes or mutants that bypass this repressive bit of DNA - that will take over the rolls played by those limited by their genes. But in the meantime, the plants and animals (including humans and their civilization) would have a rough time of it as their food source suddenly shrivels up and die.
Yes, we - like the rest of the animal kingdom - would eventually adapt. But pity those caught in the period of disruption, no matter how "short-term" it is in the overall scheme of things.
It is like the argument against global warming. Yes, the planet has weathered periods where it was both warmer and colder than it is now, and yes, life will continue if the current conditions change. But our species - and our civilizations - have adapted to current conditions and the transitory periods would bring great hardship. It's all well and good to say "life will go on" but that ignores all the pain and suffering of those living during the transition, which is sort of contrary to the whole point of having a civilization to begin with.
We have the wisdom and ability to avoid these disruptions - whether caused by mismanagement of our seedcrop or the pollutants from our industry - and ignoring the dangers these cause simply because/life/ will surely survive the changing conditions is foolish. It's not just life that is important, but individual lives. It is all the more ridiculous since we are charging recklessly ahead with these dangerous technologies simply with the aim of increasing the shareholder value of a corporation.
You can download the "desktop" client from Microsoft's website but all you get is a 2MB loader that then downloads the remaining 1GB of the program. This makes me wonder two things:
1) Why doesn't Microsoft make an offline installation available for people, since the whole point of the program is to have a note-taking program that can be synced across multiple computers and devices. It would be nice not having to download 1GB on every computer I own (not to mention it would probably do wonders for their own bandwidth)
and
2) Why the hell does a little cloud-synchronized note-taking program take 1 GB of disk space? I mean, I know Office - and Microsoft programs in general - are fabled for their bloat, but this is taking things to extremes. Evernote is 1/10th the size.
a) Since when does OneDrive not work with Windows 8.1? It is embedded into the operating system (although it does stupidly require you to log on to the computer with your Live/OneDrive/SkyDrive/Hotmail log-in if you want to use the integrated client, which I refuse to do... but you can always use the web-interface through your browser of choice)
b) regardless of how you access OneDrive, you can install OneNote on Windows 8.1. It will request your log-in credentials during installation. Even if you log onto your PC with a "local" account, you can still use OneNote and OneDrive.
Mind you, I absolutely hate how Microsoft is tricking the average user* to create an MS Live account just to use their own computer and think it's almost as bad as the MetroUI, but claims that neither OneDrive nor OneNote work with Win8.1 are patently false.
* Yes, you/can/ create a local account, but it is not at all obvious that you can, much less how it can be achieved. The average user will just create a hotmail account like MS wants.
Slashdot Mirror
While I have no love for Facebook -or Zuckerberg - and its invasive policies, I have to wonder if Iran has any jurisdiction over Facebook anyway?
Does Facebook run any servers in Iran? Do they have any offices in Iran? Do they actively seek to bypass attempts by the Iranian government to block its citizens from accessing Facebook? And, if so, do they have any evidence that Zuckerberg himself is behind these heinous "crimes"?
The very fact that this judge is calling on Zuckerberg himself (and using inciteful language by calling him a "Zionist") rather than taking the Facebook.com to task reveals the true motivations of this summons. It has nothing to do with "privacy violations"; if Facebook.com's success was due to an awesome collection of cute kitty photos, the judge probably would have accused Zuckerberg of leading believers astray from the faith by distracting them with false idols or something.
There are many (many, many) problems with Facebook, Israel, the United States, etc. that need solving. However, the judge has no interest in opening discussion about these issues. This is just another obvious attempt by the Iranian political machine to inflame anti-American and anti-Semitic hatred.
You would get a lopsided view of the world if you base your opinions solely on the comments on some Internet forum.
Just like many of us would not commit a crime just because we feel it is wrong (and not in fear of any legal consequences), so many people do not make childish or rude comments just because it is on the Internet. As old the expression goes, "if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything". Unfortunately, this imbalance can often make it seem as if the Internet is full of sad jerks whereas the truth is more likely that there is a vast unspoken majority lurking behind the scenes.
More to the point, Sony cannot depend on recouping their investment from software sales because software piracy is so prevalent in China. Thus, Sony needs a console that they can sell without losing money on the hardware. This very likely rules out the Playstation 4, but probably not the Playstation 3.
As important, offering support is often tantamount to admitting there may be a problem with the product. Look at GM, which has forbidden its employees from even using words like "defect" or "problem". Providing support can open a can of worms that may leave the company open to legal or financial obligations they would rather just avoid.
Answering support questions also can give customers a false impression as to the quality of the product; for example, based solely on bug-counts, Linux compares poorly to Apple OS X. That doesn't mean OS X has any less problems; Apple is just being less open about the issue to maintain their reputation as an "easy-to-use" product while Linux looks complicated, difficult to use and something only for geeks. Better to be silent and leave the customers wondering if it is really a problem with the product in question or if they are somehow to blame (e.g., "holding it wrong").
There are very few products where offering real support makes any sense. Certainly it is not in the fickle consumer-electronic market (customers are far more sensitive to price than anything else), or highly specialized niche or monopoly markets (where there is often only one provider and the end-user has to deal with whatever awful support they get because there are no alternatives). It is only in small markets where there is competition that offering good support makes sense for a company, and in these days where everyone is operates internationally, that sort of market is disappearingly small.
I disagree. While its effectiveness at stopping tracking was never much at doubt, it very much brought out into the open how sleazy the advertising companies are. Ad companies for years paid lip-service about how they, of course, understood people's concerns but -because of how extensive their networks were - there unfortunately was no easy way to address these issues without actually tracking the users. Remember how you could go to doubleclick.net and have them set a special cookie that said "don't track me? Does anyone believed that actually worked (I have a bridge to sell you)?
Then comes along DoNotTrack, a little beacon that any user could set that immediately indicated their desire not to have their web-history and demographics compiled into some vast database, and exactly the solution to the above problem. And what happens?
The advertising companies ignore it. They out-and-out say they will not honor the users' request and will continue to stalk our activities across the web.
DoNotTrack might not have worked as designed, but it's a Snowden-like revelation on the true attitudes and operations of advertising companies. Yes, before DoNotTrack we all suspected this sort of behavior, but thanks to this little bit of software, now we know. No amount of marketing-speak can cover up that - despite any assurances of good and honorable intentions - they had a chance to stop stalking a user's habits and outright refused to do so.
There is a difference between serving advertisements and tracking the customer.
You can still show advertisements without employing tactics to track a user's movement across the web to gather demographic information on their viewing habits and interests. Put up a website about computers and solicit advertisements from computer manufacturers (Dell, Apple, etc.) and the like. Monitor your server logs to see which stories are read most and gauge what topics are found most interesting from there. If your website has a social aspect, keep tabs on the discussed issues and if there are particular hot-topics, use that to fine-tune your ad-stream (e.g., don't advertise Microsoft Windows on Slashdot). All this information can be gleaned without following your users to other websites or compiling databases of information about the interests of each particular user.
That is what Do Not Track is about. It is an insistence that we, the viewers, don't want to be cataloged, our habits followed across the web and then sold to anyone with a large enough wallet. Many of us /also/ do not like advertising itself, but that is a separate issue (your argument would be more pertinent against ad-blocking). Websites can (and some do) survive well without relying on intrusive data-monitoring of individual users. Unfortunately, the alternative has become both too convenient and too lucrative for some businesses to resist. They have put money over morals again and I have little sympathy for them if ad-blockers and anti-tracking software makes their tactics less profitable.
If you ticket the manufacturer, you incentivize them into creating a better, safer, product.
Either that or the manufacturer does not fix the safety issue and instead just raises the price of the car to pass the legal costs on to the customer. They may also employ lobbyists to keep more talented manufacturers from bringing a working product to market. After all, fixing stuff is hard and expensive.
Now, given the past few decades, which do you think is more likely?
Which is why all the music I buy these days is so heavily encumbered with DRM. Despite the shrill protests of the public, the only way to get the content was to accept DRM on my music files.
Oh wait, no, I don't.
It is not a losing battle to fight against DRM. Between the easy accessibility of non-DRM - albeit copyright-infringing - music and a company (Apple) with a large enough market-share to say, "You know what, screw DRM!", nowadays I can download all my songs in unencumbered MP3s. And - despite all their fears to the contrary - the music industry hasn't gone bankrupt because of this. Given an equitable price, combined with the convenience and legitimacy of an above-board purchase, music sales continue to be profitable.
Firefox had an opportunity to be an Apple here; they could have helped redirect the market into a new direction. Instead they caved into prophetic bullshit about declining marketshare and now all its users suffer for their shortsightedness. Mozilla could have said to big media, "this is a shit idea" and rather than sacrifice that huge potential audience the media conglomerates would have found a more favorable alternative.
The comparison doesn't work if the majority of the "roads" are unpaved and single-lane to begin with. Yes, you could argue that certain services should get priority, but the better solution in this case is just to improve the infrastructure. This is difficult to do with real roads, because so much of the surrounding land is already owned, but this sort of restriction does not hold true for the Internet; there is room to expand but no motivation to do so because it might cut into profits.
Once everybody has gigabit to the home, then maybe they can start to discuss prioritization. Until then, it is just a way for the telecoms to duck out of their responsibilities.
Homogenization happens on the Internet as well. The difference is that - because cost of access is so low on the Internet - as your favorite website/webvideo drifts more and more towards the lowest-common-denominator - it is easy for some other website to pick up the slack (a perfect example of this is Slashdot and Soylentnews). You can't do that on TV because - between FCC licenses, CableTV provider costs, and requiring enough content to fill a whole day (7 days a week, 365 days a year) - it requires a much higher start-up investment. On the web, you just need to pay for the content itself and the bandwidth; it is significantly easier to get started.
This is why net neutrality is so important; without it, the cost of access goes up dramatically. If you want to reach any sort of audience you will need to pay extra to the internet providers to let you into their little club. It gives the internet providers great power, not only from all that extra income but in deciding who and want they will allow on the internet.
Even better, it opens the path for even more abuse. Alone, H1Bs only had to worry about only they themselves losing their jobs and getting shipped back home; now, they have to worry that poor performance might tear apart their family. Would the wife (or husband) try to make it alone, or would she leave her good-paying job to follow him back to the home-country? Even if she stays, they might be living in a home that requires both of their incomes, so his departure could force the wife to relocate. And what if they have children?
Rather than deal with all these problems, the H1Bs will just accept lower pay and longer hours rather lest he risk losing his job. Meanwhile, the fact that there are workers willing to accept these conditions depresses the job market for native IT workers, who either have to accept jobs under similar conditions or go without.
The problem with H1Bs isn't that we are hiring foreigners; rather, it is the false and hypocritical logic used by its supporters. Companies do not need to look overseas for talented workers; America has a surplus. However, those workers have been brought up expecting a fair wage. H1Bs are made vulnerable by their immigrant status and companies are taking advantage of them. Companies go for H1Bs because it is cheaper, not because there is any need for them.
Microsoft has been quite explicit this is the future. They want an update process more like Apple's.
Apple can afford to put it's customers on such a tight upgrade schedule because Apple has such a tight grip on what hardware is being used. Microsoft does not have this luxury; this is both Window's blessing and its curse. On the one hand, it allows Microsoft to dominate the desktop because users are not tied down to one hardware vendor. On the other hand, support becomes infinitely more difficult because Microsoft has to deal with all the potential conflicts caused by that huge variety of hardware. This type of support means that Microsoft has to do far more testing to make sure its OS upgrades don't inadvertently break something. This means upgrades need to come out slower, both so MS has time to do all that testing, and so its end-users can do likewise.
Microsoft is trying to have it both ways: it wants all the advantages of its immense installation base without providing the necessary support for the full range of hardware. The the end-users are rightfully crying foul at this practice. Perhaps if MS had mandated that certain controlled hardware platforms (e.g., the Surface2) would not receive support unless upgraded to W81.u1 it would be one thing, but unilaterally declaring that any version of its mainstream OS that is older than a month not receive support? It sacrifices one of Windows greatest advantages: compatibility with older software and hardware. Without that, there is increasingly little reason to use Windows. It's almost as if Microsoft is intentionally trying to push its customers towards the alternatives.
Forget Netflix; most of the internet providers own their own content stores. The ISPs will just relegate Netflix (and others) to the "slow lane" while the in-house content gets the usable speeds. It would not matter if third-party content providers were to ignore Verizon/Comcast/etc.'s attempt at extortion because they would still suffer from the effects. The customers of the third-party content providers would get the unusable service while VerizonTV gets usable bandwidth. Customers would abandon Netflix in droves.
The problem can't be fixed by just ignoring it; even if content providers refuse to play ball, the ISPs will drive the third-party content providers out of business by giving the in-house content an unfair advantage. This will radically change the Internet from an open broadcast medium to one controlled by a small subset, just like print, radio and TV are today. Legal, technical, or economic sanctions /must/ be imposed to keep the network neutral. Or we need to accept the Internet as we know it today is dead.
"On by default" is not an entirely accurate description. When you first run a version of Internet Explorer that supports DNT (IE8), or Windows 7 or 8, you are presented with several configurable options, one of which asks if you want to allow tracking by advertisers. While the "yes" radio-button is pre-selected, users do have to actively accept this choice. It is not as if Microsoft invisibly enabled this feature without alerting the users.
Admittedly, many users will just accept the defaults and press "OK", but they are still making that choice. Given the choice people generally do not like being tracked, and - although most people have been trained to just press OK - were they properly educated about the issue most would likely enable DNT anyway. Moreso, few people complain that Microsoft also includes software to avoid phishing sites (e.g., SmartScreen) which are enabled by "default" similar to DNT; these capabilities are added because the end-users find them useful. Microsoft is just protecting users from skeevy internet marketing, and just because some firms depend on this sort of underhanded tracking in no way excuses them from their deceitful practices. Features like "Do Not Track" were created because advertisers pushed too hard in one direction; now they ignore user's attempts to bring balance to the equation. I have no sympathy for the Googles and Yahoos and Facebooks; they broke the social contract first.
The iPad - and tablets in general - fill an odd niche that is likely close to capacity. Despite claims about how tablets would replace computers, it quickly becomes obvious to any who have to work on a computer that the tablet form-factor is not sufficient for the task. For the average computer user, the tablet falls into an strange zone where it is both too large and too small. On the one hand, after using a tablet for a while, you will very quickly realize that a larger monitor, a keyboard and a pointer that doesn't involve touching the screen are all very desirable things to have. Sure, you can add these peripherals to a tablet, but if you are going down that route - essentially chaining yourself to a desk again - the limited processor and storage of the tablet and it's higher price means it makes more sense just to buy a proper PC. Meanwhile, if all you want is a portable data-access device - something you can carry around with you at all times to check out the scores or look up some random fact on Wikipedia - then the tablet is suddenly /too/ large; it cannot be conveniently stuck in a pocket like a smart phone.
Tablets are wonderful little machines for two sorts of people. First, those who aren't heavy computer computer users; the grandmothers of the world who check their email once a day. The tiny screen and on-board keyboard are no major inconvenience because they don't use either enough for it to become a significant problem. The small form factor means the tablet is easy to tuck away when not in use (unlike the big bulky computer which dominates whatever corner it sits in) and its uncomplicated OS makes it easy to use. The other group are people who want it solely for media consumption, whether that takes the form of watching a movie, listening to music, reading articles on the web or playing uncomplicated games. Some of this latter group will also have a proper computer and use the tablet as a supplementary device.
But the idea that the tablet was going to supplant the computer - and all its sales - is patently false. Its niche are users who either didn't really need a computer, (or needed it so rarely that they saw no need to upgrade regularly), or people who considered it an entertainment device that they expected - like a TV or game console - to last far longer than Apple's usual product cycle. These groups just don't see the importance of getting a new tablet every two years, even if it does have an Apple logo on it.
I like tablets; I own several and have found uses for all, but they are not the revolutionary industry-changing machines that some people thought them to be. They are useful and - like desktops - will probably remain with us until we all finally get cyber-brain implants but they are still just a small part of the overall computer ecosystem. If Apple - or any other major computer company - thought they could depend on tablets alone to maintain them, they should rethink that strategy.
It's worse, to some degree.
With cable TV, the providers only have limited information about who is watching. With streaming video, they can gather much more demographic information, which they can either use themselves or resell to "business partners". It's yet another form of income for them. So Hulu (and similar services) are triple-dipping; they charge the viewer cash for the privilege of watching, then get paid for the adverts, then resell the collected demographics. The viewer pays in money, time, and privacy.
Signal interception is only half of the NSA's charter; the other half is "Information assurance", which means keeping The Bad Guys (tm) from doing the same to us.
The NSA has been too focused on the interception part of their job, to the point where they are allowing - or purposefully weakening - US security with weak or backdoored encryption methods. Too many government agencies rely on the Internet for them to have turned a blind eye to things like the OpenSSL vulnerability; the NSA has failed at one of the most important part of its jobs.
While I would be loathe to forbid an intelligence agency from using such a vulnerability against legitmate targets, at the same time I would be quite upset if they didn't make sure that they weren't doing what was necessary to keep its charges (us!) safe from being similarly penetrated, especially if that task was specifically part of their remit.
[PedantMode=On]
The various "worlds" are political, not an economic delimitation.
Third-world countries are often - but not always - developing or less wealthy countries, but also includes nations such as Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, both of which have relatively strong economies.
America by definition can never be anything but a First World country. It's just slowly shifting from an economic powerhouse to one that is in its decline.
[PedantMode=Off]
I think the braindead reason is simply that when you're selling an OS version, it has to offer something different than the version that it's supposed to replace. Otherwise people won't see the point in throwing away their old computers just to get something even more bloated than the OS they have now.
Except people do not buy new computers for the OS; the operating system is just something that comes with the computer. People would still be buying new computers at more or less the same rate if they came with Windows XP.
Yes, new operating systems need to be updated so they can take advantage of hardware improvements (SSD drives, USB3, etc), and to fix known security issues. They should also feature improvements and extra features to put the OS more in line with how people actually use their computes (for instance, adding cloud storage or better syncing with mobile devices). But it has been repeatedly shown - with Metro, Unity, Vista and probably a dozen other examples - that changing the interface solely to market your product is going to backfire big-time unless there are some very obvious advantages (MacOS versus DOS, for instance). And Metro lacked those advantages.
Worse, Microsoft was repeatedly warned of this mistake and chose to ignore it. It focused on form over function and barring an excellent marketing team - which Microsoft has never had - it was inevitable that they would fail in their transition.
Humans always forget the importance of backups, until it's too late.
Well, whaddaya expect? It's in our genes!
But it is free... for the school.
It is the CHILDREN who are paying by providing their personal usage habits and information. They are the ones surrendering their privacy to a mega-corporation (and ultimately, to the government) thanks to this short-sighted policy.
On the plus side, what with the poor state of America's Internet infrastructure, the kids will have a much better excuse for not turning in their homework assignments. Why claim "the dog ate it" when you can just use the much more believable lie that "the Internet was down"?
This story is ridiculous. Aside from all the ethical aspects - which are important - the whole idea that somebody will serve 1000 years just because we've drugged them is fallacious. They aren't going to experience 1000 years of prison; they will just feel as if time is moving really slowly for a few weeks. We have no innate sense of time and are very dependent on the environment for cues as to how much time has passed. Things like day and night, meals, bathroom breaks, etc. will quickly give lie to the idea that a 1000 year term is being served, even to the most drugged up prisoner. This is just bad science fiction coupled with vengeance fantasies.
Seed with limited number of generation, simply kick themselves out of any gene pool which has no such limitation.
While in the long run this is true, in the short run the effects of this can be ruinous to an environment.
In a natural setting, such self-limiting organisms would never be able to get a strong foothold; when they inevitably die out, the rest of the plant kingdom easily makes up the slack. Unfortunately, due to human intervention it is quite possible for these suicidal genes to spread far, far beyond what their 'natural' reach. Thus, when plants infected with these genes inevitably die off, the gap they will leave behind could be much larger than would be otherwise expected. Ultimately, there will be other plants - either those never infected with the "suicide" genes or mutants that bypass this repressive bit of DNA - that will take over the rolls played by those limited by their genes. But in the meantime, the plants and animals (including humans and their civilization) would have a rough time of it as their food source suddenly shrivels up and die.
Yes, we - like the rest of the animal kingdom - would eventually adapt. But pity those caught in the period of disruption, no matter how "short-term" it is in the overall scheme of things.
It is like the argument against global warming. Yes, the planet has weathered periods where it was both warmer and colder than it is now, and yes, life will continue if the current conditions change. But our species - and our civilizations - have adapted to current conditions and the transitory periods would bring great hardship. It's all well and good to say "life will go on" but that ignores all the pain and suffering of those living during the transition, which is sort of contrary to the whole point of having a civilization to begin with.
We have the wisdom and ability to avoid these disruptions - whether caused by mismanagement of our seedcrop or the pollutants from our industry - and ignoring the dangers these cause simply because /life/ will surely survive the changing conditions is foolish. It's not just life that is important, but individual lives. It is all the more ridiculous since we are charging recklessly ahead with these dangerous technologies simply with the aim of increasing the shareholder value of a corporation.
You can download the "desktop" client from Microsoft's website but all you get is a 2MB loader that then downloads the remaining 1GB of the program. This makes me wonder two things:
1) Why doesn't Microsoft make an offline installation available for people, since the whole point of the program is to have a note-taking program that can be synced across multiple computers and devices. It would be nice not having to download 1GB on every computer I own (not to mention it would probably do wonders for their own bandwidth)
and
2) Why the hell does a little cloud-synchronized note-taking program take 1 GB of disk space? I mean, I know Office - and Microsoft programs in general - are fabled for their bloat, but this is taking things to extremes. Evernote is 1/10th the size.
a) Since when does OneDrive not work with Windows 8.1? It is embedded into the operating system (although it does stupidly require you to log on to the computer with your Live/OneDrive/SkyDrive/Hotmail log-in if you want to use the integrated client, which I refuse to do... but you can always use the web-interface through your browser of choice)
b) regardless of how you access OneDrive, you can install OneNote on Windows 8.1. It will request your log-in credentials during installation. Even if you log onto your PC with a "local" account, you can still use OneNote and OneDrive.
Mind you, I absolutely hate how Microsoft is tricking the average user* to create an MS Live account just to use their own computer and think it's almost as bad as the MetroUI, but claims that neither OneDrive nor OneNote work with Win8.1 are patently false.
* Yes, you /can/ create a local account, but it is not at all obvious that you can, much less how it can be achieved. The average user will just create a hotmail account like MS wants.