I wonder how bad or frequent an unstart will be with a mach 6 aircraft.
I don't know how frequent they might be, but seeing as the proposed SR-72 aircraft is using a common inlet, the severity might be reduced. One of the problems of unstarts on the SR-71 was the sudden intake of supersonic air caused "loss of air flow to the engine, an enormous increase in drag, and a significant yaw to the side with the affected inlet." The common inlet would mean both engines would be effected, so - while there would probably be a severe loss of power due to compressor stall and drag - the violent yawing effects might be mitigated.
But I'm not an aeronautic engineer or even a licensed pilot, so what do I know. But I bet the gurus at Lockheed have given it a lot of consideration.
Great. Now how long until I can get an "ad-blocker" that, with Google Glass, automatically detects and filters out this obtrusive advertising. Because right now I'm using an older analog method (closing my eyes) and I keep bumping into things.
My local grocer has TVs next to each till that shows nothing but adverts. I used to turn them off by pushing the power button on the front. Then they wised up and replaced them with new models that didn't have power buttons. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who did that;-)
Which is an absolutely understandable request from the point of view of the TSA screeners.
"Look, government policy is putting us in harm's way. We are now targets. We think we should be protected from loonies. Armed guards to shoot any such loonies is one method we might be protected."
Assuming the TSA checkpoints remain, it is not a ridiculous idea and the union - nominally representing the screeners - are quite right to make this request since the welfare of those screeners is their business . The screeners themselves, however much they may be gaining advantage from the program, are not the ones who have created the policy that provides those jobs (and, from my limited experience with them, those I have met think the program is as stupid as we do, but one does not turn down a job these days). So I can hardly blame the screeners for making a fuss about the need for more protection. However, as citizens of this country, we have other things to consider, such as:
- Do we want to turn our country into an armed camp with soldiers at every corner? - While the soldiers might help protect the screeners, will they themselves just be another target? - Are there any alternatives to armed guards (bullet-proof boxes for the screeners, or the ever-popular "arm everyone" meme?) - Is the TSA screening program effective and might it not be better just rid the country of the program - and thus the need for the armed guards as well.
So rather than just lambast the union - and the TSA screeners - for making this justified request, perhaps it might be better to use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate the TSA program entirely in a moment when its supporters just may be more willing to listen to alternatives?
This is not to defend or excuse the actions of the NSA, but if you believe you are safe from having your data intercepted from intelligence agencies just because you are using a service based out of a nation that is Not-The-USA, then you are living in a fools paradise. The technology is too ubiquitous and too effective for the spooks/not/ to use, and the main difference between the NSA and foreign intelligence agencies is that the NSA got caught at it.
Well, that and the NSA tries to take the high moral ground and insists its not only legal but also something most Americans support. That's some Goebbels-level hypocrisy there. At least the DGSE, BND and GCHQ aren't making loud proclamations as to their righteousness (they are wisely keeping their heads down).
Don't depend on the good behavior of the local intelligence agency. Instead, use proper security practices to make it either impossible or not cost-effective to break into your data stream.
Yes. Yes, he is. He is a common citizen just like the rest of us, who has been temporarily granted the authority to help lead this country. He is, in the end, nothing more than the chief bureaucrat of this nation.
To presume anything else is a mistake. He is not a king. He is not a lord. When he leaves office, the country continues without him very well. He is a peon. That We-The-People have allowed this jumped-up-clerk (and that's the President in general, not Obama specifically) to increasing take on the trappings of a monarchy is a mistake that needs to be reversed. He's been given a mansion, a praetorian guard, secret police, walled him from the people he supposedly represenents and treated the officeholder as if he is some great prophet appointed by heaven to lead us to the holy land.
The president is none of that (or at least, should be none of that). He's just some chump we've saddled with the unpleasant duty of running the nation and I don't see why he should be afforded any more (or less) respect than the head of my local post office.
Of course, it isn't open-source (yet), so the effectiveness of its security can't be verified. Are they really using good security practices (e.g., not doing anything stupid like WEP)? Is the information truly secure (no backdoor keys)? Until their code can be audited, users just have to "take their word" that the data is properly encrypted.
It also seems to be situated in a single country (in this case, the United States of America), making it - and its users - vulnerable to the whims of that nation's governance. Were they multinational, should the USA decide to shut them down, all they could seize would be American assets; however, international customers would still be able to retrieve their data. MegaUpload was a lesson on the frailty of a that approach to creating a data-haven (not that Megaupload was really a datahaven, but the lesson is still applicable).
So SpiderOak is a nice step, but not the panacea it first appears to be.
Having said all that, I still am considering using it;-)
And - as importantly - let's hope NSA and the other Three-Letter-Agencies actually obey these laws.
Unfortunately, because they so often operate in secret, it's very hard to monitor their compliance. And as we've seen repeatedly throughout the last century, they are quite willing to bend or break the law to achieve their goals.
So while it's great that a judge has smacked down local police's ability to tag innocent civilians with warrentless-GPS trackers (whose activities have to be revealed in court), it likely does little or nothing to stop the Federal agencies from continuing to do the same.
But - assuming it could be proven (as much as it can ever be proven) secure - corporations would love it. Including banks.
So would terrorists, criminals and drug dealers, of course. But that's blaming the tool for the faults of its users. Regardless, a lot of people with a lot of money would see serious advantage to such a thing. Given this, it is surprising it doesn't exist.
It's unfortunate it would primarily be of interest mostly to the unscrupulous at first, but that might be what it takes to get such a thing available to the common internet user.
You know, I was wondering the very thing the other day (not coincidentally while re-reading the Cryptonomicon... but why hasn't anyone stepped up and tried creating a data-haven? It's been theorized about for years (I remember reading about it back in the '80s, I think in Bruce Sterling's Islands In the Net) so it's not as if people haven't been aware of its necessity for decades. You would think/somebody/ would have made a serious attempt by this point, even prior to the Snowden revelations.
I mean, sure, you see websites all the time that promise to archive your data for you... but those are always encumbered by hundred-page legalese that essentially say "if They come knocking, we're buckling". Has there ever been a serious attempt to create an internet haven where not only did the provider promise security but ensured it in such a way that even if the government did make such demands, the data would be unrecoverable unless the User provided the key? I know there has never been a government that has ever made a promise to honor the security of a citizen's data...
As said, a country that made such a promise (and backed it up with verifiable security) would probably make a mint these days. It almost makes one believe in tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories that this market has been so long ignored.
Do you want to also pay for your ability to comment?
Indeed, the addition of moderation to a discussion may also have a cost beyond the purely financial.
While moderation can work against egregious trolls and spammers, fear of moderation can also cause people not to post their true thoughts and opinions for fear of going against the accepted groupthink of the forum. Especially since most forums "moderate" by outright censoring the offensive comments (e.g., they delete it entirely)*. Those with differing opinions will not involve themselves in the conversation. This can result in an echo-chamber effect, and severely limits critical thought in a discussion.
Of course, this may be the unconscious goal of the people who pass laws like the one in question. Free discussion and critical thought about issues - whether it is the Prime Minister's latest decisions or whether a ferry-operator was working for the best interests of a community - is not to their advantage.
*Props to Slashdot. Worthy comments are sometimes moderated down for going against the forum's common grain, but at least they are still visible to those willing to take the time to look for them amongst the muck of trolls, goatse links and spammers
No, producers of content want money (well, the ones pushing the DRM, anyway). Money that comes from people paying for the privilege of watching their content.
But DRM does not bring viewers and it does not bring money. At best, it might prevent people from viewing the content without paying for it. It's the content - and the audience - that brings in the big bucks.
The point is, if you draw a line in the sand and say "No DRM" (either because of technical, legislative, or moral reasons) then the content producers will/still/ create their content, and they will/still/ make it available to the public because that's the only way they can get paid. The fact that they have to compete against "free" (pirated content) just means they don't get as/much/ money as they otherwise wish, but it does not mean that people will stop producing or selling their creations. We saw as much when the music industry was finally dragged - kicking and screaming - into the world of DRM-free tunes and actually ended up making more money than before.
The content producers are making a power grab because they think they can get away with, not because it is actually necessary and if they refuted they will ultimately have no choice but to do without DRM. It's not like they'll just say "fuck it, no more movies; from now on we're building toasters!", after all. They'll just adjust their business plan a bit and life will go on, except our culture won't be encumbered by their digital shackles.
So, yeah, there ought to be a stand against DRM. It's only the hard-line dinosaurs who are insisting upon it, unable to imagine a world where they don't have explicit control of their content - a world rapidly fading into the past. Both consumer and producer will ultimately be better off without it.
McDonalds' free WiFi basically doesn't work in Australia. Just about every time I've tried it times out talking to the authorisation server and if you succeed in getting authorisation there is no bandwidth to speak of.
In my experience, it's not much different in the US. McDonalds has the worst free WiFi. You can reach the Internet, but it feels like it's sub-dialup speeds. Download speeds measured in bytes per second are common. I've tried to connect in four or five "restaurants" and it was always the same, regardless of how many customers were in the store.
Starbucks and other stores were never speedy, but at least they were usable.
Best free wifi I ever had was in a hospital cafeteria, actually. 20MBps and a solid connection. I had a friend recovering from surgery who was thrilled at how often I came visiting; I hadn't the heart to tell her it wasn't entirely due to my concern for her.;-)
the U.S. Navy is one of the largest and one of the oldest operators of nuclear power plants (by hours critical) and has a spotless safety record
If you don't count there loss of the nuclear submarines USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, the radioactive contamination of the USS Guardfish, or both the USS Puffer and the USS Proteus discharging radioactive water into the oceans.
Not to mention I am sure there are a number of other incidents that haven't been declassified yet.
I don't know how well the US Navy ranks amongst other operators of nuclear power plants, but "spotless" is not an accurate description. They may do very well comparatively and the overall harm may be minimal, but they have made their share of mistakes.
Some goal is declared supremely important and then the law is distorted to fit that objective rather than to actually honestly examine if that objective is even legal to begin with.
Or if that goal is even necessary.
It's often an expansion of powers solely for the sake of expanding an agency's powers, with little necessary application.
It's the Windows 8 of Slashdot. Big panels, a flatter look, pastels, lots of wasted space. A lot of focus on form, none on the content. Big pictures, big fonts; lots of extra mouse movement to navigate. Change seemingly for the sake of change rather than to improve problem areas. Yeah, I see a lot of similarities.
Dice has always seemed more interested in catering to business users than us geeky tech types. Just as Microsoft alienated the nerds who supported it, this new design of Slashdot might finally drive away the geeks. I bet the management types will love it, though.
Having experienced both, I've concluded the following:
Time Warner is worse with the technology. Slower speeds, crappier equipment, tends to oversell bandwidth more. You'll hate them for their product.
Comcast sucks more on the business side. Billing, technical support, etc. You'll hate them for their people.
So long as your equipment and connection is good, Comcast is the way to go. Woe unto you should something go wrong, though. You'll call up Comcast and not only won't the problem be fixed, they'll probably inadvertently lose your payment for the last three months.
With Time Warner, you'll have a flakier connection but at least when you have to get a guy over to check the cabling it won't take three months and he'll actually fix the problem (at least until something else breaks).
Admittedly, these are just my personal experiences and a wider data set would doubtlessly reveal discrepancies in this generalization. But then, that's the same with most of the comments on Slashdot.
Those home and charter schools perform not because you're saving money on teachers, it's for two reasons. Fewer (or no) administrators putting ridiculous demands on the teachers that are there, and/or parents being intimately involved in their child's education. Children learn better when they see that learning is in important part of their parent's lives. Can't get much more important than Mom or Dad sitting with Junior every day doing the teaching.
Indeed. One of the most important factors in a child's education is the involvement of the parents or guardians. More so than the teachers, the curriculum or any fancy gadgets, it is the attention a parent places on the importance of education that encourages the student. This is not limited solely to Mom or Dad sitting with little Susie helping her with her fractions, but also the overall attitude that school is more than just a place to stick the kids for eight hours a day while the parents go to work.
And sending a kid to a charter school (or partaking in home schooling) is the ultimate example of this sort of attitude. The parents are openly investing in their child's future. These are the sort of parents who are more likely to stress the importance of an education to the child. Therefore, these are the students who are more receptive to receiving an education.
That is not to say that there are not many, many parents who place the same importance on schooling but still send their kids to a public school. But the types of parents who use schools as daycare for their kids are also not the sort who are going to bother with a charter school. Contrasting public schools to charter schools is therefore an inaccurate apple-to-orange comparison. It is -essentially - a comparison between a self-selected group of students who (thanks to parental involvement) want to do good in school versus students who may or may not care about their education. Like an early 20th century election poll that was unwittingly biased, the students sent to charter schools are a group who trend towards better schools for reasons other than the nature of the system itself. It says very little about the quality of the schools themselves. It is as likely most of those students would perform similarly in most public schools.
And - bringing it back to topic - charter schools are not immune to the gadget frenzy of public schools either. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience, they are more likely to throw electronics at the problem - thanks to a higher budget - with as little provable positive result to the teaching experience itself.
Alternately (and more likely), people simply won't bother with these bundles.
In other words, expect to see something like this for all these "bundles" on your favorite torrent site:
HOT TORRENTZ* FOR MADONNA'S NEWEST SONG!!!! Comment 1: Hey, this is just a demo and it asks for money after 1 minute. Anyone know where I can download the full song? Comment 2: yeah, go to http://www.piratestuff.com/torrent1234.html** File size: 12MB Total downloads: 1 Seeds: 37*** Leechers: 0
Meanwhile, the usual torrent of the MP3 or AVI files without the bundled DRM will have thousands of downloads. Why should people waste their time downloading these bundles and then looking for a crack when it's available elsewhere without the hassle?
* purposeful use of "z" to make it seem cool and illegal, just like a real pirated song! ** not a real link so don't even bother *** seeders are all the copyright owners wondering why nobody is downloading
Which IOS7, for all its faults, is most definitely not.
You do not have to update to the newest version and - as far as I know - you can't/automatically/ update anyway (the device will check and download the update, but you still have to manually start the installation). Your device will continue to work with the older version of iOS, and so will your apps (although some app updates may require later versions of iOS, they will not install if you have an incompatible operating system). The update may be required to get additional features but it is not required to keep using the device and is not forced upon you.
So this is more like having an PC with Windows XP and being alerted that Windows 7 is available. Depending on your hardware configuration, the new OS may require more resources than your PC can provide, but if you decide to install anyway, it's your own damn fault.
There are a lot of problems of how Apple manages the relationship between itself and its customers with which to take issue without any need to fabricate new ones.
You could access the camera from the lock screen on the iPhones for a while, is this new to the iPad?
Yes, it is new to the iPad.
The iPhones (and the forgotten stepchild of the line, the iTouch) had a camera button on the lock screen, but - on IOS6 and below - you did not have this feature on the Ipad.
On the other hand, you did get the stunningly useless "picture frame" button on the iPad lock screen. You know, for those times the battery wasn't draining fast enough on its own. That's disappeared with iOS7
The camera icon on the lock page is new to the iPad. I guess Apple didn't actually expect people to regularly use the iPad as a camera as it's a bit bulky for that purpose; still, I see folk doing it all the time so I suppose it's a needed addition.
IOS7 has some very nice features (I particularly like the new multitasking system and the control center). I just wish they'd let people create their own themes so I wouldn't have to use those horrible new icons. Aside from the terrible color scheme, legibility and recognition are shot to hell with this update...
What few people realize is that Brazil is a quite popular destination for our friends visiting from the arid climes of the red planet next door. What with the Amazon - world's largest river - , the Atlantic Ocean and the/rain/ forest, they are quite in love with that nation's water-rich climate. So many Martians visit Brazil and more than a few have learned the language. It's a known fact: Martians love Brazil.
But - as Earthlings have a problem with the NSA spying on them - so Martians take issue with NASA. Giant telescopes in the sky watching everything they do, immense electronic ears eavesdropping on the universe, and robotic drones pushing their telescoping probes into unwanted places; there is increasing upset with NASA's activities amongst non-terrestrials. Oh sure, NASA says it is "for the science" but it's a government agency (worse, an/American/ government agency; the US's reputation has spread even to the stars); when have they ever told the whole truth about their motives?
This isn't, of course, the first time that Martian hackers have expressed their displeasure; one need only remember the Denial of Service attack on the Beagle 2 lander (although this was of course never admitted by NASA officials, preferring to blame the loss on "technical failures"). And one need only visit the Chryse Planitia to see all the graffiti sprayed on the Viking 1 lander espousing their dissatisfaction with NASA policies*.
So this was no "confused Brazilian" who targeted the wrong website; this was a calculated statement made by an extra-terrestrial warning that the tempers are flaring regarding the recent actions of the American space agency. It was not the first such warning and surely will not be the last. The only unusual part of this story is that the "hacktivist" in question performed his vandalism while on his vacation. And that he had three tentacles, was green and had antennae.
Don't let the mainstream media blind you to the truth! Reign in NASA before it leads us to interplanetary conflict!
And I would not be surprised if those "first day" sales also included all the pre-orders that people have been laying out for months ahead of time in anticipation.
It's impressive numbers to be sure, and certain to impress the beancounters, but don't read more into it than that. Just going by the dollar signs isn't enough to gauge the overall impact or popularity of a blockbuster game versus a blockbuster movie, for instance.
Still, well-deserved and kudos to Rockstar. While I haven't liked everything about the previous GTA games, overall I found them to be quite enjoyable products and I have little doubt that GTA5 will as much fun. And as soon as it comes out on PC, I'll gladly buy this iteration of the franchise too.
There's is a part of me that wants the FCC to treat Obama's petition the way he responds to all those citizen petitions on WhiteHouse.gov... which is to say, the FCC ignores him completely or else responds with a watered down statement that says nothing.
Except I sort of like the idea of the FCC enforcing an unlocked-phone/BYOD policy for the carriers...
Hmmm, petty and pointless dreams of third-party revenge vs. naive hopes of an unlikely outcome brought to pass. Choices, choices!
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how bad or frequent an unstart will be with a mach 6 aircraft.
I don't know how frequent they might be, but seeing as the proposed SR-72 aircraft is using a common inlet, the severity might be reduced. One of the problems of unstarts on the SR-71 was the sudden intake of supersonic air caused "loss of air flow to the engine, an enormous increase in drag, and a significant yaw to the side with the affected inlet." The common inlet would mean both engines would be effected, so - while there would probably be a severe loss of power due to compressor stall and drag - the violent yawing effects might be mitigated.
But I'm not an aeronautic engineer or even a licensed pilot, so what do I know. But I bet the gurus at Lockheed have given it a lot of consideration.
Great. Now how long until I can get an "ad-blocker" that, with Google Glass, automatically detects and filters out this obtrusive advertising. Because right now I'm using an older analog method (closing my eyes) and I keep bumping into things.
My local grocer has TVs next to each till that shows nothing but adverts. I used to turn them off by pushing the power button on the front. Then they wised up and replaced them with new models that didn't have power buttons. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who did that ;-)
Which is an absolutely understandable request from the point of view of the TSA screeners.
"Look, government policy is putting us in harm's way. We are now targets. We think we should be protected from loonies. Armed guards to shoot any such loonies is one method we might be protected."
Assuming the TSA checkpoints remain, it is not a ridiculous idea and the union - nominally representing the screeners - are quite right to make this request since the welfare of those screeners is their business . The screeners themselves, however much they may be gaining advantage from the program, are not the ones who have created the policy that provides those jobs (and, from my limited experience with them, those I have met think the program is as stupid as we do, but one does not turn down a job these days). So I can hardly blame the screeners for making a fuss about the need for more protection. However, as citizens of this country, we have other things to consider, such as:
- Do we want to turn our country into an armed camp with soldiers at every corner?
- While the soldiers might help protect the screeners, will they themselves just be another target?
- Are there any alternatives to armed guards (bullet-proof boxes for the screeners, or the ever-popular "arm everyone" meme?)
- Is the TSA screening program effective and might it not be better just rid the country of the program - and thus the need for the armed guards as well.
So rather than just lambast the union - and the TSA screeners - for making this justified request, perhaps it might be better to use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate the TSA program entirely in a moment when its supporters just may be more willing to listen to alternatives?
And none of the other nations ever spy on anyone.
This is not to defend or excuse the actions of the NSA, but if you believe you are safe from having your data intercepted from intelligence agencies just because you are using a service based out of a nation that is Not-The-USA, then you are living in a fools paradise. The technology is too ubiquitous and too effective for the spooks /not/ to use, and the main difference between the NSA and foreign intelligence agencies is that the NSA got caught at it.
Well, that and the NSA tries to take the high moral ground and insists its not only legal but also something most Americans support. That's some Goebbels-level hypocrisy there. At least the DGSE, BND and GCHQ aren't making loud proclamations as to their righteousness (they are wisely keeping their heads down).
Don't depend on the good behavior of the local intelligence agency. Instead, use proper security practices to make it either impossible or not cost-effective to break into your data stream.
I agree with most of the above except for one:
A President is not a commoner.
Yes. Yes, he is. He is a common citizen just like the rest of us, who has been temporarily granted the authority to help lead this country. He is, in the end, nothing more than the chief bureaucrat of this nation.
To presume anything else is a mistake. He is not a king. He is not a lord. When he leaves office, the country continues without him very well. He is a peon. That We-The-People have allowed this jumped-up-clerk (and that's the President in general, not Obama specifically) to increasing take on the trappings of a monarchy is a mistake that needs to be reversed. He's been given a mansion, a praetorian guard, secret police, walled him from the people he supposedly represenents and treated the officeholder as if he is some great prophet appointed by heaven to lead us to the holy land.
The president is none of that (or at least, should be none of that). He's just some chump we've saddled with the unpleasant duty of running the nation and I don't see why he should be afforded any more (or less) respect than the head of my local post office.
Interesting. Thanks for the link.
Of course, it isn't open-source (yet), so the effectiveness of its security can't be verified. Are they really using good security practices (e.g., not doing anything stupid like WEP)? Is the information truly secure (no backdoor keys)? Until their code can be audited, users just have to "take their word" that the data is properly encrypted.
It also seems to be situated in a single country (in this case, the United States of America), making it - and its users - vulnerable to the whims of that nation's governance. Were they multinational, should the USA decide to shut them down, all they could seize would be American assets; however, international customers would still be able to retrieve their data. MegaUpload was a lesson on the frailty of a that approach to creating a data-haven (not that Megaupload was really a datahaven, but the lesson is still applicable).
So SpiderOak is a nice step, but not the panacea it first appears to be.
Having said all that, I still am considering using it ;-)
And - as importantly - let's hope NSA and the other Three-Letter-Agencies actually obey these laws.
Unfortunately, because they so often operate in secret, it's very hard to monitor their compliance. And as we've seen repeatedly throughout the last century, they are quite willing to bend or break the law to achieve their goals.
So while it's great that a judge has smacked down local police's ability to tag innocent civilians with warrentless-GPS trackers (whose activities have to be revealed in court), it likely does little or nothing to stop the Federal agencies from continuing to do the same.
But - assuming it could be proven (as much as it can ever be proven) secure - corporations would love it. Including banks.
So would terrorists, criminals and drug dealers, of course. But that's blaming the tool for the faults of its users. Regardless, a lot of people with a lot of money would see serious advantage to such a thing. Given this, it is surprising it doesn't exist.
It's unfortunate it would primarily be of interest mostly to the unscrupulous at first, but that might be what it takes to get such a thing available to the common internet user.
You know, I was wondering the very thing the other day (not coincidentally while re-reading the Cryptonomicon... but why hasn't anyone stepped up and tried creating a data-haven? It's been theorized about for years (I remember reading about it back in the '80s, I think in Bruce Sterling's Islands In the Net) so it's not as if people haven't been aware of its necessity for decades. You would think /somebody/ would have made a serious attempt by this point, even prior to the Snowden revelations.
I mean, sure, you see websites all the time that promise to archive your data for you... but those are always encumbered by hundred-page legalese that essentially say "if They come knocking, we're buckling". Has there ever been a serious attempt to create an internet haven where not only did the provider promise security but ensured it in such a way that even if the government did make such demands, the data would be unrecoverable unless the User provided the key? I know there has never been a government that has ever made a promise to honor the security of a citizen's data...
As said, a country that made such a promise (and backed it up with verifiable security) would probably make a mint these days. It almost makes one believe in tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories that this market has been so long ignored.
Do you want to also pay for your ability to comment?
Indeed, the addition of moderation to a discussion may also have a cost beyond the purely financial.
While moderation can work against egregious trolls and spammers, fear of moderation can also cause people not to post their true thoughts and opinions for fear of going against the accepted groupthink of the forum. Especially since most forums "moderate" by outright censoring the offensive comments (e.g., they delete it entirely)*. Those with differing opinions will not involve themselves in the conversation. This can result in an echo-chamber effect, and severely limits critical thought in a discussion.
Of course, this may be the unconscious goal of the people who pass laws like the one in question. Free discussion and critical thought about issues - whether it is the Prime Minister's latest decisions or whether a ferry-operator was working for the best interests of a community - is not to their advantage.
*Props to Slashdot. Worthy comments are sometimes moderated down for going against the forum's common grain, but at least they are still visible to those willing to take the time to look for them amongst the muck of trolls, goatse links and spammers
No, producers of content want money (well, the ones pushing the DRM, anyway). Money that comes from people paying for the privilege of watching their content.
But DRM does not bring viewers and it does not bring money. At best, it might prevent people from viewing the content without paying for it. It's the content - and the audience - that brings in the big bucks.
The point is, if you draw a line in the sand and say "No DRM" (either because of technical, legislative, or moral reasons) then the content producers will /still/ create their content, and they will /still/ make it available to the public because that's the only way they can get paid. The fact that they have to compete against "free" (pirated content) just means they don't get as /much/ money as they otherwise wish, but it does not mean that people will stop producing or selling their creations. We saw as much when the music industry was finally dragged - kicking and screaming - into the world of DRM-free tunes and actually ended up making more money than before.
The content producers are making a power grab because they think they can get away with, not because it is actually necessary and if they refuted they will ultimately have no choice but to do without DRM. It's not like they'll just say "fuck it, no more movies; from now on we're building toasters!", after all. They'll just adjust their business plan a bit and life will go on, except our culture won't be encumbered by their digital shackles.
So, yeah, there ought to be a stand against DRM. It's only the hard-line dinosaurs who are insisting upon it, unable to imagine a world where they don't have explicit control of their content - a world rapidly fading into the past. Both consumer and producer will ultimately be better off without it.
McDonalds' free WiFi basically doesn't work in Australia. Just about every time I've tried it times out talking to the authorisation server and if you succeed in getting authorisation there is no bandwidth to speak of.
In my experience, it's not much different in the US. McDonalds has the worst free WiFi. You can reach the Internet, but it feels like it's sub-dialup speeds. Download speeds measured in bytes per second are common. I've tried to connect in four or five "restaurants" and it was always the same, regardless of how many customers were in the store.
Starbucks and other stores were never speedy, but at least they were usable.
Best free wifi I ever had was in a hospital cafeteria, actually. 20MBps and a solid connection. I had a friend recovering from surgery who was thrilled at how often I came visiting; I hadn't the heart to tell her it wasn't entirely due to my concern for her. ;-)
the U.S. Navy is one of the largest and one of the oldest operators of nuclear power plants (by hours critical) and has a spotless safety record
If you don't count there loss of the nuclear submarines USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, the radioactive contamination of the USS Guardfish, or both the USS Puffer and the USS Proteus discharging radioactive water into the oceans.
Not to mention I am sure there are a number of other incidents that haven't been declassified yet.
I don't know how well the US Navy ranks amongst other operators of nuclear power plants, but "spotless" is not an accurate description. They may do very well comparatively and the overall harm may be minimal, but they have made their share of mistakes.
Some goal is declared supremely important and then the law is distorted to fit that objective rather than to actually honestly examine if that objective is even legal to begin with.
Or if that goal is even necessary.
It's often an expansion of powers solely for the sake of expanding an agency's powers, with little necessary application.
It's the Windows 8 of Slashdot. Big panels, a flatter look, pastels, lots of wasted space. A lot of focus on form, none on the content. Big pictures, big fonts; lots of extra mouse movement to navigate. Change seemingly for the sake of change rather than to improve problem areas. Yeah, I see a lot of similarities.
Dice has always seemed more interested in catering to business users than us geeky tech types. Just as Microsoft alienated the nerds who supported it, this new design of Slashdot might finally drive away the geeks. I bet the management types will love it, though.
Anecdotally:
Having experienced both, I've concluded the following:
Time Warner is worse with the technology. Slower speeds, crappier equipment, tends to oversell bandwidth more. You'll hate them for their product.
Comcast sucks more on the business side. Billing, technical support, etc. You'll hate them for their people.
So long as your equipment and connection is good, Comcast is the way to go. Woe unto you should something go wrong, though. You'll call up Comcast and not only won't the problem be fixed, they'll probably inadvertently lose your payment for the last three months.
With Time Warner, you'll have a flakier connection but at least when you have to get a guy over to check the cabling it won't take three months and he'll actually fix the problem (at least until something else breaks).
Admittedly, these are just my personal experiences and a wider data set would doubtlessly reveal discrepancies in this generalization. But then, that's the same with most of the comments on Slashdot.
Those home and charter schools perform not because you're saving money on teachers, it's for two reasons. Fewer (or no) administrators putting ridiculous demands on the teachers that are there, and/or parents being intimately involved in their child's education. Children learn better when they see that learning is in important part of their parent's lives. Can't get much more important than Mom or Dad sitting with Junior every day doing the teaching.
Indeed. One of the most important factors in a child's education is the involvement of the parents or guardians. More so than the teachers, the curriculum or any fancy gadgets, it is the attention a parent places on the importance of education that encourages the student. This is not limited solely to Mom or Dad sitting with little Susie helping her with her fractions, but also the overall attitude that school is more than just a place to stick the kids for eight hours a day while the parents go to work.
And sending a kid to a charter school (or partaking in home schooling) is the ultimate example of this sort of attitude. The parents are openly investing in their child's future. These are the sort of parents who are more likely to stress the importance of an education to the child. Therefore, these are the students who are more receptive to receiving an education.
That is not to say that there are not many, many parents who place the same importance on schooling but still send their kids to a public school. But the types of parents who use schools as daycare for their kids are also not the sort who are going to bother with a charter school. Contrasting public schools to charter schools is therefore an inaccurate apple-to-orange comparison. It is -essentially - a comparison between a self-selected group of students who (thanks to parental involvement) want to do good in school versus students who may or may not care about their education. Like an early 20th century election poll that was unwittingly biased, the students sent to charter schools are a group who trend towards better schools for reasons other than the nature of the system itself. It says very little about the quality of the schools themselves. It is as likely most of those students would perform similarly in most public schools.
And - bringing it back to topic - charter schools are not immune to the gadget frenzy of public schools either. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience, they are more likely to throw electronics at the problem - thanks to a higher budget - with as little provable positive result to the teaching experience itself.
And lens flare. Oh so much lens flare.
Alternately (and more likely), people simply won't bother with these bundles.
In other words, expect to see something like this for all these "bundles" on your favorite torrent site:
HOT TORRENTZ* FOR MADONNA'S NEWEST SONG!!!!
Comment 1: Hey, this is just a demo and it asks for money after 1 minute. Anyone know where I can download the full song?
Comment 2: yeah, go to http://www.piratestuff.com/torrent1234.html**
File size: 12MB Total downloads: 1 Seeds: 37*** Leechers: 0
Meanwhile, the usual torrent of the MP3 or AVI files without the bundled DRM will have thousands of downloads. Why should people waste their time downloading these bundles and then looking for a crack when it's available elsewhere without the hassle?
* purposeful use of "z" to make it seem cool and illegal, just like a real pirated song!
** not a real link so don't even bother
*** seeders are all the copyright owners wondering why nobody is downloading
Not always with forced updates though.
Which IOS7, for all its faults, is most definitely not.
You do not have to update to the newest version and - as far as I know - you can't /automatically/ update anyway (the device will check and download the update, but you still have to manually start the installation). Your device will continue to work with the older version of iOS, and so will your apps (although some app updates may require later versions of iOS, they will not install if you have an incompatible operating system). The update may be required to get additional features but it is not required to keep using the device and is not forced upon you.
So this is more like having an PC with Windows XP and being alerted that Windows 7 is available. Depending on your hardware configuration, the new OS may require more resources than your PC can provide, but if you decide to install anyway, it's your own damn fault.
There are a lot of problems of how Apple manages the relationship between itself and its customers with which to take issue without any need to fabricate new ones.
You could access the camera from the lock screen on the iPhones for a while, is this new to the iPad?
Yes, it is new to the iPad.
The iPhones (and the forgotten stepchild of the line, the iTouch) had a camera button on the lock screen, but - on IOS6 and below - you did not have this feature on the Ipad.
On the other hand, you did get the stunningly useless "picture frame" button on the iPad lock screen. You know, for those times the battery wasn't draining fast enough on its own. That's disappeared with iOS7
The camera icon on the lock page is new to the iPad. I guess Apple didn't actually expect people to regularly use the iPad as a camera as it's a bit bulky for that purpose; still, I see folk doing it all the time so I suppose it's a needed addition.
IOS7 has some very nice features (I particularly like the new multitasking system and the control center). I just wish they'd let people create their own themes so I wouldn't have to use those horrible new icons. Aside from the terrible color scheme, legibility and recognition are shot to hell with this update...
What few people realize is that Brazil is a quite popular destination for our friends visiting from the arid climes of the red planet next door. What with the Amazon - world's largest river - , the Atlantic Ocean and the /rain/ forest, they are quite in love with that nation's water-rich climate. So many Martians visit Brazil and more than a few have learned the language. It's a known fact: Martians love Brazil.
But - as Earthlings have a problem with the NSA spying on them - so Martians take issue with NASA. Giant telescopes in the sky watching everything they do, immense electronic ears eavesdropping on the universe, and robotic drones pushing their telescoping probes into unwanted places; there is increasing upset with NASA's activities amongst non-terrestrials. Oh sure, NASA says it is "for the science" but it's a government agency (worse, an /American/ government agency; the US's reputation has spread even to the stars); when have they ever told the whole truth about their motives?
This isn't, of course, the first time that Martian hackers have expressed their displeasure; one need only remember the Denial of Service attack on the Beagle 2 lander (although this was of course never admitted by NASA officials, preferring to blame the loss on "technical failures"). And one need only visit the Chryse Planitia to see all the graffiti sprayed on the Viking 1 lander espousing their dissatisfaction with NASA policies*.
So this was no "confused Brazilian" who targeted the wrong website; this was a calculated statement made by an extra-terrestrial warning that the tempers are flaring regarding the recent actions of the American space agency. It was not the first such warning and surely will not be the last. The only unusual part of this story is that the "hacktivist" in question performed his vandalism while on his vacation. And that he had three tentacles, was green and had antennae.
Don't let the mainstream media blind you to the truth! Reign in NASA before it leads us to interplanetary conflict!
* yeah? Prove me wrong! ;-)
And I would not be surprised if those "first day" sales also included all the pre-orders that people have been laying out for months ahead of time in anticipation.
It's impressive numbers to be sure, and certain to impress the beancounters, but don't read more into it than that. Just going by the dollar signs isn't enough to gauge the overall impact or popularity of a blockbuster game versus a blockbuster movie, for instance.
Still, well-deserved and kudos to Rockstar. While I haven't liked everything about the previous GTA games, overall I found them to be quite enjoyable products and I have little doubt that GTA5 will as much fun. And as soon as it comes out on PC, I'll gladly buy this iteration of the franchise too.
There's is a part of me that wants the FCC to treat Obama's petition the way he responds to all those citizen petitions on WhiteHouse.gov... which is to say, the FCC ignores him completely or else responds with a watered down statement that says nothing.
Except I sort of like the idea of the FCC enforcing an unlocked-phone/BYOD policy for the carriers...
Hmmm, petty and pointless dreams of third-party revenge vs. naive hopes of an unlikely outcome brought to pass. Choices, choices!
Hi, where can I download more RAM?
You may wish to contact the developers of this software and ask if they will make it available as a digital download.