Datasets:

jkruk

/

tech-data

like 0

But it's actually kind of hard if you don't use shitty locks. There's about a dozen different anti-picking techniques in use, you just have pay more than $20 for a deadbolt at Home Depot. Side pins/bars, obstructed keyways, serrated or shaped driver pins, ball bearings, dimple locks... Trap pins and top gapping can prevent bumping. Just like information security, you have to be mindful of the level security of your locks, not just the fact that you have locks.

Actually raking a lock is very quite and bumping can be as long as you use a pad so you don't bash the shoulder of the key directly onto the metal of the lock. Also if I were going to rob a house I wouldn't bother picking the lock in most cases anyhow. A towel and a quick hammer tap will quickly bust a small door window with very little noise.

Perhaps these links are more helpful. Matt Blaze, a computer science professor and security expert, talks [here]( and [here]( about locksmiths writing to his school to get him fired because he wrote papers analyzing lock security. Links to his papers: [Master-Keyed Lock Vulnerability]( Matt Blaze, AT+T Research Safecracking for the computer scientist . Matt Blaze, Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Excerpts from one of his pages linked above on the reactions of locksmiths. > Some locksmiths were outraged that I would publish a paper "revealing" security vulnerabilities in what they believed to be a closed field. See for details, but to make a long story short, some locksmiths do not approve of disclosing vulnerabilities in locks to the "general public," on the grounds that open discussion aids the bad guys more than it helps the good guys. (I don't agree -- and the scientific method's requirement for open scrutiny and debate does not provide an exemption when the subject involves security -- but that's another story for another time.) > Perhaps predictably, there has been a similar reaction to my recent draft on safe locks. Shortly after Slashdot linked to the paper, one or more locksmithing trade groups discovered it as well. The response of some locksmiths to the draft has been at least as negative as it was to my master keying paper. I've received quite a bit of uncomplimentary email from locksmiths, and I'm told that locksmithing message boards have recently been abuzz with messages about what a scoundrel I must be to again have written such an "unethical" and "irresponsible" paper. > Ironically, the theme of my safecracking survey is that while safes aren't perfect, they largely meet their requirements[....] I certainly don't think it would have been in any way "unethical" to have published an analysis that reached a different conclusion, but my paper as written could hardly be considered an attack against the safe industry or its products. > As with the reaction to my master keying paper, many of the complaints I've received are self-contradictory and emotionally charged, often invoking "homeland security" in unspecified but ominous ways. I've developed a thick skin against this sort of thing, and I try not to take it personally (although it's a bit disturbing to have so many people so angry with me over my work). It's rather like being accused of witchcraft; many of the complainers don't seem to be seeking a reasoned debate but are instead venting a broader range of unspoken frustrations that go well beyond either me or my papers. There is simply no effective way to debate on these terms, especially against an angry mob. > In any case, some locksmiths have apparently been trying to organize a letter writing campaign aimed at various officials at my university (U. Penn), and I'm told that my department chair, my dean, the provost, and the head of campus security have each received (a handful of) letters complaining about me. Of course, Penn's support for the basic principles of academic freedom would protect me even if these officials agreed that my paper was somehow inappropriate (this, after all, is exactly what the tenure system was designed for). But some of the letter writers seem to have unwittingly stumbled upon a weapon that could potentially be very effective (in other contexts) at silencing Internet-based debate. They have accused me of copyright infringement.

While I, like many others, scoff at the general quality of this article, I have something more to add. About 2 years ago, while in my 7th (don't judge me) year of college, I was bored with the huge amount of free time that I had, and picked up lockpicking as a hobby. I purchased a nice lockpicking kit at a massive 'blemish' discount from an online store, and soon went to work. Within a couple hours of recieving it, I was proficient at lockpicking every lock in my apartment, including the two deadbolts on the front door. Soon, I was carrying around my lockpick kit so that I could pick the locks on my friends' houses when I came over to visit (with permission, of course.) With the same kit that I got for ~$30.00, I have learned to pick every lock, within reason, that I've come across. I remember picking locks in Morrowwind/Skyrim, and it blows my mind how some locks are actually easier to pick in real life than they were in those games. Seriously. It's fun, but when you're learning, working the tools around in the locks is super noisy and conspicuous as hell. However, if you learn a bit of finesse and patience, you'll soon have a pretty damn good grasp on the entire concept and be able to do it all yourself.

To everyone who complains about iOS being a "closed system": Do you not remember what came before this? Motorola flip phones which require device-specific software and cable kits to move files onto, Samsung phones that you had to convert videos into 176x144 3GP video to play off the MicroSD, LG phones that require $3.99 payments for new 15 second ringtones, or $9.99 for a horrible Java app on a non-competitive market. Don't forget Windows Mobile 5.0 (nuff said). I mean really, jailbreaking or rooting your iOS and Android phones these days is NOTHING compared to what we had to deal with a decade ago. I couldn't even get color Game Boy games to emulate back then because Samsung set a Java app size limit (and you needed to custom make a .jad and .jar for every new Game Boy game).

Well the (hidden) benefit of #2 is if they push logic off onto the server, then the thing you download isn't really a full game. it's just a shell, and the logic of the game is on a server. Once it's on a server they have way more control over when you can access it. the

I'm confused.

Neuroscientist here. Let's talk about what is and is not true here. First, this article is bad a much better article (with links to criticism and discussions of feasibility is [here]( The previous article on this topic, [found here]( is the best if you really want to understand. Let me start by saying, I don't much like Markram, I think he is acting in a fundamentally non-scientific way and his refusal to contribute to the databases he is using in his project is annoying. His stuff at SfN was showy and set up in a way to be flashy more than readable. He's playing celebrity science and that often ends poorly. But I'll try to give him the benefit of the doubt here. The Problem Neuroscience has a number of discoveries about kinases, channels, organizational principles, spiking properties, anatomical builds of cells, anatomical lay out of the brain, but these insights are disconnected. The literature is essentially the 'elephant problem' but with 30000 blind men instead of seven. The theory is that it's impossible to draw a fundamental theory out of such disorganized and disparate data. Previous attempts to draw this insight out (like artificial neural networks) usually came from one direction and ignored swaths of actual neuronal properties. Due to this, they usually produced useful techniques and insights but they failed to model anything but the most gross properties of neurons. Other labs have developed software [Neuron]( for making 'empirically-based simulations of neurons and networks of neurons'. Basically it lets you simulate neurons without oversimplifying it. There have been several paper published with this in the Dentate gyrus and other regions and they have been OK but not amazing. The Solution So what Markram wants to do (at least as far as I understand) is to scale this software a lot. He wants to include A LOT more data and even invent a new way of codifying data into data banks so that new data can be rapidly added to databanks. (of course he has yet to post his simulations in an accessible area, a fact several of my friends who do models in neuron have bemoaned) He has many labs that are all doing mass hunts of properties of cells to try to help flesh this database out. (I personally don't think this is a bad idea, one of science's big problems is that findings are hard to incorporate a data bank would be nice, BUT it will run into the 'data quality' problem that bioinformatics runs into). So using these massive databanks he will simulate a little bit of the cortex (called a microcolumn). The cool thing about the cortex is that it does freaking everything with very similar machinery. Vision, hearing, speaking, predicting, object segmentation, representation etc are all done on the same type of architecture. As far as we know (and we really don't) the microcolumn (a collection of 100 or so neurons organized across all six cortical layers) is the smallest unit of information processing in the cortex. The theory then becomes, 'simulate one microcolumn, make it work exactly like it works in nature then just multiply this by a million and you have a rat, multiply it by a few billion and you have a human'. **[Why this won't work.]( I (and many others) don't think this will work for a few reasons. First, statistical models of neurological processes fail 99 out of 100 times. Statistical modelling of language failed, statistical modelling of categorization failed, statistical modelling of neuronal firing failed. The reason is that the brain is an organized structure. The connections are not probabilistic, they have 20+ years of development in the body resting on top of a couple hundred million years of evolutionary development. The organization may look random, but it's not. So modelling a handful of neurons and their connection then hitting copy paste a billion times won't produce something meaningful, it will be lucky to produce anything useful. Second, he will run face first into the same problem every brain simulation runs into, 'the synapse problem'. It turns out that the brain has a bunch of cells connected by these little things called synapses. We can easily simulate a bunch of cells, simulating 10k that number synapses with largely unknown connections and properties is very hard. Many have tried, all have failed. There are labs working on simulating individual synapses just to parse out how the hell they work. To imagine you can just say 'well the rest of the model works, we can ignore the fundamental information storing structure in the brain and go on with out lives' is short-sighted. Third, big Science sold to the media is often plagued with problems. There have been some scathing reviews written about the California institute for Regenerative medicine written lately explaining why selling science to the public is bad. I'd advise anyone curious to read [those]( Basically it tends to generate massive conflicts of interest where people and buddies get funded over good science.

if the computer were to become sentient, would it be murder to turn it off? More like suspended animation. Murder at present implicitly means an irreversible situation. Temporary loss of consciousness happens every time you fall asleep. You could even look at it as a form of time travel -- a consciousness that doesn't exist at a given time and place, and then pops into being, some time later, without any awareness of the interval. Whether this is ethical or not generally depends on how you feel about what you missed. Some notable figures of the past have written that they would have gladly given their lives to travel e.g. 500 years into the future and witness its marvels, even if only briefly. It gets extremely tricky and complicated for our own intuitions to have this notion of such easy transferability of consciousness. For example, you can elect to be cryogenically preserved after death, awaiting possible future advances that could revive you (and cure whatever ailment killed you, as many cryogenics customers are younger people with incurable medical conditions). Most people view this as dubious since we currently have no way to even address the damage from the freezing process itself, let alone reversing death or curing the incurable illness. However, what if it were as easy as turning a computer off and then on again later? What if you could snap your fingers and appear at some future time when everything was better for society? Or hibernate through the winter and always have it be spring and summer? Or await the arrival of life-extension technology, rather than die from old age? And so much of our view of ethics is predicated on how difficult it is to change our minds. But imagine that you could be programmed while you slept so that when you woke up, you would LIKE whatever world you were going to wake up to? Instead of missing all your loved ones that were long since dead, you would be programmed to be close to your new surrogate family (possibly even your own descendants) in the future. Or, since we're talking advanced technology, instead of having your brain rewired, you could have everything simulated in virtual reality, presenting your brain with whatever its current preferences happen to be.

Voting for someone who is going to win is just as much a waste as a vote for someone who can't win. Worse, I would say, as it is much more valuable to be a single voice in a small group than a single voice in a HUGE group. Even if you weren't sure whether Obama would win (I suspect you were the only one) then at least you can't be so egotistical to think that your one vote was going to be the deciding factor in the election and, had you not voted for him, he would have lost. Your single vote is most valuable as a statistic, not as a deciding factor in the election. If, during each election, the little guys get a few more votes, then it won't be long before people see them as a real option.

This is the crap claim made by IP holders. Before the DMCA, what InternetFree is describing was the law. I buy a cassette tape, CD, VHS, and I could make as many copies as I wanted and give (not sell) them to all my friends. The RIAA and MPAA couldn't do jack crap. This constituted Fair Use. People still bought overpriced CDs and movies. Then Napster came along. Suddenly I could share the same material with everyone , not just friends. Thousands of people. The RIAA lost their minds , but this was nothing new. Everything they said about Napster was the exact same thing they said about digital copying when it replaced analog copying and overcame second-generation copying issue. "Oh no, people will just copy off the radio. No one will buy our overpriced garbage! Boo hoo! Stop digital copying! Set this store on fire and collect insurance because we're out of business!" Surveys conducted by people not associated with the RIAA showed that people who downloaded "illegal" music (Napster wasn't illegal until a judge ruled that this was something new and unanticipated by Fair Use laws in place) actually increased their physical "legal" purchasing. Sales drops reported by the RIAA were not attributed to Napster, but the ridiculously high cost of CDs (around $19 for a new release), the relatively low quality of CDs, and the convenience of being able to download only the songs you wanted, immediately, and slap songs right into an MP3 player. As soon as things like iTunes and Amazon Music store rolled around, many people switched from things like Limewire and Kazaa. Piracy is not, and has never been, about "I want free stuff" for the vast majority of people who "pirate." It has always been about price, availability, and convenience of purchase and use. The MPAA and RIAA simply refuse to believe that lost revenue is a result of terrible, antiquated, analog business models and blame piracy because it's easier, they're in power, and they can get settlements of hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing absolutely nothing. As a side note, the people actually generating the content (musicians, artists, authors, etc) are not directly affected by piracy. Most musicians do not make money off of CD sales. They make their money off of concerts and merchandise.

I think you already know that statement is racist so I wont bother pointing it out. ;-P on a side note, you seem to know very little about the structure of law and power in the U.S., you see the president has little to do with anything.

Sooo... is no one else sick of the fact that "the wheel" is still our primary form of transportation even after... what... 5000 or so years of human history?? Seriously, cars are so fucking lame, so I don't give a shit about all this Tesla crap either. It's honestly a disgrace to name your car company after Nikola Tesla too, as far as I'm concerned. The man wanted to revolutionize the world, but the car company just wants to sell you an electric carriage.

Yah I get the whole electric car movement and all I just don't get how popular this 1 review has gotten and how butthurt people have gotten over it. This is just one guy who wrote one bad/false review for a car. Is this one review going to ruin Tesla and the whole electric vehicle movement? Fuck no it isn't! People don't need to go out and replicate the route as Tesla has already proven from the telemetry data that this guy was lying. It's done, case solved. Now get back to jumping on some other bandwagon that actually deserves this kind of attention. If i said that the Nissan GT-R (the new one) is a flaming piece of shit pile and is the worst car ever made, would that make you change your mind about buying one (assuming you can afford it, just like the Tesla)? No it's not is it?

The only relevant thing that these Tesla owners could do would be to park their cars overnight in 10 degree Fahrenheit weather and see if the battery loses 75% of its charge. That is the only relevant issue here. That is what put Broder's Model S on a flatbed. And it had nothing to do with when he charged, how much he charged or whether he lied about his driving speed. All those details refer to a completely separate issue in his article. I've said this once and I'll say it again... This debate on Reddit makes me wonder how many people have actually read Broder's article fully and thoroughly. I'm a huge Tesla fan but Tesla's [own graph]( clearly shows the car losing power while it sat overnight in the cold. Following that, both of Tesla's attempts to regain the lost charge failed. Tesla has yet to address this.

Who the fuck can afford a $52,400 car that goes 160 miles on a charge and must have its $20,000 batteries replaced at 100,000 miles? Plus, the base model cannot use SuperChargers. That's twice the median annual income. Top price for a SuperCharger-capable Tesla S: $84,700 base $3,750 (tech package) $950 (sound) $1,500 (rear-facing seats) $250 (parcel shelf ... a shelf ... for $250) $950 (bug damage protection ... wait, this car can be damaged by bugs?) $1,500 (twin chargers) $1,200 (high-power wall connector) $94,800 + sales tax = $100,000 So far, you haven't bought insurance, undercoating or paid destination charges, fabric protection, or even gotten floor mats. No TV for the kids, either. Map updates after 7 years cost extra.

Sorry to be a realist here, but while I really love EVs and hope they catch on, them becoming the mainstream norm is still many years off. I hope businesses start catering to them, and I hope there is a charging station in every gas station... but again, still a ways off. In he meantime the truths - all the truths - should be known so everyone can make an informed decision. This isn't just a purchasing decision, it's an understanding about current limitations of the technology. If these limitations aren't made clear you'll see more articles like the NYT's showing people falling into unexpected caveats of the technology, and that WILL hurt it in the eyes of the general public.

I don't think anyone in this thread is really against EVs. In fact personally I think the Model S is really awesome. But they're accusing Broder not of incompetence, but malfeasance which is really unacceptable, since it appears far more likely that he just wasn't quite instilled with the nuances of Electric Cars. He's a journalist not a physicist or engineer. He might know that batteries lose charge in the cold, but his first instinct might not have been, "lets charge it all the way up and wait an extra fifteen minutes, I've got plenty of range to make this drive!" Could he have done better, certainly. Is this still an issue for electric vehicles, absolutely, because now if you fuck up driving and get low in America you can go anywhere and fill up, if you're EV runs out of power you could be up a creek without a paddle.

I think all the cold-complainers aren't getting this idea. Guess what, it's a different technology to move a car. "Whoa! You mean you're going to have a different set of primary maintenance and care services?" How is this not clear?

Major kudos to mabye for doing an awesome job of explaining, but I wanted to add something else here since I've spent a bunch of time lately dunking circuits into liquid helium. As was pointed out, you never actually get that thousand times speedup. For one, the circuit itself will heat up, thereby keeping it from operating at this ideal low temperature. You also have defects and other things that are not taken into account in the models that produce the sort of huge speedup you mention (though I've never heard 1,000 times) that simply will make this not happen. More importantly, the actual carriers will often go through 'freeze-out', where they bind to the donor atoms that were added to the semiconductor (these are added to add in electrons or holes to create conduction - so basically that process gets undone) due to the lower energy state and therefor no longer contribute to conduction (this can lead to some circuits not working at all, hysteresis effects in transistor performance, overshoot, etc.). Put more simply (maybe), the Fermi level of the semiconductors increases - that is, more voltage is required to make things like transistors work. In fact, for certain types of chip layouts that count on using the doped semiconductor itself for local routing, they may fail to work at all since there are no nearby gates to maintain conductance.

and do nothing with our bodies to recoup any of that loss over the process. Which is what we do anyway. No, we don't "do nothing", we stay alive. Now, one could make the case for strapping overweight people to generator-equipped exercise bikes... but if we were to go that far, we'd be way better off mandating a maximum calorie intake for them instead. >

Or we can... Mine petroleum, use it to make fertilizer, grow crops with said fertilizer, feed said crops to cattle (for example), eat said cattle and crops to power our energy-hungry brains and bodies, and do nothing with our bodies to recoup any of that loss over the process. Which is what we do anyway. Arguing that we'd be wasting the majority of those sources of energy, while we're already wasting all of those sources in the first place, is not a valid argument against implementing change. While this may not be a the most revolutionary and efficient idea, shooting down an idea because it's not a catch all silver bullet for all of the energy issues in the human life supply chain helps no one.

Almost no energy is absorbed by the ground on a typical surface (asphalt, concrete). It is very reasonable to model it as ideal isotropic elastic solid. Additionally, remember that the energy harvester must be mounted on the same surface! Any viscous losses in the previous system (if we want to model it more accurately) are also present in the new, energy harvesting system.

I have my car pull a trailer, on which I've mounted a wind turbine. The power output from that turbine is then used in the electrolysis of my water tank, from which the resulting hydrogen gas is extracted. I then have a small hydrogen-combustion engine powering a backseat generator, whose nice side effect is its function as a cabin-air humidifier. The generator is hooked up to my alternator, which basically runs in reverse to keep my engine spinning. Free energy is the way of the future, friend.

It is entirely an either-or. Most of the United States is empty space and can thus be filled with solar panels by whoever can afford them. Just because I can't find a particular sidewalk based system doesn't mean that this is better. When you compare solar power and nuclear power, you don't say 'Oh but look I can place solar in my back yard but I can't put a nuclear reactor in my back yard so you can't compare them.' Power generation is power generation, however it happens. There is absolutely no justification for installing this anywhere, except for as a gimmick. From an environmental perspective, it's much less efficient than simply burning Big Macs. From a public health perspective, the average person is burning energy at a rate of 300W just walking. The extra 4W they're using to push the tiles down is totally insignificant. Next, the motions don't translate into the body unknowingly using more energy; they translate into an awkward gait. It's like walking on sand, so it's less nice to walk on. The only real argument would be if these things would pay for themselves, and they wouldn't. At the moment, they cost about $200 per tile. At that rate, if someone was permanently stepping on one once a second, you'd be paid back after an optimistic 200x1000/4 / 0.2 = 1000x1000/4 = 250000 hours = 29 years. Assuming (again optimistically) a 2 year time mean time before failure, you're looking at needing a price of $14 including installation costs; and that's if they're being used 24/7. Considering tiles cost about $40 per square metre to install , that aint happening any time soon.

So little EXTRA energy is needed, its not worth counting. Of course it's worth counting... that's the whole fucking point. You either make up those calories with food, or you lose weight. In either case, you're converting food into electricity... with many intermediate steps in the process, each being inefficient to some degree. You say you wouldn't notice the missing calories... which is true, but you also wouldn't notice the generated electricity. 2 Calories are equivalent to 8.4 kilojoules. So, your 2 Calories result in less than 8.4 kilojoules of electricity as nothing is perfectly efficient. Now, if we add in the energy expenditure necessary to get 2 Calories into your system, the whole house of cards falls apart. As I wrote earlier: "It would be much more efficient to not expend energy in the making of food in the first place, and just use those resources to generate the electricity directly." >because I make 100's of thousands of pennies a year, I could care less about that 1 penny and won't even notice when its gone. but when you have thousands of people donating pennies continuously all year long, every day, it adds up. suddenly AIDS is gone and my streetlight is on. OK, so what's the cost of "AIDS is gone and my streetlight is on"? It's not 1 penny, it's the aggregate sum. Just because you didn't notice it, doesn't make it free. Same deal with the piezoelectric pads. In fact your entire comment can just as easily be used to make my point as opposed to yours. Your argument boils down to two scenarios: I have a bucket of petroleum and I need some electricity. I could either throw that into a boiler and run a steam turbine and generate electricity. OR, with the magic of this glorious technology, I could use some of that petroleum to make fertilizer, use the fertilizer to grow crops with the help of some petroleum-driven farm equipment, use some other part of that petroleum to fuel trucks to move some crops to warehouses and other crops to feed lots, use more of that petroleum to move the food to stores, use more of that petroleum to refrigerate the food and light the store, use more of that petroleum to drive to the store and shop, use more of that petroleum to cook the food, then finally take a walk and generate some bullshit amount of electricity. In other words, this is quite possibly the most wasteful and environmentally unfriendly way of producing electricity.

I'm glad you don't have any data you're worried about the NSA seeing, but do you believe there is no one who has embarrasing or incriminating information that they want to keep from the NSA? No person trying to influence our social or political landscape who could possibly be blackmailed or imprisoned? Blackmailed, as in have information about them released to the general public? Sure, but if anyone has done something that would actually shock modern sensibilities, I don't want them to influence our social and political landscape in the first place. It's not like infidelity or sexual orientation will shock anyone. And since the NSA doesn't have any legal right to release this information in an above-board manner, what's to say the government needs it in the first place? Why not leak lies to discredit you? Imprisoned? No. Anything gathered by PRISM is inadmissable unless warranted through due process. Yes, there are black site secret prisons, but they don't need your Incognito Mode history to pull a sack over your head and disappear you if they're so inclined. > The FBI gathered evidence on MLK, Jr., in order to try and besmirch and blackmail him. And they did it without PRISM. Targeting specific high profile individuals is not at all what PRISM is about. It's about finding low profile individuals who are about to commit wanton destruction. > So, while it's great the NSA doesn't care about you or your data, that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who the government does care about, who are influential, who are threatening to the current hegemony, and who have embarrassing or incriminating information on their phone or Internet records. I like the current hegemony (for the most part). The current hegemony is permissive and prosperous. We have freedom of speech, assembly, and of the press, unlike any competing civilization past or present. Pax Americana is the best thing to ever happen to humanity (I say this is as a non-American, and a former Soviet "citizen"). The two big martyrs of your ilk, Snowden and Assange, are being sought because they released classified information they had no right to release, not because they're dissidents who dare speak against the status quo. Assange in particular has blood on his rapey hands as a result of his public glory-seeking. I'm a believer in technocracy. Not only do I not mind that PRISM exists, I have been convinced for decades that such things have existed, and I am happy that they do. Asymmetric warfare is a real thing, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure are a real thing, and the only way to combat it in the modern world is to use computers for what they're good at - finding patterns in massive mountains of data. There ARE things that the US government is doing that are incredibly dangerous and that should be stopped, but storing your unencrypted email in a server farm is not one of them. Indefinite detention of people arbitrarily declared "enemy combatants". Military strikes carried out by the CIA and not Air Force personnel. The supermajority bullshit that completely sabotages the function of the legislature. The security theater of the TSA. Pretending climate change isn't real because of lobby dollars. These things are a cancer on our civilization and need to be stopped. PRISM and the NSA are a mild case of the sniffles.

I'm too lazy to watch that movie, will you please

This needs more upvotes as it is exactly the case. I worked at Netflix in Tech support for ~2 years. The line we were given from the higher ups is that we can only play the version that we are given. We cannot edit them in any way since Netflix licenses the movie out from distributors.

Yes people don't notice that 'this video is being stretched/modified/compressed to fit your screen directly. What does happen though is that people get an 'off' feeling about a movie. A large part of what makes a movie great is how things are presented. Look at the There Will be Blood example. Sure both pictures show the same two guys on either end doing the exact same thing, but, in the 'modified' version their bodies are cut vertically. This doesn't seem like a big deal because you can still see them. It's a bigger problem than what you would expect, though, because deep in your subconscious you're thinking: "this isn't right, this isn't what I should be seeing". Now you're saying "I don't care about people being cut off, it doesn't really matter to me", but, it does. Seeing a person cut off like that makes people uneasy, it's been proven. Sure their legs are cut off in either case, but, how often do you look at someone's legs when you look at them? The people are the subject and the fact than you can't see their whole body bugs your subconscious. So what? A scene makes you feel a bit uneasy. That doesn't ruin the whole movie, right? Yes and no. It doesn't completely ruin the movie, but, it changes how much you enjoy it and it changes what you feel about specific scenes. That feeling of unease will make you look at scenes differently, hiding a face of an adult while he comforts a kid can make you feel like he's a predator instead of a caring person. Sure, the plot of the movie is going to be the exact same, but, how you feel about the plot and the characters will feel different.

Back in the 17th century, you didn't go to art school, you went into training at a successful painter's workshop. What usually happened is that students copied their masters most famous work, just to exercise their painting skills. Some of the copies survived to today, and because they are originally from before the cuts, the missing parts are included.

I think it's a problem that he's just posting scans of the documents. Instead he should convert to plaintext and release. Most likely the content itself is legally open, at least for the american codes he has on there. But blatantly copying and posting PDFs that some contractor has hired people to prepare and print sorta is copyright infringement. This seems similar to USGS maps, which are collected using taxpayer dollars. The map data is open, but the printed maps are done by contract and cost a somewhat pretty penny.

One of my professors in school told the class once that selling the AISC Steel Manual was the main source of income for their development. This funded the creation of the subsequent editions. It is a standard that (almost) all civil engineers use. It takes years of work and hundreds of people working on it to make a new addition. Without the sales of the books the manuals may not even see a new addition without substantial government assistance. Using the US's infrastructure as an example, it is hard to believe that the government would fund it adequately. While it sucks that they cost so much, the options are limited and would (IMHO) lead to a degrade in research and development that will ultimately lead to inadequate codes and laws. The construction industry has innovation in concrete manufacturing, steel manufacturing and connection design (and others). All these innovations need to be tested by an independent organizations to come up with unbiased laws codes and regulations in their application. Without funding from sales of books, the testing would ultimately be halted and we would see more of a reactionary (after a lose of life) than precautionary (prevention of lose life) stance on evaluating new construction innovations. It is sad that the everyday homeowner can't renovate his own house on his own without spending a lot of money on these codes. It is not an argument that they (the codes) are required for the renovations only that they are needed to be purchased. One could also argue that the price of the codes prevents unqualified home owners from doing their own renovations ensuring that they are done right by licensed, insured and bonded contractors (not accounting for the loads of contractors that are out so scam homeowners). All and all it is the humble redditor's opinion that the sale of codes within the US is a necessary evil for the meantime with no easy solution. Until federal funding is guaranteed or donations are substantial enough to provide funding sales would remain a necessity.

Lurking for a year. Created an account just for this thread. I am an engineer in Oil & Gas. The laws (DOT CFR Title 49 or local ordinances) reference the codes (ASME B31.#, BPVC, AWS) which references standards (ASTM, API, EJMA, TEMA). A single ASTM standard may reference a dozen or more other ASTM standards. Most of these other standards will not apply to your job, but you will not know without reading them or prior experience. These standards also provide for circular reference that can sight back to another code or standard. It can be very confusing at times. I am fairly certain that home construction or improvement is similar, just a smaller scale. It appears that the original intent of the law was to maintain the public safety, providing a safe a quality product for the owner. These laws have since expanded and become so complex that unless an individual has significant experience in the industry already, they will likely violate a code or standard unintentionally.

Card counting is not cheating, let alone the many other AP techniques (some of which had their day in court and won), let alone the stupid promo mistakes that have sometimes been made, let alone the faulty game analysis that can lead to an exploitable game being run by the house.

Seriously guys you have it wrong. I have been to these factories to train Asian workers. In Asia the guys with degrees working in the semiconductor fabs are highly looked up to. They may only make US$10K/yr, but they are doing much better than others there. And as far as the interns being unpaid, how is that different than a US internship. Most of the interns i have worked with or heard of were unpaid and only getting experience or some college credit. Interns are always cheap labor. And I wouldn't think much of them being "forced" to work there, they are doing it for required credit to graduate. There are lots of US colleges that have degrees that require internships to graduate, and most of those don't find the internship for you. Edit: Also in Asia they work much harder than most people I have seen in the US. Yes, they are under much more pressure there but people still chose to work in those factories because they get paid more than other jobs.

The confusion comes from the article's mistranslation of "they aren't allowed to exit the program early or lose 6 credits" as "if they refuse to participate, they lose six course credits". The internship program is [publicly recognized and promoted by the school]( however the description is pretty vague. It mention assembly lines but doesn't say that you'll literally be working at one.

tripling of pay a far more likely scenario is that shifts would be made shorter and more workers would be hired to make up the shortfall. the result is increased internal competition, which is favorable for a 'get x done, be paid y amount' model where compensation is not tied to hours at all. the compensation ratios can be manipulated so that workers can be paid less than they are now and are continually on the edge of being fired due to not meeting a quota which is purposefully set to be just out of reach for most workers. and then the desperate workers will clamor for more hours, for more opportunity to earn, and will decry the decadent west for denying them the right to earn a decent living retirement.

Let's further note that the border search exception, which makes border searches different than those which occur in the interior, and generally allows authorities at the border much more leeway in rifling through whatever they think appropriate, has existed since an act of the first Congress of the United States in 1789. Act of July 31, 1789, ch.5 §§23-24, 1 Stat. 29, 43 (current version at 19 U.S.C. §§482, 1582) > "Sec. 23. And be it further enacted,Collector, or other officer, suspecting fraud, may open and examine packages. That it shall be lawful for the collector, or other officer of the customs, after entry made of any goods, wares or merchandise, on suspicion of fraud, to open and examine, in the presence of two or more reputable merchants, any package or packages thereof, and if upon such examination they shall be found to agree with the entries, the officer making such seizure shall cause the same to be re-packed, and delivered to the owner or claimant forthwith, and the expense of such examination shall be paid by the collector, and allowed in the settlement of his accounts; but if any of the packages so examined be found to differ in their contents from the entry, and it shall appear that such difference hath been made with intention to defraud the revenue, then all the goods, wares or merchandise contained in such package or packages, shall be forfeited: Provided always, That if the owner or consignee of such goods as shall not be accompanied with the original invoice, should choose to wait the receipt of the invoice, in such case, the collector shall take into his possession all such goods, wares and merchandise, and store the same, at the expense and risk of the owner or consignee, until the invoice shall arrive, or until they agree to have the same valued. > Sec. 24. And be it further enacted, Goods subject to duty, and concealed, how to be searched for, seized, and secured. That every collector, naval officer and surveyor, or other person specially appointed by either of them for that purpose, shall have full power and authority, to enter any ship or vessel, in which they shall have reason to suspect any goods, wares or merchandise subject to duty shall be concealed; and therein to search for, seize, and secure any such goods, wares or merchandise; and if they shall have cause to suspect a concealment thereof, in any particular dwelling-house, store, building, or other place, they or either of them shall, upon application on oath or affirmation to any justice of the peace, be entitled to a warrant to enter such house, store, or other place (in the day time only) and there to search for such goods, and if any shall be found, to seize and secure the same for trial; and all such goods, wares and merchandise, on which the duties shall not have been paid or secured, shall be forfeited." And the modern USC: > (a) Any of the officers or persons authorized to board or search vessels may stop, search, and examine, as well without as within their respective districts, any vehicle, beast, or person, on which or whom he or they shall suspect there is merchandise which is subject to duty, or shall have been introduced into the United States in any manner contrary to law, whether by the person in possession or charge, or by, in, or upon such vehicle or beast, or otherwise, and to search any trunk or envelope, wherever found, in which he may have a reasonable cause to suspect there is merchandise which was imported contrary to law; and if any such officer or other person so authorized shall find any merchandise on or about any such vehicle, beast, or person, or in any such trunk or envelope, which he shall have reasonable cause to believe is subject to duty, or to have been unlawfully introduced into the United States, whether by the person in possession or charge, or by, in, or upon such vehicle, beast, or otherwise, he shall seize and secure the same for trial. (b) Any officer or employee of the United States conducting a search of a person pursuant to subsection (a) of this section shall not be held liable for any civil damages as a result of such search if the officer or employee performed the search in good faith and used reasonable means while effectuating such search. > The Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe regulations for the search of persons and baggage and he is authorized to employ female inspectors for the examination and search of persons of their own sex; and all persons coming into the United States from foreign countries shall be liable to detention and search by authorized officers or agents of the Government under such regulations. Also, a SC decision from 40 years ago explaining that, yeah, [mail could be searched]( at the border because of the historical exception--[case brief]( for the

Windows already has the capability to use your RAM as a cache for the hard drive. It's called the SuperFetch service. The purpose of the SuperFetch service is to learn what programs you like to launch, and will cache them in RAM before you need them. As a test, mark the SuperFetch service for Manual startup, and reboot. You will notice in Resource Monitor that Windows uses (relatively) little RAM. Then start the SuperFetch service, and use Resource Monitor to watch: disk activity RAM usage Windows will begin to read files that you commonly use, and place them in a Standby list. A standby list is items in memory that also exist on the hard drive (either as a real file, or in the pagefile) and could be purged at any time. In my case, i can use SysInternal's RamMap to see that about 8 GB of worth of World of Warcraft .mpq data files are cached in RAM.

I fought this charge in New Jersey. I brought in my documents to show I wasn't on my cell phone talking, texting, or using data. The court said it didn't matter and found me guilty because the prosecutor stated "you could be looking at photos" and the law states you cannot touch the cell phone at all. I countered the argument by reading the statute that says, "you can activate or deactivate functions on the cell phone with your hand even using Bluetooth." Judge told me "Why don't you just shut the hell up?" Corrupt NJ wins again!

My issue is with irresponsible operation of vehicle with great and easy potential for bodily harm/death. No one is looking to 'regulate stupid out'. This is a matter of consequence. Some choose not to drive distracted due to a sense of intelligence/responsible action. Some due to a sense of obligation for rule following/consequence. These groups have little to fear from this regulation. Many (the vast majority) others don't have these senses due to simple ignorance (age/inexperience/general obliviousness), and as you know, ignorance which can be corrected; The easy way (being educated/informed -in this case via laws/rules) or the hard way (tickets/fines). As a result, there are measurably fewer repeat-offenders than not. It's an inconvenience and expense worth imposing as it DOES have a positive effect.. think about it. There is a last group, which have none of these senses (intelligence, responsibility, societal obligation, etc), and are just plain stupid.. THESE are the folks your statement applies to. Thankfully there numbers are in the gross minority, and no amount of education/regulation can change their number significantly. That doesn't mean we should be throwing babies out with the bathwater, now does it?

Common sense" can't be left up to the individual when it comes to driving. All you need, then, is one law instead of hundreds; reckless endangerment/dangerous use of a motor vehicle laws already exist. You can add subtypes and examples to that, but the final decision rests on the officer that sees you commit that crime. It's a catch-all, you see, so you waste less time banning specific thing X- you go after the root issue (in this case, people not paying attention) instead of the incidentals. Education is the second side to that- which law names currently perform adequately, but there must be a better way to do that. In this way, you can catch the person looking down at their phone and prosecute them for that bad decision, but you leave the person who took proper precautions against possible distraction (such as using suction mounts to hold the map-displaying device and using voice technologies to manipulate that device) alone. Education is a must- these precautions must not only be obvious but well-publicized. Seat belt laws should also fall under "proper precautions taken", but there might need to be a bit more teeth to them for various reasons; promotion of engineering a better harness might also be in order or providing those felt pads to people that want them (belts aren't always comfortable, and it would be a small expense to help fix that). There will always be the people that ignore the help given; they tend to also be ones to ignore that particular law and get themselves injured regardless of society's efforts. Can't save everybody, after all. >not to go 120 mph through school zones 120mph is too fast except on long, well-maintained stretches of road. People that do that in areas with many blind corners and intersections get ticketed for excess speed- for a "fine line", just post suggested limits (again, you won't get a ticket for driving like any normal person would)- but for the person who does this on a deserted, straight, bare stretch of road there should be no limit as it is simply not needed. Extra effort should be put into new construction of roads to prioritize those kinds of stretches. The German highway model is one to take as an example. Yet, if there are no children on or near the road, what does the limit accomplish? Therefore, a better law would be that as long as there are children actually present (for instance, in the hours where they will be outside or otherwise exposed to the road) a hard limit needs to be obeyed, yet regulations relaxed when they are not. Playgrounds are open spaces and tend to be fenced in, and children (and their errant toys in this case) are easily visible; there is still no excuse for rushing through that area. This actually exists in some areas, too, most notably on highways. So you don't get people ticketed at 11AM in these areas (a purely bureaucratic violation; assuming it's winter and lunch hour is 12:30)- at 3PM, on the other hand, constant patrols and speed-checks would not be inappropriate nor perhaps as unwelcome (as we treat the citizenry that passes through that area as thinking individuals rather than pushing useless counterproductive laws). It might not work everywhere, but it's in society's best interests to find areas where it will. It's exactly the same as before, except you're giving the people who are actually thinking about what the hell they're doing behind the wheel a free pass. Much like the guy in the article- there was absolutely no need (at least, as far as the article says) to drag him into court. Legislative masturbation aids nobody- not even the person who wants total control over his neighbor by his views of "social advancement"; if that person puts themselves in the position of "average citizen" or "most people" and what they themselves might do if there were no law (just "use proper judgement") in that situation. Unless, of course, they themselves are the type of person who would do 120mph in a school zone. It's a rather conservative, outdated attitude. Providing education and training to the general population and then legislating that intelligence imparted be used, on the other hand, aids everybody; as then all might see clearly and objectively as to what true social advancement is, its benefits to themselves and others, and have no excuse not to do it. That law, too, can be abolished as education (and thus social responsibility) tends towards maximum- but not before then.

Laws can also serve a communicative purpose. If the existing laws aren't effectively communicating a rule, new laws can be useful. This is an interesting point, but I would imagine a media campaign talking about giving tickets for reckless driving due to cell phone usage would accomplish the same result. I tried looking at the data on this, and it seems to follow the same trend as drunk driving laws in that perceived enforcement is the strongest predictor of success (meaning you don't have to actually increase enforcement rates. simply running media campaigns and occassional checkpoints is just as effective). However, unlike drunk driving laws, there is no significant reduction in occurence of accidents [1] [2]. California's Office of Traffic Safety issued a press release in 2012 claiming a 47% reduction in "hand-held cell phone driver deaths" [3]. The supporting study argues "using the percentage of fatalities and injuries adjusts for the fact that overall fatalities and injuries declined during this period," however I argue that relying solely percentages is a good way to manipulate the data for a press release. This study also notes, "Publicity surrounding the law may have drawn attention to hands-free use," which I argue is a much more effective policy than adding additional laws [4]. SafeTREC has been publishing survey results on cell phone usage in California for the past two years. In 2012, they noted a sharp increase in usage, followed by a decrease in 2013 to the baseline levels they established in 2011 [5][6]. They attribute this decrease to a "distracted driving awareness campaign" run by the California Highway Patrol during April 2013 [6]. In December, California issued a $150k grant to study the effectiveness of these laws. The study will run December 2013 to November 2014. So, we can look forward to those findings. As to the point of all this - I really just wanted to get a feel for what the research on distracted driving/cell phone laws actually says. I only spent about 20 minutes researching this topic, so it's far from a comprehensive analysis. I think the takeaway is that perceived enforcement and media campaigns focused on the risk of distracted driving are a much more effective policy than adding new laws. I suppose it is worth noting this was the premise I started with, based on my previous analysis of the research on drunk driving laws.

It also doesn't work. People still text and drive all the time around here. This state is full of some of the worst drivers I've ever seen. I lived in Los Angeles for 18 years and I have driven across the US about a half dozen times. People in LA may drive a little aggressive and there might be a heavy amount of traffic, but the amount of stupidity in the everyday Alabama driver far surpasses that in LA. If you don't wait at least a solid 2 Mississipi when your light turns green, you'll probably be T-boned by somebody running their red light and speeding (yes, kind of like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar). Nobody turns left when the green arrow turns to the green yield light. They just sit behind the line, and wait, and wait, and wait some more until it cycles back to the forever safe arrow. When merging onto a highway, you have about 20 yards to get in, or the lane runs out, and nobody lets you in. Ever.

Soooo by that rationale, there's no point in discouraging behavior which exacerbates a problem? 'People already get hit by cars so I shouldn't worry about playing in traffic'

You can't "shoot volts" into anything . What you can shoot into things is a current . Bad headline and bad article, because it doesn't mention current anywhere. The voltage alone tells me nothing about danger by itself. Current is gonna vary with the resistivity of materials it conducts thru, but surely they at least have a range? And to the layperson, even that would say little without some sort of a reference for a given current's effects on the human body. If I told you that a chest X-ray was going to expose you to a dose of 20 microsieverts of radiation, that number is probably meaningless to you without greater context. Could be a lot, could be a little. With the knowledge that a normal dose of background radiation is 10 microsieverts, for example, now you have a better understand of what that actually means . (Better yet just look at this chart

Try to think of it this way... When you were growing up, your parents probably didn't like the music you listened to. You likely thought their music tastes sucked too, "old people music". Now you may have kids of your own who listen to music that you think sucks ass. They probably think your music is now "old people music" or even "grandpa music". It's a never ending cycle of rinse and repeat as the old people resist the new stuff as long as they can and stick with what they know. Anybody that had kids from 1946-1965ish is a baby boomer. Assuming the average age of between 20 and 30 when they became parents, those people would now be anywhere from 50-70 years old, which is about the average age of everyone who is in any major seat of governmental power.

From what I understand though from the ethical standpoint is how the experiment was run. Now I'm not an expert in the field myself I mainly get this information from my roomates who are studying and have a bachelor's degree in psychology. There are very clear rules you have to follow for human experimentation. One of the most important rules is that you have to get consent to do psychological research on human subjects. After you get consent you have to brief your subject on the research or debrief them after as well as provide counseling/care for undue stress. There are even more controls for people under the age of 18 as well as other protected classes like criminals, the disabled, and so on. So basically, after you make this experiment you need to go to a review board to get the ethics of the experiment reviewed. With something like this it is unlikely the board would turn it down if the experiment is run properly and ethically, however there are several violations we can see with the testing process. That is where the ethical dilemma is coming from. From what I understand the main dilemmas are the lack of briefing given to the test subjects both before and after the test, lack of psychological care provided in case of undue stress, and also that the internal review board/researchers didn't seem to contest those dilemmas when dealing with something a clear cut as human experimentation.

On Android you can't enable "high accuracy (with wifi)" location services without explicitly agreeing to share your location and history with google. Don't want to enable it - good luck catching GPS signal (and even then google will try to store your history for "your" convenience).

I don't know why you're being downvoted, though I suppose it's too much to ask that /r/technology know anything about technology other than cell phones or comcast... the motor in an electric car is a little more like a transmission than an engine in an ICE. the battery is more like the engine and fuel tank rolled into one. There is probably only a narrow area of the operating range where an existing 2wd model S is motor-limited, low rpm where you are current limited. The acceleration advantage will almost entirely come from this very low speed area where you can spread the high current over the two motors, and the tractive load over the four tires. And that's assuming they have headroom in the power electronics, if they are still under the same amp limit then it would be totally reasonable to see that increase in acceleration just from 4wd traction.

Wat? Getting more laggy, how about less? 80s Turbo cars started the whole "Hur-Dur Tarbo Lag" crap, modern Turbo cars use Twin-Scroll or Variable Turbos that spool up almost off idle in some cases. Advances in Variable Cam phasing and profiling help with that as well in both Turbo and Non-Turbo. On the Horizon is the biggest change to the ICE that will keep it relevant, Camless engines. FCA already has a partial camless design (Mutli-Air engines turn what was a cam shaft in a hydraulic pump drive for one bank of valves, electronic valves regulate the flow) and Koenigsegg/Caringe are developing FreeValve which is completely camless and uses pneumatic actuators instead of Cam Lobes and Valve Springs, it allows the engine to a 100% variation in timing, lift, and duration. What that means is that the Engine can shift it's profile based on current needs and loads on the engine. It can go from a profile that gives massive low-end torque to high-rpm flow in an instant and everything in between. It can completely deactivate cylinders, with no parasitic loss like the current systems that just cut fuel and spark. On deccel it can use engine braking to compress and store air which it can use to act as temporary forced induction when needed. With the cam and timing chain/belt gone engines can get shorter smaller and lighter. And it isn't all pie-in-the-sky shit, Koenigsegg has a development mule with one fitted that runs and drives!

Not negating anything of it, I also like Tesla because of their visions and cars, but even though I just try to put things into perspective for a more objective point of view. The new features and the D are great, I like the way SpaceX is boosting private spce flights, but aside from its electrical engine/battery setupt, it is still a normal, upper class car. Paying 120k allows you to request some things, e.g. higher warranty etc. But I didnt want to compare companies and poimt out their advantages... I was more referring to the attitude regarding "features". Tesla's autonomous driving system is nice, but not recolutionary. Get a S-class and you'll find a similar system (or take a look at the Mercedes MP4 truck... Amazing what aids a truck driver gets). You may argue that it is not tlexactly the same as the Model S', but then visit car shows and get a look at some suppliers... Most of the self-driving features are much more advanced than the systems used in most mass-produced cars, but why shall you put it in a Golf when A) most of the things aren't allowed due to laws B) nearly no one in that segment is going to spend his money for it If they would sell the Model S for 30k, I would call it amazing, but they are still a company with a reasonable business plan, and I'm glad they are otherwise it would just be another tiny spot in the automobile's history... Somehow feeling bad about arguing with you as I didnt meant the more reasonable Tesla supporters (an exklusive car brand without supporters and discussions would be a boring one :D), I'm just always expecting something more here at /r/technology than the Standard Tesla circlejerk... But regarding your last paragraph: Would you call a Porsche Panamera, which has about the same price, "some corner-cutting garbage"?

It's not really policed, its more like a vote. After creation, electricity goes into a pool. It doesn't matter where it came from. And there is no filter to say only let renewables go to the house at 123 ABC street. However, if everyone in the community says "We want 50% of our power to come from renewables" then the power company will need to make the investment and provide 50% of their electricity from renewable energy. But chances are no one will check to make sure they are living up to that commitment. If 20% of people in your community check the box for "10% renewable" then the power company is down to only having to provide a very small percent of their overall electricity production from renewables.

Your 0 - 60 time isn't useful for figuring how well you can pass other cars on the highway...there you want to now your 60 - 80 time. Torque = accelerate faster. 0-60 time will indicate how much torque you have. If you get to 60 faster than the car have tons of torque. Passing highway what you want is torque. Meaning you need to accelerate faster than your current cruising speed. So you need lots of torque. Hence why 0-60 would give you a good indication if you have good torque. If you do then it can easily pass cars. 60-80 doesn't mean anything other than car speed limit. Most cars usually have 0-60 spec. Not 60-80. So if you want to extrapolate pass other cars you take the information that is widely available. 0-60. Judging from your comment you know nothing about the physic underlying 0 to 60 nor 60 to 80. You're looking at speed and time and ignoring torque.

You shouldn't factor the weight into the comparison. Obviously a lighter car can accelerate quicker than a similar, more heavier car. That's why you should make a car light as possible if you want it to accelerate faster.

So here's the REAL reason why: in the US, if you have a fraudulent charge, you call the bank and BY LAW they have to reverse it. The max liability is $50 (or $500 if a lot of time goes by). In other parts of the world the money is GONE. Maybe you can sue to recover some of it. Therefore there is better security, and all kinds of convenient things like a text message for every transaction.

Yeah, the contactless system we have here is bullshit. The first thing I do when I get a PayPass card is find and destroy the embedded chip, specifically because it's completely insecure. The big problem we have with chip-and-pin is re-education. You have to understand that if we enter a pin today, our transaction is treated as an ATM withdrawal, and we are responsible for a transaction fee of up to $3.50. Pretty much the only reason we would enter a pin is if we were trying to get cash back from the vendor to avoid an additional trip to an ATM. The vast majority of our purchases are conducted as "credit" transactions. "Credit", in this sense, is a misnomer in that the card could be tied to either a credit account or traditional checking account. Either way, we don't enter a pin for "credit" transactions. If the bill comes to $20, swiping our card and hitting "credit" requires no pin, and we'll be charged $20. Pressing "debit" and entering our pin, we'll be charged $21 to $23.50.

Does that mean you have two accounts (one a standard bank account, and the other a credit account) with the same bank, linked to the same card? No. The first bank cards were credit cards. They were applied to a credit account at the bank. I still remember these cards being run with carbon paper imprints that would be sent to payment processors after the fact. This is why most cards have raised numbers - so they will make an impression in the carbon paper. Vendors mailed the carbon paper stubs in and paid the processors for their services. Because these cards pre-dated electronic verification, there was no need for a pin. This system eventually evolved from carbon paper to magstrip with a large overlap where both systems were in use simultaneously. The second type of bank card was the ATM card, which allowed you to gain access to your own funds in your checking account. These always "phoned home" to your bank for electronic verification, and always used a PIN to protect your personal funds. You paid for the convenience of accessing your money away from your own bank through a small fee added to your withdrawal. Eventually, it become possible to use ATM cards at retailer POS terminals, but you were still responsible for the ATM fee. Here's where it gets confusing: Some retailers adopted credit POS terminals only; some retailers adopted ATM POS terminals only. "Debit" cards were originally a hybrid card that could be used on either credit systems or ATM systems. They were called debit because they were backed by a checking account as opposed to a credit account. Most retailers were eventually pressured to accept both systems. When they can accept both methods, and your card is capable of both methods, someone has to make a choice as to which one to use, and we started getting asked "Credit or Debit?" with "debit" meaning "ATM". One final bit of confusion to throw in there: you can now conduct ATM/debit transactions with credit cards. Withdrawing money against your credit account is called a "cash advance" and requires a pin. To discourage its use, cash advances are charged higher interest rates than credit purchases.

Saturation is part of the problem. I have so much data scattered across so many disks and servers, that often I cant see "the wood for the trees". The real danger is that a blip in software (or human accident) on some server will wipe out all your copies of something. Especially if you are replicating in real-time -- it doesn't matter how redundant you are, if you accidentally delete something, the deletion willbe dutifully replicated to your replicated store. Of course, journaling software give us effectively "snapshots", which may alleviate this problem. However, this software becomes yet another moving part with its own MTBF. And sometimes the more complex your machine, the less reliable it becomes.

Can someone explain how this is a "google phone"? They don't manufacture it, and they're not a carrier. They make the OS, which is on a dozen other non-"google" phones already. So what's up? edit:

It's the difference between #23238E or #000080 (Navy) and #4169E1, #436EEE, #3A5FCD, #27408B or #3333FF (Royal).

Who would have thought if people were given a reasonably priced easy to use alternative to torrents that they would pay for the service instead of pirating everything? The problem is the same people are running the studios now that were running them 30 years ago and they have no clue whatsoever how this stuff works. I just look on in stunned disbelief as they sue themselves out of existance and do stupid things like delay rentals for 30 days on new DVD's so as to force people onto TBP if they don't want to buy the movie.

I've designed the exact same door system a while back when I was going through a "design a better bike, car door, mouse trap, anything" brain storming sessions to keep my creativity. The problem is they take an age to open, and cost a lot, while not being as reliable as normal doors. And, aside from looking cool, the only thing they add is: Being able to open your car door when you are parked close to something. If you are that close to something, getting in and out might be uncomfortable with any type of door!

Plus, even a motorbike hitting one of your giraffe's legs will topple you.

11) It adds to the cost of production and hence to the cost of the car. Do we really need cars to be even more expensive? 12) If a window motor malfunctions and I can't open the window, it's a minor inconvenience. If a door motor malfunctions I either can't get in the car or I can't get out, and that's a MAJOR inconvenience. Plus an expensive trip to a repair shop.

Depends on which site the article is located for me. If I see engadget I automatically only read the

Yep.. my fault. I'm sleepy and I read so far down your post that I forgot the

I've had a couple "H1B1 revelations" over my 25 years in programming. My first encounter with a foreign programmer was an Indian gentleman who would sleep under his desk in our office. He did not have a home.. he worked 20 hours a day. And he made maybe $10/hour, in 1990. I had to compete against that. Later on in the 90's we went through a big H1B1 visa scare with Clinton raising the yearly quota. If I remember correctly, it was from 50K per year to 200K per year. This was at a time when there were a lot of programmers were out of work and we were hearing from the likes of Microsoft that they couldn't find enough programmers to fill jobs. It was annoying. I look around at my friends, unemployed, and hear that the US does not have enough programmers. We're not talking about all the hacks that arrived during the web boom where every putz who could code HTML was given a job as Senior Programmer. So, what I heard was missing subtext in that "we can't find enough programmers to fill jobs (that will work 80 hours a week for cheap)". Over the past 10 years, absolutely nothing has changed my outlook. I worked at a web firm in Dallas and the hiring policy was to only go with college interns or H1B1 holders. They kept 1 local programmer (me) and my job was to do all the real programming and to keep this crew in line. I went through 5 H1B1 workers and ended up keeping one. He had a personality quirk - he was smart. Of the other 4 that we kept, on paper they were good. They could interview. They were groomed for that. Faced with a real problem, things fell apart. They got their CS degree by sheer memorization. If a problem was not part of what they had previously learned, there was zero chance of them solving it. Lucky for me, we didn't have to fire them. They were hired away by big companies like Texas Instruments, Cisco, and Amazon. The one smart one I liked eventually ended up leaving to seek bigger fortunes but not as a programmer. He will eventually end up back in India running a company. My take from this experience? My boss liked the idea of getting somebody in to solve the immediate projects at hand. They can leave when it is finished. Who care? Maintaining a site is much less work than coding it, right? How were the interns? Great. They LOVED solving problems and working. Geek toys, fun, and pizza went a long way. But would my boss hire them? Nope. He did end up hiring one full time after I left. Side thoughts: There is one distinguishing characteristic I found. I originally thought it was "western" vs. "eastern", but not so. 99 out of 100 H1B1 workers will be here for the success. The tech field is taking off in their home country and their family is pushing them to be in on this. They are the ones that will bounce from company to company building up that job history and go back. They got "just enough" work done. That other 1% are the nerds and nerds are nerds everywhere. We are drawn to this way of life. We are in it for the thrill and we are going die with a keyboard in our hands. A company will look at the $$$ first. Software is ever changing so telling management that we need good programmers to make the software good now is an argument I have never been able to win. No matter how much I preach about code reuse, at some point, it will require a rewrite. None of the code I wrote 10 years ago is still usable today. The 5 year old code is barely usable. Frameworks evolve. New languages come out. Nobody except the nerds in the back have to deal with the code anyway and as long as the sites work, we're good, right? Too slow? Throw more hardware at it. Why spend 3x the cost up front when it will be rewritten anyway? Until the cost of hardware outweighs the extra dev cost up front, I come off as a babbling purist.

It is a personal opinion again, but the CTS-V is a nice car, but man is the Cadillac rear-end a bit ugly. It is boxy and the lines are so blunt and "rude" for the lack of a better word. A few cars that would be just a nice and probably a few tenths of a second slower in a practical setting are: All have 4 doors (practicality) , all around $64k US (price), and all are luxury (comfortable). All could be considered Rare depending on where you live, but I am still looking for sales numbers for each car. Just for Reference: CTS-V $64k (US) 556 hp 7:59 NbR time and 0-60 mph 3.9 seconds BMW M3 $59k (US) 414 hp 8:05 NbR time and 0–60 mph in 3.9 seconds Audi RS4/5 (Not Currently Sold but resuming in 2012) 2008 Model ~$67k 414 hp 8:09 NbR time and 0-60 mph 4.5 seconds (2012 will most likely be more based on all reports) Merc C63 AMG $64k 481 hp 8:13 NbR time and 0-60 mph 3.8 seconds If you are looking at speed around the Nurburgring, you might want to look at the GT-R as it still has a back seat for your tiny children (as you will have to have a tiny wife if you can afford it). ~85k and a 0-60 mph of 3.2 seconds. They say it goes around the NbR in 7:29 but other manufacturers are contested that time. The Nurburgring means nothing for everyday driving. Usually it means that the car has had ridiculous tires and a crazy professional driver on it. I want to see what the average driver could drive any of those cars around that track. Even then, I would probably buy the Merc or the BMW before the Audi or the CTS-V. The Audi just feels like a Jetta or Passat. The downfall to the Rarity argument with all of these cars is that only car guy is going to give a shit whether or not you drive a 3 series to a M3 or a C63 to a C class or a CTS compared to a CTS-V. The fact is the car isn't that rare to the common purpose. Yes the CTS-V has a pretty good suspension with the magnetic ride magic crap, but it still feels like a GM product. I don't want to drive my Dad's chevy truck when I feel like driving a race car. It doesn't make me feel special when I get in and turn on the engine, like the Merc does. I drive a '09 WRX and a 09' R6. I am consider buying a new car once I get it paid off and some of my student loans paid off. These are the cars I am looking at because as much fun and fast as my WRX and R6 are they are not comfortable. Get in a C63 and turn on the engine and then compare that experience to the CTS-V. The CTS-V feels like a glorified Corvette. The C63 feels like a beast that I am going to get ready to uncage. I feel special in the C63 not in the 'vette'.

I don't pretend to be qualified to tell you where design patents draw the line, but it's rather unfair to say that the only defining characteristic of a vehicle is that it has four wheels. That is quite obviously not a style characteristic, much like having a power button isn't really controversial. >When I hold a Galaxy 10.1 tablet in my hand, before I even turn it on, I know that it's a Galaxy tablet; the same is true of an iPad. Samsung's lawyers had a tough time distinguishing the products themselves: [ link ]( Let me restate that: Samsung's own lawyers had difficulty picking out which device, at 10 feet, was an iPad and which was a Galaxy Tab. > By the logic of the pre-iPod and post-iPod style differences I could argue that Ford owns the right to every single car design. Or that Bell Labs owns all of the cell phones from all of history. [ See for yourself ]( Is this not shameless and lazy imitation? This isn't a matter of a vehicle needing four wheels to be technically possible, it's a matter entirely of presentation. Your car analogy does not apply. Incidentally, Samsung is also trying to screw Apple by double-dipping

Strain relief is defined as a condition where the DC cable (the thin cord that attaches the MagSafe connector to the power adapter) separates from the end of the MagSafe connector or from the other end of the thin cord, at the power adapter. Well, actually: [Strain relief]( "Used in reference to telecommunications cables, often a PC's cables, that are designed to allow the cables to move without cracking and/or breaking away from the plug or connector that connects to an electrical outlet or a hardware device. The strain relief is typically a series of ridges at the point where the cabling meets the connector or plug that allows flexibility in the cable without putting stress on that vulnerable point in the cord."

i just want to say that i have a magsafe connector that broke off my macbook pro at 3 days after 1 year. I did not get the apple exteneded protection plan, and thus apple support told me I was SHIT OUT OF LUCK. I told them I'm broke and looking for a job, and 3 days outside of warrenty is horseshit, but whatever. I said thanks for the help and told the rep on the phone that his company has forever put a kink in my opinion, and potentially lost future purchases or recomendations, and decided to take it upon myself to hack up the power adaptor and repair it myself. I have had it break again 4 times, each time i have to solder it together and hope it holds for another 2 days. Seriously fuck apple for making a shitty quality magsafe connector and making the fucking magnetic strip too strong, too magnetic putting strain on where the wire connnects to the fucking right angle head.

This happened to my MagSafe for my mbp, luckily because I live in the UK we have a piece of legislation called the sale of goods act which allows consumers to return faulty equipment or request a replacement up to 6 years after purchase (5 in Scotland). Originally when my MagSafe popped I tried contacting apple phone support, who after seeing a picture of the burning that occurred on the unit claimed I had spilled liquid on it. Knowing I hadn't I made an appointment at a genius bar armed with the sale of goods act, result, new MagSafe adaptor in 5 mins and a humble apology for the way I was treated by the phone tech support.

I purchased a wired iMac keyboard to replace my 4 year old one that was failing. I found out the standard Fn keys on the new keyboard wouldn't work on my iMac and there wasn't a way to program them in (ie. sound volume). I called Apple to find out what was going on or if there was a workaround (couldn't find one online). The agent was almost short of blaming me for buying a keyboard that doesn't work with OS 10.5.8 and that I'm ALREADY 2 operating systems behind. She said she couldn't help me because a keyboard isn't considered to be covered by support. She got another person on the line to basically tell me the same thing. He was more helpful but gave me the same schtick. I didn't freak out, I didn't complain, and I didn't raise my voice, but I was hoping for a solution.

Fucking FAIL. 1) You don't need 'humanoid' robots to do tasks that a robot can do 2) Most factory related jobs a worker is doing is because a robot can't do that job. The intelligence required or the cost to manipulate the product is too high, and a human is cheaper. 3) These robots are more sophisticated, probably not designed for factory setting, and would be 3x more expensive than a properly design existing 'factory' robot that is designed to NOT waste money to make it look human for some stupid reason.

One-hundred percent correct; however, there are some additional details. First, I wouldn't call them "bilateral arbitration clauses," but that's just a personal thing. That phrasing conjures up a mutual agreement to resolve claims in a certain way, when in reality they're adhesion contracts that force the side without bargaining power into a waiver of rights otherwise available. I would call them "class-action waivers," at the very least -- show that you're waiving rights, not agreeing to a different form of dispute resolution. Now that I just got done saying how terrible these things are, there is some good in it. Concepcion was based mostly on the Federal Arbitration Act's guarantee that arbitration contracts will be binding and enforceable. However, the same Act includes a defense to the enforcement of the agreements for general contract defenses. Those defense include in part: lack of consideration (i.e., in somewhat inaccurately over-simplified terms: you didn't receive anything for what you gave up), lack of assent (you didn't agree to arbitrate), and good-ol' fraud. Where the unequal bargaining power stuff comes up is when you're dealing with adhesion contracts such as this, and the issue is whether or not the party with the power breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing to force a manifestly unfair deal. Here's where the good stuff comes in: another main reason that Concepcion came down the way it did was because of the pro-consumer nature of some of the provisions in the rules of abritration. Namely, if the consumer (there, AT&T customers who were advertised free phones, but then charged sales tax on the full value of the phones) were to go to arbitration and win after rejecting a settlement offer that was less than the final award, then they would get $10,000, and AT&T would take care of all of the other arbitration fees. This was supposed to offset the higher up-front costs to arbitration (you usually have to pay the arbitrators a fee up-front based on the size of the suit).

I'm not sure how this would have helped Kim Dotcom being physically apprehended, and the domain being taken over/plastered. Yeah, a system like this would allow them to redirect on different domains, but MegaUpload was a for-profit venture, and required a high-overhead storage system.

Just because the 2% of users are consuming 95% of the bandwidth doesn't mean it's constant. I am a top 5% Verizon user for using 10-15GB of data in an entire month. I do not 'abuse' my internet at all, meaning I don't torrent entire games or movies ever. Hell 1 digital game download will make you go over the 5GB limit. I don't stream netflix movies and shows at all either, mostly because it can't handle it to begin with. I have 3 people that share this connection. We browse web various webpages, look at reddit pictures, and even partake in the viewing of the occasional youtube clip. One of us plays an MMO (EQ2) for a few hours a day, if even at all, which doesn't use that much bandwidth contrary to what most people think. I also download windows updates and game updates too. These can be some pretty big files that add up, especially if you have any steam games. Let's see, I also have a PS3 which will need updating before you play games or some features for single player games won't be available. I don't play online games on the PS3, but I have to get their updates anyway if I want to simply be connected to PSN. So what you are saying is that I am the 2% ruining the experience of the other 98% of consumers out there simply because I use the service I signed up for? I'm sorry but I am not the one ruining it for everyone else. I am being profiled into a category of user I simply do not belong in, and that's the person leaving uTorrent on all day sharing his copy of transformers 8. It's the person who uses their 3G card to watch netflix shows and movies at any point in the day or night. Those are the bandwidth hogs that ruin it for the others. I may be sipping the equivalent of dial-up for several hours a day constantly, but that leaves 95% of the rest of the available bandwidth open for everyone else. Just because it adds up to different totals at the end of the month doesn't make me hog 95% of the available bandwidth all the time. **

Out adsl card in our local switch was giving us way slower speeds than we paid for. They refused to let us back out if our 3 year sla. We of course didn't know about the switch issue until they found it. A defective card for 2.5 years and constant denial about it. It made us leave bell. They forced us to pay business prices for what was supposed to 8mbit unlimited, and we were getting t1 speeds with latency spikes so bad streaming and online gaming became a crapshoot. After we left, their "retention team" called us and asked what hey could do to make us stay. I told them they can pay us 36 months @ $50 for $1800 and we would consider it. The person in Mumbai could not offer that for me. Go figure. EDIT: Some people seem to be interested in my post, so I will add something pertinent. Every time we contacted Bhell they said "Sir, in your contract you see that distances to the switch will result in lower speeds. Your contract says "Up to 8 megabit", and there is no guarantee" as to ultimate speed. Well, this was getting frustrating. Whoever I was talking to in Mumbai had no idea what to do, or who I should call next. There was no obvious complaint department, or easy way to get a tech. I discovered the forums on and aired my grievance looking for advice in the Canadian ISP subforum. Since the amount of money was rather large compared to the usual posts, it got a lot of reading. This is the crazy part, I had a Bhell tech see my message on DSLReports, and could sense there was a problem beyond the distance. Nobody should get 8 down to 1 mbit. He got the ball rolling, a tech came out from Bhell finally, brought a new modem, tested the line at all the points to the switch, and explained the bad card. Came back, tested the new line, and it was coming in an 8.2mbit. My lag on my specific game servers went from a madly fluctuating 60-140ms, and after the fix it was 30-60 across the board. No more intermittent disconnects, just proper internet.

How are consumers affected by them? Well... I am a 'legacy/grandfathered' Alltel data plan user that is now owned by Verizon. I had 0 (zero) issues with Alltel before the takeover/buyout. I got full speeds 95% of the time and could use any amount of data i wanted. With Verizon and it's data caps + throttling, I don't get the service I am paying my $59.95/month for. For the past year, I have averaged 10-20GB of usage per month. In the last 6 months, my service has diminished drastically due to Verizon's new throttling policy (that still shouldn't effect me since I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan). Now comes Verizon with it's throttling measures. Even though I'm not supposed to have any data cap, I do, and it's 5GB. A few months ago I called up Verizon and bitched that my service was crap. That's when I found out that I was a top 5% bandwidth "hog" for using 8.5GB so far that month and that I was being throttled. I tried to argue with the rep about the fact that I'm not supposed to have any of these limits and while he agreed, there was nothing that he could do about it. He then told me that not only was I being throttled for the rest of the billing cycle but also for the entirety of the next billing cycle as well! So If I go over 5GB in March, I won't be taken off throttling until the start of my May billing cycle (assuming I don't exceed 5GB in April). They even changed the wording on my bill from "unlimited data plan (bsp)" to "unlimited MB allowance." They are trying to avoid lawsuits I guess but it won't work because the argument remains that they are not honoring my contract. If I wanted to use 30GB of data in a month it wouldn't be possible because of the throttling. If all I can get are dial-up speeds, this limits the MB usage I'm allowed to have! This isn't 2001, webpages require more data to be downloaded to display them (depending on the site of course). 5GB of data is utter bullshit and there is no reason why wireless internet should cost more than land line based providers. I don't mind paying what I do for service, just don't limit my service with such a measly data cap of 5GB and throttle the shit out of me if I do go over (remember I have an unlimited data plan still). 3G wireless is my ONLY source of internet (fuck satellite) so I don't have the luxury of choosing another provider. I also wouldn't mind throttling if they'd increase the cap to 10GB and only throttle you for the remainder of that billing cycle you go over.

There isn't even a theoretical unlimited quantity of data available. Maximum bitrate x number of seconds per billing cycle is the theoretical maximum of data one could download utilizing 100% network capacity. What they are selling you is access to this data network. Everyone knows it has a certain capacity and that you should only expect performance up to a certain point. But if the product is access to this network, which they are advertising as unlimited, and they clearly limit access to the network then they are deliberately being dishonest.

I want to make a couple quick points... >there is no reason why wireless internet should cost more than land line based providers. This is a common belief, but the fact of the matter is that the nature of wireless technology has many limitations that landlines do not. Although wireless technology has rapidly evolved in recent years, and thus has provided significantly more throughput, there still is always a limit. This goes the same for hardline technology too of course, but wireless has one more obstacle that doesn't affect them nearly as much. You see there is only so much radio frequency spectrum available. Look around you some day and think about all the various things that use RF. Its everywhere and the usable spectrum is essentially full. Hardlines don't have to worry about this. Fiber has no connection to it what-so-ever. The coax cable your cable provider uses for last mile is shielded from RF and therefore virtually unaffected. There also is the fact that your cellphone uses a 'point to multipoint' type system. That is to say that you are always sharing the access point on the tower with multiple other users. This would be somewhat akin (in very simplified terms) as allowing an entire neighborhood to connect to your home wireless router. It is going to have an impact eventually! So why don't they just add more towers? It's not just because of cost (though that is certainly a factor) it is also because again their is only so much spectrum. The more towers you have, the closer together they are. The closer together they are, the less potential for unique frequency selection their is. (again, simplified terms) Sure there are ways to combat this such as timing technology and transmission power, but they are not perfect because you also want reliability don't you? You even mentioned satellite service isn't a reasonable option for you. Why? Because it is affected by these same limitations on a much larger scale (even with spot-beam technology). The fact of the matter is that Wireless != Landline. Wireless has many unique limits that hardwired system don't. And my last point >the argument remains that they are not honoring my contract. I am not a lawyer, but I do know it is common for people to still use this claim after their contact has expired. Typically, unless you upgrade your phone and use a deal the provider gives you to lower your cost on the phone for a trade in your loyalty, then your service simply continues as a monthly at-will service. In such a case, you might still have some rights by way of a service agreement, but your legal basis is much smaller now that there are no terms preventing you from simply cancelling the service without penalty. Again, I am not saying that is or isn't your case... I am simply mentioning it in general for everyone reading.

It may decrease the life of the routers by constantly utilizing more data No, it doesn't. >I assume to added power to run at more capacity is negligible. No. At least, not in the way you think. Adding capacity to a wireless network is a very complex problem, especially in highly populated areas. It's not as simple as just adding a router. While adding additional radio equipment to handle capacity consumes relatively little power compared to the cell tower as a whole, cell towers consume a great deal of power themselves and are usually fitted with very large diesel generators and fuel tanks for backup during power outages. Also, it's not like the company is holding back on buying a $200 router from BestBuy, the equipment is, relatively speaking, very expensive. However, this is irrelevant since the main limiting capacity factor is wireless spectrum. Radio spectrum is limited and extremely expensive to obtain. There are only so many ways to divide up a band of spectrum amongst users before encountering complications. While there are various techniques to squeeze more capacity out, such as CDMA and TDMA, it only helps to a certain point. To fix this, you have to add more towers so that customers hop on the towers closer to them, relieving the load on the other towers. However, towers are extremely expensive. Depending on its location, it's not uncommon for a new site to cost several million dollars or more. Not only that, but they are hard to build as well due to multiple factors such as real-estate issues and political opposition. (Lots of people don't want them in their back yard). >What I really think is going on is that wireless carriers underplanned future network growth Not true. They plan and forecast growth and seasonal changes to their network traffic levels. They also plan for big sporting events, concerts, or anytime when they can reasonably expect a temporary large gathering of customers in a single spot. There is always a period of elasticity between network generations as customers roll over from the older, larger capacity network, to the newer network. The trick is to phase out the old while building up the new. However, as in any large company, the sales department doesn't always collaborate with the engineering departments and keep selling older equipment. As in any profitable business, the company won't spend money on needless equipment if the demand isn't there. If the demand is there, then it is easy to get funding for growth. Personally, I can't imagine any network engineer wanting to keep people on the older network when they can get them on the newer one and phase out the old network. Everyone likes new cool tech. > and refuse to add capacity to the network because if they just wait a while, the hardware will be better and cheaper. Again, not true. It's much more complicated than that. Carriers are required to maintain older networks. The idea is that they don't want someone to not be able to call 911 on their older phone. The people who don't move to the newer networks add a cost. This is one of the reasons why carriers will give away phones in exchange for a new contract. As you can imagine, it is very expensive to replace several concurrent nationwide wireless networks with newer equipment. Since the time between network generations is shrinking, and competing wireless companies create pressure to jump onto next gen network bandwagons, there is an incentive to build out the new network and phase out the old ones, and the new equipment is usually more expensive than the older equipment. Strictly speaking, it would be cheaper to simply maintain an older generation network without jumping to the next gen. In fact, some carriers did this when they decided not to employ 3G networks and instead waited for 4G. >They have oversold their service, and instead of building infrastructure to ensure everyone has a connection at a speed they were told(but not promised by they smart men up top), they add incentive to not use the network by adding the data cap, and punish legacy unlimited customers by decreasing their bandwidth. Perhaps they have oversold their service. However, this is very unlikely. It's the chicken and the egg problem. The company isn't going to invest in new network equipment without customers. It's really very simple. Income - Costs = Net Profit. Consider, for a moment, that they haven't oversold their service and it really is a small number of users overloading the network. Now, imagine you are in charge of a wireless network company. Obviously, you get your money from service subscriptions. Now imagine that you have a small percentage of users that are consuming lots of bandwidth compared to the rest of your customers. They're using so much, that it is causing a strain on the network. Since the cost to add capacity is more than the projected income provided by these users, adding capacity will result in a net loss in profit. How can you justify spending a ton of money adding capacity when the network traffic growth isn't coming from new subscribers, but a small percentage of your existing subscribers? Remember, you have a budget, you have a board of investors to answer to, and you have regulatory requirements mandating that you maintain your older networks. Oh, since you are not Richard Branson, you have to divide your capacity amongst voice and data users. Consequently, you have to give voice users priority. Now, here's the real kicker: Even if all your customers on your network, not just a small percentage, were using more capacity, unless you had sufficient income from your subscribers to pay for the additional equipment, you can't expand your capacity. If you did, you'd go bankrupt. The idea of data caps and speed throttling is not an unreasonable measure to this scenario. Personally, I'd go for throttling since it would allow flexible adjustment as actual capacity increased over time. >It wouldn't be as unsettling if the carriers showed a sign of removing these caps and resolved capacity issues. This is not the case. They continue to make the caps more strict and affect more users. I agree that this premise is unsettling. However, I find the implied malice highly unlikely. The reality is you don't know why they are making the bandwidth caps more stringent and apply to more users. It could be purely for profit. It could be because of what I mentioned above: everyone is using more bandwidth such that the cost of adding capacity is larger than the income received by the subscription base. The truth is probably that it's both. If a company can find a more profitable way of doing business, they will do it. >while using the money that should be going towards infrastructure on things that are not infrastructure. Really? Like what? Remember, businesses have budgets. Departments have budgets. Money and markets are limited. >These businesses are NOT hurting either. So what? The fact that they're not losing money and maintaining profitability during a recession is to be taken as a sign of malice? In other circles, this could be seen as just smart business. Do you want them to lose investors and make it even harder for them to spend on infrastructure?

Because people know the companies are thieves and still line up to pay them exorbitant fees for their services and refuse to sue them when they fail to deliver.

Bad guy Kodak printer Uses color ink in all greyscale printouts, regardless of if set strictly to greyscale in computer before printing, under the guise of "superduperhighqualitymegaphotoqualitysuperprint" quality printing. Considers cartridge spent when levels are kind of low. WILL NOT print in greyscale if color cartridge is out. Has a printer head cleaning mechanism that actually uses ink, and the mechanism runs itself after every instance of printing. what^fuck

Here it is plain and simple, free Internet services need money to operate, they make it by tracking what websites you visit, what search terms you use, etc or they run ads (which Adblock stops). People want privacy but don't want to pay for search engines, video sites(YouTube, etc) email, etc so websites said "people can opt out if they choose" and Microsoft pretty much said "well now everyone has to opt-in instead" which removes quite a lot of traffic and revenue for websites from people who simply would have no idea what any of this means (and that's a lot of people)

I get the internet needs ads. But people don't want to be tracked. They need to resolve this in some way other than "fuck you, watch ads". Technology allows people to avoid things they don't like. That's how the world works. Trying to stop it is like fighting the tide. The way to address this is to find new ways to make money, not force tracking when users don't want it (and can prevent it). DNT is the proper alternative to AdBlock. Because the way this fight keeps going results in the whole world running AdBlock and then the ad supported internet is really hosed.

Apple Maps is absolute garbage. With Google Maps I can type in my apartment address and then the name of a building on campus and it will get me right there. Last night I tried this with Apple Maps and it couldn't even find the building on campus. After I found an exact address for it I was able to get it to find it, then I clicked the bus button and it loaded up a list of public transit apps I could download. Why would I want to download ANOTHER map app to do what my old one could do easily?

When I say "skin" I mean everything that isn't the rendering engine. You can put hooks in the engine to call your routines on most user actions. So you can most likely change the behaviour of history browsing, but I'm not an iOS Webkit specialist, so I can't say for sure.

A "." is not literally a point since a point has no height or width. I was basically just summing up what I thought were the pertinent points of the article, an editorialized

I worked for Verizon for 4 years, in a couple of different locations. If they were to arrest every cell phone employee that has looked through pictures or added some pictures to their phone their jails would be bursting at the seams. Not condoning it, not saying it's ok, just saying that it happens constantly. Ladies (guys too) always remember to use a memory card. Make sure all of your videos and pictures are saved to your card. That way when you are getting anything transferred over to a new phone you can pull out the card and nothing will be left on the phone itself. The guys are the bigger idiots in this situation but that doesn't change the fact that maybe you shouldn't take naked pictures of yourself on a device that can be viewed very easily by many people.

I worked for a vzw indirect retailer, I don't think there was a single store in our district that didn't do this. At regional meetings they would share the recent finds, and if something was especially juicy they would send a mass email. The worst offenders were some of the better salesmen, so the managers and DMs would look the other way (if they weren't in on it). Phone sales reps are some of the worst people I've ever had the displeasure of working with, and I'm so glad I didn't stay there for longer than I did.

And how exactly do you expect a repair centre to do any kind of software work if it's "illegal to search through someone's computer"? When they hand it over they do so under the knowledge that the computer will be subject to extensive manual and automated searches. If they want to be fussy about the examination then we ask them to just take the time to back their private data to another device so that engineers don't have to tip toe around a system.

I disagree. It's just about the same amount of effort as sifting through undeleted files. In fact, it might be easier to search through deleted files , especially if the person deletes the files just prior to handing over the phone. In other words, it is either: Remove and plug in the SD card (<2 minutes) and look through all the photos to find what you are looking for (<2 minutes); Remove and plug in the SD card (<2 minutes) and sort by date deleted in your recovery program (<1 minute). I don't know why the OC is getting downvoted; he's clearly correct. Just remove your SD card and/or format it. If one of you [evil] redditors is feeling up to it, you could even make a proof-of-concept app which automates this really quickly and uploads to the cloud so you can download later.

Considering the possible outcome of someone stealing nudes and/or other private photos, videos, text messages, emails etc from your phone I would argue it is fitting. Not everyone is (and no offense intended to the waitress who no doubts works her ass off) a random joe. Public figures, employees for large companies who might be quite far up the corporate ladder and others could have a lot to lose up to and including pretty much have their lives and/or careers ruined by having information leaked that although maybe not illegal might be frowned upon or considered not acceptable to their employer. Teachers have lost their jobs when nude photos of them have surfaced on the internet, even if they were taken long before they became a teacher. Politicians would likely find it extremely difficult to continue to do their jobs and/or to campaign if they're in a conservative area and they're not christian and heterosexual etc.

Use randomly-generated passwords. Instead of trying to create an easy-to-remember password for your Internet credentials, use a tool to randomly generate them. Of course, SplashData publishes its "worst password" list in hopes that you'll use their password generator, SplashID Safe. But there are a number of other tools that can generate passwords for you, such as LastPass. Or you can simply use one of the many free random password generators that are out there, and store the credentials in your browser's password manager (and in another, offline location in case your browser burps). No no no no no NO NO. WTF? Why do people still push this random password bullshit? The only thing a random password does is either A)Force the user to write it down, or B)Cause the user to rely on password-remembering features in browsers and such. All it does it make the USER the weak point in a password attack rather than the password itself. It's passing the buck, so that IT policies don't get blamed if there's an intrusion. ("It's not OUR fault that the user chose to write down their 15-character random password which changes every month!") XKCD covered this well, but the

Right on, bro! Piracy is EXACTLY like a free "sample"... ...a free "sample" that just happens to be the entire product which you can keep forever, negating the need to ever purchase anything. The best part is, if you liked the first "sample" you can also "sample" every other product they make or come out with.

Umm, no, I don't think that's the case here. See the thing with random numbers is computers aren't very good at coming up with them. The best you can do is take the current time and multiply that by some crazy math to come up with a pseudorandom number. However, time is really predictable, so if someone can figure out what time the random number was generated, they can figure out the encryption key. So, when you're generating random numbers, you want to take as many random samples from as many different places as possible. Some programs (not webpages), will use things like the static on your sound card's input or the snow on a webcam, because these come from cosmic rays which are ridiculously unpredictable. On a webpage though, all you've got to work with is mouse movements, which is still pretty random. The more you move your mouse around in the window, the more random the number they generate is. No one's going to be able to predict your mouse movements down to a single pixel, so they won't be able to generate the same key as you.

Entropy is just a science-y term for chaos. It is a linear measurement and